DVT 265 & 266

Saturday and I am distracted by anticipating the results of my blood test. As it happens some come through but the crucial one, the PSA does not, so I will have to wait. So I fill my day with a combination of Christmas preparation and continuing to prepare the house for the return of the decorators on Monday. Firstly there is the new under sink storage cupboard to build and fit along with the new shower curtain to put up. Once done the bathroom begins to look better.

So in between this preparation I wrote my Christmas cards and watched rugby or the Queens Gambit. Life at the moment seems to be full of clearing up, tidying and reorganising stuff. So I work away until past midnight when my full blood results get published on Patient View. I eagerly look for my PSA level and there it is at last. So now I have the full set, and it is favourable news.

Most things are in normal range but where I am out of it there seems to be reasons for it, mostly mild dehydration and the effect of my blood thinners. I will get a chance to run this past my oncologist on Tuesday providing that he rings and that he spends enough time to listen to me before he decides I am fit and well and ticks his boxes and buggers off for another four months. I got to bed with a sense of relief.

Sunday and I share the news of my PSA level and start the day with a bacon bagel. So its time to continue the preparation for the decorators. The first thing to do is to get the first bedroom sorted out by moving all the old stuff back. In the middle of moving and resetting clocks and phones we receive a delivery. The curtains for the bedroom have arrived early and they are exactly what we had hoped they would be. I set about hanging them but find the painters had dripped paint on the rail so that the runners would not run. So a little light sandpapering was required after which I used the magical silicon lubricant that solved the car seat belt problem on the curtain rail. My efforts were rewarded and the rail started to run smoothly. After some tricky sums I work out how many hooks I need and their spacing. I have enough runners for three of the curtains but only half the number for the fourth one. Amazon of course will have more with me tomorrow to complete the job properly but for now the curtains hang to drop their travel folds. So finally the look of the room is complete and I am happy that what I thought it could look like has become a reality, and it is pleasing.

So Sunday night arrives and still stuff to do to be ready for tomorrow, but I take time to watch His Dark Materials and to write the blog. Tomorrow I will post my Christmas cards, and set about some more Enabling Environment work. Most importantly I need to buckle down and train again and train hard. The fight needs to be fought.

DVT DAY 264

Friday and its a day of stuff, of bits and pieces, of filling cars and pumping tyres, of packing up parcels to go abroad, of dropping in to a garden centre to buy pies and trying to get money back from an away break that can no longer be gone to. Its been that sort of day, bits of busy, like buying hippo bags and forgetting to take my morning drugs. Of course this all came after a trip to the GP to have my blood taken. Its in preparation for my oncology appointment next Tuesday, so if I am lucky I might get them just after midnight. Happy start to the weekend, perhaps. When not doing stuff there was time to take a call from a friend and to chat about the everyday and the frustrations that Tier 3 brings. So this evening passes in odd small jobs and tidying until I get the joy of watching The Good The Bad and The Ugly, still a classic.

Tomorrow can wait until I see my results and then I will take it from there.

DVT DAYS 262 & 263

Wednesday: most of the day was spent preparing for Christmas. As amazon parcels hit the porch they get wrapped and stored. The boxes for Sweden and Sri Lanka are ready to go and just need to be taped and posted. Apart from that it was all football and preparing for Thursdays work. I friend sent me the following which I liked.

I am not old… she said

I am rare.

I am the standing ovation

At the end of the play.

I am the retrospective

Of my life as art

I am the hours

Connected like dots

Into good sense

I am the fulness

Of existing.

You think I am waiting to die…

But I am waiting to be found.

                                                                Samantha Reynolds.

Thursday: This is the day we get to see if our choice of wallpaper is good or not and get back to our own bed. In the merry-go-round of decorating my eldest daughter will be having her turn in a spare bed tonight, and this is how our lives will be for the coming weeks as the house gets done. The biggest challenge is moving the working spaces around, but that comes next week hopefully. But for now its crack on with work meetings for the day.

I also remembered an article I saw about prostate cancer I saw when I saw a television presenter talking about his experience. That and I have a blood test tomorrow. It never stops. Add to that being in Tier3 and a screwed long weekend break, life is just peachy! I miss my family and friends.

DVT 261

Its Tuesday and no work planned so I am off to the shed after a bowl of muesli and the first coffee of the day. Of course we were all up early as the decorators were coming back at 8:30 to continue with the painting and papering. I see them arrive and scuttle off to the shed. I crank up the heating and get to writing the letters that I owe people. So for at least three hours I scribble away, taking the odd coffee break until lunchtime comes around when my partner rings me to tell me that a bacon bagel is waiting for me. So back in the house I eat lunch and potter around for a bit.

Back in the shed its time to write more letters until I can write no more, my back aches and I have nothing left to say that I can be arsed to put on paper. I return to the house and clear the kitchen ready to cook a curry for the evening meal. By four o’clock I have posted my letters and the the curry is in the oven. I put the bins out while my partner works out in the garage gym.

Another evening of football, The Great British Bake Off and sketching the blog out. I’m getting excited as the completion of our bedroom being decorated may happen tomorrow. It will soon be time to argue about curtain colours. In the meantime its time to press on getting Christmas ready. This feels like the calm before the storm, there is going to be a lot happening from the end of this week. Set the controls for the heart of the sun comes to mind,its going to be a time of burning some energy. Tomorrow I really need to get out of the house for more than a walk to the post box.

DVT DAY 261

Monday! Its decorator day, so its up at 7 o’clock and a rapid breakfast and the last remaining clearing of the main bedroom. It gets done and by the time I am firing up the laptop the decorating team arrive. They are very efficient and are soon under way. Its like having creative mice pattering around the house gradually rearranging the house. I prepare for my work meeting and read through some service self assessments until I hook up my zoom link and join my meeting. A slight hiccup and a moment when there are two of me in the meeting until I cut one laptop off. The meeting goes its merry way until by consent we all surrender and go for a coffee. During coffee we talk to the decorator who thinks we need another roll of the expensive wall paper. We talk for a while until we realise that the decorator had not realised we had bought another roll when we decided to extend the papered walls. We all breathe a sigh of relief as the decorator realises he has enough paper and I breathe my sigh of relief at avoiding paying an arm and a leg for another roll. I find myself getting excited and at the thought of seeing the transformation. If it turns out as good as I hope for I will be looking forward how the rest of the house goes.

The meeting continues and we work our way through to lunch time and leave with our various tasks. I am presented with lunch by my partner and I start to get on with my work. I plough on all afternoon until the Tesco delivery guy turns up a couple of hours early and its an all hands to the pumps moment as we bring in the order and get it put away. Then its back to the office work until the decorator mice leave for the day.

I get to dinner time tired and settle into eating dinner and watching tv, which is a habit I am falling into too readily. Fortunately my hard work today means that I have two clear days to go to the shed and write letters and catch up with Christmas and most importantly to train. I weighed myself for the first time in a fortnight on Sunday with disastrous results, I am officially obese again having gone up to 95.5 kilos. Its tiring continuing to grind it out but I now wear my home made pendant with Back Bone inscribed on it. It reminds me that my back bone is cancerous and I need to have the back bone to continue. So tomorrow has to be another day to start again. I need to remind myself that my cancer does not rest, does not take a day off, is relentless and I have to match that and more to survive. I need to rage quietly and be implacable.

• 

• 

So here I am writing the blog and remembering the message that an old friend sent me saying that she had used my Florentine recipe that I posted, and found that they came out well. If nothing else my blog has given someone good Florentines.

DVT 259

Sunday lay in and a lazy breakfast of bacon rolls at about 11 0’clock, after all there is lots to and one has to have ones strength to push on through. So once the bacon rolls and fresh coffee hit is over and the weekly drugs wallet is stocked its time to sort out Christmas presents for the grandchildren in Sweden. The Swedish post office is so shit that I no longer send my son and family anything through the post as it is highly unlikely to ever arrive. If it does then the post office will not release it without a DNA profile and blood test. So after a prolonged session of finding wish lists and getting to grips to gift bags and Swedish delivery I finally get the job done apart from one item that will need to come via me. Alas this means it probably wont get to Sweden in time for Easter.

Flushed with success I watch France beat Scotland at rugby and hen start the preparations for the decorators coming tomorrow, but not before getting my weeks washing underway. Its a mystery how much stuff can be crammed into a single bathroom cabinet, let alone the buckets of shampoo and body emoluments that accumulate in every corner of the bathroom. The landing area rapidly becomes a health and safety hazard as boxes of bathroom impedimenta get stacked on it. So scuttling around doing this and that I get to tea time, Strictly Come Dancing, His Dark Materials and old Have I Got News For You while waiting for the football highlight. As I wait for the football highlights I write the blog and vaguely wonder what I’ve forgotten to do and whether anyone still read the blog.

Tomorrow will be an adventure as the decorators turn up early and we “the slugabed family” endeavour to be ready for them to start at 8:30. I have a busy day of meetings and shed time to look forward to as well as the joys of the decorators.

DVT DAY 258

Saturday, Florentine making day before watching the rugby. I told a friend I would post the recipe for my Florentines now that I have perfected it.

Roland’s Florentines; Makes 18.

1. 50 grams unsalted butter
2. 50 grams soft brown sugar
3. 50 grams golden syrup
4. 50 grams plain flour
5. 100 grams sultanas
6. 100 grams flaked almonds
7. 50 grams glace cherries (chopped finely)
8. 50 grams candied peel
9. 200 grams dark chocolate
10. Zest of 1 orange
11. Any other decoration you like; gold leaf, hundreds and thousands, ect. Or not.

First put oven on to heat at 180 C (Fan)

Second line three baking trays with baking parchment, lightly greased with butter.

Thirdly put the butter, sugar and golden syrup in a saucepan. Do not heat yet.

Fourthly put the flour, cherries, sultanas, flaked almonds, candied peel, in a bowl and mix together.

Now the fun starts.

• Heat the butter, sugar and golden syrup in the pan until it all melts and the sugar stops being granular.
• When the mixture is liquid remove from heat and add the flour, cherries, peel, sultanas and almond mix to it. Stir until mixed completely.
• Take a TEA SPOON of the mixture and put on to the baking tray. ONLY six to a tray. You should have 18 portions on the three trays.
• Put trays into the oven for 8 minutes. NO MORE. They spread thinly and will burn if left longer than the 8 minutes.
• After 8 minutes remove the trays from the oven. DO NOT TRY TO REMOVE THE FLORENTINES. Leave to cool for at least 5 minutes or longer.
• Remove using a spatula to a cooling rack and leave to cool totally. Keep the papered trays.
• Melt the chocolate in a bowl over a pan of hot water and add the zest of an orange to it as it melts. Melt the chocolate completely and then remove from the heat.
• I put the undipped Florentines in the fridge for a few minutes before dipping them in the chocolate.
• Dip each Florentine in the chocolate and put back onto the papered tray to set. I put the trays in the fridge for a few minutes to help them set but not essential.
• When the Florentines are set, decorate if you want to or just tuck in.
• I store my Florentines in a tin.

So there you have it, Roland’s Florentines.

The rest of the day has been collating work data from a survey and watching rugby. I write the blog which watching “Safe” the most unbelievable drama with the most unlikely plot.

DVT DAYS 256 & 257

Thursday: all bloody work, one meeting after another, and paper (well digital documents anyway) up to my eyes. Never got to train and went to bed knackered.

Friday and I am up and at the Tesco web site by 7am to get a treasured Christmas delivery slot. I get put in the “waiting room” and I think “oh here we go” but to my surprise I get in and get a delivery of my choice. A win so early in the day is unusual. I took the liberty of starting to fill the on line basket with Christmas goodies, all the sort of strange things that only appear at Christmas like crystallized figs. Mission complete I cook bacon sandwiches and prepare for a day of being a Christmas wrapping elf. Of course there is the hunt the parcel stage and the “now where did I put that” stage before I can get down to the annual wrestle with sellotape. Having emptied my cupboards I am faced with a daunting amount of wrapping to do and as I am in the back bedroom I am on the floor wrapping one thing after another. I go at for hours until I need to eat, so a short break for noodles and I am back wrapping. The door bell goes and Mr Amazon delivers some more parcels and my wrapping task gets bigger. Believe it or not it takes me till almost five o’clock to finish and clear up the debris. I suck it up adn get ready to train, but clear the kitchen before I get myself in to the garage. I get on the rower and pull for half an hour. I get hot and drive myself through. I take time out in the bath adn listen to mood stuff on Spotify fro an hour. The evening is taken up with rugby and Have I got News for You on i-player. I tiredly set about the blog in order to keep up and not to lose the days.

The weekend will be spent getting ready for the decorators to arrive on Monday to start the house lift. Hopefully in a couple of weeks time we will be sitting in a newly decorated house with our heating system working at which point I shall hunker down for the winter.

DVT DAY 250

This is Wednesday, normally a laid back, do as I want to day, but this Wednesday is a work day. Before I get started on the meetings I make bacon bagels and then clean the shower head and replace the ionic beads in the head. That all went well so I sit down to my first meeting. I end up making plans to do training in the new year, which the services seem to need the most to get new staff through the COVID times.

I go to my next meeting. A new group for me, some old friends, some new people but no fixed agenda, its a group of experienced practitioners who know their way around the grey areas and ambiguities of therapeutic communities. I found the hour and half really helpful and a space that offers me a sense of belonging in that I know what I say will be heard and that I can hear others. I’m looking forward to meeting again in December. The group have dubbed itself the Elders, I think of us potentially the Brand New Ancients as Kae Tempest would call us.

Time to go to the shed and do an hour on the exercise bike, its cold and getting dark already. Heater on and in three layers to start with I pedal my way to fatigue and sweat. At the end of my session I have to phone home to get the outside lights turned on so I do not trip up in the dark of the garden. No time to shower just eat and get ready to met the decorator who is due to discuss next weeks adventure. He arrives, accepts coffee and we talk wallpaper and paint colours. As we talk some of our previous dilemmas fall away and some of the colour schemes fall into place. A productive meeting. So then its TV and Safe, only another 4 perhaps 3 episodes left of this unbelievable murder malarkey. I watch the The Rap Game UK and I am pleased to see Shogun back and doing his stuff.I winder if it is too late to learn to rap? Finally its time to retire and say good night but not before I write the blog.

DVT DAY239

Tuesday, bin out day, but first I find myself snoozing late and to my surprise my partner is also there, she having told work that she was having the day off to recover. Good for her, its timely and needed. I get up and make myself a bacon bagel to start the day and to wash my drugs down on top of. Wallpaper has arrived and I take a look. To my dismay one of them is not the fetching teal version I thought I ordered but the pink coral version. So a phone call, a reorder and a return label completed later I’m back on track. I spend a bit of time checking email and sorting some admin odds and ends before heading off to the garden to fill the bird feeders.

What I regard as my banker to get into heaven, feeding the birds turned into a tragedy. My fantasy is that as I am being weighed off at the doors of heaven and being told “you’ve been a bit of a bastard its hell for you”, I blurt out “but I fed the birds”, to which the response is “fair enough up to the boring light and eternal chorus of hallelujah for you then”. I digress. I open the shed where I store my bird feed in a large plastic box with a lid to protect it from vermin. There is a well nibbled number of holes in the lid, I am suspicious. On opening the lid I find the sad sight of four small field mice dead. The irony of irony the poor things died in their food heaven because they could not get out to drink and died of thirst. I lift them out carefully and take a picture. I dig a small grave, pop them in, and then create a mound over which I put an upturned decorative pot. It felt like the least I could do. I filled the bird feeders and when I came to close the shed I left the lid off the food box, I could not face the thought of any more creatures dying in the same way.

• 

• 

I return to the house and and set about putting together a digital booklet of the Enabling Environment standards. What always looks simple always turns out to be more complex, so I spend hours converting documents into different formats and then trying to make the online software do what I want it to. Eventually after a long struggle I got something that might be useable. It was intended to be a pilot to explore what could be done in the future and to give the team some ideas. If your interested the link is below:

https://simplebooklet.com/enablingenvironmentsstandards

Time to train. I go to the garage and strap myself into the rower. Its a hell of a session that I break into to two fro survival reasons. What was good was a brief call with a friend as she went pick up her daughter from school. It gave me good reason to take a much needed breather. I finish my session and change while listen to phone messages. Its time to eat tea and write the blog. Some TV tonight and some preparation for my meeting with he YMCA will see me through to my end of evening coffee and drugs.