Wednesday and I am roused by the sound of the Big Grabber working away and eating up the spoil pile on the drive. Big grabber was supposed to do this last evening but did not arrive to the builder badgers surprise. So I am awake and watching as Big Grabber goes to work, nothing like watching a plan come together. The operator is extremely dextrous with the monster machine, it is worth watching and appreciating.

My partner misses the spectacle as she has gone into work for the morning and will later visit her mother as usual on a Wednesday. Just as Big Grabber leaves so the builder badgers arrive, whom I make coffee for before I make my own fried egg sandwich breakfast to go with my morning meds. The Badgers finish the brick work on the patio and I start to tidy and organise my sofa end office ending in a bout of shedding. I am not feeling good today, I feel tired and breathy and it is difficult to get going today, its like having indigestion all the time, maybe it is. At 10:30 Big Grabber returns bit this time it is here to tip a load of base material for the path and the patio. The badgers are delighted as they have just finished the brick work on the patio and so they are ready to spring into action distributing the base material over the drive and patio. They go at it full tilt until about 4o’clock. Tomorrow is the big day when the block paving arrives along with the patio paving. Its creation time.

I finish my office organisation and then have a shredding session to get rid of a load of old documents. every so often I have to clear the decks and rejig my working space and the things I need close to hand when I am not feeling that good or need to rest a while. Todays effort will see me through for a while, at least until the builder badgers have finished their work and I can get back into the Shed or on the new patio.

Trying to keep up with my emails I check in and also send a few to family and friends while watching the big pile of base material get spread over the shape of the new driveway. It feels like real progress is being made. Lunch time comes and goes, I watch a couple of opera excerpts, one of which is from the Magic Flute by Mozart. Some people thought he wrote it as a joke but people actually managed to sing it. It is the Queen of the Night Aria and it just astounding.

JUST AMAZING THAT A HUMAN CAN PRODUCE THAT SOUND AND IN SUCH A CONTEXT.

I read for a while before starting to draft todays blog. The builder badger have worked hard and hit their target today, so going from a bomb site they have reach the creative stage where the top layers go onto everything they have done so far, now it is possible to see the vision, and I like it.

I promise no more building pictures until it is complete, I am guessing people are bored with them by now. My eldest daughter needs a lift to the GP as her foot is troubling her where her tendon is injured so I prepare to be “dad to taxi”. When we arrive at the GPs there is only one other person waiting to be seen so my eldest daughter is called in immediately. No panic, just more movement required. We return home relieved.

I have forgotten to say that yesterday there was a very important event in family, namely my youngest grandson made his first proper crawl. I am of course doing proud grandfather.

My partner returns home from work and seeing her mother and so the evening begins, which will include Race Across The World, anything else will be random and subject to change on a whim. Except of course the Tesco delivery, which the delivery guy will have to lug over the base material of the new drive. It feels like a long day when I have not been on form so I am hoping for a bit of a read and an early night. Of course tomorrow is my oncology review, clearly I have left the best to last, but I am feeling fatalistic, its difficult to feel you are being taken seriously over the phone. The message is in the media as Marshal McCloughan said and being treated for metastatic stage 4 cancer over the phone feels very much like “we don’t give a toss as long as your PSA is down and your blood pressure is not up”. The reality is that they have no more magic to offer so why would they bother when their potions and spells will work on others more saveable. So it is increasingly difficult to get myself up for an in depth chat when I know they just want off the phone having prescribed me the next three cycles of “chemo”. I am buggered really because all my “arithmetic” is good, especially now that my hematuria seems to have abated and I am not getting pain when I urinate, which is good, and I am just waiting to have my bladder stone removed. It feels like a Mexican stand off. In the meantime I put on weight, get less fit and become more sedentary. Yep it feels like a Mexican stand off.