It is incredible how quickly things change.
At the moment, since the weekend - I got overexcited and suspect I stood up too much - I am hobbling about like an old man. It's probably a combination of muscle tiredness and the cancer in my bones. Whatever it is, I feel like I'm barely recognisable not just from last year, but also from last week.
I have always loved to walk. Given the time, I would happily drift around London for an hour or two, working out the routes from Waterloo to Tottenham Court Road, or one of the company's offices, or - way back when - from Arnie's and my flat in Bethnal Green to Liverpool St, Bank, working my way slowly down the Central Line.
Bits of London I know as well as a cabbie, although vast swathes are blank to me. I am the same with Cambridge, Lincoln, bits of York. The routes come back to me like a memory palace, and remind me again, just in case it were needed, how lucky I am to have lived, for the most part, the way I felt like living, so often not following the quick and easy route - in this case, usually a tube ride - and doing things my way. An enjoyment of walking, coupled with a natural curiosity, enjoyment of solitude and fading into the background - maybe I should have been a private eye.
It is ironic then that currently - and hopefully it's temporary and not a permanent state - that even this pleasure is denied me. Cancer wants to take me apart, bit by bit, piece by piece, deny me old, simple pleasures. It is important to fight back, as long and hard as possible.
Seeing Dr G and the specialist nurses at the last appointment, they urged me to up the painkillers, that there's no point in being in pain. I have done so, but I feel like a wraith, transparent, an observer not a participant. And I am reminded strongly of Mrs Dubose from To Kill a Mockingbird, who, in pain from a terminal illness, had become addicted to Morphine, and wished to die free from it. I will have to find someone to volunteer to read to me.
At the moment, since the weekend - I got overexcited and suspect I stood up too much - I am hobbling about like an old man. It's probably a combination of muscle tiredness and the cancer in my bones. Whatever it is, I feel like I'm barely recognisable not just from last year, but also from last week.
I have always loved to walk. Given the time, I would happily drift around London for an hour or two, working out the routes from Waterloo to Tottenham Court Road, or one of the company's offices, or - way back when - from Arnie's and my flat in Bethnal Green to Liverpool St, Bank, working my way slowly down the Central Line.
Bits of London I know as well as a cabbie, although vast swathes are blank to me. I am the same with Cambridge, Lincoln, bits of York. The routes come back to me like a memory palace, and remind me again, just in case it were needed, how lucky I am to have lived, for the most part, the way I felt like living, so often not following the quick and easy route - in this case, usually a tube ride - and doing things my way. An enjoyment of walking, coupled with a natural curiosity, enjoyment of solitude and fading into the background - maybe I should have been a private eye.
It is ironic then that currently - and hopefully it's temporary and not a permanent state - that even this pleasure is denied me. Cancer wants to take me apart, bit by bit, piece by piece, deny me old, simple pleasures. It is important to fight back, as long and hard as possible.
Seeing Dr G and the specialist nurses at the last appointment, they urged me to up the painkillers, that there's no point in being in pain. I have done so, but I feel like a wraith, transparent, an observer not a participant. And I am reminded strongly of Mrs Dubose from To Kill a Mockingbird, who, in pain from a terminal illness, had become addicted to Morphine, and wished to die free from it. I will have to find someone to volunteer to read to me.
