It’s Friday! I can lie in and indulge myself all the way to 8 o’clock. No further than 8 o’clock as I went to bed so early last night due to being so tired; so as much as I would like to lay around I constitutionaly cannot. So it’s an early luxury bath for me. That was a good idea until I find that I have no bath bombs left and there are no bath bubbles or solution available. I find a bottle of strawberry body wash which I tip into the running bath with abandon. While waiting for the bath to fill I make breakfast and coffee and find the helpful little notes left by my partner instructing me on what is required. So I’m going out today then to shop for food. Now I wish I had panic bought in response to the corona virus, but I did not so it’s a shopping trip for me. I eat breakfast in the bath, answer e-mails and WhatsApp messages and generally get myself organised for the day. Having reached the wrinkly and cold stage I got out and got ready to go foraging at Sainsburys. I notice that my calf has eased considerably. It seems that warmth is the key to easing my calf. As the day went on I also notice that my calf stiffens up as the day goes on and I use it more. Perhaps I need to warm it more. Calf hugging is in order. I think leg warmers and my mind flys to my ice hockey leggings! Wizard idea.

 A quick tidy round and a load put in the washing machine and I am off to the supermarket. I draw out some holiday money and then shop. So far there are no signs of panic in this supermarket, the shelves are full. I whip round and fill my basket except for bath bombs that I ordered those on Amazon to arrive tomorrow. Back home I wrap a present for a friend and trot over to the post office and send it on its way. It’s early but with being on holiday next week it needs to go now. I walk down to the village café and indulge in an egg and bacon baguette while I do the crosswords. I was quick today and had time to reply to e mails that had come in. Once home I cleared the decks, turned the cars round in the drive and garage and got the suitcases out. During this I discovered the bannisters were sticky so I spent time washing the stair bannisters down. Life is so full of fun.

I hung the washing out and headed for my garden shed to write the blog and spend a bit of time in the open air and to view my garden. I like my shed and cannot wait for the better weather when I can retreat to my space in the garden. It is where I like to read and write the most. Ever since I read about the birds responding to oxygen in the mornings I like to think of them around me getting their full complement of whatever oxygen my garden is making. I also wonder if this is why so many writers had garden rooms to write in and a lot of artists had studios built in their gardens. Perhaps the creative juices flow more freely with fresh oxygen and that artists and writers feel this unconsciously, intuit it, and naturally gravitate to where they feel the effects of the “new oxygen”. I wonder. My problem is now to devise a series of experiments to see if the effect is measurable and verifiable. Unlike the Japanese man who fed nocturnal oxygen to his canaries I think my project might have more design variables to contend with. I wonder if there is a research grant going for this sort of thing, although if someone offered me the money I wonder if I could face the effort of it.

So I am now slowing down in the shed and wondering if the multivitamins with added iron will help me. As I read the Radical Remission book there is a constant tension between the scientist in me who has an aversion to superstition, suggestibility and desperate salvation seeking and the difficult balancing act of keeping an open mind without being gullible and needy. I think I am finding an increasing urge to trust what I find works for me and to perhaps consider a wider range of life adjustments to best address having and trying to rid myself of cancer. I am not sure that the latter is possible and that’s the nub of the problem, but if what I read is true then there are people who do experience radical remission. I am a realist I think, with my figures, or the ones I started out with, the prognosis is not good but then there are the cases that were sent home to die some twenty years ago and here they are still going strong and appearing to be healthy. I just have to find my own formulation that works. As I said to a friend today about the Japanese man and his oxygenated canaries; without cancer I would never have found this inquisitive man. There are delights along the way.