Thursday and I wake to find my partner up and about. I dawdle and take my vitals (all good) and check my messages and emails. By the time I get up the sun is out and there is button research to do. I take my morning meds augmented by the Vitamin D and join the hunt for button shops that are open. Normally it would be a quick trip into to the city but its a bit of a flog so the search moves to closer to home. There is a button shop in the next village so my partner and I drive over to it. After some tricky navigating we arrive at the shop to find it is closed on a Thursday! Why? Why close on a Thursday and be open the rest of the working week? Its a mystery. A quick re Google shows that there is another button shop close, in fact very close by, so we walk to it and end up buying two sets of buttons. Its a strange little shop with the proprietor stitching a quilt together on a big work surface as counter. I cannot believe that it makes money, but clearly it must do business enough.

We return home via a garden centre where I get something to eat before returning home. To my surprise and joy there is a letter for me from a friend. So I sit and read it over and over. It is full of observations and news and sharing of how the current world is being seen. Its a real pleasure and I savour it. Having spent the morning button hunting I have to train, I do not feel like it but as I am away over the weekend I will not have a chance to train. I also need to work off the stiffness in my arm where I had my booster COVID jab yesterday. Once in my training kit I get into the garage and get onto the rowing machine. I cannot face an hour session so select to go for forty five minutes. Its a tough session to get going in even with a running music session in my ears that is meant to motivate me. My body feels sluggish and the distance tells me that I am struggling to get any rhythm going. BY the end of the session I am just glad to have it over with, but at least I managed to sneak over the 8 kilometre mark.

After the session I sit and record it in my journal before getting into my gardening gear. I spend a while putting some pea netting up for the sweet peas that have been put in on a couple of pots. As I am putting up more netting the garden guy arrives so I stop my netting activity and make him a coffee. We chat for while and plan a bit more of the garden revival. I leave him chatting to my partner and finish my netting and then return to the sofa where I start to draft the blog with an early football match on the TV in the back ground.

The evening is sunny and during it there is food and football and the initial packing for tomorrows journey to the hotel as the first step of our weekend away. Tonight will be the last night in my own bed for three nights, a prospect that I always find a bit of a challenge, I think it is the travel I am wary of as I am never quite sure how I am going to travel. Sometimes it is not a problem at all other times it feels a bit tricky in terms of how confident I am in my body. It just seems to be one of the things that comes along with the cancer no matter what the arithmetic tells me. So it will be off to bed with my night meds and my finger splint on for a nights sleep in a familiar bed. All the while waiting for inspiration to strike me.

Another Wednesday and today marks the last day of Cycle 23 of the chemo therapy tablets. My impression is, according to the oncologist letter that arrived a couple of days ago, that I am tolerating the drugs pretty well. Apart from the abandoned cycle 16, where I am convinced I was ill with some form of virus that gave me angina like symptoms, I have managed to keep a constant average blood pressure, good SATS, a stable temperature and a good heart rate. So the arithmetic, apart from the cycle 16 hiccup, is good. So tomorrow I will embark on cycle 24 and hopefully cycle 25 before my next oncology review at the end of May. So the only thing to do is to keep going and trying to holds a balance between a monk like regime and over indulgence.

Before getting up I check my vitals and then my messages and social media. Nothing of note there so I get up and make breakfast. As its the end of a cycle day there is the blood pressure spread sheet to update and the cycle averages to be calculated and recorded. I take my morning meds and then prepare to go out. My partner and I go to two garden centres to get more slate and plants before I get into a T short to go to the GP surgery for my COVID booster.

When I arrive at the GP surgery I am greeted by a chirpy person and the practice nursey who jabs me regularly. The nurse laughs at the sight of me and said something to the effect of “another injection.” I am handed a piece a paper which I hand to the nurse who ushers me to a chair. I just about get my arse down on it and she is at me needle in hand and then I am done. So as I leave I mutter that I will see her in another fifteen days for my regular jab and head for the co-op. I get a paper and head for home, where I settle down to do the days crosswords while my partner continues to plant plants in the garden pots.

So the afternoon passes and my partner discovers that I have come home at which point I put garden things away and see what she has done. The garden is looking better than I was expecting it to as this time of year given the distress it suffered last year when so much disturbance was caused by the building work. A lot of things have come up and other things have survived. Nature has a way of confounding the odds.

Eventually its time to retreat to the sofa and check my emails and messages before starting to draft the blog. As I am doing that Amazon deliver some pea netting and crucially a new pair of sunglasses. My relatively new ones had disappeared and I could not find them for love nor money and in the end just bought a new pair given that the weather has been so sunny over the last few days. I wasted no time get them un packaged and on my face, I’m pleased with them and I am pleased to say they are Chinese without any tariffs applied to them, so up yours Trump, it will be a left hand drive Jaguar at a knock down price next.

The early evening meal is taken and I continue to draft the blog until its time to hut round for tonight’s football match, which I shall watch on my laptop leaving the TV free for my partner to find something entertaining. My plan is to have an easy day tomorrow and putter around in the garden and around the house till I pack to go away on Friday. I will of course need to train as when away I am unable to. I am trusting that tonight I shall not be bothered by my COVID jab and that all will be well. My usual night meds and finger splint rituals will kick in and sleep will follow. That’s the hope every night.

Tuesday and on the face of it I’ve an easy day ahead of me as I wake up. I take my vitals as my partner goes of for physio and I get up and get into my training kit. Breakfast is a scant toast affair that goes down with my morning meds and hot water. I clear the kitchen and put in a load of washing before checking my messages and WhatsApp. The world appears to be in order, or at least my world seems to be chuntering along as normal. My GP is offering a COVID booster tomorrow so I book myself in, why not, it might be beneficial, who knows, its just another round of medical Russian roulette.

I finally get into the garage and strap myself onto the rower. Its a three day gap since I rowed last so I decide to go for an hours session. These are always sedate and slowly paced affairs but build to a final burn and deep regrets that I should have gone for a shorter more intense session . Today was no different but I used and BBC motivational tape to keep me going despite not quite getting the timings right. I lagged behind the tape by about fifteen minutes so while I was being congratulated on a first half hour I was feeling crap after fifteen minutes of actual rowing. However I plugged away and got to the end of the session having managed eleven plus kilometres, which is not bad given I’ve not done an hour for a while.

With the session recorded and a Red Bull drunk I wander into the garden and start to do odd and ends, which turns out to be some extensive weeding out of the pots and one of the smaller flower beds. My partner has returned adn gone out to lunch with a friend so I continue to beaver away in the sunshine until I can do no more. I have extended my days “to do” list so that when my partner returns from her lunch I suggest we go to one of the nearby garden centres and get some plumb slate and a new rake. So off we go and spend time picking up bags of slate and assessing the merits of the range of rakes available. By the time we have completed our assessment the garden centre café has closed! My toast breakfast is now no longer sustaining me.

Once home we set to and rake out a narrow bed behind the front hedge and sow wild flower seeds, after which I spread the slate under the new raised cold frame. By the time I’ve cleared away the tools and debris I am about spoonless so retreat to me end of the sofa, drink cold Lucozade and book a night in a hotel for myself and my partner for an upcoming trip we are going to make this weekend. All that is left for me to do now is draft the blog, order in an Indian and watch football this evening. The elephant in the room is my lack of progress in clearing and organising the office space now that my partner has retired. Hopefully I can get some focus and get this done soon. I am feeling guilty that it is ages since I wrote to my friends, this is important to me so I will begin another round of letter writing from the Shed now that I am able to write once again post hand operation. For now its time to read the Velveteen Rabbit, order food and slide into the evening. I’m at the stage where I have run out of spoons (energy) and running on automatic until I hit the point where I go through my pre bed rituals and then maximum oblivion until tomorrow.

Sunday, a day to do bugger all, and that’s exactly what I did, apart from the usual medications and a trip to a far away garden centre to buy a diffuser, one of those modern air wicks with sticks and a jar of smelly stuff. Naturally there were other attractions like plants, of which we bought a few and a café at which we dined on cheese scones and ginger beer, before retuning home to have an evening meal and watch Grace, another police drama series that could be half as long if the writers understood I could not give a bugger about the personal baggage of every god damn character in the show. By all means find a body and set about finding the killer but I do not need to know that the detective is a having marital adjustment problems or that they suffer from existential anxt brought on by the job they chose to do. Any way Brentford got a point against Chelsea and donkeys still ate carrots and I took my evening meds and went to bed in anticipation of the next days visit to the surgeon who operated on my hand.

Monday and I am beaten to the shower by my partner ( I guess this will happen a lot now that she has retired). I wait my turn and then take my meds before getting ready to drive across town to see the surgeon who operated on my hand. Its lovely and sunny as my partner goes off to the dentist and drive off. My appointment is at 11:20 and I am on time, like the prompt person I am. I then wait for twenty five minutes before I get called in for the short consultation ever. The surgeon looks at my scared hand and asks if I can form a fist, I show him can and we chat about my ongoing physio with the hand and scar specialist. That was it and I was out again and driving home. The bottom line is I am left to the boring maintenance and ongoing nurturing of my hand on my own four the next four months. The other reality is that I am developing “hand Tourettes” as I find my self doing sets of hand exercises at odd moments, this includes repetitions of “the duck”, “the hook” , “the fist” and “the spread” plus a few contractions. Of course there are also the Nivea crème massages of my palm and the rest of the fingers about four or five times a day. At night all this ends as I strap on my finger splint over the latex gel dressing that clings to my scars like an over affectionate octopus.

I get home to find my partner in the garden as I go to bring in my towels. She is waiting to be picked up to go and visit her mother, a weekly trip. I putter about putting new lamps in the kitchen lights while I wait for Tesco to deliver. With that excitement out of the way I can settle down to a couple of fried egg rolls and a concerted period of doing absolutely nothing. I do some research on purple slate for the garden and a surprise arrives, a copy of The Velveteen Rabbit. Its a lovely story and a lovely re-read. By the time my partner is home I am printing off the waste collection timetable for 2025/26 and she is busy planting seeds in the garden. I note that there are a lot of maintenance tasks that need doing so I think if tomorrow is sunny I might have a go a doing some of the boring but necessary jobs around the garden, there is much staking, raking and pot clearing that needs to be done. However tomorrow must be a training day, I must rouse myself in the morning and row, and row hard. Its time to begin the long haul back to fitness and well being so I need to get physically active regularly and to start the brain feeding again with the work needed to prepare the fourth collection in the Cancer Years series of poetry collections. I have twenty eight new poems to put into a collection and by the time I have finished the manuscript preparation there will probably be more than thirty, which is more than enough for a single sitting read.

In the post today was my latest oncology summary from the team to my GP, which of course I get a copy. Apparently I am tolerating the medication well and they (the oncology boys and girls) are happy to keep on giving me three month blocks of the chemo therapy drugs. Come June I will have been on this stuff for two years, if I can keep fit I see no reason why I should not continue for a while yet. For me it is the fatigue that I experience and the bouts of frustration with my self that get to me. I have “to do” lists and plans for the garden that I want to get done but I am not sure at times if it is the medication, my age or sloth that is stopping me from doing it. I think I am trying my hardest but I can never be sure. There are of course options but as always there are other things going on.

437
I could do yoga – once or twice a week
I could eat less sweets – a ban
I could eat fewer cakes – a ban 
I could read more – less TV
I could write more – less lazing around
I could exercise more – everyday
I could communicate more – talk to people
I could play music – less fantasy time
I could do less “phone” – more real time.
All of this I could do
But on balance my cancer 
Wouldn’t give a fuck.
I just might be more knowledgeable,
And fitter with fewer
Side effects from my drugs,
But I am not curable,
I’m being palliated,
managed and consoled.
How do you think that feels?
Yep, like Crunchies, Red Bull,
Football and violent TV,
flat out on a recliner
watching my garden overgrow
and daring myself to be happy.
						437  06-03-2025 

Saturday and I laze in bed reflecting and finally rouse myself to do my vitals and get up. I have breakfast with my partner and then I get ready to drive to the dinner venue. I take my morning meds and get on my way. Its a strange and perverse world in which technology seems to choose to work or not. I set my phone up in the car and everything visually works perfectly and provides the first verbal instruction but then stops. My Google maps becomes mute. So I undertake the journey to the venue slavishly following the blue line along the roads.

There were five of us dining, a chance to catch up, eat together and to laugh together. Of course we also put the world the world to rights and to condemn the Bastard Trump for being such a prick. We paid our bills and chose another date to meet but decide that it will be at a different venue. The food was okay but over priced so we will find another place to meet.

I drove home using the car Sat Nav and became aware that too would not talk clearly to me. All I was getting was muffled whispering out of one speaker, so soft that I could not hear what was being said so once again I was following the blue line, fortunately I know the knew the way back that my car suggested.

Once home I settle down and recover from the journey and then start to draft the blog. The evening is slow but there is Beyond Paradise and Death in Paradise to catch up on. I find it difficult to draft the blog, my brain feels sticky and treacly sluggish at the moment. I’m not feeling inspired and I feel that I am about to run out of spoons (energy). Night meds loom and so does the finger splint. It is the little things that need to be done that become draining, but I can lay in in the morning.

Friday and I am awake early again. I have time to do my vitals and check my messages and socials. Then I am up and into my training gear. After a brief breakfast I find that my dosettes are empty so I go through my dosette filling ritual for the next two weeks. I make a note that in two weeks time I shall have to buy my own vitamin D. With that important chore done I move on to updating my blood pressure data base, which takes a while as I load up the data. Thankfully my average blood pressure over the latest cycle is stable, regular and well within normal range, so I am quite chuffed. So far so good.

Next up is the finishing off of the cold frame by putting some seed trays in the cold frame and fill them with compost ready for my partner to sow them with Cosmos seeds. This goes well but the inner liner needs re-pining, so I find a long ago remembered box of ladybird drawing pins and re-fix the liner. Only now do I have the time to clear the kitchen and think about training. However the post arrives and in it is the De Montfort Hall programme for the rest of the year and I notice that Tim Minchin is playing a night. In excitement I dash to the website only to find it is already sold out. However I notice that La Traviata is playing so I eagerly book tickets adn a parking place. I guess one out of two is not bad. Now I am free to go and train.

I head to the garage and strap myself onto the rower and just as I am about to start my session my phone rings and I find it is my doctors surgery ringing me to find out how I am on my blood thinner. I do a quick checklist and provide the information I am asked for adn then I am left to my session. Slightly irked by the interruption I start my session at pace and carry one as long as I can. It turns out that by thirty minutes I have rowed a personal best. Well “Go me” is all I can say to that.

With a sense of achievement I retreat to the sofa and record my session before starting to draft the blog. My day from here is predictable as my partner and I are going for a meal with friends so I shall be showering and dressing up in adult clothes.

Thursday arrives and I am up early and showered ready to go and see my hand physiotherapist. I take my morning meds and then drive off to see what the arithmetic on my hand is going to be. It turns out that I am doing well, my finger is continuing to straighten and I have more elasticity in my joints but I have a hard scar L shape on the inside of my ring finger which is being slow to soften or stretch. I discuss my options with the physio and I agree to see her in a months time to be remeasured, she massages the scar and provides me with a new piece of latex to wear on the scar at night. She also adjusts my finger splint. It appears that at the 6 month mark it will be as good as it gets so until then I will continue to do my finger exercises, wear my night splint and keep massaging the scar regularly. Basically it is good news.

I drive home and make myself a fried egg sandwich and a hot water, which I take out onto the patio and eat with my partner. While in the sunshine I do the days crosswords and then when my partner has gone to get her hair done I set about building the cold frame that has been sitting in the hall way all boxed up. Its a fairly straight forward job but as always there is a bit of juggling to be done in order to get the first part of the frame stable and lined up properly. Eventually it is complete but on the patio. The garden guy comes later to cut the grass and helps me mount it on the bricks where it is going to be permanently in the garden.

I am out of spoons by the time I have completed the build and binned all the packaging so I take a time out and have a bit of a rest until the garden guy arrives. We chat and then he cuts the grass which makes a huge difference to the look of the garden before helping me lift the cold frame into place. By now I am out of spoons (energy) and decide to hang my washing out tomorrow as its going to be sunny. I do however take a picture of my magnolia that has come out in flower in the last forty eight hours just as the cherry blossom begins to fall.

Finally I retreat to the sofa and command Alexa to play me meditation music and I then begin to draft the blog. The evening is upon me as the garden guy waves good bye and I can smell the new mown grass. Its light and sunny still but mind has already turned to tomorrow and the need to get on with clearing out the office and getting the life admin organised all in one place. As I am thinking about this the Amazon guy delivers a new soap dish, the old one is just disgusting and to ensure some future proofing the new one has “soap” written on it!

Of course the most important thing in my life right now is that the bastard Trump has made my poetry collections a dollar more expensive for discerning Americans. I am planning my response and what action I might take, as a private citizen all I can do is not buy anything American, which I suspect might be quite tricky, but if I come across any Americans I will see them as fair game.

There is no sport on TV tonight so it will be time to read or watch something on TV but to be honest I am running out of options that are partner compatible. So to night I shall down my meds, strap on my adjusted finger splint and hope for a good nights sleep to set me up for tomorrows training session and dinner with some friends later on. It will be good to chat to some non house hold people again, that will be two days running, I am almost becoming social again!

Wednesday and I am back into my old waking routine of drinking hot water, taking my vitals and checking my socials and messages. With all that done I get up and dress in my training gear, my partner already on the way to see her mother with her brother. Breakfast is a bagel affair and then I take a few minutes to do the days cross words. I clear things away and then I head for the garage and the rowing machine. I’m still sore from Mondays injection and Tuesday row so I am sensible and set myself up for a thirty minute row. It turns out to be an even tougher session than yesterdays forty five minutes. I do not make what I think is a standard distance for the time. It is what it is and I guess my body is telling me that I need recovery time.

I record the session in my journal and then clear away the kitchen before reviewing some of the things I have written recently. I stumble across a short poem that I recently wrote and had forgotten about.

430
When I’d rather be asleep
Than awake, I know its trouble.
When all the niggly bits
outweigh the rest,
then its desperate.
When nothing is a crisis
but everything needs tending
in an endless round of care
that’s when I hanker 
after sleep.
It’s the insidious side 
of cancer warfare,
chipped at slowly
like Chinese torture,
every drop washing away energy,
a man under erosion.
I crave a kindness or two
just to know that
someone sees it
before I pull the covers
over my head.

					439 20-03-2025

My mind turns to Easter and I begin to hunt around for ideas and also do some pre ordering. By the time I am through with this my partner has returned and so we have lunch together before Tesco arrive to deliver what was a hastily put together order. With the refuelling done I take my partner for a short drive to the local garage where I check my tyres and then go onto the garden centre for a ginger beer and a shortbread. This is how it goes some days in retirement.

Back home my partner plants the sweet peas we bought at the garden centre while sort out my diary and check the date and time of my post operative assessment by the surgeon. It spurs me to do my nails and to do another set of hand physio exercises. The hand physio is my one appointment tomorrow so I am keen for it to go well. I suspect I shall just have to keep going as I am for another couple of months. I realise I have no cash to pay her so its a trip for me to he local Co-Op to use the cash machine before the evening meal and the slide into the evening.

For some reason the cash machine tells me my card is not acceptable, it used to be so I assume the machines on one. So I trudge home and eat tea and settle down to an evening of films. I down my night meds, don my finger splint and magic latex dressing and go to bed

Its a post jab Tuesday so I know I have to crack on early as possible as this is the day my energy desserts me early in the day. My newly retired partner is up and getting ready to meet a friend for coffee. She brings me my morning hot water and I take my vitals (all good) before getting up and climbing into my training kit. I make myself breakfast and put a load of washing in. I delay training to re connect the smart speakers in the house to the new internet hub. I putter for a while, just long enough to hang my first load of washing out and put a second load of ice hockey jerseys in. Then I train.

The session was hard but I get to the 45 minute mark tired but pleased to have made the effort. 8 kilometres is not bad after a 16 day break from training. Now I have to get back into the swing of regular training. I record the session in my journal and then change out of my training kit. There is another load of washing to hang out and a white wash to put in. I have soup and bread on the patio with my partner who has returned. I find myself restless and end up filling the bird and squirrel feeders before taking pictures of some of the flowers that have come out in the garden.

By now I am flagging and as I put out the last load of washing on the line I know I need to rest. I retreat to the sofa and look at the disarray at my end of the sofa and I know the office space is in need of a good clear out but I will not manage that today. You either have the spoons (energy) or not and right now the answer is not. As I sit on the sofa trying to formulate a plan for clearing space in the office and at my end of the sofa I find myself jotting in my journal, which turns into a sort of poem.

440
I draw a complete and utter blank
starring at the cherry blossom
and taking bets with myself
how long it will survive.
The garden runs amok
and the office is a midden
after I have changed the Hub.
My end of the sofa is chaos, 
the cold frame is not built
and Phase two of shed building 
is a far-flung fancy.
I’ve trained, I’ve done my washing,
(lovely drying day),
But now I draw a complete and utter blank. 
I have fantasies about ending wars,
Of peace and miraculous tidiness.
I recall friendships and feel lonely
and let my mind wander further
than I probably should.
With so little done I am 
already spoonless
and here I am stuck
in the foothills of clutter.
I know what needs doing,
I’ve a smart new list maker 
on my cleverer than me phone
but now I draw a complete and utter blank.
I’ve finished the wine gums
and I am reaching for a Crunchie
but not before I do my hand exercises 
to stretch my scars,
and still my injection site 
from yesterday is sore.
It’s a gnawing dissatisfaction
that sounds as if it’s just,
“Poor me”.
But I am struggling, and vaguely 
resentful that I have no telekinesis.
I’d like a plug in energy boost,
an inspiration or something brain fed,
but now I draw a complete and utter blank.
I must find a way of breaking free,
of moving mountains or at least 
doing the basic.
My head sees it but my body
is otherwise engaged. 
This damn cellular war is relentless,
there’s no negotiation table,
no intermediary to help balance
argument and actions. 
There is just warfare inside
that has time on its side,
an enemy that laughs 
each time the clocks springs forward,
or an ordinary accident befalls me.
Each everyday mishap fuels the advance
and I wrack my mind for weapons,
strategies and tactics to retaliate
but I draw a complete and utter blank.

							444  01-04-2025

This burst of writing has to be captured and numbered and put in its place in my “All I Have” file and the best way of doing that is to put it into the blog, so I start to draft todays blog. So it is now early evening and the drift into a sunny sunset starts. There will be tea and I will be rounding up washing from the line and sorting it into neat piles to store away once again. Tonight there might be football, there may not but there will be last minute Tesco changes and then the sleeping rituals will start, meds, finger splint and last minute messages and checks. Tomorrow the office tidying is my mission, it will be brutal.

The first Monday back after the holiday and it is a twenty eight day jab day. There is no time to hang around this morning so I am up and showered in time to be in the GP surgery for 9:40am. It is my usual nurse who pumps the large amount of fluid into me. On my way home I drop into the pharmacists and pick up my out standing prescription. My twenty eight drug is there but in a different format, so I assume they had to find an alternative supplier.

Once home I make a breakfast and settle down to do the days crosswords. With the puzzles completed I turn my attention to the new Internet hub that BT has sent me. The first task is to look at the existing set up and the old hub, taking the precaution of photographing it all before I start out on the task. Its a jungle of wires and leads, some of them still have the labels I put on them telling me what they are. Past Roland was quite wise. I have to move load of stuff out of the office and clear the work surface before I can take the risk of unplugging stuff. As a diversion I go food shopping with my partner at the new garden centre. Its a quick in and out job and we are soon home. A friend calls just as I arrive home and I have the pleasure of a chat with her about holidays, families and children. It’s a real pleasure to have a conversation out side the household and to catch up with news of people I know.

I return to my rats nest of wires, cables and connectors. Some have labels, some do not so I spend a long time tracing which wires run from what to where. Eventually it comes to the moment of truth and I start to put connectors into the ack of the hub, importantly the phone line for the phone into the new portal in the back of the hub. the moment of truth comes when I plug the hub into the mains and switch on. Ta Da! the hub goes orange and then blue, it works. I check the phone works by ring the home phone and using the home phone to ring my mobile, both calls are successful. I then spend a lot of time connecting all the things that need the new connection to the new hub. One TV, a PC and two laptops later the work is done. I print off the hub information for the rest of the household and leave them to sign up in their own time.

By now I am running out of energy and my injection site is becoming sore. Time to rest and eat and finish the Agatha Christie on TV. I draft the blog and then take myself to bed full of meds and pain killers.