Its Wednesday and an interesting day ahead with the house alarm system due to be upgraded, so I am up quite early for me. On checking my emails I find more GP blood results have come in. Ferramin and B12 have been added to the previous results. I up date my results sheet and look up the meaning of the results. It turns out that all my results are within the normal range, hence the GP not needing to see me and just wanting more bloods at the end of November.

As I am preparing breakfast the alarm company engineer arrived. I am clearly getting old and bigoted as betrayed by my surprised response to the engineer being a woman. Why I should be surprised I’ve no idea but It clearly highlights my prejudice. Any way I show her around the alarm system and move my car so that she can pull her van onto the drive. Of course I offer her a drink and then scamper about making her tea with two sugars. With the engineer beavering away on the top box I have breakfast and my partner goes off to see her mother with her brother. I send birthday greetings to my eldest grandson in Sweden. With all the admin done and everyone busy doing their thing I start to draft the blog for the day. I am still feeling groggy from my Monday injection. When I say “groggy” I mean sore and fatigued, with aching joints and a low level of energy. I know that by the end of the week I will have recovered in time for the in person poetry stanza meeting on Saturday. In the meantime I pick off chores one at a time till I have run out of energy and retreat to the sofa to read or, if in the afternoon, take a crafty nap.

The afternoon passes and soon the alarm engineer is joined by “the apprentice” and soon after “ladder man” turns up. I then loose a crown as I eat a fruit pastille. As a result I spend the next thirty minutes ringing my dentist and getting an appointment for Friday. There is a bit of drilling and then I’m asked to move my car so the new external alarm box can be put up and and added into the system. It about five o’clock before I am asked to put the code into the system. The system is tested and my word it loud, there is no mistaking it for anything other than an alarm. I sign off the paper work both analogue and digital. Then the engineers disappear and its time to move the cars so my partner can go out to meet her friend for a meal.

As my partner drives off to her meal I watch a football match and order an Indian take away. As I wait for my food Amazon deliver the hard back copies of my last two poetry collections. Its a strange and different feeling picking up the hard back versions of my books. Somehow it feels more permanent and likely to last.

The rest of my evening is football followed by football until its time to take my meds and get myself of to bed. Tomorrow is the day I go to get my nails done so I hope I get a good nights sleep.

Its Tuesday and I finally wake up at 11.11am feeling totally crap. Yesterday’s 28 day injection is not only sore but I feel nothing but fatigue. I feel like I have been beaten up and left for dead in a hedge. I do get up and take my morning drugs with some orange juice and then I rouse myself to put my washing away and refill my dosettes with my drugs for the next two weeks. On checking my mail I find I have some blood results from the GP. There is nothing spectacular in them, in fact they are normal for me. Later in the day I get a message from the GP telling me to book another set of bloods for the end of November. I have to do that for the oncology team any way so its not an imposition.

I putter around down loading the poems for Saturdays poetry stanza meeting and trying to get my phone to access my emails. One of the poems that comes through is a poem about a performance of The Rite of Spring, it prompts me to watch a YouTube video of it, which answered the question of which woodwind instrument starts the ballet off. It is of course the Bassoon. Unfortunately the poem does not match the drive, intensity or primal feel of the ballet, but it prompted me to watch it again. By mid afternoon I am knackered when my son rings to ask for a chat. We agree by WhatsApp to have a pee break before we talk but I get a message to hang fire as there is a car crisis going on. So I drink my diet Coke, nibble on some Bourbons and draft the days blog. Eventually my son rings me and we talk cars and the strange fact that diesel needs to be warmed up when the weather turns cold and in Sweden it turns cold very suddenly. Tonight is a football night, England women v Greece in a world cup qualifier. I have no energy left but will rouse myself to see the bins out and tidy up the back bedroom as tomorrow we have an engineer coming to upgrade our house security system. Probably wiser than just buying more baseball bats.

Monday, the first day back from holiday and as luck would have it today is also 28 day jab day. This day also means that I am going to have another set of bloods taken so I am hardly looking forward to today. I get up and take my morning meds and empty the dishwasher. It soon becomes time to drive to the GP surgery. The village becoming larger means that it is becoming difficult to park at the surgery. I finally get into the handkerchief size parking area and book in. The blood vampire nurse calls me in and I ask whether I will be getting my 28 injection. It turns out that I am not booked in from my 28 day injection, I get my bloods done and my B12 injection, I then popped into the regular nurses to see what was going on. The nurse checked and found I was not booked in but said she would do it anyway. So I get my jab and then spent what seemed like a long time getting out of the car park.

Once home I unpack my holiday bags and put my washing in. I spend the morning re writing Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18. It was a spur of the moment thought that was prompted by not knowing what to take to this weeks Poetry Stanza meeting. It was also a response to my feeling a bit grim post injection.

563 (18)

Shall I compare you to a summers day?	
                                                                                         Yes I compared you to a summers day.
Thou art more lovely and more temperate .
                                                                                         You are right fit and kindly.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
                                                                                         Cruel weather can ruin flowers in May,
And summers lease hath all too short a date;
                                                                                         and summer may not last long;
Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines,
                                                                                         even with some very hot days
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
                                                                                         there are many cloudy times
And ever fair from fair sometimes declines,
                                                                                         when nascent blooms wilt badly,
By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimm’d.
                                                                                         either by chance or global warming.
But thy eternal summer shall not faded
                                                                                        But your good looks don’t wrinkle
Nor lose possession of that thou owest;
                                                                                        and you do not lose your allure;
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
                                                                                       it looks like death will avoid you,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest.
                                                                                       even though you get older.
So long as men can breathe and see,
                                                                                       As long as I respire and have sight
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
                                                                                        you will be a looker and always will be.

					                                                                                            563 (18) 12-10-2026

with one eye on the clock I move my car to enable the Tesco delivery in the late afternoon and then get on with the draft of the blog. As the day wears on my injection site gets more sore and I feel myself experiencing the “withdrawing junkie” symptoms that accompany the injection. So I shall ease into the evening with no plan other than taking my night meds and getting to bed as early as possible. I may have declared myself in partial remission but the monthly cycle of Degarelix injections is a pain and never seems to do anything different other than give me 72 hours or long of discomfort.

Sunday and it is driving home day, so after a coffee and meds it was all down to packing and getting ready to go. My partner and I have toasted bagels to sustain us and then we pack the car. With everything tidied up we set the SatNav and finally leave the holiday apartment. We get away about 9:30 and from then on it was all sunny driving, mostly on motorways. I was expecting to return the way we came but my SatNav took us the most obvious motorway route, which was considerably longer than the journey coming. On the way back we stopped a couple of times for a quick pee and some sustenance, but mostly it was motorway driving. It was 3 o’clock when I finally pulled into the home drive.

Making the effort my partner and I unpack the car and close the drive gates up. Of course there is post to open, mostly stuff that will go in the recycling and a new cover for my old Kindle. Most welcoming was the recliner where I get my feet up and rest while watching a rugby match. It is like this that I drift into the evening with its Strictly results programme and then to the finishing episodes of the Norwegian drama that I started to watch while on holiday. There is also Tesco order to finalise and I need to prepare myself for tomorrow’s 28 day injection. Tomorrow will also see me give another set of bloods as my GP wants to check them given that he was concerned about the last set. I could do with it really but I guess I need to see it through.

Friday was a slow waking day. The weather initially cloudy and drizzly. I sat for a while watching the sea until breakfast, thinking about the beaches I have walked up and down in my life. I eat breakfast croissants with my partner and then as the weather brightens up I get ready for another beach walk. I am fatigued, I am not sure why and wonder if I am suffering from adrenal insufficiency as I reduce my steroid intake. It is warm on the beach but I do not manage far before I need to turn back. When we get back to the beach side café I am dripping in sweat and need to sit for a while to recover. This is not good, I am hoping it is lack of fitness, which I can do something about. While I rest the crows dine at the next table.

Once rested my partner and I go into the café and order an all day breakfast. I go for eggs benedict, which turns out to be a good choice. As a treat we both go for a the apple and blackberry crumble with custard. No other way to have crumble, anything else is just not British. As we eat people come and go all eating fast and moving on, everyone seems to be in a rush despite the weather and the location. Maybe its because I am older and now appreciate the event of having a meal out more than I used to or I am just getting slower altogether. I have to say I do not think that my conversation skills have grown to fill the space and I am acutely aware that I can be silent for quite long periods of time. A lot goes on in my head though but most of it is not worth dropping out of my mouth.

We return to the apartment where I d several crosswords on my laptop before watching England women’s football team beat Greece in a world cup qualifier. This was followed by the final episodes of Blame and the tail end of the Graham Norton show before I took my night meds and went to bed. An alarming day in a way, in that I found myself so fatigued, I’m hoping for better tomorrow.

Saturday and I wake to a sunny morning. I take my partner a tea in bed and then catch up with my messages and the blog. There are bagels for breakfast as I tap out the draft of the blog. Today is the last full day of the holiday and I am determined to climb the steep cliff path to town one last time. First there is a Tesco order to arrange so that there is food arriving at home for when we get back. This Monday is a jab Monday so I want as little to do as possible in the first couple of days of the week.

My partner and I climb the steep cliff path, me needing a rest half way up. We walk into town where I search for postcards. There are none to be found and I am thirsty. My partner spots a small stall next to a Malaysian kitchen that sells all sorts of home made stuff including honey, and there in a rack were postcards. Five or six different pictures. I bought five with the aim of writing and sending them once I am home. Having cracked this task my partner and I enter Café 25 and wait for a while before being seated in the window seat. It is brilliantly sunny and we are hot. I order chilli con carne, a strawberry milkshake and a Pepsi. The food is okay and very welcome as we sit and watch the various people who arrive all of whom seem to have a dog. I have never been anywhere where there are so many dogs. I’m beginning to wonder if you are issued with a dog if you move to Wales, or certainly Tenby.

Having dined well I go to Roly’s fudge shop and pay an extortionate amount for a couple of bags of fudge, the After Eights have run out. Theni t was off to the paper shop for a paper and to top up the milk supply. With everything we came for stowed in the rucksack we walk back to the apartment, but we do not make it past the small beach side café. We linger and eat a huge ice cream and drink coffee while looking out over the beach and looking at all the dogs that bring their owners into the café. My favourite pictures of the holiday are the ones where I am relaxing, one of course with a huge ice cream.

After a long lazy rest we return to the apartment where I read the paper and keep an eye on the football scores. Brentford manage a 2-2 draw, keeping them unbeaten so far this season. I catch up with the blog and then pack my office backpack with all the techno I brought. Its time to watch Strictly and the football highlights before some perfunctory packing and preparation to drive home tomorrow. I take my evening meds and retire to bed for the last time in Tenby.

Thursday and after a good nights sleep there is a luxury lay in until its time for breakfast. Breakfast is taken on the balcony as the sun shines over Tenby bay. With breakfast done and the sun shining my partner and I decide to take the walk into Tenby and to visit the art museum. It means a climb up the steep cliff path but we go anyway. My partner negotiates the slope much better than me, as I need to rest half way up and then again at the top. With the slope conquered we walk into Tenby town and then onto Tenby harbour. From there we make our way up the Castle Hill to the museum. Its a small local museum with three floors and an RNLI display. The ground floor is local history and how Tenby became a tourist town from before the first world war. The second floor was a revelation as it housed the art collection amongst which were several August John paintings and drawings. This was a real treat and very unexpected. There were also two sculptures, one a self portrait of Augustus John.

Of course while wondering around looking at the various exhibits I naturally I need to take a piss so on the third floor I find the museum toilet tucked away in the RNLI room. As I sit contemplating one of the strangest toilets I’ve been I realise that the keen museum curators have included a display of bed pans and toilet pots. Nothing like having a themed display to contemplate while on the toilet.

We descend the steep climb from the museum and head for a restaurant where we late lunch on a fine carbonara and have long drinks. A couple visiting Tenby chat to us as we dine. Having eaten and rested we buy a paper and some supplies and then head back to the apartment.

I settle down to do the crosswords for the day and to see how my reviving Kindle Paperwhite is recovering. To my surprise my Kindle lives except the cover has rotted. I review my library and order a new cover for the Kindle. Then its time for tea and to draft the blog for the day. My partner and I settle down to watch Winter and his continuing hunt for the killer of his girlfriend and of course others. At the end of the night I take my meds and get to bed.

Wednesday and its been a bad night, I feel like I am coming down with a cold with the added fun of a bad gut. So I get up in the morning having slept in the spare bedroom of the apartment. I try to sit on the balcony to get some fresh air but it is cold so I retreat to one of the sofas in the lounge. My emails get checked as do my messages and the days headlines. There is nothing in any of them apart from a reassuring picture from my eldest daughter showing the bins waiting to be emptied. The morning meds get washed down with orange juice as I begin to draft the days blog. Today I had planned to walk to the Tenby art gallery and museum but at the moment I feel rank. Hopefully the day will improve as I recover. Perhaps this is the day I will write something or will content myself with reading some of the books I brought with but left untouched so far.

By late morning I feel less rank and take a shower and some paracetamol. I wait for thirty minutes and then feel well enough to take a walk on the beach with my partner. It is a strange day, bright and sunny yet the wind is chill. I star tout in a T shirt but as soon as I hit the beach I put my Helli Hansan wind jacket on. The beach has a lot of dog owners giving heir dogs a run, My partner and I walk for 15 minutes before returning. Along the way I take some photos.

After our beach walk we return to the The Lounges, the beach café, and have coffee and toasted tea cakes with jam. We are surrounded by dogs and their owners, this is a really popular spot for dog lovers. We sit around watching dogs, birds and the beach until we are chilled and return to the apartment. My partner reads on the balcony while I down load the photos, draft more of the blog and drift off. Somewhere in there I scribble a poem. Where it came from I’ve no idea.

562
Rod Steiger went to bed for ten years
Gloria Swanson retired to her cot
I just lazy around a lot.
One was depressed 
One was just old and deluded,
Me, I’m not sure.
Partial remission means
partially not,
so I become Schrodinger’s cat,
indeterminate until I look,
or someone else does. 
In here with my bag of poison
that may or may not trigger
I wonder if anyone will lift the lid
and what they will find. 
Rod survived to act another day,
Gloria slipped from the close up,
and I wonder how I became a cat.
							562 Tenby 07-10-2026

My partner make us late lunch and we dine quietly while outside the sun continues to shine but the temperature to drop. We sip coffee and nibble fruit cake in idle ease. Tonight there is no football so I guess we will continue to watch Blue Lights, the Irish police drama. Does nothing to suggest anything other than northern Ireland is a shit place to live, still riven by religious and political factions who seem intent on continuing to make life shit for everyone else. I know its just a drama but it seems to tap into something. I shall take my meds and get to bed early, perhaps I will make it to the art gallery tomorrow.

Tuesday and another reasonable night by the seaside. I get up and go to the balcony to see how the day is and to breathe in the sea air. For the first time there is a hint of blue in the sky.

I take my morning meds and sip orange juice as I check my messages and emails. As a result of one of then I order my eldest grandsons birthday presents. Hopefully all will go well this time and they will arrive in time for his birthday. Last time sending things to Sweden was a problem. With that done my partner and I have breakfast before girding our loins for the walk into town, which means climbing the cliff path.

My partner and I make it to the town walls and then on into the town centre. It is drizzly and cannot make up its mind to rain properly or not. As always we decide to take a break and see what happens in a local café. I sit and watch the passers by as I sip a diet Pepsi an nibble a jam and cream scone. The fellow diners come in and out , many with dogs. I think that because it is October dog owners are allowed to take their dogs onto the beach so this is the week they all come to the seaside. Its also cheaper.

Unsure about the status of the rainy weather over the next couple of days my partner and I pop into a sports clothing and general seaside crap store and buy baseball caps, mine with Captain on it. In fairness there was little choice in the end of season selection of hats. With our new hats on we went in search of a news paper and took pictures of the town walls.

We found a shop and bought a newspaper and then walked slowly back to the apartment. I sat on the balcony and settle down to do the days crossword only to find that the newspaper (its a rag really but has an easy crossword I can do) had printed the same easy crossword as yesterday. I had a decide moment of thinking I was gong mad or that I had acquired a super power like time travel or clairvoyance. I check yesterdays paper and sure enough it was the same crossword. I then did something I had never done before I wrote a email letter to the paper pointing out their mistake and telling them that I assumed Ludwig had gone on holiday. I then got on with the other puzzles in the paper. Tired by my efforts I lazed for a while until I took my partner across to the beach café for toasted sandwiches and a drink. Once again they dusted the sandwich with powdered cheese, it really is an odd custom, its like the sandwich has dandruff. Returning to the apartment I find that the news paper has replied to me! They apologised and said they were investigating how it happened and sent me a PDF of the days edition with the correct puzzle. I was impressed. Rather than dash to do the puzzle I then took a nap as fatigue had caught up with me.

I woke looking forward to tonight’s England football match and set about drafting the days blog and getting ready for kick off. I am beginning to wonder what I am doing, I mean what this partial remission actually is. I know that I have to wait till the bloods at the end of November to know if my PSA is holding or rising, or racing away but in the meantime this partial remission is a mystery. Is this the “quality of life” the medics talk about, the simple absence of intervention, or the anxious waiting “to see” during which I’m free to do what I can manage? It makes it difficult to produce a script of fighting my disease. Its still there but how do I fight it if all I am doing is waiting the next attack and the oncology team offering another chemotherapy drug? All I can do is be in this suspended state not knowing if I am going to drop or not. It does not feel comfortable nor comforting. So I will try to keep exercising and loosing weight. It feels that is the most I can do at the moment. It does not feel like much. So I will watch football, take my night meds and go to bed . If all goes well then tomorrow will see me walking into town to see the art gallery.

Sunday and it is travel to holiday day. Of course I do not make the early start I planned but there is time for hot water and toast before the final loading of Elsie (the car)takes place. It seems we have packed enough food to last the entire week but eventually it is all packed away. Elsie (the car) being an SUV helps as there is plenty of room in the back to take the large number of bags we have stowed. So my partner and I finally pull of four drive at about half past ten and head for Tenby.

The journey turns out well, good roads and good weather, accept of course in Wales when it rained for a while. Elsie (the car) is a delight to drive now that I have found a pair of shoes that are good to drive in. The soft Sketchers are hopeless but a good old fashioned solid soled Chelsea boot is ideal. My co-driver, my partner, gives me regular up dates on mileage to go and time of arrival, This is all important as I can then judge when to make a pit stop. The last stop is always crucial as it is the one that ensures I am comfortable as I negotiate the final and always last wiggly bit of the journey. Nothing worse than busting for a piss as you are trying to find a little out of the way cottage or address.

We finally arrive at our apartment right on the edge of Tenby beach. Having lugged everything into the apartment we store the food and take a breath. We find the apartment has two bedrooms, electric blinds, good WiFi and a balcony, which of course we go out on.

We find ourselves just behind a beach side restaurant, which turns out to be a real bonus later. Being tired and travel weary my partner and I head for the beach restaurant for a bite to eat. Tuna melt toasties with grated cheese dusted on the outside of the toastie, it must be a Welsh thing, but very welcome as we looked out over the beach.

The weather turns a bit chilly so we retreat to the apartment where we settle down to watch the Strictly results show, thankfully the right person left. This was followed by a football match and a smidgeon of Mock the Week before I went to bed. The effort of driving had caught up with me and I was beginning to definitely wilt. The double bed was smaller than our usual giant bed so it was going to be a snug night except that when I woke at 1:30am my partner had abandoned ship and gone into the other bedroom. Apparently her tickly cough had got the better of her and she took to a space of her own.

Monday and I wake up after a long block of sleep, its a while since I slept for more than six hours in one go. It must be the sea air. I get up early for me about 8 o’clock and go out onto the balcony to write the blog and catch up in my head where I am. Over the last twenty four hours the last two of my poetry collections has been published in hard back. I have of course ordered authors copies of them. So now The Cancer Years: Man to Man, the anthology, and The Cancer Year: The Rechallenge are now in hard back as well. I start the blog as the sun tries to break through the clouds, but it gives up as the drizzle increases in its heaviness. I retreat inside to continue the blog.

I am soon joined by my partner and we settle down to enjoy a tortilla breakfast as we watch the drizzle fall. After some serious lazing we go out for a walk. Our way out is through the outside area of the restaurant/bar and onto the beach path that leads up the cliffs to the Esplanade above the beach. Its a challenging climb and has a large number of rest benches along the way. At the top are an array of benches on which to sit and look out to sea. Most of the benches are memorialised, so some poor bastards clearly did no make it up the slope.

We follow the Esplanade along the sea front until we come to the famous Tenby town walls. Tenby is a walled town (“by” means town in old English). It is like York and like York it is possible to walk the towns walls. We got as far as the nearest shop in order to buy a paper for the crosswords before turning back and retracing our steps back to the beach. Being knackered by the walk, I am clearly no Sherpa Tensing, we headed into The Lounges and ate. I was pleases with my chicken burger soaked in hot honey and adorned with chilli. With nothing to do but laze and watch other people pop in for a coffee, or in one couples case, two large glasses of rose wine, each. Further coffee took us into the realms of discussing the shorts wearing habits of older men and I had to explain to my partner that older men find trousers perilous to put on and that donning shorts means less risk of over balancing and/or catching your foot in the trouser leg and finding yourself in A&E being asked how frequently you fall over. “He’s of an age” is the usual response of less insightful medical staff. We finish our late lunch and return to the apartment where I do the cross words and play a word game on my partners i-pad until I am bored so start to draft the blog again.

Its been an ideal start to a holiday. A brief recognisance of the area, the nearest post office located, a lazy lunch and then a relaxing afternoon. There will be an evening snack, TV and for me an early night as tomorrow I expect we will tackle the slope again and venture beyond the town walls to see what goodies Tenby has to offer. Nothing exciting but then that is okay right now.

Saturday and I attempt to get up quickly but fail, my body needs time to wake up. My partner brings me a hot water and I sip it until I am ready to arise. A quick bagel breakfast and my partner and I go in search of a suitcase for the holiday. We try the local shops at the big garden centre but to no avail so we return home empty handed. I do a Tesco order for later today and then take to drafting the blog having read a WhatsApp message that included my resignation announcement in May 2006 of my Therapy Directorship of the HMP Dovegate Therapeutic Community. It raises memories of people who I still meet with and those that have either died or moved out of my sphere of contact. Its a strange feeling after two decades to think about all the things that the group has done since and how they have spread out.

My afternoon sees me filling the bird and squirrel feeders before finally getting round to planting the rest of the bulbs in the front garden flower bed. If all goes well the Spring will bring five bunches of Narcissus to edge the front flower bed. It is intriguing how things will turn out. Having cleared everything away I sink in to the sofa to watch a rugby match, which turns out to be a really good one. I pack my holiday main bag and then watch England thrash Serbia 7-0. Of course Strictly follows on the i-player, during which I try to get some old compact cameras working and take in a Tesco order. Before going to bed I pack my traveling office backpack. I have a whole range of techno goodies that goes with me on holiday. This time the cameras and binoculars are going on holiday as well on the basis that there might be seals to see and photograph. Tomorrow is a long drive to be taken slowly.