Sunday and I am up and off to the shop for chocolate biscuits, cake and papers while my partner cooks me a breakfast bacon bagel. We have just about finished breakfast and cleared away when our visitors arrive. My nephew and wife bring there five month old daughter to us. She is of course just beautiful and a delight. We sit and chat over drinks and biscuits while my grand niece charms us. Have I said how lovely she is?

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We chat and all have a chance to give the youngest member of the family a hug until its time for us to say goodbye. We wave them off and return to our Sunday. I unbox the croc pot that has been delivered during the morning and start to prepare our first meal with it while my partner goes to see her mother. My eldest daughter goes to the shop for onions and returns as I start to put ingredients into the cooker. I settle down and watch a rugby match as I do the weeks Tesco order and book next weeks slot. My partner returns and we ring our youngest daughter to see how she is. She is excited as she and her partner have signed the contract for their house, however she had no time to talk and arranged to call tomorrow.

I write the blog as the tea cooks and look forward to my evening of Strictly and an early night. Tomorrow is 28 day jab day, a zoom training day so I preload with paracetamol. I did weigh myself today and found I had slipped over 95 Kilos. This is not good, it means I need to change what I am doing. It means a change of diet and it means a more intensive training regime. I had hoped that I might have some physical credit in the bank, that an odd biscuit here or there would be okay, but its not. So tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow until the new year of 2022 dawns it must be different.

Friday, I collected my drugs as Monday is my 28 day injection day, which means a weekend of prophylactic paracetamol, not my favourite time. I spent the morning doing very little really till lunchtime when I gave my eldest daughter a lift to circus skills while I carried on to the gym making a call to a friend as I go. We catch up and talk about how disruptive COVID in the household is. At the gym I cross trained, swam and steamed myself. By the time I was done my partner arrived to do yoga so I retuned home to cook the evening meal and watch a film stopping at some point to order a croc pot. With this gadget we can put a meal in before going to the gym at the end of a working day and not have to cook at stupid o’clock in an evening.

Saturday and it is the usual ritual of bacon bagel and putting the washing in. Then my partner and I go off on an adventure to research mattresses. We drive to Dreams in Nuneaton and engage in technological banter with the sales bloke. Usual sales chat but it helps knowing what you want. Rock hard should be simple but the labels include crap like how many recycled plastic bottles have been used in each mattress. As for spring type and fillings there is endless crap to be ploughed through. Then there is the issue of whether a super king mattress can be got into the house and bedroom without bending it because as any fool knoweth that to bend a mattress breaks the side bars and it wont sit flat on the bed, hence the exploration of zipped half mattresses. Laying on show room mattresses is such a strange experience. It seems to me that my body plays tricks on me. How can a “very firm” with 4000 springs feel softer than a cheapo 1000 spring one. The one that feels the firmest is about £700, however a top line one at Dreams could be over a £1000. We gather up literature and I take photos of labels and info boards. We then drive to Leicester to have a coffee and muffin before going to Lewis to lay on their mattress selection. Even more confused here. We find a familiar brand and it feels completely different from the upper the range. I am staggered that some of the upper range ones cost upward of £3000! We gather more pamphlets and lay on more mattresses. By the end I am totally confused, I’m sure my body is having a laugh, I just want to go home and re-acquaint myself with the beds at home, one of which we want to replace and one we like and is our “role model” for what we want our new one to be. I am convinced that the “role model” is the cheapest one we found in the last shop. Can it be that the cheaper ones are constructed to be less comfortable and hence are just “hard”. How delicious an irony if this is the case.

We return home, have sandwiches and settle down to prepare teas and watch Strictly followed by the second half of the England game. Time to catch up with the blog, resist the temptation to stay up for the Fury- Wilder fight and instead prepare to meet my grand niece tomorrow. Interesting being a grand uncle.

Thursday and I have a meeting at 9 o’clock. A swift breakfast and then I am sat in front of the screen. It’s a productive meeting and by mid morning it comes to a conclusion and I am free to catch up with my social media. I find a video from our friends in Shri Lanka with several messages. I watch the video and I am set back on my heels as I see how the families home has deteriorated since we saw it ten years ago in 2011. It was basic then but clearly things have got worse. COVID has hit Shri Lanka hard and things have become very difficult. The messages from the families eldest daughter tell me that the whole family has an income of only 30,000 Shri Lanka rupees, a month which equates to £110. There are four adults and a young boy the family. The video makes me realise just how fortunate I, and my family are. In case you are wondering the video was made on the pone we provided so that the children could continue to study during COVID. The daughter sent messages asking me to show the video to all my friends and family and so I have included it here. I am not expecting anyone to do anything or contribute but I think it important to know that others in the world who are friends are struggling to survive. I am sure our friends are not alone in their difficulties. This family are survivors of the tsunami that hit Shri Lanka and have been living in the same emergency concrete cube temporary housing sine that time. It seems as ever they are trying to make the best of their situation but COVID has placed yet another obstacle in their way.

I will not be complaining about my situation again, the gift of her video has once again jolted me back to the reality of the world. I and my partner will of course respond.

At lunchtime I bathe and get ready to go to my very first chiropody appointment. As I drive to the appointment a friend calls me and chats about how the family are coping with one of their daughters having COVID and the situation at her school. I arrive at the chiropodist to find her rearranging an appointment for someone one whose partner had died unexpectedly. A difficult call to hear. I am ushered into the clinical room and seated on the special chair. My socks are removed and my feet are examined with a running commentary on how they are. They are in fact “good feet” but need a little work. My troublesome big toes will need some attention. The chiropodist sets to with a scalpel and then her high speed grinders, filers, buffers and sanders. In order to sort my left big toe out she had to cut my nail back a long way on one side which made me wince but was necessary. She finished the work and finished by massaging lotion into my newly gleaming feet. I have to say my feet felt very happy and comfortable. I know instantly that this was a good idea, one of my better decisions. I follow her into the reception area and waited to hear the bill. It is £29, a genuine bargain, it is the best £29 I’ve spent in a long time, although I do reflect that it is 7900 Shri Lanka rupees and the equivalent of just over a third of our friends monthly family income.

I drive home, eat and change into my training gear and go and row for half an hour in the garage. It feels that I am coming down with a cold as my nose is streaming so I do what I always do and that is try to burn it out of myself by training. The session is sluggish and hard work, so I am clearly under the weather a tad.

I record the session, change and eat tea, the usual Thursday tuna pasta. I settle down to watch the Great Britain women’s ice hockey team beat Iceland in a pre Olympic qualifying game and then write the blog.

Wednesday, bin day. Breakfast of muesli and then some bed stripping, laundering , hanging out, tidying, bedclothes changing, ordering drugs, booking Mondays jab appointment and doing a bit of admin work. So by lunch time there was still training to be done and some tidying before our guest arrived. Frankly I’d had enough so I went to the club to drink a quiet cup of coffee and do a bit of google research. I decided that the Bond movie at three hours long was an ideal afternoon escape so I strolled over to the Vue cinema and indulged in a reasonable film and a packet of fruit pastilles.

I was quite pleased, given my condition, that I managed the film with a single piss and that “excuse me, sorry” shuffle down the row. Film over and everyone dead ready for an 007 reset I decided to eat out as well and made my way to Frankie and Bennies as the decent Italian could not give me a table for an hour. Frankie and Bennies has taken down all its signature photos and covered the walls in bland non COVID harbouring paper. Its even more soulless than it was before. The bruschetta was okay but they had no macaroni cheese. I selected Spaghetti Bolognese as an alternative, a poor choice as the sauce was insipid and tasteless. I tried to end on a high by choosing the exciting sounding Tolberone cheesecake, another mistake but at least the black americano was hot. I also discovered that this week is dyslexia week, my week! This invaluable piece of info came via LinkedIn, I see no evidence that it is recognised anywhere else. Perhaps I should wear a badge with some bollocks about a hidden disability along with one that says I’m dying of cancer and see if anyone notices or which one they think is more notable. I pay my bill and drive home via the garage to top my tank. I seem to put a lot into the tank but my mileage calculator in the car does not seem to go up very much, I am suspicious.

I think there are tipping points in the experience of cancer, today was one of them or at least raised the issue of there being tipping points. I realised to day that there are two distinct positions with this diagnosis. You either fight to stay alive, e.g exercise, diet, research, stay informed, stay engaged with the world and continue to try and make meaning of life and ones personal internal universe or you settle for dying in as peaceful and quiet way as possible. In short you quit because it does not make sense to go on doing all the other things that give you the allusion of agency and purpose. I think the divide between the two is subtle and very fragile as time goes on. Those moments when the aggregation of the worlds aggravations coalesce to raise the issue of a tipping point are unpredictable and certainly caught me unawares. It is something I need to learn, to recognise and to be clear about. On the other hand my life is now too short to be taking any more shit than I need to.

I get home and retreat to the peace and quite of the bedroom to write the blog and reflect on the day. Tomorrow I have work and my first visit to a chiropodist to sort out my chemo thickened big toe nails. Now life does not come any more prosaic than that.

Tuesday, the day the bin goes out and I get a day to myself. It starts with a muesli breakfast and then I head for the Shed to write letters. I notice the squirrels, Squishy and Squashy, have emptied the bird feeder and refill it before settling down to write. I spend the morning writing letters whilst a friends lavender candle scented the atmosphere and the heater kept me snug. I have a growing pile of envelopes but my stock of pretty writing paper is almost spent. At lunch time I have soup and walk to the post box to send my letters on their way. It is then time to do some Christmas shopping. I browse and research and by the end of about an hour or so I have cards and wrap with one or two luxuries to nibble. Christmas fun over I set about some enabling environment work and organising some future training sessions. By late afternoon I’m ready for the gym. My partner and I go to the gym where I cycle and cross train burning off about 500 calories. After showering I sit in the lounge and order an Indian meal and then my partner and I race home to be there to collect our meal. Its the wonder of technology and the encouragement of sloth that makes this possible. Having said that I am pleased to tuck in to my butter chicken and not have to cook. I watch the conclusion of the current Silent Witness episode and start the blog. It feels that like this is one of those periods of humdrum routine which I hope will keep me fit for as long as possible and will help hold my own at least up until my next oncology appointment in December. On the day of my appointment I have booked a pantomime for the evening. It seemed apt.

81 days to Christmas, oh yes it is.

Monday: up, breakfast, a welcome phone call from a friend and then I am in front of the screen for a morning meeting. Lovely people and doing their best so a good experience. The post arrives and I have the excitement of getting a letter. I do some admin and then go for a lunch time walk with my partner to buy a paper, flowers and some buns. A brief lunch and I take time to read my letter, which is a really nice thing to be doing. I am soon back in front of my screen for a team meeting. All of the afternoon is passed in the meeting and then I am doing more admin including sorting out my invoices. There is a brief brake to take the Tesco deliver in and then there re more loose ends to sort out. By the time its time for tea I’m up to date with my invoices and ready for tomorrows work. WhatsApp crashes and several hours later is still down.The evening is the weekly challenge of TV quiz programmes. Then its the blog. My plan is to spend time at the gym tomorrow, to get out and about, perhaps even breakfast after some exercise. Time to leave the the sofasit.

Sunday and the usual early morning drink and a chat to plan the day, then its breakfast and then face time with the youngest daughter. She was in good form and a delight to chat to. I get a phone call from Coventry Blaze telling me the ice hockey shirt I ordered has come back with the wrong spelling of my name on it. The guy is very apologetic adn promises to get the corrected one to me as soon as possible. Yep its ice hockey season.Time to clear the decks and to put my washing away and get organised for the coming working week. We go to our local garden centre and buy vegetables. While there we visit the butchers to get bacon and while there we lay in a turkey breast for the freeze as an insurance against a tricky Christmas. It cost us £27 but there was a second label on £45! We have joined the butchers Christmas club in the hope that we will have some cushion against possible Christmas shortages and price hikes. On return to home I prepare a one pot meal and pop it in the oven on a low heat before we get ready to go to the gym.

The gym is tough as I do not usually train on a Sunday. I row for 15 minutes and cross train for 35 minutes, burning off 535 calories. I take a long shower and relax in the lounge while waiting for my partner. We drive home and settle down to watch Strictly while eating the one pot. As the dance programme melds into the world of nature and breeding I begin the blog. I shall watch the football highlights tonight as the Mighty Brentford have managed to sneak a late win against a top flight team. Then it will be bed for me. I am tired and when tired I turn to chocolate.

Saturday and its throwing it down with rain. Breakfast and its still throwing it down. We decide not to go to see the Tigers play. Its still throwing it down with rain. I rig up my laptop to the TV and we get to watch the Tigers match from the comfort of the sofa. An attritional game in the rain. Tigers win with the last play of the game 13 -12.

There are chores to do and things to be topped up but of most importance is the lack of chocolate. I go to the shops in the rain dressed in a parka coat that is used in only extreme conditions, like rainy days with no chocolate. I return with a bag of goodies including two types of chocolate. Its time for dinner and the joys of Strictly Come Dancing. I cannot believe I’m addicted to it, I think I’m jealous. When anyone asks me what I would have been if I could have my life over again my answer is always dancer. It would have been disastrous as I have no sense of rhythm and also I am pretty tone deaf. However the thought of being able to express being to music is very enticing. No need for talking or words, ideal for a dyslexic. It also means not having to explain oneself to anyone. Anyway by the end of strictly chocolate is eaten and the blog is started, and its still raining.

Friday and I crawl out of bed not feeling as chipper as I have done. I get breakfast and watch the TV morning show. In it there was a short piece on some woman who was having time away from her TV job to be with her family which included her father who has prostate cancer. During a conversation with him he revealed that a new drug that he is taking has reduced his PSA level to 2.5 from a staggering 1000. The medics told me mine was high as a justification for some of the procedures they used on me, mine was 147 maximum. How ignorant I was at the time, and there was me thinking I had read lots. How did I miss the possible range of PSA? Still better late than never I guess. I retreat to the Shed and spend my morning writing letters, it pours with rain. At some point I refill the squirrel feeder and bird feeders as the squirrels seem to be eating everything they can at the moment.

There is a bacon bagel for lunch and then I am back in the Shed writing some more and arranging some Amazon purchases. I go to the post box to speed the letters on their way. I visit the village chemist to buy Actifed to find they do not sell it so I buy my partners eye drops and return. At the end of the working day my partner and I set off for the gym. She will do her yoga class and I get myself onto a cross trainer and do sixty five minutes, burning off 712 calories and covering 8.22 kilometres. This is my best yet. I shower and wait for my partner to finish her class before we drive off to the local supermarket to get pizza for supper and Actifed. Home and we eat while watching a TV film, a rugged mad man abducting women film. Morgan Freeman of course and of course he wins in a super cool way. This time he shoots the psychopath in a gas filled room through a carton of milk to avoid an explosion. So cool but psychopaths always get such a poor press. And so to bed.

Thursday and after a poor nights sleep I get up in time to have breakfast and take a call from a friend before going to my first meeting of the day. The meeting was relatively brief but fruitful. I was left with some admin to do but most of the morning was used up by sorting things out and doing chores. At lunch I down a large dish of soup and then I am into my afternoon meeting. I join a group of therapeutic community people to talk about the issues facing them at this time. There were people from India, Japan and America as well as England. It seems that there is a resistance by the nhs to invest in the non physical or pharmacological interventions that vast numbers of people require. The waiting lists in some places means that many people are never able to access the services they need. It seems to me that currently the medical establishment is too burnt out to face the challenge of attending to the psychological needs of large numbers of people in the community. Logically the onus for the provision of such services needs to be moved from the current system to a much more co produced community based system that offers safe space where people can firstly find safety and then to enable them to evolve into milieus for change. It means applying relational practice to a wider range of spaces and people services. The meeting ends and I send a LinkedIn invite to someone who is battling to preserve a local service in Leicester.

Having exercised my brain its time to exercise the body so I head for the garage and the rower. My body aches from yesterdays session in the gym but I need to keep going. I manage the half hour and a reasonable distance.

I retreat to the sofa to record my session and to catch my breath. Not for long though as I drive my eldest daughter to her circus skills session. During this time I start to read Early One Morning by Virginia Baily. Its a Times best seller, so I had high hopes but I found it… overly wordy and implausible. I will of course finish it as it might pick up but I am not hopeful. At the end of the session I drive home and eat tuna pasta and settle down to watch English football teams either lose or struggle to hold their own. Its a depressing view and I am glad when it is over so I can get on with the blog for today. I am tired but tomorrow I have a day with no commitments so I can get some Shed and gym time. My biggest challenge is to control my diet and not to comfort eat, my biggest enemy is my sweet tooth.