Thursday and I wake up late feeling that I have not slept well. I get up and do breakfast whilst watching a programme about sea otters. I idle doing nothing for a while until my musings are interrupted by the postman. Just some cards and the winter Poetry Review journal. I glace through the journal but I struggle to be engaged by any of the contents. Probably my state of mind has more to do with my lack of engagement than than the poetry . I head for the Shed filling the squirrel feeder as I go. I settle into some life admin and my last minute Christmas arrangements. By 2 o’clock I am done with the Shed and get back to the lounge.

I am strangely unmotivated to do anything let alone train so I switch on the TV. What a great decision it turns out to be as I find myself watching The African Queen, one of my favourite films. It is just a delight with Humphrey Bogart at his best.

I am about to get up and do something else when I realise that the following film is Casablanca, another Bogart classic. Of course I watch it, its Christmas and I’m resting, what better way than watch a couple of brilliant master pieces. I settle back down on the sofa.

My youngest daughter arrives for Christmas having driven for longer than usual to get to us, due to heavy traffic. We chat a while and I return to the films classic ending. The start of a beautiful friendship. I check my messages and find some lovely pictures of Castle Howards Christmas festival from a friend. It looks really rich and decadent, so many bright and shiny things for the children to marvel at.

We eat tea and idle over the chocolate Brussel sprouts before watching celebrity Sewing Bee. Tomorrow starts Christmas in earnest with the early morning collection of the Turkey and other Christmas flesh. What will follow is the entertainment of me trying to get everything into the fridge. After that I need to catch up with a decent training session. Its really good to have my youngest daughter home for Christmas, its a shame her partner cannot be with us but we will put our energies into having an indulgent and restful time.

Wednesday, its about 9 o’clock and I ease myself out of bed and throw on some clothes. Breakfast next of course and morning meds. I put a load of washing in and attend to the various post that arrives. A parcel from my sister arrives safe and sound so I send her an email to let her know. Its a morning of bits and pieces. A friend has sent me a letter and a surprise present which I of course read over a cup of coffee, one of the true pleasures of life. By lunchtime I am ready for soup and feel a little more energised.

My partner goes to visit her mother and I start my afternoon jobs. Having hung my washing out I retrieve the camera from the garden adn check to see if it has captured anything worth a look. I discover that putting a baseball cap over the top of it to ward of water from the lens has backfired on me. The day time functions have worked but there is not a singe night capture. So all that I have is squirrels, wood pidgeons and next doors cat. I return the camera to the garden minus the baseball cap. Tomorrow I will check to see if the night function is working again. I change to train. Its a real pain in the arse having to change clothes so many times in a day when training, I understand why some people seem never to get out of their track suits. Of course some peoples fashion sense goes any further but I guess you just blag the fitness line. Any way I get into the garage and settle on the rower, today is going to be 30 minutes at a higher resistance level as I have Tesco delivering between 4 and o’clock. I get my ear phones in and on and start my row. It goes okay and I burn 400+ calories.

I change into my evening slob about clothes that tonight includes a Scottish ice hockey jersey and wait for Tesco to deliver. They rock up early so I have the joy of doing the unpacking and storing away. I send back the “all steak pie” that some one thought was a reasonable substitution for a pork pie but tidily store everything else. Once done I do a stock check of the reserve larder where I squirrel away some emergency supplies. Its not a doomsday bunker sort of thing more a sensible laying in of the stuff we use a lot of. Admittedly I sometimes screw up when I am ordering and include a “just in case” purchase that I know is going in the reserve larder. This is why I find we have three jars of marmalade. At least we are well sorted if Paddington visits.

My partner returns from her mothers and finds me starting to draft the blog. We will eat to tonight and watch the Sports Personality of the Year followed by Vienna Blood by the end of which I shall be knackered and need my bed. I am beginning to worry that the gift I have order from America is not going to arrive, which means I might be last minute Christmas shopping in person in real shops. That could be a real challenge. From what I can gather all my friends are experiencing pre Christmas perturbations in their plans or reaching a crescendo of preparation that is demanding high levels of spoon expenditure. I suspect that once Christmas arrives there may well be a lot of napping going on to recover.

Tuesday and I am awake early after a poor night. I check my social media and emails and get up to a coffee. I pack my gym bag and set off. This is a result of yesterday’s conversations about varying my exercise and making an effort to have a less sedentary life style. I arrive at the gym already in my gym gear and head for the gym floor and a cross trainer. I am being cautious and set the machine to do half an hour at level 11. After 35 minutes I have shed 361 calories (not as efficient as the rower) and gone 3.63 kilometers. Having worked my legs I work my way across the upper body gym machines till I can do no more. I retreat to the warm showers and have a long and free shower. In the lounge I have coffee and a bacon and egg roll as I check my phone. The friend I was going to have coffee with in the afternoon can not make it so I have the afternoon free again.

On the drive home I fill the car and check the tyres, so that’s done for Christmas now. Once home I put the recycling bin out and have another coffee. A friend messages me to say that she and one of her daughters are seeking refuge in the local library as builders continue to make their home difficult to cook in. It would seem these builders are confirming the stereotype of being shaky on project planning and deadline meeting. I unpack my kit and then retreat to the Shed filling the squirrel feeder as I go. I write a couple of brief letters and then try to write the poem that was trying to get out while I was on the cross trainer. There are moments when things come but allude being put into words straight away. I finally get the thing down and in a form that feels right. The music was loud in my head so the poem should be to. I might give it to next months Stanza meeting to talk bollox over. Halfisch means shark in German.

AS I PRESS ONE FOOT
AFTER ANOTHER 
IN THE GYM 
I SENSE THE RHYTHM
THAT TOOK ME,
MARATHONED ME
AND TOLD ME
YOU’RE ALIVE.
I REACH FOR THAT FEELING
LIKE A LOVERS ARMS AROUND ME,
I NEED SALVATION
AS I FIGHT 
TO STAY ALIVE.
I STRIDE ON
RAMMSTEIN LOUD IN MY EARS
HALFISCH
HALFISCH
HALFISCH
DRIVING ME 
PERPETUALLY MOVING
TO STAY ALIVE,
I AM AFRAID IN THIS STRUGGLE.
HALFISCH
HALFISCH
HALFISCH
IN DER TIEFE ES EINSAM
IN THE DEEP IT IS LONELY
SO DIE TRANEN SIEHT MAN NICHT
SO NO ONE CAN SEE THE TEARS.

I clear the Shed and return to the house before popping over to the post office to send my letters. I have no idea when they will arrive with the state of the post as it is at the moment. As I return an Amazon man delivers several packages, one of which is for me. I whisk away my package and immediately wrap the contents for Christmas. I am still waiting for one important present to arrive but as it is coming from America I am not holding out much hope of getting it by Christmas. It was supposed to be here by today. I settle down to write the blog as my partner finishes work for the day not feeling well. We eat early and ease ourselves into the evening which will be short as we both need to get some much needed rest.

Monday and I wake groggily. I sort my social media and emails out till my partner brings me a coffee. Feeling more charged I get up and do breakfast and morning meds before starting on the pre Christmas tidy up. There is all the recycling of packaging to do and the returning of the Christmas decoration storage boxes to the loft before the house tidying can happen. There are bins to empty and rooms to be hoovered. Along the way I put washing away and also return to the loft to store some old duvets so that our last duvet can be stored in a bedroom cupboard. All of this takes me to lunchtime when I share soup with my partner.

Post lunch I wrap more presents and redo my to do list as I am still waiting for some things to arrive. The post arrives and to my surprise I get a card from a friend without a stamp on it. No one asks for money or points it out so I just assume that the disenchanted postal workers just let it go. Apparently it was sent quite a while ago so maybe the posties were being kind. There are some quick discussions about coffee, which leads to some research and a bulk buy, followed by an impulse buy as a surprise Christmas present. Finally it feels as if things are shipshape enough for the run into the festive season.

I clear some tools and odd bits of household stuff into he garage and notice a plastic bag with the broken bits of Minnie and Micky Mouse. These trinkets were brought back from Disneyland when we visited Florida a few years ago, unfortunately they did not survive the fall they took from the dresser some months ago. So in a the same festive spirit that saw me hang up the advent calendar and put the wreath on the door, gluing some loose fir cones back in place as I did it, I decided it was time to return Minnie and Mickey to wholeness. I’ve watched the Repair Shop, so I feel well able to undertake the task of gluing Mr and Mrs Mouse back onto their feet and reattaching Mrs Mouse’s hand. I gather together the required tools and set to work, starting by taping their feet to a board. The ceramics woman in the Repair Shop would be proud of me. I glue, hold, glue again; should have been more patient, but eventually get Mr and Mrs standing again.

I set about touching the couple up and deploy my artistic skills with a bit of acrylic paint and my pallet. It seems to go reasonably well. I am impressed by the way the acrylic paint pallet has kept the paint soft over such a long period of time. It was a good investment.

The happy couple will spend a night in recovery and then, providing they are fully dry and recovered they will be rehoused on the dresser, where hopefully, they will remain safely for many years to come. So a happy end is in sight. I clear away the tools and return them to the Shed. By now my partner has finished work for the day and the evening looms. I have a coffee and start to draft the blog. The evening could be tricky, no more football, no more Strictly, no more Happy Valley (what a misnomer that was), no more Strike, so he hunt for entertainment is on. I may peruse my book shelves and see what has eluded me or we might scroll through Netflix, i-player, ITVx, Prime video or even the radio times. I’ve already had a look at Christmas on TV, no Dr Who special, that’s it then Christmas is going to rely on someone giving someone else a jigsaw of fiendish difficulty or we all go mad and play a marathon game of Monopoly. However tonight goes I will not have trained but the house is relatively tidy.

During the day a friend tried to call, (the one who forgot the stamp), which I missed but she did message me to remind me that my screen saver at work was “Under No Circumstances Buckle”. My partner has also nudged me towards considering new options in my diet (Hairy Bikers cook books are strategically left with me) and to also consider putting more variation into my training by reintroducing some weights work. This is probably a good idea as it means that I may venture the gym more often. I shall give this serious consideration and might even visit the gym tomorrow morning. The free shower in a warm club might just be the incentive I need right now.

https://youtu.be/VErKCq1IGIU

Sunday and I am glum. Despite an interesting Stanza meeting and an enjoyable meal with friends last night I am glum. I’ve just weighed in. My scales tell me I am 96.9 kilos, that is an increase of a 1 kilo this week. This is terrible. I’ve been trying so hard to eat sensibly and to exercise. My belief has always been that if I cut out the sweet stuff and some of the starch, combined with exercise I lose weight. It appears that at the moment I am wrong and need to think again. I go thorough my training/diet journal and try to identify what I can do differently. No honey on the muesli, less bread (not that there is a lot), no more non alcohol beer as I suspect it has more sugar in it than I think, no more dried fruit snacks, no more occasional crisps. On the training side I need to do more and up the intensity providing this does not make me piss blood afterwards. The real problem is, I think, that my life style is too sedentary. I am not getting out much, despite yesterdays trips and walking to the shop occasionally. Its a Catch 22, I have less energy to spend but unless I spend more I will not lose weight. It requires another act of will, it requires me to remain steadfast in my Rocket phase strategy until my next oncology review in January. This whole position is against the backdrop of my latest blood results which were equally gloom inducing. The basic sense is that there is less I can control or influence without greater effort which is increasingly difficult to muster the energy for. This is the truly insidious nature of my cancer, it never rests, never takes a day off and grinds away remorselessly. There is no winning only delay, a rear-guard action. The temptation is to say fuck it and just indulge, a capitulation, total surrender and go down drunk, drugged and defeated. I can’t do that. I promised myself that I would do this with dignity, determination and dialogue. So although I’m not sure what the immediate solutions are I will continue to look for them and think and feel my way through this. Onwards.

Today is world cup final day. I shall watch of course but I am not “gripped” by the prospect. All this before breakfast and before taking my partner a warm drink in bed. On the brighter side (literally) I have replaced batteries in the light up festive rabbit and stag that sit in our window as we get Christmassy. So starts this Sunday, just another day in the journey.

My partner and I breakfast and then head for the garden centre to buy vegetables and meat. We also pick up some extra Christmas fripperies before heading home to yet more coffee and a mince pie. We face time our youngest daughter and catch up with arrangements. Its then time to settle down to watch the world cup final.

Well what a final. The best I’ve seen in all my years. I think the best team won. The French almost did not turn up at all and only got into it at the end. Like many others I am pleased that Messi finally got to win the world cup and step out of the shadow of Maradona. It was a breath taking game and kept me absorbed the entire time.

There is just time to eat tea before I move onto the first episode of His Dark Materials. I discover that all the episodes are on i-player, which means that at some point I might binge it. Tonight I confine myself to the first episode only as my partner and I need to catch up with the final of Strictly, which we missed last night due to being out with friends All day we have avoided knowing the result. We watch and are collectively pleased with the outcome.

Tomorrow is the day to pack away the Christmas decoration storage boxes back in the loft and to get the house straight for Christmas. The tricky bit is getting myself up to Rocket standard and to start the grind again. Its back to going forward and seeing what happens. Then of course there are the last minute Christmas cards and letters. For now I fill my drugs wallets, take my night meds and go to bed believing that I can Rocket again tomorrow.

Saturday. Blood results are in. Came in at midnight Friday night. One look and it says everything, PSA still rising and now my Creatine and Urea levels are rising as my eGFR is falling. Kidney shit basically. Functional but not going in right direction. So Saturday starts with printing off my results, colouring them in, contemplating them and digesting them.

Nothing to be done except drink more water and move on. I draft the blog with the results, make warm drinks and return to bed to share the results with my partner. Then it will be time for breakfast, dress the Christmas tree, go to the poetry Stanza this afternoon and dine with friends in the evening. I’m not feeling that jolly but fuck it what are the options? I can’t drink or fuck so my basics have gone so it will all have to be everything else, and there is a lot of that. These are my first thoughts, I’ve not had time to think about my second and third thoughts yet, they will come in time, until then; onwards.

Friday and I am awake at 7 o’clock. There is warm coffee and thoughts of going for my bloods to be taken. I check my social media and find others are awake and planning their days. One brave person is going to a Ukulele concert. My Pixies shudder at the thought and move on.

Too early in the morning for me and my pixies, how long did you last, now imagine this being played by small children. My friend is very brave, but when its your child up there doing it, it is something different. Ah the happy memories of all those school nativity plays and concerts. My own daughters were of course spectacularly brilliant. Anyway I am slow to rise but eventually I find myself dressed, huddled up in warm outdoors wear and walking to the GP surgery.

I enter the surgery with mask on and sign in, taking a seat in the waiting area. My name gets called and I look up to see the receptionist hailing me. I follow him in to the clinic room to find he is going to take my bloods. It turns out he has many skills and it quick and efficient with taking my bloods. Is today a nurses strike day, no it is not, so the receptionist has clearly moved on to pastures bloodier. I return home to a coffee and a laptop that seems to have become agedly slow. So as I try to download more Stanza poems I am simultaneously try to get it to run faster. I give in, run some clean up software and move to my other laptop to start the blog for the day. At 11 0’clock I decide its time for breakfast.

Fried egg sandwich sees me right, washed down with coffee. I set about defrosting the cars as my partner is off to the physiotherapist this afternoon. I download some more poems and prepare for tomorrow. When my partner returns my eldest daughter and I drive off to the garden centre to get a Christmas tree. It does not take long to select a tree as they are all labelled with their height and price. Actually we don’t bother with the measurement thing I stand by them and we find one that is slightly taller than me to accommodate Red Sonia our traditional red fairy. The attendant nets the tree and we push off to the tills to pay. Having put the seats down in the car the netted tree goes in easily. Back home we store the tree in the porch while I get on with the preparations to receive it. Even after a short while the smell of fir tree begins to permeate the house.

I get to work on the annual Christmas tree light swearing bout. The light box comes out of the loft and I start to unravel the rolls of lights. Its the snowflake ones that are the pain in the arse as they catch on everything in sight. Thankfully all the strings work so now its down to getting the tree screwed into to the base, moving the TV to its Christmas position and getting the room set. This gets done and I start to weave the lights into the tree. Its very hit and miss and as always the effect at the end is random. Once the lights are on I hang my youngest daughters tree decorations that she bought for us as a present recently.

It coincides with dinner. Having eaten I settle down to draft the blog. I am perturbed by the fact that DAY 45 seems to have gone astray although the platform says it has been published. I am hoping that todays blog becomes available or moves things forward. This evening I shall be watching TV, gods knows what, probably Happy Valley, which it isn’t. Whether I stay up to see if my blood results come will depend on how many spoons I can muster. There are more poems to run off in preparation for tomorrow’s poetry Stanza and I need to get some suitable finger foods to take.

Thursday I wake and 7 o’clock and immediately know its a mistake, press my internal snooze button and snuggle back down under the duvet. Two hours later I wake to find a cold cup of coffee by my bed, clearly a kind thought but one that feel on sleeping ears. I orientate myself to the morning and run through the list of imperative things that I MUST DO today. There wasn’t anything life threatening or essential so I settled back under the duvet and read Wintersmith for a while, in fact till about 11:45 when my partner brought me another hot drink. I eventually contemplated getting up as I had not eaten for 16 hours, although I was not unduly hungry. Did I feel more rested? Not really but I did realise that my brain felt fed. Apart from the odd crossword and some poems my brain had had a pretty TV and football based diet of late. It seems to me that I spend quite a lot of time being preoccupied with my physical well being or more accurately how my cancer is going/growing and tend to forget that my brain needs to feed too. It made me think about friends that I have who are up to their eyes in the Real World of raising families, moving home, caring for loved ones and battling their own ailment and conditions. They are lives packed with do lists that do have MUST DO items on them and that they have even less time than me to feed their brains. Perhaps when I tell people to be kind to themselves I should remember to remind them to feed their brains as well, although I suspect that this maybe the last thing they can contemplate or feel they have the energy to do. Perhaps there is a balance to be had and that kindness is an awareness of my own ignorance.

Any way I finally get up and feed myself a midday fried egg sandwich and more coffee, plus my morning meds. I catch up with the blog having read my post and start my water drinking in anticipation of my blood test tomorrow. I need to be as hydrated as possible to ensure my platelet count is up and my urea count down. It might help my eGFR but I am dubious about that. Of course it will not affect my PSA count, that is down to how active my cancer is and the reality is that I cannot affect that. All I can do is keep as fit as I can and to keep active, or indulge in “vigorous” exercise as “he who made a pact with the devil” put it at my last face to face oncology review. I’m not sure what he meant by “vigorous” as applied to me a 74 year old, but in my training regime getting “vigorous” means I get to piss blood as a result of it. That is my double bind, my body no longer allows me to train as hard as I could do, therefore I loose weight more slowly, loose fitness faster and generally live with the frustration that I could be doing more “vigorous” activity to fight. Rocket is not pleased with this as fighting a good fight is tricky when you can’t go all out. Still after all this time its not a time to quit, so downing a pint of lemon squash I go off to the garage to get a solid hour in. I have today and tomorrow to train as I am out at the poetry Stanza and with friends for a meal on Saturday, which is not ideal preparation for the Sunday mornings weigh in. I am desperate to be under 96 kilos by as much as possible. I go to the garage, its cold, and mount the rower, punch in 60 minutes on level 4 and, with eyes closed, begin to pull strokes.

I return to the lounge to record the session in my training/diet journal picking up another pint of lemon squash on the way to keep my hydration up for tomorrow. The session went okay the acid test will be whether I piss bold or not, it did not feel like I pushed hard in the session so I hope not. Done now anyway so on with life. I change and return to reading Wintersmith. There is nothing of note on TV tonight so I intend to read and have an early night with as many pints of lemon squash as I can take. I might get the results just after midnight tomorrow but it could be Saturday or Sunday. I need to keep my focus and not be distracted from training and getting ready for the weigh in on Sunday. There is however Christmas tree acquisition and decoration to be organised so my next 72 hours could be quite busy.

Wednesday and I wake early and have a gut sore from my injection. My partner brings me coffee and I lay in bed reading Wintersmith until 9 o’clock. I am strangely pleased to find a character called Roland in the book. A prince in fact, that seems apt. I get up have breakfast and set about some life admin. I organise paying the house insurance monthly rather than as a nasty lump sum. The process goes smoothly and I am pleased to get it done. I move on to the outside garden world where the birds have emptied the bird feeders. I refill the feeders and then check the squirrel feeder. The little beasts have completely demolished the clear plastic front of the feeder. I set about making another one from a spare bit of plastic. The job goes well and I am able to fit a new panel in a relatively short time. I am joined by an inquisitive Robin as I do the work. I retreat to the house to put away my tools and start to do other jobs, but I note the squirrel is soon at the feeder and looking bemused. It can see the peanuts but cannot get to them. All it has to do is lift the lid to get to the nuts, a thing I have seen it do in the past. This squirrel clearly has memory problems in the cold as it fails to lift the lid and just wanders off. With an attitude like that this is one squirrel that will not pass the “fittest to survive” test. I do however order more food for it to be delivered tomorrow, so I hope the squirrel remembers to lift the lid or the birds in the garden will get winter fat on squirrel food.

I have lunch with my partner and wave her off to her mothers for the weekly visit and I settle down to update the Tesco order before taking a walk to the shop for bread and then I will be ready to get into the garage to train for the day. I was impressed with the new bus shelter that is being erected outside by our drive. I’m not sure how long it will last in these days of adversity.

I of course dallied over the cross word and pitcherwits which delayed me getting to the garage. My other diversion was to print out the poems for Saturdays Stanza meeting. It is a real pleasure to receive brand new poems and to see what people are writing at the moment. I finally get to the garage but when I get there it is 4 degrees, a whole degree above yesterday. I decide to do 45 minutes at my cruise level and set off hoping for a smooth session.

Back in the lounge I find my eldest and my partner doing things with ISAs on their phones. I change into my all in one blanket and record my session before bringing the blog up to date. Tea is being created and I settle into my football watching zombie mode as I prepare for the Morocco versus France semi final. Once that is out of the way I shall return to watching the Vienna Blood new series and finally I shall retire to bed with Wintersmith. I have not been out for a while tomorrow I need to make the effort.

Monday, what a fuck up today was. My partner and drive to the local hospital so that my partner can attend the endoscopy department for a procedure having spent all of last night drinking copious litres of pre procedure preparation, which tasted foul. I pop her through the door at 9 o’clock and leave her as no “others” are allowed in and go for breakfast in the Cosy Café around the corner, while the snow falls. I am on my third coffee at about 12 o’clock when my partner rings me to tell me that the hospital is refusing to do the procedure because the appointment is not six weeks from the the referral and that there is therefore a clinical risk that the doctor is not prepared to take. So in essence the hospital has made an inappropriate appointment and my partner has a gut full of pre-med crap that she need not have. I’m furious but reasonable, my partner is understandably upset having had all the anxiety as well while preparing for the appointment. Another appointment is pencilled in for the the 11th of January so that will be with us over Christmas. I drive us home, neither of us saying anything.

We get home and my partner eats and drinks some normal food while she recovers. I spend time curating my poetry and trying to decide which, if any poem I am going to take to the Poetry Stanza on Saturday. We drift through the afternoon doing nothing other than tinkering around the edges of living until its time for me to walk down to the GPs to get my twenty eight day injection. Its a locum nurse and its the end of the day, so empathy and care have run a bit thin. The injection is into the right side of my gut today, which is the more sensitive side, not to mention the most “side effect bumpy side”. The result is a fast injection and a quick exit. I go home and stare at the walls, eat soup, and watch the Strictly results and Strike, by which time my injection site is letting me know it is there. In an act of domestic heroism I clear the kitchen, put Daisy dishwasher on and bring the car onto the drive from the road. I add paracetamol to my night meds and go to bed without doing the blog.

Tuesday. I wake at about 9:30 with a very sore gut where my injection is sitting like a hens egg in my gut. I’m not impressed and lay in bed checking my social media and messages. Nothing of import on social media and no messages so it was a quick life admin session. I get up and my partner brings me a coffee as I dress, one has to make the effort. I fix breakfast, empty Daisy dishwasher and clear the kitchen and once again try to select a poem for Saturdays Stanza meeting. In the end I select the following:

ALIEN AT HOME
So once again it is hotel time,
sitting alone to eat and drink,
I inevitably write.
Another to add to my hotel collection
the jottings of an itinerant clinician.
This time there is no observation.
Perception is low,
Caring even less.
It’s a world of fugue,
the downward eyes
the  slumped back
and slow foot drag.
Joy is at a premium,
too high for most
as they scrape the barrel,
come up empty
and try again.
When you are in the jam jar
someone else needs to read the label, 
until then it’s more of the same.
The same gets you the same
until hope is sucked dry
and someone has to be blamed.
Bloody Albanians!!

So as you can see I was in a cheery mood when I selected the above to be my public look on Saturday. To top it all we are supposed to take finger foods and non-alcoholic drinks. Outside in the real world the old plastic and metal bus stop outside our drive has been demolished along with its sibling across the way. They are supposed to be being replaced with elegant wooden shelters. My partner and suspect they might burn quite well and not last long in these cold days. At the very least out expectation is that within the first twenty four hours some enterprising Banksy will have either chiselled or painted a cock and balls on it. That’s the exuberance of youth for you. We wait to see if our jaded view of the community is accurate or not. It does mean that we will have to go and look at the new shelter regularly, which in itself it probably not normal behaviour, but I like to think its an extension of the neighbourhood watch. By noon I am feeling a little more human and draft the blog although still feeling a bit adrift and then something lovely happens. The deliver man delivers a a small bendy parcel and I immediately feel excited and uplifted. A friend has sent me a Christmas book and its a corker, I am immediately happy and know what I am going to be reading in the immediate future. It is Wintersmith by Terry Pratchett, a discworld novel, suddenly the world is a brighter place.

Of course I shall watch the World Cup semi final tonight and the final episode of Strike but Wintersmith will fill the rest of my time, apart from the training session on the rower that I must do this afternoon. These Rocket days are hard when its this cold but this is all part of the medicine and its never wasted effort. My partner returns form the local shop where she hears the Christmas banter. Apparently the most popular response to “what are you doing for Christmas?” is “I’m having my heating on all day”. Says it all really, good old British humour, that’s the spirit. Set the controls to the heart of the sun! I send a book to a friend inspired by my own gift and then I make it to the garage to train. 3 degrees and feeling like crap post injection, these are the hard yard. I enter my zombie like football watching state for the evening, eat tea and survive till night meds and bed.