Asunder?

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

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

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.

being piccy

I got a bed and graduated up to Edbaston ward, it's for women having breast surgery and it's much less frenetic. Women seem to come in, have a lump removed then dance out that evening.I had the usual 30 minutes of lovely, highly trained nurses trying to find veins in my arm, I am a great gritter of teeth and smile while they poke and grind away but as luck would have it after four abortive quite painful attempts one of the nurses owned up to being trained to put picc lines in, that is a peripherally inserted central catheter to you friends. Well it's wonderful, it stays in and sends stuff all round your body without fear of rupturing into your skin. Stewart will have to learn how to flush it out and I will have to wrap it in clingfilm when I have a bath but no more Tom and Jerry pink needles it can all go in bags on a drip. In passing this super duper specialist nurse told me my blood counts were getting quite low which explains the chemo collapses but I have insisted on early doses of the anti emetic beginning with O and so far no vomiting hooray

Feast and famine

Sitting here waiting for the call from the hospital to say yes or no to a hospital bed today. Yesterday we took ourselves off to London to have our this time final day of freedom. You will know by now that any such trip will involve me searching for a good place to eat; I did and we found it and managed to keep to the prix fixe menu which was absolutely no hardship. We went to Galvin La Chapelle in the City (for foreign readers this is the bit of London that is full of bankers and hedge fund managers if you will excuse the bad language). The restaurant is the latest enterprise by the Galvin brothers who have other fancy and less fancy eateries spread over our capital city. Giles Coren has chosen it for his wedding reception so I thought it might be worth the £25 for the fixed price menu. We had to walk past the HQ of Royal Bank of Scotland to get there, which seems to take up almost all of Bishopgate, a formerly ancient and venerable London street. It is humungously large and had we not been running a little late for our meal we would have gone in and demanded to see their accounts or at least used their toilets as we are, like the rest of our countryfolk, very reluctant but very major share holders.

The ratpack were out in strength once we got to La Chapelle as most tables were full of chaps in very expensive suits looking smug and not in the least ashamed that they were eating out, not on the Prix Fixe, but using taxpayers', ie my hard earned, money.

The food was superb, the veloute of watercress to start arrived with a tiny display of duck eggs, fresh cress and strips of smoked duck, for a moment I thought that was it and thought that was why they were only charging £25 for it all but then they came and poured over the greenest looking soup I have ever seen. Can you imagine all those anti-oxidants? It was probably the best soup I have ever eaten and don't forget that I am married to Mr Soup whose own watercress takes a bit of beating. I then had a cod thing with artichokes and the tastiest aioli ever, Stewart had calves liver and caramelised onions; we had chosen the cheapest bottle of wine on the menu at £18 and if you ever go there do the same thing because it was a fantastic Tempranillo and why pay more (didn't stop our subsidised fellow diners however). We made lots of orgasmic noises and so the purpose of filling our this time last day of freedom was well met and I am satisfied that Giles has chosen well for his wedding; for the food at least, can't speak for the bride.

On then to the Tate Modern to see the Arshile Gorky exhibition. Unfortunately I had a bout of chemo collapse on the way and found I simply could not put one foot in front of the other. It's a lesson to me as I start to feel better each time and think I can just go back to my old energetic self. Anyway we jumped in a taxi (well I sort of fell into it!) and I kept sitting down round the exhibition ostensibly to gaze admiringly at the pictures. In fact I was gazing admiringly, his stuff is wonderful. The studies of himself and his mother were my favourites and incredibly moving. His Mom had died of starvation in Armenia when he was twelve and before the family could join his father in the US. She was an amazingly beautiful woman and I couldn't but think about the contrast with the meal we had just eaten and her terrible fate. We may have hit on hard times thanks to those f***ing bankers and their like and we know that there are lean times ahead but we have no idea, do we, what real want is like.

Talking of want, I know I really don't want to go in today and have the dreaded pink needle again and feel all that stomach churning but like Mrs Gorky I have little choice but to meet my destiny; some of her son's work had the look of pink needles and the contents of stomachs so I will wonder if I too may inspire great art and anyway I'll just bite the bullet and go and get on with it.

Deserting this island discs episode 2

I am listening to Duncan Bannatine's Desert Island Discs as I write this; I can only presume that he is choosing them so that he will have to escape his island very quickly and get back to making millions.

You probably feel the same about mine but onwards and upwards. I have given up trying to download videos, I will be dead before I get eight records up so am going to add the youtube reference instead in the hope that you can just click on it if not you will have to cut and paste into google - sorry!

Me and Stewart had a long courtship with lots of separations while he was at college, we wrote every day and the letters are upstairs somewhere in the attic. This record sums up all those distant longings and it is great to sing along to; Louis Armstrong and Give me a kiss to buld a dream on

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDgncPD0bew

Then we got married and I love this song from Juno which I saw with Jess a year or so ago so this makes me think of young marriage and also my friendship with my daughter.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20PQBtyfNZY


The music that I liked in the 60s and 70s and that has stayed with me through the subsequent decades revolves mostly around the folk scene which I was vaguely a part of. I visited the Jug o Punch Folk Club every Thursday and at last got close to the black polo necked bearded bohemians I lusted after; typically as soon as they started lusting after me I tired of them but I did love a lot of the music and even though I sing like a corncrake and was instructed by teachers at school to mime in assembly, I did and still do love bellowing out the choruses. I have wracked my brains for the song I liked best; I found this video and it will do: Wild Mountain Thyme by The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BEl5hTNWh8

The 70s for me wasn't a time of dancing in discos or singing in folk clubs, well not after 1972 when I had Sam it wasn't; it is just a blur of child rearing and endeavouring not to go bankrupt on one very low salary. I did find time to run a national campaign about drug side effects however and politics were and still are big part of my life. One singer that I loved and still love was Carole King and Natural woman has resonance. I even had a perm a bit like Carole's except I could only afford the pensioners' special at the local salon and guess what it made me look exactly as it said on the tin.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hr0Vto0n5DA

The politics involved lots of marching against things especially into the early 80s, the bomb, the poll tax, unemployment, lots of Maggie, Maggie, Maggie out, out out; years of pounding the streets, leafletting and canvassing. To mark that part of my life and my lifelong feminism, here is Dame Ethel Smyth's The March of the women

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCtGkCg7trY

My working years from the mid 80s to last year were all about the NHS, going on radio and television to defend the indefensible and running white water conferences. I loved nearly every minute and made some real friends along the way. Every conference meant a dinner and a dance and I am afraid I was famous for my enthusiastic dancing. To mark that how about Dancing queen by Abba

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFrGuyw1V8s

And then there was cancer and you know all about that if you have been reading this blog - a song for that - here you go: Always look on the bright side of life from Life of Brian

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlBiLNN1NhQ

Friendship has come to the fore since my diagnosis. I have never been one for loads of friends but we have a few very very good ones and they have been with me every step of the way since September - in my back pocket awaiting the call from Kirsty I always had the Duet from the Pearl Fishers by Bizet as my music of friendship. Here it is sung by Jussi Bjorling, one of Stewart's favourites

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zdb94HbyRko

OK so I now I have 8 already here and two yesterday but I am allowed to cheat a bit. One last one then - the tear jerker to end on; well how could I leave a dry eye

Billy Holliday singing I'll be seeing you

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXLB32n6lq8

At this point on the programme Kirsty would turn to me and ask me what book I want to read before I die. The answer is the one I am reading now because if you think about it that confounds the fates and means that I will live forever. If Kirsty catches onto that then my answer would be Sam's book as I really do want to read it but it taxes all my lazy genes. It's The Birmingham Quaen by Sam Trainor and it's an epic poem, a novel, a commentary and about three other things all rolled into one. It's also very long so again it serves the purpose of life extension.

My luxury, not sure- either a daily massage or The Milkmaid by Vermeer.

What place do I want to visit? L'Esperance in St Pere sur Vezelay please , a long lovely lunch with all of my family around me

Finally will I try to escape my fate - you bet I will. So thank you Kirsty and sort the video technology will you.

Desert Island Discs

I suppose it's too late now; I am never going to be asked onto Desert Island Discs so the list I have kept in my back pocket all these years will not be needed. I have, however, thought of writing to Kirsty Young (who I think is great at it by the way) to suggest a new version of the programme for us terminally illers; it could be called Dead End Discs and you would have to change the details a bit; so you would choose records that you feel represent bits of your life as most people do now but have in mind that that they will probably get played at your funeral - so unfortunately I would have to drop Tutti Frutti and You're a pink toothbrush I'm a blue toothbrush from my back pocket list; the book would be the one you want to read before you die; the luxury what you want while you can still enjoy it and maybe we should throw in a new one - the place you want to visit while you still can. So to set the ball rolling I have made my own selection and who know's it might just catch on. (I find that I can only download a few videos at a time so I am going to do this is in installments; today will be the 1950s and one from the 1960s)


So for the 1950s and all those childhood bits I have written about earler in this blog I am going for You are my sunshine by Elizabeth Mitchell. My Mom sang this to me, I sang it to all my kids and now I sing it to Harry and Danny and they don't seem to mind


Moving onto my teenage years, that Chanel Suit and the early boy chasing times; it had a lot to do with the Beatles of course and I actually got to see them or at least scream at them when they came to Birmingham in 1963. This video features my lovely son, Joe on bass; he is the one bobbing around a lot just as his Mom does whenever she hears this music. So it's The Accoustic Beatles with Joe Trainor and his stage wife Charlotte on vocals, playing Things we said today


OK that's all for today and there will be more tomorrow, hopefully I will get all 8 in before I go back into hospital for Chemo 3 next Tuesday.