Tuesday and I wake to my partner going off to work. I laze for a while and check my vitals, which are good. I go through my messages and socials routine before attending to some life and Christmas admin. With a big effort I get up and in to my training gear take my morning meds and head for the garage and the rower. I make the decision to take the resistance level up a notch to level 5 and set the duration for 30 minutes. Its time to start to increase the intensity of the work. With the infinity Monkey Cage in my ears I set off and after being educated about trees I am rewarded with a new personal best for this time and resistance level since I started back training.

I take a few moments to record the session and then clear the kitchen before taking a shower to freshen up. Feeling clean and refreshed I accompany my eldest daughter to the local pub and sit down to chorizo hash and fruit tea. We chat about judges and the law, finally getting on with the conversation about birthdays and Christmas. On the way home we try to buy a paper but the village co-op is out.

Once home I start to draft the blog and to dig about in my wardrobes to stock check what the elves have brought so far. Crucially I am still waiting for my bespoke wrapping paper and cards so I cannot start the secret squirrel wrapping spree, but I do have the materials to start preparing my Christmas Poetry Stanza contribution. Just need to find some me time to get that all done. Its a European football week so I expect I will be glued to a game tonight. What I do get is an unexpected call from a friend who has been able for the first time to get herself to a face to face meeting and mix socially with colleagues. It is great that she is being able to keep moving forward in her recovery from long COVID. It is sobering that there are many people like my friend who are still battling long COVID. It takes a lot of creativity and perseverance to keep fighting to recover. Before I know it I am squirreling away the Tesco order and then I am on to my evening.

As predicted my evening is a combination of football and a film called Leave the World Behind. What an interesting film but a strange ending. I finish the blog, take my night meds and go to bed, wondering if I will train tomorrow or begin another round of letter writing, depending on how my body responds to todays efforts.

Saturday, and I wake to my partner preparing to go lunch with a friend. I take my vitals, still all good, and get up to train. The garage is still chilly and with the poetry stanza in the afternoon I set a 45 minute session to give me time to recover. the session goes quite well, I am only 50 metres of a personal best for the time since I returned to training. This is a good outcome so I am pleased I made the effort.

With the training behind me I can have breakfast and prepare for the Poetry Stanza meeting which is in Zoom. I go through the rituals with the technology and then at the appointed time I log in. For the next three hours I hear poetry being read and analysed including one of mine. There is some really good stuff and also some impenetrable stuff that passes me by, these poets know what they are doing and seem very at home with all the difficult stuff. The meeting ends with the reminder that the next meeting in December will include voluntary goodies and the fact that we will be in a different room. My ears prick up, that means the normal room will be in use and that means more cars in the car park, need to be early next time.

Its international rugby weekend so I slide seamlessly into a rugby match, in fact I slip seamlessly into two matches before Strictly Come Dancing is on TV. There are no obvious “donkeys” left to throw out at this stage of the game and its getting unpredictable about who will get thrown out. With that excitement over there is time for an episode of Ellis and then its time to take my night meds and get off to bed. The weather has been miserable and wet all day so I have not missed going out and my brain has been fed by the poetry stanza.

Sunday, by common decree in the household this is to be a hunkering down day as it is till grey and raining as storm Bert continues to pass through. So a lazy start to the day, with much puttering before brunch of croissants and jam and then its into more international rugby, the last full weekend, only the Irish to play next weekend. I read my meters and send off my readings, which get costed straight away. The household is about on budget, so we are being able to keep warm with out breaking the bank. The family drift into the evening sustained by a chicken crock pot before watching the Strictly results show that turns out to be predictable. Another episode of Ellis and some football later and I am downing my meds and getting ready for bed, but then I discover BBC 4 is showing La Boheme from the Metropole. Watch the opening two acts, which have some great arias in but its late and I know what’s coming and I am not sure I am rugged enough for the death scene in the last act, where poor Mimi tragically dies. I go to bed promising myself I will get it all on catch up.

Monday arrives and I have slept well, a recent trend for which I am grateful. My partner brings me hot water, my early morning drink of choice, and goes off to the gym leaving me to book my next 28 jab and a set of hospital bloods at the GP surgery. It is basic health admin but I still find it irksome, I am not sure why, I just do. More so this time as I will have to have my bloods done the heath centre in the next village as this time its due to be done on a Saturday because I shall be away with my partner on the Friday for birthday Spa visit. I’ve just about cleared the decks when the plumber arrives to install the new guts into the downstairs WC. He looks at it all and quotes me a price and says he can do it right now as he has the parts in the van. I agree, make him coffee and he gets on with it. It takes him about an hour after which I get a demonstration of the new push button system where if it ever over flows it overflows into the actual toilet and not out of a pipe through the wall, which is exactly what I wanted. The interesting thing was that before we got going he quoted me the price and asked if I had it in cash as he was retired now. Luckily I had the cash and he was happy to do the job there and then otherwise he would have to come back when I had cash. As I hand over the cash, including a new king Charles £20, we have a conversation about Terry Prachett, he has loads of TP collectables which is trying to sell as he down sizes. We chat about how best to go about getting a fair price and the platforms available to him. He leaves and I finally get to start drafting the blog that I have missed out on over the last two days.

My day, apart from lunching out is unremarkable, a round of the usual, films and resting, which as ever ends up with night meds and bed and thinking about tomorrows to do list and a Tesco order.

Friday and I wake up sleepy like Mole in Wind in the Willows. I must have slept well. I go through my morning ritual, vitals are good, and then get up, I have plan. For once I put on a proper shirt as I might be doing business today. My morning meds get done and then Amazon deliver two books and the post man a letter. The letter is from a friend and is a delight, I read it twice vowing to reply before the end of November. I turn my attention to my books. How to be a Poet, The collected short stories and essays by Dylan Thomas, the other How to be a Poet by Jo Bell and Jane Commane. I go straight to the short essay by Dylan Thomas called How to be a Poet. It is hysterical, I laughed out loud, this man knew how to take the piss, alongside writing amazing poetry. With having had such a laugh I turned to skim through the seriously titled, How to be a Poet. I admit I only dipped at this time but found myself amused by it, but I do not think I was supposed to be. Apparently there things you should not do, like invert word order (and sound like Yoda) or us the word “upon”, seriously its a minefield of up your arsedom.

My partner finishes work for the day and I drive us into town for lunch at the Cosy Club. We both have the Christmas special pie which comes with a donation to charity, so that’s me done for this year! Its a good meal and a chance to sit and chat. Mostly its about family and Christmas. Its a nice treat to have a relaxed meal and be able to take our time. With the bill paid I drive us to the Mazda dealership where we look around and engage a sales person and grill him about all the technology advances over the last ten years. He pushes, we reply by taking notes, and teasing him with a cash sale. We sit in some cars, ask more questions and when my partner has finished, I start adn the whole thing over again with a different car. Eventually we have what we want to know and walk to the dealership next door and do the same thing again with a different make. We are pleasantly surprised by what we find so life is now a bit more complicated. As night falls upon us we drive home.

Once home, it’s into comfy clothes and drafting the blog. I check to see if anyone else has posted a poem for tomorrows Poetry Stanza before I run off hard copies to read from. Thankfully there are no new additions so I prepare my file for tomorrow. Its onwards into the evening and an international rugby match, followed by some more Dylan Thomas, night meds and bed. Its been a good day.

Thursday and I wake up knowing it is cold and also the first day of Cycle 19. I go through my waking routine including vitals and get up and into my training gear. A haste glass of water and morning meds and I am heading for the garage and the rower. Its the coldest yet, a meagre 2 degrees. I strap in and get going quickly to get warm.

Its a bit of a grind but I get to the end with a reasonable output, not bad for a cold day when I am huddled up in my track suit. The session gets recorded before I change into some warm clothes and get on with filling my drugs pouches for the next two weeks. Its a tedious job but keeps me on track and. lets me easily check that I am taking my meds. Lunchtime rocks around and I cook myself and my partner filled pasta. So I dribble into the afternoon and set about preparing for the Poetry Stanza on Saturday by downloading all the poems that have been submitted so far adn reading them through. Some I like others are just a plain mystery so I decide to send every one my Dylan Thomas poem, a very short irreverent one, which I hope will lighten the mood and move things on a bit on the day. It does prompt me to order two books, one by Dylan Thomas, which are short essays on how to be a poet and another book that proports to tell one how to be a poet, I can’t wait for them to arrive as I suspect they maybe everything I loathe about the poetry industry but then again there maybe some useful stuff in them. All I can do is remain open to ideas.

Amazon start to deliver Christmas parcels and I have to find room to squirrel stuff away, which for some reason is more difficult this year, I seem to have accumulated more clothes that I am not sure where they have come from and my sisters ashes are taking up space where I used to hide things. I really need to do something with her. Having cleared away the kitchen I draft the blog and settle down to read before the evening arrives, it is such a bind these days now that the world goes dark at half past four. I noted my squirrel earlier tucking into the peanuts that I put out yesterday, I think he bides his time until the day warms up and pops out for a one off forage.

My evening seems bound to be a reading one and a dose of TV as staying warm is a priority although I’ve can feel some more Christmas shopping creeping up on me. I friend phones me and we have time for a quick chat as we go about our evenings before I reach night meds time and a way to my bed.

Wednesday and I wake after a deep sleep. I take my vitals and realise that this is the last day of Cycle 18, and I am into day 56 of the reboot of chemotherapy with the hiccups of suspected angina and the removal of the bladder stone behind me. It feels like moving forward and mildly ironic that today I am seeing a doctor to sort out my Dupuytrens contracture. I get up and potter about for a while and then take myself of to the village café for a full English breakfast and hot chocolate.

With the breakfast done and the days crosswords also done I return home and as my partner goes off to see his mother I get going on some serious Christmas admin. I beaver away until I can do no more and then pick up a line that occurred to me this morning when I was checking my vital. Taking the line I followed it through and ended up with something resembling a poem.

421

There is no finding out
Without each other. 
No making sense 
Or meaning
Without the mirror.
Each in their own bottle 
Bobbing about.
Some things maybe 
Thought known
Until confronted with
Pieces that do not fit.
There are a million
Me’s out there
And a million you’s in here,
I’ll read your label
If you will read mine.
Deal?

						421   20-11-2024
 

By the time I had finished there was just time to refill the bird and squirrel feeders before my partner retuned and we prepared to drive through the peak time traffic to see the consultant who is going to assess my Dupuytrens Contraction. The drive is predictably slow but we arrive in time. There is a short wait in the “funding yourself” waiting area adn then I am in with the consultant, my partner riding shot gun. He asks what he can do for me. I slap my hand on the table adn he says “You have got Vikings disease, it’s hereditary”. I am asking all the rational questions about treatment and time lines for the operation along with some other stuff and inside I am chanting ” Yippee I’m a Viking, I’m a fucking Viking, I knew it”. We agree that Thursday the 30th of January 2025 is a good day for everyone involved and then we leave. Now I wait for the invoices to begin to appear.

Back home I make a quiche for tea before watching TV. Before I can settle down I get a phone call from a friend while they driving south to do a workshop tomorrow. We chat for about 40 minutes which included a joint decision on a route change, which was only possible because I know the route. There is an awful lot going on in my friends life, which we chat about. Eventually we say goodbye and return to my quiche and TV. The evening goes by till I take my evening meds, catch up with the blog and go to bed.

Tuesday and the first thing I notice is the light, its different and I know instantly what it is: SNOW! It is instantly confirmed and WhatsApp messages come in with pictures of snowy gardens. Of course I followed suit once I have taken my morning vitals.

Having got over the joy of snow I get up and perversely decide to train, so I don my training gear, down my morning meds and head for the garage and the rower. Not surprisingly I find the garage at it’s coldest, a chilly 5 degrees.

I strap myself onto the rower and set up a half hour session and set off at pace hoping to keep warm. The half hour goes past quickly and I do indeed keep warm. It is not a personal best but it is over 6 kilometres.

I record the session and then change into something warm before noting that it is still snowing.

It really is snowing in the video. I lunch and and set about drawing up my Christmas list. I find the one I’ve been using for the past four or five years and edit it. It is of course shorter that than it was, which is a consequence of beginning to outlive people. There are the inevitable presents that have already been bought and squirrelled away along with the anxiety that I am going to remember where I have squirrelled them, the rest are a challenge so I need to start to hunt the internet for suitable presents. Some are easy like whiskey and socks others demand more creative and thoughtful attention. With the list done I write a half cocked poem. Its one of those where I have an idea but it does not flow out of me as I had hoped. In fairness to myself I think my ideas are far too grandiose for my talent at times and I end up with a stunted version. I may return to it I may not but here is is in its roughest form (so rough it as yet has no number):

I measure my capability 
in spoons of energy.
It is a tricky method
as no two spoons are the same.
Apostles line up with soup,
dessert with serving
while slotted and wooden
lurk in the background.
Each activity eats up
the spoons until
I am spoonless
and flounder
lifeless in the 
empty slot of
the cutlery draw.
This is how the chronically
ill balance what to do 
against what to leave.
There is a waking
spoon count and 
a scrutiny of the to do list
and then we proceed
hoping our spoons are sufficient
and never quite knowing
how much spoonery there is
in each spoon. 

                                                       19-11-2024

The post today brings the joy of a letter from a friend, which I sit down and make a slow time to read. Its a delightful letter written across three time periods and at least two countries. Included in the letter is a watercolour done whilst on a painting course in Seville, it is a truly international letter in the mould of the Bloomsbury set. I am delighted to get such letters. After the delights of the letter I settle down to organise some life admin. My partner’s friend arrives so I play the host and make tea until my partner finishes work and takes over.

I return to drafting the blog and as I do so a friend rings and we have a chat about how we are and the things that are going on for us. Its lovely to be able to chat and hear about each others families and what we are up to. The evening arrives and I am on my own, so I whip up some pasta and settle down to an evening of reading and a really violet film, hopefully. To be followed by night meds and an early night as tomorrow I have my appointment with the doctor who will hopefully get rid of my Dupuytrens Contracture.

Sunday, its a slow start but there are some things that need to be organised for Christmas, so after a quick breakfast I and my partner once again walk down to the village craft fair. I knew exactly what I wanted and headed for the stall where the woman who uses recycled materials to create all sorts of things resides. On display she has three of the things I want, when I ask if she has any more she rummages around in a cardboard box and produces three more. I look them over and then tell her her which five I will talk. She is surprised and I explain I have crafting friends who will really love them. It was probably the biggest single sale she made all weekend, which is why I left with a “Merry Christmas” ringing in my ears.

My partner and I walk home and then drive to our favourite butcher at the garden centre. After a bit of toing and froing we joined the Christmas Club and ordered the turkey and turkey crown we will need for Christmas. With nothing else to buy we return home and I start the Sunday rugby and football marathon. The rugby was okay but the game of the evening was England thrashing Ireland while we ate a roast dinner. The Strictly results show goes to prediction as the Welsh opera singer goes out and then the evening meanders into a malaise of TV wall paper until the only sensible thing to do is take my night meds and go to bed.

Monday and I find my partner has gone to the gym and left me to do my vitals and get up and into my training gear. I get up and find a cold and empty house so go off to the garage which is decidedly chilly. I strap in and get going, its hard work and I am not sure I am going to make my benchmark 11 kilometres. Towards the end I am able to pick up the pace a bit and just about get to my goal.

With the session recorded and the kitchen cleared I shower and wait for the return of my partner. Lunch is at a local delicatessens come pub come restaurant. The Chilli is reasonable. Back home I catch up with the blog and assist in the present buying for the youngest grandson while taking past in a video call with my youngest daughter.

With time my own I go in search of the W. H. Auden poem that I had come across again from watching Four Weddings and A Funereal the other night while I was waiting for my night meds to kick in. I wasn’t sure why it was so affecting until I read it and realised the rhyming scheme and how it was constructed. Of course the context and John Hanna’s rendition of it is powerful.

I am trying to decide which poem to take to this months Poetry Stanza meeting. Its been a rather dry creative month so far and I am struggling to find words to put to paper. My out put recently has been meagre and not very inspired so I might have to rake through my old stuff to see if there anything that warrants an airing. When I am feeling like this I tend to go for something short and more pithy than usual, so at the moment my Dylan Thomas poem is the most likely.

418
Dylan Thomas
staggers out
from a days
labour.
“three words”
he mutters.
That’s one
“bible black bat”.
Can’t help feeling
the lazy bastard
could have managed 
more.

								418 21-10-2024

By 4:30 the world is pitch black (sloe black, slow, black, crowblack) and I slide into the evening during which I shall read, perhaps write and continue to watch whichever TV series has taken the family eye, hoping that inspiration will strike me at some point.

Saturday and I wake and get on with breakfast with my partner, the intention is to go to our local village craft market. I am expecting a 3P experience; Pick up, Put down and Piss off. So after breakfast my partner and I walk down to the village hall and start to pursue the stalls. To my surprise I found a woman who made miniatures from recycled materials. I could not resist adding to my collection neither could resist the tiny under glass constructions. The artist goes under the name of Khulelo.

My partner also finds things and we the ideal Christmas present for our garden guy. By the time I’ve walked round the stalls I am overheated, sweating and need to sit down. The walk home is slow and as soon as I am home I strip off and rest to get cool. Once I have cooled down and and had a couple of restorative crumpets the next chore is to go to the supermarket and sort out the weekends food. I had an urge for Tizer but found none.

Once home the day descends into rugby, food and more rugby until Strictly in the evening. and night meds. While they kick in I draft the blog feeling with every moment that my energy spoons are going into deficit. I can do no more and head for bed.

Friday and I am just recording my vitals (still very good) when the appliance repair man rings to say the spare part is in that the dishwasher needs. He’s on his way over, so I change my plans to train, pull on clothes and get busy. Having taken my meds and started to update my vitals spreadsheet the guy arrives. I barely have time to finish my update when repair man is done. I offer cash and to my surprise he says he prefers card as he doesn’t want to have to go to the bank. Whatever happened to “one for me and one for the tax man”. I proffer a card and have the receipt sent to my phone before waving the guy off. Of course there is the pleasure of putting things back under the sink cupboard and reallocating somethings. With all this done its noon and I ‘ve already started the draft of the blog. I’ve chosen a new Rocket picture to mark over 51 days into the Chemo II The Reboot as it feels that there is progress being made.

My partner goes to have her nails done and I begin my afternoon by trying to sort out the laundry. It is clear from the baskets full of clothes waiting to be dealt with that I need to replace the clothes dryer that got broken months ago. I hunt Amazon and several other outlets until I find what am looking for, namely the Good Housekeeping recommended one that has nifty sock and knicker hangers on and is expandable to a size that can cope with our drying needs. Because I am lazy and cannot be arsed to go to Argos and pick it up I pay to have it delivered and to my surprise I can get it delivered today, result! With my washing in I change into me training gear and head for the garage and the rower.

I really do not want to be training, I ache and feel spoonless already today so in my head I am thinking 30 minutes, however by the time I have got on the rower and gone through my pre row routines I find myself committed to a 45 minute session. I groan inwardly and get on with it. Every stroke seems an effort so I just settle for the best rhythm I can manage and find a suitable fantasy to get me through the time. By the end I out of spoons, almost, but I have reached 8 kilometres, which is okay.

Before I can record the session or change into my evening slob wear I attend to the washing I had put in, loading it into the tumble dryer, only then can I get comfortable and ready for the evening. I return to the sofa and update the blog as I wait for my washing to dry and I prepare for the evening. This is another international rugby weekend so there is bound to be a game to watch as an alternative to the Children in Need night. There is only so much suffering and pain I can watch these days before I need to switch off.

Thursday and I wake up feeling more human than I have done since my injection on Monday so I take my vitals which are super normal today. I get up and get into my training gear and take my morning meds and head for the garage. Its four days since I have been able to train so I go for an hour session. I set myself up and get underway. My body is not initially keen on the exercise but I get going after a while as listen to yet another Mark Steels in Town. Its a bit of a grind but I do manage a 11+k distance and a 700+ calorie burn. I’m okay with that as a session to get me going again.

When I check how many PAI points this has earned me on my fitness tracker it is disappointingly few, it makes me wonder if the tracker is working properly. I record my session in my journal and then take myself off for a shower. While in the mood I hop onto the scales and to my surprise find I have cracked the 100k barrier. I come in at 99.7 kilos at least 2 kilos less than I was when I started out on my “no sweets, biscuits and cake” regime. This is an unexpected bonus, I just hope I can continue it till my official weigh in on Sunday morning. I am convinced that the issues I face at the moment are mostly caused by carrying too much weight (flab and fat), hence weight loss being one of my primary targets.

I down a lunch of ham sandwich and a diet Red Bull and head to the chiropodist in the next village. I am early but ushered in early by the chiropodist who is still waiting for her new chair. She sets to work on my feet adn we chat as she expertly puts my feet in order. About thirty minutes later my feet are singing with joy as they have been rejuvenated. I’m up for a dance.

I pop my socks back on, pay and pencil in my next appointment and make my way home where there is a news paper waiting for me to do the crosswords. Its a good day as I cruise through my regular ones without Google assistance. With my body and brain exercised I start to draft the blog before the evening begins in earnest. As England are playing Greece tonight I shall watch it and then slot into my pre-bed routine of meds, a brief read and then sleep.

Of course a lot more goes on between the cracks of the day, there are messages and emails to be dealt with, not to mention the persistent sales folk. Chief of these are the folk from E.O.N who are trying to get me to have a SMART meter. Full marks for tenacity, but they stand no chance when I just tell them I am not having one and put the phone down on them. The amount of energy used in the manufacture, upgrade and fitting of them is astronomical, not to mention the resources used, with them the companies could reduce my bill. I am quite happy to read my meters and send them my readings via the app. In fact they should give a “competent human being” discount on my bill. Anyway I exchange messages with friends as I begin to try and organise a pre Christmas trip to York to see some of my friends. From my post and messages it feels like people are going abroad more frequently now since the COVID era. Hopefully in the Spring I will be amongst them.