I'm writing this early on Sunday morning. It's been a nice few days and I've been able to get out into the garden and cut the grass. I've also had a go at getting the dandelions before they start blooming.
Chris has a full size pool table in the garden so we removed the covers to let the air get at it and played a few frames in the evening. Well, Chris played, and I pushed the balls around the table, occasionally potting a ball, usually the white one.
The longer I stayed out there, the more I noticed jobs that need doing. Chris made a start today by finishing off the edge of a patio that has needed doing for about 18 months, and we took a lot of junk to the tip.
After all that exercise I retired to the living room to watch the rugby. The Saints were playing Munster in the Heineken Cup and they took them all the way but lost by over ten points. Still it was a good game and they're still in the hunt for the league championship. I ignored the golf and the Grand National and watched the last day of the cycling which was exciting, and then the qualifying for the first race of the MotoGP season, which carried on as the last season ended, with Stoner, Rossi and Lorenzo battling for pole. Should be a good season.
All this armchair sport isn't getting me fit, but the warm weather means that I can walk to the shops or around the garden without having to put on layers of clothing and heavy boots.
One more week to go before my next blood test and appointment at the hospital.
Oh, and I caught sight of the cat that comes into the house and eats all the cat food. I will be posting wanted posters shortly....
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Dave Clemo's account of living with chronic lymphocytic leukaemia. Don't forget to add your comments when you drop in.
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My recommended reading
- "The Stars my Destination" by Alfred Bester was published in 1956, so it stands as the last of the pre space-age sci-fi novels. The hero is Gully Foyle and he is a man on a mission. He is out to exact retribution to the occupants of a space liner who ignored his distress signals and left him to die in deep space. It's a brilliant epic story, and is Bester's best novel by far. Neil Gaiman writes in the forward that it stakes a claim to be the first cyberpunk novel, albeit thirty years before the genre was established. I've read it at least four times in the last forty years, and I can highly recommend it. 10/10.
- "Stand on Zanzibar" by John Brunner. First published in 1968. This is a stunning book, written in the 1960s but set at the turn of the 21st century. The title refers to the fact that if every person alive was given a space 2ft by 1ft, they would all fit on the island of Zanzibar. By the time the novel ends, they have overflowed the island and are standing in the water. It deals with the pressures of conflicting world ideologies, overpopulation, how advertising and propaganda can shape our worldview, and features a character called Chad C Mulligan, a socioligist who was so appalled at mankind that he just dropped out. But not before publishing a book called "The Hipcrime Vocab" which was duly banned by the authorities. Brunner predicts legalised recreational drug use, intelligent computers, politics by assassination, and a state of war between conflicting ideologies. And spontaneous riotings and "muckers"- people who just go beserk and run amuck, killing as many people as possible. Spooky. 10/10
- "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand. First published 1957. Over 10 years in writing, this is a stunning read. Set in the near future (from a 50s viewpoint), it sets out what inevitably happens when socialism is allowed full rein. Eerily prescient. 10/10.
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