Tuesday and I wake up with no new book to read which is a bit of a crisis as recently I’ve been reading for an hour before I get up. I check my social media, send WhatsApps and emails and order Fragile Things and selection of short stories by Neil Gaiman. I copy an advert for a Japanese wood block printing course for beginner to a friend who is into all things Japanese. I check my bank accounts and find that the household has lived within its means and when I check the fuel bill its lower this month, which is a surprise. So by the time I get out of bed at 9:30 the days life admin is done. I eat a lazy muesli breakfast and check my availability to eat with with friends in February. At the moment my availability is confined by not knowing when my PET scan will be.

STOP PRESS: As I draft the blog I get a phone call from The PET scan shop who arrange my scan for the Thursday the 16th of February. This is excellent as it means I can now plan my month. The only embarrassing moment in the conversation was when I could not remember my full email address, but I got over that and the booking was made. The other good news is that the scan is taking place at the hospital that is closest to me and the easiest to park at. Result all tound I think. For once a plan comes together.

I intended to go to the Shed but I got side tracked by trying to arrange a dentist appointment. Not the easiest thing in the world to achieve. Eventually I get through and the receptionist finds me a space in my Dentists “packed” diary. Monday the 6th is the earliest I can get so I take it. I have a bacon sandwich for lunch and then prepare to train. I’ve decided I need to break the mould of training, I feel Spring approaching, I see it in my garden, so time to change. I decide to row for and hour and a half, something I have not done before. I get into my kit, leaving off a layer and I also collect a water bottle from the fridge. I strap into the rower and set the controls for 90 minutes. I set my Fitbit going and set off on my long row. What appears to be most important is to focus enough to keep the discipline of the slower rate required. This is more mind than body. I row through the 80s, the 70s, the 60s, the 50s, the 40s to half way and then get to the 30s. In my head I am prepared for the 20s and teens to be the tough and they are. I have to concentrate to not try and rush to the end. I make it to the end. A new personal best, unexpected at this stage, but it reinforced my old belief that when things are looking bad then that’s the time to push yourself and take charge. Today feels like that. This is Rocket at his best, this is Rocket Booster time for real.

I record my session and then shower. I let my eldest daughter plait my hair before going out to see the Queen Experience.

My partner and I grab pizza before we drive into town to the concert venue. We arrive early and have coffee before getting into the auditorium. We have great seats, my youngest daughter has chosen well.

The concert gets under way, its Queen tribute and its loud. The audience is in general my peer group, which is fine. Its good to see so many people of my age surviving, however my overwhelming impression is how bloody dull their clothes are. There is no colour, I feel conspicuous and pleased to be so in my Guardians of the Galaxy T shirt. My plaited hair is not an issue but the lack of colour is. I comment about this to my partner on the way home and discover that she has deliberately not bought anything black since coming out of lockdown, I had not noticed. From now on I want to bring colour back into the clothes I wear, its time to get the bright pink jacket out again. The concert gets more intense in the second half after ice cream and a comfort break. The audience is up on its feet, well most of it and doing what British audiences do best, clap out of time. My partner and I had a fun time. At the end we let the rest of the audience go in order to avoid the mad rush out of the car park. We ambled over to the car and before setting off emptied all the half drunk bottles of water in to the windscreen washer tank as it was empty. It made the drive back so much easier.

Once home it was coffee and scone for supper before taking my meds and finishing off the draft of the blog. Its been a good day and as I said I sense that Spring is in the air. Tomorrow I will have more Neil Gaiman to read, and will be having lunch with friends including one who is back from Bermuda for a short while. Yes Spring is definitely coming.

I wake up cold and read in bed for an hour. My partner brings me coffee which I sip while continuing to read. Eventually I get up, make breakfast and attend to my social media, wishing a friend happy birthday and another a return to domestic normality. I read, yep I read, nothing but read all morning. I am only interrupted by the post man bringing me my next oncology review appointment date of March 7th. He who made a pact with the devil is clearly giving the scan department time to do me and get the result to him. Lunch time arrives later than usual, or at least I feel a midday urge to eat later than usual, which happens when I am reading. By 1:30 I have finished my book and I am stunned, it was a superb book and one that I know will linger.

To my delight I find that there is an American Gods novella included in the book, the Monarch of the Glen that has the main character from American Gods in it. I am delighted and just sit and read it in the afternoon along with an interview with the author and some after thoughts. The daylight hours are gone and the evening is on its way. My partner will visit a friend in the village to deliver a birthday present after we have feasted on fish and chips. After that I shall take in the Tesco delivery and feel at a loss. The sort of post good book loss, where thoughts swirl around in my head and already there is a craving for more to read. Its a craving for more brain food that good brain food induces. Its a kind of addiction but one that I feel reduces my ignorance and therefore reduces the worlds store of ignorance, which I think is a good thing. It also goes some way to assuage the strange guilt that comes from not doing anything, at least nothing that would be seen as “useful”. But then I am retired, fighting cancer and need to give myself a break sometimes.

Tonight I shall go to bed with a new book from my shelves to keep me company, I shall take my meds and plan a tomorrow that lets me write and train before a Queen night out.

Sunday, my rest day which starts with the Sunday weigh in. I weigh in at 97.4 kilos, that’s half a kilo lower than last week. So I goodish start to my day. Coffee and reading in bed follows until its time to think about breakfast and the delivery of a new rug. I have a muesli and coffee breakfast and wave my partner off to the gym. I then set about moving all the furniture in the lounge and preparing for a new rug being delivered today. My eldest daughter helps me move the heavy sofa and to roll up and wrap the old rug. As we finish clearing and cleaning the room a cheery chap appears with the new rug over his shoulder. My eldest daughter and I store the old rug and then put the new rug down in the lounge. Once down the furniture gets put back into the lounge and it gets its first hoover.

The afternoon continues with football, followed by more football. My partner returns to admire the new rug and approves. We eat dinner and then slip into Sunday TV, His Dark Materials, Call the Midwife and Happy Valley, which is only interrupted by a call to our youngest daughter and an amendment to tomorrow’s Tesco order. In the gaps I read more of American Gods. By the end of the evening I am tired and draft this short blog entry before downing my meds and going off to bed to read briefly and hoping for a decent nights sleep.

Saturday and I wake up after an average nights sleep. My partner has made coffee and is reading. We read and drink coffee until we feel the need to get up as we are expecting the garden guy to arrive today. As expected garden guy turns up just as breakfast is ready so its a quick dash with a coffee and some instructions for what needs doing. After breakfast there is time to chat and plan future garden work.

I put my washing in and sort out some life admin like sending off the months meter readings. After some chores I drive my partner and I to the local shopping park where we head for the sofa shops. We peruse, we examine, we sit, we get up and down, we press buttons and pull levers. We talk to sofalogists and look at brochures, read labels and asks questions. We then measure things, look as swatches, tap out figures on the calculator and decide we need one final measure at home. We stop for a Costa coffee and a bun before going home to measure up.

Back home we do the measuring and confirm our preferred sofa and chair will fit the space. We think we have chosen well. At some point we will return to the shop and order our preferences and then wait for the 13 weeks that is will take to deliver the new furniture. We will do that after we have got the new lounge rug in tomorrow. I watch some football results come in and then I go to train. I really do not feel like it but I have one more chance to train before tomorrows weigh in. I get in to my kit and trudge to the garage, strap into the rower and set off for a forty five minute session at my cruise level. Its a tough session but I grind it out and burn 600+ calories.

Back in the lounge I record the session in my journal and then get into my evening slob clothes before settling down to watch a football match and eat tea. I am determined that tomorrow will be a rest day whatever the scales say. Tomorrow will be a day for moving furniture and putting down the new rug when it arrives. The rest of my day will be reading but for tonight I hope to watch a film and go to bed to read American Gods. The reality is I am waiting, waiting for my scan appointment. Until then it is difficult to plan ahead, I dislike that feeling.

Friday and I wake up from a god awful nights sleep. My fit bit tell me I bedded for 10 hours and six minutes of which 2hours and 1 minute was deep sleep but my 36 minutes of being awake across 9 interruptions is excessive. The irregularity score is 34% and the overall sleep score is 67 and rated as Fair. So my sense of a crap nights sleep is borne out by the figures. Isn’t science wonderful. I get up and do a muesli breakfast and coffee. My intention was to weed the front flower bed under the window but my body and my will is having none of it. I read instead, its American Gods of course, which I am hooked by and it makes me wonder how many Gods I’ve run across in my life time with out realising it. Of course the answer is none, its a story but I am no stranger to stories as I have of hundreds of them in my head, the legacy of a life in forensic psychology. Apart from some internet admin I read all morning and mourn the death of Mad Sweeney a leprechaun who could pluck gold coins from the suns hoard. If that sounds your sort of thing then American Gods is for you but be warned it has a rugged side to it.

My partner goes off to her physio appointment and I pop a delicious chicken and chorizo meal in the crockpot for later. Then I am off to the gym. I get a large bottle of water and a cross trainer and I am away on a 45 minute session. The session on the apparatus goes okay, at least its another 500 + calories burnt, and it bumps my PAI (physical Activity Intelligence) score over 200. I am now operating with a physical fitness age of 55. Yep 55, full of cancer but that fit.

I drink copious amounts of water and grab a weights bar and do some sets of “21”. This goes okay but when I try to lay flat on the mat I discover again how it hurts down one side. I try stretching, which does help but it is clear I have a problem with this and need to stretch more and loosen up. I get back to the changing rooms and shower. Combing out my long hair does not bother me any more , since a waiter in Costa wanted to shake my hand and complemented me on being able to “carry off” my now long white ponytail. What I am increasingly aware of is my tits, I am growing a pair that no matter how much weight work I do its not possible to pass them of as muscular “pecs” any more, they are clearly tits. I remember that the oncologist blithely said that tits are not a problem because they can “always cut them off”. I might be holding him to that when I next see him. Post shower I get a coffee and free biscuit and read more of the American Gods in the gym lounge.

The drive home was uneventful. As I open the door there is the smell of the meal cooking, I get sorted and settle down to coffee and start to draft the blog. This evening will be a football match, and ultimately I shall dance to the opening music of Murder in Paradise. Doubtless I shall read more American Gods and think about what I want the garden guy to do tomorrow. I suspect he will be doing what I intended to do today. Sometimes a plan comes together. l love it when a plan comes together.

Thursday and I get up after reading more of American Gods and down a muesli breakfast and coffee. I check my latest blog post and cannot get it to appear on my phone. I am feeling “unconfined joy” as I start to see if I can sort the issue out. It might of course be the servers in America where my blog is held. I shall post this brief snippet to see if it jogs the process along. I’m not hopeful in my state unconfined joy but will try it. I am concerned that my posts are not immediately available which means there is a time lag between posting and people being able to read it, which for some reason seems to be assuming more importance at the moment. More to come.

It did not jog the the process. I struggle to get going and in the end I retreat to the garden and start to weed the front beds. Its good to get my hands into the dirt and smell the earth. Under the weeds that are coming up is a profusion of bulbs coming up. The more I weed the more green beaks appear. What also appears is a robin who starts to garden alongside me in the freshly hoed earth. To my surprise Robin hangs around and stays close. It turns out gardening is good for me as my mood lifts and I get a sense of growing again. I like my new mate Robin and hope he is there tomorrow as I set to on the other flower bed.

I stop for a late lunch of chicken soup and coffee and then open my post. In there is a letter from a friend in green ink, Its a thoughtful letter and raise some interesting questions like where are the dreams that don’t get remembered. I open my package with new jeans and get them on straight away as I like the look. Once they are on I like them even more. In fact I like them so much I buy a new wide belt to go with them. The combination of gardening, a letter and new jeans is enough to get me motivated enough to train. I get myself changed and head for the garage. I strap into the rower and set the controls for an hour on my cruise level. It goes okay and I burn 800+ calories, and do more than 12 kilometres.

The evening arrives with tuna pasta and TV. I update the blog while my bathes before we indulge in some TV drama. I read and take my meds before I go to bed intending to once again garden and train tomorrow.

Wednesday, I am awakened at 8 o’clock with a coffee and a time check. I check my Fitbit and confirm that I slept poorly last night, probably due to the excitement of yesterday and the information that I am consciously and unconsciously processing. Anyway I do not have time for any namby-pamby reflection I’ve got a date with the chiropodist at 9 o’clock. I borrow my partners car and drive to the next village and arrive so early that the “foot shop” is not open. I buy a paper and sit in the car completing the quick crossword until the appointment time. The chiropodist is her usual cheery self as she soaks my feet in a magic potion (probably eye of newt and tongue of lark with a dash of oriental mushroom), then its out with the tools and away she goes shaving, clipping and filing until the final rub over with a smooth and oily unguent. Oh how my feet sing with delight, this is truly a pampering and a luxury.

I drive home, dump the car and go to the village café for breakfast. I settle down to complete another puzzle but get chatting to the old boy on the next table. He was a miner at the village pit for twenty years then worked on the land and did building work. He knows all the farmers around the village and who had what built and what the land cost. He’s still doing gardens and building fences and appears to know most of the old families in the village and is quick to tell you which ones are okay and which ones are “thick”. A chum of his arrives from a visit to a hospital to have a head lump checked. There was no getting away from him till he had shown me the picture of his head wound that he keeps on his phone. Just the sort of after breakfast sight I needed, but that’s old buggers for you, seen it all done it all and don’t give a bugger, its how things are. No snow flaking here, its in your face life, piles and all. Of course its not all quaint, we don’t make anything any more, there are too many people coming to the country and foreigners own all our industries. I guess when you’ve spent twenty years down a pit on the coal face your world has changed more than most. I escape the head wound photo and walk home with the cash I promised to get for my partner so she can pay her mother’s carer when she visits her mother in the afternoon.

Once home I clear away my washing and bring the bin in. I clean up the laundry area and retrieve all the clothing that has fallen down the back of the washing machine and tumble dryer. There is enough to fill the washing basket again. Eventually the place is ship shape again and I sit down to do some life admin and my accounts. The window cleaner appears and says I owe him for one, I tell him he is wrong and that I’ve got the acknowledgement and I counter with a required confirmation of the frequency that they have down for us. I tell him I will BACS the current one, which I duly do once he has departed. I return to the comfort of the lounge and reply to my messages before starting on the draft of todays blog. A friend wishes me a happy Burns night and another invites me for coffee, to which I reply I am available for a skinny organic soya mocha macchiato with extra hot yaks foam yoga mat infused achino, at her convenience next week. I am aware that I am easily irritated at the moment, a sure sign that I am digesting things from yesterday and I feel the draw of the Shed and the need to read quietly or write to occupy me. The fact that I am listening to the midday concert on Radio 3 is also a bit of a give way. Fortunately it is orchestral music, if it had been choral or Lieder I would have looked for something else. There are times when I just do not want to hear voices. It is a hang over from my working days when voices were all suffused with anxieties and anger, when I have my own stuff to process I do not want the distraction of all that other noise going on in the background. Voiceless music feeds my inner voices and helps me to feel my way through what ever is going on for me, words and voices just get in the way with all the other information they carry. The friends I most value are those I can be silent with. I go to the Shed to write for a bit. There is a poem in there somewhere trying to get out about spot welding cancer but it needs time.

I go to the Shed and settle down to write letters. The afternoon inks away until the light fails. I pack up the Shed and return to the house to find my partner returned from visiting her mother. I pop out and post my letters. Back home I get sofa’d and feel at odds with myself and click through TV channels. Yesterdays oncology review is still with me. I stumble across Legend showing old and original Star Trek. What a delight, back to back episodes. My partner and friend go out to eat so my eldest daughter and I indulge in a take away curry. I go for a spicy madras, craving something hot and challenging. I devour my treat when it arrives knowing I might regret this later but frankly I don’t care. I sip water as another classic old fantasy show passes. I’m bored (short hand for my needs are not being met) so I quit TV and read American Gods. That reading and finishing the draft of the blog will do me for tonight, I shall take my newly nurtured feet and go to bed with the intention of tomorrow being a gym day.

Tuesday, oncology day and civil partnership anniversary. I get woken up at 7 o’clock with coffee and slowly emerge. I squeeze into the medium weight tweed suit and I am ready to go by 8 0’clock. What followed was a nightmare drive where every road had road works and delays. What should have taken 30 minutes took an hour and twenty minutes. My partner phoned ahead to say we might be late. We arrived at 9:20 for a 9:25 appointment but still got to sit in the waiting area for a while amongst all the other bemasked ill.

I and my partner get called in. He who made a pact with the devil is there to greet us. He asks how I am, I tell him I am physically fit but what about my PSA. He goes over the options. None of them are fun but the upshot is he doesn’t have a clue why my PSA is going up. We both know that my body has done the inevitable and found a way round the effects of the medication by changing its own cell surface chemistry, clever old mother nature, bitch. Any way one option is to change my antiandrogen to a new one, Enzalutamide (Xtandi), I cannot pronounce either of them because I am dyslexic so I will refer to it as “new shit”. However before he prescribes me “new shit” he describes a PETT scan which apparently can see how much of my body is cancer ridden, which he says is going to be more than all my other scans can reveal. If we do this we get to know how extensive my cancer is and then as he put it they (the medics) can see whether radio therapy is worth a shot. He described it as (and I kid you not) as “spot welding” bits of the cancer. There will either be bits worth “spot welding” or there isn’t but either way I get to be prescribed the “new shit” once its done. This is all of course my choice and he gaily informs me that there is “no right answer”, so its down to me. (Is this where medicine is these days, it seems a bit odd). I decide on the PET scan on the basis that I want to know how much shit I am in. The rest is admin, a new blood form, he will refer me for a PET scan and book an appointment for me in February, but I have to make sure that there is sufficient time between the PET scan and an appointment with him so that the results can get to him. I am to monitor this and liaise with the cancer nurses. He runs me off a crap printer copy of information about the “new shit”, gives me a new blood form adn waves us off. I and my partner walk to the car and drive into town to look at rugs.

I eat a scone in Lewis’s café as a belated breakfast and my partner and I chat. We get the first scan pictures of our new grandchild. It is a momentous day. We send messages and talk about it for a while and then go rug hunting. The rugs in Lewis’s are not what we want and so we leave town and drive home, where I get out of the tight medium weight tweeds and slip into more comfortable trousers. I drive us to a village down the road where I have booked a table for lunch at a rather nice restaurant. We settle down to an anniversary three course lunch. It is excellent food and a good celebration meal to mark our anniversary. Feeling well fed I take us to our local shopping centre and we go adn buy a rug. More accurately we discover that what we want is not in stock in store so we order it over the internet while in the store. It will arrive on the 29th. While there we stroll to a sofa shop and accidentally find a recliner sofa and chair that we both like. We are tempted and talk to a salesperson. We decide to have a coffee and thin about it, which we do. The upshot is we decide to drive home and check the measurements.

The measurements don’t work out. The things in the shop are bigger than what we have, which is a potential problem. So there will need to be a period of thinking to be done. My partner begins to tidy the house as we have a guest staying tomorrow and I settle down to read about PET scans and the intended “new shit.” I am stupid. I should stop reading about the “new shit” and the drug trails with there outcome data, death rates and side affects. I particularly love the way the researchers talk about toxicity levels and the levels of side effects. By the time I have finished reading the real research and outcome information in the journals and papers, not the Janet and John shit that McMillan put out, I am thoroughly dispirited. This is going to be a crap period of time by the sound of it with fatigue and headaches as a minimum. I could get lucky, all I can do is keep doing the things that keep me fit and that the “new shit” (four tablets once a day) once it starts has some effect on my rising PSA levels. Until the new PET scan is done and I see “he who made a pact with the devil” in February its steady as I go as usual.

I get to the evening and start to draft the blog, deciding that this is worthy of a new stage, namely Rocket Booster stage. I just need to continue to Rocket but with renewed vigour till I get to do the next oncology review with the PET scan outcomes. I confess I find it difficult to find yet more enthusiasm and energy but wat else can I do. There is bugger all on TV so I read and look forward to the gay banter with the chiropodist tomorrow morning as my feet soak in her warm magic potion and she pleasures my feet into a state of contentment. I finish my medical admin and then read myself towards sleep.

Monday, I wake to a household out to work. Coffee, muesli and meds and I am ready for the day. I clear the kitchen, empty bins, and take a parcel to the post office. That done I start to write letters until a friend calls and we chat about how we are and what is going on for us in our respective situations. At the end of the call I send a link to something we had talked about. By the time Tesco deliver in the early afternoon I’m feeling tired, but its short of a couple of things so I take a walk to the shop to get the missing items. On the way back I post letters.

When I am home I put out the clothes I intend to wear tomorrow to my oncology review. I shall be comparing data with the oncologist and seeing where the logic in the arithmetic takes us but my concern is whether my waist numbers fit the trouser waist arithmetic. Having laid my clothes out I go back to reading American Gods.

The evening rolls round and is a mixture of reading and Silent Witness but the most crucial bit was getting the medical admin ready to take tomorrow. So the evening comes to an end with night meds and bed. Tomorrow will either be a damp squib or shit either way this might be the last ROCKET DAY and I will be into a new phase.

Sunday and I wake up to frost adn cold. I settle down to read American Gods while my partner brings me coffee. We lay in and I read until we are both hungry. We get up and eat breakfast, I take my meds and then we ring our youngest daughter to catch up. There is a flurry of domestic doing, such as washing and dishes and then I am getting ready to go to the gym.

At the gym I get in to my kit and go looking for a cross trainer. To my chagrin there are none available and so I settle for a recumbent cycle. My intention is to do a short gentle session, a lazy Sunday session to just keep me ticking over. It goes to plan and 35 minutes later I am relaxing and thinking about a few weights.

I wander over to the mats by the mirror wall and select some weights to use. In checking my Fitbit app on the phone I manage to take a picture of myself. Its not a pretty sight but I was coming to the end of my clean training gear.

The weights session turns out to be a revelation. I find I can still do some of the sets but when I get down on the mat to do some floor work I have a surprise. It is painful to lay flat on my back and I cannot lift the weights bar from above my head when I am flat out. I’ve clearly stiffened over the last couple of years and I need to begin to get some stretching done on a regular basis, perhaps yoga and I need to get more weight work into my routine. It makes me wonder about more core work. Of course the paranoid fantasy is that as I age I develop a curvature of the spine.

I finish my mat session and then head for the shower and end up with that gratifying clean and warm feeling. In the club lounge I sip coffee while waiting for my partner. On the drive home we try to check the tyres but the air line is not working at the garage, so we just return. I sort my washing and settle down to watch a rugby match having done a crossword. The evening gets going with a meal and then I draft the blog as the usual Saturday night programmes roll on. Of course it all moves towards Happy Valley and football highlights.

The coming week is going to be an interesting one with the highlight being the oncology review. It could be that Tuesday will be the last ROCKET DAY as I move to another phase or not. I shall see what comes my way and adapt appropriately. Onward and with direction.