Wednesday and its a day I should be going to a funeral but I feel crap so decide not to go. My partner and her brother will go. I get up late and make breakfast and take my morning meds. I’ve dressed in my training clothes in the hope that as the day goes on I will feel well enough to train. By mid day my partner has left and I continue to paint over the wall scar left by the instillation of the new house alarm. I bring the bins in and write a poem based on my experience of the last poetry stanza. I also message the alarm company to get an update on my new system. next on my list is parcelling up hardback copies of my last two poetry collections and boxing them up to go the team at Ruler’s Wit, the publishing team. Then its time to begin to draft todays blog. It seems very little but I find more and more that small jobs are taking longer and it is difficult to find a rhythm.

565
Shakespeare  reveals the yobbo 
who has read a few books,
It’s a fair summary of the easy way,
the short cut to the end 
justified by meagre means.
Avoid the work, the graft
to get the skills nailed
and the knowledge imbedded.
There is and never was the time 
to take time, to immerse 
and indulge, to reflect. 
Always drowning, always sinking
in the effort to stay moving. 
Years behind as the dyslexic 
dragged to the back of the class
to do raffia and be advised to 
be a butchers boy. A life
of stealing, lifting and dodging 
all the while knowing that learning 
was the ticket out. Steinbeck
saved me, correspondence courses,
Vesta curies and a cold single room
made me Balzac like.
Finally university opened the eyes
and then the doors,
but even now the years of ignorance
cannot be washed away 
and I stumble over words
that do not fit my mouth
or my history.

								565  21-10-2026

I come to a stop when I cannot find the big labels I bought and cannot get to where they might be. Perhaps its time to train. I go to the garage and not that it is 10 degrees, on the chilly side. Once strapped on the rower I get going and keep going. The outcome? I am a monster, crashing my best distance since 29th of April this year and on over 6 kilometre an hour pace. This is very unexpected but very welcome. Making the effort is paying off in a short time, now the onus is on me to keep this training going.

Of course I am on the laptop straight away to get it on the blog. I need to keep this going, the real goal is to lose weight so nothing is good until I weigh in on Sunday and see my weight reduce. That will be a slower process than the improvement in the rowing. No more sweets for me now. I want that drop in clothes size.

My evening comes along with an early football match, an Indian take away and then more Reacher. Inane but pleasingly gratuitously violent. I clear the decks, take my night meds and get myself to bed.

.