Its Wednesday and I wake up to find my partner already gone to work. Really gone, not just trotted downstairs to the office but real drive a car to work work. I make coffee and take my meds and then I think I ought to have something to eat so down a bowl of muesli. As I stand at the kitchen window a squirrel bounds into view and proceeds to dig up some of the lettuce seeds I planted in the raised bed on the patio yesterday. I am powerless to do anything and smile as I realise that the squirrel is teaching me about symbiosis. There is a balance to be had here. I’ve made up my mind to go to the gym today. I do not feel like it but I pack my kit and my portable office and drive off to the gym. I was not feeling good at all and considered turning round and going home. I said loudly to my self in the car, “Its just anxiety get on with it you are psychologist deal with it, ” so I did and got to the gym. Once there I get onto the changing rooms still not feeling chipper but made it upstairs to a cross trainer. I climbed aboard and got myself going. I did 55 minutes at a regular pace and get to the end hot and tired. I had forgotten my i-pod so had to rely on my fantasy world to get me through the time.

After climbing off the machine I walk around the gym floor trying to cool down and consult my fitness app. I am okay on the heart rate and my SATS are 98%, normal, so basically I’m okay. My fitness age according to the app is 41. Amazing, I cannot believe the algorithm has got that right, but its supposed to be based on results from over 300,000 people in Sweden over 30 years. I shower. What a luxury, a walk in shower with all the hot water I could want. I spend time showering and washing my hair, no mean feat given how long it is now. I change and blow dry my flowing locks. That’s an interesting experience in a men’s changing room. I’m past caring now, people will just have to get over it. I dump my bag in the car and return to the club lounge with my portable office and settle down to write letters. I sip americanos and devour a sausage and a bacon buns. By three o’clock I think its time to go home especially as I find I have not got a lighter with me to enable me to seal my letters properly.

Back home there is a pile of redirected mail and our own mail. I find there is a letter from the tax man about my sisters estate. There was also a letter from an insurance company threatening to stop the London house insurance. I ring the tax man and give them my solicitors contact details. He says they will write in due course. God knows how long that will be. I email the solicitor with photos of the letters and tell her what I’ve done and ask her opinion on the insurance. I finish sealing my letters and pop across to the post office to send my letters. I return home to find my new Claire North book The End of The Day waiting for me. It will see me through Easter hopefully.

I do some death admin while listening to the radio and then start to draft the blog. Yesterday was such a lovely sunny day and as I walked back from posting my letters today in the rain I really felt the loss of sunshine and warmth and it made me feel the depth of missing people. I am clear that keeping myself locked away in the house is not healthy. My conclusion is that I am a sunshine hermit. When the sun shines and I am in my Shed writing with the life of the garden around me I can do being a Hermit but not in this miserable wet weather. I should adopt the Buddhist stance and know that sunshine will follow and to cultivate patience in myself and continue to be kind. My WhatsApp has been busy today which has been really nice as people ask how I am and share what they are doing. So my evening will be a meal, followed by some TV but mainly I will get stuck into my new book. Some bloke was on TV this morning talking about a project to get people back into reading and how good reading is for our mental health and becoming a better person, (no idea what that actually means), and an assortment of other things which I forget. It would appear I am ahead of the curve, I read, exercise (fitness age 41), don’t drink, smoke or do drugs, I write and occasionally paint, in fact I am a paragon of self betterment. Strange how I don’t feel like I am in peak form, maybe its the fact that I have stage 4 prostate cancer that somehow gets in the way of a sense of immense well being. Night meds and bed will see me end the day.