I wake on this Wednesday after a late night watching The Scent of a Woman, one of Al Pacino’s better films. In an interview after making the film he found he had defocused his eyes for so long that he could not see the front row of any audience for weeks after filming. Any way my partner brings me hot water which I get down me and then get up.

My partner returns from the village pharmacy and tells me that they cannot get my 28 day injection, they do not have it in stock and their supplier has none either. They suggest I ring the doctor and get a separate prescription and then hunt around pharmacies to find my drugs. I ring some big pharmacies and get told the same thing so I ring my doctors surgery and explain my situation. They say they will ring back. I carry on ringing pharmacies. A short while later the surgery rings back and tells me that there is a prescription for me to pick. I walk down to collect it. I am tired of ringing chemists to get the same response so I put some washing in and retreat to the writing Shed where I repackage the usb stick that never made it through Swedish customs for lack of a customs declaration.

I take a short walk to the post office and send the USB stick of to Stockholm again and then return to the Shed to write a letter and hang my washing out. Time has moved on by the time the letter is finished so I close up the Shed, take in my washing and start once again to look for pharmacies on line that might have my injection. I am not panicking because I have one in hand, but it makes me realise how vulnerable I am. I eventually find an online pharmacy that says it has the drug in stock so I go through all the hoops and pay a mailing fee to have it sent to me. My sense of achievement is short lived as when I get the pharmacies e-mail they say they need me to send the original prescription to them by post before they can send the drug to me. No way will my prescription get to the in time for them to send the injection for Monday. So I am back to square one. I’ve spent considerable time today chasing my drugs. Only by good fortune do I happen to have one in hand otherwise I would be fucked.

I cook my tea and watch a quarter final of the women’s European football. Italy beat Norway. I start to watch a film but abandon it to draft the blog, take my night meds and get ready for bed. Tomorrow I might be traveling, but have yet to make up my mind. At least the first sun flower has come out in bloom.

Its been one of those days that my cancer has found a way to side track me for much of the day. Chasing around pharmacies is not a helpful thing to be doing right now. Its just another example of how the management of my cancer can take new twists and turns. Its not traumatic just bloody irritating.

Tuesday and I wake after a reasonable nights sleep. I take my vitals, all good there, and for the first time in a while I have the urge to write so I begin to scribble in the back of my vitals record book. As I am doing so my partner comes in and asks if I am writing a poem, I stop and drink the warm drink she has brought but I return later in the day to finish off the poem.

450
Bemused
Bewildered
and befuddled
I do not understand,
where has my metastasis gone?

Scans
Screening
and searching
all say the same thing,
my metastasis is nowhere to be found.

Joy
Jubilation
and jollity 
should all abound
but it seems I have doubts,
how can my metastasis not be there?

Problematic
paranoid
perturbation,
a truth that’s hard to take,
I’ve lost my malevolent  metastatic status. 

								450 15-07-2025

Its an odd feeling that I have been grappling with since being told four weeks ago. I’ve lived with the reality and thoughts of having tumours in my back and lymph system for almost exactly 6 years ago to the day. It is the metastatic element of my prostate cancer that gave me a very high Gleeson score and it was this element that drove the oncologist to declare that there was no cure for my prostate cancer. That there would be palliative care and pain relief but no cure. He could give me 18 months more life with chemotherapy to which I added the 8 months I was due according to the survival curve data giving me a life expectation of 26 months, yet here I am 6 years down the line with no metastasis and a stabilised PSA of 1.7. So yes I am confused. The simple explanation is that I have responded consistently well to the treatments over the years and that I should be joyous and focus on how well my prostate is holding up. The truth is I have been taken by surprise and I am not quite sure what to make of it all. I am sure other people would be celebrating but I find myself being very cautious my faith in medicine and my body is not high and I suspect that at any moment there might be a nasty surprise. Its a strange feeling to be both winning and losing at the same time.

After breakfast I get ready to train having left messages for the garden Shed guy to ring me and having finished writing my strategy plan for taking my poetry forward with Ruler’s Wit and sending it to them. So I find myself strapped onto the rower for a 45 minute session spurred on by running motivational pod caste. Its a tough session but I get to the end happy with my 9+ kilometres, not a personal best but a solid row.

I record my session in my journal and have lunch whilst quietly listening to comedy programmes on the smart speaker. When I have recovered enough I shower and finish off the poem before starting to draft the blog, until my partner returns from seeing her mother with her brother. And then a real surprise, a hoglet appeared in the garden at 5pm, so early in the night for the little one, so of course it was fed and photographed before it trundled off in the direction of next doors hedge.

The evening comes around, there is an evening meal and then an evening that includes the new series of The Great British Sewing Bee. Night meds and then I am trapped by The Scent of a Woman as I finish of the blog.

Monday and I wake early, take my vitals and make drinks for me and my partner. There is time to take my morning meds and have breakfast before my partner goes off to the gym. I do some more life admin before sorting my car tyres out. My vitals spread sheet for cycle 27 gets updated and a provisional average for my blood pressure gets calculated. By the time I have dawdled my way through the morning its time to go to the chiropodist. Its one of my joys to have my feet looked after by an expert and as usual I walk out of the clinic with singing feet feeling happy with life. It’s strange how a simple act of self care can make me feel so much better with life.

The afternoon was a lazy one as I frittered away time till the Tesco order arrived early and I cooked the evening meal early. With that out of the way I watched a short programme about American long term prisoners making quilts for kids in their welfare system followed by the final episodes of Detectorists. An average film later and I am drafting the blog before night meds and bed. Today feels like I have been drawing breath before returning to making a decision about what to do with my poetry and what I want Ruler’s Wit to do for me, if anything. I want to have decided by Thursday before I go to visit my youngest grandchild on his second birthday at the weekend. So tomorrow I shall go the writing Shed and finish writing my proposal/ brief. Then perhaps I can get back on track with my correspondence and of course training.

Its Sunday the 13th of July and it looks like I have been able to increase my media library size so that I can add new pictures. So with the techno problems behind me I can catch up on the Blog. I shall keep it to the major points as the days have been quite slow in the heat and activity kept to a minimum.

Friday was a day dominated by my meeting with what looks like my publishers to be. My partner and I drove to the pub where we had agreed to meet at noon. The team from Ruler’s Wit arrived and we settled down to sort out food and the to discuss a way forward for my work. We ranged over a number of things so that by the end of the meeting, and the ice cream, I had a number if things to consider and had agreed to write a document and a wish list to send to the team. Amongst the options was the creation of a web page devoted to the poetry, inclusion on the publishers authors web page, an audio book, an anthology and perhaps a new collection. The basic idea is to have a strategy that links all my resources together and to point people in the right direction if they want to read or own my poetry.

When it came time to go home I drove my partners new car for the first time, which was both fun and slightly anxiety provoking. The evening was filled with continued reading of Syou Ishida’s We’ll prescribe you a cat, the latest Japanese best seller that has copied the format of the “Before the Coffee gets Cold”. I am not sure Ishida’s book is a subtle as the “Coffee” books but it remains an interesting read and reflects the preoccupations of Japanese culture. Eventually its my night routine of medication, finger splint and then sleep.

Saturday was a single, almost, task day and that was to mend and a refurbish the Buddha head from the garden. After breakfast and morning meds I get the cracked head onto the garden table and begin work. It is an all day job as I do the filling and then the repainting of the head, and while I wait for each stage to dry I read more of my Japanese best seller. By the end of the day it is all done and I can return the head to its place beneath the magnolia tree.

After the ritual of watering the garden I settle down to more football and more episodes of The Detectorists. I’ve been in the sun all day and find myself tired at the end of the day so down my night meds and go off to bed.

Sunday I wake up to a big life admin to do list so after morning meds, taking my vitals and having breakfast I got on with a load of admin. I have of course weighted in and find myself holding my weight at 100.1 kilos. It seems that this has become my plateau weight. So by the end of the afternoon I’ve taxed my car, booked a holiday in Norfolk, sorted a Tesco order, scheduled my bloods for the next three months and then I train. Its a hot day so I go for a 45 minute session and I pull quite hard through the time. It goes reasonably well and I come away happy with my performance.

Post row I shower and then watch the men’s final at Wimbledon. There is just time for tea before the England Wales match in the European championships. It is a tetchy watch until England get a penalty. The evening passes with more of The Detectorists and then night meds and a relatively early night, that means before midnight. Behind all of this are two things going on, the first is the processing of the disappearance of the metastatic element of my cancer and the second is the thinking about how I want to take my poetry forward, with or without the publishers. I am aware that that this is all churning away quietly in the background and I am not sure where it will end up.

Thursday and I am up and medicated having done my vitals, all good, and set about giving the garden ornaments a coat of black gloss paint. All goes well and I’ve soon got them on the patio table and with their first coat on. No time to sit in the sun as I am soon on my way to the gym spa to have my nails done alongside my partner. After I am done I wait for my partner in the gym lounge and start to read Syou Ishida’s We’ll prescribe you a cat. Its an intriguing read. At this point I was going to put in a picture of the book but I am getting a message that I have no more storage space, so I have to try and fix this. I’ve already bought more storage but its not come through yet, so until it does I am stuck.

We return home and then go to the local shop to pick up hot weather type food that can be picked at when the mood takes us.

I decide that I want to paint the Bhudia head in the garden and get it onto the sack trolley to move it. As I take to the patio work area it slips off the trolley and cracks, so now I have a repair job to do. It will have to wait till tomorrow when the filler arrives. I return to reading until there is an evening meal, football and the blog to draft, which it turns out is going to problematic. So I take my meds and go to bed wondering what will happen with the blog tomorrow and also what will happen when I meet my publishers for lunch, I’ve no idea what I am getting into.

Tuesday, having got up with good vitals, taken my morning meds I know there is one thing I need to do and that is to Spring clean the writing Shed. So after a light breakfast I head for the writing Shed armed with the hoover and plastic bin bags. That’s me for the day really. I wash out ink wells get rid of old nibs and get organised. By the end of the afternoon the writing Shed is ready for action.

The evening is more football, to be honest I am losing interest and I get drawn into two films and a late night. So with meds inside me and beyond tired I go to bed.

Wednesday is an early start, the boiler is being serviced and in an uncharacteristic burst of efficiency the guy turns up early. So with a warm bagel inside me I wait for the engineer to finish. He is quick and off out leaving me to get into my training gear and head for the garage. Today has to be a long session so I strap in and set myself up for an hour session. I get going at a reasonable pace and just keep pulling until time is up. Its a reasonable row and will stand me in good stead fir a day or two.

Having recorded the session I shower and then go to the writing shed and write my first letter in weeks. It is good to feel the ink on paper. I have so many to catch up on. With my first letter in an age completed I seal it and take to the post box picking up a paper on the way. The act of writing letters is so different from anything else I do. What comes to me and ends up on the page is different from from anything else I write. It seems that I access something in the flow of me that other things do not. I return to find a birthday present from a friend waiting for me, a mirror box in the form of a book, a camera manual, it’s terrific and came with an assortment of goodies. Its a big night for England woman’s football team, its win or go home and they unexpectedly come up with a 4-0 win over the Netherlands.

There is time to water the garden, eat tea, get bored with France beating Wales and so I draft the blog, take my meds and go to bed looking forward to tomorrows visit to the spa to have my nails done alongside my partner. I will be sticking with my subtle sparkle. I’m tempted to buy a new car just to see how much fun I can have negotiating and being prepared to walk away at any point. On the other hand I could continue to catch up with my letter writing.

Its Monday and I wake up alone, my partner choosing the spare bed to ease her back. I get up and make hot drinks and empty the dish washer. All very anticlimactic after yesterdays birthday fun. I’ve already taken my vitals and when I return upstairs with drinks she is back in our bed. We sit and drink and chat before I get up to take my meds. After a quick toast breakfast I am off on a series of small puttering tasks. All the small but necessary stuff like changing light bulbs in the kitchen equipment and other such tasks. All of this takes time and soon half the day is done. One of my birthday gifts was some new garden lights so I spend sometime putting them together and then deciding where to put them in the front garden and drive. Its a tricky decision but I opt for a strategy of lighting the the front of the house along the pot line as it is south facing adn best for solar lights.

As the afternoon comes around I am sorting out my “winter” and “spares” wardrobe space. A ritual refolding of jumpers and restacking of new shirts and trousers for the chillier months, this satisfying activity is interrupted by my brother in law bringing me a birthday present, so of course we stop for drinks and small rascals. While I have him I show him the draft of his and his sisters family tree. We paw over it for a while as I check that I have the right people on the right generational level. It seems that I have and that my brother in law has more information about some of the family history, which he is going to let me have later in the week. Once I have integrated the new information I can start to put the detailed person information labels in place. After our chat I return to putting socks and other things in order.

At tea time I am checking a book list that a friend has sent me and then as my partner has her singing lesson I watch some more of the European women’s football championship while drafting the blog. So the first day of my 78th year comes to an end with the usual night time rituals of medicine and strapping my right hand into the finger splint that I have to continue to wear until the 31st of this month. So I will have had a post birthday rest day and tomorrow it will be back to training just as the weather is due to turn hot again. In all this I am still trying to come to terms with the oncology team telling mem I am metastasis free. It seems to have rattled my cage more than I thought.

Sunday the 6th of July, my 77th birthday and I am treated to a marmalade bagel in bed as I wake up. I am feeling quite chipper and respond to several birthday messages before taking my vitals, that are once again good. My news feed tells me that I share my birth date with the Dali Llama so I figure I am in good company. I get up and decide to train, it’s cooler and its raining so a good time to train. I get myself ready and make my way to the garage and the rower. My goal for the half hour session is to row a Boat Race, that’s 6.8 kilometres. I set off steadily with radio two playing in my ears and soon I start to pull in earnest. I get to the end of the session very hot and sweaty and really pleased that I have got over the 6.8 kilometre line, so that’s a Boat Race rowed. When I come to record the session in my journal I find that I have rowed a personal best. Now that’s a great birthday present.

I retreat to the sofa to recover and to record the session, I have a drink and take my meds before heading for the shower. All that remains is to get ready to go out for a late Sunday lunch with my partner and eldest daughter. We drive to a local pub and spend a few hours eating abundantly and chatting. By the time I drive the family home we are all very podged and need to have a rest.

After a suitable amount of time its time to open my presents that have been put together on the family table. I am very lucky and there are lovely surprises for me and of course there are books, lovely poetry books, Japanese book and a best seller, so I have my reading sorted for a some time to come. There are tickets to the theatre and a murder mystery weekend and of course food and book marks. There are new lights for the garden and other things, mostly edible. It was a lovely group of presents which made me feel loved and cared about. It was time for chocolate cake and drinks.

The rest of the evening was football and Live Aid. Of course the day has to come to an end, which means taking my night meds, and checking the Tesco order for tomorrow. So my birthday comes to an end and I returns to the fight against my cancer and the normal things of life, like having my nails done, having the boiler serviced and meeting with my publishers. Doing the ordinary, day in day out.

Friday and I wake to find my partner preparing to go to the hairdresser, so I take my vitals, all good and prepare to get up for the day. After a hot water I get up and shower and then do breakfast with my morning meds. I get ready to meet a friend in town for lunch but before I can get going my partner returns having found her hairdresser was marooned in Ibiza. I go for my lunch date.

I arrive at the hotel in town where I have agreed to meet my friend, I think about a drink but before I can about ordering what would be an outrageously priced hotel lemonade my friend appears at the hotel entry. We walk to the near by Cosy Club and settle in. Having ordered we sit and chat about all the things that have befallen us of the last few months. My friend has suffered a recent loss and we talk about loosing people and the subsequent processing and grief. We catch up on mutual friends and we are doing as we eat our meals. It is the sort of conversation that only friends can have, picking up instantly on the issues that each has faced or is facing. At the end of the meal we leave and return to our cars as my friend continues her journey on to London. I return home.

On my return home I head out into the garden and gather up my two kneeling figures and my embracing couple and then spend a while repainting them. With that done I gather up all the solar garden lights and clean some of them and put them together to see which ones are still working. There is another group of old light that I just junk. With all this done its time for a football fest. I watch match after match as the home football teams lose hideously. Eventually it comes to an end and I sit back and look as possible new cars and then I draft the blog.

Its my birthday tomorrow, I am going to be 77. I can barely believe it given my stage four prostate cancer but I have lived far longer than I expected when I was diagnosed in 2019. I have lived to see all my grandchildren together, my partner’s retirement, my sisters death leaving me the last of my generation, I’ve survived a DVT, a bladder stone and an angina scare. I row the equivalent of 4 to 5 Boat races a week, I’ve continued to read and feed my brain, drive and write to friends. To add to this I now have six collections of published poetry and I am thinking about a new car. Best of all the oncologist is telling me they cannot find and evidence of the metastasis associated with my prostate cancer. That is so difficult to believe, I am having problems processing this but now I’m thinking 80 might be on the cards. So Moving On feels right, but where to and to what is a bit of a puzzle. So I go into my 78th year working on it.

Friday and I wake up to another sunny day. I take my time taking my vitals, which are all good. Before I can get up I get a call from an old colleague who had previously contacted me about the whereabouts of a mutual acquaintance. We have a long chat about something he has been doing recently but in the conversation I learn that our mutual acquaintance has been diagnosed with dementia. Its in its early stages apparently but having an impact. After the call I get up and have breakfast and my morning meds. With the mechanical part of the morning done I drive myself and my partner to the supermarket to do some food shopping for the weekend. Interestingly if you buy three onions in a net they are double the price of the same. weight of lose onions. Once we discovered this it became a game of buying everything loose.

Once home and after a brief lunch break we set about the garden. I concentrate on planting up the troughs and moving pots about, while my partner plants up a coupe of pots and sows more seeds for the cold frame. Eventually all the new plants that were bought over the last couple of days are planted out and the cold frame full. All this just in time to watch the first football match of the night. By half time I am bored so cook Bolognaise source and fresh pasta. There is an evening of football ahead and once again I get bored, so order odds and ends from Amazon and then draft the blog. Of course there are night meds to take and then an early night so that I am fresh to meet a friend for lunch in town tomorrow. I am acutely aware that I have not written anything for days and need to find time to do so. Discovering that my metastasis has, or appears to have gone should have been a great lift and something to celebrate but it feels like I am stuck in some strange place rather than it being new and better as Goethe said.