Thursday and I am up relatively early. A quick coffee and breakfast and I am ready to meeting crash the Enabling Environment team meeting. Dressed in my Arizona Coyote ice hockey jersey that the team gave me as a leaving present I was able to thank them for it and to express my pleasure at receiving it. After a quick ten minutes of indulgence, I change and go off to the Shed to write more letters. I’ve almost caught up with my list of people I owe letters to. At lunch time my partner, eldest daughter and I go for a walk around the village before lunching together. As the household goes back to work I finish my last letter and then post them.

It was time to try and solve the missing hedgehog or at least try to find out who or what is eating the hedgehog food. I plug the Apeman camera into my laptop and view the videos and pictures that have been generated over the last 24 hours. Despite the video usage and a new camera angle there is no sign of the hedgehog, but the food has gone. It’s a mystery. The cats cannot get into the canteen. They can put a nose or a paw in, but they cannot reach the food and the videos conform this. So, I move the camera to a new position and build an extension to the canteen entry. This will make absolutely sure that a cat cannot get in. So tomorrow I shall check and see if the food has gone or not.

Having completed my changes to the canteen I get my washing in off the line and get ready to train. I really do not feel like it but I keep telling myself that it is part of my medicine. I remind myself that the oncologist’s advice was that exercising was the only realistic thing I could do to help myself. I go to the garage and set the rower for half an hour on my usual resistance. It’s a tough half hour and it feels like hard work, but it burns more than 400 calories.

I warm down, eat tea and settle down to watch football but half way through there is a call from my eldest daughter who is stranded at her circus skills session. Apparently, the Uber system is not working. I and my partner go adn pick her up in the car and return intime to see the end of the football and Vera solve the murder she was at before we left. Our local team lost, and I start to draft the blog while giving my night meds a chance to get working. I go to bed, tired and disturbed by the death of Bill Turnbull a fellow prostate cancer club member. He lasted 5 years, I’ve lasted 3 so far. Saturday is the third anniversary of my first chemotherapy.

Wednesday, the house is at work, and I get up for coffee and a fried egg sandwich. Meds follow of course. The house has been invaded by flys again so it’s time to tape up the air vent into the chimney space. I should explain that once in a while a bird will either fall down the chimney or throw another animal down it. The result is a lot of scrabbling for a while, silence and then the emergence of flies once the maggoty stage has been gone through. Sounds revolting, it is. Thankfully it is a rare occurrence but when it happens it’s a nuisance. So apart from spraying rooms with Raid and hoovering up the dead bodies blocking up their means of ingress is a good ploy. That way I assume they find their way out by flying up the chimney and becoming part of the local bat populations diet. Job done I can retreat to the Shed to write letters for the morning but not before I book the annual boiler service, which means I need to get going with repairing the office floor after its tile tenting.

I have lunch with my partner before she goes to see her mother, whose birthday is tomorrow, and then I put washing in and review the garden camera for sightings of the hedgehog. The food has been going from the hog canteen, so I am hoping to see images of the hog fit and well. I review the pictures, not a single one of the hedgehog. There are the usual local cats, wood pidgeons and squirrel, even a large slug but no hedgehog. This is a mystery. If mice or rats were going into eat the food the camera would definitely pick them up, it has done before. My only conclusion is that I have a Ninja Hedgehog schooled in the arts. Perhaps a Buddhist Shoa Lin hog. Anyway, from now on the hog is called “Ninja”. I re-calibrate the camera to take video as well as pictures and return it to the garden but in a new vantage point. I refill the food bowl in the canteen and a leave it to get on with its observation. I will see how things go tomorrow.

It’s time to train. I go to the garage and set myself up on the rower. Back to my usual resistance level today and a 45-minute session as I did not train yesterday. I manage to keep an even rhythm during the session and end up quite pleased with the session.

Post session I rest, drink and record the figures. The evening begins with tea, bringing in the washing and I start to draft the blog. There is football to watch tonight and also the excellent series Shetland. So, despite what feels like a busy day I am accruing a “to do” list for the next few days, however I hope to swim tomorrow.

Tuesday and its back to work for the household and back to the Shed for me. After a brief breakfast and meds, I go to the Shed for the morning. I spent the morning writing letters to friends. I also Tweeted for the first time. Or at least I think I did. I caste into the unknown my “Nature” poem that I put into yesterday’s blog. No response as far as I can see, however I have no idea how the platform works. By lunchtime I was ready to post my letters and to lunch with my partner. In the afternoon I took the plunge and ordered a replacement for my lost seal ring. At the same time my partner was trying to book a holiday for next summer, but the bargain price turned out to be unavailable as the owner wanted to up the price significantly. We declined and I set about seeing if the apartment we stayed in this year was available. It turns out that it was and so I book it and save us a grand.

By the time this is all sorted out I am feeling less than chipper and delay training. Instead, I check the hedgehog canteen and find the food has been eaten so I replace it. I am hoping that our hog is getting back into a regular routine of eating each night. I rest a bit by doing a crossword until my partner ends work and we go out to buy her mother’s birthday card and present. We return to a simple tea, and I settle down to watch football. My team manages to grab a draw at the very end of the game. I settle down to draft the blog and promise myself that I will train tomorrow as a priority. I have supper, take my meds and retire for the night. It’s been another prosaic day in the life of someone living with cancer, it seems bizarrely normal, and I am beginning to wonder what I am ignoring and what it is that I have internalised as “normal” which in fact is not. I need to maintain my sense of urgency to keep in the fight. Complacency is my biggest enemy.

Bank holiday Monday. So no pressure to do anything. After a coffee in bed I get up and make myself a breakfast omelette before filling my drugs wallets for the next two weeks. I read for a while, one of my birthday present books that has sat patiently waiting for me to get to it. I really like David Mitchell and read his column in the Sunday Guardian from time to time so this book is a real pleasure. Its humour with an intelligent edge.

My partner and eldest daughter go off to view the remaining scarecrows in the village festival and I set to and hoover through the house and clear the kitchen. Having cleaned I read a bit more until its time to train. Before I do I check the hedgehog food. Its untouched from last night. I am concerned but there is little I can do other than be patient and wait. I go to the garage and set the rower up for 45 minutes at my lower resistance to get me started back into the routine of daily training. Its my first session since before going on holiday and it feels and effort to get into a rhythm. In the end it turns out to be a reasonable session for a first return one.

I record the session in my food and exercise diary and then read some more until the evening meal. I draft the blog against the backdrop of the Edinburgh Tattoo. The evening will drift until Tesco deliver and then I guess I will take my meds, read and head for bed. Tomorrow I hope I get responses to my conformation of a new seal ring and an answer as to how I join the Leicester Stanza of the Poetry Society so that I can enter the latest competition. Of course there is the office floor to repair.

Sunday and I get up early after a disturbed night. I shower and make coffee. On the patio I sip coffee and endeavour to write poems for a competition that closes soon. The theme that is set is Nature. I toil over three options. The experience of trying to write poetry to order is frustrating, not to mention hard work and in no way feels natural. In the end I stop the effort and dash off my frustration.

NATURE

Fuck you nature
You gave me cancer
And now you want poems.
Fuck you.

Just as I pen my lines of frustration I get a call from a friend and we are able to chat at length to catch up with how we are and what lays before us in the immediate future. Its been a while since we were able to chat so it was a good call at just the right time. I put away my poetry papers and make some toast. My partner and I accompanied by our eldest daughter venture out to see more of the village scarecrow festival. We spend a couple of hours wandering the village collecting pictures of the offerings. Below are a few of my favourites from the venture.

After a quick lunch at the church hall, very village, we continue on our viewing way. After a while I can take no more, I’ve run out of energy and feel uncomfortable. Back home I change and find I have blood in my urine again. I hydrate a lot and settle down to read The Moomins and the Great Flood, the very first Moomin book. So now I have read the original nine books by Tove Jansson. Time to move on to something new. I check the garden camera to see if the hedgehog has been around. I am concerned as on the last two days none of the food I have put out has been eaten. There are pictures of the hedgehog up until three days ago. It reinforces my concern, so I put the camera back and check the hog house and to my relief find the food has gone. I replenish the meat dish and the water. Tomorrow I will check the camera again. The evening has a meal in it and a new detective series before the football during which I draft the blog. Tomorrow is a bank holiday, perhaps I will get a lay in.

Saturday and its scarecrow festival in the village, but not before I unpack from holiday and get my washing in and hung out on the line. My partner and eldest go and have a first look around the village while I do other things, like read an article in the September edition of The Psychologist with the catchy tittle of “The medical model has presided over four decades of flat-lining outcomes”. I recommend it to anyone who has tinkered with the idea that life hurts sometimes and that it is neither a cause of or manifestation of “an index of internal dysfunction”. Psychiatric outcomes have got no better since the 1980s despite billions being spent on new drug development, so something is wrong somewhere, I wonder if its the medical model where everything can be treated by drugs. I also order the first Moomin book, The Moomins and the Great Flood. Bizarrely it was published in England way after the other books were, so the initial book was not included in the Puffin set I bought. It arrives tomorrow and I will be able to complete my reading. There is a brief lunch break and then we all go off to look at the festival. So what follows is a brief selection of what was in offer which included an owl display. I should explain that the scarecrow festival had the theme of “events during the Queen’s reign”. The owls were just being themselves.

There are over a hundred scarecrows to be viewed so doubtless I will be out tomorrow afternoon viewing the others in the further flung reaches of the village. To date my favourite is;

After an ice cream and more wandering I return home and settle down for the evening. I realise that I failed to take my meds this morning and wash them down with my reviving coffee. The evening starts by drafting the blog and then changing into lounging attire in preparation for whatever comes between now and Match of the Day.

Friday, journey home day. It starts at 7 o’clock with coffee and breakfast. There is then last minute packing, loading the car and dumping the trash. We set out at 8:30 and arrive back in Leicester 7.5 hours later. There was constant hold ups and long stretches of crawling traffic. It should have taken 4 hours at most. Once home its all about unpacking and settling in. No one can face cooking so we have take away and settle down to a quiet, brainless evening. There is post, most is recycling but there is a letter from a friend and a farewell re-retirement present and card from my old work team. Its a spiffing present of an ice hockey jersey from my favourite team. I shall be wearing it and might gate crash the teams Thursday meeting to say thank you. I feed the hog, draft the blog, take my meds and head for bed. Its been a day of labour and I am now without any energy, sleep is all.

Thursday and I am up early as I can not sleep. I make a coffee and curl up on the sofa. As usual I check my emails and messages. Amongst them is an invitation to do a presentation on leadership for an open forum day in October. I am flattered and begin to think about it. Do I actually have anything to say? Will the trains run on the day? I will clearly need to think about it. I make more drinks and go back to bed. My partner and I talk tactics about the journey back tomorrow and eventually get up for breakfast. The sun shines and as a consequence the beach fills up rapidly with beach lovers and surfer camps.

My partner and I go for a walk convinced that the market is on Tuesday and Wednesdays, indeed the notice at the end of the beach road doth proclaim it thus. We walk to the market field and are dismayed to read the large sign that says “Market Tuesday and Wednesday.” Interpretation is not worth the effort. We go to the convenience store and buy rolls, butter and indulgent clotted cream fudge.

Returning to our apartment we unload and go and sit on loungers over looking the beach. Both of us read from our Kindles. I re read The Diary of a Killer Cat, which always makes me laugh and reminds me of times when I have read it previously. I move onto Sandi Toksvig’s Between the Stops and sit quietly reading in the sun with the beach in front of me.

We break for a ham roll lunch and more reading until my partner suggests we go pitch our wind break on the sand as we have been in the sun too long. We pack up and equip ourselves in the apartment for our expedition. Down on the beach we pick our spot and deftly begin to erect the wind shelter. It goes up as it should but we soon discover that the sun shines straight into it so we turn it around. The wind blows in off the sea and our little shelter is no match for it. We sit huddled in it reading and nibbling fudge until we admit defeat, we are failed sand nomads. We pack up and retreat to the apartment, where I knackeredly flop on the sofa until recovered enough to start to draft the blog.

Its early evening and there is packing to be done and preparation for tomorrows return journey. Its a prosaic decision to go for pizza from the van at the top of the beach path this evening. The week has flown by and Croyde beach and village has been a good discovery. Weighed in the scales against Westwood Ho! it does not quite tip the balance in its favour. It would be good for a big family holiday if people wanted to camp, caravan or get a lodge and were into beach life, but for us as a couple an apartment in Westwood Ho! shades it especially if we were considering a two week break. So in the morning we leave and will probably donate our drift wood collection to the apartment.

Wednesday and I pray the bin went out and the hog got fed. An early coffee and a stare out of a window at the sea. Nothing comes to me apart from one or two bland thoughts. I retreat back to bed thinking I’ll give it another go. I read Tales From Moominvalley to the end. I have read all I have, there is one more Moomin book to be hunted down and read and that will be it. I finally get up again and my partner and I have a late breakfast.

I shower. Its always an adventure using a new shower for the first time. Its like meeting a dog for the first time you never know whether it is going to sniff you pleasantly and become your best friend or sink its teeth into for any old reason that comes into its brain. This shower looked pre-set, bite or sniff I wonder. As it turns out this is a very polite and friendly shower and provides me with warm and caressing water as opposed to a manic jet stream of geyser hot steam. Once pampered and sprayed with scent my partner and I go shopping for tonight’s tea. There in the adjacent camp site convenience store we find all we need , plus chocolate of course. There follows a period of lazing on seats outside while we watch the crows and the beach life.

We potter about wondering if it is really going to rain or not and in the end we have a late lunch as it begins to rain. Needless to say as soon as we are inside it stops. This is after all is England. I set to work and investigate my sons Amazon wish list as his birthday is coming up. There is an item that looks just right so I go to Amazon and pop it into my basket. I go to check out and as soon as I indicate that it is to be delivered to Sweden an extra £40 is slapped on as prospective duty. That is at least 25% of the cost price. That’s what Brexit has done for us, so thank you all you dumb fuckers who voted to come out of a relationship with our nearest trading neighbours. I contact my son and tell him the score. He checks that he can order it in Sweden for the list price, so that’s what will happen and I will move the money to him.

Time to walk the beach. Each day we promenade the beach looking for nature. There is drift wood and eaten corn cobs, not a crab or a kraken to be seen anywhere. Lots of families playing in the sea, surfers, body boarders and flounderers, all being herded by the lifeguards who give warnings about rip tides and currents. Our way to the beach is right next to the entrance to our residential complex.

On returning from our walk there is coffee and hazelnut chocolate to aid Wordle and blog drafting. There is a feast planned for tonight before we watch Shetland and mutter to each other in Orkney voices, “there’s been a murrrrder”. Tomorrow is picnic on the beach day before packing and deciding when our optimum time of departure should be to give us the best shot of a smooth run home on Friday. How quickly the time passes and brings tricks of the mind. For example I seem to have lost day 183 Tuesday altogether. I remember a market and postcards written and posted, a walk on the beach and the start of reading Tales from Moominvalley. Clearly it never got as far as a blog page I wonder what that is all about. Thankfully others noticed, which is a relief.

Monday, Up at 9am for a coffee and a few notes in my journal. I make warm drinks for myself and partner, who is feeling bit off. I make us buttered toast and we read in bed till 12 o’clock when we get up for lunch. My partner showers and we have lunch, neither of us is feeling at our best. We go to a local campsite shop and buy all the odds and ends we need and return to the apartment. We sit outside to read overlooking the beach but it starts to rain. We continue to read indoors and then as the rain abates we go for a walk along the beach. Its bracing and a little damp. We return to our nest and continue to read. Today I have finished Moominpappa at Sea and Moominvalley in November. Currently I have started Tales from Moominvalley. We will eat tea, bath and while away the evening.

In the midst of this my GP rings, I ignore it but my eldest daughter rings to tell me that the GP is trying to get hold of me to arrange an annual full blood check related to a medication review. Never had one of those before so I am a bit taken aback. Certainly not something my oncologist has come up with. I suppose I shall have to ring up to make some sort of appointment over the next few days. In the meantime I shall go on having my hot flushes and feeling periodically tired. Everything feels an effort at the moment and I am aware that I am running on automatic at times. My creativity is low and much of the time I crave rest.