Thursday and I wake up knowing this is the day of reckoning with the Tax man. It is my annual nightmare, I hate the day of reckoning, it is when all my inattention comes home to roost. My partner brings me a hot water before she goes to the gym and I get up and prepare breakfast to go with my morning meds. I am at last able to taste food, that terrible earthy taste in my mouth due to chemo seems to be abating. With breakfast over its time to head into the office armed with my accounts and bank statements.

I open up my UK.Gov account and go to the tax self assessment section. There I find a new section, it is a quiz to see if you need to do a self assessment tax return. This seems like a good idea so I plunge in and work through the quiz. At the end I get a very clear message that I do not need to do a self assessment. Result! With this joy I move on to my account section, where it tells me I owe them £5:54 from tax year 2023-24. This seems trivial but I pay it. With a receipt copied I move on to trying to find what my 2024-25 tax year calculation is. My account is blank. I am on the point of abandoning the site when I notice I have messages. The first one I open is my 2024-25 tax calculation, first sent to me in November 2025. I go to the “this is how we worked it out” section, and there is my debt all laid out in black and white. Working through it line by line I can find nothing to argue with, which is annoying. In my head I do some calculating of what I have in my accounts generated from my bank statements and decide that the figure I am being asked for is okay, there is a bit of an offset which means in the scheme of things over the longer term what I owe the tax man is okay. My offset pays for half of what I am being asked for. I duly get the debit card out again and pay my dues. The receipt comes through and I print off a couple of copies. That’s me done for another year. My 2024-25 accounts book and bank statements get put away with all my other years accounts and leave the office to go and relax in the lounge feeling the relief that completing the taxman task always brings.

My partner returns from the gym and we go off to the garden centre for a bacon roll and an americano. We have a chance to chat and to catch up. We have achieved quite a lot in the last few weeks and are in good shape as a household, at least comfortable enough to go through the rest of winter to the spring. On the way out we spot that there are some Broom plants for sale and decide that these would shield the one or two bald patches in our front hedge. 3 for £12 seems a good deal and it gets better at the till when we get another 20% off. So for a measly £9 we have solved our front hedge problem.

Once home I am free to check my websites and emails before I have a long face to face chat with my youngest daughter. She too has a tax return to sort out as well as tending to the new born youngest grandchild along with her other son. Its a lovely chat and I come away really having enjoyed the chance to talk. The surprise I had arranged to be delivered today will now not get there till tomorrow but the jacket that my partner had sent had arrived and was being worn, looked very snug. At the end of the call I visited my poetry website and sent the link for it to the chair of my Poetry Stanza group asking if it could be shared, which he later did. I settled down to draft the family blog while my partner supported our eldest daughter with the task of completing the reference list for her PhD thesis that is due in by midnight tomorrow. It will be a take away night as it could be a long nights work. My intention is to watch the Rangers European match with my Scottish friend on the other end of a WhatsApp conversation. Its something we occasionally do, its going to be the last time for this season as Rangers are not going through to the next round.

I am just beginning to feel that I have got to grips with cycle 2 of my chemo rechallenge. My sense of taste returning is a good sign and I feel less tired than I did. My digestion has settled down and I feel less anxious. This means I shall be good to meet friends for lunch on Saturday. However it is back to a 28 injection and hospital bloods on Monday and an oncology review on Wednesday before Cycle 3 starts on Friday. It feels never ending but this is the fight, I backed myself and my strength to do the chemo rechallenge, and if I am right I get to live longer, no greater incentive than that. I stand, this is my strength.