Friday I wake up and find that I am still fight the battle of a bad gut and a sore and still purple bruised set of toes, so once again I spend the day with my foot being iced and practising the latrine two step to the loo. It does not sound much of an existence but oddly as I laze around craving plain and binding food, I update information into my new daily running journal and acquire a new ISA. The later at the suggestion of my partner who shrewdly pointed out that 4.25% is a lot more then 2.2%. The logic is in the arithmetic the anxiety is in the not quite believing that all this magic can be done on a Smart phone, but it was and magically a new entry appeared on my banking page.

I was able to do some holiday planning with the aid of my new note making App that has a list creation function on it. I just type in random stuff and press a button and it gets turned into a “to do” list. Its brilliant if only I had had this when I was working and being a manager, life would have been even easier. Any way the day passed with odd moments of joy amongst the other stuff, like my denim design crocs arriving, which I hope my bruised toes will appreciate in due course. The good news is that they did.

The evening coms around and there is a football match to watch, England in the World Cup qualifiers against the might of Albania. England manage a professional but deeply boring 2-0 win, and with that I take my meds, give my hand operation scars on last Nivea creaming of the day, don my finger splint and magic gel dressing and go to bed, hoping that my felling of physical emptiness is a signal that my gut is finally settling down.

Saturday arrives and today is supposed to be day out at the States of Independence literary festival at the local university. I make a tentative start to the day by taking my vitals ( all good) and getting myself down to the local pharmacy to try and collect the medications I tried to order on Wednesday. The timing is all a bit tight. As I feared my prescription is not ready but when I explain my situation of needing my injection to come back to on Monday week, as I am going away for a week, they check to see if they can order it for today. They come back and tell me it out of stock, the supplier does not have any. This is bad news as it is a medication that comes in from the EU and is my mainstay cancer drug. I have at least one of these injections stashed away so I will be alright on the Monday I need it, but it triggers fears about the supply chain not working. Its an anxiety I’ve not had before but I am aware that other people with similar conditions have experienced difficulties getting their medications when this disruption happens.

I return home empty handed and eat toast and marmalade determined not to panic. My partner and I get ready and we drive into town to the States of Independence book festival at the university.

We arrive, me with a bag tight with copies of my poetry collections, well you never know. We tick ourselves in and begin to roam the stalls of book sellers, self publishers and publishers. I meet someone I know from the poetry stanza who is looking after the local writers group stall. To start with I am a bit bemused it feels like a craft fair but with books, it could easily be a a 3P affair, (Pick up, Put down and Piss off) experience but I get talking to some people about what they do and I find some that do what the Americans do for me. I show them my books like a child going “look what I’ve done” and they say they can do what the Americans have been doing for me but a lot cheaper. I am interested and take their details. They suggested an anthology, which is an intriguing though but at the moment I think I just want to test the water with a new Cancer Years collection.

Time for the first presentation of the day and my partner and I choose to go and see one about how the University writers course had researched, written and illustrated a graphic novel of seven stories based on Leicester folklore. It had students and professionals there talking about their roles and a snippet of video explaining the project. There was some interesting bits in it, but I am not sure how taking a Indian folk tale and translating it into a modern day story set in Leicester so as to reflect the nature of the city is quite reflecting the folklore of Leicester rather than creating new stuff, but there you go that me.

Our next session saw us in the headline session with Anthony Joseph being interviewed and reading his poetry. He was very entertaining and interesting having been a musician first then a poet and also a novelist. My partners comment was that she could listen to his voice all day and it is true he had a rich and relaxed voice. It was a good session, its always good to see poetry being brought alive by being read, especially by some one who has a good “voice”. When I Look a the notes I made (yes of course I did!) I note that I have written “What a fucking necklace! This refers to the huge bead affair that was hung around her neck. Spectacular is the word.

After a lunch time sandwich we go back to the festival and attend another session by a block called Rob Duncan who has aphantasia, not that being aphantasic is something that you have more something you are. Aphantasia is the inability to form mental images of objects that are not present. Rob Duncan is a writer so he did a work shop on how he creates a visual world for people when he cannot create a visual world of his own . In effect he creates things for people to see in the their “minds eye” when he does not have one. Too this end he has developed “rules”, more like guidelines on how to construct a description that will do the job, understanding that everyone who reads it will create their own “minds eye” version of it. He got us all to pick up a key from the desk and then to apply the formulae to it and some brave people read what they had written. You apparently give a general location (environmental context) and then add a small visual detail followed by another sense fact in the environment. It was quite fun to do as we were encouraged to expand it if we had time. (it was a very short exercise). Here is mine:

“In the nursery on a winter’s day, dim and baby powder smelling, the key protruded from the box of magic treats. Only the nanny, tall and bleach clean, was allowed to dispense the treats. A vile tasting potion to keep a tiny soul alive.”

Having seen the session through we had a quick break and moved onto the Open Mike session where people had pre booked to read a poem or two. We sat and listened to several people read their poems, some good, some indifferent and some rathe lovely. Mostly connecting the poet to the work, so the really creepy guy who read his poem about a breast pump was put down as just strange. The Mexican woman who write a cautionary poem about her kind were out and about and not to be messed with was good. When all the signed up poets had read a couple of extras got up. I could not resist despite being nervous. I had been struck by how flat or monotone most of the reading had been so I decided that I would go with my ye ha poem “God bless America” a celebration poem of getting my first collection published in the USA. I hope I was suitably energetic and ye ha, but it only struck me half way through that there might be a sense of not wishing to bless America in the room with this audience. I was clapped politely . With the fun over we returned home.

It had been a tiring but interesting experience and I just sat in front of the TV and watched rugby and football. The evening passed with watching more stuff before going through my night rituals, taking my meds and going to bed quite early.

Sunday, I am up and finishing packing for the holiday. Last minute checks done and odd things stuffed into nooks and crannies of various bags. The car gets packed and then that point of no return comes. My partner and I get in an we are off. I know this route, M69, M6, M42, M5, J27 follow the sign posts to Barnstable, then Bideford and finally Westwood Ho! Of course I use my phone maps for the last bit but we arrive via one pee stop and a sandwich at about twenty to four. The car is unpacked and I am knackered. My first thought is to see if the ice ream van adn the ocean are still here as I remember them from last time. They are!

My partner and I are both hungry so my Country Kitchen to see if it is open, it is and we book a table for 6 o’clock. It is literally less than five minutes walk away so we arrive, check in and are shown to our table by a sweet and diminutive waitress. No. 19 our table. The menu is explained to us, we order small glasses of wine and a start after which we will attack the carvery. The starter is huge, pate, so we do as we were in structed and have a rest before getting to the multi-meated carvery. I indulge in roast beef and all the trimmings with additional roast spuds and mustard. It is what my old grandfather would have called a proper “blow out”. It was was just what I an my partner needed after the journey. We waddled back to the apartment absolutely podged. However once the jeans were off and we had watched an episode of Protection there was room for a coffee and a few After Eight mints. Tiredness won in the end, it always does, and my partner went to bed followed shortly by me after I had dug out all the things I need to go to bed with. So with my meds in me and my finger splint strapped to my hand I finally flop in to a strange bed with the sound of the sea somewhere in my ears.

Thursday morning and I just want to cover my head and sleep after a night doing the larine two step. I tentatively look in my energy cutlery draw and find a single spoon. I try to sleep but fail and eventually my partner brings me hot water, which I sip before doing my vitals, which to my surprise are okay. In an effort to try and capture what’s going on I write something on my new notes App in the hope that it will let me move on this morning.

439
When I'd rather be asleep 
than awake, I know I'm in trouble.
When all the niggly bits
out weigh the rest ,
then it's desperate.
When nothing is a crisis
but everything needs tending 
in an endless round of care
that's when I hanker
after sleep.
Its the insidious side
of cancer warfare,
chipped at slowly,
like Chinese torture,
every drop washing away energy,
a man under erosion. 
I crave a kindness or two
just to know  that 
someone sees it
before I pull the covers 
over my head.

                                                                    439 20-03-2025

I finally get up make toast (its going to be a toast day) and take my morning meds with the additional vitamin D as a treat on this Spring equinox day. Retrieving my ice pack from the freezer I strap it onto my bruised toes and begin to draft the days blog. Already I am tired and I am supposed to be seeing Paul Muldoon at the university tonight. I even bought some of his poetry to read to prepare but I’m not hopeful of stretching my one spoon that far, although I know that other poets from my Stanza group will be going. Its 11:20am and I am already fatigued.

All day I rest trying to recover from a grim stomach upset. There is a call from a friend, which was really good. Hearing someone and talking with some one out side the household is a real pleasure. I watch Under Milkwood and in the evening the last episodes of Adolescence. By bed time I am exhausted, I take my night meds and a Dioralyte with a couple of plain biscuits and head for bed. Did I mention I am exhausted.

Its a Wednesday I realise as I wake up at 7:30 and a loud voice in my head shouts “Bin day” and my outside mouth shouts “bollocks” as I realise I did not put the bin out last night. So its into a set of joggers and an ice hockey jersey to pad downstairs and put the bin out. While I am up I make warm drinks for my partner and I and return to bed. My bruised toes are a nice colour from yesterdays mishap but mobile. My partner goes of to see her mother with her brother while I breakfast and construct my “to do” list for the day. Its not ambitious and is mainly rest and ICEing my bruised foot. So I settle into the morning having taken my morning meds and eaten breakfast. Doing much with a ice an ice pack strapped to your foot is a bit inhibiting but by the time early afternoon comes round I have achieved quite a lot. All the door hinges in the house now run squeak less, the Rentokil insurance is paid, I’ve transferred information from my old journal to my new one and I have opened an ISA. The last being the scariest but it all seems to have gone magically well. My drugs are ordered and now I am free to give my hand attention and do the physio on it that is required at regular intervals. I also get a surprising quick response from the National Theatre at home website who I contacted about them taking for an order twice. They were very apologetic and have issued a refund. That was a result I was not expecting.

I eat lunch with my partner, after which I start to draft the blog while my partner cleans her car. I need to crack on with my physio and start to write my holiday list of things to do. I can feel myself getting short of spoons (energy) , I guess I jumped the gun this morning expending so much early energy putting the bins out. My GP keeps sending me messages about having statins and I keep ignoring him. I want no more medications than I am on thank you very much, I have enough trouble doing what I need to do to minimise the side effects of the stuff I am on without having to del with more crap going into my body. I am stable at the moment and apart from the odd bruise I am fine, I just get tired easily. Being handily retired means I can nap or rest when I need to.

The evening arrives and finds me feeling decidedly “off”. My gut is bad but I continue to regularly ICE my bruised toes and do the physio routine for the scar management on my hand. After a couple of episodes of Adolescence and a dumb film I call it quits as I have no more energy left, I take my meds and go to bed hopping to sleep quickly and deeply.

Tuesday, I think I start like this to remind me of the things I do on a Tuesdays, like today Tesco will deliver and the bins go out. However it is Tuesday and s usual I check my vitals and my messages. I send some as well as today is a friends birthday. My partner has already been to the shop, had breakfast and is reading a newspaper before going to an old colleagues leaving lunch. I write a poem on my new Notes App after a chat with my partner. Not like me to write early in the morning but it’s happened a couple of times recently.

438
I am like a drummer,
Someone who hangs around with 
musicians.
I just loiter around poets,
with their proper tunes and rhymes
and scribble soul notes,
random stuff with no effort to attend
to the niceties of metre or flow,
or whatever real poets do.
I listen to them in process,
I hear the nuances striven for,
the analysis of words and meaning,
and I realise I’m not even like a 
drummer, who at least keep time.
I guess I am a groupie,
because words touch me
and I am in awe of those that sculpt
them in forms that move me
to dance, laugh, sing and cry
inside my head 
or on my face.
Perhaps I’m just a lazy bastard
that just can’t be arsed,
fearing failure if I really tried,
like the dyslexic infant
who hid, played truant
and eventually escaped 
by ignoring the rules.
So now like that chid
I press my nose against a window
and wonder at the marvels
in the poetry shop window
knowing they are not for me
but for clever kids. 
This pen this ink refuses to lay down
and here I am scribbling on scraps
still looking for something
that says this is how my world is. 
Can you hear the word symphony
that’s playing somewhere
inside this private auditorium?
I’m neither stupid or uneducated
just put together different
with all the rough edges left
and unable to show my workings.
This pen this ink refuses to lay down. 	
									438 18-03-2025

When I do get up I find my partner reading he paper so I join her with my breakfast and my morning meds. I do the crosswords and then head for the garden with a club hammer intent on preparing the way for a new cold frame. As an initial step I propose to move a paving slab on to the lawn before putting the new incinerator on it to burn the old cold frames. I start to “walk” the paving slab to the lawn but it doesn’t want to go and trips my up with the result that one corner drops on my toes. Falling to the floor with a hearty “Fuck” I know I am going to have a bruise or two but need to crack on. As it turns out I am right about the bruise and the need to ICE it.

The incinerator is burning nicely as I demolish the old raised beds and redistribute the compost in readiness for a new cold frame. It a lovely sunny windless day and I am pleased to have made the effort when I hear some one down the road shouting about the fie and telling me to put it out. I carry one. The next thing I know is that my eldest daughter is standing at the bac door saying that a woman has been to the front door and been rude to her and is asking me to put my fire out because she does not want this woman back again. This is the first I hear about it. I am not chuffed but I am not going to pick a fight right now, I have cleared the area I need to put the cold frame in so I stop feeding the incinerator.

I clear away my tools and retreat inside just in time to meet the Amazon man delivering the new cold frame that I intend to install tomorrow. By the time my partner returns I am sitting feet up with icy chips strapped to my foot. After a chat I go for a bath to rest and see how my toes are doing. The bath is a real treat as I can sit back and listen to soft music and munch my way through a bacon sandwich. I languish until I start to reach the wrinkly stage so I get myself out and head for the recliner where I can continue to ICE my toes and start to draft the blog. I continue to ICE (Ice, Compress, and Elevate.) and blog till its time to stop and turn off my brain and watch TV.

The evening is slow and eventually after several ICEs and my night meds I head for bed to strap on my night splint. It would appear that my “frilly” bits are having a tricky time but come Sunday I head for a weeks break where I can rest by the sea.

Sunday and it is a birthday celebration day for my youngest daughter. so the household is up and around quite early including me. I check my vitals and then I am helping to do preparation and grandson entertainment. It seems the youngest grandson likes to feed the birds or at least throw bird feed around the garden. After a lunch every one is resting and we are getting ourselves up for going to feed the ducks at the local park when out of the blue my partners brother and youngest daughter arrive, so a big chunk of the family is under one roof. There is tea, play and family conversation amongst moments of quiet.

While the family gets on being family my partner and I prepare the birthday tea. Of course we invite our unexpected family so we juggle the table. With everything ready we invite every in.

Once every body has eaten all they want its time for birthday cake, singing and the blowing out of candles. These are the moments that grandparents like me really like and me in particular as many as I can manage.

There are presents and more tea and chat before the unexpected family return home and the rest of us settle into an evening of putting the grandchild to bed and then watching a film. One by one people drift off to bed at the end of a good day. I go through my night rituals and finally get to don my finger splint and magic latex.

Monday sees the household up as the youngest grandson and his parents prepare to leave for home. before they leave I take my eldest daughter to the hospital to meet a consultant who is going to provide her with the results of some tests. It turns out all of the results that he has examined do not need any from of intervention. One thing unrelated to the others can be contained with physio and lifestyle. As I drove home I get a message that my youngest grandson and his parents have broken down on the way home, so I change plans and drop my eldest daughter off at work, drive home and then with my partner drive to help the stranded family. When we get to where they are there is a handy Starbucks where we can keep the youngest grandchild warm, so we settle in until the RAC are able to repair the car. In a relatively short time the faulty ignition coil is replaced and they are able to continue on their journey home.

My partner and I return home collecting a paper on the way so that when we get home we can sit down and relax at last. The evening drifts into view and with it my partners singing lesson, during which I catch up with the blog. I am now looking forward to a chance to get back into a training routine, but looking at my diary it does not look like its going to happen for a while. I am beginning to wonder if I am on a fools errand and that a routine and regular life is not actually possible if I am relatively fit and trying to live a normal life, given that normal life is not predictable. My only constraints are my 28 day injection cycle that does affect me for two or three days and the current three month chemo cycles. Perhaps I should just allow those two as the framework and then not let myself be constrained by anything else. My problem is that I need thinking time and reaction time. It seems to me that I am trying to adjust to my partners retirement as much as she is. So its night meds, bed rituals and off to sleep, but not before the Tesco order gets finalised, just one more thing to fit in to the day.

Saturday arrives and there are things to do once my waking rituals are done. Once complete, I get up and get into my training kit and take my morning meds. Before I train I do a number of preparation chores for the visit of my youngest daughter, partner and son on her birthday tomorrow. Its mostly clearing the decks so they can stay the night without clutter around them. With things organised I go to the garage and the rower. I select a short session and get on my way. At the end of 30 minutes I am hot and sweaty having worked hard. I put the effort as I know that It will be a couple of days before I can train again.

With the session over I record it and change into what I am going to wear for the poetry stanza zoom meeting. I run off a missing poem and set the computer up for the Zoom meeting and then have a very late breakfast. When it comes logging in for the meeting I discover the speakers that I have tested will not work on Zoom so I have to rapidly change to a laptop.

When I read through the poems in preparation I was not moved, thirteen poems and not one of them grabbed me. It was to be omen for the session. All the usual people were there and the format was the same but as I listened to the group discuss and dissect the first two poems I felt like I did when I first attended a stanza meeting. The language used and the ideas and the interpretations just seemed alien to me. I felt lost and could not for the life of me understand what was going on, or the poems. As a result I just listened to the poems being read and discussed scribbling the odd note to myself. I neither read a poem for the group nor submitted a poem for the group to read. In fact I did not say a word for the whole session and logged out at the end with a sense of relief. The experience felt as if I had lost all touch with poetry, at least not the poetry of this session or the way it was processed. It begins to feel as if I have had a narrow escape, I had forgotten how alienated from the “poetry industry” I feel and I wonder if I have lost myself in something that is beyond me. These are erudite, educated and talented people who live for their poetry in the world of literature and its construction. Somehow it feels that I have lost something, I’m not sure what it is but I can’t do poetry like these people do, at least not now. Once again I feel the alien.

After the session I watch the international rugby that carries on through the evening to its conclusion of seeing the French claim the six nations championship. I draft a short blog, take my night meds and take myself to bed knowing that tomorrow I shall see my youngest grandson and youngest daughter on her birthday. What more could I want.

Thursday, I wake and once again got through my rituals. Vitals measured, meds taken and then into my training gear. Before I get stuck into the rower I putter around organising things for the coming week. Eventually I cannot put off the training off any longer, so I go to the garage and strap myself in. I decide to go for a 45 minute session. I discover that I am already tired so that the session is a real effort. Towards the end I am working really hard but I get to the 9 kilometer mark.

I record the session and them shower by which time I am desperately tired. I make lunch and then rest for while. There are few things I can do but mainly I rest. Occasionally I have days like this. By the evening all I am good for is watching football and then going through my night rituals. Mostly meds and strapping on my night splint to keep my finger straight post operation.

Friday arrives and there are things to do. This is my youngest daughters birthday and she is coming to visit with her partner and young son, so there is shopping to be done as my partner and I are going to do a traditional afternoon tea. After a brief breakfast my partner and I go off to the local monster M&S to get the goodies for the weekend. There is time for a quick snack before we return home and I start to tidy things away for the weekend but also prepare for Saturdays Poetry Stanza. I am only able to attend on Saturday because the group that I occasionally meet up with for lunch has been postponed. There are twelve new poems to be printed off and read. This preparation is a pleasure as there are always surprises in the new poems. I put them in a file and the settle down to eat tea and then catch up with drafting the blog. One of the things I did this afternoon was to equip my phone a note making App. What a revelation it is to have such a useful little App. This all came about by me wanting to capture something earlier in the day and being frustrated that I did not have anything easily available on the phone. What I wanted to capture was the thought that I was sufferings form NGS, or Nonspecific Grumpiness Syndrome, especially when experiencing MHF, Massive Hot Flush.

The evening passes with Death in Paradise and continued blog drafting until its time for my night medication and splinting up my finger, but I am taken by surprise. I get a WhatsApp from someone asking how I am and purporting to be a publisher. It must be a scam. And that is how the world is, no matter how much I’d like to think a publisher would like to publish stuff I shall block who ever this is.

Tuesday and today starts with my usual routine of taking my vitals and checking messages and socials. It always takes longer than I think it should but then I often get waylaid by the news feeds. Nothing of note to day in either my wellbeing or the world, which is a good day in that there are no personal crisis to be dealt with and my health bounces along holding cancer at bay. This is a day to celebrate the mundane. I putter about for a bit and then take my partner into town for lunch, parking once again in the most convenient but most frequented by the drug addict and down and out population by Leicester. In fairness we have discovered that much of this can be avoid by using the “hotel ” side of the carpark rather than the Addict Dance academy. We dine quietly next to a couple one of which has an horrendous cough and announces that she and her partner have been ill for ages. They have come all the way from forty miles away to enjoy the restaurant and a ball and presumably to spread their nasty little germs around. Thankfully the coughing abates and relative quiet ensues. Having fed its time to pursue the cancerous part of the day, a slow and measured walk down to the hospital pharmacy to pick up the next three cycles of my current chemo.

As I stand about to hand my appointment letter to the pharmacy receptionist my phone rings but I am not able to answer it, I am peeved as it is from a friend who I haven’t talked to for a while. After the briefest of waits my name is called and I collect my drugs, never have I been served so quickly, but I take it as proof that the new build pharmacy is paying off. Mission accomplished my partner and I return to the car and drive home.

Before going in I decide to walk to the post office to get a paper, my partner dumps my drugs in the porch and we amble off. Our next door neighbor is out sweeping his drive and we stop to chat. It is a moment I cannot let go pass without without once and for all find out what him and his partners names are. We have lived next door for year and often chatted but had clearly got to the stage where asking seemed rude. However I take the plunge and say something suitable and Englishly apologetic and say I still do not know their names after all this time. He is very good about it and immediately says “I am R and she is L” . What a relief. we continue to chat and it appears we both agree that there is a hole in our dividing hedge in the back garden and think we ought to either plant it or put a couple of fence panels in. This is a real win win situation, so after more chat my partner and I finally get off to the post office on our newspaper mission.

Returning home its eyes down to the cross words and the coming evening. My partner will suffer my watching the big football match of the night and then eventually we will both go to bed, me going through my new night ritual, which now includes applying the magic latex to my hand scars before donning my nocturnal finger splint.

Wednesday and I wake from a strange and restless night. I check my vitals which are surprisingly good, my blood pressure is tickety boo and my SATS joyously at 99. MY partner brings me hot water and goes off to see her mother with her brother with whom she is going to have lunch. I get up quite quickly for me and down my morning meds, noting that tomorrow is the day I get a large dose of vitamin D. I drive into town and collect my new face furniture, one pair of distance glasses and a pair of reading spectacles. In truth the distant glasses make very little difference to my vision but the reading glasses definitely do. I can probably get away with just wearing my reading glasses when I need them in front of screens and print, I will see how it goes. On leaving the opticians I stop for panini and a coffee in Costa to check out my new face furniture. It all seems to be okay.

Of course I wore the Ferrari’s to Costa and discovered that I could still miss-see things as my scribbled note on a serviette suggests.

I drive towards home and but head for the gym which has a beauticians attached to it, it’s where my partner goes. I sheepishly go in and say I would like my nails done and I am asked to to wait till the beautician has finished her current client. When done she calls me over and looks at her diary and says “when?” I think I mumble something like “soon”, I swear I can hear my inner pixies rolling around with laughter. The beautician says “Now” and I say very quickly “yes” before I change my mind and my inner pixies wet themselves.

The beautician sets about my nails and pretty soon I am popping my hands into the secret hand oven that bakes my several layers of builder gel. By the end of the process I have immaculate shiny nails and my hands are very happy and almost forget about their operation scars. The pixies have managed to stop laughing out loud but they are still giggling.

So having been nailed up I drive home and take my eldest daughter to the pub for a late lunch and as it turns out a discussion on the types of memory and it importance or not to the interviewing of traumatised, (or not), trafficked (or not) people by the police. Turns out its a tricky area. We are joined by my partner who swears that it has been snowing where she has been a few miles down the road. We all return home as the temperature plummets. I try to catch up with drafting the blog before attending an online poetry collection launch by the chair of the Poetry Stanza I belong to. IT means rigging up the computer in the office and I am not sure if it will work so I might yet have to resort to my laptop.

I attend my first online poetry collection launch for a collection by someone I know. Its a strange and moving experience that lasts an hour and then I am back to watching football. Out of the blue someone from the past rings me seeking information about a mutual acquaintance. We talk for a while and I give him some possible contacts who might know where the person being sort might be. I then return to football and ultimately my night meds and bed. Today is the last day of cycle 22 of my current chemo, its 639 days since I started it and I have another three cycles in hand before my next oncology review in May. I am desperately hoping that I can get into a rhythm over those months and feel well and normal for a while.

Monday rolls round again and I’ve had a bad nights sleep, not sure why, I guess there are just some nights that are restless. I take my vitals and they are all good, I check my messages and socials and they are all benign so eventually I get up as my partner goes to the gym. I take my morning meds, which today includes my atomic bomb size dose of vitamin D and then head for the garage and the rowing machine. Given that I did an hour yesterday I thought a short half hour was my best option today. So I set myself up and set off. Half way through the session my ear buds stopped feeding me music and I had to continue to the sound of the rowers creaks and my own occasional grunts of effort. By the end of the session I was tired but also discovered that my fitness monitor band had got low on energy and had not recorded all the data it should have done. As a result my PAI (Physical Activity Intelligence) score had barely moved from yesterdays level. The session was acceptable as I reached 6+Kilometres, what I consider to be my normal standard for the time and level set for the session.

I record the session and have breakfast before going for a shower. Although always a gratifying series of activities it is heavy on my spoon reserves and I take a breather before driving off to the chiropodist. I have said it before and I will repeat it, that going to the chiropodist every two to three months is a real pleasure, it makes my feet sing. The serious reason is to contain the damage that has been done to my nails by chemo and dropping heavy weights on at east one of them that has killed he nail bed and results in thick nails. It is a real joy to walk out of he foot clinic with a sense of well being that starts with my toes and get as far as my ankles.

I drive back quickly as there is a Tesco order to receive but I find my partner has already taken in the early delivery and is busy working out future plans. After a short time I gather up my picture hanging tools and set about putting screw eyes in the frame of the picture my partner was given by our youngest daughter to mark her retirement. All goes well until its time to put the hook into the wall. Being an older house it has solid walls and the picture hook nails are not up to the challenge so I have to doctor one to make it work, but work it does. So having discussed where it should go it is now hung between the Jay Nottingham’s in the lounge where we are able to see it properly. Its by the artist Nellie Hearn an ex dancer who now does all sorts of stuff including very colourful shirts.

With all the picture hanging gear away I settle down to draft the blog aware that I have few spoons left. I am trying to be diligent in my hand recovery exercises and massages but when busy doing other things it can be a bit tricky, but I am trying my best. I am hopeful that by the time I see the recovery therapist in a months time my hand will have improved greatly. There is one post operative ridge across the inside of my first joint on the ring finger that bothers me as it stops me being able to make a full fist, combined with the joint that is still enlarged from the operation I sometimes worry that the scar tissue will pull my finger back down but all can do is keep doing my exercises and applying Nivea crème as instructed. I am sure I will get there.

My evening is full of distant singing, and reading before my partner and I return to our binge watch of Pennyworth and ultimately my routine of night meds, splint and magic latex application t my hand and finally bed. Tomorrow is another trip into town to collect my next three months of the current chemo tablets. It sometimes feels that a great proportion of my life is spent managing my medical calendar and doing things that hopefully prolong it. Import that I break out occasionally and go off-piste.

Friday was a day of readjustment. I had risen early to prepare for a trip into town to visit the optician. Having made the effort to get up and have breakfast after removing my finger night splint and the magic gel strip that is supposed to be making my operation scars disappear, my partner and I drove into town. We parked up in a car park that must be the most urine smelling car park in the world, I suppose being next to a dance school called Addict should be a clue as to the numbers of ne’er do wells that hang around the stair wells doing drugs and pissing. The town centre is a forlorn and barren place really with its closed shops, nail bars and run emporiums. Lots of food and drink places that sustain visitors and the mageirocophobics (fear of cooking) but all a bit seedy, or maybe the people just look seedy and give the shops a bad look.

I check in at Vison Express and get shown to a sofa and asked to wait. This express might not be so express as advertised. I get called into the clever machine room that shines a very bright light into my eyes and blow air into them. I am then returned to my sofa to await the optician. I get asked all the usual stuff about age and health, drugs and family history and then she looks at my last eye test. 2015 apparently, I knew it had been a while but not that long but in my defence: I don’t have one. The optician plonks a viewer on my face and away we go with the “which is the clearest 1 or 2” and “which line of text can you read”. We go through it all and then she shows me the results from the clever machine room. I have heathy eye balls in almost every aspect apart from a tiny bit of cataract formation, (normal for my age), however I have gone from being short sighted to long sighted. My prescription is very different from my last one, but then am not surprised after ten years.

What follows could be a long drawn out process of describing selecting what new frames I am going to have but I’m a bloke I select my frames pretty sharpish, while my partner mulls over various options for herself, pausing briefly to comment on a blue pair of frames I was toying with. After having selected what I want came the paper work and the interminable sales stuff. However as I can get these over two years at zero percent interest and twenty percent off I sign up to the plan, which also means I can get free stuff in the future. I sign on the cyber pad and leave to await an email telling me my new Ferraris and Emporio glasses are ready.

After a lunch out I head for home where I learn that the opportunity to read poetry publicly has gone by the board as the organisers of the event have turned the proposal down but have put in an open mike session. I’ve no idea how that works so I will go and watch and see how it works and then consider a future one. I do some organising as the evening creeps up. There is Pennyworth to watch and then night meds to take and get myself to bed.

Saturday arrives and to be honest I do very little other than watch rugby and football, of course the garden guy arrives so there is flower bed planning to do. He also tells us that he is to be a father, which is lovely as he seems so happy. The sun shines and that means I get out to take the covers off the garden furniture and begin to assess the state of the patio and how much cleaning there is to do. But the highlight of the day was finding and booking a break away. Finding an apartment in our favourite holiday place was a real bonus. My partner and I are desperate for a break and to get ourselves by the sea. I will be interested to see if the summer time ice cream van comes out in March and whether the eating places are open, if they are not then we will be eating seagull for a week. The evening was the consumption of more Pennyworth, night meds and bed once I had clipped on my night finger splint with its magic gel strip.

Sunday and I wake quiet early and determined to train. After my usual hot water and meds I get into my training gear and get ready to row. I massage my operation scars with Nivea crème in preparation to row and head for the garage and the rowing machine. I strap in and set my session for an hour. Its a bit of a gamble given my hand but I feel I need to push myself and try and kick start some proper training and some weigh loss. So I start off slowly and just try to keep going. By the end of the session I am very tired but very pleased to get to the end. Only when I go to photograph the monitor do I realise that I have only rowed for 59 minutes! I am not sure how this happened but their you go as sessions go it was okay.

I record my session and then change into a pair of shorts and sit in the front garden to sip a drink and to recover from the session. I spend a lot of time sunning myself and hoping that doing this is topping up my vitamin D levels. I am joined by my partner and we sun ourselves, until its time to watch England against Italy in the rugby. Its a good match for the first half but England ran off with it in the second half. I realise that the blog needs to be brought up to date so I settle down to recall what I’ve done over the past two days. There are of course holes where I have pottered or puttered about. This Sunday evening I shall watch more of Pennyworth and head to my bed early as I can feel my energy running out. Tomorrow is the day I get the pleasures of the chiropodist as I move into a week of activity, somehow the days are becoming more spoon demanding.