Thursday and today is the second day of Cycle 12 of my current “chemo”. It starts early with the builder badgers ringing the door bell to announce their arrival and requesting the cars to be moved off the drive. So I am up and car driver ready in no time at all despite feeling a bit post co-codamol groggy. The cars get moved to safety and then various builder badgers start to appear with loads of tools and a chipper. There is early morning coffees and then they begin, interrupted only by a clarification chat with the head badger about where the new gate pillars are going in and the edge line on the neighbours side.

With the badgers all working and digging furiously I make my breakfast and take my morning meds. I get an early start to loading material for the blog including the summary of the consultants letter I received yesterday. It sums up my situation very neatly.

It is difficult not to get into defining myself in terms of my medical diagnosis and conditions and to remember that I am still living a life as best as I can. Perhaps this is why people with this diagnosis or other life limiting conditions do things like throw themselves out of aeroplanes or pogo stick up a mountains. It would appear I have chosen a more cerebral route. I remember years ago thinking about Mary Wesley who published her first novel at the age of 71 and was considered a “late bloomer” who went on to sell millions of books in the last twenty years of her life. She was someone who gave me hope as I got older that I would one day publish a book of my own. Here I am at 75 having published my first two collections of poetry, so thank you Mary Wesley for the inspiration. It is one of the things that I remember when I feel that I’ve become my disease, I am more than cancer and bladder stone, I am a poet, blogger, correspondent, YouTuber, gardener, partner, father, grandfather and curious human (carbon based species unit, CBSU). Those are not bad things to be, not necessarily in that order of course!

My first real task of the day is to do battle with the local council who mangled my garden bin with their emptying machine yesterday, like St George (it was his day yesterday so its apt) I go to slay the dragon.

It turns out that this is a pretty meek dragon. I fill in an online request from for a new bin adn send it off. Next step was to send another online form to say I expect it to be free and within the hour someone sends me back a reply saying the replacement will be free and with me in five days. From there I go onto the net and check some of the sites that the Americans claim my book is on and where the request for an audio book was generated from. Sure enough there are at least another four sites where if you type in my name my book comes up. Apart from Amazon it appears to be available from Waterstones, Kobo, and Barnes and Noble. This is all very gratifying but I wonder who is getting the royalties, so I email the Americans and ask the question. Its not the money so much but the principal of the thing really. I shall await the outcome with interest. I then lunch with my partner.

My afternoon is a combination of sorting out my antispam software account on the website and discussing with the “Spadger” (sparky Badger) what part of the system the outside power system is on. He wants to turn off all the computers just in case he trips the system but as my partner is on a two business meeting its a no go. We decide Friday afternoon will do. From there its taking my eldest daughter to the physio at the sports centre in the village so she can take advice on her newly torn tendon in her ankle for which she has been referred to an ankle specialist and then on to my brother law to get him to sign my driving licence renewal photographs.

With my chores done I return home in time for tea and an early evening of Shogun as my partner does her singing lesson. We come together again in mutual watching before I take my night meds and and head for bed as early as I can for tomorrow I will need to be up early to move the cars off the drive again to let our builder badgers on site to continue to do the the project. I am hoping to avoid the need for co-codamol tonight and still get a good nights sleep.

#

Wednesday and I am up early with early morning meds and vitals done before the builder badgers arrive. Its day 1 proper of the drive and patio project. The cars need to be moved to safe parking across the road so that the badgers can begin the work. As I repark the cars I notice that a police patrol and its occupants have gone into a house across from us and are searching a car. Either there has been an unexpected death or they are looking for someone. So much excitement so early in the morning is unusual in our usually quiet village. By ten o’clock the building badgers are demolishing the old patio but as yet the ground digging badger, Eddie, has has yet to appear. I have breakfasted, done my meds and started to prepare todays blog.

It turns out that the head badger has got the day wrong for the ground clearing badger to come and do the ground works by removing stumps and roots. In the meantime the builder badgers crack on with demolishing the old patio. I settle down to making video letters to friends as I cannot get into my Shed to write. At about lunch time a new sort of badger appears, this one is an electrics badger who is going to do the light on the new patio. We have a quick chat and he inspects my fuse box, not a euphemism, and we talk about lighting and power outlets. We agree what we want and he undertakes to go and do a quote. I spend the rest of my day as my partner goes to visit her mother in the afternoon making video letters. By the time I have thee video letters to go I am feeling quite spoonless, however I make the effort to go to the post office to send my letters. I also retrieve the cars and and get them back onto the drive as the builder badgers have gone to collect materials.

Having got a paper I hunker down to do todays crosswords, which go well again today. My partner returns from her visit and we glide into the evening and towards unknown delights apart from Race Around The World. My aim is an early night as I’ve had an uncomfortable day in terms of my symptoms. I’m feeling hemmed in at the moment and need to keep myself diverted so I shall continue to make video letters and to plan my next poem collections. Out of the blue in the late evening the Americans send and email to ask if I want to turn my Cancer Years collection into an audio book. I am not sure at all about this as I am more focused on getting to the point of being able to put my next two collections out there. In the meantime I am looking forward to watching the builder badgers slowly build the new look to the front and back of the house in time for summer.

Tuesday and I am awake early because firstly my partner is going to real outside world work and secondly the builder badgers are coming to do a bit of preliminary work before the tree man comes to do some ground works tomorrow. So as my partner leaves for work I check my messages and my vitals and get up uncharacteristically early. I clear the kitchen and make my breakfast and then set myself up to do some videoing. Before I can get going the builder badgers arrive and so I go out for a chat and we run over the finer points of ground clearing and root disposal. We talk about latitude and ease of work as we walk the job and the badgers ask questions about services and electricity supplies. They appear to know what they are doing so I leave them to it with coffee of course, one black, one white with two sugars. Note to self to buy more sugar, what we have is so rock hard in the packet it is a feat of mining to get enough for the first coffee. The badgers get to work and I retreat to the sofa office to create a YouTube video for the new poetry collection.

First crisis of the day is when my cup of hot breakfast water falls off the coffee table that I am about to work from and drenches the extension cable with all the laptop and phone plugs plugged in. What follows is me being irate but together enough to switch the extension cable off at the wall before taking it all apart. I spend a long time soaking up water out of the carpet and then crawling around on my hands and knees giving everything a full blast with the hair dryer. It takes ages to get it all dry enough to resume working. I have just about managed to plug it all back together when the builder badgers wave good bye having cleared the way for Eddie the ground clearing guy to arrive tomorrow and crack on. It will be another early start tomorrow and likely to be for weeks to come now.

Finally I get to sort out making my YouTube channel video for the new poetry collection. I have a couple of goes and get a version that will do the job. I manage to get into my channel and upload the video, setting its release time for noon today. The video that I posted I have posted below, I hope people like it, I chose one of my less acerbic verses but I might make another video and see if it goes down any better.

Let me know what you think. I make lunch and then take a walk to the village shop to get some cash and to pick up a paper. The journey takes it out of me and when I get home I have to rest. However it is not long before Tesco delivers and I am busy unpacking and squirreling away the goodies. With that done I am almost spoonless so I settle down to do today crosswords and to watch some world snooker. As the afternoon progress so does my discomfort when I go to the toilet to the extent that I end up taking co-codamol to get away from the discomfort. At the end of the afternoon my partner return from work and the garden guy arrives to move pots out of the way of the builder badgers so they can get on with their work in the morning. I try to catch up with the blog as I wait for the co-codamol to kick in.

It is clear that my evening needs to be quiet so I plan to watch a football match and try to get an early night before the builder badgers get going in earnest. At tea we experiment with lamb burgers from the local butchers and are pleased with the outcome. I feel slightly odd as a result of the co-codamol so this is where I shall end the blog for today. Over the coming days and weeks I hope to be watching the garden project come along and finally to sitting out in the summer sun shine.

Today is the last day of cycle 11 of my current chemo, St Georges day. It feels like it should be a significant day but it just feels as if I am drifting further away from where I could be. My next oncology review will be on the 16th of May, it will be by telephone and I suppose the “onco boys and girls” will be looking to bung me another three months worth of chemo as long as my blood pressure has remained stable and my PSA is going down or is stable. Not exactly the level of interest I would be looking for at this point in my disease progression.

Monday and I am awake quite early and set on doing something today. My partner brings me hot water and asks my plans. I have none really so we discuss the day and the options. I quickly check my messages and do my vitals before getting up to dress and make breakfast. I use my nhs app to order my next months drugs and smile at the thought that I could just order another hundred co-codamol, I resist the temptation and stick to my regular mix of drugs. My partner makes a face call to our youngest daughter and I get to “chat” to Maximus my youngest grandson. He is of course a delight despite having no language yet he is able to engage me with peek a boo and gurgling. With the catch up call done I prepare to accompany my partner to the gym, she to do Pilates and me to be somewhere other than the lounge at home. As it turns out I end up in the gym lounge indulging in berry tea and a bacon brioche bun before transposing a poem from yesterday from one of my journals to the electronic file. I share it here it for no other reason than I can really.

383

This is a bad day
after a poor night.
I’ve no energy at all
and everything is an effort.
I struggled to recall Ginsberg
and even more so Clematis. 
As my tongue twists 
around subdued synapse.
I don’t know why this occurs,
it springs like a wolf
sensing a lamb in trouble. 
Co-codamol tempts me
but it’s a cowards way out. 
I seek solace 
by reclining with TV
and a mindless hope 
for peace and quiet, 
both in and out. 

									383	21st April 2024.

Its not a masterpiece but it does get some of the mundane stuff that goes on when these bad days hit me. Its the strange things like not being able to remember favourite poets names or the names of flowers in the garden that make me stumble. I find myself going through the alphabet to try and trigger recall, sometimes it works some times not, but eventually I always get there, its more a matter of dyslexic organisation rather than loss of memory. My pixies get confused at times and I can almost hear them slamming mental filing cabinet draws as they frantically search for where I put it down last. It’s worse on some days than others and seems to be most prevalent with names and proper nouns.

While sipping my berry tea I try to draft a letter of condolence to an old colleague whose husband has just died. I find it so difficult to find adequate words and the truth is there probably aren’t any. The funeral will be the day after my next oncology review and although I want to go to the funeral I have no idea how my review will go or whether the hospital will have contacted me about my appointment to sort out Uluru my bladder stone. I make a reasonable stab at it and file it to write out latter. I think such things should be hand written .

My partner returns to the gym lounge and we go for lunch at our usual garden centre. I am not feeling my best but when we get home I quickly write the letter I had drafted and take it to the post office where I also send another copy of a previously lost video letter. I pick up a paper and sweets and head for home where I do the crosswords and settle down for the evening. I start serious work on my Herod’s Children Crumulent Collection, which is a joint collection of competition failures and criticised works. I’ve dedicated it to Dyslexics and aspiring poets. The evening has a smattering of films and continued work on the collection, interrupted by a dish of filled pasta. I finally get to update the Tesco order adn take my night meds before going to bed. The builder badger doing our drive is coming at eight thirty in the morning to have a look at the roots that will need to be removed in order to relay the drive. It will be all go tomorrow from early on as my partner goes to work and people turn up to prepare for phase one of our building upgrade. Its about to become chaotic for at least three weeks.

Saturday and I wake up to a bad day. I instantly know when I wake that I am not feeling good and take it slowly. The most I manage is to accompany my partner to the local garden centre to buy food for the weekend. By the time I get back I’m feeling ropey and retreat to the recliner to passively watch sport most of the day. My evening sees me finish the Blue Lights series. My final acts of the day are to set the dishwasher on its way and to take my night meds. I decide to add co-codamol to my meds in the hope that I get a good nights sleep.

Sunday arrives and I sleep late, so it appears the co-codamol has done the job I wanted it to. I am surprised by my partner who brings me breakfast in bed. Its a lovely surprise and I am motivated to get up and make the effort. I am feeling better from yesterday and hope to do a bit more during the day. I start by doing some life admin and then as my partner goes to the gym I tidy the kitchen and then hoover through the back library room. There is a general clear up going on in the house at the moment so I get a pile of old computer stuff to sort through and discard, apart from a brand new wireless mouse, which I immediately plug into my laptop. My activity catches up with me and I take some time to watch the London Marathon. It brings back memories of the times I ran the race and the different experiences of it, but most of all the memories of the training. I used to run almost everyday come rain or shine, its something I miss. One last admin task is to update my Excel spread sheet of my vitals. From the look of it cycle 11 of my chemo is going to show no average elevation of my blood pressure, my sats remaining even, my heart rate is in the same range and finally my temperature does not vary by anymore than 0.2 degrees. So my arithmetic is holding up.

The garden guy arrived and continued to save as many plants as possible from the planed building work that is due to start this week. Its not the ideal time of year to be doing this as many of the plants in the garden are coming into flowering but it it is unavoidable. I just have to accept that the garden will need this year to recover and look forward to next year and probably the year after as well. If everything survives the moving the garden is going to be pretty full of perennials. I watch the FA cup semi final in which Coventry almost upset Manchester United by coming back from 3-0 down to force extra time and then lose on penalties. The garden guy works like a Trojan to move all the plants from the front garden before drive work starts this week. He will be back on Tuesday to move all the pots from the front.

The evening comes around and the family eat tea before my partner and I indulge in Rom Com evening. Once a week we watch a romantic Rom Com, I am not sure why but it seems to be an evolving routine. On checking my emails for messages from the garden builders I find one from Amazon publishers who are telling me that I will get paid royalties on the 29th of the month. It is another twist in the journey of putting my poetry out there. It feels quite odd to think that I have slipped into this world. I am still not sure what is going on with this side of the process. My collections are on all sorts of platforms internationally at the moment, I’ve looked. My question is how any revenue of any of those platforms could pay me royalties unless the Americans have set something up to skim of the royalties when they put the collections onto the various platforms. I guess these things will become clear as time moves on. At the end of Rom Com evening I catch up with the blog, take my meds and go to bed hoping for time tomorrow to catch up with my to do list.

Friday and I wake up slightly groggy but okay. I do not loiter this morning and get on with doing my vitals. I get going with breakfast before showering and getting ready to do some life admin. When my partner returns from a lunchtime visit to get a massage we go off to the local coffee house at the garden centre to have a late lunch. We spend time chatting and trying to catch up with plans for the future. On returning home I find a message that one of the video letters I sent arrived without the USB stick it was on. The envelope and inner note was delivered in a plastic bag with an apology note from the Post Office. Clearly between me putting it in the pillar box and arriving at its destination someone had the USB stick away. So someone is out there with my private correspondence. I find I have unexpectedly run out of spoons and end up having a nap.

The evening arrives along with tea. I have spent a bit of time surfing the net in a very narcissistic way to see if my books are on the web adn to my surprise I find that they are on several platforms. It means that there are several platforms globally that are selling my book. They are not platforms that I have had contact with so I am asking myself how I get the royalties or whether the Americans have mugged me. So the only platform I am sure of is Amazon at the moment.

There are a couple of evening programmes to watch and then I shall take my night meds and then drift off to bed to read more of the Calvino short stories.

Thursday and I wake up determined to rest today and to get some energy back. I go through my getting up rituals, including taking my vitals. As usual my arithmetic is good. I amuse myself by watching some Mock the Week. Finally I get up and clear the kitchen before I make breakfast and think about what I am going to do for the day. I pack my mobile office back pack and head for the Shed. Its been a while since I did this and I am soon lighting the candles and setting up my laptop and new microphone.

I have decided to try and catch up with my correspondence by making video letters as my new microphone produces really good sound. I have just finished one video when my partner comes to the Shed for a chat and to see if I want lunch. So after a quick sandwich I return to the Shed to record the second video letter. My idea is to get more information into a video letter to catch up in news and ideas while I am still more sedentary than I would like. By mid afternoon I feel I have done enough and finish putting the USB sticks into envelopes ready to post. With that done I lock up the Shed and return to the house.

Its a leisurely walk over to the post office to send my video letters on their way. I pickup a paper and return home to do the crosswords. Once again I whip through the crosswords so my brain appears to be working reasonably well. There is an early evening European football match on which I choose to watch while I eat tea. The match goes into extra time and then into a penalty shoot out with the English team finally getting the result. By the time it ends my partner has finished her singing lesson and I am ready to start drafting todays blog. I am all footballed out so hand the magic stick to my partner.

During the afternoon the rest of my books are delivered along with some new pairs of reading glasses. I am still processing all the thoughts and feelings I have gathered from the experience of publishing my two slim volumes of verse. I would still like to find an English publisher rather than be reliant on the Americans but the Americans have produced the goods and I know what to expect with them. There is also something about having an editor which would improve the work a bit but I am not sure exactly what I want from them. Anyway of the next few weeks I intend to prepare another couple of collections, when that it is done I will decide whether to go back to the Americans or not.

So the evening comes to an end and I take my evening meds and resist the temptation to take any more co-codamol. Its almost the end of another week and it will soon be time for the garden scape folk to arrive and widen the drive and rebuild the patio. I am hoping that future Roland will be pleased with today Roland as I sit on the new patio in the sunshine and plan phase two and tend to the garden.

Wednesday and I wake to a house where my partner has gone to work. I do not loiter long in bed, just long enough to do my vitals and think about my day. Once up I clear the kitchen take my morning meds and head for the village café, picking up a paper on the way. I pick the sunny window seat that gives me the best view of the villages central mini roundabout. Its a constant source of drama as cars try to out muscle each other to get around it. As I chomp through my bacon and sausage baguette and slurp my hot chocolate I work my way through the days cross words. I’m on form and zip through them today. I walk home and find post. There is an over seventies driving licence renewal form to do. It tells me I can do it on line. So I set about doing it on line only to find that I cannot do it on line because the DVL cannot authenticate my passport photo and that means I have to get a new photo done. Bollocks is my response to that, but it seems I need to go and get new ID photos done.

In the meantime I fill in the form I am going to have to send and discover I need to get documents out of hiding to fill some of it in, so I am up and down stairs like brides nightdress to gather the info required. I have a long chat with my eldest daughter before my partner returns from work and readies herself to go and visit her mother for the afternoon. With all this done I drive to the photo booth in the local Sainsburys. I get there and find that my money is not sufficient, it is card only, for fuck sake I should have known, money is becoming useless. I drive home and as I get to my house I note an Amazon van parked on the drive, so after circling round the village I return to my drive. There they are in the porch, copies of my new book, the second poetry collection, which I fall upon eagerly and release them from their packets. I really like the cover, these poems are are a bit grim but an honest reflection of what being on the road was like a lot of the time.

I return to my photo mission and drive once again to the supermarket and its card only photo booth. These things are always a challenge but on my second go I get pictures that are adjudged to be acceptable to passport and driving licence agencies. I collect the the hard copy from the slot outside and then buy some mint creams to assuage my craving.

I drive home and start to get ready for the evening. I go to the loo and find I have blood in my urine. I’m just gutted. My response is to drink a load of water, take a co-codamol and get my feet up and distract myself by starting to draft the blog. I have something to eat and then settle down to watch a combo of football and Race Around the World this evening. Of course what will preoccupy me is what is going on with the blood. I am hoping that the old pattern of it clearing quite quickly takes place. So I am in feet up mode, with a lot of water at hand.

By the end of the evening there are no English teams left in European football and more importantly my urine appears to be clear. I take my night meds with a load of water and take another co-codamol just to help me through the night. I am pleased that my second book has become a reality but now I intend to take a break while I prepare some more poems into collections. It feels as if I need to reflect upon what I have learnt and what I want to do differently in the future. Tomorrow is a rest day.

Tuesday. I have slept quite well again and attribute this to the co-codamol. I quickly take my vitals and check my book shelf on the Kindle Digital publishing site. I also check the Amazon site. To my delight the paper back version of my second collection of poems is there to be bought. I order some so that can get copies in my hands as soon as tomorrow. It is that feel of a book in my hands that is so visceral and affirming of the reality of the books existence.

I have little time before I need to go out so I take my morning meds put a few things in a shoulder bag , swap the cars round on the drive and then go off to meet my friend. As I am a bit early I order a couple of bacon rolls and a pot of hot water and wait. The bacon rolls are not very good but they fill my stomach. My friend arrives and we sit and chat till the mid afternoon, taking in the odd drink and toasted sandwich as required. Its a while since I have had a chance to talk to someone outside the family, not counting the stranger at the Murder Mystery evening in a noisy room, and so it is nice to have time and space to be able to reflect and share ideas. We have a mutual love of books and have exchanged books in the past but usually it is my friend who supplies me with new authors. We share the same love of Japanese literature and have similar likes in general when it comes to books. So conversation is easy and we have a shared work history that goes back to the early nineties and several therapeutic communities. It is good to have someone who knows me well enough to ask the awkward questions about how I am dealing with my cancer and all the stuff that goes along with that. Eventually by mid afternoon I begin to run out of spoons and need to go home, we say goodbye and go our separate ways.

Once home I sort my bag out and start to write the blog when the garden guy turns up. He is starting to move plants from the front garden where the drive is going to be widened and put them in their new locations according to the plan I drew up. It’s a shame that the work is being done at this time of year as it means moving pants at a bad time for them, but it cannot be helped. I am hoping that we won’t lose too many. After our chat I find I have missed a call from a friend who I have not had a chance to talk with for a while and by the time I know she will have picked her daughter up. And so I slide into the evening with no appetite for an evening meal, I shall read and perhaps watch TV this evening and snack before bed. As it turns out I end up watching Top Gun, geriatric, the last Tom Cruise pilot film. I take my evening meds and return to the blog. Tomorrow, if I am lucky, I will get to see my new poetry collection, that’s worth getting up for. It feels like I am learning about how to put things together so I am hoping that the coming book is better than the last one in terms of feel and presentation. I will take a break before I put more of me out there and spend more time constructing any future collections, except perhaps the next in the Cancer Years series.

Monday and it is a fresh week and I wake determined to make a fresh effort. So there is a quick check of my vitals and I am out of bed having breakfast with my partner. My partner goes off to do her thing and I set about recycling a load of stuff that has been jettisoned from a cupboard clear out. With that done and morning meds taken I drive off to my local Halfords to buy new windscreen wipers for the car. On a whim I ask if some one could fit them for me. Yes they have some one who can do that adn I am quizzed as to whether I am a Halfords Motor club member. I instinctively answer yes and give the guy my email address. It turns out I am a member and have a five pound off voucher to come of the cost of my purchase and a free 10 point vehicle check owing to me. I tell the guy I’ll have the lot and go and pull my car under their awning just as it throws it down with hail! The poor bastard who had to do the fixing and the checks was not amused. My car passed all its checks and got its washer bottle topped up for free. I drove off with my new wipers working a treat and Reginald my new blue lizard air freshener clinging to the windscreen.

Once home I retrieved the garden camera and started the lengthy and laborious job of going through the the captures one by one to see what has been found. Its dull most of the time as it tends to go, pigeon, pidgeons, black bird, pidgeons, more pidgeons, squirrel, cat, pidgeon, pidgeon, cat, squirrel. What I am hoping for is a glimpse of hedgehog as just before hibernation time I buried a dead one in the back garden and not seen one since. I fear there may not be hedgehogs in our garden any more. Suddenly there it is, hedgehog, looking bright and perky and strolling around. I am so pleased to have a hedgehog back in the garden. The hedgehog appears on a couple of nights as does a small fox but not together.

Before I can finish my perusal of the captures Tesco arrives and its a well organised running of the trays and unloading in the kitchen that takes place. Just as I am putting away the last of the weeks goodie my partner returns. The last of the order is squirreled away and I return to viewing the garden camera captures. So feeling pleased my partner and I go and indulge in a snack and a drive down the road from us. We chat about odd things but agree that we need to shift our Tesco order to Tuesdays as it fits in with our routine better. Once returned home I start to draft the blog.

The early evening skies clear and although still windy the day brightens up. I am suddenly tired and return to reading my Italo Calvino books. We eat tea and ring my eldest daughter for a chat. I had not long finished chatting when the Americans ring up and ask for the code to get into the Amazon publishing account. On checking my phone I find the code there and pass it one. I settle back to watching Traces on i-player until I get an email saying my latest collection, The Travelling Years has been put up on the Amazon platform, of course I immediately go into Amazon and see if it there and sure enough the Kindle version is available and that the paper back is in review, which means it will become available over the next couple of days. Apparently it will appear on my IngramSpark account soon as well, which is an American platform. I am really chuffed and once again cannot wait till I get physical book in my hands.

The end of the evening comes around and I take my evening chemo meds, update the draft blog and get myself to bed as tomorrow I am meeting a friend for coffee, or in my case hot water and a bacon roll.