Friday and I get up for breakfast feeling in “to do” list mode. No sooner than I have finished breakfast than a friend rings on her way to Reiki. We chat about the coming weeks and the school holidays and how that is planned to go. Our conversation comes to an end as my friend reaches her destination and I set about my life admin to do list. It’s one of those lists that is all about paying ones way. Top of the list was settling my bill with the tax man for this years interim payment. This was a straight forward transaction through my bank and then it was onto the car tax. This too was easy via the website. Next came the RAC membership. My quote to renew appeared way to high so I got a quite from Green Flag. I was dumbstruck by the difference. I ring the RAC and tell them that I can get the same deal from Green Flag at a small fraction of their quote and that I am considering switching. I get put through to a person who tries to explain why my premium would be so high, apparently I am on an old contract but I can have a new that does the same at over £165 less. I go for that as it means both I and my partner are covered for any car. I am pleased with my mornings work. My partner actually goes out to her work place and I hang my washing out and tidy the house before lunch. I notice there are some new things in the garden, some new lilies have come out and for some strange reason corn appears to be growing in one of the flower beds.

My afternoon sees me in the Shed writing letters with my new feather pen, which is interrupted by the arrival of my youngest daughter. We sit on the swing seat and chat about how things are and catch up on each others news. She shares her Glastonbury pictures and I share our holiday experience. We are just about through our coffee when my partner returns. I leave them to chat and return to the Shed to finish my letters and then pop across to the post box. By the time I have returned and fed the hedgehog my eldest daughter has returned from work. We sit and chat, I get my washing in, and we decide on an Indian take away for our tea. So in due course I have the pleasure of sitting round the table with my nuclear family and having a meal.

The evening is full of women’s football, chocolate provided by my youngest and then catching up with drafting the blog. I’m itchy inside, that itchiness that comes with a sense of disappointment in the self, the self that has found a way of not training today.

Thursday and I wake late with a growing sense of heart sink as remember todays task to sort the failed lighting circuit. So I have to say I do not bounce out of bed enthusiastically but I do make the effort to have a non fried breakfast of muesli and coffee. This morning is hard going as I listen to my partner doing work “chitter chatter” on Teams as she works out of the office. I gather up my will along side the tools I will need and start the process of sorting the problem. I take out every bulb on the specific lighting circuit and then make sure all the light switches are in the off position. I flick the circuit breaker on the board but it will not reset. I am momentarily taken aback and sit and have a think. I remember that the garage light is controlled by two switches so I go back to the garage and switch the light switch to the opposite position. Back at the circuit board I try to reset again. Bingo it stays in position and does not trip. So begins the tentative replacement of the bulbs and tubes one by one. Every time I add a new bulb I test to see if it lights up. Slowly but surely all the bulbs go back into place and work. I replace one LED that I am suspicious of adn does not match the others in the same array. Finally they are all back and all work without the circuit breaker tripping. I’ve done it, go me, I am a hero especially as the electrician wanted £65 to come out and £45 an hour thereafter.

I pack my tools away and have lunch during which the two new inspection lamps I ordered arrive. If the problem ever arises again and is not so easy to solve I can now light all he areas using mains powered inspection lamps. I deparcel them, fit them with bulbs and then add them to my tool board in the garage. I am feeling pleased with myself and my mood has lifted. I watch a session of the world athletics and feeling guilty at not having trained for 15 days, (7 of which where holiday) I get changed and make my way to the rower in the garage. Always hard to restart but today has to be the day to get back to the battle and to take up the regime of self care and fitness.

I am disappointed not to make 7K but that will come. Crucially I have burnt calories. I change and start to draft the blog before tea. The evening will see my partner have her singing lesson after sometime or not depending if her teacher bails again and I will watch another football quarter final. The hedgehog will be fed of course. Its time to get back to to a rhythm and to get back on track to take my transition forward.

Wednesday and I am up to shower before going to have my feet coddled at the chiropodists. Before I can get underway I discover there is no power as I try to dry my hair. I check the fuse board and try a reset but with no success. Time marches on and I have to leave to get to the chiropodist. Sods law: the road I need to drive down to get out of the village is closed. The upshot is I get to my appointment slightly late. Its nice to sit back and let my self be tended to especially my feet which, although adequately self managed, are never quite so perfect after they have been done professionally. My chiropodist is a lively, chatty person who is decidedly upbeat. Today we chatted about there father’s funeral, which is tomorrow. It was strangely therapeutic discussing how it is good to celebrate peoples lives and how people find out all sorts of interesting things out about people at funerals and wakes. Apparently you can do “pick up and go” as an alternative to a funeral. We agreed that a funereal was more seemly and humane. So I end up with very happy feet, pay happily and wish my chiropodist a “as good as it can be” funereal for the next day.

I get home and cook a fried egg sandwich, drink coffee and take my meds. My jab site from Monday is still sore but I have stopped the paracetamol as it seems self indulgent not to deal with the discomfort without pain killers. Then its full speed ahead to solve my lighting circuit problem. I check the fuse in the shower light that controls the shower fan. I change the starter in the garage light and check all the bulbs. I take the shower light apart and find the securing screws falling out, so replace them and fit a new tube. The light switch plates are unscrewed and connections checked and tightened. I come to the end of my competency envelope. I check the board again but the fuse switch immediately flips to off or causes one of the protected circuits to trip. So we have power through out and lights in the main house but no lights in the extension. Our kitchen is now lit by a mains inspection lamp, with more on the way. I’ve messaged a local electrician and await a response.

My partner returns from visiting her mother with her brother and gives me a birthday present from her brother and my nieces. An unexpected pleasure at the end of a period of fruitless toil. To my delight it is a book on Calligraphy and a pen with nibs and ink. The book is tremendous as it is an instruction book on how to produce different styles of writing. I am really chuffed with it and look forward to start using it.

My final act of the working day, which is what it feels like, is to contact an electrician to get a quote and a date for the work to be done. The evening beckons and with it the England vs Spain quarter final in the euro women’s football competition. I feel an early night coming on and a chance to read some more of my current book. I had a chat with a friend today who suggested that swimming may be the way to train without putting to much strain on my system. Its a good idea and I am contemplating finding my way back to the gym.

Monday and its the start of the heatwave. Its hot, very hot even at 8:30 in the morning as I walk down to my GP to get my 28 day jab. As usual its an unpleasant experience and I walk away with a lump in my gut that is going to get sore over the net two or three days. I go home, have toast and then adopt a Vampire life style. I live behind closed curtains and take a call from a friend who is at Halfords having roof rails attached to her car. We chat about surviving the heat and how much we can manage in it, along with what has to be done. Holiday preparations are going on and occupy us both. After the call I hunker down and watch TV, athletics, The Magicians and Lucifer. I drink water, eat lightly and towel myself down. This is how my day is spent in total until almost midnight when I venture out to feed the hedge hog and set the dishwasher going.

I did do one thing which fed me and that was read the latest edition of the Poetry Review and the Foyles Young Poets of the Year Anthology that came with the Review. The young poets were between 12 adn 17 years old and to be honest I found them more interesting than the adult stuff in the Review. This was for a couple of reasons. Firstly I was intrigued by the content warnings on some of the poems and secondly I liked the rawness of some of them. I am taking a risk and including the one that took my eye most, which probably says more about me than the anthology, but it is as it is.

Tuesday, surprise surprise its very hot very early after a sticky and hot night. I am aware that my jab site from yesterday is sore and makes moving about painful. It will pass and the paracetamol will take the edge off. As I get up I immediately adopt Vampire mode and start my day at a snails pace to include a fried egg sandwich breakfast and a blog drafting catch up session. All I will mange today is feeding the hedgehog, watching the TV and read a bit whilst promising myself to enjoy the thunderstorms tomorrow. In fact I manage to write and post a letter and wash out my ink wells. So roll on tomorrow.

Saturday and its hot, not the extreme hot it is due to become over the next three days but still hot. As a result my partner and I go food shopping early at the garden centre and sort out a mail delivery at the local sorting office before breakfast. After that it is a day of lazing, pulled curtains and nibbling food. Most of the time is spent on the patio under the sun shade reading. The day gets hotter as it progresses so everyone lazes more. The evening is taken up with a meal and watching episodes of the Magicians. Of course during the day there are odd moments of activity like feeding the hedgehog and taking in the dry washing from the line, even the odd crossword but in general this was a physically inert day. I am aware of how easy it is to be irritated when overly hot so I try to be calm during the heat and try not to get pulled into being productive or feeling guilt that I am not doing anything. It is a time to be minimalist.

Sunday starts with a disaster. I weigh myself. I am 99 Kilos!! In two weeks (including a week on holiday) I have put on over 2 kilos. That is appalling and depressing almost despairing. It feels as if I have wasted the last three years in my fight to try and stay fit while fighting my cancer. It feels as if I have to start all over again but with a body less able to fight. To top it all tomorrow is injection Monday so I have a couple of days of taking paracetamol to ward of the after effects of the jab and then a few more walking around with a egg sized lump in my gut that is sore. But hey you say, your still alive, which is true and at which point I count my blessings. I am not in the Ukraine or Sri Lanka and as Cicero said “You want for nothing if you have a garden and a library” and I have both. As I was fond of saying to people who asked me how I was ” I am loved and cared about, who could want anything more?”

Today is already warming up and it is only 8 o’clock in the morning, I’m on the patio catching up with the blog while the house sleeps. I will do nothing today except read, eat and drink a great deal of water. I suspect there will be other things but I shall try to keep them to a minimum as I seriously start to sit out the predicted heat wave. Unless something of great magnitude happens or I have a sudden burst of inspiration I shall write no more today. Being cool and inert will receive my full attention for the next three days.

Friday and it travel day back home from holiday. I am up early and clearing things away. I shower and then I and my partner have a simple breakfast. In the clearing away I break a mug for which we leave a note apologising. We empty the bins and try to leave the place the best we can. My partner leaves a note in the guests book and then we load the car. We have decided to leave early to avoid traveling later in what the weather people say is going to be hot. So at 09:30 we drive off. I decide to stop as soon as possible to fill the tank, which we do after the first fifteen minutes. My plan is to get to Bristol and then have a break. Its a plan I am forced to ditch 20 miles short of Bristol, the journey has been slow with a lot of stop start periods. We have a short break at about 12 o’clock and move swiftly on eating sandwiches on the move.

The rest of the journey is a slow drive with a lot of stop start periods, eventually we get some clear road as we get relatively close to home. After five and half hours of focused driving we finally get home. Before we empty the car we have a coffee in the garden and take a breath. The car gets emptied, I unpack and I get my washing in. This of course means I have to rearrange my ice hockey jersey collection as I need to integrate my two new birthday jerseys. I put all my coyote jerseys together thinking ahead about future videos to be made.

I walk down to the chemists and pickup my monthly drug prescription. Monday is my jab day so I will be taking paracetamol in preparation over the weekend. Its a real downer to be doing this after such a successful holiday. Once back I stow my drugs and set about watering the pots in the garden. Once again I have returned to a garden that gives me new gifts. A few are below:

Early evening and we eat and watch the English women beat the Northern Irish 5-0. By the end of the match I am spoonless and have nothing left. I shall take my meds and then slowly make my way to bed with a new book to read. It is another present from an old friend. E. F. Benson’s Mapp and Lucia is going to be my next book. I am left feeling that I would have liked to have stayed on holiday for another week by the sea. Just watching the ocean would be sufficient.

Thursday the last full day of holiday. I get up and have coffee while my partner sleeps. We make a slow start to the day with a simple breakfast of toast and grapefruit. The forecast says its going to get unbearably hot so we decide to sit on the beach after lunch. In the meantime I and my partner go to post the last remaining cards and get food for the evening. The post box has been knitting bombed.

We collect pasties from the bakery and then buy a paper. Back at the apartment we settle down to a mid morning read and a coffee. Thus we wend our way to lunchtime and more coffee and savoury rolls. A brief rest and then its off to the beach to use our new folding chairs and to read at the edge of the sea. Very romantic, very holiday. Of course there is a challenge; how quickly can I get the chair together from its packaged state to body supporting function. Action video below, note the cracking new ice hockey jersey.

You would be forgiven for thinking that this is a resounding success and for a while it was. I erected the second chair and settled down to read some Proust on the Kindle. Being a fat bastard and the chair being, well less than Chippendale, I and the chair sank into the sand. I moved and once again slide sideways into the beach. I gather rocks to reinforce the foundations of my chair. I ease my rump into the chair and for a moment all feels well and then without any sense of responsibility it tipped me arse over head onto the beach giving out an ominous crack as it went. It had broken. I stuffed the broken skeleton into its bag and found myself a niche in the pebble ridge where I returned to reading. I did not last long before being aware of how nippy the sea breeze was. Enough was enough, we decamped and returned to the apartment disappointed and disgruntled. We change clothes and go for a walk to the “haunted House” and then indulge in an ice cream.

We end up looking over Westwood Ho! from the cliffs and watching the ocean roll in to a high tide. During this time I get a message from a friend suggesting that due to the predicted heat wave at the weekend we postpone our lunch date. We discuss this adn decide that it is a good idea and so I message back that we agree and are happy to met the following Sunday.

A wander back to the ice cream van and a sit down over looking the green to savour it. A final trip to the shop to buy beans for tea and then back to the apartment. My partner sits on the patio while I arrange a Tesco delivery for Monday. A stranger stops to talk to my partner over the patio wall and asks if she and her husband can see our apartment. They own one of the apartments in the complex and are thinking about changing the layout to one that is similar to the one we are in. They come in and have a look around and we chat a bit. They own several letting properties and are considering what to do with their latest acquisition. They seem relatively okay and clearly comfortable with life. They leave and I continue with the Tesco order. Then sadly we start to pack for our departure in the morning.

Tea is a simple affair with the football on in the background and then out of the blue a brass band starts to play. There on the green a brass band has turned up and is giving an impromptu performance. An unexpected event which is very English seaside.

The evening progresses and I start to draft the blog as France set about Belgium in the football. I’ve written nothing this holiday apart from postcards and the blog, that’s unusual but I note the Poetry Society annual competition is open till October so I might have a stabbed at it for the chance of the £5000 prize. I think however my entries will lend up joining my Herod’s Children collection which are all my competition failures.

Wednesday and I am up early as I can not get back to sleep. I do my usual email and message check as I sit with my first coffee of the day. Perhaps time to write the postcards. It is indeed and for a while I pen thoughts from Westwood Ho! to friends and family. By about 9 o’clock my partner rouses after a disrupted night so I make drinks and marmalade toast to get us both going for the morning. I have a bath and for the first time for a few days listen to the radio as I soak.

First activity of the day is to post the the cards and get a paper. This we do noting as we do that today its cloudy and the breeze is quite cool. We decide to slob for a bit doing puzzles and reading. I have had to resort to my Kindle and find myself starting to re-read In Search of Lost Time, Proust’s five volume life’s work. By lunch time phase two of the plan comes into operation, we head for the chippy. There is nothing like fish and chips by the seaside. We order, we wait, we collect and then walk the few steps back to the apartment to sit and enjoy our box of treats. It is delicious and a real holiday treat.

There is feast and there is then the rest afterwards. We laze and do nothing but enjoy the after glow of holiday food. eventually we rouse ourselves and prepare for our daily beach walk. Fully creamed and with back pack full of towel with head off down the beach. My legs, specifically my calfs are aching from all the sand walking that is being done but I know that it is good for me. Westwood Ho! beach is long and flat with surprisingly few people on it. We paddle along the waters edge for miles before we retrace our steps as the tide comes in.

We get to the slip way just as the sea starts to lap up against it, excellent timing. We dry our feet, put on our shoes and head to our favourite ice cream van on the green. Its a pleasure to sit for a while as we eat out 99s watching the sea come in and the streams of people going about their holiday fun. Post 99s we go and shop for strawberries but there are none. My partner asks a guy stacking the shelves if there are any. He goes to look adn returns with a whole tray of punnets. We are very happy. Back at the apartment we change into lazing gear and potter for a while until we feel the call of coffee and a fat rascal. I eat mine as I watch the women’s European football. Between the end of one game and the start of the next I start to draft the blog. I realise this is not exciting but to have a holiday where I and my partner are feeling relatively well and enjoying the weather and the location to the extent that we can do nothing and feel good about it has not happened for a while.

This evening will be more football and a “nibbley” late tea before a relatively early night. Tomorrow come what may we will be having our beach day complete with chairs, books and treats.

Tuesday and I awake from a good nights sleep at 10 o’clock. I am extremely dopey for a while until I have a coffee. My partner makes bacon sandwiches for breakfast before we go out to walk the beach again, full length today. This daily walk is crucial to getting 10,000 steps in each day. Its cloudy today so before we set out my partner re-plaits my hair and then we are off.

We walk the beach and paddle for much of the journey. There is something definitely English about the way we paddle in the sea. There is a certain idiosyncratic way that Brits approach the ocean. Can’t do without it, not sure what to do with it. At the end of walk we make our way to the shop to buy a paper and some more 0% beer. I rest after the walk by doing the crosswords in the paper as we eat strawberries and drink squash.

My partner gets twitchy at siting around and soon drops hints about doing something and proposes mini golf. I’m not enthusiastic but agree. So off we go to the mini golf course. We time it poorly as we end up behind a family of about eight. So our round of 18 holes takes sometime.

I lose by a single hole, I cannot keep up the concentration required. Defeated I need the consolatory ice cream. We go back to our favourite ice cream van and order our favourite 99s. Once again we sit on the green and slowly appreciate the ice creams as we look out over the sea washing up at full tide onto the pebble ridge. My eldest daughter rings and we chat about drain cleaner and disrupted travel as well as the priorities of feeding the hedgehog and putting the bins out. Time is getting on so we return to the apartment and couple watching football with making and eating tea.

Spain versus German is the evenings main match and proves to be a good entertaining game. I start to draft the blog against the background of what seems like an inevitable German victory. Time seems to be flying by on this holiday and we have yet to use our beach chairs and I’ve not written a post card yet. It is a shame we are not here for longer as this feels like the first time in a long time that we have been on a holiday that has been restful.

So perhaps we will return or find another haven to visit but it seems we fare better when we are in an apartment and can look after ourselves. If I miss anything it is my garden and my Shed with its desk and books. Finding time to write and think is sometimes a problem on holiday and it is my garden and Shed where I am able not only to reflect but also record those reflections or convert them into something expressive. However with sunsets like the one above I am fed new experiences and triggers. I still have the Kiss of the Spider Woman washing around my head and all sorts of thoughts about why confined men are characterised as likely to become sexually active with other men if they become emotionally attached or engaged. I suspect the sexuality of the author has a strong influence on this.

Monday, still on holiday, still the sun puts in an appearance and still I do not get a good nights sleep. So its a bed, sofa, bed combination night again. Again I get up early and read. I read until I finish the The Kiss of the Spider Woman. Its a while since I read a book that actually comes to its conclusion with the words “The End”. I know this is one of those books that is going to hang around” for quite a while, I’ve already started to have ideas about it. Not until my partner gets up do we eat breakfast and plan the day. We prepare our shopping list and head out to the local bakery and the general store. We return to the apartment, stow the food and settle down on the balcony to read the paper, do puzzles and for the first time in a long time jot a few notes. For what they are worth here they are:

I like to think that I can learn something when I am holiday, so I thought I would keep a note of what I’ve learnt so far. This is day three of the holiday and so far its been productive. Firstly I’ve learnt that I do not sleep well in a normal size double bed when it is hot. This is exacerbated by the hot flushes induced by my anti-cancer drugs. I am condemned to a menopausal type flushing till the day I die. I think this has increased my personal space perimeter to that of a football pitch. So no matter how knackered  I am at the point of retiring I fail to sleep for a long time until I finally drift off only to wake up quickly after and needing to decamp to a sofa. Here I doze for a while before trying to return to the bed. The outcome is that I get up early and read, which is a mixed blessing.

This brings me to my second learning. I should not read crime thrillers and who done it books. Having spent my life in the criminal justice system and in particular working in therapeutic communities with hundreds murders and the like I have a head full of lifes extreme inhumanity that humanity is capable of. The result is that the made up stuff is what it is, namely contrived. Sometimes its thoughtfully contrived and plausible, usually when kept simple, other times it’s just a hotchpotch of ill-informed pseudo psychological nonsense. There is a running joke in the family that I always know who’s done it before the end of whatever film or series we are watching. Its simple really these are forms of entertainment and of course have to be written in such a way as to be clever or entertaining. There are assumed rules to that, once you know the rules it becomes easy to see through. The reality of murder and serious crime is far more prosaic and human than the entertainment business would have us believe.  

Thirdly I have found that reading some book is exhausting. Not because the physical effort of reading them but the aftermath of them. There are those books that niggle at you and stay with you. In odd moments traces of them come back vividly and pose a question or prise open a door that you think you had bolted tight on the inside. The Cat That Saved Books was one of those but the most recent is the one I finished this morning, The Kiss of the Spider Woman. It is a book full of challenge and with a current of long academic footnotes that act as an invitation to thought along the way. In the narrative the psychological theory (now old and replaced by more rational thought) is played out in a relationship. Perhaps it appeals to me is the setting as it is a prison cell. Perhaps it was the broken night sleep, but once I had finished the book I was instantly tired and knew this was one of those books that will stay with me. Relationships in confined space have of course been a large part of my life, however mine have always been spaces with an intention, the searching and making of new meaning, new personal universes. It is the “normal” confinement of relationships that creates the journeys and universes that everyone lives in daily. Here are the greatest perils, the roots of what makes some books exhausting to read, or rather to live with afterwards.

Fourthly I’ve discovered that when I run out of books, I compulsively write. Either stuff like the above, the blog, letters, and poetry. It would seem that after a life time of trying to understand and make meaning that it is not something I can turn off.

Lunch time arrives as does the hottest part of the day. Its fat rascal time and a cool drink before we prepare to walk the beach. With a bag on my back we walk the length of the beach as the tide comes in. On our return we run out of sand and are forced to climb over the pebble ridge by the lifeguard station and walk back along the burrows behind the pebble ridge that runs the length of he beach. We get back to the main resort are and buy ice crams which we at while sitting on the “village” green. We watch a bunch of adolescence being adolescents, a couple smoking but most of the others vaping. It seems to be a big ting amongst them. They are obviously visiting for the day and like a flock of seagulls rush off together to get on their bus. The leave a load of crap behind, empty cans, bottles and wrappers. We watch and pick out the ones whose futures are already etched in there behaviours. We finish our ice creams and wander off to find postcards. The choice is not great and we end up going back to the “arty” shop to get the best variety before returning to the apartment. Here we indulge in cooled drinks and I retreat to the shady bedroom to draft the blog and fulfil my promise to include the treasures we found on the beach, our version of Caligula raiding Neptune’s palace.

So it is now evening and still hot, there will be pasties for tea and football tonight. Best of all a new sunset to admire and perhaps inspiration to be had. Football: England 8 Norway 0. I put off going to bed as long as possible in the hope that I will fall asleep tonight.