Saturday and there is only one thing that matters on this day, a day I feared I would not get to see or experience. Today is the day I got to see and hold my new grandson and first born of my youngest daughter. Not yet a full day, this new life nestled quietly in my arms. Its a day that make every moment I fight worth the battles, the set backs and every moment I strive to keep fit and alive for as long as possible.

There is nothing else to be said really, the family has grown and thrives. My job now is to keep joining it all together. There are Swedish grandchildren to weave together with their peers, perhaps somewhere in the future they can all meet. In the meantime I will keep archiving their family history.

Thursday is a blur apart form getting a letter from a friend, the start of the women’s world cup and one training session, which was a struggle.

The evening was a poor Agatha Christie movie, the child did it. Meds and then bed.

Friday and I wake early for todays the day my youngest delivers a grandson, Dangerous Beans, and we are off to Gloucester to see them. So I breakfast early, shower, and then take the car to fill and check the tyres. I’m packed and ready to go, any moment now could be the call as she was due in at midday for a C section and now it 12:42. I am on tenterhooks. I drive my partner and I to the hotel in Glouster to await news of Dangerous Beans.

Hurray Hurray Dangerous Beans has arrived and weighed in at 9lbs 15 ounces at 15:54 at Gloucester Royal Hospital. I am a grandfather again and my partner a grandparent for the first time. All concerned are well and thriving.

There is nothing else to say on such a day. My partner and I dine on Greek food, finish with Metaxa and retreat to the hotel. Tomorrow we will visit the new family member. For now I draft the blog, take my meds and go to bed.

Wednesday morning seems far off at the moment I’m tired. I got up, did my vitals and wander downstairs. I decide I can’t be arsed to make breakfast and walk down to the village shop to get a paper and then I onto the village café. Disaster strikes. The village café is closed. The owners have had the temerity to go on holiday and wont be back till July the 26th. I drag myself home and set about constructing a fried egg sandwich and a decaf coffee. So now I am fed I wander into the overgrown front garden. I do hours of weeding and freeing the irises from the undergrowth. This wet and warm weather is having the effect of creating a green jungle that is closing in on me. I beaver away until I can do no more. My garden is producing beauty everywhere, in some cases spectacularly so.

Alongside the blooms comes other signs of wildlife. My squirrels dig everywhere in there pursuit of storing and recovering their nut stores. I assume they are trying to help me in the garden and working along side me. They have a habit of drawing attention to unused patches of ground or empty pots.

By the time I am through with the garden there is time for a beef sandwich and Amazon deliver my new stationary to take the family archiving forward. I spend all afternoon putting photographs into page holders and documents into sleeves and setting up ring binders for various members of the family. I add a file for my sisters school reports and sketches and one for me. Mine is thin and contains some school reports from my junior school and my spectacular fail postcard at “O” level. I eventually can do no more, I run out of spoons and cannot face digging through yet more family documents, perhaps tomorrow. My partner returns from seeing her mother and I replace her car key battery as its been on the blink. We eat tea, book a hotel to be close to our youngest daughter on Friday when she is booked to have a C section and settle down for the evening and watch The Departed, with a brilliant cast including Nicholson, De Caprio, Winston and Damon, directed by Scorsese. I draft the blog in a state of spoonlessness.

There are days that drag no matter how much I try to lift myself, today has been one. I think the chemo drugs kick in from time to time to make me fatigued. As a result I am less tolerant and kind than I would like to be. I’ve no time for repeating myself or for those situation where people can’t make up their own minds and piss about trying to displace the decision or the blame for their being no decision. I just have not got the energy to be as tolerant as I want to be. Anyway its going to be an exciting few days with the arrival of Dangerous Beans and becoming a grandfather again. I think doing all the family history stuff recently has wheedled its way into me, I found myself thinking that I could at least tell my grandchildren who their great great great great grandparents were. It seems strangely important for then to know what their roots spring from, its something I’m not sure I ever had. It seems it became a family that gathered things but was not good at being people, a strange mix of appreciation and gathering but low on relating. Begs the question on how on earth I became a psychologist, perhaps attracted to the unknown.

Tuesday arrives and I wake up to the sound on my partner at work in the office downstairs, we are back to post holiday normal. I check my messages and emails adn find one from my youngest daughter heads upping me that an email has come in from the solicitor dealing with the sale of the house in London. I get up, do my vitals and put away yesterdays washing before going downstairs to breakfast. To my delight I find a forgotten bag of freshly ground decaffeinated coffee and make myself a pot. I then set about down loading all the papers from the solicitor. Its a nonsense, they want an entire checklist of everything in the down to plug sockets and other trivia. They also want papers signed by the owner, good trick if you can do it as she is dead. Some lazy arse in the solicitors office has just sent out a standard package with thinking about what they are doing. I email back asking for clarification about ownership when it is part of a dead persons estate and the executors position in this when the estate is being handled by colleagues in the same firm of solicitors. I tell the that no one from the family is going to London to do an inventory given it was sold as seen and their colleagues in the same firm over saw the clearance, cleaning and preparation for sale. If they want a inventory they can get their colleagues responsible for the estate to do it. A good mornings task for a para legal I would have thought. As yet there is no reply.

It would seem that there is still more death admin to be done in the form of finding space to locate he family archive. I set about creating space for the files and other bits and pieces still sitting in the hall way. I am at least successful in clearing the floor space in the spare bedroom, reconfiguring the storage unit and starting to locate the files in it. There is is also the final coming together of all knickknacks, which will need to be dispersed, sold, junked or donated. I review the filing system for the many documents and photos and invest in more spring binders and photo holders to reduce storage space. So tomorrow I will have new resource and the chance to further organise the stuff laying around. Having got to the end of where I can get to I decide to train. I do not feel like it but it needs to be done. I get changed and get to the garage and set myself up for an hours row. This session goes better than the last session and I reach my standard goals, so I hit 12000+ metres and 800+ calories.

I am a sweaty mess at the end of the session and I take a while to recover before moving the car of the drive for the Tesco order later tonight and putting the bins out. With all this done its time to eat tea and start to draft the blog. The evening will dribble away till Tesco deliver and then I can settle down and read before getting myself to bed.

Monday rolls around and I wake up with a start at 10 o’clock alone, my partner having gone to work. It seems that exercise and my drugs combine to make me sleep in the morning. I do manage breakfast and my morning meds before checking my messages and emails. I then spend time hanging on the telephone Blondie style to book my next 28 jab for next Monday. This time around I get my B12 jab as well, which I read apparently helps with balance in some older people. I wonder if this means I could drink and not fall over, this would help protect me from falling over breaking my hip and dying in hospital from an acquired deadly infection, every little helps. Jab booked I move on to the prosaic things of life like doing my washing and wondering if a shingles vaccination would with cancer meds. So there is a call to be made to the cancer nurses at some point. For now it is on with the mundane.

Lunch rolls round, so a mug of soup and olive bread later I am putting out my washing and taking pictures of butterflies on the Buddleia. For the first time in a long time I sit and read solidly, Cloud Atlas. I do this through the evening until I finish it. First complete book in a while. My only break is to eat tea, bring my washing in and walk to the village shop with my partner to buy chocolate. Somewhere in there I do a Tesco order for tomorrow.

I end the evening with appalling hot flushes and fatigue. Its all I can do to take my night meds and and set the dishwasher going. Tomorrow I hope to write letters from the Shed but for now I try to sleep.

Sunday and I am awake first so make the drinks for my partner and I. I weigh myself as its Sunday expecting a post holiday blob weight so I am chuffed when I come in at 97.2 kilos. Its clear the holiday walks and restraint on the food front have proved their worth. My partner and I chat for a while and then have bacon sandwiches for breakfast. We make our usual face to face call with our youngest daughter, and have the pre birth chat about appropriate visits by newly proud grandparents. So we now have a time table of sorts for the coming week and are able to be responsible grandparents. Post call my partner and I go shopping at our local garden centre, where we watch the butcher spatchcock a chicken in expert fashion. Its raining yet again and it feels like winter is coming early, ridiculous, but that’s how it feels.

Once home I settle down to watch the men’s final at Wimbledon. Its a long affair as Djokovic and Alcaraz begin to slog it out. By the time they they get to a set all I am getting “itchy” to train, I figure that the way things were going in the tennis they will still be at it buy the time I have trained. I get into my kit and go to the garage to find the display on the rower was dead. I spend time sorting out the wiring and put in new batteries and Bingo! it springs back into life. I climb on the rower and set off for my first row for what feels like a long time. It is a slow row and I am trying to be gentle with myself to start with as I dread inducing blood in my urine. I keep a regular pace and I am happy to get to the end feeling reasonably well. I’ve not smashed it out of the park but it will do.

Djokovic and Alcaraz are still slogging it out by the time I get back to the sofa to record my session. Ultimately Alcaraz wins out 3 sets to 2, which comes at a timely moment as the evening meal is ready. The family dines and we slip into the evening and I draft the blog. I am curious to see how I slip back into some sort of post holiday routine, I have letters to write, training to do and I need to keep going with my poetry project. Its a vanity project really, or at least my poetry stanza chums would say so, but it still needs me to put some work in produce a word count before I can price a manuscript to publish.

Saturday, awake late but early enough to make my partner a warm drink to wake up to. There is much lazing and chatting before I finally get up and have breakfast and morning meds. I set about tidying up post holiday chaos and set my laptops up ready for the weeks to come. This takes a while and then I and my partner play car shuffle on the drive so she and my eldest daughter can go to the gym and I get on with putting a curry in the Crockpot for tonight’s meal. That done I slip into my new birthday ice hockey jersey from a friend, its really good and fits like a dream.

I log on to the poetry stanza meeting. There is eleven of us, and as far as I can make out I am the only one that has never been published, that’s in a literary sense. All the book chapters and journal papers count for nothing here. The meeting lasts four hours and it is interesting how people give and take in the group, its all very polite but there is real criticism and also real appreciation. My effort was received okay.

We end just past 5 o’clock and my partner and eldest daughter have returned from the gym. I head for the garden for the first time since returning from holiday to refill the bird feeders and the squirrel feeder. The garden is being battered by high winds but some new flowers have appeared, notably some big lily and some small roses.

The family dines on the curry put in earlier and settle into the evening. I watch the strong winds continue to batter the garden and fear for the plastic greenhouse. This evening is a free form evening, by which I mean I will see what comes along, possibly read, possibly watch something on TV, perhaps reread letters or simply give myself up to whatever comes along. Whatever happens I will inevitably be taking my night meds and seeing what happens.

I wake up this Friday and note the rain, I notice I am slightly smug for the decision to return from holiday a day early and avoid the long drive in this weather. My partner brings me a coffee in bed having showered and we plan the day. I unpack and then put the car back to normal having had breakfast. I drive my partner and eldest daughter to town where they go off to buy haberdashery while I saunter off in the rain to the hospital pharmacy to collect my chemo drugs. I give my name and details and then take a seat in the waiting area. I think I am in for a long wait and settle down into my meditative waiting stance. In this I abandon my phone and half doze with just half an ear open for my name. People come and go and I just wait, it takes me back to my waiting days working in therapeutic communities. To my surprise my name gets called quite quickly. The drugs are more or less shoved at me and my details checked. I walk off into the rain with my drugs carefully stowed in my shoulder bag, taken specifically for the purpose of carrying my drugs.

Back at the car park I stow my drugs in the boot and ring my partner. I head into town and meet my partner and eldest daughter in a small Italian café that had just lost its power. My eldest daughter goes off to the gym and I take my partner to the Italian restaurant round the corner for lunch. The food is good and we chat about how we are and what is coming our way over the next couple of weeks. Having downed my pasta I indulged in a decaf coffee and the biggest cannoli I’ve ever seen. At the back of my mind is the intention to resume my pre holiday ban on sweets and treats, I need to get back to my discipline and resolve.

Once home I sort out my drugs wallets for the next two weeks adding in my chemo tablets, so tonight my night meds will include the start of a new round of chemo. I can feel myself losing spoons so I start to draft the blog while watching Alcaraz demolish Medvedev in men’s semi final at Wimbledon. Still it rains and still it is dull and grim.

There is much to do still to organise my space and fully get control of my environment to get back on track but initially I need to prepare for tomorrows poetry Stanza. This month it is a zoom meeting so I need to set up the office for tomorrow afternoon. The poems this month are particularly good so despite the lack of face to face it should be an interesting meeting. So I need to print off the poems and. arrange my stanza file. That will take some of the evening, the rest of it will be resting with TV and perhaps some reading. I am aware that I am still catching up on my birthday and need time to return to all my cards and presents, I also have letters to reread and absorb.

Thursday and I wake to a cloudy sky, I do my vitals and then make drinks for myself and my partner. We decide on a simple breakfast which while we eat the weather breaks and It rains. We know that the forecast for tomorrow here and at home is for heavy rain and thunderstorms so we decide to go home today so that we do not have to drive in the rain for hours. We pack, and then visit the sea for the last time, paddling for a short while. My partner and I go for lunch in the Rockpool café and then pack the car. I shower and then we set off for home at about 13:45.

The drive gets us back home at about 19:30 , having had a stop for comfort, a stop for fuel and an unexpected stop to check the tyres, In general the drive is good but tiring. Once home I am pretty fried and spoonless. There is post and some of it are birthday cards and presents. A friend has sent me a surprise present of an ice hockey jersey, pictures to follow. My partner and I eat a simple tea and watch a film. I draft the blog and finally go to bed. Tomorrow I will try and collect my new cycle of chemo drugs and I can get going on chemo again.

Wednesday and I wake up feeling reasonable. I make drinks for my partner and me. I check my vitals and then we chat about breakfast and the day ahead. We eat croissants and strawberries before taking stock of what food we have in. The crisis is that there are only three tea bags left so shopping is a priority. I take my morning meds and then we wander off to Tesco to pick up our needs. We take the long way round and on the way we pick up presents for my partners friend and I grab some more postcards.

Back at the apartment we store the goodies and I set about the crosswords. Today I am on fire and zip through them. By lunchtime it is decided that we will have fish and chips so we wander round to the chippy for their boxed meal. Clutching the boxes we return to the apartment only to find that the mushy peas had been missed out. We managed without. Post late lunch I wrote the postcards. There will be some surprised people who have not heard from me for years and perhaps others who will be surprised by a second card. My partner and I walk to the post box and get there in time for todays post, mission accomplished we walk along the seafront path to the “haunted house” and back to the apartment. My gut does not feel right and sure enough there is blood in my urine. I am gutted, I wanted to exercise to day but cannot now, it’s becoming wearing this unpredictable symptom of god knows what. All I can do is drink water and rest.

My partner and I go to the ice cream van and sit in the evening sunshine with our 99’s and soak up the sun as we watch the tide recede and the beach gradually appear. Back at the apartment I drink more water and monitor myself while beginning to draft the blog. There has been odd emails to solicitors and agents to do today but not much else life admin. I slip into the evening where I and my partner will finish watching A Spy Amongst Friends, eat supper late and go to bed hoping for sleep to engulf the night. I’m tired already and feel drained, it feels mental as much as physical and it probably is. I’m aware that tomorrow is our last day of holiday during which we will do things for the last time this holiday, pack, perhaps load the car before going out to eat in the evening. At the end of a holiday I get twitchy and reach a point where I just want to be on my way and get home, I’ve a strange urge to row, collect my next lot of drugs, attend the poetry stanza and see my garden again. It boils down to being in control and able to manage in the space that I feel is safe. That’s the underlying anxiety associated with managing my cancer as best I can.