Tuesday and I wake to my partner having gone to work so I indulge in watching a selection of Mock The Week “things you wouldn’t hear…”. I finally drag myself away from the phone having checked my messages and cyber litter. Still no book cover yet. I get up, take my morning meds and get myself down to the village shop for a paper and then onto the village café for a bacon and sausage baguette washed down with a hot chocolate. I sit and do the crosswords, today I’m on fire and do not need to google anything. Its a small thing but gives a crumb of comfort that I’m still functioning on some level. On returning home I put the bins outside and settle down to, nothing.

In my state of “nothing” I fall back on reading and start my re-read of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. I had forgotten just how good it is and fell right back into the joys of Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster and the immortal words “Don’t Panic”. After a while I go the laptop and star to write a poem. As I went to sleep last night I kept thinking about a poem that I remembered from my youth. It was a poem that contained reference to consonance and assonance not being able to express the experience of a prisoner getting shanked in a prison yard. In my head I had started to compose the poem, knowing that the poem I remembered was both right and wrong in some way. I know I read in the Penguin Modern Poet series published in the late sixties. I read the poem when I was 20 and it has stayed with me ever since, but I can’t remember who wrote it and which edition of the Penguin series it was in.

I draft my poem, eat tea and continue to write the poem and still I am nagged by the remembered poem and my inability to know who wrote it. I finish my verses and then start to draft the blog but I am nagged by not knowing who the poet was who stuck stuff in my head when I was 20. I retrieve my Penguin Modern Poets volumes from my poetry shelves and go through them page by page and then bingo I find the poem. Its a William Wantling poem called Poetry. On reading it I am taken aback by the similarities of the two poems in terms of their basic theme. I put both of them here for anyone who wants to read them.

I am distressed,
By my search,
For a poem once read, 
Indelible on my mind.
It spoke of the redundancy,
Of consonance and assonance.
A Penguin Modern series, 
Of the sixties and seventies. 
A man who wrote of prison, 
The brutality of survival
And the way the blood flowed 
When a man got shanked.
For him that was poetry,
He was wrong, 
For years in the heads 
Of the violent, 
The killers,
The outcasts
There was only fear,
Shame and loss.
When space allowed 
There was wit and desire,
To be better.
I was never a therapist 
More an operational moral philosopher,
Just trying to find out 
How to be a good person.
But the verses were always lodged, 
Ticking away in my mind
That there is something,
Beyond the structure 
And the academic noun.
A depth beyond 
The contrivances and the intricacies. 
I’m running out of time
And have no space for the fripperies,
Or linguistic baubles,
If I am to find 
What lays at the heart 
Of the words that move
The world of being. 
My dandelion clock
Sheds itself
As the wind blows,
And still I seek
The lost poem
And the ones to come. 

									365 23-01-24.
    
 

So today has been a good day, somehow there has been a connection over 55 years and the power of poetry is affirmed. My instinct to write seems to have been vindicated. What I find interesting is that Wantling and I seem to have found the same difficulty with poetry. I take my night meds, washed down with a 0% rum and coke and go to bed feeling relieved in a strange affirming way.

Monday and I wake feeling quiet refreshed and laid back. My partner brings me my first hot water of the day and I check my cyber gadget for messages, mail and litter. I then check the BBC news and weather forecast, watch a couple of amusing slots on my news feed and take my vitals. Having dawdled a bit I pick up a message from a friend with a picture, her sewage pipe has backed up and overflowed into the garden. That is, as she pointed out a truly crap way to start the day. I get up feeling lucky and tuck into honied toast and herbal tea. Its then that I realise that some thing is missing in my life. My green house isn’t there in the garden! Bloody storm Isha has nicked my greenhouse!

I finish my breakfast, pull on my snow boots and slug down the garden. And there is my green house laying on its side hiding behind the Shed. I am relieved, I had fantasies of it going Dorothy like on a tornado to some far off garden and wreaking havoc on the way. It took two hours or more to clear away the scatter crap and to bring the green house, who is now called Dorothy after her little windy trip, back to the vertical and standing in its allotted space. Dorothy has a broken joint that I mend with super glue and then I contemplate how to protect poor Dorothy from further weather driven escapades. Storm Jocelyn is on the way I find some tent pegs and drive several in around the frame of Dorothy and lash her to them, like Ulysses lashed to a mast to avoid running aground after hearing the Sirens sing. With Dorothy firmly anchored I replace her internal shelves and bits and bobs, finally zipping her up against the coming inclement weather. My efforts have exhausted me and I am glad of the bacon sandwich my partner makes me.

I have brought the garden camera in and start to review its contents. Its all squirrels and wood pidgeons except the section where it has captured the team felling our trees before Christmas, it takes a long time to go through and it has made me forget that I was going to put a crockpot meal on for tonight. I finish up the camera and go to the kitchen and proceed to make my famous one pot, a chicken and chorizo dish flavoured with herbs and smoky pimento. It is a tasty winter meal especially when made with red wine and a dash of brandy. With the stew bubbling nicely, I clear the kitchen and move the car off the drive ready for the Tesco delivery.

As the stew bubbles I start to draft the blog in anticipation of both the food and the Tesco delivery. With those out of the way I can get on with BBC 2’s quiz night, or as I think of it, revealing my ignorance night. In fairness I get some of the general knowledge on Mastermind, less on University Challenge but any correct answer on Just Connect raises a whoop of joy. That does not happen often, perhaps once a series. My aim is for another early night and a tomorrow when I can train and get out and about a bit, even if it is only to the shop for a paper and the café for breakfast. I take my night chemo meds and go to bed.

Sunday and I wake after a night of terrible nightmare. I dreamt of the house being invaded by men demanding that they do work on the house, a real bunch of vagabond brigands. I stood up to them adn told them to fuck off and threw them out and off the property but not before they had damaged the front door and porch. Eventually they left in a trotting cart. It left me distressed and I woke shaken. I think it was a cancer dream, the symbolism of being invaded and being made fearful all felt very cancerous to me. I got up cleared the kitchen put out the recycling, half checking the door and porch as I did so, and then retuned to bed with warm drinks for my partner and I.

After sharing my nightmare we got up for breakfast and face timed our youngest daughter. My partner went to the gym, my eldest daughter to a friends to work. I spent time reading a poem a member of the poetry stanza has sent me and then replying to his accompanying email. Alone in the house I start an early draft of the blog as I gather up my courage to go to the garage to train, spurred on by the horrific fact that I weighed in at 100 kilos this morning. I am appalled at myself, that I have let my fear do this to me.

I go to the garage and strap myself into the rower. I set the session for thirty minutes, set my activity monitor going and set off. I am working at about 75% of my capacity, its hard but I push through. I can hear the wind howling outside as the latest storm comes in. I make the end of the session and I am just glad to get there.

Having finished the session I record it in my journal and then head for the garden where I wrestle the cover back on the garden swing seat as the wind whips up. Back indoors I change out of my training kit and get a drink and a sandwich after going to the bathroom and being relieved that I have not passed blood. I settle into watching a rugby match as the house around me rattles in the ever increasing wind. My partner has retuned from the gym and quietly stitches together the grandson’s cardigan as I continue to draft the blog to the background of rugby. The evening meal is taken as a family and then we watch Vera while the storm intensified, rattling the house. I take my meds, finish off the blog and go to my bed hoping that the remaining items required to see my book come into being arrive soon.

Saturday and I wake after a reasonable nights sleep. Its chilly and my partner and I sip hot drinks and chat until we have a plan for the day. Bacon sandwiches for breakfast before some serious puttering to get the house straight. By lunchtime I am ready for the afternoons poetry stanza so I indulge in a football match. With the game almost over I settle in front of the PC and sign into the poetry stanza. For three hours I listen to poetry being read, discussed and explained and take my turn to make observations and share my ideas. This time I had not offered one of my own poems but I had shared a visual poem before the meeting which people said they liked and found funny, which I am not sure I intended it to be.

After the stanza I watch rugby, eat tea and search for an evening entertainment aware that I am becoming the owner of a headache. It ends in paracetamol, night meds and a late bed time.

Another Friday arrives, I wake early this morning and check my cyber messages and litter before checking my vitals (all good) and then doing the Tesco order for Monday. Once up I make breakfast and settle down for the mornings task of proof reading the final draft of the poetry collection. Its a slow and painful task, I keep tripping over my dyslexia and the slowing side effects of my chemo. I finally finish after lunch time and put all my feedback into a document that I send to the team in Florida.

I am watching the World Indoor Bowls championships when I get an email from the boo project team ask when they can ring me to discuss the next phase. While I am trying to work out the time difference I get a call from the commercial branch of the team who talk me through the details of ISBN numbers and book formats. Of course there is an additional cost, just new there would be, but at the end I am expecting a handful of copies at some point and for it to be available on Amazon at some point in the near future although I have yet to see the final cover. As far as I am concerned I have done all I can and just want to see the final product now. Depending on how it looks will depend on whether I use Amazon again. As usual I have a feeling that I am being ripped off, but we shall see.

With the business done I return to the bowls but Amazon deliver the folders I have been waiting for so I set about printing out the poems that have been submitted for Saturdays poetry stanza meeting. The evening arrives and so does the decision to eat take away while watching a rugby match. It ends and I draft the blog with the news on in the background spilling doom and gloom into the room. I’m tired like the rest of the household so I shall wash my night meds down with alcohol free rum and coke and have an early night, perhaps listen to some more Clive James.

Thursday and I wake after a reasonable nights sleep, but fall back to sleep again. When I do finally wake up its mid morning. I quickly check my cyber stuff, measure my vitals and get up. A simple breakfast and then some gentle puttering. Annoyingly I find I have a headache so I decide on radical self care. I plug in my ear buds and listen to Clive James’s Cultural Amnesia, a book of reflections on the cultural influences on him.

I recline, plug in my buds, put on my I Am Out hat and settle into the pleasure of being read to by the author. And there I stayed, letting myself be educated interrupted only once to eat beans on toast and then return to the listening.

So that’s how I spend my day until I am lured to the world indoor bowling and watch a couple old fat white blokes slog it out over two sets and a tie breaker. Its only a matter of time before some one complains of lack of inclusion, under representation and all the other agendas that are around. It could of course be upgraded to have a wider appeal. Multi coloured balls, heavy music walk on tunes, more adventurous game wear and some bad person behaviour to incite the crowd into partisan chanting and igniting flares. Any way the evening sidles up and I start the blog and look forward to pasta for tea and an evening of bugger all.

I suppose it is a legitimate question to ask if this is a good way to spend a day given my condition. Aught I not be doing something uplifting, making memories or doing something “amazing” with one of my limited stock of days. To be honest I can’t be arsed on some days, have I not made enough memories, done enough to have a day off occasionally? So, today I put down to indulgence in idleness. I will round it off with chemo drugs washed down with an alcohol free rum and coke. I of course have snuck in a couple of things that are not idle like downloading the poems for Saturday’s poetry stanza and acquiring some odds and ends from Amazon.

STOP PRESS: My final draft of the poetry collection has arrived. I know what I will be doing tomorrow now for sure.

Wednesday and I wake to a cold day and appointment with the dentist. There is is time to dress and take my morning meds, check my vitals (still all good) and wrap up warm for the walk to the dentist. To be honest I am not feeling great and I am hoping that I will not be waiting long to get in. While waiting I read some of the poems that have been shared prior to next Saturday’s poetry stanza meeting.

I get called in and greeted by my smiley dentist who looks into my mouth and decides I need an anaesthetic injection. So I sit for what seems no time at all before the dentist is drilling out the temporary cover for my tooth. There follows minutes of cleaning, fitting adn adjusting before the crown is finally glued into position. I make my way to reception where my now numb lips have difficulty forming words, so I silently press the buttons that make the dentist much richer and head off home. On my way home I pick up a paper and soft iced buns.

Once home I settle down to do the crossword puzzles and sip hot water while my lips return to their normal state. Having not eaten I am eager to get lunch time when I can carefully sip soup and dunk bread. I am still not feeling that chipper but I get my washing in and again settle down to write a letter. I do not know if it is a side effect of the meds but it is taking me longer to write letters recently. By the time I am done the washing is ready to be hung up before I wrap myself up warm and go over to the post office to post my letter.

By the time I return and got back to the sofa I am running out of spoons so indulge in watching the world indoor bowls on TV. This is what I am doing when my partner returns from seeing her mother. We slide into he evening with pizza and a light content film. At the end of the fluffy film there is the final throes of a cup match to watch while I draft the blog. With that done I make a small non alcohol rum and coke, take my chemo and go to bed to listen to an audio book. Another day where the mundane masks the dark waters below. Tomorrow is another day.

Tuesday and I wake up from a night of hot flushes and sleeplessness. I take time getting up. Before I do I do all my usual checks of messages and cyber litter. There are a few messages to respond to but but nothing earth shattering. I do my vitals, still good, and then have a simple breakfast. While I nibble my toast I watch the parliamentary committee on the post office scandal. It is a fascinating watch as the CEOs of the Post Office and Fujitsu try to humble their way off the hook and push any explanation on to the complexity of the situation and the fact that it happened a long time ago, as if that was sufficient explanation of them not being able to answer some really basic questions. By the time lunchtime comes round I’ve added more names to the list of people who will be up against the wall come the revolution. During my watching I decide I’m going to re listen to some of my audio books only to discover that I’ve not got a CD player, so I immediately order one from Amazon.

My afternoon finds me in the bath listening to the Infinite Monkey Cage, which means I get engrossed in several episodes as my body becomes increasingly wrinkly. Eventually I get out of the bath, enlightened about spiders and wine amongst other things. I clear the kitchen and send messages to chase my book. Apparently the team are working on it and will send me the next draft in a few days. While doing poetry things I send my contribution to this Saturdays Stanza members. As there are a lot of people attending I have sent my visual poem that is not required to be read it out. That should save time.

My partner finishes work and goes off to her brother’s to sort out some care admin and I set too and make a pie for the evening meal and get my washing away. The evening consists of eating pie, watching football and sipping rum and coke. During the football match the CD player I ordered this morning arrives so of course I spend time discovering how it works and pairing my ear buds with it. Mission accomplished I can now start my re-listening. The evening trails off as I draft the blog and contemplate my dentist appointment tomorrow morning. It should be plain sailing as it is the fitting of the 3D printed crown. It is the passing of reception and paying the bill that will cause me pain. However for now I am full of my chemo meds and off to bed.

Monday rolls round again and after an average nights sleep I rummage through my phone for messages, emails and cyber litter as well as checking my accounts and the news feeds. My partner brings me my morning hot water and I take my vitals. All good there, the arithmetic is holding up. I get myself up and make fried egg sandwiches for breakfast. I try yet another version of herbal tea. The morning is full of life admin as I wrestle with the tax man, and deal with post. Its that time of year when things like insurance renews and I go through the ritual of renewal knowing the bastards will do everything they can not to pay if push comes to shove. Lunchtime arrives and my partner and I nibble cheese on toast followed by the joy of a surprise Tunnock’s Tea Cake.

My afternoon is spent writing letters to relations in Scotland inviting them to add data to the family tree. I add printouts of the tree so far and point out some of the quirks of our family history to date. I make the trip to the post office and hand over my letters and then head for home in the blinding sunshine as it slants in on its winter trajectory. Once home there is recycling to do and then I settle down to read the Velveteen Rabbit. It is ostensibly a child’s book but it has much greater depth as a lot of children’s stories do especially those written in the late Victorian and early Georgian era. This edition has the original art work, which is lovely and very much of its time. It is a short and easy read but is full of ideas and messages that are layered into it. If you have not read it, it is worth the time.

Having read the Velveteen Rabbit I go off to redo my vitals and to have a short listen to some meditation music, before I know it, it is four thirty and time to begin to think about moving the car off the drive for the Tesco delivery. I go out to the car and find it iced already and the temperature below zero so it takes a while to clear its windscreen and get it where I want it. By the time I am in again I am chilled and pull on another layer and have a blast of the heater in the lounge while I draft the blog. During the day I check my emails and WhatsApp in the hope that there is news of how my poetry book is coming along but alas there is nothing. I am impatient to see what the next draft looks like as it should be getting near to the final version. I am quite desperate for it to be acceptable so that I can embark on my next two collections, which I hope will be quicker to produce having got the template from the first one.

Once again the evening slides into view with the prospect of Silent Witness to watch and not much else. It is after all Monday although I notice that our local Desford Heritage Family History Group is having a launch event in two weeks time in the village library on that Monday evening. I am tempted to go, but I do not want to get caught up in the usual village bollocks that goes with these things, but there maybe some useful tips I can pick up. It is always made to look easier than it actually is but there maybe someone there that has already used a software package that would suit my needs. I will see how the weather turns out and if really snows like some are predicting. Back to tonight I need to bathe at some point but I feel my spoons ebb away quickly now as the temperature drops and tiredness begins to kick in. I take my chemo and go off to bed hoping to sleep well this night.

Saturday and its a mission day. Mission to buy a new mattress, neither I or my partner can tolerate the one we have right now so its got to go. The usual cyber checks done, I have breakfast, take my meds and the I am driving my partner to the dreaded retail park.

We park up and head for Dreams the bed shop and are greeted by a an avuncular shop assistant despite the fact that I am clearly double his age at least. He of course asks if he can help, I say “Super King Size, Extra hard, zip together.” He looks happy, someone who knows what they want. He guides us to the “firm” beds and encourages us to lie down brings pillows. We dive from bed to bed with him following clutching the pillows. As a pair we are quick to dismiss some of the products and “maybe” some others before saying “this one”. Its the fastest we’ve ever made a decision and the assistant is taken aback a bit. He looks to see what the delivery time is and looks up at and says those musical words to our ears “this one comes in extra firm”. Instantly I say “we will have it”. There then follows the usual non-essential sales bollocks but all we care about is getting the old one taken away at time of delivery. So in a very few minutes we do the deal, pay the money set the delivery date and wander out of the shop clutching a recycling bag for the old mattress and promising to do the feedback survey and that we would mention Prakesh in our feedback. We must have been the easiest sale he made all week.

Being on a roll my partner returned garments to Next without a hitch and we rewarded our selves with croissants and warm drinks in a vegan friendly café. I sat and watched the flow of people wandering by. A huge tide and a true mixture of cultures, colours and presentations. It struck me that all of them were just getting on with life, a huge silent living process that in this situation had no agenda, no dispute just doing daily life and not wanting that to be interfered with or interfere with anyone else’s. The agendaless public just living as best they can. I’m struck by the thought of where all the other stuff comes from and realise I only know about the other stuff either via social media, which is really a shouting contest, and what my friends share with me about their lives and experience of others. My friend’s accounts of even the bad stuff is far more rational and kind than all the other “noise”. Looking through the glass front of the café makes me feel as if am looking at an aquarium of people, it looks peaceful but I suspect there are predators lurking in this reef. These are just impressions and probably do not stand up to considered scrutiny but there lays the poetry.

Refreshed I and my partner buy the usual gifts to give to the host when visiting for a meal adn make our way home. I watch football and rugby until as a family we go to friends for an evening meal bearing the gifts we acquired earlier. To my surprise and delight they have lit a real fire and we sit before it nobbling things, chatting and watching the flames. The meal is a chance to catch up with all our news and what is happening to the people we know and to exchange view from anything from bombing foreigners to the annoyance of leaving pots and pans in a sink to soak. With midnight approaching its time to bid farewell and drive home through the fog. Once home my partner and eldest daughter go off to bed while I clear our kitchen and then take my meds. I’m too tired to draft a blog, that will have to wait until tomorrow.

Sunday starts with me weighing myself, I am not optimistic, but to my surprise I have dropped 0.2 kilos which keeps me just under the dread 99 kilo mark. I make warm drinks for myself and my partner and slowly we surface properly, comparing notes on yesterdays adventures and trying to get motivated for the rest of the day. The up shot is that I take my vitals, have a light breakfast and morning meds then face time my youngest daughter and the new grandson. I’m hoping they visit again soon, but lives are busy and need to be planned. On the way to the gym we stop off to check the tyres on my partners car. They are way down on what they should be and it explains why the car did not handle as well as usual last night. So we arrive at the gym and while my partner does the healthy things one does in a gym I sit in the lounge drafting the blog, sipping red berry and flower fruit tea and eating a bacon roll. So I am up to date and as a reward sit and read the copy of the original Velveteen Rabbit a friend has sent me. A beautiful book with all the original illustrations. It is a classic. I’m tempted to point out how mundane all this is but maybe its just “simple” because of what lay beneath. Below is my other dark poem that I wrote recently after I found myself breathless and my blood pressure had spiked. Clearly one of my “bad days” but I suspect that this undercurrent of the battle that is going on is what saps my energy and makes me try to keep my everyday life mundane and simple. Like a swan gliding on the surface, underneath it all I am paddling and fighting hard to stay on course. It seems that only in my poetry does this ever really surface, perhaps my poetry strivings are a little less vanity driven than I give them credit for.

Scared,
I am scared,
And find myself shaking,
My body full of anxiety.
All my joints rigid waiting.
The cancer is gnawing at  
Body and soul.
For once I am without options, 
Or strategy to cope. 
I wanted to model death with dignity
But I find myself trembling, 
Breathless and terrified.
I tell myself the arithmetic is good,
And so it is, but it counts for nothing 
When I piss blood
Or my dick hurts afterwards.
I take painkillers, 
I take my meds
And try to rest,
My inactivity dampens me,
And I struggle to the surface 
To gulp in air, 
To pay attention
And to remain calm. 
This is not what I had in mind,
A legacy of bravery for my family,
A model of how it can be done. 
I fear I am failing in my last act,
The lines forgotten,
I am stumbling off the stage,
Not exiting stage left
With a flourish and a kind word. 
Writing this is a diversion,
A declaration of horror,
In one last throw of the dice 
To hold onto something. 
How I envy Lawrence’s bird
Tumbling from its branch,
Never feeling sorry for its self.
Nature made me different,
And it is a divide I cannot hide.
Of course I will fight,
Of course I will go on,
But I have no illusions any more,
Death is making me a coward.
So I may weep occasionally
And feel sorry for myself
As I feel the pull of earth and fire
And an end to it all. 
								363	6th January 2024
 

My afternoon proceeds with rugby/snooker and then I slide into the evening not knowing what it holds for me, perhaps a bath. Or as it turns out Vera, chocolate and then an almost early night to bed full of my chemo and empty of energy.