Saturday and its party day. Today is the day that my partners mother is having her 93rd birthday party. So after a croissant breakfast the family, including my youngest daughter and her fiance, pack the cars with finger rolls, chocolate cake and nibbles. When my partners brother arrives we drive off to surprise the birthday party girl. It all goes to plan, we arrive, other family members arrive, we prepare the spread and settle into party mode. We are taken aback to hear from the carer that the party girl had had one of her turns last evening which meant calling out the para medic for a check over. Party girl did not want to go to hospital to be checked again and signed a waiver to stay put. We party on with one of my nephew’s son demonstrating very good IT skills on his “big blue telephone”, which was in fact a tablet. His generation is growing up in a vastly different world than I did but then I guess that is always the way for each generation. He does however swim, climb and do karate so I guess the physical element is still there for many of the young still. There is candle blowing, cake cutting and strawberry and cream indulgence as there are multiple conversations between family members as we catch up with each other. Its a typical family gathering, generation on generation and that unspoken recognition of blood and connection. Somehow we are inter connected but it is not always obvious how this works,its more of an identification and an acknowledgements of the obligations between us.

It comes time to pack away the goodies and to load up the cars again to depart. We say our farewells and return home. I drop my partners brother home and return to a quiet house thinking about an evening meal. We settle on fish and chips from the local chippy and having indulged the family settles down in the lounge to watch “Rhapsody” the story of Queen and Freddie Mercury. Brilliantly acted and of course the music was excellent. I did make me wonder if Freddie Mercury was in fact a bi sexual who like many get told they are gay and are not allowed to be themselves by those around them. I guess there will be no knowing. The family drift off to bed and I watch the Guardians of the Galaxy, mainly to reacquaint myself with Rocket the my mental avatar for the fight against my cancer. A reassembled Racoon with violent and antisocial tendencies who fights unreservedly. I chose well.

Sunday and its up with coffee and a weigh in. Its another disaster; 95.5 kilos, an increase in weight. I really must get a grip of my food intake and exercise. We go to the garden centre to buy vegetables and chicken for lunch today. Once home we have a bagel breakfast and set about our lazy Sunday morning. I have a long chat with my eldest daughter about the aggravations of work and study and then scrabble about in the loft to retrieve our old but very solid plastic suitcases. They and some packing cases are going back with my youngest and her fiance to aid them in their preparation for moving into their new home when their new house finally goes thorough. The process is gradually getting there. In no time at all its time for lunch, a Sunday special. We sit on the patio in rare and welcome sunshine, eating and chatting. Its another good family day when plans for the future get shared and discussed. Its a big lunch and requires a lazy coffee to assist digestion and more time to talk. Eventually the youngest’s fiance takes on the challenge of packing all the borrowed suitcases into the small Toyota Aygo (named Hero). To collective amazement he succeeds and we go out to admire his work and wave them good bye. In my head I think I should train but I am feeling lethargic and listless and will content myself with poisoning weeds on the patio before watching England play a world cup qualifying football match and then Vigil, the latest BBC Sunday night drama. Tomorrow I need to get my head straight, write the words that are filling me up and train. I have to find the energy from somewhere to be consistent in my training and my diet. It feels like everything is distant, slipping out of reach, like the swimmer working against the tide which will not turn. Now is the time, this is the instant to defy the odds, to focus and do the work that makes hope possible.

Friday the third day of Autumn and the second anniversary of me starting chemotherapy, so we are off to Ragdale Spa for a day of pampering and relaxation. A breakfast of marmalade bagel and coffee, quite Paddington really, and we are up and away by nine o’clock. The spa is quite close to us so we are soon collecting our soft white bathrobes and locker keys. The first place we always go is always the out door spar pool where the water is warm and there is that unique feeling of being warm in water outside. I feel like those monkeys that bath in warm springs in the middle of winter with snow laying around. Always a good place for a chat. A quick rub down and then into the salt steam room followed by the candle lit pool and then into the sauna. I really like the sauna its the first time in weeks that I have actually been warm. Time for coffee before I go off for my massage and facial. It is truly wonderful to have someone smooth you with oil and then kneed knotted muscles into relaxation. So much to thank the Romans for.

Even though I have a beard I was able to get a facial. Now I am fascinated by the facial. So many oils, creams and emoluments applied with clothes, sponges, warm flannels and finger tips. What happened to washing your face and getting on with life. I used to work with a woman who was an Avon representative who would wander into the office with bags of chemical stuff and shout to her clients “Your shit for your face is here”. She would then deliver bags to the desks of her colleagues. What amazed me was how her business boomed and boasted many regular customers, goes to show what the truth can do. I never noticed any of the buyers looking any younger, less wrinkled, smoother or rejuvenated, but I give them their due they were persistent, much to the profit of “shit for your face ” woman.

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Once I had recovered from my rub down with an oily rag and face creaming I indulged in a fresh orange juice while waiting for my partner to emerge. We head for lunch where I indulge in red pepper humus and gammon followed by the worlds smallest portion of berry crumble and custard. We retire to the retreat bar and sip post dinner coffee on a very comfortable sofa. Time slips by and we head for the swimming pool to read whilst lazing on a sun lounger. Before I know it four thirty had rolled round so I headed for the sauna for one last time while my partner swam. I repeat that I love saunas. By the time we have showered and changed its time for one last drink and something to nibble before the drive home. We pay our bill and go home feeling chilled. Once home I unload my bag and start to write the blog and realiser that I have not given them their magic locker key band back!

I guess I will be mailing it back to them. Home to the blog and a wait for my youngest daughter and her fiance to arrive. While I blog I reflect on the two years that have past from that first day in September 2019 when I was hooked up to an IV for the first time and unexpectedly told I would have to self inject into my stomach area five times every one of the six cycles. I started this blog to try and keep control of the process but more importantly as a way of telling friends and family how I am and what was happening to me. Perhaps also to save people needing to ask when it might feels awkward, I’m not sure how successful it has been but it has helped me to not avoid the tricky issues. It has also made me keep tabs on myself and to keep some sort of focus. It is easy to slip into forgetting and letting the cancer institutionalise me. I’ve had moments of forgetting that I have limited time and let some things slip by me, but by and large I think I’ve managed to stay focussed on the important stuff. I have realised that the blog is very ordinary at times but that is the dilemma. Ordinary life carries on and if I choose to keep engaged then there are times when my blog is just my ordinary life and cancer appears not to be there, however it is always there and that’s the trap. Its that permanence that can fool me into thinking that it is not there. Its in there trying to kill me 24/7/365 so the battle has to be constant and it is this that is tiring. This is how I ended my blog two years ago:

“I end my day cooking curry for the family, taking more drugs, finishing a box of maltezers, drinking three pints of water, watching TV and then settling down to write todays blog. I’m tired and my dyslexia is having a field day. I have yet to get spell check hooked into my system. I am aware that at the moment this blog is all words when my natural urge is to include pictures and pretty things. These are skill I have yet to learn but I hope to soon be able to do more for all of you who take the time and trouble to read my journey. Please feel free to comment, make suggestions and to share this blog with anyone who you think might get something from it. Good night.”

I think my message is probably still close to the above although I hope the blog is now prettier and more visually stimulating. Good night.

Thursday and the second day of autumn. Its up for breakfast with my partner and so Saturday planing and shopping list construction to be done. I get washing in to do and then we go to shop for weekend food. It’s a while since we have shopped on any scale at our local supermarket. Of course it means we can compare the prices with the chain that provide our delivery. It is interesting to see how big a discrepancy there is between some of the prices for the same goods. We gather what we need and head home. I’ve acquired a runny nose and get some Actifed down me, which traditionally works for me. No temperature. After doing some admin work I do a rapid flow test. Negative, so I am not COVID infested. My washing is now dry so I set about putting it away and clearing away my clothes from the spare room so that my youngest daughter and boyfriend can settle in tomorrow when they arrive. I get a call from a friend and have a long chat about all sorts of things from work to domestic chores. I get myself ready to train and attend to my nail needs before setting off to the garage to train. I was going to bike today but swapped to the rower at a higher resistance. It turned out to be hard session as my body was remembering the effort it made yesterday.

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As soon as I am changed post training I get my eldest daughter in the car and give her a lift to her flying fitness session. While she is learning new skills I sit in the car and read The Fourth Shore by Virginia Bailey for just over and hour. I suspect that I may have fallen asleep for a while as I’m not finding the read one that grips me, but I will persevere, after all I am going to meet the author in November so it feels only fair to make an effort. I get home to find my partner in mid singing lesson so I crack on and make my favourite tuna past and settle down to watch England beat Hungary 4-0 in a word cup qualifier match. For me it is the blog next against the background of TV news. One item makes me incensed, it is of course the bloody Americans, Texans to be precise and their new law that makes abortion for any reason after six weeks illegal. The pernicious self righteous religionist right wing is a cancer that champions ignorance and superstition as a life choice and style, and America has it in abundance. Tomorrow is a spar day, all I want is a massage and time in a steam room to forget that Texas exists and to celebrate the second anniversary of my first chemotherapy.

September the 1st, a Wednesday, its autumn. I am at war. Its back into the arena to be fit, to be lean and to be strong. By the time I get to Oncology on the 21st of December I will be fit enough to undertake whatever new shit gets thrown at me. So its a new focus on exercise and diet. It also includes being more focused on work, so that it gets productive and before this Christmas I will have my poetry ready to publish.

So I start my day with toast and some admin before deciding to train early as possible today. I get into my training gear and make my way to the garage. I decide to go for an hour at a lower level to loosen myself up and set my new regime on the road. It goes well.

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I am gargantuan, I row a personal best. This is the best possible start to a new campaign. I am encouraged. I head for the shower. Refreshed I check my emails and complete the medical questionnaire for Fridays visit to the spa. That done I go to the Shed and write a brief note and take it to the post box. By now its become worrying that the garden waste bin has not been collected. I sneak out and check the neighbours bins. They are also full. I check the website of the local council and find that they are saying they have not got enough HGV drivers to complete all their runs. Their advice: “put it out next time”. Staggering. The garden guy arrives so its time to make tea, chat and and consider the strategy for putting the garden to bed for the winter. We have a plan. While he cuts the lawns I create my work invoice for August and get is sent to my new boss. My partner goes to the dentist and on her return we eat tea and settle down for the evening. I shall write the blog, check my new to do list and wait for my eldest daughter to return from what appears to have been an unproductive day at work. I plan to read a little tonight. Not a bad first day of the new campaign.

Tuesday, M.O.T. day. Up earlish and then straight off to the garage. Back home and breakfast and I start to review my notes on a TC review report. I start a new review and get a call which reminds me that I am supposed to be observing a training session for enhanced security on … Ah, I cant tell you, its a secret, besides which there maybe people scrutinising my cyber footprint. After being briefed and educated I return to writing my review notes on the new TC report. I’m done by lunch time when I down a large soup and check my emails. I tidy up, clear the kitchen and put the bins out. Then its more work until its time to collect the car. All is good, MOT granted and service is done. With new tyres, brake pads and discs I’m winter ready and willing to hit the road. Once more I return home avoiding the temporary traffic lights in the village that have failed creating long tail backs. Once back I find my eldest daughter has booked a table for the evening in the local tapas place. So an unexpected trip out to dine on small dishes of continental food and to chat about the ordinary world. I had forgotten about affogato, that delicious combination of hot expresso and ice cream. Its a great way to end a meal out. Home, I’ve been so cold that I put the heating on before we went out. Coming home to a warm house was a great way to end an evening. I settle down to the blog as the rest of the household go to bed. Tomorrow is a day for me and a chance to write and train. Over the next two weeks it will be time to put the garden to bed for the winter, plant bulb for spring and build a new iris bed in the front garden.

Bank holiday Monday and its a slow start but moves towards a scrambled egg breakfast before making a rare jaunt to Sainsburys. We start to get ready for next Saturday when we plan a family gathering to mark my partners mothers birthday. We gather up “free from” goodies and a replacement toaster. I sneak in some Tony’s chocolonley chocolate and a paper. So we return home with our goodies and wait for Tesco to deliver our weekly order. We lunch and wait and watch the people that have flooded the village to view the scarecrow festival, eat ice creams and dance wildly on the church green. So rural, so British. Tesco deliver and after storing it we set off around the village to view the scarecrows. Its more of an exercise jaunt really to keep the number of steps for the day up. When I get back home there is a mental struggle to get myself to get changed to train. I finally get myself into the garage to train. An initial half hour on the rower to get me going again. It is a small step to get me going again.

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I work hard on the rower and I am rewarded with a reasonable distance. I change and settle down for tea and an evening of submarine drama on the BBC whilst exploring the delights of Tony’s Chocolonley. I am now a new fan of this chocolate and will explore the range. Tomorrow beckons with the excitement of an M.O.T and more TC reports to review.

Saturday and it was a reunion day with old colleagues, a lunch engagement. First there was a bacon bagel breakfast and coffee before my partners friend arrived. Together they went of to tour the village scarecrow event that is running over the bank holiday weekend. I drive to a marina in Burton to meet my old colleagues and friend. It turned out to be a really good afternoon as a friend turned up unexpectedly having flown in from Bermuda in the morning and driven up from London. It was a an excellent time and really good to see and catch up with the group. Back home for the evening I was tired and settled done to a very passive evening of a TV film and football highlights. I eventually went to bed but did not sleep well.

Sunday, a slow rise and breakfast before going out to see some of the scarecrows around the village. They were supposed to be based on children’s books however one person obviously did not get the message as they created Gray as in “50 Shades of Gray”. There were over a hundred and nine entries, here are a couple.

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I return home and take a few pictures in the garden as I finish weed killing the front paths.

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I am tired and retreat to the bedroom to read for a while. I choose to start one of the novels by Virginia Bailey. I read the first few chapters. It is very wordy and full of adjectives, its slow and and jumps back and forth in time.

I snooze under the weight of description and wake in time to cook my famed chicken and chorizo one pot for tea. We eat and watch the new TV drama and then I write the blog as todays football highlights play out. Today I weighed myself and found myself to be only marginally under 95 kilos. I have feasted and lazed this week, in fact fro the last two weeks. It has to stop. I must get back to my fitness routine tomorrow as I have until December 21st to get fit before my next oncology appointment and the possible option of new medication.

Thursday, a taxi at 8 o’clock to the train station whisks me away in my Ko Lak blue suit and leather shoulder bag. I spring into first class and settle in smugly. No food! Now not so smug. I read poetry from the two collections I have with me, both by tutors on the course that I am going on in November. The Ugandan’s poetry is good stuff and full of powerful images and feelings. Some of it quite harrowing as it describes his flight from Idi Amin and the degeneration of his home land through his child’s eyes. The other poetry collection has a reader warning at the front. I read the collection twice and for the life of me I could not see anything remotely upsetting about it. Do the snowflake generation not get that life sucks at times? I assume that I have forgotten what its like to be young and the pain of discovering life exacerbated by a life spent wading around the minds and lives of the criminal fraternity and the world of mental health services. So the poetry occupies me till the train pulls into St Pancras and I glimpse my favourite Tracy Emin richly pink in the distance.

I get into the EN&L cafe. It used to be a straight forward travel cafe with regular normal food. Now it is a falafel invaded pink monstrosity with a hideous pink poodle sculpture. I get two cheese and tomato croissants and a black coffee, the best normal food I could find. I linger over the coffee till my colleague arrives and buys me a second coffee. We sit and chat till almost noon when we move onto the brassiere that I booked us into. We check in and order drinks while we wait for two other colleagues to join us .One then, an hour, later another join us and we settle into some delicious food and conversation. It is a farewell dinner for a manager who is leaving after being at the RCP for 17 years. We of course brought gifts and praise. At 4 o’clock the colleagues moved onto a space in a pub but I returned to a train to come home. This time there was free drinks and nibbles to have. I read more poetry and look out of the window. I am struck by the profusion of Buddleia that is growing wild along the train embankments. It is clear that the future of butterflies is assured with so much Buddleia established over so many miles of the trackside. I get out of the station and hop into a taxi to take me home. I am tired and settle down to watch Vera and the para-Olympics. I go to bed but I sleep poorly and find it difficult to get any sleep.

Friday and I wake early unable to sleep so its an early coffee and muesli breakfast. I get dressed and set about organising the day. The first job was to ring the garage and see if my car was ready. Apparently the garage thought I was not back from London till tonight, but my car was in fact ready. I drive the borrowed garage car to the garage and grit my teeth to hear the bill, it turns out to be okay. I now have new back wheel brake discs and pads to go with the new tyres. I am hoping this will get the car through its M.O.T on Tuesday. I chat to a friend as I drive home and catch up with plans. Home and I go to the Shed and write a letter. By lunch time I’m ready for a village walk with my partner before a light lunch. I post my letter and then set about re screwing the Shed door to the shed. It was down to its last screw, which explains why the door was getting difficult to close smoothly. I get tidied up and retire to the bedroom to start reading one of the novels that has been written by one of the writing course tutors. I get about 20 pages in and already I am finding this novel difficult. It is over wordy, adjective rich for the sake of it. Its going to be an effort this novel but I have until November to read it and its sister novel. Its tea time and I settle down on the sofa to write the past two days blog. My evening will be Jesse Stone and an early night hoping to sleep.

Wednesday and I wake late, about 9 o’clock with a sense of a lot to do. I get breakfast and set about downloading a couple of reports that I need to read and comment on. I get my washing on take a call from a friend who has been to a school celebration and is crossing town to deliver things to her colleague. As much as I try I cannot find the date I booked my car in for an MOT so I ring the garage and get them to look it up. Tuesday the 31st. I then ask if they can look at my grinding brake and they say “drop it down”. We chat a bit about being able to get there and back and they decide to led me a car. So I drive gingerly to the garage and equally carefully back in a diesel VW polo with 92000 on the clock. I had a moment of panic when I could not find the start button and then spotted the key port, how old fashioned. Once home I put washing in the tumble dryer and the new crockery in the dishwasher for its first clean. That went well and I was later able to junk the old crockery and install the new. It was a strange kind of satisfaction.

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I settled down to read reports and to start making notes on them. Once I get into them time passes quickly as I scroll through the report picking up discrepancies and cross checking issues. The garage calls whilst I am on another call. My brakes won’t be ready till tomorrow and the garage owner is not keen on me using his car and leaving it at the train station for a day. We agree that he will deliver my car and pick his up while I get a taxi into the station. This is a whole new challenge as booking a taxi locally proves to be more than tricky. Eventually I install an App and book a taxi for eight in the morning. At this point my partner appears and tells me that her mother’s carer has just packed up and left in a taxi leaving her mother on her own with no one to look after her. There is a frantic period of desperately trying to get the care agency to find a solution quickly. This all goes on as we try to be good hosts to our guest who has arrived and is staying the night. There are many calls and texts between family and agency. Eventually we cook and eat a meal and the agency finally find someone to be with my partners mother for the night. We reach a point of semi calm and I am able to get my partner and her friend into the lounge with a bottle of prosecco and time to talk. I clear the kitchen and retreat to the bedroom to write the blog.

I cannot believe that anyone would walk out and leave a 92 year old vulnerable person alone, unfed and scared, without any warning or thought for the consequences. I am sure there will be reasons and explanations but that kind of cavalier abandonment of someone whose well being has been entrusted to you is callous, cold and the act of someone who is losing, or has lost touch with humanity.

Tuesday, its a wake up in a hotel day. My alarm goes off and I hear Eric Sarte. I have time to read a bit, pack and have a coffee before going to the restaurant for breakfast. Full English of course at a socially distanced table. People are in and out pretty quickly. I pack up the last remaining things and go to reception to check out. I’ve a bity of time to kill before lunch so I go to the designer outlet just outside York and go for a wander round. I find an original drawing by Doug Hyde, it is at a much reduced price but still, I hover, I haver, I walk away to think. I find myself in the Denby store and face to face with some classic blue on offer. For years now we had been saying that we need to scrap the badly faded crockery that we are using. At a price considerably less than the work of art it is a chance not to be missed. Unfortunately there are no boxes available so each item has to be wrapped and put into carrier bags. I end up with six plastic carriers. The journey to the car is slow as the plastic cuts a bit. Once stowed in the boot I return to the crepe stand outside the centre and treat myself to a strawberry milkshake and a Sicilian crepe. I thought in my innocence that the “Sicillian” would be sharply lemon and sugary it turned out to be covered in a thick yellow gooey syrup that was disgustingly sweet. I leave to meet a friend for lunch at the York Marina. I never knew York had a marina but here is a bit of it.

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I arrive early adn settle in and I am soon joined by my friend who I have not seen for three and a half years. Most of our conversation is catching up on how mutual friends and acquaintances are and how we have since we last met. We eat and continue our conversation. There has been a lot of water under the bridge along the way. We chat for a while until the cafe reclaims the table and we move outside. Eventually it is time to head for home, but before I leave my friend gives me a bag of vegetables harvested from her allotment. The drive home is a reasonable, but tiring. Until the very end of the journey when my drivers side rear wheel starts to grind when I brake. Its a pain in the arse and means I will have to contact the garage to see if they can fit me in asap.

I unpack my bags, the bag of veg and the bags of crockery. I settle down to complete yesterday’s blog that I could not get to upload yesterday and to start to write todays. My challenge is to somehow make clear how the normal mundane everyday life intertwines with living alongside cancer, which is one of the reasons why I started to write the blog. The initial stages were easy because so much happened and there was a lot to process and write about, but as the process became “normalised” and getting on with life became the norm conveying the linkage is difficult. This process is hard to convey accurately and is probably quite boring for the people who read it. It is perhaps something I shall explore on the writing course in November. So tonight I shall head for bed early and pick up some work and of course start to sort out the car issue. I had hoped for a more restful day.