Saturday. A difficult day. My sisters neighbours tell me they cannot get a response for her and her mail is still in the letter box. I cannot delay action any longer and I request an urgent welfare call to her. I go to meet a group for a meal and on the way one of my sisters neighbours texts me that the police have gained access to her house. Then there is silence. I meet my friends and have a meal. I return home to find the police talking to my partner and daughters My sister has been found dead. The police leave and I ring the responsible officer and get the numbers I need and an update on the situation. The evening is filled with messages and some preliminary thank yous. I take my night meds and go to bed to sleep fitfully with the thought of how sad dying alone is and was for my sister.

Sunday starts with coffee in bed and some reflection. The household rouses and breakfasts collectively. I top up the oil level in my youngest’s car. My youngest daughter and partner along with me drive off to car dealerships in search of a new car for my youngest. We abandon one dealership as they no longer have what was on their website and head for another. We look at a couple of cars and end up test driving one. It would be possible to spend a life time looking at cars but the more we considered the one we test drove the more it ticked the boxes. Low millage, 5 door, petrol, real spare wheel, large boot, smooth drive, rear leg room and pulled up hill very well. Both my partner and I have previously owned this make and model back in the day and had really good experiences with them. The deal is done, including a good trade in and so we will return on Tuesday to collect my youngest daughter’s new car. It is particularly pleasing to know that she will have a safe and reliable car to go to work in and see her through to motherhood. We return home and indulge in celebratory ham sandwiches and a rugby match.

The family slide into the evening and the usual Sunday tasks like a Tesco order and preparing for work tomorrow. For me I will begin the journey of putting my sister to rest and sorting out all her affairs. It feels like a turning point, new challenges to be faced. Of course there are pre oncology review bloods to be done this week so there are some odd threads of my cancer reality to continue with.

Friday and I wake up in a hotel room again. Its a strange sense listening to a hotel wake up around me and I follow suit. I shower and make my way down to breakfast. It feels a quite chaotic set up but in essence I am left to graze on anything I want in any order. It is very much a refuelling experience. I return to my room to pack and organise myself for the journey back. I do not rush and take my time till I feel ready to drive. In the midst of this I receive a message that a hospital is trying to contact my sister. I make calls and send messages and texts. I leave York not knowing what the situation is.

In reality my drive back was smooth. I restocked my wine gum and water stocks at the first garage and then drive smartly home. Back home I unpack and return to messaging my sister. I get a phone call from the hospital asking if my sister was coming to her appointment as it was past time for her appointment today. I suspect that there is a story to all this and that most of it will be communication misunderstandings. The family return home and we catch up. Its Friday and we are all tired and decide it will be a good day to have fish and chips. My eldest daughter and I walk over to the chippy and find that due to the earthquake in Turkey the chippy is closed for a week. So plan B was put into action and we dined on Indian takeaway. I start to read my latest Neil Gaiman novel. Stardust. More fairies and strange folk. The evening has TV and drafting the blog in it. By the time Graham Norton comes round I am out of energy, take my meds and retreat to bed.

Thursday and I wake up early in a hotel bed after a reasonable nights sleep. I have vague memories of listening to the rain in the night. I make a coffee, take my meds and check my messages and emails. There is nothing new or urgent so I take a long shower and relax. I have a little time before I need to go to my appointment with my mentor/listener so I head to Tesco and get a breakfast roll and coffee. Considerably cheaper than at the hotel and just as satisfying. I drive to my appointment.

My conversation was interesting and useful. It would seem that the noise I experience in the world is not confined to me, it never could be just me, but it is useful to know that others experience it as well. I discuss my “fairy tale” state and the effect it might be having on me. Those moments of anxiety that I experience are probably related to what is going on in the back of my mind, which I am containing. It is apparent that in general age just brings more complex and demanding networks of relationships and health issues to juggle. It occurs to me that what I have been doing since June last year is simplifying my life and expunging the trivia and inconsequential from it. There is a danger that I over do it and cut things that actually feed me and are good for my well being. Balance seems to be the key and paying attention to what I am actually doing at any one time. Old stuff but easy to slip out of doing it. The idea of deciding what to focus on at any one time is encapsulated by WIN, What’s Important Now. Its another way to remind oneself to pay attention to what you are doing.

I leave my mentor/listener and drive back to the hotel where I start to draft the blog and to capture some of the conversation I have just had. I also write a poem, sort of, without using the letter “e”. It’s clearly a nonsense exercise but it is equally clearly informed by my concerns about the possibilities of radio therapy.

My radio
All knobs and dials
FM loud and proud
Blasts out 
And blastomas.
Its slaying a tumour
Its wild and a rumour
that pill and potion
Are in commotion.
Rock and rollology 
Biology and physiology
Burn, scar and cullolgy
On my radiology.
So go man go
And scorch away,
Tomorrows so
Another day.  
Old and gay,
I could spit
This cutting ray
This drill bit 
Sunk within
My skin,
Is no mix,
ain’t no fix.

Like I say it was an exercise, but it kept me occupied till it was time to go and eat. I do not care that it does not scan. A friend sends me a picture on WhatsApp showing the Moon, Jupiter and Venus all in a line and clearly visible. I am tired after what feels like a long but productive day so I do my night meds and go to bed hoping for a good sleep. Tomorrow is the drive home at a sedate pace and a weekend ahead.

Wednesday and I am up early for me and tucking into muesli and coffee for breakfast. My morning meds get downed and I start a blog page for the day. I am traveling to York today so need to pack and organise myself. One of the people I will see is an old colleague who now acts as my mentor/ listener who I go and see in order to check how I am coping with my cancer and all the things that are affected by that. I find it invaluable to have someone who is outside my situation to talk to who asks the questions that I or my family might not ever ask. It makes me think and helps me to stay grounded about my situation. Importantly it makes me think about the people around me and how they are and what they are coping with. Cancer tends to make me very egocentric and forget others are also dealing with my cancer and what that means to them. I am also hoping to see other old friends and colleagues for meals or coffee but all that depends on their situations and commitments. Now its time to organise and pack.

The drive to York was unremarkable apart from the treasure trove of wine gums I found in the glove compartment. Well done past Roland. The first few miles up the motorway were a tad tentative. I think like all skills if you haven’t done it for a while it erodes a bit. By the time Sheffield hove’s into view I was well back in the grove and cruising along quite happily. The cranes at Sheffield are still there and I wonder if they had a star on them at Christmas. The rest of the run was easy going and I arrived in York with time to spare before check in time so I “treated” myself to a Tesco egg and bacon brioche and coffee. What an experience that was is it arrived with a plastic cheese slice melted into it with the addition of a sweet onion relish. Thank god they did not find a way to fuck up a black americano. The brioche prompted me to order more toothpaste and a book from Amazon. A little post lunch shopping and I drove to the hotel and checked in. Once in the room I checked to see if an old colleague was free for coffee but she was busy with students and holiday admin, so I wrote some lists and caught up with drafting the blog. I’m dining out tonight so I shall kill time till then. My room for some reason has a sofa bed in it that has been made up, I’m a bit baffled by this so fold it away so that I have the space and a sofa to laze around on.

I sit and reflect on my journey and note that I did not stop for a pee on the way. When I was first diagnosed with my cancer I am sure that the same journey was punctuated by toilet stops, as were other journeys. Looking back I think this may have been the result of anxiety. After all it was a period when I had self catharised for a while and had little confidence in my body. Things seem to have changed as I have got used to my status and condition. I have clearly adapted over the last three and a half years, and probably my body has interacted with the various drugs it has absorbed, and continues to do so. So any conclusion about my current state is difficult to clarify or attribute to a single variable but I do feel less need to be “all consumed” by my cancer. At the moment I am just waiting to see what the next set of bloods brings and the outcome of my PET-CT scan. All of that comes on the 7th of March. There will be a new set of arithmetic that will contain the logic of what will happen to me and what options are available to me. I already know that my medication will change, the question will be whether radio therapy will be of any use to me and that is the logic in the arithmetic. Too big, too small or just right, its the Goldilocks syndrome. I can do nothing but wait to see how Grimm my fairy tale will be.

I watch a women’s football match on the hotel TV, Italy v South Korea. Good to see the game played without the rolling around or mouthing the referee. I go for a meal with an old colleague and friend. It is a lovely meal and a chance to catch up. We talk about long COVID and the similar experience to how cancer robs me of energy. I drop her off at home and make my way back to the hotel to finish the blog. I spend some time preparing for my meeting with my mentor/listener. There is much to consider before I see the oncologist again at the start of March.

I get up at a reasonable time for a Tuesday and go for a toast breakfast to go with my first fresh coffee of the day. Morning meds get swallowed and then its into the life admin that needs doing. There is a little financial juggling to do and a Tesco order to get booked in for Monday. The world is then my mollusc to plunder. I’m feeling a bit “floaty” and put it down to the fresh coffee. I get myself outside world ready and drive to the local garage to fill the tank and check the tyres. I’m still feeling “floaty” but I fill the car, pay and then get the air line to work using the touch pad. I checked later and found it was still charging me a pound for the air, not that I am paranoid and think that the garage would use the automation of the payment method to fleece me.

Back home I find my partner preparing to go for her lunchtime walk and decide to accompany her. We walk around the village and buy a paper on the way. It used to be a regular routine but it lapsed so now that Spring is putting in an appearance I suspect it will be reinstituted. At the end of the walk I settle down to complete the crosswords. Today I am on fire and skip through the puzzles. There is a little more life admin to do but it quickly becomes time to be thinking about training. Its the last thing I want to do or feel like but I get into my kit and head for the garage. I take a zen approach and decide to do this hour with my eyes closed and to concentrate on my breathing. Its hard work but I eventually manage to get into a rhythm. In the end I get there and burn off 750+calories and manage to get over the 12 kilometre distance.

As I am going out tonight I indulge in a bath with a happy hippo bath bomb. Its good to soak, bollocks to talking, soaking is much better at times. I feel renewed and clean in a fresh smelling way as I get my “going out for a meal” clothes on, As its to be a local pup, clean jeans and underwear will do. I get myself ready and before settling on the sofa to draft the blog I check the hog canteen (Fort Hog). The meat dish is empty once again so I refill it and batten down the lid once again. Apparently those hogs that wake early need some extra sustenance to help them through as their natural food sources may not be in plentiful supply yet. So job done I draft todays blog and wait for friends to pick us up and whisk us away to eat. As it’s Shrove Tuesday I am hoping that pancakes will be a pudding special. I am feeling weary but will enjoy tonight. Tomorrow I travel to York to see people and will need to pack and organise early in the morning so I am hoping that staying off the coffee tonight will enable me to sleep soundly. I am though still coming up with lines for my poem that started in my dreams, which contains no letter “e”.

Monday and I come to the surface very quickly. It does not feel like I slept all night. I have recollections of spikey dreams and of a long and interrupted sequence of trying to construct a poem without the letter “e”. Lines like Radio Roland FM band, and switch and dial in my hand, kept coming and going. This was clearly still a consequence of the Poetry Stanza experience working its way through my processes. There were other snippets of situations, one being a visit to poetry fare that is due to take place in March at the University my daughter works at, and then I was in the Ukraine with awesome powers turning back the Russian armies. The crescendo of this snippet was me standing in Red Square demolishing the Kremlin. It was all very spectacular. I am of course aware of the layers that are being worked through in all of this, I just wish my unconscious mind did not do it quite as vividly and keep waking me up. The consequence of this is that I wake groggily and not feeling like getting up at all. I decide not to and settle down to read the final chapters of the Anansi Boys. My partner brings me coffee but I persist until the hero and his son sing songs with a mermaid and life returns to happy. At that point it was time to get up and have breakfast for lunch.

Muesli and yogurt fill me up, more coffee sustains me and washes my late morning meds down. My partner departs to take her brother on some life admin tasks for their mother. I, now bookless, download the garden camera images of the hedgehog, who is now definitely not hibernating. I replace the camera and replenish the hog canteen before clearing the human kitchen and retreating to the sofa. I dabble with my social media and messages while the British indoor athletics championships provide TV wall paper. In the end I head for the village shop to buy pizzas and a paper for tonight’s tea. Once home I retreat to lazing on the bed to for the crosswords, which is where my partner finds me on her return. Apart from ordering more hedgehog food I’ve done nothing today that the world would see as productive, intellectually stimulating or slightly interesting. Its clear I am having a day out, perhaps tomorrow will be different, in fact it will be as we are dining with friends in the evening. For now I plan nothing for the evening but to draft the blog, watch a Vera, take my meds and go to bed in the hope that the waters of my mind have calmed down a bit and I can get to sleep.

Sunday and it an early coffee and chat before getting up for breakfast. I weigh my self as is my Sunday ritual. To my surprise I had lost weight and was down to 97.3 kilos. It is a struggle to keep reducing my weight. I cannot train as hard as I used to and I find it increasingly difficult to refuse sweet treats as my motivation dips more than before. The morning was spent clearing the decks and getting ready to go veg shopping. As usual we drove our local garden centre and bought our weeks supply of fruit and veg and topped up our cold meat supply. For once we actually bought garden requirements in the form of packets of flower seeds. Its time to start sowing this years colours.

Once the mornings shopping is stowed away my partner and I wave our eldest off to Harry Potter World accompanied by the wife of one of my nephews, we then head for the local park to feed the ducks. Today the ducks were just not interested in what we had to offer and we ended up walking the park and looking for any hungry ducks. There were some duck couples in the smaller ponds who finally ate what we had to offer.

Being walked out I drive home and check the garden. Spring is definitely knocking on the door and everywhere I look there are new blooms and buds everywhere. Here is a selection of the gems that are appearing in my garden.

I open up my greenhouse and take out the posts of Echinacea that I have been over wintering. Some of them have started to show new growth, others have either died in the ground or are not ready to grow yet. I decide to bring them out into the garden in their pots and to see if they are going to respond to my perception of spring starting. I refill the bird feeders and top up the squirrel feeder. With these things done I replenish the hedgehog canteen. Tomorrow need to check the garden camera and check to see if I am feeding the hedgehog or next doors cat, or both.

With these jobs out of the way I settle down to watch the women’s England football team beat the Italians, when it came to it I chose this over a rugby match on the laptop. With the end of the game I start the drafting of the blog. It has been a strange day as all day the poetry stanza experience has remained with me. The essence is that I have been left feeling like I felt when I was as school and being dyslexic. It is one of exclusion by dint of not knowing what the rules are or the language of the club. As like the school experience I have the sense that I am being hoodwinked and with hindsight I was. I’m fairly sure that the poetry industry is a continuation of the school illusion. I never joined the education club or the therapy club so I am fairly sure I’m not going to join the poetry club.

My evening will be quiet. The Tesco order will get done, I will finish reading the Anansi Brothers, take my meds and go to bed, but still with the one poem that hooked me at Saturday’s stanza.

Saturday and I wake with Stanza on my mind. My partner and I have coffee, chat and plan the weekend. We get up for a bacon bagel breakfast and then I am getting myself ready to go off to the poetry Stanza. Before I can go there is the garden guy to chat to and the hedgehog to feed. That done I take to the road and drive to the community hall where the Stanza are meeting. There are ten of us. Of the ten I feel I am the lesser poet, not because I am but because the group makes me feel ignorant, like a neophyte in group therapy. It feels like I’m the only one who does not know the rules or the language. It takes me back to the idiot boy at school who could not write and found relief in be delinquent. Old patterns begat new delinquency. I try to fit in, make sensible observations, be kind and try my best but no I cannot resist so I play a bit. However there is one poem that takes me by surprise which is intimate and touching. I listen to the group talk about it and I cannot escape the sense that they are grappling with stuff out of reach. I do comment but it is no where close to what I want to say as I fear slipping into being a therapist again. I leave at the end feeling like I have no way into this club.

Home and I find my partner has cooked tea as the friends we were going for a meal with have cried off due to illness of one of them. We eat and then I start to draft the blog while the TV provides wall paper. The evening stretches out in front of me with only the football highlights to illuminate the end of the tunnel. Time to read Anansi Boys and to sleep.

Friday and I wake up early feeling decidedly groggy. No idea why unless yesterdays scan is having an effect. I get up do breakfast, coffee and meds and then run off the tickets for the Ballet Rambert Peaky Blinders performance in May that have arrived in my in box. I move through the first part of the morning slowly and pack my kit for the gym. By 11 o’clock I am on my way to train.

The gym on a Friday morning is full, mostly aqua aerobics, but by the time I arrive it is thinning out and by the time I clamber onto a cross trainer there is barely anyone else in the gym. I plug in my i-pod and select Web, a modern didgeridoo electronic beat fusion that a friend gave me on retuning from Australia. Its odd but has a good rhythm to train to. I set the controls for the full hour at my usual resistance level and set off. Its hard work but the beat of the Web tracks keep my going. In the end its is a good session but I am knackered. I wonder how my body is going to respond.

I feel the effort of the session as I walk round the gym floor to cool down and recover. I rest for a while on a press bench and take a selfie out of curiosity about what I look like post session. Its not a pretty sight I decide, but for the brave here it is. Note the Scottish ice hockey jersey, quite a rarity.

After spending time cooling down I return to the changing room via the toilet where I discover that my body has once again decide to piss blood in my urine. Its not much, but it is clear that there is a limit to how long I can do on a cross trainer, clearly an hour is too long. It has been quite happy with a 50 minute session. Lesson noted. I shower and change and go to the lounge to drink coffee, water and lunch on an egg and bacon roll. I settle in and continue to read Anansi Boys. Afternoon coffee and a cookie follows as I read on. I was not sure about this book but as it goes on it gets better and better. Four o’clock rolls round so I head home.

Once home I dump my kit, change into my lounging attire and start to draft the blog. Tea follows and more blog drafting to a background of TV news. The evening has rugby, Death in Paradise, and more reading to offer. What ratio I take them in will be a mystery till it happens. I have copies of my stanza poem to run off to take to tomorrows meeting. Apart from that I just hope to sleep well tonight.

Thursday and I wake to an empty house and my first thought is “Scan.” No breakfast allowed only water so I wander about sipping water, taking my meds and finally filling in my scan forms. There are some basics to do of course beyond clearing the kitchen, which includes feeding the hedgehog, but majorly is the need to get myself hospital clean and presentable. An odd ritual but deeply ingrained. So its a long shower, hair wash and general brushing up, all the time sipping water and wondering if I have time to do my washing and get out to dry. I have several kind messages wishing me luck for the scan, which is very kind of people and appreciated. Finally I am ready and fill the waiting time with drafting the days blog and reading more of the Anansi Boys.

I drive to the PET-CT centre at the hospital. Before I book in I go to the main hospital shop and buy a sandwich and a couple of chocolate bars for recovery after the scan, I am already hungry. I book in at reception and get handed a medical history form. Its full of questions I cannot answer accurately but consult my blog for some exact dates. I hand it in and wait to be called. A short while later I am called forward and introduced to my scan technician. He takes me to isolation room 3. He checks some in formation and then tells me the routine. Its all straight forward except I have to sit for two hours not one to let the irradiated glucose get into my system. There is a slight hitch in that the injection that left Nottingham an hour ago had not arrived yet but my chap puts the catheter in my arm anyway and then leaves me to wait in my isolation room with the instruction to use the “hot toilet” if I needed to. I settle down and read Anansi Boys. The injection arrives and my chap pops it into my arms and scurries off. I lay on the clinical couch an read for the next two hours. A nurse appears and sends me to the “hot toilet” and then to follow her into the scan room. She settles me on the scan bed and tells me what happens, that it will take 25 minutes and then left me. I do what I always do I close my eyes, try to relax and let myself drift. I drift so far that I think I wake myself snoring. Soon the whirring and clicking stops and I get played the “your done” jingle. The nurse releases back into the world and I immediately eat the sandwich from my back pack as I walk to the car park. I drive home nibbling a bounty bar and craving a coffee.

Once home my first action is to make a fresh coffee and let myself flop on the sofa for a few minutes. I retrieve my washing from the machine and hang it up and then eat tea. Its Thursday so my partner goes to her singing lesson and I settle down to watch the England women’s football team beat South Korea. The game ends and as I return to the blog a friend messages me with the advert for the Ballet Rambert’s Peaky Blinders ballet. I get onto the website and find that its going to be at the Birmingham Hippodrome in May so I book tickets there and then. It will make a good spring day in May. So now I finish the blog for the day and tomorrow I get back to trying to reclaim my body, it tiring.