It’s Tuesday and a meeting day for not being an Elder anymore. So, I am faced with what I can usefully do with my additional time to myself today. I think about this after a late breakfast and clearing the kitchen. I open up the green house so my Echinacea colonies can have some sunshine and peruse my garden. I load up the dishwasher and set it going and then embark on my chosen joy project for the morning. I have decided so throw away all the socks and underwear that no longer bring me joy and to empty my store of new “just in case” socks and underwear. It seems my unconscious wants to play “out with the old and in with the new”. I just love it when my unconscious steps in and decides to run my life, its far less anxiety provoking and nearly always fun. So I end up with a bin bag full of old socks and pants which can be junked, and tidy new draws filled with favourite worn garments augmented by brand new, in the packet ones. I also end up with a much depleted but tidier reserve cupboard. The exercise is fun and in doing it a rediscover six brand new shirts, a pair of reserve slippers and a new tracksuit. I am not sure how I feel about a pack of sleeveless vests but retain them against a harsh winter. Feeling suitable happy I start to draft the blog.

I am pleased with my efforts as it means when people ask me what I want for Christmas I can revert back to stereotypical father responses of “pants and socks”, although I will stipulate “Step One” pants due to my liking of the glide panels and comfort pouch. These things are important to a man of a certain age. So, it comes to lunch time, and I have the joys of expectation before me. Will the hog have eaten he/she’s food, will I make it to the gym, will I have time to mend the bathroom light properly if the new fittings arrive and will my single cafetiere arrive in time for a real coffee post evening meal? I am slightly disappointed that there are no further developments in the Blunder Truss saga today, it has degenerated into a media fest of people guessing and fantasising about the future, which is always boring but probably necessary for them to have careers and to tell themselves that they are keeping them informed. I’m sorry to break the news to them that I am perfectly capable of making up my own guesses and fantasies and that they can go and lay down for a while to calm down.

Time to gym. Or so I thought as Mr Amazon trotted up my path with the goodies I was waiting for. So, without any hesitation I set about replacing the dodgy light fitting in the bathroom. It was a straightforward snip off the old one and attach a new one. All went well and now it should be sound for years to come.

So, job well done I decide to indulge in my other new acquisition, my new single cafetiere. I fill the gleaming new pot and pour myself a real coffee to sip as I catch up with the blog. It is all part of working out what gives me joy and fresh coffee, is one of those things. I am hoping that I will drink less coffee but better coffee at the start of the day. As I type I almost get a phone call but for some reason it gets cut out. It’s a shame but life can be hectic and perverse where technology is concerned. Now it really is time to go to the gym, I must get out.

I went to the gym via the garage to check the tyres. Lucky, I did really. The front which should be 36 psi were below 30 and the rear ones that should be 33 psi were hovered in the mid 20s. Once I had got them up to pressure the quality of drive adn handling suddenly got a lot better. Onwards to the gym where I found a cross trainer and did a 50-minute session. I’m not sure how it went beyond the numbers, I wait and see how my body reacts to the effort. As usual Rammstein was loud in my ears but when I had finished and was walking round the gym floor to cool down, I played Bette Midler’s When a Man Loves a Woman. What a performance. I detest the part of going to the gym where I undress and then dress again post shower. I no longer like my body, its fat, misshapen and marked, not something to flaunt or parade in a changing room. At least the shower was hot.

So I go home, update the blog while downing a pint of squash and a packet of mini cheddars. At some point today I ought to eat some protein. Tonight, is a family planning night, (not a euphemism), we are going to sort out our trip to Birmingham on Saturday to see Cirque De Soleil, so there are trains and taxis to sort out plus of course all the other things that go with a family trip, like snacks, emergency clothing and anything else required to deal with the collective anxieties of the day. So, I expect an interesting evening and an early night, but before all of that Fort Hog has to be surveyed and food supplied if necessary.

Monday. I wake late not feeling my best. The fried egg sandwich and coffee do little to lift me and then I watch yet another chancellor scrap a mini budget. The basic message is that our latest prime minister is thick, does not understand the economy and basically is innumerate. I check my social media for signs of life, there is none beyond a passing hello. The highlights of my day are going to be a Tesco delivery and the arrival of a long cardigan to wear at next week’s conference. Doubtless I shall go to the Shed and write and then train at some point in an effort energise myself. I realise I am seething inside although not completely sure why. I can locate some of it as being the aftermath of stepping out of the Elders group. I think it is the sense of being taken for granted and the phrase “familiarity breeds contempt”, rings true to my experience in this moment. Perhaps it is a wider experience. For the time being I will sit with it, write, read and go about my business.

I spend time doing small jobs around the house like fixing the bathroom light and the lounge light. I check Fort Hog and find the hog has not dined. I throw the old stuff away and refresh the food dish. Tomorrow I will check the garden camera. It occurs to me that now is usually the time that the hedgehogs start thinking about hibernating, perhaps the non-eating last night is the start. It’s a tricky time as I have just ordered another tray of Mr Prickles meaty super for my hog.

Jobs done I and my partner walk down to the village shop to get dish washer tablets and so spontaneous buys. Back home my partner has lunch and I begin to think about training. I am not feeling my best physically and I’m still full of my “seething” so I am slow getting into my kit but once I am I drop into my “all or nothing” mode. I hit the rower for an hour with Rammstein loud, very loud, in my ears. I discovered years ago that loud music can surface the unconscious and coupled with physical effort can be a vehicle to confront what is going in the “Dark and Tricky” that lay below the surface. I strap in and row, closed eyed with the music drowning everything out, in this state I let my body get on with the effort of exercise and let my mind roam and see what rises from the deep. It is a state in which everything else disappears and nothing can intrude. I stand alone with myself in the desert and it’s a reaffirmation that I stand on my own without fear. In this space the confrontation between who I am and what cancer is trying to do to me come face to face. Ultimately there maybe only one outcome but between now and then I win the battles in this space. At the end of a session I am stronger.

I emerge from the garage, change clothes and then move the car from the drive so that Tesco can deliver. While I wait, I watch the continuing cluster fuck that claims it is a government. The message is that when incompetence fails there will be more austerity that the poor will pay for. I begin to wonder if this Guy Fawkes anniversary there might be a successful reincarnation. Tesco deliver and I return to the political blood bath on TV. I catch up with social media and continue to draft the blog. This evening I plan to eat tea, watch a rugby match and go to bed early to read. Tomorow is an empty day that will either see me in the Shed or the gym.

Saturday and I am up early and showered as today I am meeting friends for lunch. It’s to be a day when I will wear “normal” clothes, shirt and real trousers with actual shoes with laces. It feels slightly odd. I have breakfast and then walk down to the village shop to get some cash. By the time I get back its time to start out. It’s a familiar drive to the Whinnery in Burton and goes smoothly. It feels like a while since I have driven but in truth it’s not that long ago that I have driven to and from north Devon. When I arrive, I find one of my friends has already arrived, so we sit and chat over a drink as we wait for the others. Two more friends arrive, and we settle down to drinks and to wait for the remaining people to arrive. We get a message that motorway work has delayed the arrival of our friends and that we should order our food and continue without them. They will arrive late and then catch up with us. We eat and chat until the remaining two finally arrive some two hours later and in need of a stiff drink. One or two of the group need to be away quite early and leave the rest of us to drink and talk. There is a lot sharing of how we are and there is a great deal of laughter as we recount the ups and downs of dealing with our relatives and the anticipated frustration of neighbours appallingly tasteless Christmas Garden displays. It’s well past 5 o’clock before we contemplate leaving. We find a new date to meet in December and book a table before wandering into the car park where we say our farewells.

I get home after Strictly has started and settle down to try and catch up. Not difficult really but then it’s hardly a challenge. We watch it to its twinkling, glittery and sparkly end with no particular favourites. We then nibble pizza and watch the concluding episodes of Sherwood before giving it best and going to bed. I’ve really enjoyed my day and reconnecting with friends over food, it’s a very basic human activity that has been good. It reminded me about how fun we are when we are trying to be kind in the face aggravating relatives or trying to deal with natures changes in us. I discover one thing my current hormonal situation has equipped me for is to be able to participate in a conversation on menopause and the joys of hot flushes. I take my night meds and go to bed.

Sunday and I wake up to a coffee and a chat before getting up to a bacon sandwich. There is the usual post breakfast chat with my youngest daughter. There is good news, the new bathroom is completed and even better news, her partner has a new job with an increase in wage. So, all is good with them. For the moment they are two young professionals building their futures together and building their home successfully. At some point we will go and visit them. Having completed our Sunday morning ritual my partner and I go to the garden centre to buy fruit and vegetables and indulge in a scone and a dink. It’s another opportunity to chat about things and where we are. We return home and my partner goes off to the gym, I head for the garden before television beguiles me. I dig up all the self-sown foxgloves in the garden and then replant them in two patches at the back of the front garden. If all goes to plan next year will see a backdrop of foxgloves adding height to the front garden. I am fatigued by the effort but manage to check Fort Hog and replenish the food therein. I tidy away and retreat to the sofa with toast and a drink to watch some rugby and to catch up with the blog.

This evening will see me watching the Strictly results and then drift towards my night meds. In general, it feels a silent day, a day where I find myself in in the Chinese box and reflective.

Friday and I’ve had a difficult night, a nagging headache and the issue of the Elders membership, so I get up slowly and indulge in cooked breakfast and coffee. I wander through part of the morning and reflect upon what my response to the Elders being drawn into an organisational structure is going to be. Yesterday’s email informing the group of the change has rankled me and stayed with me all night. I am obviously irritated, but I try to ask myself whether I am just being reactionary or whether there are good reasons to be disturbed by the decision. I was not consulted, nor were my colleagues, there was no discussion and no reflection. For me that speaks volumes about how the Elders, and myself are perceived. Clearly the relationship I thought I was in, along with the group, was not the one being made manifest by the relationship proposed, in fact imposed. I found myself in a really difficult dilemma given the work the Elders are embarking on in the near future. In the end when I asked myself “did I want to go through the stress of working through all the issues?” the answer was no. I can stay a friend and colleague to all of the Elders outside of the group. My decision is made, and I send messages to that effect to the group. I am too far down the road to take on more, the stress is not worth it. A friend once sent me a card that expressed it in a very direct way.

As I work my way through this, I have the TV on and watch fascinated as the Chancellor gets sacked having flown back from the USA a day early. Then I see an ex-health minister become chancellor and Blunder Truss give the shortest press conference on record. I am fascinated by the spectacle like a rabbit being charmed by a cobra. Is this the reality that I live in. Children who cannot count, do not know how a budget works and for the life of them do not understand that the logic is in the arithmetic. In an effort for normality, I put a chicken crockpot meal in and then try to capture some of the morning on the blog. There is my washing to be put away, the hog to be fed and then I am off to the gym to try and keep my body going. In the midst of all this I wish my grandson happy birthday. Oh, to be young again.

The reality turned out to be me not feeling well enough to go to the gym, so I indulged in some Hobbity tosh before my partner returned from the gym. We eat the meal I put in earlier and then watch and evening of Sherwood, Have I got News for You and the penultimate Mock the Week. My final chores are to finish todays blog, clear the kitchen and then take my night meds before going to bed with a headache. Tomorrow, I have the treat of meeting friends for lunch, a welcome break from the current world of political mayhem.

Thursday and I wake feeling relatively chipper. I sit for a while and check my social media and messages and then make breakfast and coffee. Morning meds get taken and then I’m stuck. So when in doubt do the Tesco order, which I do knowing I will change it on Sunday. With that out of the way I go to Moonpig to order a card for my eldest grandchild. It’s difficult to know what sort of card to go for but in the end I settle on Dinosaurs and a suitably odd set of words in the card. I think he is the sort of chap that will appreciate a strange grandparent from another land given that he lives in Sweden.

I go out into the garden as I notice that a dahlia has flowered. It should not have, it should be over and done with like all the others. So I go out to chat to it and see what is going on. The garden is very still, strangely so, like the time before a storm but there is nothing like that forecast. It’s almost as if the garden is waiting for something. There are no birds and no bird sounds, the pond is still and there is no squirrel dashing around everythign is just standing there, silently. The sun shines ona garden holdng its breathe,and its no talking.

I check Fort Hog and give it a clean out. The food has gone again so I assume my hog is still hungry. I notice for the first time that the big leaves on the Acer tree are not falling and then I realise that my hog wil not hibernate untill there are the materials to build a snug nest for the winter. I replenich Fort Hog and then change into my training gear. I go to the garage and row for 45 minutes, the first time in a long time that I have gone beyond 30 minutes. I abandon my ear buds for my ipod so that Ican train with Rammstein in my ears, loudly. The 45 minutes fly by and I am pleased to burn more than 600 calories.

Back to earth with a lunchtime bowl of chicken soup and orange juice. Feeling a bit more my old self, I draft the blog early. There will be no post for me to look forward to as the postal workers have gone on strike so I make my own amusement. My grandson’s birthday present has arrived in time for his birthday, which is pleasing. All I need now is for his card to arrive as well. I finally get out of my training kit, make coffee and continue to read Getting Lost by Annie Ernaux. I continue to read until it’s time to eat and watch tonight’s football while my partner is having her singing lesson. It will be an early night, night meds and sleep are what I need. My injection site is still enlarged and sore, it drains me.

Its Wednesday and the chicken egg in my gut is sore and painful so I get up latish, about 9am and get myself coffee and muesli. It is a sluggish start to my day and when this happens, I usually retreat to the Shed and today is no different.

Once in the Shed I go through my routine, light the candles, put the heater on for a blast and fill the ink well. I spread my writing pad out in front of me and then stare at it. No one comes to mind to write to in this moment. This does not usually happen, so I just stare at the blank page with my address at the top right-hand corner. I’ve had trouble recently externalising what’s going on inside but there is no forcing it. So I sit with it and see if anything comes up. Eventually I go back to an old habit of drawing my life. For years I’ve occasionally drawn out a sort of life map, with places, people, activities and things. Each one is different depending on what is going on. Over the recent years when I was working there were multiple places but now only one, home and the Shed. I start the process doodling with brush and ink and just let the picture develop. I try to let it just happen and only think about it afterwards, it’s the doodling that’s more important. I just let it create itself and see where it ends up. With my restricted life at the moment I was not expecting much and admit I started out more in hope than anything else. What I ended up with was a bit of a surprise.

I’m not going to explain it as it seems fairly obvious that there are some tangible bits that are easy to recognise but the rest is a bit of a mystery. I’ve no idea what was going on, which just reinforces my belief that my unconscious has more to do with my life than I either realise or understand. I’m just glad I have one as I have a sense that it deals with the things I do not understand or cannot or face in reality. What I do know within myself it is that it will not harm me, it’s part of me and has my best interests at its heart, it is after all part of me. I don’t believe the unconscious gets “ill”, it’s not that sort of process. My partner makes me lunch and I discover that I have post that includes a lovely and thought-provoking letter from a friend who also includes a post card, which makes me smile, so I share it here.

My partner goes to see her mother with her brother just as Amazon man delivers the picture frame I ordered for the picture my friend has sent me. So, I returned to the Shed and framed the picture and hung it above my writing table. I redistributed other odds and ends to make a suitable space and then sat and looked at it. I really like it and share it below. I apologise to the artist if making the work public is tricky but I think it deserves to be seen, it is so evocative.

I tidy the Shed and then drive to the garage to top up my tank and tyres. It’s good to get out and I decide to go to the gym, not for exercise but for a large hot chocolate and to start to draft the blog. Soon time to return home to start the evening, food then football. I bought a book with me but it remains unopened perhaps I will get to take it to bed tonight. The actual outcome was watching Liverpool stick 7 past Rangers, a dismal news bulletin and then bed.

Tuesday, a slow start, a very slow start to the day. I wake feeling decidedly off. I eventually get myself out of bed and make a coffee to get myself up to speed. Once it had oiled the wheels, I make breakfast and take my meds and sit doing very little for a while. Eventually I get myself to the Shed and spend the morning writing a letter to a friend. At lunch time I eat with my partner and find that the plants I had ordered have been delivered. It sets my activity for the afternoon. Accompanying the post was a letter for me from a friend and colleague in the Elders group. It was a generous letter that included both a painting and a poem. It was a very welcome tonic. I have already ordered a frame for it, and it will join the other pictures by the same person in my Shed gallery. Perhaps I will include it in the blog at some point in the future.

In the afternoon I post my morning letter and then I pot up the new plug plants that arrived. They are Echinacea or cone flowers. They are drought resistant and live in north America naturally. They flower from June to September. They in fact form “colonies” which can be divided and re planted as they get bigger.

I’ve just about finished when the garden guy arrives, and I present him with a coffee and a bag of daffodil bulbs to plant around the garden. It’s a challenge to find spaces to surprise us in Spring. I retreat to the sofa, my injection egg is sore and it has worn me down over the day to the point where I just want to sit, so I do. I eat tea, watch a Bond film followed by a women’s international football match. It crawls to a nil nil draw. I draft the blog, take meds, say sleep well to the universe and go to bed.

Monday and I wake up about 8 o’clock and realise it is injection day in one hours’ time. I of course know it is that day but each injection Monday when I wake up there is a moment when I have to realise it. It sets the tone against which everything else is done. So I dress, drink coffee and discover that my drugs wallets are empty so while sipping my drink I refill them and then take my morning meds. I follow these with a couple of prophylactic paracetamols and then I am ready to wander down to the GP surgery.

I arrive just before 9 o’clock and check myself in. My bum doesn’t make a waiting room seat as the nurse appears and beckons me in. I hand over my box of injection and remind her that it’s the right side this time. I point out that this side is the one that is usually the sorer of the two. We make small talk until the injection is mixed and ready. The “sharp scratch” always burns with this one so I lay back and let the nurse pump me full of the stuff and then we check the clinics diary to find that I cannot book the next one as the system hasn’t got the times up yet. So there is more banter and I get asked about my COVID booster. I declare I am ahead of the game but have to admit I’ve not had a flu jab yet. This cheered up no end as she opened the fridge and cheerily said “let’s do that now then”. So I get a flu jab in the arm, she ticks a quota box and I wander out of the surgery discarding my mask like a fleeing bandit.

Once home I make a fried egg sandwich and more coffee before retreating to the Shed. Before I can move out to the Shed I get a phone call from a friend who is on their way to have a flu jab and do other things. It feels like a long time since we actually spoke so there is a lot of catching up to do around how we are and how our families are. It’s a good call and a real pleasure to be able to chat. I go to the Shed and there I write a letter on my new paper that arrived on Saturday. It is less ornate than my usual paper and will make it easier for people to decipher my scrawl as apparently my writing over the illustrations makes my letters even more difficult to read. This takes me to lunch time and I break to have soup with my partner. Dining over I bring the garden camera in and check to see if the hedgehog has been around and crucially whether the addition of holly to the defences of Fort Hog has deterred the cats from stealing the food. I am pleased to say that it appears that the cats do not fancy the cats’ mats augmented by holly and the hog seems to be the one eating the food. I copy the relevant files and then replace the camera. I notice that some of the flowers are trying very hard to put on a late show and indeed I discover that we have Quinces for the first time.

Then it’s on with the jobs. There is a loose eaves board on the Shed to screw back into place and the overflow pipe on the water butt needs to be extended. By a stroke of luck and my anal trait od not throwing stuff out I find I have hose connector of the right size and some spare matching hose. So in a relatively short time I am able to complete my jobs and feel I’ve got something done, which is good as I am beginning to feel sore around my injection site. In a quick burst of extra energy, I go and post my letter and note in doing so that the postal workers are going on strike very soon.

By now I am feeling relatively crap so I sit down for a coffee and another couple of paracetamols. In a big effort I get into my training kit and go to the garage for a half hours row. Its slow and arduous but I get it done. It’s not a good session by any means but better than nothing.

I come out of the garage and find our guest has arrived. I change and make coffee and start to draft the blog. My partner and friend go out to dine as its pie night at one of the local pubs. I continue with the blog knowing that my eldest daughter is waiting to jointly cook and that we have a Tesco order to take in later. So, the evening will not be finished until our provisions are stored at which point, I shall retreat to bed with a book and more paracetamol.

Sunday, I sleep late and get up to a fresh croissant breakfast thanks to my partners earlier trip to the village shop. However before my early morning treat, I weigh myself. It is bad news and dispiriting; I weigh in at 99.3 kilos an increase of over a kilo. Post breakfast we ring our youngest daughter and chat about their new bathroom and upcoming interviews. Having got organised for our house guest tomorrow my partner and I head for the gym. It is my first visit to the gym floor and a cross trainer for 145 days. So I do thirty-five minutes on a cross trainer and burn off 344 calories and go 3.48 kilometres. In order to get to 400 calories, I get on a reclining cycle for a few minutes and burn the required additional 56 calories. It’s a measured reintroduction to the gym, enough for the first time back. I shower, a good perk of gym membership, and then indulge in a hot chocolate in the member’s lounge. I am joined by my partner for coffee and then we return home.

Once home I have to face my fear. Will I piss blood after my gym exercise. Eventually I get to find out and it is good news, no blood. I am relieved (no pun intended) and will use today to get me to go to the gym again this week. I settle down to watch the end of a rugby game and some football. In this way I drift into the evening and my first dose of prophylactic paracetamol before tomorrow’s injection. The evening comes and drifts by in TVs Strictly and Sherwood till I draft the blog, take my night meds and another dose of paracetamol.

Friday, yesterday and almost out of memory already. All that remains is a book delivery, an attack of rhinitis, which stopped me going to the gym, collecting my drugs and England’s women beating USA at football. Of all these the book delivery was the most important. Two new books both by the new Nobel Literary Prize winner Annie Ernaux.

I read Exteriors at one sitting. They are a set of observations of real ordinary everyday life made in her journals. They are clear and perceptive and raise all sorts of emotions and ideas. In describing her observations Annie Ernaux says “I believe that desire , frustration and social and cultural inequality are reflected in the way we examine the contents of our shopping trolley or in the words we use to order a cut of beef or to pay tribute to a painting; that the violence and shame inherent in society can be found in the contempt a customer shows for a cashier or in the vagrant begging money who is shunned by his peers – in anything that appears to be unimportant and meaningless simply because it is familiar or ordinary.” and “Thus a supermarket can provide just as much meaning and human truth as a concert hall”. I like that, it as it calls to both the poet and the psychologist in me. She says that she has kept journals since the age of thirteen, which at first strikes me as odd but on reflection is not so unusual. The fact that I have been writing a log now everyday (almost) for over three years now seems to have passed me by. This couples with the fact that when I look at the end of the sofa where I keep myself I find I have at least five journals or logs going. I keep a training and eating diary, a cash book (vital since re-retiring) and at least three other journals that I use for observations, planning and poems. On top of that I write at least two or three letters a week. So I guess I am quite a “jotter”.

As evening approaches my eldest daughter and I cook tea so that a meal is ready when my partner returns from the gym. The evening is then all football, Mock the Week and Have I Got News For You. By the time all that is done its time to take my meds and go to bed.

Saturday and its 5:30 in the morning, my nose is running and I am sneezing, this is shit. I get up don my Gandolf gown and make myself coffee and toast. I plonk my sniffy self in front of the TV and watch the women’s rugby world cup matches being played in New Zealand. England thrash Fiji and New Zealand beat Australia and my nose begins to get less sniffy. The rest of the household slowly gets up and eventually my partner and I go food shopping at the garden centre. We tarry over hot chocolate and jammy scones while chatting about how we are and life stuff. Its normally the conversation we would have on a Saturday morning before we get up, but my sniffy nose put pay to that today. We eventually arrive home with food, daffodil bulbs and some plants. I settle down to have a coffee while I draft the blog and get myself ready to plant the new acquisitions, although I think I might need more bags of compost.

I was right I did need more compost, so my partner and I go to our alternative garden centre. While there we acquire yet more plants. So loaded down with bags of compost and new plants we return home. My partner gets on with some laundry while I watch the end of a rugby match during which I plan what I am going to do with the new plants. The thing about my garden is that it doesn’t matter how many plants I buy it’s impossible to fill the garden all year round so there is always room for more. By the time the rugby ends I’m ready to garden. So, I spend time digging holes, filling them with compost and gently planting our new acquisitions. I’ve acquired things that if I am lucky will be low maintenance and will grow from year to year. After some sweaty graft everything is ready to be watered in. Of course, this is not the end of the garden action as I still have to check Fort Hog and refill the food dish. Finally, I wipe round the garden taking pictures of the new arrivals. I think my camera is my record of the garden over the last few years.

At last, I am done and ready to return inside and clean up. There are a few minutes to rest and then it’s time to eat tea while watching Strictly. Well, that’s the evening gone once the football highlights are over. Tomorow is a gym day and a paracetamol day in preparation for jab Monday. How quickly the damn jab comes round.