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‘I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.

What hours, O what black hours we have spent

This night! What sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!

…With witness I speak this.’

I’ve quoted Hopkins because his lines so exactly capture how I feel, waking before dawn, even though I’ve had a relatively good night’s sleep (some delay in getting off because of nagging kidney pain – as if it’s triumphantly reminding me that apricot kernels have nothing to do with it) – but only one piss /  turn of duvet.

First thing on my mind is getting a referral to the Royal Marsden. That’s easy enough from what friends tell me and what I read online. The problem is getting one of the specialists to take you on. As a world-leading centre, everyone wants to be treated there, and the demand is just too great to satisfy. I devise a cunning plan. Once I’ve found out when I can be referred, I’m going to go to the RM and leave a personal letter for one of the two lung specialists whose names come up time and again. How to distinguish myself from the jostling crowd? An older dad, with a three-year-old daughter, please, I beg you, take me on for her sake, not for mine. I’ll enclose a photo of us together. If Maddy’s lovely little face doesn’t do the trick, I don’t know what will.

Then I burst into the heaviest bout of sobbing I’ve had since all this began. I’ll be begging someone for my life, just put the end off as long as you can, please sir, for my daughter’s sake. And for another reason which I can’t tell any of you dear readers about just yet. Why am I so upset? Because, if I’m a realist, Maddy will spend the vast majority of her life without me. If I enjoy the average time for people with my diagnosis (kidney, lymphs and lungs), I’ll have 30-40 months from now (it might be a lot less, or possibly 20-30 months more than that). That means that, if I conform to the statistical median, when I bow out she’ll probably be six, at most seven. Of course, I’ll make it to her graduation day (!), but lying in bed, watching the first pales shimmers of dawn light the sky, I can’t help also being realistic.

Far darker follows. I begin to think that it might be better for Maddy’s sake, cause her less long-term psychological damage, if I don’t try to cling on as long as I can. She’s so little still. But the more conscious and aware she becomes, the more my departure, whenever hat happens, is going to hurt. A major reason for my not having had children before I did was the long-term consequences of the trauma I went through after losing my father at the age of twelve. I just couldn’t face the possibility that any child of mine would one day have to go through anything like that. It was only after many stages of coming to terms with what happened, sealed by my trips to India in 2007-08, which I wrote about in The Setting Sun, that I finally felt fully liberated from the burden of dad’s premature death. And now here I am, in exactly the situation I spent most of my life trying to avoid.

Why? I rage, between sobs. It’s so unfair. For the first time it really feels like that. And there’s nowhere to turn for comfort. Hopkins, whatever the depths of despair he fell into, before transmuting his mental agonies into some of the most ‘beautiful’ poetry in English, always had his faith. The poem I quote from above goes on

‘God’s most deep decree

Bitter would have me taste…’

So, whatever he suffers, Hopkins’s God is always with him, however seemingly difficult or peremptory His demands. I’m not a Christian but I’ve always liked to think of myself as spiritual in some strange sort of way.

‘Why did you give me Maddy, only to take me away from her like this?’ I cry out silently to God, Consciousness, the Spirit. ‘It’s not me who is going to suffer – I’ll be with you, or fertilising myrtle bushes on the slopes of Mt Valier. But Maddy, who’s completely innocent, why does she have to suffer the consequences?’

Where I part company with conventional religion is on just this question of the suffering of the innocent. If the Christian God, Allah, Brahma, Jehovah created us, how can they allow Nepal, the Mediterranean migrants, the suffering of Gazans; and, the flip side of that, allow the corruptly powerful to enjoy the fruits of the earth, whether sanctioned and forbidden, with apparently complete impunity? History has proved we humans far too weak to break this never-ending pattern. Why the hell haven’t any of the Creators stepped in, if they are Compassion, Love etc. In the days when I toyed with following the religious path (and I once did), it was the failure of all my notional spiritual guides to answer this question with a shred of convincingness (is there such a word?) which set me on the one I’ve followed.

It takes Anna a long time to calm me down once she’s rushed round from dropping Maddy at nursery. But, ‘of the right kidney,’ steady and strong, as well as deeply sympathetic, she does. Even if the worst comes to the worst, which it won’t, she insists, things will be totally different for Maddy than they were for you. First of all she’s part of a very strong and loving extended family who all adore her. You didn’t have that. Secondly, the world has changed radically. No-one has to suffer in silence, buttoned up, like the war-generation your mother belonged to, leading to her long years of depression. If necessary, Maddy will have a whole range of counsellors, at school and outside, to help her express her feelings and her grief, fully and openly.

‘Not like you at that awful place you went to school, where you weren’t allowed to talk about what had happened.’

I nod. It suddenly hits me. Is my recent turn to life-writing – including this blog – a reaction to that stiff-upper-lip, chin up old bean, culture of repression which almost stifled me in my teens?

‘Besides, memory’s different now, too.’

I’m startled. ‘What?’

‘There won’t be the same sort of absence you were left to cope with. Maddy will have such archives of you on video and in photographs, she’ll have the diaries you’ve kept for her – and this blog. You won’t die for her in the same nearly absolute way your father did.’

I think back to Stew’s funeral and the beautiful loop of video of his family life which played throughout the reception afterwards. He was there with us in a way unthinkable in the 1960s.

‘But what about you?’

‘However tough it gets, I’m not going to get into a depression like your mother. I’ve got Maddy, my job, my family, my friends, there’s lots of counselling available for bereavement and…’

‘And?’

‘Marise had so few resources to support her, poor thing, especially while you were all away at boarding-school’

Of course it’ll be tough for both of them, Anna concludes, when and if the time comes, but she’s not going to break, nor Maddy go off the rails at school or turn to drugs.

I feel much better by the time Elena Bennett stops by to drop off some food for me. Hearing that I’m back on animal protein, she’s made something I haven’t tasted for decades – beef casserole. And it’s accompanied by two fresh salmon steaks. And then she’s off, as nonchalantly as if she’s doing the same thing all over Battersea, no need to make a fuss thanking her. But I must and do so here.

Soon after, a friend comes to take me out for lunch. For reasons I don’t fully understand, she’s asked me not to name her, so I’ll call her Nemo just to help the flow. I’ve known Nemo for years and she’s one of the people I feel closest to. She asks what I want to do and I suggest maybe a walk, somewhere nice, and lunch.

‘Have you seen the Ravilious exhibition?’

She knows he’s one of my favourites, of the generation of Piper and Bawden and Gill, so I take little persuasion. Soon we’re skimming round the South Circular to Dulwich, which I’ve always found a peculiar area, stuffed with elite schools, seemingly in the country, inaccessible despite its closeness to  Clapham Junction unless you have a car.

It proves a good choice, however, the lovely scents of early wisteria and lavender, the white and red candles gathering on the chestnuts along the park, my favourite trees. I used to visit Dulwich when my friend Hilly lived here. Her painter father, Alfred, a close mate of Dylan Thomas, and his wife Mary were always so welcoming, humble about their accomplishments and ever-interested in what the next generation thought. I wonder if Fred knew Ravilious? They were only a few years apart at art School and some of Fred’s scoring techniques in his 1930s output resemble, in exaggerated form, one of Ravilious’s most distinctive painterly gestures.

But first it’s lunch at the Dulwich Picture Gallery cafe. In homage to my need to build myself up, I have duck confit; and I follow up with clafoutis, accompanied by a scoop of vanilla ice-cream. Wow, it may be naughty, it may be acid, but it all tastes so good after alkali for five weeks! Nemo and I discuss things at length. Where I’m at now, what lies ahead, how she’s reacted to my news, her life, her family (her son’s sent me a beautiful get-well card), her work. It’s all intimate, honest, nourishing and fun, though I sense that my voice is growing fainter as the chat goes on.

Lunch done, we head to the gallery, past the most beautiful Judas tree. May’s always been my favourite month, the natural world so abundantly picking up its stride, the scents and a promise of long, long months of light and warmth.

 

It’s not just Ravilious I’m interested in. The DPG has several Gainsboroughs. Anna and Maddy are direct his descendants, though for the life of me I can’t understand why Anna and her immediate family aren’t more interested in him – or some of the other family luminaries who fascinate me. These include Edward Lane, author of the ground-breaking work of Orientalism, Manners and Customs of the Modernern Egyptians and a translation of one of my favourite books, The One Thousand and One Nights. 

Then there’s Anna’s grand-father, former Master of Balliol, J.V. Poole. His contribution to the Oxford history of medieval Britain, From Domesday to Magna Carta, 1097-1216, is a masterpiece in my opinion, even if it’s now been superseded. What I particularly like his sly wit (it’s worth reading just for Poole’s account of how he deduced that William Rufus was gay.) Imagine spending your whole academic career mastering a nineteen-year period of history to produce your single monument to posterity! Poole wouldn’t have lasted a minute in today’s University REF environment, with its demand for a hack monograph every five years, leading to the vast over-production which nobody, with the best will in the world, has the time to get on top of.

So here we are before the Gainsboroughs. Highly skilled and accomplished, if not to my taste. Portraiture as social history (celebration or critique of the social system of his day?)

As comparison, I offer Maddy’s first-ever portrait (of Elsa from Frozen, perhaps inevitably). Nemo was struck by it and so have I been. We think it’s very sophisticated for a three-year old, especially the abstraction of Elsa’s face and the expanse of blue in which it’s situated, off-centre. (Forgive a doting father’s praise.)

Then it’s Ravilious. Anna’s grandmother Catherine owned one, which is how I first got interested in him. He was an Official War artist and painted some of the most haunting images of the war before dying at the age of 39, his plane going down into the frozen seas off Iceland. His work is enigmatic; it has elements of Blake and Samuel Palmer, especially the engravings; hints of surrealism; a relative absence of human figures; a preponderance of pale pastel colours; and a strangelydecorative streak.

When Nemo asks me which is my favourite, I answer without hesitation. ‘A Wet Afternoon.’ I love the rhythms in the landscape and the perspective. Only later does it strike me there might be another reason. The figure is on a solitary journey, headed towards the church(yard.) Is this an objective correlative for how I feel, a week exactly before my op? And when I buy the catalogue, I’m afflicted by a strange feeling. Is it a pointless purchase which someone will soon put aside and forget amongst the thousands of other books I own?

Nemo drops me off at tea-time. I feel thoroughly nourished by the outing but, as usual after any sort of social engagement tired but tired. Catching up with emails, I find more exceptional kindness. A colleague has written to offer her cottage by the beach in Broadstairs if I want somewhere to convalesce. The day’s turned full circle this from morning. I go to bed and listen to some meditation music. I’m as calm going to sleep as I was agitated when I woke. How did I allow myself to get in such a state? This time in a week I’ll be starting to mend, taking my first step on that long, long road, through many wet afternoons, to Maddy’s graduation.

Anna and I both have terrible nights. Her concerns and stresses have been troubling her and she’s exhausted again, poor thing, even before the day’s begun. I’ve had intermittent ache in the right testicle, which woke me up several times and worries me. Is it referred pain from the kidney? A signal that another of the attacks I’ve been dreading’s on the way? Just as I’m about to foreswear all pain-killers except paracetemol, in accordance with instructions given at my pre-op. And I can feel the effects of yesterday’s walk across the Common. We’ve been due for breakfast at the Bennetts, and Elena’s promised my favourites. But neither of us is in good enough shape and we don’t want to impose our downness. We very reluctantly cancel – Elena’s gracious as could be despite the fact that we’ve probably put her to a lot of wasted effort.

 

In due course, once we’ve managed to pull ourselves out of our lethargy, we head to Cafe Nero with Tara and Maddy. They tuck into breakfast treats, Anna picks at a yoghurt – but I have no appetite. In fact I feel sh**, both physically and emotionally. But the show has to go on, especially for our little girl, so I make the effort. Besides, the place has good associations for me. When Maddy was very little, we’d often come here and she’s marvel at the number of red buses coming every which way over the cross-roads. One of the very first songs I learned at Baby Rhymes, where we were regulars all through my three months of paternity leave, was

 

‘Big red bus! Big red bus! Mini, mini, mini and a big red bus!

Ferrari! Ferrari!

Mini, mini, mini and a big red bus!’

 

Those were the days. Now Maddy’s more interested in telling the numbers of the buses than their colour – when I can prise her away from her ‘people.’

 

Soon, Anna takes her off for a play-date with Rosa. Imogen’s driving them both to Kew Gardens, where they’re going to have a picnic with other relatives. This is a rare chance of a few uninterrupted hours for Anna to push on with her book, so I head home to prepare for the visit of my friends Caroline and Jim. I’d seen Jim only intermittently since we left Durham and Caroline just the once. But both got in touch after reading the review of my memoir in the Saturday Guardian. We met a couple of times at the tail-end of last year and seamlessly re-established the old rapport of forty years ago.

 

Exhausted, uncertain whether the latter’s actually coming (he later tells me he never looks at his phone!) I decide against adding to the spinach soup I made yesterday. It’s Bank Holiday – let’s go to Social Pantry, which will provide much tastier things than I can. Besides I want a break from being in the flat. Sometimes, of late, it’s been claustrophobic, the metronomic movement between Anna’s and ‘mine.’ I need to get out more. But even walking on the Common, it seems, is doing me in…

 

First to arrive is Jim Lander, with a bottle of Rosé. It’s really good to see him for the first time since December, though of late he’s been sending plenty of supportive, and sometimes hilarious, emails. He was on his year abroad when I first met him in Durham, where he tried to sell me a bike he didn’t own (Jim claims it was the other way round!) Anyway, whoever it belonged to, the incident  cemented our friendship.  He went back to California to do his PhD in Roman archaeology at UCLA but always felt more at home over here, so he took a job at an international school in Surrey, where he worked for thirty years.

 

Recently, demonstrating his versatility, he’s joined the staff of the Fleming Garden, associated with his school, to stave off the moment when he has to fully retire. His real passion remains history. In 2010, he published Lincoln and Darwin: Shared Visions of Race, Science and Religion, a bold and unexpected conjunction which demonstrates the originality of his thinking. Now he’s working on a book about the Château de Bosmelet in Normandy, the adventures during WWII of the Anglo-French couple who owned it, and the effects of the German occupation and their construction of a V-1 launch site on the château’s grounds. He also knows a hell of a lot about Israel / Palestine (we have very similar views) and British politics.

 

Aside from all that, I’ve always hugely admired Jim for the way he’s dealt with his haemophilia. As he puts it, he’s been ‘in denial’ for forty years and more and has steadfastly refused to let it interfere with his life. He’s a real example to me of courage and endurance – an embodiment of the idea of being ‘of the right kidney.’

 

I’m not drinking but I crack open Jim’s wine as the bell goes again. It’s Caroline Pick, come to catch up and to take the photos for my ‘head.’ Caroline was an extremely talented exponent of the ‘plastic arts’ when I knew her at Durham, as well as being one of the university’s pre-eminent beauties. After Durham, she returned to Leicestershire, raised a family, ran the local Arts Centre, continued her own practice, and – like Jim – really got into gardening.

 

Both Caroline and Jim have of late become a little hard of hearing. As she puts it in an email, I’ll be having lunch with two ‘deaf gardeners.’ As my voice grows weaker and weaker, this promises to be fun. Two people with hearing difficulties and one who can’t make himself heard!

 

But we have a lovely lunch at Social Pantry. There’s a lot of talk about Thursday’s election and what’s wrong with British politics (sorry!). Both are very perceptive about the predicament we’re facing – we’re agreed it’s the most important election for a generation. Not just British politics. We discuss the Mediterranean migrants, another boat-load of whom have just drowned. If you think this is getting bad, I observe, just wait until Climate Change really kicks in. They’ll be coming not in their thousands every week, but tens of thousands, even more. But we also chat openly and easily about our lives and what’s going on, my illness, Jim’s anticipated move down to Somerset, Caroline’s kids – and gardening!

 

Later, when Jim’s headed for the station, Caroline comes back to ‘mine’ and starts photographing me. Every angle – top and bottom of the head, a range of expressions. I plead with her to keep the wrinkles, but iron out the signs of illness. Can’t wait to see what she makes of me, forty years on from her last ‘head,’ when I was in my pomp. I ask her to send me some of the pictures she took – my friend Janice has demanded to see the ‘wedding haircut.’

 

After the appalling night, and the excitement of a long lunch, I’m pretty wiped out and loll around the flat, listening to some of the music that Richard and Jonathon have burned for me. In the early evening, Caroline sends some pictures. I’m truly appalled. Do I really look like that? I guess I do. I’ve never seen myself so ill and worn. Caroline has a lot of ironing out to do if she’s to hide all that. But, as usual in this topsy-turvy Manichean world I now inhabit, bad’s followed immediately by good. A message comes from my lovely Mexican friend, Gabriela, with whom Anna, Maddy and I stayed in Mexico City in December 2013, on our way home from our three-month stint in New Orleans. They were due to fly straight to Barcelona, where Gabriel’s husband Santiago has a residency (he’s a very talented artist) in early July. Now because of my illness, they’ve changed their arrangements, diverting through London for four days, so they can come visit. Caramba! With Ames here, this place may have to be renamed the Madhouse Hotel (boutique, of course!)

Pride before a fall. I wake up feeling exhausted, depressed, in a (thankfully so far rare) foul mood. That kidney ache again, prodding me awake. I’m snappy with poor Anna (soz, darling.) Something’s amiss. I decide to lay off the apricot kernels until after the op. I’ve built up to four a day now and they’ve been the only controversial addition to my routine. I like the idea of the kidney cancer reacting badly to the cyanide and kicking up a fuss, even if it’s painful. But what’s the point? In ten days it’ll be out of me. Keep the apricot kernels for the lungs later. Better to try to get as many good night’s sleep as possible in the run-up to the op.

I feel wiped out all day. I just have energy enough to write two posts for the blog, but it’s like driving a long journey in second gear. Even a break at my local café, Social Pantry, fails to revive me. I’ve always got on well with the people who work there and earlier this week they applauded my success in persuading the owner to get rid of the wretched Daily Mail. But when lovely Rosie, who hails from Cameroon, asks how I am, I’m looking a bit pale, I’m non-plussed. What should I say? I can’t keep on giving her my usual cheery ‘well, thanks.’ It seems like a breach of trust after a month of dissembling. So I tell her. She stands there disbelievingly, tears welling in her eyes. I know she’s thinking about Maddy, whom she adores and always asks after, as much me.

Later, she comes to my table. ‘I’m going to pray for you, Bart. Every day. And I want you to come in the day before your operation. I don’t work Mondays, but there’ll be a little present for you.’ The kindness of ‘strangers,’ time and time again.   I can barely stay awake when I get home. My mood’s improved but I just don’t have any anything in the tank. Is it the bending and lifting on the deck yesterday? If so, it shows how feeble I’m becoming. Or is it lack of protein?  I’m almost relieved when Anna phones at 5 o’clock and says Maddy’s fallen fast asleep. Just like the other night. An hour later, our little girl’s still out for the count. I don’t think it’s a good idea to wake her up and drag her over to ‘mine’ for our intended ‘sleep-over.’ I’m disappointed, not just because I’ve prepared us all a simple meal; and so is Anna. But Maddy’s needs come first. Better she stays there. And, desperate for a good night’s sleep myself, I’ll stay here and review where I am.

All said, I can detect signs of progress in remaking myself when I get an email from my long-distance friend Tony in Australia (I lodged with him for several months in Bulawayo, southern Zimbabwe, in 1988). He’s another example of a friend with whom I have profoundly different political opinions on some topics, especially the Tories and Israel / Palestine, but get along with well. Tony’s pretty ill himself with Parkinson’s which makes his succession of supportive emails all the more appreciated. Unsolicited by me, (not that I minded), he took the first three posts to discuss at his Sydney writers’ group and is sending his analysis of the encounter. The group was fairly evenly divided. Some liked the blog, others were plain hostile, complaining about displaying one’s suffering in public in this way – one even used the phrase ‘pain porn’ (nice, I’ll steal that for myself!) I’m completely unmoved by the negative reactions. The blog wasn’t meant for total strangers like this group, but to keep friends and family in the loop in the most efficient way possible; and to offer potential support for fellow sufferers and their carers. If others beyond those circles read it, that’s their business – it comes with pretty explicit health warnings at the outset.

I watch the evening news on BBC; it’s all about the new royal baby, born at St Mary’s. The Lindo Wing bears no resemblance to where I was for my pre-op! Perhaps when I go in, it’ll be somewhere as nice as this. I can’t stand the fawning, and after half-an-hour waiting for real news, I switch off. I wish the ‘royals’ well as a couple but this incredible fuss is plainly hegemony at work. Will it influence the election?   I’m in bed by nine-thirty, listening to the soothing voice of Deepak Chopra, falling suddenly asleep, waking again just long enough to slide the Ipad onto the floor…

Typical of this roller-coaster, I sleep beautifully and there’s no kidney pain. Could it really have been the apricot kernels? Whatever, I’m not going back to them for the moment…

Soon after breakfast, I get a call from my old Durham friend Mike, asking how I am. He’s been in the wars himself of late, suffering a cardiac arrest in February while he was in the jacuzzi, following a swim (why do these health mishaps seem to happen to swimmers like Mike and me?) at his local pool in Devon. He’d have drowned if a sharp-eyed woman doing lengths hadn’t seen his head lolling into the water, Revived just before he drowned by the life-guard, happily trained in the use of a defibrillator. Rushed to hospital, Mike entered what he describes as a bizarre in-between state, neither alive or dead.

I’ve always had a special affection for Mike, not just because of his warmth and side-splitting sense of humour (one day I hope to share with you the caption he suggested for a photo of ‘Lord’ Janner cosying up to Michael Gove which I sent him); but also perhaps because it was with him I took acid for the first and only time. The highlights included one of the most skilful, but probably one of the slowest, games of table-football in history played out over what seemed like hours in the student union. This was followed by consumption in the adjoining café of probably the most thinly sliced Mars Bar since they were invented. Wafer by wafer we swallowed, looking at each other in utter awe on account of its sheer deliciousness, the myriad shades of sweetness enfolding our tongues in paroxysms of ecstasy.

Then came a trip (literally this time) to ‘the flea-pit,’ as Durham’s ancient cinema was unkindly known. Fleas or not, it provided another out-of-this-world experience. In those days you got a double-bill for your 20p ticket. I can’t recall what was on, but I remember oh so vividly how, during the intermission, I watched what seemed like every film I’d ever seen, replaying on the blank grey screen. No jumble or confusion. Samson and Delilah, Dr Zhivago, Aguirre – Wrath of God, they marched past like Banquo’s ghosts. Except that they were side by side. Somehow I was seeing in a thousand dimensions simultaneously and taking in every one of them. Why was it the only time I took acid, despite its amazing effects? Because when I came down, it was into the deepest depression I’d ever inflicted on myself, real crawling-on-your-knees misery. Never again, I decided, it just isn’t worth it…

Talking to Mike makes me recognise how large a part my old Durham friends are playing in this blog (two more are coming for lunch tomorrow.) I guess it’s because when we were there in the early 1970s, the ‘city’ wasn’t much bigger than a large village and there weren’t many distractions. Hardly anyone had a car, hardly anybody had much money to spare (I remember being outraged when a pint of Sam Smith’s went up to 23p!), so there was little to do except work, or listen to music, get high (usually on gentler stuff than acid) or drunk when you could afford it, go to discos in the student union and, above all, get to know people incredibly well. Add the natural openness of youth and you have the foundations of life-long relationships, the intensity of which I’ve not experienced to anywhere near the same extent in bigger places like Oxford or London.

Later in the morning, Jonathon, Anna’s ‘step-dad,’ comes to help me finish arranging the deck. Like Gideon, he’s knowledgeable about plants (and lots of other things, especially Indian music), so the job’s quickly done. Then we set about pressure-washing. This is a lot of fun, though I dread Maddy getting hold of the Karcher. She’d like nothing better than causing mischievous mayhem with it. Jonathon’s very kindly agreed to stock the now ready-for-planting pots while I’m in hospital, to evade the last of the frosts. It’s so exposed up here, on top of the hill. Despite the dizzying 180 degree views of London, it’s tough on plants, too cold and windy half the year, too hot in the summers. But May and June are usually good. By the time I get back from St Mary’s, I should have a blaze of colour to convalesce in.

Then it’s to Northcote Road, to meet the family for lunch at Buona Sera. Maddy catches sight of me as I approach and runs the length of two rooms to meet me at the door. It’s so lovely to see her, feel her hand squeezing mine, as she breathlessly updates me on the morning’s news. I have to play the role of Kristoff from Frozen for a while before she lets me eat my lunch. Yes, folks, I had chicken (slathered in lemon, of course) to bulk up that protein intake. Have to say, it tastes delicious, as do the roasties, even dripping with lemon. Tomorrow I’ll investigate other protein alternatives.

Afterwards, while ‘father-in-law’ John sets off back to north London, and Anna, Maddy and Tara head off to shop for wedding gear and shoes, I decide to see if I can manage a walk through the pleasant warm spring sunshine. It’s fairly steep up to Clapham Common from Northcote Rd (which used to be a river in the old days) and I’m soon puffing. I decide to divert for a pit-stop at Tim and Elena’s on the off-chance they’re in. They are – and the welcome’s warm as ever. Elena makes me one of the delicious coffees she and Tim specialise in and we sit out on the sunny terrace discussing final details of the wedding (remember, they’re going to be our witnesses.) They so kindly offer to sweep round and pick us all up in a swish car (neither Anna nor I have one.) Their daughter Isi seems delighted that she’ll be walking behind us up the ‘aisle’ with Maddy. Elena’s investigating bridesmaid’s outfits. I’d love Maddy to wear Anna’s old one, but it’s probably beyond repair.

I manage to recruit myself sufficiently to continue the walk and get as far as the Victorian band-stand in the middle of Clapham Common. I used to run round the whole outside perimeter, three and a half miles, sometimes twice round, when I was in my pomp. Now I’m gasping and coughing after barely a mile’s snail-like progress. Is this what my novelistic hero Walter experienced when his TB set in? (I should know, but you get what I mean) It makes me wonder why they’re not chopping out the infection from the lungs, as they often used to do with TB ‘spots’ before the war. It was a hazardous operation then, for sure. But these days? It’s something to ask Mr Khoubehi’s Registrar when I speak to her this week.

I hobble over later to Anna’s, feeling a little dizzy by the time I get there. Have I over-done it again or is it just the heat? Cousin Tara, who’s come for a ‘sleep-over,’ and Maddy are ensconced on the sofa, watching kids’ t.v. Apparently I’ve missed a good laugh. Our little girl was in a bit of a mood when they first got back, despite her utterly gorgeous new wedding shoes. When Tara asked why she was being grumpy, Maddy apparently folded her arms (how did she come to associate this gesture with being pissed off?), frowned and pronounced. ‘I’m never grumpy. Just serious. Huh!’

Soon a restored Maddy’s eaten, bathed and in bed, where I recount the latest in the adventures of Kaa, which she insists on these days to the exclusion of everything else (I’m flattered!). Tara, Anna and I settle back in the living-room. What’s on t.v. tonight?  Anna reminds me about The C-Word, a new film about someone blogging about their cancer. Of course I should watch it. But not just now, I decide – later, on I-player (unless any of you kind folk out there recorded it?). It’s Bank Holiday Sunday and Tara’s here and I don’t know how I might react to something so close to home. So I second Tara’s suggestion, the remake of St Trinian’s. It’s really silly but lots of fun and at different times we all fall about at the gags. Perfect Bank Holiday relaxation.

‘We mustn’t ever let Maddy see St Trinian’s,’ I laugh, as the credits roll, ‘she’ll insist on going there instead of Wix.’

Dear family, friends and ‘followers,’

This time in a week I will be under the knife. Consequently, I anticipate a bit of a hiatus in this blog, as there will probably be this week-end owing to the wedding, honeymoon etc (I’ll try to update you on these events next Monday when we’re back, not least to help keep my mind off the op next Tuesday morning…)

Anna is going to post a bulletin every day that I’m in hospital (anticipated to be May 12-17 inclusive), briefly keeping you updated with how I’m getting on.

I’ve only been told in very general terms about visiting hours. I won’t have anything more specific until I know which ward I’ll be assigned to post-op (apparently each ward keeps its own hours.) However, the general rule seems to be two hours a day and max two visitors at a time (we don’t even know whether this also includes / applies to partner/ wives). Anna will post visiting hours in due course.

In terms of visitors. I would in theory love to see folk, but only in the right conditions i.e. I am not in pain, high on morphine, thoroughly depressed etc.

So Anna and I have decided the best way to manage visits is that for the five days I’m in St Mary’s (that might change) is for her to act as gate-keeper; so that, for example, not too many people turn up at the same time only to find they won’t be admitted because there are two people with me already. So, if you really want to come and visit me, please email her ahead of time on

annahartnell@hotmail.com

or text her on  07789 886265

Please only use these contacts if you want to visit and rely on her daily bulletins for all other information. She is going to be extremely busy while I’m in hospital, not least with Maddy care and I don’t want her overwhelmed.

To be honest, I may exercise my prerogative as a grumpy old (and vain and proud) man and decide I don’t want any visitors until I’m back home and convalescing. It all depends how I feel after the op. Please don’t be offended if you learn this is the case. You have been utterly amazing in all the support you’ve offered and I couldn’t have got this far this relatively unscathed without your love and help. But it may be that I decide I just want to recruit my strength and not get tired, so I can get home all the quicker.

Further down the line, and assuming all goes to plan, I anticipate winding down this blog towards the end of May (when life gets back to something like the normal routine.) I’ll post on special occasions, like Maddy’s birthday in June, and when my lugs are next scanned but I don’t want to bore you with the mundanities of my life as it returns to ‘normal.’

However, given that I am (allegedly) ‘incurable,’ I anticipate that the posts of April 02 – May 11 will only be the first part of the blog. In the event that my oncologist puts on his / her black cap, I will resume posting for as long as I can.

Therefore, if you want to get what will be intermittent updates as they happen after 01 June – please ‘follow’ me. It’s so easy to do – just follow the instructions in the ‘posts’ entitled ‘Following’ (see left hand side-bar / menu on the blog)

Lots of xx Bart

ps: a proper ‘post’ follows later today

Dear all:

I’ve just received this letter which I’d like to share in case anyone’s minded to help. I know – migrants, Nepal, Syria, climate change, poverty, child abuse – there are so many calls on our compassion – and cash. Nonetheless, the predicament of Gazans is unprecedented in modern history, ongoing for nearly seventy years now; and this fellow seems to want to do something really worthwhile

xx Bart

———————————————————————————————————————————-

Dear Dr. Moore-Gilbert

I am a Canadian physician who has initiated an exciting project to Empower Gaza people to end blackouts in hospitals. EmpowerGAZA is a project to install solar panels on four hospitals in Gaza over the next year. To succeed, we need your help in raising $200,000 for each hospital by sharing and contributing to our indiegogo campaign. http://igg.me/at/EmpowerGAZA

The EmpowerGAZA  project was developed by my dear friend Dr Tarek Loubani and I.  Both of us have been working in Gaza in various projects over the last three years.  Power outages remain a daily reality in the Gaza strip, lasting more than 16 hours a day. Sick patients in hospitals are especially vulnerable, where insufficient power often decides between life or death.

After much consultation with health practitioners within Gaza, we determined that the best way we could support Gaza people right now, is to enable as much autonomy and self sustaining capacity as possible. The United Nations Development Programme signed on immediately, and on the ground logistics have been evaluated and rechecked for over two years of preparation going into the EmpowerGaza project. The EmpowerGAZA health project will save lives by installing solar panels on four major hospitals in Gaza. Solar energy will provide reliable and green energy 24 hours a day to emergency rooms, intensive care units, and operating theatres.

Any amount you can contribute will help. If you can’t help that way, please consider forwarding information of the campaign to people in your life. You are welcome to forward this email, or the message I wrote on Facebook. A fundraising goal of this size requires us to really spread the word and help in the ways we can.

http://igg.me/at/EmpowerGAZA

With deep gratitude,
Dr. Benjamin Thomson

Nephrologist and General Internal Medicine Specialist

Western University, London Ontario

(226) 678-7067

ben@benthomson.org

Happy birthday to Janice, Carla, Hilly, Mary, Ursula and, last but not least, Mike!

Apologies for the lack of cards etc. this year! I hope you have (had) wonderful celebrations.

All my love, Bart

I wake to May Day after a tricky night of intermittent kidney pain which prods me awake from time to time. International Workers’ Day (politics alert, so I’ll leave it there.) The occasion of celebrations and gorgeous singing every year from the parapets of Magdalen College in Oxford (hegemony at work, surely?) The student May Queen competition they used to hold at Whiteland’s College, part of the Roehampton Institute, where I taught before Goldsmiths (gender politics are involved, inevitably – so isn’t everything political? How can I avoid it? Just not draw any lessons?)

And a month exactly since all this began. This time back on April Fool’s Day (how ironic), I was preparing for my day out with Maddy, Sam and Anna (how doubly ironic, given I’d last seen them at poor Stew’s funeral in December, after he died from cancer) at the Transport Museum. Raring to go, not a care in the world. Apparently cured of the infection which had caused the testicle attack. Fully recovered from the exhaustion of the day-trip to Cambridge – wasn’t that just the tail-end of the industrial antibiotics course I finally finished that very day? No cough. And now? As Yeats wrote of the Easter revolution in Dublin in 1916:

All changed, changed utterly;

A terrible beauty is born.

That last line captures the paradox of my predicament, which I discussed in an earlier post. There is a beauty in the Easter revolution I’m going through –  a far deeper and more intense appreciation of how, despite everything, I’m so very lucky in my family and friends, in the life I’ve led, in the power still to potentially create something interesting, if not ‘beautiful,’ through this narrative. Of course, I’d much rather not have had to go through all this. But these are big positives, even in the most shocking, unexpected and darkest turn of events to hit me since my father died when I was twelve. Feel amazingly calm as I consider all this. Is it the effects of Gabi’s guided meditation lingering on?

The fun restarts when Anna brings over her various choices for wedding gear and we consider what’s the best combination we can come up with between us. This time in a week, we’ll be married! I can hardly believe it. I’m sure any lingering fears and doubts Maddy has will quickly disappear in the whirl of dressing up as a brides-maid and the wedding brunch party. She’ll probably start demanding we get married on a regular basis. And me! At the age of 62! So often since Maddy came along, I feel – delightfully – that I’ve been living life backwards…

My brother Ames’s email about the importance of protein intake makes me sit up. Apparently I need 60g a day in normal life. Now I’m ill, and especially in recovery, I need to try to double that. Moreover, only flesh will provide the amino-acids essential for rebuilding. I check the packets of nuts I’ve bought. I’d have to eat a pound of hazelnuts every day to meet his target and I still wouldn’t be getting the amino-acids. I’m going to have to compromise the alkali diet.

Later, at the shops, I’m startled to understand what Ames’s advice entails. A cooked chicken breast, for example, has 27g of protein, a 100g (four oz) of cooked salmon 26. Can’t see myself being able to get the equivalent of 4-5 chicken breasts or salmon steaks down daily after the op, when appetite’s legendarily depressed. Besides aren’t these things stuffed with the growth hormones cancer apparently adores? Instead, I buy some organic hemp protein at Whole Foods. The greenish powder resembles wheat-grass and doesn’t taste bad at all. Still, getting four dessert spoons of the nutty stuff down every day is going to be a challenge and that will still only give me a third of what I need as a healthy person. I already feel I’m downing so many supplements that there isn’t enough room for food itself…

At tea-time, Gideon (see previous post) kindly comes round to help me make a start on sorting out my roof-deck, still in stricken winter mode. I have to get it sorted soon, if I want somewhere worth coming back to convalesce after the op. We sweep up rubbish, cut out dead growth, give the good stuff a quick trim where appropriate, rake the topsoil and start shifting tubs from their winter defensive positions back to summer stations. It looks so much better after an hour. We’ve accomplished a lot, but Gid has to go. Paradoxically, I’m relieved. Even with him doing most of the work, I’m knackered.

Then it’s off for my wedding hair-cut. Here’s a confession. I’ve never liked my hair, which is ‘fine,’ (ie thin), straight and flat; when I was younger I used to wish I had thick, curly, dark hair like my half-brother Patrick. It’s always proved difficult to cut and only the most skilled practitioners have managed to make me look anything other than a dick. So I was delighted to discover Marco in Clapham Junction and have stuck with him ever since. That’s twenty years now I’ve followed in his train as rent rises have forced him further and further away to his current berth in Tooting. It’s been a pain sometimes – half an hour by bus each way and, because he doesn’t take bookings, sometimes there are 3-4 people already waiting. Because Marco really takes his time to get it right, that can mean a whole half-day’s taken up just with getting a hair-cut. Vanity of vanities…

Now I just can’t face that trek. A couple of days ago I phoned him, explained what’s happened and asked if there was any chance, just this once, he could just possibly come to mine one evening after work. I played heavily on illness, the wedding and our twenty years’ relationship. He was very sympathetic but explained he’s short-staffed at the moment and working many extra hours. No promises, but he’d see what he could do.

Realising Marco was a long shot, I made a provisional booking at the closest hair-dresser to me, just down Lavender Hill. When Marco called back yesterday to say that he just couldn’t see how he could manage it, being so short-staffed, I felt bereft. For my wedding cut, I thought, I’m going to have to entrust myself to someone I don’t know. Damn my stupid hair. (Ego alert)  Now I’m off to Raccoon, praying I’m not going to leave it looking like one. In case it might help, I take along a photo in which I’m sporting a fresh Marco cut, taken beside a Pyrenean lake, many years ago. Not a line on my face, radiating health.

‘If you could do something like that for my wedding next week,’ I tell Enzo, the manager, ‘I’d be very grateful. And if you can make my face look like that again, there’ll be a very big tip.’

He laughs. We’ve connected and, as he studies the photo more closely, I know he’s going to do his best. We chat in the usual hair-dresser’s salon way. At least I’m spared the ‘are you married?’ routine I used to get so often before discovering Marco. When I mention I’ve been going to Marco, Enzo’s eyes light up. He worked for him before the move to Tooting; it was too far for Enzo to travel, so he started his own place. Yippee! He’ll know his business, then.

Indeed, he produces a pretty exact copy of the cut in the photograph. So next Friday I’m not going to look like one of the abused rescue animals in Jim Carey’s Ace Ventura – Pet Detective (a bundle of laughs if you haven’t seen it!) Phew! Enzo then gives me lots of tips I never heard from Marco. If you want volume, dry your hair with your head upside-down, starting from the nape, don’t use any gel except Bed Head (which I’ve never heard of), use a hair-dryer but only on medium etc. As I leave the staff call out, you look great, auguri, auguri! (How I wish I could discourse on politics, especially after Ed’s astonishing comments on last night’s Question Time about a future non-relationship with the SNP – whoops! – instead of this tedious stuff no-one else can possibly be interested in!) Still, for me, the appointment’s been a big boost. Though Enzo couldn’t do anything about the wrinkles, I do look 5 years younger minus the stringy scrag which has accumulated since December. Better still, no more wasting time going to Tooting. Enzo’s at least Marco’s equal and he’s just two minutes away…

In the evening, I get called back by Dr Pat Hanlon, a contact given me by the KCUK charity. I’d assumed he was an oncology doctor, but he’s actually an academic like me, at Birmingham University, where Anna used to work before Birkbeck. Common ground established, he tells me of his own experience as a kidney cancer patient.

‘You think your growth’s big at 6.4 cm. Natural enough,’ he says, ‘but believe me some people’s get to 20cm before they present any symptoms.’

The diameter of a puff-ball mushroom! With no warning signs!

‘The kidney’s so deep inside the body, that’s what allows it to grow like that.’

He’s full of interesting facts and figures. I’m the exact median age for contracting the disease. Research is indeed increasingly linking it (and some other cancers) to that tiny mould in ware-house-stored cereals and grains which I mentioned before. Six months to six years is indeed the normal prognosis for someone in whom it’s shifted to the lungs. So, if I’m average in that respect, too (which of course I’m not!), that gives me 30-40 months. He takes me through what to expect from the operation, how long recovery time might be and when I might expect to be fully back on my feet. But he stresses that there’s no rule of thumb. Every case is potentially unique.

‘And afterwards?’

He, too, advises me to try to transfer to the Royal Marsden. The leading place in the world for cancers of the lung, with several new experimental therapies on tap. If none are yet available at C and W / St Mary’s, he says, I’m most likely to be put on biological therapies – not the (female) hormone therapy which poor Larry had to undergo (apologies for the mistake.) But their side-effects sound pretty unpleasant in their own right.

By the time we’ve finished, however, I’m in much less dread than I’ve been from time to time about being sliced open. I feel almost cocky as I head to bed.

Another rough night. No sweats, for some reason, but a persistent nagging ache in the kidney which conquers the single nurofen I’ve started taking to get me off to sleep. I’m grateful that I haven’t had another real attack. But I still feel there’s one waiting, ready to ambush me. This sort of night makes me particularly apprehensive.

 

I’m also a little perturbed by an email I get from a colleague who’s only recently heard the news. Its’ very generous, but it does sound a little bit like the kind of tribute you’d expect at a funeral! That’s off-set by one from an old Oxford friend, Mark Roper, a talented poet and now opera libretto-writer, who lives in Ireland. A passionate Wolves fan all his life (what a cross to bear!), he once told me that he hoped to retire to a house on a street abutting Molyneux. Good job he didn’t. It would have halved in value (to about £50) now his team’s moved to a swanky new stadium elsewhere. Mark writes in both serious and comic vein. Had he known of our trawl for honeymoon venues (he’s arrived on the blog late), he’d have recommended Wolverhampton. Not only does it have a lake, as requested, it even has a park! I wonder if the former’s of the boating variety and situated in said park. At least he didn’t get the chance to suggest going to a Wolves game as our honeymoon centre-piece.

 

 

 

Thursday’s highlights include another visit from Gabi (see previous post). My counselling psychologist friend has come to give me a guided meditation based on the c.d. she left last time. I’m doubly grateful because she’s fitting me in while getting ready to dash off to Rumania tomorrow for her mother’s 85^th birthday. Before we begin, we compare experiences of being mothered and the difficulties of growing up with one who’s depressed. Gabi’s been luckier than me insofar as she’s been able to work through the burden this entailed with a parent who’s not only still alive, but is now determined to make the best of every minute she has left. We then settle down in Lotus position on my floor and for 35 minutes (it feels timeless), she talks fluently. It’s different to Deeepak Chopra, but Gabi has a lovely soothing voice with a faintly exotic accent which keeps me alert to all the exercises she offers in relation to living in the moment, to manage anxiety about the future, especially the operation, which is beginning to loom on the horizon.

 

I come out of it deeply refreshed and feeling completely centred again. Then we discuss writing as a mode of living in the moment. First of all, because to have something to write about, you have to live both intensely and self-reflectingly in the present. Secondly, because when you’re actually writing, it requires a concentration on the moment of just the kind she’s been advocating. I feel reassured. I’ve had moments of thinking this blog is Ego, alongside the useful functions it performs of keeping everyone in the loop who wants to be. Now I understand more clearly my earlier comments about the relationship between writing and life. It’s a life-line in more than way, offering benefits parallel to other ways of living in the moment.

 

Once Gabi’s left, I go the wardrobe in my study. Time to start thinking about what to wear for the wedding. I slightly dread it opening it. The flat’s been infested by tiny clothes moths, some of which have evidently survived last summer’s industrial purge of all the carpets where they used to lay their eggs. They seem to do just as well in the dusty book-shelves of my study. I’ve been at war with them since spring began, methodically eliminating each one I see before they can spread to the rest of the flat again. Good job I’m spending so long up here – and they show up beautifully on the white ceiling where they sit around waiting for a shag. The beautiful suits I used to buy when I had more money than sense, what’s happened to them? Imagining I’ll just find shards and ribbons of cloth at the bottom of each plastic protector sleeve, I’m very pleasantly surprised. The smell of cedar balls I’ve placed there from time to time seems to have kept the b’stards at bay.

 

Not that I want to wear a suit. Something jaunty and colourful, with a straw hat, even a boater, perhaps. Depends partly on what Anna chooses, I guess, so I ring her to discuss. We’ve ummed and aah’d about whether to take Maddy out of nursery for the ceremony next Friday. That might sound strange, but as you’ll see, we’ve had reason to been afraid about how she might react. But we’ve now decided she should come. First of all, I’ve urged that when she’s older and sees the film my friend Paul’s going to do for us, she might be really hurt that she wasn’t present. Second because we’ve decided to widen the wedding brunch beyond Paul and our two witnesses to encompass Anna’s London family. To that end, we recently decided that Maddy should be a bridesmaid at the ceremony, alongside Isi, Tim and Elena’s daughter. Ever helpful, the Bennetts have expressed their delight at the idea.

 

[What follows is partly my dramatisation of Anna’s account of her early evening with Maddy.] Breaking the news to her in the playground, Anna’s startled when our little girl bursts into boiling tears.

‘But I wanted to marry you both,’ she sobs.

She’s inconsolable for quite a while as Anna tries to reassure her that most of her friends’ parents are married and that, in our case, it won’t make any difference to our day-to-day lives.

‘You promise you won’t be going away to live somewhere else then?’

Maddy’s watched too many Disney films where heroine and husband decamp to start their new life. Especially Cinderella, which is threatening to displace Frozen as her favourite.

 

As Anna tells me the story, I feel chilled by this glimpse of the absolute childhood terror to which our normally so-confident girl has succumbed. I think back to how desperately she clung to Anna’s leg on Wednesday evening. All her normal routine (with me) disrupted and now this! I recall a nightmare of my own, when I was a little older than her. I was in a cave, overlooking the Manyoni-Dodoma road in central Tanganyika, waiting for my family to pick me up (why, this scenario? don’t expect a rational answer…) I hear the sound of the family lorry approaching but, to my horror, it doesn’t stop. I see my parents up front, my siblings standing in the back, eyes screwed up against the glare, hair flattened by the hot wind. But however hard I shout I can’t attract their attention. Abject with terror, I watch the spout of dust from the unmade road die down behind the lorry as it speeds my family further and further away.

 

Only back at Anna’s does Maddy begin to calm down. Soon enough – living in the moment – she’s starts to get in the mood, asking if she can wear her mother’s old bridesmaid’s dress which she first donned at Easter (see previous post). She gives sage advice on what Anna should wear, insisting it be what our little girl symptomatically calls the ‘Cinderella’ dress, a lovely gown which Anna brought for another wedding but was unable in the end to attend. It’s been sitting in her wardrobe, waiting for the right occasion. It’ll go well with what I have in mind, even if Anna’s bought something else for next Friday…I’m getting excited, too, by all this wedding talk…

 

I think about heading over to join in the fun. But I have a problem to deal with first. A while ago, I wrote to my old friend Larry’s wife, asking if I could have a photo of him. I didn’t explain why. Yesterday I wrote again, this time explaining why and directing her to the blog. Her reply quickly comes, with a beautiful photo of Larry and expressions of dismay at what’s befallen me. But Jane’s evidently in a very bad way herself, all these months on from Larry’s death and I feel awful to have pressed her. She’s back in the house where they lived outside St Girons, making her third attempt to settle back there. I think long and hard about offering advice, but being a preachy sod, as well as a concerned one, in the end I do. First, I suggest, remembering my mother’s life-path after my father’s death, Larry’s thinking there’s no way he wants Jane to be single and mourning him all her life. She’s barely in her fifties, after all. When the time’s ripe, and you feel ready, Jane, I advise… Second, I hint that going back’s maybe been a mistake (I’m damn sure it has been). She’s going to be overwhelmed by memories. Move somewhere new, maybe La Rochelle, where they’d been thinking of decamping to before Larry fell ill…

 

I’ve barely pressed the send button when I get a reply. She’s really grateful for the support and advice. What do I think about Spain? But as for men, Larry will always be the only one for her. Give yourself as much time as you need, I repeat, and don’t look for someone to replace him, rather a friend or companion, you’ve so much still to offer and be offered. She says she’s been in floods of tears since getting my last message but one, as she trawls through photos of Larry looking for another to send. Is this typical of the grief that survivors’ partners suffer, whether they show it or not? I haven’t thought about it enough. Is this what my mother Marise went through all the long years of my adolescence, hiding it from us, before she was able to move somewhere completely new and different, on the other side of the world? I think about my conversation with Gabi with a twinge of shame. And Anna?

 

My thoughts inevitably return to Larry and the good times we had in St Girons. Since I’ve been dipping in and out of Yeats today, I’ll mention one remarkable gift he had. He could quote from memory whole poems of Yeats, even long ones, one after the other, declaiming in his beautiful baritone Dublin accent. My guests and I would listen, mesmerised, after a summer supper on the terrace overlooking my wonderful garden. Jane’s expressed the hope that somehow Larry and I will meet again. I really hope so too, but – as Saint Augustine reflected while considering when to turn his back on his youthful libertine ways – not just yet.

 

When we do meet again, the fecker’s going tease me rotten about how I wasted my life being abstemious and keeping fit when, like him, I could have been drinking gin, gorging on red meat and smoking for Eire / England. Once, when I was thinking of running yoga / pilates holidays in the French house, he offered to come and give a lecture on the perils of hyper-ventilating, over-stretching and a vegetarian diet. I’ll get my own back by reminding him of when he strode stark-naked onto his balcony, in the middle of the night, using his high-powered air-gun to scatter the gaggle of slavering dogs yelping at his neighbours’ gate, behind which a bitch on heat strode demurely up and down. R.I.P. and slan, mate, I can’t help feeling you’re locked in animated conversation with Alan Maclachlan (see earlier post) about who lived the fuller life of the senses.

 

 

 

[He] has not grown uncivil

As narrow natures would

And called the pleasures evil

Happier days thought good.

Whatever happens to me, I’ve been so lucky in my friends.

Tuesday night’s unseasonably cold. But despite that and my now-customary fan pushing out its breeze, I wake in the night wet with sweats. It’s really uncomfortable. My skin feels slimy, I freeze instantly in the draught when I get up to turn the duvet over and then there’s intermittent ache in the kidney area. A crap night and I rather dread the day ahead.

But once I’m up, there’s cheering news. Thanks to our pressure J the Goddard Inquiry into Historic Child-abuse is going to include ‘Lord’ Janner in its investigations. It just shows how pusillanimous the Crown Prosecution Services has been. Not to mention its arrogance in presuming to decide what is ‘the public interest.’ Goddard explicitly cites that as a reason for his decision. Here’s to Goddard, a New Zealander brought in because the Establishment kept delaying the HC-a inquiry by appointing puppets to oversee it. How embarrassing that one-by-one they were exposed as having links to some of the big names allegedly in the frame. While that’s good news, the bad is that his inquiry’s going to take years to sift all the evidence (Janner is, for the moment, just the topmost tip of the ice-berg) and publish its report, during which time some of the alleged perpetrators will have found themselves in Hell, which I sincerely hope will prove to be a bottom-less pit.

There’s further bad news. First the appalling revelations about child-abuse by French UN troops in Central Africa from a whistle-blower who is now  – no, not being praised, for heaven’s sake!  – but threatened by his bosses in the UN. The sheer, colonial, depravity of these soldiers towards Africa’s children echoes accusations about similar behaviour by UN troops in Kosovo and other places. The second is that the CPS is as arrogant as ever. In reply to my very polite and measured email asking for further information about their decision not to prosecute, I get a very snotty email directing me to the CPS statement abut its decision, which either does not answer the questions I asked, or does so only partially. To this was appended a curt (not to say outrageous) brush-off stating that this was the end of the matter and they would answer no more emails on the subject! So those of you who are yet to respond to my call to arms, please also remind these jumped-up turds that they are public servants, that we pay their salaries and therefore have a right to expect them to engage with our concerns in a more polite and constructive way. The more communications the CPS gets about their handling of this scandal, the more the pressure will build on this Establishment-toadying institution (whoops! Is this politics? No, I don’t think so, just what common decency requires…)

My optimism’s restored by many instances of kindness and concern in the course the day. First, there’s a fat envelope from my friend and former student, Lori who, as described in an earlier post, lives in Bournemouth. In addition to her detailed guide to places to eat, etc. sent earlier, she now sends a dossier on the best places to visit and the best half-day walks. These are accompanied by a series of hand-drawn and  -coloured maps which lay everything out very simply for the first-time visitor. I know we’re not supposed to leave our honeymoon bed-room next week-end (I wish!), but it’s very welcome, nonetheless, just in case BBC South doesn’t meet expectations.  Then the Gerda Henkel Foundation’s back to me, condoling over my illness and saying I can start any time which suits up to April 01, 2016. So no need for frantic juggling of my commitments to the Leverhulme Foundation and to Goldsmiths. Whatever happens, I’ll be out of Goldsmiths well before that date. Then an email from Kidney Cancer UK, whom I contacted a few days ago, the compassion of which makes my eyes water. Having read my blog, which she’s found moving, Julie goes to great lengths to explain what options lie ahead of me and how I might make use of the charity and its services. What really impresses is that it’s not a cut and paste job but addressed specifically to me and my concerns. How do they find the time to do this for every supplicant?

Later, my old university friend Nick Noble drops round, to both witness some the legal documents his assistant has sent with him, and to catch up. We were in the same college and read English together, too. Probably the tallest man north of Nottingham at the time, Nick was an instantly recognisable figure on the scene, as he was when he arrived in Brixton after graduation. One morning a little boy approached and asked: ‘Hey, mister, what’s the weather like up there?’   One lasting memory from our time at university was Nick’s love of Auden (whom I detested at that age) and we argued long and hard about the poet’s (de)merits. As with Auden, we diverge in many areas, from politics to religion. Yet he is one of the solidest and most thoughtful people I’ve known. When my tedious (to the general public) academic tome on Postcolonial Life-Writing came out, Nick not only worked his way methodically through it, but encouraged his family to buy each of the books I addressed to discuss among themselves. Trumping that, he read the whole of Anna’s first academic work, Rewriting Exodus: American Futures from Du Bois to Obama (2011), professing himself enthralled by its finely-chiselled prose and insight. I sometimes feel that Nick slightly regrets his meteoric rise to his current position as one of the UK’s top tax lawyers and his consequent inability to find time and opportunity to motor-bike it from Cairo to London, amongst others of his youthful ambitions.

So I was delighted to be of help when it came to his own publishing endeavours. Nick recently edited the journal of his great-aunt, Diana Lewes, who visited Jamaica briefly at the turn of the last century and produced a striking and dramatic account of colonial life and mores, as seen through the eyes of a ‘naïve’ observer. A Year in Jamaica  (2013) now nestles on his shelves next to the many forbidding-looking standard works on tax-law which he’s written (Nick’s available for a modest fee to talk about this fascinating subject at stag-parties, for best man’s speeches, children’s parties etc. Unfortunately, owing to the rushed circumstances, he won’t have the opportunity to expatiate on the more recondite aspects of medieval German Trust law at our wedding (perhaps at the big party later.)

It was eagle-eared Nick who first noticed my cough on March 29, towards the end of a family day out to visit him, his lovely wife Frances and daughter Victoria – who was captivated by Maddy and super-sweet with her. After my two left for London, Nick and I got ready to meet our favourite old Durham tutor, David Crane, for dinner – David (long-retired now, supposedly) being in town for a teaching gig. Before the rendezvous, Nick took me on  a short tour of college Cambridge – I wanted to see my brother Patrick’s old college, St John’s again, and the Copper Kettle, where Patrick occasionally took me out from school for a mind-boggling ‘high tea.’ I was very quickly – and utterly – exhausted. But not suspecting the true cause, and not wanting to spoil the fun, I steeled myself for dinner – when all I wanted to do was get straight on the train and shut my eyes. For the first time, I remember, I found it hard to talk. My voice sounded thick and strained and Nick remarked that he didn’t like the sound of my cough. Fortunately, I managed to get through the meal, though I cut it shorter than I’d have liked, just to get on the train and rest. Three days later came the chronic attack of kidney pain…

Documents done with, we settle down for tea and biscuits (just for Nick, of course!) We discuss how such a prognosis changes one’s attitude to life and I tell him how determined I am to have as many holidays with my girlies as I can. Nick’s recently back from Switzerland and he makes Pontresina, the winter resort he stayed in sound amazing. It’s added to the list. No more caution about money now. And if travel insurance problems stop me taking Maddy to Africa to see the animals amongst which I grew up (assuming there are any left by next year), then we’ll just have to make to do with all the places in Europe we haven’t been. Not to mention Britain. How little I know it, despite having lived here for fifty years…

Once Nick leaves, I have a long and helpful chat with Sam, who I went to the Transport Museum on the day of the kidney attack. We have a frank and honest conversation about her husband Stew’s diagnosis with cancer (remember I went to his funeral in December), how the news was progressively broken to little Anna, how she responded and how Sam herself coped. I feel reassured that we’re dealing with this OK in respect of Maddy at the moment, though I may have to go back for more advice further down the line.   However, my confidence on that score is shaken when I get over to Anna’s to find her, Caroline, cousin Tara, Anna and Maddy tucking into post-nursery pick-up ‘jam cake.’ Anna and Caroline need to sign and have witnessed some of the legal documents Nick brought over. As they make to leave the flat to find a willing neighbour, Maddy starts to get very upset, clinging to Anna’s leg and refusing to let her go. I’m baffled. We try explaining that mummy and Caroline are just going down the corridor and that Tara and I will stay with her. It takes a good ten minutes of agitated negotiation before the signers are able to sneak off while Tara and I distract our little girl.

While the other adults are out, I talk with Tara who has her arms round Maddy and in her lap. Her little cousin’s attention is now fixed on the awful Lazytown (the first time I’ve been glad to see it arrive on-screen). Tara’s a thirteen-year old who’s impressively overcome more than her share of difficulties in home life and is always poised and collected when I see her. As I’ve said before, I can’t find words enough to praise the way she is with Maddy, so patient and caring. She tells me that her father, who lives north of London, only has one kidney, the result of a motor-bike accident when he was a teen-ager. He’s been fine on the remaining one. Then she looks at me a little shyly. ‘Bart, would you mind if I did a 5k charity run in your honour?’ I’m taken aback. ‘Me and some of my friends want to enter an event to raise money for cancer.’ I’m so touched. Soon she’s rolling back onto the floor with Maddy, arms still wrapped round her, so I can give our little girl some of the longest, noisiest raspberries ever in her belly-button, while the victim shrieks with delight, all her anxieties forgotten. Kids. Talk about teaching us how to live in the moment.

Later, in bed, I ponder what it means to live with one kidney. Does it mean I’ll piss only half as much? Or twice as much? Will I have to get up twice in the night – or not at all ? And what of being pissed, of being on the piss, of being pissed off, pissing off, being pissed at things – will it affect any those things?

This post is ‘late.’ Soz. My brother Lindsay writes this morning (Thursday), with evident concern: ‘With a hole in your day from not doing the blog…you are probably struggling to keep your pecker up…let alone you chin!’ It’s not that, though of course there have been ups and downs. Just been so busy, and have had to prioritise other things these last few days, so haven’t been able to get back to it until now. Especially galling, because it’s my favourite activity, for the moment at least, and as far as I’m concerned, where there’s writing, there’s life. However, dear family, friends and ‘followers,’ I will probably not be able for much longer to offer my usual lapidary J style. My typing’s becoming noticeably less accurate and takes more and more time (of which I have less and less) to correct; then there’s the occasionally massively time-consuming fuck-ups with WordPress formatting (see the last but one post – it just wouldn’t behave!), up-loading photos etc etc. You’ll have to forgive any blemishes henceforth, I just don’t have the time…

 

On Monday, the last poetry books (forget the novel as a genre, much though I love it, poetry is the essence of literature imho) I’ve asked to be sent from college all arrive. Now I’ve got everything I want in this department for the battle ahead. My favourite poets, a shed-load of amazing new music, as well as old favourites, loaded onto my Ipad. All I need now is some t.v. series and films to catch up on. Can I confess that I’ve never seen Homeland? Or The Wire? (On the case with Peppa Pig, series 1 to what feels like 100, though.) This feels a bit like like the scene in David Lodge’s Small World (I think it’s that one) where a bunch of drunken Englit academics at a conference play ‘Humiliation,’ which involves fessing up to the great works of literature they haven’t read…Ulysses, even Hamlet, get honourable mentions, if I remember right…

By mistake, Maria at work has sent me my oldest brother Patrick’s Winchester school edition of Hopkins. But I’m pleased. There’s something very sweet about reading his carefully-pencilled commentaries on poems I remember as formidably challenging, as well as immediately rewarding, from my own school days. Since Patrick once taught me, at prep-school in Tanganyika, during his ‘year off’ before Cambridge, I’m looking forward to telling him what mark I’m going to give his efforts 🙂

 

Much of the day is, unfortunately, taken up with dross, mainly the legal variety. As I’ve said before, this is the last thing I want to be doing at this stage, so I say to all my dear readers who’ve been as lazy as I am, get it sorted at a leisurely pace while you still have plenty of time opportunity. It’s an odd feeling rethinking my will for perhaps the last time. What do I want done with my body? Before, I’d just asked to be cremated, tout simple. Given what I’m going through now, however, I want my organs to be available for transplant  purposes – especially given the acute shortage of kidneys. Let’s hope that, if it comes to it, my left one might be of use to somebody. Lest he or she forgets me, judging by recent experience, I’ll be making him / her get up and down plenty in the night! The rest I want cremated. And for my ashes to be taken to the top of Mt Valier in the Pyrenees, the place I’ve felt most spiritually at home in adult life, and scattered there. My good friend Paul Fontvieille from St Girons has tearfully agreed to do this. He once asked me, jokingly, if I could please carry him piggy-back to the top. Now he’ll have to do the favour for me. 🙂

Then I try to work through the endless pages about powers of attorney (zzzz), one for my health and welfare, one for my goods and chattels. The legalese is tedious in the extreme and, as a naïve layman, I just don’t understand why it all has to be so complicated. Everything has to be read through carefully, filled in, signed and witnessed by various different people, sent back to the lawyer for checking and then to a government agency with the appropriately Victorian name of ‘Office of the Public Guardian.’ Don’t get me wrong. I’m immensely grateful to my old university friend Nick Noble (see next post) for arranging all this pro bono and for the incredible speed and efficiency with which his colleague is dealing with it. It’s entirely my fault for not sorting out some of this before. Still…

Later, Anna and I meet at Clapham Junction for our appointment with my conveyancing lawyer in Putney. It’s long and boring, but reassuring, too. I’m transferring the title deeds at ‘mine’ so Anna and I will be joint tenants in common. This will mean much less hassle later, enabling her to bypass the horrific bureaucracy of Probate – in regard to my property at least. It’s only when I see the list of charges at this suburban (sorry, Putney – that’s what you are) practice that I realise what a huge favour Nick has done me. The lowliest person at the conveyancing firm charges £185 an hour, rising rapidly to £350 for more senior people. I shudder to think what Nick’s top-end city firm should be charging me…

On the way back, in the rising temperature of our stuffy stalled train, I get increasingly concerned about Anna. She looks very pale and physically uncomfortable. Once again, I sense this business is much harder for her than me. Seeing her now, I wonder with mounting alarm if it’s not already becoming too much. I suggest ways she can cut down the dross in her own life. Getting a cleaner, shopping on-line, asking the Balham members of her family to prepare meals for her, in addition to Ahmad, who lives far away. If we can cut out all that stuff, Anna will ‘just’ be left with her busy job, a big academic book to finish, her primary care-role for Maddy and worrying about me.

I tell her she should consider getting compassionate leave from work, starting right away. But trooper that she is, Anna won’t hear of it. She wants to reserve compassionate leave for the week of the operation and the following one. Besides, she can’t let her students and colleagues down. Happily, however, there’s only one more week of teaching and she’s negotiating with her Head of Department, who’s very sympathetic, to be spared the endless meetings which clog up university summer terms, especially where she works. It’s not enough for my liking, but I have to respect her wishes.

We go our separate ways once back to Clapham Junction. I suddenly feel quite crap when back at ‘mine.’ Instead of getting on with proofing the opening chapters of my novel for Clare, I waste time catching up with the news on The Guardian and BBC online. One item immediately catches my eye and helps to put things in perspective again. It’s a story about a migrant ship-wreck off the island of Rhodes and the heroism of a local Greek who saved many of those thrown into the sea. It’s the picture which arrests me most. How brilliantly it captures the drama, the exhaustion and bewilderment in the face of a beautiful victim, the man’s absolute concentration on his task. Dare I say it, in other circumstances there’d be a massive sexual charge in their postures and expressions. I can’t help thinking of Botticelli’s ‘Birth of Venus,’ which it both contrasts with and complements so strikingly. Only the Greek man’s wings are lacking…

Reminded of the comparative pettiness of my concerns, I turn to the novel with renewed enthusiasm. My initial impressions are confirmed – there’s very little to change. In fact it reads as if it hadn’t been written by me and (Ego alert, watch out, Bart) and I find myself increasingly absorbed in the story, the situation, the characters. Let’s hope Clare has a taste for quirkiness, black humour, and an engagement with World War Two from a rather unexpected perspective…

In the evening, I’m back at my G.P. Instead of the affable Rumanian, there’s another locum who isn’t up to speed with my case. I wish she could control her look of dismay as she reads on-screen. I try to put her at her ease, asking bright questions about her peripatetic role round different surgeries and how disruptive that must be. She relaxes and writes me the new sick-note in light of the surgeons’ latest letter. I’m signed off until mid-July at the earliest.

It’s no use pretending. Her expression gave it away, reminding me that I’m ‘incurable.’ Really? When I get home, I tear open the other package which arrived this morning. Half-a-kilo of apricot kernels, sourced with some difficulty. This is how it’s supposed to work. The kernels have a protein in them with binds only onto cancer cells. They contain a trace of cyanide which kills them. This may seem totally ‘woo woo,’ but I’ve nothing to lose, have I? I bite into my first one. Taste of an unripe almond. I’ll build up, one more each day, until I reach five, then stick there. ‘Warning,’ the label exclaims, ‘on no account take more than thirty a day. Risk of severe toxic reaction.’ Suddenly I remember an Agatha Christie I read when I must have just been entering my teens (no it wasn’t all Conrad and Dostoyevksi!). Sparkling Cyanide. Cyanide was the killer’s weapon of choice. Better take this slowly.

It’s late and I don’t want to disrupt bed-time at Anna’s. So I hunker own at ‘mine,’ preparing an alkaline supper. Later, nervously anticipating my pre-op assessment in the morning at St Mary’s, Paddington (C and W doesn’t do surgery) I trawl through my photographs again and find one which perfectly expresses what I’m fighting for.

St Mary’s is a downer. The pre-op assessment’s in a grim Victorian-looking building; from the outside, it resembles a cross between a barracks, a factory, and work-house. Perhaps it performed all these functions before becoming a wing of St Mary’s. The inside’s equally dispiriting: a dark and neglected warren of stairs and narrow corridors, little natural light, peeling paint on the grubby walls, cramped rooms which feel – even they aren’t – dirty. This is the other NHS, I feel, a world away from the light and spacious C and W. Surely Kate and William can’t really be coming to a place like this to have their second baby? There must be a luxury wing elsewhere.

It’s the usual rigmarole. Height, weight, blood pressure, blood tests, ecg. When the nurse tells me I weigh 12.8, I’m startled. I’ve lost a stone since this business began. Is it the insidious thing inside nibbling away at me or, as I’d prefer to think, the alkali diet? I’ve been having no wheat products, nothing with fructose (so most fruit has been cut out, no juices and smoothies), no chocolate, cake or muffins. I’ve replaced normal fruit (except bananas, which are mildly alkali) with avocados and tomatoes (both of which are, in fact, fruit!) Lemons, totally counter-intuitively, are very alkali, their bitterness apparently deriving from precisely that. I’ve noticed these last few days that I’m on my way to a six-pack, something I never managed even in my younger, heavy-duty gym days. Well, let’s not exaggerate. I now have close to a four-pack, but I sense I’m getting there.

The grimness at St Mary’s continues. There’s a very old lady two seats down who’s bemused by the map that’s thrust into her hand, showing her how to get to ecg. She’s very frail and I can’t believe the wretched nurse can’t find five minutes to take her. Is this place really such a sausage-factory? Since I’ve just come back, and found it difficult enough myself to navigate the various buildings and departments, I offer to take my co-sufferer. She keeps thanking me all the way. I’m glad I made the effort. To me she looks on her last legs and I’m not certain she’d have got there unaided. Why’s no-one here to help her, a relative or friend? She’s so old perhaps she has no-one left.

Despite my efforts to remain chipper, it’s proving hard to get a laugh out of this place. The only opportunity comes while completing my medical questionnaire with a very large nurse with a West African accent. Ghana, I ask? Nigeria? Gambia? The countries I remember are quickly exhausted by the shakes of her head.

‘Put me out of my misery.’

‘Sierra Leone,’ she tells me with a booming laugh which makes her ample body quake.

We talk about the current situation there. Then it’s a long list of questions.

‘Have you ever suffered from memory loss?’

I want to hear that laugh, see that quake again. ‘Can’t remember,’ I reply with a straight face.

It takes a moment for her to cotton on and produces the effect I’d hoped for. Can’t believe she hasn’t heard that one before; but she says she hasn’t.

‘Have you ever been in contact with anyone suffering from mad cow disease?’

‘Moo,’ I suddenly low, as she watches me, concerned by my lengthening silence.

Shaky, shaky, all over again.

‘Why are you here?’ she murmurs almost fondly when we’ve finished. ‘You’ve answered no to every single question.’

Because I’m dying. That’s why I’m here. The realisation hits me really powerfully for the first time when I get back to the waiting-room. In my absence, it’s filled up with the illest-looking assortment of patients you could not wish for. We’re all of us dying. Without the operations we’re being assessed for, everyone’s doomed. This time in two weeks exactly, I realise with a shiver, I’ll be under the knife. What if something goes wrong? There must be good reason why they make you sign consent forms? And what if my other organs get damaged in the process? A scalpel slips into my liver, or my bladder’s punctured? One of the team has a hangover? Or has slept badly? But I steel myself; the chances of a mishap are small. I’ve put myself in the hands of Mr Khoubehi, whom I trust (so much I always call him Mr.)

The question suddenly rears. What is dying? What does it feel like? I can’t speak for sudden ends. In my case, which is still the leisurely process it’s been from the time this thing established itself until the diagnosis, and even since, apparently, the answer’s complex. I posted previously about the feeling of being inside an invisible transparent carapace. Sometimes I have the sense that it’s getting thicker (it never gets thinner), making everything outside me seem a little more distant and unreal. So that I feel I’m sinking ever further within myself into this strange world where no-one and nothing can reach me the way they used to. And I’m also watching myself do so, as if I’m two people now, observer and observed.

Quite contradictorily, dying’s also living with an intensity I’ve never experienced before. Whatever my physical state, which goes up and down, sometimes rapidly, I have a furious inner energy which has to make something of every minute. That doesn’t mean doing something all the time (though in some ways I’m attempting much more than when I was well); but it means that I feel – and want to feel – everything with an unquenchable passion. Poetry, music, love, friendship, fatherhood, writing, all have an immediacy, a depth and complexity they didn’t have before. And this is the biggest paradox of all. After dying like this, how can one go back to ordinary life, its banalities and routine? Once I’m healed, as I know I will be, won’t everything seem just a little tepid? Perhaps I wasn’t really alive when I was well, nowhere near this extent, at any rate. Perhaps that’s the biggest lesson I’m learning. But how will I be able to put that lesson into practice later? At the moment, to adapt Yeats’s ‘An Irish Airman Forsees His Death,’

The years to come seem waste of breath,

A waste of breath the years behind

In balance with this life, this death.

Jesus, my mobile’s on silent in obedience to the notice on the wall. What if Anna’s tried to ring? I fumble it out. No message yet. I flick idly through the new emails which have arrived during my tests. The volume hasn’t diminished. A couple of names I don’t recognise, including a certain Thomas Podranski. Another ‘follower’ I don’t know perhaps? I swipe on through, deleting all the messages about forthcoming events – at Goldsmiths, the South Bank and so forth. Then the penny drops, Thomas Podranski! The administrator of a wealthy German educational trust, a bit like the Leverhulme. Last autumn, I speculatively applied for one of their grants to complete the book I’d planned to begin towards the end of my current fellowship, twisting my project to fit their political science and international relations paradigms. Not a chance, everyone said, you’re an arty-wafty. That impression was confirmed when I received a searching follow-up letter from the Stiftung Gerda Henkel, quizzing me, amongst other things, on my knowledge of Hebrew and Arabic. Minimal, I responded, though I do have a team of expert translators who’ve agreed to help. Exposed as a chancer, I thought at the time, straight into the bin with this time-waster’s application.

I open the attachment fully expecting a brief formal rejection. But look! I can’t believe it! I’ve got a fellowship for twelve months! 3000 Euros a month living expenses. 3000 Euros for a research trip to Israel / Palestine. And get this! 300 Euros a month for Maddy, because she’s a minor! If I didn’t think it would be the final blow for them, I’d run round the waiting-room hugging and kissing my fellow-patients. Motivation to beat this thing? Here’s another one, massive! Lucky? The word was invented for me. Suddenly even this wing of St Mary’s takes on a golden glow…It means I can either retire as planned from or finish the Leverhulme at my leisure and segue seamlessly into the Gerda Henkel.

Euphoria’s exhausting, I discover, on leaving the hospital. By the time I get home, at 2, I’ve got that familiar drained, empty feeling which even the Podranski email can no longer shoo off. But I’ve got to keep going. I’m doing Maddy-care tonight, from 5 to 10, when Anna gets back from Birkbeck. And meanwhile I’ve got to get on top of some more of this legal dross. I feel I’m flogging myself as I plough through more forms, getting increasingly wound up. The printer cascades out page upon page. Something like 40 with all the explanatory material. How the hell can I fit all this stuff in?

Thank God I’ve asked Sally to give me a hand tonight (remember I don’t want to be alone with Maddy in case of another kidney attack – it might completely freak her out). I’m still feeling frazzled when I pick her up from Blundell’s; but once piled in to Sally’s battered red Noddy-car (remember it got bashed up when we went to hers for lunch a while ago), my mood lifts again (upside down, you turn a-me…) Once at Anna’s, Maddy enthusiastically shows Sally her princesses’ ward-robe. The dresses come tumbling out, Arna, Elsa, Merida, Belle, Sleeping Beauty and so on, followed by a bit of role-play connected to each one. Later, while I get Maddy’s dinner ready, Sally starts preparing ours. So generous and helpful. With her Abel and Cole weekly organic vegetable delivery, she’s soon ready to begin her ginger and garlic stir-fry.

Before she can do so, however, something unprecedented in the recent annals of Maddy history happens. After a big dinner of pasta-pesto, beans and strawberries, our little girl shifts from the sofa, where she’s been watching Cinderella, to the rug in front of the t.v. Within minutes, she’s fast asleep, fully clothed in nursery gear. I look at my watch disbelievingly. It’s barely 7.15. I decide to let her sleep a little. But at 8, she’s still out for the count. Gently as possible, I lift her up and carry her to her bed. She doesn’t wake.

‘Hey, Sally,’ I exclaim when I get back to the living-room, unable to remember the last time Maddy was asleep before 9, ‘you’ve got to come round more often. Anna and I might get our evenings back!’

The food’s delicious. Then Sally gets out her Ipad. On Youtube she finds a meditation exercise by Deepak Chopra.

‘Come on, this’ll do you good.’

We listen together, eyes closed. Within a minute or two I’m in a deep trance-like state, able to hear and respond to Chopra’s instructions, but in a place of utter tranquillity. I don’t know how long it goes on for. But when it finishes, I feel completely refreshed and fully centred again, the frazzle of the afternoon a distant memory. I need to do much more of this – perhaps Anna would benefit, too.

Maddy’s still sleeping deeply when Sally leaves, about 9. Once she’s gone, I get out the legal dross. My mind clear, still and focused, I get through it rapidly. By the time Anna returns from Birkbeck, I’ve done most of it. She seems much better than yesterday, animated and enthusiastic. That’s her last proper class done and she’s had fantastic student feed-back on the course.

‘Jammy sod! Another fellowship? That’s three years on the trot. How do you do it? Congratulations!’

As we hug, everything seems manageable again.