Thursday, I wake up feeling groggy, its the usual these days, just the result of the new antiandrogen. I’ve a meeting at 9 o’clock so its a quick coffee and drugs adn then I am in front of the laptop talking business. A couple of colleagues are unable to make it today so it is mostly focused on my new service that I met with yesterday. So the meeting is useful adn we end on time releasing me to head for the gym.

The gym is almost empty, just some familiar faces, fanatics and older people like me staying alive. Its back to the cross trainer today and its a grind, my body really does not want to do this but its medicine and Rocket needs support. I do the hour burning 709 calories and going 7.79 kilometres. I make myself do some weights work on the machines. A swift shower and then into the lounge for more coffee and an egg and bacon bun. I take my time and let myself recover as I check messages and e-mails before driving home. I do however spend a few minutes before leaving to order soem anti Putin merchandise, which I will share on the blog as soon as it arrives.

As I drive home a friend calls adn we chat about how her recover from long COVID is going. It is of course slow as the real world continue to make its every day demands of work and family life. We talk about how the war in Ukraine is affecting us. That combination of anger and desperation is an uncomfortable feeling. Once home I unpack my kit and set off to the village shop. I need the steps and a paper. The reality is I get my walk but additional chocolate biscuits, chocolate and grapes. I retreat to the Shed to read the paper and do the cross words while I nibble my way through a mystery bag of Maltesers.

Early evening and my partner and I eat tuna pasta before I go off to collect my eldest daughter from her circus class. It will be an evening of football and early sleep, I’m not fit for anything else and my body is already protesting the exertions of the day. I think my intentions to rebalance my activities is timely. Today is world book day, I should at least make the effort to take a book to bed tonight.

Wednesday and its off to the gym asap despite the crap weather and the rain. So after coffee and drugs I drive to the gym. A few sturdy souls are there already, mostly ageing blokes and younger women. I guess we are all avoiding something. Me? I am avoiding crowded changing rooms, intolerably mouthy macho blokes and sitting in my “Soffice” for a morning. My legs feel tired and I resort to a recumbent cycle thinking it would be easier on my back. I stop after 10 minutes intensely irritated by my stupidity. I had forgotten to strap my Fitbit to my trainers thereby losing steps to my step count. So I put my oversight right and continue to pedal for the rest of the hour. I eventually burn 568 calories over 22.89 kilometres. My body is not pleased when it finds the showers tepid, but it gets itself to the lounge for coffee and egg and bacon bun. I think I am becoming addicted to the gyms egg and bacon buns.

I get home, unpack my kit and make more coffee as I settle down to get ready for my work call at 2pm. The call comes and goes. It is productive and a while ago it would have kindled some fires of motivation in me but, nice as it was, the joy quotient was low. I follow up the call with some admin work and make up February’s invoice to send off. I’m still waiting for January’s to be paid, not an unusual wait. So I arrive at early evening with not a lot in my head except the vague thought that I miss the Shed, gardening and that there is more football on TV tonight. I am aware that I have not read anything for ages and that my pile of “waiting to be read ” books is now seven books tall. I’m beginning to think that I’m starving myself of stimulation and that can only lead to one thing; becoming a boring old fart. Now that’s something to be avoided, I would not like to think I am losing my curiosity.

Monday and I am up early as I am off to the GP for my monthly injection with the added bonus of a B12 jab as well this month, I am well prepared and organised today, gym bag already packed. I down my morning meds and drive to the surgery. It does not take long, I am in and out in a very short time with my white fluffy cloud stuck to my stomach. I drive to the gym, order coffee and a bacon adn egg roll and then sit an write a letter. It feels odd sitting in the gym lounge writing a letter but it is quite nice to be away from home writing. I have bought a second padlock so that I can have two lockers for my bags, a second pink one.

I get on a cross trainer and bang out an hour during which I burn 722 calories and go 7.90kilometres. I toy with the idea of doing some weights but decide not to, I just want to get in the shower to easy the soreness and sense of tightness around the injection site. The shower is good and I head for the lounge and another coffee. I intend to have soup for lunch but the bar tender tells me soup is off, so I stick with just a coffee.

I return home adn make myself a smoothie before walking to the post box and then on to the co-op to buy food for the evening meal. Tesco is delivering late tonight so I decide to cook a chicken Jalfrazi. Once home I cook and get the masterpiece gently bubbling on the range. It turns out that my eldest daughter is going out for the evening from work so there is just the two of us to enjoy the meal. We eat and then mop up some of the series that we have been watching on TV. We finish Young Wallander, Professor T and get the end of Click Bait in sight before calling it a day. My day catches up with me so I have mem evening meds, more paracetamol and head for bed.

Tuesday, pancake day, St David’s day and the day of my work one to one. I eat a muesli breakfast and get ready for my meeting. A colleague WhatsApps me and shares some family news, which might have a work bearing later in the week. At 10 o’clock I log in and start the meeting with a review of how my oncology review went and how I am. We discuss the future and the options and agree a way forward. Once this is out of the way we review my work and make appropriate plans. We end the meeting, I put my washing in and go to the gym feeling slightly of kilter. This mornings meeting has left me with some interesting feelings. I get to the gym, buy a bottle of water and then get on a cross trainer for an hour. I burn 717 calories and go 8.09 kilometres, much teh same as yesterday except today my injection site feels more sore. This is usual. The day after is very often the worst day. A shower and then to the lounge, which is pleasingly empty. I sip americano and nibble an egg and bacon roll, slowly. I am still pensive from this morning and dawdle over my coffee. Eventually I drive home, put my washing in the dryer, grab the newspaper and head for the Shed where I do the crosswords.

I emerge about 5 o’clock and decide I will keep it simple for tea tonight, soup, my gut is off and settle down to catch the blog up from yesterday and today. There will be soup and football this evening and an early night. I am hoping that as the days extend and the weather gets warmer, where is climate change and global warming when you want them, that I will become more activated and energised. At the moment I feel sluggish and there is definitely a limit to how much Ukraine news I can watch. Perhaps we will all go out with a bang and not a whimper as T.S Elliot suggested.

The Hollow Men

Mistah Kurtz-he dead
            A penny for the Old Guy

                        I

    We are the hollow men
    We are the stuffed men
    Leaning together
    Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
    Our dried voices, when
    We whisper together
    Are quiet and meaningless
    As wind in dry grass
    Or rats’ feet over broken glass
    In our dry cellar

    Shape without form, shade without colour,
    Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

    Those who have crossed
    With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
    Remember us-if at all-not as lost
    Violent souls, but only
    As the hollow men
    The stuffed men.

                              II

    Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
    In death’s dream kingdom
    These do not appear:
    There, the eyes are
    Sunlight on a broken column
    There, is a tree swinging
    And voices are
    In the wind’s singing
    More distant and more solemn
    Than a fading star.

    Let me be no nearer
    In death’s dream kingdom
    Let me also wear
    Such deliberate disguises
    Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
    In a field
    Behaving as the wind behaves
    No nearer-

    Not that final meeting
    In the twilight kingdom

                    III

    This is the dead land
    This is cactus land
    Here the stone images
    Are raised, here they receive
    The supplication of a dead man’s hand
    Under the twinkle of a fading star.

    Is it like this
    In death’s other kingdom
    Waking alone
    At the hour when we are
    Trembling with tenderness
    Lips that would kiss
    Form prayers to broken stone.

                      IV

    The eyes are not here
    There are no eyes here
    In this valley of dying stars
    In this hollow valley
    This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

    In this last of meeting places
    We grope together
    And avoid speech
    Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

    Sightless, unless
    The eyes reappear
    As the perpetual star
    Multifoliate rose
    Of death’s twilight kingdom
    The hope only
    Of empty men.

                            V

Here we go round the prickly pear
    Prickly pear prickly pear
    Here we go round the prickly pear
    At five o’clock in the morning.

    Between the idea
    And the reality
    Between the motion
    And the act
    Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

    Between the conception
    And the creation
    Between the emotion
    And the response
    Falls the Shadow
Life is very long

    Between the desire
    And the spasm
    Between the potency
    And the existence
    Between the essence
    And the descent
    Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

    For Thine is
    Life is
    For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
    This is the way the world ends
    This is the way the world ends
    Not with a bang but a whimper.

Sunday, a rest day but I am mildly surprised when I wake up at 11 o’clock. Clearly my body is telling me something. It takes two cups of coffee to get to functional and a bacon bagel cooked by my partner. I take my drugs and my first dose of prophylactic paracetamol before tomorrows injection. Eventually I come to my senses and get going. First there is a call to our youngest daughter who is recovering from a blown exhaust and a roof clean. My first chore is to fill the squirrel feeder and the bird seed dispenser. Then its the hoovering and the tidying of my “soffice” and the downstairs. The more I use the Henry the more I get used to it and appreciate its subtleties.

Rugby time is three o’clock and Ireland predictably beat Italy who end up playing with 12 men. Its a dissatisfying experience so I turn to upgrading Mondays Tesco order. It is becoming an interesting pastime trying to predict which items will not be available on the day. It has an interesting influence on the family diet over the week. Currently next week looks like a week of soup and cereals. With all these Sunday jobs done I settle to drafting todays blog. It is a rest day so not much is going to happen. The only thing that will happen in this evening will be the viewing of the last episode of Trigger Point and first instalment of the final Peaky Blinders series. Of course they are being aired at the same time so we will juggle the i player. There are the final episodes of Young Wallander to be viewed as well. So I admit tonight I will be a vegetable of the sofa kind. Tomorrow its an early start to get to the GP for my monthly injection, I’m hoping to just go to the gym to pump the stuff around my body. I like to think it helps but I think it might be the pull of the bacon and egg brioche roll. I need Shed time most of all but face a busy work week.

Saturday and it starts with a coffee in bed and the making of a plan for the day. Its a simple plan, gym, rugby, collapse for the evening. So its up and a brief toast breakfast before changing into my training kit, clothes in the gym bag and my partner and I are on our way.

The gym is not very busy and I am soon on a cross trainer listening to a random selection on the i-pod. I work away taking a drink every 20 minutes from my water bottle. Although a a bit of a grind the time seems to go quite quickly, perhaps I am getting fitter. I burn 712 calories and go 7.9 kilometres, an average session. After a coffee and bacon brioche my partner and I go to the supermarket to buy fish and then home.

What follows is international rugby and an evening of Young Wallander. Its all I have energy for. Tomorrow sees me taking my pre injection paracetamol. I plan a day of rest.

Friday and that bastard Putin invades the Ukraine. It seems every generation has to have its power crazed psychopath dictator with all the attendant paranoia and messianic complex. Not to mention the maladaptive destruction and suffering it brings. Of course life goes on which is why I am in front of my laptop at 9 o’clock for a work meeting. It goes on beyond its time and then I spend time chatting to a colleague about all things European football and future of work. Its lunch time by the time we get through talking and I have the chance to eat.

I do some admin work and then before my energy and motivation drains away I get myself into the garage to row for an hour. Its a while since I have rowed for an hour and it starts out as a real effort but eases as I get into a rhythm. It goes better than expected and end up quite close to my personal best.

I can feel my body complaining at the effort that I have just put in, especially my back. so I take myself to a hot bath embellished with a bath bomb from my collection.

I eat my favourite Thursday meal of tuna pasta and then settle in to watch Leicester beat Randers before moving onto the Rangers match. My work colleague who is a Rangers fan will have been over the moon as they get a 2 all draw with the German favourites which means the Germans go out of the competition. I meander towards bed losing energy all the time, there is not enough energy to be doing the blog, it wil have to wait.

Friday, a non work day. Putin loses it and thinks the Ukrainians are Nazis and calls upon the Ukrainian forces to commit treason adn turn on their government. Just how deluded is this man, very is the answer. I have a light breakfast and head for the gym. I get my usual bottle of water and get myself a cross trainer, turn up Rammstein to full volume and grind out an hour. My legs complain but I get through 705 calories and go 7.67 kilometres. Its an average session but good for an end of week effort. I do a few repetitions on some of the weight machines and then have a long shower. I sit in the gym lounge and drink coffee and eat a couple of bacon brioche buns. The chairs are comfortable and my back does not ache so I am tempted to linger. I do in fact linger and message several people. I notice that some people are sitting with their laptops and idly tapping away. I note this and think I might do this at some point. I return home and my partner and I walk down to the village so that I can collect my drugs, in particular my injection for Monday. Yep its that weekend of pre-emptive paracetamol.

The evening comes and is mostly TV until I get to the blog both depressed and incensed by the war in the Ukraine. Sprinkled through the last two days have been conversations with friends and family over WhatsApp and email. It is these that add the sense of connectedness with a wider world, it helps to fill the gap of not getting to the Shed to write letters. Hopefully this will be one of the things to change when I rebalance work and life.

Wednesday and a post euphoria waking. Yesterday was a good day and now the days ahead are to be focussed in and organised. The real world can feel dingy against the good days and sense of life. So today I get up for coffee, toast and chores. My pill boxes are empty so I perform my fortnightly ritual of filling the racks of day boxes. It jogs my memory, so I order my next prescriptions for Mondays injection. I tidy the kitchen and load Daisy dishwasher. I take time to have another coffee and read a letter from a friend that arrived yesterday. It is a thought provoking letter and raise issues about my relationship with cancer and the balance to be had between acknowledging the reality of it and not becoming it. Its time to sort out the squirrel feeder. What ever broke into it did a good job, I suspect a particularly muscular wood pigeon.

I put the squirrel feeder right and re fill it By the afternoon Squishy adn Squashy have found their way back to their treasure trove. They really love the raw peanuts that go into the mix. I take a quick trip round the back garden and note just how much is coming up and flowering, spring is truly burgeoning.

I turn my attention to the training session I am due to run in the afternoon. I have several goes at getting my screen to share with no luck at all. My partner patently assists me but we hit a wall. I email the presentations to the probation administrator, who does nothing with them. I give in and eat a fried egg sandwich, my go to “I’m pissed off” food. A friend rings as she delivers food to a very new mum and baby. We chat for the journey until she arrives when we go our different ways.

I go to my training session to find just two people there. Well I dump the demanding IT material stuff and settle into a guided discussion with them based on the standards to be covered. It turns out well and we all discover new things. That’s real work, creative and adaptive. I lay out my training kit but before anything can happen my partner and I walk to the village shop to collect food for this evenings meal. Back home I take another call from a golf playing friend who has been bitten by the bug and now seeks ambitions for a handicap and to go the full 18 holes.

By the time I am thinking of training again I have run out of energy. This is how it happens, the energy ends and I have to cruise, reorganise and reset. I drift into the evening, eating a meal, watching football, Professor T and then writing the blog. It is a meander down the gravity well till I find my bed and wake in the morning with an unpredictable reserve of energy. This element ,of how things are, is the factor that makes it necessary to rebalance the activities in my life.

Tuesday, the one in a thousand year palindromic date; 22/2/22.

So on this palindrome day I wake early after a very disturbed night in which it seems I was visited by all the friends and acquaintances I have known who have died of cancer. It felt as is my unconscious was working out all my anxieties by using all my own experiences of loss by cancer. My partner brought me a coffee before I got up to make myself toast and another coffee to wake me up. Todays the day of my oncology review so I select my hospital clothes and get my partner to braid my hair. I have to say that as my hair grows I am increasingly drawn to having my hair braided. So today I think it looks really good.

I drive to the hospital with my partner with me and we settle into the waiting room. My appointment time goes by and we wait till eventually I get called in. My consultant; “he who made a pack with the devil” was very up beat and greeted us with “its all good news”. The scans show that there are no new tumours or spread of the exiting ones. The new antiandrogen has significantly reduced my PSA level and there is nothing to ring alarm bells in my blood results. Apparently the new antiandrogen does not work in 30% of cases, works for a few months in about 30% and for the remaining 30% is goes on working for years. So I am at least in the second 30%, time will how long it will work for me. We agree to another review in four months and blood tests each two months. I will have to monitor the first two month blood tests adn if the PSA has risen again I need to tell the clinic so they can readjust the four month review. It is as good as it can get again so I decide that the blog will reflect that. The parting advice from the consultant is that I need to continue to exercise as it is the one thing that has been shown to be positively beneficial. He was clear that it needs to be fairly rigorous exercise so I shall continue to push it at the gym sessions. He also confirms that the tiredness I am experiencing is due to the antiandrogen. Given the importance of staying fit the balance of how I use my stores of energy is an important decision moving forward. I need to readjust what I am doing and ensuring I can look after myself.

I drive us to the gym where we have a celebration coffee and I have a bacon brioche and do the crosswords in the todays paper. After a prolonged rest I go to the gym floor and get on board a cross trainer. Something clicks and I achieve a personal best. I burn 753 calories and I go 10.08 kilometres. I never thought I would break 10 kilometres but hey there you go, I’ve done it. I shower and wait for my partner in the lounge with a large americano. My partner takes me for a surprise Italian meal. We take our time with the restaurant to ourselves. After a satisfying meal I drive us home to find that the squirrel feeder has been burgled.

The evening is taken up with reading a letter from a friend, football and TV until I settle down to write the blog. Today has been a good day and one that gives me some hope for the future providing I choose the right options to take me into the future.

Here we go Monday. Its a lazy start and my partner and I drink coffee before getting up to breakfast. A lazy breakfast and then a slow preparation towards the gym. We get there and hit the gym floor. I climb up on a cross trainer and grind out an hour. Its tough after not exercising for four days, my body clearly does not like any break from training. It gets slightly easier as the hour wears on. I burn 718 calories and go 8.08 kilometres whist downing 750 millilitres of water. A welcome shower and I am into the lounge with a large americano waiting for my partner. We leave the welcoming of the Tesco delivery to our eldest daughter and sit and talk in the gym lounge and eat a late lunch. We do not leave till mid afternoon.

Home, and before anything else we walk to the village shop to gather up the things we need that Tesco have not delivered. Apparently there is a shortage of baked beans. Shopping done, we return home and settle down to a coffee and a bun before sitting for a while before settling into an evening meal and a DVD of Cirque du Solei. My evening ends with the blog and a quiet time to think about tomorrow appointment with the oncologist. It has become an important day to me already, it feels like much hangs on it, I seek sanctuary.

Saturday and its “have another go at getting to London” day. However I wake to find my blood results are in and the news is encouraging. So here they are:

My PSA has reduced by half, my tentative hypothesis is that the new antiandrogen is reducing the “Tumour flare” as it was intended to. Kidney and liver functions are holding up, platelets are a bit low but not bad. All of this will go into the pot in Tuesday’s review. Just one step at a time at the moment.

Now its toast and order taxi time as we try to get to London for the show tonight. Taxi goes smoothly but the train that we planned to get has been cancelled due to a train fault. We sit in a freezing waiting room. Its cold because some one thought that it was a good idea in the interests of ventilation to combat COVID to leave the sliding doors on either side open. The result a howling, freezing gale whipping through the waiting room. A train arrives and we get on board and settle ourselves in the cosy luxury of first class. Of course the train is packed so all those standing in second glass get ushered into first class, ironically egalitarian. We get into St Pancras and decide to eat, so duck into the brassiere and treat ourselves to a good meal before going to the hotel via taxi.

The hotel is okay and booking in goes okay. We have some time to kill so we go to the British Museum and wander the south American halls till we discover the courtyard and the café. A cold drink is going down well when the attendant points out they are closing. I managed to get some pictures before I we leave.

I realised that the British Museum is just somewhere where we store all the stuff the British Empire nicked from all over the world and reframed it as cultural education and enlightenment. We return to the hotel and get ready to rock and roll. A taxi takes to the theatre via a circuitous route due to some road closures. There are the usual checks and public advice notices and announcements. Only my partner and I are wearing masks!!! We notice that one or two others are masked but the vast majority of the great British public do not give a toss about COVID anymore. The theatre is an old style one and quite ornate.

The show starts and they do an hour and three quarters first half before an interval ice cream and then on to a rocking finale. Its an energetic production and the crowd are on their feet at the end. The story line is a difficult one but ends on an uplifting high that was palpable in the audience as they leave. The woman who played Tina Turner was excellent and became more and more like the image of Tina Turner as the evening went on. The young girl who played the young Tina had an incredible voice and was outstanding in the rock and roll ending session. My partner and I walk back to the hotel and order what was thought to be a pizza but turned out to be a chicken pesto salad. Strange the tricks IT plays at times.

Sunday and it start with watching the rerun of Great Britain wining the curling gold medal before going down to a continental breakfast. After that it is just travel, taxi, train, taxi and then unpacking and returning to the mundane tasks like doing the Tesco order for tomorrows delivery. So now there is time to reflect on my blood results and to put together my list of questions for the oncologist on Tuesday. In a way he holds the cards as he has the scan results and I guess that’s where I want him to start. Tomorrow I need to get back to my exercise and to a diet that is healthier.