Saturday and I wake up tired having crawled into bed just before 2am. I discovered just past midnight last night that my Patient View account had been locked so I could not see my blood results. I cast about the internet to find out what is going on. I find that the Patient View platform has been jettisoned for something called Patient Knows Best, am allegedly nhs platform. I spend an age registering and getting into my account to see if I can find my blood results. The platform is unfamiliar but the format seems less easy than the old app. Eventually I find my notifications and there are my most recent blood results. They are in list form and have to be mined out. In the morning I adapt the hard copy print outs from the old platform and transfer them over. The highlights are that my PSA has risen again, meaning its has more than doubled in 85 days. This is not good news. I also find that some of my blood results are not there. Platelet count, white cell count and haemoglobin are all missing. I think this is a result of only one blood vial being taken. In my head its an admin error. So I go to bed at 1:45am dispirited by the results.

I wake up in the morning late to a warm coffee followed by a hot coffee. A jigsaw company delivers to me a gift I intended for someone else. They put the intended recipients name on it but my address. An aggravation that I will need to sort out. I get up for a late bacon bagel and then start to research PSA levels and prognosis. I discover that there is a thing called PSA kinetics and velocities. I read that there are models for calculating PSA kinetics and the relationship between the velocity of PSA doubling and survival time. I find that that there are at least 22 ways of calculating the PSA velocity and that some apply to some phases of prostate cancer and to its progression. The more I read the more complex it becomes and the more “woolly ” the whole concept of PSA kinetics and its use gets, until the bottom line comes out as a dependency on individual cases. The more I read the less answers there are. It makes the review, that will include scan results, on Tuesday all the more important. I start to draft the questions I need to ask.

The poetry stanza I was due to attend goes by the board. I can’t focus on listening to a group of people of intellectualising a bunch of poems while I have the results in my head along with all the other stuff I have read over the last 18 hours. In an effort to get out my partner and I go to the garden centre to buy meat and veg. We had intended to eat but when we saw the queue and remembered how slow the service is we shopped and left for home.

Once home I watch a rugby match. Once it is over I get ready to train. I was not going to but the blood result just convince me that I have little I can do other than stay physically as fit as I can. All the reading I do on cancer tells me that it always comes back to eating a good diet and exercising, not drinking, not smoking and sleeping well. As I don’t drink or smoke, eat well and sleep well it leaves me with exercise. So I get into my kit and get myself into the garage. I set the rower up for an hours session and get started. An hour later I am done, its still only 5 degrees in the garage.

I have been using my new Fitbit and the HUNT study index to monitor my training and how fit I am. According to my latest read out from the fitness algorithm my physical fitness age is 60. My blood oxygen is consistently between 95% and 100%, my average daily heart rate is 62 so I am in reasonable shape. Could I do more? Maybe. I move into the evening eating tea and then drafting the blog against the background of TV. I while away time to midnight just to check whether the missing blood results turn up.

Friday and I wake up groggily and then realise that its vampire day. My partner brings me coffee in bed which I snooze to coldness before getting up and selecting clothes that give easy access to my arm veins. I down my morning meds and plod off to the GP surgery in a bright but very frosty morning. I check in and get called immediately. In the blink of an eye my blood is in a labelled vial and I am walking home.

Once home I while away a few minutes until I know the village café will be open and then I go to buy a paper and make my way to the café. The full breakfast is great. I sit in the sunny window seat so that I get a grandstand few of the near misses on the village roundabout. They are frequent today as the winter sun rifles in at a low angle to blind 50% of drivers approaching the roundabout. The tooting of horns and mutterings of disapproval by fellow diners is frequent this morning. I do the crosswords in the paper and luxuriate in the deliciousness of cooked for breakfast. It has a very nurturing, caring feel about it, a kind of kindness to the self. I return home buying potatoes and flower on the way.

Once home I find a letter waiting for me. I put flowers in a vase and then settle down to read my letter. It is one of the pleasures of my life to read a letter from a friend and it deserves the proper time and attention to be paid to it. I especially love letters that point me in the direction of brain food and this letter did just that. I have some busy learning ahead of me. New poems arrive for Saturday’s Stanza meeting. I print them off and put them in my “Stanza” file ready for Saturday. I take time to read them and see if there are any that grab me enough to volunteer to read them. I reread my own contribution, I am just pleased I will not have to read it as I have no idea how to pronounce the German in it. In the Stanza meeting your poetry gets read by someone else and then the group respond to it while you listen. Only when they have had their say can you then speak. I have at least corrected the version I sent and removed the spelling mistake so that Haifisch is now spelt properly. For those that missed it on the 20th of December here it is again.

AS I PRESS ONE FOOT
AFTER ANOTHER 
IN THE GYM 
I SENSE THE RHYTHM
THAT TOOK ME,
MARATHONED ME
AND TOLD ME
YOU’RE ALIVE.
I REACH FOR THAT FEELING
LIKE A LOVERS ARMS AROUND ME,
I NEED SALVATION
AS I FIGHT 
TO STAY ALIVE.
I STRIDE ON
RAMMSTEIN LOUD IN MY EARS
HAIFISCH
HAIFISCH
HAIFISCH
DRIVNG ME 
PERPETUALLY MOVING
TO STAY ALIVE,
I AM AFRAID IN THIS STRUGGLE.
HAIFISCH
HAIFISCH
HAIFISCH
IN DER TIEFE ES EINSAM
IN THE DEEP IT IS LONELY
SO DIE TRANEN SIEHT MAN NICHT
SO NO ONE CAN SEE THE TEARS.

All of this came to me when I was on the cross trainer with Rammstein very loud in my ears. There is a a driving rhythm to the piece and the two quoted lines were the ones that stuck in my mind. It all seemed to fit the feeling at the time. It was not until I researched the spelling and the translation that I learned Haifisch means Shark or that the lines that had stuck with me actually fitted the context of what I had written. My good old unconscious can always be trusteed to do right by me when it comes to poetry. I can’t wait for somebody to read it and then what the group make of it. For you alone I will tell you. Its actually about being alone and scared in the fight to stay alive in the face of cancer. If you don’t keep moving (like a shark) you die. However like all my other poetry it ain’t ever going to win a competition or get published, at least not until I get my finger out and push that project forward.

I retreat to the Shed to write letters and think about training today. My Shed is always a welcoming space and I settle down to write letters and update my correspondence journal. I spend a couple of hours writing and then return to the house and wander over to the post box to send my letters. Back in the warmth of my lounge I watch more of the Sandman series as my motivation to train today ebbs away. I slide into the evening and watch TV and a rugby match simultaneously before returning to the blog. Its all a distraction as I wait to see if my blood results will come through tonight. Its always the same at this time before an oncology review, a mixture of curiosity and foreboding that things will change for the worse. Behind that is the irritating question as to whether or not the medical profession has any new magic if it turns out that things are getting worse. First things first, the blood results tonight and then move on. Tomorrow will see me at the poetry Stanza hoping that someone else reads my Shark.

Thursday, its gas pipe day so I am up early, breakfasted and writing a to do list for the day. I am in on my own as the household have gone to the warmth of their work places. It is not long before the gas guy knocks on the door to disconnect the gas supply and then disappear. For me it was then just a case of working through my to do list.

• Poetry update
• Poetry Stanza preparation
• Book Tesco and do the order
• Pay the Rentokil insurance
• Check the garden camera
• Cut and manaicure my nails
• Sort out the gas man when required.
• Train.

Its not an impressive list but when things like needing to pay Rentokil takes more than five times, the tasks and the time stretches out. By mid afternoon I am through the list. Along the way it has been pointed out to me that the poem I submitted for this coming Saturdays Stanza meeting has a mistake in it. I have fallen foul of my dyslexia and spelt the German word Haifisch with an L in it instead of the i. I have to make the correction and resend the entry. Haifisch is the German for shark. My new book arrives, its another Neil Gaiman, American Gods. I dip in and quickly fond myself wanting to read more.

The gas is back on quite soon adn my partner returns just as I am getting ready to train. I go off to the garage and strap into the rower for half an hour at a slightly higher resistance level. Its cold in the garage but the extra resistance means I work a bit harder. Its a reasonable session with a calorie burn of 400+.

I return to the house and record my session as my partner makes tea. We eat and I start to draft the blog while my partner does her singing lesson on line. I return to American Gods and will retire early tonight once I have downed my night meds as I have a vampire session in the morning as I give a blood sample in preparation for my oncology review next Tuesday.

Wednesday and I wake up to the usual sound of work going on in the office. I check my messages and social media and then get up for my usual muesli breakfast. I settle into my new book from my friend. It is what I do all morning, read and wonder at another’s creativity and imagination, not to mention the skill of writing in such a clear and effective way. Its a brilliant book and if you are an adult with childhood memories this will find a place with you.

Having finished the book I have lunch with my partner before she picks up her brother and goes to see her mother. I spend time putting washing away and getting my training kit packed before I drive to the gym to train in the warm. I get to the gym and get myself on a cross trainer and set off. I have discovered that my Fitbit is able to monitor elliptical training so I am able to monitor my PAI (Personal Activity Intelligence). It is an index of fitness based on the findings of the HUNT study done by a Norwegian health Study involving 230,000 people over 35 years. It calculates a personalised Index to be able to maintain optimum fitness. As long as the PAI score is 100 calculated on a rolling weeks activity then you are at optimum fitness. As you get fitter it gets harder to earn the PAI points each day. After todays session my PAI is at 229 with my fitness age at 64. My session on the cross trainer goes okay apart from the fact that I mis-keyed 45 minutes which meant I did 54 plus a 5 minute warm down. I survived and it did not lead to me peeing blood. So another 600+ calories gone and another 6+ kilometres travelled.

With the gym session done I have a shower and a coffee. The drive home was a rush hour flog. Once home I packed away my kit and recorded the session. My partner was making tea but she presented me with a present. A Rocket present that amused me and which I set about completing there and then.

Well that was an interesting new way to spend part of an evening. I do not believe that a 6 year old could do it like the box claims. I eat tea and settle down to draft the blog and do some life admin before we do the preparations to be gas less tomorrow. Its been a day of brain and body feeding so I am now pretty spoonless. Tomorrow our gas is cut off to allow a re pipe to occur and I am to be the only one home to oversee the ins and outs of the workmen. For now its time to get my night meds down me and head off to bed so I can be up before the gas man knocketh.

Its Tuesday and I wake up knowing today I shall be going to a funereal. I’m just about coming into consciousness when my phone rings and a friend is on the line on the way to the M.O.T station. We have the luxury of being able to chat for a long time and catch up with how we are both coping with our situations. Its good and helpful to compare notes and to hear how things are moving forward. I find it very supportive and helpful when I am able to have these conversations. We say farewell and I get up to make breakfast and to get my funereal clothes out and ready.

As I am tucking into my muesli there is a familiar thrump of a package being dumped in the porch. I retrieve the package and immediately know what it is. It is another book from my friend who is sending me books to feed my brain. Its a new book to me and a new author so I am excited. My initial thought was to read tonight but I am intrigued by this book prologue and so I start to read.

I read and find myself finding it easy to read and then suddenly its lunch time and I am eating bacon bagels with my partner. Its time to get my funereal clothes on. On these occasions I am old fashioned and tend towards the formal black. A sort of Sunday best approach. I think it stems from a sense of being respectful, I guess its a generational thing. Anyway I get into my three piece suit, a tight squeeze these days, and rig up with watch chain and overcoat. Its a strange combination, formal black and a white pony tail, but if I am honest I think I do it pretty well.

I drive my partner and I to the crematorium, a relatively short drive to a village where I first lived. We arrive in plenty of time and we both spend time looking at our phones and my partner tries to spot people she knows arriving. It turns out that quite a few of the attendees are known to my partner through old work associations. We go into the crematorium waiting area and talk to some of my partners old work colleagues. Then the hearse arrives with the daughter riding pillion, yes riding pillion. The funerealee was a keen motorbike so the hearse is a motor bike and sidecar. We were encouraged to take photographs so here is the hearse.

The funereal is not a religious service and full of readings. It is always difficult to be in a funereal where there is no direct connection but there is always a sense of discovery of someone’s life and an appreciation of all the things that they would have seen in their life. There is no such thing as an ordinary life only ordinary uniqueness.

At the end of the funereal and the polite well wishing and invitations I drive my partner and I to the local Next where we have coffee and pastries. We peruse rugs and sofas and pick out possibilities, but hang fire for consideration and research. We drive home put the bin out and I change into my training kit and make my way to the garage to row for 45 minutes. Its cold, I can see my breathe as I strap up to row.

The session over I return to the house and record it in my diet and training journal. I then settle down to watch a football match followed by a film about the abduction of a child. My partner and I eat tea while we watch. Night meds were followed by bed and more of my new book. Its been an unusual but thoughtful day.

Monday, I wake to an empty house as both of the other residents have actually gone to the places of their work. I check my social messages and media and then make breakfast. I clear the kitchen and tidy up before another coffee. I’m watching His Dark Materials when an old work colleague from the Enabling Environment days. he tells me about his weekend watching Rangers getting to the final of the Scottish cup. We chat about his work and how it is going. We also talk about how I am and our mutual prostate adventures. As men of a certain age we research adn chat about statins and remnd ourselves to have our arses ready for that impromptu prostate check that doctors seem to be fond off. We also swap thoughts about some of the people (not nice people) that we have coem across in our time in the criminal justice system. After almost an hour my friend goes on hos way adn I return to the heartrending end of the Amber Spyglass.

I am just about to do something when the gas pipe people knock on the door. We have a chat about where my gas meter is located and if I have a heat source. I reveal my meter location at which point he has a quick look down the side of the house and told me that there would not be any need to dig on the property. So he tells me that our day to be re-gassed is Thursday. So I shall need to be around to let them in and out during the day. I have some time to kill so I drag put my amplifier adn Stratocaster, tune up and spend some time reacquainting myself with my very limited repertoire. The amplifier is a Peavy a real gnarly amp and very loud, I dread to think what it would do to my eardrums if I actually cranked it up to full. I look more rock and roll than I actually sound.

Eventually the Tesco delivery arrives. I take it in and have an odd feeling that something is wrong but I return to my soup before I put anything away. Before I can finish my soup I get a call from Mr Tesco, he’s missing something and asks me to check my delivery. I do and find two pizzas and a bag of chips, he seems pleased and says he will be with me soon. The pick up goes well and I stow the goodies. The household returns from work and I go to train in the garage. Its to be an hour session on the rower. I actually manage to find “rower” on my Fitbit and set it up to record the session and then set off for the session. Its a struggle but I make it and do 13+ kilometres and burn 800+ calories. Its a good outcome given it was cold in the garage.

I return to the house to record the session and then change before tea. The evening moves on to Silent Witness and then meds and bed, Tomorrow I am accompanying my partner to a friends father’s funereal so I shall be robing up in black suit and paraphernalia for the day.

Saturday, it seems so long ago and its only Sunday so I guess it was a day of inactivity apart from a brief veg restock and a scone at the garden centre. It was also the day I restocked my drugs wallets for the coming two weeks. I know I did not train and apparently sitting on my arse watching TV drama box sets is not a way to get fit or loose weight. I also remember chocolate and late night TV so Sundays weigh in is doomed.

Sunday and it starts with a coffee in bed and a chat. I then weigh my self. I am 97.2 kilos, I have put back on this week what I lost the week before, I am disheartened not with the weight but with my own inability to train consistently and my tiredness. This is followed by a bacon bagel and a lot of general tidying and trying to ring our youngest daughter. So my partner and I prepare to go to the gym. I drive us there and we hit the gym floor, me grabbing a cross trainer. I really do not feel like it today but then its becoming more difficult to motivate myself as time goes on. Nevertheless I set the session to 50 minutes and my usual 11 level and off I go. It turns out out okay as I have Rammstein loud in my ears.

Spurred by my disappointment with myself on the weight and exercise front I decide to do another 30 minutes on a recumbent bike. What a waste of time this is, it must be the most inefficient way of burning calories. I work at a steady pace and only burn an additional 100 + calories. I wear my Fitbit on my foot to try and get some sort of score from the exercise. It does not work very well as I am still trying to understand how I access all the features of the new Christmas Fitbit. I walk the gym floor and finish my 750 cc of water and then go for a shower.

My partner and I have coffee in the lounge and then head for home. Damp kit gets sorted and I settle down to follow the football scores and to start to draft the blog for the last couple of days. We ring my youngest daughter who replies this time and we chat. She points out that we have been talking about a new sofa for two years and she is bored with hearing about but is proactive when it comes to a new lounge rug. Within minutes she is sending us links to appropriate rugs from various sellers. I continue to draft the blog while my partner prepares tea and makes her daily call to her mother.

Tonight is a bonanza night of TV. Country file, His Dark Materials, Midwifes, Happy Valley and then football highlights. Tonight I shall slob in front of the TV unashamedly and tomorrow I will try again. Try again to discipline myself to eat right, sleep right and train right, whilst pursing the limited goals in my life of publishing my poetry and maintaining my correspondence with those people who I have written to over the years. At times it seems that the more I try to simplify life the complicated it becomes.

Friday, up and breakfast with meds. Then its on to a domestic morning of clearing the kitchen, putting washing in and replenishing the bird feeders. Outside the gas pipe folk are relaying large bright yellow pipes so in teh next few days it will be our turn to be without gas for a couple of days as they run the new plastic pipe into the old pipe system. There is time for a bacon sandwich for lunch before my partner goes of to see her mother and I go to the gym for a touch of warm environment training.

Its a real luxury to be able to train in the warmth, wander around and choose a fitness machine and then indulge in a warm shower. The session itself is on a cross trainer for 50 minutes followed by some weight machine work. I am still wary of the cross trainer as it was the machine that was more likely to induce me to piss blood after using it. This session goes okay with no after effects and I get to burn off 500+ calories.

Post session and post shower I relax with a large coffee in the lounge and check my messages and then drive home feeling achy. I get home and walk down to the village shop, which houses the local ATM. I draw my monthly cash allowance and buy a paper before returning home. My Fitbit is confusing me as it uses a index called PAI which is supposed to monitor fitness progression with a basic target to reach each day of 100. The tricky bit is that as time goes on and you get fitter it gets more difficult to win the PAI points. Over the past few days I have been cracking the 100 mark easily but today I find myself struggling and so have have only managed 97. Once home I settle down to do the crosswords, tea and drafting the blog before watching Leicester Tigers take on Claremont in a European cup and then Death in Paradise. Tomorrow is going to throw it down with rain so I’m predicting a long lay in in the morning.

A friend emailed me early this morning to ask if I was okay because my blog did not appear to have been written. I answered her, It was nice that someone noticed and enquired after me, it was very much appreciated. I still have to sort out why the blog page is not updating.

Wednesday and it could have been a bad day but was not, Why I hear you ask. Well as my partner recovered from her hospital visit the day before I got into the office where the family PC lives. It holds all my passwords for the important sites I need and today it was “settle with the tax man” day, so having the right access codes was important. I’m expecting to be a couple of grand lighter by the end of the session. I follow the instructions on my tax office threatening letter and go to a new page that I have not visited before called my “current position.” I stare at the screen in disbelief, according to this page I only owe the HMRC a measly £132 pounds including an amount on account for next tax year. I’m bemused and go to another new to me page called payments and receipts for the tax years. I check this new page to find I have already paid about £2000 in payments on account over the tax year in question. So being paranoid I check them all again adn run of hard copies of the pages from my tax account that I have just viewed. I then pay my £132 by BACS and rejoice happily. What a good day this is turning out be. I’m giddy with my new found wealth. It is rainbow time.

The day goes on getting better as a friend messages me and tells me her sister and wife have been approved by the adoption screening panel. Another friend messages me with frustration relieving content, which I think is an excellent thing to have done. So a very good morning. I put an evening meal in the crockpot slow cooker and then my intention was to train but I made a fatal mistake. I got involved with a jigsaw, a small jigsaw, with very small pieces of strange shapes and illogical fittings. I have previously sworn never to do jigsaws again but here I am with all my combative and obsessive traits engaged. That’s me all evening and night till I down my night meds and fall into bed past midnight a tired but jigsaw competent person. The film on TV passed me by as did everything else as I head wrestled the fiendish tiny part into the shape of a bee. I go to bed frustrated that I got caught by a jigsaw and did not train. Good for head bad for body, which at the moment is the more important.

Thursday and I wake up to the sound of the gas pipe replacement workers digging hole outside the house. It will not be long before they are knocking on the door to tell us to switch off our boiler and other gas appliances. I check my social media and find a friend has sent me a link to a call for poets and spoken word artists to apply to perform at Glastonbury this year. I am tempted to apply as the Poetry Coyote, but I am not sure I’ve got enough performance videos to apply with. I have until March to decide. Its a long shot and I am an unlikely contender. Post breakfast and morning meds I catch up with drafting the blog. Friends tell me the blog is still slow in coming up or updating but I can find no obvious reason why that should be unless the size of some of the content is slowing it down. The actual site itself is responding quickly and saying it is posting the new material straight away. It is possible that the servers in America, where the site is held and administered, is being slow. My goal is to train today and get a bit of Shed time in so I can reply to some of the unexpected mail I have had over the last couple of weeks.

The Shed is quick to warm up once I am in and settled. I set about writing replies to the letters that I have received recently. I am using my new stock of writing paper that was a present at Christmas. A friend calls and we chat about the message she sent me the other day during one of those times when it fells that nothing is going right. We chat for a while and only stop when the “wet room man” turns up to look at one of the frustrating problems besetting my friend. Its all part of the teething problems of moving into a new home. I continue to write letters until I get hungry. Back in the house I have a late lunch and write an email to my sister. I pop out to the post box and take the opportunity to replenish my partner’s chocolate stock after eating last night whilst wrestling with the bee jigsaw. Time to train, I really do not want to and its difficult to get motivated to go for it, however I get changed and make my way to the garage. I set the rower for a thirty minute session but up the resistance to a work level. I set off slowly and it takes time to warm up, however by the second half I have warmed up and I am able to make up the lost distance and calorie burn from the start. It ends up a reasonable session as I burn 400+ calories.

I recover from the session and record it in my journal before stripping off the training kit. My partner and I eat tea before she goes to the office to have her on line singing lesson. I settle down to an evening of word counting and preparing some bits of writing. Tomorrow I must go out and train in the comfort of a warm gym, I’m concerned that the Dark and Tricky is circling close by.

Tuesday and its the day my partner goes to the hospital for her colonoscopy so its a slow start. My partner has been up since 5:30 to follow the pre procedure process prior to her hospital visit. I have breakfast and then the post man delivers my tax demand for the last tax year. So its not a day that is filled with joy. My injection site is red and sore but I have to say it could be worse so I think training yesterday helped. Either that or the prophylactic paracetamol is working.

So the afternoon sees me driving to the local hospital and dropping of my partner to face her procedure. I try to go to the local café and await the call from my partner but it is closed. On further exploration I find the local Costa and settle into a large hot chocolate and a bacon roll. There are very few in and so I do what I always do when I am waiting in cages, hotels and restaurants I write. Its never anything much and is often just a to do list or a check on the last one I wrote. Today I scribble a couple of brief “poems”.

What do I do 
I write,
I garden.
I clean the house, 
Something missing?
Like an alcoholic
With no kidneys,
A diver
With no lungs.
Its just a construction,
Impressions 
synapsed together
In a process,
Welded with transmitters
Cell by cell. 
On or off,
It either is or isn't,
Like life,
You either are or aren't. 


All I ever was 
Was a wordsmith,
Dyslexic silver tongue
Who knew the shapes
And colours of symbols. 
Always trying to tell others,
This is how it is for me. 
It aroused no interest
so I go on
Seeking the moment
That says clearly
This is me. 
That instance
When another's eyes light
and there are two of us,
Same place,
Same time,
Same understanding. 

I watch people come and go, children slither and fidget next to me and people while away time. I think about another drink and decide its time to move as I am having a hot flush and need to cool down. Out side I spot the local shopping centre. Its dead, half the units are empty the rest are looking abandoned or ignored. The only store with people in it is a Greggs. Its trying to be a restaurant with its comfortable eating spaces, however the sight of people tucking into their pasties from the paper bags they were serve in belies the attempts at refinement. I return to the car and check the time and decide to wait. My partner rings me at 5 o’clock to tell me she will be ready in thirty minutes. I go to the hospital unit and get in to wait with her. She is having her vitals checked and then she is allowed to leave with her paper work. The good news is that there was nothing found. It is a big relief.

We drive home and my partner goes for the solace of toast and a warm drink. I eat and settle down to draft the blog to the back drop of a film. All I need to do is to pay my tax bill and get into the next few days when I can train and count poetry words. It sounds simple but for some reason it never seems to turn out that way. With the gas company beginning to dig out side I have a feeling that the daily routine is about to be disrupted. It will be an early bed time and night meds for me tonight.