Thursday and I wake up groggy. Just occasionally my meds give me a less than a good night. I find getting up and getting going is the best thing to do although I tend to be pretty antisocial for a while till I come round. I have breakfast with no idea what I am going to do today. I check my messages and emails, responding where appropriate and then turn my attention to money. Since re-retiring I am adjusting to a limited income and so I am keeping track more closely on how I am spending it. Of course there is all the regular stuff but then there are the fripperies of life that are the little treats and indulgences that get summed up by “because I am worth it”. Of course this moment is not good as I feel as if I am about to be sucked into the Game of Thrones.

In the middle of another extreme heat warning and threats of a hose pipe ban, not to mention emptying reservoirs and the idiosyncratic shortages brought about by Brexit, the war in Ukraine and the positively rude glee of BP share holders one cannot help to wonder just what this winter is going to be like. Although whatever it is going to be, it’s going to be bloody expensive. Cancel Christmas is high my list of remedial actions. Suddenly Scrooge seems a more appealing character. As soon as I can figure out how to give up food and grow a fleece the better. I have a feeling reading by candle light might come back into fashion, or sleeping all the hours of darkness and confining activity to daylight hours might become the fashion. Anyway having completed the mildly depressing sums and attendant reflections its time to wander down to the chemist to pick my monthly meds. My partner and I collect fruit and a paper, which has risen in price by 10p. Based on 5 days a week that’s and additional £26 a year on top of the already total of £208, that’s £234 a year for a newspaper Monday to Friday. I can get the quick cross word on line for free and a book of 300 Picturewits puzzles for £9.99, its all I buy the paper for! So by ditching a daily paper I will save over £224 a year. Right, it looks like Christmas might be back on. Any way my partner and I return home and eat lunch on the patio. I do the puzzles in the paper that I will no longer be getting and then think about what to do in terms of training for the day. Its hot so in typical fashion I decide to row for an hour in the garage. As a concession to the heat I dig out my old Midlands Masters athletics vest and wear it to train in. I set the resistance to my lower level and set off. To my surprise it goes well with me managing to get over 14 kilometers and burn over 900 calories.

So being extremely hot I get out of my kit and wrap myself in a towel and go to put my washing in the machine to find myself face to face with the garden guy who had come early today. So I end up paying him and discussing next weeks work with him while hoping my towel does not abandon me. Eventually I am free to slip into something more hot weather friendly and less likely to embarrass me. I start to draft the blog, which goes well for a while until my laptop goes dead on me. I switch it off and go and hang my washing out in the mistaken belief that all will be well when I switch it back on again. Not a chance it is clearly ill so I continue on my back up laptop. So here we are heading into the evening, pasta ahead and then I suspect I am going to be knee deep in laptop guts and the mysteries of dodgy software and faulty hardware. So no shortage of things to keep me occupied. So this is re-retirement. It is exactly 8 weeks since I re-retired, it is time to take time to reflect on my first two months of idleness. Perhaps I will share the results of my reflections.

Wednesday and I wake early so read more of Flowers for Algernon. I always wondered about Algernon and what his story was. There is a bit in the book where Charlie (the hero) sets the mouse free at a conference. In the ensuing mayhem Charlie finds the mouse in the ladies cloakroom perched on a washbasin looking at himself. Now there is a story in that one moment. I get up and have breakfast and then my partner drives me to the garage to collect my newly MOT’d car. It has also had a new anti-roll bar linkage arm put in. So it was a more expensive MOT than I had planned for but it was not a severe shock. It has dented my planned new ring fund, but I’ll get there in the end.

On returning home I cleared the kitchen and prepared for my 11 o’clock zoom meeting of the Elders. Right on time I logged in and joined the meeting .There are techno problems especially for the new member of the group. The persons name comes up and I can hear them but not see them. The name is unfamiliar but the voice is not. Not until video comes on line do I realise that I know this person but by a different name. So there is story in there as well but there is no time to explore it. The group discuss its recent meeting with people from the Ukraine, its contribution to a conference and a book project. One or two people fall away before the end. Its lunchtime so I settle down to a dish of soup and watch an episode of Lucifer. It was either that or choice of day time TV which included Loose Women and a dreadful bric-a-brac show. By the time Lucifer was through another episode I was ready to go to the gym to swim. On the way I filled the car, still a shock to the lower half of the wallet, and then checked the tyres.

So long since I swam and lowering myself into the pool was interesting, but once in I swam. My body was a bit taken by surprise having had its arse firmly parked on a rowing machine lately but it adapted quickly and the pixies soon had the right levers pulled so enable me to crawl and straight leg breast stroke a few lengths. I spent some time playing sea creature by floating about a bit and then had a few lengths walking up and down. I also did a few repetitions of holding my breath under water just to see what my lung capacity was like. The results were not encouraging but will get better with practice. Ten minutes in the steam room and then I was ready to shower. Always a tricky time now, the men’s changing room. With long flowing white hair and a pair of adolescent tits courtesy of the cancer killing hormone suppression treatment I have anxieties about be identified of one of the those new fangled women with cocks. So I tend to get changed quicker than I used to and head off home not stopping for coffee.

Once home I hang out my towels and togs to dry and then settle down to draft the blog. My partner and I are meeting friends to eat tonight. We have managed to book a table on this glorious sunny day for the establishments “Pie and Pizza Night”. I guess a Caesar Salad might be hard to come by.

Tuesday and I wake early and read for an hour. More of Flowers for Algernon. I get up and have breakfast and go to the Shed. Its sunny today and the Shed is warm but I still light my scented candles. I write a letter and spend quite a lot of time starring at my garden. Once finished I walk over to the post box and send my letter on its way. Its hot and getting hotter. My partner makes me a bacon sandwich for lunch and we sit on the patio and chat. My eldest daughter is there as her train had been cancelled, so she had returned home and visited her favourite cockatoo at the local bird garden. I tried to ring my sister again but got no reply. I rang the garage to find out how my car was doing on its MOT. Failing was the reply, a coupling on my suspension had come loose. The garage is getting in the part.

My afternoon starts with some home work for the meeting at 2 o’clock. I browse the internet and look at some documents until I feel that I know enough to attend the meeting with an idea of what is going to go on. In setting up for the meeting I find two poems that I had recently written and forgotten about. One of them was written on the day I re-retired on the 16th of June. It made me realise that it has only been almost seven weeks since I re-retired. It seems so much longer. The other poem was written on the holiday just before I re-retired and as I was going down with COVID, although I did not know it at the time. I typed the poems up and added them to my “All I Have” collection, with them becoming numbers 339 and 340. For what its worth here they are.

Like sitting by the pool 
No sun
No waves
No laughing children
Or ice cream cones.
This is Windermere
Twinned with Sparta
As its babies die
On wooded hill sides
In the depths of June.
This is COVID meets BREXIT
This is empire alone,
A commonwealth of cold.
This where I sit
Balconied and over looking
The memories of sun
And welcome on the continent,
Now the fog of Englishness
Cuts us off
But still the bulldog
Gums its defiance
At bears it used to bait.
This is where in my woolly 
I make my stand.

								5-06-2022 
								The Lakes, Windermere
								339

I am alone in my garden
Sun on my back
The air still.
This is my last day 
No more employment,
Being useful
Making a difference.
Today I stop being, 
A forensic psychologist,
Professional
Expert.
I am alone in my garden 
With days to fill
A brain to feed
And all the fears
That stopping brings.
There is no me out there
No place in this world,
So this is it.
I am alone in my garden
Somehow the words are sticky,
The ink blotchy
The flow difficult.
There are ghosts in my garden
And fears budding,
Flowers going over.
A noisy neighbours mower.
I am alone in my garden.
									16/June/2022  340

At two o’clock I log into my Zoom link and find myself with about 50 other people, many Ukrainian, some colleagues from the Elders group and a lot of people from all over the world. The meeting is an update and information gathering event in order for the host organisation to form a task force to support children and families that are displaced by the war in Ukraine. There were presentations from educationalists, pupils and families from the Ukraine all describing their experience and describing what their needs are. There are also videos made by some of the schools in Odessa and Kiev trying to explain what the experience of waking up to war and its disruption to education and life was like. It was a tough watch but mercifully they were short. The problems of maintaining an education system when huge numbers of pupils and teachers have been dispersed either internally or across Europe. The educationalists all agreed that COVID has turned out to be a blessing because they all had to learn how to devise and deliver distance learning and the skills they learnt are the ones they are using now. There were some real awakeners, for example one of their needs is for shelters at the schools. There is also a growing need for resources that can be used to deal with PTSD and the traumatic experiences of war. All of this content came through interpreters. I found it interesting that one of the presenters did so in Russian but apologised if it caused any offence but his Ukrainian was not good. It goes to show just what sensitivities are around. I log out of the event and sit and think for a while.

When I ring the garage I find the car is not ready so it will mean picking it up in the morning at some time. I try to ring my sister again and get through so we have a chat and I am able to pass on the message that I got from the hospital. My partner and I walk down to the village shop and get ham and strawberries before returning in the sunshine to prepare tea. I start to draft the blog while my partner prepares the meal. We dine and as I continue with the blog we watch the end of Witness 3. This evening just needs me to feed the hedgehog and close up the Shed. Tomorrow is going to be a juggle but it should be doable. The good thing is that there is a meal with friends at the end of it.

Monday, MOT day so up bright and early, so early I have time to read a bit before showering, breakfasting and driving in convoy with my partner to the garage, Before we set off I have time to order my next lot of meds as next Monday is jab day. It comes around so quickly. We leave my partners car and return home to await the outcome. The rest of my morning is spent dead heading a lot of the garden, its almost like Autumn, so much dead and wilting. I take the loppers to the fir tree by the house and cut away the branches that are too close to the kitchen window. Finding a space to store the debris before it can be sent to the tip is a bit of a challenge. I realise I might have created another hedgehog habitat. I walk to the village shop and buy a paper and return to the Shed to do the puzzles before lunch on the patio with my partner.

Whilst quietly munching my sandwich and reading The Expectation Effect I get a call from Hammersmith Hospital who are trying to contact my sister. They tell me they are sending her an appointment letter but cannot reach her by phone. I tell them I will ring and send an email. I return to The Expectation Effect for a while and then go inside to ring my sister and to send her an email. Having done that I ring my builder and leave a message about my floor. All I can do now is wait for him to come back to me. The garage tells me the car is ready to collect. I’m hoping that is good news. I take some time to draft the blog until my partner is free from meetings and we can collect the car. My car is left for its MOT tomorrow, I’m not so confident about my car as it needs a service.

We return home happy that my partners car has passed it’s MOT. I decide to train before Tesco deliver. I get changed and go to the garage, get on the rower and set myself for a 30 minute row. Its a tough session as the first one of a new week is, but it goes okay.

The weather is hot and I feel the exertion of the session, so its a quick drink and a change of clothes. Right on the hour Tesco deliver so there is a few frantic minutes of unloading and putting away and then its time to relax. I draft more of the blog and then settle down to tea and an evening of the closing ceremony of the Commonwealth Games and some reading. My last task of the day is to feed the hedgehog.

Sunday and I wake up and read Moominland Midwinter. I make my partner and I a drink and we continue to read. I finish my book. It is a lovely book and full of adroit observation. These are more philosophy than children’s stories and full of perceptions that provoke thinking. I get up and eat a late breakfast, take my meds and then wave my partner off to the gym. I clean the house as my partner is having difficulty due to her damaged tendons in her right arm. It makes hoovering and other task difficult and painful. So while my partner goes to the gym I set about hoovering, dusting and polishing. There is a clearing up and clearing of the decks as I reorganise some things. After a while my nose streams with the disturbed dust and I get to the stage where the world smells of Mr Sheen.

Eventually I can do no more and sit with a cold non alcoholic beer just as my partner returns. I watch the English hockey team win gold and then a mixture of boxing and athletics. I feed the hedgehog having down loaded the garden camera earlier, so I am pretty sure that it is actually the hedgehog eating the food that I am putting out. My partner and eat tea and then watch the final races of the athletics at the Commonwealth Games. It fills the evening until everyone has had enough and I move on to drafting the blog. Its been a truly domestic day and tomorrow the day will start with taking my partners car to the garage for an MOT. I also have to contact a builder about the office floor so the coming week has a work feel to it. So its an early night for me, meds and bed.

Saturday: a lazy start, breakfast, meds and then my partner and I go to the garden centre to buy vegetables to see us through the week and come away with a beach shelter and a new kettle. We return home to an early lunch.

Of course there is Commonwealth Games action to watch, our boys in the beach volleyball seems surreal. I change to go and train in the garage. It is my last session of the week before the Sunday weigh in. I go for an hour at my standard resistance. In setting up the rower I realise that yesterdays session was done on a lower resistance. So today is a real test. It goes reasonably well given I am coming back from a period of inactivity and illness.

I get my kit off, get a drink, put my washing in and find I have two packages to open. I settle down and open my new book arrivals. I am extremely fortunate as I have friends who feed me books, either as presents or recommendations. This keeps me engaged and continually puts new things in front of me to think about. My two new thought provokers are Tove Jansson’s Moominland Midwinter and David Robinson’s The Expectation Effect.

It would appear I am well provided for to survive the end of the Commonwealth Games. I have a growing pile of books that I can read in those waiting moments, like waiting for the MOTs to be done next week. When I check my messages I find an extraordinary YouTube clip sent by a friend to a group of us who occasionally meet to eat together. If you have the time just sit back and enjoy it

Isn’t that just fabulous. I start to draft the blog and move towards evening when I continue to be addicted to the Commonwealth Games but think I shall also read. Of course today is the start of the football season so there will be Match of the Day to enjoy, I can hear the groans already.

Friday, up early and a coffee and omelette breakfast. Morning meds, clear kitchen and off to the Shed to write a letter. I spend all morning writing the letter and tidying my work desk. It comes round to lunch time quickly, so I take a break and have a soup lunch, complete the residential voter form on line and start to draft the blog. I check my visitor numbers and hits to the site. Once again there is an inexplicable spike of over a thousand hits from 23 visitors so far today. This cannot be right and I suspect it might be associated with the renewal of my SSD certificate, either that or someone has inadvertently set up an automatic revisit. On the other hand the servers for the site are in America, so anything could be happening. I will check again this evening but now its time to post my letter and train. It needs to be a long session today due to my tardiness yesterday.

Then its into my training gear and into the garage and strapping into the rower. I set off on an hours row at my usual resistance level. It is tough going but after a while I get a phone call. The wonder of ear buds and blue tooth allows me to answer the call and continue to jog along on the rower. The call is from a friend on holiday and we spend tine catching up and exchanging views on the trials and tribulations of holidays, HR departments, bosses and the life admin required to make a holiday go smoothly. At the end of the call I return to my session and up the pace once again. It is enough to satisfy my exercise needs for the day.

I record the session and change so that I can feed the hedgehog. That done I settle down to the Commonwealth Games while the meal cooks. My partner and I eat dinner and watch some TV as my energy drains away. In the end my partner goes to bed and I draft the blog. Its been a day of plain but useful things, however I need to be getting out and about again before I get too confined to the house. Night meds and bed for me.

Thursday and I wake up to an empty house as both my partner and eldest daughter have gone out to work. I have a mini wave of nostalgia for the old days when people went to work and day time television was a hallmark of the unfortunate and old. I have breakfast ad morning meds and wonder what I am going to do for the day, I had considered a swim and a trip to town to but I decide against it. Instead I clear the kitchen and the piles of ironing before settling down to a cup of coffee and a letter to read. It is a letter from a friend and ex colleague. The letter is both engaging and inspirational. My friend is bright and insightful and has a huge number of activities going on al of which engage her with her family, friends and community. At the moment the direct opposite of me. On the basis of her letter I decide to “do something” and go out.

I go to the village shop and buy a paper and go to the village café to get lunch. I see people hanging about outside and go into the café to order. It is quickly pointed out to me that the “people hanging about outside” is in fact a queue. I of course apologise and in British fashion join the “queue”. This is clearly a sign of my deteriorating mental health (or Rebecca Vardy Syndrome as its know now) if I cannot recognise a queue. I do the crossword while I wait in the queue and finish it before I get to order my sausage and bacon baguette and a coffee. I sit at one of the tables and do another puzzle while my food arrives. I eat, finish the puzzle and go home.

Inspired by the letter to do something I get myself changed and get out into the garden. There follows hours of severe pruning as my water deprived and sundried garden gets cut back and tidies up. Everything has flowered early and gone over early this year so there is a lot to cut back and clear up. The pots are all dead and need to be cleared. I beaver away filling the recycle bin and compressing it down. I am in full slash adn burn mode when my partner arrives home from work followed very shortly by the garden guy. We all chat for a while and then get on with the garden tasks. I leave the garden guy to it and return to watching the Commonwealth Games. We eat tea and then my partner goes to the office to have her singing lesson while I feed the hedgehog and clear the kitchen. I do more Games and start to draft the blog. I’m reading a present from a friend at the moment. Its in fact a reread, which occasionally happens when friends gift you books. My theory is that if friends are friends they are liable to have similar reading habits and therefore there will be reading cross overs. So it is in this case. The book in question is Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon. It is a touching book but predicted some issues related to human engineering. First published as a short story in 1959 and then as a novel in 1966 it was one of the books of my youth as I read it when it first came out. It obviously appealed to my dyslexic self as the format spoke to me.

Tomorrow is a day I need to train and read, read and train. I also have letters I need to write as a consequence of the one I received today. So for now its time to take my meds and hope for a reasonable nights sleep.

Wednesday. Up after a disturbed night, breakfast and then to the Shed. I spend all morning playing with wax, tools, sandpaper and a blow torch. Outcome was dissatisfaction by lunchtime. My partner made me bacon bagel before she went to visit her mother. I watch some of the Commonwealth Games before filling the bird feeders and the hedgehog meal dish. I put out a message to find someone to assess my office floor and its rising tiles. Time to train. I change into my kit and go to the garage to row. Today its 30 minutes at my normal resistance level. I take it steady and it turns out to be a reasonable session.

I change out of my training gear and sink a cool beer, record the session and watch more athletics. My partner returns and we eat dinner and continue to watch the athletics, until she goes to practice singing and I draft the blog.

I’m tired and need to sleep but most of all I need to find something to do out of the house so tomorrow I might go for a swim. The risk is becoming institutionalised in my own home. The challenge is to balance being a hermit and avoiding debilitating isolation.

Tuesday and I wake up feeling groggy, it’s not unusual as my meds tend to do this to me over night. So I get up slowly and have breakfast and settle into my life admin. I finally get through to the Urology appointment line and cancel my Urology assessment, It would appear that the GP has ignored my oncology consultant or the consultant letter to the GP arrived after the GP referred me. After a brief conversation with the receptionist we decide that they should just discharge me. I then set about looking for the company that made my seal ring. I find their website and send them an email with a photo of the original impression that came with my ring. I hunt through my old emails and find the original invoice and ring specifications so I forward those to the makers. I discover that the ring was first ordered in October 2012, so I managed to hold onto it for almost 10 years.

Having sent the email I retreat to the Shed and write letters. It feels odd writing them and knowing I could not seal them as I usually do. I write until lunchtime when my partner cooks me a bacon sandwich. We watch some of the Commonwealth games and then I go back to the Shed. After a while its time for me to get myself up for training. Its not easy, I’m finding it difficult to get myself motivated at the moment. I remind myself that endorphins are good for me and that vigorous exercise is the one thing I can do for myself in my battle against the cancer. I hate it really and resent the fact that I cannot stop, never take time off as, as I have said before, cancer never takes a day off. It is remorseless and unrelenting and I have to be to. It is my only option based in any science or rationale argument. I am aware that at times others around me pay the price as at times I have no energy left for the niceties, especially when people ask how I am. Anyway I get into my kit and go to the garage. I strap into the rower and set it up for an hour at my lower resistance. The idea is to do a steady hour to burn off fat, and I’ve got lots to burn. Its a tough session, my legs complain and the vest rubs the tops of my arms, but hey that’s how it is. It turns out to be a good session in terms of metres rowed and calories burnt.

I finish the session and recorded it straight away before getting my kit off and cooling down. It takes a while and a cold 0% alcohol beer to get cooled down enough to get into some clothes and go and feed the Hedgehog. My partner goes out for dinner which is when I discover I do not know where the second set of car keys are for her car, which means I cannot put the bins out. I have tea, watch some Lucifer and Commonwealth games athletics. I check my emails and find a reply from the ring makers. They have found my original specifications and have quoted me a price for a new identical ring. The price in ten years has increased by 50%. It was an indulgence the first time but will be even more so if I decide to reorder. In all honesty the experience of loosing the ring has been interesting and made me realise how much a part of me it is. I guess I will be ordering. I draft the blog and when my partner returns I put the bins out. So the evening will end with a little more TV and perhaps a read and of course my meds.