Monday and the first week day on holiday, Its a slow start with vitals to do and record and meds to take, I wonder why in am taking vitamin D tablets in a heat wave when I am in shorts and sport vest all day. I have no answer and just swallow the pills. There are things needed from the shop but most of all breakfast is required, so my partner and I sort out suitable clothes, fire up google maps and set of for Watsons café. It turns out that the café is embarrassingly close. There is hardly anyone there so we select our own seats and wait for the staff to come across to us. It is a strange place and very much a road side café with a strong hint of seaside about it. Its just the kind of café that fits in with Bacton.
The breakfast was good and hearty and we watch people outside eat alongside their dogs while others wandered past. Opposite was the village garage with a beauty parlour as an annexe, I suppose you could have everything M.O.T.d at the same time. With breakfast done and dusted my partner and I strolled back to FLIP the cottage via the village store. I was determined to get postcards to send and for them to arrive before we got home. I search the whole shop and found none, my partner had to ask where they were. I promise you that below is the full range of Bacton post cards.
Notice there is not a beach insight, not even the sea really. My conclusion is that this is a village and beach in hiding and that it maybe just one large witness protection programme. So if you are the lucky recipient of one of these cards, I was not being lazy, or hiding, this is all there was. Once back at the cottage I of course start to write postcards until I realise I have not got my address book with me, fortunately I am a person of more than one synapse and consulted my address section of the Amazon App and there you all were at least the lucky recipients of one of Bacton’s resplendent post card selection. I lazed and grazed and read until it was time for a late tea of nibbles type things before launching into The Gone series 2. I am not persuaded that I would want to live in New Zealand, especially after learning that we Brits were responsible for massacring the aboriginals, with other aboriginals help of course. It would seem that Empire builders are good at spotting and using tribal rivalries. Bed time rolled around so I took my meds and headed for bed with the sound of the sea rolling in my ears.
Tuesday and I am awake early, so I do the dishes from last night, leave a cup of tea by my partner and head for the little suntrap courtyard of the cottage to finish reading Ian Rankin’s Let it Bleed. It was an okay read, good holiday ,easy to read stuff that was pacey and undemanding. I finish the book and reflect for a while and then in a flurry I write three poems. Whilst writing the man in the door cottage “Flop”, hurries indoors from the beach, where he has been fishing and calls to his partner that he needs her to Google something quickly. It turns out that he caught a Weever fish and before he had time to think he had grabbed hold of it on the end of his line only for the Weever fish to stick its poisonous spines into his hand. At the point he was asking for the Google search he could feel the venom going up his arm. Apparently in this situation you dunk the affect limb into the hottest water you can stand to cook the protein in the venom, thus deactivation it, which I assume he did. He appeared later and retrieved his rods from the beach where he had left them. He and his partner subsequently went out for the day, or perhaps A&E.
455
Sitting by the sea,
outside "FLIP"
the holiday cottage,
the constant rolling
in my ears;
perpetual,
the other end
of my life spectrum.
It is a reminder
that everything
will continue,
until it too
reaches it's time.
445 12/08/2025
I am sitting writing when I am joined by my partner and we sit and munch marmalade toast and sip warm drinks. With breakfast done we make a dash for the shop to avoid the hottest part of the day pausing only to post the postcards that I had written yesterday. Unfortunately some of the things we wanted were unavailable, simple things like fruit and veg and fresh meat. So we returned with new menu plans but clutching new daily newspaper puzzles to do. After a brief rest and my partner and I head for the beach to walk along its still mostly deserted lengths. A brief rest at an old groyne to watch the sea gives pause for reflection.
A gentle walk back to the cottage and a light lunch and ice cream and I start to draft the blog. There are poems to be added to my “All I Have” file before tea and then more of the The Gone series before the highlight of the evening, The Great British Sewing Bee. Somewhere in there will be a shower and my night meds before I get myself to bed and hopefully sleep. I notice that I find it difficult to focus for long periods and get bored, no not bored, dissatisfied with what I am writing, a lack of depth or pertinence to what I think this blog should be about. I am no less me just more distracted by my circumstances.
453
It's a roller coaster
one minute there is joy
the next the black pits.
A smiling doctor tells me,
"your doing really well"
as my metastatic tumours
disappear from any scan,
and then my damn PSA
rises and rises again.
The bit of cancer
that I feared might
run amok has gone
yet my prostate worsens,
and with it my fear.
I'm scared in a new sort
of way,
death scared.
A getting better
but getting worse scared
that gnaws in a new way.
Someone I told about my
magic growth disappearance
said this:
"does it mean you don't
have to talk about it
all the time now?"
My god what a bore
I must be.
So I'll keep stum,
retire a little
and try to be
a man with a stiff
upper lip, no bother,
but I am terrified
of slipping into
steroid territory
and bloating like a pig.
Before I always had a plan
but now I don't.
I'm scared in a new sort
of way,
death scared.
453 12-08-2025
