Wednesday and still on holiday but I am up early and sitting outside of the cottage in the courtyard relaxing with a hot water and reflecting before the heat of the day. Its one of those quiet moments as my partner sleeps and I listen to the sound of the sea lapping up against the beach. I make some odd notes about the website I am planning for my poetry. I am not sure what to call it and I am not sure about how I want to structure the content. So I jot a few ideas until my partner joins me and we have breakfast outside.
We decide to go to the shop to get bits and pieces of food for the day, it also means that the post cards that were written after breakfast can be posted. All goes to plan and we return to the cottage with everything we need. There follows a long period of reading. I am almost at the end of Ryka Aoki’s Light from Uncommon Stars.
Something different, a science fiction fantasy novel with a transgender central character.
The book is a strange mixture of science fiction and fantasy involving souls, demons, a transgender woman, doughnuts and purple aliens and violins. It is an interesting book whose author is an American trans woman and a professor of English at an American University. She is also a poet and essayist. I read until it is time for the afternoon walk along the beach. My partner and I walk down to our favourite groyne and sit chatting about some of our past and how we are now, and all the time the sound of the sea rumbles a few yards away. Time moves on and we walk back to the cottage and I continue to read. Tea time rolls around my partner clears the kitchen and I cook pasta with a tomato and mince source. Full of pasta I finish my book. Its a devil gets cheated happy Hollywood ending where love over comes all and there is universal hope in the face of “Endplague”, that inevitable end of everything that appears to be an affliction that appears to face all individuals, cultures, civilisations no matter what planet they are from. My one bone of contention was that when ever trans people are written as characters they are almost inevitably have time in the pay for sex industry, which I am pretty sure is just not representative of trans folk. Anyway I finish the book and watch a football match, washing up at half time. The cottage does not have a dishwasher, so basic! Having watched yet another English team get beaten on penalties, you would think professional footballers paid millions could put the ball in the net from 1 2 yards, but apparently not. All the pundits were saying how well the English team had done and that they deserved lots of credit, while I am pretty sure that all the fans that spent money to go and see their team and watched them miss 3 out of 5 penalties were, to a person, thinking “Wankers. I draft the blog, take my meds and go to bed, having checked my messages for the last time in the day.
Monday and the first week day on holiday, Its a slow start with vitals to do and record and meds to take, I wonder why in am taking vitamin D tablets in a heat wave when I am in shorts and sport vest all day. I have no answer and just swallow the pills. There are things needed from the shop but most of all breakfast is required, so my partner and I sort out suitable clothes, fire up google maps and set of for Watsons café. It turns out that the café is embarrassingly close. There is hardly anyone there so we select our own seats and wait for the staff to come across to us. It is a strange place and very much a road side café with a strong hint of seaside about it. Its just the kind of café that fits in with Bacton.
Watsons Café, all with a whiff of seaside.
The breakfast was good and hearty and we watch people outside eat alongside their dogs while others wandered past. Opposite was the village garage with a beauty parlour as an annexe, I suppose you could have everything M.O.T.d at the same time. With breakfast done and dusted my partner and I strolled back to FLIP the cottage via the village store. I was determined to get postcards to send and for them to arrive before we got home. I search the whole shop and found none, my partner had to ask where they were. I promise you that below is the full range of Bacton post cards.
Bacton, the entire range of postcards!
Notice there is not a beach insight, not even the sea really. My conclusion is that this is a village and beach in hiding and that it maybe just one large witness protection programme. So if you are the lucky recipient of one of these cards, I was not being lazy, or hiding, this is all there was. Once back at the cottage I of course start to write postcards until I realise I have not got my address book with me, fortunately I am a person of more than one synapse and consulted my address section of the Amazon App and there you all were at least the lucky recipients of one of Bacton’s resplendent post card selection. I lazed and grazed and read until it was time for a late tea of nibbles type things before launching into The Gone series 2. I am not persuaded that I would want to live in New Zealand, especially after learning that we Brits were responsible for massacring the aboriginals, with other aboriginals help of course. It would seem that Empire builders are good at spotting and using tribal rivalries. Bed time rolled around so I took my meds and headed for bed with the sound of the sea rolling in my ears.
Tuesday and I am awake early, so I do the dishes from last night, leave a cup of tea by my partner and head for the little suntrap courtyard of the cottage to finish reading Ian Rankin’s Let it Bleed. It was an okay read, good holiday ,easy to read stuff that was pacey and undemanding. I finish the book and reflect for a while and then in a flurry I write three poems. Whilst writing the man in the door cottage “Flop”, hurries indoors from the beach, where he has been fishing and calls to his partner that he needs her to Google something quickly. It turns out that he caught a Weever fish and before he had time to think he had grabbed hold of it on the end of his line only for the Weever fish to stick its poisonous spines into his hand. At the point he was asking for the Google search he could feel the venom going up his arm. Apparently in this situation you dunk the affect limb into the hottest water you can stand to cook the protein in the venom, thus deactivation it, which I assume he did. He appeared later and retrieved his rods from the beach where he had left them. He and his partner subsequently went out for the day, or perhaps A&E.
455 Sitting by the sea, outside "FLIP" the holiday cottage, the constant rolling in my ears; perpetual, the other end of my life spectrum. It is a reminder that everything will continue, until it too reaches it's time.
445 12/08/2025
I am sitting writing when I am joined by my partner and we sit and munch marmalade toast and sip warm drinks. With breakfast done we make a dash for the shop to avoid the hottest part of the day pausing only to post the postcards that I had written yesterday. Unfortunately some of the things we wanted were unavailable, simple things like fruit and veg and fresh meat. So we returned with new menu plans but clutching new daily newspaper puzzles to do. After a brief rest and my partner and I head for the beach to walk along its still mostly deserted lengths. A brief rest at an old groyne to watch the sea gives pause for reflection.
A gentle walk back to the cottage and a light lunch and ice cream and I start to draft the blog. There are poems to be added to my “All I Have” file before tea and then more of the The Gone series before the highlight of the evening, The Great British Sewing Bee. Somewhere in there will be a shower and my night meds before I get myself to bed and hopefully sleep. I notice that I find it difficult to focus for long periods and get bored, no not bored, dissatisfied with what I am writing, a lack of depth or pertinence to what I think this blog should be about. I am no less me just more distracted by my circumstances.
453 It's a roller coaster one minute there is joy the next the black pits. A smiling doctor tells me, "your doing really well" as my metastatic tumours disappear from any scan, and then my damn PSA rises and rises again. The bit of cancer that I feared might run amok has gone yet my prostate worsens, and with it my fear. I'm scared in a new sort of way, death scared. A getting better but getting worse scared that gnaws in a new way. Someone I told about my magic growth disappearance said this: "does it mean you don't have to talk about it all the time now?" My god what a bore I must be. So I'll keep stum, retire a little and try to be a man with a stiff upper lip, no bother, but I am terrified of slipping into steroid territory and bloating like a pig. Before I always had a plan but now I don't. I'm scared in a new sort of way, death scared.
Sunday and the first waking up on holiday in FLIP the cottage that has been rented for the week. Of course its a lazy start to a sun day. A low key breakfast long after our neighbours in FLOP had driven off somewhere. So its warm drinks on the lawn that looks out over the sea before we decide to wander down to the closest shop and get essentials, like butter and AAA batteries to make the TV remote work. We discover that it is the village garage sale day and the two houses either side of FLIP and FLOP had a range of crap laid out on tables hoping someone would buy it. There was a moment when I looked at the industrial chop saw for £50 but quickly came to my senses, it is not after all the normal bring home souvenir from a holiday.
The local Premier shop, open 24/7 of course to cater for the chalet parks around it was an Aladdin’s cave goodies of, everything a cabin dweller could ask for. Bizarrely triple A batteries were stored with the spirits and vapes and had to be asked for. With far more in the bags knapsacks than we anticipated we my partner and I returned to flip and squirreled away our shopping. Time for a drink and a bit of a breather before I suggest a walk down the beach. Donning our “walk down the beach outfits” we stepped out and took the twenty yard hike to the beach, which turned out to be far more pebbly than it had looked from a distant. We walk along and noted how there was evidence of a continuing battle with sea erosion and that some of the holiday chalets where going to inevitably one day slip into the sea. It was bright, sunny and blowy but invigorating. One small child had taken her sea unicorn and was doing a runner pursued by a concerned adult.
One small child and sea unicorn making a run for it.
Back at FLIP it was time for a sandwich and a read. The back garden is sheltered and it was possible to read for a while in the afternoon sunshine and still listen to the sound of the rolling sea. Come three o’clock I watch the Community Charity Shield, which ends in a penalty shoot out, which sees Crystal Palace win. There is cherry cake and water in the sunshine before I start to draft the blog while my partner prepares tea. FLOP, or the tortoise folk, as I have named them, are BBQing slabs of meat on the electric BBQ that they brought with them, eschewing the traditional one supplied by the landlords of FLIP and FLOP.
Having put the new batteries in the TV remote our evening can be a combination of reading, knitting and watching the new series on i-player that we started. All in all a slow day of settling in and finding our bearings. I am still trying to work through the results from my latest bloods and the last oncology review results, they could not be more different. The review brings me the good news that my metastasis is no where to be found, my bloods bring me my highest PSA level for two years and lowest kidney function for the same length of time. I do not know what is going on, its like being on a rollercoaster. I’m not sure what to think at all and I am trying desperately to think about what I can do. So far I have got as far as no more fizzy drinks, only water, and High Intensity Interval Training. I find it all a bit scary at the moment. Tomorrow I shall find postcards and stamps and let the outside world know i am still alive and kicking.
Friday was all about preparing to go on holiday on Saturday but first there was a trip to the GP surgery to have a set of bloods done. These are interim bloods to monitor my PSA everything else is just the every day. No results by the end of the day but all the bags are packed and the car checked ready to go.
Saturday morning and the bloods are in, its not pretty. So I go on holiday to rest and think and write.
Not what I hoped for, lifestyle adjustments needed.
Thursday and I am awake early. I take my vitals and find them good. My partner gets up to go to the gym. I am up shortly afterwards and have breakfast and get into my training gear. I take my morning meds and realise that I need to order this months drugs, which I do and then set about filling my dosettes for the next two weeks. Its a fiddly job but keeps my drug routine straight. While checking my emails I find an email from the publishers who have requoted me for the production of the anthology and the proposed new website. I look it over and notice that the costings do not add up. I send an email and point out the maths mistake. Its now time to go and train, I do not feel motivated and I need something new. So I set myself up on the rower for a 30 minute row at level 5, one up from my usual level. I plug in my ear buds and listen to a promenade concert featuring Zebra by Mark Simpson. It was a world premier of a work commissioned by the BBC. An orchestral piece for electric guitar, interesting but not in the same league as the Richard Strauss Death and Transfiguration, which he wrote at the age of twenty five. I get to the end of the Zebra with a couple of minutes to go on the row. My shoulders ache and I get to the end of the session a little under my usual half hour standard.
First row at level 5 for years
Level 5! Good but little reward on my fitness tracker.
By the time I have got away from the rower my partner has retuned and made lunch. After lunch we both potter in the garden until I make curry for tea. While I prepare the ingredients I think about the proposed anthology and how I can present it and I have a thought. I decide to down load the first two entries of my blog, the Induction day and the first chemo day. As the curry bubbles away I down load the blog entries and edit them before sending them to the publishers with a “what do you think” email.
Post tea I settle down to watch more episodes of Sinner, and find it is becoming more and more ridiculous as it goes on, this will be the last series of Sinner I’ll be watching, especially as a second series of Annika is out. I draft the blog and continue to drink copious amounts of water before my bloods get done tomorrow. I take my night meds and go to bed thinking about tomorrows bloods and getting ready to go on holiday on Saturday.
Tuesday and another day of self maintenance. I wake, I take my vitals, once again all good and get up early. The rest of my morning was spent Hoovering around and putting clothes away, they seem to distribute themselves all over the place. I also arrange a visitors pass to the gym for my eldest daughter who is going to train while I and my partner are going to have our nails done.
On the stroke of noon I and my partner enter the Spa at the gym having left our eldest in the gym. My partner is having the lot done, hands and feet but I am just having my subtly sparkled nails done. The two beauticians sit and get to work on us whilst chatting and keeping us amused. My nails have to be cleaned down to the original nail and then four layers of stuff applied. Each new layer is baked in a nifty little UV hand oven. After about an hour I have my sparkly nails back. I am growing accustomed to them but I notice that just occasionally someone notices them. God knows what they think as they spot them alongside my long white hair, sometimes with a Viking runic bead in the end of it. Although I can probably guess.
Just a touch of sparkle to keep me amused.
The family come together in the gym lounge and move off home, for me to spend the afternoon reading more of Let it Bleed, the Rebus novel. I have the luxury of a long reading session until tea. The family were looking forward to a good old fish and chip supper but were thwarted by the the chippy being closed. That’s 20% of the village shops being closed, the owners are away in Cyprus till the 25th of August on their annual trip home. Which just leaves the Indian, which no one wants. So for the first time in my life I am persuaded by my eldest daughter to order Nandos, yes Nandos! I start to watch a football match until it arrives I admit I am dubious about my lemon and something butterfly chicken with rice and Peruvian tomato salad, neatly packaged in little boxes. I am pleasantly surprised, it tastes okay, I did note just how small a chicken it must have been. The Peruvian had slices of a green thing in it that I could not identify, so that got left but the rest was fine. So having eaten and seen Rangers go 3-0 up in the European qualifier I switched over to watch Korea week on the Greta British Sewing Bee. The pattern challenge was difficult and the made to measure was tricky as well. It was obvious from the start who was struggling and sure enough come the end of the show the welsh women with the strange hat went. There was just time for an episode of Sinner before taking the bins out, taking my meds and heading for bed.
Wednesday and a call wakes me to tell me that the new cold frame is being delivered in 45 minutes. I take my vitals, which are all good and get up to make warm drinks for myself and my partner. She leaves quite soon with her brother to visit their mother and sort out stuff with the carers. So I am left to assemble the the new raised cold frame. I gather up my tools and and wheel the flat pack round to the patio where I unpack it and begin assembly. It all goes well until I find that on one pair of slots the grub screw passes though the retaining slot, which it should not do. I head for my garage workshop and fish out packs of washers and add them to the construction. After about two and a half hours I have the thing completed. I wrangle a couple of heavy duty paving slabs into place and erect the cold frame on them having levelled the ground. Eventually it is all done and the new cold frame is in place a few minutes before my partner returns.
The new cold frame in place. Expansion is now possible.
My partner makes lunch and then she set about pricking out some seedings from cold frame number one into pots for the new cold frame. Its a laborious job which I leave her to as I clear my tools away and tidy up. What’s is clear is that we do not have enough compost so after a period of repotting my partner and I drive off to the local garden centre and have a snack and buy compost and some more plants that were ridiculously cheap, I mean Hosters at £2 a throw is good value. So we return home to find that the bird feed peanuts I have order have arrived. Everything is barrowed into the back garden, things put away and watering done. Eventually its time to stop so that my partner can go out to the pub with a friend and I can draft the blog whilst listening to the Prom concert (Rachmaninov piano concerto No.2) A rare oasis of calm. It feels like a busy day but tomorrow I need to train and begin to get ready to go on holiday on Saturday. There will food, night meds and sleep and a lingering sense that I am somehow falling short, I’ve not made progress on the new website nor have a written any letters or any poetry. There is nagging sense of something but I cannot put my finger on it or my pen to it, yet.
Sunday, it was wet and windy, so apart from taking my meds and watching too much TV I did bugger all. I did re-sew the buttons on one of my shirts and put my washing away, apart from that I cannot claim to have done anything useful at all. I found listening to the test match quite mesmeric and was suitably disappointed when rain stopped play with England needing 35 runs with three wickets in hand. There was no further play meaning that everyone had to come back on Monday for the sake of 35 runs.
Monday I wake up quite late and take my time getting up after taking my vitals and having a hot drink. Of course I check the cricket results and find that England have managed to lose by 6 runs, so another defeat clutched from the jaws of success. India, their opponents must be laughing themselves sick at England’s ineptitude. I get into my training gear and have breakfast and morning meds before going to the garage and the rower. My partner has gone to the gym to go bobbing about in the water (aqua aerobics) so I decide it’s time to up the ante and stretch myself a bit, I set the controls for a 90 minute row, something I have not dared do for literally years. So I set off trying not to look at the monitor and just set up a rhythm, letting myself sink into fantasy. I do get into a rhythm but nothing engrossing appears on the fantasy scene, which means the session is going to be a flog. I grind and just grind till the first hour is done and I tell my self the additional 30 minutes are a bonus. Do I have the energy for a bit of a sprint with 10 minutes to go? I try and manage to get over the 17 kilometre mark and surprise myself by burning in excess of 1000 calories. That’s 4 Mars bars! So in my world 2 and 1/2 Boat Races = 4 Mars Bars! Go me.
Oh yes, its not world beating but its pretty good for me, I claim it as a PB in the new era.
This is what a 77 year old looks like after a 90 minute row, knackered!
Why you may ask, well because my oncologist keeps telling me that strenuous exercise is the most effective way to allay the side effects of all the medication I am on. I do it because I hope it mitigates all the after eight mints I eat and other confectionary. After cooling down and downing a couple of yoghurts and some Lucozade I take a shower, put my feet up and draft the blog. Today is a Tesco order day so I wait patiently for it to arrive while I start to read Ian Rankin’s Let it Bleed, one of his Rebus book, which are new to me. I am not up to the intellectual challenge of setting up a new website for my poetry today besides which I have not thought about what format I want it in or what I am going to call it. So I require a period of reflection before I dive in, it is also the details that I am going to share with the Ruler’s Wit team who are going to do the technical side of the website set up for me, so there is quite a lot at stake. So for this afternoon it is Let it Bleed, a new author to me, if I like him it could prove quite expensive as when I find a new author I like I tend to read everything they have written, only ever failed once in this when Balzac got the better of me. Fifty two novels he wrote and he wrote them in sequence which I did not know or notice until I was a good number into his output.
An author I have not read before, I hope it goes well.
I read until Tesco deliver and then it will be time for tea and a gentle evening watching the second series of Sinner but not before being ritually humbled by Only Connect. Personally I think the quiz is going soft I managed to get two things right last week and got bits of the puzzle wall right as well. It will be early night meds and early to bed to night as tomorrow I will be having my nails done again. I’m feeling quite chipper after my long row, perhaps the oncologist is onto something or I am just feeling the benefit of the endorphins.
Saturday is a day for maintenance. So after breakfast and my morning meds I get my washing in and check my vitals. By the time I have puttered around its time to take the car to Kwik Fit to get my drivers front tyre checked as it is losing pressure. My partner comes with and we sit and wait the diagnosis on the tyre. I have researched tyre in case I need to replace any or all of the tyres. After a quarter of an hour the guy comes back and tells me I have a slow puncture due to a screw being embedded in the centre of my tyre. Its a minimal cost fix and quick so after another forty minutes I am paying the bill and driving off.
On the way home there is a stop for snacks before heading home. I settle down to watch the England women’s rugby team thrash Spain by almost a hundred points. I go into the garden and find the Hibiscus has come out in flower and some of the other flowers are showing well, so before I bring my washing in I take some more pictures of the flowers.
New DahliasA gem of an HibiscusFuchsias waiting to burstA new white fuchsia
I make my way into the evening via sorting out my washing and then watch the last three episodes of Sinner. The end is okay, but as always the eight episodes could have been got into four and of course the lead character in real life would just not survive with the level of “issues and demons” built in to make the central detective “interesting”. Tiredness overcomes me and I take my night meds and go off to bed having completed my maintenance day and having cast away my night finger splint.
The ghastly night finger sprint is at last cast away.
Friday and I wake up late but I get up to move my car so that my partner can go to the gym. I take my meds and my vitals before breakfast. I then spend time researching car tyres and weigh up my options to either get my tyres looked at or changed as options to getting a new car and begging able to afford getting my poetry published as anthologies or audio books. I ring Kwik Fit and book an appointment for tomorrow for them to check my tyres. If they are okay I will probably keep my trusty car and spend my money on publishing stuff and planning a longer holiday break.
I spend time putting together the manuscripts for the planned anthology adding some new poems. I manage to get all the materials together in zip files and send them off to the publishers for the editing process to begin. I also respond to the email from the person who is going to do the technology stuff with a website. So time flies by and its soon time for me to start to cook the evening meal. I set about making a curry, an activity I like. After a lot of simmering and juggling the components of the meal i sit down with my partner to eat.
The evening arrives and their is a new series to watch, Sinner. Its is the usual American psycho babble stretch out over too many episodes, I guess this maximises the advertising venue. After the third episode on the trot I start to draft the blog. The evening comes to an end and I take my night meds and go off to bed hoping for a deep sleep.
Fight and do it all over again and again and again.
Thursday and an important one, today I hope to be signed off by the hand physio and it is the start of Cycle 28 of the current chemo. So I get up and have swift breakfast and morning meds before driving off for my early appointment with the had physio. All was going very well as I was sure of the way and the address, I was sure that I was looking for April Close however as I became lost I realised it might not be April but could not remember what it was, fortunately as I turned into Iris Close there was instant recognition! The session was a great success, I no longer need my night splint or to do hand exercises beyond a daily massage with the Nivea Creme. Apparently I now have two matching fists and hand grips so I am free to carry on moving on. So I waved farewell after the physio waived her fee as I was cured. What a grand start to the day!
I was home in time to accompany my partner to the gym, she to bob about in the aqua aerobics class and me to read to the end of We will Prescribe you a Cat. There is to be a follow up book but I will not both, the book lacks the sensitivity of the Before the Coffee gets Cold series, which this book has copied.
As I am driving back I get a call from the gym, I have dropped my Lloyds bank card, so I scoot back and pick it up before talking my partner for a snack and drink at our local garden centre where we rescue some more free plants. One home it is just waiting to go out for the evening to see the Addams Family at the Curve theatre. I now have got the hang of the Uber App, which is really good for going into to town for nights out.
Great set and staging
The Addams Family was good but not fully attended so the ice cream queue was easily negotiable at half time. Story line a bit thin but singing good and generally a good night out. My eldest daughter Ubered us home to drinks and for me night meds and my first night without the finger splint. All in all a good day for the first day of a new chemo cycle, hopefully it will continue.
