Nine Feet Underground

6am start. Record blood pressure. Shower. Exercises (1). Log laptop in and connect to Zoom. Set mat, blocks and cushion up. Take BP med. Water. Join the other nutters at 5 to 7 in the bloody morning ready for 50 minutes of so of Pranayama followed by 12 rounds of Surya Namaskar. 12 rounds of 'salute to the sun' certainly gets the blood pumping and the heart racing and that, on top of all the breathing exercises, has really set me up for the day. I do feel really energetic and alive. After tidying the mat and stuff away I finished off getting ready, which is essentially more exercises. Before doing the exercises I measured my BP and it was the best / lowest yet - the power of yoga. 😀 Of course I'm now going to fuck that up during the day by getting wound up by this and that, but it's good to have a few decent numbers to share with my doctor. I have an interesting day ahead. I volunteered to become one of my company's 'Mental Health Champions' - essential...

Not up until 6:45 today, as, until I heard/saw the rain, I was planning to go for a run.  As tomorrow is early morning yoga, it'll probably have to wait until Thursday now, weather permitting. Work has dominated the day, so far - punctuated by the odd blood pressure reading.  One hour of the day was spent on a company-run charity quiz, which I took part in as part of a team from the group I work in. We didn't win - it was one of those computer-marked quizzes and we had lots of of questions right, but were rejected based on answer spelling / formatting etc.  One whole round had to be removed from the scores because loads of teams complained they had the answers right, but 'Computer said 'No!', and when the adjudicators checked the answers, they had to agree that the computer was wrong. It's been rather strange seeing rain rather than sun and, on balance, please can we have the sun back. That's it. I'm shutting down the work laptop for the day as it...

Up fairly early as I have to finish eating breakfast at least two hours before yoga, which is at 10. 7:15 and I'd almost finished getting up, showered and semi-dressed, when the first carer of the day arrived. Chatted with her, from a safe distance, as she went about disconnecting the PEG pump and administering my wife's meds. She asked Bear if she was alright and, unusually, she responded indicating 'no'. Bear was a bit troubled: she has an ongoing problem with a cough which is caused by fluids which rise up from her alimentary tract, and always seems worst in the early morning.  The coughing wears her out and was particularly bad, and seemed to be causing pain in her chest and her breathing seemed a bit laboured.  I'm keeping an eye/ear on her and she seems to have settled down now.  Every now and then I get these reminders of how tenuous a hold on life Bear has. Her breathing this morning worried me and a panic-stricken voice from deep within says, 'I...

I've done it again!  Only further and faster.  My second successive run (next one should be Tuesday, 'cos I'm doing yoga tomorrow  morning and I don't think I could fit a run in unless I get up really early (Tuesday will be a challenge as it's a working day. Nevertheless if I plan to do it, I'll do it.)) Spent about 10 minutes warming down after the run by walking and doing stretching exercises.  I was about to sit on the bench outside in the sun when I noticed it was filthy, so I ended up washing it down so I can sit on it later and maybe read the papers in the sun. Whilst getting ready post-run I was mulling over my current approach to re-reading 'Finnegans Wake' and came to a decision: I'm going to read to the 'end' (there is neither an end nor a beginning, strictly speaking) without referring back to explanations of the chapters after I've finished them. (The book is like the Circle Line used to be - you can (if you choose) just ...

Shopping. Washing (x3). Breakfast. Cut the grass. Trim the unruly bushes ('get down, Shep!'). Assist in making lunch. Eat lunch. Wash car. That's something I'd never normally do, wash the car, Always take it somewhere and get done. Or rather, I did.  When I went shopping I noticed a yellow sheen on the bonnet, I'm guessing it's probably Saharan sand.  Anyway, enough is enough and I'm going to wash it.  I have asked for assistance, just to speed up the process, however the request appears to have fallen on deaf ears.  Take that back! Mid-way through the process I did get some assistance after all, though not a fully-fledged assistant, my son's attire - dressing gown and pyjamas (AT 4PM, FFS!) - didn't permit further involvement.  I could have asked him to get changed, but by the time he'd have been ready to help I'd've been able to dry the car with my eyelashes. (N.B. Just to be clear, I actually dried it with a chamois (or rather a n...

Started the day with a run.  Not very far, just enough to get warmed up and aerobic. It's part of a plan to return to running by making time to run a little most days (at least every other day) on the basis that it's better to do some running than none, because it's hard to find time for a longer run.  With determination I should be able to build back up and, to be honest, it's the way you should do it rather than my normal 'bull at a gate, must run further straight away otherwise it's not good enough' approach that I normally beat myself up over. As things stand I have a little more time / flexibility since yesterday. It's my 'big' sister's birthday today - hopefully she'll have received the card and present and I'll speak to her later. Guess she'll not be going out to celebrate, so there's a good chance she'll be home when I ring.😉 Planned to finish work early. Didn't. So much for the flexibility. I have a glas...

An unusual work day.  Think I'll leave it at that. I've been pretty busy getting some critical admin done - still more to do tomorrow. Owing to the length and complexity of III.3 of the 'Wake, it's going to take me 3 or 4 days to go back over the chapter to get a better understanding.  My initial research this evening has shown me that even the first page is going to take some going through: "...Yawn is titanic, gigantic. As Adam Kadmon, he is the original Adam who, in the Kabbala, is coterminous with the universe ... Evoking awe in contemplating the vast universe ... Joyce shows himself to be a great painter with words. He produces a masterly and vividly coloured portrait of the starry universe, culminating in the Milky Way." Flip! This will take some close re-reading. 😵 Putting that to one side - it's already been a day of brain ache - The Idler are doing another of their 'Drinks with...' evenings over Zoom tonight, and the guest this eveni...

Started today at 7am (got up at 6!) with 30 minutes pranayama and 10 rounds of surya namaskar.  That certainly kick starts the body and brain into action! Just as well, because based on yesterday's conversations, it sounded like it would be a relatively easy working day,  instead it turned out there was something I had to do which kept me busy until beyond 5pm. Then, set free, for today at least, I finished III.3 of the 'Wake, so I am now ready to review what I could or should have understood from the chapter. Given there were sections of such obscurity that I had no idea what was happening or being suggested and also that it's one of the longest chapters in the book, there will no doubt be plenty of surprises. I'll probably save the analysis for tomorrow, my brain's not ready for it. Managed to grab an hour or so to listen to music: a variety of sounds and styles to hear what the new speakers make of them.  One of the albums I listened to will probably be th...

Work again.  It seems a little strange after a week off, but work it is.  Working from home, of course, like so many others across the country, the world, in fact. Work dominates the day, as it tends to do, so there's not much excitement to report (though I could do without some of the excitement at times.) I did take delivery of new pair of speakers for the Hi-Fi. I'd been planning to upgrade to this particular model for ages, but last week they went on offer at a ridiculously low price, and I thought 'it's now or never!' They arrived in the early morning and I was incredibly restrained and left them in their box until I finished work in the evening.  Unboxed them, swapped out my old speakers and got set up to listen to a few albums that I know really well. I don't think I have the greatest hearing nowadays, owing to loud gigs and fast jet noise close by, but my test of any new bit of audio kit is 'can I hear the difference?' Undoubtedly the spea...

Monday. Someone should write a song about Mondays. What a rich vein of material there would be to tap in to. Done yoga. Or has yoga done me?  I know that come tomorrow morning my hips will feel like I've given birth to a hippo, though thankfully the feeling will be confined to that part of my anatomy. Seriously though, since I started yoga in August 2018, it has become a core part of my life: I always feel so much better for it and, though I still need WD40 to be applied to quite a few of my joints and have the balance of Twiggy in a hurricane, I am getting better at it with practice. (You tell yourself that mate!) I could probably do with another upper body massage, but that is currently impossible, sadly. Or a rack, maybe. There is still fallout from my wife's visit to A&E on Thursday and Friday to address: I've had a conversation with the Community Matron and, as a result, I need to have a conversation with a GP, a call which I await.  I've completed the...

Gonna take it slow today.  Breakfast of coffee and almond croissant. Take my time drinking the coffee, maybe make another. Not much of note today either. Did a load of jobs and chores, you know, the usual: washing; cleaning en-suite; cut my hair; trimmed my beard (weird). Also found time to read the papers, read a bit of the 'Wake and continue a dialogue with a friend that started on Saturday. I was pleased to see I got a reply from Henry Eliot, author/presenter of the 'Borges' course, to my course comments and questions. He wrote an interesting and detailed reply which did agree with my thinking on the parallels between Borges and Joyce. More research to be done, I think. For a change we decided to have a takeaway from our local Italian restaurant for dinner: it's good not to cook all the time. Booked the collection time in the early afternoon (last time we tried to book a collection they were full, so took no chances today!) I'm experimenting with the Hi-...

Another normal Saturday. Normal for these lockdown days, I guess. Food shopping to start the day.  Shouldn't have to go shopping again until next weekend, but the way things are going, I may need to stop going out shopping completely soon. Finished another 'Borges' story, 'The Aleph', did the end of course test and got 15 out of 18 which I was happy with. Must have been paying attention.  Wrote a comment on the course discussion/blog and asked a question of the course author. Be interested to see if I get a reply any time soon. Decided the course I'm gonna do next - 'An Introduction to Psychotherapy' - I'll start that tomorrow. I probably need to have my head examined. Chores galore, too boring to enumerate; suffice it to say I've done some. I enjoyed them so much, I've saved some for tomorrow. Had a late afternoon WhatsApp call with a good friend, good to talk, must do it again soon.  Other communication too fragile to mention. ...

A day of many interruptions in the form of phone calls and messages: nurses at RBH; social worker; care agency. An ever-changing picture. In between all these calls and changes of plan I have managed to complete the Borges course and start reading some of the stories - so far I've read 'The Garden of Forking Paths', 'The Secret Miracle', 'The Book of Sand' and 'Shakespeare's Memory'.  I will read 'The Aleph', one of the longer stories, next, but before that I must return to the 'Wake . A mid-afternoon flurry of calls from the hospital brought good news, my wife would return today after all and be home in plenty of time for the evening carer visit.  By 4pm, she had returned.  Boundless joy for me, though she was fast asleep and has barely stirred, so far. My wife's visit to A&E reminded me just how dependent on others we are, though it's never far from my mind, especially now. We are immeasurably grateful to the para...

A slow burner, compared to yesterday. Got up later - 7am - got ready later, in fact I generally took my time. Finished reading 'The Queue' which means I have time to read other stuff of my own choosing, at least until it's time to start reading May's book club choice ('Three Women' by Lisa Taddeo). Done all the usual day time things including watching the penultimate lesson in the Borges course, this one titled 'Mirrors'.  Perhaps not as strong as the previous four lessons, in part, I think, because 'Mirrors' owes a debt to two earlier themes. namely 'Infinities' and 'Identities', though of course it could just be that I'm not totally 'on it' today.  The last lesson, 'Labyrinths', ought to be a good one - both because it is a favourite them of Borges and also of Henry Eliot, who has written a book on the subject. Gave up an hour of the day to go on a work call about some fairly major things that will imp...

An energetic start to the day. Up at 6am, ready to do Pranayama yoga at 6:55am. Thirty minutes Pranayama (breathing exercises) and - surprise for today - the teacher added 15 minutes of Surya Namaskar (salute to the sun) on to the end, making a 45-minute session!  If you've done Surya Namaskar you'll know it's a fairly energetic sequence of 12 linked poses / asanas. Just the thing to wake me and get me ready to go... ...food shopping at around 8:15am. As mentioned somewhere back in these diary entries, I've found food shopping a challenge in these lockdown days. Today was my second day shopping with a phone app called 'AnyList' and I'm beginning to find it really useful.  I create a list and share it with my sons (they have to have the app as well) and they can read the list and add to it. This means they are responsible for making sure things they need aren't forgotten. This is working rather well.  The other essential feature is you can duplicate li...

A quiet day. Made some progress on the Sci-Fi book club novel, 'The Queue'. (Hmm! Does it qualify as Sci-Fi? Debate!) Contacted our GP about my wife's registration on the 'at-risk' list of people who should be shielding/shielded. Turns out she was omitted in error on the first pass while at the same time some who shouldn't have been on the list were included. Not a very exact science by the look of things. Just as well I followed up on it though. She has now been flagged properly. The Community matron also called to see how my wife is doing and check that the antibiotics prescribed for her are working, which they are. Both the GP and the matron enquired after my well being, especially my mental health and I assured them that things were OK, so far.  The biggest stress is the fear that inadvertently, despite all my efforts to keep the virus at bay, I might be the vector that wreaks havoc, with cataclysmic effect, leaving my/our sons parent-less.  Let'...

Yoga again this morning: good session but I arrived in Zoom 10 minutes late, owing to the laptop doing a virus scan which slowed things down so much I had re-boot.  Despite (or probably because of) starting the laptop an hour earlier, I still go caught out.  Must see if I can find a way to configure McAfee to either ask before starting a scan or to do it later in the day. A small project. After yoga, coffee! Finished reading 'Ghost Wall', though I'll have to save my thoughts on it until after book club discusses it on the 4th May.  Started 'The Queue' as I only have a week to read it in - good job I'm on leave this week! Since I spent so much time at the weekend doing washing and other chores, I'm planning another relaxing do.  Reading. Start an online course. That sort of thing. Early afternoon I completed the first lesson of The Idler's course on the Argentinian writer, Jorge Luis Borges, titled 'An Introduction to Borges with Henry Eliot...

A litany of chores: washing (x4); change my bed (see previous); put salt in the dishwasher; flush my wife's catheter; sort out some old clothes for collection (whenever collection re-starts); put yesterday's washing away; 'talk' to Amazon about missing items that have apparently disappeared into thin air (not in depot, left there; not with a delivery driver; somewhere yet nowhere); attempt (key word here) to persuade boys to change their bedding whilst sun shines. As second wash load circulates, time to take a breather and catch up on the papers. All this and it's not even lunchtime, yet. Finished the papers, read quite a chunk of 'Ghost Wall', which I plan to finish tomorrow as I've got to read 'The Queue' by Basma Abdel Aziz by the following Monday and I can't be reading two novels at the same time, apart, that is, from the 'Wake and one other (FW might screw with your brain completely, but you'll never get it confused with any...

Saturday. Shopping day. Washing day. 'Nuff said. On a more upbeat note, it's the day I get to read the Arts section of the papers, in particular the (books) Review section of The Guardian, which is a small-scale highlight of any week (larger scale, currently.) Beyond that I've not done much else, apart from a long (phone) conversation with my younger sister who works at the Royal Berkshire Hospital. Plenty to talk about in these troubling times.   The weather's been glorious again, so I've tried to spend a bit of time outside catching some rays.  I've also been opening all the windows up to let some air in, but unfortunately unwanted visitors - wasps, primarily - seem to feel this is an open invitation. It wouldn't be so bad if they had the sense to exit the way they came in, instead of which, they fly about getting angrier and angrier as their attempts to fly up and out are hindered by the fact that the house has a bloody roof!  I am hoping that la...

Good Friday.  Though, as Good Fridays go, not such a good one.  Were it not for Coronavirus, we'd have been in a car travelling 200+ miles north-westwards. I'm sure it's the same for many people, this being a long Bank Holiday weekend and also the school holidays. Oh well, there's always next year. I decided to chill today. Don't often have days where I don't 'achieve' something, so I'm cool with it. Read a bit ('Ghost Wall', 'Finnegans Wake' and this week's poem) chatted on the phone with friends: spent an hour or so chatting to a mate in Berlin and another hour talking to a friend who lives in Ascot (yes, I can talk, that is true, but the mate in Berlin is equally bad and I hadn't spoken to the friend in Ascot for several months, hence...well, that's my excuse.) Besides, I need to steel myself for shopping tomorrow morning. Part of that process is wine. Drinking a nice chilled white wine (chenin blanc/chardonnay ble...

Last working day before the long Bank Holiday weekend and four days annual leave.  Consequently, as always seems to happen the day before a break, it's been really hectic, trying to get important things done so I can forget them for a week.  This also means it's been another day without a walk, unless you count hanging out the unexpected wash load caused by the problems outlined below. I do refuse to lose my meditation break, though, so I did find 20 minutes peace. The challenge of getting stuff done has not been helped by the fact that my wife seems to have a UTI, which meant contacting the Community Matron to get the GP to prescribe something then asking another favour from a family friend who is able to help us out here. (You know who you are, thanks again for your help 💜)  Shielding is pretty difficult when you need to get things.  I also successfully flushed my wife's catheter again, and, yes, I do want a medal! (My wife's favourite retort when I said I...

Up at 6 and doing a 30 minute pranayama session at 7am.  Committed or what? (Should be, probably) Given I slept really badly last night, owing in main to the pain from my UTI, the pranayama session did an amazing job of waking me up. I felt really energised afterwards and that continued on into the day. I should probably do it everyday, however its so much easier to do it when someone's guiding a session.  I'm not at the stage where I could do it myself, for a whole host of reasons. Oh, well, until next Wednesday, then. A spot of breakfast (porridge with fruit + strong coffee, should you want to know), then on the phone to GP surgery because the antibiotics don't seem to be working (see above). The new plan is to get a prescription for an alternative antibiotic (the one that worked last time, but not the one that usually works, which I'm on, but doesn't seem to be working this time), and also to take a 'sample' to the surgery. Don't seem to have man...