Sunday and its weigh in day. I wake about 10 o’clock and get myself off to the scales. I step up and look down in hope.

93.5 Kilos. a decrease of

2 kilos.

I am so relieved that I have lost weight. It means that even with my new medication I can control an important element in my fitness and wellness. It provides me with motivation to keep going. So tomorrow I resume training.

The rest of my day was all rest and chocolate. I did nothing meaningful beyond filling the bird feeders, filling the squirrel feeder, checking the hedgehog canteen and checking the garden camera. No pictures of the hedgehogs but the camera was not in the best place. I reorganise the camera and re-site it. I will check the canteen again and see if my impression that the “insect crumble” has been eaten.

For the rest of the day I lazed, ate chocolate, ate a good dinner, did the Tesco order and watched rugby until the evening when I cleared the kitchen and wrote the blog. I deliciously did nothing intellectual, no reading, no writing, nothing creative, in fact a day of complete slobbery. Tomorrow the grind resumes, so I will be of to the gym in the morning and then to the Shed.

Friday and today my partner and daughter are off to London to see Cirque Du Soleil, but first there is a work meeting to do. A session with one of my services, it goes well as the people there are positive and engaged. As soon as I log off I do the taxi run to the station and drop my partner and eldest daughter off to get their train. I drive to the gym and do an hour on the cross trainer. Its a very tired session and I just about manage to burn 687 calories over 7.12 kilometres. A warm shower and I sit in the club lounge to drink coffee and to eat a chicken fajita salad. I’m feeling very tired at the end of what has been a long training and dieting week. I get myself home and watch rugby while I wait for my new fitness tracker to arrive. It arrives and I am like a kid with a new toy. Like all new toys it takes up my time as I learn its secrets. I finally strap it on and begin a new relationship with a gadget.

I while away the rest of my evening by clearing the kitchen and watching more episodes of the Witcher until its time to take my drugs and take myself to bed. Once in bed I cannot sleep and at one point seriously consider getting up again but persevere until I guess that I finally fall asleep.

Saturday and I finally wake up about 10 o’clock. It again seems that my best time to sleep is in the morning. I look at my new fitness tracker and I am very surprised to see that I apparently I slept for more than 9 hours. I do not think my new gadget can tell the difference between sleep and staring into the darkness. I have breakfast and then put the evening meal into the slow cooker, so by the magic of kitchen gadgets there will be a meal ready in the evening. I settle down to watch the midday football game, which is going well when Amazon unexpectedly deliver my new hedgehog feeding station/house. Rather than bugger about with some sort of home made contraption made from bricks and a cat bed turned upside down I’ve bought a properly constructed feeding box.

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I put some of the dry Prickles hedgehog food on a plate inside the house and place the box next to the point where my hedgehog has housed itself in my green house. I also put out a shallow dish of water nearby. Tomorrow I shall check the camera to see if the hedgehog has been out and about or whether its going to sleep through for longer. From now on I need to check the camera regularly and heck on the canteen to see if any of the food is being eaten. I return to watching rugby until its time to go and collect my partner and eldest daughter from the station. It goes well, drive in easy, short wait and speedy return. We watch our local rugby team win narrowly over an Irish team in the European competition. Game over I go to train in the garage. I row for half an hour. It is a painful and tired session, the last of the week and I am feeling it.

I return from the garage, change and settle down to eat the meal that was put in the slow cooker in the morning. It is very welcome. There is more TV during the evening and I have time to look at the presents that have been brought for me in London.

All of this week comes to nothing if tomorrow when I weigh myself in there is no weight loss. It would be nice to see at least some decrease even if its small. It feels as if I am working against more things at the moment. My anxiety is that my new medication is going to make it more difficult for me to control my weight. It is one of the few things that I feel I have some control over that might affect my cancers progress or not. I can indulge in all sorts of intellectual activities and become different things, like the poetry coyote, but I know that none of this will alter the cell chemistry that is nibbling away at me. It raises the issues of what quality of life actually means to me. It is a question that I return to over and over as things change but there are anchors that fix me and provide the stability. Every one of the anchors are people or people related, but its a fine balance between time to be with them and the time I need to think, reflect and create.

Thursday. I wake ten minutes before my first meeting of the day, so its a quick coffee and in front of the laptop. Good to see people and catch up. It feels that the world is slowly waking up and in due course it will be possible to meet as real people again in the Real World. So it passes pleasantly and at the end I take a few minutes to catch up with a colleague that shares my interest in football, rugby and tax returns. There is admin to do post meeting. I also grab a round of peanut butter toast and coffee as there had been no time before the meeting. There then followed a period of frustration as I wrestle with my Fitbit that refuses to charge. No matter what I do I cannot get the dead thing to charge. I of course go to Amazon and find myself a new one, which with luck will be with me tomorrow. Feeling pleased with myself I am further encouraged by the arrival of the Amazon man. He delivers my new inspection lamp that is going to illuminate the Shed. I open it and of course its broken. The bulb is in pieces. Luckily I have anticipated this and have spares. A few minutes later and a new bulb is in place and I have found the hooks I need to put it in place. However there things to do first. I get my training kit together and load it in the car along with the dead Dyson that needs to go to the recycling centre.

I get to the recycling centre and queue for a few minutes before being directed to bay 18. I deposit the dead Dyson down with the other “small electrical goods” in the giant skip. Then I’m off to the gym, buying my usual large bottle of water at the bar and head for the changing rooms. I’m up on a cross trainer and treading out another hours worth of calories. 705 today over 7.62 kilometres. I Shower and head for the lounge and on the way take a phone call from a friend. The world is busy and everyone seems to be engaged in organising and restructuring life. I get up to go to the bar and have a light headed moment so I add an omelette to my black coffee and rest a while in the comfort of a large chair. I guess sometime the battle takes its toll, Rocket would be proud. Once feeling chipper again I drive home.

The kit gets put in the washing basket, and then I get a small weekend case out of the loft for my partners trip to London tomorrow. I take the new lamp to the Shed and install it so that the Shed is now better lit. It will make spending time working in the Shed that much easier. I return to the house and clear the kitchen by which time I am feeling tired. I watch ancient TV till my favourite tuna pasta dinner appears. My partner expresses doubt about the wisdom of driving to London and back in a single day next weekend. I look at where we are going and book the nearest hotel. My partner reads the reviews. The reviews say and is concerned that they say the hotel is dirty. There is a frank exchange of views before she goes to her singing lesson and I watch the Witcher. I cancel the hotel booking, my partner can find better.

I spend my evening writing the blog and Witchering. I take time out to search Amazon for a hedgehog feeding station, which I find several of. I read all the reviews and choose very carefully, I’m clearly better at choosing hedgehog shelters than hotels. More Witcher then drugs and bed. I’m tired.

Wednesday and its an Elders meeting day, so I am up and breakfasting fairly quickly once I am up. I have some work admin to do and emails to check. I find a receipt for my entry fee for the Kent and Sussex Poetry Society poetry competition. That’s two competitions that I have entered now. Only winners will get notified so I am expecting to drift in in to 2022 in silence. I have the feeling that I should have just torn up a couple of twenty pound notes and got on with life. Anyway its done now. I fill my drugs wallets for the next two weeks, one of my fortnightly rituals. Eleven o’clock rolls round and I Zoom in to the Elders meeting. There is a new face and some bad news from someone who I write to. The meeting pursues its project goals and we meander to the conclusion. The meeting ends with “leave meeting” clicks, and that’s it. All that stays with me is a friends news. I need to write.

Its lunchtime and I stop for soup. I start to run through my poem files and select out the “hotel and restaurant” poems. They are going to be the next poetry coyote video. I find I have quite a lot and will need to edit them before I record. What I have learnt is that none of the poems I use on my YouTube cannot be used in any competitions. Another reason why I prefer to use the YouTube channel and ignore the poetry industry. A work for a while, clear the kitchen and then get into my training kit. What I cannot get to work properly are a pair of ear buds. The buds work but my ears just cannot keep them in. I wanted to be able to train in them but it is going to be hopeless. As I listen to some music my phone rings and the call pops up in my ear buds, the caller can hear me, I am surprised, such a bummer that my ears cannot keep the buds in. We have a chat and talk about what we are doing and how things are panning out with COVID and our current plans. Its a real pleasure to be able to chat, but the Real World calls and there are children to be collected and training sessions to be done.

I head for the garage having abandoned my buds and reverted to my head phones. I strap my feet in, select a level and the time. Its going to be an hour, the first time I’ve rowed for an hour for a while. I start steady and let myself stretch and build up a rhythm. By the end of the hour I am dripping wet but more than satisfied with the way the session has gone.

I wander back to the “soffice” to record the session and find that Amazon has delivered my Prickles starter pack. I have taken my role of Hogherd seriously and bought the right food. All I need to do now is construct a feeding station and gauge when to start to tempt my hog out with well chosen morsels.

I change out of my training gear and load the dishwasher and then return to the “soffice” to tidy up some emails. I settle into the early evening TV and then my partner returns from visiting her mother and we finish off last nights fish pie. The TV provides NCIS wallpaper as I start to write the blog. As the evening wears on I can feel myself getting more and more tired. As my partner reminds me, training, dieting and doing a new medication might have something to do with it. That might be true but I don’t think cancer is going to let me off, so regardless, it is necessary to keep fighting. So I shall head for bed early and gather spoons for tomorrows meetings, gym and a delightful trip to the recycling centre to wave farewell to the dead Dyson, Long live Henry.

Monday, and the start of the re-boot of the New Year. I do a muesli breakfast and drugs and then head for the gym. Weekday mornings and afternoons are good times to go, there is elbow room in the changing rooms. I do an hour on a cross trainer, burning 711 calories adn going 7.81 kilometres. A refreshing shower and I sit in the club lounge and sip a large americano and eat a three egg omelette. I take my time and eventually drive home via Sainsburys to get chicken and mince as I am forewarned that Tesco are not going to deliver them this evening.

Home and I clear the kitchen and settle down to select which poems I am going to enter in to the Magma poetry competition. The required admin due to the format required and the entry procedure is formidable. I get the documents prepared and register with the submission portal. Then its time for dinner. I’m feeling tired, abnormally tired for me at this time of day. It could be my meds. I have a flurry of activity to try and liven myself up, I buy hedgehog food, ear buds and send messages and then I flag again. I miss a call from a friend, I become more irritable with the TV, I go to bed and read a Kate Tempest play, Hopelessly Devoted, its prison based and seems ironic. I go to sleep early feeling that today has been long.

Tuesday and I wake up at eight o’clock and feel like I have not slept at all. I get up pull on my “fuck cancer” T shirt and go back to bed. I check my phone for messages and emails and then read another Kae Tempest play; Wasted. My partner brings me a coffee as I read. I finish the play and get up, I feel tired, everything is an effort.

I eat muesli, drink more coffee, clear the kitchen and empty the bins. I pack my gym bag and feel knackered. I recharge my watch and ipod while I play for time and get myself up for going to the gym. I make the gym about 12:30, buy water and head to the changing rooms. I get myself a cross trainer, plug in the ear phones, jack up Rammstein and try to start a session. I feel fucked and it crosses my mind to stop but that’s not how surviving cancer goes. Relentless has to be met with relentless. I will finish this session and so I grit and grind. All that matters is finishing, that will do today. I have a ritual, a drink of water every 20 minutes, it gives me targets to get to and keeps me hydrated. The rest is down to Rammstein and whatever fantasies my pixies come up with to keep my brain occupied. I get there, to the end and I’ve managed to burn dead on 700 calories and gone 7.86 kilometres. Slow but steady got me there. I walk a couple of circuits of the gym floor as I finish my bottle of water and then its off to the showers. It’s a slow one followed by a long black americano in the lounge. I note that my companion is a small and struggling palm, a real one not plastic, I’m impressed and then saddened for it as it seems to me its chances of survival are small.

I go home and have chicken soup, feeling tired and with little motivation to do anything. Tomorrow I shall use the rower in the garage so that I can rest my legs a bit. I do a crossword and put my washing in before retreating to the sofa to catch up with the blog. My ambitions for for the rest of the day are small, firstly get the poems away, eat dinner, go to bed early and perhaps read. Tomorrow is an Elders meeting day and a rower day. Beyond that I will see how it goes, I sense this tiredness may be variable from day to day and clearly affects how communicative I am. Its time to be in the box, to focus and to get through.

Its Sunday and of course its weigh in day. 95.5 Kilos, which is a meagre 0.3 kilos down on last week. It makes me think of the New Years resolutions I made only nine short days ago. They are not going well. Here they are with an update:

1. Stay alive, Yep so far so good
2. Be kinder, debatable, I doubt my family would think so, work to be done there
3. Notice the ordinary, I’ve noticed the irritating probably, although the garden is blooming.
4. Contribute, I’m back to work and doing some stuff, that has to count.
5. Spend more time in the Shed, I’ve had a couple of half days letter writing, so that’s getting there.
6. Train regularly, training but not regularly. 4 out of 9 so far, not good enough.
7. Eat protein and fruit, low carbs. Total failure here.
8. Enter some poetry competitions. Not yet but have selected some for a specific competition.
9. Keep writing letters to friends, Yep I’ve written quite a lot of letters so far.
10. Buy less on Amazon,Too early to tell, but it creeps up on me.
11. Learn how to plait my own hair, I’ve got a video and watched it but yet to try.
12. Play guitar more. Not touched one yet in 2022
13. Tend the garden, Done nothing yet.
14. Feed the squirrels and the birds. Yep, I’ve done this, Squishy and Squashy are looking plumpish.

So it’s a really average start so I think I need to reset and go again with more gusto this time so I am declaring January the 10th as New Year. Monday, tomorrow, will be the start of the concerted effort, especially numbers 6,7 and 2. All of this in my head before making a warm drink for my partner before she wakes up. We have our drinks and then while she makes breakfast I Henry the upstairs. Breakfast is eaten and we set about the day. As part of my organising I refill the squirrel feeder and then decide to see if the garden camera trap has caught anything interesting. We last set it in October and have left it since then. When I put the memory card in the laptop I find that the batteries only lasted another two days and the card is full as well. I begin to go through the images. There is a lot of pidgeons, squirrels and the occasional cat and then there was this:

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Yes indeed we have a hedgehog, at least we did on October. It appears that the mound of leaves in the plastic greenhouse really is a hedgehog in residence. I’m so chuffed, I’ve always wanted to see hedgehogs back in the garden. I re-battery the camera and copy the card before deleting it, then I put it back in the garden. I shall be checking the camera more regularly now but I suspect that if the hedgehog is a wise one it will be well and truly hibernating in this colder weather.

The afternoon was spent watching Tigers lose for the first time this season. It was disappointing to watch but hopefully they will recover. I moved onto football as wall paper while I do the Tesco order for tomorrow and process the blog content. I make a start to write it. The family has dinner and we settle down to the early evening news to be followed by a new series of Vera. The evening will pass and I will go to bed full of intent to restart my New Year again although I have to say my injection is still sore and I am wondering if my new medication is actually doing anything except make me feel tired more quickly.

Saturday and most of the morning is spent in bed talking about breaks, cleaning and the usual domestics. It also reflected a poor nights sleep as my prostate got me up more frequently than usual. So it was brunch as the first meal of the day, fresh coffee and drugs. I unpack some new Denby mugs to add to the ones that my youngest daughter bought us for Christmas. I find I’ve bought the wrong hue of blue! Same shape but one hue deeper of blue. I’m not amused, now I have to decide whether to send the back or keep them and gamble on people not noticing. I decide to think about it.

Its time to clean the fish out as my partner cleans the fridge before tackling the rest of the house. All goes well for the most part and in due course the fish’s view of the television is restored. They look pleased and appreciate the renewed water flow from the cleaned pump. Life for the fish will be better for a few weeks now.

I am at the happy stage of clearing things up, with the carpet rolled up and my fish cleaning paraphernalia to put away when my partner appears with the Dyson beast. Its not working, cleaning has come to a halt, this is a crisis. I get my electrical kit and screw drivers and start to check the Dyson beast. Fuse is good. I start to take the machine apart starting with the mains switch and the mains cable. All is well. So I take all the filters out and check them, all is good. I check the hoses and pipes, all are well. I remove the brush guard and de hair the roller brush, now all is well. The machine still refuses to work. I examine the motor housing to find that to may amazement I do not have the right tool to unscrew the housing. I am stumped. I Google the Dyson beast and find it is no longer made. That means spares will be rare or its a case of finding a viable second hand one. Hmmmm, its decision time.

Hmmmm indeed. Answer buy a new one. Want one now. Google research shows that the replacement model, the Dyson Ball (big and small) is the replacement for the Dyson Beast. No where has the Dyson Balls in stock, no where. Right that is not good enough to solve the immediate “no hoover” situation. There is an intense Google research project and the outcome is The Henry Pet and its available from my local Argos. Henry is bought, I nominate my local in Sainsburys Argos to collect from. The confirmation comes through and my partner and set off to our local Sainsburys to pick up our Henry, (already one of the family). I get to Sainsburys and check the email and find that Argos have decided I’m collecting from another branch in the centre of town. I and my partner are not best pleased. We drive grudgingly into town and park. Its a five minute walk to the Argos. The pick up goes well, the walk back to the car park turns into a farmers walk as I clutch the boxed Henry to me. I make it in one go.

We drive home and of course I am like a child with a new toy. I clear the debris from the dead Dyson recovery attempt and assemble green Henry. I give Henry his inaugural run and introduce him to his new home and work environment. I am impressed with his dynamic suction power and willingness to work. The lounge is returned to its tidy state and the ground floor gets Henry clean. In the midst of this I order an Indian take away, no one can face cooking so I take the easy way out. Henry gets a rest, I watch a TV football match till the food arrives and then we feast. Nothings quite gone to plan today. I start the blog and before I know it is gone 10 o’clock. I’ve not had a moment to respond to friends WhatsApp messages and pictures. It seems everyone has been busy either reorganising rooms or socialising. Perhaps this is Spring springing and everyone is making the effort to move forward out of what has been a dark and miserable autumn and winter so far. Thankfully climate warming is bringing the garden spring along quicker this year and all sorts of things are flowering or growing early. Tomorrow the “too blue” mugs need to be solved, a home for Henry found, old mugs stored and the dead beast readied for recycling. Then things can be got on with. Now its time for drugs and bed.

Friday and I wake to find everyone else up and busy. I have a muesli breakfast, coffee and then settle down to review a draft report of a service review that was done before Christmas. Its a tricky report and take some time to tease a way through. A friend calls and we chat about how we are and what we are doing. We decide that at some point we will do a zoom or a Teams meeting as we both want to have the opportunity to chat and be able to see each other at the same time. It would seem that zoom and other platforms have taught us that the good old fashioned telephone call is just that, old fashioned. I continue on with the report review. At lunchtime my partner and I go for a walk around the village and to pick up a paper and some food. I have a brief lunch and do the crosswords during which a friend rings for a chat. She has gathered produce from her allotment and was on the way to play golf so it was a quick chat.

I looked for a treat in the infamous third kitchen draw down, where we keep the treats and indulgences. I was disappointed as I had forgotten that I had feasted earlier in the week on some rather lovely gingerbread iced cookies. I highly recommend them, they are very moreish.

I prepare the evening meal and put it in the slow cooker and then change into my training gear and head for the Shed. I had previously had the brain to turn the heating on earlier to warm it through. I go to the Shed and climb up on to the bike. Its the first time for a long time that I’ve used the bike and I am not sure how this is going to go. I use my training mask for he first six minutes but have to abandon it as I am so hot. I shed my top layers quickly as the Shed gets hotter and hotter but I keep going. I do an hour at a steady pace. I need to remember to use the bike more often, however it is not as effective as the rower or cross trainer at burning off the calories.

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I end the session and return to the house to record it in my food and training log. I change out of my kit and then flop on the sofa. I watch TV as the dinner continues to cook. The evening drifts by in TV and rugby until I am on my own when I settle to write the blog. The highlight was getting the cake out of the fridge and having a celebrator slice to mark the second anniversary of the end of chemotherapy. No headway on the poetry competition front other than reading through some and picking out ones that meet certain length criteria.

Thursday, I’m up early and having toast and coffee before de-icing the cars so my partner can go to the physiotherapist. I notice that I am still sore from Tuesdays injection. I then go to my work meeting, first one of the year with the team. Its a useful meeting and goes well. Just before the end I get a call which I take. By the time the call comes to an end the team are all leaving the meeting. I do some admin tasks and then get myself off to the gym.

Its another session on the cross trainer for an hour which burns off 727 calories and takes me 8.4 kilometres. Unusually the bar is open so I have lunch at the club and do a Tesco order before driving home and heading to the Shed. I spend the rest of the afternoon writing letters and then getting them to the post office before collection time. So evening arrives along with my favourite tuna pasta. My partner settles into her singing lesson and I start to go through my poems looking for possible candidates to enter into competitions. There are three possible competitions to enter in the immediate future. Its a strange world, so I have been looking through my poems for ones that are less than 10 lines and between 11 and 50. Eventually my rummaging comes to an end and my partners lesson ends. We spend time watching “Hope Street” until my partner goes to bed and I write the blog. So today feels like it has been busy and partially productive. I’ve kept myself busy as a distraction from the fact that tomorrow is the second anniversary of completing chemo therapy. The therapy that was sold to me on the basis that it would prolong my life by 18 months. Well I’m still here, so what’s next? I guess I just keep wining till I don’t.

Wednesday and its bin day, an exciting start to the day wondering if the bins will be cleared. I cook a bacon and egg breakfast and then head for the Shed. I spend all morning writing letters punctuated by a coffee and biscuit break. Once the Shed gets warm it provides a really cosy space to sit and write at leisure. I break off at quarter to two to do a work meeting for half an hour, which turns out to be very productive. A quick lunch and I am back in the Shed finishing letters. At about 3:30 I realise I might miss the post so I take a walk over to the post office, buy stamps and send my letters on their way. I return home and close the Shed up but take pictures of a couple of little wonders in the garden. Despite the mornings ice and frost these little gems where still there in my garden to be found.

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With the Shed tight for the night I head back to the house and work up the motivation to train. I get into my kit and head for the rower in the garage. The garage is cold so I get started. I feel like I would be cheating if I just do half an hour so I set the clock for 45 and get underway. I start slowly and build up over the time. It goes okay and I end up with a decent session.

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I get back into comfortable clothes and sit down to dinner and early evening TV. Having eaten I start to write the blog. It will be a short blog, I’m still sore and will be tucking myself up early tonight. It seems that the world is like the universe, slowly drifting apart as we all acquire more complex COVID personal baggage. As we all strive to be normal our normal becomes more onerous and the connections more demanding on us. I think it is this that continues to motivate me to make the effort to go on writing letters, the blog, the newly found Poetry Coyote and WhatsApping. Perhaps its just me, maybe the world out there is carrying on regardless.