Monday and I awake to a very chipper partner who brings me hot water and a plan for the day. I surface and take my vitals, which are good and then make breakfast to eat with my morning meds. With the basics done I dress and ready for the “plan”. We drive to Sainsbury’s and the change counting machine to cash in the contents of my elephant money box. The result is pleasing and for the first time I walk out with more money than I went in with. Next stop were a couple of stores where my partner returned items, so collectively we were getting richer as the time unfolded.

Intoxicated with the new found wealth and experience of being cash ahead we popped into Smiths and ran off some hard copies of photographs of the youngest grandson so that at long last we have something to put into the photograph frame that was a present to my partner. With so much done and with food we bought for tonight’s tea we stop for coffee and a roll. Sitting in the window seat of the Soho coffee shop I looked out over the meandering masses of humanity in the Real World and reflected on where all the beautiful people were. Its very ordinary the ocean of people that drift by a coffee shop window but all uniquely different and I have no doubt there is a fascinating story attached to each one. I was not experiencing much joie de vivre, or rather I was not observing much, but then today is a wet, grey February day. This however was broken when one of the staff hugged a customer, an act that got repeated so I guess there is more joie de vivre around than I thought. I just have to be in the right place at the right moment.

We returned home and duly put a photo of the youngest grandson into the empty picture frame and found a home for it in the lounge. I started to draft the blog and returned to reading some of my poetry trying to decide what I would read as typical of my work. As I ponder some of my stuff a friend rings for a chat. We spend time talking about how difficult it is raising children now with all the social media that’s around with its “Dos and don’ts” and “you should look like this” crap and that’s without the darker stuff that rolls around and seeps into everything. Its very difficult for todays children to ignore what proports to give them the answers they seek as they try to navigate growing up. Whatever happened to wise uncles and aunts and grandparents who had seen it all before and understood. Now its all “influencers” who most of the time don’t know their arses from their elbows and have fuck all real life experience anyway. It seems that anyone can have an opinion on everything regardless of how ill informed or ill judged it is and expect to be taken seriously as a right. Any way it was lovely to have the conversation and to be able to talk about things with my friend.

After a bit more reading I go to the post office to get a paper and some tea cakes before returning home and seeking out the crosswords to do. There are three that I regularly do so it takes me a while. Today was a good day and got through them in good time and without need to resort to looking anything up on Google. Serendipitously tea was ready as I finish the last cross word. The evening will be filled with my partners singing lesson and I shall sneak a watch of a football match before a film perhaps or a read. There is of course the last minute check to see everything is on tomorrows Tesco order but then I will be off to bed full of my night meds.

Saturday was one of those that was a hotchpotch of indulgent going out for breakfast, watching international rugby and seeing a TV drama series to its conclusion. As usual the TV drama started out on a reasonable and rational premise and descended into unlikely and plain silliness. In this case a sort of rural welsh county lines meets Breaking Bad by accident. My two tasks of any meaning was to fil my Dosettes for the coming two weeks and to perform my physio hand homework every two hours. I now have my phone clock set for a repeating two hour countdown so that I am sure to to do my 10 hand star jumps, ducks and hooks every hour. So another mundane day but one that need some effort to keep my hand and cancer routines going.

Sunday and I get up to breakfast and little to do other than book a Tesco slot, watch the last international rugby match of the weekend. I feel like I am marking time until my stitches come out of my right hand on Thursday at the hospital and I see my hand therapist on Friday. In the meantime I need to write a bit and find ways of taking exercise to ward off the worst of the chemo side effects.

Amongst my emails today was one from the Chair of the poetry stanza I go to. He has sent a proposal to the The States of Independence event organisers to suggest that the Stanza do a 45 minute slot as a celebration of the Stanzas 17th year. If it is excepted it would mean that I might get a a three minute slot to say who I am and to read one of my poems. There are two issues in this, 1, what do I say about who and what I am, and 2, which poem do I choose to read. I think I can hone the first one down to a very bony “this is me” but I am not sure how I choose one poem from the 122 that I published last year and the 20 plus that I am readying for this year?

I feel that it should be from one of my Cancer Years Collections as that is why I self published and why I continue to use poetry to contain the ongoing fight, however I am drawn to one that is about the feeling of being published for the first time and holding my own book in my hands. Its a competition between that “Ye Ha! moment of joy of first holding my first collection in my hands or something that is more painful and direct that reflects the issues around having cancer. My head says the latter my heart says the former. So I expect I shall be self indulgently re-reading my collections and trying to decide which poem to choose. It would be nice to learn it off by heart and just do it, but I am not sure I am up to that. If I decide to try I shall appear to be quite mad as I wonder around muttering to myself as I try to cram it into my brain, but first the choice must be made. If anyone has suggestions I’d like to hear them.

So my Sunday is set for poetry reading and Rugby until I realise that this is Super Bowl night. I’d really like to watch it, as the game itself is a true American spectacle but there is so much crap wrapped around so little actual game that I know I will only manage the first half before I get bored with all the non essentials hype and meaningless stuff around it and go to bed disgruntled and having my prejudices confirmed about American culture and addictions.

Friday and I wake up with last nights visit to Warwick Arts Centre to see Motionhouse’s new production Hidden on my mind. I enthusiastically drove as I was relieved to be free of my plaster, but still bandaged. Arriving just in time having played the “where do I park ” game there was just time to say a quick hello to Louise Richards the co-founder and executive director of Motionhouse, who I knew from the early days of the company when they visited two of the prisons I worked in, in the late 80s and late 90s. I was briefly on their board until it was clear I was out of my depth but by then they had established themselves. This was a long time ago. Anyway the curtain went up and we were treated to a two act work of incredible artistry, accomplishment and ideas. The energy and skill of the dancers brilliant and the stage set really technically difficult to co-ordinate with movement and projecting. Complex in content and matched by the complexity of the technology required to create the environment. The most amazing bit was that the dancers had to move parts of the set at the right moment for the right projection to appear at the right time. Apparently the dancers have to count the entire time as they dance and move stuff on stage. Its an incredible feat of co-ordination. Underlying it was the message as Kevin Finnan, the artistic director, says in the programme “to bring a sense of hope and a belief in the future of humanity” in a world currently filed with conflicts of devastating consequences for individuals.

Having driven home I donned my newly made finger splint and went to bed full of ideas but very very tired.

So this is how I get to wake up with a head full of ideas however I needed pain killers in the night, probably not a good idea to drive but hey ho! I’ve no time to be shilly shallying about as I am off to the dentist for about ten o’clock. I arrive on time and we have a chat about how I am and what is going on for me to update my medical history. Then its time for the inspection and the prodding and poking accompanied by the dentist secret language to the assistant. I’ve never quite understood why they insist of sticking a needle into your gums and saying cheery things like “three lower left bleeding”. Just how impenetrable to steel are my gums meant to be? Inspection over we chat and I agree to a couple of up to date X rays which come up really quickly and we discus a way forward. In the end I agree to go back in three months and will consider some more work at that time and in the meantime visit the hygienist. I leave and go to the C0-Op to get a paper and return home.

There are cross words to do before chores and of course a bacon sandwich to be had curtesy of my partner. So, with a kitchen light bulb replaced, my washing in, the dishwasher filled and set on its way and the tumble dryer merrily tumbling a consignment of towels I sit and draft the blog. I watched yesterdays blog and I am appalled by my video, I am truly boring on it, very flat. Not the sort of thing to watch in the proximity of sharp objects. I have to say I am far more cheery than that, in fact I am feeling up beat now I am free of my caste and a few days past my 28 day injection and looking forward to a much brighter time ahead. With four clear days ahead there should be time to do some fun things, or at least relax and do stuff at a slow and reasonable pace.

As I continue to try and clear the decks I discover that my raspberry blowing frog has been broken as he lives on a shelf on a book in the office I can only assume an accident at some point. I swing into action gathering up glue, head torch and other bits and bobs such repairs demand. Its a fracture of his ankles. I dry him and place the glue on one surface and then gently press his broken parts together again, and there we sit for 20 minutes until I am confident that the procedure has been successful. At last I risk taking my hands away and nothing happens. I decide to put him in quarantine, so pop him behind the little garden vase in the lounge where I can keep an eye on him till I go back into the office once it is vacated by my retiring partner at the end of the month.

Its a quiet meander into the evening and as there is no international rugby tonight it will be a mixture of TV drama and any other diversions that appeal, however tomorrow is a different story with the Six Nations Rugby in full swing. As I draft this bit of the blog I remember that while I was idling time post having seen my operation scar for the first time I started another poem, which I put here.

433
Zigzag snake down my hand
but my fingers now free of caste
I can write again!
Ah this pen, this ink
once again can flow 
and I can contain the reptile 
that creeps within.
I'm doing very well
everyone says so
but I know this Serpentine's way,
coiled in the warmth
it takes it time, degree
by insidious degree it expands.
A strange brew of poison
and constriction it moves.
This slinking thing changes
the wonder and magic of my cells
to bring me to my knees.
Its a disease they say,
you cannot fight it,
but if true then why science?
Oh! it's a disease, no point then,
just let them die like reptiles
in the cold of ignorance.
No! That's not the way,
I'll not let go of me,
or the universe
contained within.
I'll fight to live a life,
to create, parent and be kind.
There is an urgency now
my personal viper coils
about my organs
to see my kith and kin right. 
To wage war against  
the black and white,
to stay grey and tolerate 
the ambiguity.
Reasonable, rational, and proportionate
is what I want on my epitaph
once the Asp has done with me. 

                                                                                      433 06-02-2025
                                                                                       post caste removal from hand.

Wednesday and I wake up tired and stay that way all day, I am thankful that I will get rid of my cast tomorrow. It is a constant weight and is now quite loose, so I can wriggle my fingers freely but it remains an unwelcome encumbrance.

Before getting up I was able to take my vitals and they were very good, it’s not often I wake up with a blood pressure of 113 over 67, so I start the day quite chuffed. With breakfast and morning meds done I start to check my messages and socials and come across an email from the co-ordinator of my poetry stanza group telling me that the Leicester Literary group is having a four day festival and has links to the programme and tickets. Its a free festival so I take a look and end up getting tickets for Paul Muldoon an Irishman based in New York who has a Pulitzer prize to his name. I’ve no idea what to expect apart from he will read some of his stuff and the audience will ask questions. Hopefully it will feed my brain, at worst it will be an hour I won’t get back. I also find time to send a friend a belated birthday present.

In the early afternoon a friend calls, which is lovely, I can go days without actual talking to anyone other than the household. We chat about family, schooling and dyslexia, which is being relevant in her family as was in mine when my daughters were her daughters age. We chat for quite a long time before she has to return to work. As my partner has gone to visit her mother I take trip to Co-Op to get cash and a paper. I think about a baguette from the village café and then remember it is gone for ever as from Monday, I have a pang of regret that I did not go in, but I was preoccupied with my hand operation. So, I buy a Co-Op sandwich and return home to do the crosswords and eat my pre-packaged sandwich.

For a while I wrestled with the Uber app, updating my payment method but failing to pre book an Uber for tomorrow so will take what I can get tomorrow to go and see the hand therapist. Tonight I shall be doing the one handed showering, getting my hair plaited and getting to bed early in anticipation of tomorrows adventure. Meds as usual of course. I am pleased with myself that I have not used pain killers for at least two days now and I am hoping that with a fresh dressing and just a splint I will be able to drive as tomorrow evening I have tickets to the premier of Motionhouse’s new piece, Hidden, at the Warwick Arts Centre.

Monday and I shall try the video experiment again. I think I may have a problem with the size of video that the website will take as a down load from my system so I might have to try putting it on my YouTube channel and then pasting in the URL for it into a YouTube block on the blog. So here goes!

I am so chuffed to have found a way round the video size restriction on the web site. I have no idea about the technology that allows this to happen, I am just happy that it works.

Sunday and it’s a lazy day. I have slept well but I wake to an aching hand. My partner brings me hot water to drink before getting up to breakfast. Breakfast is very welcome but this Sunday I have additional antibiotics and pain killers to add to the usual intake to care for my recent hand operation. I have just finished eating and dosing when I get a 48 hour follow up call from the hospital. The nurse asks if my wounds is okay, to which I reply that I have no idea as it is under layers of bandages and plaster, they are not blood soaked so I assume all is well. She asks aboand ut DVTs, and I explain I am back on my prophylactic blood thinners, seems to please her. She also seems pleased that I am able to manage the post op pain with paracetamol rather than the Codeine they sent me home with. She said it all sounded good and left me to my day.

I get fully dressed and feel I ought to do something but I am feeling “off it” and drowsy from the mixture of medication and just want to sit quietly, which is what I do but before long I start to draft the blog. I find a fragment of a poem from the hospital day.

432
My time has come and gone
last words become penultimate
and I begin to flag.
I read, I've ordered books,
my friends have received messages
but now I find few spoons
to keep my spirits up.
My stomach protests
and growls it's disapproval,
Knock knock
and suddenly its all
action.

My day goes fast and I run out of energy. I prepare for tomorrows 28 day jab. The need to keep my fighting routine going while recovering from my hand operation is just another juggle, but it means the the next couple days are going to be rough. At least I take the last of the antibiotics tonight, so its onwards, and ever forwards.

Saturday 1st February, I might try an experiment.

Well it worked, so I’ve found a way through my current one handedness. I clearly had not been to make up or prepared a script but the techno works. In future I will attempt to be more David Sedaris like, but right now its time for my next bout of pain killers. I have a busy week ahead as Monday is 28 day injection day, I also see the post operation hand therapist and have tickets for Motionhouse’s premier of Hidden at Warwick Arts Centre, so there should be enough to chat about.

Welcome to my one hand blog. For a little while I will not have the use of my right hand, so the blog maybe shorter than usual and more visual until I find other means to produce it. At the moment it is a one handed adventure.

Thursday the 30th of January is hand operation day. I wake up and prepare for the day, shower first then the only thing I am allowed, water! My partner kindly drives me to the hospital where I am booked in and then shown to my room. My lead nurse comes to see me and leaves me to get into hospital gown and those delicious black net hospital pants. She returns to take my vitals and tells me what the day is going to be like and then leaves me to settle in, I’m clearly going to here a while so I read my clinical notes that have been left in the room. My pre operation bloods, mrsa and ECG were all good and normal for me. I hunker down and read Harry Martinson’s Chickweed Wintergreen a poetry collection, having ordered my post operation cheese and pickle sandwich.

At abut half twelve I am visited by the surgeon and the anaesthetist who give me the once over and tell me I will not be in theatre until 3:30pm, so I have a long wait. The surgeon marks me up so everyone knows which bit of me they are working on, which is a good thing!

So I have hours to kill, I continue to read until I inevitably need to write so I dig out a small notebook, which was a present from a friend some time ago, and started to write. Of course I ended up with poem.

431
For a while this is the last I write
with my trusty right hand,
this pen this ink.
I await the surgeons scalpel
to release my curling finger
from its genetic bent
sent by Viking heritage.

I sit and wait in my hospital
underwear and gown,
wrapped in dragons and bamboo,
my legs swathed like a Chines emperor,
reading poetry to pass the time
before the show begins.

No knockout drops or gas and air
but ultrasonic blocking of my nerves.
I'll be awake and a spectator,
my surgeon says we can chat,
I am not sure about that.

Will my undergrad dissection days
stand me in good stead
or will I look away
and vaguely wish I were dead?

That's progress you see,
or is it?
Perhaps it's just cheaper, low cost,
means bigger margins for holidays
and fast cars.
It's plain to see I am a commodity.

So I write to bridge the gap
and cherish my dexterity,
appreciate the feel of writing,
every pressure, measured symbol
as brain tries to capture
what is about to happen to me.

I'm hungry, no food or drink
since before I last slept,
a mini Ramadan,
to make me reflect.

So here I am writing this
as the distant sounds of hospital
murmur in the background,
like a spring coming to the surface
to find a brook to follow
and flow onwards.

They will come for me, theatre time,
my turn to play my part,
the centre piece of artistry.
My chance to shine, be brave,
a model patient, my Olivier 
moment, a Golden Globe at least.

While idling away I read my notes
and found comfort. 
It all looked comfortably familiar
to the ones I'd seen before.
Mr Dependable, Mr Everythingisfine,
except of course its not.
No one mentions the cancer.

Suddenly I am taken by surprise,
someone brings me water,
a measured amount with a straw,
"sip it" she says reading my mind
about the straw being redundant.

So on it goes with hours to wait,
I return to my Swedish collection
of Chickweed Wintergreen
to comfort me.

These are my last hand written lines,
not profound but comforting.
I already miss this feeling,
the pen ,the ink, the stream
meandering from brain to page.

Knock, Knock, its show time,
I am ready for my close up
Mr DeMille..

                                                                          431 30-01-2025
                                                                          Nuffield Hospital Leicester.

Late afternoon I am taken to theatre where my right arm has its nerves blocked and I am wheeled in to theatre where the surgeon and his team set to work while I lay awake staring at the white ceiling only glancing now and then at the small distorted reflection in the theatre lights of the surgeon at work. My arm is an alien limb that I cannot feel or have control over, which the assistant surgeon forgets. When she lifts my arm to remove the operation clutter she let go of it so that I hit myself on the head with the newly applied plaster cast on my arm. A moment of humour and then I am in recovery. I do not stay long before I am back in my room eating my pre ordered sandwich and facing getting dressed.

My partner arrives to take me home but we have to wait for antibiotics, pain killers and a discharge letter. My nurse duly delivers and we leave. I am flagging now and desperately hungry so on the way home I order an Indian takeaway. I am only just home when the meal arrives and I quickly tuck in as I settle down on the recliner to watch TV. There are night meds, the usual, and antibiotics to take before I get to bed. Undressing took a while but I managed, then propped up on pillows endeavoured to sleep.

Friday, I wake in time to dress, everything baggy and pull on, and then let the electrician in to mend the kitchen light. A quick cash job and he is gone so I take my meds and have breakfast. I discovered two things; 1 I cannot open a fresh bottle of orange juice one handed (partner to the rescue), 2 it difficult to get peanut butter out of a jar one handed. Having eaten I start to draft the blog, slowly with one hand, which brings me to lunch time, were I will stop. My hand is now fully thawed out from yesterday and is very sore, but I am resisting pain killers, but I do not think I will last long.