Tuesday and it’s a day of surprises. The biggest one is that I appear to have a cold. So I I resort to Actifed and working my way through a to do list interspersed with world cup football. Having had breakfast, I clear the kitchen and watch some football. Bored with the football I prepare a parcel and wrap some presents. Lunch of soup follows, and I put the newly arrived 16.5 Tog duvet on the bed with a little help from my eldest daughter. My next chore is sorting my car out for tomorrow and the trip later in the week. I drive to the garage and fill the tank and then check the tyres. Back home I walk to the cash machine in the village shop and draw cash to see me through the coming week.

I watch football until my partner returns from work and then after a while we eat the meal I put in the crockpot earlier. Another football match follows. I clear the kitchen, move the car back onto the drive so that I can go to the chiropodist tomorrow. I write the blog, a terse version that befits the cold filled day I’ve had. I am hoping that tomorrow sees me recovered and my feet sing with joy as they usually do after they have been pampered. I also need to be focused and clear as I am seeing an old supervision client for a single session to process a specific case. So an early night. I take my meds while watching the final episodes of The English and then go to bed.

Monday, I wake to the household working. I make my breakfast and go to the Shed for the first time in a while. I sit to write letters as the rain pours down. As it’s been a while the ink and pen come slowly and in less of a flow than usual. I persist till almost 1 o’clock at which point I stop and eat a light lunch before sitting down to watch England thrash Iran 6-2. I take time out to post my letters, buy Christmas card stamps and to move the car from the drive to let Tesco deliver later. Just before 4 o’clock they deliver. I order a new 16.5 Tog duvet as I am feeling the cold and want to ensure that I am warm at night. I sense this is going to be a cold and long winter. Another match followed, Wales this time, who struggled to a 1-1 draw with the USA. Tea is eaten during the match. By the end of the match is gone 9 o’clock. It’s time to train, the garage will be cold, so I decide to do 45 minutes. I plug in my headphones and get going. It’s hard work to start with but gets easier as the session goes on.

I record my session and write the bog. All that is left is to take my evening meds and go to bed. This is going to be a tough world cup in terms of my training, I need to get better organised.

Sunday, my rest day so I laze a bit before getting up. In truth it was a busy dream night and I woke up tired out having tried to get a prison roll right for what seemed all night. I’ve no idea what triggered this or what my pixies were trying to tell me. As it’s a Sunday it’s my weigh in day so I go off to the bathroom and get myself as light as possible. I step on the scales and then look down.

96.2 kilos. That is 1.6 kilos lost this week. The Rocket effect.

I am of course pleased but know that these are the ease kilos and as I get closer to Christmas it will be more difficult to shed the weight. I record the outcome in my food and training journal while my partner produces bacon sandwiched for breakfast. I drink fresh coffee and re-fill my medication wallets. Having celebrated with my bacon sandwich my partner and I go to the garden centre and stock up with vegetables and fruit for the week. On return my partner goes off to the gym and my eldest daughter takes a trip to the local bird garden. My intention was to watch a rugby match but I decided to clean the house. I hoover through and empty bins. I clear the kitchen. Once things are more organised and cleaner, I do settle down to watch the first game of the football World Cup. It’s an average game with the hosts losing.

The evening is filled with chicken pie and the Strictly results show. Part of my evening will be balancing my training time and the world cup over the coming week; it will be a master stoke of timetabling. I’ve committed one early evening to providing a one-off supervision/processing session for an old supervision client, so I am hoping there are no tasty games on that evening. I’m missing my Shed time, more precisely I am missing not having written to anyone in the last week. It feels odd and slightly rude and neglectful. Tonight, I shall draft the blog, take my meds and go to my bed early. It’s going to be a demanding week to maintain my Rocket offence on my fitness and diet.

Saturday, I am the last one up and I am met on the stairs by my partner carrying warm drinks. We drink them in the lounge, and I make myself a muesli breakfast. I spend time rebooting the printer and after much juggling of ignorance and button pushing, I manage it. I run off the poems for this afternoon and put them neatly in order in a folder so that I can read them easily at the poetry stanza meeting. Before lunch I drive my partner to the local charity shop to drop off some clothes. Our charity shop of choice is “Sod the Aged” as it is affectionately known in our household. We drive home and have a quick lunch before I go to the office and log on via Zoom to the Stanza meeting.

There are about 12 of us online. People read out other people’s poems and then the group talk about them for ten minutes, after which the poet can comment. Its an interesting process. There is one man’s poetry that really grabs me and I always try to be the person who reads his poem. He seems the most poetic to me as he seems to be able to create powerful feelings and vivid images. It is poetry that I feel at a gut level. Much of the rest is good as well but I think the dissection that takes place is more projection, agenda and competition. I don’t give a fuck about rhyme and assonance and all the other bollocks that gets talked about, it’s just poetry industry jargon to keep the plebs out, I’m only interested in how it makes me feel and whether it rattles my inner universe in some way. I add bits of my own so I suppose I am being drawn into the dialogue I dislike. By the end I have had enough. The next meeting is going to be face to face in the local Quaker meeting house before Christmas, which I am looking forward to. People in the flesh are always best, mostly.

I go from poetry to watching England versus the All Blacks. It’s a good match that ends in a draw, which is a relative scarcity in the rugby world at international level. My partner and I eat tea and then settle down to watch Strictly. It’s getting competitive now as there no clear duffers left so who ever goes next will be a reasonable dancer. Strictly comes to an end and I change into me training gear determined to get a session in today. Cancer never rests and neither does Rocket, except on Sundays after the weigh in. I get into the garage and climb onto the rower, its 9 degrees, winter is coming. I do half an hour at my regular level with Rammstein loud in my ears. Its a typical end of week session, the fatigue is beginning to show. I do less then 6000 metres and burn less than 400 calories. It will have to do, I’ve no more to give.

I retrieve my laptop from the lounge and retreat to bed to draft the blog. Once done I shall take my meds and sleep. Tomorow is weigh in day, rest day and in the case of this particular tomorrow it is the start of the World Cup. I know that I shall get hooked despite all my good intentions.

Friday and I wake full of dreams or the backwash of them more accurately. I get up and go through my usual rising ritual of making the bed, drawing curtains and sniffing the world to see how it is. I do something that I do not usually do, I weigh myself. My rule is that I only weigh myself once a week on Sunday but today I break my rule in the hope that I get some motivation to train today and to keep going with the diet (I do miss sweets and chocolate. My partner gave me 4 chocolate buttons in a dish this week as a treat/thank you, but I only smelt them and then fed them to my eldest daughter). I look down at the display and find I have dipped under 97 kilos; it is enough of a downward trend to give me hope. Breakfast follows as does clearing the kitchen and then I am off to the Shed to reacquaint myself with pen and ink, it’s been several days now since I wrote a letter. My Christmas cards have arrived so I shall soon be sending those at the crack of December.

I do not make it to the Shed, Amazon delivers and then the post office and then another carrier. There is squirreling to be done. There is also some Christmas shopping to be done as lists become available. I manage to be busy till lunchtime when my partner and I sit down to a dish of soup and more fresh coffee. My partner goes off with her brother to their mothers, and I set about my washing, feeding the squirrels, replenishing Fort Hog with food and then getting some life and death admin done. By the time I have hung my washing out and completed my admin tasks I am feeling tired but need to train. I get myself ready and get to the garage and set the rower up for a standard level half hour. I feel knackered before I start but grind on in a sort of daze. It turns out okay, I managed 6000+ metres and 400+ calories so it was worth it.

I record my session and catch up with the blog. I notice I have missed calls from friends today. I guess I have been preoccupied with admin and jobs and for once not carried my phone around with me. It irks me that have missed the opportunity to talk. The evening is dark and, on this night, there are difficult decisions to make. Its Pudsy night on television, its either watch entertainment punctuated by miseryverts or Warrior Nun. If I am lucky there might be a rugby match to view. So I meander into my Friday night with no great hopes of joy. Unless of course I send the evening trying to get the printer to work. It ceased to function because HP ink had not been paid for the ink. So I spent time changing the payment method but by then the printer had cut itself off so now I have to get it back online, which means firing up the big system and buggering about for ages. The reward for doing this will be that I can run off all the poems for tomorrow’s poetry stanza meeting. I’m vaguely interested in what they make of mine. Some of the other members poems are really imaginative and creative, some are not my cup of tea, so I expect tomorrow’s meeting to be more stimulating than Pudsy.

Thursday, and I wake to the sound of my partner busy at work in the office downstairs. Its 9 o’clock and I am chilly so its a quick dress and down for breakfast. My usual muesli, fresh coffee and meds to start the day. I check my social media and find an intriguing text from an ex-supervision client asking if I would consider a one-off session to think through a situation. I mull it over and decide that I will do it. Mostly I decide to do it because this person was one of those clinicians who was always willing to go the extra mile for the client and was brave in reflection and taking responsibility. I await dates.

At 11 o’clock my partner and I attend a Zoom funeral of her uncle. It was my first zoom funeral. I go from the funeral to draft the blog but find that the chancellor’s economic statement is going on. It’s a skilful delivery but very Tory. It will no doubt satisfy the markets but the crucial strategy on care for the elderly is stopped and the appearance of money and bigger council taxes are being relied upon. This means that in all probability selling my partners mother’s house will be necessary to provide care for her, which means she will have to go into a care home at some point. I watch the statement and the shadow chancellor’s response, while my partner and I have lunch. There is of course a lot of television discussion afterwards at which point I disengage.

My partner returns to work and I dally over some snooker before I get myself ready to train. Today will be a half hour session at my normal level but done gently. I need to avoid passing blood, so today I intend to be gentle. The logic is in the arithmetic as I clock up less than 6000 metres and less than 400 calories so today was indeed gentle.

I retire to the lounge and record the session and bring my blog up to date, while the snooker rumbles on in the background. I prepare for an evening of nothing very much. I have downloaded the poems that members of the poetry stanza have sent in readiness for Saturdays meeting. I shall read them properly tonight having already glanced over them. There are some unusual presentations in this batch of poems. It is really interesting how the poems vary in style and tone. Already I can see the way poems reflect the poets, which unfortunately highlights my prejudices and stereotypes. There is definitely some poetry that I find syrupy and contrived, but then I guess my “bony” poetry is not favourite with others. So my evening will be a mixture of brain sustenance and episodes of Warrior Nun.

Wednesday and I wake up to find my partner up and my eldest daughter departed for work. I have breakfast and meds and then settle into a morning of Christmas shopping and organising. There is a lot of messaging going on and checking of links and wish lists. Once into the swing of things I gather pace, write lists, check off acquisitions and develop delivery strategies. My partner is easing her way through the day as she recovers from yesterday’s visit to the hospital so we both tap away at our techno. Now that there are orders out there the waiting for delivery begins. I always have a nagging concern that every trade or deal I do is a scam, and I am just waiting to be let down, robbed or conned. I have to say my faith in technology is glass fragile and not a little paranoid.

By lunchtime I am content with the progress made. A package marked fragile arrives for me, so there are positive signs that the world is functioning. Finally, I have got as far as I can get and resort to the mundane tasks like doing next week’s Tesco order. All that remains for today is to select a poem to throw for slaughter at Saturdays Poetry Stanza meeting and to train. The latter is not appealing as my injection site is still sore from Monday, so I will preload with paracetamol and reduce the resistance level a notch and increase the time. Long and easy is the watch word. But first the poem selection. I think I am going to go with one about old men.

I know why old men stare,
Why they sit and look.
Nothing now is real
So we cling like Harlow’s monkeys
To the Terry towelling comfort of memory.
All those moments when alive
When love, passion and life
Grabbed us and gave us meaning.
Now we see the world,
The bird on the wire,
The crow on the roof,
The raptor high in the sky,
We feel the air, the effort to fly.
None of what we are is here
But the world remains,
It persists and so we watch,
We see the world
And so we stare at it,
But it no longer gives us meaning,
We are in it,
But we are not of it. 

I am not sure, and it will need to be tidied up. Perhaps by the time I get to the actual submission something else will have presented itself. It’s something to think about while I train.

I did not think about it while I trained. I sent my old man’s poem off and went to the garage to train. As I did not train yesterday due to the hospital adventure, I decided to train for an hour today at a lower level. I confess I did not fancy it but then that’s what Rocket is for. He came through, he always does and soon I was astride my rower. The first half hour was a strain but as I got into the second half I relaxed a bit and found some energy. In the end it was a good session. Over 12 kilometres and 800+ calories burnt.

The session gets recorded in my food and training journal before I change out of my kit and make myself the luxury of a fresh coffee. I am truly addicted. I retire to the lounge and sit on the sofa with my feet on the Circulation Reviver, which, as far as I can tell just mildly electrocutes my feet, but it seems to work, so as I tempt myself to up the voltage I sit and catch up on the blog. My intention is to have a mindless evening as I have no spoons left. There appears to be little on TV so I expect I will scour the various platforms for something suitably undemanding.

Tuesday and I wake up with my usual injection ache, so I head for the kitchen to make muesli and fresh coffee. I settle down to eat and take my morning meds while I watch a forensic expert talk about 16 groove right hand gun barrel rifling. My partner goes out to see the GP and I learn more about hollow point 2.2 rifle bullets. I get a call from a friend, and as we are catching up my partner returns and says that the doctor has arranged for her to go to hospital. Not what either of us expected, so preparations got under way, a bag packed and clothes changed.

I was going to drive and then I remembered the queues at the hospital car park and brought up the Uber app and we were on our way. When we get to the hospital we see what a good decision a taxi was as the street queue to get into the hospital car park tails back at least three streets. We find our way to ward 16 and my partner checks in.

This is how the waiting starts. My partner finally gets called to have her blood pressure taken and returns with a catheter in her arm and a few millilitres of blood short. All we can do is wait for the results to come through, hours go by and we improvise a game to keep us occupied while everyone around us are buried in their phones.

Eventually my partner gets called back to see the doctor. She returns after some time, back after more probing and prodding, with the news that she is to have a scan but there is between a one or two hour wait. We settle down for the wait, its gone four o’clock and I am hungry. I go to the restaurant and grab a sandwich and as I tuck in my partner text me to say she has been called back in to see the consultant. By the time I get up the five floors to the ward waiting area my partner is there waiting for me. The consultant has decided that my partner can become an outpatient and have her investigation in due course. In the meantime she is prescribed codeine. We wait for the paperwork to arrive and when it does there is a discharge repot and a prescription. The nurse says we can go however is a bit embarrassed when my partner points out that she still has a catheter in her arm. There is a quick hunt for a nurse and my partner returns without catheter and the hospital gown she has been sporting.

We leave the ward and head for the pharmacy. We think we have found it at reception but are redirected to a portacabin by the car park to get the prescription fulfilled. We are order 173 and it will take half an hour to get to us, so we sit in the waiting area still masked up, unlike the overweight bloke in shorts and two families. Bastards. On reflection there was a woman in the ward waiting area, clearly sign posted a mask area, who just sat there without one. Bastard, I should have ranted but I had other things to do. 173 finally gets called and we collect the codeine from someone who clearly had had a long day, either that or she was just miserably lacking in social skills or just plain miserable. Any way we left, took our masks off and applied the Uber app. This driver was chatty all the way home.

It was a relief to get home, with a flurry of activity the bin gets put out, coffee made, clothes changed and food decided on. My partner goes for simple cereals, banana and savoury bagel while I and my eldest daughter go for an Indian takeaway. We all slow down and watch the Great British Bake Off and I draft the blog. It’s been a long day, Longest of all for my partner. There will be early nights. I will take early night meds and retire spoonless.

Monday, its injection day. I grudgingly get up and have a muesli and fresh coffee breakfast along with my morning meds and pain killers. The walk down to the GP is misty and autumnal. That’s as poetic as the day gets. I’ve no sooner logged into the GP system than the nurse calls me up. Usual procedure, lay on the couch, loosen the clothes round the target area and wait for the sharp scratch and the slight burning sensation in my left side. Finger on cotton wool while it gets taped down adn I’m ready for the next bit of fun. It’s time for the three monthly B12 jab. That get stuck in my left arm with even more of a burn this time. Not being able to book the next appointment because the GP techno system does not go that far I bound from the surgery ripping off my mask and walk home.

On my return I have more fresh coffee and change into my work kit. I have decided to tackle my gutter hedgehogs that have got blocked. As the forecast is for it to piss down tomorrow, I figure that today is a good day to get the gutters clear and the gutter hedgehogs cleaned. So I gather tools and steps and clamber about removing the gutter hedgehogs and clearing out the silt from the gutters at the back of the house where all our roof rainfall runs to. It goes reasonably well, and I tuck the hedgehogs back into the guttering with a degree of satisfaction. With luck the guttering will cope without overflowing tomorrow. While I am in the garden with the steps I trim the fir hedge back to encourage it to bush out and to keep it from becoming too tall. As that goes so well I prune the climbing rose back to the top of the wall height. Thats’s me done in the garden now till Spring.

Back inside and in laze around clothes I have a soup lunch and some tuna before catching up with my cash book and starting to do some Christmas shopping along with some present hunting for my partners birthday that is rapidly approaching. I am beginning to feel my injection and have more coffee and pain killers. While I wait for Tesco to deliver, I watch some snooker, I know that’s not very intellectual but that is all I can manage. Tesco rocks up adn tries to reverse down our narrow drive, there is always one tosser that has no sense of distance or width. As usual he ends up parking outside on the road like everyone else that has a brain. As my partner is on the computer taking a work call I get to have all the fun of unloading and filing the family’s food. Of course, I hide stuff, wouldn’t be fun if I didn’t. My eldest daughter returns from work as I begin to think about training, it’s getting dark and cold and I am tempted to rest, but cancer doesn’t rest and neither does Rocket. I get into my kit and go to the garage. I really do not feel like it. It is a half hour session at my usual resistance level. I do it and it is okay, at least it is done.

I return to the lounge to recover and as I sit, I start to draft the blog. I can feel myself being spoonless and drifting into the night. I shall don my Merlin robe and watch rugby and whatever else takes my fancy before wandering off to bed and hopefully sleeping. There will be meds and more pain killers to see me on my way to the ocean.

Saturday and the day is mainly rugby in all its forms. I watch the first game at 7 o’clock with coffee and bacon sandwiches. Everyone in the household goes out to do things like have their hair done, shop for Christmas or go to the gym. In between rugby games I set about mending the broken greenhouse. After a lot of juggling and replacing joints and connections the greenhouse is retuned to a good condition. It no longer leans or dips and contains the plants I am hoping will be ready for the Spring. Another tick on my to do list.

My youngest daughter who is visiting overnight returns from her shopping in town. She has bought us a present for the Christmas tree, which I instantly love. There will be a tree soon to be decked and these new additions will be right up the front of it.

There is more rugby and then as the sun goes down and the temperature dips, I force myself to change into my training gear, and head for the garage. I can only contemplate a half hour session on the rower and start out at a slow pace. As it turns out I manage to burn 400 calories.

I recover and slip into my Merlin robe to watch Strictly. It’s clear to me who should go, I hope there is justice this week. I finish watching SAS Rogue Heroes and then return to Match of the Day to watch my Brentford beat Manchester City with their first away win. I go to bed with a headache from too much screen time today.

Sunday, the household doesn’t wake up until gone 11 o’clock. I go and weigh myself as it is my Sunday truth slot. I weigh in at 97.8 Kilos. It’s a gain of 0.9 kilos, which after my week, that included time in York and a couple of missed training sessions, I am not surprised. All I need to do is focus and let Rocket do his work next week. There are warm drinks and conversation before I finally get up for breakfast. In an effort to get out my partner and I go to the garden centre to top up our vegetable and fruit. While there we wonder around looking for Christmas present ideas. We are not successful, but I do buy my festive ear stud collection to go with my Xmas jumper. Not classy but fun. My plan is to change my festive stud depending on my mood.

My partner and I move on to the next garden centre, known by us as Hagrid’s, where I buy more peanuts for the squirrels who are being very busy at the moment as autumn begins to bite. Once home I refill the bird feeders and the squirrel feeder that has been emptied quickly over the last two days. I also check Fort Hog and fill up the food bowl again. I am still not sure that it’s not next doors cat that is stealing the food. When everything is refilled, I take time to check the garden camera and I am pleased to find more pictures adn videos of the hedgehog on the night of the 10th-11th of this month, so the hog has not hibernated yet. My partner and I spend time ordering Christmas presents for family members and trying to make inroads to Christmas planning. The evening approaches and after tea we ready ourselves for the Strictly results show. The rest of the evening will pass with a Tesco order check and I will continue to take my pre-emptive pain killers in anticipation of tomorrows injection. Yep, it’s that time of month again. I have had the luxury of an extra week on this cycle as I forgot to order my drugs for last Monday, which made my trip to York far more pleasurable than it would have been.