So another week starts, I wonder what it will bring. Coffee and then muesli before retreating to the shed. I reorganise the shed a bit and integrate binoculars, field identification charts and Chinese character books. The intention is to get back to typing up my poems, spurred by an incessant nagging in my head that I’ve got over confident with my cancer. Having lost weight, got fitter, lowered my heart rate and become more active I’ve become lackadaisical about my diet, too much sugar, and fallen into assuming that I have all the time I need. As a result some of the priorities that came to the forefront when I first got diagnosed and went in to chemo have been slowly abandoned or pushed into the background. Recently my partners mother going into hospital and more recently my partners brother becoming ill suddenly and requiring urgent intervention has sharpened my sense of my own threat. So I am trying to get back to my original priorities, hence the clearing of my desk space in the shed. I settle down to write a letter before my lunch time meeting. A get a text message telling me the hospital appointment for my facial lump is to be Monday morning and for me to confirm my attendance, which I duly do. Another thing to get into the dairy, another skirmish in the battle.

My meeting rolls around and I spend two hours with colleagues checking out where we are in our various areas and thinking about how we move forward. Some agencies are easier to work with than others, which poses us some interesting issues. The meeting ends and I grab some food before walking with my partner to the post box and then taking a turn around the village to get some air. We just get home and Tesco deliver. I discover that my partners brother was taken into hospital again yesterday but was discharged in the middle of the night to return home. So I’m not surprised he has not responded to my messages. We cook tea and sit down to an evening meal. A brief rest to let the food go down and I get changed to train. Back to the shed I do an hour on the bike as night gets blacker.

• 

• 

• 

I return to the house and settle on the sofa to write the blog and then I notice. I am not wearing my seal ring. I always wear my seal ring, only when I row do I not. I was riding therefore it would have been on my hand. I search the room but cannot find it. No other choice but to get my head torch on and search the garden and the shed, it must have come off during the training session. So I spend time wandering my garden with a head torch on and then searching the shed’s every nook and cranny. No luck, I return to the house and search the lounge again. I sit, I think, and I am about to go out to the garden again, its now 12:30, and I think about changing to train. Its a long shot but worth a try. I go to the back bedroom where I change and look around on the floor, nothing. More in desperation than hope I pick up my jeans and stick my had in the pocket, eureka! There it is nestling in a handkerchief. I feel relief and joy. I know why it has happened. Since losing weight my fingers are slimmer and when I am cold the ring slips off my second finger and I have to move it over a finger to keep it on. It as clearly slipped off my cold thin finger when I changed to train. I return to the blog and finish my account. I drink a reflective non alcohol beer and retire knowing that I have no work tomorrow and that I have a chance to return to my poems and letter writing. Somehow it seems more important than ever to keep Rocket fighting and to stay engaged in the war against my cancer.