Its Tuesday and today I travel to MB3 to meet up with other members of the group. I start the day with my favourite bacon bagel and then take the car to the garage to fill and to check the tyres. I make a dash to the supermarket and buy food to take with me. Probably contentious but I can’t not take anything, it’s not something I can do. Back home there is some clearing up to do and bins to be put out. There is of course the last-minute packing to do and mentally run through my check list. Come lunch time I’ve done todays crosswords and I am ready to leave. A friend calls and we chat for a while and then I am ready for the off. It’s a very straight forward drive, M69 and then A46 for an hour and forty minutes until I arrive at the venue for the meeting. I park up and put food in the fridge and dump my stuff in my room in the residential building. Soon others arrive and so begins the experience. My evening is filled with barbequed food and conversation as we get settled in. I am pleased to be here but alongside this is the slight anxieties of doing the face-to-face stuff with real people and people I like and respect. I cannot write here in the blog what we spoke about as I think it would be disrespectful to my friends and damaging to the trust between us. In the Therapeutic Community fraternity there is an expectation that confidentiality exists automatically, so I shall abide by it. The environment here at MB3 is lovely and I am excited by the view from my bedroom window, it looks out over the yurt, which I we get to use tomorrow, but we will see.

We have agreed breakfast at 9am tomorrow. Having collectively washed up and cleared away people drift off to their rooms but I remain in the main building as this is where the Wi-Fi is and I have the blog to write. I try to get access to my website but for some reason I cannot get in so have resorted to writing this in Word in the hope that I will be able to cut and paste it across when I can get access. Its only 10:30 and feels awfully early to me as I rarely go to bed before midnight. I shall attempt to get into my website again but if not I shall retreat like the others to my bedroom and read or write letters.

Wednesday, the day of the Elders meeting, and still, I cannot get into my website, apparently it may have something to do with MB3’s fire wall. I have breakfast and repair with the rest to the yurt. And so, the day begins as we talk and think our way through the day. It seems a struggle at times but it feels productive as we gradually whittle away to the critical issues. There is a space in which we are shown the archives at MB3 and I note that there are things I can donate to the archives related to prison therapeutic communities. We also find time to talk to a colleague in India which puts some things into context. As the day breaks up and people leave those remaining for the night cook, eat and chat before clearing away and retiring early to bed. I pack for my return journey and write a draft of the blog for when I can get into the site again. During the last couple of days people have enquired how I am and how I am coping with my cancer. It has been strangely reassuring to be able to tell people how I am and share some of my thoughts about the process of trying to manage the cancer and the interventions that are a consequence of the illness. People are kind and explore some of the experiences with me and make connections with others experiences. These conversations lay alongside other conversations about entanglement theory, altered states of mind, the unconscious and the other ideas that occupy us as we try to make sense of things.