I had the fidgets this morning when I woke up and decided that after breakfast (cooked, obviously, again) I was going to tackle the bit of land at the top of our garden, which we rent from the owner of the field it's in, and which has been sadly neglected since the demise of our chickens - we still call it Chickoland though, even though there are no chickens in it any more. We haven't done anything with it for a while and it's very overgrown; as it was raining this morning it seemed the perfect opportunity for a bonfire (any opportunity for a bonfire is good for me) so off I went suitably attired (looking like a bad repro of Felicity Kendal in The Good Life) armed with firelighters, matches and some dry wood. I got a nice fire going and proceeded to wreak havoc with the shears!!! So satisfying cutting through the undergrowth (or should that be overgrowth?) and piling it onto the fire; probably not so good for Brading as the ensuing smoke must have been quite overpowering down the hill....Anyhow it gave me a good couple of hours solid workout, to vent my frustrations and clear up a bit in the meantime. By the time I came back in at 12.45 I was soaking wet (from the rain and, eugh, per-spir-ra-tion), filthy and smelled like the bonfire. Straight to the shower I went...
Basically C and I have been killing time again today, waiting for a phone call from someone from Southampton General to tell us the outcome of their meeting this morning. So without meaning to we were pacing around again, hence the Chickoland venture.
We had lunch - I've upped C's protein intake as he seems to be losing weight and needs to take on board more energy in terms of food - and then decided to watch some crap TV (Midsomer Murders, always good to literally kill a couple of hours) and as C felt quite tired he could happily doze in front of this without actually missing anything!
He's also been investigating places to go away for a couple of nights - it seems like a good idea to take a break before treatment starts, so he's found some really nice what they call 'boutique hotels' along the south coast. Hopefully we'll go early next week, once he's decided where.
And so we were watching Midsomer Murders, and time is getting on, and we've had no phone call - here's where the brick wall (or actually the wooden back door) comes in...we'd heard nothing. So C rang our Macmillan nurse specialist, who also knew nothing and it was clear that once again NO-ONE has told ANYONE ANYTHING. I cannot believe that there was not one single person at that meeting this morning who thought they ought to ring us and tell us what happened. Not one bloody person.. Crap, absolute crap. We tried to get hold of someone at QA in Portsmouth, but no-one was available; we don't have any contact numbers for anyone at Southampton. And that was the point at which I completely, utterly and totally lost it, and took it out on our back door. Poor door. It isn't in the best of health itself and I kicked the **** out of it and hurt my toes into the bargain. I have tried very hard not to do this, as it clearly doesn't help the situation, or C, or me. But something in my brain clicked out and I went nuts. I even had to go up to the summerhouse and punch eight bells out of the futon (what is this 'eight bells' anyway???)
Thankfully C had remained calm and spoke to Sonya again and she had managed to find out that apparently the Southampton team think C's cancer is operable; but she did drive home to us both how serious the situation is when she said "...if you decide to go ahead with the surgery." Go ahead? Given the options it's the only thing to do - we are not curling up our toes and saying 'Oh dear, never mind, no nasty surgery.' No, bugger that. We're going for any chance we've got and surgery it is in the first instance, so hopefully (hahahaha) we'll get the call and get on with it. The other choice is no choice.
And so tomorrow is our 21st wedding anniversary. 21 years. We're going out for lunch somewhere nice, then normal things are happening like having logs delivered and choir starting again. I have to confess that right now our lives are like someone else's; it's not like it's happening to us, it's something out of some weird film noir where you just keep waiting for something good to happen...and wait...and wait. That's all we can do, wait. And I am not a patient person!
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