DVT DAY 110

Today was as follows: 1. breakfast, 2. mow the lawns, 3. write for hours about maintaining an enabling environment, 4. climb on the bike, 5. eat, 6. do Glastonbury. Productive but a boring read.

DVT DAY 109

Its hot. At 9 0’clock it was hot for the work call. It was hot at 10 o’clock when I retreated to the shed and wrote work stuff all morning. It was hotter at 1 o’clock when I hosted an open forum for an hour and it continued to be hot when I wrote up the notes in the shed. When I climbed onto the bike for 45 minutes in the shed it was bloody hot, and oven like when I finished. Since then I’ve eaten, watched football and chatted in a pool of sweat. Did I mention it is hot, that pre storm, crack the sky, break the atmosphere hot. Not looking forward to tonight as I know it will be sleeplessly hot.

My impression is that everyone is making it up. Everyone does their own risk assessment and then allows themselves to do what they most want to do as an exception. I must drive to Durham to see how my eyesight has survived COVID-19.

DVT DAY 108

Work, more work and yet more work as I try to catch up a back log of work. At 1 o’clock I attend an open forum on the net and then return to my shed to continue the work. The postman brings me a letter that spells out my new Shielding guidance, so it looks like my youngest daughter can soon come and stay. If all goes well I shall be fully free by August providing there is no spike. I finish work and clamber onto the bike and grind out another 45 minutes in the sweltering heat of the shed. Dinner which includes a neighbours strawberries and cinnamon buns. Then the highlight of the day; the final of the Great British Sewing Bee. The right person won but the made to measure dress by Matt was stunning. So time for the news and then football and I shall be away to bed as I have a 9 o’clock meeting in the morning.

DVT DAY 107

I woke to sunshine, breakfast and a drugs pouch refill this morning. A retreat to the shed, hanging out my washing as I went, and a quick planting of more lettuce. I settled to catch up with my correspondence. Mid morning a parcel arrived for me, it was the other half of my fathers day present from my youngest daughter. Seedboms. An inspired choice of gift. I shall take great delight in bombing the more barren areas of my garden.

Letters written its lunchtime which my partner made and we ate on the patio in glorious sunshine. For me it was time to prep for my meeting with the YMCA. It a meeting that went well despite some terrible IT issues for one contributor. I still find a Zoom meeting where people choose not to turn on the video disconcerting, its like going to a meeting with a bag over your head. Meeting over I pop to the post box and deposit my letters for the day, to return home and change into my cycling shorts and churn out a half hour session in the heat of the shed. Once recovered I sort out the gigantic pile of recycling cardboard that has accumulated over the last two weeks in the hall way. I admit I hide the polythene and expanded packaging under the layers of cardboard that I stuff into the largest carton. Once done the bins go out and the now quite solid carton of cardboard gets wedged between them . I return to the shed to read while my family are out walking the village.

My partner eschews the suggestion of a take away and decides to cook a one pot and I write the blog. I’ve a stack of work things to do tomorrow while my partner has a days leave to enjoy the sunshine with a new paddling pool and sun lounger. It might also be the day that social distancing gets reduced and more things given the go ahead to open up again. I still have till the end of July to do I think but a small garden celebration on my birthday maybe permissible.

DBVT DAY 106

Awake and heart sink, 08:05, 28 day injection appointment 08:30! Time to brush teeth, spray the pits and dress. This of course includes picking a face mask as I am going to the GP surgery. My partner drives me done, because I am lazy. I ring and tell them I have arrived and get told to get myself to the back door. I go to the back door and try to get my mask on. I discover that my ears are not up to it. I cannot get the bloody elastic to stay on my ears and in my struggles I rip out my ear stud. I am not amused and I am even more pissed off when a bag woman wanders up to the door and says “you must be waiting for me”. Good of the nurse to turn up ,really it must be hell donning PPE, that’s nursing for you. I get in still wrestling with the mask and lay on the couch. Its the left side today and sure enough that is where the needle goes.

Home and its time for breakfast, rabbit food and yogurt. That delicious meal over I wander into the garden and rearrange things in the leper shed so I can fit the exercise bike into it. So it is now my wifi-less office, art studio and gym. If I had a throne installed I could live like a king.

I take more photos of flowers in the garden and skim weed from the pond surface before sitting down to write letters, which takes me up to lunchtime. Back in the house I check my laptop for e-mail and realise I have missed a meeting time so there is some hasty massages to rearrange for 3 o’clock. I take the opportunity to go to the post office with my letters and stretch my legs. Once back I settle down to my meeting and chat about future work and arrange a new timetable.

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Back to the shed with my newly delivered cycling gloves and I go for my first in shed cycle. An hour later my arse hurts, Rammstein is louder than I’ve ever had it but I have managed the full hour. My family have gone out so I hit the bathroom and have warm bath bomb bathe, such luxury. Having dried the floor I throw on clothes and settle down to arrange a Tesco delivery for next Friday. I’ve abandoned Sainsburys as at Tesco you can indicate if you will accept substitutes, so hopefully this time I will get Mars bar ice creams and not the crap substituted chocolate ice cream sandwiches that taste like cardboard. Dinner is then ready and I eat.

My evening was mostly watching an appalling thing called the “Luminaries”. That’s an hour of my life I wont get back. I will not do that again. So it was then time to write the blog. Tomorrow I am doing a work review so I need to sparkle in the afternoon.

DVT DAY 105

Father’s day, so I get to lay in till 10 o’clock and then I am treated to bacon sandwiches without the need to negotiate. My family give me lovely presents including multi coloured sealing wax and an array of bath bombs. Alongside these there are some frogs to go by the pond in the garden.

We have a family call with my youngest daughter who returns to work on Monday. She tells me that one of my bath bombs is in fact a bubble bath and to use it carefully. My family decide to go for their stroll and I clamber on to the bike once again, My other new pair of padded cycling shorts are excellent and I managed a full hour of cycling. What I have discovered is the pressure that goes into the palms of the hands as I lean into the handle bars. The ache and pain is not inconsiderable so I shall order myself some padded cycling gloves and push my target time up to an hour and half.

Having caught my breath I go for a bath and use my special father’s day bath bomb and read my current favourite book and listen to the football on the radio.

Having bathed and pampered myself I settle down to continue to read and listen to the radio. Before long dinner is served and I have to move my partners completed jigsaw, another of the Wentworth puzzles that contain “whimsies”, those fiendish to fit pieces in shapes related to the content of the puzzle.

Post dinner I read and write my “to do” list for the week to come before I settle down to write the blog. Any early night for me tonight as tomorrow is the day I get my 28 day injection at 8:30 in the morning. It means that I shall have a sore gut for a few days, hence my reticence about joy tomorrow.

DVT DAY 104

Its been a day, breakfast and drugs and then, having toped up my tyres, a drive. Yes I got the beast out and drove to our local farm shop to buy steaks, sausages and sausage rolls. My first COVID shop. A notice on the farm shop said “Only one customer at a time”, very responsible I thought and entered. I and my partner were the only people in the shop, on the customer side of the counter. Behind the counter in a small space were at least six people in a space the size of a small rug. So much for social distancing.

Home and while my partner and daughter go for a walk I set to and construct a work video complete with pictures. It was to introduce a digital version of an Enabling Environment Work book, which will be released soon. Although it took ages to do I was quite pleased with some of it.

Having got the video done it was time to don my new arse padded cycling shorts and bike shoes and clamber aboard the bike to renew the fight on the flab. The bike has yet to move from the kitchen so my efforts were public.

I was puffing and blowing my way through the session when after about 35 minutes of effort that had made me sweat like Niagara falls my partner turned the oven on to start tea as she was hungry. I finished my session and wandered off to recover and change. The ambition is to be able to extend the session to a full hour. I take a few photos of the flowers in the garden as I am trying to keep a record of what comes up through the year.

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Steak and chips was the delightful tea and devoured whilst watching the first live football match on the BBC since 1985. The rest of the evening passed with reading and writing. Still here I am at 00:26 with a kitchen to clear and the blog to finish. Tomorrow is father’s day, so with luck it will be me who gets coffee in bed, but for now its drugs and good night.

DVT DAY 103

Woke to more rain and a dismal morning. So dragged myself up an had breakfast and drugs and thought about what I was going to do.  This problem was solved for me when I found I had a one to one meeting with the Enabling Environment programme manager at 10:30. She however messaged at 10o’clock asking where I was and then apologised for getting ahead of herself. The meeting came and went with little to note beyond the odd minor adaptation to the current “to do” list. As soon as that meeting ended I was into another one and proving who I am to get my DBS clearance by waving my passport, drivers licence and National Insurance number at the screen. This was soon over and it was time for lunch with my partner and daughter. It was one of those bored moments with nothing to do, allegedly, that my brain turns to mush and I want entertainment. In this instance I got my daughter to show me where she made the new emoji of herself. I down loaded and app and created a new me, which apparently I can modify at any time, if only life was that simple. We then spent a few minutes sending my youngest daughter messages with emojis to tantalise her, and it succeeded.

Enough was enough but then a friend told me her wife had just been promoted at work and so there was an excuse to use the emoji again. I sense that I may soon get bored with the emoji thing.

I changed and at last clambered on to the new exercise bike for my first session. The bike is still in the kitchen but now has the floor mat under it so there was no excuse not to train. 45 minutes of light weight pedalling just about did me and made me very aware, as if I wasn’t already, of how unfit I am at the moment. The bike is basic but solid and does the job and I am sure I will adapt to it but my arse cried for mercy fairly early on in the experience. No mistaking that pain in the arse feeling where you know that this is not something that can be tolerated day after day. I got off the bike hot and sweaty and sat for a while to recover, my partner came through and when she saw that I had been on the bike commented “ I wondered what all the huffing and puffing was”.

Having recovered I went to Amazon to the “rescue my arse” section and ordered some proper padded cycling shorts and a pair of exercise shoes that will fit the pedals more comfortably. I am determined to shed this weight and I will cycle everyday to do it so I think my baboon arsed cycling pants to be a good investment.

Having recovered enough I went to run a bath and got side tracked by an interesting piece of work my partner was doing, so interested that when I got back to the bath room the bath was flowing freely through the over flow pipe. So a tepid bath, as both hot and cold had been left on. Once out I made the fatal mistake washing my hair using the shower attachment which can be temperamental, today it was. I had a head full of Head and Shoulders shampoo and the shower cut out so I had to go down stairs and use the one down stairs. Life is never simple. I eventually got dry and changed in time for my partner and daughter return from their walk and to start the tea routine while I cleared my work space in the lounge for the weekend. So here I am in the office, my office, writing the blog and looking forward to weekend English football, the arrival of my arse saving pants and tomorrows bike session. I also have a video to make, but that will be an adventure.

DVT DAY 102

Am I the only person who is pissed off waking up to rain, all day rain! That’s how it was this morning as I got up for breakfast and drugs and then opened up my computer for a 9 o’clock meeting. So I spent some time talking work with colleagues to the sound of rain pattering down outside. I had hoped to get the new bike into the shed but it still sits I the kitchen waiting to be moved and ridden. But on the bright side my new Samsung fitness tracker is delivered.  Take the time to charge the new toy and synchronise it with my phone. It appears to charge quickly and do almost all the things my Fitbit did but at almost for a third of the price. It is less sophisticated but it appears to do the job including telling me what is arriving on my phone. Overall l am quite chuffed with my impulse (excuse the pun) buy.  

I sort the kitchen, clear breakfast and tidy up a bit and take the opportunity to read a couple of pages from my new book, which I continue to enjoy. A lunch with my partner and then I am ready to facilitate my Open Forum. The forum is stimulating and makes the time fly by. During the session our fruit and veg order gets delivered and I put it away once I am out of the forum. There are notes to be written, which take me ages to do. They are part record and part reflection and as such take time to write, being dyslexic doesn’t help but spellcheck helps most of the time.  

I get finished and read a bit more until dinner, our Thursday evening pre singing lesson tuna pasta. Its one of my favourite meals, plain, simple, tasty and satisfying. Followed by another favourite of strawberries and ice cream, it completes a comforting meal. Coffee to finish and an evening spreads before me. Tough choice, read, bath, The Last Kingdom, German football, test the bike or sleep. I won’t know till tomorrow.

DVT DAY 101

Breakfast, drugs and email check gets the day started. My first task is to get all the documents to complete my DBS forms for the RCP. Deciding which documents to use and which I could find took time but I eventually got to the on line form to complete. I ticked a lot of boxes that has probably signed my soul away but I need the certificate to the work. I pushed the button and off it went and almost immediately I got an e-mail to tell me it had been accepted and the RCP had been in formed to check my identity.

At this point my partner returned from the chemist and presented me with my months’ worth of drugs including Mondays monthly injection. While I am filling my weekly drugs wallet the roof felting that I ordered has been delivered. I am half thinking that if I get the chance, I will put the final patch on the tool shed roof. It’s time for lunch and my partner and daughter sit outside on the patio to eat, it’s nice and warm and my roof patching ambitions are looking good. Lunch done I sign into my afternoon open forum for an hour. Although not many of us there it was a productive hour. While under the headset chatting on the forum my new training bike is delivered and left ton the drive.

As soon as possible I get to work on assembling the bike but it soon becomes clear that getting it in to the shed and my ambitions to patch the tool shed roof are not going to happen as there is a thunderstorm of biblical proportions. So, I press on and complete the bike in the kitchen.

All I can do is stand and watch the torrential rain and how the gutters cannot cope and overflow. The street outside is showing signs of filling up with water and the cars are producing funfair size log flume sprays as they pass by. I note with relief and a smile that other people’s drain pipes and gutters are not coping with now tropical like deluge. In a moment of slightly less rain I close up the shed and check what is on TV tonight, Yippee it’s the Great British Sewing Bee.

We have dinner, watch an episode of The Last Kingdom” and then clear the kitchen in readiness for the GBSB.

TGBSB is a delight but I promised not to include any spoilers in the blog.