It’s Sunday and given that this is the day of rest I finally got up about 11 o’clock. Sometimes I just want to sleep and indulge myself. Coffee in bed followed by a large bacon and egg sandwich, what could be a better way to start a cold, wet and windy Sunday?

However there are always things to be done so my partner and I head for Sainsbury’s and pick up a prescription and root vegetables. Not very exciting but necessary.

Then to the gym. A hard 772 calories burnt and 10,000 steps done. So feeling a mixture of pain and achievement we return home to empty the tumble dryer and for me to attend to my claws. They are gradually growing out but still feel odd and ugly. Dinner and television before settling down to write a brief blog. Tomorrow is a work day but as it is local I shall have time to go to the gym to either swim or work the top half of my body. It’s also time to get the Wolf out of the garage.

Today I have a new passport, have applied for new European health cards (valid for 2020) and received a Sainsbury’s delivery all before 10 o’clock. Washing in, desk tidied and a letter written and posted before noon. So I watch a little football as the original lunch date in Burton is cancelled due to a combination of travel difficulties, mumps and lowered immune system function. However due to there always being a balance it has proved possible to arrange a meeting in Leicester with the friend who flew in this morning from Ghana. He had been there looking at the prison system amongst other things. Any way I wrap up warm and wind proof and head into town to the Cosy Club to meet him knowing that my partner will be there meeting an old work colleague.

When I arrive I find them there including my eldest daughter who had hitched a ride into town. My friend arrived looking unmistakably Caribbean with a quite noisy shirt, light trousers and a white hat. It was really good to see him. He joined us and we chatted about his work in Bermuda and his trip to Ghana. He is an eloquent raconteur and tells us how he survived his first hurricane in Bermuda by tying loose windows to a sofa and then laying on it from hours to stop it being blown away.  Eventually he had to leave as did my partner’s friend, who incidentally is off to Australia to motorbike around it in four weeks’ time. As time had moved on we decided to eat at the cosy club and indulge ourselves before returning home to settle in for the night and sit out the storm. I hope the temporary cover for my garden shed holds up overnight. It’s quite early and I can hear the wind outside beginning to whip around and gust. It could be a long a night.

An up early day today as I am off to Lincoln YMCA to talk to them about the Enabling Environment project. I have time to eat a muesli breakfast and then it’s into the car for the drive to Lincoln. I arrive in plenty of time and chat to a friend whilst I sit in the car outside the YMCA. I go in with fifteen minutes to spare to find that I am at the wrong address, apparently I need to be at the “Showroom”, which is about 3 miles away. I grab the post code and reset the satnav and hurry off. At first my satnav takes me down a one wat street that is a dead end and only plays nicely when I drive back to the river crossing. At last I arrive at the “Showroom” which really is an old car showroom that has been tuned into a café and community activity centre. It is a splendid facility with a really wizard climbing wall and boulder room, plus lots of other activity areas. I meet my colleague from the Leicester YMCA and we meet with the representative of Lincoln YMCA. The meeting was cordial and explored several issues for about two hours.

Having finished business I drove back to Leicester and headed for the gym. I found my brother in partnership (I am assuming this is the civil partnership equivalent of brother in law), sitting in the lounge. We sat and chatted over a light lunch until he needed to be away. I did the crosswords and then began to write the blog whilst waiting for my partner to arrive. When my partner arrived we headed for the machines. I burnt off 778 calories and got my 10,000 steps before getting off the machine. So a shower and we head home to bacon sandwiches and some TV football.

I’ve noticed today that I’ve got an irritating cough and a tickle in the back of my throat. This of course means I have cancer of the throat now! It’s an issue, every minor cough, ache or pang immediatiely raises the question; is this cancer or just a minor thing that will go away? There is rarely an wasy answer and all it does is sow seeds of doubt to carry with me as I get on with it. In the midst of this a friend sends me a greetings card straight from her pallet. There is always a balance in there somewhere.

Saturday will bring storm David and an old friend, as I said there is always a balance.

Thursday rolls round and I rise to an empty house so there is just clearing away and breakfast to be done. The routine check of e-mails and then I am ready to … The reality is I check a few things for work on Friday and them grit my teeth to repair the roofing felt on one of the garden sheds. When I actually get out in the garden and inspect the shed half the roof is bare, the roofing felt has been torn away by the high winds of the latest storm. The wooden roof is wet and will not take the adhesive required to re-felt it. The only thing to do is to cover it over and try to keep it water free till it can dry off before re-felting. I look around and find an old garden furniture cover which with a bit of attention might do the job. I collect together the ladders, garden gloves, heavy duty duct tape, scissors and set to trying to get the cover over the shed. I manage it after a bit of clambering about and then spend time on patching the odd hole or tear in the cover. Finally I am done and move on to repair the cover that is over the garden furniture as it too requires some attention after the storm. There is to be another storm this coming weekend I shall find out then if my temporary fixes will stand the test of another storm.

Feeling reasonably pleased with myself I walk down to the village to buy a paper with the intention of having a roll in the village cafe. The paper buying went well enough but the village café was full young things out of the village academy just down the road so there was no place to sit. I grumpily walked home muttering to myself about the failings of youth. So once home I whisked up an omelette and a slice of Panetonne and settled down to a peaceful late lunch and the crosswords. There is some real rubbish on TV in the day fortunately a friend rang me which saved me. After more organising for tomorrow’s trip to Lincoln I set about making a dinner for the evening. By the time my partner returned home to eat and do the on line food shop it was nearly time for her singing teacher to arrive. I retreat to write the blog.

It’s been another, “just another day” and yet I know it isn’t. There is something about the ordinary that is no longer ordinary. Neither is it a great harvest of “isn’t life wonderful I must make the most of it”. As I said to a friend at dinner last night I have not got the urge to go out and do all sorts of things before it’s too late. If it wasn’t on my bucket list before cancer I’m not going to be putting it on now, I’ve never wanted to throw myself out of an aeroplane so I’m not going to start now just to show the world that cancer has not stopped me living. My priorities lay with being with the people I love and care about. That for me is the best kind of ordinariness there can be.

Today I mowed the lawns and went out to dinner with friends. The rest has disappeared as trivia.

Tuesday a work day so up early and on the road. I’m of to Derby to facilitate a training course. On the way I pick up lunch and a couple of Red Bulls. I get to Derby early and get a parking space, which had been my major concern, as parking in Derby is a nightmare. So I am about an hour and a half early and set up the room and the IT and think about the day to come. My colleague rings me to say she has been taken to the wrong place and asks for the address of where I am. As I wait for her to arrive the training attendees start to arrive, I was expecting 20ish and set the room out on that basis. The room begins to fill and then my colleague arrives, still more people arrive. In the end there are 31 people plus myself and colleague squeezed into the room. This was a bit unexpected so my colleague and I conferred and re-planned our approach to the day. I was expecting a tricky day but in fact there was very little active resistance and as the day went on the attendees got more engaged and worked at the tasks that were set. By the end of the day it felt like we had made progress and that some things and some teams had shifted.

I was expecting a slow drive home but actually made good time to the gym where I downed a coffee and waited for my partner. In the gym I clambered aboard my favoured cross trainer and pumped out 767 calories. My step count was well up having been on my feet all day. By the time the gym was done with it was mid evening so it was home to tuna pasta and a little TV. It turns out that my old passport has arrived with the passport office so they can now process my renewal application.

While treading away on the cross trainer I began to get ideas for a poem. It happens sometimes that I get a sense of something growing, forming, which sometimes make it to the page or sometimes withers in the mind. The trick is patience.  When this happens the poem forms itself until there is a moment when I find myself sitting quietly somewhere and it fall out of my pen. They write themselves and I never edit them. Once done they get typed up and filed in a laptop folder, except for those I might write as a letter. I suppose I have poems for me and poems for others, which I do not keep, a kind of gift. I think this current one is of the dark type but much can change between mind and page.

Another of those “to do” list days that do not turn out the way they should. For example I never ordered snow but found myself driving through hail and snow on my return from the shops having restocked the yoghurt store. At least we are not flooded as it appears so many are. My major achievement of the day was to apply to renew my passport on line having got a digital photograph of myself from the booth in the supermarket. The new passport picture makes the four horsemen of the apocalypse look positively attractive. I look ravaged, which I suppose is partly true.

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 The rest of my day has been taken up with revamping the training slides for tomorrows Enabling Environment training that I am delivering with a colleague in Derby. I note that the slide that introduces me has an old picture of me in the days when I still had a beard,its a harsh change of image. I also wrote a letter to a good friend in York, which helped me, put some thoughts in order. It is one of many letters that I owe. I notice that I am not so assiduous in my letter writing than I was but have it on my list of things to deal with soon.  The weather in Derby has been snowy and as usual there has been a crop of traffic accidents on the motorway so I shall be leaving early in the morning. I plan an early night for me tonight in the hope of rest so as to be fresh for tomorrow.

98.6 Kilos, Sunday morning, stark naked! A loss of 2.1 kilos from last week. Go me, I’m a hero. In celebration I broke out the first of the christmas Pannetone!

Sunday and the gale still blows and the rain still falls, The recycling wheelie been is over in the front garden and the garden furniture cover is ripped in the gale. Apart from that all is well. There will be no going anywhere today, I shall watch the six nations rugby and finalise the 40 photos that are going into the civil partnership album. Apart from the check on my passport that tells me I need one quite quickly, I’ve very little to do, the most exercise I get is hoovering the downstairs carpets. Still I cling to my weight loss for the week. More of the same is I suppose the lesson to be learnt, so I need to keep my control on my diet and to keep going to the gym. It is after all not about weight but the silent battle within. As Bradley Walsh’s character in Dr Who said tonight the shadow of cancer never really leaves you. He is right and it heightens the disappointments when they occur and makes all achievements second place.

A Saturday of international rugby but that has to be earnt by a trip to the gym. So gym it is via Sainsbury to put in a prescription for my partners mother who needs a specific brand of paracetamol due to an aversion to the pill coating on most brands. That done, we hit the gym and give it our best shot. I shed 771 calories and clock up my 10,000 steps. I am mildly pleased and return home to watch the six nations rugby games.

I’v never lost the feel of the game. I can feel what it is like to step on to a field even now and to feel the cold and the anticipation of receiving the ball. Even better is the experience of the physicality as you bring down a charging forward built like a brick outhouse by tacking his legs from under him with a well-timed diving tackle. Best of all was going over for a try, especially if it is a winning try. All my rugby memories are from my time as a Grasshopper I gave up playing when I went through a run of games where I could not remember a lot of the game due to what I realise now was concussion. I apparently was reckless with my head. Marathon running was okay but never achieved the same sense of accomplishment or sense of winning as a team.

After dinner it was time to watch the Best Dancer on TV. Truly accomplished people doing incredible things with their bodies to music I’ve always thought that if I had my choices again I would have chosen dance, the only fly in the ointment is that I have no sense of rhythm, which is a catastrophic draw back for a dancer. The rest of the evening was films. A waste of reading time really but by then my gym fatigue had kicked. What was apparent was that the storm raging outside was a big one with strong winds and lashing rain. And so to bed.

The day has been a very domestic one being taken by surprise by the early Sainsbury’s delivery guy. So my day started in my dressing gown chatting to the delivery guy about the weather as we unpacked the crates. I then set about clearing up, paying bills, organising the office and buying fruit and meat for the weekend. Like all days I start off with relatively good energy levels but as the day wears on I begin to find it difficult to keep going at the same pace. By the time I am at the gym waiting for my partner I am flagging and as a result we decide to train on Saturday morning instead. We return home and settle for then evening, me to write a brief blog and then either watch TV or read.

This veering off course is not good; my physical fitness is a significant part of my fight with cancer. The fitter I am the better I can cope with the physical demand of the treatment and also the psychological juggling that needs to be done to stay ahead of the disease. It is a constant battle on both fronts.

I manage part of it by getting “Rocket” to do the physical bit for me while my head gets on and does the research, the planning, and keeping a strategy going for the long term. In this way I can best balance my energy against the need to deal with the real world whilst fight my private internal battle. I used to use an image of a desert to understand the strange things being ill did to time and the resultant feelings of being ill but I changed to the image of an island. This seemed to represent me amidst the real world and reminder me to swim occasionally. The island image no longer feels right any more, however I’ve no clear idea what image does feel right at the moment. This feeling of uncertainty and lack of clarity of image maybe the best indication of the ambiguity and uncertainty about my condition that I feel at the moment. I guess something will come to me, I just need to trust my mind to incubate and to sort through the conflicting thoughts and feelings. “Trust the process” is something I used to say to my staff team in the therapeutic communities I had responsibility for; I guess its time for me to take my own advice.