Thursday and I am awake early in anticipation of my oncology review at 11:20. Normally I would check my emails and go back to sleep, but today I get up and make breakfast. More cholesterol friendly muesli and a decaf coffee. I eat it while putting together my crib sheet for the review and bring up my Excel spreadsheet for my blood pressure, which now includes an cycle average blood pressure chart. So breakfast done and my coffee table work space cleared for action I watch the Harvard University Justice lecture number 10 on Aristotle’s politics. Its fascinating stuff, and Michael Sandel is an excellent lecturer. The original lectures were given back in the early 2000’s which means there is still use of the overhead projector! Remember them with there acetate sheets and infuriating drying pens. However he is brilliant at getting the audience of students to participate and doing the philosophical arguing. It gets close to review time and I sit expectantly waiting for my phone to ring. It doesn’t and it continues to not ring for an hour and a half. By now I have text’d the specialist cancer nurse and started to watch the second series of the Good Place. I have even amended the reading instructions for my poem, Too Sore to go to Peaky Blinders, a Sonnet. I am not sure if I have shared that on the blog before, if I haven’t here it is with its new reading instructions.

(Instruction for reading: Add your own commas and full stops. Only comas and full stops everything else is too fancy, but in iambic. You may use 1 octave, or two quatrains to make up the first stanza and the remaining sestet for the final stanza.)

Too sore for Peaky Blinders, a sonnet 
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck 
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck 
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck 
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck 
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck 
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck 
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck 
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck 
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck 
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck 
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck 
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck 
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck Cancer.

Any way by the time I have done all this no one has rung me. My partner goes out for a walk to the shop and only as she returns does my phone ring. At last there is someone from the oncology department. Not the consultant, “he who made a pact with the devil”, but one of his staff. So she tells me what I already know about my falling PSA and tells me bloods are okay, I point out they are the best bloods I have had in four years, go me, and then she asks how my blood pressure is. I tell her its an average of 127 over 75 over the cycle so far to which she responds “Oh that’s good”, note the lack of curiosity about how I know this. Lets face it I could just make anything up, but I didn’t. So there was a bit of chat about my gut being off a bit and the persistent tiredness and fatigue along the lines of yes that what this drug does and then she says she is happy to prescribe me another two cycles to which I respond the conversation had been that we would move to three. She askes me if I am happy with that and I say yes, thinking I could have pulled any number out of the air. We part company with her saying she will tell the pharmacy to order it in and I will hear in due course. So that was it. Goal achieved, now I can plan the next three months of my life knowing I’ve got the drugs to do it. My next review will be just before Christmas. Another new year beckons, first step in the new five year plan.

I eat a late lunch on the patio with my partner on the patio and settle down to do the daily crossword puzzles. I drift up stairs intending to do my vitals but find myself sleepy and decide to nap. I wake at well gone four o’clock with several messages on my phone. The hospital pharmacy has text me to say I can pick up my drugs next Tuesday afternoon, the 11th, so that goes in my diary. I do my vitals, which are all good but I am having a hot flush. In the freezer I find the box of lollies that I bought the other day and relax, happily sucking it as I cool down. I know its only coloured water but it feels more virtuous than an an ice cream. One more chore to do and that is contact the tree people to come and give us a quote for removing some of the trees in the garden. I also catch up with the messages friends have sent me during the day asking how the review went, which went unanswered or got only perfunctory responses.

Back on the sofa I start to draft the blog, while in the distance I hear Thursdays Tuna pasta being prepared, before my partner has her on line singing lesson tonight. My evening could well be full of The Good Place or a film. On the horizon is the Rugby World Cup, in fact the opening match is tomorrow night. I shall be lost in that no doubt. But for now I devour my tuna pasta and glide into the evening able to plan a little ahead. Mind you planning things is a double edged sword, things can go wrong, whereas if I don’t plan anything there is nothing to go wrong, thus saving me from a ton of anxt. Night meds and bed is always the bottom line, but after todays early start I think an early night is called for.

Wednesday and I wake up to the sounds of the house at work and finally get up. I do not feel great and notice my PSI score has dropped below 100 so I know I am going to have to train today. I settle down with a dish of muesli (cholesterol friendly) and go through my emails and find there is work to be done on my sisters estate. Not a big deal but it took time. I watch another Harvard Justice lecture and then I set about cleaning the filters in the dishwasher, all I can say is that Daisy has been letting herself go . Once I had done the nasty bits I set off on a cleaning cycle. These are some of the mundane things that fill my days. I do not think I am unique but I am either desperate for folk to know it or I have a sense that great portions of humanities time is spent on such things but no one wants to face the fact that their lives are not a continuous stream of exciting and interesting activities. Of course we all know it but I guess I feel that my cancer makes me notice. Difficult to explain really, I will leave it with you.

I go to the Shed and spend time making a video letter. Occasionally I do this if I feel estranged from my pens and ink. Any way I complete the letter and transfer it to a USB and pop it into an envelope. Yes I know what you are thinking, “why doesn’t he send it as an email attachment or e document.” Its simple really I just do not think its the same as finding an envelope on the doorstep like a real letter. So I send them through the mail, I think its a win win. Any way having prepared the envelope I pack up the Shed and return to the house and then I go to the post office to send off me voice letter. In a moment of spontaneity I decide to walk down to the co-op to pick up pasta and strawberries for my tea tonight as the rest of the household are all out. Once home and the family are out I get myself into my kit and go to the garage. Its time to row, so I set myself up for a 45 minute row which if I am lucky will get me over the 100PSI level I need. So I set off and immediately have a moment of regret, this is going to be a bitch of a session. So I guess I try to compensate and go at it a bit more than I feel capable of. By the end of the 45 minutes I am knackered and very hot. The good news is that I have reached my normal distance and calorie burn, go me.

I’m so hot post training and wonder around with my nothing but my neck fan on trying to cool down. Once I finally get cooled down I throw on kimono and cook my pasta and prepare a dish of strawberries. I settle down and eat while watching a poor Sly Stallone film made for teenagers, really very odd. The family return home and drift off to bed as I draft the blog. Tomorrow is my cancer review, by phone of course, and I have been doing my homework. I’ve worked out my average blood pressure over my three cycles so far and updated my bloods. The aim is to convince he who made a pact with the devil to prescribe my chemo drugs in a three month block. It would make my cancer admin a bit easier and enable going away from home easier. I take my night meds and make my way to bed.

Tuesday the 5th of September, in all the excitement of my partners mothers 95th birthday party and the new grandson staying over the weekend I had forgotten that four years ago on Sunday was my first day of Chemotherapy. With a Gleeson score of 9+ and a predicted 8 months on the survival graphs, the first Chemotherapy was going to add an additional 18 months. Here I am four years later with a falling PSA, the best standard blood results I’ve ever had since I started and a new hurdle of high cholesterol. In that time I’ve been on holidays, seen friends, out lived my sister and been around to see my third grandchild come into the world. Both my daughters are working and either being mothers or continuing to study, while my son continues to forge a life in Sweden with his family. My partner continues to amaze me. Although I have not yet managed to get my poetry published I do still write some along with letters to friends. I survived COVID. All in all that’s not bad going. I am sure I have missed a few things, but there is a limit to self proclamation that is tolerable. My family, loves and garden sustain me, in that I have increasingly found that simple things are most sustaining and that what foundations I laid inside myself have borne me up over the last four years. Its not easy but now there is a real battle going on and once again I have to find the discipline and will power to get back to training, to drop my weight and combat the worst of the current chemo’s side effects. The next five years might need a revised strategy, but I am working on it.

Today was again a sunny one. As I got out of bed I could hear my partner in the office busy at work. I contemplated breakfast in terms of lowering my cholesterol and went for muesli, a good choice I thought. Of course I started to research cholesterol and sources of Omega 3. What I found was a lot of bollocks written as infoads, where there was a survey of the best products that inevitably had the sponsors product rated as the best, which is just a neat way of slagging off the competition. When I got through all the crap adn found some solid peer reviewed research it turns out that there is no firm evidence to suggest that Omega 3 supplements are of any proven benefits and that eating oily fish a couple of times a week is good enough. So farewell Roland and hello Dolphin boy as I go in pursuit of oily fish, kippers, herrings, sardines and mackerel beware. Strawberries are supposed to be good as well so suddenly a breakfast of strawberries and small flute of champagne is looking good. By the time I had researched it was time to hang the washing out, have a shower and put on my dapper clothes to go and do some. business in town.

On my return there was time for lunch, tuna roll and and apple (both cholesterol busters). I put more washing in and retreated to the Shed. There I wrote letters. I’ve discarded my artist ink for ordinary pen ink. In this weather the artist ink cloys and will not play well at all with my dipping pens. My letter complete I walk over to the post box to send it and return to peg out the latest lot of washing and begin to draft the blog. I do not get very far as the garden guy turns up so there are drinks to be made and conversations to be had. I can feel myself running out of spoons as I continue to draft the blog until tea is ready. The family dines on the patio as the evening cools. I later discover that I have missed a call from a friend, which is disappointing. I bring in my washing and settle down again to finish drafting the blog. I am more or less out of spoons now and entering the zombie phase of the evening, which means struggling to read or TV. So I guess it will be TV and my night meds before going to bed and hoping for a cool night, nothing worse than hot flushes on a hot night.

Its Monday and there is a baby in the house, oh yes! It’s been a while since I have woken to the sound of a new baby chatting and making baby noises off in the distance. My partner is awake and presents me with a decaf coffee and we gradually get ourselves going. Breakfast is an extended family affair with the new member joining in. With everyone fed its time to head for the outdoors, except my eldest daughter who is at work in the back room. There is of course a lot of packing baby stuff into the car to make sure we have everything. In fact this little trip is a two car job. We drive to the local park where new boy is transferred to an all terrain buggy. Never had those in my day, is my grand gnarly response. So we set off across the paths and meander around the ponds until we come to the duck feeding point. Bread appears and as the first crumbs appear so do the ducks and a solitary Moorhen. Mother and Grandmother set about feeding the ducks.

We exhaust the bread and then stroll back to the cars where we load up and head for home. Once home there is a light lunch, a feed for grandson and amidst the miracle car packing the new family move off on their journey home. Its been a delicious time with them and I am sad to seem them go and hope they have a good journey back to their nest in the forest.

My partner takes to a recliner and I check my emails. I find three new blood results that I do not usually have as part of the outcome of checking my anticoagulant. Two of them are okay, one isn’t. My Triglyceride is at 1.85, which when I look it up is okay, just. My Glycosylated Haemoglobin is 5.5, which apparently is normal. However my cholesterol is 6.9. Its high. I of course look up what this means. What it means is sucking herrings and taking omega 3 tablets and feasting on muesli. Another fucking thing I have to manage, which means nothing enjoyable and more exercise that will raise the probability of pissing blood. Is there no end to this crap. My partner has fallen into a nap so I put washing in and clear the kitchen. I then get into the garden where I cut back everything in the front garden that I can. By the time I have finished and resting on the swing seat my partner has joined me with cake and squash. Time to reflect on the last two days. Having had the treat I hang the washing out and then set about watering the pots in the front garden and feeding the tomato plants. I empty the top tier of the water butt and keep going until everything in a container has been watered. I’m tired and retreat to the sofa to draft the blog. Tesco delivers and is cheery, I also get to sign for the order, which seems random as I have not done so before, perhaps its a new process or a wicked scam to get my signature. I return to the sofa with a head full of conspiracy theories. That’s where I am when tea is called. I wonder out to the patio and eat my rice and meatballs feeling my spoons ebb away. A coffee and a couple of digestives (no good for cholesterol) and I am gathering in the dry washing before retuning to the sofa and drafting the blog. It been a long day and I sink into TV and an early night, taking my meds and hoping for sleep. Its going to be hot all week so there will be garden time but also Shed time as I am aware that I have letters to write. I am struck by the thought that tomorrow many will go back to school but due to “aero” concrete may not be able to, will this lead to a re-release of “School’s Out” by Alice Cooper?

Sunday and its the day of my partners mothers 95th birthday party. I hear the sounds of baby in the house and I am brought a coffee to remind me that there are things to do. I do join the family for croissants and more coffee before downing my morning meds and then helping with preparations. Bags get packed with party food and before we depart I load Daisy dishwasher and set her to work. The family leave the house and drive across the forest to the my partner’s mother. we are greeted by her carer and we are soon laying the table with food.

The whole family turn up, so for the first time in years everyone is there. The only people who are not there are my some and family but as they are in Stockholm it would be tricky for them to get over for the day. I spend time chatting to the career who I had not met before and then with family members. My overwhelming sense is one of vibrancy. I think it is to do with mixing of the generations and what seems like fewer opportunities for them to meet. There is eating and drinking and a lot of catching up with one another and of course a cake and candle moment. There are is a baby, a toddler and a junior amongst us adults which adds to the richness of the mix and quite a range of new parents and new grandparents. Of course there was only one great parent who seemed to enjoy having her family around her.

Inevitably the time comes for the family photograph and the clearing away of the debris of the feast. We say our goodbyes load up cars and drive off. Once home I take a quiet moment on the garden swing seat in the sunshine and reflect on the afternoon. My partner joins me. We note that since COVID and my cancer there has been less times that the family have met and that no one has had the energy to do the hosting. We have all had our issues and I remember and miss our hosting a Christmas family gathering. Perhaps this year if I and my partner feel up to it, we will see.

We sit down as a family and eat tea while the new young baby sleeps peacefully. At the end of the meal we clear the decks, load up Daisy dishwasher and return to the lounge to watch a baby sleep and some TV. During the evening I take photos of the new grandson.

I draft the blog and while watching TV and then the football highlights. I sit with grandson and his dad till I droop and go to bed.

Saturday, well the full blood scores were pretty damn good to wake up to. Given that these bloods were taken 17 days into the 28 day third cycle, this is a good result. Its also sunny. If the arithmetic is to be believed then my cancer is being contained at the moment, or at least the PSA indictor is reducing, which seems to indicate a positive response to the current chemo. I drink a warm coffee in bed and then get up to complete the results grid and up load it to the website library before tucking into toast for breakfast and finishing off with my morning meds.

There is much to be done this morning and I find that my partner has been busy cooking for tonight and tomorrow. I clear the kitchen and then take myself off to do my vitals (all good) and then to sort my clothes out. As lunchtime approaches I sit on the patio in the sunshine and do the crosswords. I am in the middle of this when my youngest daughter appears with her new baby son and partner. This is the baby grandson I have been referring to as Dangerous Beans. We eat lunch and acquaint ourselves with the new member of the family. Its quite warm outside so we move indoors with baby boy and get him to sleep. During this time Amazon deliver some new storage boxes which are destined to house the last of my sisters and families material goods and documents in the loft. I begin to integrate yet more books into the houses over crowded book shelves and having found a new niche for my Brentford signed football I am able to accommodate the boxed ones. The rest, which were awards to my mother will go into storage in the loft. As I unpack more stuff I am able to jettison the cardboard boxes into the recycling. Slow I am getting to the point where It will all be contained in sealed plastic boxes that can go in the loft or the garage. I’m almost there.

Having got this far I return to the sofa and have Dangerous Beans lay on my chest and fall asleep while tea is being prepared. Its a long time since I had a baby fall asleep on me and even long since I sang to one to get it asleep. All goes well and my youngest grandson falls asleep. By the time tea is ready he has to be nudged awake to be changed and fed as the family assemble for tea . We eat and then clear away as my youngest daughter and new mother gets ready to go off to bed early in order to get enough sleep to get through the night. The kitchen gets cleared and the dishwasher loaded as before we all retreat to the lounge and collectively get Dangerous Beans to go to sleep. So here I am drafting the blog as he sleeps soundly on my partners lap happily snuffling along. There will of course be Match of the Day football highlights and then night meds before going to bed and seeing what the night brings. I suspect that youngest grandson will have his own ideas about what the night is for, so we shall see how it goes.

Friday adn I am the first awake and making warm drinks, downing my morning meds and fishing out my blood form. While the house slumbers I walk down to the GP surgery noting that autumn is in the air and smug that I have worn a vest. I have to admit I am a convert to the vest, that cosy close layer of warmth is welcome on such mornings and I am hoping will delay the dreaded turning on of the heating system. Anyway I arrive at the GPs, log in and wait to be called. The nurse soon appears and beckons me in. I hand her my form and she asks if my bloods have been done to monitor my Apixaban intake. I tell her I’ve never had bloods done but someone did ring me up and ask me questions. “Ah” she says and runs off a form and gets out two more blood vials. So in goes the needle and out goes four vials of blood. Its all done quickly and efficiently and in no time at all I am sporting a white fluffy cloud taped to my arm. I walk home via the co-op to gather strawberries, a paper and my monthly cash allowance it being the first day of September.

By the time I get home the house has stirred and I am made toast and decaf coffee. I clear the kitchen and then return m partners car manual to her car glove box but not before I wrestle the cigar lighter adapter from behind the compartment where it has got itself lodged. Its the small moments of over coming the nuisance phenomena that are sometimes the most satisfying. I help change the bed and then do my vitals. They are all good. Chore done I set about transferring the results to my data base and calculating my average blood pressure so far on this third cycle of chemo. I know that I have called this era of my blog CHEMO II but it is not continuous, within it there are 28 day cycles and I am onto the third of these cycles. Unlike my first chemo which had six discrete 28 day cycles and came to an end, these cycles will go on until the drug stops working and my body finds another clever way to stop it. How long that will be I have no idea so I could go in cycling till I die. It feels like I am locked in to a franchise like Fast and Furious, Rambo or Bond. “My name is Roland, Double digits cycle Roland, licensed to blog” .

I lunch on jam doughnuts and decaf coffee and draft the blog before I ease in to the afternoon with another Harvard philosophy lecture. My partner and I go shopping for presents at our local shopping centre and whilst there take time out for a coffee and tuna melt. Back home we move into the evening with a treat. No one feels like cooking so my eldest daughter and I walk over to the village chippy. Normally you put your order in and then have to wait around while the fish gets cooked almost as if the chippy is taken by surprise that anyone wants fish, tonight I am surprised as there is fish available immediately. I’ve never been served so quickly. Back home we sit down to eat before spending the rest of the evening finishing of The Tower and watching a couple of boxing bouts while finishing off the blog for the day. I take my evening meds and post the blog before going off to sleep knowing that tomorrow my new grandson is coming. One last thing to do, check to see if my blood results are in. They are and I look anxiously for my PSA score, it is relief, my PSA has dropped to 1.7, a fall of 0.6 and I still have 6 days to go in this third cycle. I go to bed feeling that I am still in the fight. My eGFR has also gone up to 62,back in the normal range so my kidneys are firing as good as they can. I am more than just in the fight.

Thursday and I wake up with last night in my head.

Having fully woken up my partner adn I make our way to the Orangery for breakfast. How lovely to have breakfast that is provided by someone else. Good muesli followed by eggs Benedict with salmon. Delicious. We ate whilst the wren that had got into the Orangery flitted about and we chatted to the couple on the next table who had also been to last nights show. We took our time over the meal and then returned to the room to pack. We checked out at reception and then drove home. Being efficient I unpacked and begun to down load material onto the blog site.

It was not long before my partner and I are planning for the weekend and drawing up shopping lists. We get organised and drive to our local Sainsburys and fill our trolley with the goodies we require plus a few indulgences. Its not a good experience, nothing specific but the joy of supermarkets has faded. Its difficult to describe but it is now just a big shop full of strange stuff and After Eight mints at a scandalous £4. The goodies get loaded in the car and we return home but on the journey we discover that the CD player is refusing to spit out the resident CD. Once home I read the car manual to no avail and then watch videos of people wheedling CDs out of car CD players. Armed with my computer mending tool kit and some gaffer tape (no crisis in which gaffer tape isn’t useful), I return to the car and proceed to delve into the CD player. In less time than I anticipated I am able to coax the CD in to view. With a deft touch I use my computer fine point pliers to slide the disc out. I run checks and find the CD player is now working perfectly well. It is clear that the CD player was unwilling to let Tina Turner out into the world again. Happy with my work I return Tina to my partner with a plea not to let Tina back in the car.

With my tools away I settle down to watch episode three of the Harvard philosophy lectures and continue to watch until tea time. I am drooping, a severe lack of spoons now but I draft the blog before settling down to watch one of my favourite films, In the Heat of the Night, possibly Rod Steiger’s best performance as the racist southern sheriff. I’m drinking water like a thirsty camel as I have bloods to do in the morning and being hydrated make a difference. I will take my meds and get myself to bed and hope for many spoons to give mem the energy for the weekend.

Wednesday and I am awake and sentient, so much so that I watch lecture two of the Harvard philosophy course before getting up. It Bentham and utilitarianism. The lecturer is really good and involved the students excellently, drawing out the arguments for and against and plotting out the questions to be examined in the coming lectures. With brain fed I get up for breakfast and my meds before taking my vitals (all good there) and packing for my night away seeing a Dire Straits tribute band tonight as a birthday present. I decide to train as my PSI score on my fitness app has dropped below 100. I get myself ready and go to the garage to row. I need 21 PSI point to get to a 100 total so I decide to opt for a 45 minute session. So I I row as ever cautiously for the time, burning off more than 550+ calories and managing 8795 metres, a bit below my usual normal of 9 kilometres. However it does the job as my PSI score rises to 127 and my fitness age drops a year to 51. That will do me at the moment. My personal best back in 2022 for the same duration and resistance level is a tad over 13 kilometres, so it is clear I am a long way off my peak fitness. It defines my struggle and fight, as a colleague of mine always used to say “the logic is in the arithmetic”.

After my session I record it in my journal and caste about for something to listen to before a shower and lunch. I end up with the Infinite Monkey Cage on radio. They are excellent adn funny as well as being informative. I also have a letter from a friend which I devour immediately. I love that moment when I realise I have a letter to read. I shower merrily and dry my now cascading white hair before lunch during which I indulge in another Infinite Monkey Cage episode. This one was on fungi and was quite an eye opener. With Daisy dishwasher packed my partner and I pack the car and I drive us off to Kilworth House about half an hour away to book in to the hotel. The plan is pre concert dinner in the Orangery before being golf buggy’d (exciting, reminiscent of Disney World car park) to see the show in the hotel’s concert facility in the grounds of the hotel. So before I get caught up in the whirl of excitement I draft the blog in anticipation of a reckless spoon spending evening. A good night out and ended in brandy so pictures tomorrow.

Tuesday and I wake to find my partner has gone to real work. A friend has emailed me a link to the Harvard University first semester philosophy course which has been been made available on line. There are twelve of them, so before I get up i watch the first one. Its very good and I plan to watch one each morning before I get up. I get myself up and cook breakfast and toast to be washed down with decaf coffee and my morning meds. So far so good, I’m feeling more human this morning. There are chores to be done after clearing the kitchen. I replace the light bulb in the bathroom and hoover out the dead bodies of wasps from the fitting. The light works and for now that is enough. I move onto preparing the boiler cupboard for the service guy to come later in the day and then move on to replacing light bulbs in the lounge light fitting. More success there, I am on a roll. I refill my drugs wallets for the next two weeks which will take me to the end of cycle three of Chemo II. All I have to to do is remember to have my bloods done on Friday in readiness for my next oncology review on Thursday the 7th and my cancer admin will be under control.

My philosopher friend also emails a link to The Good Place a comedy/philosophy show. From the moment it starts with the main protagonist being told she is dead and come to The Good Place by the “architect” (played by Ted Danson) I am hooked. What follows is many of the classic philosophical problems played out in comedic fashion. It is genius. I am so hooked that I manage to watch the whole of series one before tea time. There are three more series to watch so I have something that I can watch without feeling guilty and also learn stuff along the way. My partner returns from work and we later eat tea. I have some minor admin to do and I also daft the blog before settling down for the rest of the evening. I am out tomorrow at a concert and an over night stay at the venue, so I need to get a good nights sleep to rack up the spoons. Its the Sultans of swing for me.