Friday, nothing to say really other than the morning was spent preparing to drive to see my youngest daughter and her partner and the afternoon was spent driving. The drive was the usual flog down three motorways with a single stop but at least the sun shone. On arrival we sat in a sunny garden, drank lemon squash and chatted our way to pizza and an evening of going through lots of things they had brought back from the London house. This included my grandfather’s first world war medals and his army paperwork. After eight years in India as a professional soldier he bought himself out for £35 and avoided being sent to Ireland. At the end of the day we retired to a normal size double bed which was interesting. The alert amongst you will have noted the absence of coffee from the blog. This is because I have given it up. Much as I love a really good cup of coffee it is a variable in increased blood pressure. As my new cancer drug has as its major side effect raised blood pressure (hence the regular monitoring) I thought it wise to drop coffee. It is one thing I can do to help my situation. Once again my need to take what control I can comes to the fore. Always I need to think about what is happening to me and try to use what knowledge I have or can gain to give myself the best chance of the best possible outcome. That I think is what a reasonable, rational, existentially informed adult should do, take responsibility! I take my night meds and settle down for the night in a normal size double bed. Its been a long but satisfying day.

Saturday I wake in the strange bed after a night of my usual cycle of getting up in the night. I take some time to check messages and mail, With that done I catch up with the blog from yesterday and then return to the family to have breakfast. I spend all morning going through albums and packets of photographs along with a lot of documents which capture the history of my family for the last three generations. Unknown facts about relatives come to light and there are hundreds of photographs of some very old relatives and of course of my own history. By lunch time I am bent under the weight of family memories and questions and I am pleased to break and eat lunch with the family in the garden. There is a little more looking at things retrieved from the London house before we go on a trip to one of the lakes in the forest.

We take a sedate stroll around the lake and then indulge in ice cream as we sit at a picnic bench and watch the family of goslings wandering between the benches. One young gosling comes in our direction and pretty soon we have it eating morsels out of our hands. I do not know exactly why there is such a strong urge to make this kind of contact with wild animals but the satisfaction of doing so is immense. Even if it s fleeting there is something special about it. Of course once we ran out of crumbs to feed our gosling it ran back to its peers and returned to following its mother around the lake edge.

We drove back to my youngest daughters house and settled down in various rooms for the rest of the afternoon. I watched the second half of the cup final and then I returned to sorting out more of the oddments of jewellery that needed to be identified. I beavered away at this until it was time to change and drive to the pub for dinner. The Butcher’s Arms is comfortable enough and as its a treat I order stake. The meal is good and the family sit and chat about work, babies, pregnancy, phones and anything else that fell across or paths. A good evening meal indeed. I pay the bill and we return to my daughters where I am massaged with a wicked machine. I am in hope that my birthday might be blessed with such a machine. I check my messages and find a photo of my friend and her family at Pride. They look very happy and having a good time. I recall a conversation I had with her about how lucky I was to be able to take my daughters to Africa to see the big animals n which she reminded me that she could not do that for her daughters as being gay in Africa was in many areas illegal and in some punishable by death. That conversation always put things into perspective for me. I continue to draft the blog while everyone settles down and prepares for an early night. I am perplexed as to what is the best way forward with all this family “treasure”. It feels that I have the responsibility of making sure the family history is preserved and enhanced before I am not around any more to do it. This is where the ripples matter and where for some their ripples peter out. It feels like a big responsibility. I take my meds and go to bed no closer to any answers.

Thursday June the 1st. I wake, I get up, I sing, I make breakfast. I then spend my morning installing the safe I bought from Amazon, which they delivered yesterday. As always there were hiccups along the way but eventually I get it fixed to the wall. I then spend time loading it with what I want in it. Its noon by the time I finish the task and get all the tools and impedimenta away. I get a drink and then spend a few minutes to get the days blog started. Along the way I note my blood result are in. These will form the baseline for the new toxic beast once I start on it next week. So here they are. The obvious issue is the galloping PSA, but then that’s what the new weapon is for.

I run off fresh record sheets and then answer some emails to do with the London house. I decide to email the Australian glass maker who I think might have made a peace of glass that was my sisters. I send photos and a brief question. A friend rings me to tell me how a meeting with Occupational Health has gone and how things stand at the moment. It is a difficult position to be in and it is draining. We chat for a while till my friend goes to get lunch and a rest. Its time to train but I feel crap and have a raging headache, however it is medicine and needs to be done. I take a couple of paracetamol and go and get changed. Once in the garage I strap into the rower and set myself up for an hors row on my cruise level. the start is slow, very slow and my body complains at the effort. I persevere and eventually I get going. For a while I do not think I will make my normal target in terms of either distance or calories burnt. Towards the end of the session I am able to pick up the rate and by the end I have managed to reach 12 kilometres, over 2000 strokes and 800+ calories burnt.

At the end of the session I am knackered and sit on the sofa recording the session. I watch the garden guy beavering away outside and ultimately wave to him as he leaves. Dinner follows and I continue to draft the blog still carrying my headache. My evening is going to be a slow one topped of by an early night. Tomorrow I drive down to see my youngets daughter and her partner. It might be the last time I get to see her before she produces our grandson in July. So tomorrow I have to prep the car, pack and then drive.

Wednesday and I am woken with a coffee at about eight thirty. I am not sure how I feel. I get up and and make an egg sandwich and lemon squash. There are lot of small things that need to be done but I head for the Shed for the first time in a long while, or so it feels. I write letters all morning and fins that am using my last stamps. During the morning I have a WhatsApp conversation with my youngest daughter about a music box we found at the London house. It starts with the recognition that there is someone who specialises in the refurbishment of music boxes and then of course we both go on the internet and start to research our music box. It turns out to be a classic by a famous maker in the 1800s and selling at quite high prices.

I send an email to the music box repair man with some photographs and ask about refurbishment. By lunchtime I get a reply and find out that our music box is indeed genuine. He tells me that it is a double roll pianoforte version and a very nice box. He explains that costs of refurbishment. The quote runs into thousands, so there is a decision to be made. I wonder if its possible to crowd found a refurbishment. I pack up the Shed and return to the house to find my partner going off to see her mother. I lunch on chicken soup and then wander over to the post office to send my letters and to buy in some chocolate treats.

My afternoon as a long procrastination. I know I must train but I find all sorts of things to do to avoid it. I empty the bins, play loo roll fairy, fill the bird and squirrel feeders and tidy the kitchen. A friend calls and we chat about a meeting she has been to in the morning. It is clear that her journey back to work after long COVID is a difficult one and full of organisational hurdles. We talk until it comes time for her to collect her children. I am almost out of distractions when Amazon deliver the small safe I ordered yesterday to accommodate some of the things that we have accrued over the last few weeks. I spend time finding a place that the new safe can be housed so that it can be anchored to the wall properly. I jettison a pile of old socks to make room and then site the safe. No time to anchor it tonight as we have a guest staying tonight. That’s going to be a tomorrow job now.

I can no longer avoid training and now I feel tired. I change into my kit and get into the garage. I decide to up the resistance level and cut the time. So at level 5 I set off to do 30 minutes. It turns out that I am out of practice at level 5. The initial pulls are a surprise and very hard work, so I get the message early on that this is going to be a tough session. I end up getting to my 6 kilometre target and over 400 calories.

I record my session and make a cold drink which I have with my partner and our guest who has arrived. They soon leave to go and eat out, I change and cook my tea and then settle in to start to draft the blog. Tonight there is a football final to watch so I shall do that and then see if I have time to include the time line of the blog into it tonight as I said I would.

BLOG TME LINE & PHASES

• Welcome all.                            01-09-2019                             1 day
• Induction Day                          02-09-2019                             1 day
• Chemo Day                              03-09-2019 – 05-01-2020  124 days
• Fingers Crossed phase             07-01-2020 – 23-03-2020 77 days
• As Good As It Gets Phase         24-03-2020 – 08-02-2021   322 days
• Antiandrogen                            22-12-2021 -22-02-2022     63 days
• As Good As it Gets Again          23-02-2022 – 31-10-2022  251 days
• Rocket                                       01-11-2022 – 21-12-2022      51 days
• Rocket Booster                          22-12-2022 – 06-03-2023   42 days
• Run up to Radiotherapy            07-03-2023 – 17-05-2023      72 days
• No Mans Land                           18-05-2023 – 29-05-2023      12 days
• Rearmament                              30-05-2023 –           

As promised the time line. I’m off to bed I can’t stand the insensitivity. Meds for me and some peace and quiet.

Tuesday, oncology day, no more no mans land, something has to change. I get up as my partner brings me a coffee. I feel anxious and not at my best, but then who does when they are anxious? I drink the coffee and head for the shower. Time to feel fresh and splash on the scent. Before dressing I go and have breakfast and then think about what to wear for the day at the hospital. I select black shirt with skull cuff links and burgundy trousers. I like the way my clean bright white hair stands out against the black shirt. I am dressing in the bedroom when I tap my foot on the under bed storage tray and there is a metallic clink. I look down and I am flabbergasted to see the seal ring that I thought I had lost back in July/August of last year. I was so convinced it was gone for ever I had a replacement made. So it is a bizarre start to the day.

So having reunited the ring with my hand I drive with my partner to the hospital. We arrive on time and have the unusual experience of being kept waiting. Half an hour after my appointment time we get called in. The specialist nurse is in the room, not usual, so I figure this is not going to be straight forward. We allow ourselves a moment of levity and note how quickly we burnt through the radiotherapy option. So he who made a pact with the devil drops in the new medicine. Its name is Enzalutamide (Xtandi). It is clearly a toxic little potion as I have to have regular blood tests and I’ve got to start taking and reporting my blood pressure. I can only get by going to the Leicester Royal Infirmary on a weekly basis to get the beast. The oncologist jokes that if it goes okay they might trust me with a couple of months worth. I interpret this as if the beast potion does not kill you we will let you have your own supply. This is clearly chemical roulette, good old medical profession loves to roll the dice. The nurse takes me outside to weigh me. 100 kilos, I’m not having that I know I am 98K. I banter the nurse and we agree that she will tell him 98K. I also discover that I am still 5 ft 11 inches tall. Back in the room my partner had clearly been asking questions about my cancer. Its not got bigger apparently just more invasive. There is paper work to do. I have to sign a consent form that says clearly that this is not a cure only containment and palliative care. The usual extensive arse covering, but that is the game, what else am I going to do? Below is the top page of the drug info sheet and the list of side effects.

He who made a pact with the devil explains that there maybe tiredness and cognitive impairment, e.g if I do crosswords in 20 minutes now they could take me 40 in the future. That’s going to make reading Chalmers theory of consciousness a bit of a challenge. He presses two blood test forms into my hands and gives me directions to the hospital vampire department. That’s about it really apart from how much he stressed that exercise was the best (only) way to counteract the side effects. In my head that means thinking about exercise/training as medicine. It is now an essential not an optional nice to have. Exercise or die of heart shit or any of the other little side effects this beast of a potion has up its sleeve. We bid farewell and wait for a moment while the specialist nurse gives us a copy of my consent form.

The walk to the blood test department was quiet and quite long. I took my number, A38 and sit in the waiting room. Numbers 36 and 37 go in and so I am in quickly. Not only am I having the usual blood, testosterone and PSA but also a virology scan. Now I understand the oncologists reference to HIV. It appears this new beast potion comes with more scrutiny across the board. I leave the vampires with the usual fluffy cloud taped to my arm. The car is retrieved and I drive us to the garden centre nearest to home and eat lunch.

On arriving home I file my papers in the cancer file and make an Excel spread sheet for my blood pressure. I take pictures for the blog and up load them. Its time to take my new medicine: exercise. I really do not feel like it but its already five days since I trained so I cannot afford to snowflake about. I get into my gear and go to the garages and set the rower up for an hour session. My body is not happy with this development and resists to start with. The result is that by the 30 minute mark it looks likely that I wont make my basic standard of 12 kilometres in the hour. I pick it up a bit and in the end I make my standard and burn 600+ calories. The lesson is so clear, I cannot afford to lapse and my training medicine must be daily. Essential, not a nice to have.

I retreat to the sofa to record the session and then get changed out of my sweaty kit. I am back on the sofa drafting the blog when a friend calls. She is in the middle of lots of organisational stuff so we chat it through and talk about how tough it can be at times working ones way through all these processes while trying to maintain normal family life. After the call I eat tea and then return to drafting the blog, which I had finally decided what I would call this phase during which I drop one potion and prepare to trade up to something a little more toxic. I will soon put all the phases of the blog up so that people can see the journey to date. Now its time to watch the last episode of Steel Town Murders and get my self to bed minus one pill. Its been a tough day but there is worse to come, so I will endeavour to look on the bright side.

Bank holiday Monday and I wake up about 8 o’clock after a medium nights sleep and feel better than yesterday. My partner brings coffee and we figure out our next move. Breakfast obviously, but then what. In reality my partner needs to go back the shop where she bought a pair of sandals which when she walked up stairs in them broke! We ran through the usual “taking things back” scenarios. “Stroppy assistant” is always high on the list. We were prepared for any excuse that could be offered. Our killer argument was to be that the Roman army overran Europe and forged an empire wearing sandals so no excuse will do. Had the sandal not been made for going up stairs then ancient Britain’s would have built staircases all round Britain and the Roman invasion would have floundered. Every centurion would have flailed their arms in despair and told their legions “we’re buggered men they have built staircases , we just don’t have the foot wear to invade,” and retuned to plunder the rest of the staircase less Mediterranean. Anyway we were ready with our killer argument as we drove the garden centre where the shop is. As it turned out the assistant was lovely, offered options and did the rebate with out a single tut or grimace.

We drove away content and moved onto the next garden centre to buy more plants for my partner’s mother’s patio pots and for our front garden pots. The place was packed but we managed to park creatively and get in and out without too much bother. Bank holiday humanity at garden centres is not at its best. So once home its coffee and a relax. I set about recording and identifying the makers of the pottery that we brought back from London. I photograph it all and the makers marks and then go agoogling. I was able to identify all eight of the potters responsible for the items, three of whom are now dead. So I now have a computer file of images and have learnt quite a lot about modern ceramics along the way. Below I share a pot by Matt Horne, still alive, and a vase (I think) by Robin Welch, now dead.

Once I have satisfied my curiosity I go to the garden and plant the fuchsias that we got this morning. They all go into the pots at the front of the house except one that I reserve for the back garden. Its seems to be hard work and I am aware that I am rapidly running out of spoons. I judicially prune one of my small olive trees that is struggling but showing signs of recovery. I put my tools away and head for the lounge to start to draft the blog and to see if I can find the maker of a piece of glass. It is signed but it is unreadable so I am hunting the internet. As far as I can tell its by an Australian called Gerry Reilly but the signature on the piece is unreadable. Good with glass just never learnt to write his name properly I guess.

Its an interesting object that looks very much like the work of Gerry Reilly but the signature looks nothing like his name. So I guess there is an email and a picture to be sent. I eat dinner and indulge myself with a brandy in the hope it will settle my stomach. I sniff it and only wet my lips with it, it lasts ages. It lasts three episodes of Steel Town Murders by which time I am spoonless and beyond any sane or sensible thought, which given that tomorrow is an oncology review in the morning might not be good. I take my night meds, more paracetamol, finish the blog for the day and head for bed. Going to be a tricky 24 hours I think. Here goes.

Sunday and I wake in the spare bed as my sore gut had kept me awake last night and in an effort to get some sleep I changed beds. So I finally wake at about 9:30 and groggily return to the partnership bed. On the way to my return I weigh myself and to my surprise I find my 97.8 kilos represents a weight loss. Good start to the day. My partner and I drink coffee and chat for a while until we decide to get up for breakfast. To my partners dismay there is no bacon so she takes a trip to the shop. I run the hoover round before the family meeting on the patio for what turns out to be a very late breakfast. As we sit and chat we are joined by the squirrels who pop down to take peanuts from the feeder. They have clearly become accustomed to us.

We make the weekly face time call to our youngest daughter and make arrangements to visit her next weekend. My partner then goes off sandal shopping and I sort out the boxes of stuff that we brought back from the London house. It takes a long time to get things into groups and to photograph them. I send the pictures to my youngest so she can see what there is. I drop some stuff in the bins and note how good part of the front garden is looking. It seems this Spring is blooming beyond expectation, moving the iris last year was certainly the right thing to do.

I just finish my sorting and settle down to watch a football match. It is the last day of the season and demotion and European qualification is to be sorted out. The upshot is my home town Leicester get relegated and my favourite team the mighty Brentford beat the new champions but do not get European football next season. I take more pain killers as I’m not feeling so chipper still and wend my way to the evening meal. There is the usual Sunday stuff that forms the background wallpaper to my blog drafting. I shall watch the football highlights and put myself to bed hoping that by some miracle I will sleep.

It’s getting tiring and I am getting fed up with this state I am in. I am sore and irritable, lacking energy and inspiration. In fact thoroughly fucked off. I assume it is a mixture of my anxieties about my cancer, the coming oncology review, my lack of energy and inability to sleep well. The night sweats are continuing to be a pain. I thought I would throw that in for good measure. The problem is that it’s difficult to fight what you can’t fight, when its your own body that is out witting the medical profession, when your own cell biochemistry is adapting faster than the medicine can counter. Of course the medicine has no adaptive ability, it just does what it does until it gets out manoeuvred by my clever, adaptive and self destructive cell chemistry. So where is the battle ground to be? It always comes back to the same things; stay fit, eat reasonably, take the medicine, feed my brain, be kind and value family and friends.

Saturday and its been a long night, I wake up feeling shit and instantly know I am not going to make it to Birmingham to see Ballet Rambert dance Peaky Blinders. Fuck is the extent of my vocabulary for a while. After a cup of coffee it expands a bit to For Fuck Sake. My partner and I quickly agree that I am not going and that she and our eldest daughter will go instead. I print off the train tickets and go back to bed. My family Uber off to Brum. I lay there muttering Fuck quite a lot and eventually find a pair of loose shorts and an ice hockey shirt and get myself another coffee and a fried egg sandwich. I am so fucked off with myself and decide I can’t just lay around like some snowflake so I head for the garden. Slowly and gingerly I pot out some petunias and get the patio pots looking okay. I “nibble” at other containers, resting and muttering fuck to myself, which no doubt amused the neighbours who were sitting the other side of the patio wall. Eventually I can do no more and indulge in a cornetto from the freezer. My eldest daughter sends me pictures of Birmingham Pride going on. A friend sends me pictures of the beach in Whitby. I retreat to the lounge and think about what I would do as a poem for this moment and start to draft the blog. I write a sonnet to express today.

Too sore for Peaky Blinders a sonnet 
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck 
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck  
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck  
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck 
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck  
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck 
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck Cancer.

Well I seem to have captured the mood and the sense of inarticulate rage quite neatly in the Sonnet format. Shakespeare would have been proud and no doubt had Caliban recite it in honour of Prosper who nicked his island and bad mouthed his mother Sycorax.

Well I’m going to watch rugby and rest now for the rest of the day and imagine myself watching ballet and being enculturated. The rugby comes and goes, my family return from Peaky Blinders having had a good time and I eat pie and chips before Annika and a final bash at the blog. Night meds and its time to see if I can sleep tonight. I’m still sore and still feel shit.

Friday and I wake up eager to see the new painting in the morning light. I get up and stand on the stairs looking into the room with the ew painting. I feel juvinated and pleased that we bought the painting, it has transformed the room. I never thought in my wildest dreams I would buy big new art and that I would always be confined to collecting miniatures within my budget. However there it is large as life in the lounge a genuine Hamish Herd. I have breakfast and spin out time till it is time to walk down to the GP surgery for my monthly jab. I walk down in sunshine and log in on the new system and sit and wait to be called. I am almost immediately in the nurses lair and being jabbed with my potion. There is very little light banter to be had apart from have a good bank holiday. I leave and return home via the village shop to buy a paper.

On arriving home I find that the postman has delivered copies of the probate papers with a covering letter from the solicitor. It appears the estate owes the tax man more than I manged to save in a life time and that paying the tax is going to be a major pain in the arse until we can get the house sold. The tax man wants money up front or we don’t get probate, which would mean not being able to sell the house, talk about being had by the balls. I go through the papers and find an unanswered question which then sets me off on a hunt for data. I end up sending the solicitor an email with a bank statement attached to it. That done I sit on the patio with a coffee and cannoli and do the cross words until lunchtime when I share a bite with my partner.

As the afternoon looms I decide to go to the harden centre and buy more flowers and plants for the garden and also for my partners mother’s patio pots. Once at the garden centre its a bit like a trolley dash as I pile plants and trays of flowers into a cart, my buying is limited by the size of my car boot but I cheat and lower the back seats thus making it possible to buy loads of plants. On arriving home I set to on the front garden and add new things to old tubs and pots to add a bit more colour. Time passes quickly when I am doing this and the afternoon disappears. I sit in the chair that is part of our front garden and look at it noting what is doing well. Its a pleasing moment.

Having gardened and cleared away I become aware of how sore my injection site is getting to stop and have a non alcoholic beer with paracetamol chaser and read again Epitaph by Merritt Mallory. A friend pointed it out to me and said how it really helped. I include it here for those interested.

Epitaph 
Merritt Malloy

When I die
Give what’s left of me away
To children
And old men that wait to die.
And if you need to cry,
Cry for your brother
Walking the street beside you.
And when you need me,
Put your arms
Around anyone
And give them
What you need to give to me.
I want to leave you something,
Something better
Than words
Or sounds.
Look for me
In the people I’ve known
Or loved,
And if you cannot give me away,
At least let me live on in your eyes
And not your mind.
You can love me most
By letting
Hands touch hands,
By letting bodies touch bodies,
And by letting go
Of children
That need to be free.
Love doesn’t die,
People do.
So, when all that’s left of me
Is love,
Give me away.

I wish I could write this kind of good stuff. I have a similar short line and sparse word style but no where near as effect as this. Any way there are still things to do today. I book train tickets to Birmingham for tomorrow as my partner and I are going to see Ballet Rambert perform the Peaky Blinders ballet. Its a matinee performance so we leave in the morning with time to eat a lunch and then attend the show. With this done I think about training but already feel sore as it is so decide to draft the blog instead. I do this drifting towards the evening meal and probably TV that will end in Have I Got News for You, night meds and the hope that I find solace in the deep once again.

Thursday arrives after a varied nights sleep. My partner brings me coffee which helps to bring me round. I get up and have breakfast and then my day of art starts. I take all my sisters glass art into the garden to sort out and clean. What can be hung goes into the Shed and what cannot is cocooned and stored in the garage along with her stock of glass. This takes me all day and is only interrupted by the odd coffee and sandwich.

By four o’clock I am tired and settle to a coffee, cannoli and a cross word when the garden guy appears. Today is the day the hedge gets done but he needs the high steps which means I am on steadying duty. I move the cars off the drive so he can get a good run at the hedge and then we are at it, he with his hedge trimmers and me making sure the steps stay stable. It goes well and I am served my favourite tea of tuna pasta. The day has yet more art to come. I have just finished tea when the woman who owns the gallery where we bought a new painting arrives with it. We chat and she sizes up the hanging space and advises double raw plugs. She leaves and I gather up my tools and set about putting new raw plugged hooks on the wall. I am surprised at how well it goes. My partner goes off to a room to do her singing lesson and I retrieve the cars. With everything away and sorted its time to hang Hamish Herd’s Sanctity of the Deep on the wall.

I’ve not stopped all day and now with everything in place I stop and draft the blog, already it is 8:30pm and suddenly I am tired, spoonless in fact. As I slow down and get the blog done I remember that tomorrow is injection day and immediately feel bad about not training today. The rest of my evening I will be something mindless as I stare at the new painting and wend my way to night meds and bed, doubtless hoping for solace from the deep.

Wednesday and I am slugabedding till 9 o’clock when I get brought a coffee. Its very welcome and helps me come round after a reasonable nights sleep. I get up and fix myself breakfast but notice that the squirrel has abandoned the squirrel feeder for more tasty morsels in the bird feeder and in doing so is demonstrating its dexterity.

I have breakfast and then I start to prepare for the new painting to arrive tomorrow. I move the existing canvas print of a holiday photo taken in Kenya to the stairs and relocate the displaced fossil, that was a retirement present ( I do not think it was intended as a joke), on the stairs. So there is now a bare space awaiting the new acquisition. I hoover the room and get rid of the errant cobwebs to spruce the room for the new arrival. Having sorted that I move onto contacting the solicitor and formally setting out the executive signatory and checking the probate time scale.

Time to train, so as my partner goes off to see her mother I drive to the gym. I get a bottle of water and make my way to the gym floor where I set up a cross trainer for an hour session. I set off with Rammstein loud in my ears and the resolution to drink at each third of the time. I keep a steady pace and I am surprised how easy it comes to me, I’m tempted to press on harder but do not as this is what makes me piss blood, so I press on persistently. It goes well and I burn 600+ calories and I collect a lot of PSI points on my fitness calculator.

The last of my water get drunk and I head for the changing rooms to shower and get cool. Feeling better than I have done for days I treat myself to a coffee and a caramel shortbread before heading home in the sunshine. I arrive home at the same time as my partner. She has brought her mothers watch and a new strap for it so I sit on the patio with my watch kit and put the new strap on as I and my partner chat about our coming timetable and what we can plan and what needs to wait until I know what delicious cocktail of chemicals he who made a pact with the devil decides to dish up for me on Tuesday and how I react to them. Nothing worse than planning a long journey if your throwing up on the hour. Not that I ever had but you can bet your life its on the list of common side effects for whatever I get prescribed. I settle down to draft the blog as my partner goes off with a friend for a meal. I make my evening meal and settle down for the evening with a J K Rowling film, more wizardry nonsense no doubt or perhaps the new Sewing Bee series. I shall laze and think about what I am going to do with my sisters stained glass works tomorrow. They need to be cleaned and stored flat. I shall hang as many as I can in the Shed. I’ve already hung up the now mended Kiwi, a hedgehog, a cat tile and a delightful small circular one with a cat watching a shooting star. Once I have done what’s necessary I will post pictures of them. In the meantime I hope for a good nights sleep.