Saturday is a poetry, cooking and eating day. I am up early, breakfasted and then I am busy cooking. I beaver away putting the nights meal into the crockpot, its a chicken Tagine filled with goodies like apricots and olives. I am ready to flick the switch dead on 11 o’clock. Morning cooking over I head for the shower and then get my partner to plait my hair. I drive to the Quaker meeting house where the poetry stanza meets every for months. I am very early and settle in to prepare when a new person arrives and we chat till others arrive. Once the Stanza is assembled we get to work for the next two and half hours we read, read out loud and reflect upon each others work. I think mine was well received and there were some real gems amid the work presented. After the Stanza ends I head for the supermarket and get the remaining ingredients for the evening meal. On arriving home I find the table laid and ready for our guests.

I set to work getting the courses I prepared yesterday ready for serving. I am efficient and effective so with 30 minutes to go before our guests arrive I have a time out on the sofa. Our friends arrive and I swing in to action. We sit and dine on pea and pesto soup, chicken tagine, Bailey’s tiramisu (acclaimed by all as excellent), followed by cheese, coffee and chocolates. Best of all is the conversation between old friends that ranges over all sorts of topics. By midnight we are all flagging and we wave our guests good night. The dishes get stacked but not washed. I down some lemon squash adn go to bed with out taking my meds.

Sunday and I am awake and fresh at 7 o’clock. If this is the way to get a good nights sleep then I shall leave off taking my night meds more often. I head to the kitchen and clear it setting the dishwasher on its way. I return to my partner with tea and we sit and chat for a while. Bacon sandwiches follow and then a trip to see our local ducks. A refreshing walk before an afternoon of watching rugby, emptying the dishwasher and then a drift into the evening with its meal, TV beavers and drugged up Dickens. I can stand no more and take to drafting the blog. I expect I will return to my sensible self and take my night meds tonight. I shall weigh myself tomorrow morning as I did not today suspecting that my indulgence over the last 24 hours has done me no favours.

Friday and an early morning coffee in bed while I check my emails and messages. Once that I feel I am up to speed with my socials I get dressed adn go down stairs for breakfast. Today I am a man with a mission, there are dishes to be prepared for our guests tomorrow so that I can go to the poetry stanza meeting tomorrow afternoon. I have already got the ingredients in it should just be a matter of making the dishes. Of course everyone else in the house choose that moment to make toast and protein drinks so I retreat to the TV until I’ve got free reign in the kitchen.

Nigella is providing the courses that I am preparing this morning. A splendid Baileys infused Tiramisu and a warming pea and pesto soup. So for the vast majority of the morning I juggle ingredients adn perform cooking skills I did not know I have. There are moments of panic when the instructions say “fold in to a mousse like consistence” and what sits in the bowl refuses to “fold in” and forces the executive decision to use a whisk. Just how long do you soak Savoiardi in the coffee and Baileys mixture? Clearly when it disintegrates into an unmanageable pulp the dunking has gone on too long. One other thing I learnt was that my square dish is slightly narrower at the bottom than the top, which led me to discover that you can cut the ends off Savoiardi with a pair of scissors. I admit I am a very organised by bloody grumpy cook. I am one of those people that lays all the ingredients out and then gets to work. My problem is opening the kitchen cupboards and finding chaos which means hunting around stuff to find what I actually need. However I do eventually get to where I need to be, or rather the food does. Once I have one dish chilling in the fridge waiting only for its final dusting before serving I clear the decks and then prepare for the next one.

The next dish is simple in itself but the amounts need to be scaled up to feed all of the diners. So there is some sums to do and some careful weighing out to be done before I can get things going. Once underway it does not take long to prepare, I just have to juggle the final blending. Mission successful, after a suitable cooling period everything goes into the fridge to chill. Again I clear the decks and then indulge in a lunchtime dish of chicken soup.

It is raining, it has rained all morning, I hate it when it does this as I cannot get out into the garden. I do some on line shopping and then chat to a friend who has just come out of hospital after falling off her horse. We chat for a while about how we are and plans for the future. She faces a period of enforced rest and no driving while her back heals encased in a brace. I find I am cold and decide to train. I always find it more difficult to motivate myself when I am cold so getting myself upstairs to change in to my kit is a real effort but I do it. I decide that today I will row for just 30 minutes but will increase the resistance. I strap in and set off and immediately feel the the difference in the pull required. It turns out to be a good session as I manage more than 6 kilometres and more than 400 calories.

I record the session in my training and food journal and then change into some evening closes and return to the sofa. I eat tea and start to draft the blog while the TV provides wallpaper. I shall watch a rugby match and then the new series of Have I Got News for You. Night meds and bed.

Thursday, and I wake up after what feels like a decent nights sleep. My fitness App does not agree but it says it was better than yesterday, that will do me. There is silence in the house. There is no no work chatter noise coming from the office downstairs which means my partner has gone to real drive a car to work work again. I languish in bed and check my messages and emails adn exchange a few early morning pleasantries with some people. I move onto booking a Tesco slot for Monday and filling my shopping basket. So the basics are sorted by the time I get up and wander downstairs for breakfast. I try to ring the specialist prostate nurse to chase my next scan appointment up. There was no answer, I assume that this is a biproduct of the junior doctors being on strike. I will try later or leave it till the strike is over. I sense a FUBAR coming on.

I clear the kitchen, empty Daisy the dishwasher and tidy up a bit before trying the specialist prostate nurse again more in hope than expectation. Of course there is no answer. I have options and consider training before anything else but I realise that I have acquired a strange habit, namely that I do not train until the postman has been. Whether I am living in some sort of perpetual expectation of something important or I am using it as a form of procrastination I am not sure. I know that when I am trying to plan my day and organise myself its the thought of having to change clothes again to train that is an obstacle, I just get a sense that it would be nice to go through a day in one set of clothes. Saying it out loud makes it sound odd but when I am trying to juggle a restricted number of energy spoons over a day it makes more sense. I try to be as ergonomically efficient as I can over the course of the day, experience tells me that energy expenditure tends to be like buses, turning up in bunches rather than well ordered singles at regular intervals. As it turns out I sit and start to draft the blog as I was finding that if I leave it to last thing at night I am tired and produce dour and lifeless content.

I walk down to the village shop with my eldest daughter and then onto the village café where we eat lunch and chat at length about research and PhD issues. We indulge in additional coffee cake before walking home. My Amazon goodies have arrived so I am in possession of all I need to make tiramisu. I change into my training kit and head for the garage. I can feel myself running out of spoons so I settle for a 45 minute session. Despite me feeling tired I I manage 600+ calories and the expected 9 kilometres.

The garden guy arrives as I am recovering in the lounge, fortunately my partner has returned from work and can give him coffee and money. He mows the grass, the first cut this year. It always makes a big difference to the look of the garden so tomorrow I shall give myself some Shed time, before I set about my cooking plan. I eat my evening meal and settle down to watch two football matches one after the other. Its a European night, which is no excuse, but the evening is mindless until I return to the blog. I finish for the day, take my meds and go to bed hoping for another reasonable nights sleep.

Wednesday and I wake up, check my fitness App to see what it says about last nights sleep as I made the effort to go to bed early. My sleep score is down to 68, apparently even though I got 9 hours 47 minutes sleep its not good. Apparently my deep sleep time was normal but my regularity is low and my awake time is 32 minutes with four interruptions in the night. My App appears to make no allowance for the fact that my prostate cancer means I get up every two to three hours to piss and that a good hot flush will wake me up in a sweat. So I digest the information and check my messages. There is a message about friend who it turns out has fallen off her horse and acquired a compression fracture of her spine. She is in hospital waiting tests and will probably be in a brace for a while. I of course send a message to my friend gently joshing her. I’ve always had reservations about one species riding on the back of another species.

I get up and go and have breakfast, open the post and take in the day. Its overcast and looks like rain, so I have another coffee and Amoretti while pondering what I am going to do. I clear the kitchen, pack my gym kit and dress. I return to the kitchen and prepare the nights meal popping everything in to the crockpot. I am waiting for my partner to go to visit her mother on her regular Wednesday visit after which I intend to go to the gym but in the meantime I start todays blog. My life is not exciting but neither is it without stimulation, its the “noise” that I find increasingly irksome, perhaps if I was busier I would not notice but I retired not to be busy. It raise questions of purpose and meaning, neither of which particularly interest me anymore. It is as it is, like love or the pouring rain that is now falling.

I go to gym via the petrol station and then via the big Sainsburys to buy the rest of the ingredients for Saturdays meal. It took me hours as I could not find the Savoiardi. They were in neither the biscuit nor the cake isle but tucked away with coffee and tea accompaniments. Finding expresso coffee that I understood took a while to, but I got there eventually having mastered the roasting scale. I proceeded to the gym where I got myself a cross trainer and set off on a 50 minute session. I had no music and once again fell back on my fantasy world. Boringly won the world cup twice in a row again. It was a reasonable session but it took me time to recover before I went back to the changing rooms. Any way I burnt 500+ calories so that will do.

I showered and washed my hair which made me feel much better, strangely. In the lounge I ordered a large black coffee and on a vaguely Easter whim indulged in a mini egg cookie. I thought it fitted in with my muesli and Amoretti diet. Any way I sipped my coffee appreciatively and nibbled away at my treat, before driving home.

Once home I unpacked my shopping, dumped damp kit in the laundry basket and checked the crockpot to make sure the meal was coming along nicely. I have an urge to spend tomorrow cooking. I settle down to draft more of the blog before tea. My evening will be food followed by football, meds and bed. I am beginning to dread the nights, I do not wake up refreshed and it takes me a while to get going. My nights are interrupted and the pleasure I used to get from sleep is no longer there. I think it is a combination of mental stuff (technical term) and my meds. My periods of deep and rewarding sleep seem to come late in the night, in fact the early morning. I am hoping that as Spring turns in to a globally warmed sweltering summer that things may improve. I like the sun and the heat, I can see why the ancient Egyptians made such a big deal out of the sun. Before I go I want to recommend a film. 3000 Years of Longing with Tilda Swinton and Edris Elba. Its a brilliant film if only to watch the performances. Its on Amazon Prime. A woman meets a Djinn and has three wishes, what would yours be, be careful Djinns and wishes can be tricky.

Tuesday, the first day back at work, not for me but the rest of the household, so I wake up to the murmur of office business going on. I get up and have my muesli breakfast before hanging up my washing and then drafting a note of the solicitor for my daughters to agree. I send a message to the funeral directors to thank them for their excellent work and to request electronic copies of the service broadcast. I move the car off the drive so that Tesco can deliver. This all being done I settle down to read The End of The Day. It is perhaps the best book I have read that demonstrates and explores the constant “noise” of life whilst exploring the relationship between a constantly changing world and death. I read solidly until Tesco delivers. Then its a speed unload and put away before returning to the Harbinger of Death and his journey. I read solidly till I finish the book at 6:30. I am left just not wanting to contribute to the “noise”. I send the now agreed email to the solicitor and eat tea.

It’s throwing it down with rain and has done all afternoon. I wait patiently for it to ease so I can get the bins out and the car in so I settle down to watch the English women play Australia at football this evening. I’ve not trained today, I chose to read instead.

Monday, Easter Monday and I wake up again having had a poor nights sleep. My fitness App confirms my senses about the nights sleep, not enough, irregular and interrupted. I go to the bathroom and get back to read more of The End of the Day and accompany Charlie, The Harbinger of Death to Iraq and a miserable war torn episode of pain and horror with mouse traps and a broken poets pen thrown in for good measure. I am relieved to get up and eat a bacon sandwich still in my leopard over blanket and Bedroom Athletics furry slippers. My partner goes to the gym, I cannot be arsed frankly, I’ll row later. I watch the the lone squirrel feed busily from the feeder before I take down several cookery books and retreat to the sofa to plan next Saturdays meal. We have guests for dinner so I need to plan a meal I can prepare and have time to attend the poetry Stanza meeting in town. On TV an Andre Rieu concert plays. I am interested in how this music makes me feel the same way as the music I listened to last night on the Freddie Mercury film. Its the opera components I think. Monserrat Caballe and the trio of tenors just make sounds that are beyond belief. Music in general I think is something incredible. It is my greatest regret never to have had the patience, strength or moral fibre to learn, to practice and to play. I know people who have learned and then never played again, the accomplishment having such a painful association that they could not face going on with it. It is beyond me, both the acquisition and the abandonment. It is the effect it has on others that is so atavistic, so fundamental. It leads me to question what I have ever done to make others feel happy or to experience something beyond themselves. I think music is a form of giving, and there are those who are naturally good at giving and those that are not, a continuum. It does not feel that I am on the Giving end of the continuum.

I choose my menu, mark the pages and list the ingredients I need to get. Friday will be my main cooking day. The Andre Rieu concert goes on until my Amazon deliveries arrive so I am able to indulge in fresh coffee and newly arrived Amoretti. I clear the recycling, empty the kitchen bin and assemble my new pond pump with the intention of fitting it immediately but it is throwing it down with rain. I divert myself by starting to draft the blog. More coffee and more Amoretti till the rain eases and I am able to get into the garden.

The sun comes out, briefly, and I am out there in the garden like a rat up a drain pipe. I un-net the pond and install the new more powerful pond pump and outlet head. Although it it is now over caste the new solar panel works a treat and I have a strong flow. I should fit one on my bladder to give my cancerous prostate something to think about. I’m sure I could make a solar array into a piece of jewellery to provide the power. One way to increase my flow. Anyway I decide that I want a wide flow not some fancy fountain effect and the pump and outlet duly oblige so there is a steady flow of water in the pond now that keeps the surface moving at a steady rate. I am pleased, this the hoped for improvement. I remove the old pump and outlet and re-net the pond. A good job well done, now all I hope for is the conditions to attract more wild life. Time to train.

It starts to rain hard as I go to the garage to train. It is striping the blossom from the cherry trees determined that the beauty will not linger. So I am in the garage and strapped in, only an hour will do as I’ve sat on my arse most of the day. The controls are set all I need know is to decide what I am going to feed my internal environment. I’m fed up with pop, rock and Radio 2 so I go looking for something a bit more in tune with how I feel. BBC sounds has a classical section and there I find a broadcast from the metropolitan opera house of Tosca. That wil do me thinks I and so I row for an hour to glorious opera. The session in terms of rowing is average, probably due to the fact that there parts of the opera that I slowed down to listen to properly. I still managed to burn 800 calories and do my basic requirement of 12 kilometres. So I’m pleased, I’ve fed my body and my mind.

By the time I emerge from the garage I am feeling more chipper than when I went in. I crawl out of my kit and discover that Radio 2 is doing a Queen best of show, so I plug in the ear phones again and listen to the show as I put my washing in and set the machine going. I return to drafting the blog with a fresh coffee and yet another amoretti. I’m not sure that a diet of bacon sandwiches and amoretti is a recommended healthy diet but I’m willing to give it a try. The evening approaches and its a TV desert so I intend to read for the evening. I feel I want to finish with the Harbinger of Death and move on to another author, although I am aware that Claire North has written other novels. I’ve also had a quick look my poem bank as I’m trying to decide whether to take a poem to this Saturdays poetry Stanza. I’ve two in mind. I have put then below just for completeness of what I’m doing at the moment.

Running, dribbling man
A madness high pitched
Contained by soft hands
Another world lived out
Amidst the dour closet
Full of moths.

Running dribbling man
A husband, father, son
All come to this.
Mindlessness, being consumed
A brain no longer working
Confined, atrophied, starved
A beastly end.

Running dribbling man
Wide eyed and panicked,
No words to tell
No vocabulary left
Only an impulse to the unseen,
Not knowing why or how.

Running dribbling man 
There is no deep meaning
No strange wisdom
This is man at his end
Already dead and waiting 
For the body to follow suit.
Still and dry


This came from my time in a Hull Mental Health Hospital as a visiting psychologist. The next one is a combination of stand up and fatigue. 

Settle down you’ve seen a pensioner in a suit before.
Maybe not vertical,
more wood encased on a rainy afternoon
with a lot of people looking into a hole
and wishing it was all over.
Except that no matter how hard you try, 
you cannot help thinking,
“Did he leave me anything ? Am I in the will?”
I’m just getting my monies worth out of mine 
before an unsuspecting stranger grabs it 
as a bargain from Sod the Aged.

I hate old people,
Why cannot they all die tragically young?
Why do they hang on till everyone is guilt ridden?
Thinking it would be a relief when they go?
Yes yes a couple of you love nanna
but what a pain she is.
How many times has she buried 
her teeth in the garden?

Clearly I am in sober mood but part of it is my irritation of the “hello birds hello trees” type of poetry that seems to be prevalent and popular amongst the members of the poetry stanza. Nice people but..I can’t resist the temptation to play or be a bit delinquent. For now its the evening, night meds and bed. There is still another 38 days before my Radiotherapy Oncology appointment, I’m not even half way, I’m pissed off with marking time, I’m not good at waiting when I know my life is at stake. I know I live every day and will die only once but I would rather it was later rather than sooner.

Saturday, a long time ago now as I’m writing this on a Sunday afternoon having watched an English rugby team be destroyed by a French team. As far as I can remember my morning on Saturday was spent clearing the kitchen and hoovering through the house while my partner went to have her hair cut. There comes a point where I just have to hoover round the sofa where I live. Of course there is the obligatory de-hairing of the hoover roller but the outcome is satisfying. At these times I get urges to do outstanding chores so I happily sit and do all the shredding that needs to be done adn empty all the bins. So I am on a roll and head for the garden. I uncover all the garden furniture and give it a good cleaning and set it ready for the rest of the year. Following on from yesterdays pond clearing I add addition additional pegs to the netting round the pond, warily watched by a couple of nervous frogs. There is still time to watch a football match and then as tea time hauls into view its time to train. Its Saturday a training day and if I am to earn a rest day on Sunday I need to train. So I go to the garage and row for an hour. Its not a spectacular session but it’s good enough as I burn 800+calories.

Evening arrives with a meal and then because TV was so rank I watched five episodes of Magpie Murders. My partner lasted four and a half episodes before going to bed. I guess that means a rerun of episode 5 on Sunday. I watch football highlights, take my meds and clear the kitchen before going to bed, tired but knowing I’ve earnt my rest on Sunday.

Sunday and I wake up late and my partner brings me a coffee to help me wake up. Before I sup my reviving coffee I go and weigh myself as Sunday is also weigh in day. Its good news, I come in at 97.6 kilos a loss over the last week of 1.2 kilos. So this weeks efforts have been worth it. Eventually I get up feeling stiff from yesterdays rowing session. There is a a delicious cooked breakfast, more a brunch really and then I give my partner and eldest daughter their Easter Eggs. We call my youngest daughter and face time her to see how her pregnancy is going . The garden camera is checked and I find the batteries are too low to activate the night time videos function. This is the most useful function for capturing my friendly hedgehog and the occasional fox. My partner and I are house crazy and go for a walk in our local park to relieve it. The sunshine is deceptively chilly and we stroll round the park visiting the ducks and chatting about how we are. By a stoke of luck the parking ticket machine is not working so we leave the park without needing to pay anything. Back home I watch a rugby match and then start the drafting of the blog. Amidst all this humdrum banal activity I discover what a K tax code means and what the figures that go with the K means. K means I owe the tax person money. The amount I owe is ten times the number with the K. Apparently my K9 tax code means that I owe HMRC £90. I guess I will sort that out when I do my last self assessment tax form over the next couple off days.

The evening arrives with a meal to start with and then its on to the finishing straight of Magpie Murders and football highlights. First the rerun of episode 5 and then to the grand final of the series. The acid test will be whether we graduate to series two. As usual it will be night meds and last minute read and then bed, but not before watching a programme about Freddie Mercury and wondering why my three guitar chords and lack of talent never propelled me to stardom.

Friday, Good Friday. Good it was but as I sit here on the sofa late at night with my meds inside me all I can manage is a “this is what I did” list:

• Breakfast
• Read
• Shop at the garden centre for Easter food
• Bought child buttons for a newly knitted jacket in town
• Dined on real Italian pizza and coffee
• Cleaned the pond
• Got the garden furniture out
• Put the iris in the front garden.
• Watched rugby
• Wrote blog
• Took meds and went to bed.

So that’s it for the day. I am spoonless and go off to bed looking forward to a Saturday of sunshine and time in the garden. I did not train today but hopefully tomorrow I shall get time in the gym.

Thursday and I am awake at 7 o’clock as my partner gets up and gets ready to go to her physio appointment. I am not sleepy so I read more of The End of The Day, my partner brings me coffee and I happily keep reading to gone 8:30. I finally get up and have more coffee to wash down a dish of muesli. I clear the kitchen, empty the dishwasher and promptly start filling it again. There is no shilly shallying about as I gather up my portable office and head for the Shed. So there I am in the Shed writing letters to all those correspondence friends who I feel I’ve rather ignored over he last couple of weeks as I attended to funeral admin. There I stayed, in the Shed writing letters until lunch time when I emerged to feed myself chicken soup adn a hot cross bun. Simple but satisfying. Post lunch I head back to the Shed.

I am in the Shed writing yet more letters when a friend messages me from her driving course where she is the only woman amongst a group of young Asian men. She asks me if a book she has sent me arrived. I tell it has not but it is likely that the driver is on a driving course. She seemed amused by that. I continue to write, doubtless repeating myself across letters and finally can write no more. Each letter gets sealed and I add a small embellishment to each one. Its time to close up the Shed but as I do so I notice my first ladybird of the year. Its a photo opportunity and a chance to pretty up the blog.

As I pass the herb pipes I notice one of them has come in to flower so I grab a picture of that as well.

Once in doors I am a man with a mission, namely to get to the post box before collection time so I am out the door pronto to fulfil the goal. I realise that even if they are collected today they may not arrive till Saturday earliest as tomorrow is Good Friday. They may not arrive till Tuesday given the Easter interruption. Once home again its time to train, so change into some kit and get myself into the garage. I set the controls for an hour and set off at a reasonable pace. Its a good hour and I crack 13 kilometres and over 800 calories. So I am pleased with this effort.

Its heading into the evening as I begin to look for Easter treats. Understandably almost all of the Easter fun things are geared to children, so there are no end of Easter egg trails to go on. I’m hoping to find something a little more adult. The evening starts with a dish of tuna pasta and strawberries and ice cream. The timing is perfect, I am just finishing my coffee and its time for kick off between England and Brazil as the European and South American women’s champions compete for the champions tittle. Once over it will be reading more of my current book and an early night for me. I am looking forward to the Easter break and plan to get out into the world. Hopefully I can find some things to do that are not too Eastery. England win on a penalty shot out, that’s not something you hear often.

Its Wednesday and I wake up to find my partner already gone to work. Really gone, not just trotted downstairs to the office but real drive a car to work work. I make coffee and take my meds and then I think I ought to have something to eat so down a bowl of muesli. As I stand at the kitchen window a squirrel bounds into view and proceeds to dig up some of the lettuce seeds I planted in the raised bed on the patio yesterday. I am powerless to do anything and smile as I realise that the squirrel is teaching me about symbiosis. There is a balance to be had here. I’ve made up my mind to go to the gym today. I do not feel like it but I pack my kit and my portable office and drive off to the gym. I was not feeling good at all and considered turning round and going home. I said loudly to my self in the car, “Its just anxiety get on with it you are psychologist deal with it, ” so I did and got to the gym. Once there I get onto the changing rooms still not feeling chipper but made it upstairs to a cross trainer. I climbed aboard and got myself going. I did 55 minutes at a regular pace and get to the end hot and tired. I had forgotten my i-pod so had to rely on my fantasy world to get me through the time.

After climbing off the machine I walk around the gym floor trying to cool down and consult my fitness app. I am okay on the heart rate and my SATS are 98%, normal, so basically I’m okay. My fitness age according to the app is 41. Amazing, I cannot believe the algorithm has got that right, but its supposed to be based on results from over 300,000 people in Sweden over 30 years. I shower. What a luxury, a walk in shower with all the hot water I could want. I spend time showering and washing my hair, no mean feat given how long it is now. I change and blow dry my flowing locks. That’s an interesting experience in a men’s changing room. I’m past caring now, people will just have to get over it. I dump my bag in the car and return to the club lounge with my portable office and settle down to write letters. I sip americanos and devour a sausage and a bacon buns. By three o’clock I think its time to go home especially as I find I have not got a lighter with me to enable me to seal my letters properly.

Back home there is a pile of redirected mail and our own mail. I find there is a letter from the tax man about my sisters estate. There was also a letter from an insurance company threatening to stop the London house insurance. I ring the tax man and give them my solicitors contact details. He says they will write in due course. God knows how long that will be. I email the solicitor with photos of the letters and tell her what I’ve done and ask her opinion on the insurance. I finish sealing my letters and pop across to the post office to send my letters. I return home to find my new Claire North book The End of The Day waiting for me. It will see me through Easter hopefully.

I do some death admin while listening to the radio and then start to draft the blog. Yesterday was such a lovely sunny day and as I walked back from posting my letters today in the rain I really felt the loss of sunshine and warmth and it made me feel the depth of missing people. I am clear that keeping myself locked away in the house is not healthy. My conclusion is that I am a sunshine hermit. When the sun shines and I am in my Shed writing with the life of the garden around me I can do being a Hermit but not in this miserable wet weather. I should adopt the Buddhist stance and know that sunshine will follow and to cultivate patience in myself and continue to be kind. My WhatsApp has been busy today which has been really nice as people ask how I am and share what they are doing. So my evening will be a meal, followed by some TV but mainly I will get stuck into my new book. Some bloke was on TV this morning talking about a project to get people back into reading and how good reading is for our mental health and becoming a better person, (no idea what that actually means), and an assortment of other things which I forget. It would appear I am ahead of the curve, I read, exercise (fitness age 41), don’t drink, smoke or do drugs, I write and occasionally paint, in fact I am a paragon of self betterment. Strange how I don’t feel like I am in peak form, maybe its the fact that I have stage 4 prostate cancer that somehow gets in the way of a sense of immense well being. Night meds and bed will see me end the day.