Friday, a slow start, I’m feeling sluggish but I get up and make a bacon bagel and coffee and get under way. My day is stop start as I take calls from social services and the GP. I also talk to my sisters neighbour who is an absolute hero. Finally I get the message that someone is going to see my sister at 4 o’clock and my sisters neighbour has agreed to meet them with the key. I take a lunchtime walk to the chemist to get my meds but they are not in and I am told to return tomorrow. I shop for bread and a paper before returning home. I have a call with a friend and hear how she is coping with the demands of birthday parties. I get another call from the GP and we discuss if it is a good idea for her to be there when the carers call on my sister. I field one or two more messages about my sister and then I get ready to go and row in the garage. I do not make it. My sister is admitted to hospital as the GP finds her in a difficult state and decides admission to hospital is the wisest decision. I plan a visit whilst biding my time before ring the hospital and finding out where she has been admitted to. We will eat tea, I will make the calls and then hopefully this evening we can all rest and get an early night. These days feel arduous but I remind myself whose crisis is this and of course it is my sisters.

Against this background the world continues and the garden grows, as a constant reminder of what is essential.

Wednesday and I am up early and packing to go to the gym. I drink a coffee and take my meds and then I am off on the road. The world has gone back to work so the gym is empty and I can have the pick of equipment. I grab a cross trainer, put music in my ears and set off. My legs after yesterdays stint on the bike are stiff and complain. I keep going and end up burning 714 calories and going 7.77 kilometres. Not bad given how my legs were. I get in the changing rooms and have to sit for a bit to recover. I then get into the shower. Its lunch time so I order coffee and a bacon and egg roll in the club lounge. I get a message from a colleague who reminds me that there is a meeting at 2 o’clock. I act cool but I’m thinking it could be tight. As it turns out I get home in plenty of time.

The meeting was on of those that made me wish I had not bothered and it dragged on. It finally came to an end and I was free to spread my wings. A friend rang me from her car outside the hospital in which her daughter was in. There is nothing more guaranteed to challenge us than sick children and to make us feel at our most vulnerable. She and her wife were juggling the care and the family, I’m sure that rings bells for all of us who have children. We go our separate ways , I wish I could be more helpful. I had mistakenly arranged to phone a friend in the evening but had to rearrange as I was reminded that on this night we are going out to eat with friends. Such a rare occasion that I had overlooked it. Of course this brings on the “what to wear” conundrum, one that I have nit had to face for quite a while. I go really conservative, trousers, shirt and blazer. I add a pair of Oxfords to this for security. So my partner and I are whisked away to a pub in the countryside where we settle down to chat and eat a good pub meal. It was really good as the company we were with are lovely. We had not seen them for a long time due to COVID but we slipped back into conversation as if we had only seen them yesterday, it felt very natural and easy. I guess that’s how good friendships are. We of course were the last people in the place. I think other people eat in a sort of hit and run way as if being with the people they are eating with is a secondary consideration. For me its always the people, I guess I belong to a generation that sat up all night with people to talk as opposed to a generation that huddles under the bed clothes with an ipad/iphone and live out a fantasy of a relationship. Soz, I mean init, so olds. Any way we get a lift home and say farewell, and so to bed, after midweek match of the day of course.

Thursday, the last night can of Coke was not a good idea. My new meds are playing havoc with my gut in the night but Coke really doesn’t help. Memo to self “don’t”. I make coffee and toast and get myself in front of the laptop for the Thursday team meeting. It is the usual catch meeting and I am simultaneously catching up with some of my work emails, mostly trying to track people down. Its Easter holidays, no one is at work who has children it seems. The meeting ends and I continue to do bits and pieces of communications till lunchtime, when the family go for a lunchtime walk around the village. A quick lunch and then I head for the Shed to write letters, which of course is followed by a trip to the post box. I keep thinking that I should train but my body is really not up for it, I take a nap instead. I just about come out of my nap to find the guy who does our garden has arrived so I leap into chat mode and and go and talk to him, give him coffee and pay him. While he cuts my grass I feed the hedgehog. There is just time to eat tuna pasta before taking my daughter to her trapeze class and returning to write the blog and phone a friend. My friend is very helpful and supportive and suggests some useful things to help support my sister. We end the call promising to talk again soon. A message tells me my friends daughter has returned from hospital.

I am about to go downstairs when I get a phone call from my sister’s neighbour in London, He is ringing me to tell me about his concern for my sister. We talk for a while and I tell him about the referral I have made and my chat with the GP. We exchange numbers and agree to catch up again tomorrow. I ring the duty team at social services and express my concerns again. I am told that the duty social worker will ring me later. I settle down to watch a TV programme on design but the I am called by the duty social worker who is very helpful and has accelerated the appropriate referral to the team who will do the assessment. They will ring me tomorrow. I make note of numbers and return to the TV programme. It feels like there is nothing else to be done tonight, as uncomfortable as that feels. I take my meds, finish the blog and go to bed full of the sound of inner doors opening and closing.

Tuesday and I am up determined to start fresh and t get back in to the battle for myself. Coffee and meds and I am off to the gym. A friend calls just as I am leaving, she is off to golf but for some reason the call gets lost. Before I can arrive another friend rings and we chat while I drive. Her daughter is not well and there is family juggling to be done. As she goes in for her blood tests I arrive at the gym. The gym is fuller than usual with tubby Easter bunnies working off their chocolate eggs. I get on board a bike and pump away for an hour. I burn 562 calories and go 22.53 kilometres and my calves felt every metre. I shower in showers that are actually hot and head for the lounge. There I drink coffee, eat a bacon and egg roll and reread for the the third time The Little Prince. The book is fascinating me, it clearly resonates with something in me.

I drive home, and on the way my sisters GP rings me just to confirm an email I had sent to them regarding my referral to social services to see if they can provide her with some support at the moment. I get indoors and sort out my kit and put the bin out for tomorrow. Somewhere in there I find time to renew the garden waste permit and run of the new bin collection timetable for the year. Just as the Tesco order arrives Ealing Social Services ring me and I have a disjointed conversation with the caller about what I want from them and why I made my referral. He confirmed that they were going to do an assessment of need.

The hedgehog get it food renewed and I drift into the evening which is spent watching No Time to Die. I clear the kitchen and retreat to bed in an effort to get to bed early and to start a more nurturing regime. So I am in bed writing the blog, sending and responding to messages and it is still coming up to 11 o’clock. Today has been a small start, it will have to be enough. I am acutely aware that there are family and friends out there that are having tough times right now so I need to look after myself if I am going to be able to offer support.

Saturday and I wake up lazy in the hotel. Its a slow start to the day as my partner and I make our way to breakfast. We find our selves a table in the foresters court room and tuck into a big breakfast that included fried bread. Neither of us had seen fried bread for years. The meal dawdles along until we get a message from our youngest daughter asking if we are still alive!

We shift ourselves and go and visit them. Its time to laze and catch up. There are pond issues to debate and lunch sandwiches to be had. In the afternoon we all return to the hotel and sit in there garden and drink in their garden. The rose wine flows and we wonder at the number of lotus cars parked up in the car park, there is clearly a club meeting going on. The forest surrounds everything here, an old and rocky forest.

Our daughter returns home with her partner to get ready to go out for a meal later, we return to our room to nap and watch the end of the cup semi final.

The early evening arrives and we get picked up by our daughter and drive off to a pub in the forest for our evening meal. I rare chance to indulge in a steak and Welsh Gold. The later being honeycomb ice cream, which was delicious. It is a luxury to be cooked for and for food to magically appear and the washing up never to be an issue. We take our time and chat until its time to be dropped back at the hotel. We settle down for a bit of TV and an early night.

Sunday rocks up and both my partner and I are feeling pretty crap, not sure why, whether it was something we ate or just one of those night we are not sure. Not an ideal way to be when away but we rally ourselves and decide to have a good old fashion soak in the bath to ease ourselves. It seems to work quite well and we make our way down to breakfast. I cannot face the fried stuff and stick to cereals and toast. Again we take our time before returning to the room to collect the remaining bags, having dropped most of them in the car on the way to breakfast. We pay our bill and go off to our daughters. Having arrived I presented my partner and my daughter with their Easter eggs. I had managed to smuggle the Bettys delivery into home and then wrap them for presentation today. We sip coffee and look at some of the family memories that have been captured as calendars whilst using this years to plan future weekends, including our village heritage weekend in July. At lunch time it time to leave and drive home. The journey is a dream. Clear roads, no accidents, no road works, the issues will be tomorrow.

Home and there is the unpacking to do and the usual post break chores to do. My washing goes in and we indulge in coffee and iced buns for lunch. Time for me to have a post driving nap. I watch the second cup semi final and then we proceed to watch a procession of TV Easter goodies until we eat and while the evening away. I toy with the idea of doing my blood type test that has arrived, an order prompted by a conversation about what blood type we all are with my daughter. I decide tomorrow will do. I’m tired and go to bed.

Monday, again we both wake up feeling less than chipper. I get up and hang my washing out, the cheap option, and then make drinks, returning to the bedroom to deliver them. We chat for a while and bemoan how crap it is feeling like this. We get up and breakfast. at this point I rouse myself and get out into the garden having set myself the goal of tidying the pond. I set to clearing away weed, dead leaves and removing the netting. It goes quite well and at least four frogs put in an appearance along with a large glob of frog spawn. It looks a little sparse at the finish but ultimately it will be a more healthy eco system. At least that’s what I think but I guess the frogs wil be the ultimate judges of that.

Garden job done I turn my attention to the blog. I have a problem the laptop I usually use has suddenly become the ultimate sloth of the laptop world. I try the usual magic tricks to no avail so have to swap to another machine. The intention is to catch up on the blog and then prepare for going back to work tomorrow. I have a lot to catch up on having been ill and then away on holiday. However this time has reinforced my decision to stop working. I need the time to train, which I now haven’t done for five days and I need my vigorous exercise, its another form of medicine. I go on a search for my blood donor card, which I am sure I have tucked away somewhere. After some ferreting around I find it. I find out my blood type and the fact that I gave blood once a very long time again. Apparently about 33% of the population are fellow A RH Positive. Thankfully I am easy to transfuse, except in Jamaica of course who would not give me any.

I work towards the evening and might just talk myself into an half hour row, we shall see. I didn’t, I watched Villanelle die.

Wednesday and I am up early downing muesli and a coffee before I set off to London by 6:30am. I know the way to my sisters house in London by heart and slip into automatic as I zip down the M1. I make really good time and I am at my sisters front door by just after nine o’clock. I wait for her to get ready and at 10 o’clock the taxi arrives to take us to the medical centre where she is booked into have a scan. Its a relatively short journey but I am glad I am not driving. I grew up in this area and although the street names are the same they look very different. So much has changed adn so much gone. The George and Dragon where I used to go to see the John Williams Big Band play at the jazz club has gone. The place is filed with people oblivious to their own safety as they lunge across the road in front of the taxi. There are racks of electric scooters and the frenetic pace at which everyone is dashing about or shuffling about is horrific. I loathe London and I am reaffirmed in my youthful decision to leave it as soon as possible.

We arrive at the medical centre and book in. We are early so we wait quietly in the waiting area watching a young mum teach her two girls simple maths. A clinician appears and calls my sister in. I help her to the scan room adn leave her with the technician to do the scan. An hour later she reappears and calls me in to collect my sister, and we leave sit sit in the waiting area while I summon a taxi. It is the same driver who brought us who arrives to take us back. The return journey is more direct and although I know the places we pass so many of them have changed and with that much of the richness of my memories. It is as if the reality of now cannot support the memories I hold. It is to be expected this erosion of synchronicity between person and place. We arrive back at my sisters house and she rests on the sofa while I pop out and do a bit of food shopping for her. I make her a simple lunch and we chat. Because of her breathlessness it is difficult to keep things tidy and we talk about the possibility of getting some help for a while. At three o’clock I take my leave so that I can miss the traffic out of London. I leave my sister resting on her sofa and drive home. Its a difficult drive due to an accident on the motorway so the journey home takes me almost double the time of the morning journey. I get home, my partner is out with a friend so my daughter and I eat Indian takeaway and I watch football. I am tired from the day and soon go to bed when my partner and friend return from their meal. I find London tiring and difficult. I try to ring my sister once I am home but there is no answer, I assume she is asleep as she has had a long and tiring day.

Thursday I wake up with a start as I realise I have a meeting in two minutes, so its a very quick coffee and I am in front of my laptop. The meeting is a regular team meeting and it is full of routine updates and discussions about services, assessments and some logistics of service delivery. At the end I stay on line and chat to a colleague who is going to be driving up to watch his team Rangers play for a place in a semi final of a European football competition. I to am looking forward to watching Leicester on TV trying to achieve a similar feat. At lunchtime my partner and I walk around the village and I discuss with her my experience of going to London and ideas about how my sister might get help given her situation. We return to lunch and I decide to contact social services to see if they will do an assessment of need for my sister on the off chance that they might be able to provide some temporary assistance to her. I fill in a form and submit it and I email my sister to let her know what I have done. I spend a little time in the Shed. The football is an early kick off so I feed the hedgehog and settle down to watch the two matches I am interested in. It is an exciting night, my friends team wins as do Leicester. It is a good night. I find myself feeling vert tired, I’ve messaged and talked to a several people today about my London visit and have received kind advice from them all. I go to bed still full of thoughts about London, my childhood and the house where I was born and grew up.

Friday, I am woken up by a cheery partner eager to get off on our weekend break to see our youngest daughter and her partner. I am made toast in bed as a treat before I get up, shower, pack and prepare to travel. I of course make sure the hedgehog is fed. We set off, fill up with petrol and find our way to the motorway. It goes well till we hit junction 5 on the M5, its a slow drag through the road works, I am slightly worried that my wine gum stock will not last. It does and we arrive later than expected at our daughters in time for a late lunch sandwich and coffee. We sit in the sunshine of their back garden and we watch our daughters partner work hard to drain a pond as a starting point of reclaiming the garden. We sit and chat till late afternoon when we leave to go and check into our hotel. The Speech House is set in the middle of the forest and is still the place where the wards of the forest meet. Our room is excellent, we unpack and then take a nap. We return to our daughters and eat a delicious tea of pie and pudding. We sit and chat and catch up. Eventually we return to the hotel where I come to bed and catch up with the blog. I finally feel that I can rest for a while.

Tuesday, row or gym, gym, so its coffee and drugs when I get up and away to the gym. Bottle of water and up to the gym floor and a cross trainer. Its hard work today but I have my music in my ears again and I grind it out. 708 calories burned and 7.53 kilometres travelled. I thought about doing some weights machines but my body said emphatically “no!”. when my body speaks I generally listen these days. To my surprise the showers are hot so I indulge. It takes time to get back into my clothes, mainly because I now regularly use the hair dryer to dry my hair. I got sick of a wet pony tail and now brush my locks dry with the hair drier looking like some grey old horse shaking its mane. I like the bloke who is often in there at the same time as me as who just uses the hair drier to dry himself completely, the towel action being too much for him after his session. I guess there is a certain age where you do what you do regardless.

Post session I get in to the lounge and order coffee and a bacon and. egg roll. I settle down and read The Little Prince again in one sitting punctuated only by a second egg and bacon roll and additional coffee. It is a fascinating book and as a friend put it “tends to stay with you”. Having finished my reading I drive to the newly opened petrol station at my local cross roads. I fill with petrol for tomorrows drive to London. That all goes well but I also want to check my tyres. I spot the re-sited air supply. Its cashless. I press the start button on the machine and present my debit card. It rejects the transaction. It does this five fucking times. The last two watch by a guy who is also wanting to check his tyres. In the end I give up. So much for technology and the cashless crap we get forced into. I go home and have my afternoon nap before feeding the hedgehog. I clear the kitchen and then write the log as tonight we are going to see John Cooper Clarke.

So I prepare to go out and hope that tonight lives up to my fantasy. A friend calls after having been away and who is still battling long COVID. At the moment it seems to be rife. Another friend is currently recovering alongside her husband who also has it. It seems to be a battle all round at the moment. But right now I prepare to go and see a punk poet and of course the issue is to decide what to wear. Until tomorrow then when I have seen the opposition to the poetry coyote.

Monday, I oversleep a bit, check my messages and get up. No breakfast just a coffee and then I am off to the gym. I get there, check in and get my bottle of water and then hit the gym floor. I’m up on a cross trainer and about to set off when I find that my i-pod is out of juice, so its an hour without my music and the gym is not playing theirs. I resort to old fashioned fantasy, so I run marathons, sprint record times and drift through old holidays and trips. An hour later I am 719 calories lighter and 7.48 imaginary kilometres along the road. Its been four days since I last trained, so the outcome is quite pleasing.

I get back to the changing room and get into the showers. They are tepid at best as David Lloyd save money on their energy bills, bastards. What’s the point of a gym membership if you can’t get a warm shower after extreme exercise. I have my routine coffee and bacon and egg roll in the lounge. I take my time to eat and recover. I drive home to clear the kitchen, feed the hedgehog, fill the bird feeders, hang my towel out to dry and open my post. There is a lovely surprise, a book. The Little Prince by Antoine De Saint-Exupery. Its a present from a friend and I am really chuffed. Having done chores I put a cleaner in the dishwasher and set it off to clean. I retrieve my gold ring from the Shed where it has been waiting for me to take it to the jeweller as it split. I drive to my usual jeweller and put it in for repair. Apparently 9 carrot gold does not bend as well as 18 carat gold and tends to split more easily. As I have been known to forget to take it off in the gym its probably had a rougher ride than usual. I return home and bring the washing in. Its time for my afternoon nap so I head to bed and instruct Alexa to wake in me in 30 minutes, which it does on time. I start to read The Little Prince and I am immediately hooked. I have read some of his books about his experiences of flying in south America and Africa and enjoyed them. This book is very different, both a child’s and an adults book. I am hooked very quickly. My partner returns from visiting her mother and we decide to walk down to the village shop to get pizza for tea.

While my partner cooks tea I continue to read my new book. I eat tea and read on. There is more TV but I continue to read and do so till I end the book. Instantly I want to read it again. This is clearly not a straight forward children’s book and it is not a straight forward adults book either, hence my immediate urge to read it again. However I recommend it to you.

Well its been a while since I read a book in almost one sitting. It feels good to have done so and it has given me a lot to think about. This book is very layered and I have no doubt someone has got a PhD out of it. I like it when I read something and I get the sense that I’ve missed something or a lot of things. Its that nudge that niggles at the back of the brain. Its the stuff that the pixies cannot file or put away and runs around like an oiled pig refusing to be caught. Today has been a good day, gym, reading and the first to do list in ages. The blog drafted I go to bed.

Sunday, a lazy Sunday of mixed activity and achievements. There is, of course, coffee to start with and then a leisurely breakfast. We try to ring our youngest daughter but to no avail so we move into Sunday chore mode. I get called to mend the washing line that has failed. Job done I start to prepare to mend a dripping tap. I source the tools, watch the appropriate instructional video and begin the initial preparation. Firstly I need to turn the water off. I look under the sink and locate what I think is a close off valve. I turn it and find water leak from it. That’s not supposed to happen, I quickly reverse my actions. This means turning off the water at the stop cock. One small problem, the washing machine is running. I abort the mission and focus on the required vegetable shopping.

My partner and I drive to the garden centre and stock up on vegetables. It at least gets us out for a while. We return and I settle down to watch Leicester tigers beat a French team in the European cup quarter final. Its a good game. During this time my Amazon delivery arrives, my new desk organiser that I am hoping will clear the end of my “soffice”. It is a flat pack job that requires assembly. Fortunately being part octopus I manage the juggle required to bring all the parts together. Its not Chippendale but it is functional and forces me to sort the pile of papers that has accumulated.

So the evening starts with pie and moves on to TV and blog drafting although we do manage to make contact with our youngest and chat for a while. As we are visiting her next weekend we organise dining for the two nights we are there, then its back to blogging and TV mysteries. I have of course replenished the hedgehogs canteen today already. If I am lucky I might get to the football and see my team “The mighty Brentford” beat West Ham. Tomorrow I shall try to restart my routine with a trip to the gym.

Saturday I get up and make black coffee for my partner and myself. My partner has been fasting since yesterday and cannot eat until after her scan at 2 o’clock today, all she can have is black coffee. While my partner takes a shower I make my breakfast out of her sight so its all over by the time she comes down. The morning drifts by with odds an ends being done. I order a new desk organiser to complete my reorganisation of my “soffice”. I get the evening meal into the Crockpot. The garden camera reveals more activity by the hedgehog and I renew its food supply. The local bus service, which has a stop outside the house, has a strange idea of a timetable. It publishes one and then teasingly ignores it, so actually catching a bus becomes more of an intuitive art form. Unfortunately this morning my daughters intuition was not on point with the result that she needed a lift to her hair appointment. So we drop my daughter off and I take my partner to her scan appointment. We arrive in plenty of time and note another couple waiting in a car. It turns out that these scan appointments are spaced at quarter hour intervals. We get in to the medical centre and almost immediately my partner is called. In a very short time she is out again, scan complete.

I drive us home to the luxury of bacon bagels, a good way to break a fast. I settle down to watch the women’s rugby international between England and Wales. England of course thrash the Welsh but my main interest is watching one of the English players who went to school with my daughters in the local village school. Strange to see someone you knew from school nativity plays being an international athlete. We eat the Crockpot evening meal and settle down to amuse ourselves until Killing Eve is on. It was good to see Villanelle back on form and killing with aplomb again. Football follows and drafting the blog. Its been a slow day, meandering day, lazy day. It ends with meds and a late nigh to bed. Tomorrow I need to activate again.

Thursday, a strange day as it seems I remember little about it. There was toast to start the day and then a work meeting, which was okay. So there I am in the middle of the day already having written and submitted my Invoices for March. My partner and I go for a walk in the village to pick up prescriptions and some bits of shopping. its cold, wind and raining and no incentive to do anything. In the afternoon I have a brief nap and talk to a friend who continues to try and recover from long COVID. It is a slow and challenging process and not made easier by a world that insists that recovery has to be faster or on a timetable set by it and not on the actual state or needs of the person. It strikes me how quickly people want to move on regardless of evidence that there are still real issues to be faced and recovered from. We chat for a while until my friend goes on her way and I return to my nap. I finally rouse from my nap and go to the Shed to feed the hedgehog. It is still eating heartily and appears to be prospering. I drift into the evening, my partner forgoes her singing lesson and we watch a combination of mysteries and football. Late in the evening I clear the kitchen and wander off to bed. I have meandered the day away and know that Friday needs to be different.

Friday and I wake feeling less tired and get up to make a tasty bacon bagel breakfast and prepare to attend a work meeting. I make fresh coffee and settle down in front of the laptop adn log into my Teams link. I wait, I continue to wait, I start doing other things, and wait some more. Eventually the laptop throws me out, its clear I’ve been stood up. So I now spring into action. My partner has holiday time at the start of June and asked me to surprise her with a break or holiday. I scroll through many options and eventually come to a hotel in Windermere, which fits the things we like. I book it for a week, so now we have settled our breaks for the year so far. We intend to see how things go now and adapt our plans for later in the year.

Next it’s time to relocate the fish and to recycle the fish tank. I relocate the fish to the garden pond. I’ve been cross breeding guppies with a cold water fish so I am hoping that there is enough genetic strength in the strain to adapt to the pond environment. I clear the fish tank away and reclaim the lounge alcove. This means I can reorganise my “soffice” and return the sofa to being a piece of furniture. Friends suggest it is a harsh move for the fish, however in the current energy environment it is a luxury to keep heating 96 litres of water to 26 degrees, filter it and light it 24 hours a day every day. That is not an insignificant amount of electricity to be saving and at todays costs, its a financial saving. So its done, an era is over, we move on. I lunch on coffee and iced bun. I clear the kitchen and head for a Shed, where I write a brief letter and feed the hedgehog. I wash out my ink wells, yes you read right, I wash out my ink wells as they tend to sludge up over time. I have also found that dipping my nibs in a candle flame seems to clean them and make the script sharper. I pop out to the post box and return to find the new starters for the garage light have arrived. I fit a new starter but to my chagrin the tube still refuses to light permanently, it just flickers. It means the tube has gone. I take the old one out, do research and source new ones. My partner and I drive to the nearest Wickes and buy a couple of replacement tubes. We know how to have fun. I get home and put in the replacement tube. Bingo, there is light. In another universe I’d be a god.

Too late and too hungry to train we settle for an Indian takeaway, women’s football, TV and finally, as I write the blog, Iron Man 3. During the day I get messages from friends. One has gone down with COVID the other continues to battle the affects of long COVID. It is a battle and the cruellest element is the way it robs people of their energy at a stroke, unexpectedly and wholly. My cancer does it to me on occasions and it is a very disconcerting feeling as the ground gets cut from under you and any plans you’ve made. All I can do is trust myself, rest and go again, again and again until its as good as it gets, again.