April Fools day, a Wednesday, a day to have bloods taken and therefore another PSA reading, its an important day. I am sluggish to wake and find everyone is on the way out to something. I do get up and make myself breakfast, a traditional one of toast and marmalade to accompany my morning medications. At the appointed time I drive to the GP surgery, I’d not make it walking, fortunately there is a space to park in. Having checked in I realise I have not got my phone with me and actually do not care, in fact its a relief, I do not have to play with the calendar for the next appointment. The nurse calls me in and I am really relieved to see its my usual blood taker. She is chatty, bouncy and blood good at getting the needle into my tired veins. She is having a busy morning, the doctors keep asking for a “quick bloods or ECG”. I suggest she draws a wiggly line on a piece of paper and when they ask for a quick ECG she produces it and says “here’s one I made earlier”. It was nice that she laughed. A couple of vials blood later I was on my way out.

I drove home and rested until my partner returned from visiting her mother in hospital. I did have time to type up a poem that I wrote yesterday. At the last poetry stanza one of the group suggested that I wrote more poems that contained my past and especially my memories of London just post war when I was a child. Apparently my image of the Sunlight Laundry horse in the smog was a good one. I had also had a conversation with one of the Rulers Wit publishing team on Saturday who was thinking of writing a memoir after reading some of my poems. So I had been thinking a lot about my childhood and wondering if a memoir was possible. The following poem popped out of my head and gave me a very clear answer.

510
I thought I’d write
a memoir.
It turns out
my childhood
is a cloud
of fragmented falsehoods
and constructions,
bleak, cold 
and misunderstood. 
There’s nothing there
but mute parents,
a weird sister
and a sense 
of having to go it 
alone.
There were ration books,
smog, gas light,
and horse shit on the road.
A nit nurse and a parade
on Empire Day.
The other kids
were fucking awful
so I played rugby
and stole things...
and drank.
It was twenty years
of dyslexic hell
till correspondence courses
bought me a ticket 
to Uni.
English, economics and logic
saved me.
That and the fact 
I thought I might 
be bright enough,
good enough
to do the normal shit.

							510 31-03-2026

My partner and I drove to a big garden centre near us for lunch where I indulged in chilli concarni. It was nice just to eat an chat, With the food and chat over I headed for the Pavers shoe shop and made a bee line for the Sketchers slip ins. I had my eye on a pair of blue trainers. I found two styles and grabbed them to try on. On style had laces that were not done up but even so I could no t get my feet to “slip into” them, poor design. The others were a broad fit and I liked them immediately, so it was them that came home with me. along with a couple of boxes of chocolate creams, peppermint and strawberry. Of course I wore my new “slip ins” to break them in for a while.

The evening came along and we watched the conclusion of Gone, not bad but a bit predictable, my partner went to bed and I sat and waited for the “patient knows best” email to arrive with my blood results from the mornings visit to the GP. It is always a tense moment as I read them, transferring them as I go to my record sheet that I use to record them. As always the crucial one is the PSA score, up is bad and down is good. I am relieved that today it is down. Down by 0.4, not a lot but down and I have to remind myself that the bloods have been taken earlier than usual, day 13 of 21 in the cycle because of Easter. The rest of the profile is okay. The things that are out of “range” are all moving in the direction of “range” so I am quite pleased with the overall outcome.

Today is a significant day in a different way. Seven years ago to the day I was flown out of Jamaica in an air ambulance, where I stopped for ice cream in Bermuda, pizza in Carpenter, Canada and sandwiches in Iceland before retuning home to Birmingham airport and an ambulance ride to Leicester Royal Infirmary, where I was immediately put into quarantine. I did have the memory of seeing the northern lights over Iceland to keep me going. Here I am still fighting, still knowing that I want to live, that I still have things that I love about the world and a family I do not want to leave and, of course, a head full of poetry and silly stuff. My cherry blossom continues to hold on and I intend to see it next year and the year after.

Thursday and to my chagrin I wake up at gone 10:30. I check my phone for world and personal updates and send birthday greetings to a friend. I feel rank but I eventually bully myself to get up and to take my morning meds, which are now more like breds, brunch meds. I have pizza and orange juice on the swing seat in the garden as the sun is out. I watch mother robin feed her young one, the squirrel gather peanuts from the freshy filled dispenser and our bachelor wood pidgin waddle about filling his crop. I also listen to the poxy dog down the road yelping and growling. Its a bulli type dog and I can’t help fantasying about it coming to a sticky end. My partner returns from visiting her mother and after a chat and a bite to eat for my partner we set about some jobs in the garden. I plant out some geraniums and pot up others. The garden furniture is released from its winter coves and the patio sponged down but will need a power wash very soon. My partner organises the mini greenhouse and the covered raised beds and plants out some over due pansies. By four o’clock I am knackered and clear away what I have been using. Back on my end of the sofa I draft the blog until tea time. The evening is up for grabs, perhaps a film or a new drama series, it is that tricky pre world cup couple of months when I feel I need to abstain a bit from football to get enough credit for the world cup, however I reckon England will not go far and in likelihood Scotland are more likely to stay longer. With that in mind I shall steer my way through the evening to evening meds and then bed. Easter is a bit of a lottery as my partners mother moves to a new rehab facility today so there will be visiting and organising to be done. Creativity and flexibility is the key.