Today started with coffee in bed, made by the youngest daughter in an effort to get her parents up. It was a nice surprise as was the conversation that followed. A relatively lazy start to the day which drifted into a bacon sandwich breakfast intertwined with the pre visitor hovering and dusting.  We had not long finished the late breakfast when friends turned up with their two small girls on their way home from visiting relatives and the local zoo. There was time for drinks and chocolate cake in-between looking at the fish, exploring the garden, doing a jigsaw, playing a game and nibbling snacks. It was good to see them and to present the two girls with bags of “treasure” that had been left by Santa at Christmas. We waved them farewell on their journey home and soon after our youngest daughter headed for home as well.

We cleared the decks and did some routine things before the England Ireland rugby international. At least I and my partner did whilst our eldest continued to beaver away at a midterm paper for her doctorate. We watched England beat the Irish and then settled back to do more clearing, organising and recording until tea time. This evening Dr Who will entertain us followed by Endeavour Morse by which time I will be ready for bed and maybe some reading.

• I have a strange kind of fatigue at times. The last couple of days have been buoyed by my good blood results but I seem to have slowed down a bit, finding things an effort. I think there is some kind of tiredness from the planning and arranging of the coming holiday but also an inherent fatigue of carrying the knowledge of cancer within. There are some, upcoming, end of month chores to be done as well and I think I might be avoiding them, or at least some of them, ordering my 28 day injection for instance. This feels like a kind of winter hinterland that is cold and slightly bleak. The garden is a profusion of early flowers yet too cold to tend. Going to the gym is desired but difficult to motivate myself into, I like the soup there and reading the papers but that walk to the changing rooms is getting longer and harder to do. The little voice that sits on my shoulder and urges me to eat the sweets, have a pudding, miss out the training, have a nap and go on a marathon reading session is becoming louder. It’s a very appealing temptation but Rocket the Racoon who is my mental ally who fights the cancer within nudges me and reminds me that my life is too short to be sitting on my arse getting fat, there is cancer to fight and things to do in the real world that matter. I think it is partly the winter and its cold storms and partly the increased effort it feels to do the things that matter, to stay in control to keep life flowing in the right direction. Perhaps I just need the sunny climes of Spain, which are not far off now, to revive me. I think the wearing thing is that cancer never takes a holiday. No matter what I do I cannot leave it anywhere so that I can take a break, and I think that this is true for all those that care about me. They see me and know that I carry this pernicious intruder within and in their turn they cannot un-know this. It is a cruel and invisible brand that stamps itself on all my relationships. I think this is why I have become Jolly, I need to bear this with good grace for my own sake and for those that are around me as they carry this burden as much as I. No sense in being anything other than Jolly and trying to lessen whatever others carry of my cancer.