I should use this blogging space better and more frequently.

I guess the fact that I’m not is in a way a good sign – I’m alive, and I’m too busy living. After my fight with Stage 4 cancer, I’m almost shocked to be able to say that 🙂

I had terrible adverse reaction (cramps) after Jab#1, and I had more after Jab#2 but this time it was more generalised. Some cramping, not as severe, but a wider range of other symptoms, nausea, diarrhea, headache, muscle pain (arms & legs). My doctor said it’s a thing called “Vaccine Induced Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome”, a problem where your autoimmune response over-produces the antibodies in response to the vaccine, and they go rampaging around attacking healthy tissue.

It can be quite severe, but I’m almost over it – just niggling stuff at this stage.

Today I went out to Ipswich and walked back home, all told only 28km, but honestly tonight it feels like double that. Maybe it’s the wobbly legs, the long, windy hilly terrain. It was still a lovely day, just physically grueling.

As you’ll see in the stream, at one point I’m on a high road (so many effing hills!), and I realise continuing down the roadside would be unsafe, but down down down below me there’s an alternative path. Old fool that I am, I slide down this (at least 60 degree) incline on my big old bum, haha. Like a child on a waterslide.

It was delightful.

People down the bottom were watching, laughing.

When I got down there, two men (kind heartedly laughing) explained that directly beside me there was a path that went all the way up. True, I would have had to backtrack for 5 minutes (and know it was there), but it was hilarious to bum-slide down this long and iffy mountainside to land and have them point out the nearby path 🙂

Lamentably their audio is no good. Earbud mic has to be tuned into my voice, or ambient sound, and it was in my voice mode.

Later, I stumbled upon the memorial stone of a lady killed almost ten years ago (murdered by her husband), Allison Bayden-Clay. The memorial stone did exactly that – brought back memories of the crime. How .. unnecessary, selfish, ugly it was, how stupid and pathetic and vapid the offender was. All suburban pathos, a life torn, a man with a mistress and one screaming moment you can never take back. A sad, nasty story.

I messed up my charger cable (but hopefully not my phone) by trying to feed power into the device directly from a solar blanket. That experiment failed and left me with a no battery phone and no way to recharge it, so regrettably I couldn’t share the best part of the day.

I was walking down a remote dirt road, past a farm where two horses were just hanging out — and this gorgeous chestnut mare suddenly canters across the property directly to me, as if she knows me. She leaned over the fence inclining her head. So I approached, talked to her, said hi, said who I was and how gorgeous she is, but sorry I don’t have sugar or an apple or any of those horsey type of things that I could give her. (In fact I hadn’t eaten all day and had no food at all on me, old fool that I am).

She inclined her head, tilting it … she wanted a hug.

I get emotional now, and will remember this moment happily for years to come. It was just lovely.

I stroked her mane, her ears, the side of her face. Leaned my face in and rested it against hers. Rubbing her … nose ? head ? Whatever the correct word is. She seemed very happy with it, and I most certainly was. I think we both just needed a hug. Maybe she was a wise horse, and saw that in me.

I have no experience with horses, none at all, so it wasn’t a learned thing, just instinct, and it was lovely.