Thursday and I am awake early after a night of dreams. For some reason I was sitting an exam which I was not happy about to the extent that I chopped my desk and chair up and fashioned a galleon with offence slogan on the sails. At this point I woke. I thought about going back in but decided to spend some time checking my emails and messages. I ended up doing quite a lot of business before finally getting out of bed and having breakfast.

I tidied a bit, cleared the kitchen and then read for a bit. At lunch time there was bacon sandwiches and then more reading. I settled in the sunshine of the lounge and wrote a letter to an old colleague who I had not heard from for a while and then popped over to the post office to sent my letter on its way and pick up a paper. The short walk left me breathless, concerningly so. I rested doing the crosswords and letting myself calm down. Outside in the garden the Michaelmas daisies are providing nectar for the bees and butterflies. And rooks are taking advantage of the bird feeder.

I rest and try to decide which poem to take to the poetry Stanza this Saturday. Its a choice between something flippant related to my waist size or something a little more pithy about my cancer. Once I make my choice I rest more until tea before once again settling down to draft the blog to a background of NCIS while my partner is having her weekly singing lesson. I feel another early night coming on. I do not feel clever and place my faith in rest and sleep. I have a trip to make next week, a poetry stanza to attend and some birthday planning to do alongside the continuing saga of my sisters estate. Time to eat the elephant one bite at a time.

Wednesday and I wake with a sense of relief and feeling better than I have done for a few days. It is a good feeling to have sold the house in London both in terms of managing my sisters estate and psychologically. Collectively the executors of my sisters estate were anxious that with the state of the market it could have been a difficult and drawn out process that took us into a winter and all that would mean for maintaining an empty house. Thankfully that has been avoided and is now someone else’s problem. They are probably planning to rip the guts out of it as I type this but I really do not care. Mostly I am pleased to be rid of the weight of it and the associations it held for me. It feels as if I have finally cut the ties to a place I could not wait to get off when young and sever my ties completely with London, a place I left with no regrets at all. All that remains now is the tedious flog through the rigmarole of tax returns and dealing with HMRC. I am quietly hopeful that the tax consultant hired by the solicitor will sort that out.

I have breakfast and clear the kitchen as usual and then take a brief time to start the blog before going to the Shed to start writing letters and thinking about next Saturdays Poetry Stanza meeting, which is face to face. I also realise that I am down to my last stamp, which in my world is a crisis. So it seems that my day’s priorities fall neatly into a to do list of, write, stamps, exercise and rest.

Over the day I manage to spend time in my Shed and write letters, replenish my stamp reserves and provide fish and chips for my partner who has visited her mother in the afternoon and wrestled with the impenetrability of the banking system. No training as by the afternoon had rolled round I was knackered, this is clearly a low spoon day. So I make no apology for a short and bland blog today, some days are just difficult and less inspiring than others. Although I woke up quite chipper I have declined quite quickly today, one can never tell how its going to go on any one day. I shall watch Race Across The World and then take my meds and take myself to bed with a book. I get another shot at it tomorrow.

Tuesday and I wake up to a silent house as the household has gone to work, so I have time to appreciate the warmth of the winter duvet. I am still sore from yesterdays injections so I take my time getting up. I decide to walk to the village co-op for a paper and then to the village café. Getting a paper goes well but I am thwarted for breakfast by the café being closed till the 26th. Back home I resort to muesli, coffee and the crosswords. Out of the blue an email comes in telling me that the sale of the house in London as part of my sisters estate as been completed.

There is an immediate relief that this has been accomplished and then there is a flurry of paperwork to do. I send several emails tying up loose ends and asking for clarifications on tax points. Thus my afternoon disappears as I print of copies of statements and file them. My partner returns from work and we move into the evening. I watch England beat Italy and qualify for next years European championships. The blog gets drafted while the TV plays out the news in the background. I am tired from yesterdays injections and will take my night meds and go to bed early hoping that tomorrow I will be able to train and reflect on being free of my childhood home in London and all the baggage that came with it.

Monday, Jab Monday, so I’m awake at 7 o’clock and trying to surface. My partner brings me coffee and toast to get me going, which it does. I get up and sort out my clothes, its got got to be a T shirt as I’m having my B12 jab as well as my regular cancer jab to day so there needs to be easy arm access. I choose my fuck cancer T short that was made for me by a friend. It acts as a bit of armour against how I feel. Today is is going to be different as it will be the first time I have had to wear a mask to the GP in months. The GP has messaged his flock to say masks are now a thing again due to the new strain of COVID virus that is going around. Fortunately I saw the message and immediately bought a new stock of masks. So I get to the GP on time and have no chance to read before the nurse beckons me in to the clinical room. We chat about the chilly weather while she mixes up my injection and then she pops it into me. The B12 goes in my arm straight after. I cannot book my next one as the system is not loaded up to my next date so a reminder has to go in my diary. I leave the surgery feeling less than chipper but buy a paper on the way home.

Once home I settle down to do the crosswords and puzzles in the paper, I’m cold and turn the heating on for the first time this year. I read an article where the nhs had recommended that homes should be kept at 18 degrees, the thermometer that I had taken round the house had shown that the house was around 15 degrees. No wonder I am cold. My injection days always get worse over 48 hours before I feel better so I want to be warm, I’m tired of being snifferly and feeling chilly all day. So stuff the bill and the fact that its sunny outside the house needs warming through and so do I. I try to get onto my website to draft the blog but get thrown out several times so I give that up and arrange to see friends in December for a meal. I move onto the Amazon website to try and explain that the delivery they say has been delivered yesterday has not, the chatbot was polite and suggest I wait a coupe of days to see if stuff turns up. I’ll go with that as I only order the items yesterday and the tracking says they were delivered yesterday, so chatbot could be right this time.

I have soup for lunch to warm me up and to help with the sense of constipation I’m experiencing, which I think and hope is just a side effect of the paracetamol I am taking to stave off the effects of todays jabs, but just in case I have a laxative at hand. I finally get onto my blog site and begin to draft todays edition but as I sit here typing I can feel my injection site becoming sore. Its the usual process, the site increases in soreness, I take paracetamol and a couple of hours later I start to feel like a withdrawing junkie, cold, shaky and as if I am going down with flu. I’d prefer to be more Christopher Robin and go down with Alice but it is what it is. I settle down for the afternoon and will read some more David Sedaris. I should train as my PSI points have dropped below 100 but I can tell I might not feel chipper enough today to do that.

The day got better when the solicitor dealing with my sisters estate emailed to say the buyer is ready to exchange and to complete this week and was asking for the go ahead. Of course I said yes but as always one does not jump for joy until the the curtain rings down and the final bow is taken. When it does, if it does, then I can breathe an immense sigh of relief. For now my evening comes to an end with meds having finished reading my David Sedaris book. As I slide into the night I feel myself slipping into my post injection withdrawing junkie state.

Saturday a day ago and already much lost. Its a cloud of vegetable shopping, rugby disappointment for Wales and Ireland and yet more admiration for Angela Rippon on Strictly. There were patches of reading, crosswords and chores but nothing inspirational. The usual chores and pottering around. The good thing is that my sore rib from last week (bloody hedgehog) are easing. I did check the garden camera and picked up the record of the dead hedgehog and me burying it. Unfortunately there is no sign after that date of hedgehogs. I am pretty sure the one I buried was not our “regular” hedgehog but I need to have some proof before I start to put food in the hog canteen again. At the end of the day I take my meds and go to bed.

Sunday and I weigh in first thing and find I am 96.7 kilos, a loss of 0-7 kilos over the week. So far “no sweets, cakes or biscuits October” is working slowly but steadily. Warm coffee before getting up and then its breakfast with morning meds. My favourite way to start the day, bacon sandwiches, is probably a major contributor to my elevated cholesterol levels but some times there is a need to eat the unwise. With breakfast over I start on Christmas. This stemmed from an earlier conversation with my partner where we both agreed that we could easily get going on an Christmas and get it down early. With that in mind I dug out my journal with my Christmas card list in it and up dated it, calculated the number I need and the stampage. With that done I go to Amazon and order my cards for this year. I also discovered that I can buy stamps from Tesco so by Monday evening Amazon and Tesco will have equipped me to do my cards. I may well get the cards done and then send them as so as it does not feel to previous and will not create a “heart sink” moment in recipients rather that moment of festive skip of joy of getting something through the post other than all the crap flyers, junk mail and coercive sales pap that drops on our door mats all the rest of the year. I just my start sooner this year. What I will not do is write one of those “family letters” which manages to pack an entire years gossip, trivia and misery into two tightly typed pages and mentions obscure family relations that no one knows or is interested in. For some reason these sorts of letters err on the side of doom and gloom. Rarely do such happy events such as the neighbours rabbit having kittens or unexpected wealth get a mention. The closet they get is the sunny foreign holiday that has been had, which is a bit of a double edge sword if such sunny sourjons are out of ones own reach. I prefer the personalised note in each card that can reflect the individual nature of the relationship. On this day 2014 I finished reading the final novel of Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. It clearly made an impression as its the only set of novels that made it into my diary.

My partner goes to the gym and I draft the blog. All this culminates as England kick off against Fiji in the World Rugby Cup. What a game, and one England manage to win and progress into the semi finals. So the evening starts with Country File followed by Strictly results show and then the final quarter final of the rugby in which France take on South Africa. For me it will then be time to take my night meds and paracetamol in readiness for tomorrows early morning monthly injections. It will be a double injection this month to include B12. It will be another Monday on which I try to make the effort to train as well as continue with “no sweets, cake and biscuits” October.

Friday and I wake to find a thoughtful cold coffee waiting for me. I clearly roused early and fell back to sleep. Surfacing I wonder how my youngets grandson is and whether he is recovering from COVID and I wonder if my presents are arriving for my eldest grandson in Sweden in time for his birthday tomorrow. First I must get new papers from the solicitors counter signed by my partners brother, so I message him and arrange to go round to see him in the morning. A quick breakfast and coffee with meds and I drive round to get the papers signed. I have a quick chat with my brother in law about an issue on the papers and then drive back home to check previous versions. Having checked that I have run off the right version I go to the post office to send the documents and buy a newspaper. I’m knackered, it would appear that recently I have had fewer spoons than before.

The second half of the morning I spend doing the days crosswords and reading Banana Yoshimoto’s Premonition, before eagerly devouring a bacon sandwich for lunch. I do not feel great so I continue to read Premonition. By 3 o’clock I have finished it. A beautiful sensitive book that only a Japanese writer could have written. It weaves the less tangible human experiences together with a modern Japanese context in a way that is not sentimental or fanciful but natural and easily acceptable in a matter of fact way. She is definitely one of my favourite writers. I had bought the book as soon as I had seen that is was available having been advertised as her new novel, but when I looked at the publication date I see that it was first published in 1988 some 35 years ago and only now in 2023 has been translated into English. So this gem of a novel has been around for thirty five years and I did not know it. Japanese folk have had this gem for all that time and no one thought to share it with the English speaking world. It makes me wonder what else is out there waiting to be brought into the culture. Perhaps some Japanese works are thought to difficult to translate without losing their subtlety and the way what the Japanese call Yugen, those experiences for which there are no words, is communicated outside the Japanese language. There is in this book the central theme of knowing something but not being able to identify it but knowing that you will. As I say a beautiful book.

Full of the Premonition I go to the village chemists to collect my medication and to buy more paracetamol as its the weekend before injection Monday. It seems to have come around quickly this cycle. I trudge down to the chemist in the ran, which is forecast to last all day so there is no point in delaying. Mission accomplished I trudge back and settle down to start the draft blog, knowing I need to clear kitchen, check my vitals and squirrel away my new medications. I sense its getting clos to the time that the heating will go on. Once or twice recently the hot air heater has been put on in the lounge to create a burst of warmth, an oasis of heat, and today I am wearing my Nightmare Before Christmas jumper for the first time this year. I guess winter is coming although this year it seems in fits and bursts. Perhaps it has something to do with my feelings of shakiness at times but I think it is more to do with anxiety about my condition and the medication.

In think that recently I have taken to drafting the blog earlier in the day but still posting it at night, which probably accounts for the change in tone of it and the structure. My spoons run out more quickly these days and by the time the evenings come around I lack sufficient spoons to write either cogently or expansively. The numbers of people looking at the blog and the numbers of visits has declined, which is not surprising given the time its been going and the humdrum nature of it. I appreciate that reading about my days as they become less exciting, if that’s the word, is understandable, but it still remains for family and friends to be able to dip into to see how I am at any time.

I feel the evening sliding toward me as the world goes dark outside and know that I shall eat dinner tonight, watch football, read and retire to bed hoping for a gentle sleep tonight. It has felt a long day.

Thursday and its day two of cycle 5, I wake up and my first thoughts are about my new grandson who was last night in a side room of a children’s ward with his parents diagnosed with COVID. I send a WhatsApp message and later get one back telling me that they are all home, but everyone is feeling poorly. Before I can get up a friend rings me on her way to getting her flu jab and we chat for a while trying to catch up with how we are and what is going on in our lives. Her world is packed with returning to work after a prolonged period of long COVID and trying to keep everything going with her lively young family. After out call I get up have a simple breakfast and shower in readiness to go to the dentist. I’m just about done when its time to go and collect my new crown. I’m very quickly in the chair of pain having the temporary cap taken of and my new 3D printed crown being glued into place. Its a really good job, well done and my mouth feels so much better for it. I pass reception and pay for my new mouth jewel.

On the way home I get cash from the local co-op but have to walk the village to get the paper I want, which provides me with crosswords to once I am home. Lunch comes and goes and I settle down to read more David Sedaris until I feel moved to do to do the recycling and clear the kitchen. Chores done I draft the blog before going off to the chiropodist, which will make my feet sing with joy. As I remarked to my partner, by the end of the day my mouth and feet will feel great it just the rest of my body in between which feels such crap at the moment.

All goes well at the chiropodist and on retuning home I find my latest book has been delivered. I settle down to start reading the new book and I am not disappointed, I immediately feel the familiar voice of the author and recognise the deftness of touch. There is definitely a distinctive way Japanese writers express issues around feelings and the wordless experiences of people.

The evening proceeds with dinner and moves on to doing yet more paper work for the solicitors read for signing and sending tomorrow. Finally I have done as much as I can and return to drafting the blog and reading to a background of TV stuff that I take little notice of. I take my night meds and go to bed with my book and a new to do list for tomorrow.

Wednesday, welcome to cycle 5, I wake up feeling off. A sort of shaky anxious off, I’m not sure if its the meds or a combination of meds, training and dealing with my sisters estate. I just don’t feel right and wonder if the oncologist warning of being slowed down is coming true. I laze in bed and try to rearrange a dinner date for the group of old colleagues and friends who I met up with on occasions and I also send emails to the executor group of my sisters estate over some issues that have arisen and cost me some sleep last night. My intention was to laze for a while reading David Sedaris’s Dress Your Family in Corduroy & Denim but instead I get up for Toast and coffee trying to settle myself down, in doing so I start to draft the the blog and get my head straight for the day. As my first step to getting my head straight is usually a “to do” list and I guess that’s where I will start. A few mundane things to get me going and then perhaps something a little more ambitious, but what that might be I’m not sure yet.

Apart from a chat with the window cleaner, emails to a solicitor, a bowl of soup and watching the film Dune, part 1 all afternoon I have done bugger all as the rain has fallen outside. However due to a friend of my partner going down with COVID I get to go out with my partner for a meal this evening as it seems a shame to waste the reservation. My doctor has sent a message to everyone saying they are reverting back to requiring everyone to wear a mask when visiting the surgery, which reminds me a friend has sent a picture of his rapid flow test (remember them) showing the tell tale two lines. Feels like we are being crept up on by another wave of COVID. I’ve of course order more masks, more liquid soap and hand sanitizer and will reassess my toilet roll stock immediately. I think my strategy will be one of Panic Early for Christmas COVID.

As I fall into the vulnerable category I am now conscious of having to look after myself a bit more., so I shall be taking stock of unread books I have in reserve and writing paper and envelopes although I suppose the safer thing to do would be to send very long emails. As we move into Autumn I’m hoping my flu jab and COVID booster actually work. I could do without a winter of discontent I’ve got enough on my plate at the moment including avoiding the temptation of a pudding at tonight’s meal and blowing “no sweets, cakes and biscuits” October.

So I go for a meal and learn that my new grandson is going to hospital with a temperature with his parents. By the time we have eaten and returned home my new grandson and parents are in hospital having been diagnosed with COVID and in a side room on a children’s ward. I’m speechless at the cruelty of the world, For Fuck Sake does it never end.

Tuesday and the last day of chemo cycle 4, which signals the need to refill my drugs wallet. Strangely I’m awake at 7 0’clock and reading David Sedaris’s Dress Your Family in Corduroy an Denim, more of his humorous observations of himself and the world he experiences. By 9 o’clock I am up and having breakfast before I ritualistically fill my drugs wallets for the next two weeks. Tomorrow I move on to cycle 5 of my chemo with no gap. I feel fatigued but start the blog before I go to the Shed. Life has to be simple when spoonless so today my to do list reads: 1, drugs, 2. Letters, 3. Train. 4. Put bins out. That’s it. If I do that it will have been a good day. 1 is done so I am off to the Shed to do 2.

Its 16:35 and true to my to do list I have spent most of my time in the Shed writing letters, three in all and managed to get to the post box in time for collection. Going to the post box meant that I could complete 4 on the to do list and bring the car back onto the drive. So I sit with a coffee updating the blog and wondering if I will get to train. I’m feeling very tired but want to not let myself down.

So I manage thirty minutes on the rower and that just about finishes me, I’m now spoonless. I very gratefully eat my evening meal, update my blood pressure spread sheet and do the cycle average and then get the blog drafted. I’m done now, all that matters now is getting through the evening with limited effort and the Great British Bake Off before heading for the sanctuary of bed and a nights sleep. Getting up at 7am was a rash start to the day. I’m hoping that I can get well into my last at hand Davis Sedaris book Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, in which there are more of his essays about his life, family and observation. So I wave cycle 4 farewell and step straight in to cycle 5 tomorrow.

Monday and I wake to an eerie quiet. I realise that the rest of the household have all gone to work, I am silently alone. I check my phone, read a section of David Sedaris’s Me Talk Pretty One Day and then get up in my wearable blanket. The kitchen gets cleared and I make myself boiled eggs and soldiers (magic get better food) and then watch some David Sedaris’s videos. By 11 o’clock I’ve had enough of both the videos and my wearable blanket. In a fit of self disgruntlement I go upstairs and get into my training kit. I’ve had enough of me and my sore ribs and feeling crap, I’m a man that has run marathons, reduced my fitness age to 40, had a career, provided for my family and owe nothing so what the hell am I doing sitting around feeling sorry for myself, its the rowing machine for me, survive it or not. I get into the garage and find the bloody display on the rowing machine was blank. Feeling as I do I take it personally and very grumpily change the batteries and strap in. I was going to do half an hour but I’m so pissed off with the world in general I go for a 45 minute session. To be honest I don’t give a crap if it makes my ribs worse, but I do take it steady to start with, somewhere in there my reasonable rational self is still looking out for me. Its a very below average session but it gets my PSI points over a 100, which is where I need to consistently be. I guess the distance is a bit down and 500+ burnt calories will have to do. I did say yesterday that this would be “give it another go Monday”.

Having got myself together after the session I record it in the journal, book the coming months medications and get a bath organised. As I am alone I can leave all the doors open and wander around as I please. The plan was to read in the bath but instead I listen to three episodes of The Infinite Monkey Cage ranging across, Sharks, Richard III and Space Dust. Having soaked, laughed and got wrinkly I get out of my rib easing bath and don some clothes. Chicken Soup follows and then more Podcasts of the best bits of the Infinity Monkey Cage. On checking my emails there is an email from the solicitor related to the sale of the house in my sister’s estate. The buyers who have not completed are asking to be able to go in with an architect before completion. Our solicitor advises against it unless accompanied by some of the estate agents staff. I agree on behalf of the executors and note the focus needs to be on the hurdles standing in the way of completion of the sale contract.

As I listen to the radio I see another email comes through from my GP asking me to send my blood pressure reading. Having updated my Excel spreadsheet I send the average for cycle 4 so far. It is highly unlikely that I will get a response but then there is nothing remarkable in my blood pressure, or indeed in any of my metrics. My source of discomfort is my fatigue and there is no measure of that objectively, I suppose I could rate myself on a scale of one to ten but without referents for the ends of the scales I’ve no idea what I would rate myself, beyond not my most chipper. My partner returns from work that signals the start of the evening, a beverage, a phone call to check on her mother and then a meal of some description while we wait for Tesco to deliver. I plan to read, rest, take my meds and go to bed and hopefully repeat tomorrow. The sun has shone today and I have glimpsed the garden, thought briefly of being in it or going to the Shed but felt overwhelmed by it. Today has been about the first step of recuperation, again, and tomorrow might require the same, but I feel the tentacles of guilt seeping into as I have been inattentive to those who write to me or to those to whom I write, so perhaps I will find myself in the Shed tomorrow.