DVT DAY 218

Its easy not to bother, to have another cup of coffee and not do it. And so the distance grows. Winter COVID will make strangers of us all if we are not as careful of our friends as we are of ourselves in this time of isolation, fear and uncertainty. From living to survival in one easy virus. Even the previously easy solutions become risk laden and so we are entranced into doing nothing. Dangerously we stop making the effort and then we begin to think no one cares enough to respond or make the effort. It is this that will eat away at our being and undermine our friendships, affections and loves. It becomes a “the sun is shining but I cannot be bothered” syndrome and soon winter is upon us and we will huddle like squirrels in drays waiting for spring, but in our case waiting for someone else to be spring for us. So today I shall make the effort, write the letters, make the calls, persist and knock once more on the doors of friendship, family and loved ones just to say hello and ask if they can come out to play in the autumn leafs before winter truly arrives.

And if you are reading this and thinking the bugger has not written, phoned, hailed me then do something about, spend a stamp, make a call, you never know the response might surprise you. It might surprise me to.

I now go to mount my exercise bike and continue the fight as I see the postman pass my door empty handed. Later I will talk to others in an open forum full of strangers and people I have never been in the room with and wonder why I do not do this with those I have. Another leaf that falls in autumn before the trees are laid bare in winter. I perhaps need to be more creative but then I need to take care that this is not merely a distraction from what this virus is really robbing me of, and that is more difficult to face. Which reminds me I have two letters to reply to and a coffee ZOOM in the diary, I am perhaps more blessed than most but still need to remind myself to pay attention and make the effort.

In the middle of writing up my forum notes I noticed the sun glinting off my coke can onto the television and where it fell at the right angle it produced rainbows. I took some time to play.

My evening was full of football and watching Leicester win in the Europa League and watching a film about an ex Olympic gold medalist turned missionary in Japan having a crap time in a Japanese camp in the war. Now that’s multitasking when you throw in finishing the blog for the day as well.

DVT DAY 227

Its Wednesday and it is one that starts well, the squirrel has found the refilled nut feeder, so my efforts yesterday were worth while. Its good to start the day that way.

After a light breakfast of muesli that looks suspiciously like hamster food, I checked my diary and headed for garage gym to row for half an hour. I was pleasantly surprised how well it went and felt very happy skipping off to the shower. I prepared for my two o’clock meeting and while doing so a surprise package arrived for me, a late birthday present and a “test piece” T shirt from a friend. The T shirt is spectacularly “Tucany” and fits to a T. I am sure it will not be long before I wear it for a work zoom call. The other part of the package was my belated birthday present. Ear drops that contain dandelion seeds, which reflect the image I use to symbolise my life time clock. A thoughtful present, I like them a lot, those too I shall doubtless wear one for a meeting.

I attend my meeting and do the follow up emails and calls. This work somehow continues through calls and follow up emails till its time to head for the kitchen. I start the preparation for a signature one pot only to find the remains of the last one still in the pot! So after a hygienic delay I continue to make the dish and pop it in the range. Time for football! Suddenly the evening is all but gone, just time to write a bit of a blog.

DVT DAYS 225 & 226

Monday and I head off in the morning to see my clinical supervisor and mentor. A drive north, further than I have been for a while. I spent four and a half hours talking and exploring how my work was going and how I am coping with my cancer and the constraints of COVID. It was a crucial time very well spent and I came away with a head full of information, questions and ideas for how I can keep myself working well, staying healthy and maintaining a reasonable, rational balance in my life. Given that in all likelihood we face a COVID infected autumn and winter keeping that balance is what will see me through what is ahead.

In my hotel room I order pizza and a couple of Becks Blues and write notes from the afternoon. A time to think, plan and be out of my usual bubble. It was relaxing and a brief time to reconnect with what is central and crucial to living. I finished my pizza and Becks before settling down to sleep.

Tuesday and I skip breakfast to leave the hotel early. The key was to have as little contact with people as possible and to drive home to get some work done. Apart from having to change my route to avoid a motorway closure I got home okay more or less on time. Home and the luxury of a bacon sandwich before I unpack and get ready to train. Before I actually get to train I find myself cleaning and refilling the bird feeders and our squirrel box. Whilst on a roll I managed to get the cover over the swing seat after tediously rethreading the retaining cord through the hem of the cover. So now the garden is more or less prepared for winter. At last I get to climb aboard the exercise bike and grind out an hour of effort, the first for several days. This is the start of my revamped strategy to get my weight down, strengthen my core and build some upper body strength. The gardener rocks up later in the afternoon and sets to work on the garden clearing. It soon pisses with rain and he goes home and I settle down to watch what turns out to be a really boring football match. Out of all this what have I learnt? Dry your hair after you’ve washed it or your head gets cold and your nose runs. Tomorrow starts three days of work and my new exercise regime so an earlyish night for me.

DVT DAYS 221,222,223 & 224

Thursday, Friday, and Saturday was recovery time, which basically meant me laying around and then having spurts of energy as I caught up with a vague to do list. Amongst which I am ashamed to say is catching up with my grandsons birthday which passed me by. On Friday a rowing machine got delivered, one of my bursts of energy was to put it together, so now the garage is beginning to look truly like a gym. All I need now is the energy to use it.

All Saturday afternoon was spent in the office glued to the computer screen as I “attended” a webinar that I had booked and paid for some weeks ago when I thought I needed to do some cpd. From there it was a drive to friends for a meal. Fortunately we are both in tier 1, moderate, zones. No touching, hand shaking, fist pumping, elbow clashing at all, just socially distanced dining and conversation. Actually it was a real pleasure after the week I had had and good to know that others are surviving. So a late night to bed and a lots to think about.

Sunday up and the ritual weigh in. Disaster; 95.4 kilos, I’m officially obese again. Too much comfort food and no exercise during being ill has made me a fat boy again. We eat a late breakfast before confirming my arrangements to see my clinical supervisor on Monday. I’ve done a lot of work over the last few months amidst all the other stuff that COVID has brought alongside my cancer and I need to get it all straight in my head for my own wellbeing. It looks like I and the family are going to face weeks and months over the autumn and winter of going no where and being hunkered down in the house together. I need a plan to stay balanced and clarity about what I am going to do with that time. So today I catch up with washing , packing, and putting the garden to bed for the autumn. Still the garden gives me unexpected gifts.

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I’ve no doubt I’m going to watch trash television at some point as there is no sport to watch. I’m hoping my motor will begin to run again as the coming week gets under way, there are meeting to attend and a lot of catching up to do. I’ve just discovered the calendar on my phone has wiped all the events and entries prior to September 2019, all my records of the time in Jamaica from when I became ill have just gone, I hate IT. I feel like I’ve lost an important document of my last two years experience. So much for having control of your own IT, clearly its a myth. Back to pen and paper for me.

DVT DAYS 219 & 220

TUESDAY: ILL.

WEDNESDAY; ILL BUT SURFACING. NO LONGER SHIVERING.

DVT DAYS 217 & 218

Sunday was spent doing home stuff like rewiring the light switches in the kitchen and clearing the decks for the week to come.

Today, Monday, I get up, shower and head for the GP surgery to get my 28 day injection and my three monthly B12 jab. Back home straight afterwards to a day full, literally, with zoom and teams meetings. In the gaps there are e-mails to send and admin to do. By the end of the day of work all I can do is stare at the TV and listen to the waves of COVID news. As the day wears on towards the Tesco delivery I am feeling progressively under the weather. No temperature, and my heart rate and oxygen sats are good, but I am feeling chilled and I ache, my joints feel stiff, especially in my hands. I resort to chocolate. An early night for me. Hopefully its just the effects of my injection.

DVT DAY 216

Saturday, the day before weigh in and a day to risk Sainsburys for a new frying pan and fish food. So after a late morning bacon bagel its off to the supermarket. I strange land of queuing, sanitizer and designer masks. No car washers in the car park, a disappointment but I guess they lack the moral fibre of the car washers of my youth. We leave with more than we planned of course and head for the garden centre with a good butcher but alas no turkey crowns. This is part of our plan B Christmas contingencies. So we assuage our disappointment with fruit scones and some posh strawberry daiquiri jam.

In the midst of all this my new tracksuit arrived. An understated combo which I shall use to train in the chilly garage gym over the next few weeks to build some core strength and tone up.

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It’s rugby semi final day so we settle down to watch while indulging on the scones with daiquiri jam. Good games but by the time they are over it was getting dark. Time to retreat to the shed and train. Today the aim was to reach 1000 kilometre mark. So in the dark and rain I get set in the shed and start to pedal wearing my altitude training mask on for the first ten minutes. I cannot see the garden so I sweat and pedal by the light of the desk lamp while the heater pumps out heat. For almost an hour I grind out the work and then at 57 minutes the magic 1000 kilometre total appears on the monitor. I ease off for the last four minutes but manage to get 500 calories burnt.

I go through my usual post training routine to close up the shed and get into the warmth of the house, where I can shed my kit and recover on the sofa watching a film and beginning to write the blog. This was interrupted by dinner and the start of a new Tom Hanks film. So I finish the blog and settle down to watch the film while my legs recover. Tomorrow is crunch day, I weigh in on the scales that today I put a new battery in and cleaned. I am hoping for another decrease on my weight so that Sunday can be an indulgence day, chocolate orange perhaps.

DVT DAYS 214 & 215.

Thursday: a day when I take delivery of my prized Honka FC football shirt. My favourite Finnish football team who currently are riding fourth in the Finnish top league. Who could not like a team called Honka. My football highlight is the Finnish derby of Honka versus Haka. Below is my new shirt, which I shall be wearing to meetings in the near future.

So Thursday was a good day. It also included a good open forum session and a rare reasonable performance by the England football team, watched in my Honka shirt of course, which saw them beat Wales 3 nil. So they were the highlights that framed stuff like checking the wiring on some lighting switches, tripping off to Wickes to buy replacement switches and the excitement of a power cut, unrelated I hasten to add to my wiring check.

Friday. The door chimes ring out the Ode to Joy at four in the morning. Another power cut, so back to sleep. Up in the morning, breakfast and some Enabling Environment work before retreating to the shed in my training gear to write up the notes from yesterday. This process is always a longer task than I anticipate due to the nature of the notes and the work. I get them finished and then clamber up on the exercise bike to do a session for an hour. A good session that was completed to the noise of Rammstein. Always works for mem every time. I am within 25 kilometres of completing 1000 kilometres on the bike. I am still determined to get my weight down and get fit. Its begging to feel as If I am getting fitter, mostly because my clothes are starting to fit again ad I am once again looking in my wardrobe and fancying wearing some of my nicer clothes. Anyway I get my session done and take a shower. As I am getting the ingredients together to cook the evening meal a friend rings for a chat , which a was a nice surprise and a welcome distraction from the chopped vegetables. I got the meal in the oven and settled down to watch the French Open while my partner trained in the garage. Djokovic won eventually over Tsitsipas. An evening of TV and popcorn. Tomorrow I might venture to Sainsburys, just for the excitement of the peril of COVID restrictions in a supermarket. What would be a bonus would be if the car wash teams are there but I guess COVID has done for them.

DVT DAY 203

Wednesday, and today needed to start with breakfast followed by training as today our garden man was due to arrive this afternoon. There was also another good reason to get training in early and that was the new grill element was due to arrive today and that meant I was going to enter into DIY mode with the range. So I spent an early hour sweating in the shed and determined to get to the end of the hour. I was pleased to survive and returned to the house to play with my new WIFI headphones, connecting them to my laptop and my phone, discovering on the way that Spotify plays automatically allowing me to hands free “groove around” the kitchen while I sized up the task in front of me. All my research tells me I am going to have to take the back of the cooker off to access the wiring of the grill element. That in itself is not a problem but what is a pain in the butt is the filth and grease that will have accumulated over the years since it was installed.

I was right. It was a war zone, muck and grease encrusted on the floor, walls and the sides of the adjacent kitchen units. So it was out with the kitchen cleaner, scourers and hot water to clean the area out. Of course the cooker had to be unchained from the wall before it would ease its way out into the main part of the kitchen. Once freed from its greasy moorings the cooker was striped of pans and shelves to give me access to the burnt out elements. Fuse off of course.

The first step is to get to the back of the cooker and remove the casing hiding the wiring to the element.

So here we go, simply take the back cover off. This little cover was sneaky and used two types of screw, lucky I noticed, but it came away easily to expose the wiring to the element.

Being kind of obsessive I take the extra precaution of labeling the wiring. Never can be too careful.

I then returned to the front of the cooker and started to remove the retaining bar and then the screws that retain the element. The first retaining screw fell behind the rear oven plate so that had to be taken out as well. More grease and muck to clean. The second screw came out easily enough, allowing the new one to be slid into place and secured. So far so good. So its returning to the rear of the cooker I rewire the new element contacts.

So now its all about putting everything back and securing it all. I do all this and start to repair the light on the cooker hood which had not been working for sometime. I discover the glass on one of them is in four bits so naturally I reach for the glue to find there is not any in the garage. I abandon home and drive to the local Wickes and buy glue, filing my partners car up on the way back.

So at last the job is done and I put everything back and go and flick the fuse back on. No loud bang, that’s a good sign, as is the oven lights working and the cooker hood light coming on. I put everything back and take a celebratory photo.

As I finish the job our garden guy has arrived and is mowing the lawns. I put away my tools and flop on the sofa to rest and check my e-mails and take a couple of calls. It feels like a long day already as I ease into NCIS having closed up the shed for the night and said farewell to garden man. In front of TV I eat tea and settle down to watch the last episode of the Great British Bake Off, bread week. I have to say there was nothing that blew me away but I did get the urge to make soda bread with some sort of weird flavouring. This done I settle down to write the blog. Tomorrow I have an open forum to look forward to and another training session to get through.

DVT DAYS 211 & 212

Monday, letter writing, mending the shed window. Doesn’t sound much but it was all so time consuming, however I did manage to get a good training session in which made me ache and dash to the shower. By nine o’clock I went to bed to read as I was more tired than I realised. Very little got read before I slipped into sleep.

Today started with a omelette breakfast and a challenge, the window I am mending in the shed had dropped so much that it would not close plus I had run out of sealant. A trip to the local Wickes via the garage to fill up and I was in possession of all the required materials. After a bit of a wrestle I got the window closed and sealed. So now it is weather proof but it will not open without serious force which will mean it is likely to drop to pieces. As long as it keeps the winter out I will be satisfied. I turned my attention to the broken oven grill and discovered that there is a company that specialises in elements who could deliver the part I need by tomorrow. The thought of bacon sandwiches spurred me to action and one will be delivered tomorrow. Hurray for the motivation of bacon sandwiches. After a brief lunch of noodles I retreated to the shed and set about designing things to be made out of wax for the jewelry set. I eventually got an idea and made a rough cut out of one of the waxes. After some experimental filing and drafting I got to something resembling a worth while object, or at least an idea. I registered my efforts with CAST and got a code and popped my effort into the provided prepaid mail tin. I thought I had missed the posting time but I got to the post box just as it was being emptied. Home and I close up the shed for the night and settle on the sofa to write the blog, eat dinner, take a call from a friend and wonder what to do tonight. Perhaps a film for a change.