Sunday and I wake up again in the Forest of Dean and I am brought a coffee by my youngest daughter to rouse us. My partner and I share bacon sandwiches with our youngest daughter and her fiancé. More coffee, conversation and morning meds follow. By lunchtime we leave for home as our hosts go off to Wales to the Big Pit mining museum.

The drive home goes very smoothly with no need for a stop. I am proud that over both journeys to and from our daughters that I was able to restrict my wine intake to less than half a bag. A swift coffee once I am home and then I set about unpacking and then reorganising the now emptier unit in the back bedroom as we have delivered some of its contents to our daughter. I relocate the books that have accumulated at my end of the sofa since the onset of COVID and my confinement and loss of office to home working by y partner. I’m quietly impressed with my reading over the last three years. Of course, once I get to the point at which I can do no more immediate reorganising I resort to World Cup football. The rest of the afternoon and evening is taken up with football, doing the Tesco order and drafting the blog. I then relax and settle into watching Wednesday the Netflix Addams family spin off. Its excellently dark and ironic. Filled with dark humour I go to bed.

https://youtu.be/3fRrfWOPSbU

Friday and it is the morning of watching Wales throw away their world cup chances by losing to Iran 2-0 and getting ready to drive to the Forest of Dean to see my youngest daughter and her fiancé. The dilemma was whether to buy wine gums for the journey or not. Having fulfilled the post football chores like feeding the hedgehog and filling the bird feeders I walked to the shop and got my driving wine gums. I had been reassured by a friend that the car was “a safe space” when it came to wine gums. Provisions acquired I load the car and my partner, and I set off for the Forest.

The drive was a good one for the distance with bright slanty sunshine in my eyes most of the way and only minimal delay due to road works on the M5. we have one stop for a pee and then drove on to arrive about 4 o’clock in the afternoon. We were greeted with coffee and time to catch up before our evening meal of chicken and chorizo with mash, a good warming autumnal meal. Soon after we drove to the local cinema, which is an incredibly quaint old-style cinema run as a private one as the owner just wants to be a cinema owner. There are no more than 10 of us in to watch the film on a Friday night. I sat through Black Panther Wakanda Forever for its 160+ minutes with luxury leg room. The comfort and the popcorn were excellent. The film was a disappointing follow up to the original and smacked of a girlie version for the sake of it. Most of the men in the film were portrayed as either power driven Neanderthals or weak ineffectual men, but then that’s a common trend across all media at the moment. We returned home to bed down for the night with me and partner snuggled under double duvets. By the end of the day, I am spoonless having driven so I was glad to get to bed.

Saturday and I wake to morning meds and black coffee. I get up slowly and make myself a second coffee before I join the rest of the household in the kitchen. We have croissants and fresh coffee and plan our day. We decide to visit a butterfly zoo and so we pile into a car and drive to Symonds Yat. We arrive at the zoo and get into the viewing area and find ourselves surrounded by beautiful butterflies. What follows is a sample of my photos and if the technology allows my new discovery of super slow motion.

When we are all butterflied out, we return to the car and drive to the Forest of Dean Heritage centre. We arrive at ten minutes past two o’clock to find they stopped doing food at 2 o’clock. Grumpily and disappointed we return home and eat sandwiches and coffee in the comfort of home. I start to draft the blog for the last two days before we get ready to go out for a good pub meal this evening at the Dog and Muffler. I anticipate an evening of good food, conversation, games and finally bed.

Thursday and once again I wake engulfed by the new fluffy duvet. These days it’s very tempting to stay snuggled down in the fluffiness, however I do get up and sort out my breakfast. There is of course football match on TV but a little way in a friend rings me and we chat for a long time. It was good to have the time to catch up and to compare how Christmas preparations are going. We range across lots of issues for an hour until my friend has to go to continue her progress around the supermarkets. I return to the football match until I get to fill in my world cup chart with the result.

There is more football coming but I cannot watch anymore, my conscience just won’t allow me to, so I change into my training kit. As my cold has stopped me from training over the last two days I need to put in a longer session, so I decide that I will go for an hour but reduce the resistance level by one. I get into the garage and find it is quite chilly and the rain is pouring down as I get strapped onto the rower.

The session starts slowly as I am wary of doing an hour after a couple of days off. I also have a lingering fear that an hour rowing might lead to me pissing blood again, so I am gentle with myself. The session goes smoothly once I am warmed up. Once I get through the first half hour, I relax a bit and then pick off the remaining time in five-minute chunks that roughly equate to 1000 metres. At the end of the hour, I am satisfied with the session and glad that I have it out of the way for today. As I am going away for the weekend I need to think when I can train, if at all and keep an eye on my diet.

I return to the lounge and record the session and sit and stare for a while. I change out of my kit and put my washing in. To refuel I make peanut toast and coffee. I settle down with I am David my new book from my friend. It is supposed to be a children’s book, but it does not read like a child’s book and its subject is very adult and although written in the early 1960s and deals with the issues that surrounded the forced labour camps that held up to 2.5 million people. As I say not easy stuff for children but written so it is accessible.

More football follows as does tea. I retrieve my washing and hang it on the airer before settling down to draft the blog to the background wallpaper off Brazil versus Serbia. In truth I have run out of spoons right now and have started to plan my day tomorrow. I need to train, pack for the weekend and drive down to the Forest of Dean. A busy day in which I will have to resist the temptation of “driving wine gums”.

Wednesday and I wake up under the fluffy new duvet and I am still pleased at the decision to buy one. I get up and shower in preparation for my visit to the chiropodist. A quick coffee and morning meds and I drive to the next village where my chiropodist practices. I park in the local co-op store car park and walk over to the chiropodist. A surprise awaits me. My usual chiropodist Jane has retired, and I am greeted by Emma. It turns out that Jane has legged it into retirement and handed on her practice to Emma. Emma has graduated this year and as a local and a friend of Jane has taken over the practice. She tells me all this as she soaks my feet in magic nail softening solution. I of course grill her (subtly) about how she became a chiropodist and what sort of course she did. She has the scalpel in her hand as she explains the three-year degree and all the placements that she did and what a network the chiropodists have. So, after more gentle prodding about future plans: it’s possible to do an MSc apparently, and to build a chain of clinics, I am done and finished with a gentle massage of foot cream. Back to the co-op to collect pizzas and the car. I return home with happy feet and have breakfast.

I watch a football match and then refill the bird feeders. The birds are hungry and emptying the feeders quickly. Winter is here as the birds have come in from the fields. The squirrels are going through peanuts like there is no tomorrow. The food has gone from Fort Hog so I top the bowl up before returning to the house. I skip lunch as I had a late breakfast and set about writing my Christmas cards. I return to last year’s list and cross off the dead and estranged then work my way through my list trying to select appropriate cards from selection. All my cards are Japanese, I find them less cheesy than the standard Ho Ho Merry Christmas stuff. Once they are all written I stick the stamps on and then seal them all with a gold seal, my Christmas touch. The post arrives and in it is a book. My friend has sent me another book, it is a classic children’s book that has never gone out of print. When I open it, I find this inscription: ” Happy Birthday Ruby. I hope you enjoy this as much as I did” signed “Auntie Vicki xx 26/1/21.” My friend is green minded and always sends me preloved books. It seems apt. I read the back cover and the additional information; it looks like a book I will enjoy.

Christmas cards completed, almost, they will sit until December chimes and will then be posted. Nothing like getting in early. My partner return from visiting her mother and we watch the end of another football match. We have an early tea and I get ready to receive an old supervision client who has asked for some time to process some material. My old client arrives, and we spend an hour talking through the material and thinking about the future. My client leaves and I watch the end of the final football match of the day. Once over, I draft the blog with the intention of retreating to the new fluffy duvet with my new book. Night meds taken I meander towards the comfort of my reading nest noting that I have not trained today and that my cold appears better, so I shall return to training tomorrow.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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