This week has certainly been eventful! Five appointments consisting of: one visit to Kendal PCAS (Primary Care Assessment service), one GP visit, one community nurse visit, one Multi- Disciplinary meeting and one gastroenterology appointment. I went back to school yesterday after Christmas – that’s how many days off I’ve had to have. I’m feeling back to my usual self – my abscess has gone down considerably and my virus has gone.

I’ve just finished listening to “Let them eat Chaos” by Kate Tempest. I bought the book and then listened to the recording of it on Spotify. It was an all encompassing experience. I’d recommend setting aside 50 minutes that you know you aren’t going to be disturbed in, plugging in some decent headphones and turning the volume up just loud enough so that you can’t hear what is going on around you. Wow. Stick with the first poem (I wasn’t overly keen) because the following sequence is worth it. I rarely read sequences, I often find them a bit disconnected from one poem to the next – but this was wonderful. Do be warned that what she does deviate sometimes and you have to skip around the pages sometimes. Following it along and listening to it was like being at a live performance – even in the back of car. Her other collections/albums are on there as well so I will DEFINITELY be listening to them, although they didn’t have accompanying books when I looked on Amazon.

I’ve boxed away my 2016 notebooks. Every day since April 10th 2016 I have written at least a recount of my day, and on most days I have either worked on ongoing poems in there or written a new one. It has really improved my writing and got me motivated to write so much more than I used to. It just seems natural after writing an entry to continue on writing. I’ve not missed a single day – and I’ve used lots of notebooks as you can see!

Finally, I have discovered the joys of Audiable. Personally, I can struggle to read at the end of my day – or in any part of it – because I am tired all the time, even from the moment that I wake up. I am currently listening to a book called “So you’ve been publicly shamed” by Jon Ronson. He talks of people who have made HUGE misdemeanours and have been roasted online, primarily through Twitter. The people concerned are mainly people who have said things on Twitter that are hugely offensive, academics who have been discovered as creating facts or quotes or involved in what society would consider unordinary activities. It looks at how their lives have changed in the aftermath, and how an online reputation follows you around. He looks at ways people try to manage this reputation – and I won’t spoil the book but there are lots of ways of manipulating what appears on Google search results. It’s a wonderful book. Audiable is meaning that I am getting more literature in my life because on top of this I am reading as much as I was before.