Tuesday, and its going to be a good one. Things will turn up, get mended, be delivered and not be broken. This has sunshine day written all over it. So it is with optimism that I get up for breakfast and plan the day. Its going to be training between 11 and 13:30 over zoom and then some radical gardening. I try to join the zoom training but the link is dud. So I admit defeat, tell my colleagues of my failure and move on. I sit on the front step and I’m rewarded with several butterflies.

Its lunchtime and the family go for a walk to the village co-op to buy strawberry plants. A successful mission followed by me starting to garden while my partner and eldest daughter go for a longer walk. On their return I prepare the raised bed for the strawberries and leave my partner to plant them, a mission that went well.

While my partner does the strawberries I crack on clearing the heather bed and and getting it ready to put log roll edging round part of it. New pots of bulbs get planted and sited. I move some of our pots around to make a cleaner looking garden. While doing this I discover a small patch anemones that have come into flower.

My garden as full of gifts today as it soon presented me with a very plump bumble bee. Who could ask for anything more.

I beaver away and eventually can clear away the tools and sit back and look at the fruits of my labour. Well I can see the difference but I doubt if anyone else will. I’m banking on the summer bulbs being spectacular.

I am tired and sore from yesterdays injection and decide to call it a day. I retreat to the house and open my new Amazon package. Oh the delight. There is nothing like a new set of electronic screwdrivers.

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In my joy I put the bins out for tomorrows collection and moved onto re-siting the pond pump on a more suctionable base to stand it on. All the time I was fiddling around with my hand in the pond a very brave small frog sat in the middle of the pond and watched me intently. His or her friends had all dived out of site when I started but this one seemed to be unphased by me. I think tomorrow I’ll go down and see if he/she is up for a chat.

Its tea time and then I start the blog early as my intention is to soak in a bath adn get an early night. Its due to be sunny again tomorrow so its more garden time if I’m lucky.

Today is Monday and its a crap day, because this is injection day. Jab at 2:30. It would also appear to be a day for things to go wrong, go missing and generally be demanding. My day starts with muesli and moves onto taking solar panels apart and trying to get the pond pumps working. Hours pass as I get engaged with the project. Soon its time to think GP surgery, so its a long and enjoyable shower and then I am off to the surgery my fresh clean snowy hair waving in the breeze. I arrive full of paracetamol and phone into reception. I am admitted at the back door, I’m still a leper till the 1st of April. I get my gut jab and just for thoroughness I get a B12 jab in the arm as well. I drive home and find 80 plug petunias have been delivered. So my afternoon gets spent in the greenhouse as I plant up the plug plants.

Another satisfying time, however a friend rings me and shares the nightmare day she is having, stalled car, lost purse, daughter with a poorly foot requiring assessment, visitors arriving, and a work IT system that will not talk to her. It seems that out there in the real world days can still be a bag of pain and mishap. The life Admin will be a major pain. I retreat to the house for tea and an evening of TV and a wrestle to get in to my web page to write the blog. I’ve had several tries and only succeeded at midnight. So I’m now full of pills and drugs, sore and achy but it is all confined without real world interference. I’m off to bed and will go again tomorrow.

It’s Sunday, my day of rest so I get up at 11 o’clock. Decadent, depraved and delightful. My first thought is “Weigh In”, so I skip to the bathroom, prepare and jump on the scales.

89.8 Kilos

I am elated, I’ve cracked the 90 kilo barrier and I am setting new personal bests along with a decreasing resting heart rate. Now I can begin to get cracking on the weights regime. I love it when a plan comes together.

Breakfast follows, and the Sunday call to our youngest daughter. We spend quite along time chatting and talking about houses and mortgages. Its gone midday by the time we have finished. While this is going on I start to create a pair of crocodile clips so that I can begin to cannibalise some mini solar panels to drive the pond pump more efficiently. In the process of doing this I discover that the battery connector in my multi meter has eroded and the wiring failed. So as a sub plot I end up mending my multi meter before I can test if my crocodile leads work. Life is never simple. Success; when I test the crocs they work. Too late to start on the panels so I clear things away and get ready to deliver a birthday present to a niece that lives in the village. My partner and I walk around the village and deliver the present and saunter back the long way round just for the exercise. Its all I will get today as its my rest day. Once home I settle down to watch the second half of Leicester Tigers beat Newcastle and then move on to watch England beat Albania two nil. I pop out to the shed and check to see if the garden sculpture I had repainted yesterday was dry ad ready to be re-sited in the garden. The paint has dried well and so I return it to its place in the garden beneath the pampas grass.

Tea follows and more pain killers in preparation for tomorrows 28 day injection. It has become part of my monthly routine. I start to write the blog as I watch “Line of Duty and then continue as my washing tumble drys. I like to go into a new week with my washing done and my clothes sorted. Tomorrow will start with training before I go for my jab in the afternoon which will then go down hill for a while. To finish the blog today I have included my recipe for my favourite one pot, which I have in the past clearly mentioned as a friend who has asked me to share. So here it is:

Roland’s famous one pot recipe. The basic requirements are as follows:

1. Chicken 650 – 750grams – cut into cubes
2. Chorizo – half a ring, sliced into coin size discs
3. Bacon – one pack chopped up
4. onion – 1 chopped
5. leek – 1 sliced and separated in to rings
6. Carrot- 1 chopped.
7. pepper – seeded and diced
8. garlic – four cloves at least, sliced thinly
9. mushroom – half a dozen, quartered.
10. Cherry tomatoes- half a dozen
11. One tin of chopped tomatoes
12. One tin of chick peas
13. Mixed herbs
14. Smoked sweet paprika
15. 1 chicken oxo cube – dissolved in as little water as possible
16. Tomato paste- two table spoons
17. Red wine – cheap as possible
18. Virgin Olive oil- enough to cover the bottom of a sturdy large oven top pot.
19. For the luxury version- a couple of shots of Armagnac

The Method.

1. Heat the oil till a piece of onion in it bubbles
2. Throw in the chorizo and bacon, cook until the oil turns red from the chorizo.
3. Keep the heat up and throw in the chicken and smoked sweet paprika. Seal the chicken by keeping it all moving in the oil, bacon and chorizo.
4. Now throw in the pepper, carrot, pepper, garlic, leek and soften them. Keep it all moving as it heats through.
5. Turn the heat down and add the chick peas, stir in.
6. Empty the can of chopped tomatoes onto the top of the mixture
7. Squeeze a good two tablespoons full of tomato paste into the chopped tomatoes.
8. Add to the tomatoes and tomato paste a good tablespoon full of mixed herbs. Stir the tomato and herb mixture into the rest of the food.
9. Add the chicken oxo cube diluted in as little water as possible.
10. Add red wine till it just covers the food. Bring it to a simmer, slowly.
11. Add the mushrooms and cherry tomatoes (adding them now preserves their integrity).
12. Add a sprinkling of more smoked sweet paprika and stir in.
13. If doing the luxury version add the Armagnac.
14. Bring to the simmer and cover. Leave to bubble quietly for least an hour, or pop it in the oven on the lowest heat and leave for four hours, checking occasionally to monitor juice level. Should it show signs of drying add more red wine, never water!!! More Armagnac if your rich.
15. Serve with fresh whole meal bread to soak up the sauce.

Saturday and I am up making teas and and getting ready to go to the chemist to get my injection for tomorrows GP appointment. We walk down to the chemist and pick up the medication and a paper. Back home to drop stuff off and we drive off again to the garden centre to get bacon, lasagne and treats for tomorrow. The garden centre is a strange array of premature flowers raised in greenhouses and likely to die in the still cold weather, while the butcher does a roaring trade and the mini Sainsburys allows us to top up with bagels. By the time we get home and settle for breakfast the morning is almost gone. I eat the remainder of last nights chicken one pot and drink copious amounts of fresh coffee. I go to the shed to check on the garden sculptures I painted yesterday. They are dry so I put them back in their allotted places, to shine. I think they look good. I good decision to do them.

With the sculptures back in position I clean up the desk space in the shed and retreat to the house, where the hoover is waiting to be mended. I get in to the kitchen and find that my eldest daughter has been busy and created a small poster for our fridge.

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One of the endearing things about our household is that occasionally these art surprises appear spontaneously. I set about the sickly Hoover, which of course is actually a Dyson. It works when in its basic configuration but does not when the hose extension is used, its a mystery. So I set about taking it apart and deploy an array of tools and lubricants to free parts of it and inspect the beast. It turns out that feeding the Dyson with pennies gives it constipation. None of my tools will free the coin so I resort to using a stick! It works. A fortune in tools and it takes a bamboo stick to do the job. So after a lot of time and exploring the Dyson gets fixed and of course I test it out on the ground floor to check it works okay. It does and due to all the lubricating and freeing of wheels it glides like new.

So the wizardry over I clear away the tools and get ready to train. Today its the bike so its back to the shed, but I pick up the last garden sculpture that needs repainting and set it up ready to be painted on the shed desk before I train. I put in a big effort and I am rewarded with a good session. I am pleased with this as it is my last training session before resting tomorrow and then the 28 day injection on Monday. It feels like the end of a cycle which has come good. Come Monday and the injection I will have a couple of bad days and I start over again to get back to training well and recovering my fitness. Even though I have started taking Paracetamol the day before and for a further two days the injection still makes me tired, sore and demotivated.

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Having toweled down and slipped on a T shirt post session I set to painting the last garden sculpture. It comes out quite well and I leave it to dry over night.

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I clean up and change before settling down to Lasagne and salad and then watch a documentary on Paloma Faith. Bright and underestimated, typical of a lot of working class people. Often seen as strange, but mostly more up front. I write the blog to the accompaniment of the end of Creed and Rambo Uncut, obviously a Stallone night. Tomorrow is my rest and paracetamol day, I’m hoping for sunshine and a chance to be in my garden rewiring solar panels for the pond pump. Just another lazy Sunday.

Friday, a free day at last, so I indulge in a bacon breakfast, coffee and the usual medication before checking emails and getting on with things. Things in this case means retreating to the shed and writing letters. I am finding new motivation to write by using both pen and brushes. There is something appealing about having pot of ink and a brush to hand when writing. I’m sitting writing the blog with two new brush rests sitting in front of me.

A morning passes quickly until lunch time calls. I have a quick smoothie and set about making a chicken and chorizo one pot for his evenings meal. This one was going to be a long slow cook so it goes into the oven at 1 o’clock to be ready for around 5 o’clock. Steeped in red wine and smoked paprika it will be delicious. My partner returns from her midday walk and collecting my drugs order from the chemist. It turns out that my 28 day injection is not there but they are promising it for Saturday morning. I returned to the shed and and decide to repaint my garden sculptures. I gather up my kneeling figures and bring them into the shed prepare them and then paint them with fresh black concrete paint. They come out well I think.

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I am so pleased with the out come that I decide to have a go at my Buddha head, so I heave the thing in to the shed almost immediately regretting my miscalculation of the weight of it. I get it up on the desk and set to painting it.

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I clear away the paint and wash the brushes out and realise that I cannot go back in the shed and train on the bike without choking on the paint fumes. So today I return to the garage to the rower. I give it a hard 45 minutes on a lower resistance than yesterday and find myself setting yet another personal best for the time on that level. I’ve gone at it really hard and exceed my previous PB by 2 kilometres. That surprises me greatly but confirms that I am at last getting fitter.

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The evening is of course started with the delicious one pot followed by a cracking rugby match with Scotland defeating France for the first time in Paris for over twenty years. I write the blog conscious that tomorrow I need to remember to get my injection, mend the hoover and see if the paint has dried.

Thursday, a work day, so breakfast, drugs and crank up the laptop. The IT is still not working as it should but eventually I get to meet with my colleagues for the morning meeting. We try to clarify where we are, how the EE world is and what knowledge we have to pool. In the end we know we can only wait and hold our counsel till others have had their conversations. I have time to write a brief letter in the shed before my next meeting. My IT continues to play up but I get in to my meeting after some fiddling with the tech, much to my relief. It is a quirky session from my point of view but the content was good and I hope useful to the participants.

I decide that our cash deposits are low and head for the local supermarket and its ATM. The car park is all but empty, no one around, its a strange feel. I use the ATM and head back home. I have to psyche myself up to get ready to train. I am finding it increasingly difficult to motivate myself lately but remind myself that this is medicine and climb into my gear. I head to the garage and decide to row at a higher level today. I adjust the machine to a heavier resistance and go for a rugged half hour. As I pulled myself through the time a friend rang and due to the wonder of technology I could have the conversation via my head phones and continue to row. Everyone I know at the moment seem to be cramming more and more into their lives just to keep things going. At the end of the conversation I continue my row and set a new personal best for the time at this level of resistance. The numbers are telling me I am getting fitter and my resting heart rate is decreasing in line with the fitness. I am trying to make the most of this weeks training as Monday is 28 day jab Monday, which signals at least two days of feeling crap.

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I change out of my gear ready for my favourite meal of the week, tuna pasta. Tonight England play Montenegro in a world cup qualifier on TV. It is like men against hamsters, England win easily with a less than best team. I write the blog and do my to do list for tomorrow. If I am lucky with the weather I may get some garden time.

Wednesday, bin day. It starts with a call from a friend who has already been working for hours. I have the luxury of a lazy bacon breakfast and coffee. I spend time with the guy who tidies our garden and then spend hours, literally, trying to get the RCP apps on my phone to work. This included calls from and to a tech guy with limited clarity in what sounded like a bar. The end result is that I now cannot even get into the portal app. My levels of IT frustration plumb new depths. In the end I gave up, life is too short for this level of shit. I retreat to the shed and write some thoughts and then post them. Time to train, so I get into my gear and return to the shed for a gentle hour of pedaling.

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So I close up the shed, change and settle down to tea and a film. A film based on a true story of how a number of young women were killed and because they were perceived as prostitutes the police failed to investigate properly and nobody has ever been held responsible. Tragically the mother of one of the victims was later killed by her youngest daughter as a result of a psychotic episode leaving the victims final sister to continue the campaign. Here we are on the anniversary of lockdown and we choose this film. My partner goes to bed and I am left to ponder the joys of the world, like the new 50 pence piece that was minted in 2020, one of which sits in front of me as I write the blog.

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I wonder sometimes about agendas, differences and why the designer chose a geodome to represent diversity. Dominique Evans, the designer suggests that for her the equal length of the elements symbolise a community of connection and strength. A vision then. Aspirational perhaps, but not a reality. Britain got built (whatever that means) on privilege, inequality, exploitation and repression. Cannot deny that such a mixture of toxic elements does not create diversity.

Its no show plumber day! Tuesday. I get up earlyish and do eggs for breakfast in the expectation that the plumber would arrive any time after 10:30. So to fill in time I did the following:

1. Booked my 28 day injection appointment
2. Renewed my HCPC registration
3. Taped a parcel box for Shri Lanka
4. Tried to reactivate my RCP phone app
5. Baked a wholemeal loaf
6. Read another three essays in the BI-BLE
7. Cleaned the shower head.

Still no plumber so I indulge in noodles for lunch. I’m getting irritated and I can feel I am working up to a training session. Instead I read and drink coffee in feint hope that plumber man might still arrive. Of course he doesn’t. I guess he is telling me to stick my shower work as I have not renewed my boiler service agreement with him. Its time to get myself into the garage and work off my irritation.

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WOW I am impressed with me, this is a tremendous personal best. I must have been really pissed off with the plumber. This betters my last PB by over three kilometres and its the first time since 2019 that I have burnt over a 1000 calories in an hour. This is good stuff. Can I really be ill? Can I still do this and have cancer? Is this some cruel kind of trick? Clearly I can as the cancer is not a fantasy, I’ve seen the scans. All I can do is go on making this as good as it can get. I head for a warm bath to ease the muscles and of course I indulge in a bath bomb while I read.

Ah the joys of soaking and reading. Eventually I get out of the soak and eat tea while my body relaxes further. I write the blog early, or relatively early with a view to an early night. Tomorrow its back to the shed and the garden and maybe some work. Bollocks I’ve forgotten its Tuesday the day bins go out! So out to the cold. Brrrr.

Monday, I’ve slept in, a poetry over dose late last night meant I went to bed late. A simple breakfast of muesli and I head for the shed, firstly to write a bit of my own poetry and secondly to sort out the garden pots. For the rest of the day I garden and take the occasional call from friends and colleagues. I manage to gather up my pots and tidy up areas at the top of the garden that’s been a wilderness for a while.

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At midday I pop out to post my mornings letters. Then its back to the garden, a quick cup of soup and its back to filling, planting and deploying pots. I tidy up the mallow and replace one of the palms. By five o’clock I have pots planted up and dispersed around the garden, filled with summer bulbs. I tidy up and retreat to the shed with a coffee just as a friend rings for a chat. It is a good end to a busy physical day. I note I have done over 10,000 steps so I am going to count this as a rest day with activity. Just time to catch two frogs at the same time in the pond.

Time to wash up and eat tea before settling down to the third place tie in “Only Connect” and following that up with “Unforgotten” ( or remembered as I pedantically keep insisting on). Of course the most important event will be when Tesco rock up between 9 and 10 and deliver the household from starvation. We will as a household behave like nut starved squirrels and hide the food as quickly as possible and then settle back to our preoccupations. I look forward to the silent house and time to read again before finally tucking myself away to bed to rise tomorrow to my new to do list.

Sunday, my day of rest, so it starts with the Sunday weigh in. I skip on the scales, hold my breath and look down for the moment of truth.

90.3 Kilos

The same weight as last week. I will take that as a win. I will also take the weekly treat. So the weigh in done its time for breakfast and a first treat of croissants, jam and fresh coffee. A quick call to my to youngest daughter and then I build the new garden chair that is going to be located in the front garden as that is the sunniest place in the garden. So as summer progresses I am more likely to be found sunning myself in my front garden idly awaiting the post man and reading.

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Having got the chair in place it was time to get to the garden centre and get some compost, a pie and my treat of white chocolate cheesecake. Back home I stash the compost and settle down to watch the end of a football match, while my weekly wash tumbles dry. My afternoon takes me to the garden and the greenhouse where I sew more seeds as I begin to gear up for Spring.

I close the greenhouse up and leave it to do its magic. I watch Leicester beat Manchester united in the cup and then eat pie for tea and while away my time till the new series of Line of Duty comes on the TV. Then it’s blog time. So my lazy Sunday comes to an end with me updating tomorrows Tesco order. Do I feel rested and ready for a new week, not really. I’m restless and tired of it all, a functional mute.