Wednesday and its a self maintenance day. I’m up and showering early with an hour and a half to go before my dentist appointment. A long clean of the teeth and morning meds and I am out of the door to walk down the road to my dentist. I book in at reception and settle down with David Sedaris’s Naked while I wait to be called in. After a while I am shepherded into the clinical room and the couch of pain. I’m here to have a filling and preparation for a crown. For the full hour I am mouth stretched open. I get injected with anaesthetic to start with before the work on the tooth to be crowned begins. There is a lot that goes on but finally its ready for a temporary cap. The dentist produces a wizard piece of scan kit. No longer is a mouthful of sticky plaster in a tray required, this new equipment scans my teeth and jaw building a complete picture of my teeth and jaw which is then sent electronically to the lab who then print my new crown on a 3D printer! How cool is that. In doing the scan the dentist spots a cavity at the top of one of my front teeth. We have a quick chat and decide to add it to todays work. My dentist moves on to the planned filling and when that is done she moves to the front tooth. Its the full hour I’ve had my mouth full of metal and tools and now I’m numbed and sore. I make the appointment to return for my 3D crown and return to reception to pay for todays work.

I walk home and rest as I Am due a COVID booster this afternoon. I make myself boiled egg and soldiers (magic food) for lunch and then spend more time reading. I am thinking about getting ready to go to the GP for my jab when my partner returns from seeing her mother. She taps on the window and beckons me to come to the door quietly. There on the doorstep is a hedgehog, not our regular hog but a small one, probably this years. Unusual to see this nocturnal chap out in broad daylight, so I am concerned about his health. I dash to the Shed to get some hedgehog food and on my way back I trip over the electricity table and take a painful tumble. I tuck and roll and its my ribs that take the brunt. I put food and water down for the small hog and drop some on the path to encourage the little hog to eat. The hog eats a bit but then wanders slowly into the pots. I create a little shelter for the hog reasoning that it might want some cover until dark comes around.

I am pushed for time so I have to leave the hog and hope he/she is alright and make my way to the GP surgery for my jab. The walk down is short and the process of actually getting my COVID is even shorter, I barely have time to get my arm uncovered and the needle is in. I walk home beginning to feel a bit knockabout. When I go for a piss I find the tumble I took earlier has made me pass blood. I take myself off to the spare room, take my vitals, down a pint of orange squash adn read for a while, stopping only to nibble crisps and to drink another pint of water. Eventually I return to my place on the sofa and begin to drat the blog. Dinner arrives and I eat with a football match playing in the background. The hedgehog seems to have moved on with the onset of darkness. With the dark comes the feeling of cold, a runny nose and the sense that tonight must be an early night and rest before I take the car to Kwik Fit tomorrow morning. For now I must look after me, I suspect my ribs are going to be bruised in the morning, needless to say I’ll find out soon enough.

Tuesday and I cannot afford to lull about in bed as today I’m off to the dental hygienist. So there is time for toast and coffee before I give my teeth the pre dentist scrub and mouth wash. I chose one of my comfortable ice hockey jerseys, pack a book into my jacket and wander down to the dentist. Luckily I had stowed my book as I had quite a long wait before I was called into the hygienist. I sit in the reclining couch of pain and chat while my notes get up dated. Then it begins, all that scraping, drilling and messing around inside my mouth. Eventually my teeth get polished and given the standard thou shalt not use your mouth wash unless told to by the dentist, thou shall use these mini inter dental brushes before going to bed and thou shalt brush at least twice a day. I hate those inter dental brushes and their colour coded sizing. Who has time last thing at night to go through every gap in their mouth with tiny bottle brushes. Life is just too short isn’t?

I return home to an email from the solicitor telling me that new forms need to be signed and their is an issue with the house sale in London. I email the solicitor to clarify what a new clause means. He comes back quickly and reassures me that we are not at risk. I set about preparing the new paper work so that when my eldest daughter returned home the papers could be resigned. My partner and I walk round the village to stretch our legs and collect some food from the village shop on the way. Lunch follows and then my eldest daughter duly arrived and signed the papers so that we could drive round to my partners brother so that he could witness the signature. With everything signed its off to the post office to send the documents off for arrival the next day.

Once home again its chore time as the bin is put out I empty the room bins and try to get things a bit straight. I can feel myself running out of spoons so I slow down and sit and do todays cross words. So the day ends and the evening slides into view with tea on the horizon and TV following close behind with mixture of crime, football and Party Gate. I draft the blog, down my night meds and go to bed knowing that tomorrow is going to be a challenge, dentist at 10:20 and COVID booster jab at 1:38pm. Its been a day of disrupted intentions, of bits and pieces but then that’s the juggle of the everyday.

Another Monday rolls round and as usual I wake to the murmurer of work going on in the form of office chat and meeting. I am snuggled in under the million tog duvet but I’m feeling pretty ropey. I get up and do toast (more magic toast) and coffee before getting myself together. By the time I do its late morning and I am heading to the Shed. Once there I settle in and write a letter and some odds and ends. Today I am having real problems trying to get what is in my head onto the page. I find these days so frustrating, the words seem to get stuck in the end of my pen or jam themselves in the key board. Its bad enough being dyslexic but when I have these days its just grade on frustrating. I must appear, or my writing must appear like a struggling first former. All I can do is sit it out and keep trying to open the doors. I popped a small picture a friend sent me into a frame and found it a space in the Shed alongside all the other pictures and stained glass.

I wait for the rain to stop and then return to the house and make myself tomato soup (another magic food). A lot of my early afternoon is spent reclining and just getting myself together and doing odd sporadic things like super gluing the Easislide feet on the coffee table. Having watched Michael Portillo wander around Canada I pull myself together and go and post my letter. I notice that there are several plants that are still blooming in the front garden so take a few snaps to capture them.

There was a time when the front garden was a forest of huge fir trees where nothing else grew in their shade, now there is a year round profusion. I have just about got myself back in and settled when Tesco deliver early, I had not had a chance to move the car off the drive so the poor man had to juggle the blue trays around it. My partner is at the dentist so its down to me do the squirreling and sorting of the delivery. I’m soon back on the sofa trying to draft the blog. My partner returns from the dentist and the evening slides into view.

I’m hoping for a quiet evening and an early night before my trip to the hygienist tomorrow. I remember that somewhere in the day I’ve booked time at my local Kwik Fit to sort out my leaking rear tyre.

Saturday now seems a long time ago, I think that is a retired time thing. What I do remember is waking up to my partner telling me the meal we had had the night before had made her sick in the middle of the night and that she was feeling rough. I made us warm drinks and buttered toast which we ate in bed whilst planning the day and the short term future. There is something magical about buttered toast when feeling rough in the morning. Its one of the magical foods like boiled eggs and soldiers and chicken soup, although my preference has always bee tomato. So we lazed for a long time while the toast worked its magic and then slowly got up and pottered around. Eventually my partner and I felt fit enough to take my car to the garage to check its tyres before I drove off to meet friends for a meal later in the afternoon. My partner was sufficiently recovered to drive to her brothers in the village to wrestle with the paperwork required to get support for their mother.

I drove to the Whinery in Burton on Trent to meet my friends. Normally there would be five or six of us but this day there was to be only three. We dined and chatted for three or so hours before going our separate ways. We are of an age where we check each others health and activity with interest. As it happens I was the indolent one of this particular trio, as one friend is still working and the other is a positive whirlwind of activity with a range of charity and community activities that is breath taking. She is truly one of those people who makes the wheels of her community go round. So there is a lot to share and wonder about and we still find things to share about ourselves that we have not heard before even though we have known and worked together for over twenty years and in some cases more than thirty years. The meal, as with friends last night was secondary to the conversation. In the course of our conversation which is often a cause of merriment I heard a phrase I had never heard before which made me laugh. One of my friends recalled telling someone that she was so pissed off with peoples trivia and aggravations that she would never “manage people as long as her arse pointed downwards”. Made me chuckle heartily. I drove home in the rain feeling uplifted and remembering to keep my arse pointing downwards.

Once home the evening was a heady mix of Strictly, rugby and Vincent before I crashed spoonless and quickly, having time only to take my night meds and get myself to bed.

Sunday I woke and wondered what damage I had done to my weight over the last couple days with multiple restaurant meals. When I indulge I usual pit on weight so as I stood naked upon the scales I was apprehensive that I had maintained my “obese bastard” over 98 kilos mark of last week. I smiled quietly to myself as I came in at 97.9 kilos a loss of 0.6 kilos for the week. It is a good omen for the coming month of October that the family has declared a non sweets, cakes or biscuit month. Following yesterdays warm drinks and toast magic I repeated the dose which seemed to go down well. Eventually I get up and while my partner goes down stairs I put my clean clothes away and release the might million tog duvet from its storage space. I get the big winter cover ready to change and call my partner for assistance. We get the winter duvet on quickly so tonight we should be as snug as we could wish for. With ample layers, the heavy tog bedding and global warming we might just get away with not needing to put the heating on till November. I check the garden camera and find that the fox has been to visit us again and that the hedgehog is alive and well. I replace the batteries and replace the camera in the garden. I need to clean the hedgehog canteen and begin to put food out again as winter approaches although I have to say our hedgehog looks quite rotund.

Lunch follows and I settle down to catch up drafting the blog and updating the Tesco order. There will be rugby to watch later. Its a slow Sunday, as Sundays should be as I head towards a week that will include visits to the dentist, the hygienist and the GP for my COVID booster. Somewhere in there needs to be a visit to Kwik Fit to have one of my tyres checked as it is losing pressure. Beyond that I hope for Shed time to catch up with my correspondence.

Friday and I find myself drafting the blog late at night before heading for bed, so this is a backwards day. Having just come in from a meal with friends I make an effort to recall the day. Back there in the morning was an early coffee and meds followed by a walk down to the village café for a full English breakfast. This turned out to be ironic as later I get request to ring my GP. When I do I am told the GP has marked me as “Borderline” due to my cholesterol score of 6.9 on my last set of blood tests. I was offered pills but said I was controlling it through diet. Which is partly true as I chose smoked haddock kedgeree for my evening meal. I omit the peaches and cream sundae that accompanied it out of guilty pleasure.

On returning from my breakfast I find the post has delivered more forms from the solicitors. I get my eldest daughter to sign them and then trop to the post office to get the documents sent for arrival Monday morning. A friend calls at the end of her first week back to work after a prolonged fight with long COVID. Its been a tough journey and still has a way to go but this is a major milestone in recovery. I get my second load of washing in and then nap, I heavily nap until I rouse myself enough to get changed to train. In the garage I strap myself in and begin a 45 minute row. I am not good so its a mediocre session, but it gets done.

Post row I get my washing in and shower, doesn’t sound much but I am knackered. I get ready to go out for the meal with friends. My partner drives us to the pub and we meet our friends and dine. We are as usual the last people in the place as for us its about the conversation as much as the food, but that’s another blog. And that brings me full circle. All that remains is to finish the drafting of the blog and actually going to bed.

Its Thursday afternoon and I thought I would for once draft the blog before I run out of spoons. Most days I write the blog, I do it at the end of the day when I am exhausted, spoonless and heading for bed. It probably accounts for why many of the days are so mundane. By the time I get to my bedtime state I struggle to remember what happened earlier in the day and anything that has caught my attention of any interest has turned in to a grey pulp in the fatigued mind. I cling onto to the prosaic rituals of the day like breakfast because these are the things that form the scaffolding of my life. Without this construction around me I might collapse. I never used to need this carapace around me as my internal skeleton coupled with a strong sense of self was sufficient for me to navigate the world, continue to build my inner universe and seek meaning to my existence. Cancer changed that and the medications that came with it. As I learnt what challenges it brought and what compensations I needed to make so I began to build my protective shell around me. My immediate environment needed to be more ordered. I needed to know where everything was so I did not waste energy trying to find things. My tolerance of things that I thought to be easy and turned out not to be so infuriated me, and still does. Like wise technology that constantly changed. I would get used to a system and some arsehole would decide my life would be easier if they changed a sequence or user interface optic. It just could not be left alone, no progress must happen or people would not have careers. Worst of all was the the increase in “noise”. The emotional and relentless voices of the outside world, mostly wanting my money by guilt tripping me, trying to scare me or enticing me with shit I do not need. I am almost at the point of not watching TV. The BBC , which is supposed to be advert free is full of doom and gloom, grim documentaries and its own style of moral high ground extortion. It all constitutes “noise”. I suppose worse of all is my own intolerance of others trivia which is expressed as “really important” and ” I’m entitled to my opinion” , regardless of how ill-informed, inaccurate and self serving it is. It borders on the edge of “If its my opinion then it must be true”. As I become more entwined with the battle against my cancer the less I can tolerate this “noise” and the more I withdraw into an internal world of feeding myself through reading and writing letters and the odd poem. By its nature cancer forces me to live in short bursts as I no longer have the spoons for prolonged effort. I am engaged in a marathon jog with frequent water and sponge breaks where there is no room for malfunctioning technology or people without kindness. Much of this explains my recent interest in philosophy and the idea of a good person. I’ve said before that I am not a naturally good or kind person, it does not come easily to me. Some people seem to be able to be instantly empathetic and kind, it is their nature, it is not mine.

Anyway I got up and had breakfast and then read for a while. I have finished my David Sedaris book and started on another titled Naked. Another autobiographical set of essays which so far is proving exceedingly engaging. In a strange way he reminds me of Alistair Cooke’s Letter from America but from the other end of the spectrum. Rough versus smooth but with the same penetrating powers of observation and comment.

I read for a while and then take a shower and wash my hair. I am after all going to the dentist. All smartened up I walk slowly to the dentist feeling that I might be wearing too many layers for my level of dentist anxiety. Once booked in I read for a while and then make my way into the room of pain. Today I am seeing a new dentist as my regular one is on maternity leave. She is clued up on me and catches up on my current medical status adn then gives me the oral once over. Apparently my gums are good and my teeth are no worse then they were last time. I clearly need my chipped filing done and I agree to let her excavate my tooth that might be capable. I am x-rayed and we chat about the plan going forward. That’s it, she makes me a new appointment and recommends I see the hygienist before our next appointment. I say farewell and return to the reception desk where I make my hygienist appointment and pay todays bill. I walk away relieved and feeling strangely better. That was a much better experience than I expected.

Back home I have lunch and then read some more of Naked. After a while my eldest daughter becomes available and we sit down together and work through all the legal paper work for my sister’s estate and the house sale. It takes ages to work through all the questions and to ensue what needs signing is signed and what needs dating is or is not according to need. Eventually it all gets down and I drive my eldest daughter to her uncles so he can witness some of the paper work to be signed. The visit does not take long and we are soon home again. The evening gallops in with tea and my partners singing lesson, while l watch rugby and an episode of Vincent. I finish the blog and take my night meds before taking myself off to bed. Tomorrow I must train.

Wednesday and I wake up and for once I feel a bit chipper, so I am hopeful of training today. I pop myself into my wearable blanket and head downstairs to make toast and coffee. I settle down to eat my breakfast and to read more David Sedaris. After a while I check my emails and find the quote I’ve been waiting for from our tree men. The price is reasonable so I reply and ask to fix a date. I am on a roll so I read the gas and electric meters and submit my readings. My new statement is back very quickly and I am pleased that once again the household has come in under budget for the month.

My partner is on her way out to see her mother when she picks up the post to find documents from the solicitors, they are for my eldest daughter to sign and complete. I undertake to make copies and fill the forms in on a copy set so that my eldest daughter can just fill everything in and sign them off. Sounds simple but it turns out to be a nightmare. The printer at first will not copy the documents and I spend an eternity getting the printer to work. I also have to ring the solicitors as one of the enclosures is missing. Once I get the forms copied I set about filling them, in truth there is only one that requires any detail the rest just need my eldest daughter to sign. I start to fill in the form adn pretty soon its clear that no one in the family has the information required. I start to go through other documents to try and answer what is required. It becomes a mammoth task and I end up having to run off another wedge of papers. It takes all afternoon and I am still not finished by the time my partner returns from seeing her mother.

I eventually get as far as I can. I will have to sit down with my eldest daughter and go through all the forms at some point after which we will need to find an independent witness. So I go into the evening really pissed off as I had planned to make pie for tea and that plan went out the window. I get to watch half the rugby match I had planned to watch and end up thoroughly grumpy. My partner cooks tea and we prepare to watch a series we have ben following on ITV-X. All we could get was Error code -7. So even the TV is against me today, I’ve just about had it with technology. I draft the blog while four “celebrities” and A N Other flog their way from somewhere south to north Finland. I feel myself drooping and an underlying irritability. My new plan for the rest of today is take my night meds and go to bed and read. Tomorrow I am going to the dentist, which will open up another chapter of pain. So what started as a day of feeling chipper has end up as one of feeling homicidal.

Tuesday and I wake up late, my partner having gone off to work, out of the house type work. I feel groggy and not sure why but as usual I check my messages and find one from my daughter saying that there is a solicitor’s email saying that probate has been granted on my sisters estate. I get up and check my emails and sure enough there it is in black and white. It means that papers will be with the solicitor in five days. There follows some exchanges of emails between myself and the solicitor about arrangements and the disposal of my sisters house as part of the estate. This all takes time of course. I ring my son on WhatsApp in Sweden and up date him on how things are going. We have a long chat about roofing and concrete water proofing and then the grandchildren. It appears that Swedish bureaucracy is even worse than ours, its taking for ever to get his residency card, citizenship and passport. I clear the kitchen and load Daisy before finally getting myself some toast and a drink. My eldest daughter and I have a long chat while I nibble away at my toast until finally I decide its time to get dressed properly. In fact I have decided to get into my training gear and try and make the effort.

On my way to get changed I go to take my morning meds with what’s left of my coffee and find that I had not taken last nights chemo. It was was the last day in my drugs wallets so I do not know how I missed this. My drugs wallets need filling so I take time out to refill my two wallets that will see me through the next two weeks. Finally I get changed into my training gear and head for the garage. I have not trained for 18 days, unforgivable really but I’ve been away and also feeling overwhelmed by fatigue My PSI score has been under 100 for days now and my fitness age has been going up rapidly on the App. I am determined to get it back to 100, which is considered the healthy level. So I get on the rowing machine and set of for a 45 minute row at the slowest pace I’ve ever rowed at. It is all about my fear of passing blood again, which has contributed greatly to my reluctance to train along side the fatigue. I row steadily for the 45 minutes with the only aim to be to get to the end and to get my hit my PSI 100 point mark. At the end I check my PSI score, its 94. I am disappointed.

I stare at my fitness App on my phone in disbelief and disappointment, I am so irritated with myself. To do more risks passing blood is my thought and then I think “fuck it”, I lower the resistance a notch to level 3 and set off again for another 15 minutes. It goes reasonably well and when the clock runs down I am instantly checking my PSI score.

I check the fitness App and find I have hit a PSI of 119. So I have hit my target. As usual I retreat to the sofa and record my session in my food and exercise journal and the stare into space for a while. I run a bath and when I go for my first post exercise piss I am relieved to see that it is clear and blood free. I have a long , warm bath bomb bath and read more of David Sedaris. Eventually I get out, get dry and throw on my wearable leopards head blanket with the huge kangaroo pocket on the front of it. There are very few if any spoons left to spend so I sit down to draft the blog as the evening drifts towards me. I have a headache so take paracetamol, which is something I am doing more often these days. Today I am not sure if its the lack of food, lack of yesterdays chemo meds, the effort of rowing or the weight of my ponytail. So I shall eat this evening having put the bins out and hopefully read and watch TV, I think the women’s England team are playing tonight. Tonight I will make sure I take my meds before bed. My priority tomorrow is to train again, now I have started again I must keep going. None of this is very exciting but it is the grind that keeps me alive for longer, living with cancer is all about this and finding joy in the everyday. My Michaelmas daisies are coming into bloom.

Monday and I pull myself to the surface where I hear voices at work. I breakfast and then begin a stream of life admin. I book a dentist appointment and then spend time trying to book into to see my GP. I explain its not urgent and I can wait a couple of days but regardless of that I have to ring in the following morning to fight for an appointment on the day, because todays appointments are full. Its a special kind of madness I think. There is an email from my solicitor regarding my sisters estate and I make a couple of calls and finally get some business sorted. It seems to take for ever. I find time to read some more David Sedaris and get to lunch time. I can feel myself getting drained. Lunch is with my partner on the patio after which I refill the bird feeders and the squirrel box. In a last throw of the spoons I plant out the rest of the plants into the back garden pots. My reward is my first tomatoes of the year!

I know that Tesco is going to deliver so I move my car and then read for a while. It takes it toll so I update my vitals excel spread sheet and check my average blood pressure so far on this fourth cycle of Chemo. The post delivers a letter to me from a friend in her catachrestic green ink. I settle down and read it slowly. I never get over the power of a letters, there is just nothing like like the joy and pleasure of having something written for you, it a special kind of sharing. I nap for a while and the Tesco deliver. There is the usual unpacking and squirreling and then I return to the sofa to read.

I slide into the evening to eat tea with my partner before she goes out to a village meeting that is forming a new community choir. I watch a film and the when my partner returns we watch the final episode of a series about Irelands trafficked children. Night meds and bed. Today has been a day of small bursts of activity and then rests. I never got to train, each time I thought about it I got overwhelmed. I know its part of the meds side effects but I ‘m struggling to overcome my anxieties about both the effects of exercising and my cancer. Tomorrow is another day to give it a go.

Saturday and its the Autumn Equinox, not that it will make any difference to my day to day life, although it is chilly and makes me wonder if its time to turn the house heating on or not. I decide “not” remembering that the thick maximum Tog duvets have yet to be put on. I had promised my partner an exciting trip to the garden centre for lunch after she had had her hair trimmed. So by ten o’clock I was siting in the gym lounge sipping coffee and eating a bacon bun while my partner was in the hairdressers in the same complex. I continue to read David Sedaris’s Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls. He is humorous and a sharp observer of his environment but he paints a jaundiced picture of himself, certainly of someone I would not give much time for. Maybe that is because he’s so candidly open and honest about himself and how he feels, which is admirable, but off putting with so many strangers. Can’t help feeling there is a lack of judgement in there at times. His now long term partner has obviously managed to find a way of accommodating it and also the fact that he ( the long term partner ) appears in his partners writings. I also reread my letter from the friend in Scotland. She manages to pack so much into a letter as she does into life, still working as a therapist she manages to do painting courses and is now off to CERN to see the Hadron Collider for two weeks as she has an interest to particle physics and its connection to Jungian thinking. Indomitable is the word I would use to describe her.

My partner reappears, trimmed and we drive to one of the local garden centres for lunch. At heart I am a child and love a good milkshake, which this pace does well. Over smoked salmon bagels we discuss the experience of retirement as I have finally managed to break free of all work and she is considering it. It took me years to really let go of work and all the ego and identity attachments that came with it, plus fears and fantasies about poverty and old age. Old age by the way is independent of poverty, its just a fucking pain in the arse whether you are poor or not. We chatted for a while with me listing all the things I do not have to concern myself with now and how my choices have expanded. There are and awful lot of “shoulds” and “oughts” that have just disappeared. It probably does not make me a very nice person or a good person but at least I leave people alone and do not interfere, I just sit and read stuff, watch sport and on occasions write a poem or two. I recycle, try not to use too much energy, eat reasonable amounts, do not buy crap or fashion and look after my garden. I write letters to the people I like who I do not live with and keep my WhatApping in control, feed the squirrels and birds, beyond that I no longer make any kind of contribution. So as I said since my real retirement my choices have expanded and I chose not to use them. I like to think that I quietly battle my cancer and live a quiet life, blogging as I go.

Our conversation finished we drive home with a boot full of pansies and viola’s. As soon as I am home I am planting up the pots in the front of the house, there is now a splash of colour along the houses apron. I move to the back and pot up some more but I get tired and run out of spoons quite suddenly. I quickly water the new plants before it rains ( a certain kind of gardener madness) and put the tools away. I’m in front of the TV in time for the first of two world cup rugby matches of the day. As evening slides into being the family eat a simple tea. Its simple because everyone, particularly my partner, are tired of having to think about what to eat. Sometimes no one in the household can face the the juggle of protein, carbs and fats into a “its healthy for you” meal. Sometime everyone just goes “yea beans on toast sounds great”. And it is.

I watch the Ireland v South Africa match and it is BRUTAL. I’ve not seen such a physical match in a long time. It was played at a pace and level of confrontation that take sport beyond a quick Saturday afternoon run out into something entirely different. By the end of the match I am drained, Ireland won, and for light relief I find Strictly on the BBC i-player. Its the opening show of the new season but I can only manage the first two couples before I have to go to bed. I am overcome by waves of fatigue and have nothing left in the tank. I take my chemo meds and head for bed. The blog must wait till tomorrow.

Sunday arrives and I wake up cold and headachy. It feels like being a storm tossed galleon desperate to tie up in a harbour and weather the storm. I get up and make my partner and I warm drinks and then check all the usual things I do on my phone. Getting up is a slow process as is getting dressed but once achieved there are bacon sandwiches and more coffee. I have of course weighed myself and find myself in the disgustingly obese category. I weigh in a 98.5 Kilos since a fortnight ago. Over the holiday and since I have not trained, I was thoroughly spooked by the the last time I passed blood in my urine while on holiday after what I thought was a short walk. Since then I’ve lacked the motivation or courage to kit up and go and row even though I know it is the right thing to do. Its a real catch 22, row and risk the anxiety of seeing blood again or not row and know I am not doing the best thing to alleviate the Chemo side effects.

Post breakfast my partner and I go off to the garden centre to buy this evenings meal and to stock up with fruit and vegetables. It is our usual routine broken only this time by acquiring a present for my partners birthday in December. Once home we unload and I head for the sofa to rest and to catch upon drafting the blog. I do not know if it is the Chemo but I find it increasingly difficult to maintain my concentration to drat the blog, I find myself swept over by tiredness and the ability to type accurately and to express myself properly. I have a sense that I am inflicting increasingly banal stuff on people due to flagging powers, but as someone said to me the other day “your blog is not meant to entertain”, that runs counter to the inner me that has always had the urge to do stand up.

The evening sees me eat and watch rugby before downing my night meds and getting myself to bed. Tomorrow is another Monday on which I have the opportunity to gather myself up again and start once more to take control of the aspects of my life that have slipped. Its a day to take a deep breath and go again.