Spring has come, that is to say we have passed through the vernal equinox: the time when night is as long as the day. We are back on British Summer Time and, although our body clocks are all ahoo, it is all sunshine and light from now on. Honestly: trust me on this. A further sign of Spring is that the days have warmed up slightly and Jane has started to paint her toenails, which is always a good indicator. Stage 2, the shedding of her vest, may take a little longer. The Deep Cold Snap predicted by the gloomy press never happened for us (though it may happen yet). To be fair, I understand there was a good dollop of snow across the Pennines and in the area that I call The Midlands, and midlanders and southerners call The North. If you are born on Tyneside, as I was, then you know you are in The North. A glance at a map of England will reveal that Manchester and Leeds lie half way up the country, hence they are in the Midlands as far as I am concerned. Of course, even this is a typical Englishman’s outlook, for if you look at a map of Britain you will see that Thurso, Wick, Inverness and Aberdeen are actually in The North, and Tyneside is in the Midlands. When you consider it that way, it is no wonder that the the Scots get upset about Manchester and Liverpool being rejuvenated under a government programme to revive “The Northern Powerhouse”. When Jane and I lived in Scotland in the mid 1980s, even we got annoyed at the way the television programmes, the weather forecasts and the road improvements seemed to be aimed purely at southern England. My biggest memory of living up there was having to go to work during a (English) Bank Holiday, with all the television schedule geared up accordingly (I think a James Bond film was showing – there usually was). My second memory was going to work in a hailstorm in June. Scotland had its own Bank Holidays, and still does, but it never managed to get its act together as a country: individual towns and cities did their own thing, so you could have a Bank Holiday in, say, Glasgow, but not in nearby Paisley. It was an odd set up.
It is also the third anniversary of Covid19 restrictions first being imposed in Britain and the start of publication of these blogs (Blog 35). Re-reading those blogs recently, I was amazed at how our lives changed. Did we really meekly comply with all those draconian measures imposed by the government? Did we really accept the British police fining people for simply walking in the open air? Did we really queue for hours outside supermarkets to buy essential foodstuffs? Did we really stand outside our houses at 2000 every night and rattle pots and pans like mindless drones in support of The Great God, the NHS? Yes, we did, and even today there are some people who think we did not restrict ourselves enough or – for that matter – who think we should still be living a hermit-like existence, avoiding contact with our fellow men, and covering our faces. Recent revelations of the Health Secretary’s WhatsApp records by the Daily Telegraph have confirmed my suspicions that many of the restrictions were based, not on science, but on the projection of power or to save face. I was right in my belief that the aim of government was to scare the living daylights out of everyone by propaganda, and the legacy remains in that many people still believe that a virus which, at its peak, had only a 0.1% likelihood of killing you in a year, was a deadly epidemic that would wipe out the world. Our economy is in a mess; our children have mental health problems and huge gaps in their education; our workforce is reluctant to go back to work; it is virtually impossible to get a face-to-face GP appointment; and there is an enormous backlog of patients awaiting hospital treatment. Still, we came through it. There were many success stories, most notably the UK’s vaccination programme, but what a blessed relief it is that it is over. Covid19 is still around, of course, but it has mutated to a more benign form and – for most of us – results in symptoms little different from influenza. Restrictions were finally dropped in England fourteen months ago. All my friends have had Covid19, most more than once despite being fully vaccinated, but Jane and I have been been very lucky and not succumbed once (unless you count that time in January 2021 when I tested positive without symptoms [Blog 78]).
So – what of the future? What will the press and government latch on to next to scare the living daylights out of us? Another deadly virus? A comet heading for Earth? Climate change? My money is on the last of those, as it has endless possibilities for fuelling our anxieties: sea levels rising, power outages, a ban on dairy and meat, drought, water shortages, famine, or (currently, in the UK) a shortage of tomatoes and cucumbers. Dear, oh dear: please, no; don’t deprive me of the tomatoes and cucumbers. I will tell you one thing: no way will I ever again lock myself up at home or accept being unable to sit next to a friend on a park bench.
March has been a busy month. We brought the boat out of her slumber early on by giving her a good wash down, replacing the proper bedding, completing a few jobs and staying overnight. We also took delight in visiting the new marina Facilities Building or ‘Control Building’ which – at long last – has opened fully. Regular readers will recall that this structure has been eagerly awaited for years and its completion was long overdue. Much was promised and the frustration of waiting was exacerbated by watching the framework and roof go up relatively quickly, but the fitting out dragging on. Well, now it is finished and, I must say, it really is rather splendid. Futuristic in style, the building has the marina Reception and main entrance at the riverside end, with a berth-holder’s lounge on the floor above, both with panoramic picture windows overlooking the river. Behind Reception is the swish, modern, shower and toilet block, and behind that there is a small café (yet to find a tenant). Access to the whole set up is by key fob so that only berth-holders can gain entrance to the facilities (not for paupers, then). For the first time since we moved to Noss Marina in 2019 we can begin to see what the new setup will look like: the soft lights, the paved walkways, the contemporary village feel. Of course, Mount Crushmore (the remains of the old shipyard buildings) is still there and the foundations for the apartment block, boutique hotel and the houses have yet to be laid, but – as Winston Churchill famously said – this is not the end; it it not even the beginning of the end; but it is the end of the beginning.
Mid March took us to Bury St Edmunds to attend the funeral of a very dear friend who, quite literally, dropped down dead at the age of 64. He was lean, fit and apparently healthy, but he died anyway and our trip to Suffolk to pay our respects and console his widow has to be recorded as the low point of the last decade.
Late March found us back onboard APPLETON RUM again and we took her to sea for the first time in 2023. We were blessed with a beautiful sunny day with little wind and a modest temperature of 13C; the opportunity was too good to miss. Like horses, diesel engines love to be exercised or worked hard and the worst thing you can do with them is run them on light load. As we passed the Dartmouth harbour limits I gradually wound open the throttles and gave the boat her head. The stern went down, the bow came up and soon she had a fine bone in her teeth as we creamed along at 14 knots, shaking off the cobwebs, weeds and barnacles of winter. We headed for the fishing port of Brixham this time, across a green sea with very little swell: an hour’s journey soon accomplished. Being limited by time, we did not berth in the harbour, but I did take the boat right in to check out the visitor moorings for a future time. Then, it was back to Dartmouth for tea and a run ashore in the evening in the Floating Bridge with our old friends Raymond and Carole. Excellent. The next day brought torrential rain, with wind Force 3 from the south east, but – hey – we were in Devonshire: what else can you expect? The interlude was still well worthwhile and next time we will stay a week to really get back into the swing of things.
So there I was, sitting in a special chair in the hospital of The Big City, trousers down, feet in stirrups, main armament trained fore and aft, tompion in, the whole mounting lashed up out of the way and secured for sea. Between my legs, a specialist nurse did things to my groin with needles and stuffed a probe up my bum. As pastimes go, it was almost surreal, but – after all – we all need a hobby. I had earlier read the procedure for a biopsy of my prostate with growing incredulity, and had bemoaned the forthcoming event to Jane as being somewhat undignified.
“Welcome to a woman’s world!”, had been the somewhat tart response.
Not a lot of sympathy there then, or even empathy.
Actually, the procedure – undertaken under local anaesthetic – was not painful at all, just a bit uncomfortable. There were a few thumps and clicks in the target area and, within about ten minutes, it was all over. I dressed, was given a cup of tea and a biscuit, and allowed to go home. I opted to hear the result by telephone rather than come in to hospital again.
Twelve days later the telephone call came at the appointed time. The specialist nurse informed me that I have high grade prostate cancer and must start treatment immediately. Bit of a bugger really, if you will forgive my Anglo Saxon.
I must say, my gob was well and truly smacked. On a scale of risk that has the lowest reading of 3+3=6 and the worst of 5+5=10, I have a prostate cancer reading of 4+5=9 or Grade 5. It is lucky that it was not 3+5=6, or I could have been labelled as innumerate as well as cancerous.
[Note to self: must remember to tell that genie that, when I said I wanted to excel in everything I did, this was not the sort of thing I had in mind].
There and then, on the telephone, I was given two options: surgery to have the prostate removed or hormone treatment with radiotherapy. I asked about the third option of ‘do nothing’ and was told, after a sharp intake of breath, that the type of cancer I had was of the rapid-growing type, so it would spread to the rest of my body if I took no immediate action. I thought I would ‘pass’ on that one, so I opted for the ‘hormone treatment with microwave’. I wonder if the machine goes ‘ping’ when it is finished? I must say, for all the faults that one reads of the NHS in the press, the system moved like greased lightning in my case. Within three hours I had received a dose of hormone pills from my GP and an appointment had been made for a hormone injection, to be administered the following week. I was a bit surprised to receive the subsequent injection in the stomach, but I could think of worse places to have it and – surprisingly – it did not hurt at all. Apparently, the hormones inhibit the testosterone in the body that feeds the cancer, and the treatment kills prostate cancer cells wherever they have gone. The down side is that Mr Frisky will be frisky no more and may develop tender breasts among other side effects. I found myself admiring cushions and candles in a shop the other day and started eyeing up pretty brassieres in Marks and Spencers last week. Well, not really: actually, I have suffered very few side effects at all, nor am I in any pain or have any symptoms of illness The last point is telling for any male readers: best get yourself a PSA test and keep a check on it all; you may get no other warning. Anyway, as I write I have had a CT scan to assess the nature and extent of the beast; tomorrow I have a bone scan, after being injected with radioactive fluid so that I can be seen better in the dark. I am also invited not to sit near children for a few days after the scan, but that is not a problem – I never have any such intention. If the cancer has confined itself to my pelvic area, then the radiotherapy and hormone route will fix it. It will comprise four weeks in the microwave on weekdays starting in late June and hormone injections for the rest of my life. If, on the other hand, the cancer has decided to go walk-about through my lithe, muscular body, then I would rather not think of the next step. Results in mid April.
After the shock of the diagnosis Jane and I repaired to the drawing room and I switched on daytime television to watch something mindless to take my mind off the shock of it all. The first thing that came on was an advertisement for the Co-operative Funeral Service. The irony just follows me around.
So that’s the situation. I pondered for quite some time on whether to burden you with this news, ‘to reach out to you and recount my journey’ as they say in the latest, hip, dreadful phraseology. My initial view was to say nothing; there are few things more tedious than reading of other people’s medical problems – one’s own are always far more interesting, and my initial aim of these blogs, way back at Blog 35, was to try to take readers’ minds off the Covid 19 epidemic with a cheerful story of everyday country folk. But then I thought that there were some surreal and almost humorous experiences that might be be gleaned from my situation and that might be worth recounting; the feet-in-the stirrups episode has, perhaps, been the high point so far. I also thought my experience might be a salutary lesson to male readers to get a PSA test for prostate cancer and not bury their heads in the sand like I did. I may not have had any symptoms but, equally, I did not set out to look for trouble either. Here am I, one year after my first marginal PSA result, waiting to be microwaved. Ping! I will let you know how I get on.
28 March 2023
"A Very Vintage Chap..." 