Thoroughfare toTupperware.

As I write I'm sitting on a comfortable sofa, warmed by a large log stove in Kate and Leon's place in deepest Herefordshire. Along with their part timber-framed farmhouse we are sitting their dog, Woody, a couple of unfriendly geese and a sizeable group of bantams.


I'll concede now that my strategy of leaving a lengthy gap between 'posts' in order to elicit a collective pleading from you lot, has failed. My only compensation has been a single request from Del that I make a further effort - because she at least is reading the blog.


I guess that the most significant development, of late and of a positive nature, has been my recent experience of travelling, beginning with a solo expedition to London. I had been to stay at Kathy's before - in the years B.C. I recall the view from the top-floor window of her terrace house in Greenwich of the London skyline; the glimpse of St Paul's, the Eye and from another window, Canary Wharf and the Millenium Dome. I'd thought these wonderful sights but knew that when she realised that long-harboured wish for a place on the river, the view would be even better.


But those plans went back to a time when John was still alive and more than 6 years had now passed since his loss to aggressive bowel cancer. We'd reconnected after a long gap in those early traumatic months. There had been many tears and occasional forays into our shared ancient history as fresh-faced, exuberant undergraduates in the late 1960s.


Then. when I was diagnosed she had visited Brum and drawing on her experience of a long journey into loss, she had some wise and calming words to offer.
 
But since her move to that riverside flat, I had been unsure about taking her up on the offer to visit. How would I cope with travelling on my own? Would she understand that, post-op and on-chemo, I am not as I was? So, when she offered to both pick me up from Euston and return me the following Monday, I was greatly and gratefully, relieved.


That journey from the station to Greenwich turned out to be more eventful than I would have wished. An accident a few days prior to our meeting had resulted in her use of a courtesy car sporting gadgets she had yet to master. On a beautiful spring morning we over-revved and hand-braked our way across the busy, bustling, thoroughfares of the city.


I had, of course, imagined the river aspect as described in numerous phone conversations but the reality when we reached the penthouse living space was simply stunning.


From the picture windows and the balcony beyond, the span in view was a cinemascopic 180 degrees of an expansive, tide-swollen, swirling, chocolate-grey, River Thames. To my right the Millenium Dome nestled amid the low-rise buildings like an outsize and unexploded, WW2 mine. Across the water the towers of Canary Wharf competed for my attention led by the tall, blinking, obelisk of One Canada Square. Ahead, on the opposite bank some considerable distance from the facing riverside apartments I could see the distinctive outline of the Gherkin and the Eye; to my left Wren's Naval College, the masts of the Cutty Sark and the sky-piercing Shard.


The lazy, endlessly shifting, riverscape is so different to the buzzing world at ground level with its narrow Georgian streets thronging with excited young tourists and local residents.


The weekend of walks and words went well. I feel I can make further excursions into  the old world where I once moved so unthinkingly.


But first there was another part of my new world with which to contend; the consulting room of my oncologist at the QEH Cancer Centre. At the end of my two-week drug-free period I returned from London for the news on how I was progressing. The young female doctor said I was doing very well to have reached this point, the end of five cycles and still on the maximum dosage of the powerful anti-cancer drugs. Apparently it is elderly, slightly-built women who suffer most from side effects and have to either reduce their dosage or come off the medication altogether. 


Which is a nice way of saying that the toxicity is diluted for fatties like me.


She took some interest in my new regime of analgesics following the visit to the palliative care doctor (see last post) and when I reported that they had made little difference after an encouraging start, she prescribed additional medication. 


I am now taking so many pills each day that Boots have submitted a planning application to open a branch next door to our house, I need special computer software in order to co-ordinate my drug regime and a large set of tupperware boxes to serve as containers.


This is the reason for our retreat to a Herefordshire idyll; our Moseley friends and neighbours are unhappy about the proposed pharmacy but more especially, they are distraught about a possible renaissance in 1960s Tupperware parties.