DVT DAY 306

Friday, and I wake up to a package of curtains. So this it what a COVID thrill is; new curtains. Actually they are consciously temporary curtains until we can get the right size ones we need. So after a hearty breakfast of unburnt bacon and eggs I set about attaching hooks to the new new curtains and clambering about the lounge windows getting the things up. They are pretty stiff black out curtains so getting them to hang properly was more a man taking on a over excited crocodile. However they are now up and the house is complete, just about. Having been of a cautious disposition when ordering them I find myself with a pair of curtains I do not need. I recycle the packaging to send back the spare pair and manage to include some of the bloody polystyrene blocks that I’ve trying to get rid of for a couple of weeks. It seemed like a genius plan at the time, get someone else to get rid of it was the thought and get a refund at the same time. So tomorrow I might brave the post office to hand my duct taped box over. In the duct taping of my parcel I ran out of duct tape, this is a real crisis as I truly believe that 99% of problems can be solved with duct tape. If they cannot be then you have a real crisis on your hands. I take a call from a friend and chat about how its working out with COVID, it seems that this is all we are all doing at the moment as the daily death toll goes over a thousand for the second day running. Making out, making plans, adapting plans, doing the basics and keeping going, that’s what we are all doing. All except the dumb bastards who haven’t got the synaptic density to understand whats going on or too little back bone to face the reality of their situation. If ever there was an example of people not being able to look their death anxiety in the face and cope with their mortality this is it. So we get deniers, conspiracy theorists and the plain dumb, which, in the days to come, will include vaccine refusers. Now is the time for the reasonable and rational to hold the boundaries. It will be science and its application plus cooperative communities that will get us out of this not the mumbo jumbo mob, magic stones, and astrology.

I spend a little while writing a letter, ordering more duct tape, one of which has unicorns on, buying a cordless drill and then I change into my training gear and tramp down the garden to the shed in the freezing cold to the shed. I get on board the bike, get my training mask on and start to pedal. An hour later I am bathed in sweat and cannot wait to stop. My last bike session before I weigh in on Sunday as Saturday will be a rowing day.

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A smoothie later and I am clearing the kitchen and thinking about the evening meal. Its Friday so stuff it we will have an Indian take away, I will watch football and end up writing the blog before going to bed.

I reach a state of tiredness were I just become irritated with myself and the world, unable to think, to articulate or be creative. I become restless and distracted. Yet I blog on. Probably not healthy. Tomorrow is another day, I’ll give it another shot then.

DVT 305

Thursday, a people day for me with meetings and forums, so a good breakfast is required. I load the grill with bacon adn then set about multitasking. The result is a kitchen full of smoke as my bacon turns to charcoal. Clearly I have over reached myself too early in the morning. Note to self; one thing at a time. I settle for muesli as a safe non preparation meal. So within minutes I am once again under the head phones and talking to colleagues. Of course we catch up on the COVID lockdown and then move on to how it is affecting our work and what our response should be. Its a long meeting but really useful to hear how others are dealing with things and what their ideas are for the future. We will meet again on Monday with the rest of the team. I have time for a quick lunch and then I am up and hosting a Open Forum for service managers for an hour. It is difficult listening, and I am struck very hard by how hard a struggle this group of people are facing and dealing with. I discuss with colleagues the session and then log off. Remember this?

The over looked central star of our nativity babushka is returned to its family of eggs in the loft. Hopefully I shall be unpacking it next Christmas. Feeling pleased with myself go to the spare room to change into my training kit. I glance out of the window and note the whiteness of the scene and wonder just how cold the garage are going to be.

So I get changed and get myself into the garage and strapped into the rower. I look at the read out and note the temperature.

I get my session underway and continue to take it relatively easy to keep the strain off my back. I gradually up the pace and as a consequence I begin to feel warm inside my track suit. I grind away noting the minutes tick by.

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One would expect that after a half our with the fan heater on full blast and my body pumping out heat that the garage would show at least some rise in temperature.

It turns out that the heater and my body just cannot affect the temperature of the garage. I get out of the garage as soon as possible and out of my kit. I settle on the sofa with a drink and the laptop to start the blog but find that I am watching Boris do his daily briefing. This time its all about the vaccine and the logistics. Can’t wait to hear what the soldier boy has to say for himself as the army is doing the logistics based on a warfare scenario.

Today is the anniversary of the end of my chemotherapy. It was supposed to give me an additional 18 months on top of whatever time I had anyway. The time anyway aspect of it was unknowable, incalculable, unestimatable and not even divinable with the aid of medical goat intestines. Some front loading my life span with the chemo therapy 18 months means that after July (roughly my birthday) I am on my own time. So its an interesting time. This month I have bone and CAT scans to have to monitor how the tumors in my back are doing and the cancer in my spine is progressing, or not. This will give me some data at least to gauge how I really am. So onward to new and interesting times.

DT DAY 304

Wednesday and nothing in the diary so its going to be a busy day, the Christmas decorations need to come down as this is twelfth night. So after a muesli breakfast I set about denuding the Christmas tree having got the storage boxes out of the loft. It takes hours, literally, to take each bauble, drop and inch of tinsel and wrap it. Each of the trinkets is carefully put in its box ready to go back in the loft for another year. The lights are the last things to come off the tree, leaving the tree bare.

So now its time to get Christmas packed away in the loft, which takes a while as I hump the boxes and bags into their allotted spot. Eventually done its time for coffee and a break before I hack the tree up.

Post coffee I set about taking the tree apart and filling the garden recycling bin. There’s a lot of branches on this tree but I gradually got it down to its trunk A bit of sawing using the tree pruning saw got the trunk into three bits that fitted the bin. Just the sweeping and hoovering to be done in an endeavour to avoid finding pine needles for the next several months. Ultimately its done, the tree gone, the TV back in the bay, the cards taken down. The only Christmas things left is the pretty lights strung up in the hall way along the stairs. It is all good until this…

Yep that’s right the inner egg of the nativity babushka dolls is sitting there on the sofa while its outer eggs are now sitting wrapped, boxed, contained and stacked in the loft. Cannot be left, so at some point I am going to have to get up in the loft, dig the dolls out, open them all and pop their star egg into the middle of them. Not to do so would mean a starless next year. So having go to this happy place I decide its time to train, so its off to the shed for me to cycle for an hour.

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After an hour on the bike I am knackered but clear the kitchen and then change. I settle down for the first time on the sofa and reflect on the day. Over the day work colleagues and friends have contacted me. Without fail each of them is trying to reorganise life to cope with the new lockdown. Those with children are facing really tricky juggling tasks and at the back of it there is the anxiety of how they are going to manage to function for work, for children and maintain their own well being. I realise how fortunate I am and how lucky my family are at the moment. Serendipity is being kind to me in that I started my new exercise and diet regime just before the lockdown so I have something of a routine or at least things I do daily. It is a time for direction and grim determination. As the distance increases so the single mindedness of getting to the other side becomes more intense. My parents generation survived two world wars with no internet, rationing and no TV, so it can be done.

Tomorrow I need to get on with some Enabling Environment work, there are meetings to do, open forums to host and training to organise. Some where in there I need to row and source curtains. What I really want to do is write letters on the new writing paper that arrived today.

DT DAY 303

Tuesday, and after a night in the spare bed with the rigid mattress to easy my back, I was not feeling spring lamb like at all. So a smoothie and bacon breakfast later I settle down to a morning of odd jobs until I check my emails and find I have a one to one at the end of the morning. Of course this means I need to check my commitments and make sure I know what I am doing or at least what I said I would do. So by the time the meeting comes around I am ready and set up in the bedroom where the sun wont get in my eyes during the meeting. It goes well. Of course the issue is what we are supposed to do in response to a new COVID lockdown. Like every one else we are caught on the hop and will have to play it by ear. After the meeting I send a few work emails and contact colleagues.

Once the admin has been done I get into my training kit and get off to the garage and the rowing machine. Its cold and I am being careful to take care of my back. Thirty minutes later I am done, achy but not sweaty as the chill of the garage had kept me cool.

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I realise I have not eaten for a while and do myself soup, then I head for a bath to ease my back out. Another of my Christmas present bath bombs, this one a glitter ball. I soak and soak, and soak until I wrinkle and get bored with listening to Spotify., specifically Lorde, who I like but takes me back to the good old personality disorder days. There a limit to PD material I can take.

I clear the kitchen and pick up work emails and settle to watch TV and find Boris giving a press briefing. Record COVID infections and over 800 deaths coupled with an estimate that 2% of the population is infected, which very quickly was interpreted as 1 in 50 people is infected. Part way through a friend rings me as she is going to collect her daughter from school. We talk about how this lockdown is affecting people and the way things may change. The way everyone is having to adapt and be creative to get through this lockdown will determine how well people come out the other side of it.

I settle back to the TV and tea. I am of course distracting myself from the fact that I cannot watch my team Brentford play in the cup semifinal against Spurs. It would be a major upset if they won but I maintain true fan hope.

DVT DAY 302

Monday 8 o’clock and in 50 minutes I’m being jabbed. So its a sprint, well more of a motivated stumble really, towards the kitchen to grab a breakfast of muesli and coffee. By the time I am dressed and ready its almost appointment time. A dash in the partners car and I am outside the GP ringing them to tell them I have arrived and currently waiting at the back door like the vulnerable leper I am. It cold, bloody cold and I am beginning to have abandonment fantasies when the nurse appears dressed in the latest PPE gear. I hand her the injection in a box and settle down on the bench adjusting the clothing to accommodate the impending jab. Left side this month, usually the better side. “Sharp scratch” and I am being pumped full of stuff to keep me castrated like a later day sex offender. Once I am full of my drug I readjust my clothing and ready my right arm full a jab of B12. Another “sharp scratch” and I’ve got B12 for three months.

I drive home and immediately change into my training gear, its a case of if I do not train now I will not. So I pull on the gear and head for the shed. Its cold so the heater goes on full blast and I mount up for an hours hard work. Its hard to start with but I get into a rhythm and strip layers an take regular drinks. At the end of the hour I’m done.

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I check my new garden camera to what it has caught. It caught me about to open the camera. I go in doors and get changed, have coffee and tidy up a bit. I settle on the sofa and start to write letters. Its where I stay for a while until lunch time. An omelette later I return to my letter writing. I eventually get to the point when its time to go to the post box. Its cold out so I make haste to get back and get the evening meal started. A curry tonight. I write more blog till the meal is ready and then after eating I get ready for the next Boris announcement. I friend sends me Boris bingo to play during the broadcast.

All I want is to get to the Tesco delivery and then to bed as the post jab chills and junky impersonation is coming on. But right now I’m going to play Boris Bingo.

DVT DAY 301

It’s weigh in Sunday! This is the moment of truth. I find out if my effort of the last six days has had any effect on my weight. All that carbohydrate abstinence and exercise has been put into the fat boy of 98.1 kilos, that obese ball of lard. So I am nudged awake and a coffee offered, I take myself to the bath room and psyche myself up for that moment when I will step onto the scales.

95.1 Kilos.

Damn I am still obese, just 0.1 away from being plain ordinary over weight, but I will take a 3 kilo loss as a good start. This is the easy weigh to lose now the fight begins to get to my first target of 92 kilos. It also means that today I get a rest day as a reward otherwise I would be on the bike for an hour today. I can also have a treat and that means apple strudel for tea.

So first coffee of the day to celebrate and then for the first time in a while I get dressed in full kit, trousers and everything, almost like a normal person. Well tasty breakfast of eggs and bacon and I get the cars ready to take my partner to her mothers house so that we can collect more clothes for her and check that everything is in working order.

The drive give the car a run and we get to see the world, mostly people-less and very few cars moving around, The world has frozen, or maybe just come to its senses and stopped doing the unnecessary dashing around stuff that it tends to do. We arrive at the house and while my partner sorts out clothes I do all the manly things like check the toilets are flushing, the heating is on and the hot water is still flowing. We collect the post and have a quick check in the fridge to make sure we have not missed anything. I note the grass in the back garden is quite long but that is a March problem. We lock up and leave stopping only to check that the porch light is working on its motion sensor. It is so we drive off for home during which my partner checks the mail for anything urgent. Its a strange experience walking around a house in these circumstances, it feels an intrusion into a life that is in suspended animation, the house waits for its owner to give it life again, purpose. Its like an inorganic pet just waiting to be scratched behind its ears to bring out its true nature. It is odd that when we look after our houses they give us warmth, shelter and a sense of security, which is quite a good definition of a relationship, and when we are not there they go trying to do it. Ultimately they stop. There is a symbiosis in this I think. Since having our heating re-piped and the house decorated I’ve felt more “looked after” by the house and I find myself paying more attention to it, being kinder to it.

So home and I settle to a coffee and an early start to the blog before I watch the local rugby team, Tigers, play Bath on TV. I miss going to the games live. Despite the cold, the hard wood benches and of late the crap results, there is something magical about walking up the steps to the stand and getting that first view of the arena, the pitch, the crowd and the teams warming up. I get all the old tingle of my youth when I stepped out onto a pitch as a Grasshopper to play the game. There is clearly something in the experience that never left me. These days it is a game played by giants, whose impacts can be heard by 24,000 people who wince and ahhhh in unison. That same 24000 will go deadly silent when a kick is being taken for points, in respect for the kicker. People who watch rugby have usually played or have people who do or have, it seems the respect is built in for what the players go through. Never any trouble in the crowd, no fights but an awful lot of black humour and self mocking jokes.

I am amazed the Tigers win a close and entertaining match which takes them to mid table. I had been considering giving up my season tickets but if they continue to improve I may well see how this season goes. I laze for a while until Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald comes on the TV, I am of course only interested in the Niffler, a duck billed creature that likes bright sparkly things, which it steals and “pouches”.

My evening is taken with tomorrows Tesco order, the addition of remembered shortages and last minute fancies. An invoice for December needs to be written and sent and then there is tomorrows pre GP pre-appointment COVID questionnaire to complete. My day will start with my 28 day jabbing and this month I get an additional B12 jab, I suspect it is too much to hope for a COVID vaccine jab. I’m not sure if the folk at the RCP are actually going to start work again on Monday, which means I’m not sure if I am. I’ve not read any of the teams emails if there have been any, just those from services prior to Christmas, I will have the pleasure of whatever 2021 surprises there might be. On a lighter note we should have taken the Christmas decorations down by now but as it was such a crap year we have left them up, especially the lights up and down the stairs. I guess the tree, the baubles, “the god in a box set” will need to go soon, but not quite yet. I’ve a lot of letters to write first. This tier 4 lark has made me hungrier for the conversation of friends and the exchange of ideas, observations and encouragements. There is of course the restored banjo to learn to play to add to my kazoo playing skills.

DVT DAY 300

Saturday and we need food so we head for our local garden centre that has a cunningly concealed butchers and a micro Sainsburys. We pulled into the car park to find it almost empty. The place has no stock of plants apart from some sparsely budding camellias. The butchers full of meat and no one buying, even so we snaffle the last large chicken and ham hock pie,huge packs of bacon and chicken. We are saved from starvation. Next we shuffle round the Sainsburys shelves and impulse buy things like tuna and crisps. Home to a well deserved brunch of bacon, eggs coffee and drugs.

I go to the garden and set up the outdoor camera I got for Christmas. I’ve screwed it to the shed and pointed it at the pond area so I am hoping the coming days to get some interesting pictures of whatever visits the pond. I will of course share when I master the technology.

In from the cold I change into my training gear and settle down to watch the early afternoon football match followed by a good rugby match. I am presented with a belated Christmas present that has just arrived. It is a metal photo of my favourite Tracey Emin work at St Pancras station. I want my time with you.

Its all really a dis’traction from training but there is no more avoiding it any more so its off to the garage for me and the rower.

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Straight to the bath for me to ease my back which I can feel tightening up. I laze in the silky smoothness of a bath bomb bath courtesy of my youngest daughter. I of course check emails, WhatsApp and football results and then settle down to a Spotify session of yoga and relaxation music. Its all good for quite a while until my partner pops her head round the door and says “I’ve broken my sewing machine”. A call to magic! I wash my now pony tail length hair and spray all over with CK One. So sweet smelling I go to do magic on the sewing machine. With a few basic tools I start taking the machine apart, dropping screws now and again and taking photos.

Nothing obviously wrong apart from a a very small thread wound round an internal part. So I put the machine back together and power it up. It appears to stall so judiciously I give it a bit of a tap, a speculative twist of the drive end and tell it I will let the pixies lose on it if it doesn’t do the right thing. I put my foot down on the power pedal and Brrrrrmmmmm the machine whizzes away. Several checks and several goes later the machine is still responding normally. Genius or the threat of pixies, I will never know. Time for tea and the goodies we brought this morning. I settle for an evening of TV , reading and trying to find curtains for the lounge till it is time to write the blog. Tomorrow is weigh in day. The deal is that if I have lost weight I get a rest day from training, if not then its an hour on the bike.

DVT DAY 299

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Woke late of course, very late, but after a coffee I got going, cleared the kitchen and started to plan the day. First of course is get the washing on, have a dish of muesli and change into my training kit. I take a moment to set myself and find that Mathew Bourne’s Romeo and Juliet is on. I just watch entranced, its everything that dance should be and what in my head I wanted to do. If I had my time again that is what I would do. Sad really as I haven’t got the musical skills required, like a sense of rhythm, which for a dancer is pretty terminal. At the end point of bloody corpses draped across a slab I get my self to the shed.

Its a bloody hard hour as I push my legs on for an hour with the heater full blast. Apparently its going to get cold again tomorrow so I will retreat to the garage if that is the case. At the end it turns out a reasonable session .Tomorrow is the weigh in.

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I wipe everything down and start out to the house when I notice that my garden is talking to me, in little green shoots, its saying spring is on the way.

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Ah a bath with the addition of a bath bomb, curtesy of my youngest daughter. By now the washing has tumbled itself dry ready to be put away. A quick snack of nuts and cheese and I am ready to pop the evening meal in the oven. This will be a joint effort. So while the salmon cooks I take to writing the blog early so that I can catch the Dr Who Christmas special. Tomorrow its food gathering time and thoughts will turn to work and the impending appointment with the nurses needle on Monday.

DVT DAY 298

Thursday, new years eve and there a few things to do. 1. Do my tax return, 2. finish the damn jigsaw. So after coffee and bacon we set to and go at the jigsaw. Outcome inevitable but strangely satisfying and reinforces the strange ritual of festive jigsaw doing.

Time to get the taxman done. I retreat to the office and pull out my account book and all the relevant P60s. I run off the relevant bank statements and settle down to do the maths and fill in the accounts. Once the books are done I log on to the website and log in. It is disturbing how much the government already knows about me, or at least my finances. I plough my way through the online pages and eventually get to the painful bit, the final debt. I submit my self assessment and get a reference number. Now I have to wait 72 hours before I can pay off my debt. I can wait.

Its taken hours so its the sofa for me and a quick read. I am hooked on my new book by Studs Terkel, a radio presenter in the USA who interviewed ordinary working people up until his death in 2008 aged 96. He won the Pulitzer prize in 1985 for general non-fiction. His ability to get ordinary working people to talk about work is brilliant. Some of his early work feels like the world that Steinbeck wrote about in Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath. Its a book that can be dipped into but I am reading my way through it and surprisingly find myself making pencil notes in the margin.

Time for dinner and The Celebrity Great British Sewing Bee and I realise that it is New Years Eve. Honestly I could not give a toss, 2021 will come in its own good time. Sound bah humbug? Probably, but Tier 4 has cast its shadow over the land. I shall pick the most entertaining TV and welcome the new COVID year with a smoothie.

Well thank you for reading my blog I hope it’s still being useful and that 2021 will be as good as it can be. See you all as soon as possible. I promise to be the first leper out of the colony!

DVT DAY 297

Wednesday, I’m up, I’m in my training gear and ready to go and then the bloody jigsaw got me. Now I know this sounds sad but I got hooked and before I know it it’s gone two o’clock. How did that happen? I’m starving so its time for a bacon bagel and a drink to wash the drugs down. Even after refreshment I cannot resist pressing on with the green bits with stars, it’s obsessional and this jigsaw is a beast.

Eventually I get to go to the garage to train. 30 minutes on the rower was the target. I step into the garage and check the temperature.

Bloody cold is the answer so I keep all my layers on and try to put the cold out of mind by listening to calming music over my head phones. I press on and make the 30 minutes. Not as far as last time but I was conscious of being in danger if pulling muscles in these cold conditions.

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I’m knackered and treat myself to a diet coke before dinner, which my partner cooks, my turn tomorrow. before I can watch the news I get a text from HMGov telling me that now I am in tier 4 I should “Shield”, so I am back to being a leper. I watch the news later and note the grim figures. The only spark of light is the new vaccine. I begin to wonder if I will be offered the vaccine when I go for my 28 day injection and B12 jab on the 4th of January, but I very much doubt it, as I think I am still not old enough or important enough to be at the head of the queue.

I escape to watch a boring goalless football match and then settle down to more TV news and to write the blog. My priority is to avoid that bloody jigsaw and have an early night. Tomorrow is the day I do my tax return. Its a day that every year I loathe but my conscience feels the benefit when its done. On the day we leave the EU I just hope my taxes will be spent wisely, compassionately and productively for the majority.