Wednesday, another day of waking early in order to do toast and drugs before the rest of the family are up. My evening yesterday went to plan. football, Silent Witness and sleep. There was one nasty shock and that was I had not realised how much I had bleed from the canula site when it had been removed yesterday. I had had no reason to look until I was getting myself ready for sleep but when I did I was a bit taken aback.

I cleaned the dressing up and applied a new one, so no harm seems to have been done. Anyway on with Wednesday. I decided that I would try and attend a Zoom meeting with a group that I am a member of. I logged on successfully but became aware that my partner was not well. On checking I found her in an unwell state but wanting to be left alone. I finished my meeting and went to see my partner who was now back in bed and looking very poorly. My eldest daughter had gone to a meeting entailing an overnight stay so I set about my care duties. I took some SATs and rang the doctor to ask for a call from them to my partner, which they agreed to do. Having sorted that I got my partner to do a Lateral flow Test. It was positive so we both have COVID. I reported the test result, which was going so well until it asked for my partners nhs number. It took me to another page and through the same information and ended up saying it would send my partner her nhs number to her email address. I returned to the original web page and leave the nhs number blank and find that the system works with out it. So why, I ask myself, do they ask for it in the first place if they do not need it and also have temerity to send you down a rabbit hole that ends up not giving you what you need straight away? I’m too full of COVID to even guess so I put it down to them being arseholes, which is not reflective but has to suffice given my general state of health and copping ability.

So here we are in our separate rooms, isolating. We are hunkered down and hoping to get through. We await a doctors call and already my to do list is getting longer. I am not sure the hot tap in the kitchen is functioning properly, I have an experimental dishwasher load on the go, the hedgehog needs feeding, the squirrel feeder needs filling as it is now serving at least three new baby squirrels and then there is the window cleaner to pay and the house to tidy. The bin needs bringing in and the garden guy needs to told to avoid us this week and the blood pressure machine needs new batteries if I am going to be able to complete a set of home NEWS 2 measures. These are handy as they determine whether you get taken seriously by a doctor or not, 5 is the cut off for clinical intervention. Due to my condition we have of course got the required equipment to gather this data.

I’ve missed a call from a friend which I regret and I’m being slothful in my communications, I guess this is what happens in isolation. So here we are waiting, I have no inclination to do the “to do” list but will once we have doctored. My beacon of hope is the Greta British Sewing Bee, which I can watch on my laptop and a book of puzzles that are on their way to me. I’ve no creative juice, no insights, just an animalistic desire to sleep and wake up well. I might make the sleep but I know I am a way off waking up well. It is bizarre that for me to wake up well in my universe is to wake up to it being As Good As it Gets Again, and I am back to where my cancer is not getting worse, where my PSA level is lowering, I am able to train, read and write, letters or poems, and garden. Who would have thought life could be so well defined.

Tuesday, my third day of COVID, so much unwell admin to do. I wake at 5:30 very hungry but with a rasping throat. I leave Spinalonga (I’ve named the spared room where I am holed up) and go to the kitchen to make coffee and toast which I smother in honey and retreat to Spinalonga. Here I drink and eat after downing my usual meds plus the antibiotics. By my calculations I can take more antibiotics at about two o’clock. I suck Strepsils and reflect but in the end try to get back to sleep. I wake again at 8 o’clock to the usual working day sounds of the house. I am wondering what I am going to do for the rest of the day, I could like a friend take a long bath and watch Lucifer but I lack the IT water skills to do this with confidence in my current state. I ring the service that is supposed to be shoving a camera down my dick on Wednesday and get the answer phone again. All this and only nine o’clock.

My phone rings. This is a surprise and I have no idea who it can be. A friendly voice, one I understand, introduces himself as a doctor from the local COVID medication service. We chat and he offers me an “infusion”. He cannot fool me I know this a canular in the arm job. We agree that I will find my way to the unit for 11 o’clock. I get up and clean my teeth with a new tooth brush, daub myself with Calvin Klein One and dress. I organise my office bag, adding the The Elegance of the Hedgehog to it. I restore the car to its pre holiday configuration and set off to the hospital. I get there just fine but can I find some where to park, no I can’t. To crown it all I get a call from “camera down your dick” in response to my message. I try to explain that I have COVID and that I am currently at the hospital. There is a torturous exchange and I agree to phone them when I am well enough. All this while I’m trying to find somewhere to park. So in my desperation and annoyance I park the car on a bit of grass alongside another car. I walk to the unit and I am greeted and offered a proper hospital mask, they are insistent that my trendy, vented one will not do. I am seated in a reclining chair and I am immediately back in chemo, same set up. I’m in a dedicated chair with a time table.

I settle in, the canular goes in followed by a bit of saline. My SATS are taken and monitored during the session. Then the infusion of the anti viral protein is added. Of course there is paper work that gets done by the doctor and I sign a consent form. Could have been anything in reality. So I sit and be infused whilst I read occasionally interrupted by the SATS taking. My SATS through our are pretty good actually and apparently I stayed awake the entire time.

I get to 12:45 and I have shown no adverse symptoms, the team have been cheery and efficient and so I am allowed to leave. I have no doubt someone will ask me for feedback soon on how I found the experience. I leave and return to my car to find that a white van has been parked so as to leave almost no space for me to get out. Another example of “white van mans arseholeism”. I rise above the obvious “I’ll stuff you” intention of the WVM’s moronic mind and with deft and adroit skills manoeuvre out demonstrating supreme “up yours” determination. I drive home feeling drained and without spoons. How ever the team at the clinic deserve a cheer, they were very good, so a big thank you to them all, especially the one who got my cannula in first time. Hip hip hooray!

So I am home with coffee, biscuits and water. There are antibiotics to take now and a nap to have. Tonight there is a football match. Beyond this there are no spoons. I settle back into Spinaloga and see how my body copes with the cornucopia of drugs it now has inside it. I suppose its too much to hope for a rare mutation that will give me super powers. I like super powers.

Monday and its time to go home and I feel crap, sore throat, headache and painful back. This is certainly not as good as it gets, in fact this is crap. So we put cases in the car have breakfast, toast and coffee for me, and then finish loading the car. We pay our bill and realise we have been suckered for parking. Its how they get their fee money back when you book through an agency, slimy bastards.

I drive us home, stopping once for a sandwich and a comfort break. We arrive home about 2 0’clock. I assemble the new veg rack, read a letter from a friend and do a lateral flow test as my senses tell me this might be COVID. I do the test and almost instantly the red line pops up. I isolate myself in the back bedroom send out for paracetamol and cough drops. I try to cancel my Wednesday hospital appointment, its an answer phone, some one will ring me back, they haven’t. I wont be going out to dinner on Wednesday either and going to the BGSPD conference is looking unlikely. So my planned re-retirement has gone tits up.

So this is the pits and I have to ring the GP tomorrow to tell him my back pain (possible kidney infection) is back again and is painful. I would like to be optimistic and cheery. A positive Polly Anna of joy and comfort but I am not, just very frustrated that I was giving up work to focus on my health and to get fit again and fight a good fight against cancer but I feel I have been bushwhacked by my body. I hate being ill, all the smells associated with ill health are loathsome and the interminable waiting for the body to get its act together is pure frustration. I’m very tempted just to down a large brandy and stuff it all, but I’m too sensible for that, besides there is a hedgehog to feed, squirrels to nurture and poems to be YouTubed at some point. I shall write no more now and attend to being kind to myself, I’ve got a feeling I’m going to get fed up with myself quite rapidly. Worst of all is the feeling of being a burden.

Sunday and I wake up with a vaguely sore throat and feeling cold, so its the usual early morning in bed coffee. As usual I take my drugs and today supplement them with a couple of paracetamol. Breakfast as usual at 9 o’clock, which means its 15 hours since we last ate. I still cannot face a full English but I do go for a bacon sandwich. We have a quick post meal sit in the lounge but move outside to the terrace where we watch the lake as we are serenaded by a blackbird sitting atop the singularly tall and slender pine in the garden.

On our way to the room I re park the car so it will not get blocked in by the hotels Bentley and then we prepare to go and get the Sunday papers. Today is going to be a lazy pre travel day.

We walk down into the town and find an awful lot of things open, I guess Sunday in the Lakes is a business day. We get a paper, nibblers and a new toothbrush, my standard response to getting a sore throat. Out with the old toothbrush and in with a new one. As we walk along I see the art shop is open, that is unexpected as I had promised myself that if it was open I would get one of the pictures I liked when we were last in. I never thought it would happen. So I went in and bought a small new original painting to go in the collection. Its by a bloke called Bev Mair.

With the new picture safely wrapped we go to our regular café and have a lunchtime drink and in my case a throat lozenge. We amble back to the hotel and sit on the “sun” terrace reading the paper, writing and just looking at the view, that is until it rained when we moved inside. Eventually we retreat to the room to make coffee, eat cake and for me to draft the blog. It will soon be football time and then a decision of what to eat and where. Of course at some point we will pack ready for the journey home tomorrow. So as way of farewell to Windermere here is what I wrote on the balcony.

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 is where I sit
Balconied and overlooking
The memories of sun
And welcome on the continent. 
Now the fog of Englishness
Cuts us off
But still the bulldog
Gums its defiance
To bears it used to bait. 
This is where, in my woolly, 
I make my stand.

Saturday. Breakfast and then a walk into town. We buy a paper and look in at the local art shop. Down at the water side there were queues for the boats. We went to a local pub on the waterside and had coffee before walking along the lakes edge. Sitting on a bench I do crosswords and read the paper. On completion we continued our walk to Cockshott Point where the ferry is. Apparently at sometime developers wanted to do things with the point but Beatrix Potter was so appalled by the plans that she sold over sixty of her paintings to American admirers in order to save it by giving the money to the National Trust. Respect to Beatrix.

We return to town and return to our favourite café where we eat a ploughman’s sharing platter and drinks. By mid afternoon we are done and return to the hotel. Its hot tub time. I bubble away till I have had enough but by then its almost time to get ready to go to dinner. We return to the same bistro as yesterday and get a warm greeting . We dine on good food as England get beaten by Hungry. Back at the hotel we watch TV, I mend my broken watch strap and draft the blog.

Its been a low key, meander of a day. I feel I’ve not done the Lakes justice but as a friend pointed out it takes time. I had hoped to write more than I have but these things come on their own and will not be rushed.

Friday, jubilee Friday and its raining as I wake up in the hotel room to the sound of my phone alarm. Its make tea and coffee time and then a trip to the breakfast room. I still cannot face fried breakfast and stick with grapefruit, strawberries and toast washed down with coffee. I and my partner retreat to the lounge while it rains and I write more postcards, fill out my food journal, scribble some notes and draft some early lines for the blog. Now comes the difficult bit, deciding what to do with the rest of the day and where and when to eat later in the day. What I do notice is that my site stats tell me I had 22 visitors to the site but here were 1142 hits!!!!!This is clearly wrong unless I have a acquired a very obsessive reader, in which case I say to you once or twice a day will do.

So in the end we return to the room and wait for the rain to abate before we go out to town to post the cards and buy a paper. We stop for hot chocolate and sandwiches and wander around a bit before returning to the hotel to nap, do cross words and then indulge in the hot tub. A leisurely afternoon that will lead in to a leisurely evening of doing little except perhaps visiting the bistro down the road for a light evening meal. Of course I need to get my hair brained before we go out to eat.

We make our way to the bistro and manage to get a table. We settle in and are really pleased with the variety and quality of the food. It is a good meal and I finish off with a lovely fresh coffee. We are so impressed that we book a table for tomorrow before we walk back to the hotel and a quiet evening.

Thursday and I wake to sunshine across Windermere. We get up and go to breakfast. I cannot face anymore fried stuff so stick to fruit and toast washed down with a jug of coffee. As the sun is shining we head for the boats on the lake and head for Ambleside. The boat is a slow relaxing way to travel to the northern end of the lake. Once alighted there is a walk to be had to get to Ambleside itself. We plod along until we get to a café and we have a chance to get a coffee and a bite to eat. I like holidays as I get to eat odd things that I normally do not think of, so this was an opportunity to indulge in a strawberry milkshake. We mosey around the town and take some pictures.

Having sated our curiosity for Ambleside we slowly walk back to the pier to get the ferry back. Was laze and watch the lake and the various activities going on.

The ferry arrives and we hop on board and relax on the journey back. Having got land side again I buy some more postcards before we head to a little bar which serves us a cream team. Again we laze before wandering back to the hotel. I have a panic as I am convinced I have lost my wallet, in reality it was sitting in a draw by bedside. Back in the hotel its time for a nap.

I wake from my nap and begin to draft the blog. Over the last couple of days my back has been aching and my gut has been off. Its uncomfortable and of course raised all my old fears of a Jamaica repeat or a reoccurrence of my kidney infection, or worse. However the restaurant table has been booked in town so I get ready and my partner and I walk into Bowness. We get seated in the restaurant and are pleased to find it is a proper Italian restaurant. You can tell this by the amount of arm waving and gesticulation that goes on. They also serve thin based pizzas not the revolting stuff crusted affairs that we (the Americans) have plagued us with. I choose the traditional multi bean soup to start and what a good choice it is. Delicious is the adjective to describe the soup. Its followed by penne al forno, again delicious but huge, I am out faced and can only wash it down with coffee and a free limoncello. As my partner and I eat our way through this lovely meal it starts to rain, hard, very hard, so that by the time we leave the pavements are literally flowing streams. We walk back skipping over rivulets and finally make the haven of our hotel room where we immediately divest ourselves of our clothes and rest and relax to let the food digest. A good meal it was indeed. I continue to draft the blog.

At this point I am utterly spoon less and know that I shall half heartedly potter for a while and then get snared by sleep. I’ve not kept my food diary and not written anything in my holiday journal, where has the energy gone? It feels as if am just getting by at the moment until I feel well again. Activity is the key and I’ve never had trouble with that before at the moment it is an up hill battle to get myself kinetic. Tomorrow is perhaps a good day to go for a swim in the hotel pool. My relatively new drugs continue to give me interrupted nights but the worst of all things is the continuing hot flushes. I had hoped they might die away but they haven’t and act as a constant reminder that cancer never takes a day off and as a consequence neither should I. Its just hard at the moment to fight for the first step.

Wednesday and a simple day. Got up, ate breakfast, wrote postcards ( I just know I’ve forgotten some people) and went to Beatrix Potter World. We queued for ages to get in but once in it was worth it. The children there liked it.

Resisting the urge to buy stuff we left empty handed but entertained. Next mission was to buy trainer socks which was not as easy as thought as the Lake District is all walking and climbing of the serious variety which apparently requires very special socks that cost the earth. eventually found what I wanted at £3:50 for three pairs. So it was time for a light lunch and a sit down, however before we found our arbour of respite we booked a table for tomorrow night in an Italian restaurant. Striking while the iron was hot as finding tables in restaurants is proving tricky at the moment which is why we are dining in the hotel tonight. We returned to the hotel picking up a dozen bottles of water on the way and lugging them back through reception where we picked up our Amazon orders. New water proof trousers and some tools and beads so I can braid my hair. A chaps got to look the part on holiday.

We return to our room, do the cross word puzzles and hit the hot tub. I draft the blog before grabbing a shower and tarting myself up for dinner at 6:45. No idea how the evening will go, but I know tomorrow we are going on a boat to Ambleside to mosey around and explore.

Tuesday and I wake up in a strange place. My phone alarm wakes me with Eric Sarte. We have an hour to get ourselves up and ready for breakfast, which a coffee helps us towards. We go down to the breakfast room, check in and then go at the buffet breakfast. We dine well and store calories for the day to come. A hearty breakfast indeed, so much so we take a coffee into the lounge and sink into large armchairs to relax and wait for our extensive breakfast to digest a bit. We decide to walk down into Bowness but we are thwarted by rain so we delay till it appears that the rain is abating.

We sprint into Bowness and find postcards, papers and a map. Down at the quay we size up the sky and decide to do the “island boat trip”, the shortest non stop available. We buy our tickets and go and look at the birds mugging people for food.

At the appointed time we go to the embarkation pier and queue to get on the tour boat. As we are let onto the quay to get onto the boat a load of pushy Asians who clearly have no idea how to queue just bowled down the side of the queue and barged their way onto the boat at the front, much to the annoyance of my partner who pointed out their rudeness. They of course took no notice.

We board the boat and take the decision to go aloft in the uncovered seats, because we are an ocean going nation and hardy, plus it was not raining. Almost as soon as we let go fore and aft the rain starts, drizzle first and then an increasingly heavy pour. The lake itself is awesome with some interesting sights around it including the odd cormorant diving for fish and young ducklings paddling for their lives. We had waterproof tops and a waterproof over our knees but the small children with a family had none of these and got soaked during the trip.

The trip comes to an end and we head back to the hotel for refreshment. Coffee and a mini afternoon tea is very welcome as it continues to rain heavily. We of course do what any good Brit would do in this situation, we head for the hot tub on the balcony of our room. Its a warm massaging bliss and we wallow for a long time before having a shower and resting.

We laze and slowly get ready to walk into town in search of an Italian evening meal. While we do this I am content that the water proof over trousers that I ordered today will be delivered to the concierge tomorrow along with some braiding tools and beads for my hair. Its rains again and we briefly opt for an in hotel option but as we wait to be served in the bar the sun comes out and we leg it into town. We cannot find anywhere that has room for us or is open. Restaurants close at 8:30 or do not open till 5pm on a Wednesday. Eventually we find a pub with food and chat to a couple of locals about the situation. According to them food places cannot get staff and therefore restrict opening times. The food at the pig was okay but nothing to rave about and the local people we were talking to were no impressed with their food and complained about it.

We finish our meal and walk back in the evening sunshine to the hotel. Silence Witness is on so we watch that and I then go back to drafting the blog. It feels like a full day and I’ve run out of spoons and run on the muscle memory of routine. I shall charge up the Kindle and find something to read till I drift off.

Its Monday and the first day of holiday. We are off to the Lake District, Windermere to be precise. So a slow rise and a leisurely breakfast before feeding the hedgehog, putting out the rubbish and loading the car. Having got sweaty doing the chores I take a pre travel shower and feel all the better for it. My partner collects her prescription from the chemist and then we are ready to play car shuffle and get on our way.

The journey to the M1 is smooth but its a different story once on the M1. There is obviously a problem and almost immediately we are crawling. Thankfully the crawl to the A50 takes us off the M1 and we then get underway. Stoke the M6 is okay and then of course the M6 starts t be the M6, it is intermittent progress. We stop earlier than I planned to get coffee and something to eat. Once past Liverpool things speed up and we get on with it. We get to Windermere and the fun starts. We go round and round Bowness and Windermere trying to find the hotel. Eventually we get there adn ae met at the barrier by a chirpy inquisitor who checked me out before he let us in.

We are greeted and helped to register in and given a guided tour of the facilities. By the time our guide shows us to our room our bags have been delivered. Our guide shows us how the hot tub works and wises us well. We immediately go to the “pub and swimming pool” for a drink adn a nosey around. Every where people are wandering around in white fluffy robes. It seems incongruitous in England but there it is. We go to the cocktail bar order drinks and then eat, drink more and have coffee while we chat. The nice thing about being in a hotel is that you can eat what you want and not be constrained by what is being prepared for the family. Feeling tired we return to the room and unpack and get comfortable. I take the opportunity to catch up on the blog against the background of Silent Witness. I’m hoping for a good nights sleep and a good first day of exploring. I have a clean notebook with me so I hope my exploring is more than geographical.