Friday and I am awake as my partner goes off to her physio appointment. I went through my usual rising rituals and then puttered about a bit and checking what I need to arrange for the busy week ahead. In going through my journal I found the “poem” I had jotted yesterday while waiting for my scan to take place.

448

Sitting in the car park, 
a hospital.
I've snacked after being 
injected with radiation,
now I sit filling time
so the fluid will show my bones.

I've read Harrison
to keep me company
and I like him, 
but I feel time is heavy. 

This time the nurse
missed the vein
and moved into pastures new
until I bled satisfyingly
into a canula,
this the gateway to the isotope.

She talked incessantly
not noticing I was having 
a hot flush, but carried on
a running commentary
on needle size and wobbly veins. 

In two hours time 
I'll be laying on my back
encased in a tube 
with my only thought beig
"don't want a piss".
They have after all 
asked a bloke with
prostate cancer to drink
more than usual, 
so forgive my paranoia.

At least I am here 
in my car listening 
to the rain beat down
and wonder if this is to be
the forecast thunderstorm.
How ironic if I should
get a lightening strike.
But I am feeling confident,
I have a pig umbrella 
in the boot. 

Maybe it will rain so hard
I will be washed away 
in my tin can.
I notice on my windscreen
a parking voucher, now sodden
and immediately think I'm in breach
of some arcane rule .
Here I am dry, do I risk it?
And then I realise its a reflection
of a voucher sitting on my dashboard
behind my Satnav. 
My anxieties dissolve and I return
to watching the rain and scribbling. 

This is waiting on the nhs,
this is being aske to bugger off
for two hours:
amuse yourself.
I might pop down to cardiology
and see if anyone is up for a fright
or see what's on at theatre.
I bet you could sell tickets 
for that. 

                                  448  14/ 06/2025 
                                   Glenfield Hospital car park.

Having extracted it I wait for my partner to return hone before we go and collect her new car. Having arrived at the dealers there was a mountain of electronic admin to do before that moment of my partner getting behind the wheel of her new car. It was a carful drive home but a very smooth one. The evening came along quickly and my partner spent it in her new car trying to sort out all the new things the car does and is supposed to do. While she was playing and wrestling with the fact that there is no paper manual only a digital one, which is a real swine to work with or even find. My evening is filled with completing my ALCS account that has come through. So I spend time entering ISBN numbers and hinting through my book shelves for everything I have ever written as contributions to books or edited. In theory if anyone is using my poetry or old psychology stuff then there maybe money due. What the ALCS does is collect it up and pay to me in September less a percentage. By the end of the evening its all done and I go through my night rituals and head for bed.

Saturday is a special day as my youngest grandchild is coming to visit with his parents. Of course there is clearing up and preparation to do so there is a period of “whizz round” and then they arrive. From then on its one full on energy delight as a small person gets into everything. Apart from a break to watch the local rugby team lose in the final of the premier league its all about the small person until he goes to bed and the adults have a quite rest of the day. The day has flown by.

Sunday and its fathers day. I am woken up by a small boy with a beaming smile. It is also the birthday of one of my other grandchildren in Sweden. My son has been lovely in sorting things out for her from me and it will not be long before I’ll be able to see her in person when they visit soon. The decision is made to go to Twycross zoo and show my grandson big animals and especially the monkeys, so just before noon we load up and drove off to Twycross zoo.

It used to be a great place to go to, a real zoo, with real animals and a real sense of excitement. It was a place we took our children and have really lovely memories of it but the zoo of today is a shadow of its former self. The animals are mostly made of leggo, invisible or looking to be in poor condition if you can see them. The place is now a theme park with food outlets. So we trudged round trying to find the animals and after a few hours we leave disappointed in our experience. It was an expensive walk during which my grandson picked up stones.

Once home there is food to be eaten a tired little boy to get to bed and four knackered adults who ease through the evening, but we get there and I draft the log and share the photo that I took. It will be an early night for mem once the Tesco order is done.