I got up early again today as I am not sleeping long at the moment. So breakfast done by 7:30 and I am checking that my eldest daughters lap top has backed up. It has, I am a hero, her laptop is now fully functional, hurray!
Then onto down loading all the shared picture folders onto a hard drive so that they can be copied to my partners laptop. All goes well, but a lengthy process. Then it was time to load them up onto the laptop so they can be photoshopped. While all that is going on I clear the kitchen, replace light bulbs and open up the garden.
My partner gets up and we breakfast on bacon sandwiches (yes I know but there are times when a Hobbit second breakfast is essential). I check my Amazon orders and top them up to make sure we have all the IT drives and cases that we need. Along the way I find that it is now possible to buy Carex handwash in 5 litre cartons, I could not resist. Later in the day I check my orders and find I might have ordered two, not my intention but hey its not perishable. One last chore before getting out in to the garden, and that’s to organise the card board mountain that has collected in the hall. I take my box cutter to it and get it all into one large box, which I gaffer tape ready for collection. Now for the garden.
I set about clearing out some of the pots in the front garden with view to planting out some of the seedlings. Pots ready, I plant them up with a mixture of Cosmos and tomatoes plants. It will make a strange presentation when they all come to full bloom.
Within this tiny pond lurks at least 5 frogs, tadpoles and a surprise pair of newts.
With the planting done I sit by the pond on my gardening kneeler and watch the pond for frogs and if lucky the newt. Surprise surprise there are two newts and they seem to be a couple. What are baby newts called, newtlettes or ewfts, I do not know, something to google in an odd moment. Fortunately, I have my phone with me and take a video of my new found gems.
As promised: “The Newts!”
I retreat inside and write materials for Enabling Environment commitments I have this week. It is strange writing things for people who are out there working on the frontline of the criminal justice system. It’s difficult not to sound condescending or out of touch with reality when the real desire is to try and be supportive and recognise the excellent work they are doing. Time to close up the garden, the greenhouse and summer house before dinner and writing the blog.
Tomorrow is the day I go to the GP for my 28 day injection to keep my cancer at bay. With COVID19 all about us, I have to be kept in the car park until the nurse is ready to stab me. It means that I shall have a sore stomach for a couple of days and will bathe regularly to relieve the soreness. So tomorrow I shall take it easy and be kind to myself. I may well spend time sitting but the pond.
By the Powers what a day! Avast yea, not only is it “speak like a pirate day” me heartys but it is also “found a NEWT in the pond” day. Blow me down in Davey Jones Locker a newt lurks. The knave was too quick about the deep to capture in picture but I will Nessie hunt the beast till I has a likeness.
This looks like my newt
What’s more landlubbers my jolly heave ho weights bench arrived so I can once again weigh anchor and set my jib to ripple. Furthermore matey, listen up scurvy tar, I be gettin’ my sea legs back by parading the unicycle down the gang plank. The suns up and the tide right for a spot of seafarin’.
Unicycle weight lifting is the challenge today
Back in the binnacles eldest wench daughter an’ I did surf waves and harpooned ourselves a laptop fishy for few doubloons so that eldest can pull up anchor and rove da seas with all her learning cargo on board. This luckless slinger not dun bad, no hornswaggling here.
Well my scurvy knaves and salty dogs tis’ tot time as sun sets over the yard arm to eat and hornpipe gaily. Pass me the grog till I’m squiffy. Aye Aye its time to batten down the hatches.
Another early day with a quick breakfast and then a retreat to the shed to write letters and continue to write Enabling Environment maintenance materials. My partner brings me my monthly injection for Monday. A quick lunch and then I mow the lawns front and back and return to the shed to write more stuff for enabling environment. Tap tap tap away until it’s time to cook dinner, pie. While my creation bubbles away in the oven I unpack the new hard drives and search for the instructions. After dinner I plug my 6 Terabyte in to the main PC in the office and leave it to get on with backing up the system. Tesco delivers and then it’s TV and write the blog.
If you get the impression that I am bored, you’d be partly right, but I am more tired from my days efforts than anything else, so I am probably entering a semi-comatose state.
A day of production and nice surprises. I woke early and knew I would not go back to sleep so I got up and had an early breakfast and put on some laundry. Breakfast is eaten in front of the TV news, no surprises, apparently there is still COVID 19 going on and no sport. Its only a matter of time before X Box launch their latest game, Virus. A chance to battle a deadly world pandemic and make a fortune suppling PPE. I find an e-mail letter from a friend and I take my time reading it and have a second cup coffee so that I can take my time over the letter. I check my e-mails and find that e-bay are going to reimburse me the cost of my weights bench that has not arrived. I impetuously go to Amazon and find that suddenly there is a plethora of weights benches available, I buy one as it appears it can be here between Monday and Wednesday. I can feel some serious getting fit coming on once I have shifted my Enabling Environment work for the next week.
I go to the garden shed and start to write more material for the Enabling Environment resource that we are building and of course keeping my time sheet up to date. I write until about 11:15 and retreat to the house to do a meeting on Teams for which I need the reliability of the house WiFi. It’s a long meeting and goes on till almost 1 o’clock. I have time for a hot cross bun and a coke before I am back up on screen hosting a Forum for managers. My partner delivers a sandwich lunch part way through the forum, which I watch during the forum. Once the forum is over I fall on the sandwich and devour it with relish.
It’s time to get back to the shed so that I can write up my notes and take a phone call. Its back to the practical then. Taking in this morning’s washing, putting clothes away and setting up for the evening. I insect the pond to see if the water levels have gone down or not. It appears stable and I wonder if the drop in the level yesterday was due to the solar pump getting misaligned and in effect pumping water out of the pond. It’s a distinct possibility. Hopefully this is the explanation. So, I eat dinner and get on with the blog for the day. I’m flagging and hope for an early night to catch up on what I lost last night.
Today has been one of aggravation, it would appear that the pond liner maybe punctured, my eldest daughters laptop appears to be ill, and the rate at which I can get through the EE work is slow because my internet keeps dropping out. But on the plus side is the fact that today I did not have to self stab. Today was my first pill day! What a relief, I am eternally grateful to my oncologist ( He who made a pact with the devil) for suggesting the alternative medication format. I cannot express adequately the relief I am feeling.
So today I have worked, and worked some more and butlered through the day. I go to bed to sleep on my latest IT challenge, having ordered a new back up system for the family’s main computer system as I get more and more paranoid about losing our data. I am fortunate in that I am able to deal with my isolation, the experience of spending a month in a Jamaican hospital last year and my natural ability to occupy myself without any pressing responsibilities for children is a blessing. I am full of admiration for one friend in particular who not only continues to work from home but also manages to keep creating education and engaging activities for her three and five year olds at the same time. It puts my isolation in to perspective.
Up to an early breakfast and an early trudge up the garden to the shed. I open up the greenhouse and have a chat with the seedlings. I spend a bit of time writing a letter and preparing a work hour record sheet before setting about pricking out more seedlings. I get engrossed in the process and work away till lunchtime, with the odd visit to the house to get a Wi Fi signal that is reliable. I weed out the patio pots, weed out the front garden pots and then I’m ready for lunch, scrambled eggs and salmon. My garden is giving gifts everyday and keeps me sane, more or less.
I have a meeting at two o’clock I dive into the shower to freshen up before I go video! The meeting opens up and I observe the it, taking notes and noticing the processes that look similar to the other groups that I am part of. By four o’clock the meeting has ended, the debrief done and the notes made. After couple of hours of listening I needed to do something physical so I found some hard wood tiles to mount the swing seat on and put one of the raised garden beds on. That done it was time to strike the tent and end the festival camping in the garden. By the time I had struck, rolled, and pushed the tent into its cover it was time to eat dinner.
The tent has gone so my Budha head can now be seen.
I return to the house and find my daughter has returned from her exercise walk via the chemist. On this walk she delivered my new perscription to the chemist who actually had the stuff in stock. This is a big deal as it means no more daily injectuions. Two pills a day and I am off the needle, my day just got great! Heaven knows what the side effects are potentially but I’m beyond caring that much, I am just happy not to be self stabbing everyday.
Hurray no more self stabbing. Beezer!
I tentatively try getting onto my website from my notebook and to my great surprise I get in. I have no idea how it has corrected it’s self so I beaver away to write todays blog. As for tonight I have no idea. I’ve blown Killing Eve as I have already watched the most recent episode. If this goes on I shall have to get back to reading.
Getting up after a poor night’s sleep I sort out breakfast and have the joy of doing the crosswords in the paper my partner has brought back from her morning pre work walk. This is a rarer joy recently and I take my time over it. However all things come to an end and I headed out to the shed to set up my office as I had a days work of writing Enabling Environment stuff to do. I made a start and broke off at ten o’clock to self-stab. I am evermore grateful to the DVT doctor for moving me onto a tablet medication, the prescription just has to arrive and we can sort that out. Release is in my grasp I just need to be patient.
I return to the shed and get my head down to write a document and to design some planning tools. At some point I return to the house so that I can get on the internet to send materials off. When I am in the midst of doing this my Amazon order arrives. It is a bicycle pump and I cannot resist seeing if it works. It does and my eldest daughter is now able to set about learning her new circus skill.
UP FOR THE UNICYCLE CHALLENGE
Lunch time comes around and we all find ourselves in the kitchen watching soup warm up, when out of the blue another Amazon package arrives for my partner, I am intrigued. It turns out to be wide brimmed floppy hat with a Velcro see through brim! It a kind of cough and sneeze guard of large proportions, I of course had to try it on. I may well wear it when I finally emerge from isolation riding a unicycle!
The BPS bulletin says that COVID 19 may cause a wave of obsessional behaviours
I return to the shed and write more stuff, and more stuff, and yet more stuff. Every so often I return to the house to send to a colleague. By five o’clock I am done and decide to look at what I need to claim from the RCP for the work I’ve done this month. I discover it is all in bits and pieces and not easy to put together in solid days or half days so I am on the hunt for a time sheet that I can use. In a brief moment of WiFi I discover that there are Apps that will do this. My task tonight is to find and down load an app and get myself up to date. That and completing the blog that it appears I can only access from one of my laptops. If that goes down I am knackered. So fingers crossed I return to the house to complete my day, which will include the next episode Killing Eve on i-player.
Another day up early as the plumber was due to return and finish his handy work on the boiler condenser outlet. So, early coffee and a bit of Andrew Marr to catch up with the corona virus up dates. Already people are writing reports, criticising and arguing about getting back to normal and yet the death rate is still romping along at the same rate and the care homes continue to be unreported. There was a spectacular professor of virology interviewed. She was the model of clarity, knowledge, intelligence and was so articulate about her subject that there was no mistaking where we were and what needed doing. The plumber arrived at this time, waved through the window and got on about his work while Andrew Marr got far from clear answers to his questions from Gove. No surprise there then. The lovely professor was crystal clear about the need to invest now in plant to manufacture any future vaccine on an industrial scale. When asked if the government was up for this Gove waffled and basically said no and muttered shit about international cooperation. The answer was really “we’ve done a bit, but no”. The plumber waved again and got me to check something, which I did and all was good. He took his envelope of money and waved. So we are a home with a functional boiler again, which obviously means we will all want to shower or bathe at the same time. I went off and got ready to self-inject feeling pleased that there is an end to this in sight. I get it over and done with.
I head for the garden after a bacon sandwich and start sorting out the rubbish that is going in the Hippo skipette. I move a load of bags and load them into the Hippo skipette nestled into the front hedge. Job done I contact Hippobag and sort out collection. In the coming days the bag will magically disappear. I was about to rest when my eldest daughter appeared in the garden with her unicycle, an old Christmas present, which after a brief moment of activity has resided in the garage. She has decided to learn how to ride it as a way of combatting isolation. I note that the tyre is flat and suggest that we reflate it before she tries to ride it. On looking I find we have no pump so I go to the Mr Amazon shop and find one that in theory can be with us tomorrow. Once the unicycle is functional I just know I am going to be on it. I too want to learn how to ride it. What a great way to emerge from being shielded, riding out into the village on a unicycle!
Back in the garden I move the Buddha head to live under the magnolia tree, which seems more appropriate than be hidden behind the temporary greenhouse.
I rest in the summer house and read some of the letters in a volume of notable letters that I have. A ham sandwich and a few letters later I end up in the greenhouse potting up yet more seedlings as the early evening draw. It gets chilly so I come inside to write the blog knowing that Killing Eve is back on TV tonight. So unreal but such fun.
So today was exciting, a Saturday lay in. The laying there feeling smug that I had fixed the laptop was good, after that it went downhill. I decided that I would at last have the bath I had been promising myself for a couple of days after a hot cup of coffee. I checked the boiler and found it was “out”. I turned the knob to reset, which usually solves the problem but this time there was a bubbly noise, the green light flashed on then off. I tried again, and then I tried again. The only conclusion was that the boiler was knackered. I made the coffee and a cup of tea for my partner still blissfully unaware and text out plumber. The plumber replied instantly and asked if it could wait till tomorrow, I was thinking about this when he text again and said he would be with us in half an hour. He is my hero. I of course said yes and he replied to ask if we had any latex gloves and to leave them at the porch. So we get decent, and look for latex gloves, which I find several pairs of stashed under the sink under a mountain of plastic bags. At the same time my partner came up with a pack of masks! Apparently she had acquired them early on when I was being fairly cavalier about the virus ad she thought it best not to declare the masks until necessary. In the rush to get the boiler area ready to be worked in I broke my inspection lamp and was mending it when the plumber arrived.
We hailed each other over the door step at a good social distance and set the ground rules after which he came in gloved up and closed himself in the office where our boiler lives. For about half an hour he tinkered and foraged through the boiler’s innards and then suddenly said, “all done”. We went back to the doorstep pose and chatted. Apparently the condenser outlet had become blocked causing a back up of water that fell back into the boiler and stopped it from working. Viola! Chop a bit of the condenser outside and the problem is cured. Boiler happy again, Roland very happy again, and plumber happy, because he gets paid cash and can get back to his decorating with his wife up a ladder. He is coming back tomorrow morning just to cap off and seal the pipe properly so we negotiated how to hand over the money. Frankly I would have paid him double, like I say he is my hero.
I returned to trying to rectify the SSD drive I had screwed up but in the end over a bacon and egg sandwich I had to admit defeat. It is something I will take up again one rainy afternoon. So I put all the screws back into the laptop case fired it and checked that it was working okay. It was so I cleared away and then did the Ta Da! Bit with my partner who asked if she could have Skype on it? By now I am feeling confident and with in a matter of minutes Skye is up and running and picking up all her Skype friends and work contacts. Sorted I think. She then asked if it would support the Photoshop software that she had as present some time ago. I delve into the IT box in the office and come up with the instillation disc and again within minutes the programme is up and ready to use. Finally I am done, I put the laptop in the new bag that I had ordered for it in a fit of confidence that I would succeed, and present it to my partner. Happy partner who now has a laptop of her own that is empty and can be filed with photographs and be used to do her isolation singing lessons on.
I am clearing away my tools when my partner appears waving the phone at me and saying into it “he is just here”, and saying to me “its the DVT clinic at the hospital”. Never words of joy when they are unexpected. I say hello and the doctor introduces herself and asks if I mind doing my telephone consultation early as it was due on the 23rd. I assure her that if she wants to spend her Saturday talking to me she is most welcome. We chat about my last conversation with my GP and the possibility of coming off the dreaded self injections. She is happy for me to move to an oral medication in a tablet from that I can initially take twice a day, which fits into my drug taking habit very well, so we agree on this way forward. She will send a prescription to me to start with and write to my GP, copy to me, and arrange the future prescriptions. My response to the new medication can be monitored thorough my regular blood tests for the oncologist. It looks like a result all round, till I try to confirm how long I will need to take the medication. Will it be for the six months I was told at the clinic when I first went? “Ah” she says, this is never a good thing to hear from a doctor, it is akin to the sharp intake of breath by a garage mechanic when he is weighing up the damage to the car and the potential damage that can be inflicted on your wallet. She explains that because I am having regular hormone stripping injections for the rest of my life (thanks for the reminder) she wants me to have the blood thinners for the rest of my life as well! Apparently the 28 day hormone stripping injection makes me susceptible to DVTs, the fuckers never told me that when they started chemically castrating me! I am the reasonable Englishman and finish the conversation pleasantly being glad I was getting off the injections. Everything changes so this is just another ripple in the process. However I will need to rethink how I head my blog.
I make my way to the bath room to finally have my bath. Bath bomb in, can of coke, apple and bag of cheeselets and I am ready. Phone to radio 2 and some music and I am at last in the bath I’ve been craving. I find I can dance laying down in the bath and discover that if I chant inwardly “iambic pentameter” I can keep time with the house music being played. Revelation. So I dance horizontal for quite a time. My partner has gone for a post yoga walk and I think my daughter has gone for her walk to. After several top ups I finally get out and wash my hair before doing the doing the full drying and scenting thing. Deodorant and smellies! There is nothing like climbing into clean lounge pants and fresh ice hockey top to make a chap feel beezer!
So I come down to an empty house where I head for the office and the main PC to writ the blog. However I am intrigued by the landline phone that is flashing a bright red “F” at me. I press play and I get a voice telling me that the memory is full. I press all the buttons in various combinations but it will not delete. I google it where I am advised to unplug it and then reconnect, if that doesn’t work the friendly BT people think I might need to buy a new phone, well they would wouldn’t they . I surf deeper and find a sensible voice of reason, which advises that if I scroll though the menus I am likely to find a “recording” item which will give me a delete option. I follow this advice and find that indeed over the last few months we have actually recorded several incoming calls. I delete them all wondering how we managed to record them in the first place. Bingo it works. At last I settle to write the blog, until a friend sends me a beautiful video of a ballet company working at home. I love it and it reminds me that if I had my time again I would seriously consider dance as a career even though know the realities of that.
i LOVED THIS.
Then another friend sent me a TED talk that just transfixed me.
This just transfixed me.
So after these lovely and provoking interludes I continue to write the blog. This is Saturday night, no football, so I hope for a good film and an early night, after all the plumber is coming first thing.
Up early today as there is the excitement of a Sainsbury’s delivery to be had. Very prompt, dead on the dot of 8 o’clock the Sainsbury’s van rolled up. Of course I scuttled out of the way till he had gone. I re-emerged to a sea of blue plastic bags and mystery shapes strewn across the kitchen floor. I set about packing it away, which turned out to be quite a task. The fridge, the freezer, the kitchen cupboards, the downstairs storage cupboard is full and now we have a cardboard box of overflow cans and goodies tucked away in the garage vestibule. We now need to eat like pigs to get through it all before the next deliver is due next Friday. It is ironic that I am trying to lose weight and keep a food diary of everything I eat. I notice that the odd biscuit has become a ritual and the amount is creeping up. At moments of feeling sorry for myself just recently I have gratuitously indulged in at least 7 jelly beans. Where sugar is “fat powder” for others it is “killer dust “for me as it feeds my cancer. Another irony as I am blessed with a sweet tooth.
I wade through the blue bags and finally get to the end of squirreling the goodies away and then realise there are no stamps, I ordered stamps, I check the bill and there they are. No stamps to be seen. I go through the bin and there they are. My “owl tokens” are indispensable to me.
Once clear of the shopping I cook myself a bacon sandwich and get ready to self-stab before being interviewed over zoom. I had completed a workbook about the process of my retirement and the work I have done since then. The research is part of an Erasmus project being done in several European countries with a view to creating a tool to be used with pre-retirement people to help them plan their retirement activity. It was an interesting interview and, let’s call her Sam, was knowledgeable about the area. Apparently people now have Encore careers and Legacy careers, the rest seem to just fall into retirement without a plan to do anything. We chatted about the structure of the workbook until there was nothing left to say. So lunchtime approach and I retreated to the garden shed clutching two runner beans. My partner has been sent them from hr work team as part of the teams strategy to amuse themselves through the restrictions. They are now safely snuggled in pots in the greenhouse sporting their own labels and with a shelf to themselves.
ISOLATION DISTRACTION
A lunch of soup and teacake and I return to the shed to write letters and organise some EE work. By four o’clock it is getting cold so I pack up, deliver my days letters to the “Owl” for delivery to the post box. I discover that the Windows recovery disc I was waiting for had arrived. So I begin to try and re-run the start-up programme. After several tries it kicks in and then there was the long and prolonged process of instillation. During this time I help to cook tea and end up eating it while I press buttons and keys and then holding my breath in the hope that it is all going to work. To my relief it does and I end up with a laptop that is empty and functioning well. Rather than stopping there and thinking that I have won I am greedy to make it even better, so I down load cloning software and try to clone the old disc drive onto a swish new SSD drive. I play and try different ways into the system and suddenly the disc I was looking for pops up on the screen. I try to clone it but with no joy and so I try again and this time leave it to run without me watching it. Its mid evening and I retreat to London Kills and sit with a laptop on my legs writing the blog. The laptop will either work or not but I will not be playing any longer tonight, that will be a tomorrow job.
