How things are

This is how things are, really.

For months, I’ve found it hard to write because of what was not being said, not being acknowledged, which made it awkward to talk cheerfully of anything else. So I sat down and wrote an honest account of what had happened in our lives in the past year. It read like a catalogue of misery.

So I left it in draft form, and had a good look at myself and where we are right now, and it seemed as though things were looking up, the misery declining. So here goes.

The Gardener loves it here. He’s happy in the cottage, doesn’t notice the brown carpets and magnolia walls, enjoys transforming the garden little by little. He enjoys the friendly-but-not-over-friendly encounters with neighbours, and everyone’s willingness to help if asked. He thinks long term, aided by the planting of trees and shrubs, and hopes that I can do the same.

I have been less settled. After 11 months, I find I still don’t like the cottage much, finding it sprawling and inconvenient without enough storage, and I cordially detest the (practical and mud-friendly) brown carpet everywhere and the light-sapping magnolia walls. All new, therefore wasteful and expensive to replace. The low ceilings downstairs feel oppressive to me, and require more thought and attention to be given to improving the lighting. Too much of my furniture is brown and takes up too much space, and there are days when I feel like a constant moaner – not a self-image I particularly relish.

I have plans, of course, to change some of these irritants, painting some of the downstairs rooms white and replacing the duller floor covering with more fresh and cheerful vinyl flooring (bathroom and gloomy hall already done), and this has helped, with more to be done, and – as ever – with much decluttering required. I know I am never happier in my home than when making it calm and serene in atmosphere, and have set this as my winter project.

I know that underlying all this dissatisfaction has been my loss of my former home, no, not the rented annexe to the manor, but my beloved Tobias Cottage. It has been incredibly difficult to let it go, and I have had a prolonged period of delayed grieving that took me by surprise. I’ve found it hard to apply the same interest and sense of a worthwhile project to transforming this cottage, but as The Gardener pointed out a while ago, in this state of mind, I would probably have been miserable wherever I lived, and I think he was right, if a trifle brutal! But slowly, carefully, I am letting Tobias Cottage become a happy memory, not a loss, and looking instead at my life as it is today. Here and Now, Here and Now.

Tobias Cottage

But it isn’t all about me and my cottage. We are aware that we have had a very challenging two years together. Cancer, death of our landlady, sudden move to a new home. But this year in particular has been hard.

The Gardener was diagnosed last year with Parkinson’s disease. There now, I’ve said it: Parkinson’s, that common but cruel and unpredictable disease that has struck my fit strong partner, who was already coping with a chronic back condition. It’s a life-changing diagnosis, and no matter how positively you look at it, how optimistically you project its timeline and hope it will progress very slowly, it does not usually augur or end well, particularly just now when all services and support seem to have been withdrawn because of the pandemic.

It felt to me like a massive catastrophe, and my feelings of shock and hopelessness (behind as brave a face as I could muster) took a long time to subside. We had to re-evaluate our priorities and our own roles, and The Gardener had decisions to make about treatment options. Because of the pandemic, everything that could have assisted us moved at a snail’s pace, and we felt very alone.

The Gardener maintains a much more positive attitude; he has never been one to worry about what might happen, and is a natural problem solver when problems do arise. Catastrophe is not in his way of looking at life; if it did happen, he would find a way of dealing with it. I have always relied on him for this.

We had a few turbulent months, struggling with the long-term implications of his diagnosis. But recently, our initial fright passing and our pleasure in living in a rather unique place returning, things are changing and yes, feeling more hopeful.

The garden has proved a blessing to us both in recent months, giving us much rewarding activity and a place to stop and rest; it enables us to look forward more positively to the coming years. Throughout the warmer days of summer, I attached myself emotionally to the garden, and the cottage became easier to live in.

Day 1 in our new home Jan. 2021

We came here in January, when it was bare and rather bleak, and have set about making it interesting and attractive. Aiming for a cottage garden look, but with enough lawn to spend time sitting outside, we planted a mixed native hedge to hide the car park, grew hollyhocks and wild flowers from seed, transplanted roses and other shrubs from our pots. Our little trees are thriving, the beds have been enlarged (thank you, neighbouring farmer who came with a mini-digger to help turn over the stony compacted soil!) and we have planted many many Spring bulbs.

It is my first-ever proper garden with lawn, and I can understand that it may take years to make it as we would like. No instant gratification as with potted plants, just preparation, planning, planting, and oh so much weeding and mowing! Each young tree is a commitment to our future; I can’t think about impulsively moving when the young trees we have chosen and lovingly planted are just head-high.

We are surrounded by trees and fields, with sheep and horses, pheasants and many birds. The cats and the dog love it all.

Our first summer 2021

The hollyhocks aim for the sky

Friends and family visited throughout the hot summer, sharing meals at our rather haphazard garden furniture arrangement, relaxing and watching our many birds that visit the feeders, and we settled almost imperceptibly into this odd little hamlet of 100-or-so residents.

Fully vaccinated and boosted, we have stayed well so far, benefitting by life in a tiny secluded place where we do not run the same risks of infection as city dwellers. We have regular contact with our families in London, and joyous visits from them to us, where our grandson, now 6, can run free. The Gardener’s beloved daughters have returned from their travels and are often in contact. We have lovely neighbours and some new friends; we live in beautiful countryside, our pets are healthy, if ageing, and in comparison with so many other people, our troubles are bearable.

There is much to be positive about. I count my blessings, and I see signs of hope.

Where to start?

Long story short: we decided to leave our rented annexe attached to a manor house when the owner died and a buyer came along. We had a long notice period, thanks to the previous owner’s protective foresight, but felt that after 2 years in the place, and having had such a close relationship with her as she weakened and died, we were more than ready to move on. The new owner, excited by having sold his London home for enough money to buy the money pit manor, said all the right things about keeping us on as tenants, but his cold-eyed relatives, who were planning to move with him, made it clear that our home was to be their home, and we did not feel comfortable with keeping them waiting. Yes, you may read between the lines here. But with The Gardener’s move away, the interior designer owner has lost the tenant who understood how the roof requires constant vigilance and attention, and where the rain would flood in, rather than Instagrammable interior photos of designer furniture and cosmetic changes, and we sometimes feel a pang of anxiety for the lovely old manor’s long term prospects.

But that was then. And so we searched for another tenancy where our animals would be welcome, while we kept our beloved Tobias Cottage on the market, and suddenly things started to move. We viewed the thatched cottage, met the landlord, who stressed that he wanted tenants to move in for the long term, “for decades, even” and fell in love with it all. Six months before our notice period expired, we left the manor. It had been an amazing, testing, privileged and exhausting two years, and it was enough.

The relief to leave the rust-coloured floor tiles and carpets/yellow walls/orange knotty pine everywhere was intense – oh, how I had suffered in my shallow way with all that orange knotty pine! We packed up all our plant pots and troughs from the crumbling courtyard, where they had provided me with so much therapy during that first lockdown, and on New Year’s Eve, moved them to our new home, where they encountered their first hard frosts immediately. Several tender plants gave up at once, but many surprised us by coping with the cold, frosts, and the wicked winds sweeping across from the Quantock hills.

This was our yard; the annexe had been garages. It was gloomy in winter, but sheltered, and with care, our plants thrived.

We live now in a tiny hamlet, with a village hall and a duck pond, but no shop, pub or transport links. We think there may be a hundred residents, some with a long history, who remember the old days when rents were nominal and cottages were allowed to fall into serious disrepair. Our cottage dates from around 1600; our neighbours across the road told me that their own row did not appear on maps until some ten years later. Almost every house and farm belongs to the ancient estate. Nothing can be sold, and the landowner/landlord has the responsibility of keeping the cottages maintained. This works if the tenants quietly press their point when repairs are required.

It is completely dark at night, and silent. Sheep and horses are everywhere, but until our cats arrived and the new next-door neighbour brought hers, dogs predominated. Everyone knows everyone else, everyone is friendly and helpful, and we have received some touching messages of welcome. We became well-known within days of our arrival thanks to Millie, our little tabby who likes to come for walks with us, including the long muddy track to the cliffs and stony fossil-rich beach. We have warned neighbours of her liking for home visits, popping in through their open windows; no one seems to mind.

The first weeks in the cottage were challenging – there had been much work done a year before, combining two ancient cottages into one, with newly-laid carpets everywhere and fresh paint on the walls, but the attention to detail was sorely lacking – windows and doors did not fit, chimneys were open, and the new central heating barely coped downstairs. The winter winds howled throughout the house, and the heating costs threatened to bankrupt us.

I haven’t been so constantly, miserably cold since the ’60s, when I lived in a huge high-ceilinged Edinburgh flat rendered tepidly survivable only by a coal fire in the sitting room and a stinky paraffin heater in the kitchen. I could see how happy The Gardener was to be living here, and how surprisingly quickly he settled in to chatting to neighbours, but I found the constant cold, draughts and howling sound effects unbearable.

Eventually, with my pressing the point nicely but persistently, the landlord’s contractors came to deal with the more pressing problems, and two enormous chimneys were closed off, one by having a wood burning stove installed, the other with a permanent closure. Bubble wrap and heavy curtains helped with the front door, which barely fitted anywhere, and slowly, slowly I stopped feeling that we had made a terrible mistake.

Millie is disappointed to find plywood blocking the chimney.

Flossie is in heaven.

The room with the cavernous fireplace, to be truthful, my least favourite room, required a wood burner too, so the landlord agreed to install one while we installed the other. This has worked well – we can toast our toes in either room, and I can moan faintly about being too hot. Infinitely preferable to being blue with cold….

The weather is always interesting (euphemism) and changeable. We have glorious views of the hills, but this can change in a few moments:

We have a garden, with a lumpy lawn and stony soil, to keep The Gardener happily occupied. This is a major work in progress; we have planted a hedge which will one day hide our cars, and are planting beds and planning a path to the back door. My pots and troughs now line the cottage walls, where they are happy. There will be roses, and hollyhocks, honeysuckle, lavenders and clematis, and all things cottage-y this summer. The garden is full of birds visiting the feeders, which gives me intense pleasure, and the cats seem to leave them alone – possibly having become bored by the sight of squirrels on the feeders in our previous home.

And that’s as far as we’ve got. No, we haven’t finished unpacking, hanging mirrors and pictures or sorting out all our clutter, but the village hall will soon be able to restart its monthly market, with a bric a brac stall that may well be completely filled with my decluttered belongings. We long for warmer weather and an end to lockdown, but apart from being able to shed our winter clothes at last, I doubt if our lives will really change much.

Oh – nearly forgot. The final and best bit of news is that Tobias Cottage now has a new owner, a woman who is so in love with it that she describes it thus: “this house is a hug” and I am able to let it go, happy in the knowledge that it will continue to be loved and cared for, allowing myself to settle here with no regrets or misgivings.

PS:

Millie visits the beach for the first time in her life.

Just looking in….

It’s been a long time, and much has happened. I won’t go on about the everlasting pandemic, except to say how much I hope you all are as safe and well as I am.

But after finding it well-nigh impossible to sign in to this blog, I managed – almost accidentally, through the Comments section – to do so tonight, and thought I’d take the opportunity to say that I’m ready to start blogging again. And if I still struggle to sign in, I’ll just construct a new blog altogether.

In it I can waffle on about our new home, which is about 50 years older than our old cottage, being built around 1600, and how the cats and the dog are blissfully happy in our tiny hamlet. We will be too, but only when we’ve finished unpacking, clearing clutter, and getting curtains up. This may take some time.

Meanwhile, stay safe and well, stay positive, stay hopeful. See you soon.

All Will Be Well

A brief hello/goodbye in this frightening period of pestilence.

We are well, as we hope you are too, and that we can all remain so.

But  it is hard to think about writing blog posts. So I just want to say: stay safe, stay well, stay hopeful that this will pass, and that eventually all will be well.

For now, however, Cats Dinner Time is being mothballed as irrelevant.

Sending love and hope to anyone reading this; look after yourselves and your beloveds.

Here are some of mine; they help to maintain our morale and remind us to live in the moment.

 

A good clear out

At the back of a kitchen cupboard lurked a box of breakfast cereal, a well-known brand made entirely of wheat bran, old and overlooked, and decidedly stale. I threw a little out for the birds (we have such greedy pheasants and pigeons who call each day and eat what the earlier birds disdain), but after finding that they didn’t fancy such a high-fibre treat either, placed the box on a windowsill by the front door, to be emptied later onto the compost heap. The box was well over half full.

That evening, hearing Flossie rustling busily in the hall, I went to investigate. Spoiler alert: another tale of Flossie’s Experiments With Her Innards coming up. I discovered the inner bag of bran cereal on the floor, empty, with a snout-shaped opening in it, and a dog looking only slightly furtive, licking her lips with satisfaction.

Alarmed, I rushed to google “Can dogs eat All Bran?” and learned that yes, they can, in moderation. But Flossie does not know the meaning of the word moderation, and if she did, wouldn’t understand what our problem was with her helpful approach to limiting food waste.

She also drank a great deal of water throughout the evening, The Gardener and I watching her  anxiously, taking her out at regular intervals to walk round the grounds, and retiring to bed late, with some misgivings – shouldn’t one of us stay up through the night to – well, you know, respond immediately if Flossie showed any signs of urgency to go out?

We noticed that the combination of bran and water made for a certain tubbiness around her middle, but she seemed fine, obviously comfortably full, but without the squeaky discomfort of her experience some years ago when she swallowed the lid of the yoghurt pot. Anyone wishing to know more can read about it here – it’s worth a look for the priceless comments alone.

It was a mistake not to have walked her during the night, but I’ll spare you a description of the consequences. We spent the next day walking our greedy dog at frequent intervals  so that she could ‘go’ (yes, we counted: SIX….), and only the day after that (7 and 8) could we conclude that at last, her generous fibre-based snack had been er… fully discharged.  And Flossie regained her waistline.

As ever, what has Flossie learned from this? Exactly.

Tender Loving Care

The radiotherapy is over. No more half-days spent travelling, often in the dark and in stormy weather on flood-prone roads, to arrive sensibly early only to find that everyone’s appointments are running late or that one of the huge machines has broken down. We became a comradely little band, often seeing the same people in the waiting areas, exchanging personal stories, learning more about each other’s physical and emotional states than if we were close friends  living in the same street.

And then it was over. I was reviewed, told I was doing exceptionally well, and discharged, and will probably never see any of these fellow patients and their companions again. But I won’t forget them.

I had not found the treatments particularly difficult. Once I became used to the fiddly positioning, the breath-holding, the half-nakedness, it was an automatic process to go through every day. I was a compliant patient, trusting that these people who made the huge life-changing treatment decisions and timetables on my behalf knew what they were doing. I’m finding the side effects of the radiation manageable, despite my body looking like The Wreck of the Hesperus, and each day is easier.

We were both tired, The Gardener and I, with all the travelling, the sitting about, the disrupted routines and mealtimes, but we realised through our contact with other patients, some with many more treatments as well as chemotherapy to go through, that we had got off lightly by comparison, and we are grateful. I am also grateful for the opportunity to have spent so much time (albeit mostly sitting in the car and in waiting rooms) with The Gardener; I remarked the other day that we’d just spent an incredible amount of time together since September, and he responded “Yes. It’s been lovely.” Dear man.

So what next? It’s too easy to say “get on with normal life” because while we must, of course, there is also a sense that life is not normal now, not any more. Almost normal, but not quite.

My son asked me an interesting question: do I feel changed by this? I had to think about it.

Yes, I do feel changed. But surprisingly, not in any dramatic way; I have simply refined my focus of anxiety, narrowing it down from my usual broad range of Things To Worry About to a specific area: Cancer and All That Comes With It. And to my surprise, it doesn’t overwhelm me.  An almost-normal life now looks much like a normal life before; there is closer attention to be paid to an already-healthy diet, to regular (and sufficient!) exercise, and to making sure that we both have enough variety in our daily activities, but many things remain as they were, the needs of family,  friends and pets to consider, the terrible state of the world, and so forth, and so on, but my perspective has shifted.  What was ‘My life’ has just moved to being ‘The rest of my life’ – a subtle distinction.

It has been a short but challenging road, from September 12th when the recall letter arrived, until today, and I know more about myself and my loved ones than I did before.

Many things that mattered before, matter less now; some are more precious, but they are fewer. The spectre of the cancer recurring jostles for position in my catalogue of worries, of course, but there is something  – what’s the word I’m searching for here?  freeing? uplifting? comforting? enabling? something between all of these – that allows me to acknowledge my fears openly and yet set them aside a little.

Never underestimate the force of TLC. The influence of all the love, kindness and care that came flooding my way from the very beginning, and the knowledge that I was being looked after by professionals whose sole aim was to maximise my chances of survival and good health, has been intensely powerful for me. To be loved and cared for is a treasure beyond all else.

We have a little card somewhere in the house that reads “Start Each Day With A Grateful Heart”. (So much more authentic in my cynical opinion than those signs that urge us to live, laugh, love, eat chocolate, obey the house rules, stay calm, dance like no one is watching, and so on!)

And so we go on, a day at a time, with a hopeful yet realistic eye to the future, grateful to have come through, and determined to make the most of my new, almost-normal life.

Starting every day with a grateful heart.

Thank you all for your wonderful support.

When this is over….

….I shall take the kitchen scissors and cut my sturdy breast cancer bras into small pieces. I have two of these ugly, unglamorous garments, designed to come up fairly high under the arms and to support the areas that have had surgery.

Admittedly my Sturdy Bras are comfortable, if hideous, and so long as you don’t look at them too critically, do the job well enough. They have big elastic shoulder straps and too many hooks and eyes to fasten easily when you are barely able to move your arms backwards because of stitches and dressings.

The Gardener, with his large hands, struggled manfully to help with the fasteners, but it was rather telling that he failed to notice that on one occasion, we had managed to put the thing on inside out. After that, I turned it round, fastened it frontwards, and swivelled it into the right position.

I had to wear one day and night for several weeks. This was a trial, let me tell you, worse than trying to sleep in socks – it just doesn’t feel right.

Now I keep one of them exclusively for radiotherapy sessions. This will be the first to fall under the kitchen scissors. The felt tip pen marks come off onto it, and don’t wash out well, the slatherings of required moisturiser do it no favours either, so it always looks thoroughly shabby and disreputable. If I were to be run over by a bus, I know I would have to force myself to stay alive long enough to explain its horrible state to the paramedics. “It’s clean, it really is, it just looks grubby, honest….”

When this is all over, I shall treat myself to the prettiest lingerie I can afford. In the meantime, my unloved Sturdy Bras still have a job to do.

The alien rays and I

It’s now early January 2020, a new year, leaving behind one that I will not miss one bit. May we all experience a happier, healthier year, despite all the current evidence that Things Can Only Get Worse.

I have tried to set up a new blog, and failed miserably – so technical, so complicated, so  – well, modern for someone who really just wants an electronic version of the schoolgirl diary with its flimsy lock, rather than a monetised, domained, sophisticated construction that invites daily emails from the mighty marketing arm of WordPress.

So I’ll stick with Cats Dinnertime for now, which is familiar and relatively easy, and allows the cats themselves to have a look-in now and again. Incidentally, they have nothing to report; they are overfed winter couch potatoes.

Christmas came and went, as did the family, bringing chaos, mayhem and fun as always, and on January 2nd, I started radiotherapy. I am timetabled to receive 15 sessions in total, ending 20 days later, and have already had 5. One-third of the way through, and so far, no ill effects worth mentioning. I am warned repeatedly that fatigue is likely, and imminent, but to date, the most tiring aspect of the process is the 50-mile round trip to and from the hospital. Several friends have offered to make this journey with me, but The Gardener will have none of it; he drives me, and will continue to do so, no argument. And I am very happy to let him; he’s the best companion. It’s a long and boring journey, and the variable timetable disrupts our mealtimes, so sometimes we take sandwiches, a homely element in an otherwise most unhomely expedition.

Radiotherapy is a rather bizarre experience, Blue Peter meets science fiction and alien rays, for which I was well-prepared by the radiographer who carried out the original terrifying CT scan. It took a couple of sessions before I lost my feeling of extreme vulnerability when lying half-naked, arms above my head in supports,  while felt-tip pens were used to make marks on my skin, scarred and with patches remaining of the blue dye used in the first surgery two months ago . By session 5, I have become relaxed and unselfconscious about it, although I still wonder uneasily at times about those invisible rays that will disrupt the DNA of the cancer cells. I have signed the consent form after a frank explanation of the possible risks (heart damage, cancer) that may manifest themselves in 20 years time. I’ll be 91 by then, I tell myself, and unlikely to mind so much then…. If I find that I do mind, I’ll come back and tell you.

For those who want to know more, this little video (from another hospital) is a very accurate representation of what it is like to be on the receiving end of the alien rays. Except that the hospital I attend prides itself on promoting patient dignity, so instead of being offered a sheet of paper to cover upper-body nakedness as in the video, we are issued with a hospital gown to bring with us each time.

And what a gown! Limp, well-washed, i.e. tired, with innumerable ties that still manage not to close the ghastly garment adequately, I slip it on back to front to make that short walk from cubicle to treatment room. I ponder the intricacies of hospital gown design and manufacture – who does this? For a living? And do they know anything about how the ordinary human body is shaped, and why a gown could be useful as a cover for those scarred areas that aren’t so happily shown off, and that it would need to be functional in that respect.

The machines have noble names: Orion (11 years old and due for replacement soon), Pegasus, which I am usually on, and Phoenix, out of action at present, which means some sessions are scheduled on Saturdays in order to cope with the backlog.

The radiographers and nurses are all young, friendly, efficient without being brisk, and kindly. They use my first name liberally, and say “Well done!” at each breath hold. They answer questions: what happens to the radiation in the room? A: electrically generated, it ceases to exist as soon as the machine switches off; it can’t travel round corners, which is why the room is squared off, with a sort of unseen corridor leading to the changing cubicles. Aren’t they at risk of receiving radiation too? A: They wear little devices that alert them to the radiation they may receive inadvertently, although they retire to their bunker and operate the machine remotely once they have finished positioning me accurately with green lasers and lots of dots and dashes in black felt-tip pen that come off later on my sturdy post-operation bras. Yes, I’ve spotted the inconsistencies in these responses too.

Twenty minutes later, it’s all over, and I can don the gown back to front again and go off to get dressed and back to where The Gardener is sitting with other patients and their companions. A chatty group, they exchange stories, and common themes emerge: shock and terror at diagnosis, horror at the thought of having to tell one’s children, growing awareness of how life changing it is, coping with assorted horrible combinations of surgery/chemo/radiotherapy/medication, and, for me at least, how very lucky I have been to be diagnosed so early and to require relatively little treatment. There are some astonishingly brave people coping with far worse; they all have a story, but I have not encountered one shred of self-pity, other than my own, which creeps up occasionally and gives me a slap.

Then we drive home; I often have a little tearful moment in the car (well, little tearful moments anywhere, any time, to be honest), probably just the aftermath of being determinedly positive and self-contained during treatment. The Gardener drives stoically on; he knows that home is the best place for me to be.

And the next day, we do it all again.

Intermission. The second act is dramatic.

End of Act I: It’s been a busy time. The seaside landlady business has been hectic, tiring, fun and interesting, and the extra income has helped the cottage pay its way. It goes on, thinning out a bit as winter approaches, but steadily enough for us not to worry, and promising to be a fruitful year ahead. Airbnb has had a bad press recently, but for those of us in holiday areas, and not hosting remotely, it has proved productive – no wild parties or pop-up brothels so far! And many very nice people (and, often, their dogs) to meet and welcome.

Back in our rented home, the cats continue to love their life in this rural idyll. Squirrels and pheasants, rabbits and ducks abound, all interesting to look at and perhaps even stalk, but without serious intent. Scooter climbs trees, gets stuck 20 feet up and howls piteously for help until driven down by the lure of rattling dinner dishes.

The glacial-paced sale of the big house shows no sign of concluding, so we stay where we are, enjoying the peace and privacy, the trees and ponds, the big skies and wide views. We shuttle back and forth frequently to the cottage a few miles away to carry out our hosting duties. In comparison with our life here, the village in which the cottage sits seems busy, noisy and traffic-choked; we know this is not exactly accurate, and that it is still a sleepy place, but here it is unimaginably calm and tranquil.

Behind the iron gates we are just three humans (landlady and us), five cats and one dog, our cars and a drive that is often filled with scatty, easily-alarmed female pheasants, which ensures that our driving is slow and cautious. No one comes here except for friends and deliveries, although there was a hugely successful coffee morning recently, held in partnership with the nearby village to raise funds for Macmillan cancer charity; this brought many visitors, some, I suspect, for a rare chance to see inside the manor as much as to buy coffee and cake, and it raised over £1000.

This blog languished in the doldrums again, another slow intermission in our daily non-drama of Nothing Much Happening At All.

And then suddenly things changed, and swept us into another world of activity beyond our control. After a routine appointment in the mobile breast screening unit, my mammogram results showed what were described in the urgent recall letter, “changes”. The day after the letter arrived, to be read with violently shaking hands, I was in the county town’s hospital having scans and biopsies, and being told that same day that what was showing up was almost certainly cancer.

Eight agonising waiting days later, the results confirmed Stage 2 early breast cancer, “very treatable” but requiring surgery. A month later, the first of two surgeries was carried out, the second taking place after another excruciating and painful month. During those first weeks, we struggled with feelings of shock, fear, inability to tell all but a few of our closest family and friends, and coping with our lives running on two simultaneous but hugely different lines: running our Airbnb bookings as normal, being welcoming, chatting and friendly, and dealing with a life-changing diagnosis that rearranged our priorities, our plans and our sense of being grounded, and that brought me to helpless tears innumerable times a day.

It is a well-trodden path, the cancer journey (oh so many cliches!) and familiar to many of us. The death of our friend Suzi last year after a horrifying and aggressive version of this same disease brought additional terror until the final test results came back post-operatively, and showed that I did not have the type of cancer that she had. My version is very common, rather ordinary, in fact, and familiar to many women, and has a clear treatment plan with positive outcomes. But it is cancer, a bomb that has caused our lives to implode, changing everything.

The surgeries are over, the medication is being taken daily, a CT scan is scheduled next week in order to plot the course of radiotherapy, and we know that there is residual cancer to be dealt with and monitored. We are doing all we can to assimilate what has just happened to our lives. I have learned much about myself (not all edifying) and The Gardener (whose capacity to love and support has been deeply inspirational). Each day is different, emotionally volatile, physically taxing, and to be lived with care and attention.

So what to do next, blogwise? I feel I should start a completely new blog, a medium which now seems outdated and losing its original force in favour of Instagram, which I can’t get on with at all because of its impersonal and highly curated nature. I love blogging; I know I don’t do it very much nowadays, but I enjoy writing, and remember very clearly those first months of my first-ever blog, which for a long time had no one to read it. I knew I was probably writing just for myself, and that felt fine too. I could happily do that again.

The dilemma for me is how to write about what has happened, is happening, will happen. Another cancer blog – and there are many, some moving, some informative, some terrifying – is not what I had in mind.

I don’t really know what I have in mind….

But there are days when I just want to float a thought, a question, a feeling, or an observation, out into the ether of blogworld. The question for me is, shall I? Perhaps. Does it have to have meaning for anyone other than myself? Perhaps not. Watch this space.

 

Appearances can deceive

I have to say that I’m enjoying my new role as landlady. I like meeting the people who have booked to stay, hearing their astonished responses as to the size of the cottage (“So much bigger than we imagined!” (not exactly big, just more to it than the photos indicate), or “The photos don’t do it justice!” (not sure how to take this, as they are my photos and I was quite pleased with them).

And I like seeing how very different the newly-arrived guests are in the flesh, compared to their profile photos. These photos only become visible after a booking has been confirmed, a very good idea to avoid discrimination on appearances alone.

However, one guest made me rather worried when his confirmed booking revealed that he looked like an Identikit composite photo of a serial killer. A seriously unrepentant one at that. With large sinister specs*.

And then he arrived, with his smiley cheerful wife, and turned out to be very smiley and cheerful himself, no specs and not a hint of serial homicide about him. I said nothing at all when he brought up the subject of his profile photo – he had only just registered with Airbnb in a hurry, and the very old photo was the only one he could find.”It makes me look like a mass murderer!” he said.

And so we moved smoothly on to other things, like which local fish and chip shop was the better. After a long and fraught journey, Mr and Mrs SmileyandCheerful were ready for their dinner.

I said nothing either about The Gardener’s passport photo**, which on more than one occasion has been inspected twice at Customs. We expect this now, and watch for the discreet way in which this extra check is carried out whilst the customs official chats cheerily.

*In retrospect, maybe it was the large specs that did it. Many serial killers have them, it seems; yes, I googled them.

**Thankfully, The Gardener does not resemble his passport photo at all. It too has that suggestion of murderous intent about it.

Slightly disappointed

Guest typo. It was a cockapoo she meant. Smallish dog. Well-behaved, apparently.

I think a cockatoo might have been more fun, though.

Back on the coalface

After years of irritating my working friends by declaring – often – how wonderful it is to be retired, I suddenly find myself rather busy! As in slightly-work-like busy. I am now a short-term holiday let landlady.

Tobias Cottage went live on Airbnb in May, and bookings came in quickly. Rather haphazard bookings, because getting the hang of Airbnb’s complicated website took a while, and some people bagged a great bargain while I sorted out my pricing, but that’s ok, I guess. I switched off Instant Booking, although I know potential guests prefer it, and gave myself the opportunity to ask a few questions before accepting a reservation. Straightforward questions, of course, like “Who the hell are you, gang of potential axe-murderers? Tell me a bit about yourself and your travelling companions” when an attempted booking tells me only “Looking forward to staying in your house!” (4 adults and a child) or, as in a current issue, “I’m bringing my well-behaved cockatoo” – I’m still trying to discover whether she means a bird or a misspelled mixed-breed dog.

My first guests arrived the other day, to a spotlessly clean cottage (I’d still woken up in the small hours fretting about when the ceiling fan upstairs was last dusted, and had to get over there to double-check before their arrival) and a freshly-baked marmalade cake; they loved it all, and we loved them; a wonderful start to what I know can be a challenging way to make a bit of a living. Especially for someone who could almost make a living out of droning on about the joys of retirement…..

From years of never being quite sure what day of the week it is, I now have to manage a bookings calendar. This in itself feels like meaningful work.

And then there are the Facebook forums for hosts. They provide a huge amount of essential information, friendly advice and assistance, and a wealth of stories. Horror stories, more often than not, exposing the general public as fussy, filthy, idle, dishonest, stupid and ever-willing to ruin your bedding, smuggle in unauthorised friends/dogs, run the heating full blast with all the windows open, and arrive hours later than the check in time. But after reading some truly terrifying tales, some with photographs, someone will remind us all that the forums are there to allow hosts to vent, and that mostly guests are unproblematic, and some are even wonderful. So we’ll see.

So far, it’s fun! And a welcome addition to a retirement pension (see, had to get the R word in again). The Gardener is living for the day that his State pension kicks in – he has to wait until September, poor man, for his princely allowance – but meanwhile is pursuing his usual summer regime: mowing and moaning. He is excessively busy, because of the rate of growth of grass in so much rain, and tired. He says he’ll never afford to retire.

The cats carry on much as before: in one door, out the other, many many times a day. Millie has had tonsillitis, unusual in cats, the vet tells me, and hasn’t quite picked up since, but continues to make the most of her life here, carefree, car-free, and with many little creatures to er… observe with interest.

It is almost a year since our friend Suzi died; her mother gave me some money and asked if we’d plant a yellow rose in our garden in her memory. We did, although it had to go in a large pot, and this week it opened its first bloom.

I’m sorry she isn’t here to listen with righteous indignation to other people’s tales of their guests from hell; she’d have loved every minute of her beloved Tobias Cottage’s transformation, and laughed heartily at my new-found ability to manage a calendar.