Friday and I wake up late. I am surprised that its gone 10am. I did not expect to sleep this deeply. I quickly check my messages and newsfeeds and then measure my vitals. My blood pressure is good but my heart rate is still elevated. Out of interest I weigh myself and find I have lost weight, about a kilo and a half. I put it down to no sweets and Lucozade for a while. I finally get up and make myself breakfast. It seems I have fallen into a habit of cheese omelettes and peeled tomatoes, which seems to sustain me well till the evening meal. With a late breakfast done I sort out the outstanding window cleaner debt and then settle down to watch the men’s semi finals at the Paris open tennis. Its not hugely inspiring so I draft the blog as I wait for the Tesco order to arrive.

Today is yet another rest day. It feels like I am not recovering as I thought I might on a reduced chemo dosage. It is disappointing but I have no other option but to keep going. I cannot see my going for another cycle unless there is a a big decrease in my PSA as a result of the current cycle. It seems to me that my next move is to get some Quality of Life for as long as possible.

Today the England women’s football team play Spain in a world cup qualifier, so my evening is taken care of. In the meantime I continue to wait for Tesco and for the garden guy to turn up and begin to tidy up the garden, probably by mowing the lawns and doing some weeding. So there will be a burst of activity and then I shall retreat back to my resting.

Well Tesco turned up but the garden guy did not. As for the England football team, they got their arses handed to them with a four nil defeat. I close the evening with my meds and a relatively early night.

Thursday. I wake tired, my partner and eldest daughter already out of the house. I go through my morning rituals and take my vitals. I try to take stock of how I am, my conclusion is that I am not in the best condition. I scribble a poem that reflects this assessment.

536
There is nothing to say
beyond the desert
of defeat.
Crushed by chemo,
ground by toxicity
I lay alone, desperate,
for in this instant
I can see no glimmer
of me in the future
with energy.
Quality of life 
is not in my grasp
but an idea waved
at me by caring medics.
I am suspended,
a strange fruit
neither fallen
nor ripened,
waiting to be
harvested. 

					536 04-06-2026

I check my vitals, they are okay but my heart rate persists a little high. I take a shower while I feel I have the energy to do so and then make a late breakfast. With food inside me I settle down on the sofa and start to draft an email in response to a poetry stanza discussion. I eventually get a draft done and sent. My partner returns home and is happy that some of the issues related to her mother have been sorted as a preferred care home is going to take her early next week.

The afternoon is full of women’s semi final tennis as I rest and see if the paracetamol helps. The paracetamol sees me through the Paris semi finals and into the evening. The family eat tea together and I then order a Tesco delivery for tomorrow. With that done I spend time down loading a new channel onto the TV so that I can watch the new Brokenwood Mystery series. I check the poetry stanza discussion that is going on and note that it seems a poetry celebration at Christmas looks like a popular option. At the end of the evening I take my meds and head for bed.

Wednesday and its been a crap day. I managed to mend and refit a toilet seat, which induced an hour and a half nap. For the rest of the day I did nothing but rest as any activity just brought me to a stand still, or more accurately a sit still. So at the end of the day its meds and bed for me. I’m getting fed up with this Cycle of chemo.

Tuesday and after a reasonable nights sleep I surface and do my early morning checks. I am instantly aware that I am fatigued as I check my messages and news feeds. I check my vitals, which remain stable despite the slightly elevated heart rate. My partner goes to the gym to do aqua aerobics and I make breakfast. As I am late up I go for pizza for breakfast. Having eaten I set about filing my drugs dosettes. It takes more time than usual as the neuropathy in my fingers slows the opening of the pill packets, however I get it done. Because I have delayed the current cycle I am short of one of the steroids I take. I will have about five days short, which I shall either tolerate or get some more if I can face the faff of doig so.

Very little happens after this activity as all I feel able to do is rest and listen to episodes of Just a Minute. The postman delivers my oncology letters, which I file before my partner returns for lunch. It is not long before she is off to see her mother in hospital with her brother. She has a busy schedule as she and her brother are also going to look at another care home. From there she is picking up a friend to go for a meal this evening. On checking my emails I found one from a poetry competition that I had entered. Of course I had not one, in fact I did not even make the “long list”. It is abundantly clear that my poetry is not acceptable and is not in any way aligned with the poetry mainstream or in fact any stream of poetry. Clearly giving poems numbers and regarding tittles as a sign of failure severely hampers my poems ever being competitive. Perhaps the bottom line is that my poetry is just crap, which is not inconceivable. I note that another poetry magazine is open for submissions so I might try and write something for it outside my current series for The Rechallenge collection.

I nibble my way through the afternoon and type odd notes and ideas but nothing coalesces. I am not sure I am functioning well enough to generate anything of interest. I continue to jot stuff and then turn to the blog to daft. A friend rings me as she is out and about doing chores before returning home to do the family tea. I enjoy chatting about our families and what we are currently doing. My evening looms into view. I shall be watching a football match this evening and once again heading for my evening meds and the hope of a good nights sleep.

Monday the first day of June and I wake up feeling decidedly shaky. I check my messages, emails and news feeds before I take my vitals. My vitals are more or less okay but my heart rate is still elevated. Having listened to Ten to the Top I finally get up and get breakfast hoping to be able to get into the garden but it becomes very obvious that I do not have the energy to do so. I eat breakfast and then spend time ruling up my daily journal. I listen to several radio comedy shows and try to relax. My partner finally returned from the gym. The next door neighbour calls in and tells us that the people we use to do our hedges is coming to do them on the first of July. It is an arrangement that we have our neighbours so that the hedges of the gardens get done together and means the team can work in both gardens at the same time. Its an arrangement that seems to work well over the summer.

I spend quite a lot of time thinking about what sort of cover design I want for the next poetry collection. I research some images and eventually decide that I like the idea of a café with a neon sign that says PSA. The obvious image that comes to mind is Hopwood’s Nighthawks. An amazing painting but captures the kind of surreal feel I like.

At lunchtime I go for the luxury of melon and ham in the hope that I will be able to taste something, however what I experienced was the chill of the melon. I start to draft the blog while listening to more radio shows. Of course the Paris open tennis is available alongside reading and writing, so my afternoon passes interrupted by the occasional unintentional nap. I poem sums up my day so far.

535
Shaky 
not a good way to start the day.
My head is at odds 
with my body,
so much to do 
and so little resource 
to be doing it with.
Its rest or collapse,
submit or crash.
So this is me being 
over optimistic,
feeling bad that 
I cannot contribute
beyond survival
tasks.
So I sit 
and wait 
feeling
guilt.

							535 01-06-2026

By the evening I eat tea and watch almost all the last episodes of Bay of Fires before taking my meds, finishing the blog and finally going to bed. I am hoping that tomorrow I begin to feel some relief from the chemo fatigue and at least a little less shaky.

Sunday and I wake up at a reasonable time and check my vitals and my messages. I get up and make breakfast and go out onto the patio to eat in the fresh air. I do the days crosswords and then find I am unexpectedly chilled so I retreat to the sofa. There I work on getting my next poetry collection on its way, so I sign off on the contract letter and pay my 50% deposit for my editing and publishing services. After a couple of goes I manage to get the right zip files to send and then follow it up with some more parts of the full manuscript. My partner returns from visiting her mother in hospital with her brother and we have lunch. I am feeling fatigued as usual after starting a new chemo cycle and everything I do is slow and needs to be checked as I discovered when I found I had no orange Lucozade in the shopping.

One of the effects of my chemo treatment is a mild neuropathy of my fingers and hands which, when I write with a pen or ball point means I write like an old person in a shaky hand. What I see appear on the page is definitely not me. Its like looking in a mirror and seeing someone different. The reality is that when I look in the mirror now I do not see anything that is remotely like me in my head. I have a steroid induced football head. I look like a Francis Bacon self portrait or from one of his Three Figures at the Foot of the Cross, but more like a self portrait. Does nothing for my self esteem and in a way I look forward to ending the rechallenge just to see if my face and head ever go back to anything I recognise as being me. Maybe its all just vanity but it is a very disconcerting to know that a version of the self is out there in the world that you no longer recognise or like. I feel like a pig on which lipstick would make no difference , certainly no incentive to dress up, clothes can look cool but not this face. It resembles a fictional ageing criminal from some Balzac or Dickens novel.

My hope is that once off the chemo my hair will return and my jowls recede, energy flow and I become able to train properly once again. For now I content myself with resting, getting through the chemo rechallenge and looking forward to the world cup. Right now I am going to watch the women’s FA cup final in the hopes that Brighton win.

Brighton lose, Leicester Tigers lose at rugby, the athletics are poor. The family eat tea and I watch more Bay of Fires before taking my meds and finishing the days blog, go to bed hoping that I get some sleep and feel better tomorrow and up to doing some activity in the garden. Of course I’ve now lost my sense of taste again thanks to the chemo, so its back to eating flannel and lint.

Friday and its Cycle 8 day. I take time to get up and prepare for the trip to the oncology clinic. So I spend my morning having breakfast, taking my meds with the added steroids. The morning goes by until its time to book an Uber to the hospital. I am in my lightest shirt and shorts as the weather is still hot. My partner and I get dropped off at the car park entrance which is considerably nearer to the clinic than our usual drop off point.

We pick up strawberries and cherries from the fruit stall at the hospital before I book in. I am about half an hour early but it is forty five minutes after my appointment time before I get called in. I am put in bay 1, and I do not recognise anyone on the staff or any of the fellow cancer club members. A nurse puts in my cannula and administers my pre-meds once she has checked my raised heart rate is acceptable with the on duty doctor. My chemo is reduced by about 25% but still takes a full hour to infuse. My session comes to an end after which I rej-oin my partner and we go to get another Uber home. It turns out that I have dropped one of my card cases, not the bank card case, in the Uber. The driver contacts me and lets me know he has found it and we make an arrangement for him to drop it off tomorrow.

Once home tea is eaten on the patio and then I watch TV until its time to take my meds and get myself to bed. I can feel that my body is beginning to react to the huge amount of dugs that I’ve got inside me. I just hope that I get some reasonable sleep tonight.

Saturday and I wake up feeling decidedly chemo’d. I am fatigued and my gut is off badly. I take my vitals and set up my records for cycle 8. My partner and her brother have gone to see their mother in hospital and then onto look at a care home. I get up late morning and have pizza for breakfast and then settle into a day of TV rugby and football. Apart from a Tesco delivery and the Uber driver returning my card case I did nothing. I know what I want to do, mostly to do with the garden, I also need to move on my new poetry collection but first I need to get through the first flush of the Cycle 8. I get to the end of the evening and attempt to catch up with the blog. I inevitably get to drugs time and the wandering of to bed in the hope of sleep. At the edges of my mind I am aware that friends are playing golf, attending Pride, celebrating Eid and tending gardens and allotments. I am also turning over in my mind a poem based on something my partner said in the oncology clinic waiting area. When I asked if she had seen any of the usual people we see on a Friday she noted that because my cycle was delayed a week none of the usual people where this week. At which point she said “I don’t expect I’ll see them again”. It is a haunting phrase that strikes a cord with me. A sense of temporary community and the unquestioned loss of people and the temporary joining of others. I am interested to see if these senses turn into an actual poem.

Thursday arrives after a night of spectacular thunder storms, which kept me awake for a part of the night. I go through my rising rituals and eventually get up to make breakfast and take my medication. After yesterdays oncology review and decisions made there I add my pre chemo steroids to todays medications. Deciding to go for cycle 8 now feels a bigger decision than it did yesterday. While my partner visits her brother to sort out future care for their mother I start to draft the blog for the day and include a poem that comes to me.

534
It’s alright to sound confident
as I make the decision to 
go for cycle 8
with reduced dosage.
A day later I’m not so cocksure.
I start the extra steroids
to protect me
and with them come the doubts.
In my head at the time
my reasons and logic were impeccable.
Now I’m not so sure, 
as I face the reality of post chemo 
toxicity and fatigue I waver. 
Part of me longs to stop,
to rest and see if my PSA 
will rise or fall. 
I crave rest,
a period of my particular normality 
and maybe a little recovery.
For today I have to live 
with my chosen option
and tomorrow watch the drugs
drip into my veins 
and hope my belief 
in logic and reason
are well founded.
It is my act of faith
in science and myself.

						534 28-05-2026

I stop writing and get on with my to do list for the day, which incudes unloading yesterdays compost buy from the boot of the car. I am already thinking about tomorrows trip to the oncology clinic and wondering if I can get an Uber to drop me closer so I do not have to walk so far through the hospital to get to my chemo session.

At lunchtime I am joined by my partner who then goes off with her brother to look at a possible care home for their mother. I have lunch and spend time in the garden taking photos of the amazing peonies and the roses that are coming out.

I’ve never seen the peonies look so good. This recent sunny weather is bringing the best from the garden including a crop of rogue foxgloves, which the bees love, and some giant weeds. As Cicero said ” All a man needs is a library and a garden”, I have both and I am therefore blessed. In fact I am doubly blessed, I know I am loved and cared about, what more could a chap want?

My evening will see a meal eaten and then probably TV to keep my mind from tomorrows chemo. The closer it gets the more anxious I get but I cling to the belief that my reasoning was and is good, so I will do cycle 8 and then see what new data there is before doing anything else.

Wednesday, another bin day and, on this occasion, an oncology review day. I do my usual eighty eight minutes of pre rising rituals, including a poem and then get up to shower.

553
It takes eighty eight minutes 
to do my life each morning.
Messages, emails, news feeds,
TV listings and my vitals.
That’s it.
From then on its all vertical potential,
Showers, to do lists and inspiration.
Occasionally there is disease control,
talks with oncologists, dates in diaries
and a rearranged timetable.
I wonder if I’ll talk to anyone today,
someone outside the household.
Hermit time makes the cogs turn,
wheel inwards and soar into fantasy
in which a hero overcomes all. 
What falls is ink on paper
and another jotting in the series
scalds the marks of the journey.
So now the difficult bit,
getting on with life
and doing the ordinary.
I message:
“is anyone out there”

							533 27-05-2026

I make breakfast and then retreat to the sofa to type up my poem and draft the blog while I wait for the oncologist to call. At 13:00 ” he who made a pact with the devil” calls. He asks how I am, how my bowels are, how my numb hands are and explains the options. He says that he cannot predict which of three groups I will fall into regarding PSA rise. One group goes for 12 months, one group goes for fourth months and one just rises. I was given the option of resting, quitting or carrying on. In essence it was up to me. I chose to go for cycle 8 this Friday on a reduced dose to see if the PSA will come down any further. If it does great and cycle 9 is a possibility, if it doesn’t then there is no point in going on with the rechallenge and I have to consider the possibility of a sister drug. Same family, same side effects! Maybe worth a go. So my dye is cast, back to pre chemo steroids tomorrow.

To celebrate my partner and I go for a bacon roll and a drink in the local garden centre. We chat about some of the issues but my partners mother and other things as we enjoy our rolls. Having enjoyed our break we walk through the till and pay for three bags of compost. While I collect the car my partner collects a member of staff to load the compost into the boot of the car. We drive home and I head for the sofa and the Paris Open to watch Djokovic struggle in the heat against a Frenchman. I’m not a great fan of Djokovic but I am now always drawn to the veteran players, I always root for the elder player. We older folk need to stick together. As Djokovic looses the third set, I loose interest as it means the match will drag on for ages and my attention will never last out that long. I think there should be a time limit on tennis matches. Once it gets to two and a half hours whoever is ahead should win. I read review articles about chemo rechallenge, specifically for prostate cancer. It seems all the reviews show that the current studies and trails show that is you responded well to the chemo (specifically Doxetaxel) the first time then there was a reasonable chance you would respond well in the rechallenge. My PSA has reduced by at east 50% so far. The related relapse time ranged from approximately 12 months to 50 months. I suspect the 50 months may well be an outlying result due to some specific elements of the particular study, but one can hope. Djokovic wins in four sets in 3 hours 50 minutes. A victory for age.

The evening rolls in. I water the sunflowers and eat tea before intending to watching another European football final. This time its Crystal Palace that is going for a trophy. I shall watch and go to bed knowing that I need to start my pre chemo steroids in the morning.

Monday, a Bank Holiday, and its a very hot day. I get up and sit on the patio having eaten breakfast and taken my meds. I sit in the sunshine and write a poem felling overwhelmed, but not quite sure why.

532
So its thirty degrees plus
and I am up to my eyes
in rules. 
All the shoulds and oughts 
that would keep me alive.
The exercise I struggle to do,
the diet I should eat,
the tasks and to do list
that would give me 
quality of life. 
A life of denial of 
Dis and dat
to keep me healthy.
But I’m not, healthy that is,
I’m fighting prostate cancer
and the more ill I feel 
the greater the rules,
the rights and wrongs of 
survival grow.
If I gave them all up
what would become of me?
It all ends in death anyway
so what am I clinging to?
Life of course,
But I’m not sure why anymore.
If living becomes filled with tasks 
then life becomes a chore,
a series of tick off jobs
with no guarantees.
I tell myself its part of the battle,
the taking control,
of how I fight my corner
so I can stay longer.
Again I wonder for what if 
I cannot function well enough
to do the ordinary,
to be good enough.
I wonder if I’ve already lost
and what is worse is that 
I’ve mislaid my ability to be reckless.
A simple glass of wine,
an indulgence or two
seem to pass me by.
Remind me,
what am I living for again.
Just the satisfaction that I’m not dead yet?
Well that’s no life at all!
I think I am a coward,
I do as I’m told
I take my meds
I give my bloods
and struggle on,
what was it I’m looking for?
Quality of life!
Oh yes that,
It seems I have fucked that up.
A neat realisation as I wait for the 
pain killers to kick in.
Its all a malaise
in which I cling to words,
words to read and to write 
as I try to make meaning of all this.
It feels very alone 
and maybe that’s the point.
There is no one but me 
who can live and die this conundrum. 
It’s a rule.

						532 25-05-2026

As the day warms up to its scorching heat I alternate between soem gardening and sitting in the fan cooled lounge reading or doing odd life admin tasks. My eldest daughter gave me a copy of her board report from her doctorial Viva. I read it through, its a really good report. It is clear that the board was very impressed with the content and quality of her work. The whole devising of a new methodology is impressive. It is a well deserved PhD and one that has real relevance to people and the criminal justice system today, which is more than can be said for some things that get awarded the same accolade.

Slowly over the day I finally get my sunflower seedlings planted up in their new containers. I have to do this in stages but I eventually get it done. I just hope the bloody squirrel does not dig them up. I will be interested to see how they survive, they are supposed to be purple “teddy bear” sun flowers. If they survive and grow they should be spectacular.

With the sunflowers out in the world I take pictures of the new flowers that have bloomed today in the ever increasing heat. The peonies and the roses seem to be the most happy in this heat. I take more pictures and then retreat to the cool of the lounge and its cooling fan.

Due to the heat the family eat late and then I and my partner finish our binge watch of Death Valley and the joys of Timothy Spall playing an actor. We round off the evening with the final episode of Grace. I took my meds and went off to bed while my partner continued to isolate to fully recover from her recent bout of vomiting and diarrhea.

Tuesday and I am up early after a terrible nights thrashing about in bed. I did not sleep more than two hours at any time last night. So I am up at 7:30 and in the kitchen making the breakfast. I eat breakfast, take my meds and then catch up with drafting the blog. With the drat as far as it can go I wander into the garden, raise the sun shade and then roll out the hose and top up the tiny pond. No sign of any frogs, I think the pond is toxic. Once refilled I try and get the solar pump working and eventually after a lot of scrapping I get it going again. Its ideal weather for the solar pump so I am hoping it will help clear the pond a bit. It is still brilliant sunshine but the forecast says there is a thunder storm on the way.

My partner and I share a pizza for lunch after which I read a bit of another new book. It is the sixth in the “Before the Coffee Gets Cold” series by Toshikazu Kawaguchi. I have read all the others and like the unusual premise of them. You can go back in time but you cannot change anything, It leads to some very interesting situations and is very philosophically Japanese.

The afternoon passes with reading and some more light gardening. There is some poetry admin to do to make sure that all my back ups are in place as I prepare to publish again in a few weeks. I return to the garden and despite the forecast suggesting a thunderstorm I water the garden with the hose. Despite the odd rumble of thunder there is no sign of rain. I slip into the evening very tired, I eat tea and then watch TV till I take my meds and get to bed. Tomorrow I have an oncology review which will determine if I start cycle 8 on Friday on a lower dosage. \its an important decision.