DVT DAY 95

Five minutes to go to my first meeting of the day and I am still in bed. No point trying to rush as my body won’t put up with that this early. So I sedately make coffee switch on my machine and make my meeting with seconds to spare. Although there is no work to review that does not stop us comparing notes and feedback for a couple of hours. Once I am meeting free I make breakfast and realise how much we need a Sainsburys delivery. I do some work and before I know it’s time to hold my regular open forum for enabling environments. During this time various high viz clad people wander up the drive and leave packages in the porch including jigsaws and bamboo canes. Once the forum is over I make coffee and settle down to write up the forum notes. Time flies and I am soon watching the COVID daily propaganda programme. The death toll continues to grow, but more slowly and now we are all supposed to get excited about “Track and Trace”. Early days yet but it may get better. I update the Sainsburys order to include essentials like chocolate and stamps and settle down to a tuna past tea. Tonight my partner has her online singing lesson so I shall read, watch TV , write the blog and chat to a friend on the phone. Thursday is really my Friday so I will hope to relax and return to my painting, poems and reading. To sum up today has been a couch potato day of work, although I did manage to bake a loaf in there somewhere.

Occasionally I come across something that makes me think “wow wish I’d done that”. Recently I was part of a forum where a person from the BAME community raised issues about rights in therapeutic communities in prisons, I subject close to my heart. I subsequently saw this posted on LinkedIn and wished I had thought of this question to ask my colleagues.

DVT DAY 94

Well I finally drag my arse out of bed to cook egg sandwiches and coffee to wash my drugs down. Ritual over I checked e-mails and messages, before I get myself off to the shed. I spent ages trying to track down a reference to a piece of work that I have been using in presentations. It’s come to the time that I need the original paper and of course I find that the authors have moved on from the company that they worked for at the time. Finding myself at a dead end I wrote a quick poem and went back to the house to take part in an Open Forum for therapeutic community staff and people interested in them. What evolved in the discussion was people’s responses to the recent death of the black guy in America. It is an unfortunate but painful truth that therapeutic communities in the prison system are not immune from racism. Once we were through the forum I returned to the shed to continue work noting some of the new flowers that have come into bloom.

A letter from Scotland arrived to distract me, which was lovely. Before I knew it I was being asked if I want to feed the ducks in the local park, an opportunity not to be missed. So an unexpected outing with my partner and eldest daughter to hurl old bread at the, ducks, moorhens and coots that could be arsed to swim across the pond. It was fun and I admit I needed the change of environment as I have been feeling flat for a couple of days.

We retuned home to find the album from our civil partnership ceremony had been delivered. Dinner, the great British sewing bee and an inspired internet search of the internet for sewing paraphernalia. Now it’s time to sleep and prepare for my early morning meeting.

DVT DAY 93

A day of broken things, broken sleep, broken hard drive and broken Fitbit. So I spent a lot of time googleing “how to…” videos and all to no avail. So apart from a sketch for a new picture, a short walk to post letters and the joys of refilling my drugs organiser for the week today has been less than joyous. This may not sound good but it does means that I am getting fed up with myself, which means I shall do something different in order to reclaim the sense of meaning. I will see what tomorrow brings.

DVT DAY 92

Its late or at least my body tells me it is late and in need of sleep, so tonight I strain to remember what the day has consisted of. I have showered early to wash the lateness of the previous night from me expecting to go into a meeting at 10am but sun stroke of the host pushed that into the afternoon. Yes I said sunstroke, no, I don’t know either, but it happened in Eastbourne of all places. As a result I spent the morning in the shed writing letters in the comfort of my new office chair. Lunch was delicious bacon rolls and then it was onto a long ZOOM meeting. I will not bore you with the details but by the time it was over I barely had time to make a couple of calls before tea time. That is how my day flew by to this point of post TV and kitchen clearance exhaustion. Of course I have taken my drugs, intermittently WhatsApp’d and done odd chores but it is all a blur. I was going to write to write a brief article arguing that that the LGBT? community should be the LGBT?CC community, the CC being the chemically castrated on the basis that the CC’d have only love and affection to offer in a relationship and under the banner of “love is love” that should admit them to the community, however I realise that this is ill thought out as yet and needs more consideration. There are some obviously tricky bits to the argument such as where do CC’d sex offenders fit in? Told you it was tricky. I doubt I will ever complete the argument, it is probably more an indication of my fatigue than anything else. So good night.

DVT DAY 91

Another day in paradise, well almost except it’s raining, the German football is dire, and its and effort to do anything. Apart from eating good food and not feeling the urge to do anything today has been unremarkable, which for me is a bonus. I just take my drugs and get on with it. There was one highlight and that was when Amazon delivered my new shed chair. I go so fed up with my arse ending up with the slat marks of the folding chair that I had been using that I decided to get myself a decent office chair. As my partner is likely to be using the office for evermore in the “new normal” I thought I needed to make my shed work environment as comfortable as possible. So tomorrow I shall move it into the shed and settle down to work and complete one of my projects.

The other highlight was an e-letter from an old colleague and friend. It was a lovely letter as it detailed what the person is up to now and how COVID is affecting their household. I was very tempted to sit down at my laptop and to respond. I always think that if I lettered this way I would produce long and detailed letters like the ones I admire in some of the collection of letters that I have, but, and it is a big but, I am addicted to the process of sitting down and writing letters by hand. For me I seem to ramble into more interesting places on paper than I do on screen. I think there is something about the process of siting at a desk with paper and pen and making marks of ink that are never the same and are often not ordered in time. I lose time when I write by hand but not when I write on screen.

Tonight, I shall bath, watch the TV series based on Alfred the Great and get myself ready for tomorrows Enabling Environment team meeting, and of course write the blog.

DVT DAY 90

Today I hoovered, watched TV , watched German Football, cooked a curry and costed up a project to build my own tower PC. So this is life.

DVT DAY 89

Today I sat in the shed and wrote cards and letters while the rain and pigeons feet pattered on the roof. Most of the day was spent doing this with a brief interlude to unpack and install a rising stand at computer  desk in the office for my partner. Apart from a brief walk with my partner to post my mail the day was unremarkable until 11pm. It was at this time I notice I had lost my signet seal ring. There followed a search with all the usual irritating questions “like where did you have it last?” After an extensive search and a retracing of my days activities I found it. It had fallen off as I was putting my washing away in my clothes cupboard. So there it nestled at the foot of my shorts pile. Panic over and I am free to write the blog, short and curtailed by the dullness of my existence today. So I shall down my drugs and bid you all a good night. There must be more to life than this.

Oh yes there is there is my latest reading Mind and Cosmos; Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception Of Nature is Almost Certainly Wrong, by Thomas Nagel. I thought that I was in for a stimulating read but it has not materialised as yet, in fact the guys a bit of an arse given that he is a professor of philosophy at New York University which has a big reputation, he appears to think that the intelligent design  school have a point based on his difficulty to get over his own incredulousness at the thought of mutation and natural selection accounting for the world he thinks he lives in. In fairness I’ve not finished his arguments yet, but I am not hopeful.

DVT DAY 88

A restless night leads to an early breakfast and a settling in on the sofa for an early morning Teams meeting. Two hours we chat, plan, reflect and analyse preparing this weeks materials and planning how to conclude our twelve week programme. By the time we finish we have a plan and are prepared for out Monday meeting of the whole team. Bye the time we are through its time for me to take up the kitchen clearing and thinking about the open forum in the afternoon.

By the time the forum comes around I am aware that the probation service Teams platform is experiencing trouble so there may not be many attending. That is how it turned out, only two people turned up but it turned out to be a good hour. Usually I write the session up straight away but I wanted sometime to think. What I actually did was watch a lot of Tim Minchin YouTube videos, I had forgotten how much I like him. I’ve included a link to one of his YouTube videos below but they are not for the fainthearted.

I finally write up the session and eat an early tuna pasta tea provided by my partner. Its singing lesson night tonight so I clear the kitchen and prepare for a quite evening. I settle on the sofa to write the blog when a friend calls and we chat until the Sainsburys delivery, which was due as 9pm rocks up at 8 o’clock curtailing my phone call, just plain rude if you ask me. Lucky I had already moved my partners car off he drive.

So a quick fridge fill and I am back on the sofa, finish my call and then start on the blog. This evening is one I will fritter on the promise that I shall do things tomorrow. I shall read and indulge my childish like of NCIS and Gibbs rules, of which my favourite is “don’t waste good”.

DVT DAY 87

Todays the day the shielded teddy bear went down to the woods and posted his own letters. Todays the day he found he is getting fatter by the minute and very very unfit. Todays the day the sun did not shine but the garden got the drink it desperately needed.

Breakfast and butler duties before I check my e-mails intending to go to the shed and do something creative. However, I end up tiding up business and making calls to get things sorted. Once I had got through all the unexpected work I had time to sit and fill my drugs wallet for the week. It’s a regular ritual that I no longer think much about except having enough pills to fill the little daily boxes for the week. Today I stared at them and wonder about each one and whether they were necessary and concluded that I haven’t a clue anymore. I know far more about cell biology than I did and cancer in general and I have more than dabbled in kidneys but when I stare at the four pills a day I take I’ve not a clue really. None of them are related to cancer treatment, raised blood pressure (allegedly), a bladder relaxant (although I’m not sure any more why I am taking this) and two identical pills morning and evening to thin my blood to fought off DVTs. So, a heart that is pumping at the wrong pressure is now doing it with thinner blood, how does that  work? The problem is I do not think I care anymore. Alongside this my body is supposed to be reabsorbing the DVT but as the DVT clinic does not do second scans, I will never know if it has or not, or at least fully. So that leaves me with my monthly FIRMAGON which chemically castrates me and leaves me with the ambition of being the fittest castrate in the choir. That one is cancer relevant.

Any way after doing the pill popping I finally retreated to the shed to write a long letter. At lunch time a friend rang me and I had the pleasure of a long conversation before I attended my Wednesday Open Forum. An interesting one today which made the time fly by. I had planned soup for lunch but never got to it but instead decided to go and post my letters myself. Big moment this. I put on real clothes and don a mask and hat and set off looking like some weird cowboy looking for a bank to rob.

Posting the letters was easy, but the rest of the walk was not. I laboured and got very hot in my mask and jumper, both a mistake in hindsight. I trudged round the village for 42 minutes discovering that the village café had reopened to do take away food. By the time I got back home I was dripping with sweat and just wanted to take everything off, especially when I found the heating had been turned on! I lay on the sofa with a 0% beer and begin to type the blog. Bizarrely I am looking forward to the great British sewing bee tonight, I am fascinated by how people can create such amazing clothes from scratch in such a short space of time. It’s got to be better than crowd less German football, hasn’t it? Perhaps this is the chance to settle down with my new book.

DVT DAY 86

Today started with the usual breakfast and then a retreat to the shed. I am trying to cut down the amount of time I spend looking at a screen and so spent my morning finishing the paintings that I had started. I make no claims to any form of artistic talent, my art is just another way that I’m finding to use my time while I remain Shielded. I have to say I find the activity relaxing and when engaged in this I find that time passes quickly.

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A bacon sandwich lunch and I then return to the shed to write letters and to think about what future pictures I might create. I spend quite a long time creating my May invoices and getting them sent off. I also took delivery of my latest book. I am aware that I am becoming more prone to solipsism where I find it more difficult to see what is beyond my house and what comes through the TV to my living room is real. It is similar to astronauts who experience this if they spend time on the international space station, but then if you are looking down on earth then it is understandable. The question is whether isolation under lockdown for three months is a similar experience. My natural inclination is to think that solipsism is a desperate philosophy but I am reading what I can find on the subject to know what the arguments actually are. As a psychologist I am interested in people who exhibit this form of thinking and what the consequences are.

While doing all this I popped a loaf in the bread maker to bake before setting about preparing the evening meal, stopping late afternoon for a coffee and panettoni. By the evening there is a meal ready and time to finish writing my letters. An evening phone call with a friend is a welcome voice from the outside. It is then time to write the blog and watch “the A word”.