Wednesday and its car service day so its up early and a quick coffee. I drive to the garage following my partner who gives me a lift back. I make breakfast and watch more European athletics, diving and climbing. My injection site remains sore and the insistent nagging discomfort makes maintaining motivation to be active difficult. The morning goes by until my partner makes us lunch and then she goes off to see her mother. Rather than sit around and wait to collect the car I decide to train. It needs to be an hour so I get myself ready and go to the garage. I set the rower to my usual resistance and get going. Its a good hour and I manage to get over the 14 kilometre mark and burn more than 900 calories. This is a good session, mind you a year ago I set a personal best of over 15 kilometres and burnt over 1000 calories, which goes to show how much more fitness I have to regain.

I get out of my kit and check the garage closing time and start to draft the blog. My partner gets caught up in traffic so does not get back in time to get to the garage to collect my car, so its a chore that gets pushed in to tomorrow morning. The evening meal follows against the background of European athletics and Shetland. I feed the hedgehog and clean the feeding station, which prompts me to order more food to sustain the hog while I am away. I finish the drafting of the blog and then prepare for tomorrow. A growing list of chores before holiday is developing and I need to train at some point and I have letters to write. The evening will end as ever with me taking my meds and hoping for a good nights sleep.

Tuesday and I wake up in the spare room after a crap nights sleep, its day 2 of jab time so I wake up very sore and this morning I feel very “woolly”. I get coffee and a peanut bagel for breakfast and then stare into space for a while. I decide I need to do something so I decide to give the ancestor’s spirit house its annual coat of protective stain. So I gather up my materials and get out to the house. It sits to the side of the porch and contains three figures. This came from seeing all the houses in Thailand with their ancestor houses. For them it is where their ancestors spirits live and where they honour their ancestors.

Within the house a set of three monks live and they get an annual clean and replacement in the house.

Once the house is repainted and dry the boys are returned home.

I put things away and then I go to the Shed and settle down to send messages to friends and to write a letter. Lunch is chicken soup on the patio and a chat with my partner as we chat about preparations for going on holiday on Friday. I wander over to the post box still feeling very sore but a little less woolly. On my return I look for something else to occupy me, a diversion, so I set about throwing the remnants of my professional life away. All those folders from conferences, CPD events and training courses attended and delivered need to go. I dig out the bags and go through them and retain only the actual qualification certificates and attendance acknowledgements. After a lot of ripping and tearing I have things sorted into piles. I load the remnants of my professional life into the recycle bin and squirrel away the certificates and recycled folders. Its all part of the transition and letting go of the past, not easy but necessary if I am not to waste my time and to get on with my life. Only the people will remain, which is as it should be.

Its late afternoon and I decide that feeling crap or not I need to train. I change into my kit and go to the garage. I’m feeling defiant and up the resistance level a notch. I do thirty minutes at the increased level and still manage over 6000 meters and burn in excess of 400 calories. One thing the greater resistance produces is a higher heart rate so its a good workout.

The session gets recorded and then I start the blog draft until tea time. My evening may have live football in it but it will also have athletics in it. Hopefully this will be the last day I will need to take paracetamol before bed. Tomorrow is a practical day as the car is being serviced so I need to wake up feeling chipper.

Monday, jab Monday, so its up and shower, before making my way to the GP surgery. Clutching the box with the jab in I sit in the waiting room until the nurse calls mem in. I remind her that the right side is the one that gets the sorest. She looks for a new place which has less of the lumps that this jab creates. She finds a spot and slowly pumps the jab into me. Once done she turns her attention to my left arm where she gives me a B12 shot.

I go home and watch European sport and make myself one of my comfort foods, a fried egg sandwich! I eat and try to get myself motivated. I fail, I am just aware of the sore lump in my gut so take more paracetamol. A friend phones and we chat about her experience of selling her house and buying a new bungalow. We finish our call when her golf partner arrives. I continue to watch sport and prepare for the Tesco delivery. Tesco turn up on tine and there is a floury of activity followed by a period of squirreling. There is no avoiding the need to train so I down some more paracetamol and climb into my kit. I decide that 30 minutes at my usual resistance will do. It goes okay.

I change out of my kit and rest for a bit and then collect the garden camera and see if the hedgehog has been about. It would seem that the hog is being more active recently so there are quite a lot of day time pictures of him/her.

Its time for tea, more athletics and drafting the blog but all the time I am aware that I am getting “dopier” and more sore. Its the usual jab day progression, so by the time I go to bed it will feel grim. On occasions I stay up on these nights till I am vey tired and then I get some sleep. so it could be a long night.

Sunday, its hot again and its only about 9 o’clock. On getting up I weigh myself, the weekly ritual by which I measure my progress in the battle with my weight. I weigh in at 96.8 kilos. A slight reduction, which I think reflects the less vigorous exercise regime I am doing. The inclusion of swimming is good in terms of widening the form of exercise but it is less calorie burning, or it is at the moment the way I am currently swimming it is. I make my partner a drink and take it up to her. No one feels much like eating so its a simple bagel breakfast and then we all go our ways to spend a Sunday resting. I sit on the patio and read the end of Finn Family Moomintroll and on completion I read The Exploits of Moominpapa. Apart from a brief lunch of ham sandwich I continue to read. I do root around in the shed to get the sun lounger out so my partner can laze and snooze in the afternoon sun.

Apart from a bit of Shed tidying and compost management the afternoon is all reading. The evening comes around and the evening meal accompanied by the first prophylactic paracetamol dose for tomorrows monthly injection. I clear the kitchen, clear the washing from the garden, feed the hedgehog, put the sun lounger away in the shed and fold away the sun shade on the patio whilst clearing the area as the weather forecast is saying it is going to rain tomorrow and there is a weather warning issued based on the likelihood of thunderstorms in the next 48 hours. I watch Van Der Valk and draft the blog feeling terse and irritable in anticipation of tomorrows injection. Its the tricky end of the cycle especially when the jab is on the right side. In my head that is where I can feel carrying my cancerous prostate. Illusion or accurate perception, I am not sure, but the fact is the right side injection is always the one which creates the most inflammation and discomfort. Hence my pre injection tightness. So I shall end the evening with meds, more paracetamol and with a bit of luck sometime to myself. Tomorrows challenge is to train.

Saturday and it is a slowish start but finally gets going with a bacon sandwich and meds. My partner goes to have her hair done and while she is away I clean the house. This means that she does not have to use her injured wrist pushing the hoover around and gives it a chance to heal properly. So in the hours it takes to get hair done I go through the house until I am high on Mr Sheen and ready for a rest. I sit on the patio and read Comet in Moominland. By the time my partner returns I am on to Finn Family Moomintroll. We go to the garden centre to replenish our salad supplies and food for the evening meal.

On returning home I continue to read Finn Family Moomintroll, indulge in a yogurt and then contemplate training. Its hot, very hot but training cannot be put aside because its hot. Its back to the old argument that while cancer does not take a day off I can’t. So I change in to my gear and go to the garage and get on the rower. I decide that I will do an hour at my normal resistance level as tomorrow is weigh in day and my one rest day of the week. Its hot so I start off at a slow pace adn gradually get going as my body warm to the task. I have my ear buds in and listen to Brentford playing Manchester United. To my amazement Brentford take a 4 nil lead by half time, a score they maintain to the end. I toil in the heat and in the end do a reasonable session. For me its always about how many calories I burn as it is this that is the crucial side of the calories in and calories out balance that is key to my part of controlling my weight. Anything over 750 calories for an hours effort is a good outcome.

I finish my session and change before the evening meal. My evening is all sport, clearing the kitchen, feeding the hedgehog and drafting the blog. Tomorrow is the start of my cycle, it means pre-emptive paracetamol in readiness for Mondays injection. This cycle is the one that sees the jab go into my right side, which is the one that responds less well and tends to stay sore for longer. The elements of being alive in this situation makes a strange jigsaw. I am still not sure I have the pieces in the right place.

Friday and I wake up quite late after a disturbed night again, a combination of heat, meds and head. Its sunny and hot again as I get my breakfast and settle down to it thinking about what I am going to do for the day. The post man arrives unusually early, I guess he is starting early to avoid the heat of the day, and delivers a treat to me. As I was so taken with the one that was sent to me as a present I have indulged myself and bought a collection of the Moomin books. I have a friend who swears they are philosophy books and not the children’s book they masquerade as. I’m inclined to agree. Of course I Google what order I should read the books in and discover that different people recommend different orders so I decide I will read them in order of publication. So I put the books in order and then label them with numbers so I know where I am.

I realise that some of the stories are missing but hopefully I will fill in the blanks as time goes on. Of course I start reading Comet in Moominland. The morning flies by and I realise I need to exercise. I drive to the gym and go for my second swim of the week. The swimming is a challenge, not so much the swimming, once I am in the pool the feel of water and the ability to swim comes back to me easily. What is difficult is that I cannot hide my body. When I use the gym I am covered up but when I swim the body that I find more and more difficult to live with is exposed. I realise that others may not notice but my misshapen non functioning body but I am very aware of how uncomfortable I feel with a body that I used to have confidence in. A body that I could train, sculpt and keep fit but now the cancer treatment has changed all that. I need the type of exercise that swimming offers me to avoid some of the side effects other forms of exercise at times bring me. So going for a swim is now a challenge an turns me into some one who scuttles out of the pool to shower in a very self conscious way. As part of my swim I always spend 10 minutes in the steam room, a good place to hide. I shower and drive home straight away, no longer do I stop for coffee, food or time to reflect.

Once home I find that a friend has been round to look at the floor in our office and come to the conclusion that the “tile tenting” is not due to any water incursion. I have lunch and ring the friend, who will ring me later. I put chicken in the oven to have with a salad in the evening and then retreat to the garden seat and continue to read. I’m joined by my eldest daughter and we chat about her studies and things in general. Tea time arrives and I watch some European swimming and athletics. I feed the hedgehog. The dishes are empty from last night. That was an adventure as I went out late to feed the hedgehog and found the hog actually in the feeding station, no doubt peeved that the dish was empty. The hog let me take the empty dish and replace it with a full one. I popped the lid back on and left the hog to it. It was the first close up encounter with the hog. Tonight I am earlier so there is no sign of the hog apart from the empty food dishes. I return in doors, clear the kitchen and draft the blog well into the evening. I return to my new books and wend my way towards the evening meds and bed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

								5-06-2022 
								The Lakes, Windermere
								339

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

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

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

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

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

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

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