DVT DAY 63

Its Sunday, so a lazy coffee and a chat to start off with, all very relaxed. Actually, I had just been to the bathroom to conduct my once a week weigh in. Disastrous really, I weighed in at 101.1 kilos. This is not good and means I am not exercising enough and have slipped in to eating too much sugary foods. It means sweets, puddings, biscuits and honey need to go and go from now. While we are talking about this I get a call from a friend who is out and about already desperately seeking pants for her fast-growing daughter. My daughter sits on the end of or bed and chats about face masks, what’s cool, what is not and where to get the best ones. We go to Cyberdog website and are not disappointed as they specialise in rave gear, so if you want your mask to light up in UV light then this is the place to go.

We negotiate breakfast and settle on scrambled eggs and salmon. So a gentle start to the day before we go our separate ways to prepare for the days activities. I climb into my BAM shorts, pull on a top and track suit top and head for my garden to garden walking circuit. Today I incorporate  the patio into the route so I have to climb the couple of steps and down the other side twice on each circuit. Its cold today so I put on a hat and set off with Rammstein cranked up on the i-pod to training pitch. When I trained at the gym I used Rammstein as my training music to provide motivation but more importantly to shut of the constant chatter of fellow gym users out. There is a breed of person who seem incapable of doing anything without running off at the mouth about the most trivial of trivia and doing so incessantly as if everyone else has an innate interest in their life, attitudes and opinions and my god are not short of those. Any way Rammstein provide me with company and motivation to keep going. I have never seen them, although my son has. I read with regret that they have just cancelled their summer European tour, so I shall have to wait even longer. The walk goes well I do just over an hour. I rest on the garden swing seat and my partner brings me a post walk pint of orange squash.

After a rest and another negotiation I head to the bathroom and run myself a hot relieving bath. I lay and enjoy the heat and try to relax. I pick up my book that a friend sent me. It is a collection of short essays on a wide range of topics. The author is an ex prison doctor and psychiatrist who writes about whatever seems to catch his eye in the papers or from conversations with guests at his French house. I found myself intrigued to start with and the views expressed interesting in a strange way, I wasn’t sure why and how. As I read more I began to recognise some of the issues and where the opinions where coming from. What started to make me twitchy was the fact that I began to spot things that were not as my understanding have them. Having spent many years in prison working with offenders and staff I began to find that my experience did not lead me to the same conclusions as the writer. I think the moment when I began to doubt this person’s perceptions, understandings and conclusions is when he appeared to have misunderstood Virginia Wolf’s Three Guineas book. After this I began to read with a more critical eye and found that things that appeared to be asserted were not necessarily accurate. Having said this, I continue to read his essays but with a renewed interest. I will no doubt finish the book, but the most important thing is that this gift has got me reading again, for which I am very grateful.

I climb from the bath a little less stiff and more relaxed than I started. I could hear the sounds of house cleaning and hoovering getting closer and sure enough my partner appears to clean the bathroom. I go down stairs and grab and apple and some cheese as I realise that I have not eaten for 6 or 7 hours. A brief break to see Charlie Dimmock work her magic on a back yard and I go to the kitchen to cook tonight’s meal. A chicken curry with ginger and red chilli. I merrily chop ingredients to the voice of Pavarotti  and prepare the dish until I reach the “leave it alone to simmer” stage, from that moment I have and hour to start to write the blog. It is all carefully timed so that the family can eat before Boris pops up on TV to tell us all about what our future holds. Not a lot is the answer. The R values seems to be the key, but my daughter observed that it should be called the “R we there yet”. I listened very carefully but heard no mention of the “Shielded” so I assume my initial house arrest date remains the 14^th of June. I reconcile myself to yet more weeks of my circumstances.

The TV continues to tear the arse out of the whole broadcast and state the obvious and stir the differences between England and the rest of the union. I abandon it in favour of Van De Valk .

Good night.

DVT DAY 62

I woke up this morning feeling very iris and grandfather, which will become clearer later in the blog. Some days I just get the sense of something brewing, often it’s a poem other times its something else. But first things first there is the delight of a bacon sandwich to look forward to. My plan for the day is to reclaim the world, or more specifically to make the world come to me. If I cannot go out to walk for an hour then the walk comes to me and I use what I’ve got, to wit, a front and a back garden and a side way between them. So I have a circuit and the decision to take back my walking hour in the world. And to do that I need feet that can walk, all this shielding in slippers has seen toe nails grow beyond the comfortable length for walking in trainers. So first order of the day, after bacon sandwich, is to sort my toe nails. Your be relieved to know there is no gory video or pictures, so I move onto the walk. I don gym clothes, clip on my i-player, ramp up Rammstein and slap on the sun hat with visor. I am ready to walk. Walk I do for 1 hour and 7 minutes around my home route. All went well and I end up sitting happily on the garden swing seat happy with myself.

Lunch comes around, sandwich and apple and time to do the crosswords. I put my fleece into wash and get my camera to take photos of the pond, but I find that because the pond is netted the camera will not focus on my frog friend who is sitting in the middle of the pond. Sometimes things are just not meant to be. I decide its time to re-pot the four big tomato plants that have outgrown their pots. Always an enjoyable task to provide a small plant with the growing room to blossom into a full-grown specimen. It’s even more rewarding when the plants were looking droopy and lacking vigour who then perk up no end in their new pot with plenty of water retaining compost. These four plants responded splendidly and have settled down nicely.

I retreat to the shed to read and take my notebook with me intending to start the blog before tea time. What actually happens is I write a “poem” about irises and my grandfather.

I wake up all irises and grandfather.

Suddenly that blacksmith turned gardener

Is alive and well in my garden.

An army man, a mule man,

Returned from Empire

To find nothing to do

Only to remember.

His arms and chest ablaze,

Tattoos of a young soldier,

Bright, brazen, patriotic and oriental,

Artwork that cost him his bed

As his wife withdrew in shock

Only to forgive two weeks later.

Eight years of India and a sock full of rupees

That bought no work or bread.

Warrior no more it is the streets,

To search for work amongst

So many returning heroes disposed of.

Wandering and meandering along the river

From Chiswick to Kew Fred walked

To find an old veterans scheme.

For sixpence a day he could dig

And later plant and tend.

Kew Gardens was his work,

For life he would be natures manicurist

Whilst at home gas light turned electric,

Range became gas oven,

And the radio played music

While he still played dominoes.

One job lives on.

As great houses closed the garden collected

That which was rare or prized.

That day it was Irises, purple and sky blue

With scent sweet and strong.

My mother said he asked,

But a man who traded booze at the Khyber Pass

Under the cover of dark with locals

And then fought them in the light

Was not a man to ask,

I think he rescued them.

He brought those rare rhizomes home

To flower in his tiny garden.

When another war was waging

His daughter, with one of her own

Tucked under her arm found a flat

To which she clung for her returning man.

In that flat she raised the Irises of home

And to this day they bloom there.

Some good years, some bad

But they persist.

In my turn I set up home

And in turn my mother brings the irises.

In my turn I have lean years,

Sometimes years of abundance.

Recently the iris years have been poor

Despite my and Brian’s efforts.

Then this year in which I shield

From a world of threat

The irises set forth a profusion of flower stems.

Both beds are spiking skyward as never before.

I know not why but it is their time.

This summer I will smell again

Those childhood scents,

My own early family perfumes

And know patience and persistent care

Brings forth the beauty hidden there.

My world is, today,

All irises and grandfather,

Whose watch chain I still wear

As he did playing dominoes,

Smoking his pipe and answering

To the name of Snowy.                     

There you go, I just never know when they are going to make themselves manifest, usually they just remain as senses or feelings.

By the time I am finished its time to dash around getting the washing in as its started to rain. Panic over, washing in, its time to get indoors and get ready for tea and the rest of the evening. So chicken and desert later I settle down in front of Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency and write todays blog.

DVT DAY 61

Up early, empty Daisy the dishwasher, wash up the stagnant one pot that had been missed over the last few days. Then its muesli and coffee, before I open up the greenhouse. Today’s task is to pot up more of the seedlings, especially the odd vegetable collection. I spend hours potting up seedlings until I run out of shelve space for the pots. I was going to plant some of the seedlings out in the garden and was tempted especially as it is such a sunny day, but given the forecast says it’s going to get very cold over the weekend I shall resist the urge. So I hang up my dibber and sat and read my new gift book.

Lunch and more time on the patio reading and then a surprise, my partner presents me with an amazon parcel. Inside a find a seed box. It’s just what I wanted as I am about to embark on my second wave of planting. I of course immediately set it to use.

A little more gentle gardening and I can no longer put it off. The “it” being some exercise. Its been too long and I need to get myself moving again before I totally seize up. So I retreat to the back bedroom taking my notebook with me and change in to something gymish. I then become a silver swan for a while as I do my adult beginners’ ballet class. I am pleased that I manage to do both sides of the body by winding back the tape so that I can lead with the other leg. I take a photograph as a record of where I am and where I am is “fat”.

So, its into the garage for me and a first shielded weights session. Its been far too long myself and I am tentative. Again I video myself to see how much I have gone downhill. It feels hard work and I look appalling but I need to record where I start out from to give me an incentive to keep at it in the future. The video below is part of what I did. Not pretty but a reality check.

So having got myself sweaty I head for the bath with book and phone in hand. There I laze in dark blue water and read more of my book until delightfully wrinkly and prune like. I get out and get dry and indulge in my expensive smellies. Nice to smell good occasionally. So straight to dinner and then to write the blog while the family catch up with Killing Eve.

I feel like  am starting a new way to do Shielding and looking after myself in a more positive fashion.

DVT DAY 60

Up for a nine o’clock meeting, so a quick muesli breakfast and then its all down to setting up the computer system in the office. Today I get the office because my partner is having a day off. So off we go and I get into the Team meeting and almost instantly my computer says “No”, makes a howling sound and goes dark. I illuminate the air with a number of expletives as I dash to get my back up system and re-enter the meeting, no longer feeling cool in my skeleton T shirt and not that motivate. I join the general conversation and take the odd note until my partner pops a piece of paper under my nose with the magic words “bacon sandwich” written on it. At first I think this is some sort of surrealist art instillation, then I realise there is a question mark at the end of it. I give an enthusiastic thumbs up and continue with the meeting. I cannot tell you how frustrating it is to have a bacon sandwich sitting in front of you, off camera and trying to judge the appropriate moment to make it obvious to the other team members that you are eating a bacon sandwich in the middle of the meeting. I nibble and contribute as best I can, being mildly distracted by bacon aroma and salty taste. Eventually the meeting ends and three of us stay on to chat about future work. This turned out to be surprisingly productive.

Meeting over I retreat for a while and gather up the post. A lovely surprise of a letter and a invoice trying not charge me import duty on the bloody weights bench I did not want and have not paid for. I take to the e-bay e Mil system and send a clear and un equivocal, fuck off message, only in much nicer language than that, I think I added please to it. However, I made it quite clear that they are still the owners of the bench and if they want it back then they could collect it at their own expense. So, unless they have an agent in England then they have a bit of a trek from Hong Kong to get it. Having asserted my rights, I go to see the frogs in the pond and top it up.

Before I know it its time to get ready for my open forum group. Four an hour I have the joy of chatting to some real heroes dealing with some of the most difficult and risky people. At the end I feel quite tired, not from the people but from the strain of making Teams work, it’s a shit format for interpersonal work.

I have coffee and a choc ice. I find I am on my own in the house as my partner and daughter have gone for a long walk for their daily exercise. I sit on the garden swing seat for a while and read my letter. It is a delight and chuckle to myself. Feeling uplifted I got to he shed and start to write up my session notes, which takes quite a while as I try to organise my thoughts. I also finish off some of my Empowerment cards. I feel tired again and settle down to read “Farewell to Fear”. Before I know it my partner is telling me dinner is ready.

So, I settle down to a tasty meal and then we play hunt the Fitbit watch as my partner could not find hers after having had a post walk shower. Before we can find it a friend rings me and my partner goes for her singing lesson over skype. My friend is out for her walk and we chat about how things are and she tells me that she has found yeast and is sending me some tomorrow. Now there is a friend, what a star. By the time we finish our call I‘ve hunted down the missing Fitbit, which had hidden under the bed. By this time my partner is warbling so I have a punt on getting a Sainsburys slot and to my surprise find I can get one for next Thursday so fill a virtual trolley and head for the check out. Mission accomplished, I have a wave of smugness. So I settle down on the sofa to write the blog, watch “Have I Got News for You”, drink non-alcoholic beer and much crisps. Oh the riskiness of it all.

DVT DAY 59

Its been a strange day of “bits”, some a delight and some irritating diversions. Having got up and found my partner had already taken her morning constitutional I prepared my breakfast. In the back ground my partner was busily chatting away to work colleagues. I ate breakfast watching the TV pump out more COVID-19 news, by the end of my muesli I was beginning to experience a head ache and a bit of a dip pin mood. My conclusion is that COVID 19 TV cover is a virus in its own right. So  turning off the source of infection I feed the fish and fill my drugs wallet for the week. Then I am off to the shed to do something calming. I open the green house and settle into a morning of writing letters. I intermittently adjust the pond solar fountain to get the best effect. To my amazement the dead pond fountain in the bucket springs into life, I am coming to the conclusion that solar power is not the most reliable form of renewable energy.

The post man calls at about the same time as the meal deliveryman drops off our two posh meals for the week. In a blink of an eye Amazon man also delivers a couple of packets with my name on. Two packets when I am expecting one. The first one contains the external DVD disc drive I was expecting but the second is a mystery. I open it not sure what to expect and find it is a book and a gift from a friend with whom I correspond. The cover is striking and immediately makes me want to read it. But it will have to wait as I have some e-mails to deal with and a meeting to prepare for.

Lunchtime is close when a delivery arrives and turns out to be the refurbished HP Elite note book that we ordered for my eldest daughter. We are excited and open the package immediately. We write down the software activation code, plug the power cable in and switch on. Nothing, just a brightish screen showing the power is on but bugger all else. We try again, nothing again. Nothing for it but to ring the help line number that has come with the instructions.  Due to COVI-19 they only people the phones at certain hours and the earliest we can talk to them is 2pm. Now it is time for me to join the open forum on Zoom that I am part of.

I sit in on my the forum and then chat to the host afterwards and promise to write a brief suggestion paper. I return to the refusenik laptop and ring the support number, it rings, it goes dead, I ring again, it goes dead again and so it goes on for several minutes until I’ve had enough. I know that these laptops are easy to get into as they only have a single latch on the back. No pesky screws to deal with. The back pops open and it is obvious what the problem may be. One of the RAM cards is not in the RAM slot properly. I pop the card out and replace it properly and put the cover back onto the laptop. Power on and the machine springs to life! Go me I am a hero. The rest was just doing the set process and bingo the laptop is tip top.

Back to the shed to write a thank you card to my surprise present friend and to start to draft my promised brief proposal. I get this all done and return to the laptop to load Windows Office using the external disc drive that arrived today. All went well, mission accomplished. Time to slow down, I read the first essay in the surprise book and I am hooked. Soon tea is ready. So, tonight I am treating myself to read more essays, write and post the blog. What I notice is the lack of exercise and the effect that it is having on me so apart from the open forum I host tomorrow and my early morning meeting I am going to focus on doing some exercise. As the bank holiday Friday approaches, I ‘m going to have an exercise weekend and win the weekend Fibit challenge.

DVT DAY 58

Well today has been a mixed bag of joy and frustration. After breakfast I did some serious and focussed tinkering with the laptop and to my surprise I actual managed to fix it, or so I thought. But as normal I retreated to the shed. There I wrote letters and intermittently returned to the house to check on the recovering laptop which was very slow at digesting its medicine. By the time lunchtime came around my letters were complete and the laptop appeared well, so confident was I that I packed up my IT computer repair case and put it away. My clinical supervisor and friend rings me to thank me for a card and we chat about a mutual colleague who has recently died and the current state of the COVID-19 world we live in. I also find a letter from a friend waiting for me and settle down to read it with a coffee. It is a long and thoughtful letter, which I know I will read again soon before replying.

A quick lunch taken with the family during which we order really bright cycle masks, and then I set to, to unwrap my Amazon packages. New blog covers for the hard copy, sticky hooks for the shower, which got put up. Then it was time to unpack the new electrical connectors and mend the fan heater, which obdurately refused to work even after I had rewired it. It turns out that the thermostat is knackered and there is no way to get a new one. Undaunted by my failure I take to the garden and clip the hedges along the drive way so that we can park the cares without fighting our way through three feet of hedging. Undaunted by the ache in my arms I set myself up in the green house and planted rose seeds. They were a gift in 2009 that I came across when clearing a cupboard out in the office. I’m intrigued to see if they grow.

Time to rest and check out the laptop. Bastard thing gives me the old BOOTMGR image is corrupt message. I start again to repair the boot manager. I write code into the tool, chkdsk c: /f. It appears to work, so here I am writing the blog post dinner and wondering where the time has gone today.

I will publish this and then run off the hard copies before getting an early night and spending some time reading. I have found that I have at least four unread books on my kindle, one of which is by Sandi Toksvig’s Between the Stops. So that is where I will start. Tomorrow I might get some more exercise.

DVT DAY 57 (13 days no injections)

Today was in danger of going well. I had risen from a relatively good nights sleep and negotiated breakfast without any mishap. I made it to the shed and set myself up to work, all was going well. I typed up a blog for work and started to make te materials that go with it, at this point I am ahead of the game. I write a couple of cards to people that had sent me letters. I use my last stamp and had to scrat around to find a Christmas second class stamp for one  of the cards. I am still feeling like I am ahead, so its time for lunch.

The household agree it’s going to be soup for lunch so I set to and prepare it, I even wam bread rolls in the oven. Delicious. Some where in here my partner picks up my little HP Elite Notebook and does not notice that the external backup hard drive is attached to it and drops it. I’m on my way to the shed to continue my day, check to see if he new solar pond pump is working as the sun has come out. It does, I’m chuffed. Over lunch we had identified somethings that we are short of that need to go on the Sainsburys delivery list for Thursday  so I go to my little Elite Notebook to log on and change the order while I remember. My little HP Elite is not feeling elite anymore and gives me the message that “Boot Manager corrupt. Cannot boot “.  The day turns to instant rat shit! Not even a card from a friend can cut through this. I get into the system and set it to diagnose the problem and check the hardware and the memory before doing anything else. That’s going to take 2 hours and 45 minutes the machine tells me. I go to the kitchen and cook. I chop vegetables with venom, and hack chicken flesh with glee. I wasn’t going to cook it straight away just prepare stuff but in the end I just got on with it and put it in the oven to quietly simmer away, a bit like me. Kitchen cleared  I return to the HP elite sorry for itself laptop. I try several things but it will not play, so I end up getting it to boot to a Windows 10 USB stick and select “repair my computer”. It whirrs, it loads files and goes blank…it comes back with options… I choose…it goes blank…it returns and says it cannot repair my computer. Not impressed, I continue my battle. This going to take all night I can tell it in my IT bones.

There will be dinner first , then more IT bollox and then if I am lucky I will get to go out with a friend for a drink, all via the phone or zoom or something. Which in fact happened. I end up my day having a very long conversation with a friend on the phone. The first proper conversation with someone outside the family that I have had since I started my lock down weeks ago. I guess I was garrulous because its been so long, but it was a real pleasure.

DVT DAY 56 (12 Injection free)

Its been a long dull day. Late breakfast, chat with youngest daughter, life admin and running off the back log of the hard copy of the blog. Long chat with my sister and then dinner followed by TV and a Wentworth Jigsaw. Tomorrow back to the shed.

DVT DAY 55 (No Injections)

Today I get up and make coffee and tea to take back to bed. This of course is my opening gambit to get a bacon sandwich for breakfast. After a chat, the sandwich is agreed and I go and clear the kitchen ready. Bacon sandwich and coffee is taken watching one of the many Saturday morning cookery programmes. I’m intrigued by cornbread but cannot find the recipe on the BBC website. Eventually after a version of Gumbo I get going on the day.

I open the greenhouse up and give the newly emerging peas sticks to climb up and assess the water needs of the rest of the seedlings. I check out the pond and find that the water pump is not working and cannot fix it. There is another on the way, which hopefully will solve the problem. I play car jigsaw and eventually get the Wolf backed in to the garage so that I have a space to use. I sweep and hoover the garage space and then move the new weights bench from the shed to the garage. This is followed by several trips to bring the bar and weights int o the same space and to set them up. A couple of bench presses just to make sure the set-up is solid and I leave the garage to return tomorrow for a work out.

Time for lunch and a tidy up.  Egg noodles and parmesan. I empty the bins, dispose of the cardboard mountain and then pack up the two halves of the Le cruiser pie dish that fell in half the first time it was used and arrange for those nice people at Amazon to pick up the pieces and give me a refund. So, all is organised as I field a couple of e-mails form a colleague and talk about how I generated the materials. Amazon deliver my new pond solar fountain and like an impatient school boy I go out and fit it into the pond. There is not enough sun to make it work properly but it tries. The old one goes into  a bucket and will be played with tomorrow. A breathing space at last so I sort out my gym kit and prepare to exercise. In the spare bedroom I set up my smaller laptop and set my beginners ballet class going. So, there I am stretching and bending, watching my arm and learning how to take silver swan beginners steps in ballet.

I go to the sofa and recover and fairly soon I am eating tea and preparing for the evening of films and writing the blog. So, all in all a good day and at last I am moving a bit. Tomorrow I check the new pond pump and take things from there. Must keep moving now I have made a start.  

DVT DAY 54 (No Injections)

It was a good night. Two blocks of four hours sleep. I actually feel refreshed. So a quick breakfast and I retreat to the shed and open up the greenhouse. I settle down to write letters. I’ve not put pen to paper for a while and it feels good to be writing to friends again. Apart from a quick coffee break I write all morning. At one point it throws it down with rain and hails, the noise on the shed roof is loud and strangely comforting. At lunchtime there is scrambled eggs and a surprise in the post. An old colleague and friend writes to me out of the blue. She had heard from a mutual friend that I have been ill and writes to say hello. Letters are fabulous things; such surprises are all the sweeter when they drop through the door and reveal themselves slowly on reading.

A few chores like refiling the soap dispensers and its back to the shed to write yet more letters. I finish the writing and prepare them to be posted by my Hogwarts Owl. So I pack up the shed, close the greenhouse and return to the house. I check e-mails and find there are some things that I need to download and do some work on. Unfortunately, the system I am trying to download from will not let me do it because of a security protocol. It’s a pain in the arse and all I can do is rail at the IT crew. Clearly time to fit the multiple USB port to the computer and tidy up the range of stuff we have laying around he desk in the office. I’ve checked that all the laptops and systems in the house have backed up. Success, we are good for a week.

We communally cook tea and eat it as the COVID update pushes out its latest messages. I settle down to watch a film and write the blog. I am missing the gym and the pool, it seems so much more difficult to exercise at home rather than go to the gym. I guess I will crack it soon enough.