Now in the last few days of the second 'chemo cycle'. I went to the Cancer Centre at the QEH last Thursday for my regular three weekly check-up and was seen by the specialist nurse and the pharmacist. I was pleased - on the principle that you are more likely to be on the schedule of those with the most elevated status when there is some perceived problem. So, my record of an early appointment with the oncology consultant, then with his registrar and now with the pharmacist could be viewed as a promising trend. I'm hoping that on my next visit I get to be seen by the tea-lady.

There was some concern, however, about my raised blood pressure and a suggested doubling of the hypertension medication but when I asked for feedback on my progress they were very positive.

And speaking of the positive - we've now been on our first proper holiday since the traumatic days of late spring. We spent three nights in the Lake District in a National Trust cottage little changed since the 1920s. Together with Di's sister, Liz, her husband Chris, Chloe their daughter and Mike, Chloe's partner, we explored the unbelievably perfect landscape around Great Langdale. One morning, rising before the others, I walked out onto the hillside and began to climb. After only a few hundred feet I was totally exhausted. Interested as I am in amateur dramatics, I decided this was a personal, portentous, watershed; those peaks of yesteryear would not be revisited; no more would I look down on the valleys, birds and diminutive lakes from some high mountain. I returned to the cottage, a chastened man of Wordsworthian proportions (we'd visited Dove cottage the previous day). After a breakfast that tasted of sawdust we commenced our excursion over Lingmoor Fell (no relation). A couple of, at times, admittedly very tough, hours later we stood on the top of Brown How; looking down on the valleys, birds and diminutive..........

I spoke to Claire the other day. Our conversation turned to the way she had responded to concerns for my health. She said that the time spent visiting us over the summer and reflecting on the circumstances since her return to the US had revealed an appreciation of the important things in life and a new directness in expressing herself. This realisation took me back to those earlier posts about the 'silver lining' and the Steve Jobs quotation - this experience is not confined to the 'patient' but is shared with those who are most closely connected. It felt like a significant moment.

As will be, I hope, the steroid injections I am due to have administered to my lumbar spine at the Royal Orthopaedic Hospital next week during my drug-free 'holiday'.