Wednesday and after a brief rummage through my phone I am up and running with my mental to do list. Breakfast adn coffee and I am into my life admin, there are appointments to book, birthdays and anniversaries to acknowledge and more estate stuff to be done. So no reading time in the morning for reading. This morning was earmarked for getting my next set of appoints lined up. I need a time to get jabbed and two to have bloods taken. Sounds straight forward and it is if I can get through to the GP surgery. Having made myself comfortable I settle down for the long phone in. First phase is the line busy stage, which seems to go on for ever, either there are a lot of people quicker on the redial than me or the receptionist is listing to a life story of adn medical history of great complexity and detail. Finally I am blessed with the “our receptionists are busy, please stay on the line” message and know I am in the cyber holding pen. There is no music to keep me entertained, like “I will survive”, just the same “we are busy” message to keep me engaged. It seems an age before a voice says hello. Once at this stage it is all very smooth and efficient. By the time I am off the phone there are confirmation text messages on my phone. My phone calendar gets updated and I move on.

There is yet more paperwork to be done for my sisters estate but I finally get to the stage where I can email the solicitors who are administering the estate. I think I am clear for the day when another tax form arrives and has to be dealt with. Its not all bad as apparently I am getting my winter fuel allowance soon, which prompts me to do the house accounts. By lunchtime there is nothing else I can do to organise either finances or health.

Lunch with Steph’s Packed Lunch and I am ready for my afternoon chores while my partner visits her mother. Having cleared the kitchen and got rid of yet more recycling I drove to the garden centre to buy provisions for our weekend away. Time is rushing by and I can feel myself running out of spoons so I get myself home and take a few minutes to check my emails again and send some messages. Once I had gained my breathe I put my washing away took my vitals and got changed to train. My last chance before going away so I need to take it or I will not hold of the medication side effects. I get into the garage and strap myself into the rowing machine and set off on a 45 minute session. I was determined to give this a go and at least try and get to my usual standard. The temperature has dropped so am glad for my track suit for the first fifteen minutes after which I get really hot. By the end of the session I am a pool of sweat but a happy person as I made my standards and some.

As the say in the Good Place, Forking awesome. I am totally spoonless now but happy. I head for the sofa, record the session and then change into evening wear lounge wear. I draft the blog and know I shall stare in to space for a while, watch football followed by Celebrity Race Across the World and then meander my way to night meds and bed. The packing for tomorrows journey can wait till the morning as can checking the car. I am truly spent.

Tuesday rolls around and I wake up after a decent nights sleep. Rather than dash about I check my messages, mail and other electronic ephemera. I read for a while and the more I read the more convinced I am that I got therapeutic communities all wrong and that what I was doing all those years was more to do with practical ethical philosophy. I’m not going to explain but for a fleeting moment I was tempted to write a paper for the therapeutic community journal. Then I remembered that I have stopped trying to be useful and got up and had breakfast.

Having fed I do my vitals for the first time and then set about doing the paper work that needs to be done for my sisters estate. It inevitably means a trip to the post office and as its Tuesday putting bins out and bringing in the car. It is that time in a fortnight that I get to fill my drugs wallets for the next two weeks. Its a task that means I do not miss my meds and allows me to keep track of where I am in my chemo cycle. With the mundane done I can settle down to read more of The Good Place and Philosophy. I continue to gather new ideas about my new frame work for Therapeutic Communities where I redefine them from being search engines for meaning to being ethics pumps. An unusual way to spend a morning. I have lunch with my partner and do the days crossword clues.

My afternoon was spent putting the garden to bed for the winter. All the garden furniture is not neatly under cover and weighted down to resist the rigours of the winter storms. There is still some tying down to do and some cutting down to be done but if the worst comes to the worst the garden will get through. Having had my burst of energy I return to my reading and another set of vitals. Before I know it I’m eating tea and slipping into watching the latest binge watch: Lupin. It inevitably ends with night meds and bed. Its been another ordinary day but once again there have been kind messages from friends during the day.

Monday, again. Wake and check the usual sites. Right I am updated, no messages, no emails, and the world is as it was yesterday. My bank details no different and there’s nothing in the diary apart from Tesco, so a usual Monday. So breakfast and meds and my day is my own.

When my day is my own and its a Monday, its a laundry day, so I excavate the laundry basket and get a load in then escape to the Shed. I refill the squirrel feeder and the bird feeders, which I regard as my ticket into The Good Place on the basis that in the final reckoning I can say that at least I fed the squirrels and the birds. I light my scented candle, my last one, so they can go on my Christmas list, and sit at my Shed table and write a letter. The oncologist told me this current chemo would slow me down and he is not wrong, its a sort of brain fog, my stream of consciousness seems to be slowed or at least less able to jump along from idea to idea, making connections and applying wit. Its probably reflected in the blog, which will explain why fewer people are accessing it. No surprise really if it reflects my dullness at the moment. So it takes me longer to write letters at the moment. By lunchtime I’ve managed a single letter. I can do no more and return to the house where my laundry is waiting to be hung out.

With a line full of T shirts and underwear I have lunch with my partner . I sip soup and ponder over todays cross words. These too can take longer to complete but I stick at it and get them completed. I take a walk over to the post box and note that the collection flag on the post box says Wednesday and I wonder if that is true or whether collection bunnies just can’t be arsed to change the flag when they empty the pillar box. It makes a mockery of first class delivery if there has been a random decision not to collect daily from the pillar box outside the local in shop post office. I am hoping it is a case of the occasional collecting person having quietly quit and cant be arse to change the next collection flag. Today being Monday and the flag saying Wednesday I can only assume that it is either accurate or multiple collectors since last Wednesday could not be arsed, unless there has been a dumping of the system altogether since last Wednesday. I’m not sure why this exercises me so much, something about customer service I guess and the recent rise in first class stamps. Of course this will not stop me writing letters but it is making me think a pigeon loft might not be such a bad idea after all. Perhaps a Harry Potter owl but I fear that is too fanciful. I go home to download tax papers and charge my Fitbit. I’m mentally tinkering with the idea of doing an half hour on the rower, I need the PSI points. While I wait I draft a bit more of the blog.

Yep I trained for 45 minutes and almost made my usual standard 9K and 600 calories for the time. With no rest I took in my washing and hung it on the drier to finish off, no tumble drying here for a while, the heating is already on twice a day. I run off the capital gains tax forms for the estate and will get them gone tomorrow.

Its evening and I am knackered, totally spoonless, yet there are still the joys of a late evening Tesco delivery to come. I down a pint of effervescent paracetamol and draft more of the blog before tea. There will be Lupin on Netflix tonight while we wait for Tesco and then I shall be off to bed. Its been a rugged day to day but underneath it there is a flow of good, messages from friends and reminders that my pixies are still functional and I am still standing.

Sunday and I wake up to nothing of note. I make warm drinks for my partner and myself and then enter into the Sunday competition of who is going to be last to get up. As I get hungry I decide I need some motivational music so I get Alexa to play the Sorcerer’s Apprentice to get me up. It works!

My day then started with a mistake. I thought it would be good to have kippers on toast for breakfast. Won’t be doing that again, not that they were not nice but I was eating them for the rest of the day. I think my cholesterol level will have to stay as it is rather than eat kippers to help lower it. My partner goes to the gym after face timing our youngest daughter. I hoover the house through but find it blows my spoon economy out of the water. I take my vitals and update my Excel spread sheet. The personal arithmetic remains good so I find my lack of energy and increasing anxiety frustrating. I rest for a while before running off some of the papers that have come through on my sisters estate. All I have energy for is watching the rugby match on TV. So I slide into the evening, drafting the blog, ultimately to take my night meds and going to bed.

I feel like I am sliding, I’m not sure why, but I know I look like I should be able to do all the old Roland things I used to do, but I can’t. Inside is where the battle is going on. I am applying all my psychological tricks on one front while I physically wrestle with the cancer on the chemo front. Its tiring, so I take my time. Reading helps, training helps and quiet helps.

Saturday and I wake up with a painful back having managed to pull it getting out of bed to have a piss. How ridiculous is that. I drink my coffee and easy myself up for breakfast. A slowly and careful muesli and coffee and then I run off the poems I am going to take to the poetry stanza later. I also run off my green flag stuff so that my partner can have a copy in the car. Morning meds and vitals get done and I choose an ice hockey jersey for the day. Penquins is my choice. I get myself ready including my back support that I used to use when I used weights. My partner goes to lunch with a friend and I head for the poetry Stanza.

On the way to the venue I check my tyres hoping that the repaired one has held its pressure, to my relief it has so I am able to carry on my journey with confidence in the car. I arrive early and as I can not get into the community centre I get a sandwich and red bull from the garage and dine in my car while I check football scores. The community hall gets opened and we all get in and set up the table and chairs. Today there are nine of us and my poem get read third and is kindly received.

Twenty three and a half
By twenty three and a half inches.
A measuring tape.
Two laptops and stands
With mouse and mat, top layer.
Down.
Used envelop, deceased RAC card,
Hard drives, external.
Hair band, rubber band, box cutter,
Ear buds, biro, gimlet.
USB stick, glasses, glasses reading,
Bulldog clip, paper clip, expended paracetamol.
Paper note, post office receipt, postage stamps.
Sticky note flags, silver ring box, 
Remote and coffee glass;
Almost overlooked the fifty pence pieces, rare.
This is the archaeology of a dying life,
Or, another instillation by Tracey.

								349. 03-08-2023 @ 10:30

After Tracey Emin. Guide price £50,000. If you think £50,000 is a joke, remember Tracey Emin’s bed installation went for £2,400,000 purportedly representing her struggle with a period of severe emotional flux, so I reckon that wrestling with stage 4 cancer got to be worth at least £50,000. You see how absurd the world is and must not be taken seriously.

My back up poem was a lighter one, but not inconsequential, which I might share next time.

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.

The session moves on and we read and discuss more poems. The variety is stimulating and the discussions are full of interesting new knowledge as people struggle to bring experiences together. I learnt that looking to have ones “ashes hauled” is a medieval way of saying having sex. There was apparently a woman called Elizbeth Heyrick who lead a women’s campaign against slavery before it was outlawed. Because women were disenfranchised and had no voice they made work bags on which they sewed symbols and slogans that supported the anti-slavery movement. The session comes to an end and we pack up the furniture before I drive home.

The house is locked up when I get home so I get myself set on the sofa and start to draft the blog to the accompaniment of a woman’s football match in the background. My partner returns and we eat a simple tea before watching England play South Africa in the Rugby World Cup. They lose by a single point. I watch Strictly on catch up and then down my night meds before going to bed.

Friday again and I wake after a dreamless less night. I do not dwell in bed, which is lucky as I get the last two slices of bread to have with my eggs this morning. I watch the news on TV and see that both bi-elections have been won by Labour. There are the usual claims and counter claims about turnout and 13 years of failing government. The last time it was “13 years of Tory mismanagement” when Harold Wilson got in for Labour. Theses things come around again if you wait long enough, it would appear that 13 years is as long as the British public can tolerate any one party being in power. Due to these “historic” swings to Labour the coming year year will be nothing but wen the next general election will be. I think I might choose to cut down radically on my screen time.

My partner tries to go to her physio appointment but finds that storm Babet has flooded the roads on the way so she returns. Fortunately we live on a hill and do not get flood but every road out of the village has dips in them that can flood at times. I decide I have to train today and get into my gear. I really do not feel like it but I know that I must make the effort. My anxiety about doing so is quite high but I must overcome them. In the garage I settle down on the rower and set myself to go for 45 minutes. My hope is it will earn my enough PSI points to get me over the 100 mark. I start out very tentatively almost waiting for something to happen. As I warm up I get into a rhythm and manage the 45 minutes. Its a poor distance and lower than usual calories but given this is the first session in 9 days it will have to do.

I take a few minutes to record the session and indulge in a Rowntree’s Fruit Pastille lolly, my latest addiction. They have replaced chocolate, cakes and biscuits. Any early afternoon bath is next on the list and I am soon sloshing about and sinking back to listen to the lunch time concert on Radio 4. It is a delicious and relaxing time. I really should do this more often.

I do a set of post training vitals and get comfortable to have a nap but find that the afternoon concert on Radio 4 is Schubert’s 9th symphony, a bit of a cracker so I just lay back and let the music wash over me. My partner thinks I fell asleep but I know she looked in on me twice. This is what retirement is about, or at least one of the things. By the time the concert is over I’m peckish, so I indulge in cheese, oatcakes and pickled onions, another joy of retirement. I continue to read The Good Place and Philosophy and I am fascinated to learn that someone has done experiments with children to see what they would do with the “Trolley Dilemma”. Basically a train is going down a track out of control and is going to kill five people but it can avoid doing so by diverting down a side track with only one person on it and killing them. You can divert the train, so what would you do? This is what a two year old did.

Who said philosophy can’t be fun. I continue to read till early evening when I eat tea with my partner, draft the blog and settle down to watch the first world cup rugby semi final between New Zealand and Argentina. It turns out to be a rout with New Zealand wining massively. A quick burst of Have I Got News For You and I am downing my night meds and heading for bed. Tomorrow is Poetry Stanza day so I guess I’ll be out and about this week after all.

Thursday and I am awake early after a night of dreams. For some reason I was sitting an exam which I was not happy about to the extent that I chopped my desk and chair up and fashioned a galleon with offence slogan on the sails. At this point I woke. I thought about going back in but decided to spend some time checking my emails and messages. I ended up doing quite a lot of business before finally getting out of bed and having breakfast.

I tidied a bit, cleared the kitchen and then read for a bit. At lunch time there was bacon sandwiches and then more reading. I settled in the sunshine of the lounge and wrote a letter to an old colleague who I had not heard from for a while and then popped over to the post office to sent my letter on its way and pick up a paper. The short walk left me breathless, concerningly so. I rested doing the crosswords and letting myself calm down. Outside in the garden the Michaelmas daisies are providing nectar for the bees and butterflies. And rooks are taking advantage of the bird feeder.

I rest and try to decide which poem to take to the poetry Stanza this Saturday. Its a choice between something flippant related to my waist size or something a little more pithy about my cancer. Once I make my choice I rest more until tea before once again settling down to draft the blog to a background of NCIS while my partner is having her weekly singing lesson. I feel another early night coming on. I do not feel clever and place my faith in rest and sleep. I have a trip to make next week, a poetry stanza to attend and some birthday planning to do alongside the continuing saga of my sisters estate. Time to eat the elephant one bite at a time.

Wednesday and I wake with a sense of relief and feeling better than I have done for a few days. It is a good feeling to have sold the house in London both in terms of managing my sisters estate and psychologically. Collectively the executors of my sisters estate were anxious that with the state of the market it could have been a difficult and drawn out process that took us into a winter and all that would mean for maintaining an empty house. Thankfully that has been avoided and is now someone else’s problem. They are probably planning to rip the guts out of it as I type this but I really do not care. Mostly I am pleased to be rid of the weight of it and the associations it held for me. It feels as if I have finally cut the ties to a place I could not wait to get off when young and sever my ties completely with London, a place I left with no regrets at all. All that remains now is the tedious flog through the rigmarole of tax returns and dealing with HMRC. I am quietly hopeful that the tax consultant hired by the solicitor will sort that out.

I have breakfast and clear the kitchen as usual and then take a brief time to start the blog before going to the Shed to start writing letters and thinking about next Saturdays Poetry Stanza meeting, which is face to face. I also realise that I am down to my last stamp, which in my world is a crisis. So it seems that my day’s priorities fall neatly into a to do list of, write, stamps, exercise and rest.

Over the day I manage to spend time in my Shed and write letters, replenish my stamp reserves and provide fish and chips for my partner who has visited her mother in the afternoon and wrestled with the impenetrability of the banking system. No training as by the afternoon had rolled round I was knackered, this is clearly a low spoon day. So I make no apology for a short and bland blog today, some days are just difficult and less inspiring than others. Although I woke up quite chipper I have declined quite quickly today, one can never tell how its going to go on any one day. I shall watch Race Across The World and then take my meds and take myself to bed with a book. I get another shot at it tomorrow.

Tuesday and I wake up to a silent house as the household has gone to work, so I have time to appreciate the warmth of the winter duvet. I am still sore from yesterdays injections so I take my time getting up. I decide to walk to the village co-op for a paper and then to the village café. Getting a paper goes well but I am thwarted for breakfast by the café being closed till the 26th. Back home I resort to muesli, coffee and the crosswords. Out of the blue an email comes in telling me that the sale of the house in London as part of my sisters estate as been completed.

There is an immediate relief that this has been accomplished and then there is a flurry of paperwork to do. I send several emails tying up loose ends and asking for clarifications on tax points. Thus my afternoon disappears as I print of copies of statements and file them. My partner returns from work and we move into the evening. I watch England beat Italy and qualify for next years European championships. The blog gets drafted while the TV plays out the news in the background. I am tired from yesterdays injections and will take my night meds and go to bed early hoping that tomorrow I will be able to train and reflect on being free of my childhood home in London and all the baggage that came with it.

Monday, Jab Monday, so I’m awake at 7 o’clock and trying to surface. My partner brings me coffee and toast to get me going, which it does. I get up and sort out my clothes, its got got to be a T shirt as I’m having my B12 jab as well as my regular cancer jab to day so there needs to be easy arm access. I choose my fuck cancer T short that was made for me by a friend. It acts as a bit of armour against how I feel. Today is is going to be different as it will be the first time I have had to wear a mask to the GP in months. The GP has messaged his flock to say masks are now a thing again due to the new strain of COVID virus that is going around. Fortunately I saw the message and immediately bought a new stock of masks. So I get to the GP on time and have no chance to read before the nurse beckons me in to the clinical room. We chat about the chilly weather while she mixes up my injection and then she pops it into me. The B12 goes in my arm straight after. I cannot book my next one as the system is not loaded up to my next date so a reminder has to go in my diary. I leave the surgery feeling less than chipper but buy a paper on the way home.

Once home I settle down to do the crosswords and puzzles in the paper, I’m cold and turn the heating on for the first time this year. I read an article where the nhs had recommended that homes should be kept at 18 degrees, the thermometer that I had taken round the house had shown that the house was around 15 degrees. No wonder I am cold. My injection days always get worse over 48 hours before I feel better so I want to be warm, I’m tired of being snifferly and feeling chilly all day. So stuff the bill and the fact that its sunny outside the house needs warming through and so do I. I try to get onto my website to draft the blog but get thrown out several times so I give that up and arrange to see friends in December for a meal. I move onto the Amazon website to try and explain that the delivery they say has been delivered yesterday has not, the chatbot was polite and suggest I wait a coupe of days to see if stuff turns up. I’ll go with that as I only order the items yesterday and the tracking says they were delivered yesterday, so chatbot could be right this time.

I have soup for lunch to warm me up and to help with the sense of constipation I’m experiencing, which I think and hope is just a side effect of the paracetamol I am taking to stave off the effects of todays jabs, but just in case I have a laxative at hand. I finally get onto my blog site and begin to draft todays edition but as I sit here typing I can feel my injection site becoming sore. Its the usual process, the site increases in soreness, I take paracetamol and a couple of hours later I start to feel like a withdrawing junkie, cold, shaky and as if I am going down with flu. I’d prefer to be more Christopher Robin and go down with Alice but it is what it is. I settle down for the afternoon and will read some more David Sedaris. I should train as my PSI points have dropped below 100 but I can tell I might not feel chipper enough today to do that.

The day got better when the solicitor dealing with my sisters estate emailed to say the buyer is ready to exchange and to complete this week and was asking for the go ahead. Of course I said yes but as always one does not jump for joy until the the curtain rings down and the final bow is taken. When it does, if it does, then I can breathe an immense sigh of relief. For now my evening comes to an end with meds having finished reading my David Sedaris book. As I slide into the night I feel myself slipping into my post injection withdrawing junkie state.