Thursday and I seem to be returning to the pattern of my body only wanting to deep sleep in the mornings. That’s not just an impression but something my fitness App is picking up as well. I think it may have something to do with where I am in my 28 day injection cycle. It appears that I fall asleep quite quickly, probably out of fatigue, but then wake up about two hours later to then spend the next four or five ours not able to settle. At about 5 in the morning I then drop into deep sleep which may last, on and off for the next 5 hours. Its a real inconvenience as it means I am getting up late.
So after such a night I check my messages and socials, have a quick look at the news and adn take my vital. So today it is welcome to CYCLE 21 of my “new” chemo. I have been on the current chemo pills since June of 2023, so that’s 19 months. From what I have read that’s quite a while for this particular chemo, and my oncologist has given me enough to last till the middle of March. So all I can do is keep taking the tablets and monitoring my physical arithmetic. My regime of training seems to be helpful, but I still have to balance my energy each day, some days are low energy days others seem to be better but not anywhere near my old self.
After my checks I take a shower and then return to sorting out the poems for Saturdays poetry Stanza meeting, it appears that quite a lot of us have poems we wants to present including some new people, which is exciting. I have breakfast, clear the kitchen and then get ready to go to the chiropodist. It is my bimonthly pleasure, which I look forward to. So I arrive early and spend some time on the phone till my chiropodist is ready for me. She has a brand new chair that is colour co-ordinated with the treatment room, which is very relaxing. I wipe off my socks and get in to the new seat, which feels like getting into a rocket ship and is very friendly. My feet get a warm dunking in some magic fluid and then she sets to work on my feet with an array of tools. Its a great feeling and then there is the final rub down with a cream to finish to all off. My feet sing with joy as I pop my socks and shoes back on. It’s a delicious feeling and lifts my mood no end. I pay my bill and spring heel back to the co-op car park, where I pop in and get a paper and a sandwich.
Back home I get to work on the days cross words. This goes well again although there is a word I have not come across before, which is always nice. You always know the compiler is struggling a bit when the definition of the word starts with “archaic”. I am feeling clean and fresh but know I need to train so reluctantly I get into my training gear and head for the garage and the rower. Its a temperate 6 degrees. I set myself to row for 30 minutes as I know that sessions at this end of the day tend to be hard. I get going and by the end of the time I have gone 6+kilometres, so its a reasonable session.
6+Kilometres is not a bad end of day session.
Once recovered I change in to lounge wear, record the session in my journal and hit the recliner to star to draft the blog. Tea follows and tonight it will be the the final episode of Blindspot for ever. It will be a relief to get it over and done with. I’m going to have a rest from binge watching series for a bit it can all too consuming, especially when there is still good poetry and books to read from Christmas. I will how ever sneak in a televised football match in as well tonight, I find I can stream the football with the sound off and still watch what ever is on TV, or even read. So that is my plan followed of course by my night meds and the hope that I can shake off my current sleep pattern. Its unrealistic to think I wont get up in the night, my prostate cancer and medication see to that, but it would be nice to sleep soundly enough to be able to get up earlier and have more of my day.
So far the wind of cancer seems not to be disturbing my life clock too much.
Still my central tenet of survival
Finding time for coffee is an art and an essential
Wednesday and I am just about awake when my eldest daughter hands me a phone and on the other end is a woman, who turns out to be a nurse, asking where I was at 9:30 for my pre operation assessment. It turns out that the letter from the hospital has not arrived. We have a quick chat and confirm contact details and she says that the booking bunnies will will be in contact wit me. I just have enough time for breakfast and the morning meds before a person from the bookings department rings me up. There is another brief conversation and I get a new appointment for the same time next week.
So onto house chores like clearing the kitchen and then after a quick lunch I start to write letters. I also find that the Poetry Stanza members are sending their poems for Saturday’s meeting. I download them and put them in a folder and return to deciding which, if any of my poems, I am going to submit. After some thought I decide on one of my more recent ones that is in keeping with what is being submitted by the other poets.
425
My poems are the whore house of words. Driven by desire to be seen as I sink. Bought and paid for like a funeral mass. A vanity that is all, can’t help myself. These are fleeting pleasures, more masochistic bound up in knots and thrashed out to divert time and compensate for what’s been lost. I’ll hang about on literatures street corner showing a bit of ankle, not brave enough for full on tits and teeth, until there are no more punters, no tricks to turn. I shall lounge in the snug bar of the last saloon wrecked and waiting, deserted by my pimp and idly scribbling on the back of beer mats and wondering if there are benefits for this old slag.
452 07-01-2025
With the decision made and sent I return to the letter writing. Once I have completed my writing I go to the post office and send them off and getting a paper. Once home I settle down to do today crosswords. The evening comes around with a meal and then some football. At the end of the evening I draft the blog, take my meds and think about tomorrows visit to the chiropodist and the need to train again.
Tuesday and I wake to the sound of my partner going off to work, so I check my messages and socials before taking my vitals, which once again are good. I get up and get into my training gear before making myself a giant crumpet breakfast and taking my morning meds. The garage has warmed up a bit since the last session so I set myself up for an hours row. Once the machine is set I get going. Its a tough session to start with and it doesn’t get any easier, so by the end I am dripping in sweat and just pleased to have made it. Its an average session but I have made 11+ kilometres and 700+ calories burnt off.
I record the session in my journal and then set about clearing the kitchen and emptying the dishwasher. With that out of the way I have room to make a turkey mince pie. Turkey mince is pretty bland so I pile in a lot of veg, chilli flakes and a sauce with white wine, herbs and brandy in it. There is a moment of respite as the pie filing bubbles away and the potatoes for the mash topping boil. I take the opportunity to have a chunk of panettone and a glass of Lucozade to see me through the afternoon.
I love it when a pie comes together.
The pie comes together like an A team plan and sits and waits for the end of the day. I crack on and put the bins out and then sit for some time deciding which poem to take to this months poetry Stanza. I fail to decide adn instead go for a shower followed by a session on my partners eye sauna while listening to restful music. I do my nails and put the oven on ready ofr the pie just as my partner returns from work.
With the post meal debris cleared away its time to start to draft the blog. It another mundane day in the life of this cancer fighter but one that has been navigated well. There is a football match on TV involving my favourite team tonight so I shall watch that on my laptop without sound whilst watching whatever my partner has chosen as an evenings entertainment. There will be night meds and a last look at possible poems to present before sliding off to bed and another nights sleep. I will probably go with 426
426 Fuck me I am addicted to Crunchies Chocolate covered honeycomb A blast from my childhood come back to haunt my adulthood. Once big enough to satisfy but now a weedy runt of a bar the cunning confectioner sells them in multi packs, one for now and now and now and now. I could walk away I could honestly because I know that down the aisle Frys Turkish Delight lays in wait. This poem cost me a Crunchie, my conscience a smidgeon of guilt. Compared to my other sins it’s a pleasure, especially when washed down with a Red Bull, diet of course!
Sunday was of course a rest day, with third round FA cup football matches to watch after I had lazed in bed in the morning. With my vitals taken and my morning meds taken I was alone in the house as my partner and eldest daughter went off to the gym. With some time to spare before the football I drafted a letter to the reviewer who had reviewed my collection, The Cancer Years: So Far, thanking him for the kind and unexpected review. I wrapped copies of the two further collections in the series in bubble wrap and prepared the package to go tomorrow. Not sure what to expect, perhaps nothing, but I thought the guy maybe interested in the development of the series. He may not of course give a toss, so whatever it is, I will live with it. With that done am ready for for a good football game and I got one.
So after extra time and the thrill of a penalty shoot out it was time to eat and continue watching the series Blindspot. It is coming to and end thankfully as the story line is becoming more comic book as the writers struggle to get to an ending that could be feasible, I fear it is a series that has got beyond them and I sense an inconclusive ending. Its all fantasy to bed time, night meds and the final clearing of the kitchen before I get to bed.
Monday and I wake after a good nights sleep to my partner up and busy, She brings me hot water as I take my vitals and organise myself. Breakfast is simple accompanied by my morning meds, and then I am off to the post office to send my package of letter and books to the reviewer at the Lancet who reviewed my first collection. There is a bit of a stumble at the post office as it turns out that I have not got the right post code on the packet. I get it sorted with the help of the post person and return home with a paper.
On returning home I get my washing into the machine and settle down to do the days crosswords. I zip thorough these again as my washing chugs away until its time to go out for a snack at lunchtime. My partner drives us to a small garden centre where I can indulge in hot chocolate. I am not very chatty, today is an effort but I get through the snack and walk round the the rather run down garden centre, including their cut price Christmas decorations. I miss a call from a friend but catch up with the voice message later. Having bought nothing we drive home where I shove my washing into the tumble dryer and then take time to catch up drafting the blog. This is being one of my mundane days, where everything is an effort and I am short of energy. By half past three I am ready for a chunk of panettone and a go of my partners eye mask sauna.
I slide into the evening and while my partner is at her singing lesson, half way through my football match the Tesco delivery arrives, so I am solo taking in the weeks goodies and playing squirrel. Post squirrelling my partner and I watch more of the increasingly improbable Blindspot. So I drift into night meds and an early night. Its been a day of sluggishness and a sort of itchy scratchy ill contentment, feeling like I am surrounded, tomorrow I shall train it out of me.
Saturday and I wake after a reasonable nights sleep to find my partner already preparing to go out in to the deep frost. I check my socials and my messages and then with a burst of will power I get up and get into my training kit. Breakfast is a giant buttery crumpet and hot water accompanied by my morning meds. After a short procrastination I head for the garage and the rowing machine. It’s 0 degrees, freezing in other words, I do not think I have ever trained in such cold conditions, at least not since I first joined the cancer club. I use a training App to monitor my exercise activity and general fitness called Zepp and today I want to tip over the 200 PAI (Personal Activity Intelligence) points. This is an App that monitors and calculates all sorts of things and claims that those people who keep their PAI above 100 live longer by about five years, based on a Norwegian University of Science and Technology study that has been going on for 35 years and based on a sample size of 230,000 adults. It is called the HUNT study and is lead by Professor Ulrik Wisloff at the faculty of Health and Medicine Sciences.
My only concession to the cold is long socks, apart from that I am wrapped up in my usual read track suit with my ear buds in to listen to radio to keep me going during the session. I set the session for 45 minutes and set off in the freezing cold. Despite some entertaining radio this is a hard session and it feels like I am having to pull harder than usual just to keep going, perhaps the cold weather is affecting the rower, I do not know so just get on with it. As I get towards the end of the session I can feel myself loosing energy quickly and have to make an effort to get to the end of the session. When I check the monitor I find I have managed 8+kilometres, which is a surprise given how my body feels.
0 degrees, the coldest I have trained in, I think.
Well wrapped upand protected from the glare.
8000+ metres is good for the day, as is 575 calories.
I get out of the garage quickly and into the warm of the house pleased my session is over. I grab a red bull and record my session in my journal. My partner is still at the hairdressers so I clear the kitchen and then hoover round the house to try and make sure the rest of the day can be lazy for everyone. Just as I finish my partner returns and goes off to shop for food at our favourite garden centre. In her absence I watch the first half of a football match and then shower at half time before watching the rest of the game. I have very few if any meaningful spoons left to spend this day so I take to drafting the blog whilst listening to Radio 3’s Mindful Mix. It is still only mid afternoon and the light is beginning to fade so it must be getting close to the time for a slab of Panettone and some writing and reflection time.
The evening rocks round, my team Brentford loose in the third round of the cup to a lower division team, so not a good result at all. There is an evening meal and a TV football match after which more of Blindspot before I take my night meds and go to bed hoping for a good nights sleep before my intended rest day of a Sunday. I might even get to go and feed the duck tomorrow.
Freezing Friday and I wake to messages and social media. I take my vitals which are all good and slowly get up. I find my household sitting on the sofa watching the news and I soon join them with comforting crumpets and morning meds. With breakfast out of the way I have time to update my vitals Excel data base so I can keep track of my blood pressure averages over chemo cycles. So far the last two cycles since my “heart fiasco” have been normal so I am content. I will be happy if things stay as they are till my next oncology review in early March. My partner and eldest daughter go out and leave me to start the daily draft of the blog.
My day progresses to writing the first letters of the year. It is an important moment of the year for me as keeping up my letter writing as a way of staying in touch with friends I value and care about is big issue for me. At the moment my Dupuytrens Contracture makes using my favoured pen and ink tricky so I have resorted to typing using a script font. Its not the same but it does add the additional factor of readability to my letters at the moment. There are some household chores to do but I soon return to the key board and continue to write. All the while I listen to Radio 3s mindfulness selection. Its so refreshing to just have gently music on in the back ground, not lift music or caned music but proper classical music that has been toiled over and thought about. No adverts, opinions, no extraneous noise just music that does not try to force its way into my ears. I seal my letter using some of the sealing wax I received as a Christmas present. Before venturing out into the bitter cold where the streets where still white with frost I layered up and made sure I was as warm as could be. I made my way to the post box and back without mishap.
Once home set about the days crosswords, some tricky stuff in them today so it took me longer to work through them, but I eventually came out triumphant. having nibbled Panettone along the way. My mind turned to the evening meal and on having explored the possibilities I was off to the village shop to get potatoes for jacket potatoes because this is the sort of weather that is just perfect for them.
So the evening is a rough and ready meal and then there is a TV quiz show to watch and then some football before I can finish off drafting the blog, take my evening meds and get to bed ready for the weekend. I’m still stunned by yesterdays review of my poems in the Lancet, its going to take a while for this to work off.
Thursday and I have another good nights sleep, so I am feeling quite chipper as I wake up and check my news feeds, messages and socials. I’m up and in my training gear before a crumpet breakfast and then its off to the garage. Its 2 degrees and a bit nippy. I set the session for 45 minutes and crack on. It is hard work but I get to the end mercifully quickly as I’ve got bloody Jeremy Vine in my ears. The session is not a PB but it has warmed me up.
On the nippy side today
Over 9K is good and 600+ calories will do.
I am pleased that I am managing to get to train again, there were months when it was not possible without pissing blood ,it was a major source of distress, so this run of being able to train is a real blessing. I record the session in my journal and then recover with the last piece of Christmas cake and some Lucozade. As I have changed out of the training kit I have another twenty minute session with my partners eye sauna whilst listening to one of radio threes relaxation sessions. Life cannot be all here and now relaxation so I gird up my loins and set about clearing the kitchen and emptying the dishwasher and getting it ready for whatever action it is going to see later. The secretary of the surgeon who is going to do my Dupuytrens contractor operation rings me back and says she has seen the quote that the private hospital has sent me, and that the other private hospital is sending me a better deal on the understanding that my after care will be extra from a specialist hand and wrist Occupational Therapist. It is a bizarre feeling having hospitals price matching and in effect touting for my sickly business. So I now await new paper work to accept the new offer and my January 30th hand job. Probably not the best way to describe it.
With the med admin done I set about checking the car tyres on the cars and making sure the pressures are up to speed. Its not complicated it just means jiggling about with the portable compressor. Fortunately our little compressor is quite bright so that once the desired pressure is set it gets on with the job and stops when the pressure is right. It neatly runs off the cigarette lighter port on the car. With the job done and the pressure measuring dust caps back on the tyres I retreat inside to the warmth of the lounge intending to write letters but instead I find myself reviewing the poems I’ve written lately and then with a Red Bull and Crunchie bar I start to write. Its a strange feeling, once I start there is no stopping it, it just gets going and I have to see it through, so I end up writing two.
426 Fuck me I am addicted to Crunchies Chocolate covered honeycomb A blast from my childhood come back to haunt my adulthood. Once big enough to satisfy but now a weedy runt of a bar the cunning confectioner sells them in multi packs, one for now and now and now and now. I could walk away I could honestly because I know that down the aisle Frys Turkish Delight lays in wait. This poem cost me a Crunchie, my conscience a smidgeon of guilt. Compared to my other sins it’s a pleasure, especially when washed down with a Red Bull, diet of course!
426 09-01-2025
427 I idly read my last clutch of poems and I see that cancer is not there, have I become complacent, a host with Stockholm syndrome? It is true I am in awe Of its fabulous cell chemistry, Its ability to find a way, Of how molecules stiffen, bridges become rigid and the constant flux of what washes through me as pill after potion is tried. The measure of my metastases by noisy magnetic tubes, wonderous machines, my only arithmetic of life. For much of my time I feel a fraud and think “I should do better”, be more fun, more adventurous. Be the partner, lover, I once was, and then: then fatigue catches up with me, my mental to do list outstrips my available spoons, my energy gone and I sit on the recliner trying my very best to feed my brain to retaliate and be something. My friend said: “he needs to be seen” as I put poetry into the world and seek the words that will encapsulate me before its too late. Much of this life is mundane, a routine, trying to remain, a life, unseen, new terrain but it is a life, and I cling to it, for family, friends and the endless wonders that it brings. It is a revel of the ordinary amidst the exceptional, a celebration of unique ordinariness, and I love it.
427 09-01-02025
I just about get to the end of my musings and I realise the night has arrived, winter night has gone quickly black and I turn my attention to drafting the blog for the day. The website analysis that comes with platform that I use gives me surprising information , apparently people from all over the world have a look from time to time, which might explain the spikes that occur now and again in the visitor and visit figures. Strangely the most views come from Hong Kong, America, Russia and from places like Mongolia. There are of course some European ones. Clearly people stumble over me in there browsing I hope they find the experience comprehendible, it must be a baffling experience for many or just plain boring and easily swiped by. No one ever leaves a message or comment so I assume they pass through and leave us family to get on with things. Either that or the traffic analysis I am getting from my platform provider is just plain wrong.
Tonight I am not sure what I shall do, there is no football to watch and I am tiring of Blindspot. Perhaps this is to be a reading night. What I do know is that tomorrow needs to be a letter writing day, even a Shed day. I have bought my annual correspondence diary and await its arrival so I need to get going on writing my first letters of 2025 to all my correspondents and recipients. It feels important that I do this as I have not seen many of my friends for what feels far to long already and I miss them.
STOP PRESS:
I have just discovered that my first book of poetry The Cancer Years: So Far was reviewed in the Lancet Oncology section! No one asked me or contacted me but here it is, I am flabbergasted!
The Lancet Dec 2024
Volume 25Number 12p1507-1676, e617-e704
The Cancer Years: So Far (Book Marketeers, 2024) is the first publication from Roland T Woodward, a retired chartered forensic psychologist who, since being diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer, has posted a regular blog that reflects on living with his incurable disease. A raw and powerful collection of poems, the self-described compilation of “light and wonder” gave Woodward an outlet for all the feelings of loneliness, fear, and defiance that cancer provokes. Woodward’s candid poems reveal the day-to-day emotions of a man who feels the helplessness of his condition and repeatedly rallies against it. The first poem in the collection, numbered 335, portrays that helplessness. With its speaker declaring that “Nothing now is real”, 335 laments that when living with cancer, the world “no longer gives us meaning”. A few pages later, number 339 expresses that life is like “sitting by the pool” with “No sun | No waves | No laughing children | Or ice cream cones”. However, the end of the poem signifies the shift to resistance that Woodward upholds through the rest of his collection: “This is where, in my woolly, | I make my stand”. The poems that follow depict a shared and vulgar defiance towards the prostate cancer that Woodward refuses to let rule his life—as the speaker declares in number 348, “don’t expect me to be nice about it”. Woodward offers readers an empowered position towards illness that they may find hard to come by on their own. Number 349, a poem that considers Woodward’s struggle for meaning and value in a world that “holds no interest”, ends with a sharp expletive aimed at the disease. At the extreme, number 355 takes a traditional English sonnet and fills it exclusively with expletives and the word “Cancer”. By embracing his resistance and challenging his disease, Woodward can reconnect with his own identity and realise the value that can be found in life when he is in control, not his physical condition; and, by proxy, he offers this method of resistance to his readers.
Wednesday and I appear to have slept deeply waking only once in the night which is very rare for me. No time to do the vitals, just time to check my messages and socials before getting up and dressed ready to take myself out for breakfast. I walk to the village shop and stock up on crumpets and a daily paper and move onto the local pub that now serves as a café during the day. I order eggs Benedict and a hot chocolate minus the crap on top and settle down to read more of Charles G Lauder Jr’s The Aesthetics of Breath. As I sit and read I enjoy spotting the local references that he makes and the fact that they are mixed in with his Texan background. My food arrives and I have the pleasure of good food and good poetry all at one time. As I run out of food but not poetry I order a second hot chocolate and sit until both both run out. A good way to spend a morning.
Poetry that is very eggs Benedict.
Back home I do the days cross words. They are the easy cross words that I do, requiring little high brow intellectual puzzling skills, nothing like a secret service entry test, but I like to think that it exercises at least some portion of my mind. The goal is always to complete all three without recourse to Google. Sometimes my dyslexia gets in the way as I can deduce what the answer is but have not got a clue about how to spell it. My knowledge outstrips my ability to turn sounds into symbols which is at the heart of my dyslexia especially when using pen and paper, not quite so bad when I am using a keyboard, and some times Spell Check helps or predictive text. Today is a good day and I give myself three big ticks of success. With the crosswords done I prepare to accompany my partner and her brother to see their mother.
I am going as an amateur electrician as the career has sent a picture of a hoover lead with an abrasion, so it needs to be checked. I gather up tools, tapes and a spare Henry just in case before my partners brother picks us up in his nice new car. On the journey we talk cars, in particular the one we are in. It is very nice and has lots of “toys”. I like it, my partner would prefer a smaller car by the same manufacturer. We arrive at the mother in laws and while my partner and her brother are visiting and doing what business needs to be done with the career I set about inspecting the abraded wiring on the Hoover (other cleaners are available). My inspection is thorough and I conclude that it is only the out cable layer that has been slightly damaged, the current carrying wires are in tact. I use insulation tape as a first layer to repair the outer layer and then overlay it with a heavier duty duct tape to give it a smooth finish. Job done, I test the cleaner and it works just fine so I join the others in the lounge where we chat beds ands and TV. I take a call from a friend who calls me on the fly as she dives from one task to another on her busy to do list on her way to collect her children from school. After our fleeting the call the career asks if I could look at the upstairs shower as it is not working. The ceiling mains switch is an odd configuration, however I work it out and after a couple of goes the power returns to the shower unit and it starts to work. An easy win.
Not long after my shower victory we are all back in the car returning home through the growing gloom of the evening. Once home I start to draft the blog and think about putting all the tools I had taken with me back in their allotted places, while my partner starts to prepare the evening meal. I respond to an email that is the cost of my planned operation for my Dupuytrens Contracture operation. I have to leave a message as the secretary to whom I am to respond is away from her phone. The evening is with us and I am growing tired already so I suspect I will seek something to read or some TV that requires little of me. Its been a day of normality really, leaving the house, reading, attending to family business, again out of the house, it feels a kind of useful, engaged day. Ordinary but important. I perhaps need more of these. At the back of my mind cancer nags and mutters that I do not get off the hook that easily, the fight goes on and on and on and on and on and on and on.
Fight, happy 5 year anniversary to Rocket and me fighting.
Its Tuesday the 7th of January 2025, the fifth anniversary of me and Rocket finishing my first round of Chemotherapy. I survived minus hair and as I walked out of the chemo delivery ward I gave the survivors bell a cold stare and passed it by, I knew then, as I know now that getting through those six cycles was just the start of a long, bitter and draining struggle. Plenty of people get to ring the bell and die pretty soon afterwards, this guy was not for the rituals but for the reality. I ‘m still here and I am still standing and I intend to be in five years time.
I go through my usual pre-rising routine of checking my vitals and my socials. My vitals are good and my socials inconsequential so I get up and get my training gear on. Down stairs I pause to take my morning meds and get my ear buds wedged, then its off to the garage. Its 3 degrees but I set myself up for an hours row. This is a big anniversary and deserves a big push. I set off at eleven in my sunglasses to avoid the annoying slit of sun that comes over the top of the garage door and just keep going through the inane chatter adn music of Radio 2. By the time noon comes up I’m flagging but I have got over the 11 kilometre mark and shed over 700 calories. First hour session of the year, there are many more to come.
Oh yes, not a PB but a good start to the year’s longer sessions.
I get out of the cold garage and record the session in my journal and for a while to rest. When I am ready I go to the kitchen to make myself the desired crumpet breakfast only to find that they had all been eaten by the rest of the household. So for me its a toasted bagel. I am eager to get to my journal I have a line in my head that came to me when I was rowing and combined itself with something a friend said about me when I last met a group of friends to eat together. It takes a while to get the ink to flow but eventually I get to something that feels right.
425
My poems are the whore house of words. Driven by desire to be seen as I sink. Bought and paid for like a funereal mass. A vanity that is all, can’t help myself. These are fleeting pleasures, more masochistic bound up in knots and thrashed out to divert time and compensate for what’s been lost. I’ll hang about on literatures street corner showing a bit of ankle, not brave enough for full on tits and teeth, until there are no more punters, no tricks to turn. I shall lounge in the snug bar of the last saloon wrecked and waiting, deserted by my pimp and idly scribbling on the back of beer mats and wondering if there are benefits for this old slag.
452 07-01-2025
Having got to the end of writing there was some poem admin to be done to get the last few in the right order. Having a shower is my next priority but once again I have to prime the shower as I get a few low pressure messages before I can get on with my shower. It takes a while to get my hair dry enough to dress and then spend 20 minutes under my partners eye sauna. Feeling quite chipper I return to the lounge with a drink and settle down to read another of the poetry collections that I was given at Christmas. This collection is by the chair of the south Leicestershire Poetry Stanza, Charles G Lauder Jr who is a Texan who moved to England in 2000. His first collection is called The Aesthetics of Breath and published in 2019 in England, so he feels like an honorary Brit. I like his poetry and has a very southern states drawl to it and that deep south politeness which is really charming.
Lovely poetry from an American in England.
I am happy reclining and reading the poetry when I get a call from my gas fitter who tells me that he cannot do the repairs on the gas fire as the parts are not available. His advice is to ring the manufacturers. I put aside the poetry and ring the company and get nothing but bad news, model is obsolete, spare parts, obsolete, fire obsolete, the upgrade package is obsolete and no longer available, bottom line, I’m fucked, the fire is only 13 years old, says it all about commerce. I check websites for spares but nothing useful is available, so it means replacing the gas fire we have, so in a last desperate act I email the company to ask if a new model will fit into the same space as the old Model 1. I await the response.
The evening arrives as does the evening meal. With that out of the way I once again return to the recliner and start to draft the blog. I am almost out of spoons so look to TV for relief, there is Blindspot, Silent Witness and football to choose from before I take my night meds and look towards sleep. So far I seem to be managing my 28 jab quite well, I think making the effort to row for an hour has helped.
Monday, Jab Monday. I wake to see snow and sleet outside and prepare to do my Nanook of the North impression, getting up taking my partner tea and then putting on several layers, finished off with my prison anorak, grippy boots and Shark gloves. Having taken my morning meds I walk down to the GP surgery. In a very short time I am called in by my usual nurse who is very chatty and business like. She hunts around my right lower gut area trying to find a non lumpy bit to inject into to me. She pinches a bit of my fat and goes in. The injection takes a while but then it is done and I am sporting a fluffy cloud of cotton wool and tape. I put all my layers back in order and wish her a merry cheerio.
As I am out and about I walk to the village shop and buy a paper and more crumpets, which I have taken a liking to recently. Once home I am out of my boots and anorak and toasting crumpets for breakfast. As I have a paper I set about doing the three daily crosswords, two are relatively straight forward but the third one proves to be sticky. Eventually I crack it and feel chuffed that I got there on my own, no google. With my social media and messages checked I move on to domestic tasks, which includes putting tonight’s meal in the crock pot. I am doing a version of chicken and chorizo with mixed herbs, a chicken stock based source with white wine and brandy. Its all a matter of luck how these meals turn out, depending on what is in the fridge on any given day. I found some of the worlds smallest parsnips in the fridge so they have gone in almost whole, something I’ve not done before, so it remains to be seen if the whole thing works or not.
With the kitchen cleared I am beginning to feel my post jab shivers starting so I take myself off to the lounge and settle down to read Tomas Transtromer’s collected poems entitled The Half Finished Heaven. This was a gift from my son in Sweden in response to my request for Swedish poetry for Christmas. I spend all afternoon reading the collection and about him. His poetry is direct and clear, which I like but unfortunately I nod off a couple of times, a result of getting up early and the jab, not the quality of the poetry. Tomas Transtromer is a Noblel Prize winner who died in 2015 and well know in Sweden, I’d never heard of him. The translation is by Robert Bly an American and what caught my eye is that there is a book of Transtromer’s and Bly’s correspondence over some twenty six years before Transtromer had a stroke. I suspect I shall seek it out as I am always interested in letter writers and people who stay in correspondence with each other.
I like this mans poetry.
I should perhaps mention that Transtromer was a psychologist who spent many years of his life working with young offenders, it is perhaps this similarity in us that draws me to his work. This a collection that I shall read again. My partner returns from the gym and joins me to read in the lounge as I start to draft the blogs. Tonight she will have her singing lesson and I will fight off the shakes from my injection. As I draft this I can feel myself getting shivery and nibble Croccantini to keep my blood sugar up and of course for comfort. Croccantini are thin hazelnut biscuits dipped in chocolate, very moreish.
So the plan is to keep warm, eat the crock pot meal, watch something mindless on TV, take my meds and have an early night in the hope that I will sleep okay. The first night after my 28 day jab tends to be a bit of a battle as the injection site gets sore and my shivers get more pronounced. My best line of defence is to be kind to myself and to take paracetamol.
