CYCLE 3 DAY 5

Yesterday , Friday 18th, found me trying to rest in the morning and feeling a little less chipper than usual so I retreated to my garden shed and wrote letters all morning. I have always liked letters, both receiving and writing them. There is something about a letter that is personal and intimate in a away that no e-mail, WhatsApp or text can be. I love finding a letter in the post and instantly put it to one side to be read with a coffee and at leisure. It’s a kind of respect for the effort that someone has gone to and a politeness to pay it due attention. There are a few people who I correspond with on a regular basis and our correspondence is an important part of our relationship. The seal above is my seal. When I write a letter I always seal it with my own seal. I suppose that some people would see this as incredibly pretentious but I am of a fan of letter writers and I want to keep letters special. My seal is perhaps one way I mark the individual and personal nature of letters. I have several collections of letter either from particular people or general collections of letters. As I say I had retreated to my shed to write letters for the morning until I felt better. Once written I walked to the village post box and popped them in knowing that with luck they would arrive the following day. I like to think that my letters bring the same pleasantness to the receiver as I get from receiving letters. So if you ever get a letter with the above seal on it, its from me.

Time then to go to the gym. As I was going out in the evening my gym time needed to be fitted in. I am desperate to try and not get fat due to the chemo and all the drugs I’m taking. I need to keep making the effort. So I rock up at the gym and get myself going on a treadmill for an hour. A steady workout followed by a shower. The later being necessary to ward of my sense of being smelly from hot flushes whilst in company. So I leave the gym with a full can of something sprayed all over me and drive for an hour and ten to the pub where I was meeting friends. The rain was heavy and I had not driven at night for a while so it was arduous. On arrival my friends where there. Its a group of friends that came together through working together in a therapeutic community. It is one of those groups of friends that can always pick up from where they were and know each other too well to avoid the difficult conversations. This is a group of people who I can rely upon to tell me if I am getting up myself, or being an idiot or hiding things from myself. They are a group that can ask me how long I think I am going to live. They are people who I trust and care about a great deal. So we talked and caught up with each other and swapped news of mutual acquaintances, and of course we ate. At the end of the evening one of us always pays for everyone else, we of course take it in turns. Its always been like this, its just easier. Then the drive home to discover that the M1 is closed at junction 24 so I get diverted across country to get home. By the time I reach home I was too tired to write a blog hence my brief:

UTTERLY BLOGGERED, blog of yesterday.

It’s Saturday and England are playing Australia in the rugby world cup quarter final. Not to be missed. Coffee and toast munched in a fluffy dressing gown was a great way to watch England stuff Australia. I of course took the opportunity to self stab during half time and to clear the kitchen. With a short break before the next game, New Zealand versus the Irish, there was time to strip the bed, put washing on and generally tidy up. The Irish did not do well and were brushed aside by the All Blacks. That leaves England to play the All Blacks in the semi final next week, could be bloody.

To my delight there was a card and a present for me in the post. One of the people who I worked with at The Retreat York, had sent me a card telling me how she was doing and her plans for the future. She had included a small present which was much appreciated and clearly was intended to support me. I shall write soon and thank her properly.

My afternoon has been taken up with a trip to the DIY store for a new kitchen light and radiator bleed key. My partner and I stopped off at the garden centre for sauceages and cold meats, not as bizzare as it sounds, and a drink to keep us going. Once home I set about fixing the new kitchen light, which went well, at least its alight. Then came bleeding the radiators. That went more or less to plan once I had sorted out the right bleed key. I do worryingly have a radiator that will not bleed, in that it is full of air but seems reluctant to expel it. I have some googling to do. Dinner and an evening of TV and blogging, which will give way to football later. Tomorrow is more rugby and a trip to the gym.

It strikes me that life on chemo, at least for me, is a strange mixture of real life admin played out against a background of side effects, both of which take place in a hinterland where life expectancy is only a guess but is going to be less than hoped for. I supppose I notice this in writing the blog. I sometimes think that I am wasting peoples time with details of ordinary life interspersed with the odd comment about cancer or chemo, but rumbling around is my sense of being engaged in an invisible war, a fight for life that seeems strangely ordinary. An ever present desert that is being marched across.