Don't tell me how I know. I just do.
It's coming back. It had a go at my head. Now it's going to find a way in. Through my fucking bollocks.
I have a blood test tomorrow.
I have two bollocks, conventionally enough. Unconventionally, however, one is three times the size of the other. The smaller of the two - we'll call him Righty - has been hurting, fairly consistently, ever since Lefty started to ominously inflate about a month ago.
I went to the GP today. He said, with the same quiet, sad but authoritative demeanour as my oncologist, that the signs were not good, at all. He referred me to urology on the spot.
There's a chance it's nothing, but we'll find out when there's a scan, which will be in a few weeks, probably. But I know it's not nothing. I know.
Last week, Mike fractured a vertebrae. Nigel's now unable to do the mobility exercises that keep him going.
The rocket left on its first unmanned test-flight today, but the mission - deep down, my final goal - has just been knocked back to 2026.
I submitted a load of goals around management, promotion and such today, and DC signed them all off. I love working. So clever, such a challenging. Keeps my mind occupied. I'm tired, though.
Here's hoping.
You've done incredibly well, my little man.
You're smart, funny, fast, talkative, and you've even started to make friends. I love you, mate.
The rain’s falling outside, flanked by the darkness, a static hiss like and old TV, but warmer than that. In here, muffled by the double-glazing, it is safe, comfortable. Sodium lights the way. Nearly five years out now. I’d like another five. In the morning, Leo starts big school.
The last five years have been the hardest and worst of my life, but also possibly the best five. Honours even. Life is hard, but so am I. The rain falls. I have raised a boy from conception to school, thinks mainly to others. But I’m here, at the bottom of the bucket list I wrote on diagnosis, ready to walk my son to school in the rain, just like I said I would.
What would the stoics think?
I love my life, really. I have got to know love, and hurt, and joy. Pain, regret, stupidity, inspiration, thee good and the bad. And it’s not ending soon any more. No more of that shit for me. I’m divorcing death for the time being. In the morning, when Leo is safely away learning how to be a grown-up from other grown-ups, we can work. We can play. We can fuck. We can plan. We can get our lives down off the shelf, until three fifteen, when he wants us back again. I love that idea; that arrangement. That bargain makes sense. For what feels like the first time in a long time, we - Tamsin and I - are in charge again. Until 3.15, when he wants us back.
Tonight, we’ll drink martinis and listen to the rain. Tomorrow is all his. I’m so proud of him I have cried. I have on occasion hated fatherhood. It didn’t come naturally. It probably won’t now. I have been making it up since day one, because everyone else does. It has driven me to the outskirts of sanity frequently. But I do love him. I love the looks on other people’s faces when they see him. I love it when I can get out of the now and remember what Tam and I went through, and will still go through. Yes, the future is scary, but it’s also mine, and ours, together.
Tomorrow will be tough, just as other tomorrows have been. It’s like he’s leaving, and the little boy that comes back will be different. More power to you, little man we made. More power to you. See you tomorrow for another day, then.
Me and weed have had a tricky old time of it, all things considered. But nowadays we generally get along. I suppose that new entente is primarily caused by my need to slow down and weed's need for me to speed up, but I have no real idea. Sitting here as I am, full of post-Covid fog, really good tequila, reasurringly quick Merc qualifying, eight or so of Dr Keef's dots, prime lunatic James Bond entertainment. and nostalgia, I'm also reminded that just three days ago, I was seriously considering quitting work in all its forms, getting back on benefit, and then engineering the most lopsided divorce in history - or at least the most lop-sided divorce since Amber's.
As a teenager, weed was like alcohol squared. Or Boozecubed. Nobody Mknew how it worked, but it only ever appeared if your Cool-Adjacent Friends had some, you for some reason found yourself at an afterparty, well after you should have had alternative transit shit in place. Weed, in any transformational, this-here-is-better-than-Fosters-sense, then, was late on my bus.
The reason for this lateness is that we, as boys who were English and lived in England, got fucking pissed in clubs, pubs and wherever else (I've had a pint in a Pizza Hut at 0130). Since me and my whole generation were programmed that This is How We Can Have Fun from the age of fifteen, is anyone surprised? My friendships were formed on what you liked to do with your free time - drinking while watching football, drinking while watching cricket, drinking while watching bands, or drinking. No fucking surprises. No alarms either, as we'd sleep through them anyway.
Then, bit by bit, along comes weed. The first time I had some, I was walking through Barton, from one field to another, after a big curry and some parent-sanctioned pints to celebrate Chris Hatch's birthday. I felt great: illicit, chatty, funny, dizzy... all of that shit.
Every time me and weed met after that, though, weed was nasty. It made me fall down, get hangovers, forget where I was. Weed, I surmised, was a dick. I steadfastly ignored it for about 18 years, choosing to merely smoke absolutely shitloads of actually carcinogenic cigarettes while blousily rejecting cannabis and all its derivatives as stoner nonsense.
When I was diagnosed with cancer in 2017, and got through the original, everything-you-eat-tastes-of-cooking-oil onslaught of chemo, I starteed reading. I was told - you're told a lot of things when you have cancer, but this is one of the things that actually helped - that something called CBD and THC was a useful emollient to the deleterious effects of chemo, and potentially a 'cure', such as there is one, for several types of Actual Cancer. So, I did some digging, asking my friends who used to smoke if they could source some.
After a few bonkers 'I can get you a kilo of pure Afgan from Dover if you can fake a Turkish accent'-type responses, a man I know who remains nameless popped into my socials and agreed to provide both a link to CBD that wasn't merely goosefat at £100 a bottle and also some 'liquid THC at over 70% purity.
A relationship, as you can imagine, was forged.
Initially, my friend's contributions were, shall we say, 'light on detail', and rather overlooked the fact that, as a brain-cancer survivor, my tolerance for his exquisetly-produced but potent product left me, and I don't think I'm swerving when I say this, fucked beyond belief. Pluckily though, I persevered, and now can manage a dose, a beer and a Bond film with the calm assurance of a magistrate. I'm also certain that my doctors are baffled as to my continued success in the survival field, and would love to attribute this to my being bolloxed on weed, but can't.
A case in point arose only last week, when I couldn't ingest as planned doe to Covid. As well as the virus itself, I felt massive rises in anxiety, anger, confuaion, headaches, weakness down my left side, which we know is down to cancer, and many other things. But put weed back in, and I'm not wobbly, weak, sad, stiff, sore or any of the above. I have composed this whole post on nine drops of Keef's weed (as well as two tequilas and a pint) and while I'm tired, I'm not limping, or haunted by visions of eyeless shapes breathing death into me, which I was last night. And the transformation in my muscle-health and mobility is obvious. It's almost as if the NHS should prescribe it.
You're four, mate. What a long journey we've been on thus far, eh? Feels like it, anyway. As I type this, you and Mum are playing with your new toys in the kitchen, the sounds of your voices drifting up from below. It's been a big couple of weeks, all told. You are now a dummy-free zone - we're five days into the biggest change in your world since... continence? - and you seem ok about it all, apart from being a bit nazzy at bedtime. But who's not a bit on the nazz at lights out?
Other than that, you're still convinced you're a girl (you insist on being referred to as 'she' and 'her' when you're tired. You're also having a bit of an obsessive crush on Mummy, have taken to calling Grandad 'Daddy' by mistake - despite me being a foot away - and Mum, you and your grandmother seem to be oblivious to my presence quite a lot. They're just obsessed with you, and you're obsessed with yourself and them, I suppose. I'm ok, though. Let the record show that I'm still around, doing fine, and living my life.
You're also a confident little bike-rider (stabilisers on) and enjoying your new-found turn of speed no end. I'm actually a bit jealous of all your new toys and might get myself a little something for fun too :)
Work is fine, not that you should care about that. It matters to you because it pays for things, and the way things are going, I think we might buy a big toy for the family soon. Maybe a new bike for me? I don't know if I can even ride a bike; it's been a while. Might risk it for a biscuit and find out.
Some other things have happened, too.
I met Joanna Osborne when Lucy started at Arnewood. From my memory, they were instant friends, and she was around our house regularly. I always thought she was lovely. Friendly, confident, funny, clever, pretty. I also thought she might be hitting on me when she came round. That was nice. I liked her, and despite confirming that she fancied me for ages in 2000, I never did anything about it. I couldn't see us together, as great as she was.
When Lucy became ill, Jo was a regular visitor, and she's one of those I can never be very far from. She's always been there, on the warm, friendly, not-entirely-platonic-but-probably-platonic fringes of my life, like other Jos, Joannas and Joannes I can think of. My friend Joe asked Lucy if Jo fancied me once. 'Oh, she fucking loves him, always has,' said Lucy at Oasis in 2000. I knew that then, and I did nothing. I liked Jo where she was. Change the status of that relationship, and you change that relationship forever. Making the imagined actual reality is not always a good plan. We all exist on an elevated plane in people's minds, if we exist there at all. On the whole, though, people don't sit around thinking about you as much as you imagine they do. I've been in this position before, and trust me, you tread carefully.
When I got ill, there she was again. She had breast cancer herself by then, and was battling away. She was a tremendous person, so full of life and light and bubbles and positivity.
Late last year she went into a hospice for some palliative chemo, and ended up being in and out of there on rotation, as her health stabilised, then declined, then stabilised, then declined. The cycle that is cancer taking over began, quietly, just like it did with my mum and Lucy.
Jo called me on my birthday, from the same hospice Lucy and my mum died in, saying she'd been talking to the nurses there who had treated both, and remembered them fondly.
Her voice cracked slightly when she mentioned you. She knew she didn't have long, and so did I. I couldn't muster the right words to reply properly, much less in the more immediate voice-message form she'd used. I prevaricated. I didn't reply.So Jo died last week. Married with two beautiful daughters, one of whom carries Lucy on in the world as her middle name. Jo had been ill for several years, with cancer that got more and more invasive.
Then a few days later, her sister Nicky Whatsapped me. Jo had died at Oakhaven, holding a picture of your Auntie, and joined my Mum and everyone else over the bridge still holding it.
In that context, then, today has been joyous, because you're four, and I'm lucky to have been here to help you celebrate that and all of your other achievements. Sometimes I feel like I'm the ghost at the feast: left to hover in the doorway while you, your grandparents and Mummy played on the floor of the kitchen with your backs to me, I felt ostracised. I said: 'Sometimes I don't think anyone in this family is listening to me.' 'Say something interesting, then', said your Mum. I don't think that was fair. I've loved all of your birthdays, but maybe I'm not as attentive as I was. Maybe I don't read the room very well. Maybe, just maybe, I'm fed up of having to read the room.
If I can't make myself heard over the noise, if my opinions don't matter to anyone else, if my health is taken-as-read, if my presence is relegated to a nice-to-have more often than not, and if my contribution to life isn't required, I find myself wondering why I should try.
But what alternative do I have? I have a few options, shall we say, and I'm reminded of them when I'm spat at. I'm reminded of them when getting out of the house takes two hours and a row. I'm reminded of them when I'm asked/told to 'leave the family', which has happened six times in the last year. I'm also the one with the terminal illness, the variable moods and the death sentence everyone else can't be bothered to worry about any more. I'm the one who four years ago was given a year to live, who now has a job and is planning to spend all (yeah, ALL) of that money on his family, so that we have a lovely time. No other fucker is up for this task.
Those that turn their backs on me, that snort, bemused, at the idea of a standing fit versus a falling fit but are too lazy to research my condition; those that studiously avoid talking about anything but the distant past and think nothing of asking for money to pay their mortgages off as soon as they find out I've got cash, while not contributing a fucking penny to their own daughter's wedding? They can watch it all get fucking spent on crisps, for all I care.
The real amusement for me is the fact that our bravery, our loss, our good sense and our planning will actually end up putting a roof over their thick heads, will pay for their EoL care and funerals, I'd wager, and then put food in the mouth and shelter over the empty head of their useless other daughter, too. So generous is Tams, and so lazy and profligate they are, I can't believe anything else can happen.
Pop Quiz: If you have a dog, and you go on holiday, do you (a) pay £50 for a kennel cough jab every year and then pay for kennels when you go away, or (b) 'save' the money on kennel cough jabs by never paying for them and, by extension, never kennelling your dog, thus never travelling at all?
If the answer is (b), newsflash: you're a fucking idiot.
I'm well. Enjoyed the New Year's Eve drone show and some truly excellent wine. Cancer is an ongoing, daily and minor aspect of life. It makes me tired, nervy, jumpy, confused and all the rest, but it's still mine to live with. Four years post-op now - I'd love to send the nurse they call Nails a card, just to say hello.
More importantly, Leo is nearly four now. My expectations re what he can do and what he can actually do are still out of whack. Sometimes he's incredible - building Lego sets designed for six-to-eight year-olds one minute, then being rendered unable to put his trousers on the next. This might be Peak Three.
We managed to get around to signing him up for full-time education at the mighty Buckland Brewer Primary School, a mere four-minute walk from the front door. He starts in September, and when he does, I will have officially run out of things on my bucket list, as 'walk my son to school' is the last one. Completists would argue that I've not ticked everything off but I have three points on that. 1) Fuck completists, they're dull. Take every opportunity to subvert expectation, I say. 2) New things being added to the bottom of the list makes the top of the list irrelevant, and 3) It's my fucking list.
I don't know whether I've mentioned this yet - can't be bothered to check, as befits a recovering journalist - but I've got a new job. After three years of all this nonsense, I'm back earning, and even doing dirty freelance, again. Never been richer, or more tired, but point two far outweighs the significance of point one. How long it lasts is anyone's guess, but I'm not overly encumbered, and each day I finish is another £190 in the kettle, so I don't care, really.
More fuck-it news: I've started playing guitar again, and am enjoying the pure throaty roar of the Firebird a great deal. Sustain for days, tone for months. Lovely. That said, now that I'm earning - and Rob has pronounced my stuff 'pretty damn good', I might buy some more hardware and make some more things. Rob has good ears after all.
