Wednesday and its a “do the house stuff” day but before I do anything I get a call from a friend so I start my day with a chat about children’s birthday parties and the work entailed to come up with ways to keep young children amused. Then after a muesli breakfast I set about the list of things to do. First up is planting the bulbs and flowers that arrived yesterday.

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Well garden done I move on. Whilst doing the garden the splash guards for the bath arrive via Amazon. So I gather together my tools and take over the bathroom to fix the guard in place. It goes really well, I think,so tomorrow once the bonding has set it will be possible to take anxiety free showers.

Time for lunch with my partner and then its time to clear away the debris created by my daughters clearing out their old and unwanted clothes from their weekend reorganisation of storage space. I recycle a lot of coat hangers and deal with the cardboard mountain that had accumulated. With this done it was time to take the charity boxes to the Age UK shop in the next village, I nice break from the house.

Back home and I set about putting everything away that had to be taken out of the under sink cupboard to get Daisy Dishwasher better. I relocate the candles and the vases. Then I get a loaf started in the bread maker before going to the garage and sorting out the paint from the latest redecoration and reinstall the weights bench so that I can use it, I must be the only person who hoovers their garage. However the bench is back and I can get back to some weight training.

I get my weeks washing in the machine and then get ready to train. Today is a rowing day, so I will do 45 minutes. It goes relatively well and I feel I am getting back into the routine of training again. It will soon be back to having smoothies on a regular basis. The aim is to get back to 90 Kilos as soon as possible.

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I finish my session and retreat to the sofa to record it and to eat tea. I read for a while and then watch Chelsea beat Real Madrid to join Manchester City in the European cup final. At the end of the game I retrieve my washing from the tumble dryer and fold it ready to go away. Its blog time. Today has been all chores but there is a sense of achievement to have cleared the decks. Tomorrow is back to some work and some research on self publishing.

A post bank holiday Tuesday and I am up early as I am off to the hospital today for the result of my ultrasound on my sebaceous cyst. First a shower in the now non leaking facility followed by breakfast. On the drive to the hospital I have the company of a friend on the phone as she waited for her partner to emerge from a hospital appointment. I’m at the hospital early and have to wander around a bit before they can book me in. Once booked in I wait to be called. I am called and in I go. Two minutes tops to tell me what I already knew and tell me there is a three to twelve week wait before the cyst gets cut out. I walk back to the hotel car park and drive home. A waste of my time really, they could have phoned me and told me and save every ones time. By the time I got home the engineer had been to mend Daisy dishwasher and succeeded at a cost of course but it means I can get back to my nightly routine of setting the dishwasher off before bed. I contact a couple of private hospitals adn ask if they can do the surgery I need quickly. The answer was either that they could not get a consultant appointment any earlier than the nhs or the consultant that was available is now off ill. So much for the private sector. A brief lunch and I set off for the Shed to write letters and to train.

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Back in the house I find new plants have arrived which means that at least part of my day tomorrow is sorted. I also find the book that I ordered, the first book by Toshikazu Kawaguchi, Before the Coffee Gets Cold. I found that the book that I read a couple of days before was Before the Coffee Gets Cold: Tales from the Cafe, was the follow up to the original. So now I shall read the first book in the series.

My evening is food and football before the blog. I want to read before bed but I am tired. Despite training I still feel less than activated.

Monday and its pissing down with rain, in fact it does so all day. The family gets up to bacon sandwiches and fresh coffee. Over the meal we chat and discover that my youngest daughter has never seen photos of my mother in her younger days.This leads to much rummaging in cupboards and the digging out of old photographs. We spend ages pawing over the pictures and retelling some of the family history. By the time we finish it is lunch time adn my youngest daughter loads up her car and sets off for home. The rain sets in even harder and I retreat to the sofa and spend all afternoon formatting my poems so that they are all in Arial 12. Its a pain of a job going through them one by one but necessary. I finally finish. Now they all have to be edited and prepared into a single manuscript. I have to decided how I go about self publishing them. It is a pure vanity project on my part, I am under no illusion about them but at least my family can have what I’ve produced over my life, at least all the ones I’ve got. I eat tea and watch a film before getting to write the blog. I still have “Before the coffee gets cold” peculating away inside me, I have order the book that came before it, once I find an author I like then I read everything that they have written. With most authors this is okay but I never managed to do that with Balzac, I swear he could write faster than I could read.

Sunday, its been a day of gifts but first there was bath resealing to deal with. I am not satisfied with the tap end of the bath and decide that it needs redoing. To be safe I take a trip to Wickes to get another tube of sealant. I arrive at 10:15 and have to QUEUE !

Its back to home to redo the tap end before breakfast with the family. I give it my best shot using a different shaping tool,and get a better result, not perfect but much improved.

Breakfast over a present arrives from Amazon. I open it and find an early birthday present from a friend. Its a book; Before The Coffee Gets Cold. Tales from the Cafe, by Toshikazu Kawaguchi. I start to read and go on reading and reading , I am gripped. For the first time in a long time I am truly hooked.

I go on reading and reading. I stop only to go for a walk with the family to feed the ducks in the local park. The walk is full of gifts that include, chaffinches, squirrels and a woodpecker. We also get to feed the ducks and geese and yet another gift, a pair of goslings.

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Back home I continue to read and read and read. No TV, no music just reading. There is something about Japanese writers that I love, they seem to have a sensitivity about relationships that gets expressed very elegantly. We reach dinner time and eat as a family, clear away and I read more stopping only for the final episode and season finale of In the Line of Duty, before returning to the book. I finish the book and feel drawn to coffee and reflection. Time to write the blog and to reflect. I know that I shall be thinking about the book for days to come, I’m tempted to start to re-read the book but resist. I want time for it to sink in and give up more of its subtleties. When I get a book like this I know I could be a hermit as long as I had books, pen, paper and ink.

Saturday starts early as there are things to do today. As always Saturday starts with breakfast and the loading of my weekly drugs wallet. That done we go to the garden center to get some food and a couple of log roll edging lengths. Once home I wait for two things, the arrival of my youngest daughter and the foam rods that I need to reseal the bath. In due course both arrive so I set about resealing the bath. Looks easy on the videos but of course my walls are not straight, the gap is not equal and nothing comes away or cleans as easily.

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The pictures make this look like a stroll in the park but believe me this job was a pain from start to finish. Fortunately my preparation was good in that I had bought everything I could possibly need from tools to solvents. During the process I get to clean the surfaces with white spirit, upc cleaner, antifungal foam and of course soapy water.Between treatments everything gets dried using the hair dryer. Every stage also got hoovered to ensure no debris got left. So now I have a bath full of water to ensure that gap was at its largest when sealed so that when someone has a bath it does not distort the seal. Due to the depth of the gap that had to be sealed the sealant needs as long as possible to cure, the water will stay in the bath for one to two days to ensure it has the best chance of success. Then will come the acid test. Until then my box of sealing goodies will stay close by. By the end of the week the splash guard that I have ordered for the end of the bath will arrive and be fitted.

At last it is done and I can eat tea, watch a rugby match and write the blog. I find myself tired, disgruntled that I have not trained today and face a weigh in tomorrow that I know I will fail. Although I have finished todays job, I will not know if it works for a couple of days. There is always that moment when you have to face the prospect of failure and the need to start allover again. I need to start to get out again, I’m feeling dissatisfied with too many things, the garden, the work, my weight, my fitness, my COVID institutionalisation but most of all my own lack of motivation.

Friday and unusually a part work day. I get a bacon bagel and a coffee and ring the dishwasher mending company to ask if they got my booking on line. An apologetic receptionist tells me that the website is creating problems and takes my details to check their system. I’m not on it. She apologies and takes my booking. A few minutes later Chris rings me, the engineer, he’s busy today and away over the weekend so do I want him to refer me back to the company. We talk about how Daisy Dishwasher is and he seems to be aware of what the problem is likely to be. I decide that as having no dishwasher is not life threatening I agree to a Tuesday appointment. Once off the phone I surf the net fro information about rod use when sealing a bath. I discover that a “rod” in this context is a foam filling rod used to back sealant when the gap to be sealed is large. I hunt for the rods I need and to my surprise find them Amazon and available to be delivered tomorrow. I order the rods I need and tick them off my materials list. Having completed this task I gather some information and get ready for my meeting at 11 o’clock. I Also book a ticket for a conversation with Irvine Yalom my existential and group therapy hero. Its on May the 11th in the evening for an hour and a half with access to the video for some time afterwards. I recommend it. On cue I log on to my zoom meeting and have a useful conversation with one of the managers I support. Work is moving into a new phase and these conversations are really useful to keep in touch with how services are moving out of COVID restrictions. I come away and find that the information I had just discussed had come through so now the new work will start to come through.

I take a call from a friend and chat for a while and then go to the shed for a while. I write a letter and use my last stamp, always a tricky moment. Another friend calls me as I write so I have little time to finish the letter before I take my eldest daughter to her circus skills class. Its a relatively short drive away, and once I have dropped her off I head for the local do it yourself stores. I search both stores for a particular splash guards to use on the bath but neither of them stock what I need so I confine myself to buying the sealant that I need. This has taken a lot of time and I make it to my home village post box just in time to press my letter into the letter collectors hands, after which I pop into the post office and renew my stamp stock. I am about to drive off but realise two of my nieces have followed me out of the post office. We have a brief chat at a socially distanced distance and catch up with family news. We agree that it would be nice to have a family day in the summer to catch up and celebrate all the things the family have missed over the last thirteen months.

I get home and settle into my evening of tea followed by a cracking rugby match where Leicester Tigers clawed their way back to win a semi final which takes them to a Twickenham final. This was followed by a world boxing bout while I write the blog. My weekend is going to have the added pleasure of the company of my youngest daughter while I reseal the bath once my “rods” arrive.

Thursday already and a day that starts with bailing out the dishwasher. It has two inches of water in the base of it which needs to be syphoned out having cleared out the under sink cabinets. I clean all the filters and take apart what I can and do the obvious but I have no luck. I grab coffee and muesli and get myself in front of the laptop in time for my first meeting of the day. I catch up with colleagues and welcome back our manager. There is a lot to catch up on and we log back in to zoom for second session. At lunch time I return to the dishwasher, but nothing has changed, I check again to see if there is something obvious I’ve missed. I have a moment to appreciate the front garden and I snap a couple of examples.

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A very fast soup and I am back in front of the screen in time for the Open Forum I co host. It is an intense hour and I pay close attention to the content and what is required. I come out of the session and discuss it with my co host. A few moments for reflection and notes and I set about finding someone to come and tend to Daisy Dishwasher. I ferret around the internet and find a dishwasher mending service and book on line for them to come tomorrow. They promised to confirm the appointment by phone in an hour. They didn’t. I will see if anyone actually turns up tomorrow. Having done what I can do I change into my training gear and clear the kitchen before going to the garage to row for 45 minutes. I need to know if my back is going to be okay with it so I reduce the resistance level. It seems to go okay and is eased by a call from a friend.

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I’ve not long finished training and the Thursday tea of tuna pasta is ready as my partner prepares for her evening singing lesson. I settle down to watch Manchester United thrash Roma and at the same time tend to my weekly wash. By the end of the match, my washing is sorted and I am started on the blog. Tomorrow I have more meetings, the mystery of a dishwasher mender, will they or wont they, re-calking the bath and training. All this time my facial sebaceous cyst continues to sit in my cheek becoming sore. I just need to get to next Tuesday when my next appointment at the hospital is booked. Hopefully they will actually do something.

It’s Wednesday which means the bins go out, I have breakfast and head for the shed to write letters. But not before I get a call from a friend and the opportunity to talk to someone who is out there in the world balancing work and family pre vaccination. There I sit and watch my garden and write to friends. Soon it will be possible to entertain again and to visit and this is reflected in my letters. At lunch time I realise that I am still sore from Mondays injection and that I have stopped taking pain killers. I decide to persist without the pain killers, I judge the discomfort is manageable. A bacon bagel lunch and I clear the kitchen and then post my letters, I note I am low on stamps. I prepare the curry for the evening meal and pop it in the oven on a low heat to slowly come to completion in the early evening. I settle into the sofa for my afternoon work meeting. The meeting is an interesting one and I am drawn into a complex discussion on how it is possible to create inclusion across all levels of an organisation. I come away from the meeting with a lot of thoughts about how COVID has created widening of gaps in organisations.By the time I have finished the guy who tidies our garden had arrived so I was out chatting to him and feeding him tea. It is soon curry time and we sit and plan our evening. Easy for me I am going to watch a football match, which I do and then write the blog. I am acutely aware that I have not trained and I am seriously considering a late night row.

So here we are back to the blog on Tuesday having got it up and running again this morning. After getting the IT together I have breakfast, move my car so my partner can go to the physiotherapist. I settle down to continue numbering poems. In the end I go for an old fashioned analog process of cutting them up and sorting them into lines according to date.

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I plug away unstintingly until I get to the end. Having sorted them by date I then numbered them electronically in the digital file. Having done this I then merged two files and have finally got all my poems in date order in a single file. Now its time to edit them all and get them ready to publish and that’s the exciting part of embarking on self publishing. By the time I have had lunch and started the editing and formatting its time to train. I clamber into my training gear and go to the shed to bike for an hour.

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I go for a bath and find no hot water, so while the system kicks in I run tests on the bath sealing as there appears to be a leak. I ascertain that the shower and bath are okay but the bath sealing is not. So I now have a project to strip out the bath calking and reseal it. I check videos on how to do it and order the things I need. I get a call from a friend as she goes to collect her daughter and we talk work and the balance of work and family. I finally get my bath and then tea before watching a European football match. I return to the web site to write the blog and I am relieved that it is still operating. In all this excitement I find myself reapplying for my driving license. I got the standard threatening letter from the DVLA noting my age and the fact that my license runs out in July. I reapply on the online website and decide I only want a car driving license if it means I can do it on line. If I wanted to retain the ability to drive trucks I would have to have done it on a paper version. Life is too short for that.

Jab Monday, so I am up early and at the GP surgery by 8:30. I am admitted by a new practice nurse. We chat and introduce ourselves. She pinches my fat a little higher than the last nurse and injects me more slowly. When done I get a cotton wool and tape cloud and we agree the next injection date. I drive home and go to the shed and there I stay all day, typing up poems and then numbering all the poems in the electronic file. 229 poems digitised from the original paper file numbered. I started the process in 2014 and now its done. So I have started to number the poems already in digital format, but I am tired. I order Indian take away for the family as a treat. The website failed at this point and I was forced to abandon the post. This recovery is the result of hours of fucking around with the system the following morning. I’m still sore from yesterday and the pain in my side is still there so I have yet to train. I will give it a shot and see how it goes, but for now its work, poem numbering and work.