Sunday and I am awake first so make the drinks for my partner and I. I weigh myself as its Sunday expecting a post holiday blob weight so I am chuffed when I come in at 97.2 kilos. Its clear the holiday walks and restraint on the food front have proved their worth. My partner and I chat for a while and then have bacon sandwiches for breakfast. We make our usual face to face call with our youngest daughter, and have the pre birth chat about appropriate visits by newly proud grandparents. So we now have a time table of sorts for the coming week and are able to be responsible grandparents. Post call my partner and I go shopping at our local garden centre, where we watch the butcher spatchcock a chicken in expert fashion. Its raining yet again and it feels like winter is coming early, ridiculous, but that’s how it feels.

Once home I settle down to watch the men’s final at Wimbledon. Its a long affair as Djokovic and Alcaraz begin to slog it out. By the time they they get to a set all I am getting “itchy” to train, I figure that the way things were going in the tennis they will still be at it buy the time I have trained. I get into my kit and go to the garage to find the display on the rower was dead. I spend time sorting out the wiring and put in new batteries and Bingo! it springs back into life. I climb on the rower and set off for my first row for what feels like a long time. It is a slow row and I am trying to be gentle with myself to start with as I dread inducing blood in my urine. I keep a regular pace and I am happy to get to the end feeling reasonably well. I’ve not smashed it out of the park but it will do.

Djokovic and Alcaraz are still slogging it out by the time I get back to the sofa to record my session. Ultimately Alcaraz wins out 3 sets to 2, which comes at a timely moment as the evening meal is ready. The family dines and we slip into the evening and I draft the blog. I am curious to see how I slip back into some sort of post holiday routine, I have letters to write, training to do and I need to keep going with my poetry project. Its a vanity project really, or at least my poetry stanza chums would say so, but it still needs me to put some work in produce a word count before I can price a manuscript to publish.

Saturday, awake late but early enough to make my partner a warm drink to wake up to. There is much lazing and chatting before I finally get up and have breakfast and morning meds. I set about tidying up post holiday chaos and set my laptops up ready for the weeks to come. This takes a while and then I and my partner play car shuffle on the drive so she and my eldest daughter can go to the gym and I get on with putting a curry in the Crockpot for tonight’s meal. That done I slip into my new birthday ice hockey jersey from a friend, its really good and fits like a dream.

I log on to the poetry stanza meeting. There is eleven of us, and as far as I can make out I am the only one that has never been published, that’s in a literary sense. All the book chapters and journal papers count for nothing here. The meeting lasts four hours and it is interesting how people give and take in the group, its all very polite but there is real criticism and also real appreciation. My effort was received okay.

We end just past 5 o’clock and my partner and eldest daughter have returned from the gym. I head for the garden for the first time since returning from holiday to refill the bird feeders and the squirrel feeder. The garden is being battered by high winds but some new flowers have appeared, notably some big lily and some small roses.

The family dines on the curry put in earlier and settle into the evening. I watch the strong winds continue to batter the garden and fear for the plastic greenhouse. This evening is a free form evening, by which I mean I will see what comes along, possibly read, possibly watch something on TV, perhaps reread letters or simply give myself up to whatever comes along. Whatever happens I will inevitably be taking my night meds and seeing what happens.

I wake up this Friday and note the rain, I notice I am slightly smug for the decision to return from holiday a day early and avoid the long drive in this weather. My partner brings me a coffee in bed having showered and we plan the day. I unpack and then put the car back to normal having had breakfast. I drive my partner and eldest daughter to town where they go off to buy haberdashery while I saunter off in the rain to the hospital pharmacy to collect my chemo drugs. I give my name and details and then take a seat in the waiting area. I think I am in for a long wait and settle down into my meditative waiting stance. In this I abandon my phone and half doze with just half an ear open for my name. People come and go and I just wait, it takes me back to my waiting days working in therapeutic communities. To my surprise my name gets called quite quickly. The drugs are more or less shoved at me and my details checked. I walk off into the rain with my drugs carefully stowed in my shoulder bag, taken specifically for the purpose of carrying my drugs.

Back at the car park I stow my drugs in the boot and ring my partner. I head into town and meet my partner and eldest daughter in a small Italian café that had just lost its power. My eldest daughter goes off to the gym and I take my partner to the Italian restaurant round the corner for lunch. The food is good and we chat about how we are and what is coming our way over the next couple of weeks. Having downed my pasta I indulged in a decaf coffee and the biggest cannoli I’ve ever seen. At the back of my mind is the intention to resume my pre holiday ban on sweets and treats, I need to get back to my discipline and resolve.

Once home I sort out my drugs wallets for the next two weeks adding in my chemo tablets, so tonight my night meds will include the start of a new round of chemo. I can feel myself losing spoons so I start to draft the blog while watching Alcaraz demolish Medvedev in men’s semi final at Wimbledon. Still it rains and still it is dull and grim.

There is much to do still to organise my space and fully get control of my environment to get back on track but initially I need to prepare for tomorrows poetry Stanza. This month it is a zoom meeting so I need to set up the office for tomorrow afternoon. The poems this month are particularly good so despite the lack of face to face it should be an interesting meeting. So I need to print off the poems and. arrange my stanza file. That will take some of the evening, the rest of it will be resting with TV and perhaps some reading. I am aware that I am still catching up on my birthday and need time to return to all my cards and presents, I also have letters to reread and absorb.

Thursday and I wake to a cloudy sky, I do my vitals and then make drinks for myself and my partner. We decide on a simple breakfast which while we eat the weather breaks and It rains. We know that the forecast for tomorrow here and at home is for heavy rain and thunderstorms so we decide to go home today so that we do not have to drive in the rain for hours. We pack, and then visit the sea for the last time, paddling for a short while. My partner and I go for lunch in the Rockpool café and then pack the car. I shower and then we set off for home at about 13:45.

The drive gets us back home at about 19:30 , having had a stop for comfort, a stop for fuel and an unexpected stop to check the tyres, In general the drive is good but tiring. Once home I am pretty fried and spoonless. There is post and some of it are birthday cards and presents. A friend has sent me a surprise present of an ice hockey jersey, pictures to follow. My partner and I eat a simple tea and watch a film. I draft the blog and finally go to bed. Tomorrow I will try and collect my new cycle of chemo drugs and I can get going on chemo again.

Wednesday and I wake up feeling reasonable. I make drinks for my partner and me. I check my vitals and then we chat about breakfast and the day ahead. We eat croissants and strawberries before taking stock of what food we have in. The crisis is that there are only three tea bags left so shopping is a priority. I take my morning meds and then we wander off to Tesco to pick up our needs. We take the long way round and on the way we pick up presents for my partners friend and I grab some more postcards.

Back at the apartment we store the goodies and I set about the crosswords. Today I am on fire and zip through them. By lunchtime it is decided that we will have fish and chips so we wander round to the chippy for their boxed meal. Clutching the boxes we return to the apartment only to find that the mushy peas had been missed out. We managed without. Post late lunch I wrote the postcards. There will be some surprised people who have not heard from me for years and perhaps others who will be surprised by a second card. My partner and I walk to the post box and get there in time for todays post, mission accomplished we walk along the seafront path to the “haunted house” and back to the apartment. My gut does not feel right and sure enough there is blood in my urine. I am gutted, I wanted to exercise to day but cannot now, it’s becoming wearing this unpredictable symptom of god knows what. All I can do is drink water and rest.

My partner and I go to the ice cream van and sit in the evening sunshine with our 99’s and soak up the sun as we watch the tide recede and the beach gradually appear. Back at the apartment I drink more water and monitor myself while beginning to draft the blog. There has been odd emails to solicitors and agents to do today but not much else life admin. I slip into the evening where I and my partner will finish watching A Spy Amongst Friends, eat supper late and go to bed hoping for sleep to engulf the night. I’m tired already and feel drained, it feels mental as much as physical and it probably is. I’m aware that tomorrow is our last day of holiday during which we will do things for the last time this holiday, pack, perhaps load the car before going out to eat in the evening. At the end of a holiday I get twitchy and reach a point where I just want to be on my way and get home, I’ve a strange urge to row, collect my next lot of drugs, attend the poetry stanza and see my garden again. It boils down to being in control and able to manage in the space that I feel is safe. That’s the underlying anxiety associated with managing my cancer as best I can.

Tuesday I wake surprisingly perky and in a definite up yours mood. I get up and make drinks for my partner and I and take my vitals. All good I am pleased to say. I eschew reading and prefer to check my messages and mail. Nothing, so be it, I get up an dress ready to go out, for this morning I and my partner are off to the Rockpool Café for breakfast. Because we can and its a holiday. I take my morning meds before stepping out into the rain. All I can say is thankfully I had the sense to put my Heli Hanson rain wear in the car before we came.

Having taken the short step to the Rockpool we settled in at a table and ordered breakfast. My eggs Benedict with salmon and a large hot chocolate were a real treat, which I enjoyed immensely, even to the point of eating all the spinach that came with it. Such a surprise to my partner that she wondered if I had hidden it in a napkin. A good breakfast is no substitute for sunshine but this one certainly helped. After loitering in the warmth of the café we head for the shops to buy tonight’s tea and to replenish this nibbles store. It rains of course but we achieve our targets adn return to the apartment to stow the goodies adn then go out again to get stamps and some odds and ends.

Back at the apartment I settle down to do the crosswords in todays paper and to have a cup of decaf. I breeze through the cross words and move onto selecting which poem I am going to take to the Poetry Stanza on Saturday. I have some newish ones but I go for one I wrote on the Arvon course at the end of 2021. We were asked to write something in response to a New York Times short story about a man called Anders who gets himself shot dead because he laughs in a bank robbery when the robbery uses the word Capiche. I have met and worked with many of these sorts of Capiche guys so I wrote my version. I add that I never laughed out loud at them although I was inwardly amused at times.

Capiche!
Like Anders I laugh
Aping the Cat A
Walk, bow legged
Arms akimbo
Like a carpet
Deliverer having
Lost his rolls.
A tattooed strut
That says;
“Does it look like
I’ve got Victim
On my forehead?”
Hours in the gym
Putting on the armour
To ward of anyone, 
To be safe.
This is the image.
Poke your finger 
Through it and feel
The empty space.
The person so lost 
That they became the image.
This is what you see
This is what you get
Capiche?

So I send my poem off to the group and see how it goes down at Saturdays meeting over zoom. The rain breaks and the sun comes out as I finish the first drafting of todays blog content. Now is the time to dash out and walk, eat ice cream and play crazy golf in any order, or dally a while and eat cream and jam laden scones.

As it turns out I and my partner manage both a round of crazy windy golf and a walk along the back of the long natural pebble ridge that runs the length of Westwood Ho! beach. It seems that the Northam borough council has a whimsical sense of humour as they warn people not to take pebble or the elves will get them. Here is the proof.

On retuning to the apartment I check my vitals and then spend some time reading Cloud Atlas. As the sun comes out my partner and I eat our traditional Devon pasties tea. The evening stretches into continuing to watch a Spy Amongst Friends and finally to taking my night meds and heading for bed. I am finally spoonless.

Monday and I wake in a very strange state. Post dreaming of fish tanks, monkeys and mermaids, it all seemed so real and bizarre. It takes me a while to get up, when my partner makes me a defcaff coffee. Its wet, its warm, it has a vague coffeeish taste but basically its not coffee and tastes crap. It does get my intestines working and makes me crave food. We have breakfast and I take my morning meds. I am still not sure what my dreams were about, I’ll work on it later. Its raining hard and people are huddling by with hoods up and not looking kike they are having fun at all. I do my vitals, all good there and settle down to doing sod all really apart from a welcome shower, where I notice how long my hair is getting. I check my messages, my emails and other bits and bobs on the laptop. I notice I have some files in my emails that are redundant, as for instance one for some one who died a while ago and a company I did some work for. There are one or two others that need to go. So I erase them. Strangely later in the day as I walk the beach a short poem occurs to me as I ponder the going of old messages.

The pyre burns
Words to ashes
And I grieve.
Left with the 
Imperscriptibilty
Of experience.  

After much lazing about the rain abates and my partner and I got to shop for odds and ends. With limited success we called a halt and dropped into a little café for a late lunch. We decide to dine then as the tide was still going out and making room for us to walk the beach later. We ordered and waited and admired the wall paintings done on what looked like old pallets. I quite liked them.

Having eaten (note to self, body doesn’t like cucumber any more) my partner and I go shopping for tonight’s late tea, simple nibbles stuff with no cooking required, my partners plea. We return to the apartment and stow the food and try to decide what is appropriate clothing for the beach walk. Footwear is proving to be an issue and in the end I decide to use my boat shoes. So we set off across the moist sands of Westward Ho! with an eye on the leaden skies. I’m not enthusiastic but I am not training today so I make the effort. Its a walk to and back from the coast guard station. By the time I return to the jetty I am tired and by the time I am back at the apartment my feet are complaining. I change and find my feet have bled slightly where the shoes have rubbed so I discard them and settle down with the paper to do the cross words and begin to draft the blog. I do the early evening vitals and return to the blog, all the time the rain worsens and people become fewer and fewer passing our sea front patio. I suspect I will succumb to Wimbledon or a film tonight punctuated by our picnic tea at some point. Then the inevitable night meds and bed, perchance to dream again. Perhaps more mermaids as I am by the ocean.

Its Sunday my first full day without the new drugs, it feels okay. My partner brings me decaf coffee in bed and we plan the day. I do my vitals, all good and then we have breakfast against a darkening background out to sea. We go to Tesco to get a paper and tonight’s meal and then we take the long way back to the apartment to gauge the receding high tide and to see what the life guards do at that time.

Back on our patio we do crosswords and read until the the approaching downpour reaches us. Its inside for a while as we watch the heavy rain.

At this point after a conversation with my partner who complained that I did not give due credit for her hole in one on the crazy golf course yesterday, so below I post the score card. Note the mighty hole in one on the tricky 10th hole.

I continue to do crosswords and for the first time in my life actually complete a general knowledge one and pop it in an envelope to see if I can win the £1500 prize. I doubt very much that I am going to be first out of the winning correct bag. I brief lunch follows and as it is still overcast and chilly I start to draft the blog, empty the dishwasher and prepare for the beach walk that has become part of the daily routine. However due to the inclement weather my partner and I walk up to the “haunted house” and back to the now busy ice ream van where we indulge in post walk 99s.

Its afternoon vitals time, which are all good, and then I boxercise for a while just to feel I am fighting back a bit on holiday. It would seem that the freebees that come with David Lloyd membership are being useful at last. The boxercise earns me Physical Activity Intelligence points and keeps me above the 100 PAI mark, which is the level at which it is claimed people live longer if they maintain it. Got to be worth a try and it adds discipline to the one thing I can do to help myself fight cancer medication side effects. I am appalled at my loss of agility and bendiness, I have some strength (avoid being frail at all costs)and some capacity for endurance but no suppleness. I need to begin to do some yoga before I seize up completely, perhaps a retreat, time to get my friends book out and use it.

By early evening the sun comes out, England win at cricket and Westwood Ho! has the buzz of an English resort on a Sunday evening as it braces itself for the season to start properly with the release of children from learning prisons all over the country. Fresh pasta for supper tonight and probably time on the sofa with a book or TV. If I am lucky I might get to see a sunset, one of those where if you listen carefully you can hear the Shhhh as it sinks into the sea and switches night on. Mmm that what comes of seeing my first rabbit among the beach huts today whilst on our walk.

Its Saturday and last night was the last of my chemo drugs. What starts now is an interval week before my next cycle starts so I may find myself experiencing something different for a while. I make drinks for my partner and I and then do my vitals before breakfast. The tide is up so there is no morning beach walk, its time to shop for tonight’s meal. Tesco provides what we need including a paper which I take back to the apartment and extract the crosswords from.

I settle down to write postcards. Its a tradition I like and I like to try and find something to to say, I’m not sure I succeed but I give it a go. Lunch comes and goes and the tide recedes enough for an afternoon saunter down the beach. My partner and I walk for an hour up and down discussing things like who is good and bad in We Hunt Together and the related issues of keeping ones feet on one side of the line. I find the walking tiring so return to the apartment but I find all my effort has earned me very few activity points on my fitness tracker, I’ve not made the 100 points I need so despite feeling tired I take myself of to the bedroom with my phone and choose a 20 minute dance work to get my points. What follows is beyond words really. No sense of rhythm, timing or co-ordination makes for a painful experience. Yesterday I discovered my body no longer jumps and today I discovered my body has four limbs that do not seems to communicate with each other. They certainly do not have the ability to copy someone else’s dance moves. There was a lot of fumbling free styling but it earned me the points I needed to hit my 100 point goal for the day.

After my unsightly gyrations I flop on the sofa and watch the England under 21 team beat Spain in the European championship final. An interesting game in effect won by the English goal keeper saving a last minute penalty. My partner and I eat tea and then watch the final episodes of We Hunt Together. Its a sort of poor persons Killing Eve or at least the adventures of a female psychopath. There will be a second series no doubt. There is of course tennis, with English players falling by the way side. I draft the blog to the background of Pink Floyd. So this is the beginning of my chemo interval. Hopefully I might get a brief respite from the side effects of the drugs. I am not sure my body is going to thank me for the last couple of days workouts. So with these last thoughts I take myself off to bed and hopefully some sleep.

Friday, my first day into my fourth quarter of a century and I am alarmed awake by Alexa at 8 o’clock. Its a slow rise with vitals being done a coffee drunk and morning meds taken. We prepare to leave the apartment when the housekeeper arrives to give us our half way spruce up. We exchange niceties and then get on with our mission. Next door pub/B and B does breakfast till 11;30 so we pop next door and get one of their outdoor shelters and order breakfast via the scan code. Almost immediately the drinks appear and not long afterward the food arrives. Its not Cordon Bleu but hey we did not have to cook it and we can sit in the sunshine and eat while chatting and watching other people and their dog/children.

Breakfast done we return with some shopping to the apartment to find a fresh bed and clean towels. The shopping gets squirrelled and I do the crosswords while my partner continues with her secret knitting project. By mutual consent the time for the beach walk comes around so I don my boat shoes and we head beach ward. Todays the day I get my feet in the sea and it is cold, very cold, the sort of cold that leads me to utter “Fuck that’s cold” numerous times until I acclimatise to it a bit. My partner and I walk the beach for over an hour mostly with our feet in the waves, its hot sunshine and the sea breeze is strong. By the time get back to the slipway I’m knackered and want the comfort of the apartment. The beef curry I had last night as my birthday treat is wreaking its revenge. In retrospect should have dunked my bum in the sea.

There is a period of lazing and reading until I work up the energy to actual do a work out. I pick a David Lloyd 33 minute Blaze workout, intermediate level that includes some boxercise. I must have looked ridiculous as I tried to get my body to do things it has just forgotten how to do and is no longer capable of anyway. I’ve discovered “jumping” is not something my body does anymore, at least not in the confines of a small bedroom, but I suspect anywhere. Anyway I sweat through an embarrassing 33 minutes and get to the end, earning just short of the 100 PAI points I need to live longer. I strip and do my vitals and then ready myself for tea. A light affair of salmon and salad. After a post tea negotiation in which it is clear that if I want an ice cream I am going to have to shift my arse and and accompany my partner to the ice cream van, we both go to the van, We sit with our 99s on the “village green” and enjoy them as we watch the “green folk” devour a range of goodies or smoke and chat before going off to whatever night life Westward Ho! has to offer. I and my partner do a quick shop and head back to the apartment for tea and beer. I draft the blog and then it is a TV series We Hunt. I am hoping that my exercise helps me sleep to night and holds at bay the drug side effects. Its been a good day generally, unfortunately we appear to be losing the sun tomorrow, so it might be time to write the postcards.