Charged and Trimmed

Please click the photo above to play the daily videoSome days you can feel coming before they arrive. I woke this morning with that particular awareness, the sense of a diary that had been filled in by someone with great ambition and very little regard for the person who would have to live it. A busy day, then. Best to get on with it.

The morning clinic was a long one. Not unpleasant, simply long, the sort where the waiting room never quite empties and each conversation leads politely into the next. By the time it eased off, the morning had been thoroughly used up, with nothing left over for the luxury of a proper pause.

The afternoon brought a stem cell infusion, which is quieter and slower than it sounds, a matter of patience and careful watching. There is something steadying about it. The clock moves at its own pace, and for a while you move with it, whether you like it or not.

Somewhere in the background, the weekend had been assembling itself. Tomorrow we head for Cherating, by way of Kuantan, where Aya’s daughter is getting married. A wedding has a way of rearranging everyone’s priorities, and ours were duly rearranged. Plans were made, clothes considered, and the question of the drive itself came up, as it now inevitably does.

Which is how the evening began with a trip to Bangsar in search of somewhere to charge the car. Owning an EV, I am learning, adds a new layer to any journey. You no longer simply go somewhere. You go somewhere via somewhere else, with one eye on the battery percentage and the other on a map of charging points. It is not a burden exactly, more a new habit forming, like checking your pockets for keys before shutting the door.

While the car took its fill, I took the opportunity to have a haircut. There is a pleasing efficiency in two things being topped up and tidied at the same time. The barber worked with quiet focus, and I left looking marginally more presentable for a wedding, which seemed only fair given the effort everyone else would be making.

Home again, and the day was not quite finished with me. There was an online meeting with the team in Kota Bharu who are organising the ASM next year. Planning something a year ahead has its own strange gravity. Dates, venues and programmes all feel slightly hypothetical, until suddenly they are not. The team were enthusiastic and organised, which is the best combination one can hope for, and we ended with that pleasant sense of things beginning to take shape.

By the time the screen went dark it was late, and the house had settled around me. The car was charged, my hair was shorter, and the plans for both this weekend and next year were rather further along than they had been this morning.

A packed day, as predicted. There is a certain satisfaction in a forecast that turns out to be accurate, even when the forecast was mostly for exhaustion. Tomorrow, the east coast. Tonight, a little rest, and perhaps a last look at the packing list.