Thursday I wake and 7 o’clock and immediately know its a mistake, press my internal snooze button and snuggle back down under the duvet. Two hours later I wake to find a cold cup of coffee by my bed, clearly a kind thought but one that feel on sleeping ears. I orientate myself to the morning and run through the list of imperative things that I MUST DO today. There wasn’t anything life threatening or essential so I settled back under the duvet and read Wintersmith for a while, in fact till about 11:45 when my partner brought me another hot drink. I eventually contemplated getting up as I had not eaten for 16 hours, although I was not unduly hungry. Did I feel more rested? Not really but I did realise that my brain felt fed. Apart from the odd crossword and some poems my brain had had a pretty TV and football based diet of late. It seems to me that I spend quite a lot of time being preoccupied with my physical well being or more accurately how my cancer is going/growing and tend to forget that my brain needs to feed too. It made me think about friends that I have who are up to their eyes in the Real World of raising families, moving home, caring for loved ones and battling their own ailment and conditions. They are lives packed with do lists that do have MUST DO items on them and that they have even less time than me to feed their brains. Perhaps when I tell people to be kind to themselves I should remember to remind them to feed their brains as well, although I suspect that this maybe the last thing they can contemplate or feel they have the energy to do. Perhaps there is a balance to be had and that kindness is an awareness of my own ignorance.

Any way I finally get up and feed myself a midday fried egg sandwich and more coffee, plus my morning meds. I catch up with the blog having read my post and start my water drinking in anticipation of my blood test tomorrow. I need to be as hydrated as possible to ensure my platelet count is up and my urea count down. It might help my eGFR but I am dubious about that. Of course it will not affect my PSA count, that is down to how active my cancer is and the reality is that I cannot affect that. All I can do is keep as fit as I can and to keep active, or indulge in “vigorous” exercise as “he who made a pact with the devil” put it at my last face to face oncology review. I’m not sure what he meant by “vigorous” as applied to me a 74 year old, but in my training regime getting “vigorous” means I get to piss blood as a result of it. That is my double bind, my body no longer allows me to train as hard as I could do, therefore I loose weight more slowly, loose fitness faster and generally live with the frustration that I could be doing more “vigorous” activity to fight. Rocket is not pleased with this as fighting a good fight is tricky when you can’t go all out. Still after all this time its not a time to quit, so downing a pint of lemon squash I go off to the garage to get a solid hour in. I have today and tomorrow to train as I am out at the poetry Stanza and with friends for a meal on Saturday, which is not ideal preparation for the Sunday mornings weigh in. I am desperate to be under 96 kilos by as much as possible. I go to the garage, its cold, and mount the rower, punch in 60 minutes on level 4 and, with eyes closed, begin to pull strokes.

I return to the lounge to record the session in my training/diet journal picking up another pint of lemon squash on the way to keep my hydration up for tomorrow. The session went okay the acid test will be whether I piss bold or not, it did not feel like I pushed hard in the session so I hope not. Done now anyway so on with life. I change and return to reading Wintersmith. There is nothing of note on TV tonight so I intend to read and have an early night with as many pints of lemon squash as I can take. I might get the results just after midnight tomorrow but it could be Saturday or Sunday. I need to keep my focus and not be distracted from training and getting ready for the weigh in on Sunday. There is however Christmas tree acquisition and decoration to be organised so my next 72 hours could be quite busy.

Wednesday and I wake early and have a gut sore from my injection. My partner brings me coffee and I lay in bed reading Wintersmith until 9 o’clock. I am strangely pleased to find a character called Roland in the book. A prince in fact, that seems apt. I get up have breakfast and set about some life admin. I organise paying the house insurance monthly rather than as a nasty lump sum. The process goes smoothly and I am pleased to get it done. I move on to the outside garden world where the birds have emptied the bird feeders. I refill the feeders and then check the squirrel feeder. The little beasts have completely demolished the clear plastic front of the feeder. I set about making another one from a spare bit of plastic. The job goes well and I am able to fit a new panel in a relatively short time. I am joined by an inquisitive Robin as I do the work. I retreat to the house to put away my tools and start to do other jobs, but I note the squirrel is soon at the feeder and looking bemused. It can see the peanuts but cannot get to them. All it has to do is lift the lid to get to the nuts, a thing I have seen it do in the past. This squirrel clearly has memory problems in the cold as it fails to lift the lid and just wanders off. With an attitude like that this is one squirrel that will not pass the “fittest to survive” test. I do however order more food for it to be delivered tomorrow, so I hope the squirrel remembers to lift the lid or the birds in the garden will get winter fat on squirrel food.

I have lunch with my partner and wave her off to her mothers for the weekly visit and I settle down to update the Tesco order before taking a walk to the shop for bread and then I will be ready to get into the garage to train for the day. I was impressed with the new bus shelter that is being erected outside by our drive. I’m not sure how long it will last in these days of adversity.

I of course dallied over the cross word and pitcherwits which delayed me getting to the garage. My other diversion was to print out the poems for Saturdays Stanza meeting. It is a real pleasure to receive brand new poems and to see what people are writing at the moment. I finally get to the garage but when I get there it is 4 degrees, a whole degree above yesterday. I decide to do 45 minutes at my cruise level and set off hoping for a smooth session.

Back in the lounge I find my eldest and my partner doing things with ISAs on their phones. I change into my all in one blanket and record my session before bringing the blog up to date. Tea is being created and I settle into my football watching zombie mode as I prepare for the Morocco versus France semi final. Once that is out of the way I shall return to watching the Vienna Blood new series and finally I shall retire to bed with Wintersmith. I have not been out for a while tomorrow I need to make the effort.

Monday, what a fuck up today was. My partner and drive to the local hospital so that my partner can attend the endoscopy department for a procedure having spent all of last night drinking copious litres of pre procedure preparation, which tasted foul. I pop her through the door at 9 o’clock and leave her as no “others” are allowed in and go for breakfast in the Cosy Café around the corner, while the snow falls. I am on my third coffee at about 12 o’clock when my partner rings me to tell me that the hospital is refusing to do the procedure because the appointment is not six weeks from the the referral and that there is therefore a clinical risk that the doctor is not prepared to take. So in essence the hospital has made an inappropriate appointment and my partner has a gut full of pre-med crap that she need not have. I’m furious but reasonable, my partner is understandably upset having had all the anxiety as well while preparing for the appointment. Another appointment is pencilled in for the the 11th of January so that will be with us over Christmas. I drive us home, neither of us saying anything.

We get home and my partner eats and drinks some normal food while she recovers. I spend time curating my poetry and trying to decide which, if any poem I am going to take to the Poetry Stanza on Saturday. We drift through the afternoon doing nothing other than tinkering around the edges of living until its time for me to walk down to the GPs to get my twenty eight day injection. Its a locum nurse and its the end of the day, so empathy and care have run a bit thin. The injection is into the right side of my gut today, which is the more sensitive side, not to mention the most “side effect bumpy side”. The result is a fast injection and a quick exit. I go home and stare at the walls, eat soup, and watch the Strictly results and Strike, by which time my injection site is letting me know it is there. In an act of domestic heroism I clear the kitchen, put Daisy dishwasher on and bring the car onto the drive from the road. I add paracetamol to my night meds and go to bed without doing the blog.

Tuesday. I wake at about 9:30 with a very sore gut where my injection is sitting like a hens egg in my gut. I’m not impressed and lay in bed checking my social media and messages. Nothing of import on social media and no messages so it was a quick life admin session. I get up and my partner brings me a coffee as I dress, one has to make the effort. I fix breakfast, empty Daisy dishwasher and clear the kitchen and once again try to select a poem for Saturdays Stanza meeting. In the end I select the following:

ALIEN AT HOME
So once again it is hotel time,
sitting alone to eat and drink,
I inevitably write.
Another to add to my hotel collection
the jottings of an itinerant clinician.
This time there is no observation.
Perception is low,
Caring even less.
It’s a world of fugue,
the downward eyes
the  slumped back
and slow foot drag.
Joy is at a premium,
too high for most
as they scrape the barrel,
come up empty
and try again.
When you are in the jam jar
someone else needs to read the label, 
until then it’s more of the same.
The same gets you the same
until hope is sucked dry
and someone has to be blamed.
Bloody Albanians!!

So as you can see I was in a cheery mood when I selected the above to be my public look on Saturday. To top it all we are supposed to take finger foods and non-alcoholic drinks. Outside in the real world the old plastic and metal bus stop outside our drive has been demolished along with its sibling across the way. They are supposed to be being replaced with elegant wooden shelters. My partner and suspect they might burn quite well and not last long in these cold days. At the very least out expectation is that within the first twenty four hours some enterprising Banksy will have either chiselled or painted a cock and balls on it. That’s the exuberance of youth for you. We wait to see if our jaded view of the community is accurate or not. It does mean that we will have to go and look at the new shelter regularly, which in itself it probably not normal behaviour, but I like to think its an extension of the neighbourhood watch. By noon I am feeling a little more human and draft the blog although still feeling a bit adrift and then something lovely happens. The deliver man delivers a a small bendy parcel and I immediately feel excited and uplifted. A friend has sent me a Christmas book and its a corker, I am immediately happy and know what I am going to be reading in the immediate future. It is Wintersmith by Terry Pratchett, a discworld novel, suddenly the world is a brighter place.

Of course I shall watch the World Cup semi final tonight and the final episode of Strike but Wintersmith will fill the rest of my time, apart from the training session on the rower that I must do this afternoon. These Rocket days are hard when its this cold but this is all part of the medicine and its never wasted effort. My partner returns form the local shop where she hears the Christmas banter. Apparently the most popular response to “what are you doing for Christmas?” is “I’m having my heating on all day”. Says it all really, good old British humour, that’s the spirit. Set the controls to the heart of the sun! I send a book to a friend inspired by my own gift and then I make it to the garage to train. 3 degrees and feeling like crap post injection, these are the hard yard. I enter my zombie like football watching state for the evening, eat tea and survive till night meds and bed.

Saturday and it is a slow start with a morning whiled away with some wrapping, more Christmas Admin and cleaning and “glaming” myself up for my late lunch later. I post my remaining Christmas cards and write the ones for the people I will see later. I take a long shower and when my hair is dried I ask my eldest daughter to plait my hair for me. Its becoming a tradition that when I go out somewhere that I have my hair plaited. Here is the result of todays efforts.

So once I am “glamed” up I get the car out and drive to Burton on Trent to the Whinery. The car feels skittish in this weather and I think I detect a slight slide early on in the journey. It is cold and there is still a lot of frost on the roads in the shady spots. The result is that I drive more slowly than usual and pay attention to the gear I am in. It seemed to me that others round me were doing the same. There are of course the obvious exceptions, Range Rover drivers mostly. I get to the Whinery and greet my friends and we settle down to a convivial meal and chat. We exchange cards and gifts and talk about mutual acquaintances and work of old. We of course try to include the daughter of one us who is there but being us we descend into memory lane. We breakup about an hour before the England kick off and go our different ways.

I get home and settle into watching the world cup semi final between England and France, Of course we lose because one of our star world class players is unable to get a football on target when taking a penalty. Well that’s England done and over with, its up to Morocco to disenchant the French now as it is Croatia’s job to disgruntle Argentina. Enough of football, we move onto the death fest that is Midsommer Murders. It straight to bed full of night meds as soon as the last body is accounted for. I spend some time reading Portrait of Your Ex Assembling Furniture by Nicolette Daskalakis. Its a collection of poems by a Los Angeles writer, film maker and photographer apart from also writing poetry. She comes from an interesting perspective. Sleep arrives as does oblivion, until of course I need a piss every couple of hours courtesy of my meds.

Sunday and for a Sunday I am awake early and breakfasting after a warm drink in bed. My partner is preparing for our guests this morning so chocolate cake, biscuits and mini mince pies are arranged and ready. At ten o’clock the guests arrive and we settle down to coffee and nibbles. There is covert present swapping to be done as my grand nephew still has some inkling that Santa is alive and well, even if he does accept a delivery role for other people at Christmas. We sit and catch up and talk through Christmas plans and what we have done recently. The time flies by and soon the guests are away. My partner had to start her pre hospital diet routine so we spend the afternoon preparing and diverting ourselves with Happy Valley. I draft the blog only half watching TV knowing the big event of the evening will be the Strictly semi-final. It will come and it will go and then my partner and I can get on with tomorrows business of her hospital appointment in the morning and my injection in the afternoon, that is once we have sorted the Tesco order and delivery. Life is full of interesting experiences but tomorrow’s are ones we could do without.

I forgot to mention that as per usual I weighed myself as the first thing I did. I stepped onto the scales and looked tentatively down. I am gleeful given the lean training I have done as I read 95.9 Kilos. I have at last dipped below 96 kilos and if I am focussed and keep to the Rocket plan I could dip below 95 kilos for Christmas. That would be the best present possible along with a falling PSA. The latter maybe more difficult to achieve.

Friday and I am awake quite early for me. Its cold and the wold is frosted outside. I have breakfast while the Shed warms up. When I think the Shed has the chill off I get down to the Shed and spend my morning writing letters. Ironic really as today is a postal strike day. I write till lunchtime at which point I return to the house for lunch.

I have coffee and then I walk into the village with my partner to collect my drugs and buy some eggs. When I get back I have soup and spend some time wrapping some of the present that have been delivered during the morning. By the time I have finished wrapping and filling the bird feeders its time to watch the quarter finals of the world cup, but not before I go to the post office to send my letters. The afternoon drift into the evening as Croatia defeat Brazil on penalties and Argentina knock out the Netherlands on penalties. Its a rollercoaster of a championship and good watching. Tomorrow England take on France, could be a close match.

In the later reaches of the the day I draft the blog to the background of a country music documentary. Tomorrow I get to have a late lunch with a group of old colleagues and friends, it will be the start of Christmas which will contain visits to hospitals, injections, blood tests, scans, visits by relatives, poetry meetings and meals with friends. A real mixed bag of pleasures and pains. All I hope is that there is a space to slow down, to just be with family and to be idle. They are all of course Rocket days and days in the fight to lower my PSA, lose weight, get fit and continue to fight cancer.

Thursday and I am a sluggerbed. I wake at 10 o’clock. Again my deepest sleep seems to occur in the early morning once my night meds have worked their way through my system, either that or my body is desperately trying to hibernate. I suspect the later as when I unusually weighed myself once I go tout of bed I found my weight had risen again. If that’s not a body trying to lay down fat for the winter I don’t know what is. Ah I hear you say but winter is here. My argument is that my body is in the same state as my garden: confused. What I am experiencing is a late dash for fat.

I have breakfast and do some life admin including some belated Christmas ordering and then settle down to read. A friend who moved house yesterday messages me from her cardboard city and is happy that she has been shopping for the first time and laid in food so that she and her husband will not starve if the snow traps them in their new home. I decide to read until lunch time when I will walk to the village with my partner and collect my drugs and do some food shopping. I finish my book, I Am David. It is supposed to be a children’s book but I am not sure how a child would take to it or what it would take from it. Its been a best seller since the 1960s and is still in print across Europe so I guess kids are pretty rugged. Mind you there is some rugged modern stuff around, try Hard Candy.

At lunchtime my partner and I walk to the village centre and I try to collect my drugs. My injection has not arrived despite ordering it on Sunday. The world is slowing down. The Christmas cards that were sent the 21st November second class are still turning up, one of them at an address a twenty minute drive from home. My partner and I pick up some food and get ourselves home. I indulge in a newspaper and distribute the varies deliveries that arrive. I spend some time wrapping todays arrivals as I try to keep pace with Christmas admin. Finally it is time to train, I’ve delayed too long already today really but I get changed and get into the garage. Its cold, 5 degrees cold, the coldest so far this year.

I get myself going on my selected one hour session. I am about ten minutes in when a friend calls as she travels to pick up one of her daughters who is not well and needs to be retrieved from school. We chat during her journey about Christmas and the preparations until she arrives at her destination. I return to my rowing and push myself along. It turns out a reasonable session, which I need to repeat for the rest of the training days on the week. I am pleased to have made 12 kilometres and burn off 700+ calories.

At the end of the session I quickly get into the house and record my session in the training/diet journal. My partner cooks tea and I start to draft the blog. During this evening my partner will do her singing lesson and I will watch the final ever episode of Lucifer. I find it difficult to believe that I have watched all 96 episodes. Is this what retirement is for? I think as long as its not the only thing I do its okay. Mind you there are few more series I would have to add the likes of The Witcher and Warrior Nun. I now need to find a new book to read and I really need to write my Christmas letters and beat the postal strikes. However tonight its the end of Lucifer and a relatively early night.

Wednesday and its time to get breakfast down my throat and get my partners car to Kwik Fit (which I’ve finally learned to spell properly.) After an aborted attempt to put more air into the cars poorly front nearside tyre I just jump in and drive, carefully and sensitively and like a responsible adult to Kwik Fit being guided all the way by the wonder of Google maps and a smart phone. I get to the Kwik Fit shop, drive in , park up and give the keys to the small and spotty adolescent apprentice tyre fitter.

Kwik Fit barns are cold with no coffee machines but they do have Wi Fi so I am able to continue to do Christmas shopping. The activity, or lack of it is a wonder to behold as everyone hops from one job to another in between answering phones and looking for stock. Eventually the car gets its new tyres and a quick realignment of its tracking. I pay the realignment fees and drive home to a heroes welcome that included coffee and a bacon bagel.

Having dined it was onto my next project. Its Christmas and that means wrapping. So I retreat to the back bedroom and set about and firstly finding everything that I have squirreled away and then wrapping it. It takes an age, time enough for a quick mid wrapping cold non alcohol beer. Eventually it gets done and there is just the recycling to be done, the hoovering and the tidying up and the returning of the room to a habitable state. With all this done I scuttle to the post office and post off my final Christmas postings. On the way back from the posting I notice the full moon rising over the house, it is awesome and stirs me.

Back home our guest for the night arrives and after a quick chat my partner and her friend go out to eat. I eat soup and start to draft the blog while catching up with the last of the Lucifer series. My evening will cruise to my bed and finally sleep. It feel like I have been busy and neglectful of the people that I write to regularly so tomorrow I shall head to the Shed and try to write some pre Christmas letters. I also need to pick up my training, Rocket does not approve of my slothfulness.

Tuesday and I am up and showered early as today is nuclear medicine day. I have the joys of being injected with radioactive isotope and then being scanned. The ball ache in this is the fact that I have to wait for about two hours between having the isotope and the actual scan. I’ve done all I can to prepare. All the usual things, shower, hair washed, clean underwear, seasonal socks and smellies. I have my usual muesli breakfast, check my social media, emails and messages. As time goes by I think this activity is taking me less time, a kind of social erosion perhaps or maybe I am just coming to my senses. My current focus is on emails telling me that I have parcels on the way. Some I recognise others are a mystery.

At the appointed time I drive to the hospital and make my way to the nuclear medicine department. I book in and then sit in the waiting area reading I Am David. After a short wait a cheery nurse calls me in to the clinic room. The catheter goes into my arm followed by saline and a radioactive isotope. So far so good. I return home and while away the time before I return to the hospital for my 2 o’clock second appointment. I continue to read my book until called in. I lay on the scan bed and soon I am underway as I get slide into the scanner. When in these situations, especially when the camera plate is about three inches from my nose, I try to relax and lightly nap. It takes about 25 minutes to completer the scan after which a technician explains to me that the consultant that is to review my pictures is delayed so I might have a longer wait before I can go home. I return to the waiting area and continue to read. After about half an hour a chap wanders in, calls my name and tells me I can go. The carpark system is a camera and number plate recognition system, which works really well, much better than the old coin system, which was a truly archaic system.

Once home I am beginning to feel tired, so I settle down to watch the afternoons world cup football match. It is a surprise result as Morocco beat Spain in a penalty shootout. I drift through to the evening meal and another football match in a kind of disconnected way, ending with drafting the blog having watched the final episode of Granite Harbour. Tomorrow, I have the job of getting my partners car to Kwikfit to have new tyres put on. I shall need to pump up the front nearside tyre before making the 19-minute dash to the tyre fitters, so it’s going to be an interesting morning. If that goes well, I must do some Christmas wrapping and get one or two things in the post before the postal system goes into strike delays. I need to train hard as well to make up for the last two lost days. It feels like Christmas is not helping. Others have greater things to do such as moving house tomorrow and guiding children through all the school Christmas activities. In comparison my Real World is not that demanding.

Monday and it’s my partners birthday. I make warm drinks to have in bed however my partner is not feeling to chipper. We laze for a while until we both feel in need of breakfast. Having cleared away the kitchen, the washing and tidied up a bit we set about ordering new tyres for my partners car. So by the end of the morning, I am booked in to take the car to our local Kwik Fit on Wednesday to have the car reshod for the winter. Better safe than sorry. I have also booked my next injection for a later time next Monday so that I can take my partner for her hospital investigation in the morning. I also book in my next set of bloods to monitor my PSA. We then get ready to go for a birthday lunch at one of our local pubs.

My partner and I settle at our pub restaurant table and begin a long lunchtime meal. Its slow service but the food is good. I cave in and have a cheesecake pudding and my body cannot believe it is getting something so sugary. We arrive back home just as the first football match starts at the world cup. My partner and I are both full after our meal and it is good just to chill out and watch the football. The match goes to penalties, the first of the championship, which Japan loses appallingly with some of the worst penalties I’ve ever seen. While the game is on my partner’s brother drops by to say happy birthday to my partner. It becomes, cake, card and present time for my partner so we indulge in candle lit chocolate cake, card and present opening. We are just over the cake and coffee when Tesco deliver. Some squirreling and reserve store topping up gets done and we are soon back to watch the final football match of the day. Brazil thrash South Korea while a friend of my partner visits to say happy birthday. Post visit and post football my partner and I settle down to watch a new series.

While the new series sizes up I draft the blog and look at my paperwork for tomorrow’s bone scan. It is one of those procedures that means I will be radioactive for a few hours. I get jabbed with the isotope and then wander around for a couple of hours avoiding pregnant women before returning to be put through the big whizzo nuclear scan machine. It’s not a big deal just time consuming and I have yet to train this week. Time now for night meds and bed.

Sunday and it’s a slow start with a coffee in bed before starting out on the day. Before anything else comes the Sunday weigh in. I step onto the scales and hope for the best. I look down and see 96.0 kilos on the display. It is a decrease from last week, but I am vaguely disappointed. I had hoped to see 59 something but it is proving difficult to lose the weight as quickly as I could when I could train flat out in sessions. This careful training that I am doing to try and avoid passing blood afterwards is limiting my ability to shed weight quickly. Patience is indeed the ability to deal with things when they do not go to plan. I just need to preserver (that’s Rockets job) and to keep looking at what I can do to adapt and how I can be creative in finding new ways to keep fit, lose weight and maintain my strength.

I make a fried egg sandwich for breakfast and get myself ready to take my partner and eldest daughter to the gym. I drop them off and then go shopping. I find disposable turkey baking tins, which are a real boon to our Christmas plans that include a traveling Christmas dinner. I return to the gym and indulge in a hot chocolate while I wait for my family to finish their work outs. We drive home and I squirrel away some of the shopping and get ready to watch another knockout world cup football match. I watch as France beat Poland 3-1 and then set about some chores. I order my monthly drugs and refill my drugs wallets for the coming two weeks. There is just about time for dinner before I settle down to watch England take on Senegal in their first knock out match of the world cup.

England win 3-0. Now for France. Just before the end of the match my partner gets a call to tell her that her mother has had another of one of her turns, so my partner and her brother have gone to see her and to wait for the ambulance. I tidy what I can and then prepare for tomorrow in the hope that things go well. While I wait for news I watch a film and draft the blog.