Saturday, a day that had a morning of preparation as I printed off poems and practiced reading them. There followed quite a long wrestle with the technology as Zoom insisted on upgrading on my “unrecognised” device. It took for what felt for ever, so what was supposed to be a relaxed approach to the poetry Stanza turned out to be an unseemly and anxious rush. However once into the meeting the afternoon went by very pleasantly, my poem went okay and there were some lovely ones from the rest of the group.

Post stanza I moved into evening and of course Strictly. A strange fascination, I have no idea why I watch it, perhaps it is just something about dance for dance sake. AS the day progresses I feel the soreness in my mouth increase due the sharpness of the tooth that has lost its filling. It tends to take the joy out of food. I am increasingly looking forward to Monday morning dentist appointment. The evening ends with a film. A nonsense film full of the usual technology is dangerous messages is the food for the evening before I down my night meds and go to bed.

Sunday and I wake up to a coffee brought to me by my partner. We laze in bed and chat about family matters, finances and plans for the coming week. It is a time to catch up and see how we are. Having chatted we get up for breakfast after which we make our usual face to face call to our youngest daughter with the new grandson. I fill my drugs wallets for the next two weeks and then drive my partner and I to the local garden centre to get food and odd items for Christmas. The weather is cold and damp with a wintery nip in the air. On the return journey I check the car tyres and fill the tank in preparation for my drive to York tomorrow. I also manage to get a bottle of mouth wash for my sore mouth. Once home I immediately use the mouthwash and get some relief for my sore mouth. I then rest from the effort and continue to read Tom’s Midnight Garden until up to doing other things. One of the other things I do is finally move the last remaining storage box of my deceased families trinkets, fripperies and jewellery into the loft with the help of my eldest daughter. At last the hallway is almost reclaimed apart from some pictures that I need to find homes for. There is time to catch a rugby match before tea and then of course the Strictly results show. Justice is done as Angela Rippon bites the dust.

There is time to pack for my York trip and to get ready to travel. I finalise the Tesco order and leave a list of things that the garden guy needs to do on Monday. I am trying to ensure that I have done everything I need to do before my brief trip. Of course my first port of call in the morning is the dentist who I am hoping will work her miracles and remove the cause of my sore mouth. Then it will be a stately drive up the motorway. I take my night meds and go to my bed hoping for a good nights sleep.

Post result show

Friday and I am doing okay as I wake up. I check my messages and my cyber litter before settling down to reading Tom’s Midnight Garden. I am brought a coffee and I continue to read. I am slow to rise this Friday as I know I am going out this evening. Of course I eventually get up and make myself toast and coffee. I then start to deal with mail that needs to go to the solicitors. I discover I have lost a filing and immediately ring the dentist. The earliest I can get in is Monday morning, so on Monday I shall go and have my filling done before I drive north to York to see my mentor and friends.

There is a bacon sandwich followed by a telephone call with from the solicitors office. It is a timely conversation to have as I am half way through drafting an email to them, so the call saves me time. I start my preparation for this weekends Poetry Stanza meeting whilst listening to more episodes of the Infinite Monkey Cage. Its like doing homework or rehearsing for an audition. All the poems have to be downloaded and organised and then of course read. The reading is not just for understanding but the knowledge of knowing that I will be responsible for reading someone’s poems on the day motivates me to get it right. After all I hope other people do the same for my poem as its part of the core experience of hearing some one else read your poetry out loud. Given that the group will discuss the poem after the reading you want the poem to be shown off at its best and of course when its my turn to read I want to do the poem justice. Below is my contribution this month, its more of a frippery this month. I think I save my more “meaty” stuff for the face to face meetings.

It’s time.
Time to say farewell,
bite the bullet and concede to the scythe.
Like the inevitably
Of harvest,
I yield.
Carefully I select
the items,
and with them the memories.
With each comes stitched in
reminiscences. 
Each pair are transitional items
that will be jettisoned,
recycled or forgotten.
Reality confrontation
at a brutal level.
A mirror that won’t be denied
And is now avoided.
I’m never going to be the same 
and gone is the possibility.
I am beyond any clever fix
My waist line will never again be 36.

By the time I have done this and I have started drafting the blog the day has gone dark. So I ease myself to the evening where I shall wrap up warm and go with my partner to meet friends for a meal at a local pub. In fact its our local biker pub and I think as a consequences does very good food. I realise only now that England are playing on TV tonight as is Pudsy and children in need. On balance I think a meal with friends is preferable.

Thursday and I wake to a quiet house as my partner has gone to work, real work not a trot downstairs to the office. I am tentative about getting up so spend a bit of time reading Wild Swans and dealing with my cyber litter, messages and emails. By the time I am up I am hungry and make egg and soldiers before sorting the post and tidying up. In the post is a new book from my brain feeding friend and it is one I have not read. I am tempted to start reading it straight away but hold of, as I know I need to make the effort to train.

I am not feeling particularly good as I take my vitals but they seem to be okay so I change into my training gear and head to the garage. Its the coldest its been so far this year.

The session I decide will be 30 minutes as I am not sure how much energy I have to spend and I am aware that I am going out tonight. I strap in to the rower and set off not feeling particularly confident that I will reach my normal standards, but I do get into to a groove and make headway. By the end of the session I am over 6 Kilometres and have burnt over 400 calories, so I am pleased and mildly surprised.

As is my usual habit I record my session in my food, meds and training journal and then go and take my vitals again. They are okay but my heart rate is a bit elevated. As I am going out in the evening I decide to have a bath and hope it eases off the last of the soreness from Mondays injection. Once my bath bomb bath is ready I ease myself in and start to read Tom’s Midnight Garden. From the start I find it quite a disturbing book adn it is partly because I’ve been listening to the Infinite Monkey Cage where the idea of Block Time keeps being discussed. It’s the idea that all things have happened, past and future, but for some reason humans can only access the past. It is a matter of debate. However it becomes clear very soon that Tom’s Midnight Garden has an strong element of this idea in it. I am eager to read more but my bath gets cold and I slither out into warm towels.

I get tarted up to go out, trimmed beard and deodorant and of course dressed. By now I am hungry again and have a sandwich and drink and discover I have some more emails to deal with. There is time to snatch a few more pages of the new book before its tie to start to prepare tea in anticipation of my partner retuning from work. Just as I get the sauce underway my partner returns and so I crack on making our pasta meal. Its not long before we are on our way to the De Montfort Hall to see Fascinating Aida. We arrive in plenty of time and park in the venues car park and indulge in a pre hoe coffee and twix. There is time for the usual pre-emptive activity piss and then we are in the auditorium seated in our favourite row, which is the front row of the upper circle as it has huge leg room. Fascinating Aida are jut brilliant. If you haven’t seen them do so if you get a chance. Not for the feint hearted or Tory but both funny and touching. There is half time ice cream and then more excellent entertainment from them. Below is the trailer for the show we saw tonight.

We drive home after the show and I draft the blog having taken my night meds. I go to bed having spent all my spoons for the day but glad I made the effort on all fronts today

Same moon but always different, how is this possible, a trick of the light or of the mind?

Wednesday after terror Tuesday and I take my time to wake up and see how I am. The answer is a bit wobbly but not yet chipper. My partner brings me a coffee and I get with the goal of getting out of the house by going to the village café for breakfast. I get my morning meds down me and then get myself into my new fleece lined action trousers and overcoat, topped off with the new beanie and head off out. Picking up a newspaper on the way I settle into the village café and start the crosswords while my bacon and sausage baguette with a black coffee arrives. Its nice to be out and good to see strangers doing the same wandering the village as me. I have to say my new winter clothes were a good decision as I feel snug the entire time. I am home by noon and start to deal with the post and the emails that need attention.

I can feel myself flagging so take a break and listen to The Infinite Monkey Cage for a while and then get on with the life admin. Some forms get printed and signed. I write the covering letter and get the documents over to the post office and sent for tomorrows delivery. Back home there are emails to write to the solicitors dealing with my sisters estate. Its difficult to ensure the right balance between legal advice and other considerations without sounding arsy. So with the emails gone its time to file the paper work that has been generated. Call me old fashioned but I like to keep hard copies of things, I like the the “flipping backwards and forwards” nature of hard copy. The post has brought me a new book, a gift from my book reading friend who has been helping me feed my brain. Wild Swans by Jung Chang is a book I have read before but I shall reread it as it is a truly remarkable book. It is the true history of three generations of Chinese women from times of emperor rule through to communist revolution. The way the family survives the radical cultural and political changes are incredible.

Evening is suddenly upon me and eating tea, drafting the blog and watching an FA cup match before Shetland comes on. Its been a reasonable day compared to the last two so I am hoping I am properly recovered tomorrow as tomorrow evening I have tickets to go and see Fascinating Aida. One of my favourite evenings out as they are always entertaining and bitingly satirical. So once I’ve watched Shetland and taken my night meds I am off to bed pleased that I have stayed off the paracetamol today.

This is terror Tuesday. I wake up feeling knocked about and sore from yesterdays injection. I feel groggy and fatigued but mostly sore. I wonder if I am talking myself into this with a negative internal dialogue, but I feel crap against an internal dialogue that I can make more positive. Like in rain I know the sun will shine again, so I keep these thoughts in mind and tell myself that any small step I can make is a contribution to feeling better.

My partner brings me a coffee and I slowly check my messages, emails, and cyber litter. By 10 o’clock I get up and have muesli and coffee taking my morning meds as I do so. I wonder about taking more paracetamol, I am not keen but I know I shall probably do so at some point. I send my poem to the poetry Stanza for the coming meeting on Saturday, as I do I note that on Zoom meeting sessions I tend to send less personal poems and more humorous or trivial content poems. There is something about sharing the more “tricky” poems face to face which feels more appropriate.

By noon I am flagging again and cave in and take paracetamol. If only I could get moving, its a real Catch 22. So paracetamol, take my vitals and then try to find a way to rest restoratively. I end up listening to more Infinite Monkey Cage while laying down. Mid afternoon I try to rouse myself, clear the kitchen, put the bin out and take in a delivery, which includes my new beanie and fleece lined trousers. I am flagging but a new email comes in from the tax company that are working on my sisters estate. There are several things I do not understand and spend ages drafting a reply to try and clarify some points. No sooner than I have pressed the go key another email comes in from the solicitors which needs time to consider. We appear to have reached an impasse with HMRC despite having paid the inheritance tax, with solicitors advising to wait for the tax folk to clear everything.

Evening rolls up and my partner makes tea and we eat while I draft the blog and wait for the Great British Bake Off. I am still feeling like I have been run over by a bus and have a simple plan: take my meds and go to bed. It is definitely a case of eat, sleep, repeat. Right now my spoon economy is minimal, all I can do is hang on in there and trust my body will recover as it has done so many times before. Its just the nature of the cycle.

Jab Monday and I am awake at 7:30 listening to my eldest daughter getting ready to go to work and my partner snoozing. I get up, make a warm drink for my partner and get myself ready for my walk to the GP surgery. Just time for a coffee adn morning meds and then I am walking in the morning air that is breezy and damp. On my arrival at the surgery I fish out mask from the depths of a fluffy pocket and book myself in, take a seat and wait. Within moments I am called in to the clinic room, the upside of going for an early appointment time. I hand over the injection box to the nurse who puts the impedimenta together while I adjust my clothing to give her access to the injection site. The drug goes in relatively easy, it is viscous and bulky adn takes time to get it all in. Once done I check my next appointment time and go on my way.

On my way home I pick up a paper so I can do the crosswords as I have more coffee and toast. I consume these as I watch the government reshuffle on TV in a kind of fascination, like a snake watching a mongoose. I am surprised as the announcement is made that David, pig botherer, Cameroon, is appointed as Foreign Secretary. After the initial shock there are acres of fill in TV full of people making up opinions and waffle to fill in time before anything else happens. My partner goes off with her brother to see their mother who has returned from her hospital visit last night. I start to do my own admin by chasing up solicitors, writing letters and tidying up the domestic environment in preparation for the coming Tesco delivery.

By lunchtime I am tired and feeling sore at my injection site. I make myself soup and move the car off the drive to leave rom for the Tesco delivery. I listen to another episode of the Infinite Monkey Cage. My partner returns and we while time away until Tesco deliver. There is a spurt of unpacking and squirrelling away the food. I return to the sofa as I feel my post injection “withdrawing junkie” state coming on. No matter how warm the house is I shiver on these injection days. All I can do is take paracetamol, grit my teeth adn take myself to bed as early as I can bear to try and sleep through the worst of the “withdrawal”. My evening then is made up of eating and then trying to be as mindless as possible till I take my night meds and fight to sleep through. These days are the low points as two 28 day cycles collide, however I will stand, hold my ground and come through to some equilibrium.

Saturday and a good as my new grandson arrives with his parents. My partner has gone off to have her hair done and I have a list of food to buy from the local garden centre. So having done my early morning cyber litter checks and viewed messages I get up, take my meds and drive off to shop. I a have not been back long when my youngest daughter arrives with her son and partner. He is a delight and such a contented young person. The family sits down to lunch and of course play with the new grandson. It is an easy afternoon of relaxing and catching up with, of course, the new family member at the heart of everything. The family sit down to a roast dinner and pudding before settling down to watch Strictly together. Of course the newest family member and is parents drift off to bed relatively early and others duly follow leaving me to watch football highlights and finally set Daisy dishwasher going and down my meds before going to bed. Its been a good family day.

Sunday I wake early and find the family up and about and we are soon gathered around the table having breakfast. My day starts with paracetamol added to my usual morning meds in preparation for tomorrow’s 28 day injection. The morning is spent playing with the young grandson and chatting to the parents. He is an extremely calm and chatty young baby and clearly very interested in his environment and instigates interaction a great deal. At lunchtime they pack all the gadgetry they travel with leave for home home. Its been lovely to see them and I look forward to Christmas and the experience of seeing the new boy experience his first Christmas tree.

I settle down to start the blog and then I watch a rugby match. My partner gets a telephone call to say her mother has been taken to hospital for her bloods to be checked. There follows a long period of waiting and conversations with the carer with my partners mother. Not until 7:30 pm does she see a doctor and we have a conversation with the doctor about whether she is going to stay in or not.

It is a long evening as we wait to know for sure whether my partners mother is being sent home. I watch TV and draft the blog as we wait. It is a long evening. Tomorrow I am up early as it is injection Monday. Not my favourite day of the month so I eat chocolate, drink diet coke and wait to see how this day ends.

Friday was a very slow start, as I check my cyber litter and messages. Then its on to organising the next Tesco order and getting to grips with putting in place arrangements to go north to see my mentor and friends. I dally so long that just as I clamber out of bed my partner brings me a bacon sandwich. There is post already and amongst it the HMRC letter we were waiting for to move my sisters estate tax moving on. So there is some admin to be done. I have no book to hand so listen to another episode of The Infinite Monkey Cage. My partner goes off to see her physio and I set about Hoovering the house through prior to my youngest daughter, partner and their new young son coming tomorrow. I’m impressed with our version of a Hoover in that I had never found one that was capable of rolling up a pair of nickers on the front roller, but this one achieved this with ease. So after freeing up the roller I continued the run through the house and cleared the kitchen.

By the time I had finished I was ready for another episode of The Infinite Monkey Cage, which kept me amused while I recovered from the house Hoovering. I was beginning to drift when I decided to take my vitals and then change for a short row. I am trying to build up my PAI points and also lay in some resilience to Mondays 28 day injection. Yep, its that time of month again, so I will be checking my paracetamol stock as well. The garage is chilly so I strap in quick to he rower and getting going speedily, again giving it a bit of “vim” and hoping to meet my usual standard. It goes well and I achieve my goals.

I return to the sofa and record my session. I am pleased to find I have accrued 175 PAI points and my fitness age has dropped to 52. So all in all I am quite pleased with this weeks efforts. The rest of my day sinks into evening where I eat tea and then settle down to an evening of TV as I switch off and try to maintain as many spoons as possible in anticipation of tomorrows guests. Ultimately there will be night meds and bed.

Thursday and I wake early and get brought coffee and toast in bed, which I am thankful for. Once again I check my cyber litter and other bits on my phone. Once up I am not quite sure what I want to be doing, I feel listless. I do odd chores like emptying the waste paper baskets in the house and try to settle. In the end I decide to give Oscar and Lucinda another go. I try, really try to appreciate the quality of writing, the detail, the fine observation and the delicacy of the way the two main characters stories develop before they meet. Its no good, I go to the end of the book and start to read it backwards, which strangely makes it marginally better. By lunchtime have given up and own up to the friend who sent it to me that I can no longer go on with it. In fact my summary was ” I’d sum it up as addicted gambling priest meets too tightly wrapped feminist factory owner who both fuck their lives up and of course their friends and innocent bystanders. Just another couple of personality disordered twats really.”

My partner and I go for a walk to the village pharmacist to pick up prescriptions, my partner’s is ready but I will have to return tomorrow to collect mine. We slip into the co-op next door where I pick up cash and we add some food to the basket. Back home I make myself soup and start the cross words. A friend rings who I have not talked to for a while adn we compare notes about family, Christmas and how we are. My friend goes off to continue her Christmas organising and I return to my soup and crosswords. Crosswords done I start to investigate Christmas and my timetable running up to it. There are things I want to fit in like a visit to my mentor which I can combine with a Christmas shopping trip, December is already looking cramped with the the various things in the diary, my chemo reviews and injections. I listen to an Infinite Monkey Cage and then decide to train. It will be a 45 minute session with a bit more “vim” to it that the gentle 60 minutes previously that did not gain me the necessary PAI points to get me to a 100 for the day. I get my training kit on and make my way to the garage, strap onto the rower and get going in the chilly atmosphere.

I put some effort into the session with a very pleasing result, for the first time in a long time I get past the 10,000 meter mark and burn over 650 calories in the 45 minute time slot. This is more like it, I now need to keep this up consistently. I go the sofa and record the session in my journal before getting out of my kit.

Returning to the sofa I start to draft the blog and a little later eat tea while watching the early European football match. I am finding that a modicum of chocolate settles my stomach as I think an unsettled gut is one of my chemo drugs side effects. My partner goes off to the office to do her singing lesson and I continue to draft the blog to the background of football. I am hoping that my good session sets me up for a spoonful day tomorrow. I would just like a day when I wake up feeling like I have energy enough to get out and about and do some of the normal things. For this evening I shall content myself with easing towards my bedtime with its night meds and rituals.

Wednesday and I start Cycle six of my chemo, the treatment that just rolls on as long as the arithmetic is right, and as my arithmetic appears to be good, it rolls on. My partner brings me coffee in bed before going to work and I check my cyber litter. Nothing in the cyber bag of stuff is of any use, comfort or interest to to me so I get up and do a toast and jam breakfast before showering. It is a spoon costly exercise, even more so when as I am dripping with exotic foam I realise I have not put the towels near the bath. For once I have not carried out my pre shower rituals properly and I am left to shake myself like a dog and and skip naked out of the bath to reach my towels. There follows the usual rub down and then the towel wrapped trip to he bedroom to blow dry my hair. With flowing locks I dress and drive to meet a friend to have coffee.

I arrive and clearly I am not looking too good as my friend says its okay if I am not up to it but I say I am and she drives me to a local National Trust park to have coffee. We actually tuck into eggs Royal and Benedict with hot chocolate for me and begin our conversation. It goes on thorough many topics including my growing aversion to people and the vacuous noise they make, realising of course that anyone listening to my own conversation may deem if “vacuous noise”. Undeterred I continue with our conversation. My friend is an academic and philosopher who is the person who feeds me books so of course we discuss Oscar and Lucinda, which is her latest gift. We move onto Glass Churches, other books, how we are and favourite idea from favourite television series, including of course, The Good Place. By then its time for more hot chocolate and cherry cake to fuel us through more idle conversation through family, retirement plans, David Sedaris and other ideas about Therapeutic Communities as Operational Moral Philosophy and University degree ceremonies. The later yielding a story that it was Margret Thatcher who stopped the Open University from being scrapped when there was strong pressure from the conservative party to scrap it when they were in power. Bit of a difficult one to swallow that but she was clearly not all bad. Lots of miners children got out from under via the Open University, as did many others.

We had a quick look around one of the craft shops and then at “death corner|” of the garden centre to see if there are any likely candidates for saving. There were not so we left and I was driven back to my friends house. We said our farewells and I drove home. The evening was already closing in and so I settled down on the sofa and began to draft the blog. I have noticed that now when I spend anytime talking to people my voice disappears. It is almost as if its lack of use gives it a limited usage time. It goes hoarse and I cough as if an irritated throat has had enough and in a sense just says, in its own way, enough is enough.

Whilst siting drafting the blog my partner returns from work and after making me a coffee she checks her car insurance and asks if I have points on my driving license. I do not know, I know I did a motorway speed course, which was on line during or just after COVID, as for actual points I have no idea. Intrigued I Google how to check and then proceed to follow the instructions. I whoop with joy as his majesty’s official web site tells me I have no points, or as I think of it, I still have 12 to spend, which my partner points out is probably not the way to view it. I return to the blog.

As I have dined so well already today I shall be making soup later when my partner goes out for a meal and my daughter goes of to the fare with a friend. My evening will be football, I have nothing left in the spoon locker to do anything more clever today, certainly not got the energy to train. I am hoping over the next couple of days to begin the actual work on preparing my self published poetry collections. In the meantime I shall continue with Cycle 6 and next Mondays 28 day injection. Night meds and bed take me to the end of the day.