Tuesday and I am just awake when my partner brings me hot water before she goes to the physiotherapist and the onto her aqua class at the gym. I sip my drink, check my emails and social media and then call the GP surgery to book my COVID and Flu jabs. So now I have something to look forward to on the first of October. I write a poem, not brilliant but where I am.

558
Ten o’clock
still in bed
as I struggle 
to open another day.
My mind ticks off
the to do list
of everyday self
maintenance tasks,
and before I know it
I’m  exhausted 
at the thought of it.
This is fatigue
and the voice
that pleads for respite.
Still the question,
“What is this?”
gnaws away at me.
Am I abandoned?
Is this remission?,
or just waiting.
Perhaps caste off
to die
and the doctors staying quiet.
Bloods on Friday,
So data at last,
then a phone call
midweek.
I’m not hopeful
of any answers,
in their minds
I’m 12 to 18 months
And 9 of those
have gone.
A body
half full.

					558 08-09-2026

Finally I manage to get out of bed and take a shower. It perks me up a bit when I feel fresh and clean. The next task is breakfast, I go for fast and easy, which in my world is muesli, yoghurt and fresh orange juice. Its A second Tuesday in my drugs rota so I spend time filling my drugs dossetes for the next two weeks while my washing sloshes around in the machine. By twelve o’clock the life admin has been done and I have time to draft the blog and to read the letter from Prostate Progress inviting me to join. It appears to be a research project which will ask me to fill in surveys and to contribute to ideas for treatment and services. I am not one for joining things but I am tempted to contribute Maybe I will sell them a few books. So far today it feels relatively productive.

My partner returns from the gym as I am in the middle of the days crosswords, I leave my puzzles and we go to a local garden centre for lunch. I chose a baked potato with tuna mayo, I would not usually mention my food but it was the cost of this one that was staggering. It seemed disproportionately priced compared to my partners scone platter, which I swear had more calories. Any way we ate and then looked for a pair of matching pots to house our new perennial shrubs that we intend to be the front door guardians. We had no luck so returned home empty handed. I finished my puzzles and attend to my broken nails before catching up on the blog. It is a European night of football tonight but it is also the semi final of the great British Sewing Bee so there are some tricky choices to be made.

Whatever the out come I shall end up taking my night meds and going off to bed one day closer to the bloods on Friday and whatever logic is in their arithmetic. What ever they are I am hoping they move me on from What ever this is?

Saturday and Sunday are all about grandchildren and the celebration of the oldest member of the family. I woke up on Saturday looking forward to the arrival of my youngest daughters family. They arrive mid morning and settle down with lunch. The afternoon gets filled with a trip to a local park to feed the ducks. I did not accompany them due to feeling fatigued. The evening saw the family getting the grandchildren off to bed before the adults enjoyed the calm and silence before going to bed wondering how many times they will be woken up in the night. I of course take my night meds and go to bed hoping for no more than sleep.

Sunday is a busy day. Everyone gets up early and prepare to go to the family gathering celebrating my partners mother’s 98th birthday. After breakfast the household drive off to the care home where the great grandmother awaits unknowing that family is about to arrive. In the end four generations gather together to eat cake, sing happy birthday and catch up with each other. After a couple of hours its time for the residents of the care home to have lunch so the celebrations are cleared away and people left leaving the birthday girl and a single person to have lunch. The family outside say their farewells and drive home.

Once home there was time to take the eldest visiting grandson into the garden where he helped fill the bird feeders and the squirrel nut box. He worked very hard at the task and then helped to hang the feeders up. We then spent time on the swing seat waiting for the birds and squirrels to come and find the new food. Tea time arrives and everyone tucks into pie and roast goodies and once again the children are gentled off to bed and the adults hit the sofas and watch TV until each person goes off to bed again hoping for uninterrupted sleep.

Monday and I wake up feeling very under the weather. I can hear the young visiting family are up and about but I do not join them until breakfast later on. There is a lot of packing and clearing away activity until they clamber into the new car and head for home. I retreat to the recliner and try to rest. The foreword for my new poetry collection arrives and I immediately send it of to my publishers who now have to integrate it into the manuscript and get it up on the publishing platform. Its going to take at least a couple of days for that to happen so it will be at least a week or ten days before I can hold the physical book in my hands. The foreword has been written by the chair of the South Leicestershire Poetry Stanza. He wrote the foreword for the last collection. His Foreword for this collection is very generous and kind and I am touched by it. As I draft the catch up on the blog, the flowers I ordered from a local florist arrives for my partner. A small gesture of thanks for all the hard work she has put in to make the family experience this weekend such a success. I also discover that the “too good to be true” leather biker jacket that I ordered is coming from China. I swear that when I ordered it the seller said it was coming by DPD but it turns out it is coming by Yuntrack, the obvious Chinese equivalent. I paid an express free thinking it would be with me quickly but now my expectations is that any time before Christmas will be an achievement. So I shall while my afternoon away with some light gardening and plan on how I shall fill my evening during my partners singing lesson. My guess is her pipes will be a bit rusty and that there will be some interesting sounds in the night.

My light gardening goes well as I manage to regain a pot and plant the third of our ornamental grass experiments. I am thinking that ornamental grasses might be a good idea in draught like weather conditions so my partner and I have acquired three and potted then up to over winter them and then see in the spring if we want to plant them out. It is a sort of future planing to future proof the garden.

Having potted up the third grass I have a look at the garden and find that the rose bought for my partner by a friend a couple of years ago has flowered again and has more buds. Unusual for the time of year.

These late flowers and the wild life give me hope. The Honeysuckle is also flowering again and the Cosmos and other plants continue to flower. I am hoping that signals a warm autumn and of course the hope that there will be no need to turn the heating on till as late as possible. With everything cleared away I spend time on the swing seat watching the birds feed from the feeders that my grandson and I filled yesterday. My garden never fails to inspire me and bear me up when I am feeling less than chipper. So I spend time on the swing seat relaxing and thinking about “What is this?” It is still my dominant question at this time.

Eventually I return to the sofa and update the blog before making myself tuna pasta and then settling for the night to watch TV while my partner has her singing lesson. I get to night meds time and take myself off to bed noting that tomorrow week is my oncology review, which means bloods this Friday.

Friday I wake up feeling decidedly off. My partner brings me hot water and I get up to make breakfast and take my morning meds. I am feeling rotten and all I am good for is doing the days crosswords and reading snippets of a newspaper. I write a quick verse that sums me up this morning.

557
I’m furious 
I fell over.
One step
was one step
too many.
Now I have 
a strained calf.
So I am immobilised,
Limping like
a matchstick man
down a painted street.
Another hurdle
in the pursuit 
of wellness.
Hobbled and trapped
I rage silently 
and try  to 
learn to hop
in a compulsive
urge to live
normally. 
It feels like time 
is running out.

                                                             557 04-09-2026

                                                     

I have a lunchtime roll with my partner and try to settle down, My partner and eldest daughter go to the gym with a plan to go to the theatre afterwards. I see them off and then tidy up a bit, shower and do my nails. Feeling clean but with a gut that is decidedly off I rest for a while before making a dinner of tuna pasta and watch a Millie Bobby Brown fantasy film. I wait for Tesco to deliver and as I wait I draft the blog against a background of the British Open snooker tournament and later The Dark Knight. Night meds and then bed.

Thursday the 3rd of September, its the seventh anniversary of my first chemotherapy. It feels like a long time with its highs and lows but here I am battered but moving forward. Currently my biggest challenge is my strained left calf, which is making mobility an issue, and the fatigue that goes with coming off the chemo rechallenge and the steroids. However I am above ground and vertical, which is all good. So after drinking the hot water my partner brought me I get up and make breakfast and then begin the draft of todays blog. I’ve already booked the Tesco slot for tomorrow and begun filing the basket in readiness for my youngest daughter’s family visit at the weekend. Once I feel settled I crack on with jobs while my partner meets the physio at the care home to discuss her mother, after which she moves she moves onto the hairdresser.

My eldest daughter and I move the bags f books from the garage to the Hippo Bag on the verge in front of the house. Once the books are all stowed I retrieve old covers from the garden shed and cover and secure the Hippo Bag. With that done I try to change the light bulb in the bathroom but there is clearly an issue with the supply to the fitment. This may well be an electrician job. I tidy away my tools and rubbish and return to the British Open Snooker championship and writing odds and ends. I appear not to have too much energy at the moment as moving around seems to be draining me a lot at the moment.

Later in the afternoon the garden guy turns up and gets to work on some Autumn pruning and planting. We are in the phase of preparing the garden for next Spring with cutting things back and making sure the things we have potted up for the beds next year are safe and secure. The evening will soon be upon me and apart from the final additions to the Tesco order I have little to do. I need to catch up with my correspondence, people must feel |I’ve abandoned them. There will be the inevitable night meds and last minute clearing up to do and before I know it the weekend will be upon me and it will be full of family.

Tuesday and I wake with my left calf still hurting from my fall on Sunday so I order a calf support, get up and have breakfast with my morning meds. It is my partners mother’s birthday so she goes to the gym before being picked up by her brother at lunchtime to visit her in he care home. I spend my morning attending to my sons birthday. Some things go well, good old Amazon being a star provider. However Tigers rugby club store was less helpful. Apparently in this day and age of international digital trade the Tigers are not able to send goods to Sweden, tossers. The birthday present is therefore now coming to me for onward transmission to Sweden. Having wrestled with the birthday admin I moved onto sorting out the Foreword for my next collection of poetry to be published. Having emailed the author I got a swift response and have agreed that in the circumstances its reasonable to give more time for it to be written.

The rest of my day was pottering until two thirty when I limped out to Elsie (the car) and drove to the chiropodist. I parked in my usual pace in the Co-op car park and then limped to the chiropodist’s. I must have looked like a shuffling old man out for his daily hobble. On arriving at the chiropodists I read the local advertising rag and took photos of all the “Handy Man” adverts before being called into the treatment room. I am usually quite chatty but today I did not feel like it. Of course I did chip in with some comments but I sensed the chiropodist was not up for much of a chat either. She worked away on my feet very efficiently and effectively until they were ready for their cream rub.

Having paid my bill I tottered in happy feet back to the Co-op where I bought some essentials, a paper and some After Eights. I almost thought of them as essentials but realise they are in fact an unnecessary indulgence that I turn to when I am feeling pissed off with the world or myself. I drove home and retreated to the sofa and more episodes of The Big Bang Theory. This is where I pretty much stayed for the rest of the day, drifting into the evening and the Swedish crime drama The Chestnut Man. Very dark and a lot of limb lopping. I a final flurry of activity I pu the bins out, set Didy (dishwasher) going and retreated to bed looking forward to tomorrow as my newly order calm support sock should arrive. Its come to this, the joy of anticipation of a compression sock, how bad can it get.

Wednesday and I wake up after a reasonable nights sleep, however my left calf is still giving me gip. My partner brings me a hot water as I check my social media and the news. World is the same old shit so I move on to sending messages to people. My partner goes to the gym for an aqua class and I get up for breakfast to find my partner has already fetched todays newspaper. One of my sons birthday presents has arrived and I spend some time boxing it up and getting it ready to go to the post office later today. I change a light bulb or two and do a bit of rudimentary tidying before beginning to draft the blog. This is followed by the days crosswords.

My afternoon is spent getting a bacon sandwich and buying new plants for the front garden. Of course there is an afternoon nap before the excitement of tea and more Danish crime drama. Refreshingly one of the main police characters gets unexpectedly gunned down four episodes in. I get to my night meds, eat supper and go to bed having removed my newly acquired compression calf support, which I am hoping will ease my left calf.

Saturday and the day is dominated by preparing for and attending a lunch with old work colleagues. After a shower and breakfast with my meds I get ready to drive off to the canal side venue in the Burton area. My satnav took me across country so the journey was slow but I eventually got there. It took a while for all of us to arrive. In the end there was four of us , one of who had only arrived in England a few hours earlier having flown in from Bermuda where he works. The lunch was okay food wise but it was the conversations and the catching up with each others news that was the really good part of the time. All of our families had changed significantly and there were things in the future that we were all looking forward to. Several hours later we wrap up our time and head off tour various destinations.

My evening saw me watching the end of the Lidia Poet series punctuated by the weekly Tesco delivery before going to bed tired from the days exertions.

Sunday and another busy social day ahead. I have a light breakfast and take my morning meds before getting ready to go to friends for lunch. It is to be a celebration of my eldest daughters being awarded her doctorate.

I drive the family to our friends for lunch but by a hugely circuitous route due to the usual one being closed. There was no explanation as to why the roads were closed but it meant a long and time consuming deviation. We finally arrived about thirty minutes late and were shown to the garden patio where we were served drinks on a surprisingly warm and sun afternoon. We ate a tasty goats cheese and walnut starter with a drizzle of honey however the sun was so warm we retreated inside to the air conditioning before the main course was served. There was wine and delicious food to consume as we chatted and caught up with each others news and plans. With a small rest between courses we chatted more until the pudding was ready straight from the oven. With the meal over we sat and drank wine or coffee as the outside world grew dark and rainy. ON one trip to the loo I missed my footing on the bathroom step. It is an old Victorian house and for some reason they seemed to put steps into all sorts of places. In this case it was a tricky little step down into the bathroom. I must have missed the step as I found myself falling forward, My left ankle rolled and I fell awkwardly over my left leg and banged my head on the floor. I lay there for a bit testing that I could move all my limbs, and very shortly afterwards my family had arrived, I assume they heard me yelp as I went down. HAvig ascertained that there was nothing broken and I could stand I was left alone to take the pee I had originally come for. I knew exactly what I had done, my rolled ankle had meant that as my weight went done I had pulled the ligaments and muscles on the outside of my calf. Although painful it was walkable and crucially it turned out that it did not impede my driving. I returned to the chatting and the devouring of mint chocolates. Before we new it, it had become early evening and the night was closing in. We said our farewells and I drove the family home retracing our previous long route avoiding the road closures. Once home my partner and I settled down to watch Blood Sacrifice, a Swedish crime drama that charts the pursuit of a serial killer who is killing and beheading police officers. The best it is learning from the subtitles the names of the days of the week. We are slowly getting there. Monday = Mandag, Tuesday = Tisdag, Wednesday =Onsdag, Thursday = Torsdag, Friday =Fredag, Saturday =Lordag, Sunday = Sondag. I watch the football highlight when my partner goes off to bed and I extend my TV viewing by watching new episodes of Mock the week. I eventually take my night meds and limp off to bed, my leg feeling achy after its earlier part on my fall.

Bank holiday Monday and I radically over sleep. I do not properly wake until about eleven o’clock. I hate it when this happens, I feel that I am immediately on the back foot an trying to catch up. In reality I have nothing to catch up on, I’m retired. However I feel put out but my left leg reminds me that I has a fall yesterday and despite myself I find I am limping a bit and its painful. This is a real inconvenience as I had planned to stat training again on the first of September, tomorrow. I will have to see how I am feeling tomorrow and make a decision. I finally get up and take my morning meds along with fresh orange juice and a toasted tea cake. With my feet up to rest my leg I catch up with drafting the blog. Its already one o’clock and I feel the rest of the day stretching ahead of me. In my head I have a to do list but I do not feel I have the energy or capability to do very much beyond perhaps filing the car with petrol.

The afternoon is spent at a garden centre café indulging in food and black coffee, and then filling the car with petrol, while my evening spent watching more of the Blood Sacrifice. Finally I get to take my meds and go to bed late after watching some of a film that I could not wait for the end off.

Friday and my household go off to the gym leaving me with a hot water and marmite toast. I get up and shower before getting ready to go out at lunch time. I spend time doing some life admin and preparing the house for a future crisis of energy loss. The electricity provider, who sought my details to keep me on their priority list, also provided advice about how to cope with long term power cuts. Part of that advice was to have a wind up radio and lantern. Taking their advice I ordered one of each. Suddenly the world feels safer all I need to do now is lay in long term supplies of lentils, rice and beans.

With the future security of the family sorted I turn my attention to sorting out my winter coats and finding the Fuchsia jacket I intend to wear to my eldest daughters doctoral graduation ceremony. My Neo Matrix coat I can just about get into providing I do not put anything in the inside pockets, while my biker jacket is a hopeless cause. There is no way I can zip it up over my steroid/goodies paunch. Fortunately the rest of my winter coats still fit me. I search for my Fuchsia cord Jaeger jacket, unfortunately it is nowhere to be found. This meant a trip to the loft. Using my baseball bat I get into the loft and rummage through the “Dad’s winter woollies” box. I find my jacket and hang it up in the hope that the creases will fall out, but to be honest its not looking its best. I will get it dry cleaned and see what happens. My family return from the gym and we go off to a local garden centre for bacon rolls and black decaf coffee.

Once home I nap for a while and then listen to several episodes of “I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue” until tea time when I eat and succumb to TV. There are still episodes of Lilia Poet to go. I shall endeavour to have an early night as tomorrow I am lunching with old colleagues from my work days. This is not a problem but the weather is due to be stormy, which will make the drive more of a pain. I am hoping the fatigue begins to decline.

Thursday, fatigue as I wake that does not shift despite getting up, having breakfast and taking my morning meds. My household goes to the gym, I watch TV and finally manage to write.

556
I can’t write this,
my ink clots like blood,
there is no flow 
just smears of sensed
hollowness.
This vacuum,
this echoing chasm,
this emptiness
that consumes 
my every effort
in all directions.
As a result I am inert,
fearing to move 
In body or mind. 
Action,
any movement
may jar the jammed being.
In the meantime 
I go on daubing
primeval being
to hold the space 
that is me.

                                                556 27-08-2026

The day and evening is full of violent thunderstorms. I take my meds and go to bed.

Wednesday and I wake quite early and check my messages and socials. Not much in any of them apart from the death of Dolly Parton. My partner brings me a hot water, which I sip while listening to the bin folk empty our bins, or at least two of them, for some reason it take till later in the day for the recycling to be collected. On getting up I make breakfast, take my meds and clear the dish washer. Its in to the washer with my weekly washing load and then I bring the empty bins in. At last the message telling me my drugs can be collected after 3pm today comes through so at some point I will be Ubering into the hospital pharmacy.

My washing gets transferred to the tumble dryer as I am too lazy to hang it out in the free sunshine. I am momentarily expecting rain. I begin to draft the blog and idle away time by writing some verses. I am feeling very fatigued and I am not sure why I am so tired, all I can do is have bursts of activity and then rest before trying to do anything else. A friend calls and we chat about fatigue, she is taking her family abroad soon and is trying to keep work under control while still suffering the effects of long term COVID. In these circumstances energy is in short supply and has to be managed carefully. It seems we have a shared challenge, I could certainly do with more energy.

555
I realise I want to make a noise,
not just play guitar or sing badly
but to be heard.
It is the loudness that seems important,
to ensure that when silence comes
it will be be noticed.
Oh its quiet,
he’s not here anymore.
There is a gap,
where something used to be,
a thing that made a noise 
and drew attention to the world
and its madness's and contradictions
but most of all its meaninglessness
and our shared struggle to make sense 
of it all.
Our constant making of an internal universe
in the hope that someday we would understand.
Now there is a new silence to comprehend 
and another piece of data that needs to be held,
and examined in the sister silence of so much else.
Listen carefully to the absence 
and remember there used to be sound 
where now there is just the moment.

                                                                                  555  26-08-2026

After a light lunch I take some paracetamol and get ready to go to the hospital to collect my steroids. My partner and I take an Uber to and from the hospital. My wait in the pharmacy is minimal so we are soon speeding our way back home where I load up my dossetes with the steroids. I rest for a while before the evening meal and then I settle down to watch more of the Lidia Poet series. I take my night meds, finish the blog and get myself off to bed.

Tuesday and my partner brings me hot water as usual before I get up and take my morning meds. I decide to go to the gym with my partner so that I can have breakfast and a shower as she bounces about in the aqua aerobics class. That is exactly what I do and in the time I am waiting for my partner to appear from her class I sloth about and imagine I am winning the world cup for the third time but admit I am surprised to find myself playing left back. When my partner reappears we head for one of our local garden centres with a coffee house and have a late lunch. My strawberry milkshake and tuba melt panini turned out to be a filling combination.

Once home I set about sawing the end off the discarded sunshade so that is would fit in the HIPPO Bag. This went very well but when I came t o unlock the garage door it was a different matter. The lock is jammed and despite a lot of WD40 it would not budge. In the end I humped shopping bags full of old text books onto the garage floor but did not have the energy to get them to the Hippo bag, so there they sit till I feel stronger or I get some help. I was hoping to get the drive way gates re-oiled today but that ambition is out of the window. I drink a cold zero percent lager as I sit on the swing seat to recover before retreating indoors to draft the blog and plan TV for the evening, of course the Greta British Sewing Bee is a shoe in, the rest is trickier so I feel an early night coming on as I may need to go to the hospital to collect a new prescription for the steroids I am taking. Failing that there are bags of books to move and gates to oil before it starts to rain.