Sunday arrives and I read for a while before getting up to have breakfast with my partner. Once again my vitals are good but I do not get to train today. Instead my partner and I go to a new garden centre based on a farm which also has a huge child’s soft play and adventure area. This is next to a restaurant with an eighteen hole putting course in the next floor up. It seems an ideal place to take my youngest grandson when he next visits. Of course we tried out the garden centre restaurant and managed to come away with some goodies like fig jam and an odd impulse buy like a sack of narcissus. Once home there was of course of rugby to watch and time to read more of Tom Hanks short stories. By the evening I am flagging and end my day with my night meds. Monday must start with training to loosen me up.

Monday and I wake to good vitals and time to have croissants before my partner goes to the gym and I head to the garage to row for an hour. I set myself up ready to get going but the reality is that my session starts off very sluggishly. As I warm up I get better and I get to the end having reached my now regular target of 11k and 700+ calories burnt.

With the session recorded and the blog caught up with I shower and then run off a hard copy of a friends PhD proposal to read and write all over. Before I can get to the proposal I need to fill the bird and squirrel feeders and I also bring in the garden camera. I go through what the camera has captured and to my joy the hedgehog appears adn seems to be quite well and active. So this is a happy thing to find.

Having sorted out my garden camera I return to the PhD proposal and paw over my printed copy. I scribble notes and think about what I want to say that might be useful. After a period of cogitation I draft an email with my thoughts. I hope they are useful. Tea follows and I settle down to my evening of TV and reading as I can feel my remaining spoons ebbing away. There is much to start to think about as November nudges the door with birthdays and Christmas coming into view. It is the time of year to get bulbs into the garden and hard prune some of the shrubs so if the weather can hold up I might get on with this. It is also time to record some more of the latest poetry collection for the YouTube channel, which is a decidedly bad weather activity.

Saturday and I am awake quite early, my partner already up. There is time to take my vitals, once again all good, before a shared breakfast. The post arrives and in it is another letter from the cardiac consultant who is responding to my oncologist. Apparently the cardio consultant agrees with my oncology consultant in that he can see no reason why I was given a diagnosis of angina when I was admitted to hospital. On the end of the letter is a note addressed to me telling mem I have a strong and healthy heart! This is really good news and means I can think about pushing myself some more.

My partner goes to the gym and I head for the garden. I spend a lot of time putting in new support poles for the new willow screen that I’ve put in. I move some things into the Shed to make room in the house and eventually I am through with the days garden chores. With a bit of breathing space I order a patio cleaning attachment for the new power washer and then settle down to read a friends PhD proposal. It is an ambitious proposal and I need time to think about it. A rugby match follows which is followed by tea and another game featuring my local team. As this plays out I draft the blog and look forward to catching up with Strictly.

My last tasks before I take myself to bed is to take my night meds and go round the house putting the manual clocks back an hour .Tonight I get an hours additional rest!

Friday and after a good nights sleep I take my vitals and get myself up and into my training gear. I am at my best when I train in the morning. So I take my morning meds and head for the garage and the rower. I strap in and get my ear buds in and tune into Ian Hislop’s radio series where he explores the origins of humour. I set the the session for an hour, so with Ian exploring Chaucerian humour in my ears I start out on my row. An hour later I am mildly enlightened about the history of humour and achieved 11+k and burnt off 700+ calories. So I am pleased with how this has gone.

I record my session in my journal and then as I am about to think about a late breakfast the garden guy arrives, so I make him coffee and hand him some matches and fire lighters and set him burning a lot of the wood that is laying around. He seems to be very happy about the chance to set things alight. I take my partner off for lunch hoping that the garden guy does not over do the bon fire fun.

We eat lunch at our favourite garden centre and discuss the plans for Christmas and I start my own wish list. on returning home I go and get a paper and then spend a while doing todays crosswords. With the daily challenge out of the way I sneak a quick dip into my two new books gifted to me by my friend yesterday. I am really intrigued by Tom Hanks short stories and the first few pages reinforce my impression.

Before I know it its time to cook the evening meal. I have defrosted the chicken thighs and get to work on a Nadya Hussain curry recipe. It all goes to recipe and by 6 o’clock the family are tucking into the dish. It all gets eaten so I assume it was acceptable. Amazon delivers and my latest poetry collection arrives. Its that moment when the physical reality of a book drops into your hands and there is a sense of both relief and tremulousness. This is me done for the year. There will be no more from me until later next year but I will be putting more being read on my Proat8kancerman YouTube channel, so if you want to hear me read one or two then that’s the place to go over the next few days.

Before the evening rugby game gets started I draft the blog and then settle in for a relaxed Friday evening. It all goes to plan and I end the evening taking my meds, clearing the the wreckage I had created in the kitchen and going to bed. I’m feeling lucky, so many people in the news and around are going down with cancer, I am beginning to think I am leading a charmed life. It makes me want to fight harder, there is something more to come, but I am not sure what it is yet. Life continues to be a mystery.

Thursday and I am up early for me but not before I take my vitals, that are good. I am dressed and ready to go out and down my morning meds on the way. The drive to my friends was uneventful and we moved on from there to a local estate which has a tearoom, craft shops and garden centre, however the first thig we did was walk to the lake to see the swans. The peacocks that I was looking forward to were not there, their pen had been grassed over and trees planted. We looked to see if they had been relocated but only found chickens. The tea room was our next port of call.

Having ordered a late breakfast we exchanged books. I gifted the rest of my poetry collections and in return I received Tom Hanks Uncommon Types, a collection of short stories with a typewriter theme, and Ray Bradbury’s The Illustrated Man. At last I have new brain food. We dined, chatted, caught up, shared some of what is going on for us, ate some more and finally, as the team were cleaning away the area headed for the art shops. Nothing there grabbed me and there was nothing in the garden centre that tempted me. By about 4 o’clock I was tiring so we left.

I drove home from my friends tired but very pleased I had made the effort, it had been a lovely day just doing ordinary things and chatting. Once home I felt very tired from the day and caught up with my partner who had also had a long work day. While waiting for tea to come together I started to draft the blog. I was hoping to have more energy to spend but the tiredness has crept up on me. I suspect I shall have an early night with a mixture of football, book and meds. I am slightly nagged as to why the cardiac boys and girls want to see me again but as they do not want to see me until December it cannot be that urgent.

Wednesday and I wake from a reasonable nights sleep feeling okay but in need of a shower, so after taking my vitals and having breakfast I showered. Having emptied the dishwasher I go into my work clothes and gathered up my “de mossing” tools to go in the car. The intention was to de-moss my partner’s mothers’ patio this afternoon while she and her brother visit their mother.

I listen to an episode of The Infinite Monkey Cage before lunch and turning the cars round in the drive. I idle a few minutes away drafting the blog while I give my partner and brother a head start to their mothers.

Once I get to my partners mothers I set to work assessing the problem and deciding on the best solution. Its dry so I decide not to deluge everything in water but go for scouring the patio with a wire brush and then treating it with an anti moss and weed killer. I beaver away till the patio is scoured and then I treat the margins of the front path before treating the whole of the patio and the garden steps. If it stays dry for a while and reasonably bright the effects should be visible soon. I have a quick sit down with my partners mother before getting my gear together and driving home.

As I arrive home the garden guy arrives so there is a flurry of activity till I can sit down and take stock of the day so far. I check my phone and find a message telling me an automated hospital booking system is going to ring in half an hour. I have no idea why I need an appointment. Dead on time OTTO rings and introduces herself adn asks me questions about who I am . With introductions done OTTO says she is from the cardiac unit ad asks if I am available on the 2nd of December. I say yes and OTTO says thank you and tells me I will get a letter adn then just rings off. I have not got a clue why the cardiac boys and girls want to see me given I have been discharged to my GP by the cardiac team who saw me when I was in hospital and after my stress and relaxed heart scans. Its a mystery so all I can do is turn up on the 2nd and see what they have to say for them selves.

With the new appointment in the diary I make myself tea as my partner is our for the evening. Over tea I check to see where my latest poetry collection is in the process of publication and to my surprise I find it is available on Amazon. Of course I order some but that will be my last foray into self publishing this year. As usual it does not feel real and I will wait till the physical copies are in my hands before I share the new book here. It now gets taken as a run of the mill event in this household now, life just goes on, no celebration or comment. I settle down to watch football and continue to draft the blog. And so the day draws to an end with a new mystery to consider. I reflect quietly on today and wonder if I am alone in this and then take my meds and go to bed. Tomorrow I have booked coffee with a friend, which means I get to drive again, all part of my continued effort to engage in the world once more. Tomorrow is also a training day, how quickly these weeks are passing.

Tuesday and I wake up to a busy day so I take my vitals and get myself up. I make breakfast and take my meds and then start to prepare to go to the hospital to pick up my next chemotherapy cycle. I need to know when Tesco are going to deliver so I have to hang fire until Tesco tell me when they are going to deliver. A get a paper from the post office and spend some time doing the days crosswords. At last I get the delivery time through and it is suitably distant for me to get in to town to collect my drugs.

I drive into town and park up in a central car park and then walk down to the hospital pharmacy. I was expecting a long wait but to my surprise they found my prescription quickly and dispensed it to me almost straight away. I made my way back to the car but was sweating profusely by the time I arrived. I get my car park ticket authorised and get to the car where I can shed my fleece and drink the Red Bull I had stashed in the glove compartment.

I drive home and put my washing in and then do some holiday and car valeting research while I wait for the Americans to ring me in order to publish my new collection. I change into my training gear in anticipation of a later training session and put the bins out. Five o’clock comes around and sure enough the Americans ring on time and I supply them with the number they need to publish on my platform. With the publishing process under way I go to the garage and set myself up to do a half hour rowing session. I strap in and get myself under way determined to do better than I did yesterday. It goes well and I find myself in a faster rhythm and so I push on to the end as hard as I dare push it. It goes well and I end up doing what I used to do as my expected normal distance and I also managed to get to a thousand strokes in the time.

The figures suggests that I am getting fitter and that I can press on doing more things. I record the session and then change out of my training gear and wait for the Tesco delivery. It duly arrives and the family unpack it and squirrel it a way before eating tea. For me there is a football match to watch which means I can use half time to unload the tumble dryer and fold the load up. The second half rolls through and at the end of the match I draft the blog adn check to see if the new book is being processed on the publishing platform. I am pleased to se it is there so in a couple of days it will be available on Amazon.

Its been a busy and productive day at the end of which I take my meds and take myself to bed. Tomorrow I have committed myself to going to my partners mothers in order to clear her patio of moss, so another busy day, it feels right to be getting back into some sort of normality, and the next steps are to get back to seeing people regularly again.

Monday and its been a short night after my staying up late to watch the final of the Young Musician of the Year. Despite my late night I get up early and wait for my partner to be ready to go to the gym. We go to the gym where my partner goes to the gym floor and stay in the lounge to eat bacon rolls and drink fruit tea. I occupy myself by scribbling odd notes and poems and generally wandering around my mind.

418
Dylan Thomas
staggers out
from a days 
labour.
"Three words"
he mutters.
That's one
"a black bat,
Can't help feeling
"the lazy bastard"
could have managed 
more.

                                                                          418 21st October 2024.

 

Not a masterpiece but just something that dropped by. Eventually my partner finishes her session and I drive her to one of our local garden centres for lunch. It is a simple lunch which when done with sees us drive home where I have the fun of putting together my new toy, a brand new spanking power washer. It looks like fun and with luck I might get a go at it on Wednesday when I go to my partner’s mother to clear the moss off her patio.

With the toy playing done I get ready to train. I start tired and just get more tired. Its a forty five minute session and at the end I have rowed the worst I have done since starting to train again. I guess this just goes to show that I cannot spend spoons at both ends of the day and expect to be able to perform up to standard.

I record the session and change out of my training gear before beginning to draft the blog. I tap away while yesterdays one pot bubbles away until I think its safe enough to eat. There is no sport to watch tonight so I shall have time to edit the Tesco order and then have an early night. I managed to miss two calls from a friend today which was very irritating so hopefully I will be luckier tomorrow especially as the Americans are supposed to be ringing me to complete the publication of my third The Cancer Years collection, subtitled Breathless.

Sunday, a lazy Sunday when I wake late, make my partner tea and we chat for a while until we can both be bothered to get up and make breakfast. The dish washer (Daisy) is still running, which is not right she will need to be tended to. Before any household stuff can be done there is the little matter of getting food in for today and tomorrow. We drive off in the pouring rain to a local supermarket and plunder the vegetable racks mercilessly and fill the trolley with essentials and a few indulgences.

Once home I tended to Daisy (Dishwasher) by cleaning all her filters and pumps. I find a chink of plastic stuck in one of the pump fans, no wonder she had indigestion. Everything gets cleaned and put back adn then I run a deep cleaning cycle in her before watching the afternoon rugby match. My home team wins. With the afternoons diversion over I prepare my chicken and chorizo one pot for the evening meal in time for the Strictly results show. I notice that Sir Chris Hoy has got stage four prostate cancer with the spread into his bones and that his doctors have given him two to four years to live. I saw him commentating on the world cycling championships yesterday, which raises the issue of, who pays for his travel insurance? Every time I look at holidays the bloody insurance costs more than the holiday! Someone must be getting him a good deal or just shelling out for it for him.

One film later I am alone in the lounge watching, actually more listening to the final of the Young Musician of the Year on BBC 2. The soloists are just amazing, A violinist playing Tchaikovsky’s violin concerto and two pianists both playing Rachmaninov’s second piano concerto. They are two seventeen year olds and a sixteen year old. The seventeen year old from Canada who is on a scholarship in England at Eton wins. I knew he would win he had immaculate cuffs and cuff links. Somehow I knew no one from a compressive was going to make it. I have said before I am in awe of anyone who can play an instrument or sing but these guys were just off the scale. When you can play Rachmaninov’s second piano concerto by the age of 17 where is there left to go? So far from chopsticks! I take my meds and go to bed with a head full of beautiful music and wondering what would have happened had I persevered with the Bert Weedon Teach Yourself Guitar Book 1.

Saturday and I have slept well. I wake knowing that today is Poetry Stanza day. I take my vitals and get myself out of bed as my partner goes of for an early morning coffee morning with a friend. I make breakfast and open my post, where I find my next oncology appointment is fixed for mid December. It is always a big decision what to where to the Stanza, I give it a lot of thought and decide that I will wear one of my Arizona Coyote ice hockey jersey, with Jeans. Its a look I like mainly because ice hockey jerseys are so comfortable and hide a lot. Its the ability to flap about in it and it fits the l look. I have a little while to spend before I leave for the meeting so I see if there is any football on but while checking I opened the Arizona Coyotes App on my phone to see how they are doing in the new season as I had not the usual result texts I get during the season. The App opens and I am taken aback to find that the Arizona Coyotes no longer exits! I mean how did that happen, actually it happened because the franchise went bust and the owner walked away. All the assets, that’s the players, got shipped off to Utah, one state north, where a new franchise in the NHL is starting up. I am very taken aback, but I realise that my collection of Coyote Jerseys will now become rarities over time. Strange how life moves on. I am not a Duck or Penguin or any of the other array of animals or epithets that the other ice hockey franchises are, I feel let down and abandoned by the Coyotes. One less dependable thing in my life.

I drive to the stanza meeting and take my place around the table of ten fellow poets. We read each others poems and make our observations for the afternoon. My poem is accepted, which is nice. I wonder if I am saying that I feel accepted now? There are some tricky moments, like when I have no idea what a poem is about, or wonder why anyone would go to such lengths to be that obscure. The trickiest is the moment when one of the group rehearses a remembrance day poem and is the only one who reads his own poem. I am fascinated by the tattoo of a remembrance battlefield and the wearing of a checked neckerchief. This is a an ex service man whose poem means a lot to him as does his relationship with the armed forces with all its meaning for him. I said nothing, there is a time and place. At the end of the meeting I dive home having checked my tyre pressure gauges and turned off my i-stop indicator. My car is showing signs of age , its electrics are becoming… idiosyncratic.

Once home I eat tea and settle down to watch Strictly. The family watch a romantic film (Thor actor meets Jurassic Park actor), I try watching some rugby highlights and then start to draft the blog. I might or might not get to the football highlights or a film but I will get to my night meds before going to bed. It feels like a stimulating but tiring day, a step towards engagement again.

Friday and I seem to have slept well and my vitals are good. I check my messages before my partner brings me a hot a water and then I get up and get into my training gear and go down stairs. Unusually the postman has been and there is a letter from the cardiac consultant with the out come of my stay in hospital and the tests. It appears that everything is tickety boo and I am discharged from the cardiac services. See below.

With this piece of confirmed good news I head for the garage and set myself up for an hours row. I pop in my earbuds and put Mark Steel on and get on with my row. I am trying to keep a steady pace through out but as I get to the end I put a bit more effort in and I am rewarded with a best yet since having Uluru removed.

I record my session, down a Red Bull with a sandwich and start to draft the blog while the window cleaner gives me funny looks as he goes about his business. So I go into the afternoon with a shower and a spring in my step. I sort some life admin and eventually prepare a snack to se me through to the evening. The return of my partner from her pamper day coincides with the arrival of the garden guy who sets about giving the bay tree a final end of year trim.

The choice of evening meal is an Indian take away. Although the delivery time is always about an hour but without fail the food arrives very quickly as the restaurant is in the village. I dine and settle down to get comfortable for this evenings rugby match and an episode of Have I Got News For You later on. While I wait for the rugby to kick off I update the blog draft. Today has in general been a good day so I am hoping for a good nights sleep as tomorrow it is the face to face meeting of the Poetry Stanza. It will have been quite a while since I have meet the group in the fresh and I am looking forward to the experience. Not just meeting them but making the effort to drive to the venue and to be out and about. Depending on my decision on route I might get to drive past one of prisons that I worked in, which always prompts memories.