Tuesday and its a day of adventure. MOT to do, café to visit and an ombudsman calls me. I even get to wax and polish the pine table in the dining room. However the priority has been to drink as much water as I can in order not to be dehydrated when I go for my blood test tomorrow. So its been a strange doing and drinking day, mostly a form of distraction. It would have been fine if the car had passed the MOT, but it didn’t and in doing so signed its death warrant. On Monday it will get the work it needs to get through the MOT and then it will go to those nice “we buy any car” people, and if I time it right then I am off he hook for tax and insurance.
I have undertaken to deinstitutionalise myself from lock down and shielding. So this pupating butterfly plans to emerge and get out and about more, I cannot go on being confined to the home with the odd trip to the GP surgery. Time to resurrect Rocket, the real world and life.
Monday: Its injection day, and letter writing day. As the day goes on I get more sore and tired. The decorator visits, scribbles notes and goes. I go for a walk with the family and then sofa sit and watch Striker. Tomorrow its the first MOT day, so I am out and about. This is not one of the fun days.
Saturday has been and gone, exceptional for only one reason and that was the pleasure of having my youngest daughter to come and stay for the weekend. Always a joy to have her around, a refreshingly direct voice in the family conversation. So there was much chat and catching up with work and family life. In the afternoon I went to the shed to clamber onto he bike and grind out an hour of exercise, which included the usual ten minutes in my altitude training mask. The mask restricts air intake, makes the lungs work harder to draw in breath and mimics the effects of training at altitude. It in theory it produces a higher blood count. I am hoping that ten minutes in a cycle session will boost my blood counts and increase my fitness and performance in the battle against cancer. The evening was a family one of watching TV together, Striker mostly. Sunday is my weigh in day and after another week of careful diet I am hoping for a weight loss, any weight loss, of any magnitude will do as long as it is downwards.
Sunday. Woke late having gone to bed at 1am last night having cleared the kitchen for a new day. An overcast and wet day. I went to the bathroom to go through my ritual Sunday weigh in. Body prepared, scales on same floor tile and I am ready, feeling confident after my week of denial:
97.2 Kilos,a bloody rise of 0.2 kilos. I am stunned, saddened and angry, all that effort for fucking nothing! Clearly not exercising enough, too sluggish a life style and still too many calories.
Breakfast, eggs, bacon, toast, more toast with jam and lashings of black coffee. Might as well indulge, I’ve got another week of restraint in front of me with some extra exercise and the excitement of going out into the community for two visits to the GP surgery and two trips to the garage to get two of the cars MOT’d. I’m getting stir crazy, a combination of being at home and lack of shed time to write and pursue projects. Its a useful wake up call to get out and about and to shake off my self imposed institutionalisation. The fly in the ointment is the rising tide of COVID positive cases in Leicester and the surrounding areas, way above he national average and far in excess of the rates that require isolation after return from the countries in the quarantine group. I doubt that the area will come out of restrictions anytime soon.
I clean the fish tank out while watching Ronnie O’Sullivan thrash an opponent in the third session of the world snooker championship. I remember Ronnie turning up at Gartree prison with the trophy one year to show his dad who was a guest at her majesty’s establishment at the time. Brightened up a boring normal visits day. By the time I had finished cleaning out the guppy colony Ronnie had ended the afternoon session only needing one more frame to win the tittle again. The poor bastard he was thrashing faced an evening of waiting to lose, which is a crap position to be in for anyone, but then again he had played rubbish so its his own fault. I suspect the second prize of £200,000 will soften the blow.
Happy Guppies in their clean tank
Having eaten a late Sunday dinner and waved farewell to my youngest daughter, I retreated to the sofa to blog and await the final football match of the season to involve and English team in a European competition. In the meantime I read and ponder how I am going to shift my weight. Next week is relatively busy so a little more like normal life returns and with it a higher calorie burn. I am hoping next Sundays weigh in produces a more favourable result. Tomorrow is a day to start to try again.
I knew today was not going to be fun given that it was dentist day. Being a prompt sort I rocked up on time and was told to wait as they were running behind time. So I amused myself in the car park, without car, for half and hour before I was called in, offered hand sanitizer and shown to the clinic room. I was greeted by my dentist in a self contained breathing helmet and full hazmat kit. Well this is fun. The injection in my gums weren’t fun, nor was the metal cage around my tooth, nor was the drilling. The actual filling was more artistic and ended with the usual trying to spit out mouth wash accurately with the now very numb face. So by the time I got home the morning was gone and just needed to read for a couple of hours till my mouth recovered enough for me to eat. Soft noodles and zero alcohol beer. More reading and the it was time to jump on the bike and train for an hour. The best thing about the bike was the end when I found the hibiscus had flowered.
My evening was an IT conquest as I got my laptop to blue tooth with the TV so I could watch the first rugby match of the renewed season. Another little wonder of the cyber world and a new skill to add to my CV. The best news of the day was that my youngest daughter is coming to stay for the weekend. This was counter balanced by the news that an old client is going to be released, old colleagues were equally dismayed. Strange world. In this strange world it will be a year in 17 days since I wrote my first blog and a year since I started chemo. I am not sure how I will celebrate, there are a lot of things and people I miss as we grind through the aggravation and this COVID.
Today is Thursday, I like to keep track of these things. Patio coffee and Woman, Girl, Other. The more I read the more I see parallels in the literature of the working class. Same undervalued, unrecognised, isolated, alienated and denied, particularly nasty as its inflicted by ones own. End up thinking that no matter what you achieve there is a pernicious sense that you should not be there.
Breakfast of bacon sandwich and coffee, followed by more reading and a phone call to the GP to organise next weeks blood test. By lunchtime I was ready for my Open Forum and hurray people turned up. It was a good hour and productive, I felt quite lifted. I chatted with a colleague after the forum and then retreated to the shed to write up the forum notes. A quick trip to collect drugs from the chemist and tuna from the co-op, except they had none! The village has clearly gone into a tuna frenzy, or they are stock piling already. Dinner and another evening pinned to the sofa by the Umbrella Academy until I find myself abandoning the blog as I realise the Tesco order has to be amended before the deadline. Dentist tomorrow for a filing, so I am not hopeful of a fun day.
The day started with Isadora and fruit tea on the patio after rehanging out my washing from yesterday. I noticed some new flowers and an interesting bug which I caught on camera whilst I was hanging out the washing.
I was later joined for breakfast by the family and I continued to read Isadora. During the morning I booked my Monday stabbing appointment and booked a GP call for the afternoon. I continued to read and before I knew it, it was time to log into an Open Forum for TC workers. A pleasant hour hearing how people were continuing to deal with the lockdown and the new ways of working on the web.
I light lunch with a friend who was visiting my partner before waiting for my GP call. Just after three my GP rang and we had a sensible discussion about a blood test to which she agreed it was a good move and wrote up the form. All I have to do is book an appointment for next week. Pleased that I had sorted that out I changed in to my kit and went off to the shed to clamber up on the bike for forty five minutes. I tough session but worth it I think. Dinner followed after we had waved our guest off.
I started reading Girls, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo which won the Booker Prize in 2019. I am immediately drawn in and think it likely I shall block read this book. I enjoy new voices when I find them. Like most of the new voices I find they come recommended by friends whose judgement and opinions I trust and value. While in a conference session a while again I was struck by someone who noted that only by participating in as widely diverse group as possible could she hope to be the best person she could be, I think the same about literature, the wider the diversity of writers the more enriched will be my personal universe. That’s the theory, I am curious about how I will test it.
A new voice to enjoy
My evening was also full of The Umbrella Academy, which could become a major watch. The final act of the day to write the blog.
Today was a lazy start and a bacon sandwich break fast which lead to a family chat on the patio. Tuesday is the day I fill my drug wallet for the week, a ritual like putting out the bins later in the day. Just another cog in the fight.
I spent the best part of a day filing a service self assessment tool for work to see whether we adhere by the ten standards that we promote as an enabling environment. An interesting exercise and one that created more questions about who and what tis was for. What followed was an interesting e-mail exchange trying to define exactly what we all thought we were doing in this exercise. I am still not sure I know what we are doing and as for why, that may be the nub of the issue.
By the time I had finished, put my washing in it was time to train. So I clambered on the bike and in the heat of the day ground out a forty minute session, by which time the garden guy had arrived and was busily rationalising the flower beds. My turn to make the salad to go with the protein at dinner, which I duly did and we ate dinner in the patio. Bins out, dishes cleared I settled down to watch Wolves lose one nil to Sevilla. So I come to the end of another day and time to blog. I bought a “thing” to make the website secure by so far I notice it is not activated. Another painfully interaction with IT is on the cards.
Very tired today after a TEAM meeting, visit to garden centre amongst other things and a session on the bike in the heat. It feels a day of little achievement with a growing to do list. A poster that a friend sent me today summed it up for me.
At the moment I sit dripping sweat on a humid night having a hot flush and remembering that I must order my drugs for my Monday stabbing. The fight is mundane, routine and boring but nevertheless a fight to the death. I will try again tomorrow.
Today I woke to find my partner doing yoga so I went to the patio to read and sip fruit tea. The family got to have breakfast on the patio and talk for a while. The garden is in that time of year when some unexpected flowers arrive but many are past their best so we decided on a trip to the garden centre. It was a disappointing visit as they to seemed to be between seasons. However we came away with a few plants to fill the gaps. Back home I spent the afternoon on my knees digging out the weeds from the front path and house front apron. Once that was clear it was time to plant the mornings haul. By the end of the afternoon I was dripping in sweat as much as a work out. It is always worth the effort as the garden rewards me with great beauty and inspiration.
Thankfully I did not need to train today as at my morning weigh in I had lost weight. I was therefore able to rest a while before dinner on the patio. All very alfresco today. So this evening I have watched the end of season three of Stranger Things and then blogged , after reading a surprise e letter from a friend.
Yesterday was a writing day and most importantly it was snail day. I had retreated to the shed to write letters and ponder on ordering another laptop stand for the shed when out of the sky landed a snail. I thought it must have been dropped by a thrush, but no thrush arrived. It looked lifeless, which is probably no surprise, at the very least it must have one hell of a headache. Its shell was intact and covered in debris and cobwebs, but no sign of horns. I continued to write and have phone calls until I noticed the snail was moving. It precariously slithered itself up the electricity cable like a tight rope walker and headed for the shed. I took pity on it and got it to slime its it way on to a piece of cardboard, where it posed for me before I took it to a flower bed. It disappeared off into the undergrowth. Could have been nasty, a philosopher play writer, Aeschylus, got killed by an eagle dropping a turtle from the sky in ancient Greece about 500BC.
My snail that dropped from the sky
The rest if the day was taken with reading Isadora Duncan’s autobiography. An interesting read and a fascinating study in how people construct their own history. She wrote it when she was broke, again, and in the year she died aged fifty.
Today, Saturday, it was a lazy morning during which we organised our usual decorator to come and give us a quote to redecorate the house after the central heating has been re-piped. Then it was back to Isadora and her travels across Europe. By the afternoon Isadora is in Greece building her own Temple. I go to train on the bike for an hour during which Amazon deliver a laptop riser for the shed. So once I have recovered I test the riser in the shed and declare myself pleased.
My new laptop riser in place.
A long bath while my partner clambered onto the bike and then I started the blog before dinner and picked it up again after the meal. So tonight I shall read and and dip into Stranger Things. Tomorrow is weigh in day and I will see if my changed diet over this week shows any result.
