Its been a while but a lot seems to have happened. Thursday was a day of of preparation before Fridays Chemo. I did small things like change light bulbs and getting my Chemo survival bag ready as I was going solo this time, my partner still has her stinking cold and cough so a hospital is definitely not the place for her to be hanging around in. So Thursday was a puttering day but of course I had to start my pre chemo steroids. I went to bed quite late satisfied that I was as ready as I could be having taken all I needed to take and downloaded all the poems for Saturdays poetry Stanza meeting. I had written a poem about meeting a fellow poet at the oncology outpatients yesterday. A man who asked about what I was reading and the ensuing conversation.

489
I met a man named Jim.
He sat next to me in
oncology outpatients 
and enquired what I was reading.
It was Jim Harrison
and I explained how I found him
being read by a character in a film. 
Jim found H.G. Wells the same way. 
We talked about how writing it down
gets it out of our heads 
and he shared he is writing a poem.
He could not tell me what it was
but it made his wife cry and then
Jim welled up.
I showed him my collections
and told him how others 
contained the dark stuff
where my family could not.
He started a year before me
and here we are seven years on 
both embarked on the chemo rechallenge.
A couple of fighters still standing,
Still pumping our arms
and still wielding words and ink 
in our defence.
His name gets called 
and he leaves.
Minutes later he returns,
Sits by me,
wishes me well,
says it was good to meet me,
and like men
we shake hands and
wish each other 
luck. 
I miss him. 

						489 15-01-2026

Friday, chemo day, I am up early and showered so that I am bright and sparkly for the oncology boys and girls. A quick toast breakfast and I am Ubering my way to the hospital. The Uber is my rainy day luxury, its not a fortune but it eases my life immeasurably not having to drive or public transport it to the hospital and back. I arrive at the oncology department on time and hand my pink “dance card” into reception and go upstairs to the chemo suite waiting area. I settle in and have a pre- emptive piss and start to read, its coming up to 10:45 my time. A smiley reception person comes up to me with my dance card and points out that my chemo is not until 3pm, I am at least 4 hours early! My mistake, I put the wrong time from one part of my dance card into my phone diary. So I have to amuse myself for the time. I make a plan, read and write till noon, grab a sandwich for lunch, read more, write more and nibble the chocolate that I will undoubtedly buy from the café. I immediately drink the Red Bull I have bought with me.

Chemo waiting areas are strange places and as I read The Forest of Noise, poems by Mosab Abu Toha, a contemporary war poet from Gazza I begin to notice things. There is a strange coming together of what is going on around me and what the poems are describing in a war torn world.

490
Sitting in chemo reception
I’m four hours early,
another dyslexic diversion
with an unexpected picnic.
So I settle in and nread poetry,
Forrest of Noise by Toha,
a contemporary Palestinian  
carrying a nations pain,
loss upon loss buried
under rumble and no way
of identifying the slaughtered,
it’s  tough read.
I can only bear it in 
short and thoughtful bursts.
Nne but Indians talk 
to each other in this
stark waiting area,
presumably because that’s
the way to be private.
Our curse is English,
We gave it ti the Empire 
and then the world
and now there is no hiding,
no public unique vice. 
So there is silence 
broken only by a snatched
clarification or request
for information, usually 
followed by a British grumble. 
No one expects Morris dancing
Or philosophical debate,
all is confined to screens 
and a world out there
away from the door 
of a chemo suite. 
Couples, patients and carers,
snatch lowly muttered messages,
invariably family are in there.
But mainly its silence
broken only by the clip clop 
of healthcare staff
going about their business
for this is their land
to step in.
Again I return to Gazza
And wonder how many died
waiting in quiet
hospital wards and clinics
until something exploded 
and their floor fell 
followed by ceiling and walls
to entomb
beyond medical reach.
Just more dead rubble people 
that the world ignores
and fail to use it’s
shared English to find a peace
where loss can return 
to its natural order:
grandparents die,
parents die,
I die,
my children follow
in their time, as do 
theirs. 
This is what English 
should be for,
not the language 
by which tyrants
inflict death 
for oil or rare earths
in the name of justice
or worst of all, religion. 
					490  16-01-2026

							

I am not sure where all this came from, but came it did. I keep to my plan and go in search of the café where I find a sandwich of something resembling ham and cheese, a pile of Kit Kats and a Yorkie along with two bottles of water. These I nibble in the chemo waiting area and continue to read and write. A nurse announces that they are running two hours late. It seems today is going to be longer than I thought. Little did I know about what was to come. At one point I hear the end of chemo rainbow bell being rung, which prompted me to scribble another poem.

491
A bell is rung
as another one
gets to the end 
of chemo.
A burst of applause,
and then an exit 
through those of us waiting.
It is a delusion,
the battles not over
the bell is a distraction
the illusion of hope
rung out over
the waiting reality
of the pain to follow.
I hate that fucking bell
and refused to ring it
the first time. 
Older and cancer wiser
back for a rechallenge
there will be silence
again as I get on
with life. 

							491 16-01-2026

So I read and write and as 3pm gets closer I go for another pre-emptive piss hoping that I might get into my session on time. Of course I do not get called and by 3:30 I am off for another pre-emptive piss, it is clear I am conscious of my ability to out last my session with out the need to go to the toilet, life is easier like that. At 3:45pm my name gets called, I bound forward glad at last to be on the go and getting it done. I pop myself into bay 18 and the nurse pops the cannula into the back of my hand, my blood pressure is taken, a bit high, so they wait to start pumping stuff into me.

Blood pressure all good and off we go! What happened next was a complete and utter surprise and shock. I went into a full blown allergic reaction! By body responded as if filed with fire and I my head spun lightly and I knew I was going to loose consciousness. Typically I thought. “Fuck me this is a bit of a rush” but apparently had enough sense to hail the nurse and mutter feebly “I am feeling very feint”. I’ve never seen so many nurses move so fast. In an instant I had five around me, my chemo IV lead was taken out and they pumped my with antihistamines and corticoids and of course a lot of saline. I recovered miraculously fast, just like in the films when some one goes down with an anaphylactic shock and they get jabbed with adrenaline, the recovery is instant and so it was with me. The lead nurse explained what had happened and we chatted about this never ever happening to me before and that this was my second cycle. He said it sometimes takes two or three cycles for this to happen. They all agree I have recovered well, so I ask “can we get on with it now”. The nurses says that will give me saline for 30 minutes and talk to the doctor. I stress that I am keen to continue. When he comes back they tell me that they will finish the session but the rate of infusion will be over two hours. “Fuck” I think “that means a long time to go with out a piss”. Faced with the reality I of course manage to last the course, which probably says more about my levels of anxiety than anything else.

So by about six o’clock I am the only one in the chemo suit apart from a poor woman who has had a fall and is in a side room. A sort of lodger in oncology while the nursing team and doctors try to find her a bed for the night, which is proving to be a tricky task, clearly bed managers are the kings and queens of any hospital. So I am alone with a Yorkie to see me through my long session and of course Toha’s poetry.

After a while it is clear the nurses want to go home so they up the delivery rate steadily to get it done in an hour and then there will be ten minutes of saline flush and I can go home. I find time time to scribble a short poem about my reaction and the ensuing events before they set me free to go and find an Uber home.

492
Wow! That was scary,
a sudden rush, faint
and wobbly.
Apparently this is allergic reaction. 
After all this time 
the Yew tree gets me.
I’m surrounded,
new chemicals pumped into me
via the handy cannula. 
I surface, even out
and return to basics.
I’m filled with saline
and then we have another go,
slow and steady, two hours
not one, with saline to follow.
Wow! what a rush
But I pass a second go
so I am Billy no mates 
alone on the ward,
the last man chemoing
and nurses want to go home,
I don’t blame them,
the awkward old bastard 
in bay eighteen 
is keeping them here. 
He just wants a piss and an Uber. 
							492 16-01-2026

I make it to the hotel across the way from the hospital and pick up an Uber to get me home, I’m tired and a bit taken aback by the events of the day. I call my partner to say I’m on the way back and hear that tea is on the go. Once home I just change clothes and flop down to eat and rest. The evening is slow and I am not really paying attention to much. I go to bed having taken my meds and got myself well hydrated.

Saturday arrives slowly, I am clearly tired from yesterdays adventure but I get up and make breakfast. I try to install new LED G4 lamps into the kitchen lighting array. It goes well for a moment and there is a glorious display of LED lighting and then the controlling transformer in the array blows. My new LED lights are too much for the system so I take them out and put in old style bulbs but of course there needs to be a new transformer put in. I email our electrician, a lovely bloke, who messages back that he is stacked with work and it will not be until the third week in February that he can get to us. That’s fine, its not an emergency, so we can wait that long. I also put out a call for a handyman to rehang and shorten the bathroom door so it will close properly, I’m fed up living with an open bathroom door. I am tempted to do it myself, I have all the kit I need but I am not sure if I can be arsed. If they come back with ridiculous quotes for it I will do it myself. By the time I’ve done all this its time to fire up the office computer and attend the Poetry Stanza zoom meeting.

The poetry stanza meeting goes well. By chance sometimes the poems compliment each other and this session had several poems that neatly ran into each other with similar themes. It was a really pleasant experience and one I enjoyed more than I thought I would given the events of yesterday. My own contribution was very usefully commented on and made me think that I have perhaps found my voice and style, I am after all who I am and I guess there are somethings that I am just not suited or destined to do.

477
I long to write expansive poems like Darwish and Martinson that illuminate, that take the fibres of life and weave them into others being, To find themes that skewer the heart to the expression of life. I want to pull the strings that lead others down a path to hidden gardens and waves of engulfment that leave them feeling the hugeness of the sky, the speed of light and the briefness of life,
But I stumble,
trip over myself
and find dirt
in my mouth,
dark in my eyes
and a gyroscope,
running fast,
in my head,
leaving me 
facing death
and its cold 
finality.
			477  27-11-2025

I guess I will never write a long lyrical poem and I will continue to try and capture moments of experience. There was a poem presented about the nature of Blackpool Rock and the way it has a word written through it all the way like a defining feature of what it is. I guess if I were a stick of rock my defining word would be Existentialist. It’s all here and now.

After the meeting I watch a football match and drift into the evening, eating tea and continuing to watch The Brokenwood Mysteries, a comedy detective series made in New Zealand. Eventually I take my night meds and go to bed but before setting down I do the Tesco slot booking and throw stuff into the basket for Mondays delivery knowing that I can reorganise it tomorrow before midnight.

Sunday and I am up at a reasonable time, clearing the kitchen and making breakfast before I settle down to a marathon blog catch up. There is quite a lot to get in. I take my meds and steadily work my way through the past couple of days. My partner rises late still trying to shake off the effects of her cold, while my eldest daughter continues to wrestle with the writing up of her PhD, its that falling out of love with what was an exciting idea. That’s academia for you, if your not careful it sucks the joy out of learning and curiosity. It will recover given time. As for me I need to complete my new poetry website by sending the required content to my website builder and getting on with it. I have nearly a new collection of about 50 new poems to put together and to publish. On reflection I will probably aim to have this done by mid July when chemo finishes. It would be a neat target date and would form a natural end to the next step in the Cancer Years series. I might then experiment with some different stuff, old or new. Perhaps a collection of happy stuff! For the rest of today I shall putter about, perhaps watch the African football final or read and write quietly, or fill the bird and squirrel feeders and fill the car with petrol. I think its my turn to cook so I shall be making a pie at some point. It is a Sunday and a Sunday should be lazy. There needs to be chocolate at some point.