Famous last words

2011-07-19T16:24:00.003+01:00

Carpe Diem
It’s rather a glib phrase isn’t? You see it on pots, cards and the sort of sundials you buy in those select ‘in the know’ catalogues for the aspiring middle class. It’s the names they give them that get me; “The Museum Collection”, “Culture Vulture”, “House of Bath” (based in Manchester by the way).
Well anyway, my darling did what E. M. Forster suggested you should do with clichés; she breathed new life into this one by seizing the day, the fatal day, before it even happened.
She had told me that there was a folder called ‘funeral’, but I couldn’t bear to look at it until she had left us – it was just too close. Even seeing the reduced person she was in the last few weeks of her life I knew that she would have taken a hand, she was, after all, amongst a host of other things, a brilliant event organiser – everything from the annual British Pharmaceutical Conference with a cast of thousands, to small discussion groups for mental health sufferers.
Well what I imagined would be odd suggestions about an order of service and appropriate tunes turned out to be much more. One of the mourners said to me “I think that was the most amazing ceremony I’ve ever been to!”
What she had done was to ‘organise’ the whole thing: order of service; script for the humanist celebrant; readings; music, and even left the catalogue number for the coffin. “I want a wicker coffin. I don’t want to be hemmed-in, and I’ve always been at least pale green in outlook”.
The three readings were ones that she had written about us, family and friends – typical of her; she would still be thinking about others from beyond the grave. We were to write the last reading, and she knew that Sam, our family laureate, would write a poem for the occasion.
So what I am going to do is reproduce as much of this ceremony as I can for you on her beloved blog. I will include an electronic version of the Order of Service designed by the lovely Jo who worked with Jean for over 20 years. She turned Jean’s order and Jessie’s suggestions into a simple, beautiful testament for the day. Then there will be the three readings which Jean left and the fourth which we put together in her memory.
At family funerals eldest son Sam usually plays a beautiful Irish air called ‘The tip of the Whistle’ on the penny-whistle - at the interment. He didn’t think he could do it on this occasion, but Joe, second son, recorded him playing it a couple of days before. Joe tells me that we can probably insert a link for that too. So we will try.
The only thing that we couldn’t do at the crematorium from Jean’s original order of service (the place was jam-packed with people standing on top of each other almost), was to get up and dance to ABBA singing ‘Dancing Queen’ (with bubbles). We did that at the local cricket club afterwards, so you will have to imagine it.
First reading
Read by Andree Mackay, Sister in law
The most important relationship in my life has, of course, been with Stewart. I met him at 15 and fell in love at 16, married him at 18 and though we had our ups and downs, thicks and thins, we stayed deeply in love right to the end. I wrote about our relationship on my blog, I called it
Asunder
It's the thought of leaving my kids that brings the quickest tear to my eye; it just does. I try to think about leaving Stewart behind, but I can't formulate it in my mind. I think he will be coming with me and that is just daft. Certainly the he that is he that is us will, but he will be left and shattered and forever different. But I still can't conceive of it.

There is a beautiful place near our French house called Limeuil, we went there for picnics by the river and for the annual pottery fair where we always bought something even though we had no bloody room in either of our houses. If you walk up the hill it's one of “les plus belles villages de France” but the wonder of it is the river.. . or rivers.. I should say, as it's where the Vezere meets the Dordogne and they become one river. They are both massive and brown and godlike; they rumble and bicker together as they meet then merge with little flurries over rocks and banks. Just a way up from the picnic site there would be no way of separating one from the other, their weeds are each other’s, the fish can't tell the difference. If one were to dry up there would still be all the life from the other - from before, that would be impossible to disentwine. So is that like us; yes and no; no because rivers can't feel and miss and want; yes because we are one miraculous, mucky thing, sometimes out of control and sometimes deep and beautiful; and, it has proved, always feeling the pull to be together.
Second reading – Denise Burns, friend
I can remember a blissful day when I was about 21, it was in a place with a bandstand and lots of grass. I was playing with Jeanie and Jamie: my niece and nephew and we were chasing around playing catch. I knew then I had to have some children of my own and have them quickly. We had been waiting until we could afford a house and I had finished my degree. Switch to another day, perhaps 14 years on when we were rattling along in one of our old bangers, with all four children aboard, Sam, Joe, Luke and Jess, through Shropshire I think it was. We were playing 20 questions and I remember thinking ,“ I don’t think I will ever be happier than this”.
Having children is an amazing thing, they sort of become part of you but apart; they are your life but more important than your life. They take over your being.
For me family memories revolve around food and eating, en masse, at our kitchen table. There were seven of us every evening, including my Dad. We didn’t have much money at all at first so it was often omelettes or spaghetti bol but delicious all the same. We would natter continuously as we chomped and it wasn’t just to drown out the noise of Dad’s false teeth rattling around. Often it was about politics, religion or the latest news. There was gossip and there were Luke’s questions to Sam: did Fred Astaire ever do shot-putting? Do I have to say I am a Christian boy at school even if I don’t believe in God; will you write a song about tap dancing on Rupert the bear. (he did)
Often we were joined by other members of the family: my Mom and her second husband the beloved Fred; Peggy and Eric - Stewart’s, Mom and Dad; Neil and Andree, my brother and sister-in-law and often Jeanie of the bandstand memory; Graham and Ruth and Grace, Stewart’s wonderful devoted brother, his wife and their lovely daughter. Later our kids brought their friends who became our friends, and then their partners: Tom; Aleks and her daughters, our step-granddaughters, Hannah and Chelsea; and Julie from France. Their parents and siblings too have become part of the family and with great joy recently their children: Harry and Danny and the twins Max and Charlie, and we must not forget Scoobie, Joe’s dog: oh what a difference they have all made to our lives. I cannot put into adequate words the complete joy that grandchildren bring.
All this was a wonderful mix of fantastic food and people we loved. I had had a very different childhood in many ways, we ate on our laps and it was often Steaklettes and Angel Delight or warmed up school dinners but I was given the most amazing grounding in political awareness, art, kindness and bravery by my Mom and Dad and a lot of laughter, what a pair they were. My wider family of aunts, uncles and cousins were all characters in their own right. I thank them all for making me what I was.
Of course I can’t bear to leave all of this family life and for there to be a gap at that table in the kitchen, but I know that they will all keep me alive in their hearts. I would love to have been around longer for my children and grandchildren but it is not to be. So, keep eating, loving and remembering my darlings.
Third reading- Ruth Harker, sister in law
Friendship and fellowship
The other big boon in my life has been the amazing array of friends I have had through the years. This all started in the black and white years of the 1950s with Lynda, Frieda, Kathryn and Ann, and the boys of course who we chased around Gleneagles Rd and in the playground; then on to secondary school where Berenice became and has remained all my life like a surrogate sister. At University I was a married woman and so not open to many of the frenetic friendships that went on but Doug and Gloria who came to live near us after University have remained fast friends as has Sue who was a weirdo scientist but we overlooked that.
I married into an amazing set of friends from Stewart’s school life: Duncan and his wife Maggie; Les and Jude, Mary and Mike, Lynn and Doug and Sue and Mick. For over forty years and most particularly when we were young and fancy free, and also since I became ill, they have lightened our lives and mixed in their own blend of experience and humour.
There are some friends who become something other, part of the family but different, your soul mates I suppose. They come and go but we have been so lucky in these sorts of relationships over the years: Nita and Tony; Rudy and Celia, and Richard; Pat and Dick (40 odd years and still going strong – in fact stronger); and in the last two decades Chris and Denise our inseparable mates. With these there is a silent understanding and an unbreakable bond. Some like Rudy and Celia split up but stayed close to us even though separated by thousands of miles.
We have been extremely lucky in living in a road for 30 years that is bursting with fellowship and community spirit. We have loved the parties and the fireworks, the quizzes and the neighbourliness. And when we were lucky enough to be able to buy our paradise in Maumont we found it there too, bathed in sunshine and bursting with bon viveur.
Friends also come because of kids and politics, Julie and Trudie are notable examples of these, guaranteed to make me laugh. So many others as well – it would take a book.
At work too I counted everyone I worked with, with one notable exception, as a friend. Work became a fulfilment and an obsession at times and the support and laughter I shared has been one of the best parts of my life. I know I was famous for lists, but I’m not going to make one now. You know who you are, and that I love you.
I have talked, giggled, drunk and danced with all of you, thank you so much for enriching my life and please carry on for those left behind.

Fourth Reading – From us to her
Sue Williams, friend
Apart from Sam’s poem all the words you have heard so far have been Jean’s words, and, true to character, they have all been about us, her family and friends.

Now is the time for a few words about her. We are not going to have the usual potted biography. We are all here today because we know and have been touched by the facts of her life. Suffice it to say that she was a clever brummie girl who had academic success and then devoted the rest of her life to making things better for others. In the seventies she ran a campaign exposing the pain visited on people, her mom included, from taking a heart drug made by ICI. They made a Panorama programme about her campaign. She got 14 million pounds in compensation for people – a fortune in those days – without a thought about personal gain. This was typical of her quiet determined nature.

Here then are some words that family and friends have to say about Jean.

Friends say:

“She was so brave, funny, clever and kind.”

“She was an inspiration to us all, not only in the dignified way she coped with her illness but also as an example in life – as a mother, a wife, a daughter and a friend.”

“I will always remember her as being full of life, kindness and strength, and I always looked forward to being in her company.”

Neighbours say:

“There will forever be a void in Livingstone Road.”

Workmates say:

“Jean was special to all who worked with her. She was always confident and made up for all our inadequacies. She was always supportive, never seriously critical, and when she was with you everything seemed manageable.”

“Jean was a wonderful person, warm, fun to be with, a great friend and colleague. She was immensely talented and achieved so much.”

And now to her children;
Joe wrote:
I have been asked to say a few words about my mother Jean, but there are no words. There are no words to describe what a wonderful wife, mother and friend she was. There are no words to describe how we will all miss her sunny, positive disposition, her wisdom and council in times of pain and uncertainty. There are no words that could ever do justice to the way we loved her and the love she showed to us all.
Luke wrote:
Around the time my Grandma Peggy died, I was very sad and approached my mom with questions of the here-after and whether Grandma was in 'heaven' It took real devotion and love from mom to tell me truth, that no, we could not make everything seem better and easier by palming this over to a 'god'. She told me that what lives on from a person is the memories we have shared and that when a person dies they are not really dead because the memories of that person live on in the minds of those that love them and are passed on throughout the ages. Aldous Huxley wrote that 'Every man's memory is his private literature'. With memories of my mother we all have a library of inspiration.
From Jess:
My mom was everything I am and everything I am not. She taught me to be a friend, a mother, a grafter, a feminist, a wife, a socialist; a women. What I didn’t learn was her grace. I didn’t learn to fight quietly, to let things go and to pick my battles. Her greatest skill was to fight and win, love and be loved without anyone realising she had done it. She was a master of the art of diplomacy.
My mom was like medicine. When I was pregnant and scared she made it seem like nothing to be scared of. When I wanted to quit my degree she did all the bloody work for me. When I lost my rag (all the time) she calmed me down. When I had nothing to wear she made me feel a million dollars; which probably is the amount she spent on clothes, holidays, haircuts and lunches for me. She made me feel like it was a privilege to be my mom.
Now I face the fight and the fun without her, however she gave each one of us, me especially, so much of herself that I have credit in the bank. I have enough love to make sure that she carries on as Jean the activist; Jean the friend; nanny Jean; My Mom.
The final words about Jean come from her husband of 43 years:
Stewart said:
Simply this:
She was my going out and my coming in. She was my loaves my fishes, my heat my light, my longing, my desire.

Sam’s poem:
A Mother’s Words

To read the last few pages of a book
And find out how it ends before the story
Gets there, is what the worst kind of a crook
Would do, you said, it was like voting Tory.
But sometimes something makes me want to look –
A kind of narrative momento mori.

So when I teach my own kids how to read,
Can I forget these last pages you read
To me, the way the words began to bleed
Into each other as the reader bled –
The way the paper turned into seaweed
And held fast to the rocks beached in your bed?

There are books we’ll always read again,
Just for the joy of putting off the end,
Knowing that the words – these gingerbread men
In our mouths – will fail every time to fend
Off the fox – the tongue darting from his den –
As he’s the gingerbread man’s fastest friend.

“I’m all gone!” he says, but it’s a joke.
An all-gone gingerbread man doesn’t speak.
And yet, it doesn’t change the fact he spoke
Or the miracle of his triumphant streak.
Each time you read that ending, my heart broke,
And leapt to hear such existential cheek;

Then Dad would have to read it too. So now
Each time I teach my kids an English rhyme
You taught to me, I’ll tell them who and how
You are. I’ll use the present tense, and time
Will have no choice but to accept my vow
To help another incy wincy spider climb

Another spout again. And when I reach
The last few pages of the book and try
To say how your fox ate you too, I’ll teach
My children the first and the last thing I
Was taught by you; that is: the gift of speech
Exists because a mother’s words don’t die.

Tip of the Whistle

Hope it all works. Can't seem to upload Jo's lovely Order of Service at the moment. Will do that later.

Sad News

2011-07-08T09:24:00.000+01:00

Dear blog followers Stewart Trainor here:

Many of you will know, but some may not, that my wonderful wife has left us. She died in the evening of July 4th, the day they put a statue up to Ronald Reagan. The irony of it would not have been lost on her. She departed this world, the lifelong champion of human rights and dignity that she had always been. She, however, bore the mantle of champion with a lightness and grace that entirely escaped those who sit in high places and end up on plinths.

Jean has shared her musings with you over these months, and I’m sure you will miss them. She would have thought of them as ‘musings’, nothing dogmatic, nothing didactic in the obvious sense. “I hate those pompous buggers on Front Row discussing how many levels of textual analysis are possible in Middlemarch” she would say, “I bet George Elliot is rotating in her grave”. Her comments came from the heart, and a pretty prodigious processor in the head never weighed them down with pomposity or cant. She was a devoted and courageous campaigner, but never sought prominence. She loved the simple act of sharing, and that’s what she’s been doing with you.
I’ve shared my life with her since she was 15 years old (not even in the sixth form yet – shocking eh?). I can’t wake up to share our tea and toast now. And, like you, I can no longer share her whimsical sideways on look at a barmy world, but I’m not going to weigh down her lightness with heavy clichés about her remaining always with me; she wouldn’t like that. I’ll leave you instead with one of my many fond memories, which of course will remain. It’s one that shows her totally unpretentious nature, alongside her simple joy at a complex task well done.

We were going for a well-earned weekend break in Paris. On the way into the aircraft cabin she picked up a free copy of The Times. We found our seats, sat down, and in the time that it took the plane to taxi out to the take of runway, some 10 – 12 minutes she had completed the Times Crossword. She merely lent across and said “I think I’ll have a bit of a doze now darlin”, and by the time we lifted off she was asleep.

Goodnight sweetheart!

The Funeral will take place at Robin Hood Crematorium, Streetsbrook Road, Solihull, on 15th July at 1pm, with a reception afterwards at Kings Heath Cricket Club.

Watch this space

2011-06-24T15:37:00.001+01:00

Had a few ups and downs recently

But watch this space

First trip, first real job

2011-06-09T13:26:00.005+01:00

I went to see Dr Peake last Friday, having waited the statutory two hours, I finally got into see him. He felt my stomach and noted the growth there but said he couldn't really make a judgement until the scan results came through. We discussed treatment options, he doubled my steroids to 4mg a day and he promised to call with the results while we are in Sandringham.

Trouble is I do feel a change for the worst has occurred, as I keep having to sit up when I am asleep, to aid the gurgling in my stomach. Funnily enough it's making me sleep better and I am getting a good six hours of admittedly strange sleep but six hours none the less.

We are getting packed for our first trip, I have written my lists and Stewart is doing his ironing and worrying, so nothing changes there. We will set out at about 11ish once the District Nurses have been, dressed my pressure sore etc. The etc involves hands up bum but we wont go there! We will take in lunch on the way, as usual, and try to be as dreadfully normal as possible. I am really looking forward to it, if a tad apprehensively.

And meanwhile, Sam, husband of Julie, father to Max and Charlie, number one son to me and Stewart has got a job. OK he only came second in the interviews but given that the woman they chose had to travel form Marseilles to Lille, ie about as far as you can go in France, perhaps this was yet another piece of French bureaucracy gone mad. Well done Sam!

Infinite possibilities

2011-05-29T17:34:00.002+01:00

It was the Jersey man telling me that I could fly that did it. Then Pat my lovely friend said why don't you go down to Maumont then. I had read that the civilised French hired out hoists and beds form the local pharmacy, they also provide district nursing services at about 10 euros a day. Then we discussed how we might adapt the entrance to the house to take the wheelchair with a little help from our friends, and how we might get Chris and Denise, our friends from over the road who were going anyway, to drive our wheelchair accessible car to Bergerac to pick us up from the flight from Birmingham. Et voila Guillame est votre oncle.

We will have to move the table out of the kitchen and turn it into a sitting room and pray for good weather so that we can eat outside, we will have to bring one of the single beds down from upstairs so that Stewart can sleep downstairs with me but that is petit bier considering the benefits. So we are getting our canards in a row, we will ditch Jersey as we only made a provisional booking and head for Maumont instead.

Can't believe it might be possible.

A holiday a month

2011-05-21T08:52:00.006+01:00

Well there are three or four hotels with hoists in the UK and we have booked each of them! To avoid disappointment of course and with fingers crossed in case we will lose money if we have to cancel. I inquired about cancellation insurance but it was £1800 for a single trip. Isn't that a great thing about insurance get a real illness and you are persona non grata? Beware health reformers, give up the NHS at your peril. I love it when private insurers phone me on spec and I say "Yes I would be interested" (don't worry I am not turning I just like to test them out) and then tell them about my terminal cancer and all my problems, they suddenly go very quiet and start making excuses, I say "Hello, it is supposed to be insurance, right".

Anyway the plan is Sandringham for four days in June, Minehead in July for a week, Jersey in August for four days and Llandudno in September for a week. It was a revelation about Jersey, I had investigated ferries and they were horrendously expensive and would take all day. Then the man from the hotel called and said why not fly? Apparently the flight staff lift you on to a little chair, haul you up the stairs then transfer you to your airline seat. Your wheelchair goes into the hold. Well all sorts of questions come to mind. Will the little chair be too little? will I be too heavy? but they must have people heavier then me. When we get there we will take taxis, the island is only about 15 miles across for goodness sake.

I have been Googling like mad to find the best restaurants in the locality, Michelin stars and all. Don't think we'll make it to Gidleigh Park in Devon as its 76 miles away but you never know, and in Llandudno there is one just 10 minutes away at a very Welsh sounding place, the Tyddyn Llan at Llindrillo.

All set then to make our way around Norfolk and Lincolnshire, we have been to Norfolk a few times recently and done the usual stuff, so we though we would head North West and revisit Lincoln Cathedral, it's been about 40 years since we were there. WE will visit the rolling hills of Somerset and Devon, the delights of Jersey and the wonders of Wales.

We will eat drink and be merry for who know's tomorrow may never come and we will certainly be filling our boots till it does.

Hotels with hoists

2011-05-14T19:33:00.003+01:00

Sitting in my bed. I am a Google freak. A few weeks ago Stewart, who is normally very cautious, commented that if we bought a portable hoist, we could go away for a few days. I was a bit shocked really, hadn't thought about that possibility. I parked the idea for a while and then sat Googling and just typed in hotels with hoists, well a revelation. Apparently there is an organisation laughingly called The Ceiling Hoist Users Club and they have a list of hotels with hoists. Not only hoists but electric beds, nursing support, doors that flash apart as soon as your wheelchair whispers "open sesame".

OK there are only about three or four of these wonders, plus a few Holiday Inns that I think only have the hoists, two based in Central London, so maybe we could go for a weekend, take in a show, an exhibition and of course a blow out meal in a Michelin star restaurant. Well you have to spend your DLA on something.

So we have booked mid-June, four days in Park House Hotel, on the Sandringham Estate. The house that Princess Di was raised in. We will go half board as it's a good deal, and throws in afternoon tea. We will search for lovely places to visit and pubs for lunch. Our horizons are widened if only over the vast skies of Norfolk and there are two more to try, one in Minehead in Somerset and one in Llandudno in Wales. Not so posh and maybe they will smell of wee and cabbage, but then I suppose, beggars who use ceiling hoists really can't be choosers.

Family matters

2011-05-04T10:49:00.004+01:00

Another day, another funeral. This time it was my cousin, Betty's, husband Freddie. He was 85 and had been struggling with leukemia but that doesn't get over the fact that he is no more and that he was a laugh and an absolutely devoted husband and father; and that he will be missed so much by his nearest and dearest.

That's what's been getting me at these funerals, I call them my funeral moments. I can't help but bawl when I think about my own demise and how much it will affect those closest to me. Just can't help it, it's too raw and open, sore and painful. I don't feel as if it will happen yet as I am feeling well, but the time will come. But sufficient to the day is the evil therof and so I brush away the tears and wipe on the smile, as much for myself as anyone else.

It was good to see the family though, bits of it I rarely ever see these days, only at funerals in fact. There was cousin Ann. I have no idea why I always refer to her as cousin Ann, it sounds like something from the hillbillies and her husband Brian, who is a dead ringer for Donald Sutherland. Cousin Ann was always held up as a model of virtue and blessedness by my mother because she ironed and sewed beautifully. She had neat plaits and was the first of our family to go to college, unless you count my Dad who at 14 went to Birmingham School of Art. Betty and her sister Joan, who was once the most glamorous woman on the planet, but now lies unable to function hardly at all due to Altzheimers, were 20 years older than me, at least, as I was the youngest child of the youngest child of my Nanny. So it was their children, Peter and Pam and Lou and Glen who I was nearest to in age. I hadn't seen Peter, Joan's son for years, since his grandmother's funeral in fact, but we fell back into an easy relationship and it felt good. Apart from Betty of course, that was it and we dwindle. There were only three of us there yesterday. From the dizzy heights of six children and nine grandchildren (not that dizzy on the grandchildren front actually) of my Nanny's brood we are down to six grandchildren, of which I am the youngest, and we hardly ever see each other.

I took along a few photos, as I have been ploughing through them to find subjects for my oeuvre, terrible burden to have an oeuvre, and it struck me that we will soon be losing the shared memory of our generation. It mostly stops about 40 years ago anyway as we all grew up and moved apart, but there are things I would like to ask my older cousins about what went on, who did what etc and I had better get a shake on as we are a bit prone to dementia and other memory taking conditions. I am going to try to be proactive about this and actually pick up the phone to arrange visits, says she, yes I am. They are family after all and it's all in the pursuit of my art, or should I say heart?

Hubble, bubble

2011-04-28T09:42:00.002+01:00

We went to see Macbeth on Saturday at the new theatre in Stratford. Stratford looked just like it used to on bank holidays when we used to go on charabanc trips; not an inch to spare on the grass by the river; people having picnics and kids with ice cream all over their clothes and faces. I know that's how they used to look because I have been searching out old photos to use as inspiration for my paintings. Mind you that world was black and white then, Stratford on Saturday was a blaze of colour.

I loved the play. I have seen it many times before, of course, but I just got carried away by the whole theatre experience on Saturday. Stewart who "did" Macbeth for O level told me they had missed chunks out and fiddled around with the beginning. I am glad I wasn't so "au fait" and hope Shakespeare would have relished my innocent enjoyment rather than the scepticism of the scholar.

They have restored the new theatre along the lines of the 16th century model, ie all tiered and tall, and the stage is in the round with four aisles leading from the auditorium to the exits. Being a disabled bod I was right on the edge of one of these aisles and had actors tearing around, up and down alongside me, breathing down my neck in fact. It did make me wonder if when they were in the aisles, were they still Macbeth or McDuff or were they anxious actors getting ready to be in the next right place at the next right time. When did they stop acting or that bit of acting when they are actually in character?

Yesterday at Aiobheann's funeral, there was a lot of acting going on I guess. People putting on brave faces. I held it together until Ceri from over the road stumbled tearfully but successfully through a poem. I wept and it was not just for Aiobheann. Lots of lovely things were said about her and that wasn't an act. People kept saying how well I looked and so my act was paying off under the thick stage make-up I metaphorically wear. I wear it to dim sum with my niece; awesome crystal scallops, I tell her I am not afraid and at the moment I am not. I wear it to Easter Sunday outings with my nearest and dearest and indeed I wear it to Stratford, carried with me in my own version of the charabanc trip.

At the funeral one of my caps fell out. What I didn't tell you about Macbeth was that the witches weren't witches but ghostly fay children. I quite liked this as it seemed to follow a theme of the whole play. But if the directors change their minds and decide to go back to the original idea well here I am ready and waiting, toothless and witch like, and no make up required.

Just being normal

2011-04-20T20:21:00.003+01:00

It's nice, we go shopping; we meet friends, we do the garden. I chop vegetables. We are almost normal. Okay I have to be winched if want to move out of bed, I have to sit where I am put and we can't do anything until the nurses have been but just living is OK, fantastic in fact and definitely, at the moment, better than the alternative.

Tomorrow we look after Harry for the day, another sign of normality, I will bake with him and make Easter goodies and paint with him and he might go and help his Grandad in the garden. Stewart has brought all the nice stuff up from the bottom of our garden, the urns, the big black model flamingos and pots galore filled with Spring. I can see them all from my bed. We open the French windows as the weather is so good and I sit out in the sun for part of my time out of bed allowance. It is simply heaven or as close to it as I will ever get.

And I think I have found my oeuvre! I am working on style, it is likely to be just that, stylised based on the patterns and shapes in things rather than attempting realism; and for subject matter I am going to try and paint some pictures based on incidental moments in my life. I have enjoyed writing about these from time to time on this blog so will see if I can paint a few. I will be scouring through all the old photos and thanking goodness for my Dad's photography passion, although when I was a little girl it drove me mad, all that waiting around posing while he fiddled with light metres and bellowed at me.

We will see how far I get and how much time my lovely normal life allows me to try to make images of my past.

Smiling through in pictures- my birthday

2011-04-14T14:23:00.014+01:00

Some pictures of happiness, grandsons and birthdays.

Charlie with his Grandad and Max with his Nan

Charlie and Max, the most beautiful babies in the world!

Julie and me with a handful

Danny and his Nan are pleased with themselves!

Danny shows off Harry's pirate picture

Julie and Max

Birthday fat arty farty girl

2011-04-11T09:45:00.005+01:00

Well I've made it to 62 and as Harry said yesterday, that's nearly 100. We started the celebrations on Friday night, when the twins arrived with their Mom and Dad and Jess and her brood came round for a Trainor type sumptuous feast. It was then one big blur of eating and visits and lovely smiles from twins. Max smiles at you as if you are the most wonderful thing in his life, Charlie as if you are the funniest. They are the most beautiful babies in the world and Sam and Julie are like the cats who got the cream, loving every moment. It is a joy to behold. The best birthday present of the lot; that and when Danny and Harry look at their two little cousins as if they were their most precious gifts as well.

As for the food; we took in lunch at lovely brother and sister-in laws on Saturday, afternoon tea with proper scones, clotted cream and cucumber sandwiches back at ours with friends and family. A massive brunch of kedgeree and bacon and eggs on Sunday, the actual anniversary, shared with all my lovely grandsons, followed swiftly by Julie's delicious lemon tart and lime and coriander truffles made by Diana, Harry and Danny's other Nanny. Talk about an extended family. Finale was posh meals on wheels (ginger chicken and marmalade bread and butter pudding brought over by Chris and Denise in the evening, we sang as we ate, don't know why, we often do!

Apart from the gourmet fare the other major theme, was painting and I had all sorts of art materials`as gifts. All very challenging and technical. So I will start my 63rd year, stuffed to the gunnels with food and love and with bright ambitions about finding my oeuvre and creating something worth keeping.

I have an awful lot worth keeping.

Aoibheann

2011-04-08T09:13:00.002+01:00

I had to look her name up. I had to look it up every year for the Christmas card, or if I was rushed I would just write to the Butlers from the Trainors. It's a beautiful Irish name, pronounced Eevan. We had it as a question in the New Year quiz one year, her husband, Graham always did the quiz. Aoibheann lived on our road, she always asked how you were, she always cared about the answer.

There have been two cancer stories up our street for the past few months, mine and Aoibheann's. We have sat in our various rooms, feared our fears, bristled our will, taken our medicine. We have just missed each other in our sojourns on the Cancer wards. We have asked after each other and felt our singular sort of empathy.

Aoibheann's story ended yesterday. She had it in her throat, they got it out eventually after bombarding her body and spirit with particularly poisonous chemicals and deadly radio waves, each of which affected her terribly. Finally a viscous sweep of her throat got rid of the cells. She was clear but some delicate thread was cut, she just went to bed for a rest and died. She was on the path to survival but somehow it didn't happen

Our road, which is full of old and new friends who look out for each other, feels damaged, chipped, cracked.

Legs eleven

2011-04-04T11:20:00.004+01:00

Right from the start of this cancer marathon, it's been my legs that have told the story. It started you will recall, three years ago now, with me noticing that one leg was fatter than the other; shunted me into a sidetrack where the blinkered NHS saw the only likely cause as a DVT despite the fact the leg continued to expand and then thanks to the French the cancer was discovered right up in the vein in aforementioned fat leg. Once the vein was out the leg continued to be "my fat leg" it got lymphoedema and I had to wear sexy thick compression stockings. I got by though. I could walk and that helped.

Since the paralysis set in a couple of months ago the poor old legs have had another story to tell. For a start they are all floppy and I can't control them at all, or feel them in the slightest for that matter. And because they aren't being moved and I spend my time perched up above them, they are apt to swell to enormous proportions given half a chance.

Well that was the story they were telling until a week ago, but no more! A transformation has taken place. An angel in the guise of a specialist lymphoedema nurse walked into my life and after just four visits I have legs that are almost normal. There they were bloated and literally weeping. Stewart had to heave them in and out of the hoist; we had to pad the wheelchair so that they didn't bruise from being squeezed into the bars; they were probably the ugliest legs on the planet. Then in walks Jane and after she binds them up for a few days in Michelin man type bandages and fits new compression hosiery, I have legs I can almost be proud of; can take out and show to the public in fact.

I did in fact take them out on Saturday, neatly tipped in crocs sandles, and I haven't worn shoes for months; when our friends Mike and Mary from Galway (well actually Mary is from up the road from where I'm from and Mike round the corner from where Stewart lived, but they live in Galway now) took us out for a meal of soup, posh fish and chips and rice pudding. Just what the doctor ordered and my legs and the rest of me filled our boots!

Talking of legs, please will you sponsor my friend, Diana's legs to run a lot of miles in aid of cancer research. She is doing it in my name in the Race for Life. I have added details of how to sponsor her in the column on the right. She is also Harry and Danny's other nanny and like them has a fine pair of pins I am sure.

The medication hits the spot

2011-03-31T13:44:00.002+01:00

Feeling better today as hopefully the medication is hitting home. Doctors confirmed that its probably my liver kicking off and have prescribed steroids and anti-nausea medication. I managed to down a ham sandwich and a custard tart a few minutes ago, and I had a laugh with my friend Yvonne who popped in.

I find that my taste buds are reverting to the 1950s; when Stewart asks what I fancy for tea (tea you see! what we now call dinner and posh people call supper but for the 1950s' working classes, it was definitely "tea"), I eschew any of our more recent culinary repertoire of Roghan Josh's, Thai chicken etc and opt instead for cheese and potato pie, or just egg and bacon. Who knows perhaps it will be corned beef hash next.

It is wonderful when you stop feeling sick and long may it continue up our neck of the woods

Liverish

2011-03-30T10:59:00.003+01:00

I don't feel well and I don't like it. I feel I am losing control and Leio is taking over. I suppose up to now I have felt quite well most of the time. I know that sounds strange when I am paralysed as a result of Leio acting at his worst, devastating my life. But up until now all these mets in my vital organs, liver and lungs have been reasonably quiet.

I now have a pain in my side which makes me shout out when I breathe in deeply and I am feeling sick almost all the time. Very unusual for me, but also I have absolutely no appetite. Anyway we have called the doctor and the hospice nurse specialist. She thinks it's probably liver capsule pain, because the liver is covered in something like cling film which bubbles up if the liver swells, it would also explain the nausea and loss of appetite. We will see what the doctor says when he comes and what they can do for it. I may have to go to hospital again; here's hoping I don't and that we can move back into the driving seat and kick Leio into touch for a little longer

Pressure

2011-03-27T13:07:00.002+01:00

I have a dreaded pressure sore. It's level 3 when the scale only goes up to 4. Nurses have to come in on a daily basis and stroke it and pack it and worry about it. I can't feel it as its below the paralysis line and that is a blessing but in order to stop it spreading I have to put annoying restrictions on my life. I can't sit out for more than three hours; I have to screw myself into a contorted foetal position so that the sore is off the bed several times a day.

Believe me there's not a lot you can do hanging onto the edge of your bed; reading is nigh on impossible although I did manage to finish Sophie's Choice the other day. I enjoyed every word, beautifully written and an ideal book for when you are feeling sorry for yourself! Things could be a lot worse.

I can listen to the radio while on my side and doze of course, that seems to be the option that creeps up on me most often. Haven't managed to complete my next mistress-piece but we will see what today brings.

I would have been marching or rolling against the cuts in London if I could have been yesterday, piling the pressure on those that protect their own interests while making the lives of people with paralysis, poverty and public sector posts a whole lot worse.

He's not heavy..

2011-03-22T15:35:00.002Z

My brother is coming to visit tomorrow. Along with his wife, Andree he will catch a train and get a taxi and arrive at my door. A simple act you may think, but not for him as he has been ill for a couple of years and does not venture out.

So I feel highly honoured that he is making this trip to see me and know how difficult it is for him. I sometimes say that it is a good job my Mom is not alive at the moment. She would be 98 now, and probably not have all her marbles, but she would be driven mad by the thought that both her kids have been so ill for the last two years. This being said we have both, in our way, shown her unique brand of strength and resiliance throughout our very different ordeals.

So Stewart will make the quiches and the curries and me and my brother will feast and chat, keeping our peckers up and putting on a brave face as we were taught at our mother's knee

Filling my life

2011-03-18T17:50:00.006Z

"You always have visitors" my daughter said today when she rang to catch up with me and moan about the assignment she has to do for her Masters Degree. And she is not wrong. Today it was lovely Kathryn who I have known all my life. She lived up the road and her sister, Mary, went to school aged five with Stewart. Mary married Mike, Stewart's scientific brainy mate; they live in Galway and are a pair of our oldest friends. In the 1950s Kathryn's family and mine and all of our neighbours went on charabanc trips to the seaside and to the glories of the Warwickshire and Worcestershire countryside, or pubs more like. Kathryn's Dad and my Dad went up the Blues together. We had lots to talk about.

Yesterday two old colleagues from my working days, Jo and Ruth, came and we caught up on past and present gossip and fell back into all the old laughter. Last night we had an impromptu St Patrick Day's party. Stewart is half Irish which makes the kids a quarter Paddy. They take full advantage of this as it gives an excuse to drink gallons of Guinness and Bushmills. Luke, no three son, turned up and called his wife, Aleks to join us, Chris and Denise from over the road dropped in. Joe had made a delicious Irish Stew which we managed to stretch to feed everyone and we topped it all off with very strong Irish coffees and raucous singing of Danny Boy, Patrick McGinty's Goat and other classics.

Wednesday saw us going out for a very posh lunch at a local toff's house, Hampton Manor: pea soup with basil ravioli followed by monkfish, mussels, asparagus and seaweed sauce - delicious; we went with Pat our dearest friend. That evening Stewart's brother Graham popped in as did Jess, Tom, Harry and Danny

And then back to Tuesday, a lovely lunch here with Les and Jude, another pair of old friends, in fact aforementioned Mary and Mike, Pat, Les and Jude and Stewart all went to school together fifty odd years ago.

So as you see my life as a poor, paralysed old thing is not so bad. In fact it's bloody wonderful. And on top of this I have painted and find I can do it. I have added a copy of my interpretation of a jug of tulips at the top of this blog. It's only my second attempt since I started painting last week. I am thinking about the next one. Somehow I want to capture this room, my world and all that come and go in it. Not sure how I will do it but I will keep you updated

Grandma Moses

2011-03-14T13:02:00.003Z

I have taken up painting.It's sometimes a bit hard trying to do it in bed - ooh er missus... I only spend about five hours out of bed each day now as I get tired but I manage to paint propped up against my pillows, swathed in aprons to keep the watery colours from invading the sheets. Chris over the road, who is an art teacher, is giving me guidance. He's doing a good job, after realising that saying just play around with the paint, wasn't enough for someone who hasn't painted since she was 18 and then it was with the dreaded powder paint on sugar paper. Yesterday I moved away from circles and dribbling colours down the paper to an actual picture of a bronze model we have. It's not half bad even though I say so myself but I already have enormous ambitions and want to loosen up, become expressive, find my oeuvre, hit the world of art like Grandma Moses did when she was supposed to be finished.

Perhaps it's something to do with feeling a limit on my existence that makes me want to make a mark on the world. Anyway for now I will just make a mark on the paper and see where we go from there.

Counting for something

2011-03-10T14:26:00.005Z

I am tremendously excited. Okay I know I don't get out much these days but the 2011 census has dropped on our doorstep and I will be counted. I won't be a past thing but I will be down as the head of the household, as I always insist on that as a rather pathetic blow for feminism. Mind you with my luck a thunderbolt will hit the house on 27 March and none of us will be counted. Failing that historians in the future looking for trends in education or in disability will count me.I will be an important statistic. But sometimes I don't feel as if I count at all.

I had a terrible day on Monday. I had to go to the Diabetes clinic, which at the moment is sited in one of our local hospitals, an old workhouse that is going to be razed to the ground soon. At present you have to park in the Visitor's car park, which of course we had to pay for, and then find the diabetes clinic. Luckily we saw a couple of chaps in hi-viz jackets who showed us the way. But the route was so long and bumpy, I was in severe pain around where my feeling starts and Stewart worn out by pushing me up hill and down dale. We got there and apart from the fact I had to sit outside to avoid passing out with the heat all went well. I am no longer diabetic.

But I have a problem with my hearing on top of everything else and had been told by my GP that I could just walk in (ha ha) to the walk-in hearing assessment clinic to be assessed. He said it was in the Rehab centre close by to said old workhouse. We went in there, now remember that everytime I get in and get out of our new green frog car, it's an effort for us both and currently I only have a crappy wheelchair on loan from Bourneville Ward. I am by now slipping out of said wheelchair and very uncomfortable. We go to the reception in the Rehab centre, they say that the hearing assessment centre is at out-patients back at the hospital. We duly go over there, get ourselves out of the car only to find that it is elsewhere on the hospital site. By this time I am absolutely exhausted. We go round to the centre, which is tucked away down a snicket. We can hardly manoeuvre the car round it and there is no disabled parking at all. We park right outside where it says "keep clear". We struggle to get me out again and I wheel myself up to reception to ask if I can avail myself of the walk-in clinic, I even find the energy to joke and call it the roll-in centre for me. I am told that the walk-in clinic only operates from 9am to 12.30pm and that as long as there is an audiologist available I will be seen if I return the next morning. I ask if I can make an appointment then and she says that they don't make appointments for hearing assessments. I burst into tears much to the embarrassment of all those sitting and waiting.

I have reported this chain of events, in no uncertain terms, to the Chief Executive of the hospital. Because I am known to her and to every other bugger at the top of the NHS, a special appointment has been made for me next Monday. So I count, but what about the other poor sods who don't or at least only will on 27 March.

The Egg

2011-03-06T13:37:00.003Z

Just found this on a blog called Midnight Musings. I love it except of course it would definitely have been a woman...

The Egg

By: Andy Weir

You were on your way home when you died.
It was a car accident. Nothing particularly remarkable, but fatal nonetheless. You left behind a wife and two children. It was a painless death. The EMTs tried their best to save you, but to no avail. Your body was so utterly shattered you were better off, trust me.

And that’s when you met me.

“What… what happened?” You asked. “Where am I?”

“You died,” I said, matter-of-factly. No point in mincing words.

“There was a… a truck and it was skidding…”

“Yup,” I said.

“I… I died?”

“Yup. But don’t feel bad about it. Everyone dies,” I said.

You looked around. There was nothingness. Just you and me. “What is this place?” You asked. “Is this the afterlife?”

“More or less,” I said.

“Are you god?” You asked.

“Yup,” I replied. “I’m God.”

“My kids… my wife,” you said.

“What about them?”

“Will they be all right?”

“That’s what I like to see,” I said. “You just died and your main concern is for your family. That’s good stuff right there.”

You looked at me with fascination. To you, I didn’t look like God. I just looked like some man. Or possibly a woman. Some vague authority figure, maybe. More of a grammar school teacher than the almighty.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “They’ll be fine. Your kids will remember you as perfect in every way. They didn’t have time to grow contempt for you. Your wife will cry on the outside, but will be secretly relieved. To be fair, your marriage was falling apart. If it’s any consolation, she’ll feel very guilty for feeling relieved.”

“Oh,” you said. “So what happens now? Do I go to heaven or hell or something?”

“Neither,” I said. “You’ll be reincarnated.”

“Ah,” you said. “So the Hindus were right,”

“All religions are right in their own way,” I said. “Walk with me.”

You followed along as we strode through the void. “Where are we going?”

“Nowhere in particular,” I said. “It’s just nice to walk while we talk.”

“So what’s the point, then?” You asked. “When I get reborn, I’ll just be a blank slate, right? A baby. So all my experiences and everything I did in this life won’t matter.”

“Not so!” I said. “You have within you all the knowledge and experiences of all your past lives. You just don’t remember them right now.”

I stopped walking and took you by the shoulders. “Your soul is more magnificent, beautiful, and gigantic than you can possibly imagine. A human mind can only contain a tiny fraction of what you are. It’s like sticking your finger in a glass of water to see if it’s hot or cold. You put a tiny part of yourself into the vessel, and when you bring it back out, you’ve gained all the experiences it had.

“You’ve been in a human for the last 48 years, so you haven’t stretched out yet and felt the rest of your immense consciousness. If we hung out here for long enough, you’d start remembering everything. But there’s no point to doing that between each life.”

“How many times have I been reincarnated, then?”

“Oh lots. Lots and lots. An in to lots of different lives.” I said. “This time around, you’ll be a Chinese peasant girl in 540 AD.”

“Wait, what?” You stammered. “You’re sending me back in time?”

“Well, I guess technically. Time, as you know it, only exists in your universe. Things are different where I come from.”

“Where you come from?” You said.

“Oh sure,” I explained “I come from somewhere. Somewhere else. And there are others like me. I know you’ll want to know what it’s like there, but honestly you wouldn’t understand.”

“Oh,” you said, a little let down. “But wait. If I get reincarnated to other places in time, I could have interacted with myself at some point.”

“Sure. Happens all the time. And with both lives only aware of their own lifespan you don’t even know it’s happening.”

“So what’s the point of it all?”

“Seriously?” I asked. “Seriously? You’re asking me for the meaning of life? Isn’t that a little stereotypical?”

“Well it’s a reasonable question,” you persisted.

I looked you in the eye. “The meaning of life, the reason I made this whole universe, is for you to mature.”

“You mean mankind? You want us to mature?”

“No, just you. I made this whole universe for you. With each new life you grow and mature and become a larger and greater intellect.”

“Just me? What about everyone else?”

“There is no one else,” I said. “In this universe, there’s just you and me.”

You stared blankly at me. “But all the people on earth…”

“All you. Different incarnations of you.”

“Wait. I’m everyone!?”

“Now you’re getting it,” I said, with a congratulatory slap on the back.

“I’m every human being who ever lived?”

“Or who will ever live, yes.”

“I’m Abraham Lincoln?”

“And you’re John Wilkes Booth, too,” I added.

“I’m Hitler?” You said, appalled.

“And you’re the millions he killed.”

“I’m Jesus?”

“And you’re everyone who followed him.”

You fell silent.

“Every time you victimized someone,” I said, “you were victimizing yourself. Every act of kindness you’ve done, you’ve done to yourself. Every happy and sad moment ever experienced by any human was, or will be, experienced by you.”

You thought for a long time.

“Why?” You asked me. “Why do all this?”

“Because someday, you will become like me. Because that’s what you are. You’re one of my kind. You’re my child.”

“Whoa,” you said, incredulous. “You mean I’m a god?”
“No. Not yet. You’re a fetus. You’re still growing. Once you’ve lived every human life throughout all time, you will have grown enough to be born.”

“So the whole universe,” you said, “it’s just…”

“An egg.” I answered. “Now it’s time for you to move on to your next life.”

And I sent you on your way.

A man in every port

2011-02-28T22:55:00.021Z

I am back in hospital! A great big, well about 3cm, hole opened up by the fancy portacath I had inserted just above my right boob. It was put in about four weeks ago to simplify the administration of Yondelis, the highly expensive sea squirt. I have decided not to have the chemo so it is pretty redundant and in fact not very pretty as said boob is bruised black and blue even after four weeks. The hole oozes vile caramel stuff, like yucky coloured gloss paint. You can see the actual tubing below the surface of the wound once it has been cleaned up.

This afternoon I went down to Dr McCafferty's world again, Ambulatory Care, to have the port taken out. He wasn't aware it was infected so called one of his colleagues to come and see me. Didn't catch his surname but his first name was Garth. Now McCafferty is not a bad catch himself, quite easy on the eye, very funny and a great conversationalist but dearie me, Garth! I can't remember if the cartoon hero of the 50s and 60s was a hunk but this one, my goodness me. He put that other famous doctor, George Clooney, in the shade, more real looking somehow. He examined me, pressed my boob and looked down into my eyes. The monitor that was measuring my blood pressure immediately shot up. He gave his advice, the wound would need a corrugated drain, not very romantic I know. He flashed me a smile and modestly went on his way.

McCafferty set about his task with Marvin Gaye singing in the background. He whipped the port out through the wound, painlessly, flushed it out, then applied the corrugated drain. It was just like a corrugated roof tile, or do you remember those cheap penny sweets, spearmint, pink, we had, again in the 60s? McCafferty had never done a corrugated drain before and was bemused by the safety pin that came with it. It was in a sterile pack and the penny sweet needed securing with something so he assumed that it had to be pinned through my skin. On reflection it could have been put there by whoever it is that is keeping a voodoo doll of me and using every opportunity to pierce and stab me. McCafferty asked if I need a local anaesthetic but as he was standing with the pin ready to go in, I rather unwisely said let's give it a go without. Well I tried to squeal softly but if you are ever in need of a pin shoved through your boob then say yes to the needle. He gave me a jab straight after and all was well.

We jabbered on through the whole procedure about people we knew in the NHS, the new hospital and the comparison between the French and the UK health systems. He also talked about my infections and he said that the speed that the urinary tract infection had come on and the severity of it, it was likely that I had had septaecemia. It now seems I will be in for a few days while I am on oral antibiotics. It's not just the wound, I also have a chest infection that can render me speechless (a great relief to some no doubt) and wheezy for hours. He said all these infections were probably a hang over from the aforesaid septaecemia.

When I do get home I will be crossing every digit I can, in fact I can easily cross all four fingers on each hand, and I will be calling on all the gods to ensure that we will have a longer stretch where we can adjust ourselves better to the new me.

That time of year again

2011-02-24T16:25:00.002Z

I can change my profile again, today is our 43rd wedding anniversary. I have got through another milestone and beaten the odds again. 43 may be a prime number and you all know I have a thing about primes. On Tuesday next week it will be my third son, Luke's, 31st birthday, another prime number but I have enough problems without developing a full blown prime number phobia. I blame our old friend, Rudy, who used to teach me telephone numbers by breaking them down into primes.

As I type the two most gorgeous twin boys in the whole wide world are grizzling in the background. They arrived for a visit from France yesterday and they are miraculously beautiful. This is their first time abroad, they are two months old and they are meeting a lot of their relations for the first time.

Two sets of lovely friends have just left after making me laugh all afternoon, and we have booked to go out to lunch with one set, Sue and Mick, a month from today, at a posh restaurant in Oxfordshire.

On Saturday we plan a big birthday celebration for Luke, when the whole family is together now, we add up to 16. So our feast will have to be eaten on laps (we have taken away our stretchy dining table to house my electric super comfortable hospital type bed). I will make a trifle; starters will be spring rolls, nems and some spicy skewered prawns made by the birthday boy; main course Beef Rendang made by Jess and Tom. Julie and Sam have bought wine and lovely smelly french cheese.

Now the babies are quietening down and there is a lovely golden twilight outside. I have a house full of flowers sent from friends.

I am a very happy long-married woman

White water rafting!

2011-02-18T10:30:00.005Z

This is the full technicolour version of the last blog, so hold onto your hats.

I got home on Tuesday 11 February, unfortunately it was at about 5.45 in the evening by the time the transport got me back. So after all the local services had shut down for the day. We failed, therefore to make the vital link up with the local services, they had been round that afternoon but, of course I was caught in transit. A lovely evening was had as Jess, Tom , Harry and Danny came round. Harry and Danny dived into a new bag of dressing up clothes and other toy delights donated by their beloved Aunty Pat and Stewart hoisted them around on our splendid new hoist. We had our dinner, a lovely spicy lamb concoction and then set about sorting out the medication I needed only to find that we had the wrong dose of the injection I have to take for blood thinning and we did not know how much insulin I should be taking as that had got lost in the loop (I became temporarily diabetic due to the massive dose of steroids I was taking, all gone now thank goodness. I failed to test my blood for sugars as the machine I had was useless and felt a bit dumped by the services. We improvised.

We decided to try to get me from chair to hoist to bed, and succeeded second time around. Stewart washed me, and I will spare you the details of that.

Then at 4pm I burst into tears, it suddenly hit me that I was paralysed, would never be able to move my own legs again, I was doubly incontinent. I could never go upstairs in my own house again. We would never be able to go to our house in France again, far too many stairs, and you all know how much we love that house.

The care I had received on Bournville ward in the cancer centre was second to none, they all became my friends and the treatment was excellent in every way but one (in fact it gave me great comfort that if the worst came to the worst and I had to die in the hospital rather than at home or in the hospice - sorry can't help but think a la Henry Higgns and Eliza Doolittle: in hospital, home and hospice, hurricanes hardly happen. The one exception to the excellence and I didn't particularly expect the nurses to do it, no-one ever talked to me about the paralysis and what it meant for me and my life hereafter.

Stewart came over and I wept and wept and wept. Once I could talk again and was calmer, I said to him: we have been dealing with this dreadful blow and we have coped magnificently in our different ways. He had been brave and then set about investigating every disability aid available, buying us our sooper- dooper new frog shaped, wheelchair friendly car and staying up till the early hours moving the furniture. I had been brave and then bizarrely and perfectly happily started planning my funeral (all done now in my head) and checking my will.

So we set about what needed to be done now about all the medication and tying into the local services. I found that all this cathartic crying has stripped me of something. I had to write everything down step by step. Have breakfast, the next step is test blood sugar and I know my machine is useless, so ask Penny over the road goes down. Stewart pops over the road and she comes like an angel in disguise, gives me the test and the lovely simple reading. I probably look a bit red-eyed but she doesn't mention it. Later I find typing a simple email difficult, very very slow. The carers are coming in at 8pm, they arrive exactly on time and do a beautiful job and I know that is all going to be well in that department. I am out in my wheelchair. Luckily the District Nurse has called and will come round at 11pm. That goes well but again I have to be very precise about what she is saying and write everything down rather manically. We have lunch and Stewart decides to pop down the shops. He is out for about 15 minutes, the GP calls and I discuss the medication I need and book a visit for the next day, as the nurse had advised me. Our friend Mick phones we discuss a visit, Stewart phones to check I am OK.

Then all hell breaks loose. A urinary infection I apparently had been harbouring sends me into a completely confused and delirious spin. What a day to choose to have one of those. I have heard about these things but never imagined it could be as bad as this. Basically I moved into a state where I was sinking into my last breath and dying through all sorts of terrifying images, including turning into a skeleton with my skull whizzing around. Then I was granted one more breath and rose painfully back to life. I was clearly also having panic attacks and hyperventilating, Jess tells me I turned blue at one point.

Stewart came home shortly to find a mad woman who told him that she had died and come back to life. Jess rushed over as she had called the house to check how I was, they called all the frontline services and finally 999. Stewart tells me that it was like watching someone have contractions, and he should know.

The district nurse and the on-call doctor both told me I probably had a urinary tract infection, I thought they were mad, no I was dying and living, dying and living. Stewart tried to get me to have a dextrose tablet thinking I might be hypo and to take the antibiotics that the Dr had prescribed but I flatly refused and thought they would help to kill me. Every time Stewart or Jess tried to stop me flayling about or even tried to hug me, I would wrestle them away. Anyway I get shunted off to A and E. In a moment of lucidity I asked what is best to control a panic attack and I insist they take me to Bournville Ward, although they are not allowed it has to be A and E. I ask if I can have a sedative, they say not untill I have been assesed.

Then the illusions got worse and worse. Prior to this as I died I had to keep shouting out I love you, I love you, I love you, over and over again. As I descended to my last breaths I composed my features into a smile so I would die looking happy. I muttered about the funeral arrangements I had started to make. On the way back up to life, I started by shouting out breathe, breathe, swallow over and over again and then as I came back I shouted my name hundreds of times, Stewart's name, all the kids and grandkids, then things in the room. All so I could check my brain was back in full working order. When I was seeing myself as a skeleton I was whizzing my head around and grinding my teeth.

As it worsened in A and E, the whole dying and coming back to life became a perpetual nightmare. I strangely thought that I would rot in my wheelchair and that then the wheelchair would rot and then the whole world would have to rot. This lead me to believe that I had to get everyone to breathe at the same time, so I was bellowing to everyone in A and E that they must breathe now. I refused to answer the doctor's questions: what day is it? Who is the prime minister? I had accused her of being a nurse, well she was wearing dark blue, Jess told me I was undoing decades of good work fighting against gender stereotyping.

At this point I decided I had to go through the whole of my life again, presumably to reach some sort of end. Unfortunately I missed out my childhood and moved straight to my relationship with Stewart, I was shouting loudly all sorts of sexy invitations to him until he wisely got me off the subject.

I then decide I would go along with all they were doing because they hadn't got a clue, I think I became quieter and more co-operative.

Jess had been contacting Bournville Ward and insisting to the Emergency Doctor that I be taken there, they also managed to get a sedative shot into me.

I ended up eventually on Bournville sans hallucinations but very, very groggy. Luckily they had a sidebay free, which meant Stewart could stay with me all night. Jess came back the next day to relieve him and we had a lovely time talking about the family, her ambitions: she wants to become Camilla Batmangelidh (sp?).

When Stewart got back I got him to tell me what had happened from his point of view, and gradually pieced it all together into some sort of reality. I gradually started to feel less whoozy.

I was moved back to the main ward and surprised the patients and staff that I had returned so quickly. The doctor came, luckily the lovely one. I asked if what had happened was symptommatic of a urinary tract infection and she said absolutely. I asked could I have a brain scan as I was worried it might have gone to my brain.

That happened the next day, dead simple CT scan. They found no sign of mets but a small, fresh brain bleed caused by all the thrashing about. As I was taking blood thinning medication they had to be doubly careful.

I stayed in for 5 days, a further scan on the 5th day showed shrinkage of the bleed and they were less worried. I still nearly didn't make it out and had to discharge myself as inflammatory markers in my blood were high and had grown quite dramatically. All they wanted to do was watch me for one more night - I had heard that before - and give me a course of the same antibiotics. I said we would do that better at home as Stewart would be watching me like a hawk.

So home I went, ready to enjoy the rest of my life. Yesterday we had a fantastic day with Jess and Stewart- he went off and did his own shopping. Lunch at Wagamama's, shopping till Jess dropped in John Lewis and Marks and Spencers. Today was Waitrose, a very practical meeting with Physios and OTs, I am going to do upper body strength exercises and they will get me referred to the lymphoedema service. Denise, our good friend came round for a chat and we have just had pork belly for dinner. So on with the rest of my life and no more white water rafting please.

,

Keep watching

2011-02-14T11:41:00.002Z

Sorry folks won't be able to update the blog until Wednesday at the earliest now. Quick resume so you know the jist.

Went home last Wednesday, all fine
Thursday developed dreadful urinary infection, delirium, total madness
Back in hospital
Friday whoozy but better
Had ct scan on brain, no mets but showed recent bleed caused by urinary madness
They need to observe for 5 days
If I become confused they operate- very simple bit of black and deckering (drilling)

All a bit dramatic and it's a good job I have a good book on the go: Sophie"s Choice. Not a cheery tale I know but I am loving every minute of it

Last night we had a party on the ward for our friend Chris and so I am making the best of a bad job as ever.

Watch this space

2011-02-11T21:50:00.001Z

Have promised a blog update. Bear with me it will be posted by Monday.

I am fine

Watch this space

2011-02-11T21:50:00.000Z

Have promised a blog update. Bear with me it will be posted by Monday.

I am fine

I nearly had my skirt on and was out the door

2011-02-07T17:09:00.002Z

Washed, packed up, all in place then they found some blood in my poo. Poo indeed.

Seems I've had too much laxative and too much blood thinner and so I have to stay, hopefully only till tomorrow.

We will get there

I used to...

2011-02-06T18:17:00.003Z

I used to run like the wind, I can still feel the spiky grass between my toes, the rush to the tape

I used to go like a train, dance like a demon

I have shopped till I dropped, I've mopped, plopped and slopped

The books, the laughs, the winces, the wit, the love, the lust, the politics, the dreams

They happen in my head and heart not my legs. They still do.

Escape still looks god for tomorrow.

Getting out

2011-02-02T07:46:00.002Z

Today we have a meeting: me, Stewart, Jo the OT manager, Monica the discharge manager and Maureen, the social worker. All on first name terms here. I am no stranger to meetings. I have asked for criteria, I think I have my head round it, and if I don' t god help any other poor bugger struggling with this.

It is an assessment of what I need. A plan will emerge and budgets will be discussed. Trouble is they have to manage me and I have set them a deadline of Friday to be out, they pale, they twitch, so they should.

Not only that they have my political standpoint to reckon with and I have never been good at compromising that, nor will I be. It comes down to whether you are covered by the social or the health. Social you pay, health you don't. I get Disabled Living Allowance now so I am happy to give them that. Beyond that I am not happy.

You see I believe that even Georgie boy Osborne, or dodgy David Cameron ( god you'd never go out with them would you?) with all of their millions should not have to pay for care when they become immobile and doubly incontinent. As long as we have screwed them for every penny of tax on exactly the same terms that we pay, no fancy accountants, no respectable fiddles. Not going to happen I know but we can dream.

So what do I need, simple really, I want Stewart to become the fastest hoister in the west, I don't want to have to wait for some other bugger to turn up if I want to go on the bed or into a chair. I want a daily health check on my vitals and my pipes. Frankly I think we could do the rest but I may give into a personal comfort visit a day just so Stewart doesn't end up doing all their jobs for them. Apart from that we may get a cleaner but that was always the case and then there's the asses milk and good food guides. We will cover those. Don't think the rest will break the bank and if they haven't got it sorted by Friday, I will, it's what I do. To get out we will get a car with ramp and winch, oh how sexy.

And to help matters I find I am quite whizzo in a wheelchair. I was tazzing round the ward yesterday and my famed lack of ability to do a three point turn is a myth engendered by others.

Taste the difference

2011-02-01T11:20:00.003Z

I am carving my own gastronomic fate here in Bourneville ward where there is no chocolate. You will have gathered that food plays a big part in my life as I have eulogised over the best gastronomy of France, Italy, Wales even. When I got the death sentence I took it on myself to make every meal, a meal to remember; quite a challenge for those around me. I have planned trips, scoured guides. Thank goodness the chemo didn't alter my taste buds and thank goodness my nearest and dearest like to eat too. And we are catholic in our tastes so Dad's Lane fish and chips and the pensioners' egg and chip special up the co-op feature in my drooling.

Being in hospital does not suit these foodie passions one little bit so I am on hunger strike from their slop. I have tried to down it, tried to make the best of a bad job, but it's no good, it's not worth the candle. I don't have a massive appetite as I am hardly using up loads of calories so my needs are small in size but huge in expectations.

I eat their breakfast, a few oranges and a weetabix. Then whoever is visiting at two is tasked with bringing me the loveliest, freshest, fullest flavour bursting sandwich they can find from Pret or Philpotts. Ok I will do with M and S at a push. Trouble is they all have busy lives and Stewart just doesn' t have a sandwich instinct unless its ham or cheese with none of that filthy mayo. I adore filthy mayo mixed with any other fancy filth you can throw at it. Luke is my best bet if he can get his act together.

Then for dinner I want more small explosions of flavour. Last night I ordered two perfect lamb chops, just on the turn re bloodiness and with foccacio bread. This was from Stewart and he managed to pull it off with magnificence. I am sure I would have overcooked them in his place but these were superb, drool, drool. I was grunting orgasmically all the way through.

I have read about this capsule eating they go in for in New York, Paris etc when for a ridiculous amount of rich persons money they can order perfect little meals that arrive by courier at exactly the right moment. Yes this is what we want. Why can't I pick up a menu from one of my favourite eateries, choose a bit here and a bit there and have it delivered to Bournville ward. An opening here for someone although I am not sure the Market is huge.

So my taste buds are working in anticipation of that sarnie and for tonight I have asked Stewart to rustle up more foccacio, half to mop up a small tomato salad and the other half slathered in the muit-cuit fois gras entiere that we just happen to have in the fridge, followed by raspberry jelly, low sugar of course. Bon appetit.

Bedside manners

2011-01-28T09:30:00.003Z

Snippets:

Jess: how you going to wash your hair Mom?
Me: in a bowl you just splash a load of water on and give it a good rubbing. It's all ever did when I was a girl
Luke: is that before you used to spread the beef dripping on?

Me sitting on a bed pan at visiting time nothing happening: is that me or Danny?

Me to social worker: my husband has been endeavouring to meet my personal needs for 42 years why change the habits of a lifetime?

So the legs are worse, no feeling at all from top of thighs down. Doubly incontinent too and that's a breeze in the main. I can wash and brush half way, including the hair scrubbing and beef dripping application and then the nurses take over. They do it tenderly, with humour and it's really rather nice.

Yesterday I went to the gym and managed to shuffle from a slidy banana, ooh er missus, onto a wheelchair. So that was progress.

Social worker and OT have started the discharge process and so beds will be arriving and carers lined up. I have to prove I am a medical case to get funding but that should not be hard.

To say it has all been disturbing is an under- statement. To have totally senseless stumps sticking out of you and not being able to twitch a toe puts a very different perspective on life and knowing that this is your life now no going back. But I am coping friends I am the cheeriest on the ward. As I said yesterday I am still me, I can write a symphony, I might just try and publish this blog and become a strange, quirky, commentating superstar for a while. Who needs legs?

A good woman

2011-01-26T09:09:00.002Z

So where are we? Well I am probably in exactly the same spot that I was in yesterday as I can't move off it. It is very disturbing to not be able to move your foot or lower leg when you feel you might appreciate an exciting change of scene. The physio says to send the signals down as the muscles need to remember the twitch but I get no twitch. I really need to be able to shift my bum but those close to me know that was always the case. It is a priority though and I will let the physios try to help me today.

I am eternally grateful for being a brummie at the moment. It wont mean much to you if you are not one but the nurses and porters with their quips and normalness are keeping me going. I quip back and I am me again. And we have a broad Dublin night sister who Is amazing, she is super efficient and puts the doctors right and she will gossip and exclaim and ask us about ourselves. She keeps proclaiming that we are good women and she may have something there. We have our whitterer who keeps sloping off to blow her hair and a couple who could do with cracking their faces but generally we endure with grace. Last night we had a spiritual moment. Those of you who read my blog will know I don't go in for such stuff but the lady in the corner who had had a really bad day had about 18 of her family around, they had her in stitches most of the night and stayed on after closing time. Then this lovely song drifted across the ward, all in perfect gospel harmony. Ok god did get a mention but it was all about being together in love. It hit the spot albeit a bit weepily.

And now I am the proud bearer of a portacath, inserted yesterday afternoon after a whole day of nil by mouth. A trip to the new hospital over the link and then to another gaggle of people ready for a laugh and to treat me like me. Scots this time so further back into my history. Apparently they sliced and inserted but I was off with the fairies and didn't feel a thing. Itsbecoming the story of my life.

Keeping me on my toes

2011-01-22T09:10:00.003Z

Well I don't suppose you could call it a boring couple of days. Thursday after a visit from the lovely hospice nurse who sanctioned wine with relish we went off to lunch at our favourite Birmingham eatery, Simpson's. This was the venue for our memorable anniversary meal last February. This time we were testing for wheelchair compatability alongside all my other criteria. It fared quite well, you have to park in a special place and take a back entrance but it's little hardship and they were all lovely and as subtle as possible. Set lunch for £35 including wine and all sorts of bits and pieces was great value and absolutely delicious. I drank the lion's share of the wine and I put the slightly wobblier legs on return down to that. Visitors completed the rest of a lovely afternoon including Harry who wanted to check on every change we had made to the house and all about me not being able to walk, how did I go to bed , the loo etc. Good questions as it happened as by the time they had all gone I couldn't. Legs just went completely.

We somehow managed that evening but it was all very perilous and on Friday it got to crisis point. I had appointments to go to but couldn't get up off the chair at all. Couldn't get to the loo, couldn't do diddly squat that entailed standing up. So 999 call and back in hospital, bed ridden at the moment. Will have MRI scan today, yes a Saturday! And we will take it from there. Still hoping it's not permanent but they are delicate old nerves down there.

So it's all keeping me on my toes if only metaphorically.

Our house in the middle of our street

2011-01-18T13:36:00.002Z

I love our house. It's just about Victorian, it is long and thin and goes up quite a way. When we bought it we couldn't afford it and jumped from paying about £30 a month, (I know those were the days!) to about £300 and then that nice Osborne forerunner Nigel Lawson I think it was, put interest rates up to 16%. We had three kids, one job and Jess was on her unbidden way. We lived on lentils.

We have knocked bits down and added bits on over the last 30 years. When we started our business and ran it almost alone we bought original art and pottery. Two years ago we changed style and painted the walls Vert de Terre or some such Farrow and Ballness, Stewart adapted Ikea Billy shelves into posh looking display vehicles for our books and all the new pots and old stuff from my Mom's.

So this is my world now and I am grateful for it. I sit and just soak in the colours and the mix of bits and pieces, the lovely mysterious paintings. The photos of Pete my dog from about 50 years ago, the lovely cracked art nouveau vase my Mom gave me filled with fresias when Jess was born. The monk in the rain. I can do no other. It could be worse.

Where from here?

2011-01-16T17:17:00.002Z

I try to keep this blog entertaining, real but with a smattering of irony, a glance to the past, a smile or a tear. I enjoy making the patterns in the writing, the dom - de - dom. It is about me having cancer however and a particular bastard to boot. It's been tough of course getting the diagnosis, reading the stats, telling the kids, having the surgery, the radio and the chemo but I have kept to my own "let's keep cheery " brief.

But let's be honest I am struggling now to be very cheery about the fact I can hardly pick my legs up and that last night I had more pain than four labours rolled together - even if mine were famously easy. Ok today the pain is easier so that is good, in fact I am not in pain as we speak. Last night was a flare up from the radiotherapy on my equine vestige, of course it was, why should I ever have such pain again? Oh yes there is the cancer. Readers will also have picked up that I am a celebratory slob. I like nothing better than doing nothing but read and do the odd crossword but even I am jacked off that I can't straighten my innumerable cushions the way I like them or put my book away where I think it should go. I also find that I don't like telling people what to do or asking for help with simple things, I have only one abiding religious creed - don't wake people up when they are asleep ( will have to convert the twins) so I lie around worrying about asking for things in the middle of the night or when I want a swig of morphine .

I quite like the wheelchair we bought yesterday to get me round the shops, I liked being at eye level to the stuff and not having to make any effort and I have been reminded that love is about looking after as well as looking at and I thank my lucky stars that me and Stewart know and love each other and have no modesty whatsoever.

Horse's tail

2011-01-11T17:47:00.002Z

Doctor's entourage just been, apparently my spinal column is just fine, well as fine as someone with lung mets etc can be. But and there is always a but, the cluster of nerves at the base of my spine, commonly called the Horse's tail has cancer deposits and that is what's causing the problems, so same difference really. Treatment will be 5 doses of radiotherapy to the place where my tail would be if I was a horse. Then I will start the sea squid aka yondelis so the fun begins. The physios will have a go at me tomorrow to get me on my feet again. It is hoped the radiotherapy will at least halt the paralysis in it's tracks and best case scenario turn me back to normal, if such I ever was. With a fair wind I should be out tomorrow or day after.

Noises off

2011-01-11T11:06:00.003Z

Managed to sleep, or more accurately not sleep, lying down last night. That is good news as the pelvic pain is much better and maybe reacting to the steroids. Also I am getting a bit more feeling in bits that were going numb, even managed a hasty pelvic floor squeeze, not at the banana peeling stage but whenever was I? before Sam perhaps but I never tried it.

Lack of sleep due to aforementioned steroids but also to whoever was shovelling coal or similar in the night and doing the heavy duty polishing. Some bloke was sounding off very loudly at about 4 o'clock and it was a toss up whether I shot him or joined him on a rooftop protest. The noises have continued this morning in the MRI scan machine but considering my scary back and my claustrophobia it wasn't too bad. Let's hope the results are the same but until then bed rest and lots of reading.

Hospital again

2011-01-10T15:18:00.001Z

Legs collapsed this morning and I fell quite elegantly onto our front garden. I was on the way to the scan so now they know what is wrong and have me back in hospital. I await enlightenment and some sort of hope that they can get my legs back. Till then it's lots of close holding up by Stewart and Joe and warm hugs and kisses. I can feel those at least. Will keep updating with news.

Hippy, hippy shake

2011-01-07T12:05:00.002Z

Here we go, new year, new symptoms. Not good I fear. For the last few days I have been tossing and turning in bed and staggering about during the day. No this is not due to the one night break at Ynyshyr Hall in Wales we enjoyed on Wednesday/Thursday. We couldn't afford the full two day jobby but enjoyed our one day of hedonistic heaven in one of the most beautiful spots on earth, imbibed the complementary sherry and the de rigeur aperitif, various wines with the Michelin starred utterly delicious dinner etc. But no my staggering is not due to the booze or my tossing and turning to the four poster, sinkingly soft bed. I have horrible aching pains across my pelvis and hips and down into my thighs and my legs have gone all shaky and sort of numb. Not good signs, in fact classic signs of spinal compression and impending no useful legs or rude, toilet bits doom.

I am due a scan on Monday which will look at me very closely and I have told my doctor what is happening so I suspect next week may see, not a visit to the new twins as planned but another week or so of visits to my best friend the radiation machine. That and the dreaded sea squid; thank goodness I got the pressed fois gras with beetroot mousse in, in Wales, before the cancer menu recommences. It was perhaps the best starter I have ever tasted, and I have had a few in my time. It's the endings I find I am not so good at.

Prime time

2011-01-01T09:36:00.003Z

2011 is a prime number and I don't like them, somebody has made up a name for such irrationality: Perittosarithmosphobia, and I have a mild case of it, nowhere near as strong as my arachnophobia which is firing up at the moment as our Christmas tree is doing that curling downwards thing that they do after a couple of weeks in the corner by the radiator, looks for all the world like a large collection of tarantulas. It will have to go.

I checked whether 2011 was a prime and discovered that I was born in a prime year too but that none of my children or their children were. Must be some significance there for a perittosarithmosphobic. The whole Happy New Year thing is weird for me anyway but we had a lovely evening doing absolutely nothing and having met Max and Charlie now there is a great potential for happiness in 2011, added to Harry's wide eyed look and Danny's cheeky, grinning shrugs. They are a handful though, literally so we will be going back very soon to lend our old hands and keep our mouths firmly shut about funny French ways (don't take them out for a month..sacre bleu!).

As for resolutions just two for me: stay alive and don't buy anymore cushions. Happy 2011 everyone and may it be a prime time for you all.

Wishing and waiting

2010-12-27T11:17:00.004Z

Waiting at the Eurotunnel, arrived 2 hours early and there is a two hour delay. What joy but the wait will be worth it as we will see Max and Charlie once we get over there. Christmas was good, turkey delicious but still a little dry despite the 9 hours in a salt bath looking just like a Damion Hurst installation, and the pound of butter shoved under its breast skin and slathered over its capacious frame. Fourteen people scoffed it down however and then played silly games and sang to the karioke machine. My superwoman status - home made everything - was slightly shaken when Stewart was searching for the tablecloth for the big table only to find it at the bottom of the ironing basket where it had mouldered since last Christmas. A ladybird had made its home in its creases. I looked as fit as a butcher's curly haired pup and I had to dish up 14 dinners so there was no time or reason for maudelling last Christmas fears, thank goodness.

So here's to Christmas future and to the Eurotunnel getting a move on.

Two special presents

2010-12-19T16:09:00.003Z

STOP PRESS: HERE IS A PICTURE, AREN'T THEY TWO LITTLE SMASHERS!

At last they are here, born at 15.00 and 15.10, one just over 3kg and one just under. Max and Charlie, no longer foetus A and B but bona fide little boys dying to see their nanny Jean I am sure. But there is too much snow for us to jump straight into our car and head over there. We would get stuck on the M40 and my fat leg would freeze up and we would be no good to man, beast or lovely little twins. We will go after Christmas, en famille to see our new famille and give them the shock of their very short lives.

Deck the halls

2010-12-14T10:54:00.004Z

Jess bought me a Christmas tree on Sunday; that was thoughtful and kind of course but the kindness was really to the Christmas tree. It is to trees as those runty puppies with one lame leg, a bashed in eye and mangy fur are to the canine population. The sort of puppy they use in adverts for Dog's Homes. They do it to try to tug at your heart strings, please very kind person give this mutt, that no-one could possibly want, a home. How could my lovely humane daughter resist and how could we? So we have lopped bits off, propped it up and filled the yawning gaps with our biggest baubles. I scoff now at the forests of perfectly shaped trees that adorn our neighbours' windows, how boring, how obvious; not the sort of tree for us at all.

Ours matches perfectly the slightly wonky cake I made, the very tipsy puddings and no doubt the oozing mince pies that are on today's festive factoring agenda. I am, as you will have gathered, something of a Christmas hero, especially this year and no, fear not I am not going to turn into one of those teary Grannies that weep through their turkey and trimmings because this may be the last chance they get to do so. Even though I have been a bit prone to the miseries recently, it's this bloody cold and my cricked leg. They make me feel old and tired and ill and I begin to wonder if I am going to feel better or is this the slide downwards. So the Christmas cheer is just what I need and filling my days with Yuletide fiddle faddling.

Today I am planning the meal and making sure I have everything ordered from the two or three supermarkets chains that are, as we speak, searching the highways and bye-ways with the sole purpose of provisioning our groaning table. I am even going to desert Delia and her turkey under a foil tent that has stood me in good stead for the last 10 years or so and which I always think about when I am sleeping under the roof of our bedroom in Maumont; the previous owner thought it a good idea to line the very highly pitched ceiling with silver insulation materials and like our tree, we have learned to live with it. This year I will try Heston Blumenthal's method which entails soaking the bird in a salt bath for 10 hours (well it worked for the Romans), then tenderly stroking its breast(s?)underneath the skin with thick swathes of butter and gently heating it up until it is just begging us to tear into its eager flesh.

Of course ours will probably have one leg shorter than the other and be even uglier than the average, ugliest bird in the world, turkey; but I will love it just the same and after all that salt soaking how could I possibly add to its burden by weeping and wailing over its beautiful, tender, butter crisped skin.

Trust me I'm a doctor

2010-12-11T11:09:00.004Z

Things are looking slightly brighter: Stewart is out of hospital and OK he did do his back in sorting out the futility room, home of the ashamed washing machine still sitting on its sopping carpet, but at least we are moaning and groaning together. He looks like the crooked man, walking his crooked mile.

My lergy turned into a cold and cough so not too life threatening and yesterday I went to see the oncologist. Frankly I was in no mood to fire loads of questions at him but basically he said my leg tumour was the same size, ie stable which believe you me is good news, and the Xray of my lungs was OK. A tad vague that you might think for a man of science but I have no trust in Xrays to show anything anyway. He has ordered a CT scan for mid January and I will see him again a week later. That gets me over Christmas so I made a speedy exit in case he changed his mind and tried to convince me that sea squid poison (main ingredient of next lot of chemo) was the just the thing to accompany turkey and mince pies.

Meanwhile back in Northern France, Julie continues to grow and incubate our twins. Her doctor is just watching and waiting too, you would think that with all that training they could be a bit more proactive and maybe work the odd miracle or two. We have all fingers and limbs crossed that the two little boys will arrive next week so that we can whistle over there, albeit crookedly, go gaga over their beauty and fill the car up with fat duck livers and cheap champagne. Beats sea squids any day.

What else can go wrong?

2010-12-08T12:13:00.002Z

OK God I know my last post suggested I didn't believe in you and I still don't. But just in case I am completely wrong will you just get off my case. If you are out there and this is some sort of divine retribution I don't want to be in your gang anyway and I certainly don't want to live with you for ever; not even if you let me torture a few folk who really deserve it and who funnily enough believe in you up to the hilt.

This is enough who ever you are. I have Stewart my poor old husband in hospital. He is fine really, he has the flu or some such virus. But because he has Chronic Lymphocytic Leukaemia (symptom free for 20 odd years) they go into a panic. They panic and then do sod all. He is in Birmingham's supposedly sooper dooper new hospital. It is very pretty once you get on the wards. But he was in what is laughingly called the Clinical Decision Unit on Sunday, very soon renamed by me to the Clinical Indecision Unit. Staffed mostly by junior doctors under terrible strain, you are surrounded and within a hair's breadth of people with all sorts of things wrong with them. Presumably it did them no good to be near Stewart and his virus, it certainly did me no good to listen to an old chap screaming in agony from pneumonia for literally hours. The ward he is on now is light and bright but chronically understaffed and unable to make speedy clinical decisions hence he is blocking his bed and complaining that he wants to go home on an hourly basis. It is also a long way from the car park and although I am now the proud owner of a blue badge, by the time I reach his ward I am ready to be admitted myself. Not that I would show it I would rather they shoot me.

And yes I now have symptoms of Stewart's lergy, I have a raised temperature, my cough has come back and I feel as if I have done ten rounds with Mike Tyson.

And finally about 30 minutes ago Joe discovered that our washing machine that I had struggled to put on this morning, had flooded and water was pouring through the kitchen ceiling, on examination we found that the central heating boiler was also dripping. The kitchen is now carpeted with towels soaking up the wet and I fear the ceiling is bulging.

So leave me alone will you, my phlegmatism does have its limits.

Frightened to death

2010-11-30T19:55:00.002Z

I have been ruminating (as we cow like types will) on fear and what makes me afraid. It's an easy one, spiders number one and, as of last year, bikes number two. Not dying you will have picked up and more of that later. Clearly my fears are all irrational but that does not stop the grinding panic, the rush of blood to somewhere where it is terrifying. I have a large nature book that I can't touch because it has the most gruesome picture of a spider's face, I can hardly bear to type the words. Every time the last episode of the Lord of the Rings film comes on I tell myself that it is just that, a film, that I have read the book a hundred times, that I am safe at home and all is well. No good as soon as the intrepid travellers enter that mountainside into Shelob's lair, I have my head buried in a cushion and nothing will get me to look up.

And why bikes? I used to live on my bike when I was about ten. I could ride with no hands and on one wheel, I could pelt down our hill with my feet off the pedals. Then last year, nearly 50 years on, I decided to get myself a new bike, I hadn't ridden since I was about thirteen. I didn't get just any old bike but a £2000 beauty that gave you power assistance as you pedalled (remember the fat leg problem). I proved the old adage wrong you can forget how to ride a bike. Oh I could still just about keep upright but I went into a flat spin literally if I had to stop, turn round or go near another human being or form of transport. In the end I fell off so often I was driven rigid with fear and now can't even bear to pedal on the straight.

My terror therefore is of scraging (Brummie term means scraping) my knee or seeing ghastly images of spiders but not of this vile cancer that is invading my body and doing me real harm. I simply cannot get the adrenalin flowing on its behalf. Sometimes when I feel dreadful, I have recently had a cold and a cough and I fell over in the snow and ricked my bad leg; I feel a glimmer of something but it's more like irritation. I used to be frightened of dying, I could get myself to this place where my scalp tingled as I made myself think about what not existing might be like, but it is much easier not to do that and frankly now I can't be arsed. Of course I am frightened of being very ill, but am comforted by the fact that when this has happened in the past, dreadful flu or last winter's cold, I really haven't cared whether I lived or died so when the time comes I will be looking for relief. Also I get claustrophobic so I am frightened of coffins. I'll have one of those whicker jobbies please, they seem less closed in, idiot that I am!

People say that believing in the after life stops the fear of dying and gives comfort. It seems for me it is entirely the opposite. I would be absolutely pissing myself if I thought I had to go somewhere else. What if I didn't like it, didn't fit in? What about those terrible judgements they say will be made about you? I haven't done much that is really sinful but I am no goody goody. I tell lies, I have chocolate and eat it all by myself, I am anti-social and I used to be a flirt. I covet my neighbours clean house. And what if all that sent me to hell, I know it would be filled with spiders and bikes. So thank goodness I know that I will be going nowhere but into the collective memories of my friends and family. To me that is the great comfort and probably the reason I am not afraid.

Of course I might die in the street after seeing a spider and falling off my bike in which case be assured that, as I breathe my last, I will be shaking in my boots.

The emperor has no clothes on

2010-11-20T13:51:00.004Z

Just back from Bournemouth where the NHS Alliance were holding their 13th conference and my old organisation were helping to make it all happen. I was only there for the beer and to see old friends, but in the end I helped with the stage management, managed to dance a few dances and found myself on the reality check panel able to tell the Chief Executive of the whole NHS, the head of NICE and the Chief Executive of the Care Quality Commission what it felt like for patients these days.

It was the emperor has no clothes on time for me and I told them in no uncertain terms that he didn't and that what we received, in secondary care in particular, was far too frequently substandard and at times downright unsafe. I put in a plea for us poor buggers with rare conditions who could easily be pushed into a cruel postcode lottery if there isn't a national scheme to fund our treatment. I asked them to ask themselves how 26 miles across the channel our continental neighbours were receiving a far better, higher quality service that had much better results, when they didn't have a zillion quality standards, or huge organisations to monitor what is going on, or wave after wave of new policies, strategies and management models; just simple, easy, good quality.

I was asked what I wanted from my GP, I said I wanted him/her to be able to send me directly for imaging or other diagnostics not to have to go via secondary care, that I wanted that to happen very quickly. I asked them to make sure that when they referred their patients on to secondary care they made sure that they saw someone with at least as much expertise and experience as they had themselves, and to be aware that this does not happen now; far too much diagnosis and ongoing care is left to Senior House Officers who simply are not senior enough to be able to pick up the exceptions to the rule.

It was amazing how many of the delegates, mostly GPs themselves came up to me afterwards and gave me chapter and verse about the poor care they and their families had received in hospitals etc and they all seemed to still be smiling at me so perhaps I have kept a few friends and maybe together we can start to reclothe our beloved emperor even though times are tough and we might have to make do with M & S rather than Yves Saint Lauren .

A lump in the throat

2010-11-14T15:01:00.003Z

Well the pain in the shoulder blade that nearly finished me off has faded to a whisper but the radiotherapy soldiers are still creating havoc as they follow their scorched earth tactics on my lungs and gullet. I am on a diet of scrambled eggs, risotto and for today's Sunday blowout I am making my melt in the mouth steak and kidney pie in the hope I can get it down, and would you believe it a milk jelly made with evap.

There is this lump in my throat or around the top of my rib cage actually, that means it hurts to swallow. I have always been a fan of swallowing, you get nice tastes on the way. All through the dreaded chemo I was fearing a loss of taste as other poor victims have fallen prey to this, but no I was saved and gorging my way through the best restaurants of Britain, France and Italy has been my way of making the best of this bloody nightmare,

Now my gorge is not so gorgeous, but they say it will abate and yes I will enjoy a bacon sarnie again until then.. well there was that fantastic fois gras brulee I had in Perigueux that had nary a lump, and rice pudding and Stewart's wondrous watercress soup and endless cups of tea.

However, you will forgive me, I hope if I say that despite the wonders of tasty slops, this most recent turn of the screw by the cruel and ruthless Leio is a bit hard for this fat foodie to swallow.

No pats on the back

2010-11-04T20:28:00.002Z

OK I know I am a brave little thing at times and yes I have scored my 100 on Scramble but please don't pat me on the back or give me a hug. They said it would get worse before it got better and they were right with Round 1, hopefully the second prediction will be just as accurate.

It's been agony but I am discovering the wonders of morphine, even if it does turn you into a Zombie. Danny was a Zombie for Halloween so while I know nothing about Zombie genetics, it is only right that his Nan shows some of the characteristics I suppose. The drugs have also put a strange smile onto my face which beats the grimace of yesterday.

Typing hurts so that's it for blogging for today.

A TINGLE UP MY SPINE

2010-10-29T21:38:00.003+01:00

I knew it was bad news when the phone rang and it was David Peake, my oncologist at about 10 o'clock this morning. Oh hello how are you I say, as you do and he asks the same of me and then says that the radiology doctor had alerted him because one of the blobs in my right lung that neither the Germans or the chemo got is wrapping itself around my spine and this is not good news as it will bugger up my nerves and my legs and maybe make me poo my pants. Well I didn't thank goodness despite the lurch in my stomach, and rushed off to the hospital to start immediate radiotherapy thinking that I have been going on about the pain in my shoulder by my spine for some time. In fact I had stopped going on about it and put it down to RSI from my new obsession with Scramble on my Iphone - my score is 98 and if I don't get it to a 100 I will not die a happy woman.

When I say immediately have radiotherapy I got to the hospital by about 11.30, waited to see himself, saw the pictures of the snake around my spine, had a natter, signed my life away and then had to wait for the processes to unfold. Number One was an IV jab of steroids. This may make you feel as if you are sitting on nettles she said and yes it did. Two days before, the jab in the scan had gone straight to my rude bits and being a bit weird I quite enjoyed it, this was slightly more disarming, is this a pleasant or downright horrible, sado masochistic type experience. It went straight down there and was like being beaten by razor wire, not that I ever have been of course.

Then eventually up for another scan to get the target just right, and tattoo me. Just a ragged blob, no Girl with the Dragon Tattoo for me, well I am not that good on motor bikes or computer hacking or indeed sado masochism, so what can I expect? That was over at 2ish and then we had the long wait till about 5.00pm when I had my two second blast under the machine. I must go back tomorrow, round the back, because it's closed really and for the next nine days. This is a pre-emptive strike says David but we don't talk about what will happen if it doesn't work or only works for a while.

So spine tingling stuff, we drop a bit in the morale stakes but have just been out for a curry and half a bottle of wine and tomorrow I will get that magic 100 despite all of it being a bit of a pain in the neck.

Keep smiling through

2010-10-25T10:06:00.006+01:00

It's going from bad to worse on the hair front, a few weeks ago friends told me I looked like Julie Driscoll once my hair started to grow back on but now I have all these grey curls, Jess ruffles my head and tells me I look like Melanie Phillips. Now the only good thing about Melanie Phillips is her hair but that is not saying much as she is a peculiarly unpleasant, Zionist, gender betraying, misanthropic scumbag. Ok Julie D was a bit of an airhead and wore too much makeup but she didn't turn your stomach. I plan a visit to the hairdressers to tidy it all up and maybe dye it purple. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

The journey back was uneventful, we met a nice bloke called Thierry who at 1.45am in a pretty depressing service station was cheerful and jokey, perhaps he was on drugs but he managed to make us smile and sold us some Diesel. We were all knackered, me mainly because every time I dropped off we went round one of the zillion roundabouts on the road up through Normandy or I had to be nudged awake to pay a toll. Right hand driving has many downsides. Since then we have been catching up on creche duties and falling in love with our grandsons all over again, Danny has been transformed into a talking, biddable, beaming boy while we have been away. Which with my curls means we have a lot to smile about. You know smiling Melanie, it's when you feel good about things or something makes you laugh and your mouth turns up. And it's infectious .. try it sometime.

Don't panic, don't panic

2010-10-20T11:03:00.002+01:00

Sarkozy, aka Sarcoma, says don't panic so of course we are. Tonight we will make a mercy dash with our precious full tank of Diesel in the dark to the Eurotunnel, booked for 6.45 tomorrow morning because Sarcoma aka Sarkosy, is going to bring in the special forces and that is bound to cause more trouble, the French lorry drivers will love the challenge. My scan is next Wednesday and although I don't really want to know what Sarcoma, (this time not aka Sarcozy but I wouldn't be surprised if he and his like were resposible for that too) is up to with its wicked devices, I suppose I have to face up to it and rally my forces against it to block its progress and cut off its fuel.

At least the rush to pack and clear will take my mind off leaving this lovely place. Next time we come to France it will be to see our new twins. I fear they will have to work till they are very old but if they are chips off the old block, they will be blocking the roads and telling the future Sarcozys where to get off just as I hope their Nan can tell Monsieur Sarcoma next week.

Talking about my generation

2010-10-18T10:47:00.004+01:00

The Who famously sang "hope I die before I get old", I am part of that generation but never signed up to that hell cat sort of sentiment and while I am still far too young to die, I fear I have missed the " hope I die before I get old" boat already. Let's look at the facts. I am collecting my pension although these days you don't have to queue up at the post office but just watch as it glides, almost unnoticed it's so teeny weeny, into your account. I have hardly any clothes that don't have dinner dropped down them, parts of my body that once had skin so smooth it made men go weak at the knees would now only set a rhinoceros or other pachyderm atremble. I am half deaf, I have to have the subtitles on and in conversation find myself guessing words ridiculously wrongly like my Mom who was convinced our friend Chris was called Fritz. Last time I had my eyes tested they had to point me at the chart because I could hardly make out the top line and try as I may I can't get up out of a chair without a sort of strangulated bellow erupting from my lips, if lips you can still call them.

I suppose I should be thankful that I may be saved from sinking further into dotage to the point where I start peeing myself and muttering things about the younger generation or even worse start trying to look the same as I did when the Who were around. We had Roger Daltrey speaking at one of our conferences a couple of years ago, alongside the Prince of Wales would you believe, I didn't notice whether he had gravy stains down his shirt or was beginning to dribble but sure enough he was older and like me, can probably now pop his clogs without those immortal, dying before he gets old, words leaving his lips, if lips you can still call them.

It don't rain but it pours

2010-10-16T12:39:00.004+01:00

There is a Brummie saying: just cos yer house burns down, it don't mean yer old lady wont run off with the milkman. Well it's less PC than that but I have my reputation to think of. So I find that having cancer doesn't mean other things stop going wrong. I don't just mean my dodgy knees and the repetitive strain injury in my shoulder caused by too much Monopoly on the laptop but the trials of parenthood are catching up with us again. When young folks moan about their babies not sleeping etc we joke and say " It's the first 37 years that have been the worst". Well that is coming back to bite us as we have a very unhappy Joe staying with us. We had to go and fetch him from Sam's who had fetched him from Lille right up in the North. I find you can't put being a Mom on hold, we are weaving the family magic on him and feeding him up. Luckily he can keep working from here and we have got him fixing a satellite on the side of the house. Not sure of the aesthetics on our lovely mellow limestone, but it is bringing a smile to his face and that is all the aesthetics I need.

It seems we may be marooned here as the French are up in arms about Scarcozy ( ha ha spellcheck offers me Sarcoma or scarcity for that) wanting to raise the pension age to the dizzy heights of 62. While the world lets the bankers get off the hook I am with them all the way. The petrol refiners and deliverers are on strike and there are queues at the petrol stations, maybe the ferries wont be working and they may blockade the roads. No hardship for us of course, I can get a scan done here if I have to and we can enjoy more of the wonderful sunshine and autumnal colours, and no rain or milkmen in sight.

Happy Birthday

2010-10-09T08:43:00.002+01:00

Google tells me that today is John Lennon's birthday, they seem to have missed the fact that it is also the birthday of my soul mate and daughter, Jess. She is 29 today, so the last year of her roaring twenties is about to start. And they have certainly roared, but then so did her teens and her pre-teens, in fact she sort of roared at me as we eyed each other up for the first time, when she was about 29 seconds old. Her look said "and who do you think you are". I'm still asking that question myself but she got used to me and her Dad and loved her brothers as long as they kept to their places ie did what they were told. If you were watching Question Time on Thursday she made the second comment from the audience ( I haven't seen it yet, we can't get the telly here in France) something which suggested that maybe David Cameron's multi millionaire family might not feel the loss of child benefit quite as much as the average single Mom who has struggled to get her salary up to £36K or whatever the limit is. So we are bursting with pride for her of course.

This is the first second family occasion since I was told I might only see one more birthday, one more Christmas etc. It's a weird feeling. My Mom lived almost another 29 years after I was 29; OK the last five or so were not worth the candle but if I think what has happened over the last 29 years since Jess was born it feels like almost all of my life. I know I couldn't have expected the next 29 to be quite so momentous career and personal experience wise; life is slowing down and gets a bit repetitive but I can't begin to imagine all that I might miss that I should be seeing happening. Some perhaps that I would rather miss!

I do know that Jess will carry my flag, remember everyone's birthday and cook the Christmas puds and she will keep on roaring.. because ..that's my girl.

Curly tops

2010-10-06T09:05:00.003+01:00

My hair definitely has a wave in it. Not waving goodbye anymore but waving hello to a new curly me. It has always been dead straight. I didn't need to iron it when it fell down to my waist in the 60s; my Mom had it razor cut for a couple of years, whatever that is, in the hope that this might make a wave happen. She used to curl it round a few grips and even the odd roller in the hope of getting her dream daughter to materialise. Nothing would make it curl. Even I tried to get the Farrah Forcett look in the 70s and had a perm, but I could only afford the local salon where the old ladies went and ended up looking like a Brillo Pad.

But now the curls have finally arrived, I am really not sure what to do with them, how to live with them. Luckily it's still very short so it's not going wild, I don't have ringlets or kiss curls but wonder if it's just a matter of time. It's like getting a baby or a pet late in life when you have lived without one for ever. I may need to go to curly hair classes or consult a few of my wavy friends.

I am wondering if anything else is growing back kinked, maybe my politics and I'll start thinking Nick Clegg is a good thing or my atheism, I might start lighting candles or muttering the rosary. If you see either of those things happening dear friends, I think it will be clear that in fact I am not waving but drowning and for goodness sake, pull me back and lock me up.

My old man

2010-09-26T10:34:00.004+01:00

There are things that irritate me about my husband. Currently:

* He drives at a million miles an hour if someone is behind us on bendy French roads because" they get annoyed if you don't"

* He can't go a day without visiting a do-it-yourself shop and standing for hours fondling various screws and brackets

* He has always just read the greatest book ever and goes on about it to everyone

* He worries about everything, the fosse (septic tank), the boiler, Rupert Murdoch, the attention span of today's kids.

BUT

He makes me laugh, we love the same things and people, we agree about all the important things like politics and religion and since the very worst he could imagine ever happening, happened, he has been fantastic about it. About leio and how he now shares my life and might in fact run off with me sooner rather than later. He has played along religiously with my let's not let it ruin what time we do have philosophy, he has become fonder, he never let's me see him feeling sad even if we both know just how much he is; he makes me tea in bed.

I cannot conceive of what it will be like, no comfortable silence, no quirky shared smiles, no punch on the arm on waking. It's too much for him to lose. Which is why when he read out this poem chosen by our friends, Chris and Denise, at their recent wedding (after 26 years together!) I wept, like them, but for different reasons I hope:

For What Binds Us
by Jane Hirshfield

There are names for what binds us:
strong forces, weak forces.
Look around, you can see them:
the skin that forms in a half-empty cup,
nails rusting into the places they join,
joints dovetailed on their own weight.
The way things stay so solidly
wherever they've been set down—
and gravity, scientists say, is weak.
And see how the flesh grows back
across a wound, with a great vehemence,
more strong
than the simple, untested surface before.
There's a name for it on horses,
when it comes back darker and raised: proud flesh,
as all flesh,
is proud of its wounds, wears them
as honors given out after battle,
small triumphs pinned to the chest—
And when two people have loved each other
see how it is like a
scar between their bodies,
stronger, darker, and proud;
how the black cord makes of them a single fabric
that nothing can tear or mend.

The bearded lady

2010-09-22T11:49:00.003+01:00

In yesterday's Guardian there was an article telling us we should learn to love our facial hair. Apparently there is a group called Hairey Awarey that is proposing that we embrace our beards and flaunt our hirsute extremities. I have always quite liked my facial hair because frankly I didn't have much, certainly not enough to get into a clinch with. But of late I am becoming more hairey aware, you see the hair is not just coming back onto my head but also onto my chin in soft, pale, but really quite long, sort of down. I am pleased that this might now be the height of chic but still shudder as I see it glowing and waving as I pass the mirror. So this morning, not wishing to be a slavish follower of fashion, I got Stewart to give it a quick clip with his beard trimmer.

I hope this doesn't mean I will have to start shaving on a regular basis because I couldn't even keep up with my legs before the chemo and fuzz is starting to grow back there too. But luckily I will have no need for a Brazilian or other exotic trims on my rude bits, the radiotherapy did for them in more ways than one.

I was right wasn't I? Cancer treatments do have a great deal of the absurd and bizarre about them; in fact it's all quite hairy as you will observe.

Read any good books lately

2010-09-20T17:43:00.005+01:00

I was reading A Fair Balance by Rohinton Mistry on the way here. It's the book I stole or swapped, in fact, from the German hospital where I had my lung zapped. I had abandoned it, gathering dust next to my bed, because the print was very small and I kept nodding off as I screwed up my eyes to try to make out the blurry bits. Armed with my new glasses I picked it up again and got hooked. It's a happy tale of castration, amputation, hanging, starvation and slums but it manages to have its funny moments.

Even so as light relief after polishing it off I turned to Adrian Mole's latest diary The Prostrate(sic) Years. What do you know it's all about cancer, poor old Adrian; and of course it's a hoot. It doesn't quite wring out the full absurdity of radiotherapy and chemo and what it does to you but my smile kept wrying. And that Sue Townsend, they say that blind people have better hearing than the rest of us, it must be so, she must have heard, all the way from Leicester, my husband muttering about the impossibility of finding a proper sandwich and not one slathered in mayonnaise; words put into the mouth of the hapless Adrian. Perhaps my husband is Adrian Mole, he keeps threatening to write to the Prime Minister too, he is 25 years older of course and has a much better prostate and taste in women but ..there is the cardigan.

I'm now reading a book by a woman called Fred about murders that mimic the Black Death, that should be a laugh a minute too.

A Maumont

2010-09-16T12:11:00.002+01:00

'A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For the journey, and such a long journey
The ways deep and the weather sharp"

Well it's only September, but the boat was delayed because of a south westerly gale and then it drizzled for 500 miles through France. We kept seeing blue skies ahead but they were mysteriously always ahead until, that is, we reached Maumont and it was warm and sunny and we felt welcomed back.

This morning we have been to the market, we saw wild boar and a red squirrel on the way and they saw us and knew we were back or so I like to think. In Bethune we felt baby bumps or maybe bums and Julie introduced us to Bill and Ben or whatever they will be called.

A lot of hellos therefore and so far, so good, no goodbyes.

Beating the odds

2010-09-10T08:53:00.004+01:00

It was exactly a year ago today if you go by the days not the date, when I asked how long he said an average of a year. So if I make it to tomorrow I am beating the odds. I feel fine except on Tuesday morning I slipped on the stair of an inn that has certainly beaten the odds and made it to 500 years old. So now I have a bruised bum and jarred operation bits.

It's a funny old life when you have a death sentence hanging over you. I think I will make it to 02/11 and so my credit card will expire before I do. Not sure about the passport though 2015 for that one. The really good thing is I can take on long contracts for stuff and not let them know I may run out before they do.

The latest is an IPhone, not the new version I am not posh enough for that, but the one before that. Each of my friends and family who have one of these little beauties has assured me, separately, that it is going to change my life (but perhaps not my life expectancy). So far it's just meant that I feel really old as I struggle with syncing, or sinking in my case, and that I have spent this morning retyping in my contacts because I couldn't work out how to sync those with my old phone or my PC. I have also forgotten the password to our wireless connection so can't put that in either.

Yesterday when it came in its wrapping and today as I cocked up most of the names I was typing in on the super sensitive touch screen, I realised yet again how useful fingernails are and how, literally, ham-fisted you feel without them. Earlier I had actually wept as I tried to put on my brand new compression stocking, I had to keep lying down between lunges at the unrelenting fabric with my soft shell fingertips.

So my days over the odds have so far been hampered by the shock of the new but I will get Jess round and get her to prove to me how the dratted phone is going to change my life and later on today either by IPhone or by my old and trusty laptop I will book our crossing to France and from next Tuesday we will live out a few more bonus and, hopefully, IPhone transformed days in Gallic peace and tranquility.

Money, money, money

2010-08-31T17:55:00.004+01:00

I find that this on/off dying malarkey pays havoc with budgeting. Not that I was ever that good at it and am definitely of the any excuse for a splurge, let's close our eyes to the consequences, school of economics. I was quite enjoying the pensioner's plight of living off a daily pittance, well about £40 to be exact which should be manageable even with my psyche. I kept a daily tally and loved the days when we only reached about £2.45. And then the cancer man said you might only have a year, go and have a good time. So off we went and blasted about £6K of our savings on hedonism Italian style and then we thought better hold off, and then they found the lumps in my leg, liver and lymphs and so off we went again, eating our way around the Dordogne and buying the odd small library and another few thousand went the way of all flesh. Now the xray has come up trumps and so it's back to watching the pennies. Boom and bust Trainor style; I may start taking lessons from the heartless Messrs Osborne and Armstrong and cut, cut, cut; but frankly I prefer to spend, spend, spend and do my small bit to boost the economy, and my morale, while I can still taste, walk and wonder.

Reprieve

2010-08-27T17:07:00.002+01:00

Well it was no fun coming back, well not after leaving Sam and Julie's it wasn't. Our friends Julie and Harry, who also have a house in France, stopped over as well and we had feasting and lots of very cheeky conversation. I saw the latest scans of the twins including a very super willy on Foetus A, I think it was, both are boys we now know and that is no surprise as girls are very few and far between in our family. I am beginning to feel sorry for Foetus B, he is smaller and more hidden and I love him to bits.

England was cold, wet, noisy, crowded and traffic riddled and if it hadn't been quite nice to snuggle under the duvet last night and to see Harry and Danny earlier I would be ready to sink the whole place.

Today saw sunshine, if a lot weaker than in the Dordogne, and good news from the oncologist. It was only an xray, not a scan which shows up the full story, but on the xray you couldn't see any blobs at all and he was pleased and said I could have another two months off- repreive! - till the end of October when we will have a proper scan. So I am pleased too, of course, even though in my heart I know an xray can't really see enough of me, the bits it saw looked a lot better for now.

We will probably go back to lovely Maumont quite soon, once I have had my family fix and tidied up the garden. You don't need a scan there to see massive growth of unwanted items and I will be pulling them up with renewed enthusiasm.

Back to reality

2010-08-19T14:28:00.003+01:00

The last of our visitors has gone and we are now into the last week of our stay here. Next Wednesday I have to go back to Britain, see my oncologist on Friday after he has looked at my chest via an xray and we will then find out how leio is behaving. I feel Ok, my leg is no worse but neither is it any better. I have a bit of a cough but not as bad as it has been, I am eating like a horse but then I always did. One of my big toe nails is hanging off and that is the worst of my problems at the moment. That and the worry that this might be the best summer I will ever have now, we always knew this might be the case which is why we have worked so hard to make sure it was fantastic. And it has been, I have read a lot of amazing books and a couple of duds. Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver is my favourite read of 2010 so far, I enjoyed One Day by David Nicholls, The Help by Kathryn Stockett and A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore. Others have not made their mark and I still have a small shelf to get through. I have eaten some fantastic meals cooked by Michelin chefs and some by bigger stars in my own family, even a few cooked by myself and we have lazed, laughed, sung and danced in glorious sunshine and drizzly rain. My hair is growing back and friends say I look like Julie Driscoll (well she must be getting on a bit now too!)

I want to come back very soon, I don't want to have to start being injected with poison again, to have my energy sapped and my enjoyment prospects dimmed. Leio get on your bike will you and let me make this summer just the first of many boozy, basky, beautiful ones to come.

Unwelcome visitors

2010-08-09T11:57:00.002+01:00

No it's not you or you two; humanoid visitors this summer to our little French house have all been charming and have lifted my spirits. But we have a very sweet and very unwelcome visitor. A chubby, and extremely pretty mouse. I saw her/him a few weeks ago and fell instantly in love, don't know why. So we left well alone, but then Stewart saw him/her and found that he/she had been eating our flour and crapping on our furniture. I utilised my newly returned energy levels and cleaned out the food cupboards yesterday, only to find a nest in an opened packet of popping corn that Jess thought was a good idea to buy maybe last year or the year before. I chucked out all the old half eaten packets and washed the cans and bottles, bleached the round roundy thing that the previous owner had put in the kitchen units to store food on and then stood back and admired my shiny clean world. BUT quelle horreur this morning more mouse droppings on the carousel so we have been off to buy poison to kill my new love and his/her family and friends.

What that will do to my karma I can ony imagine.

All done and dusted

2010-08-04T11:17:00.003+01:00

A few months ago when the idea of the family helping Sam and Julie to move was mooted, I said yes great if I feel well enough and here we are now back in home number 2 in South West France having successfully moved them lock, stock and barrel, although the barrel was empty by the time we left. I felt perfectly fit, relatively perfectly fit that is. And while I can't say I did that much to contribute to the move, on Day 2 when I got up and straightened a few books, plumped a few cushions and picked up a scrap of paper, Joe got the vac out and voila the room was transformed into a thing of beauty. It is a beautiful house, all wood panelling and Minton tiled floors, ceiling roses and those enormous double doors you see in bourgeois French houses.

Harry and Danny tazzed around it with great joi de vivre making us all imagine the twins doing the same thing in a couple of years time. Although two years seems an enormous stretch for poor time limited me. As Jess and Julie filled the bookcases on Saturday night to much banter and hilarity, and as my boys who used to spend hours talking about the relative merits of amps or cry baby wa wa pedals discussed drill bits with their father with equal enthusiasm, I imagined this all going on without me there. After all what did I contribute? - very little other than the odd quip or giggle so maybe it will all continue and not be ripped apart. And maybe, just maybe I will be well enough to go and help Julie when the twins arrive and be there when they career around the lovely hall and through the gorgeous doors and send all our hearts to our collective mouths as they make their attempt on the summit of the two sets of stairs.

A moving experience

2010-07-27T07:47:00.005+01:00

It has been said that our family will make any excuse for a party and I am beginning to believe it. The weekend before last my superwoman daughter helped to organise a massive Big Lunch party in her road, what was the excuse - someone had firebombed cars along the road a few months earlier - there you go. And this weekend coming the family Trainor, except Luke and Aleks as Luke is starting his new job - yippee, are all congregating at Sam and Julie's to help them move to a bigger twin friendly house. This may not sound much but they live in Northern France and Joe and his dog, Scoobie are travelling from Amsterdam; Jess, Tom and Harry, 5 and Danny not quite 2 are coming from Birmingham; and me and Stewart are driving 500 miles from South West France bearing travel cots, wine and other essentials to a house move.

We are all very excited about it. I try not to remember what moving house was like and what bedlam it might be with two small boys and a dog in tow, not to mention the fifty odd tumours I carry with me everywhere and the two little to-be Trainors that Julie has inside her - but they are only moving their millions of books, hundreds of tins of fois gras and all the new beds and kitchen furniture they have just bought, around the corner from where they live now, so how hard can it be?

If the sun shines and we are all finished by Sunday we will go to the seaside and have our own version of the Big Lunch, if not you can be assured that their new house will be well and truely warmed and we will have found our excuse for a party.

Pictured is aforementioned Scoobie (whisper it softly but I am almost as excited about seeing him as the two grandsons.. and that is very excited I can tell you).

It's getting hairy

2010-07-24T14:50:00.004+01:00

Today I had to pluck a hair from the mole on my neck; also I did not brush stuff on my eyebrows and they look almost like they used to. That could be because I have put so much on over the last few weeks it's soaked into my skin permanently but also it could be because my hair is growing back and I am beginning to feel normal.

I still wear the headwraps but when I don't there is a shadow all over my head, darkish in some lights, grey in others so we are still not sure if I will get all I deserve for being 61 or return with my hair still brown: Jeanie with the light brown hair, except it was always dark brown.

And I am feeling the benefit of a month in this idyllic place with not a doctor or nurse in sight. Today I just felt irritated when Stewart spent what felt like an hour deciding not to buy the bracket or piece of wood he had been musing over in Bricomarche; two weeks ago it was exhaustion that sent me back to the car. I know I am an ungrateful cow because he is spending ages making mosquito nets for the windows so I don't get bitten but for goodness sake how long does it take to decide which bracket to buy!

I am clearly feeling better and more my old cantakerous self, I do not let it kid me however, I know it's not going to last for ever and thinking it might would be just too cruel. But Sufficient unto the day is the evil therof so I enjoy the relief and try to appreciate even a morning in Bricomarche.

Awareness

2010-07-18T10:35:00.002+01:00

Apparently this week is Sarcoma Awareness week. I remember when I was in the events world I used to get regular updates on these sort of weeks and the events associated with them. There are millions of the things; did you know that there was a chocolate week for example? I decided that as I couldn't remember which week it was I would have to celebrate it every week, every day in fact.

Same with Sarcoma really although I do not celebrate it, and how aware of it am I? Mostly it's the chemo and its effects I am aware of, no hair (although it's starting to grow back and I don't think it is all grey), runny nose, ghostly nausea and seascape nails. Then there are the scars from the surgery which strangely have kicked off again soreness wise; but the sarcoma itself well it's just the lump at the back of my leg really and that just gets lost with all the other lumps lurking on that particular limb.

There is something I am supposed to do to my Facebook page to alert people to Sarcoma Awareness week but I couldn't work out what it was from the instructions and so apart from this blog my contribution will be nil. So folks please be aware and make your friends and family aware that Sarcoma sucks, it's rare so there's no money in it and that to my certain knowledge there is a group of people suffering from it who must be the bravest and best in the world. These are the Mimis, Amys, Shirleys, Kathryns, Karens, Christophers, Dots, Peters, Rogers and loads of others who through their pain and fear research, and fight and share and cheerfully survive despite having bits lopped off themselves and poison pumped into their veins. In America there was a Dr Dee who finally didn't survive but whose memory lingers on and who it would seem did more for Sarcoma awareness and research than any of the professionals who are paid to help us out.

Sarcoma needs more money, more interest, more notice because there are things out there that can help us, there is a right way and a wrong way to tackle the bastard, it's not good enough to say we are too rare and expensive or leave us to the lottery of insurance or the passing interest of a few devotees.

Be aware, it's Sarcoma Awareness Week and for some of us, and our families and friends, Sarcoma Awareness life.

Dying happy

2010-07-13T15:23:00.006+01:00

You know that phrase, now I can die happy or I suppose it should be happily; well I don't think I've got there yet and I have absolutely no idea whether I will be in the slightest bit happy when I die, I can't imagine that I will. I do imagine it from time to time and shake myself and say now don't go there. Somehow making the beds for our visitors brings it on, maybe it's pulling up the sheet, ugh no do not let us go there.

But today is one of those days when the phrase now I can die happy might pass my lips as number three son Luke got the job he desperately wanted and it puts him on the right course for the future whatever that is. He has not had an easy ride, and hence neither have we, but the last couple of years or so he has dragged himself back into normality, again whatever that is and today is the start of payback time for us all.

Of course that nice multi millionaire George Osborne - "we are all in this together and must all expect to suffer because my friends the bankers wrecked our economy but I wont because I am rich, rich rich" - will be getting his cutting shears out to jobs like Luke's and also Jessie's and he might even have a go at Stewart's pension which is probably brings in about as much as Georgie boy pays for suits every year.

It is painful to watch it unfold and to see yesterday, for example, that loads of my ex-colleagues in PCTs and SHAs in the health service will now be worrying like mad about their jobs and their mortgages. So will I die happy? Well when the time comes part of me will be happy to get away from this sort of brutality and the inevitable consequences of being helplessly in the hands of people whose philosophy and morality are the polar opposite to my own and, in my view, downright wicked and wrong.

It's a wonderful world

2010-07-08T12:00:00.003+01:00

Just got back from another lovely market, this time in Terrason, bought apricots, veal escalopes and girolle mushrooms which tomorrow I will whiz up into a bonne repas, I hope. We had breakfast, croissants and pain au raisin in a little pavement cafe where a hurdy gurdy man or chanteur was playing and singing, he played parlez moi d'amour which is one of my all time favourites and I thought: well life can't get much better than this. OK it may not happen next year but then maybe the hurdy gurdy man will go somewhere else and the boulangerie may mess up its croissants and the sun may not shine; so we enjoy the moment and let it rest at that.

I do sometimes wonder though if the fates are conspiring against us, one of our favourite restaurants the Belle Etoile in beautiful La Roque Gageac is closed at the moment. I rang the first week we were here to reserve a table using my best French which is just a little better than hopeless. The man said they were closed because of a problem, that was as much as I could understand but I have since learnt that a 320 ton piece of rock is threatening to fall onto the village exactly above said favourite restaurant. Now come on fates, it's fantastic food, it's cheap and it has a view to die for literally it would seem. I do not have endless opportunities to enjoy all of this, so come on sort your act out.

Thanks for all the nail advice by the way, I am soaking and stroking my finger ends regularly and Amazon are whistling over silica tablets as I type. I will soon be able to scratch my itches again and if the rock pinners work hard enough I can do so discreetly while answering the itch to eat at the Belle Etoile.

For want of a nail

2010-07-05T12:23:00.002+01:00

OK friends so you were brilliant with eyebrow advice a couple of weeks ago, now I need you to turn your mind to nails. Again I have never been one to fiddle much with my nails unless you count biting them and the cuticles around them with great satisfaction but the last month or so they have gone manky in the extreme, another side effect of the chemo apparently. It seems I should have clutched some ice or a packet of frozen peas while I was having my treatments but as my infusions went on for about 48 hours each time that was beyond the call of duty and anyway I didn't know. Also I should have worn gloves when doing all that housework I do, oh yes of course. As ever I did none of these things and so have bendy, soft peeling nails each broken down to the quick; they are covered in pretty wavy patterns and ridges a bit like you used to draw for the sea when you were little.

It's amazing how much you need your nails, Stewart asked me to scratch his back in the car the other day and I had to flail around doing the best I could with my soft little pinkies. I can't get the tea caddy open, or when the need arises pick my nose and if some French floozy ogles my other half (yes it's possible!) I will not be able to scratch her eyes out and will have to resort to a knee in the groin or ready wit and repartee.

I have googled and find I should be eating gelatine so have just bought two strawberry jellies from the shaming English shelves at the Intermarche, I prefer raspberry or lemon but beggers can't be choosers. There was little more advice apart from - and Jess over the road from my Jess will like this - soaking your nails in squashed blue iris flowers, trouble is irises are not flowering over here at the moment. So come on friends what should I do, what can I put on them to give them a bit more oomph?

Hot headed

2010-07-01T13:30:00.003+01:00

This morning to the market at Exideuil and try to pronounce that if you can. Bought luscious cherries and four different sorts of pork from the black bummed pork butcher: belly which I will try to do slowly a la Heston; pâte de campagne which is the best in the country, tongues cooked in a slice, more delicious than it sounds and common old pork chops. Also bought an ancien baguette which dipped in the melting butter at lunch time was probablly the best bread I have ever eaten.

And why was the butter melting? Because reader it is hot hot hot here. It means I have to keep taking off my headwrap even though it's made of lovely natural silk; believe you me your head gets hotter without hair, wrapped up it does anyway. It sweats like mad so now I know why my Dad used to wear that fetching knotted handkerchief in the summer, the accompaniment to his string vest and rolled up trousers. So I have pulled out an old straw hat that flops all over my face to plonk on when I move outside but I fear that the populace of Maumont, all eleven of them, are seeing more of my bald head than I, and most definitely they, would prefer. I am hoping however that the sun will encourage growth and that the very boiled and currently steaming egg look will gradually become a thing of the past.

Karma

2010-06-28T17:10:00.005+01:00

Living deep in the French countryside is wonderful, it's peace and quiet and green and rolly; it's gooey cheese, crusty bread and meaty meat BUT it's buggy as well. Apologies to readers in Australia who have bugs and spiders the size of houses, but us temporate climate townies just aren't used to it. Mostly the spiders are just those spindly ghosty ones that are not too bad except they spread their pesky webs all over my maison; and don't tell me they eat all the insects because clearly they do not, because there are hundreds of them of varying sizes and colours, flying and otherwise moving their families into live with us. Spiders clearly have a good PR agency working for them but I don't believe a word of it and because they are no damn good at their job I vac them up with a woosh or bash them with my shoe if I can bear to get that close. Stewart has designed a fly catching method with the Dyson too, he creeps up behind them where their compound eyes can't see and sucks them right up, whether they then become a meal for the ghostly spiders I don't know.

I am worried about the bad karma though, a few vile specimens with antennae far too long for their bodies take some bashing and keep on struggling to live, I apologise profusely as I bash them again and again but I am sure I am playing with fire, fates wise. Despite this am hoping that the other blight of the region the dreaded mosquito is going to leave me alone this summer, usually I am to them as egg and chips or fois gras entier is to me but I have filled my blood with very nasty chemicals and maybe I don't taste so good anymore. For that reason I am risking venturing outside at night without benefit of anti-moustique, worrying of course that the insect world will rise up as one in vengeance for their squashed cousins and eat me alive.

Glad to be here

2010-06-25T16:01:00.002+01:00

I am glad to be here full stop but especially glad to be in France at our little house. Mind you it has felt très grande over the last couple of days as I have had to clean every bit of it. We had some building work done and on top of that we haven't been here for five months if you dont count our abortive trip in May when all I did was notice the dirt and add it mournfully to my chapter of woes. This time I have at least found the energy to wash all the bits and pieces we have spread about the place and trail around the supermarche getting delicious French goodies so I am getting better. Or at least I am recovering from the chemo, all I hope is that the cancer cells aren't feeling energised and going on their travels too.

We stopped at Giverny on the way down and visited Monet's house and garden. The main bit of the garden which claimed to be in the English style, frankly needed to try harder but oh the bit over the road, the water lily ponds that he painted so often, were breathtaking, I could have sat their all day losing my breath without help from shrunken mets or post-operative scarring. I liked his house too and noticed that everything was gleaming, methinks Monsieur Monet didn't do any of the scrubbing and probably not Madame either. This probably explains why I have not become a great master to date or indeed a great mistress, too much scrubbing to do.

Smaller by half

2010-06-18T19:10:00.003+01:00

The blobs have shrunk! funny one in the abdomen by about a half and liver and lung ones all looking smaller. The oncologist seemed pleased and he has given me two months off before I see him again; the chemo will still be working for a few weeks apparently and then we need to leave a space to see what happens. This suits us perfectly and so we are off to France like a shot and will stay there till the end of August all being well. I am so relieved that all that nasty smelly, sicky, knackering chemo has shown some results. I know I still have the little buggers inside me and they are not going to disappear but they are littler now and maybe stalled for a bit in their tracks.

More good news is that we don't have a telly in France so I won't have to put up with the drone of the vuvuzelas or the even worse drone of the dreaded football commentary. England are about to play, I expect less from that than I did from the scans so who knows what might happen; we might even stop throwing the ball into our own goal.

scans with a difference

2010-06-17T08:14:00.003+01:00

Scans can be a good thing, they don't always show up ugly blobs that are taking over your body, sometimes they show beautiful blobs that are taking over your body and so it is with us. Julie and Sam (No 1 son) are expecting twins and they now measure 8cm each and yesterday's scan showed that they were hanging on in there and looking very well, tres bien, thank you. So now I can tell the world. It is truly wonderful news, Julie has been on a parallel track to me for the last few weeks, taking the medicine, talking to the experts (and not just me and her Mom), watching her blobs change and feeling sick and knackered. But hers we have willed to grow whereas mine we want to shrivel; even if we only get one out of two of those results it is a very happy outcome; and we get double joy anyway, two babies to add to our crew.

All I have to do now is stay alive and kicking so I can help them when they have these two babies plonked in their arms and dish out a bit of my nah don't listen to that rubbish type advice while I can.

They will be Anglo-French babies of course, born and bred in France but brought up Brummie and Bergercoises: faggots (apologies American readers over here a faggot is a savoury food item made from animal innards!)and fois gras. For now they are lovely 8cm active shapes on a scan; tomorrow I hope to see something much smaller and slower on mine. But till then all I can say is vive la difference and sorry Julie I can't do accents in this programme.

Raised eyebrows

2010-06-15T10:52:00.002+01:00

Despite spending £20 on special stuff that was supposed to save them, my eyebrows have deserted me. It's amazing what a difference it makes to your face so I am attempting to draw new ones on each morning. If only my A level art education had covered face painting and if only I had been one of those women who learnt how to do such things by trial and error in her youth. I only ever plucked my eyebrows once because everyone else seemed to be doing it and it was such an eyewateringly painful experience that I have never tried since; anyway I now find that my brow was quite nice. As the song said - you don't know what you've got till it's gone.

So now I stare at people's faces and realise that eyebrows sit much lower than you might imagine and are much thicker than the ones I have been attempting to replicate. The trouble is that you have two of the darned things so you have to try to make them look the same and of course, as clowns know so well, eyebrows give your face expression so it's easy to end up looking shocked on one side and confused on the other. That about sums me up at the moment so perhaps it's OK.

What I really need are perfect models of my old ones to just stick on, that would have been more useful than my wig which just sits unused in my bedroom getting lonelier and lonelier by the day.

The hair should start growing back on now of course as today is the day I normally would have been going back for chemo and it's finished so I am not yippee. I suppose I can expect strange thin eyebrows for a while, as well as men's type hair but I will buy restorer and perhaps as Harry (grandson aged 5) suggested yesterday as he watched my amateur eyebrow artistry, I could draw on hair all over.

Pictures galore

2010-06-11T12:17:00.003+01:00

Back from good old Sussex by the sea; we did see the sea briefly and the rain stayed away. On the way down we had the best pub meal we have ever had and it's perhaps not surprising as it was Heston Blumenthal's pub in Bray. It seems to be where his enterprise cook top dollar proper British food as I had slow roast pork belly with a sort of mush of peas that were nothing like mushy peas and Stewart had oxtail and kidney pudding and oh yes we had his triple cooked chips even though they were £4.50 a shot; they were worth every penny.

Apart from meandering around the beautiful Sussex Weald and eating in more good pubs we visited Charleston Farmhouse where the darlings of the Bloomsbury set fetched up in the first world war to farm instead of fight. It is a delightful place and it seems they spent all of their time painting every single surface, even coal scuttles and the sides of the bath. It's the sort of painting that you think - well I could do that. A load of criss crosses down the panels of a bookcase, circles above the picture rails but then I remember my one attempt at stenciling which left a block of smudged pattern stranded in our kitchen for years and realise it's probably harder than it looks.

The rooms in the house were all in fact quite small and it made me wonder about all of the psycho drama that was going on there and how they didn't end up killing each other. You know she was in love with him but he was gay; his boyfriend lived there too; they had a daughter who didn't know she was his and who married his ex-boyfriend years later but didn't know she had and all the time her (the first her!) husband still lived with them. On top of that they were never without visitors with very famous names, no wonder they had to go off and throw paint at the walls every five minutes.

I'm back now to face the prospect of pictures of my blobs, not so pretty perhaps as the Bloomsbury ones but I have a scan on Monday and an appointment with the oncologist on Friday so we will see if they have changed at all. I hope then to go off to France for as much of the summer as I can get out there; without a menage a trois of course and hopefully as boring as hell.

Catching a train

2010-06-07T15:30:00.004+01:00

Tomorrow as part of our throw caution to the winds let's have a bloody good time philosophy we are off to Sussex to sleep in a train some posh bloke has done up and turned into a classy B & B. Our room will be an old Pullman carriage with a king-sized bed.

It wont be the first time we have slept together on a train and I have in fact slept with thousands of men in first and second class carriages all over the country. Yes I fear readers I have snored, snorted and dribbled in the company of strangers and colleagues on many occasions and on many a train. You know that hopeless attempt to cough and cover it up when a snore wakes you up; oh the shame of it.

Stewart and I first slept together on a train crossing the Alps when I was but 17 and he had earned enough working in the summer to take me to Florence and the Italian Riviera. Then we had a very discreet single couchettes and shared with a honeymoon couple similarly innocently bedded. We had earlier stuffed ourselves with the most amazing packed lunch that Stewart's Mom had put together for us thinking no doubt that we wouldn't be eating for the next fortnight; the honeymooners had looked on in wonder and it's no wonder.

Trains featured even earlier in our relationship when at the tender age of 15 I braved my first sole journey on a train to visit Stewart in London. He was a student then and I travelled on a Sunday; the day of course when British Rail or whoever owned the trains in 1965 decided to do major repairs. I was delayed by two hours and this of course was way before the days of mobile phones in fact most people didn't own a phone of any description. Stewart being older and wiser had set up a contingency whereby if I was late he would go every half an hour and wait at the National Gallery. A good plan but when I finally got off the train, it was at a different station to the one planned and I hadn't got a clue how to get to the National Gallery or any bloody gallery. I asked a friendly looking news vendor who just said whey hey nice pair of tits love and offered no other advice. Suffice it to say by the time I finally found my way to the National Gallery and waited for the next half hour to go round it was nearly time to come back. However the vision of him striding across Trafalgar Square after all of that was the most wonderful sight in the world and, on reflection, probably sealed my fate.

A treat a day

2010-06-03T09:57:00.002+01:00

Everyday since I came out after the last chemo it is treat time. It's a good plan if not a tad expensive, usually it's a meal out so Saturday was excellent Thai in Moseley, Tuesday was lunch at Lasan's, very posh Indian in our trendy jewellery quarter, apparently they just won a competition on the telly in Gordon Ramsey's F word something or other, well the duck I had was F wording marvellous. Yesterday was lunch with Jess and posh dress, actually a jump suit, buying for her oldest friend's wedding next Friday and tonight we are off to the theatre to see "Noises off" and have a jolly good laugh, as long as I can hear it!

Not such a treat, I am off for an eye test this afternoon, my glasses are falling to bits because I keep treading on them, and I am peering blindly at things more; I try to kid myself I just need reading glasses but the truth will out; you have to wonder if it's worth the arm and leg they will cost but caution to the winds and who knows how long I will be around to see the world more clearly.

Things can only get...?

2010-06-01T10:57:00.006+01:00

I suppose the difficult thing will be when it all starts to hurt; at the moment I have soreness at the top of my fat leg but it's not much and if I eat too much, sorry when I eat too much, I feel more bloated than usual. I do have an annoying cough and my right side ribs are a bit sore. In the past mostly when I have had a pain or some other symptom I have either let it run its course or taken something to get rid of it; the scary thing is now that probably wont work and I have only more of the same to look forward to; no more of the same but worse.

It still feels unknown however and I banish such thoughts, you know begone, into exile with you, leave this land; you are not worthy and don't think you can come back here with your legions and fancy ways and wheedle yourself back in to my fair domain; you are not wanted. Unfortunately sometimes my dreams have not caught up with this banishment and they will play their little games with me.

For now I feel well, relatively, and am banishing Greta Garbo and her wanting to be alone a tad. I am ready to meet the world again as long as it's germ free. Hedonism is the medicine of the moment.

Blobs galore

2010-05-28T10:19:00.002+01:00

Well I got out yesterday, final chemo over and it was earlier than ever thanks to pump never breaking down, so Stewart whisked me off into the countryside for a wonderful lunch; to say it was better than I would have had in hospital is like comparing a clinch with say Johnny Depp and ooh I don't know .. Benny Hill. This morning I have finally unpacked my hospital bag and the case we took to France which up to now has been blocking the bedroom floor and spilling out its contents so that I could just pick out something to wear each day from the emerging layer; all is now tidily hanging up and I have even filled a bag for the charity shop full of work jackets and tops I will never squeeze into.

The reason for this small burst of activity I presume is that I am still on the steroids they give you to stop you retching every 5 minutes; it's almost working and because I was given news in the hospital. Well I suppose you could call it news more like more information and none of it that good I am afraid readers. In fact I am thinking of renaming this blog the blob blog and you will see why.

The mysterious Mr Gurevitch turned up at my bedside with Gloria the nurse. He, you will recall, is the sarcoma surgeon who had shown an interest in my thigh; well who can blame him, it used to be a thing of beauty but unfortunately now I find is just an item of medical interest. His first appearance I think was to get an idea of the sort of person I was, because when he came back a few hours later (Stewart had stayed on to be with me) he was armed with computer, surgeon assistant and a more senior nurse. It was the computer that was the most useful and he very carefully took me through my latest scans. These were taken a few weeks ago, when I had already had three lots of chemo but we don't have anything to compare them with from just before the chemo as scans weren't done then. It's almost academic because it wasn't a pretty picture. The lungs were much as I would have expected; lots of blobs but none of them growing massively; he then took me to my liver, two blobs about 1.5cm but then at the bottom a much bigger and messier one, about 4-5cm; then a bit further down a 6cm blob attached outside of my bowel, nestling against my pancreas. He moved onto the MRI scan of my leg and here was another large messy blob, again about 5cm, sitting in my thigh muscle. I had no idea that I was nursing blobs so large, or so many of them. We talked about surgery and in a nutshell he said he wouldn't operate on the bowel one; it was too risky; the leg one was more operable but really he didn't think I should put myself through any of it; it would be painful, need relatively long hospitalisation and the other blobs would still be there doing their worst. In addition at present I am relatively well if you look beyond the chemo reactions. I am inclined to agree with him.

So I am planning the summer and intend to make it as wonderful as I can, in France of course once I have had the next scan, which might show some reductions who knows. How do I feel? different definitely. I knew before that I had too many blobs to make it to my three score years and ten but thought I might just get to see the 2012 Olympics; now the prospects look shorter I think and the facts are clearer. I do feel doomed and it's not pleasant. I think its all terribly unfair.. but madly I suppose, I still can't stop looking forward to the sun, to good meals, friendship and to all that the world is offering me and mine for as long as I am well enough to enjoy it all. Let's hope I can stretch it out.

A sea of lactic acid

2010-05-24T09:42:00.003+01:00

David Coleman (for those of you who live outside the UK or are very young he was a sports commentator famous for Coleman Balls ups) used to say at the end of very long races when an athlete just couldn't go any faster and got passed by some smart arse who'd kept a bit of energy spare, "he's swimming in a sea of lactic acid". I had no idea what he meant but it was quite graphic and that is exactly how I feel but not after 10,000 metres, literally after 10 yards of very slow walking.

It's the chemo I know and what it is doing to my blood cells or maybe my lactic acid if I have any; I can only hope it's slowing leio down in the same way or maybe doing for him completely for a while.

Tomorrow I go in for my last installment of the poison, I fancy it about as much as I fancy running 10,000 metres but it has to be done. I know in my bones I will be facing new poisons further down the track so it doesn't feel like the absolute last but I will try to make it a cause for celebration and find the energy from somewhere to celebrate.

LIfe or limb

2010-05-19T08:51:00.003+01:00

Google is a wonderful thing; if not a little patronising. On return from the abortive trip to France there was a message on my answerphone from someone called Gloria from the hospital; never heard of her but I called and got Helen instead. It seems that a Mr Gullervitch or someone wants to talk to me about a possible operation on my leg to dig out the new sarcoma. I said yes and then tried to google him to see if he deserved to get anywhere near my thigh.

I typed in gullervitch surgeon birmingham and it came back - Did you mean: gurevitch surgeon birmingham? OK clever clogs I suppose I did but how did you know you are just an engine; a load of digital numbers, wires and circuit boards and thingies.

I told Jess about the appointment last night when I left my Greta Garbo hermitage briefly for Harry's 5th birthday and she asked if I would let them cut my leg off - she doesn't beat about the bush my daughter! She was surprised when I said No I didn't think so as for her it would be an obvious choice life or leg, she'd choose life. As I'd still have God knows how many blobs in my lungs and would be a pretty miserable unidexter, I would not.

Let's hope Mr Gurevitch, thank you google, will not be offering me the choice but just doing a bit of lipo and sarcoma reduction on my battered thigh. We will see what we will see.

Round trip

2010-05-16T09:15:00.004+01:00

We got to our lovely little house in France and then we turned round and came back again. I was OK at Sam and Julie's in Northern France except things were a bit nightmarish in the toilet department; I slept most of the way down France; was miserable in the Aire where we stopped for lunch but I put that down to the fact that I chose lentils rather than chips with my fish and that a bloke on the table next to us felt it necessary to hand me a card that told me that God loved me or Tu est aime; Dieu a dit: Tu as du prix a mes yeux, tu comptes beaucoup pour moi et je t'aime - I must have looked bad and I didn't have the energy to ask him if my sarcomas were a love gift of said God and that merci but he could shove his card up his derriere.

Got to Maumont at about 5ish; and just wrapped myself in a blanket and shivered and slept the evening away. The next morning my temperature soared over 38 - the danger point; it was a bank holiday in France and anyway I just handed over all decision making to Stewart and he opted for driving back as quickly as possible. We left at 10 in the morning and I was in the hospital in Brum by 10 at night; having slept all the way back this time. Toilet nightmares explained by the fact that I had raging thrush; a vile set of hemorrhoids and a serious urinary infection. I can frankly say that none of my four baby births or three lots of major surgery come near the screaming agony of going to the toilet over the past few days.

I am out now after another big blood transfusion and IV antibiotics. I am still feeling dozy but discomfort (lovely euphemism that) is gradually going away. I feel a Greta Garbo moment coming on however; one of the big reasons for getting away was to wallow in the peace and quiet, not to have to put a brave face on or make any sort of effort. I want to take my hat off when my head itches and not worry that someone will turn up and see the full bald horror. So for a while I say to my best in the world family and friends, I love you to bits, you are wonderful, I wouldn't offend you for the world but can we all pretend that we made it to France and stayed there and we are not at home. We will let you know if we need help.

I find that Greta and I share something in common around the eyebrows as well as wanting to be alone, because I have to draw mine on now and clearly those beauties of Greta's are not the real thing. I have a horror however of looking like the dentist around the corner who has a full head of hair so can't have any excuse for the terrible job she does on her brows, she should stick to cosmetic teeth in my humble opinion but then I am just a nasty anti-social ne'er - do - well like the beautiful Greta so why listen to me?

I will keep blogging when I get the energy.

It's all a mess

2010-05-08T17:28:00.003+01:00

I feel I have a lot in common with the UK body politic today. It and the body Jean Trainor are both in an almighty mess and facing an uncertain future. Inside me cancer cells are trying to duplicate themselves at ridiculously exuberant speeds while chemo drugs try to halt them and at the same time knock for six at all my healthy cells, meanwhile leio keeps popping up and getting a grip leaving looming lumps and bumps all over the shop.

In the country we don't know who is going to be in government, what poison is being hatched up behind closed doors and who of the nasty little gremlins will be in charge in the end. And we must do it all quickly, not take a good respectable month or so as the Germans etc do because we are at the beck and call of the markets it would seem; ah yes the markets and political expediency- the cancer cells in the body politic!

Quick update: Back at home and knackered by night up watching nothing happen in the election; feeling as OK as poss and hoping to escape to France on Tuesday

On parole

2010-05-03T10:34:00.002+01:00

Sorry for delay in posting friends, I was out on Friday but have had wall to wall visitors since then and on Saturday had a night away at my brother and sister in laws after a superb meal at a posh country house. I am back in tomorrow so it's just a short parole but they are going to inject me with some magic stuff with the next chemo to boost my white blood cells and netrophils so maybe I will be on a shorter sentence next time.

I did manage to watch the last election debate whilst in hospital and the clear winner in my view was the Great Hall at my alma mater; didn't it look superb. I happen to know however that it has the wost acoustics in the Western world so no wonder Nick looked a bit sweaty and David D had to keep repeating the questions, it must have been nigh on impossible to hear anything. And I was worried about David, the man is well over 70 and he had to stand up for the whole hour and a half and then go on and do Question Time. Having paid him for a couple of days work once which nearly bankrupted the organisation I was working for, I know he will have been paid well but really they should have given him a chair.

Stewart will have to proxy vote for me on Thursday, I think I can trust him especially as I have decided to stay with the old team despite it being a busted flush and having let me down badly. Hopefully I will be home for the night long vigil of waiting for the results and listening again to David D who will at least have a chair this time.

Still here

2010-04-29T10:45:00.002+01:00

I feel fine but I am still here. The neutraphils were up to 0.2 yesterday and I have just had another blood test, they have to reach 1.0 and then I can escape except my temperature keeps going up and down even though I have no symptoms and look and feel perfectly OK. I just keep reading the books and doing the crosswords and wont believe I am free until I walk out of the door.

The MRI scan showed up another little leio in my thigh so the score is now about 50 in my lungs, 'a few' in my liver, one in my stomach and one in my leg, I will have to choose which to go for after the chemo is over. The good news is that yesterday I met a woman who had been hosting leio for 14 years, for 10 years she had no treatment at all. So perhaps like a fractious child I should just put him on the naughty step and ignore his attempts to get my attention. At the moment however I would give in and offer him or anyone else a lollipop if they would just let me out of here.

Everything that can go wrong

2010-04-26T11:54:00.002+01:00

First it was the DVT, then my PICC line got blocked and I had to come in and get it removed, then on Saturday the full rag doll with no stuffing phenomena occurred and walking 100 yards to the Post Office nearly killed me, the reason became clear on Sunday when I started to shiver, felt like death warmed up and got admitted to hospital with dangerous fever. So here I am with neutrophils of nil (sounds like a garden feed to me) and white blood cells (who needs them, we all know blood is red)of a very low nature. Basically my immune system has gone awol and I need to stay here till it finds its way back.

It did mean I was on site for the MRI, which I just had, what ridiculous things they are, I wonder if all that noise is really necessary or if they just do it to impress. You feel as if you are the street undergoing major repairs, or I started to pick up subliminal messages as the noises changed, mostly it was Baghdad and burkha repeated over and over again interspersed with drilling noises. I have been considering a burkha as appropriate garb for the chemo look so perhaps someone was reinforcing this having seen me hairless overnight. We will see what all the noises showed up: a DVT or a new sarcoma or both but till then its rest, rest and more rest and try not to think that I am spending far too many of my precious days in this bleeding hospital.

Sunflowers

2010-04-21T10:19:00.003+01:00

STOP PRESS: MRI SCAN BOOKED FOR MONDAY SO SUCCESS!

Despite all this circles stuff I am feeling OK and can't stop the sun putting a spring into my step, or into one of them anyway. I continue to be visted from all quarters; the weekend before last it was California and France and this weekend Michigan and the very exotic, Hull. From Hull came Gloria and Doug, the only friends I have left from University days; Gloria went on to teach with Stewart and they lived a few doors from us when we both moved into the property owning class.

Doug was the first person to ever ask me if I was a historian; he was in the year above me and Gloria and was stewarding people to some sort or freshers event. I almost said no when he asked me; how could I possibly describe myself so grandly, I had a history A level, I had opted to do a History degree in a very off hand sort of way, did that make me a historian? Anyway I have no such compunction now, despite never having picked up a non-fiction history book for 40 years, apart to move them from house to house; I can't throw them away of course; I am happy to claim to be a historian whenever the need arises. It's surprising how often it does; if you don't follow an academic track in life you sometimes need to let people know you once did even for a short while.

History is a good discipline I find for all sorts of walks of life; it means you can read loads of stuff really quickly and weigh up the evidence and the opinions before you state your view or take action; it seems I have been doing that sort of thing all my life; not least since I got cancer.

I didn't make many friends at University because I was an old married lady (all of 19) by then and wasn't a candidate for the chatting up and pairing off that went on; or much of a catch as a friend in a new place as I wasn't going to be hitting the pubs and clubs. I tended to be left to have lunch or sit around campus with the billy no mates types so I often didn't bother and went back to my domestic idyll. My other visitor this weekend from Michigan, Rudy, who came to live in the flat below us in 1968, brought a different perspective on that idyll; he had come to lecture at the University, he was a proper sort of hippy Alan Ginsberg look a like; so I could bye-pass all that undergrad freshers stuff and move in the big boys' (they were all boys!) circle around Rudy and do it with my other half. I had very set views about what University life ought to be like and this was much more like it; a lot of hanging around doing very little if I really recall.

So this weekend my University life came back to me with Rudy and Gloria and Doug sitting round for lunch and it was good; and this morning D and G sent me sunflowers and added to the sunshine that the powers that be just can't keep out of my life, try as they may.

Going round in circles

2010-04-17T10:22:00.002+01:00

Here we go again. I got out of hospital after chemo number 4 on Thursday night not feeling too bad, no sickness and I had had a blood transfusion to up my Haemoglobin so was feeling reasonably energetic on someone else's fuel. After braving the election debate and thinking I could have done a better job myself, I went to bed and looked at my fat leg which was feeling achy, stiff and looked even fatter. Next morning off to GP- could this be a DVT(known side-effect of some chemos)or recurrence of leio in the vein? Yes of course it could so after lots of frustrating calls by him and me I get sent to the DVT assessment service at Selly Oak almost 3 years to the day from my first visit there at the beginning of this sad tale. To say I had a sinking feeling is to put it very mildly.

The DVT assessment service has changed in that time and mostly gone into the community I was told, I cannot tell you whether this is a successful move as I went to the hospital to a funny sort of in-between ward. There I saw a very charming, pleasant young SHO (junior doc) about 25 I'd guess. By this time Jess, my daughter had joined us and turned her full investigative, don't piss me about, skills on the poor lad; so he had me and her going at him. To cut a long story short, I was scanned, they found a blockage from thigh to knee; they said this was unusual but after checking with my oncology team decided to send me home with heparin injections and check me out when I go for next chemo. Poor SHO had to deliver this news and receive all the frustration back from us all. Anyway this was at 5 in the evening so there was no way I was going to get an MRI till Monday or even the chance of booking an appointment for one. Heparin I knew was a good move at this time so off I tottered back home with a very sore leg.

I will contact my oncologist on Monday and demand an MRI before I go back for next chemo. It was all the usual NHS story I am afraid:

* why didn't they check my leg during the chemo I had told them it was playing up a bit?

* why did I have to wait all day and be trailed about half a mile in a very old wheelchair by Stewart and Jess to get an ultrascan?

* why did it then take another three hours to decide what to do with me?

* why did I not see a Consultant just a disempowered junior?

* why wasn't am MRI ordered immediately - they know my history!

* why do I have to fight these battles all the time?

It's the same with my last scan: the doctor did come to talk to me about it but he couldn't tell me much more. The facts are these and again I have to fight to learn more:

* they hadn't scanned me at the start of my chemo even though I kept asking about this

* I haven't really had one scan like any other before it throughout the whole treatment, they have all been different and shown different things- no consistency

* this could all be academic as I now definitely have mets in stomach and liver but I can't tell you much about them, the descriptions are vague

* same for the lungs I can't get a good picture of progress for good or ill there; but he repeats that the Xrays show some small shrinkage.

It's all a terrible mess but along with the MRI request I am sending over a list of specific questions about size and number of mets on Monday. I am trying not to let all of this get me down and so far succeeding against all the odds maybe it's the sunshine.

So our planned trip to France looks very unlikely for next week and anyway we would have had to try to get around the Icelandic volcano! It seems I must be part of the jet set now as this stream of lava has directly affected not only us but loads of close friends and family:

* our friends Celia and Richard from California are marooned in Paris; we at one time were going to be there with them so that would have been fun!

* Graham and Ruth, brother and sister in law are stuck in Spain and we have just heard they are getting a taxi from N Spain to Paris and getting Eurostar back tomorrow - what a trip!

* Our old friend Rudy from Michigan (once married to Celia!) flew on Thursday to come and see us; he got to Frankfurt saw all the flights cancelled, no idea why, but one was going to Heathrow so he ambled over and got it - it must have been the last flight into the UK.

So if my bloodstream is anything like the lava stream and it feels pretty close at the moment, I am hoping that it and the bloody obfuscations of the health professionals clears a little and that all of us can get back to living our normal boring lives again.

In my prime?

2010-04-10T11:52:00.002+01:00

Today is my birthday and I am now 61; I have always hated being a prime number because somehow they feel funny as do those big birthdays plus one. I suppose I should be grateful to have made it to another anniversary especially as my doctor phoned last night with mixed sort of news.

Surprise surprise he noticed that I hadn't had a scan since September, I had mentioned this in January before we started chemo but he said then that xrays would be enough to see what was happening; anyway so now he realises he can't really see how well the chemo is doing from the scan but that the xrays show shrinkage. The scan looks a lot worse than the one in September apparently but then it was a different sort of scan. The significant thing is that stuff is showing up in my liver now - tiny bits and there is something in my stomach, maybe an enlarged lymph node but then I have had those before and they have turned out to be innocent. I reminded him that I had had a scan in Germany in December and he had a copy of that so he is going to look it out and we will discuss all of this in more detail next Wednesday when I am back in hospital.

The important thing is that he thinks we should continue the chemo so we are; and today the sun is out, my family and friends are gathering and I intend to be the prime time birthday girl.

Awaiting results

2010-04-06T15:15:00.002+01:00

It was scan day today; and just in passing a general election was called. Preparations for the scan started yesterday morning when I had to drink the contents of a small bottle they had sent me. I felt just like Alice in Wonderland but thankfully I neither became very small or very tall. Then this morning I was handed a jug full of the most disgusting thin squashy stuff and I had to drink all of it; you begin to wonder if they are just playing games with you; then in for the jab that makes you think you have wet yourself and after all that squash would you be surprised and 30 seconds flat under the CT machine.

Now like Gordon I have to await the results; my doctor did say he would phone but not when so I just have to sit by the phone. It's not just the blobs I had that I have scanxiety about but others that may have emerged and maybe elsewhere. Unlike Gordon I can do nothing to influence the outcome: although as someone on the radio this morning said he really only has to do better than everyone expects and he will be deemed a success.

When I turned on my computer there was a very sad email awaiting me, Pauline, a fellow sufferer with whom I had lovely long chat before I went off to Dresden died last night. She had been suffering badly but I remember how much she wanted to live when I spoke to her and how she was willing to try anything that might help her. She too ultimately couldn't influence the results; it's just too sad for words and only goes to show that being good and right doesn't necessarily mean you will win in the end.

At risk

2010-04-04T12:39:00.002+01:00

Danny has chicken pox, discovered on Friday afternoon. He stayed with us on Thursday night so as my blood counts and immunity are currently at their lowest in the most recent chemo phase, I am now at risk. As if I wasn't before but there you go.

I called the hospital and they just said look out for symptoms and then let them know. I have of course had Chicken pox and nursed each of my four kids with it but it's a funny old herpes riddled thing and can trigger all sorts apparently. The trouble is Danny is a very hands on sort of chap and he likes to share his body fluids quite liberally. He will hand me a kazoo, an instrument he plays with child prodigy type skill, with spit and snot attached and expect me to try to play as well as him; I fail of course but pick up his leavings as I do.

Anyway the spotty boy is now banned from this afternoon's double celebration of Easter and Luke and Aleks' first wedding anniversary. As Aleks is one of his favourite people (and the feeling is mutual) it's a sad expulsion but his other Nanny will step into the breach, feed him Easter eggs and mop up his pox laden messes. We will do Danny-less chicken related activities like egg hunts and self inflicted stuffing with pea veloute, venison casserole and chocolate cheesecake, all cooked by other people not me. Well I am at risk and need to summon my defences; chocolate eggs and champagne may well feature in the risk management activities so I expect no shingles, cold sores or other unmentionables to invade my shell or burst my bubble.

Asunder?

2010-03-31T11:53:00.003+01:00

Stewart has been shown how to clean my PICC line and flush it out; it's really not rocket science or cutting edge care but I suppose it marks another milestone in our relationship. If I think about the changes he has had to endure in me over the years they far outweigh the greying, growing and slight sagging that has been his metamorphosis. He must look over at me these mornings and see the same greying, growing and sagging but topped with a bald head, a body riddled in deep scars, a fat leg and now an arm with contraptions on; not to mention the ravages of four pregnancies and about three years of breast feeding.

He sees the me beyond all of this thank goodness just as I don't count the white hairs or the reductions in his thunder thighs but look for the twinkle in his eye and the twist of his humour. It's been pretty clear in this blog that it's the thought of leaving my kids that brings the quickest tear to my eye; it just does. I try to think about leaving Stewart behind but I can't formulate it in my mind. I think he will be coming with me and that is just daft. Certainly the he that is he that is us will but he will be left and shattered and forever different. But I still can't conceive of it.

There is a beautiful place near our French house called Limeuil, we go there for picnics by the river and for the annual pottery fair where we always buy something even though we have no bloody room in either house. If you walk up the hill it's one of les plus belles villages de France but the wonder of it is the river or rivers, I should say, as it's where the Vezere meets the Dordogne and they become one river. They are both massive and brown and godlike; they rumble and bicker together as they meet then merge with little flurries over rocks and banks. Just a way up from the picnic site there would be no way of separating one from the other, their weeds are each others, the fish can't tell the difference. If one were to dry up there would still be all the life from the other from before that would be impossible to disentwine. So is that like us; yes and no; no because rivers can't feel and miss and want; yes because we are one troublesome, mucky thing, sometimes out of control and sometimes deep and beautiful; but, it has proved, always feeling the pull to be together.

Shrinking

2010-03-27T19:04:00.002Z

I have had a mixed history when it comes to shrinking; I have never managed to shrink myself permanently down to the size I ought to be but have had a few dramatic reductions followed by inevitable disappointing expansions on the way. Give me an expensive jumper, a very special tee-shirt or a much loved silk dress however and I am your woman I will shrink it as quick as you like and turn it bright red if I manage to add the right sock or pair of knickers.

So now I have to turn all this talent into shrinking my blobs. It is good news that they look smaller on the xray but it's the scan that matters and I have that in 10 days time. I am encouraged however that all that training with my poor kids' favourite clothes will come good and Leio will share the fate of Luke's Nirvana tee-shirt (mind you I had to darn the "f**ks" off that too in order to take him out in company. I would happily do the same to Leio and his blobs if required I imagine they are covered in them).

For the rest I still haven't been sick which is a good job as Harry and Danny walked out with my hospital sick bowls last night, sporting them as hats; Danny looked even more like Pete Docherty than usual which was a tad disturbing but his hat is going to be dressed up with eggs and daffs for his nursey Easter bonnet so the unfortunate resemblence will fade we hope.

I do feel a bit like a rag doll with half of its stuffing knocked out but I suppose you have to expect that if you have major shrinkage going on deep inside you; I know how my washing machine feels now.

Good news I think so far

2010-03-25T08:53:00.002Z

Good news so far.I haven't been sick and the x-ray they took on Tuesday showed that the blobs they could see had shrunk, the doctor made optimistic noises about the scan I will have next week which will also show what is happening in my operated on lung, hopefully not very much. So the baldness and badness may not have been in vain and I can look forward to three more of these little holidays.Very short stop press today as have to crane my neck to type, back home this afternoon to the new normality.