Thursday rolls around again. Its a usual Thursday but starts with a phone call from a friend whose birthday it is. It was good to hear how someone was planning to celebrate and indulge in the midst of COVID lockdown. A fast bacon breakfast and then I am back in front of a screen for the first time today. A useful meeting with colleagues. Once over I head for the post office to send my son a letter. I always giggle quietly to myself on entering a post office wearing a beanie and a mask. I’m so tempted to shout “hands up” and see what happens but I restrain myself and just pop my letter on the scales. Home to a bowl of lunch muesli and back in front of the screen to host an open forum, to which two new people attended. A good and interesting session which leaves me staring into space for a while afterwards. The guy who tidies our garden has been and gone, having drunk tea, raked lawns and trimmed bamboo. Its time to train and I get in to my gear and head for the garage to row. I do 45 minutes and get a new personal best for the time. Go me, that was unexpected.
Kilometres 
Time and calories
Training over I change and settle down to an evening of European football alongside my Scottish colleague on WhatsApp. As his team spiral to a defeat our exchanges get more terse and mildly xenophobic. By the time it had descended into a Saturday night brawl the game was gone. So for all the wrong reasons the evening turn out to be unusually entertaining. The fun over I start to write the blog to the background debate about vaccines, Europe, and looking for people to blame and noting that COVID is re-ravaging parts of Europe. I hanker after my garden, sunshine and friends and ponder on whether the email I got saying I do not have to shield from the 1st April is genuine or whether this is a result of a bored apparatchik having an April fools joke. It reminds me of the civil servant who thought it was fun to create Minimum Use Of Force Tactical Intervention (MUFTI) as the tittle for the training given to prison officers to manage violet behaviour. A mufti being an Islamic scholar who may issue fatwa or nonbinding opinions on law. At the time of its inception the common rumour put around was that MUFTI meant subduing the unbeliever, hence the perception that someone was making a gratuitous joke of the role of the prison staff. On that note I close the blog and wander off to bed hoping to sleep for more than two hours at a time, one of the side effects of my meds. Fun eh.
