A week of more ladders and fewer snakes….

Morphine? Never heard of it!

Week 13

Saturday 2^nd > Sunday 3^rd April

An early start to Saturday as Carol is driving Anna & Tom back to Lincoln, the Easter holiday seems to have shot by, but at least Anna is back for the club End of Season Ball at the beginning of May, so only 4 weeks to wait until I have my pocket picked again.

I spent the afternoon at OBR shooting the Centaurs & Horde, the light was perfect for a change & both teams won. 

A while ago I’d mentioned in this blog that Black Pudding was a “Super Food” a friend remember that comment & now that I can eat what I like again they presented me with a rather nice piece of BP from a local butchers. Max & I enjoyed it with a steak and ale pie, asparagus & jacket potatoes, it was darn good. It also shows that good friends can’t be beaten!  

Sunday morning seemed to start somewhere in the middle of Saturday night, ie far too darn early!! Up at 6am, so I watched a couple of episodes of “Better Call Saul” before banging around in the kitchen in the vague hope that Carol & Max would wake up! Nope, it took a cup of tea for Carol & a loud knock on his door for Max before either decided to grace Sunday morning with their presence. A decent breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon and black pudding set us up for our trip to Camberley RFC. Now I’ve not been to Camberley since Max was an U12. I called a match off early when I was ref due to constant abuse from idiots on the sidelines. It didn’t go down well with the coaches at the time, but I had no other choice. Anyway, the Colts got beaten 34-0, a score that doesn’t really reflect the match. Again I took the camera & was quite pleased with the results. 

Max had a pretty good game again, only 3 more matches for him in Youth rugby, frightening how quickly the 12 years have gone. It was great to catch up with a couple of old faces today, took me back to the halcyon days of youth rugby at Rams J

Two fairly long days have left me feeling a bit worn out this evening. So after a rather good roast dinner it was a soak in the bath & an early night listening to the rain rattling against the window pane.

 

Monday 4^th > Friday 8^th April

Monday was a day of DIY and bad moods. I took up the carpet in the ensuite bathroom & Carol replaced with fake floor tiles, will be much better than having soggy carpet. I also broke & then repaired our CD rack, so spent a good couple of hours putting the CDs back in artist’s alphabetical order & then chronological order, I think I must have OCD or something. 

Last night’s sleep was poor again & I was in a fairly “Snappy” mood for most of the day. The job for the rest of the week will be to sand, prep & paint the front door, garage, & conservatory! I hope the weather plays ball. I’ll also be doing it at my own pace, if I’m feeling tired I’ll pack in for a while. At this rate I’ll be chomping at the bit to get back to work!

I had my first pizza for a number of months this evening, a good meaty & spicy one at that. Went down a treat so long as I avoided the large pieces of red chilli. The second piece of food news for the day is that Complan is truly awful stuff. I’ve just about finished the Ensure protein drinks I was given on prescription & as I need to contain piling in the calories I thought I’d add Complan to my diet. I’m not sure if I made it wrong, but it reminded me of trying to drink wet sawdust!

I think there’s a bit of a malaise setting in with me at the moment, & that’s having an impact on my moods. A couple of folk asked me at the weekend what the next steps are for me & it really got me thinking that I’m sitting here just waiting to hear the results of the treatment & there is sod all I can do about it now. I also stupidly spent an hour or so googling various sites relating to Head & Neck Cancer, just when you think it’s safe to get back into the water……….. Physically I’m going in the right direction, mentally it’s all getting a bit tough again. I can’t help myself thinking of the possible consequences going forward, even if I’m given the all clear it’s likely I’ll continue to have side effects & other complications for potentially years to come. At the moment this isn’t something that really appeals to me. It’s the knowing what might / could / should happen in the future that’s frightening, sometimes ignorance is bliss.

Tuesday I probably pushed myself a bit far. Despite the best of intentions to take things easy I spent just about all day from 9am > 4pm painting. I managed 3 external coats on the front door, conservatory & back door. Hopefully the cat has learnt how to read Now I’ve just got the wood on the interior of the conservatory to do, but I may leave that for a couple of days & put my feet up a bit on Wednesday. I did however reward myself with a pint of bitter shandy after I’d finished J

I had a surprise & welcomed phone call from my Brother in Law (Evil Twins husband) in the morning. He’d been reading my blog & thought he’d phone up for a chat & to see how I was getting on. They’ve got friends in Spain who is also going through throat cancer, by the sounds of things I’ve got away quite lightly compared to her. Sometimes it’s good just to have a chat with someone who’s slightly more removed than the immediate family of Carol, Anna & Max. 

I’m feeling a bit more positive about the future today, probably because I haven’t had the time to sit & brood. Maybe that should be the plan going forward, make sure I’m doing something, even if it’s just sitting down & reading a book.

I mentioned last week that I’d managed to get the lawn cut for the first time, well having looked at it today it seems I’m not the only one who was pleased to have got it done, the sodding badgers who have a set at the bottom of the garden have had a field day digging it up looking for grubs!! Anyone got a 12 bore I can borrow for a couple of days? Jasper Carrot & the Mole!

I spent the evening in a very entertaining conversation on FB with a bunch of self published authors who were holding a “Free for all” for anyone who wanted to ask them questions on any subject that came to mind. For me I got some useful feedback for if I ever turn this blog into a book, I also found out that booze is hideously expensive in Australia! It turned out to be a fairly costly evening as I bought 9 books in total! Still, that’ll keep me going when we’re on holiday.

Wednesday was a quiet day, recharging the batteries. I popped into town first thing to sort out Euro’s for our holiday, got a rate of 1.22 which is a bit painful compared to last year when I think I got closer to 1.40. I also picked up a rather smart broad brimmed hat for the summer as I can’t risk getting burnt around my neck. A lazy afternoon spent updating the slide show used at Rams for home matches. This weekend they’re taking on league leaders Cambridge at OBR. It could be an interesting match as Rams are on a 7 match unbeaten run & Cambridge won against Cornish All Blacks last week by 109-0!! Hopefully they’ll be slightly under cooked J Max was over at Bella’s so I dropped into OBR a bit later to pick him up from training, muddy doesn’t describe him!

Thursday started just where Wednesday finished off, up at 5am for some god known reason! Good news though, I’ve cracked the 80kg barrier. I’ve been weighing myself each morning wearing just a smile and Channel No.5, this is the first time I’ve been over 80kg for a number of weeks. The trick now will be to keep gaining weight until I hit my target of 85kg (13.4 stone in old money). I had a quick trip up to OBR to take photo’s of the Kids Camp being run until Friday, however I was defeated by the rain, I’ll try again on Friday when the forecast is supposed to be quite good.

A pleasant evening was spent watching Max make his debut training with the “Big Boys”, I’d warned him to try to keep his mouth shut for the first few weeks & not engage in any of his infamous muppetry, he seemed to love it & fitted in pretty well from what I saw. Looks like the transition from Junior rugby to Senior rugby has well & truly begun. You’re a long time an adult & I’d never advocate jumping away from Youth rugby until you’ve reached the end of Colts, but 3 more matches of Junior’s for Max, so now is the right time to get a manly cuddle from the Three’s!

Friday was a positively late start, lie in until 7am, result. Drawing back the curtains however only displayed the damage the sodding badgers hae done to the lawn over night!! Solution needed chaps please! As the weather was much better I went up to OBR to take some shots of the Easter Camp, some pretty good results that I’m pleased with. 

I managed a bike ride of about 8k in the afternoon, not far by some standards, but a step up for me, even if I did have to get off & walk back up Oak Tree Road. I forgot to set Strava, so you’ll have to take my word that I was travelling at about 30kmh for most of the trip J

Max was out with his work colleagues on Friday evening, so we pushed the boat out & invested in ribeye steaks, with roasted peppers & home made chips, that should add a few more pounds onto the scales. The weekend will largely be spent watching rugby, fingers crossed I won’t be leaving OBR in an ambulance this week. Is it too much to ask for another 5 points?

Monday brings an evening treat that I’d forgotten about, & now can’t wait for it to arrive………….

As always, thanks for reading & thanks for the continued support.

To be continued……………………

#Shouldertoshoulder