So brace yourselves.

I vow not to:

1. Buy stuff from EBay
2. Put the world to rights
3. Write bad poetry
4. Adopt unfitting political viewpoints
5. Believe I am cleverer than I am
6. Blog at 2:00 am to read and regret at 8:00 am

Maria’s face fell and she started making up the spare bed when I announced it. Yep a new chemotherapy chapter is about to open.

I had got used to the self administered variety but this is a return to the hospital drip feed version. Once a week initially and then once every two weeks. How will I fit it into my hectic schedule full of daytime TV and sleeping? So glad I have retired. This is a treatment regime that hitherto York did not have a license for so I am very fortunate to get it. I am slightly jumping the gun because as yet my new consultant has to have a multidisciplinary team meeting, coo! And a discussion with the National Amyloidosis Centre. Aren’t I important. I have to say I am glad to be led again. My treatment was in danger of drifting a bit while York Hospital struggled to recruit haematology specialists but it seems things are getting sorted which is very reassuring.

Yesterday I knew something was afoot when during my consultation a specialist nurse came to join us. This usually means the session is gonna involve a procedure (painful or embarrassing) or she’s gonna have to dispense tissues and comfort. Neither were necessary, just the usual leaflet describing the abominations your body will produce when subjected to the vellum. Actually touch wood my body has yet to react adversely to any of the chemo recipes so far.

This has been two years in coming and lucky me that there continues to be new treatments available – god know what they cost – I assume it might be on an ascending scale, try the cheap stuff first (Lidl chemo) if that doesn’t work  try Tesco chemo  then Waitrose chemo and finally Fortnums chemo that comes in a gift basket delivered by private jet.

As ever I continue to be profoundly impressed by the care I get at York yesterday I bought a caffeinated macchiato from Costa by mistake, gave it to the nurses who made me a decaffeinated instant in exchange and brought it to me in the waiting area – I have not had instant for thirty years and I was immediately transported back to working at Bonaparte Records in Bromley drinking gallons of instant coffee so that by the end of the day I would feel so bloated that I needed milking.

Coincidentally my next door neighbour is about to embark on a change of chemo so we were hoping we might get appointments together. The procedure takes a few hours so having a mate alongside might make the time pass more quickly – mind you that is a perfect opportunity for German study to take place on which subject – I had my German lesson online with Sophia yesterday. Yet another disaster. As bad as I have had so far. I panic and get brain freeze. She has to wait while I painfully fail to dredge up any German sentence with a passing resemblance to the one I intend to say. Often falling upon an English one of such inordinate complexity that it sounds like I am trying to fox her translation skills or demonstrate that I can at least speak my mother tongue. Maria has the same problem – Say it as simply as you can – “I went to town” – not “ Yesterday we decided, after much consideration to take a much needed trip to town.” Basically I would get as far as “yesterday” and the rest would be a string of incomprehensible German sounds punctuated by ‘becketian’ pauses and Anglo Saxon curses.

It seems I am drawn to the blog when my health concerns move to the foreground. I know why and I have repeated it many times: It makes me feel better. So no doubt you will hear from me again at least until I get used to the new chemo regime or bored with it.

I suddenly feel the urge to blog. In the past the shorter darker days have sent me into a tailspin of gloom but since retirement I have so much more freedom to avoid gloom, I would feel guilty if I let myself go. What are you all doing about the news from the US? As soon as I realised what was happening, I deleted all my online news feeds and stopped listening to Radio 4 or watching TV news. If it comes on while I am changing channels I sing loudly shout nonsense and frantically find a channel with dull people up-cycling bedside tables. (Much repeated moan – Up cycling in my view should be called ruining – beautiful old telephones turned into horrible lamps …ughhhh) anyway back to the news from America – I just can’t face it anymore. I followed the election build up enthusiastically, hoping (expecting) that ‘Sane’ Kamala would win and ‘Mad’ Donald would lose, then disappear. Now I give up. The American people have made their decision, and I have made mine – to ignore them, him, it, the whole terrible thing the whole terrible lot of them. I am too weak and lazy to do anything positive to improve the world so I have decided to stop looking, listening, reading, to hibernate and just wait until someone tells me it’s worth waking up because all the greedy old men with humongous egos have been eaten up by a monster.

While we wait, we in York and have been ill. Not seriously but persistently and when I say my family I include one cat. Between us we have taken four lots of antibios and a ‘Boots’ load of paracetamol and ibuprofen. Fortunately Maria and I didn’t need clamping by the front paws onto the kitchen table while utilising long leather rose pruning gloves to have our medicine administered but Vince did. Awful, awful, awful – we needed Lisa badly. Poor Vince acquired over a week or so a lion face with a big swollen jaw and a lot of dribble and pus, squeeling with pain at one stage. We took him to the vet three times or was it four, and each time he pooed in his box and was very distressed. The vet said it could be something sinister (a popular euphemism for cancer) but could equally be a vermin bite or an abscess under a tooth. I started preparing his eulogy on the basis that cancer is very much in fashion in our house so I saw no reason why Vince wouldn’t want to be part of the trend. Hopefully he doesn’t as his face is no longer ‘lenny’ like (Tv lion from the 60’s) and his appetite is back and his temperament is jolly as ever. Bobby the only non ill member of the family has a smug look on his face that warrants a punch.

The last five weeks have probably been my least productive period for years. I have done next to nothing except feel poorly and slightly obsessively keep on learning German. My excuse is that we are in Bonn for Arthur’s birthday next year but I think I am competing secretly with Maria and George who are both making excellent progress with their Italian and I just don’t want to be left out. I have a super smart, too smart teacher, Sophia who massively overestimates my intelligence and retention power, bubbles with enthusiasm but cannot refrain from speaking so fast my brain starts to boil trying to keep up. I come away exhausted unable to remember the German for ‘Christopher Newell’ – it is Christopher Newell btw.

I continue to enter various writing competitions never to hear a thing back except variations on a theme of “nah.” Before getting ill I completed a short video made with my next door neighbour Geoff and his grand daughter. I will release it once they have seen it and approved. It hasn’t been possible to show them so far because we have been so infectious they don’t want to come in the house for a screening

On Thursday I will find out what the plan is for my treatment, as the current chemo has stopped working. Worked for three years which is excellent. Hoping it’s nothing too vicious but I will take whatever is thrown at me of course. I am on stronger beta blockers as well for my heart which are making me super lazy but then again I can’t unravel the effect of the cold on my particularly sedentary habits so we will see. I expect to be a lot bouncier soon and I must say I am looking forward to feeling like getting on with things again.

Hey one more thing.  Once you chuck away BBC news and the Guardian and TikTok you discover loads of worthy, arty videos on You Tube you have been promising to watch but just accruing in ‘watch later’ at the expense of a quick news fix. Bernstein’s series on music is brilliant. I have never realised before, that the reason I love Berg so much and don’t love Schoenberg at all is the incredibly emotional way he hints but doesn’t indulge in tonality. If you think of his music as tonal layered with atonality then it seems more accessible. Then again you need Bernsteins ear to hear it. Even the more accessible Berg is still quite often a right load of wrong notes for rather a long time but I think I understand it better now.