Tuesday 24 July 2012

Missing

Two days - or is it three? - of unbridled sunshine means that soon we'll be complaining about the temperature being too hot. We're never satisfied are we. Well, actually  I am. I'm extremely satisfied at the moment.  I've run out of urgent things to do; all I have left to do is to compile a list of what I'm going to pack for our week away.

But there is one thing which is bugging me and that that's the fact that our cat has been missing now for two days.  I'm taking some comfort from the fact that a neighbour's cat has been behaving differently since the hot weather - making infrequent visits to his food. The trouble is that our cat has not been in for food. I guess he's either a stiff by the side of a road somewhere or has gone off to look for better lodgings. Yes, I know - sometimes cats come back after weeks away and I do hope ours will.

We moan about him. We moan about the mess he makes. I moaned about the fact he sprayed inside the van (to mark it as his territory) on Sunday. I moan about the fact he won't let me use the keyboard and I've had to put his blanket here so that he can lie down on my desk while I'm working. But after all that moaning, I really am missing him and there's a big hole in my life where our great big bruiser of a cat used to be.

Wednesday 18 July 2012

A flashback maybe

It wasn't a good night last night.  I don't know why. It seemed as if I was dreaming all the night but I suspect that's not the case at all.  However there was something that happened which was really quite scary.

I had a dream, or maybe a flashback, which was sudden, vivid, incredibly dramatic and terrifying. When I came to I realised I was lying on my back and that nothing was wrong with me. My heart was beating quite normally, my breathing was fine - yes, I did a very calm check of everything and was surprised to find nothing amiss.

Yet the sensation which woke me - and I cried out because I remember hearing my own voice - was of something having happened to my heart, maybe even that it had stopped - and that the very centre of my being, right in the middle of my torso was being pulled apart. It's nothing I've ever experienced before and I hope never to again.  I interpreted it (because it's one's nature to try interpretation and to make sense of the thoughts) as if I was being pulled forward, upwards - indeed away from life. That's why, when I came too I checked I was still alive.  I was awake in an instant but terrified and pulled the sheet over my head in order to sleep again - daft, I now.

Could that have been a flashback to surgery I wonder?  I'm off now to Google surgery flashbacks and see what is the likelihood that I retained memory of the experience.

Tuesday 17 July 2012

The bank

Today I went with my new business partners to the bank, NatWest to be precise, to open a business account.  I cannot tell you how many pieces of paper the bank official generated but, put it this way, you'd need a heavy-duty stapler to fix them all together.  Such a last-century system I have not seen in a long time.

I nearly started giggling at Mr NatWest's opening introduction. Handing us a piece of paper he quickly ran through it starting with "we're regulated by the FSA" and culminating, if we had a complaint "you can complain to the FSA".  What a joke!

The second time I nearly let everyone down (remember I'm the senior citizen here and the other two are thirty-something young men) was when Mr NatWest asked us what relationship we had with one another.  I so much wanted to point to my colleagues and say "well this one is my lover and the other one is my father".  I didn't as I didn't think that Mr NatWest with his finely pressed white shirt, pristine tie and wonderfully buffed black patent shoes would have been able to cope adequately with such a response. 

What I deduced by the end of the experience was that the process has changed not one jot since 1996 when I last opened a business account with NatWest, so it's hardly surprising that banking is in the mess it is!

A new beginning

Last week I became the director of a new company and tomorrow I seal my fate as a venture capitalist.  There's a project that I'd been trying to get off the ground for about four years. Upon receiving my diagnosis I assumed that it would never come to fruition and I gave up trying. 

However a couple of months ago I met a couple of guys who agreed with me that the idea was a good one. They're prepared to make an investment of their time an expertise alongside my money. So today (as I see it's after midnight) we start on the project. Exciting times, eh!

Thursday 12 July 2012

It's been a while

Hello there. Yes, it's been a while since I posted. I did try while we were away in Orkney but somehow the post didn't get through thanks to the unhelpful re-arrangement of the interface meaning that my mobile no longer works effectively with Blogger. I don't appear to be able to download any updating browser software to make the thing work either. Oh dear - I can see another expensive purchase coming up when I purchase a tablet. 

I can't knock the smartphone though. I've had it for about three years now. It took me a month to learn how to use it, I've never made a call on it but it hosts my address book and other information, is a camera when I've forgotten to bring one and up until now has enabled me to keep you all up-to-date on my progress when there's not a PC to hand. It continues to delight me; I was wondering how many knots we were travelling at on the ferry on Monday, I simply downloaded then and there a free app and was able to see precisely how fast we were going.  But with the tiny screen and my eyes not getting any better, I have to say a tablet does now begin to appeal. I'll wait and see what the reviews are for the Asus Google machine before making a decision.

So how have you all been I wonder?  I'm fine - much as I was the last time I gave you an update.  Interestingly enough I'm still conscious of a slight blotching on my skin - legs this time - not torso. It looks like the rash that took me to the doctor's a while back.  I've stopped taking all supplements now - apart from the cottage cheese and flaxoil, hoping that it will spontaneously go away as it did from my waistline.  I'm just wondering if this is something left over from the chemo which just needs to work its way through - but it's over a year since my last dose so that does seem unlikely. Perhaps I need to cut out the wheat again and the diary. It's not easy maintaining your body like a temple.

The cloud that is the six month check-up now begins to hover.  Not that I think such an appointment will be much more than a "how are you?" exercise.  I wonder if I get Xrayed again?  I've just checked on the blog. It was the start of February that I was given the all clear for the second time - so that means the letter will probably arrive at the start of August.

An interesting thing happened the other day. Well, two interesting things really.  An anonymous person commented on my comments on the Cancer Act - and then someone called Guy added his opinion. It obviously stirs opinion. In the light of the pharmaceutical exposées of recent days where drug giants have been uncovered doing things they shouldn't, it seems there's little morality in the industry. Why then should we expect it to play fair where cancer's concerned?