Saturday and the day is dominated by preparing for and attending a lunch with old work colleagues. After a shower and breakfast with my meds I get ready to drive off to the canal side venue in the Burton area. My satnav took me across country so the journey was slow but I eventually got there. It took a while for all of us to arrive. In the end there was four of us , one of who had only arrived in England a few hours earlier having flown in from Bermuda where he works. The lunch was okay food wise but it was the conversations and the catching up with each others news that was the really good part of the time. All of our families had changed significantly and there were things in the future that we were all looking forward to. Several hours later we wrap up our time and head off tour various destinations.

My evening saw me watching the end of the Lidia Poet series punctuated by the weekly Tesco delivery before going to bed tired from the days exertions.

Sunday and another busy social day ahead. I have a light breakfast and take my morning meds before getting ready to go to friends for lunch. It is to be a celebration of my eldest daughters being awarded her doctorate.

I drive the family to our friends for lunch but by a hugely circuitous route due to the usual one being closed. There was no explanation as to why the roads were closed but it meant a long and time consuming deviation. We finally arrived about thirty minutes late and were shown to the garden patio where we were served drinks on a surprisingly warm and sun afternoon. We ate a tasty goats cheese and walnut starter with a drizzle of honey however the sun was so warm we retreated inside to the air conditioning before the main course was served. There was wine and delicious food to consume as we chatted and caught up with each others news and plans. With a small rest between courses we chatted more until the pudding was ready straight from the oven. With the meal over we sat and drank wine or coffee as the outside world grew dark and rainy. ON one trip to the loo I missed my footing on the bathroom step. It is an old Victorian house and for some reason they seemed to put steps into all sorts of places. In this case it was a tricky little step down into the bathroom. I must have missed the step as I found myself falling forward, My left ankle rolled and I fell awkwardly over my left leg and banged my head on the floor. I lay there for a bit testing that I could move all my limbs, and very shortly afterwards my family had arrived, I assume they heard me yelp as I went down. HAvig ascertained that there was nothing broken and I could stand I was left alone to take the pee I had originally come for. I knew exactly what I had done, my rolled ankle had meant that as my weight went done I had pulled the ligaments and muscles on the outside of my calf. Although painful it was walkable and crucially it turned out that it did not impede my driving. I returned to the chatting and the devouring of mint chocolates. Before we new it, it had become early evening and the night was closing in. We said our farewells and I drove the family home retracing our previous long route avoiding the road closures. Once home my partner and I settled down to watch Blood Sacrifice, a Swedish crime drama that charts the pursuit of a serial killer who is killing and beheading police officers. The best it is learning from the subtitles the names of the days of the week. We are slowly getting there. Monday = Mandag, Tuesday = Tisdag, Wednesday =Onsdag, Thursday = Torsdag, Friday =Fredag, Saturday =Lordag, Sunday = Sondag. I watch the football highlight when my partner goes off to bed and I extend my TV viewing by watching new episodes of Mock the week. I eventually take my night meds and limp off to bed, my leg feeling achy after its earlier part on my fall.

Bank holiday Monday and I radically over sleep. I do not properly wake until about eleven o’clock. I hate it when this happens, I feel that I am immediately on the back foot an trying to catch up. In reality I have nothing to catch up on, I’m retired. However I feel put out but my left leg reminds me that I has a fall yesterday and despite myself I find I am limping a bit and its painful. This is a real inconvenience as I had planned to stat training again on the first of September, tomorrow. I will have to see how I am feeling tomorrow and make a decision. I finally get up and take my morning meds along with fresh orange juice and a toasted tea cake. With my feet up to rest my leg I catch up with drafting the blog. Its already one o’clock and I feel the rest of the day stretching ahead of me. In my head I have a to do list but I do not feel I have the energy or capability to do very much beyond perhaps filing the car with petrol.

The afternoon is spent at a garden centre café indulging in food and black coffee, and then filling the car with petrol, while my evening spent watching more of the Blood Sacrifice. Finally I get to take my meds and go to bed late after watching some of a film that I could not wait for the end off.

Friday and my household go off to the gym leaving me with a hot water and marmite toast. I get up and shower before getting ready to go out at lunch time. I spend time doing some life admin and preparing the house for a future crisis of energy loss. The electricity provider, who sought my details to keep me on their priority list, also provided advice about how to cope with long term power cuts. Part of that advice was to have a wind up radio and lantern. Taking their advice I ordered one of each. Suddenly the world feels safer all I need to do now is lay in long term supplies of lentils, rice and beans.

With the future security of the family sorted I turn my attention to sorting out my winter coats and finding the Fuchsia jacket I intend to wear to my eldest daughters doctoral graduation ceremony. My Neo Matrix coat I can just about get into providing I do not put anything in the inside pockets, while my biker jacket is a hopeless cause. There is no way I can zip it up over my steroid/goodies paunch. Fortunately the rest of my winter coats still fit me. I search for my Fuchsia cord Jaeger jacket, unfortunately it is nowhere to be found. This meant a trip to the loft. Using my baseball bat I get into the loft and rummage through the “Dad’s winter woollies” box. I find my jacket and hang it up in the hope that the creases will fall out, but to be honest its not looking its best. I will get it dry cleaned and see what happens. My family return from the gym and we go off to a local garden centre for bacon rolls and black decaf coffee.

Once home I nap for a while and then listen to several episodes of “I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue” until tea time when I eat and succumb to TV. There are still episodes of Lilia Poet to go. I shall endeavour to have an early night as tomorrow I am lunching with old colleagues from my work days. This is not a problem but the weather is due to be stormy, which will make the drive more of a pain. I am hoping the fatigue begins to decline.

Thursday, fatigue as I wake that does not shift despite getting up, having breakfast and taking my morning meds. My household goes to the gym, I watch TV and finally manage to write.

556
I can’t write this,
my ink clots like blood,
there is no flow 
just smears of sensed
hollowness.
This vacuum,
this echoing chasm,
this emptiness
that consumes 
my every effort
in all directions.
As a result I am inert,
fearing to move 
In body or mind. 
Action,
any movement
may jar the jammed being.
In the meantime 
I go on daubing
primeval being
to hold the space 
that is me.

                                                556 27-08-2026

The day and evening is full of violent thunderstorms. I take my meds and go to bed.

Wednesday and I wake quite early and check my messages and socials. Not much in any of them apart from the death of Dolly Parton. My partner brings me a hot water, which I sip while listening to the bin folk empty our bins, or at least two of them, for some reason it take till later in the day for the recycling to be collected. On getting up I make breakfast, take my meds and clear the dish washer. Its in to the washer with my weekly washing load and then I bring the empty bins in. At last the message telling me my drugs can be collected after 3pm today comes through so at some point I will be Ubering into the hospital pharmacy.

My washing gets transferred to the tumble dryer as I am too lazy to hang it out in the free sunshine. I am momentarily expecting rain. I begin to draft the blog and idle away time by writing some verses. I am feeling very fatigued and I am not sure why I am so tired, all I can do is have bursts of activity and then rest before trying to do anything else. A friend calls and we chat about fatigue, she is taking her family abroad soon and is trying to keep work under control while still suffering the effects of long term COVID. In these circumstances energy is in short supply and has to be managed carefully. It seems we have a shared challenge, I could certainly do with more energy.

555
I realise I want to make a noise,
not just play guitar or sing badly
but to be heard.
It is the loudness that seems important,
to ensure that when silence comes
it will be be noticed.
Oh its quiet,
he’s not here anymore.
There is a gap,
where something used to be,
a thing that made a noise 
and drew attention to the world
and its madness's and contradictions
but most of all its meaninglessness
and our shared struggle to make sense 
of it all.
Our constant making of an internal universe
in the hope that someday we would understand.
Now there is a new silence to comprehend 
and another piece of data that needs to be held,
and examined in the sister silence of so much else.
Listen carefully to the absence 
and remember there used to be sound 
where now there is just the moment.

                                                                                  555  26-08-2026

After a light lunch I take some paracetamol and get ready to go to the hospital to collect my steroids. My partner and I take an Uber to and from the hospital. My wait in the pharmacy is minimal so we are soon speeding our way back home where I load up my dossetes with the steroids. I rest for a while before the evening meal and then I settle down to watch more of the Lidia Poet series. I take my night meds, finish the blog and get myself off to bed.

Tuesday and my partner brings me hot water as usual before I get up and take my morning meds. I decide to go to the gym with my partner so that I can have breakfast and a shower as she bounces about in the aqua aerobics class. That is exactly what I do and in the time I am waiting for my partner to appear from her class I sloth about and imagine I am winning the world cup for the third time but admit I am surprised to find myself playing left back. When my partner reappears we head for one of our local garden centres with a coffee house and have a late lunch. My strawberry milkshake and tuba melt panini turned out to be a filling combination.

Once home I set about sawing the end off the discarded sunshade so that is would fit in the HIPPO Bag. This went very well but when I came t o unlock the garage door it was a different matter. The lock is jammed and despite a lot of WD40 it would not budge. In the end I humped shopping bags full of old text books onto the garage floor but did not have the energy to get them to the Hippo bag, so there they sit till I feel stronger or I get some help. I was hoping to get the drive way gates re-oiled today but that ambition is out of the window. I drink a cold zero percent lager as I sit on the swing seat to recover before retreating indoors to draft the blog and plan TV for the evening, of course the Greta British Sewing Bee is a shoe in, the rest is trickier so I feel an early night coming on as I may need to go to the hospital to collect a new prescription for the steroids I am taking. Failing that there are bags of books to move and gates to oil before it starts to rain.

Monday and I’ve been a “busy boy”. I woke to find my partner gone with her brother to see their mother in the care home. I get up quite quickly for me as today is to be a sunny day which means garden things need doing. I make breakfast and take my meds before clearing the kitchen and emptying the Daisy (Dishwasher). There are things to do but first I check my RAC renewal and the goodies in the museum catalogue. I head for the garden in my boots and start the autumn pruning and clearing away of dead or spent flowers. I fill the garden recycling bin before giving it best and downing a diet coke.

Before lunch I read the energy meters and submit my readings on the phone App. Its been a good month the household will come in under budget for the month. The use of the fans in the heat waves seem not to have made any difference to our power usage. So I reach the time for a late Pizza lunch and as it turns out, a nap.

Post nap I put my office chair back in the Shed and then hunt out some Velcro fixing strips. I spend some time sorting out the right fixings and then place the new miniatures into the collections on the staircase. That was to be my last task of the day, so I retreated to the sofa and began the drafting of the blog until my partner returned.

Post diner I settled down to watch several episodes of Lidia Poet. This person actually existed, an Italian woman born 1885 and was the first woman lawyer to be admitted to the bar and then rejected three months later. She spent decades fighting for women’s rights and finally was admitted to the bar again along with other women when she was in her sixties. A fearsome, religious woman, who did not drink, never married and had no children. In the Netflix series she drinks, fucks and profanes freely. The remaining living relatives, she died in 1949, when I was one, offered to advise Netflix but Netflix never responded. Given what they turned this woman into they are no more or less hypocritical, bigoted and ignorant than the Italian male establishment Lidia fought all her life. Bastards.

I take my night meds and retreat to bed to gather more energy for tomorrows tasks.

Friday, after a slow getting up and taking my morning meds I go to the gym with my partner. While she bounces about in the pool under the guidance of an expert aqua aerobics tutor I take a gym shower, free hot water, that does not fail. I take a luxurious time and emerge clean and refreshed ready for a cookie and a diet coke. While I wait for my partner to emerge I tap out a verse on my phone.

554

I'm tapping bars
which I cannot see,
I think I am going blind.
Ages changes the eyes
but the brain accommodates
and personal universes alters.
My mothers hooded eyes
passed down to me
along with her bloody
but clear mindedness.
I peer through pin holes
and see a world upside down,
an old world being ravaged
by ageless change and growing 
losses and the struggle for survival.
It feels like war is at hand
but I fear it has already begun
I'm just not a casualty yet.
With luck I will be a blessed one
to have lived and died in relative
peace.
Unfortunately my generation
had the seeds of damaged men
embedded in it,
and now in their declining years
their rottenness infects us all.
The horsemen gather
and await the final charge.

                                                                   554 21-08-2026  

My partner reappears and in a moment of spontaneous hunger satisfaction we decide to eat out for lunch. We agree on the local pub in a nearby village. Once settled into a comfy nook we order our meals and enjoy the atmosphere and chat. It is a very pleasant meal and by the end we are relaxed and ready for home. Once there we settle in for a quiet evening in front of the TV catching up with Professor T. I take my night meds and go to bed feeling that I am recovering and finding some energy.

There are only a few ways to describe my Saturday. Of course it started with breakfast and morning meds. The rest of my time is taken up with filling a Hippo Bag. In order to fill it I have to dismantle a sunshade which included emptying the ballast tanks. My next task was to dismantle a brute of a Swedish business office chair. Once I discovered the right tool it was a matter of unscrewing everything I could get my tool to. By the time I had got everything into the Hippo Bag I was knackered. I had just cleared everything away when Tesco delivered, so there was an intense unloading and squirreling time. Dinner was emergency shepherds pies and and evening of more Professor T and Ludwig. While this was happening my team, Brentford were thrashing Spurs in the first match of the football season. So a good day, which ended with Match of the Day and the inevitable night meds.

Sunday and its unexpectedly sunny so on a whim my partner and I have breakfast and after a short rest to let the paracetamol work. We drove to Statin Harold where there was an Artisan Show. Normally such “art fares” are full of tat interspersed with the occasional stall with something worth having however this Artisan Show was populated with really good products. There were several very good arts and people making things. There was music by live musicains, pipers, and organ grinders.

We wandered the event, ate pizza and drank coke before buying additions to the miniature collection. We also looked at the 1653 church that is an amazingly intact example of a 1653 catholic church built while Cromwell was running the country. Its a great little gem of a church. We drive home and rest until the evening when we dine and I draft the blog before I watch the last of the Professor T series. Finally its of to bed after my meds are taken. I just have a week of rest and recovery before I am due to start training again.

Thursday and I had hoped I was going to feel better after my 28 day jab on Monday but alas it has not happened. I woke up feeling fatigued and with a head ache. My partner brought me hot water and we chatted for a while before she went to the gym for an aqua class. I got up and made breakfast and took my morning meds. Amazon delivered the new garden hose reel which I set about making, A pretty simple challenge really. Once the reel was assembled I took it into the garden and attached the hose to it. All seems to have gone well. I spent a bit of time dead heading flowers and took more pictures of the Dahlias in bloom. I also gave the newest two plants that I potted up yesterday a extra watering. A waste of time really as it rained heavily later in the day.

My headache had not gone so I took some paracetamol and relaxed listening to Jus a Minute. My partner returned and I did the Tesco order for Saturday before my partner went to her brother’s to sort out more finance issues related to their mother being in care. I rested feeling intensely frustrated that I could do no more. I turn to drafting the blog and checking my emails which included a David Lloyd member survey. I’m not one for filling in surveys but I did this one and probably vented my irritation with life in general. My frustration with myself for not shifting the projects I want to do is growing.

I spend the afternoon resting, trying to read and thinking about reviewing my poetry website. I’ve not written anything lately and I have a lot of new poetry to read and write about. I am also waiting for the person who is writing the Forward to the new poetry collection to finish it, but their is a lot for him to read and digest and that cannot be hurried, so I shall have to be patient. I’ve not put anything up on my poetry YouTube channel either but I think that will happen naturally when the new poetry collection is published. So I wait to feel better and have more energy. Of course my anxiety is that while I am not taking any medication to fight my cancer that I am giving it free reign over my body and that I may not get to feel better. I am back to the “What is this?” question in my cancer journey. I have specific things (projects) I need to do to organise life a bit more and clear away some of the “stuff” that needs to be got rid of. So I am aware that it must be frustrating being around me at the moment, I must look like I’m just laying around doing nothing, which is partly true. So I’m still no nearer knowing what this is, which means I have to make it into something . Finding the energy to do that is the challenge.

My evening is going to be slow with TV, reading and finally night meds. With the addition of a box of after eights.

Never so happy to see rain

Monday I wake and prepare to go to the GP surgery to get my 28 day injection. My youngest grandsons are still visiting so there is a shuffle of cars on the drive so that I can get out. My usual nurse is back from her holiday of traveling around Canada. She gives me my usual injection and I head off home. My eldest daughter and partner take their youngest son with them to collect a new car and leave their eldest with us to entertain. It goes really well and in a bout two hours the parents return with the new car, a lovely orange red Nissan Juke hybrid. It looks good and means that the family can get about their domestic and work lives more simply than before. After a light lunch the grandsons get strapped into the cars and the family drive off home My partner and I tidy up a bit and I retreat to the garden swing seat to rest, my injection site is becoming sore and soon my body will start to react against the injection. And so it does as the day wears on. The evening is slow and I am sure I watch something but it was unremarkable. What is remarkable are the Dahlia’s that have come out more in their patio pots. A good image to end the day on.

Tuesday and I wake up still sore from yesterdays 28 day injection. I know right from the off this is going to be a slow day with a lot of resting. And so it is as I drift and meander through the day. I get a call from a friend out there in the real world. She is heading for a post office to send parcels before collecting her youngest daughter. It is easy to forget that there are people out there working and having to achieve things. It is the greatest luxury of retirement, and the most difficult to understand and accept that you no longer have to achieve things, that days can go by with having achieved anything apart from fulfilling your own fancies and desires. Of course there are personal things that one wants to do, like write and publish poetry, play better guitar or have a tidy garden but no one requires me to do these things and my financial agency is not dependant on doing them. This is real freedom but I worked bloody hard to obtain it, perhaps the best achievement of my life. Any way my friend and I chatted for the duration of the journey to the post office.

Of course I spent some time on the garden swing seat in the much cooler weather trying to get rid of my headache and the soreness of the injection site. M partner goes out early evening to have dinner with an old work friend leaving me to watch a film and indulge in a take away Indian. The film was okay the chicken Balti was not. I made a poor choice and my mouth and gut declined to finish it and left me to nibble on a plain nan. A second film followed, which has left me so it cant have been any good. On my partners return we settle down to watch The Great British Sewing Bee, kids week, and then I take my evening meds and go to bed still feeling sore and decidedly grumpy. I am frustrated that I have not had enough energy to get to grips with the things I want to do, it is a consequence of having to give my injection time to settle down and for my body to gather itself together enough to be active.

Wednesday, my chicken Balti gives me a disturbed night and I end up surfacing about 09:30 when my partner hands me a hot water. I sip the water as I go through my morning orientation ritual of checking messages, alerts and all the other stuff that clutters up my phone. In a short time my partner goes off with her brother to see their mother in the care home. Shortly afterwards my eldest daughter goes off to see her physiotherapist to sort out a painful limb. In a moment of energy I take a shower grabbing the first shower/shampoo gel I can get my hands on. Feeling refreshed I make breakfast and then set about drafting the blog and ordering my own shower gel.

By lunch time I have done all my life admin and when my partner returns from her gym class we go off to the garden centre for bacon rolls and coffee. Of course as we have an empty pot we buy two new plants. Once home I set about planting up the new plants in some rare spots of rain. I spend the rest of the afternoon reading and napping until my partner goes out to meet a friend for dinner. I make myself a meal and then indulge myself by watching The Matrix, a great film that still stands up today. I follow this by the new Professor T series before taking my night meds and heading off to bed.

Friday was a day at the gym. My partner was doing back to back aqua aerobics and having her nails done so I decided to go to the gym and have a shower and spend my time reading till she was done. It gets me out of the house and it is also a test. I have not been able to bare being in the gym changing rooms and exposing my naked body to view by others. So todays adventure was a big deal. ONce at the gym I head for the changing rooms and grab a locker. I undress quickly and head for the showers with my Sainsburys bag with my towels and smellies in it. I have chosen a locker close to the showers so that my exposure time is as small as possible. Once in the shower I take my time adjusting the shower head and the temperature before I get in under the warm stream. I let myself have the luxury of two rinses with the shower gel and take my time rinsing and then drying. Back in the locker room I wrap myself in towels and sit waiting to dry fully whilst watching the European athletics on the locker room TV. Once dry I apply my lotions and dress. I am soon back in the gym lounge having survived my exposure.

I sit in the lounge with a diet Coke and read Blindboy Boatclub’s series of short stories. The guy definitely has issues but also has a really warped sense of humour, sharp and satirical. I read until my partner appears for a brief lunch before she goes to the beauty salon to do her nails. I lunch on a Lucozade sport and an ice cream and continue to read. At three o’clock, or close to, my partner reappears and we drive home.

The evening is all athletics as the Brits win medals and also lose appallingly, a real mixed bag. Eventually I take my night meds and go to bed knowing it is the poetry stanza meeting tomorrow, I hope for good sleep.

Saturday arrives and I feel tired and a bit apprehensive but I get up and make breakfast and take my morning meds. I run off copies of two poems to take to the stanza meeting as I cannot decide which I want to make public. I will see what else is brought before I make up my mind. At lunch time I set off early as I want to get a parking space, its a small car park and the space are narrow and few and with Elsie (car) being an SUV it can be a struggle parking her girth. I get there early and I am rewarded with an easy car parking space. I’m fifty minutes early and go to the Quaker House library to sit in the quite and wait. I think their are others around but being British probably do not want to be too early. While I am waiting I think about a comment by John Cooper Clarke in which he thinks poetry is accessible to everyone as “who cannot afford a biro”. I write a brief verse.

553

Who cannot afford a Biro?
Being somewhere different
like a Quaker library 
for instance.
A Biro can take you places,
turn inside into outside,
make mine yours uncontrollably.
Turn strangers into familiars
and a world less alien, less lonely.
Pity those that cannot afford a Biro 
and do not know they can steal one
from Argos or the Post Office.

                                                                         553 15-08-2026

Eventually everyone arrives and change the room to a collective satisfaction. We then begin to read and examine our poetry. There is some good stuff and I enjoy reading when it gets to my turn. There is a short break and it comes to my poems turn to be read and discussed. I finally chose my Dr John Cooper Clarke poem.

543
Dr John Cooper Clarke,
People accuse me all the time
Of being accessible...
My ears prick up at accuse!
So its poor poetry to be accessible?
What is craved is the obscure, 
the veiled,
the smart arsed, unintelligible,
sickeningly egocentric, over
intellectualised clap trap 
that indulges airy fairy 
whimsicality of an aesthete
who cannot look you in the poetic eye
and say this is it.
I am saved by 
Foyle’s Young Poets anthology
where youths gaze
is not turned away,
raw and rugged 
and very accessible.
But oh woe
the adults cannot resist slapping,
Content warning, graphic imagery or
Content warning, allusion to suicide
all over the work of the young.
And there you have my loathing 
of the poetry industry.
It drives me wild.
Killing the thing it loves 
with a kiss like the coward it is. 
						543 25-06-2026

People seemed to like my poem and I eventually cam away feeling satisfied that I had contributed to the group. One or two people asked how I was and chatted for a while. I drive home, content but tired. I also come home with the idea of a story about a piece of Venetian glass. My evening is athletics, the European championship and a crap film before I take my night meds and

Sunday and I wake quite late and to organise myself before the arrival of my two youngest grandsons with their parents. I sort out a 28 day injection for tomorrow . I need to be at the GP surgery for 9am in order for the nurse to jab me. I make breakfast and take my morning meds. I have woken up with a headache so I take paracetamol and head for the garden swing seat to rest and relax. Eventually I am joined by my youngest daughter and one of the grandsons. The rest of the day is filled with children things, garden things and eating. As I am doing crosswords at the patio table I notice that one of the Dahlias has come into bloom and it looks lovely.

I take time to draft the blog before tea and then continue while the last day of the European athletics plays out. At the end of the evening I take my night meds and retreat to bed knowing that I have to be up early and at the GP surgery by 9am.