...just another day
Once again it is the early hours of the morning and the various concoction of drugs and inappropriate foods has kept me largely out of bed. I don’t always attack the computer though, never the tv or music or sit morose in the dark listening to the faintly comforting snoring from the bedrooms. Recently the mornings have been getting lighter and I am always conscious of the correct weather conditions for a spectacular sunrise at this time of the year. (Old photographic stem cells still live in the primordial sludge that passes through my veins). Opportunity could show itself on the school run as we drive toward Southend Seafront for the 20 minute silence that is the trademark of adolescents as they ‘plug in’ to their various music mp3 players to avoid a potential poisoning of the mind from Radio 2. With the weather I would often take note of various attributes of the day... then invariably disregard the photo opportunity for one of three reasons:
1. We are running late and you can bet that everyone is visored down in their cars, blinded by the rising sun or simply going arghhh at the rare sight....as opposed to my parental ‘ARGHHH!!! Move it *****’ ...some of us have a schedule and potential school attendance issues if we get held up. Thinking about it, we have never had a parental ticking off from the school Headmaster (No PC error here...he is a Master of the Old school!) for slack travel arrangements but I’m certain he has a 2000 word passionate defence of education at threat by the casual motoring trends of the 2000’s tucked away somewhere. I can see it now, but he is so good with words. Why use just 50 when there are so many out there?
2. It’s frankly boring without perfect conditions and foregrounds and backgrounds to anchor the seafront shot.
3. Thirdly...I have seen better. I had always seen better from around the world ...invariably on top of the world!
From the absolute blackness of the night the sun rises. At first there is a very subtle change of colour from where you imagine a horizon to be. Dark blue begins to bleed from the bottom of this view, domed and centred on the as yet invisible sun. As it washes the blackness out of the sky...the curvature of the Earth becomes spectacularly visible as the World awakes. Then the first signs of red follow the blue wash upwards. Now we have a blackness at the base creeping into reds and oranges, blues and again the absolute blackness of space. Just moments later the intense source of clean white light makes its orbital aura known as it too rises to join in this fiesta celebration of a new day.
Ok, enough of this waxing lyrical arty stuff!... Have you ever tried to look directly into a rising sun right in front of your maxed out tired eyes that have been accustomed to a peaceful ‘stillness for the last 8 hours or so? Forget the beauty of yet another new day,’ get the screens up...sunglasses on... wedged onto your burning eyes as you consider the safety implications of sticking a magazine or newspaper around your protective tin-can cockpit as the pain of unprotected welding comes to mind as your sockets begin to cook your eyes like poached eggs. Just another day, another dollar, another passenger breakfast offered and rejected (as if) and another imminent landing in the gloom of the UK where the sun hasn’t shone for the last three months. Yes... pilots do like to whinge!
End of this story so, a natural break is obvious. It is still dark. Do I risk getting dressed and driving to a good location for a photo?...Na...have breakfast and pray for rain and greyness to justify my decision. A quick check on this tired body and...we’re fit to continue this blog after a cup of tea and a fist full of drugs.
It’s Sunday and I think I would wake everyone if I got on with the hoovering. However, the gentle dull clang of a frying pan on the hob cooking bacon and eggs might be an option to entice movement from my family slumberers. Question? Why do we always want fresh croissant on a Sunday morning when Tescos aren’t open? 24 hours a day, 7 days per week...but not on a Sunday before 10!
Me digress? Mais non.
It seems a little late now but I have had such a laugh over the Christmas holidays. Daniel, my university freshman son took on the roll of Master Chef in charge for his friends at University. Having cooked 'just a few’ Christmas dinners myself in the past for large groups he asked for instructions from inception to washing up. Part of my advice was to check on the turkey wrapper to see if the bird had giblets (explaining what giblets are to a McDonalds generation just grosses them out). If they did have them ‘you must find them before cooking’ I advised.’ You may need to get up close and personal’. So, a few phone calls later, Daniel, confident that no such blue bag existed in the cavernous insides of a very large bird was willing to continue. Ok, so most of us have cooked the bagged giblets in the past and no one has died at my table, but that’s not the point. I have now got him doing an internal exam worthy of a medical college rather than the Engineering University he is at, determined to check into every orifice, sleeves rolled up for the illusive item. Triumphantly he texted that he eventually found them but only after he had turned this volumous bird upside down and violently shaken it with wings, legs and ‘drunken’ body mass flying everywhere resisting the bag’s detection.
I so wish I had been there or at least seen this group of 18 year olds on Youtube recording their efforts. I was in tears at the scene. Oh, and the Christmas dinner for eight?...Perfect! Good lad. You make your Dad so proud, complete with the slapstick. He! he!
And again that opening line to this blog...” There are moments when you are thankful for your own weaknesses and mortality”. Don’t worry, I have just had a revision of my cancer drugs and the new ones’ possible side effect list reads long and thorough. Actually they aren’t that different from the last set of scare-mongering possible conditions, but I picked up on the dry throat and croaky voice and thought ah oh! that’s me. That was until I blew my nose and proved that the contents were barely human like everyone else with a cold! Nasty mucous and flu like symptoms are about the only things not on the list of side effects. Here I am then, the happiest guy with ‘man flu’ you are likely to find. Out with the man sized Kleenex, here I come sniffing and coughing like normal people.
...and the other health stuff?
Most of you would have got a brief note at Christmas but I’ll elaborate a little.
My tumours/lesions are all mostly stable or missing. Yes missing! Three large cells (to me a golf ball size is ‘large’) in my back have disappeared! Yeah, we can’t figure that out either because last time around they had made an attempt to grow. So it would appear now that this Sutent drug of mine is doing what it said it might do on the label. That said, they have now taken me off it and replaced it with a more exclusive drug which had to be financially approved by the London Primary Care Trust as it is not available on the NHS...even if it is the Director of Medicine at The Royal Marsden Hospital putting forward my case. Professor Gore is a good man to know! He got it...naturally!
Afinitor evidently has a greater effect with a view to destroying my brain tumours whilst still doing the same job as the Sutent on the rest of me. So my least used organ is going to get a good chemical slapping before I get too much necrosis. Evidently we all have brain cells to spare...speak for yourself Professor! Unfortunately my family and friends are now on the lookout for odd behaviour...memory loss, mood swings and lack of errr...errr...concentration. Hey, I’m 51... it’s normal!!
Copley is functioning within normal parameters.
Once again, Happy New Year everyone and thanks for your support, no matter how you show it. It is very much appreciated.
Richard
Sorry for the delay, but Windows 7 email had decided to lose my group contacts.
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