Thursday arrives and I am up early and showered ready to go and see my hand physiotherapist. I take my morning meds and then drive off to see what the arithmetic on my hand is going to be. It turns out that I am doing well, my finger is continuing to straighten and I have more elasticity in my joints but I have a hard scar L shape on the inside of my ring finger which is being slow to soften or stretch. I discuss my options with the physio and I agree to see her in a months time to be remeasured, she massages the scar and provides me with a new piece of latex to wear on the scar at night. She also adjusts my finger splint. It appears that at the 6 month mark it will be as good as it gets so until then I will continue to do my finger exercises, wear my night splint and keep massaging the scar regularly. Basically it is good news.

I drive home and make myself a fried egg sandwich and a hot water, which I take out onto the patio and eat with my partner. While in the sunshine I do the days crosswords and then when my partner has gone to get her hair done I set about building the cold frame that has been sitting in the hall way all boxed up. Its a fairly straight forward job but as always there is a bit of juggling to be done in order to get the first part of the frame stable and lined up properly. Eventually it is complete but on the patio. The garden guy comes later to cut the grass and helps me mount it on the bricks where it is going to be permanently in the garden.

I am out of spoons by the time I have completed the build and binned all the packaging so I take a time out and have a bit of a rest until the garden guy arrives. We chat and then he cuts the grass which makes a huge difference to the look of the garden before helping me lift the cold frame into place. By now I am out of spoons (energy) and decide to hang my washing out tomorrow as its going to be sunny. I do however take a picture of my magnolia that has come out in flower in the last forty eight hours just as the cherry blossom begins to fall.

Finally I retreat to the sofa and command Alexa to play me meditation music and I then begin to draft the blog. The evening is upon me as the garden guy waves good bye and I can smell the new mown grass. Its light and sunny still but mind has already turned to tomorrow and the need to get on with clearing out the office and getting the life admin organised all in one place. As I am thinking about this the Amazon guy delivers a new soap dish, the old one is just disgusting and to ensure some future proofing the new one has “soap” written on it!

Of course the most important thing in my life right now is that the bastard Trump has made my poetry collections a dollar more expensive for discerning Americans. I am planning my response and what action I might take, as a private citizen all I can do is not buy anything American, which I suspect might be quite tricky, but if I come across any Americans I will see them as fair game.

There is no sport on TV tonight so it will be time to read or watch something on TV but to be honest I am running out of options that are partner compatible. So to night I shall down my meds, strap on my adjusted finger splint and hope for a good nights sleep to set me up for tomorrows training session and dinner with some friends later on. It will be good to chat to some non house hold people again, that will be two days running, I am almost becoming social again!

Wednesday and I am back into my old waking routine of drinking hot water, taking my vitals and checking my socials and messages. With all that done I get up and dress in my training gear, my partner already on the way to see her mother with her brother. Breakfast is a bagel affair and then I take a few minutes to do the days cross words. I clear things away and then I head for the garage and the rowing machine. I’m still sore from Mondays injection and Tuesday row so I am sensible and set myself up for a thirty minute row. It turns out to be an even tougher session than yesterdays forty five minutes. I do not make what I think is a standard distance for the time. It is what it is and I guess my body is telling me that I need recovery time.

I record the session in my journal and then clear away the kitchen before reviewing some of the things I have written recently. I stumble across a short poem that I recently wrote and had forgotten about.

430
When I’d rather be asleep
Than awake, I know its trouble.
When all the niggly bits
outweigh the rest,
then its desperate.
When nothing is a crisis
but everything needs tending
in an endless round of care
that’s when I hanker 
after sleep.
It’s the insidious side 
of cancer warfare,
chipped at slowly
like Chinese torture,
every drop washing away energy,
a man under erosion.
I crave a kindness or two
just to know that
someone sees it
before I pull the covers
over my head.

					439 20-03-2025

My mind turns to Easter and I begin to hunt around for ideas and also do some pre ordering. By the time I am through with this my partner has returned and so we have lunch together before Tesco arrive to deliver what was a hastily put together order. With the refuelling done I take my partner for a short drive to the local garage where I check my tyres and then go onto the garden centre for a ginger beer and a shortbread. This is how it goes some days in retirement.

Back home my partner plants the sweet peas we bought at the garden centre while sort out my diary and check the date and time of my post operative assessment by the surgeon. It spurs me to do my nails and to do another set of hand physio exercises. The hand physio is my one appointment tomorrow so I am keen for it to go well. I suspect I shall just have to keep going as I am for another couple of months. I realise I have no cash to pay her so its a trip for me to he local Co-Op to use the cash machine before the evening meal and the slide into the evening.

For some reason the cash machine tells me my card is not acceptable, it used to be so I assume the machines on one. So I trudge home and eat tea and settle down to an evening of films. I down my night meds, don my finger splint and magic latex dressing and go to bed

Its a post jab Tuesday so I know I have to crack on early as possible as this is the day my energy desserts me early in the day. My newly retired partner is up and getting ready to meet a friend for coffee. She brings me my morning hot water and I take my vitals (all good) before getting up and climbing into my training kit. I make myself breakfast and put a load of washing in. I delay training to re connect the smart speakers in the house to the new internet hub. I putter for a while, just long enough to hang my first load of washing out and put a second load of ice hockey jerseys in. Then I train.

The session was hard but I get to the 45 minute mark tired but pleased to have made the effort. 8 kilometres is not bad after a 16 day break from training. Now I have to get back into the swing of regular training. I record the session in my journal and then change out of my training kit. There is another load of washing to hang out and a white wash to put in. I have soup and bread on the patio with my partner who has returned. I find myself restless and end up filling the bird and squirrel feeders before taking pictures of some of the flowers that have come out in the garden.

By now I am flagging and as I put out the last load of washing on the line I know I need to rest. I retreat to the sofa and look at the disarray at my end of the sofa and I know the office space is in need of a good clear out but I will not manage that today. You either have the spoons (energy) or not and right now the answer is not. As I sit on the sofa trying to formulate a plan for clearing space in the office and at my end of the sofa I find myself jotting in my journal, which turns into a sort of poem.

440
I draw a complete and utter blank
starring at the cherry blossom
and taking bets with myself
how long it will survive.
The garden runs amok
and the office is a midden
after I have changed the Hub.
My end of the sofa is chaos, 
the cold frame is not built
and Phase two of shed building 
is a far-flung fancy.
I’ve trained, I’ve done my washing,
(lovely drying day),
But now I draw a complete and utter blank. 
I have fantasies about ending wars,
Of peace and miraculous tidiness.
I recall friendships and feel lonely
and let my mind wander further
than I probably should.
With so little done I am 
already spoonless
and here I am stuck
in the foothills of clutter.
I know what needs doing,
I’ve a smart new list maker 
on my cleverer than me phone
but now I draw a complete and utter blank.
I’ve finished the wine gums
and I am reaching for a Crunchie
but not before I do my hand exercises 
to stretch my scars,
and still my injection site 
from yesterday is sore.
It’s a gnawing dissatisfaction
that sounds as if it’s just,
“Poor me”.
But I am struggling, and vaguely 
resentful that I have no telekinesis.
I’d like a plug in energy boost,
an inspiration or something brain fed,
but now I draw a complete and utter blank.
I must find a way of breaking free,
of moving mountains or at least 
doing the basic.
My head sees it but my body
is otherwise engaged. 
This damn cellular war is relentless,
there’s no negotiation table,
no intermediary to help balance
argument and actions. 
There is just warfare inside
that has time on its side,
an enemy that laughs 
each time the clocks springs forward,
or an ordinary accident befalls me.
Each everyday mishap fuels the advance
and I wrack my mind for weapons,
strategies and tactics to retaliate
but I draw a complete and utter blank.

							444  01-04-2025

This burst of writing has to be captured and numbered and put in its place in my “All I Have” file and the best way of doing that is to put it into the blog, so I start to draft todays blog. So it is now early evening and the drift into a sunny sunset starts. There will be tea and I will be rounding up washing from the line and sorting it into neat piles to store away once again. Tonight there might be football, there may not but there will be last minute Tesco changes and then the sleeping rituals will start, meds, finger splint and last minute messages and checks. Tomorrow the office tidying is my mission, it will be brutal.

The first Monday back after the holiday and it is a twenty eight day jab day. There is no time to hang around this morning so I am up and showered in time to be in the GP surgery for 9:40am. It is my usual nurse who pumps the large amount of fluid into me. On my way home I drop into the pharmacists and pick up my out standing prescription. My twenty eight drug is there but in a different format, so I assume they had to find an alternative supplier.

Once home I make a breakfast and settle down to do the days crosswords. With the puzzles completed I turn my attention to the new Internet hub that BT has sent me. The first task is to look at the existing set up and the old hub, taking the precaution of photographing it all before I start out on the task. Its a jungle of wires and leads, some of them still have the labels I put on them telling me what they are. Past Roland was quite wise. I have to move load of stuff out of the office and clear the work surface before I can take the risk of unplugging stuff. As a diversion I go food shopping with my partner at the new garden centre. Its a quick in and out job and we are soon home. A friend calls just as I arrive home and I have the pleasure of a chat with her about holidays, families and children. It’s a real pleasure to have a conversation out side the household and to catch up with news of people I know.

I return to my rats nest of wires, cables and connectors. Some have labels, some do not so I spend a long time tracing which wires run from what to where. Eventually it comes to the moment of truth and I start to put connectors into the ack of the hub, importantly the phone line for the phone into the new portal in the back of the hub. the moment of truth comes when I plug the hub into the mains and switch on. Ta Da! the hub goes orange and then blue, it works. I check the phone works by ring the home phone and using the home phone to ring my mobile, both calls are successful. I then spend a lot of time connecting all the things that need the new connection to the new hub. One TV, a PC and two laptops later the work is done. I print off the hub information for the rest of the household and leave them to sign up in their own time.

By now I am running out of energy and my injection site is becoming sore. Time to rest and eat and finish the Agatha Christie on TV. I draft the blog and then take myself to bed full of meds and pain killers.

Saturday and I wake the quiet of the sea side village out of season. If I and my partner are to get onto the beach for a walk then breakfast has to be fast, and it is. As soon as we can we get down to the beach, only today there are more people out and about. It remains an amazing beach and has not changed in the sixty three years when I first saw it on a family holiday.

Once again we stroll the beach, with me in my Crocs and my training bottoms turned up in true Brit style. On returning it the village my partner and I shop for a paper and some odds and ends. Back in the apartment I set about the crosswords and drift towards the evening after rugby and football. The treat of the evening is going out to eat at the Country Cousins restaurant. As an indulgence I have a small glass of Merlot, which I savour. Just occasionally I have a small glass of wine to see if the reality is anywhere near the fantasy, it rarely is.

The evening passes in a drift of murderous Agatha Christie, before fatigue sets in and its time to take meds and go through my pre-sleep rituals.

Sunday is pack, eat and drive day. And so it was. That plough along mostly motorway taking longer than due to my prostate cancer demanding that I stop more frequently than my pre diagnosis days. Finally I pull into the drive to a brilliant surprise, my cherry trees are in full blossom!

After such a welcome home all else pales into insignificance. Tomorrow is “Jab Monday” so here I am at the end of another twenty eight days. By tomorrow evening it is likely that the side effects of my jab will have kicked in and I will be fairly useless for the next forty eight hours. Maybe I will get lucky this month. So I will take my night meds and add some prophylactic paracetamol. Onward.

Friday and I wake early again, it must be the fresh sea air. I make warm drinks for my partner and I, which we drink as we roughly plan the day. Before getting up I take my vitals and they are okay. My morning meds are taken with breakfast and then we head for the beach. Tide is out but it is blowing hard as witnessed by the para surfers, they are the only other people on the beach apart from a couple of detectorists who are leaving mounds like moles at irregular intervals on the tide line.

Its very blustery but bracing and I am glad of my windproof jacket and Crocs, which seem ideal for this sort of beach walk. Its a kind of “there and back” sort of walk, deciding to turn around at a convenient dryer patch of sand, my partner leading the way with her walking poles, which seem to be doing the job.

Back at the causeway I dry my feet and don socks as well as the Crocs and my partner and I go off to the shop to get a paper and something to put in a sandwich later, then its back to the apartment to do the cross words, read the paper and listen to the tide turn. In a gastronomic change of plan we decide on fish and chips for a late lunch and while my partner goes and gets them them from the chippy a hundred yards from the apartment I lay the table in readiness. The delicious food arrives in sturdy, vinegar resistant, boxes so there is no washing up to do apart from the cutlery. We could of used our hands but the mushy peas would have been messy. I am thoroughly podged and lay on the sofa to have a quick nap. I ask my partner to wake my in half an hour and with that dive under a blanket and snooze. When I wake up more than an hour and a half has passed, my partner did not want to disturb me! So now its time for the ice cream walk. We are not great walkers at the moment due to my sore toes but we manage our usual jaunt despite the wind being well gusty and full of gusto. We can see the waves breaking against the promenade wall and throwing white walls of foam over it. Having walked our walk I pushed on to the sea front and tried to capture the breaking waves and sea spray but also the sound of the waves rolling the giant pebbles back and forth at the waters edge. Its a deep and grumbling sound that speaks of power and relentlessness.

Back to the apartment to read and for me to start to draft the blog, typing stuff up first and then doing the jiggery pokery to add the pictures and the videos, which always takes a while. Its early evening and tea will be sandwiches and cake before settling on some TV. It will be an early night of meds, hand physio and strapping on the finger splint with the magic gel strip. Tomorrow we will brave beach again.

Thursday and its extra Vitamin D day, I’m up early (ish) to clear the kitchen space and make hot drinks to take back to bed to my partner. I check my holiday vitals and find they are all good and then its time to chat and slowly get up for the day. Breakfast goes hand in hand with the morning meds, which as I mentioned earlier includes a block dose of vitamin D today. Its chilly outside as the wind whips off the sea so I and my partner well to go and post the last of the post cards and to get a paper. I lay in a store of Devon fudge, that won’t be coming home.

Back at the apartment its time to settle down to do the crosswords, read the paper and read. I have bought Harry Martinson’s Aniaria, A review of Man in Time and Space. Its a an epic poem about space flight, not many of those about. Its made up of 107 poems or sections, actually 106 in the addition I have as one verse has been omitted.

So I read for a long time until a brief break for a snack lunch and then my partner and I go for a walk up to the haunted house and the most famous car park in England (self proclaimed).

The walk back is easier as the wind is behind us, but neither of us want an ice ream today, so while my partner buys frozen chips I take pictures of Westwood Ho! out of season, its quiet and I half expect tumble weed.

With chips in hand we return to the apartment and a coffee over which I draft the blog. My bruised foot is still giving me jip but it is much improved. I periodically remember to do my hand physio and massage my operation scars with Nivea Crème. Evening sidles up and I return to my poetry sage and drift into the evening of quiche an TV before going through my pre bed rituals and meds. The time seems to be going past quickly now and still my writing journal remains bare.

Wednesday and I wake early and before I can sink into my usual rousing routine I find myself in the shower. It’s a powerful rain shower and very warming. It’s one of the upgrades to the apartment along with it being a walk in shower. It makes me wonder if we should take to bath out at home and install a walk in one. Once showered I make warm drinks for my partner and I and return to bed.

Breakfast is eaten to the accompaniment of the sea rolling the giant pebbles around just across from our apartment. my partner re-plaits my hair in readiness for our first walk into the village.

After I am braided we go for a walk to the post box and then to the chemist, I am desperate for a nail file and clippers as I have split a nail and its really irritating as I keep catching it on my clothes. I am lucky and find all I need and we are able to move on to the next shop to get the odds and ends we need to survive, like dishwasher tablets. On the way back there were the most enormous lilies in a front garden, I’d not seen them so large before and assume the southerly climate favours them.

The shopping is dropped into the apartment as is two layers of clothing, the sun is out and its quite warm, With the adjustments made we head for the café round the corner for raspberry lemonade and a massive warm fruit scone with all the trimmings. Its a real treat and I am fascinated by the local people who are coming in and out. Back at the apartment I do the days crosswords, while my partner reads on the patio in the sunshine. So time passes until it’s time for the ice cream walk. Donning the most comfortable shoes I can manage my partner and I walk to the promenade and look out over the sea under a blue sky.

We walk the back way to overlook the back of the pebble ridge and on the way discover an extraordinary facility, a self service dog wash: I kid you not! How a dog manages it is beyond me but there it was as bold as brass and here is the picture to prove it.

Can only be a matter of time before someone tries to use it on a child. My partner and i have done the required time out and about and head for the ice cream van back along the sea front and there we sit 99’s in hand and and just watch the sea. It’s looking bluer today and I reflect that, unlike furniture and other objects I cannot grasp its shape or weight, I find it difficult to get a “sense” of it and I find that mildly disturbing. We watch it for a long time.

Once again back at the apartment I settle down and send birthday flowers to my sons partner in Stockholm and then I set about drafting the blog, while my partner makes tea for us, pate to start and pasta to finish. And so the evening begins and for the first time in days I can begin to feel a poem sloshing about inside me, not formed yet but gradually forming adn incubating. Maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow, maybe never, I just have to wait and see. In the mean time I shall eat, read, watch TV until its time for my meds and all the other bedtime rituals that I am locked into at the moment as part of my war on the cancer and the other minor skirmishes around my body.

Tuesday and the second full day on holiday, I wake up in the strange bed listening to the quiet. I seem to have slept okay and get up to make warm drinks for myself and my partner. We chat and discuss the experience of having nothing to do and dreams. Eventually we get up and go for breakfast at the little café round the corner, which being out of season I thought might be empty but it is almost full. We get a small table and peruse the menu. I go for hot chocolate and the double breakfast. This is a real treat as people come and go. It’s nice to just sit and chat over a meal. With breakfast done we return to the apartment to rest. I write postcards while my partner reads and knits. Outside people are walking by huddled up against the chill breeze.

Early after noon and are out again, this time to post postcards and to have an ice cream as a reward. The post box is traditionally yarn bombed and this time is no exception. There is an Easter version of the Wallace and Gromit penguin atop the box. Its a real splash of colour and fun.

Having posted the cards we wander off to walk the promenade towards the haunted house at the end of the beach huts, stopping for breath a couple of times. The “haunted house” is a big old cliff top house that has fallen into to disrepair but as we approach we notice a van and a bloke loading a stained glass window casement into his van. Apparently there is a plan to save the house and work has started including saving the stained glass windows in the front.

I and my partner walk back to a well earned 99 ice ream, which we eat sitting on a bench looking out to sea. Its a chilly breeze so we return to the apartment where I write more postcards and my partner reads before we watch the last episode of Protection. Tea is a bit of a challenge as the controls on the hob are not self explanatory so there is a bit of delay during which I draft the blog and the sun goes down.

Tea is eaten and my partner and I settle down to an evening of reading, knitting and TV before I once again go through my nightly rituals of medications, hand splint and massage. All day I have been wondering if inspiration will strike and I will have a suitable seaside inspired poem to share but so far there has been nothing and no signs of any inner bubbling that I am aware of, I guess I shall just have to wait.

Glorious Monday, I’m on holiday and I’ve slept well in a strange bed having retired early last night. I get up early and leave my partner to sleep as long as she wants and begin to catch up with the last three days on the blog. There is a lot to get through and it take a while to put it together. My partner gets up and feeds me marmalade toast, and then potters about while I finally finish drafting and publish the blog. With that out of the way its time to go and see the sea and do a bit of shopping.

My partner and I raid Tesco’s and retreat to the apartment where we squirrel away our food in the giant SMEG fridge and then sit on our patio doing the crosswords and reading the paper, eventually indulging in sandwiches for lunch knowing that there is a walk to be had if there is to be ice cream from the van. Our walk is not a long one but takes us to the end of path to the end of Westwood Ho! We saunter back to the ice ream van and order our 99’s and then sit and eat them in glorious sunshine and watch the sea. It feels like we are truly arriving for our break. With ice cream done there is a short walk to the small row of shops that constitute the shopping opportunity overlooking the “bowling green” to the sea. We buy postcards and soap and then return to the apartment to settle down to a quiet time where my partner start to knit a jacket for the youngest grandson and I check emails and star todays blog. And so we drift with our patio door open with the sun streaming in and the sounds of passers by all under pinned by the sound of the sea, rolling, and above it gulls giving an occasional screech.

Its soon time to think food and the coming England football match tonight. Tonight the team has to overcome Latvia. It will be a poor show if they cannot stick a few past the Latvians. If they don’t I am not sure the new German manager of England will even make it to the World Cup.