Thursday, and a disturbed night of sleep so I get up relatively early and have breakfast. Wash down the meds with coffee and then clear the kitchen. My remaining blood tests came in last night and they are all okay. Everything is in the normal range, apparently my kidneys and liver are in fine enough fettle. I clear the kitchen and then prepare my sample to take to the GP. Being an old hand at being a cancer club member I have specimen vials in stock. It’s just wonderful what Amazon will provide. Anyway, I wander down to the GP surgery and hand over my liquid gold and head off to the chemist to pick up my monthly drugs. Yep, it’s that time already in my cycle, Monday is a jab day. By 11 o’clock I am ready for coffee and a couple of crosswords before a light lunch. I recall Baumeister’s definitions of meaning in relation to the self. One of the key elements of making meaning of life according to him is the “efficacy” variable. This is the feedback that is received from the environment about the effect one’s actions, or lack of them, have on the environment. Of course, there are different kinds of environment but the principle in general holds true for them all. It occurs to me that this is one factor that is a major part of retiring, I have in effect divorced myself from what was one of my major sources of feedback about my efficacy in relation to my various environments. Hence the greater difficulty to make meaning of my life as I have severely reduced one of the major variables by which I did that. I suspect this maybe why entering poetry completions is such a soul-destroying process as anything less than prize winning provokes no feedback whatsoever. It set me thinking about what the variables in my environments are which do in fact provide feedback about my efficacy to me. My initial list is as follows, 1: the garden, 2: the rowing machine, 3: the bathroom scales, 4: the viewing figures for the blog 5: my cash book and finally but by no means least, 6: my WhatsApp account. I should include of course the people I live with as they of course provide feedback about my effect on them, sometimes. I was once told I wrote “boney” poetry; it would appear that I live a “boney” life. All this before lunch. Anyone interested in what Baumeister has to say can find it all in his excellent book Meanings of Life. In it he outlines what he calls his existential shopping list of the four needs for Meaning. They are Purpose, Value (Justification), Efficacy and Self Worth. So, I’m off to Amazon to see what they have in stock.

Lunch turns out to be bacon sandwiches, which is a favourite. There then followed a book harvest as not one but two books arrived. One was expected the other a surprise gift from a friend. So, I have reading for the days ahead. I am excited.

I go to the Shed and write a letter to a friend who had sent me a card. I do so in the middle of a thunderstorm with the rain beating down on the roof of the Shed. By the time I had finished the rain had passed and I was able to wander over to the post box and send my letter on its way. I return home to read a while and then watch an early evening football match and eat tea.

The queen dies at about 6:30. Long live the king, Charles the third.

Well, that buggers the rest of the evenings viewing. Every channel is full of it. By the second half of the football match English teams playing abroad were wearing black arm bands and the 8 o’clock kick offs all had a minute’s silence. I suppose this is going to drag on for days, thankfully my books will save me from most of it. It was clear something was up when she shook hands with Lis Truss, the back of her hand was badly bruised. As an experienced receiver of back of the hand catheters it was clear she was receiving some sort of intravenous drugs. I take my evening meds and go to bed with a good book.

Wednesday, I wake knowing the initial outcome of yesterday’s blood test. Just after midnight the first basic test results came in. My Haemoglobin, White Blood Cell count, Neutrophils and Heamatocrit/PCV are all good. I wait for the rest to arrive but that will not happen now until after midnight tonight. So, I move into today slowly with a lazy muesli breakfast to accompany my meds. It’s a toss up between the Shed, the gym and the garage today.

I go to the Shed and write letters until my partner comes to beg a stamp. At this point it throws it down with rain, so I stop for lunch. I have been feeling a bit off when going for a pee today so I do a dip test and find my Ph and specific gravity values are up, which makes me think it might be a UTI in the making. I ring my doctor and am promised a phone call later. IN a burst of optimistic life admin I book a ticket for a three-day conference in October. I also have some message conversation with a friend who alerts me to the fact that the author of Before the Coffee gets Cold, Toshikazu Kawaguchi, new book Before Your Memory Fades is available. I immediately order it from Amazon so tomorrow I will be able to settle down with a new book. Once the rain stops, I post my letters and then I fill more time doing crosswords until a late afternoon football match is on TV.

My partner goes out for dinner with a friend in the evening so my eldest daughter and I make chicken fajitas for tea and I return to watching football. So my evening passes and I draft the blog while deciding whether to stay up and see if more blood results come through. I probably won’t as when my GP rang back, she had the temerity to ask me to bring a sample to the surgery tomorrow morning for testing as she did not want to prescribe antibiotics unnecessarily. In the meantime, I am to drink a lot of water. Retirement is turning out to be a real joy.

Tuesday, an action-packed day with the excitement of my partner going into work, my eldest daughter going to the physio and me off to the GP for a blood drawing. Not only that but this afternoon someone is coming to service the boiler. I can barely contain my excitement. Breakfast of sensible muesli, equally sensible Greek low-fat yogurt and all topped off with indulgent blossom honey. I wash this down with coffee and drugs before pulling on jeans in deference to the rain. Cotton hippy cargo pants will not cut it in this weather. A friend calls on her way to play golf, or if it rains coffee and a swim. We chat about our respective ill relatives and a bit about our own ills. She is bravely making major life decisions about where and how is best to live with an ailing partner. After the call I ready myself for the GP. I leave a bit early as it takes me longer to walk to the GP now. As it turns out I arrive ten minutes early. I am prepared with my David Mitchel book, but I have no time to get going on it as I am called in immediately. I judge by the peeved looks on the others faces in the waiting room that they are no impressed. I am in and out in a flash. I have to say the nurse who takes the bloods is very very good at it. She is in and out of my arm in record time. So, I am out of the GPs and heading for the cash machine in the co-op to draw my monthly cash allowance. I no longer buy a paper as all I want is the cross word and I get that free on the web. On getting home its coffee and a start on the blog. Now to wait for the excitement of the boiler service.

The boiler service was not exciting, in fact it was brief, efficient and painless, not to mention joyless. Overcome by the mundanity of hedgehog less existence I decide to go for a swim. So, I clamber into my car and drive off to the gym. On the way I fill my tank (approx. 400 miles), check my tyres and drive onto the gym knowing that the world is my oyster. I swim, it is true that I swam relatively briefly, but I swam. There was a brief jacuzzi time as the steam room was not functional. A shower and a large americano later I am chilling in the club lounge waiting for my partner. She arrives and goes to train while I return home to watch football. Dinner of pizza and more football, England’s women thrashing Luxenberg 10- 0. Out of some sort of “keeping up ” I watch the new to see what Liz Truss is up to. New cabinet looks interesting. I think the next couple of years is going to be interesting. I predict polarisation and strive, but then I would. I continue to drat the blog and keep myself amused and will continue to do so just in case my blood results get posted after midnight. I note that there are Macmillan adverts for their coffee morning on TV. I have a better idea, cut out the middle agent and just send your money to me. Saves all the faffing about making cakes. Would we need charities if people cared directly, and governments provided adequately for its citizens? Its time I checked my bloods adn went to bed.

Sunday, its family birthday lunch day so I am up early and showered, after all you can’t smell when you’re with the extended family. I weigh myself and find myself over 1.5 kilos lighter than a fortnight ago, before I went on holiday. I’ve a way to go but it’s a good start. Realistically I need to set my targets for Christmas. Everyone is up and breakfasted in good order and much preparation has been done to get the food ready for travel. At 11:15 the starting gun goes off and we load food into cars and drive off to my partners mother’s house. We bound out of the cars ladened with food of all varieties including the gluten free goodies. Pretty soon all the family that can make it arrive and soon we are all making conversation or putting up the food table. There is conversation and catching up until it’s time to eat and to work our way to the birthday cake. We continue to eat and watch gifts being unwrapped. Inevitably the small children get restless or sleepy and parents begin to depart. With that there is a general exodus but not before we rally round the birthday girl (94) and have our pictures taken. We return home to have a coffee and then wave my youngest and her partner off home.

The evening is a blur now, I watched Lucifer, which is just running out of steam as a concept and a series and then watched two episodes of Capture. The house went to bed, and I watched the end of Stuart Lee’s Snowflake before taking my meds ands going to bed. I always find family days fascinating; the way different couples and generations mix and manage each other. It’s very ritualistic with only the children doing what they actually expressing what they want to do or or are interested in. In an L shaped room, I realised that there was a great deal going on that I had no idea about, it was almost like two different events, but I guess everyone went away feeling they had done their bit, made their contribution, avoided the Harold Pinter play.

Monday, and I cannot give a toss really. I get up have toast and then spend what seems like an eternity entering two poems for a Poetry Society Stanza competition. You can only enter if you are a member of a local Poetry Society Stanza group. I’ve spent a considerable amount of effort and time tracking down my local Stanza and making contact. I’ve finally managed to find the contact person and get the info I needed from him. The next meeting is on the twenty fourth and I am going so I consider myself a member. Thus I have entered two poems. I thought the theme was Nature, when I read the entry form it says Environment. Not a problem I tweaked the existing two and waved them off to cyber space. They too will soon be Herod’s Children and will appear on the blog as rejected strophes. Having sorted all of this it’s time for a lobster bisque lunch and an M&M bar lunch.

Post lunch entertainment was required so I finished the last remaining Wordle that my partner was wrestling with and then I found Stuart Lees Snowflake show recorded in York on the BBC iPlayer. I like the way Stuart Lee deconstructs what he is doing as he is doing it; I find it very appealing. Having been head fed I email to decline an invitation to present at an open forum in London later in October. I’ve just not got the energy or the wellness at the moment to do it justice. I complete the power companies’ letter to ensure I remain on their emergency list if there is a power cut in the future. Guess what they are getting ready for? I walk across to the post box and return to survey the hedgehog situation. I established yesterday when I reviewed the camera footage that the poxy cat from next door has been nicking the food making it look like the hedgehog is still around. It isn’t. I clear out the hedgehog canteen and leave a single dish of meat pellets in the canteen. The cat does not touch the pellets so if a hedgehog should show up again, I will be able to tell. I now have a dozen cans of Spikes meaty feast in the Shed. I am hoping autumn might drive hedgehogs to the garden again. I draft the blog. Listlessly. 5 o’clock rolls round and the evening beckons. The evening is filled with a romantic comedy film, yes really, not a single dead body or act of violence anywhere. The only interruption was to take the Tesco delivery in. Then a news catch up. I take my meds, finish off the blog draft for the day and go to bed. Tomorrow is a small matter of morning blood tests, and boiler service in the afternoon. Somewhere in there needs to be some exercise.

Friday, a tired day with no energy, so the day came and went. The hedgehog food disappeared again but no sign on the camera of the hog, Ninja is living up to his/her name. I cooked a curry for the evening meal, that was about all I could contribute.

Saturday and I wake up in time to be up by the time my youngest daughter. The family have breakfast together around the family table. After much chat and catching up the rest of the family go off to the local Bird Garden on the edge of the village while I set about relaying the excavated area of the office floor. It’s tricky to put the jigsaw together but I eventually I get there. Once again, the office is back in order. In putting things back I dump another bag of my old working life. I retreat to the garden seat to recover as I am dripping sweat from the effort. I further recover by watching England women football team qualify for the world cup next year by beating Austria 2-0. The family eat dinner together and chat further. By the end of the meal I am wiped out and need to go for a nap. I’m awake again by 10:30 in time to watch Match of the Day and Brentford getting a 5-2 win against Leeds. I try to catch up with the blog before taking my meds and getting back to bed. Tomorrow we are all celebrating my partners mothers 94th birthday so we need to up and away to hers by 1 o’clock.

Today has been my three-year anniversary since my first session of chemotherapy. It’s been an interesting and demanding three years. All in all it’s been a tricky three years with COVID sticking its nose in but I’ve survived. It gets tougher as time goes on as witnessed by my struggle for energy, my battle with my weight, my meds induced body change and the effort to remain in the fight. Still yet to get a poem published.

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.