Tuesday and its late, busy day. So this is likely to be short and sweet. After a muesli breakfast I headed for the shed armed with a can of 7 UP, two packets of mini cheddars and a laptop. I got set up at my table and resumed typing up the poems that I have in a lever arch file that constitute the first two hundred and something poems that I wrote in my youth. All morning I sat and typed until I needed a break at which point it was lunchtime. When I went to the house it was empty as the household had gone for a walk but there was post and what a great delivery this was. There were plants that I had been waiting for, a letter from a friend, my hospital appointment paper work for Monday ( apparently I’m going for a maxillofacial, sounds like a vaguely dodgy massage parlour) and most dazzling of all was a training top that my friend had made and sent to me. By any standard that is quite a collection of post to get. Of course I immediately potted up the plug plants and got them under cover in the greenhouse. It was then back to the shed to type up some more poems. I persisted and now I am down to my last (which are actually my first) 50 poems. A few more days and I will have all my poetry digitised. Then perhaps I can get them into book form, beware if I do you could be getting the most narcistic Christmas present ever.

I make the mistake of popping into the house and find another box of plants in the porch, so its back to the garden to pot up more plug plants and to put the trays of pre arranged summer flowering bulbs into suitable troughs. I return to the shed to get a breather when a friend calls and I am able to thank her for her terrific gift. I promise to give her feedback on how the top performs when I train in it later. Its her daughters birthday today so there is much excitement and fun to be had. I close up the shed for the day and return to the house, where I make up a file for the Maxillofacial paper work and fill in the forms that I need to take with me next week. By the time I finish my partner has made tea so we sit to eat, time is getting on. I change in to my training gear and watch a football match before heading for the garage to do a 45 minute session on the rower, it is my new tops first outing. I set a personal best for the time and resistance level, so the new top clearly works.

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After my session I put the bins out and settle down to write the blog. Tomorrow is a big day, I have a meeting with colleagues in the morning then in the afternoon I am off to get my second jab. It will be the day I complete my smug card.

So another week starts, I wonder what it will bring. Coffee and then muesli before retreating to the shed. I reorganise the shed a bit and integrate binoculars, field identification charts and Chinese character books. The intention is to get back to typing up my poems, spurred by an incessant nagging in my head that I’ve got over confident with my cancer. Having lost weight, got fitter, lowered my heart rate and become more active I’ve become lackadaisical about my diet, too much sugar, and fallen into assuming that I have all the time I need. As a result some of the priorities that came to the forefront when I first got diagnosed and went in to chemo have been slowly abandoned or pushed into the background. Recently my partners mother going into hospital and more recently my partners brother becoming ill suddenly and requiring urgent intervention has sharpened my sense of my own threat. So I am trying to get back to my original priorities, hence the clearing of my desk space in the shed. I settle down to write a letter before my lunch time meeting. A get a text message telling me the hospital appointment for my facial lump is to be Monday morning and for me to confirm my attendance, which I duly do. Another thing to get into the dairy, another skirmish in the battle.

My meeting rolls around and I spend two hours with colleagues checking out where we are in our various areas and thinking about how we move forward. Some agencies are easier to work with than others, which poses us some interesting issues. The meeting ends and I grab some food before walking with my partner to the post box and then taking a turn around the village to get some air. We just get home and Tesco deliver. I discover that my partners brother was taken into hospital again yesterday but was discharged in the middle of the night to return home. So I’m not surprised he has not responded to my messages. We cook tea and sit down to an evening meal. A brief rest to let the food go down and I get changed to train. Back to the shed I do an hour on the bike as night gets blacker.

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I return to the house and settle on the sofa to write the blog and then I notice. I am not wearing my seal ring. I always wear my seal ring, only when I row do I not. I was riding therefore it would have been on my hand. I search the room but cannot find it. No other choice but to get my head torch on and search the garden and the shed, it must have come off during the training session. So I spend time wandering my garden with a head torch on and then searching the shed’s every nook and cranny. No luck, I return to the house and search the lounge again. I sit, I think, and I am about to go out to the garden again, its now 12:30, and I think about changing to train. Its a long shot but worth a try. I go to the back bedroom where I change and look around on the floor, nothing. More in desperation than hope I pick up my jeans and stick my had in the pocket, eureka! There it is nestling in a handkerchief. I feel relief and joy. I know why it has happened. Since losing weight my fingers are slimmer and when I am cold the ring slips off my second finger and I have to move it over a finger to keep it on. It as clearly slipped off my cold thin finger when I changed to train. I return to the blog and finish my account. I drink a reflective non alcohol beer and retire knowing that I have no work tomorrow and that I have a chance to return to my poems and letter writing. Somehow it seems more important than ever to keep Rocket fighting and to stay engaged in the war against my cancer.

Sunday, weigh in day.

90.4 Kilos

That will do me. That is cheesecake worthy given the past week. So after coffee we have a substantial breakfast and plan the day, but not before we have rung our youngest daughter. We chat about the process of buying a house and the pressures of organising next Christmas on a commercial basis. Apparently its even trickier this year. I message my partners brother to see how he is doing having been discharged home after having spent time having a bleed om the brain dealt with. Apart from being tired, having some interesting sensory experiences the worst thing is not wanting to eat. It is so serious that he does not even fancy a bacon sandwich, which is an indication of how serious things are. Having cleared the decks my partner and I head for one of the local garden centres. We navigate the one way system and pick up a climbing rose on the way. Whilst we stand in line with our trolley in the elements it snows. We finally get past the tills and collect our prepaid bags of compost and drive home. So then the fun starts. I find some trellis and fix it to a wall and then dig out a large hole for the rose. Once in the ground the stems get separated and tied to the trellis. First job done so now its onto getting the new wisteria settled into the big planter in the front garden so that it can begin to climb the front of the house and cover it in a drapery of flowers. After much muck moving and refiling I get the wisteria into its new home. Again it feels like I am planting in hope and the frustrations of confinement. Like a prisoner who eases his arms by growing what he can where he can while waiting freedom.

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Having completed the garden tasks for the day my partner and I go in search of oregano at the local Co-op. It looked like we were out of luck until the assistant literally rummaged around at the back of a shelf and found a jar of the stuff. We added ice cream and a paper and headed home muttering about the be-tattooed scumbag who barged into the shop with out a mask, and his woman and child. Tolerance out of the window, up against the wall. Where are the army when you really need them? Any way once home I make olive bread or at least put all the ingredients into the bread maker, push buttons and then set it going. At about ten o’clock tonight I will know if all my button pushing has worked. With things being tidied and cleaned I start to write the blog before tea. The olive loaf turned out okay, hurray.

Saturday, coffee, fill the drugs wallet and eat a bacon bagel. Then its off to the garden centre to get cheesecake, crisps and lasagne. Home to watch Leicester Tigers beat Newcastle in a cup quarter final. During the match I get a delivery of a wisteria. I unpack the wisteria and put it into the greenhouse to overnight. With the weather that is coming I expect I will keep it in the greenhouse for a while. I return to the rugby and watch England women beat Italy by a vast margin. Its time to get ready to train. I’ve decided to go for an hours row at a higher resistance as I am not sure I am working hard enough in my sessions, either that or I am getting impatient with progress or lack of it. I get into the garage and before I start my hour I have a call with a friend who is out walking and getting some time for herself. It was good to chat but it left the sense of what is missing in life at the moment. That normal ability to speak face to face and weave a conversation following all the cues that are available, even the silences. We say our farewells and I start my hour at level 6; new territory for me. To my surprise it goes okay.

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I head for a bath bomb bath and soak my fatigue out of me. Tea is lasagne and salad followed by a film, Turks and Caicos starring Bill Nye. It was okay and was followed by football and writing the blog. In the holes in the day I acquired new cargo shorts in anticipation of the summer and an upgrade to my wardrobe. Alongside this I bought new bedding for both sizes of beds in the house and a new garden furniture cover. These moments of acquisition are semi spontaneous, an idea appears in my head and the IT takes care of it, it is quite disturbing really and why I like the shed with its lack of wi-fi. However it is a way of avoiding dithering. Need a garden furniture cover: done. What could be easier. Need an AK47, trickier, but probably doable, just not on Amazon.

Friday, yippee its a work free day and time for breakfast and retreat to the shed. There in the shed I write letters and nibble elicit chocolate root ginger. I like my shed because it has my only flat desk space where I have my pens, brushes, ink and sealing waxes as I want them. All around me are my favourite books, correspondence and art materials. On the walls the art that friends have sent me and on the book rest my file of poems. Behind my chair is my exercise bike. In this shed I can sit uninterrupted and in private, either active or in power save mode. It is in this space that I allow myself to think the unthinkable and find the words that come closest to expressing it, or the symbols, daubs and strokes that try to do what the words cannot do. This shed sits in the garden which surrounds me with green, growth and a myriad of creatures, resident or passing through. This space is laptop and wi-fi free, it is civilised.

So lunch comes and goes, friends travel south, post arrives and life churns on. In this break our youngest daughter messages to say she and her partners bid for a house has been accepted. We of course ring to say congratulations but of course there is a long way to go till they step through the door of their own house and being a sensible person my daughter was being measured in her joy. On checking my emails from work I find the first edit of the podcast I recorded a couple of weeks ago. I sit and listen to me talking about my life and my work with a sense of fascination and repulsion. It is a strange feeling I get when I think it will be public in a few days. I post my letters from the morning and prepare the evenings meal, a chicken and chorizo one pot that goes into the oven while I change to train. Back into the shed I try to find a radio station that is playing music but all I get is tributes to the dead Duke of Edinburgh who died at midday today, so I train to Spotify, which keeps playing adverts so I junk it and just train. Not a bad session, just one more session to go for the week.

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I return to the house and check the one pot, almost ready. I learn that my partners brother is being allowed home although the MDT has not met to decide on their next treatment options. Clearly they think the risk is manageable, he was waiting to be picked up by his son to return home. I guess they will contact him when they know what they want to do. The family eats, I watch football and then write the blog. No contact from the hospital regarding my referral for my face yet. I am feeling distracted and not sure why.

Thursday and its up early to get to the GP at 9 o’clock. Breakfast is provided by my partner, my favourite bacon bagel, grapefruit and coffee. I set up the laptops for the training workshop I am co presenting at 10 o’clock before getting myself off to the GP. I go through the usual routine of checking in and then hanging around at the back door to be let in by the doctor. I sit down in the doctors room on a socially distanced chair and the doctor brings up my records some distance away from me. We chat the usual how big, is it sore, how long conversation after which the doctor measures my facial cyst/boil/blocked gland/tumour/thingy, he then grabs hold of it to appreciate how solid it is. He goes back to his desk and asks me more questions. The outcome is that he refers me to the head/neck and throat team to check whether my lump is cancerous or not. I should hear in four working days, and he gives me a printout with contact numbers and the rules of engagement. I thank him and leave.

Back home I log into my training session and chat with my co-presenters before the sixty attendees log on. So dead on 10 o’clock we are off and running. That’s me until 3:45 in the afternoon. For me the training is only interrupted at lunchtime when I host an open forum for an hour and then return to the training session. So a full on screen day, and although we use cyber polls, word clouds and other techno devices it is still a struggle to sense what is going on in the “cyber room”. It is tiring and unpredictable, but like all things it passes. It comes to an end and the team do a quick debrief before we head off in our different directions. I get into my training gear and get into the garage and strap myself into the rower. 45 minutes on level 5 taken slowly and concentrating on rhythm, whatever the outcome it will be a personal best.

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Tea, live football and then the blog. An additional pleasure today is a letter from a friend that I save to read in the comfort of solitude as the rest of the household goes to bed. During the day I have dipped in and out of my WhatsApp messages to see how my partners brother is doing in hospital. Late in the day we find out that the procedure from yesterday was not totally successful and that the fistula has only been partially closed. The MDT is to meet and discuss what they need to do next and weigh up the pros and cons of further intervention. So my brother in law has to wait for a couple of days in hospital while while the team make up their minds what to offer. So the waiting will go on for a while. All the while the clock ticks, wanting to spend time with people continues and the ocean remains stubbornly far away.

Wednesday, a minimal day, so here’s the list:

1. Breakfast
2. Booked GP call
3. Asked for a tree lopping quote
4. Checked Email
5. Read letter from post
6. Reviewed the slides for tomorrow’s course
7. Reviewed the resource pack
8. Retreated to the shed to write letters
9. Put in ten new solar lights into the garden.
10. Answered some work emails
11. Wrote my March Invoices and sent them
12. Posted letters
13. WhatsApped several messages
14. Had a 2 minute 33 second call with my GP
15. Watched football
16. Showered
17. Wrote the blog.

So a very average day and one that lacked any training because I could not be arsed today. So today was average but lifted by the odd image from afar. Tomorrow will be full on work with the rarity of a face to face meeting with my GP first thing in the morning, so I am off to bed having ascertained that my partners brother is safe and well after his hospital procedure today.

Tuesday and its back to work for the world. By the time I get up my partner is at work so I have breakfast and go to the shed to write letters. Its good to be back looking out on my garden and having a flat surface to write on. It takes me a while to get back into the swing of writing, but it came back to me. By lunch time I had two letters to post once I had grabbed a tomato soup lunch. I wander over to the post box in my Rupert Bear yellow golf trousers and bright red padded jacket. My now long hair is tucked into a beanie. Its cold and every so often there is a flurry of snow. I while away the time till Tesco rock up and deliver our weekly grocers, unfortunatley I forgot the eggs this week, perhaps a response to Easter. I put stuff away and change into my training gear. Before returning to the shed I prepare a baked cod dish ready to go into the oven to coincide when I finish training. I go to the shed and train. I decide to push myself today. I rowed a personal best yesterday so I thought I would go for a PB on the bike as its been a while since I set my last bike PB, the end of February in fact. I still do the first ten minutes wearing my aerobic training mask, which is meant to mimic altitude training. So I climb aboard the bike and start out.

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I am exceedingly chuffed with myself, I am without doubt getting fitter and stronger. I am hoping that this continues and I can move into some weight work. Anyway time to press on and eat the meal I prepared earlier along with the newly made salad. My evening will be watching Liverpool lose to Milan and writing the blog. I am getting twitchy about the arival of my new plants, about not getting out and the distance COVID creates getting bigger. Still I am confined untill I get my second vaccination and give it time to ferment into the biochemical guardian angel its intended to be. Tomorrow I will concentrate on work, imvoices and the practicallities of life.

Easter Monday and a lazy start with a bacon bagel breakfast. So my morning was taken up with altering our Tesco order, cleaning out the fish tank and having a long conversation with my sister. One of the interesting things that my sister pointed out to me was that the bee I had found in our garden and put on the blog was in fact a Tawny Miner Bee.

Apparently my sister has an identification card from the International Field Survey. I of course go to their website straight after the call and find they have identification cards on all sorts of things, such as moths, butterflies, ladybirds and caterpillars. Of curse I did, I filled my basket with goodies and now have several guides winging their to me. I am hopefully about spring and summer and curious about how my garden will flourish. A late smoothie lunch and its time to order some new lights for the garden before getting ready to train. I decide to row for an hour at my usual level, which I have not done to date.

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Time for tea and a film. I watch As Good As It gets (my third favourite film of all time). I find something new in it every time I watch it, and it never ceases to grip me at some point new. It is all the spaces that speak so loudly and the hesitations but most of all the struggle with the normal and the personal. At the end I always strangely feel explained. Its time to write the blog and prepare for tomorrow. Most of all I need to write, so it will be the shed for me.

Easter Sunday, weigh in day, so as always my first thought is weigh myself and see if my light training has affected my weight. I step on the scales and tentatively look down.

89.9 Kilos

I am amazed but will happily eat my treat this week. Its sunny, so straight after breakfast and a call to our youngest daughter it is out in to the garden. There I stayed all day weeding out the flower beds and planting summer bulbs and corms. While friends and family celebrated in a chocolatey way I busied myself shaping the front garden aware that this sunshine would disappear by tomorrow pausing only for a drink and a hot cross bun for sustenance.

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My evening is TV, Line of Duty and football highlights. Tomorrow its back to training and cold weather. At the moment we all wait for the outcome of Tuesdays assessment of my partners brother. Quietly we all wait.