I get up at a reasonable time for a Tuesday and go for a toast breakfast to go with my first fresh coffee of the day. Morning meds get swallowed and then its into the life admin that needs doing. There is a little financial juggling to do and a Tesco order to get booked in for Monday. The world is then my mollusc to plunder. I’m feeling a bit “floaty” and put it down to the fresh coffee. I get myself outside world ready and drive to the local garage to fill the tank and check the tyres. I’m still feeling “floaty” but I fill the car, pay and then get the air line to work using the touch pad. I checked later and found it was still charging me a pound for the air, not that I am paranoid and think that the garage would use the automation of the payment method to fleece me.

Back home I find my partner preparing to go for her lunchtime walk and decide to accompany her. We walk around the village and buy a paper on the way. It used to be a regular routine but it lapsed so now that Spring is putting in an appearance I suspect it will be reinstituted. At the end of the walk I settle down to complete the crosswords. Today I am on fire and skip through the puzzles. There is a little more life admin to do but it quickly becomes time to be thinking about training. Its the last thing I want to do or feel like but I get into my kit and head for the garage. I take a zen approach and decide to do this hour with my eyes closed and to concentrate on my breathing. Its hard work but I eventually manage to get into a rhythm. In the end I get there and burn off 750+calories and manage to get over the 12 kilometre distance.

As I am going out tonight I indulge in a bath with a happy hippo bath bomb. Its good to soak, bollocks to talking, soaking is much better at times. I feel renewed and clean in a fresh smelling way as I get my “going out for a meal” clothes on, As its to be a local pup, clean jeans and underwear will do. I get myself ready and before settling on the sofa to draft the blog I check the hog canteen (Fort Hog). The meat dish is empty once again so I refill it and batten down the lid once again. Apparently those hogs that wake early need some extra sustenance to help them through as their natural food sources may not be in plentiful supply yet. So job done I draft todays blog and wait for friends to pick us up and whisk us away to eat. As it’s Shrove Tuesday I am hoping that pancakes will be a pudding special. I am feeling weary but will enjoy tonight. Tomorrow I travel to York to see people and will need to pack and organise early in the morning so I am hoping that staying off the coffee tonight will enable me to sleep soundly. I am though still coming up with lines for my poem that started in my dreams, which contains no letter “e”.

Monday and I come to the surface very quickly. It does not feel like I slept all night. I have recollections of spikey dreams and of a long and interrupted sequence of trying to construct a poem without the letter “e”. Lines like Radio Roland FM band, and switch and dial in my hand, kept coming and going. This was clearly still a consequence of the Poetry Stanza experience working its way through my processes. There were other snippets of situations, one being a visit to poetry fare that is due to take place in March at the University my daughter works at, and then I was in the Ukraine with awesome powers turning back the Russian armies. The crescendo of this snippet was me standing in Red Square demolishing the Kremlin. It was all very spectacular. I am of course aware of the layers that are being worked through in all of this, I just wish my unconscious mind did not do it quite as vividly and keep waking me up. The consequence of this is that I wake groggily and not feeling like getting up at all. I decide not to and settle down to read the final chapters of the Anansi Boys. My partner brings me coffee but I persist until the hero and his son sing songs with a mermaid and life returns to happy. At that point it was time to get up and have breakfast for lunch.

Muesli and yogurt fill me up, more coffee sustains me and washes my late morning meds down. My partner departs to take her brother on some life admin tasks for their mother. I, now bookless, download the garden camera images of the hedgehog, who is now definitely not hibernating. I replace the camera and replenish the hog canteen before clearing the human kitchen and retreating to the sofa. I dabble with my social media and messages while the British indoor athletics championships provide TV wall paper. In the end I head for the village shop to buy pizzas and a paper for tonight’s tea. Once home I retreat to lazing on the bed to for the crosswords, which is where my partner finds me on her return. Apart from ordering more hedgehog food I’ve done nothing today that the world would see as productive, intellectually stimulating or slightly interesting. Its clear I am having a day out, perhaps tomorrow will be different, in fact it will be as we are dining with friends in the evening. For now I plan nothing for the evening but to draft the blog, watch a Vera, take my meds and go to bed in the hope that the waters of my mind have calmed down a bit and I can get to sleep.

Sunday and it an early coffee and chat before getting up for breakfast. I weigh my self as is my Sunday ritual. To my surprise I had lost weight and was down to 97.3 kilos. It is a struggle to keep reducing my weight. I cannot train as hard as I used to and I find it increasingly difficult to refuse sweet treats as my motivation dips more than before. The morning was spent clearing the decks and getting ready to go veg shopping. As usual we drove our local garden centre and bought our weeks supply of fruit and veg and topped up our cold meat supply. For once we actually bought garden requirements in the form of packets of flower seeds. Its time to start sowing this years colours.

Once the mornings shopping is stowed away my partner and I wave our eldest off to Harry Potter World accompanied by the wife of one of my nephews, we then head for the local park to feed the ducks. Today the ducks were just not interested in what we had to offer and we ended up walking the park and looking for any hungry ducks. There were some duck couples in the smaller ponds who finally ate what we had to offer.

Being walked out I drive home and check the garden. Spring is definitely knocking on the door and everywhere I look there are new blooms and buds everywhere. Here is a selection of the gems that are appearing in my garden.

I open up my greenhouse and take out the posts of Echinacea that I have been over wintering. Some of them have started to show new growth, others have either died in the ground or are not ready to grow yet. I decide to bring them out into the garden in their pots and to see if they are going to respond to my perception of spring starting. I refill the bird feeders and top up the squirrel feeder. With these things done I replenish the hedgehog canteen. Tomorrow need to check the garden camera and check to see if I am feeding the hedgehog or next doors cat, or both.

With these jobs out of the way I settle down to watch the women’s England football team beat the Italians, when it came to it I chose this over a rugby match on the laptop. With the end of the game I start the drafting of the blog. It has been a strange day as all day the poetry stanza experience has remained with me. The essence is that I have been left feeling like I felt when I was as school and being dyslexic. It is one of exclusion by dint of not knowing what the rules are or the language of the club. As like the school experience I have the sense that I am being hoodwinked and with hindsight I was. I’m fairly sure that the poetry industry is a continuation of the school illusion. I never joined the education club or the therapy club so I am fairly sure I’m not going to join the poetry club.

My evening will be quiet. The Tesco order will get done, I will finish reading the Anansi Brothers, take my meds and go to bed, but still with the one poem that hooked me at Saturday’s stanza.

Saturday and I wake with Stanza on my mind. My partner and I have coffee, chat and plan the weekend. We get up for a bacon bagel breakfast and then I am getting myself ready to go off to the poetry Stanza. Before I can go there is the garden guy to chat to and the hedgehog to feed. That done I take to the road and drive to the community hall where the Stanza are meeting. There are ten of us. Of the ten I feel I am the lesser poet, not because I am but because the group makes me feel ignorant, like a neophyte in group therapy. It feels like I’m the only one who does not know the rules or the language. It takes me back to the idiot boy at school who could not write and found relief in be delinquent. Old patterns begat new delinquency. I try to fit in, make sensible observations, be kind and try my best but no I cannot resist so I play a bit. However there is one poem that takes me by surprise which is intimate and touching. I listen to the group talk about it and I cannot escape the sense that they are grappling with stuff out of reach. I do comment but it is no where close to what I want to say as I fear slipping into being a therapist again. I leave at the end feeling like I have no way into this club.

Home and I find my partner has cooked tea as the friends we were going for a meal with have cried off due to illness of one of them. We eat and then I start to draft the blog while the TV provides wall paper. The evening stretches out in front of me with only the football highlights to illuminate the end of the tunnel. Time to read Anansi Boys and to sleep.

Friday and I wake up early feeling decidedly groggy. No idea why unless yesterdays scan is having an effect. I get up do breakfast, coffee and meds and then run off the tickets for the Ballet Rambert Peaky Blinders performance in May that have arrived in my in box. I move through the first part of the morning slowly and pack my kit for the gym. By 11 o’clock I am on my way to train.

The gym on a Friday morning is full, mostly aqua aerobics, but by the time I arrive it is thinning out and by the time I clamber onto a cross trainer there is barely anyone else in the gym. I plug in my i-pod and select Web, a modern didgeridoo electronic beat fusion that a friend gave me on retuning from Australia. Its odd but has a good rhythm to train to. I set the controls for the full hour at my usual resistance level and set off. Its hard work but the beat of the Web tracks keep my going. In the end its is a good session but I am knackered. I wonder how my body is going to respond.

I feel the effort of the session as I walk round the gym floor to cool down and recover. I rest for a while on a press bench and take a selfie out of curiosity about what I look like post session. Its not a pretty sight I decide, but for the brave here it is. Note the Scottish ice hockey jersey, quite a rarity.

After spending time cooling down I return to the changing room via the toilet where I discover that my body has once again decide to piss blood in my urine. Its not much, but it is clear that there is a limit to how long I can do on a cross trainer, clearly an hour is too long. It has been quite happy with a 50 minute session. Lesson noted. I shower and change and go to the lounge to drink coffee, water and lunch on an egg and bacon roll. I settle in and continue to read Anansi Boys. Afternoon coffee and a cookie follows as I read on. I was not sure about this book but as it goes on it gets better and better. Four o’clock rolls round so I head home.

Once home I dump my kit, change into my lounging attire and start to draft the blog. Tea follows and more blog drafting to a background of TV news. The evening has rugby, Death in Paradise, and more reading to offer. What ratio I take them in will be a mystery till it happens. I have copies of my stanza poem to run off to take to tomorrows meeting. Apart from that I just hope to sleep well tonight.

Thursday and I wake to an empty house and my first thought is “Scan.” No breakfast allowed only water so I wander about sipping water, taking my meds and finally filling in my scan forms. There are some basics to do of course beyond clearing the kitchen, which includes feeding the hedgehog, but majorly is the need to get myself hospital clean and presentable. An odd ritual but deeply ingrained. So its a long shower, hair wash and general brushing up, all the time sipping water and wondering if I have time to do my washing and get out to dry. I have several kind messages wishing me luck for the scan, which is very kind of people and appreciated. Finally I am ready and fill the waiting time with drafting the days blog and reading more of the Anansi Boys.

I drive to the PET-CT centre at the hospital. Before I book in I go to the main hospital shop and buy a sandwich and a couple of chocolate bars for recovery after the scan, I am already hungry. I book in at reception and get handed a medical history form. Its full of questions I cannot answer accurately but consult my blog for some exact dates. I hand it in and wait to be called. A short while later I am called forward and introduced to my scan technician. He takes me to isolation room 3. He checks some in formation and then tells me the routine. Its all straight forward except I have to sit for two hours not one to let the irradiated glucose get into my system. There is a slight hitch in that the injection that left Nottingham an hour ago had not arrived yet but my chap puts the catheter in my arm anyway and then leaves me to wait in my isolation room with the instruction to use the “hot toilet” if I needed to. I settle down and read Anansi Boys. The injection arrives and my chap pops it into my arms and scurries off. I lay on the clinical couch an read for the next two hours. A nurse appears and sends me to the “hot toilet” and then to follow her into the scan room. She settles me on the scan bed and tells me what happens, that it will take 25 minutes and then left me. I do what I always do I close my eyes, try to relax and let myself drift. I drift so far that I think I wake myself snoring. Soon the whirring and clicking stops and I get played the “your done” jingle. The nurse releases back into the world and I immediately eat the sandwich from my back pack as I walk to the car park. I drive home nibbling a bounty bar and craving a coffee.

Once home my first action is to make a fresh coffee and let myself flop on the sofa for a few minutes. I retrieve my washing from the machine and hang it up and then eat tea. Its Thursday so my partner goes to her singing lesson and I settle down to watch the England women’s football team beat South Korea. The game ends and as I return to the blog a friend messages me with the advert for the Ballet Rambert’s Peaky Blinders ballet. I get onto the website and find that its going to be at the Birmingham Hippodrome in May so I book tickets there and then. It will make a good spring day in May. So now I finish the blog for the day and tomorrow I get back to trying to reclaim my body, it tiring.

Wednesday and I wake early and do my daily phone life admin while I drink a coffee. I add a Tesco order to that task list and very quickly life is sorted. All I have to do now is eat breakfast, take my meds and I am ready to select this months poem for the Stanza meeting on Saturday (a face to face meeting) and read the instructions for tomorrows PET-CT scan. At the moment I know that I cannot train within 24 hours of the scan so I will be training this morning. So the day is off to a flyer and to my delight I get a message that my new Neil Gaiman novel is only two stops away, so my idle pre scan time is now filled. Life can be good at times. I look over some whiskeys and select one as a birthday present for an old colleague of mine. It might arrive slightly early but I think better early than late.

My new Neil Gaiman book, Anansi Boys, arrives before I leave to go to the garage to train. I am very tempted to start to read but I know I must not get hooked so I grit my teeth and go to the garage.

I settle into the rower and set myself up for an hours row at my soft level. It goes okay, I burn off 800+ calories and go more than 12 kilometres. My new fit bit tells me that I have a 231 PAI (100 PAI necessary for an increased chance of avoiding heart disease, and a whole host of other conditions that fitness wards off) and the same App tells me my fitness age is now down to 45! I am beginning to believe that I am the fittest stage four meta static prostate cancer guy around for my actual age, but I know that some where a fellow fighter will be running an ultra marathon across a desert with only Kenda Mint Cake and a thimble full of water to survive on, so I’ll try to get over myself.

Post session I bring the bins in and then change into my casual reading lounge wear and feed myself chicken soup and cherries. Nothing left now but an afternoon of reading, feeding the hedgehog, or at least checking the hedgehog canteen. I know there is a football match to watch tonight while my partner is out with a friend dining but I suspect Anansi Boys might divert me. That and trying to decide which, if any, poem I take to the Stanza on Saturday.

I was right about Anansi Boys diverting me but I did decide on my poem for the Stanza this month. I copy it here as it is related to both poetry and cancer. Its night meds for me and then bed before tomorrows adventure scan.

I can’t write,
I’m uninspired,
It’s the cold,
the sleet
that hangs around 
my heart.
Somehow, I am not working, 
frozen and iced up.
The world holds no interest,	
no flow or inspiration.
So, this is winter 
Snowed in and
Snowed under.
When I lose my poetry
I’ve lost engagement,
I no longer notice,
I’m emotionally immobile.
It is a little death,
the other end of orgasm.
Around me the world is 2D
And reality is debatable,
Nothing tugs, knocks, impinges,
I’m hard wrapped in a shell.
Inside are unmet needs
that dare not say their names, 
and the Dark and Tricky
ripples ominously, whispering,
“You are mine”.
Gone are the days 
When a brandy and a decent shag
would see the world right.
This is what being at war
with cancer in your balls
does to you.
Fuck cancer?
I should be so lucky.

Monday, I wake to an empty house, eat breakfast, take my meds and then do very little for the rest of the day. All I did was the following:

1. Write letters all morning in the Shed.
2. Read Neverwhere from lunch till 0:48 Tuesday morning.
3. Occasional WhatsApp messages.
4. Took the Tesco order in, hurray I will not starve for another week.
5. Fed the hedgehog.

That’s it. Took my night meds and slept with a head full of book.

Tuesday, breakfast meds and more reading. Ignoring Valentines Day, just another commercial crap fest. I shall fill my partners car with petrol, what could be better in these days of grey austerity and joyless world? I note that this Saturday is a Poetry Stanza meeting and also that I have not had the usual email asking for contributions, so my Dark and Tricky slips into paranoid mode, ridiculous of course but that’s me for you. I send a reasonable email to check my paranoia and whether I’ve got the date right.

Email does the trick, the Stanza is confirmed. I then read a WhatsApp post from a friend who describes the argument she just had with herself about going swimming and the internal tussle that went on to get her to the pool. This was serendipitous as I was having that vey argument with myself as to whether to go to the gym or not. Like her I won the argument with my SELF and got ready to go and do a session. My SELF can be a real pain in the arse at times but in general I am quite fond of my SELF as it seems to be generally trying to get me to be kind to myself. I drive to the gym filling my partners car on the way. I do a session on a cross trainer and work one or two weights machines. Its a reasonable session to start the week with.

I sit in the club lounge post session drinking coffee and eating a bacon roll while reflecting that I feel much better for making the effort. I had made a comment to a friend earlier in the day that “life had been a bit heavy to lug about” over the last couple of days. The lesson is always the same, if I make the effort I feel better for it I although this time I think I am dragging some anxiety about my PET-CT on Thursday around with me. I’m not sure what is the best outcome, whether it is “better” to have cancer that is “chunky” enough to “spot weld” or not. If not then it comes back to reliance on the available drugs, and the new one does not sound too much fun. My guess is this is part of what I am “lugging ” around. I drive home, put the bins out and change into my “Bedroom Athletics” woolly boots and lounge pants before doing todays crossword. While my partner fixes tea I catch up on drafting the blog. I’ve already ordered my next Neil Gaiman novel, Anansi Boys, another novel in the American Gods series, so I suspect I shall be immersed in that when it arrives tomorrow. In the meantime I have to decide which poem, if any, to present to the Poetry Stanza group on Saturday. My recent stuff is quite personal but I guess it is what it is and I am where I am so I guess they will get it. I have toll Thursday to decide and send it off, if at all. There is a football match to watch tonight and then I will go to bed early to make up for last nights readathon.

Sunday and I wake to the sound of household chores being done. I’m slow to get up but when I do I am greeted with a bacon sandwich and coffee. Of course I weigh myself before I eat and wish I had not. I weigh in at 98.6 kilos. I am disappointed as my weight was going down during the week. I feel a mixture of anger at myself and irritation with myself. Post sandwich I while away time knowing that the rugby I want to watch is on later.

My partner and I face time our youngest daughter. We chat for a while and talk about cars and the possible options going forward. After the call my partner and I spend time researching cars and thinking through options. There is a little time before the rugby starts so I gather up the garden camera and begin to check it with little expectation of anything exciting. To my delight and surprise the hedgehog appears. My hog is out of hibernation! This is worthy of a whoop and a skip. From the camera I ascertain that the hog is out and about quite a lot, but the 20th of January is the day the hog has chosen to remerge from his winter sleep, so Spring is on the way.

The rugby starts and I stop everything to watch the match. Its a good match and worth the effort to watch. Half time arrives and by chance Amazon deliver my new slippers and a book. I watch the second half of the game in my new and very cosy slippers.

With the joy of cosy feet I watch England beat Italy and then turn my attention back to sorting out the pictures from the garden camera. The hog is very active and going to the hog canteen so I will need to get some food into the canteen tomorrow and ensure my hog gets a good wake up meal. I start to read my new book as tea is being prepared. Its another Neil Gaiman novel, his first, Neverwhere. Within two pages I am intrigued.

I eat tea and then draft the blog as the TV provides wallpaper and my partner goes for a bath. There is time to drift through, a Tesco order to revamp and then the tricky decision of whether to watch the Super Bowl or not. Tricky decision as the actual sport content is good but all the typical American fanning farting and fucking about that surrounds it makes it a marathon not a football game. The coming week brings my PET-CT scan, I need to focus and train.

Saturday and I am awake with a hot coffee to hand. I reflect on the discovery of Vests, yes vests. Its been a bit of a revelation brought on by higher energy costs. In an effort to control energy bills I took heed of the “Layers” mantra that was being espoused by various sources, mostly cosy comfortable MPs and ministers along with well heeled media types, (over to our cost of living correspondent). Of course the media go tot me adn I rummaged through my cupboard of “clothes in waiting”. When I find things I like I tend to buy more than one pair and keep a pair “in waiting”. In amidst shirts, socks and pants I found a three pack of vests. I’ll give those I try I think to myself and what a good idea that turned out to be. It seems that a vest tucked in and fitting snuggly against the skin works like a wet suit trapping a layer of medium and allowing it to warm up from the bodies heat. It was a real find and I now have a solid stock of vests which I would not be without. I calculate that it has delayed the onset of heating switch on by at least a few hours a day, so the saving from a pack of cheapo Primark vests is significant. That was my wake up reflection and early morning coffee thoughts. I’m sure other people wake up to similar early morning reflections or perhaps the rest of the world is to busy with the Real World to have time for such cognitive fripperies. Perhaps its one of the jewels of retirement that I have the time adn inclination for such reflections. It was during one of these reflective moments after seeing Stuart Lee that I came across Daniel Kitson’s material on the wonder of pidgeons and Billy Connolly’s story of a dwarf on a Glasgow bus, both on YouTube if you fancy frittering some time away in comedy.

So eventually I get up to a peanut butter bagel and more coffee, feed the dishwasher, put my laundry in and settle down to start todays blog, having waved my partner off to the hairdresser. So I ease into todays blog with the sound of Linton Kwesi Johnson’s Victory album playing. I understand now why my friend who recommended it also said it was a “bit spikey.” All of this is the precursor to the real business of today and that is to watch the six nations rugby internationals that are on TV today. I have no doubt that other things like vegetable shopping and overseeing the garden guy who is supposed to be arriving today and a host of other “stuff” required for modern day living is going to arise but in essence today is a rugby day. This is closely followed by keeping my PAI score above 200, which means I will have to train at some point to gain the PAI points I need to do this. Apparently my fitness age score places me at 47! If only I had a portrait in the attic.

Well the garden guy arrived and sorted out another flower bed in the back garden and drove off happy at about twelve thirty. I wash the cutlery holder in the kitchen draw make lunch before my partner returns from her hair appointment. We dash off to the garden centre to shop for fruit and veg before returning to a giant sausage roll and the rugby on TV. What a game between the Irish and the French, a really good game of rugby. For once the Irish win and win in style. There is barely any time before the next match between Scotland and Wales. Another good game which surprisingly Scotland win. Well its been an exciting afternoon and early evening and neither I or my partner can be arsed to cook so we resort to a takeaway. An evening of Indian food, Midsomer Murders and football highlights ensues. I’ve not trained so will regret it at weigh in tomorrow but right now I’m full of good food and kindness to myself. I am also marginally excited at the prospect of receiving my new slippers and more tantalising, a new Neil Gaiman novel, Neverwhere, his first novel. I’m interested to see how he started out. For now its night meds and bed.