There are only three things from today:

1. There is a new cancer research finding about a virus that might be implicated in about 19% of cancers including Prostate cancer. Another ray of hope down the end of the tunnel.

2. I went to the gym and burnt off 776 calories and achieved my 10,000 steps. Hard work that my legs, will pay the price for tomorrow (Friday)

3. I went to see Fascinating Aida with my partner at the De Montfort Hall. A thoroughly enjoyable evening, which made me wonder where else can be found witty current events comment mixed with outright humour. Click the link below, providing you are not of a sensitive disposition.

https://binged.it/2S8nV2o

An at home day of the mundane. Doing chores and ticking them off the “to do list”. The highlight was having two letters in the post, a congratulations card from my son and his family alongside a long letter from an old colleague now in Scotland. So as the dishwasher washed and the tumble dryer dried I wrote a reply. I still use fountain pen and paper for this as opposed to speech recognition software as my colleague uses. I just spell things wrong and construct strange sentences due to my dyslexia, I am not sure how I would cope with a software programme that misinterpreted my words, as I probably would not notice. My colleagues system produced “curtains” for “Schroedinger”, which in the context of knowing whether the cat is dead or alive in Schrödinger’s thought experiment is fairly spooky. Is the software making a prediction about the state of the cat? I do not believe that Windows 10’s speech software is that sentient, if at all. Apart from the joy of receiving a letter and writing one it has been mundane to say the least, right up to making the turkey one pot for tea.

During all of this I played the Argentine Tango music that was played at my civil partnership celebration meal after the ceremony, except for the news. The news was worrying because the newly voted in government are now proposing to extend the power to police to extend pre-trial bail and remand allowing them to extend detention up to three months. The problem is who decides the risk. Of course the argument is that things like the recent stabbing that took place under the policies noses before they shot the offender would be less likely to occur if the police have more powers of detention in the first place. That coupled with the argument that people should not be released before the end of their sentence means greater powers to retain people in custody. I feel vaguely uncomfortable about all of this. I wonder what the safeguards are. I suspect that I am sensitised to the growth in powers to detain specific groups of people as I am currently reading what happens when governments extend these powers and where that can lead to. The issue is and always will be the assessment of risk. Who does it and on what basis risk is assessed is going to be an ongoing debate, or is it? Will those who do it now continue to or will there be some kind of inclusion of public anxieties steered and encouraged by the current crop of politicians? Well that perked up a dull day.

Up early and off to London. All a bit of a daze really but once I am on the train I read. I have returned to Primo Levi’s If This Is A Man and The Truce.

The hour passed quickly before we pulled into my favourite Tracy Emin.

I walk to the RCP and have breakfast and prepare for my one to one with the programme manager of Enabling Environments. My manager turns up and after a quick chat with another colleague we set up in one of the ground floor work rooms. We start with an in formal chat about poetry. I suggested Kate Tempest, one of my favourite contemporary poets.

The rest of the time we spent in discussing the work and the services response to our support. That took us to lunchtime and my journey back to Leicester. I caught the early train by two minutes and settled once again into This Is A Man. I am not sure how I feel about reading the life lead by those who were subjected to the Nazi work and extermination camps. It is a relentless grind of survival in appalling conditions beautifully observed and recorded by Levi. The tragedy is that Levi died having committed suicide in 1987, although this has been challenged by many who knew him at the time.

Back in Leicester I drive to the gym and indulge in a dish of soup and the newspapers while I wait for my partner who has a session booked with her personal trainer. When she arrived I was tired and decided to go home to eat and write the blog and watch some cup football.

Today has been the Roland MOT day. It started with an early visit to the GP to get my 28 day injection. It went smoothly, but always does, until later on when it gets progressively sorer and persists for a few days. Back home for breakfast and to write my invoice for the Royal College of Psychiatrists. By the time I had finished the task it was time to walk down the road to the dentist. This was to be a check-up and an assessment of how my mouth had survived chemotherapy. My dentist is a star and spent time asking me how chemo had gone and how I am now. She checked my teeth and gums and we discussed what she had found. Thankfully there is nothing urgent and things that need attention can wait till I have spoken to my oncologist on March the 24^th. So the outcome from my point of view was a satisfactory one. I made another routine appointment for six months’ time, if there is a need I can return before this. Home again and more organising for tomorrow by buying my train tickets. Once again it was time to get on the way to the hospital for my CT scan.

Mercifully the drive was easy until we got to the car park. As usual we had to queue to get in, thankfully not for long. We arrived in the x-ray department early for my appointment. My partner and I sat and read until a small nurse called us into the inner area of the ward. I was shown into the small cannulisation room where the same small nurse attempted to put a cannula into my now predictable wiggly” vein. True to history it wiggled and the nurse had to patch me up and had to have a go at the vein next door. Success. So I sit in the waiting area drinking water and trying not to dislodge my cannula. A spritely young man appeared and asked for me to accompany him into the scan room. He checked my name and birthday and then explained what would happen. So I sat on the bench, dropped my trousers and laid on my back while the spritely young man hooked me up to the machine that was going to pump a dye into my blood stream. He tested it with saline and then we got on with it. We had a couple of practice breaths and a bit of sliding up and down and then the dye was injected into me and we did the sliding back and forward for real. There is a momentary side effect of feeling you want to pass water and a slight metallic taste in the mouth, in me it manifested as a distinctly warm arse effect with no metal mouth effect. I was done very quickly and had to wait in the waiting room for 15 minutes to make sure I did not keel over. After my quarantine was up the small nurse reappeared and beckoned me into the de cannulation room. The cannula came out a lot easier than it went in and I was sent on my way with a small pad taped to my arm.

We drove home and I headed for the bath to ease the soreness of this morning’s injection. I, shed my clothes, threw in a sparkly bath bomb, selected a book, got a non-alcoholic beer out of the fridge and added my phone to the little fold away table next to the bath, I was about to hop in when the phone rings and my partner answers it, my daughter is ill at work. I swear quite a lot as I drag on clothes and grab my car keys. My partner and I drive to the college where my partner goes and retrieves our poorly daughter.

Home and poorly daughter retreats to bed and I strip again and get into my bath. I text a lot and message several people to say that the civil partnership photos are now viewable on the photographers website. I start to get cold and top up the bath. In doing this I discover I can block the over flow with my feet or a wet flannel so as the bath warms up again the water level rises and I feel the warmth immerse me. I become aware that I have to move to turn the hot tap off. By this time the Archimedes principal is kicking in and as I move my bulk I create a Tsunami. Splash and splosh there is a flood over the rim and the floor is awash. I pull the plug and wait till levels are safe and then gingerly get myself out and onto the duck board, from there a spare towel gets foot shuffled around the flor to soak up the flood. Success, all there is left is a couple of wet towels to deal with. I notice as I prepare to leave that the floor is now very golden sparkly due to the bath bomb. Far more sparkly than I am I notice.

Tea time and I settle down in front of the TV not feeling very clever and slightly chilled. I have watch some quiz shows, mainly Only Connect as it features the very witty and bright woman who is also an ace poker player who on her time has walked away with over two million in prize money. So all that remains now is to organise for tomorrows one to one with my project manage at the RCP, so it’s an early start for me and a ride on the iron horse to London.

My day started with breakfast in bed, which was unexpected but very welcome as I had had another night interrupted by two hourly visits to the bathroom. So having indulged in a lazy breakfast I got up and get ready to go to the gym. The gym is my place of restoration but I need the right conditions. So we drove to the gym, bought bottles of water and headed to the changing rooms. As usual I climbed up onto a cross trainer, set the timer for an hour, the resistance at 15 and my ear phones at maximum. I have found that my favourite musical accompaniment to exercise is Rammstein, a German rock group, who were once the cutting edge of rock but have become mainstream now.

For me the German language has a raw harshness that suits rock. It provides me with a loud rhythmic background to my exercise but blocks out the outside world, deafeningly so. I have found that once Rammstein is up and pounding I can drift off into whatever internal dialogue or fantasy I want to whilst maintaining a good exercise pace. What I have also found is that loud, very loud music during demanding exercises drives my unconscious to the surface. I have been known to speak out loud when immersed in an internal dialogue that consists of me arguing with someone in my fantasy or a deliberate conversation that I undertake to sort something out. One of my retreats is this form of conversation in my head, which helps me work through issues and ideas. As I have said in these conditions my unconscious seems to surface much more easily so the conversations I have can become informed from all sorts of things that pop up from seemingly nowhere but very often are the things that I do not want to acknowledge or find difficult to own consciously. Any way todays Rammstein filled session was a good one and let me think about my recent reaction to the civil partnership photos that had me in them. 900 calories and 750 millilitres of water later I was me again and feeling steady, no less fat but fitter and more relaxed about facing the world, just not mirrors.

I take my time to shower and feel a thousand times better then into the lounge to meet my partner. We return home to prepare lamb for the oven and settle to watch England play France at rugby. Good game, wrong result. We eat the lamb as consolation and settle down to watch some TV and to write the blog.

Whilst siting in the gym lounge I read a column in which someone wrote about his response to a version of a Dickens novel but where the cast of the film came from a diverse range of cultures and orientations. He noted that some people of either an older generation or having specific knowledge about the era depicted would take exception to the way in which the novel had been “tampered” with. The author of the piece came to the conclusion that it did not matter what people felt about it as the book was a piece of fiction so it did not matter, it was not worth getting upset about. First thought about that was that this was a sensible response. I think Rammstein kicked in about now and I began to think about how we construct our world, how each of us as individuals constructs our own internal universe in order to manage our lives on a day to day basis and crucially how we make meaning of our lives. There is therefore a crucial relationship which we forge between our internal universes and ourselves, or our idea of ourselves, thus we survive with a sense of self and the external world in a way that makes sense to us. Of course we all have our own individual internal universe, they are all fictions based on our unique but imperfect and incomplete experiences. Small discrete samples of being alive at any one time, at any one place. So if this is the case then why would I bother to get upset by anyone else, after all their universe and their relationship with it is just a fiction. So what does it matter if I ignore it, impose my own interpretation on it, who cares, it’s not real it’s a work of fiction. So maybe it’s not alright to piss around with someone else’s attempt to make meaning of their universe in their time and place, because is that not what art is. So my comment to the person who thought it was okay to re-people, reconfigure, reimagine, reinterpret, and re-profit from someone else’s art is write your own fucking book.

It’s world cancer day on the 4th of February. I got a package through the door with free address stickers with “I’m a cancer supporter” emblazoned on them. There was a plea for money as well. There is blackmail and then there is misplaced insensitive charity blackmail. Its all in the bin. I’m doing my best to support myself. I did think I might have my own stickers that state. “I’m a cancer suffer send money to me now!”

I’ve no words, only pictures. Its like that at times.

Early start to get the train to London, I down the morning meds and go. I make good time and get and early train and spend the journey finishing Early Riser. A good read and a charming ending. Pull into St Pancras and there is the Trace Emin glowing in its deep pink glory. It makes me smile and starts my day in a good way.

I get to Royal College of Psychiatry and head for the canteen to get breakfast. I check my e-mails and get ready for the meeting by watching the TED talk that was referenced with the agenda for the day. I liked the idea that no one would consider laying of family members if the family were not doing well but in a company its the people that sacrificed first to keep the managers/leaders salary intact and the shareholders dividends up. At meeting time I go to the meeting room with a colleague and we get going on our task of discerning, defining and devising something to do with leadership of an enabling environment. We worked till three and then we scattered to other meetings and journeys home.

I slept on the train home. Off the train and I drive to the gym to meet my partner and we decided to eat out. When I checked my e-mails I found the photographer had put our album on the website ready to view and to check. We of course returned home and I set up my laptop and the TV to view the album. The photos were what would be expected of a civil ceremony, the usual family and friends photos pre and post the actual ceremony. I am sure that people will recognise the day and the people they met and will remember the day. Everyone looked as I remembered them, and they looked like the people I knew, I did not. I was shocked to see myself. I did not recognise myself. Confronted with multiple views of myself I became more and more aware how the distance between my self-image and what the reality of the person walking around in the world had grown. I no longer recognise myself. I am bloated, distorted and ugly. I cannot stand to see myself. I am embarrassed at what I have become. Now I have a new battle alongside the cancer, now I have to find a way to be in the world as I am while I try to get myself back to where I recognise myself again.

I remember a client who was admitted to a service I was director of. She arrived deluded and paranoid with little grip on reality. Months later and full of the medication the team had administered she came into a clinical review meeting and said “look what you have done to me”. She had put on a considerable amount of weight to the extent that she had had to buy new larger size clothes. She no longer recognised herself; I now know what she meant.

TAX RETURN DAY

One of the few days on the year that I hate. I find it exhausting and depressing to be handing over money. Despite some careful reading of the help notes I found no allowance for prostate cancer, so my return was the usual figures drawn from cross referencing my bank statements, invoices and remittance advices. Of course there were also the P60s but the tax man has those already so when I entered the webpage to fill my tax return on line, the P60 information was already filled in. Big Person looms large.

So after hours of pen pushing and flicking backwards and forwards in my account ledger I finally got to the bottom line of “this is what you owe us”. I cannot bare to drag the process out any longer than necessary so I paid up straight away. So I am now free hopefully till I have to repeat it in April 2020. One thing that was uncomfortable was that the tax period ran into the part of 2019 when I was first taken ill in Jamaica with failed kidneys that started all this cancer journey off. An odd feeling being taken back to where this started in such a cold cash and taxes way. I also got a an e-mail from an old work colleague who talked about prostate cancer treatment and her experiences of it via her husband. It was the first time that my hormone depletion treatment had been referred to as “chemical castration”. It shocked me at first and then made me have a lot of questions, which I shall think through and refine before I see my oncologist next time. It was an unfortunate combination, tax man plus castration.

Tomorrow I go to London to take part in a work shop for Enabling Environment leadership skills and competentacies, so tonight I will rest and try to put the tax person behind me. I also get to see my favourite Tracy Emine.

I travelled back from York at about midday today having had a productive and good time. My journey back was interrupted by a hold up close to home as the motorway was closed to allow the helicopter ambulance to land and ferry people to hospital. I finally got to the gym and got an hours session in. I burnt off 750 calories and completed my 10,000 step count for the day. Once home I ate dinner with my partner and watched some television. I am tired, very tired and just want to sleep. Tomorrow is going to be taxman day so I know I need to rest. Hopefully the experience is not going to be problematic, just expensive.

Today was a work day. Up to York and then a hotel before returning tomorrow. I had dinner with a friend in York and talked about how different York and Leicester are. Apparently there is a rash of unsavoury stickers appearing all over York which are racist and inspired by the right. It is not something I have noticed in Leicester but then I may just not been aware of it. I shall certainly look out for such stickers when I next go into the city.

We also talked about my cancer; actually I did most of the talking, which was useful to get the view of someone outside of the family and local friends. I’ve been uncomfortable of late with the image of an island as representing my current state. I’m not sure what image would represent how I feel and experience my cancer at the moment but the conversation has prompted me to think about what would adequately reflect current thoughts and feelings about my situation. There is something in my situation that is typified by ambiguity and it is difficult to think of images that would represent this. My immediate thought is Dali clocks but it is still not right. I will give it time to ferment and see what appears.