I’m very tired tonight so this is going to be short. There has been a lot in this day including an unexpected windfall from the tax man. There was that brown thin envelop laying on the door mat with the tell-tale tax inspector logo on it. The instant thought was “how much do I owe them” because let’s face it that’s always been my experience. Imagine my surprise when I read that they are going to put money into my bank account.

Any way I digress. My first task was to organise information about the service I am reviewing next week in time for the pre visit phone conference. At 10:30 sharp I dial in and I spend time discussing some details about the evidence required and the mundane things like parking. Once done I get on with printing my monthly invoices and running off the boarding passes for the upcoming holiday in March. I go to the post office to send my invoices and buy bread and bacon. Home to bacon sandwiches for lunch. The afternoon sees me shopping for smoked paprika and printing paper and returning home to cook a one pot paprika chicken dish, before watching football. So another evening floats past to blog time. Tomorrow I promise myself to go to the gym and try to work off the numerous jelly beans I have eaten today and of course collect my next prescription. Its never far away, cancer.

• 

Up early today as it’s a work day and parking spaces in Derby are as rare as hen’s teeth. I get my traveling office together, that will be the back pack, and my gym kit and head off north up the motorway. I totally forgot that the holiday flight book in was open, but as I’ve already selected our seats I can afford to book in later. I get to Derby and get a parking place. Once in the probation building I set the meeting room out and set the room up with the projector and the flip charts. A last minute phone call gets my progress chart up to date and then people start to arrive. The session goes well and there is a sense of progress amongst the group and the managers are clear about where their services are in the enabling environment process. Having booked future review days I drive back to Leicester and to the gym.

I spend the afternoon writing up contract progress and sharing some observations. I also do my February invoices and relax doing crosswords in the paper until my partner arrives for her personal trainer session. I spend an hour cycling and burning off 501 calories and collecting my 10,000 steps accolade.

Returning home there was just time to eat dinner and settle down to watch the night’s football match. Now it’s time to write the blog and watch the news which is mainly about the ever creeping progress of the corona virus. Now that Tenerife has joined Italy in having virus cases it begins to make one more attentive as we have a holiday on Spain booked. It also appears that life expectancy has stalled and is getting worse. It would appear that once again I am on the cutting edge and ahead of the game. Always was a fashion leader. A message for all the ill people.

Two squirrels was the highlight of my day today. I woke with a head ache which kept me company all day. For light relieve I nibbled jelly beans and ploughed my way through the pre visit evidence supplied by the Therapeutic Community in question. In fairness it was good evidence and has made the future visit easier. A quick swapping of the cars from garage to drive was my outdoor exercise. It was then back to nibbling jelly beans. It’s one of those mundane days where the weather is wet, cold and windy, which kind of matched the way I felt all day. The upside is that the work I did today will make my next two days much easier. As for tonight I shall write the blog, and sneak off to bed early to read and snooze.

These are the days I fear, they are the ones that can feel normal and they are not, they are days that can float by and make me forget that I need to keep fighting and making the effort.

Today started with coffee in bed, made by the youngest daughter in an effort to get her parents up. It was a nice surprise as was the conversation that followed. A relatively lazy start to the day which drifted into a bacon sandwich breakfast intertwined with the pre visitor hovering and dusting.  We had not long finished the late breakfast when friends turned up with their two small girls on their way home from visiting relatives and the local zoo. There was time for drinks and chocolate cake in-between looking at the fish, exploring the garden, doing a jigsaw, playing a game and nibbling snacks. It was good to see them and to present the two girls with bags of “treasure” that had been left by Santa at Christmas. We waved them farewell on their journey home and soon after our youngest daughter headed for home as well.

We cleared the decks and did some routine things before the England Ireland rugby international. At least I and my partner did whilst our eldest continued to beaver away at a midterm paper for her doctorate. We watched England beat the Irish and then settled back to do more clearing, organising and recording until tea time. This evening Dr Who will entertain us followed by Endeavour Morse by which time I will be ready for bed and maybe some reading.

• I have a strange kind of fatigue at times. The last couple of days have been buoyed by my good blood results but I seem to have slowed down a bit, finding things an effort. I think there is some kind of tiredness from the planning and arranging of the coming holiday but also an inherent fatigue of carrying the knowledge of cancer within. There are some, upcoming, end of month chores to be done as well and I think I might be avoiding them, or at least some of them, ordering my 28 day injection for instance. This feels like a kind of winter hinterland that is cold and slightly bleak. The garden is a profusion of early flowers yet too cold to tend. Going to the gym is desired but difficult to motivate myself into, I like the soup there and reading the papers but that walk to the changing rooms is getting longer and harder to do. The little voice that sits on my shoulder and urges me to eat the sweets, have a pudding, miss out the training, have a nap and go on a marathon reading session is becoming louder. It’s a very appealing temptation but Rocket the Racoon who is my mental ally who fights the cancer within nudges me and reminds me that my life is too short to be sitting on my arse getting fat, there is cancer to fight and things to do in the real world that matter. I think it is partly the winter and its cold storms and partly the increased effort it feels to do the things that matter, to stay in control to keep life flowing in the right direction. Perhaps I just need the sunny climes of Spain, which are not far off now, to revive me. I think the wearing thing is that cancer never takes a holiday. No matter what I do I cannot leave it anywhere so that I can take a break, and I think that this is true for all those that care about me. They see me and know that I carry this pernicious intruder within and in their turn they cannot un-know this. It is a cruel and invisible brand that stamps itself on all my relationships. I think this is why I have become Jolly, I need to bear this with good grace for my own sake and for those that are around me as they carry this burden as much as I. No sense in being anything other than Jolly and trying to lessen whatever others carry of my cancer.

Its been all football, rugby, bacon sandwiches, Indian takeaways and lazing today. Apart from a card from my sister there was nothing of note, although I understand someone saw there first zebra today. And so to bed.

Up early to let me partner out to work and off to the gym for me to have breakfast and to do the crosswords. It was good to have an early start and to get to the supermarket early to get printer cartridges and most importantly a triple chocolate cake for our expected visitors on Sunday. On an impulse I drop into Pets Are Us and pick up some pretty gravel for the fish along with some Elder Guppies, small but brightly coloured little fish that will add variety to my guppies community.

So with my bag of fish I return home and tidy up while my fish acclimatise in the bag floating in the tank. While they get used to their new tank I wash the pretty gravel and add it to the tank. Once released the new fish happily swim off into the depths of the weeds and rocks and I return to preparing for our March holiday.

I input the new passport details into the holiday site and choose our extra leg room seats on the flights. This was all straight forward but I still needed to find some holiday insurance. I trawled the usual sites for a long time but as soon as I declared my cancer the amount that was required ran in to thousands of pounds. I then started to look for companies that would exclude medical cover but found none. I was getting frustrated when I found a blog where people were discussing the problem. Bingo there is a travel insurance company that will insure you but will not cover anything that arises from a declared illness. Globallinks.co.uk is the company, Their over 70+ gold insurance cost me £62 for the weeks insurance, that’s far more like it and realistic given my general good condition.

So I was pleased with myself, the only thing left is to book a taxi and check in on line when the opportunity comes open next week. I retreat to the shed and write a letter which I then post in the village indulging in a bacon baguette at the village café on the way back. By the time my partner returns from work I have organised quite a lot of things and I am getting ready to go out to eat with friends in the evening. There is nothing like a good pie night especially back at the venue where we got civil partnered a month ago. It was a lovely evening with good food and conversation. On returning home we found our youngest daughter had arrived and gone to bed leaving a treasure trove of chocolate and sweet goodies in the kitchen. We followed quite quickly after as I needed to be up early to take the Sainsbury’s deliver.

Today is a very good day, I got my blood test results back.

Note the PSA of 0.4. A drop of a full point. Go me! Note also the eGFR (Kidney function) of 60, normal! More go me!

So after a lazy morning I go to the gym to burn off another 764 calories and getting another 10,000 steps. This all helped burn of the 247 calories of the Snickers bar I ate in celebration and as a reward for my good blood results.

While at the gym I reads of yet another show business star has come out as a prostate cancer sufferer.

I go home for tea and a night of european football while my partner has her singing lesson. Its been a good day, my blood test results are just the feedback I need to motivate me to keep the battel going. Next fight is to find holiday insurance that is not silly money otherwise I will rely on my European Health Insurance Card.

Such a busy day and its only 3:34pm. Up early and off to the GP to have my blood taken. In 24 hours I will have the all-important feedback about my PSA level post chemo therapy. I arrived early in my eagerness and met my nephew in the waiting area. He was collecting some medication but we had no time to chat as he was whisked away by the doctor whilst I was called by the nurse to give my blood. My veins obviously like the nurse as it gave up its red fluid easily. I had hope for a village café breakfast but no joy as I was too early, so it was back home where my partner who was working from home made me a bacon sandwich.

The day then got interesting as we had the conversation about her leave and I set about finding us a week’s break in Spain. I found a place in Calpe overlooking the beech with a spa and a gym and did full board with no children. I wanted a room with a sea view and a balcony but struggled to get it on the website I was on. My partner found the same hotel with the required sea view and balcony so I swapped sites and booked quickly. So we have a week to look forward to and the opportunity to test out me travelling and flying. I’ve got a new passport and I am determined to use it and I am determined not to be confined by my cancer. The game was then to find insurance for us, I went to sites that specialised in cancer travel insurance and listed my current situation. If I was absolutely honest the prices quoted was between £2220 & £3444, all due to the fact that I have not had my post chemo scan results back yet. So as a first step I insured my partner for the week. £20 with Admiral had her sorted in ten minutes. Now I am hunting some reasonable insurance for me.

My partner went off to deliver drugs to her mother so I set about cleaning out the fish, so now they can watch TV without the green screen of algae. I wonder about adding a new strain of guppy to the community to see what colours become dominant, the current community has assimilated the predominantly orange ones I introduced some months ago.

Not being able to face the hunt for insurance I check my e-mails and find that the new edition of The Visionary has been delivered. I am a Universal Life Church Minister along with millions of others who have been ordained over the internet. It was the result of a bored afternoon several years back which resulted in me now being referred to a “Minister Roland” and having a Doctorate in Divinity.

Anyway they regularly send me “The Visionary” with its latest comments on all things religious and political. What caught my eye was a story headed “Hookers for Jesus”, which you have to admit is quite catchy. Apparently the Trump administration has diverted $500,000 from a catholic charity to an organisation run by a  “born again human trafficking survivor” who has a set up a charity to help trafficked people leave prostitution and to find God. The charity works to ensure that prostitution is not decriminalised and that the people the charity save are converted to Christianity. The regime at the safe house they run includes abiding by strict biblical rules and participating in religious activities. As the article puts it, some people are not happy that tax payers money is being used to force Christianity on those looking to escape human trafficking. Apparently the staff training manual decries everything from homosexuality (“immoral”) to recreational drug use (“witchcraft”)! Only in America could “witchcraft” be included and accepted as an explanation without any self-consciousness at all. The blog that accompanies this article is hilarious or sad depending on your view. It is a cross between a bible quote battle and a real spat between a Universal Life Church Minister of a Christian persuasion and an atheist “Minister”. Again only in America, or perhaps not, maybe the same goes on here in the UK but it just doesn’t fall in front of me. Apart of course from the Church of England bishops deciding marriage is the only place sex should happen, regardless of the establishment of civil partnerships and same sex marriages. As I said a busy day and only partly over.

Time to cook tonights dinner and settle down for another european football night while my partner goes out to a friends for a girls night in. Tommorow I shall continue the hunt to find travel insurance for less than an arm and a leg.

Waking up alone in the house I set my heart on a village café breakfast. I clear the kitchen, set dishwasher going and set out to the shop for a paper with the intention of dropping into the café. It all went well until it came to the cafe. Ram packed with diners, not a chair anywhere so I trudged back home in the cold and rain. Back to muesli and yogurt and coffee and a distinct feeling of disgruntlement. Never has my gruntle been so dis. I sit and clear the desk in the office and sort out my blood form for tomorrow. It means that on Thursday or Friday I will get my latest PSA reading and some indication of how I have responded to chemo therapy. It’s been 43 days now since the 7^th of January, the last day of my last cycle. I’m intrigued to see how my numbers have held up or not over the past 43 days or so. The ridges in my nails due to the chemo are gradually growing out but still look quite claw like. Having done the crosswords and sent the work e-mails that I need to I am ready to go out. I empty the dishwasher and set it up for a cleaning cycle while my eldest daughter who has returned home eats a lunch and then I am ready to go out.

I take the Wolf to the garage to fill with petrol and to check the tyre pressures. So far the wretched weather that has flooded areas quite close to us has not affected us. It is against this eventuality that we keep the Wolf as it is our vehicle of escape given its high clearance, four wheel drive and High Drive capability. Should all the ways into the village become tricky we are relying on the Wolf to be able to drive out of trouble. With its tank full and tyres up to pressure I drive to the gym and change into my kit and put a track suit on to go to the bar and indulge in chicken Thai soups and a coffee.

I write letters, which I find a real relief as I can capture some of my observations and feelings. At the moment I am so aware of the flowers that are coming out in the garden, there is a profusion of colour at the moment. It feels as if spring has come really early this year. Every bulb that has been planted seems to have come up and is either flowering or about to. The colours of the crocuses and the primroses are brilliant, while the snow drops shine against the green background. I am wanting to get out in the garden and begin to tinker with the edgings and the bushes but it is after all still only mid-February and officially the winter, although it appears that no one told the garden. Thankfully it’s too bloody cold to get there for any length of time at the moment, so my current to do list is indoor focused at the moment. Tomorrow will also be the day that I will clean the fish out that will take my mind off the blood test and results for a while. So all of this kind of stuff finds its way into the letters, which will get sent once I’ve sealed them at home.

At the moment I am keeping busy trying not to give into the temptation of a snickers bar. In my efforts to shed weight I’ve given up sweets, biscuits, cake, buns and the other enjoyable things that used to live in the third draw down of the kitchen unit. Those and alcohol of course are off the menu for me, although occasionally I give in, as I did at the weekend when I scoffed a box of crystallised ginger that was left over from Christmas. It seems I am still having trouble with getting the weight down as I was back at 99.9 kilos on Sunday after a week of going out to dine at least twice. I am hopeful for this week despite the fact that we are going out for “pie night” on Friday with friends at the place we had our civil partnership.

So here I am at the gym lounge typing up the blog and wandering if I will get to see the European football on TV tonight. First I have to tackle the gym, my legs still ache from Sunday and I find it increasingly difficult to put in the effort required to burn the calories I would like to. I do not know if I am still recovering from the chemo or whether I’ve hit acritical age when my energy levels are lowering. Whatever it is it is frustrating. My major weapons against weight gain have always been giving up sweets and alcohol with increased exercise. The weight just rolled off but now it is proving stubborn to shift. I think in my head I think that if I could get my body looking half decent it might make up for the loss of my hair. It is a bizarre defence to think that if I can get the packaging right it won’t matter so much how crap the inside is. This of course is about control, power and self-determination. I cannot change or fight the cancer because it will do its own things, I have no control over it but I think I can control the body that it is in by taking control of my weight and my fitness. These are the few things that I can control so that when my efforts do not yield the expected results it is hard to keep motivated and the temptation is to give in and eat sweet stuff on the basis that it’s a comfort and “why shouldn’t I if I am going to die?” It’s very tempting at times and I know that people encourage me to be kind to myself and reassure me that one snickers isn’t going to kill me but I know me, once I start I will keep going so it’s always best just not to start. There is a bottom line of perhaps it will kill me, little indulgences accumulating to erode what control I do have. This battle “to have my time with you” is a life and death one and it matters that I can keep fighting it my way. So I shall get myself up on to the gym floor and pump out some more calories and keep the battle going. Later tonight I will reward myself with sofa and football time. I might even get some reading time.

So the gym went well enough, 773 calories and I got my 10,000 steps, its home now to eat and post the blog. I finish the existential cafe and watch Liverpool struggle in the football. It will be an early night for me.

An early start as I needed ot be up to move my car off the drive so that my partner could go to work. It’s a rude awakening and I think that I was grumpy as I parked the Beast on the puddle outside our drive. Having waved my partner off to work I settled down to a muesli breakfast and the last minute preparation for my work visit this morning. I drove to the service that is local to me and spent the morning discussing the work they had done to prepare for their assessment visit. It is a service that I have had dealings with since the mid seventies so it is interesting to see the change and development of the service over the years. When I first went there it was to work with a man who had a drink problem and was conflicted by his sexuality. Bearing in mind the  time, this was a difficult issue and had implications for him in terms of where he could move onto after the probation placement. My role was to assess and  support the man in his move to a community hostel run by a charity. All went reasonably well until I arrived one day to do a routine session with him to find him very drunk and saw him down a bottle of aftershave for the alcohol. That was a tricky session and an exercise in containment and staff support. He made the transition but ultimately disappeared. The service in place now is far more sophisticated and elegant in its understanding of its client group and better resourced. As I say the changes over the past decades has been dramatic.

I go to the gym to get lunch and to write a letter. My intention was to do a session before going home but I decided to train tomorrow and went home early to post the letter and get a paper. I met my eldest daughter in the village cafe and sat and chatted with her for a while before we both needed to get home to get on with things. Once home I put together the new garden lights and planted them in the garden. In doing this I managed to cut my hand, so when my partner returned home she found me clutching a bandage to my freshly washed hand whilst I looked for a plaster. None to be found, so I settled for the spray on plastic instant skin from the holiday first aid kit. I get really skittish when I damage myself as I dread any wound becoming infected. In my head I see myself as vulnerable to infection. I know I was during chemotherapy but I am not sure if I still am or if my immune system is recovering of its own accord. It would be good if there was a simple test that could be done to tell you what percentage efficiency your immune system is at. As it is I just assume the worst and drown any cut in disinfectant and anti bacterial foam, with of course a dollop of Savlon antiseptic cream. This is accompanied by ripe language till the stinging stops. So once I’ve performed my-self care I settle down to write the blog. It’s going to be an early night for me.

I still have not worked out what the thoughts about a pangolin are all about or what the poem is but in the meantime here is a pangolin. Shame the Chinese think their scales have some magical medicinal power, what can you say?