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.
My Fathers Day Gifts
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.
Back on the bike for an hour this time.
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.
My fathers day bath bomb.
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.
My partners completed jigsaw
Spot the whimsies
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.
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.
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.
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.
My Emoji self
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”.
The Machine I hope will save me from total flab.
Man on Bike by L. Ockdown.
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.
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.
My new fitness tracker paired with my phone
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.
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.
My hope of fat loss.
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.
Garden lockdownin downpour
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.
Today has been a day of bits and piece. From the mundane chore of doing a weekly wash to the AGM of the The Consortium of Therapeutic Communities. The usual start to the day and then a spell in the shed to write letters before I download my meeting papers and start to read in preparation. It’s the usual stuff, agenda, reports from the chair and the treasurer, and a strategic development plan. By the time the meeting is opened I Am up to speed and in my best Zoom T shirt and headset.
Two hours of following the details, doing the standard business and entering into the discussions and then it is over for another year or so. Free of et meeting I sort out my dried washing and get dressed to go the post box to send my letters. Back home I watch some pretty dull German football before reorganising my office bag, and take a call from a friend who has been wrestling with a recalcitrant toilet seat that will not unscrew. Dinner next and then an evening of The Last Kingdom, more slash and burning Danes and Saxons. Finally, the bin goes out, the car comes in and I sit to write the blog before bed.
Well this has been a day, talk about light and shade. So there I was up and breakfasted by 9 o’clock and checking my emails. A colleague had circulated some materials she had designed for a programme that the team are running currently. As part of the materials there was a blog about the Enabling Environment Standard of Structure. My colleague’s cat Tiny has featured before in her blog but today I laughed out loud at the schedule which had been designed by her host. I leave you to judge if Tiny had found a good structure to get through lockdown.
Tiny the cat’s lockdown schedule.
After dealing with my work emails I surfed the net and bought an exercise bike and some bits and pieces. I am determined to shift this weight and if I have a bike then I can get into a routine and train. Having been a gym rat I need something that gets me moving, I am appalled at the way my legs have stiffened up and how I am siting here with a shape that I was, and still am, critical of in others. Right I have made the move and now I have to find somewhere to put it and of course the answer is “the shed”. Sounds simple doesn’t it but what it actually entailed was emptying the shed that had been living under a tarpaulin waiting to be re roofed and re organising the shed so it could accommodate a couple of cane chairs. Simples! Except that it meant I had to re felt the roof and as life is not simple it also meant I had to replace a part of the summer house back wall due to the shed having leaned against it and damaged it. So I emptied out everything from the shed and then had to elbow it over a few inches to get it off the back of the summer house.
So much stuff in such a small shed.
At last the shed is empty
Having done that I need to replace a plan in the back wall of the summer house, I just happen to have some in the garage. So I manage to get the panel screwed into place and then of course it needed to be painted. There I am up on the rickety shed roof trying to paint the new plank and what happens, a thunderstorm is what happens, so I get soaked and have to seek shelter. It passes and I kick on. Once the summer house is sorted I start on the shed roof. Hours of cleaning and reworking the new roof felt and I get it done and I’m tired. But in the middle of this the internet goes down spectacularly.
Roof patching done.
The systems come up with a hacking warning and the hub begins to flash purple. So I start to do the BT thing and try to restart the hub, no joy. My partner then calls me to the front door and there was our telephone line draped across the front garden. Across the road the jolly BT folk are up a pole and all the lines from it are down. So that explains the loss off WiFi. Nothing to be done except get back to my shed fixing.
The cause of my lost WiFi
The tell tale sign that all is not well in BT land
I finally get to the putting everything back in the shed and finding room for the chairs so that the bike (remember the bike?) can go in the summer house. I’m finally done and it’s time to eat, and as I go back to the house my partner gives me the good news that the WiFi is back. Yippee Amazon is my shop again, that was a close shave.
Job done and I’m knackered
So I have had dinner and writing the blog before I have a bath to get rid of the aches that I can feel coming on and then it will be back to slaying Danes and Saxons post Alfred the Great.
Up and at it this morning after of course the weekend negations over bacon sandwiches for breakfast. I checked that the new hanging basket on the shed was still in place. It was and looking good. By which I mean it was still alive and not dropping flowers yet.
I noted that the garden continues to give me new delights such as the small red roses on the tree my eldest daughter gave me one father’s day, and the white peony’s that have bloomed quickly and buckle under the intermittent down pours we are having at the moment.
The twinned trunk oak tree continues to grow from its acorn base and the purple mallow continues to bloom.
But before I can set to on the water butt arrangement that has been over flowing, I think judging by the moss at its base, I go to the garage with my partner to fill the car with petrol and to check the pressures. We had to queue to get a pump which in itself was a trial as some arsehole young male who thought he could just pull had to be faced off. No sense of a queue the ignorant git. My partner filled the car and went to pay while I moved it to the air pump. There was bugger all social distancing going on in the service station shop and my partner emerged disgruntled. We duly did the tyres, 36 front 33 back, guess where the engine is? Then it was back home and time for me to go to the garden and for my partner to take cash to her mother who had run out of cash and had no access to a machine.
The water butt has planters built into it which looks good but were creating an overflow. I took the think apart and cleaned it and then removed the plug of sealant the fitter had put in the end of the drainpipe to force it to use the diversion hose. The arrangement had never worked very well so I decided to have the drain pipe run straight in to the top of the tower butt. Having sorted this I removed the gutter hedgehog and cleaned the guttering and the hedgehog. By hosing the gutters and the roof I was able to check the whole arrangement worked as it should and that the down pipes were al clear. Deep joy it all worked and that included the butt overflow pipe. All that was left was to clear up the area and wait for rain. It conveniently down poured about twenty minutes later when we were all sat on the patio having fruit and oatcakes for lunch. The butt was dripping water but it was from the built-in flower boxes, so they had to come out. They have become water logged and need new liners and a layer of stones to make them viable again. Apart from that everything is tickety boo.
The Tower
The new drain
New drain and hedgehog
Time for a bath and a chance to read a few pages of my latest book, an early birthday present from a friend. It is called Under the Stars by Matt Gaw, and is as far as I have got so far understand it to be a description of how the author rediscovers the night. The pages I read in my bath were lovely and full of delicate adjectives that created a vivid picture of the described experiences. It is a book that I am tempted to devour already but will take my time.
Sunday is Zoom call our youngest daughter time which is what I walked into after my bath. She is furloughed but her boyfriend is going back to work tomorrow. We chatted about how we were and about what is going on in the world. I wonder how many other families are doing the same right now and wondering how it is all going to turn out. So, it comes to dinner time and my partner cooks as I settle down to write the blog. I expect that we shall eat and return to our current Netflix box set binge “The Last Kingdom”. Its basically a Thor versus God slash and burn series based on Alfred the Greats attempt to hold the kingdom of Wessex and build a united England. It passes the time and allows to think about other things like the chick weed that is covering the pond and where I am going to put the exercise bike I intend to buy. The bike is necessary as I can no longer stand myself at this weight and this unfit, I’m better than this and need to get myself sorted. Yoga and ballet are fine but I have been used to going to the gym and burning off at least a 1000 calories three times a week, walking doesn’t do it for me either. I weighed myself today in my ritualistic once a week way, 100.6 kilos. I’ve been around 100 kilos for months now since the chemo and it got to come down for my health’s sake. Best bet for he bike is in the shed with me at eh expense of a couple of old chairs, I think.
Today was all garden, walking and The Last Kingdom, but a late start to the day meant I forgot to take my drugs this morning. I discover this as I go to take my night drugs. I think sometimes I unconsciously forget the drugs in an attempt to pretend I do not have cancer. It is a delusion for I can never walk away from the fact that I have cancer, much in the same way that if I was black I could not walk away from that either. I suppose that holds good for anyone who is different enough to be a target of others disapproval, distaste or pity. The difference is that I do not have a visual identifier, in fact I look well, so I am told. I am tired and going to bed.
At last its Christmas, or at least the time to get round to eating the Christmas cake.
2019 Christmas cake is begun at last.
This is a family debate every year that takes place about how long we are going to preserve the Christmas cake we could not face eating at Christmas due to the plethora of sweet stuff and mountain of dead flesh we have chewed our way through in a very short space of time. I lose count of the number of festive chocolate oranges I get to eat along with a variety of crystallised fruits of strange and bizarre origin. Any about May to June time we wonder whether to eat the Christmas cake or keep it till next Christmas. With this year’s COVID restrictions and the usual culinary fripperies not being available we decide to start on the cake. The cake is always good, as it is more or less solid fruit with more than a hint of brandy but the apricot jam supported icing is a different matter. From the first tentative nibble at the icing I know that I should leave it, but I never do, my sweet tooth takes over and I invariably eat the lot. I shall now crave plain food and fruit for about a week and blame my increase in weight at the Sunday weigh in on the icing. But I am pleased that we have begun the cake as there is no more dilemma as to whether to keep it for another six months or not. This year it is definitely, not!
I’ve had one of those buggering about days really. One of those days when just as I was about to launch into something in earnest I have been diverted. By the time I had checked my e-mails and sorted out what bits of work I needed to do I was ready to go to the shed. As I am about to set off the phone rings and I spend a happy time chatting to a friend, after which the post arrives. All for me and in it a demand to pay import duty on the infamous weights bench that I never owned, never paid for and did not want. I send a firm but fair e-mail to them directing them to the real owners of the goods and cross my fingers that this will be the end of it. It won’t be, I wait for the metaphorical arm wrestle tat is going to go on.
In the post was a long letter from a friend, which I sat down with a coffee and read over twice. It is such a pleasure to get a letter like this and spurs me on to continue to write both letters and blog. I have no doubt that I shall read it again soon and begin to think about a reply soon. Another colleague calls and we chat about our work situation and before I know it, it is lunchtime. The household sits down together and we chat as we eat. Nothing deep or philosophical but we drift into such areas as what colour is a PhD hood on an academic robe from De Montfort University and what colour do Buddhist nuns wear. Of course, we race on Google to find the answers, which are orange and pink. In the surfing I discovered it is possible to buy Buddhist meditation robes in a deep red. I was very tempted but resisted. After lunch Amazon deliver the new external hard drive for my eldest daughters’ laptop so there is the task of setting it up. Turned out to be trickier than expected but eventually I get it going and have to leave it to get on with it. It was during this time that we took the decision to eat Christmas cake. By the time the laptop has backed up my partner has packed up work for the day and she and my eldest daughter go for a walk leaving me to write the blog while I watch the corona virus update show. Today we are expecting Sainsburys to deliver so it will be a case of having dinner, waiting the delivery while watching TV, reading or sitting on the couch wishing I had not eaten all that Christmas cake icing.
