Monday and although I woke early I managed to contrive to not get up early. I’m not sure quite how it happened, there was no great amount of cyber litter or messages so I guess cognitively pottered for a while. When I did get up I made myself boiled eggs and toast. I’ve come to the conclusion that soft boiled eggs are beyond my culinary skills, they are never quite right and I end up feeling dissatisfied with my efforts. It’s disappointing really as I have such god fantasies about how much I like boiled eggs adn soldiers. I take my meds and set about life admin.

My intention was to complete my tax return for the last tax year but realised that the accounts book I thought I had has in fact been used for the previous tax year. So I order a new ledger and set about ordering my papers in my over stuffed in tray. By lunchtime and the departure of my partner to see her mother I am all admined out. Just as I am about to spring into action I get a phone call from New York, it is a guy who is welcoming me to the Amazon Writers Clique. He tells me he has my manuscript and that someone will call me later to talk about things and that he will appoint a project lead who will contact me. He confirms the tittle of the collection as The Cancer Years and also asks if I am on WhatsApp, I confirm I am and we say goodbye. I then wrestle the Christmas storage boxes back into the loft and end up feeling quiet knackered.

I settle down to have a quiet moment and to watch a bit of snooker. No one cares about the German masters, no commentators and no crowd. The match I watch has a world ranked player in it but the standard of play is appalling as if no one can be bothered. My partners friend arrives and I make her tea and chat until my partner returns. My partner and her friend go out for a meal and I scuttle down to the local co-op to get some cash from the ATM. I need this to pay the plumber tomorrow when he rocks up to install the new shower. When I finally return to my laptop I find I have a a new WhatsApp message from the publishing folk. I am pretty sure this is a chat bot, but it tells me its sending me three questionnaires about my project. I get the questionnaires and set about completing them. It takes most of my evening. There are always things people think you know when you don’t, like what different fonts look like and what size books are. I had to measure a book to pick my size. So this took up my evening. Eventually I get the forms completed and send them back. I WhatsApp the bot (Ted Baker, got to be a chat bot) and tell it/him that I’ve emailed the the forms. To my surprise he acknowledges that they have arrived and tells me he is going to send me a couple of style examples to choose from in the next few days. By the time my partner and friend return I am all project admined out.

My final chore of the day is to complete the changes to the Tesco order adding in Christmas goodies and then drafting the blog. I down my night meds and go through my me pre bed rituals before finally climbing into bed, very tired and very curious to how my book project adventure is going to turn out. I will either be pleasantly surprised or deflated but unless I try it I will never know. If it turns out okay I will have found a vehicle for my vanity. Lets face it the members of my poetry stanza are the real poets and writers, I am just taking a short cut to my ego, but it would be nice to have a couple of small collections of my poems to leave behind me. I take inspiration from Billy Connelly who no one had heard of in England when he started out. His first move as to book a Croydon Hall, a big venue and take the risk of it turning out okay. He went down a storm a never looked back.

Saturday. I wake up eat toast and meds. I spend my morning erecting the new Christmas tree and get the Christmas boxes out of the loft. I then wrestle with the tree lights for a long time until they festoon the tree. I am on a tight timetable and dive into the bath in readiness to go to the poetry Stanza.

I am sitting on the sofa and I realise I do not have the spoons to drive into town and attend the poetry Stanza. I just cannot face it. I put the poems I had printed out ready for the meeting back in the file and I changed out of my poetry clothes. After a while of sitting staring at the tree I get myself together and start to hanging things on the tree. That’s what I do for the afternoon, resting at odd times. Eventually I get to the end of the process and stop.

Everyone in the household is tired today, my partner has a cold so in the evening we order in and Indian meal and settle down to watch the Strictly final. The great British public predictably do not vote for the best dancer but the one they think has tried hardest. True underdog favouritism. There follows some late evening kitchen clearing and meds taking before I go to bed. I’m edging towards Christmas but I am disappointed in myself for not getting to the poetry Stanza meeting but I have to accept that there will be days like this.

Sunday, my partner and I drink coffee in bed and plan the run into Christmas. With that done we eat toast and take family present to my partners brother. Its a quick Santa drop before we go to the local garden centre to get pies and veg. On returning home I find the garden guy has turned up for the last time before Christmas. He is fed coffee and we chat for a while and then he gets on with the final pruning and clearing for the year. I set about putting arrangements in place to publish my “The Cancer Years” poetry selection. I’m using the Amazon Writers Cliché service. So I’ve bought my publishing package and sent my zip file of content off. I now wait for the call about cover design and other admin bits to be sorted. After this I am wall to wall rugby matches until the evening. My evening passes quietly until I draft the blog for the last couple of days. I appear to be low in energy at the moment so as I down my night meds I hope for a good night sleep and to wake up with a renewed reserve of spoons.

Friday and another end of the week. I deal with my messages and cyber litter before a bit of on line banking. Life admin done I get up, get dressed, have my meds and go for breakfast at the local café. I have picked up a paper so I can do the crosswords while I tuck into my food. I have not brought my glasses so stare myopically at the clues and make my best guesses. As a result it takes me longer to work through my usual dyslexic attempts but I get there in the end only being tripped over by the name of a double breasted overcoat, which it turns out is called an Ulster. I collect cash from the Co-op ATM and then wander to the post office to get wrapping paper, and mail boxes to complete my Christmas sending.

Once home I rummage through my hide away place for the things I need to send and armed with my newly acquired wrapping equipment hide away and elf like wrap. Soon I have a rattling post box to send. It is heavily taped up with gaffer tape and hopefully impregnable by prying hands or inquisitive rodents. I am soon back to the Post Office and sending the parcel on its way. That’s it for now, all I need to do is my in house wrapping and the decorations. So my afternoon is a wrestle with the new artificial tree and the annual trip to the loft to retrieve Red Sonia ( our beloved tree topper), God in a box, ( our nativity set from Barcelona) and three, possible four generations of baubles, gewgaws and droplets. There is of course the annual wrestle with the tree lights to be had, where I generally disappear into a blue cloud, muttering FFS frequently and occasional y getting a belt of electricity for my pains. In fairness I should not stick my fingers in the bulb sockets to see if their is current but it seems to work. I draft the blog before I start just in case.

The tree is up, but I run out of spoons. The evening is all about eating, watching TV and taking my meds before going to bed. Tomorrow is poetry stanza day and Strictly final day. There is a tree to dress and other odds and ends to do. I am hoping for many spoons.

Wednesday and a big day in my household as our injured house guest is due to go to hospital to have her plaster removed and then, accompanied by her son, on to a hotel before flying home to Greece on Saturday. However before any of that can happen I have to get up, have breakfast and morning meds. My injection site is still sore and I am not at my best but as I have a plumber coming at 9:30 to look at our knackered downstairs shower. On the dot the plumber turns up and I lead him through to the offending shower. He looks at it and tells me that basically its as cheap to replace the whole unit rather than bugger about putting in a new thermal regulating bar. We chat option and ratings for potential new fittings and then he goes. I immediately do my research and order a new fitment to arrive tomorrow. God bless Amazon. I’ve gone for one of those rain showers that also has a hand shower with it, very modern and in stainless steel. Very posh, so it will look good, whether it works or not is a different matter, we shall see.

My eldest daughter adn one of my nieces go off to town to breakfast and to collect our house guests son from the railway station. In the background I am aware that there are packing and travel activities going on. I am writing Christmas cards and brief notes to accompany them to the Scottish branch of the family. My sister used to do this “oiling of the family wheels” but this year it falls to me. There are two generations of our family now that have had no contact with the other branch of the family so I am inviting my generation and my children’s generation to join in the family tree project. I just think it would be useful for my generations children and grandchildren to at least have a map of where they came from. So I busy my self trying to find the right words. Before I can finish there is news from the estate solicitors that some of our instructions have been carried out, which comes as a relief and a step forward. There are still some snags to sort out so some more admin is required. I’m doing this when my eldest daughter, niece and house guest’s son arrive back from town. The son of course wants to see his mum as soon as possible and is lead up stairs to see her. Almost immediately my brother in law also appears to say goodbye to our house guest. There are drinks and chats much of which is about clarifying timetables and arrangements. Eventually our house guest comes down stairs and waits in the lounge until her taxi is due. We have bought a light weight wheel chair for her to use and take with her, a strange but useful Christmas present. When the time comes I wheel her out to the back door and after a bit of jiggery pokery mange to get her to the front drive. Its bloody cold and a knot of us stand on the road side making small talk while waiting for the taxi. We wait and wait and wait and wait until there is a message to say the taxi has arrived. Only then do we find out that the house guest has booked a taxi to arrive at number 7, the wrong house number. There are calls made and then more waiting until the taxi arrives. Packing everything into the boot is fun to watch as a clearly pissed off taxi driver struggles to get the the walking frame, wheelchair and cases into the boot of his nice new car. What amused me was that he closed the boot of the car by pressing a button in side the boot rim. When it would not close there was a lot of rearranging before another button push, and then another and then another, in the end the driver just push it closed manually like we all did back in the day before we thought pressing a button was cool. A grumpy driver told us to order an estate car next time. We waved them on their way and went in doors to the warmth, happy that they were on their way home ultimately and happy that we could now settle down again and prepare for Christmas. Come tea time we celebrated with fish and chips.

It had been a strange day, it ended with my eldest daughter going to Jiu Jitsu, and my partner and I watching football and the third series of Crossing Lines. A strange experience as all but three of he original caste had disappeared since series two. There was very little explanation of why they had gone beyond going home or the in implied fact that the unit they worked for had been closed down. The reality was of course that the first two series had not got good ratings so the producers decided they need to rehash it. They rehashed it so poorly it never made a fourth series. Any way after downing my evening meds I headed for bed.

Thursday and I am up, dressed, breakfasted and medicated in time to get to the chiropodist by 9:30. Its happy feet day, I really enjoy my happy feet days. The chat with the chiropodist, the warm soak of the feet followed by the meticulous attention to my hard pad and nails, all finished off with an oiling, it is delicious and a genuine pleasure. Damn good value for money. If your wondering what to buy someone for Christmas buy them a chiropody session voucher. My feet sing with delight after I’ve been done, its the best £32 I spend on a quarterly basis. I am almost sad the sessions do not last longer.

Once home I am into heavy “Puttering”. Puttering is a word a friend introduced to me by sending me an image with a definition, I share it with you below.

Given the definition I am not sure one can be “heavily” puttering but it seemed appropriate to all the little chores that needed doing to return the house to its normal stats post house guest. So after my pedal delights I pottered and puttered for quite a time retuning the guest room to its natural state, my drugs to their draw, my clothes to their wardrobes and washing to the laundry. Having started from the top I worked down to the lounge and cleared out my end of the sofa, which frankly had become a bit of a shit pit. I returned books to shelves, rehouse boiler papers, returned other objects to their rightful places and filed the estate papers along with all the other documents I inherited. Only once my self maintenance structures were back in order did I stop to check the blog and discover that Tuesdays blog had been left hanging. I set about putting that right and then started to draft up the blog to bring it up to date. By 4 o’clock I’m just about up to date, so I take a breather for coffee and to plan ahead. All this done around Amazon delivering things and me arranging for the plumber to come and fit the new shower next Tuesday morning. Already it is dark and the evening approaches. I have an eye on Friday as the day I need to do things in the garden, have some Shed time, sign up to self publish my first poetry book and start serious Christmas decorating. But first the evening beckons. I get to the end of the evening with a final putter and my night meds, then retreat to bed, remembering to post the blog this time.

Tuesday and I thought it a day to rest as my partner went to work. As it turned out it was not a restful day. Once having had breakfast and morning meds I settled down to type a letter and finish off Christmas shopping. The shopping went well and so did the letter. A long letter to a friend. It was when I came to print the letter off that my day turned to rat droppings of monumental size. I tried all things printery to get the bloody thing to work. I tried on two laptops and the main system all to no avail. My eldest daughter assures me it worked for her this morning, but for me, no. It even refused to print a test page from the App on all machines, At times it would say “printing” when it patently was not and then flash up a cheeky “error cannot print document”. Of course I tried other documents, I’m not daft. I plugged and unplugged several times, I ran the trouble shooter several times from different devices and still it refused to print. I was eventually persuaded that it is defunct. I’ve research how much a new one is. They are as cheap as chips, the catch is the ink. They do not make my printer any more and changing machine and ink cartridge will be a bind as we have our ink on a supply agreement. I foresee high blood pressure and aggravation coming my way. In the end I give up and have a late dish of chicken soup.

Just as I am microwaving my late lunch one of my nieces appears with my eldest daughter. It appears that my eldest is running off and scanning documents for our Greek guest so that she can fly home as soon as possible. Its nice to see another face in the house. After they go off to scan and send stuff away I have a flurry of activity as its bin day tomorrow. I scurry around and empty all the house bins and then rollout the wheelie bin for collection tomorrow. I feel spoons ebb away and retreat to the recliner to think about printers and begin to draft the blog. As I do so I realise that I’ve not read the letter that came in a Christmas card from an old friend and colleague. An opportunity to make real coffee and read a letter does not come around often and is a real pleasure. The day is already dark and is also wet so I indulge in my coffee and letter.

The rest of the day disappeared in a blur and I clearly got distracted. I find this blog draft on Thursday afternoon and I am surprised that I have forgotten to finish it and post on Tuesday. Tuesday was a day after my injection so its quite possible that by the evening all I wanted to do was sit and watch football and Crossing Lines before crawling off to bed. Maybe I’m just getting tired.

Monday , or more precisely Jab Monday. As ever I have chosen to go early for my 28 day jab. A bleary eyed and quite timorous me gets dressed and head for the GP clinic. I have preloaded with my morning meds and a dose of paracetamol to fight the side effects. Once masked up and in the GP surgery I go to sign in but the screen is not working, fortunately the receptionist recognises me and books me. I wait until called by a nurse I do not recognise. Following her into the clinic room I wonder if I need to have the “lumpy stomach side effect” conversation. In the end I deicide not to, I’m not sure why, I think I just want to get in and out as quickly as possible. She injects me and tells me the system is not up for my next date and that I will have to book it nearer the time.

I leave ripping the mask off my face as soon as I can and head for home. On a good day I might have gone to get a paper but today I just want to be home . Once home I have hot water and my partner makes me toast. I spend a lot of time from then on bending my credit card to finish my Christmas shopping. I am almost done when the garden guy turns up to do the regular tidying. As everyone else is either resting a broken limb or at work its down to me to make him coffee and pay him. We chat for a while, he’s a lovely bloke but can chat for ever, as we chat I keep noticing things in the garden that need to be done so I set to and start doing stuff as well. In the end I spend a good two hours moving things around and filling feeders. I end by draining the water butt again to ensure my gutters can cope in the coming wet weeks. It feels like its been productive time.

On my return to the lounge I find post and a voice message. The plumber has rung back and left a message. I immediately ring him and arrange a day for him to come and look at the defunct shower mixer. My faith in plumbers is renewed. In the post is a card from my cousin in Scotland with note inside acknowledging my letter to them. They have just moved and will contact me in the new year to help with their side of the family tree. While I am doing life admin I write a brief letter to the people who have sent my sister a Christmas card. I explain her death and hope they remember her with fondness. Before I know it I am skipping to the post office to send my letter and to buy our guest more dark chocolate for its potassium content. On my return I start to read Pooh and the Philosophers, a present from my book gifting friend.

I take a nap, I know I take a nap because I wake myself up snoring and its dark outside. I drift in and out of sleep as I feel my injection site getting sore as time goes on. This is how it happens, it will get worse before it gets better and will last a couple of days along with acute tiredness and a lack of motivation to do anything. Then three things happen all at once. Tea is cooked and served by my partner, an email from the solicitors raises real issues over the estate and Tesco deliver. Its a juggle but of course the food gets devoured, the new food gets squirrelled away and the there is a flurry of WhatsApp messages as things get sorted, or sort of sorted. By the time early evening comes round I am beyond much other than watching TV, taking my night meds enhanced by more paracetamol. I look at my dairy and I am relieved there is nothing in it, I will need a free day to recover from my jab and regain some balance. At least I am done with the jabs now until 2024.

Sunday and I wake to find it pouring with rain so I take my time getting up. I check my vitals first before breakfasting and then getting ready to go and find a Christmas turkey. I drive my partner to our local garden centre in pouring rain where we head for the in house butcher. We select what we require for Christmas and put our order in. Before we leave we collect some other food and veg and then drive home in the unrelenting rain.

Back home I put my washing in and settle down to watch football and rugby. I have things to do but frankly I find myself lacking motivation, tomorrow is my injection day and by mid afternoon I have started to take some paracetamol. This is part of my routine that ameliorates the side effects of the injection. I am expecting to have a rough two or three days as a result of the interaction between my injection and the chemo. It will be a time when I try to rest and finish off my Christmas shopping over the net. Apart for a face to face conversation with my youngest daughter and sorting out my dried washing I do nothing this Sunday. For now I ease my way into the evening with a little more rugby and Strictly. I feel uneasy and anxious about the coming couple of days but rely on my routines to see me through.

Saturday, yesterday now and already becoming a blur. Age or medication, I’ve no idea. I do remember taking, my partner to the coffee shop at a garden center in the afternoon to get a break and have a chance to chat and plan. I also recall paying the tree people for their work and then spending a lot of time on the internet giving my credit card a thorough work out for Christmas. In the evening my eldest daughter took me for my birthday treat, we went to see Dave Gorman at De Montfort Hall.

It was an excellent evening, we were right up the front of the flat stalls and had an excellent view of him at work. His brand of humour is unique and unusual in the way it uses what is available on the internet and in the media generally. A lot of laughter, maltezers and ice cream later we drove home. The only thing that marred the evening was the drive there. My favourite into town route was suddenly barred by cones and meant finding another way to the venue, which was a pain in the arse but we still go the venue with time enough to do battle with the parking ticket machine that refused to coins despite having a slot to do so. Once home I took my night meds and opened up the laptop to draft the blog but was just too tired, I did not have the spoons for it so went to bed.

Saturday I wake and have a coffee to get going when my partner asks why the shower down stairs is not running hot. I investigate, I test, I concluded, the hot water valve on the mixer bar is fucked. So I text and ring our local plumber, no response of course because its Saturday and he is semi retired, this does not however stop him putting “emergency and maintenance plumping ” on his business card. I guess emergencies are all relative depending on day of week and weather conditions. So on a rainy Saturday a broken non life threatening broken shower value is probably not worth the effort.

I eat breakfast, take my meds and then start to draft the blog, catching up on yesterday. A friend sends a link to a tracker App, which means I can watch his progress on his journey up from Plymouth to the venue for our meal later. I’ve not seen this before and I am fascinated by it as I zoom in and out to him zipping along the M5. This is a great App and will get him to show me how it works when he arrives. Strikes me as a really useful thing to know how to do.

My dinner with friends it a delight and it is really good to see them. I drive home to an evening of Strictly and Crossing the Lines, before I down my night meds and go to bed. Its been a good day but one that has drained me of spoons. I’m too tired to do anything else to the blog, it will have to be enough.

Thursday and its raining again as I wake up. This is day two of cycle 7 and its starting to be a slow day right from the off. I go through my routine message, email and cyber litter sifting. There is nothing of note in all of this except the bill from the tree man who was working here yesterday. I eventually get out of bed and have breakfast and begin to make a plan for the rest of the res of the day. There are some messages to be dealt with from the solicitor.

Noon rolls round all too quickly. I and my eldest daughter walk down to to the village pharmacy and shop to gather up some food but also my next drugs order including the coming Mondays injection. In anticipation of the injection weekend my eldest daughter and I round up as much paracetamol as we can. The household has run out so by the end of our trip we have gathered up four packets of paracetamol, that should see us through. I take a quick trip to the post office and get stamps for my partners Christmas cards. Once settled in home again I watch the penultimate edition of Steph’s Packed Lunch, eat a sandwich and continue to watch the COVID review. Boris is continuing to be quizzed and wriggling like a worm. The KC representing people with Long COVID could get nowhere with Boris who just kept saying that the best way of dealing with Long COVID was to stop people getting COVID in the first place. He was unable to say anything constructive about Long COVID in its own right. By the end of the hearing today Boris had done nothing to change the view that he is a slimy toad. Apparently such phrases as “utter bollocks” and “fucked up” are to be considered unpolished language designed to encourage freedom of speech and to widen the range of opinions given in government.

My evening moves on to tea followed by a taxiing of my partner to a friend for coffee before settling down to a football match. I’ve done bugger all today really, I’ve not read, not trained, not gardened and written nothing, but I have discovered that its good that jam doughnuts come in bags of five. In effect this has been me marking time on a very rainy day. My eldest daughter goes out with friend so I spend my evening watching football and Mock the Week. What remains is to draft the blog, take my meds and get a good nights sleep.

Wednesday and welcome to cycle seven of my second bout of chemo. Remember this is not a cure this is palliative care, I had to sign papers to say I understood this. It’s the “their doing their best best but we cannot cure you ” oncology clause. So I wake up to a coffee with my partner already up and about around the house. It is she who greets the tree folk who have returned to load up the logs from yesterdays tree felling and to stump grind. Before I can get up my partner is already helping our injured houseguest wash her hair. When the cost is clear I get and my partner makes me breakfast before I get myself into the shower. I’m tired this morning and things take time. There is nothing in the post for me so I catch up with filling this weeks drugs wallet with the first days of cycle seven chemo pills. As I am in admin mode I also pay the invoice for the work done to our boiler. Thankfully the boiler is now tickety boo and keeping us warm and supplied with hot water.

Noon arrives and I drive my partner and I to a lovely little restaurant in a village not far away. Unfortunately it is one of those posh villages with “historic history” and no bloody parking. What parking they have got at this time of year is taken up with Christmas stalls filled with crap that no one really wants. I’ve learnt my lesson, if we do this again I’ll Uber it. IN the end I drop my partner off at the restaurant and drive off to find a side street to park in and then hike back to the restaurant myself. Its a posh restaurant full of nice country types with the usual accessories, so I am not sure that my “fuck cancer” T shirt and long white pony tail that spills over my shoulders once my beanie is removed, is viewed as quite fitting in with the rest of the clientele. The restaurant staff are of course polite and attentive. The meal is excellent and I in effect have a Christmas dinner including a minimal serving of sprouts, just the two, but it makes me feel festive. By the time I have gone through the Christmas pudding I am up for a black coffee and an Armagnac. Over our lunch my partner and I take stock of Christmas and our unforeseen circumstances and chip away at a plan. By three o’clock we are done, pay the bill and march off to find the car. There is a bit of me that wants to build a huge five story car park in the middle of their village and clad it with murals of Morris dancers and Maypole dancing. It would of course have a community of rough sleepers or traditional tramps living in it so the gentle folk of the village could knit mufflers for them and take them broth, while the local parson could mobilise his parishioners to make a special effort at Christmas to take one for the festive season. Any way we drive home through the end of school traffic.

Once home I go into the garden and look at the back of the house without the trees, it look big and open. Taking the trees out has made a huge difference. I retreat to the sofa as my partners brother arrives to talk family business. I take a well earned post lunch nap and wake up in the dark, I do believe my own snoring has roused me. I start to draft the blog and drift toward the evening. No doubt I will rue the sprouts later but for now I am content enough to idle time until Shetland is on. Shetland comes and goes and its time to prepare for bed, so its my night meds which includes the first of chemo cycle 7, setting the dishwasher going and a bit of last minute tidying.