Archives: Blogging

Today’s been a really good day for me and I’m really pleased with myself for it, too. 

Yesterday, apart from slumming it on the sofa trying to urge my chest pains to go away, I spent the afternoon writing another article for the Guardian’s Comment is Free site – this time about Transplantation.

Em and Em, the partners in crime behind Live Life Then Give Life (from whom you should all have bought a T-shirt, not to mention signed up to the Organ Donor Register), organised another big publicity push for Christmas, which I sadly missed out on because of all my recent email hiccups and account confusions.

So, in order to still be doing my part, I mentioned the campaign to the guy who’d contacted me about writing my previous article to see if he was interested.  He said he was, so I spent the afternoon writing up a general summary of the status of transplant in the country and the various different systems around the world.

What I’m most pleased about it that he particularly wanted to stir up a bit of debate about the subject and if you go and check out the article online (here), you’ll find a lively exchange in the comments section underneath, which is really good to see.  Except maybe for the comment about my hair…

After being in the study working all afternoon, my chest was protesting a little again so I stayed on the sofa watching a movie in the evening and headed to bed at a sensible time. 

Better than anything was the fact that I got myself comfortable (not always possible with chest pains) and slept solidly through until 11am this morning – 12 hours sleep being something I’ve not enjoyed for as long as I can remember.  It was blissful to wake up and discover I’d been out like a light all night.  And it’s really recharging, too.

What I’m most pleased with today, though, is that I’ve stayed true to my promise to chill for the next few days before Christmas and have done very little again today.  I’ve been massively helped by the fact that I’ve had friends round to see me most of the day, which is good for sitting on the sofa chatting and not having to move or do other things.

But I’ve also been really good at doing physio sessions and stopping myself from “popping out” or sitting in the study at the computer for too long, or at the table in the kitchen reading the paper – all of which have a tendency to put extra strain on my chest and induce pain here and there.

Fingers crossed, I’ll be able to carry my discipline over to tomorrow, when I’ve got a little more planned, but am hoping that when I’m not out of the house, I’ll either be in bed or on the sofa doing nothing at all.  And K’s back from her parents’ tomorrow afternoon, so she’ll be around to police me.

Had a really good giggle last night when I ventured out with the fam and K to watch my bro enjoy his birthday pressie from earlier in the year with 10 minutes fly-time at Airkix indoor skydiving centre in MK.

It’s unbelievably cool – a little plexiglass bubble one story up above a pair of jet turbiney things (that’s their trade name, obviously), which serves to suspend people mid-air as if falling at great speed from a plane.

My bro, the sicken sports fanatic that he is, got on amazingly well.  He did 4 “jumps” of 2.5 minutes each and manged to learn 8 out of 10 techniques of flight.  His instructor told us afterwards you’re supposed to learn one per flight, so he’d doubled the expectation and mastered most of them within his 10 minutes.  I really hate him sometimes.

Mind you, it was hilarious to watch him with his little cheeks wibbling away in the uprush of air.  He even managed to dribble upwards.  It feels a little odd when you watch people do it, because you’re the other side of a plexiglass window about 2 feet away from them, so if they lose control a little, they endup nearly head-butting you.  Nervous laughter abounds amoungst the spectators getting a little weirdly close to people the don’t know in zoo-like conditions.

It’s an amazing thing, though, the Airkix centre and I have to recommend it to anyone as a gift, or even as a treat for yourself.  It’s not cheap, I know that much, but it looked like so much fun.  I was extremely jealous, but I’ve got something else to add to my list of post-tx “must do’s” now.

After we watched his diving antics, we all headed off for a nice Tex-Mex dinner, which went down wonderfully.  By the end of it, though, I was exhausted.  Is wasn’t until we were in the car on the way home that K pointed out that I’d woken up at 6.30am that morning (no reason, was just awake and couldn’t nod off again) and without a sleep in the afternoon, it was no wonder I was a touch on the snoozy-side.

This morning I woke up even earlier, 5.30am, with roaring chest pains.  After my last little pointless jaunt to casualty with over-exuberant pre-diagnosis, I decided it best just to grab some painkillers and immobilize myself for the day, so I duly took to the sofa in true grumpy-lunged sulk.

Watching the sky-diving and at the restaurant I’d gone without my O2 and I think this is my body’s way of telling me that it was distinctly unimpressed with my choice to move around quite so much without additional support. 

I’ve been a lot more comfortable this afternoon than I was when I woke up, but I know a chiding chest when I feel one, so I’m sworn to “good boy” status for the next few days to make sure I can make the most of Christmas.

It was also pointed out to me today by the lovely Lady K that my last update vaguely referred to things going on in April without any real expansion.  Apologies for the vagueness, and I promise I’ll post with full and inclusive April updates shortly, but for the record there will be a fundraiser for the CF Trust through the MKT Activ8 Youth Theatre by way of a mainstage performance in the middle of April.

More to come, so watch this space….

MUCH better day today, as I was sure it would be.  Well, semi-sure.

But my body’s been decidedly responsive and I’ve managed to pass through an entire day with remarkably high energy-levels and not very much in the way of breathless episodes and other nastiness.

I slept pretty well, which is always a good start, and didn’t lie in bed too long this morning, which is something I’m increasingly persuaded is a bad thing in terms of momentum for the day.

This afternoon I ran K over to an appointment in Northampton and used the spare time to visit Suze, my partner in crime from MKT, from where I’ve sadly been completely AWOL for the entire term.  It was good to hear that all the work they’ve been doing is going fabulously well and that plans for the show in April are really rolling along.

I’m desperate to get back there and get my creative juices flowing again.  The workshops really energise me – working with kids and young people is so inspiring because of the way they see things and tackle problems.

One of the things I always fall back on when I tell people how great it is doing what I do is how much we can learn from children.  The most important thing in a 6 year-old’s life is whatever they happen to be doing at that moment in time, and that’s absolutely the way that we should all live out lives.

The trouble is as we get older, other stresses and worries crowd in and take over the freedom and innocence we enjoy as children and everything becomes more complicated.  But working with the younger groups at MKT has really helped me keep in touch with the old adage of living every day – and moment – for what it is, not what it could, should or has been.

The older groups at MKT simply serve to drive me forward creatively.  There’s nothing so powerfully motivating than seeing a group of people you’ve worked with for a long time learning and growing and expanding their experiences and outlooks on life, and to be challenged in your beliefs and understanding of the things around you. 

They push me to better understand myself and my ideas and to make sense of what I’m trying to communicate, to them or an audience or anyone else.

And working with Suzanne has given me the opportunity to be involved in a whole load of things in a whole load of capacities that I never would have had chance to do were it not for her faith and trust in me and what I can (or can’t) do.

Needless to say, I miss it mightily and I’m yearning to go back.  What’s fantastic about today is that having spoken to Suze and caught up on life, the universe and everything (sorry about the house!) it’s helped me to remember just how much I do want to still be part of what’s happening and it’s making me more determined than ever to get a grip on what my body’s doing and learn to play it properly so I can get myself back into sessions, even if it’s only for a couple of hours a week.

So today has also proved to myself that although bad days come along once in a while, but that they will always pass and be replaced by a good day.  I’m lucky in that it’s turned around quickly this time, but even in the blackest of nights it’s important to remember that there’s always a light at the end of the tunnel – and you know you’re going to get there in the end.

Here’s to April.

The meal was nice – and everyone enjoyed it (including me) – but it was WAY too much physical activity cooking it and I left myself feeling really quite rubbish.

K cooked the starter and the pudding, I did the main, and it was clearly not a cleverly thought out plan.  What I should have done was chosen something that needed preparation and slow cooking in the oven so I wasn’t standing over the stove for half-an-hour odd while it cooked, but could have sat and rested.  More fool me.

It was a lovely dinner and it was great to sit around with the whole family and just eat and chat (pretty much what my family does best).  By the end of the meal, though, I was shattered and my chest was really tight, so I took myself straight up to lie down on the bed.  I thought it would just be for a little while and I’d be back down, but in the end I was settled there for the night.

Today’s been another pretty rough day, paying the price for the over-exertion yesterday.  I’ve been pretty low all day, just feeling a bit pissed off with the seemingly endless merry-go-round of exertion and recovery.  I know it’s what I should be used to by now, but it still grates that I can’t do things two days in a row or if I over-stretch myself it takes me days to recover.

Still, I’ve been trying hard not to be too gloomy about it all and had fun this evening playing a game with my bro, Dad and K.  I won, which is rare for me, but still managed to prove myself stupider(!) than the rest of the family by trying to play at being banker.  I should really know that maths isn’t my strong point and if I want to avoid getting annoyed with myself should give up the job at the start not try to bluff my way through it again and again.

I can see, reading what I’m writing just now, that the sunny-side of my disposition is struggling to get through;I’m taking everything to heart and being downcast about pretty much whatever’s going on today.  It’s just a bad day, though, and everyone has those. 

Doubtless I’ll hit the sack tonight and get a good night’s sleep (I feel exhausted) and things will look much brighter and sunnier in the morning.  These feelings never last forever, it’s just a matter of buckling down, acknowledging the rubbishness and ploughing through it to tomorrow.

For all the forward motion I’ve been making recently, the pendulum was bound to swing back.  I’m sure someone far more intelligent than me said something once about equals and opposites and all that kind of thing, but I have better hair than him, so I can’t be bothered to quote him properly.

Still, after confidently striding forward and warning myself strictly against doing too much too soon, I spent this afternoon in bed after, well, doing too much too soon.

I hasten to my own defence to say that a) I spotted it early and nipped it in the bud and b) actually the hour-or-so I spent in bed on Neve (hmmm… maybe not such a clever idea to name the NIV after all – that could get a little confusing) and the extra session of physio have done me the world of good and this evening I feel top-notch.

Yesterday I went to Oxford to finish IVs – that’s a grand total of 5 weeks all together, my record for recent times.  My chest is a lot better and my lung function was hitting the 0.7/1.4, which is about as high as I go these days.  For those of you who work in percentages, that’s very roughly 20%/25% predicted.  More encouragingly, my SATs were running at 93% on 2 litres O2, which is unheard of for my since around August.

I’m coping pretty well off-oxygen now.  I’m still using it almost all day, but I can cope with wandering around shops (ok, Borders) without it for an hour or so, which is good.

I try to justify it by saying that it makes shopping a whole load easier not having to lug a cylinder around the shop with me, and I reassure myself that I’m good and have it in the car when I’m driving and wear it all the time at home, but if I’m truly honest with myself, it’s still very much a vanity thing.

K and I decided we wanted to cook dinner tomorrow for Mum, Dad and my bro, who’s home for Christmas, to thank them for putting up with me for the last few weeks (well, not my bro, ‘cos he’s not had to cope with me invading his life, but it seemed a bit mean to cook for everyone else and not him when it’s in his home…).  So we had the cunning plan of hitting Tesco’s late last night to avoid the crowds.

At 8pm we thought we’d got it right and BOY were we wrong.  It was still heaving and in one despairing moment of realisation I stood at the threshold of the store in Kingston and realised that it was WAY too huge for me to wander round, especially at the end of a long day.

It’s always a little dispiriting to have to acknowledge your limits – especially when things are looking up again.  But I’m proud of the fact that I didn’t just try to “soldier on” through the shop and completely wipe myself out, but instead called it a night with two bars of Toblerone and headed home.

I think, actually, our late-night jaunt is probably the crux of what lead to my energy shortage this afternoon and, again, I’m pleased I spotted it and took action (or rather, in-action) to combat it without trying to soldier through.  I feel much better for it physically and it’s given me a boost in my mental confidence to know that I’m learning to listen to my body again.

So tomorrow I’ve prescribed myself a day of rest, doing nothing all morning and afternoon and plenty of physio so that I’ve got energy enough to help K whip up a storm in the kitchen and give Mum and Dad a proper thank you.  And my bro, I suppose…

In the last two days I’ve come to a shocking personal conclusion: I’m an addict.  Twice over.  I’m now – 100% officially – addicted to Sky+.  And I’m now – 100% officially – addicted to Borders.

Nuts.

I don’t watch much TV – hardly any at all when I’m not around K.  She’s a terrible influence on me because she’ll watch any old rubbish and claim it’s interesting, happily squidged on a sofa all day long.  Ironically, I can’t get her to share my passion for films because she doesn’t have the attention-span for them.  Hmmm…. there may be something in this “MTV generation” theory after all… but that’s beside the point.

Anyway, I don’t watch much TV – maybe an hour a day, possibly two and it’s usually specific programs that I want to watch.  I’ve never been much of a sofa-surfing channel-hopper.  Well, OK, I was once upon a time, until my brother began to tease me about my being able to win Telly Addicts on my own and I started having nightmares of Noel Edmonds in family-knitted garish Christmas jumpers.

So it used to really bug me when I’d look at the night’s listings and discover that the only two things I really wanted to watch were on at the same time.  Or, more particularly annoying, given it’s infrequent occurence, when I had something planned which clashed with something important.

Since moving back to Mum and Dad’s, however, I’ve been blessed with the genius that is Sky+.  The best thing in the world about Sky+ is it means I don’t ever, EVER have to watch daytime TV.  Even if I do have those days when I really can do nothing but sit on my butt on the sofa and veg out, I can record a whole evening’s worth of vaguely-entertaining fayre, without having to resort to the daytime schedules of not-even-close-to-entertaining pap.  Or Neighbours (which is another category altogether).

Most of all, what I love about it is being able to watch things whenever I want to.  For example, I’ve developed a new routine whereby I keep myself busy for most of the day, but permit myself a “lunch hour” in the middle of the day to grab lunch and sit and do nothing.  Which means I can record things from the night before and catch up with them today.

All of which is a really long way of going about saying that I watched a really interesting programme today.  But actually, I’ve been prattling on so long about the genius of Sky+ it seems pointless to go into my new-fangled theories on positive thinking and instead I’ll save it for another day and come back to it fresher and less Sky+’d up.

Back to my addictions, though.  Borders: the wonderful world of literature and other stuff that’s descended from on high (read: opened a store in MK as opposed to the nearest one being in Oxford) and plonked itself slap-bang in the middle of my everyday life.

I’ve been there 4 times now, 3 times in the last week and for a combined total of around 4 hours and I still don’t feel like I’ve managed to have a really good look around.  I maintain, in fact, that I still won’t until I’ve settled myself into a comfy Starbucks chair and flicked through an un-bought book for half an hour, finished my coffee, put the book back and come home.

The great thing about Borders, and what really stands out when you walk in, especially for someone like me who loves books, is that it’s just so wonderfully full of books.  I mean, they’re everywhere.  And not just in a regular book-shop kind of way. 

I mean they’re EVERYWHERE and “everywhere” goes on for absolutely AGES.  It’s the biggest biggest biggest book-holding space in the whole widest world of Milton Keynes and is so spectacularly amazing it makes me positively dribble with excitement.  I can almost smell the print.

So now I can’t keep myself away.  I have to have my Borders fix.  Twice in two nights I’ve been there for an hour between 8pm and 9pm, just to wander around when it’s not full of silly people doing silly things like trying to shop for Christmas presents when I’m trying to be there and just enjoy the SPACE.  Inconsiderate little so-and-so’s.

It is mildly – only mildly – concerning what effect this could have on my bank balance.  I’ve been fairly good so far – so far – at keeping my wallet in check and not splashing out, but it’s only a matter of time.

I see Borders, and my addiction to it, as rather like one of these new Super Casinos that are due to be hitting our shores sometime in the near future (you know, the one that should be in Blackpool that the Government are making everyone think they might put somewhere else, just to spite Blackpool and take away it’s “UK’s Las Vegas” tag, as if that was something to be proud of in the first place).  You think you’ve got it under control, and that you’re winning.  But sooner or later the situation’s gonna change, everything will turn around on you and you’ll find yourself completely wiped out.

Mind you, at least when I’ve cleaned myself out, maxed out my credit cards and had to lock myself in the flat and barricade the baliffs out I’ll have something good to read….

I’ve been making myself chuckle this afternoon as my procrastination levels increase.  In fact, I’ve found a whole writers self-help website devoted to aiding folks like me to get down to the nitty-gritty of actually churning something out.

The last couple of nights I’ve hardly slept at all.  Monday night I was up until around 3am before finally dozing off, sleeping through till 11am save for an hour’s break in the middle around 6am to do much IVs.  Last night was worse – I didn’t manage to sleep at all until after my morning dose.

Oddly, it doesn’t appear to be your regular, run-of-the-mill, thinking-horrible-thoughts kind of insomnia.  Rather, it’s just that as I improve health-wise my brain is staying resolutely five strides ahead of my body.  So while I can’t do much physically during the day, my brain is aching to be put to use and if it’s not (as it hasn’t been) then it settles itself into manic thinking patterns when I hit the sack and keeps me wide awake, no matter how much my eyelids beg to differ.

So today I have been resolutely trying my best to a) stay awake all day and not take my usual afternoon nap and b) do things with my day that will make my mind feel like it’s had if not a real work out, at least a little bit of a gentle jog.

It struck me when I was  writing out my Christmas cards this afternoon that getting myself writing would be the most obvious method of productive mind-occupation, so I set that part of my brain that never stops whirring creatively to spin on ahead whilst I wrote, corrected and re-wrote the cards that kept being incorrectly filled in due to my non-multi-tasking man-brain.

Perhaps what I needed by way of a spur, I figured, was to tackle a branch of writing I’ve not tackled before – something different and fresh and intriguing to me.  I’ve written plays and I’ve written screenplays – I’ve even finished some of them, too.  So why not try something more narrative – a short story or similar?

In fact, it was the Stephen King interview I watched yesterday evening that provided my spark of inspiration – if I wanted to stir my creative brain and really test my mettle, why not try what writers used to do when they needed to churn something out (albeit usually for the cash than the creative momentum) and knock out a classic piece of pulp fiction?

Pulp fiction is that stuff that used to be known as Dime-Store Novels in the US and is more commonly known these days as Airport Fiction – that kind of crime-based, semi-plotted, under-characterised pap that you whistle through when you’re lying on the beach in the summer months trying not to remember that it’s only four more days till you’re back at work.

What better, I thought, than to pin myself down to knocking something out which needn’t have any literary merit at all, but merely serve as an exercise to show that a) I can still write and b) I can make myself focus on one thing for at least the space of time it takes me to write a chapter or two.

Of course, we all know that my mind doesn’t work like that.  Instead, I set off researching into pulp fiction and it’s current place in the literary world: is it still written, published, sold around the world?  Could I, conceivably, sell my mini-opus for publication when I’m done with it?

And research it I did.  I even answered most of my questions.  Which was annoying because it meant I had to come up with more questions so I didn’t have to actually start writing.

Surfing through the myriad writers’ websites dotted around the ‘net, I came across various tips for getting into good writing habits and avoiding said procrastination.  Eventually, I discovered an entire website devoted to a 30-day programme to help writers get organised and write.

That’s right: a 30-DAY PROGRAMME.  That’s an entire month’s worth of tips and exercises designed so that, at the end of the allotted period, you’re set to go write your masterpiece.  30 (Thirty) Days.  To get organised.  To AVOID procrastination.  It’s so funny, I can’t even do it justice with a smart-arsed quip.

Needless to say, I shall be sticking point-by-point the programme and ensuring that I don’t achieve ANYTHING by way of productivity before the New Year.  After all, if I don’t pay attention to the site I found, all my hard research work from today will have been for nothing, won’t it?

On my usual daily tour of my favourite websites today, I stopped in on my friend Em’s blog to discover the following paragraph, which so neatly encapsulated the to-ings and fro-ings of my mind and body at the moment I thought it silly to try to reword it to enlighten my readership and decided instead just to lift it wholesale and try to pass it off as my own.

“Sadly after 22 years I still don’t quite seem to have got my head round the concept of “improving” as opposed to “magically cured and reinstated with working lungs” and so the minute I feel a turn around I start jumping around and doing lots and then am surprised when said behaviour doesn’t go down well with my lungs which were (for want of a better phrase) breathing a sigh of relief that I was finally operating on a level they can maintain. I mentioned to my physio that you’d think I would have learned by now, she neatly sidestepped this remark by laughing politely and neglecting to comment.”

Sadly, my sense of duty and honour (and the knowledge that we have enough mutual friends for it to be highly unlikely that I wouldn’t get caught) meant I just couldn’t bring myself to fully commit to the stealthy liberation of the text.

I’d like to say my conscience was pricked by the knowledge that Em managed to write it from her hospital bed and went to all the trouble of emailing it to a friend and getting it posted for her, but I know if I did that then she’d eventually read this and send my huge screaming emails and numerous phone calls berating me for jumping on the pity band-wagon which we all so deplore.  Plus it’s also untrue, for that precise reason – pity is a trait all people should deplore. (Doesn’t that sound like a high school philosophy essay question? Pity is a trait all people should deplore: Discuss)

At the end of the day, when someone says what you want to say better than the way you wanted to say it, it’s best to hold your hands up and admit defeat than drive yourself barmy trying to best something that you can’t.

If you needed any proof of that, just take a look at what a complete and total load of waffle I’ve written trying to justify lifting a paragraph of a friend’s blog in order to help explain the challenges of getting back on your feet.

I think I should go and lie down.  Maybe this plagiarism lark is too heavy for me, after all.  Next time I’ll stick to my own drivel.

I’m clearly starting to reach sensible fitness levels as for the first time over the weekend, my mind has started to whir with possibilities of things I could be doing, or would like to do in the New Year.

Sadly, most of them are all things that will be beyond my reach before my Tx, but I suppose there’s no problem having some kind of roughly sketched plan for the future, however far away it may be.

At times like these, I find the difficult thing is to focus my mind on to one thing in particular and get something done.

Right now, for example, would be a perfect time to knuckle down and get some really good writing done.  Perhaps one of the new play ideas which have been circling my head – written up into draft form, or even just solidified in story terms.  Or perhaps taking an opportunity to look back over one of my few first-draft projects and hone them slightly.

Inevitably, though, I find myself enjoying my imagined new-life projects far too much and taking myself off into my fantasy new world while achieving nothing and taking no steps forward in the real world.

It seems silly, really, to become too swept up in the details and nitty gritty of the grand schemes I have laid out post-Tx when right now, planning whether or not I’m well enough to make a trip to Borders to finish the last of my Christmas shopping or treat myself to some new reading material.

What I need is some focus, and that’s what I’m heroically lacking in.  I say “heroically” as I’m blaming it on my brain as a way of coping with ignoring all the negative stuff that’s inevitably swirling around at celebration times and the turn of a New Year.

Yes, it helps to bluff oneself with the concept that you’re looking after yourself in the long run, and right now while you’re recovering physically, any kind of mental exertion is good, whether its practical or dream-based.  At least that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

There’s also the question of the “holiday season” as some loathsome people are wont to call it, which is arriving like a speeding train and is just as likely to derail any well-laid plans anyway, so it’s yet another excuse for butt-sitting and job avoidance.

Indeed, it seems fairly clear sitting here bashing away at the computer during the half-time break of the Sheffield Utd vs. Aston Villa game on the TV that the blog is just now as much a procrastination tool as anything else.

Or maybe – just maybe – forcing myself to sit and write my little progress notes of an evening is going to finally instill a little bit of discipline into my daily routine and lead me down the path of finally focused achievement.

Any takers?

Another good day today, and another day of what economists term “positive growth” – although I have to say I wish that referred to my personal economics rather than the state of my chest.

Actually, I take that back – I’d take empty bank over knackered blowers any day of the week.  Still, it’s got to show how much things have improved over the last week or so that I can actually write half a paragraph complaining about lack of funds as opposed to anything health-related.  What a relief.  I think.

Having spent a week away from K, it’s been absolutely lovely to finally spend some time together yesterday and today.  She’s been so amazingly supportive and has been there for me all the way through and has also dealt superbly well with not being there when I needed it, which I know from personal experience isn’t an easy thing to do. 

While I’m on the subject of support, though, I’ve been blown away by all the messages of support I’ve had from people reading this blog – it really is something else. 

It’s a remarkable feeling to know that you’re loved and thought of by people all over the world (and it really has been from all over) and I want to say that every single one of your messages have made a huge difference in encouraging me and keeping me going when the times have got really tough recently.

As a side note, those of you who’ve been emailing me at my onetel account, I have to apologise for lack of responses, because I can’t access my emails from Mum and Dad’s.  I went back to the flat for the first time in a couple of weeks today and was there long enough to check my mail and discover a whole raft of messages to which I want to reply but didn’t have the time.  So please excuse my rubbishness, but I will get back to you, I promise!

As far as today goes, I’ve had a lovely day of chilling out and relaxing.  This morning, after sleeping in nicely till 11ish (caused mostly by poor sleep and drug-related tiredness), K and I were visited by S&S, no longer the newest double-team on the block, but happily still going strong. 

It’s been a while since I caught up with them, so it was good to have tea and chats and to humiliate myself with my awful knowledge of music while we channel-surfed through MTV, VH1, TMF, Q and other letters.

When they’d gone and we’d had a nice big bacon sarnie lunch with Mum and Dad, with super-fresh bakery bread, I did my drugs and caught a cat-nap before K and I ventured out in the car for a bit of a spin and stopped over at the flat, where I checked my mail and gathered a few bits and pieces to keep me occupied at home for tonight and the week ahead.

It was good to get out of the house properly for a bit and I was impressed at my discipline in again not pushing myself too far in trying to do too much. 

Our friends at The Lodge, including the aforementioned S&S, D and PS are throwing a Dirty C Word Hawaiin Luau at their place tonight, which I really wanted to pop my head into, not least because it was at least partly motivated as an opporunity for K to get out to.  But it would have been doing too much and I doubt I’d have managed to stay for just the quick “hi” and “bye” that I’d wanted to because I’d have had so much catching up and gossiping to do. 

Mum’s got all of her book group over for the night tonight, but I’m shutting myself away upstairs and being anti-social.  Although I get on well with Mum’s friends, I’m just not sure I’m up to maintaining conversation with big groups of people at the moment, so I thought it best to opt myself out of it and sequester myself in my room with Dad’s laptop on wi-fi and today’s papers to keep me occupied.

I’m sure I’ll soon have my Social Strength back up to full-speed, but like everything I’m working with at the moment, I’m trying not to take too big steps too quickly.  Slow and steady wins the race, as someone once said about something to someone. 

Profound, that.