I was in the Cancer Centre briefly this afternoon to sign the consent forms for the radiotherapy. As these things go it was a good discussion covering a little of what to expect and what I can do to make it easier, including some temporary changes in diet after Christmas – I’ll spare you the details but suffice to say a temporary avoidance of my usual high fruit and fibre diet to avoid having too much intestinal gas in the system. Also, what might have been up to 12 months of hormone treatment will probably now just be six, so my injection in January ought to be my last unless things go awry.
The plan is that once the radiotherapy is done then I will spend a while recovering – it could be up to six months before my system approaches normalcy so I expect a period of regaining strength throughout the balance of 2026. I have some ideas about that: I don’t know if I’ll be able to run properly again, my knee has never really recovered, but I do want to build regular exercise into my recovery schedule and possibly beforehand as well, although I continue to walk a lot.
Anyhow, things are now in motion and, despite the onset of chilly winter weather, I can look forward to spring rainbows.
It isn’t quite a month since my first hormone implant and I’m beginning to feel its impact now in two ways. The first is that I find myself getting tired by late afternoon. I keep active, but a weariness descends; I do pick up again after supper though: the second is that it is changing trips to the bathroom – I’m peeing a bit more often and with greater urgency. I’m due another implant in January and I’m told that further and increasing weariness is an expected side-effect of the radiotherapy, which starts at the end of January and runs through February.
The idea, by the way, is that the hormones block testosterone which starves the cancer (and shrinks the prostate) and, under radiotherapy, cells are damaged but healthy ones grow back whereas cancerous ones don’t.
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I continue to write despite tiredness and make a point of writing at least a paragraph a day. In practice I find I have two or three productive days of several hundred words followed by a couple of days off during which I read. I’m quite happy with the direction the new novel is taking, albeit that it is in first draft and it will need a lot of kicking into shape when the first draft is done, especially around pacing and structure. How to fix both of those becomes clearer when the whole story is told and I can take a big-picture view. I don’t expect to get to that stage until later in 2026 once the radiotherapy is over and I get back to my normal routines.
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Meanwhile, I’ve been watching assorted programmes (online) including a spy series produced by Yorkshire Television in the late 1970s: The Sandbaggers. Unusually for a spy series, and possibly taking its cue from Len Deighton, it spends a lot of time on inter-Whitehall rivalry and manoeuvring, only occasionally venturing into action sequences and cynical brutality. It is undoubtedly ‘of its time’ in production values, stuffed full of tobacco products and, of course, rotary telephones with never a mobile or laptop computer in sight. Enjoyable.
Earlier today on a WhatsApp group, chatting about UK politics, a friend commented that it was 3 1/2 years to the next general election and a lot can happen in 3 1/2 years that will impact on us here. Being a cheerful sort I jotted down some of what might plausibly happen. My list, lightly edited, was:
A change in US president before the next US election;
Consolidation of Chinese trade hegemony;
Collapse of AI bubble delivers another global financial crisis;
Ukraine forces Russian retreat from Crimea;
UK starts talks re EU accession;
Change in monarch in UK or effective withdrawal of Charles from public life for health reasons;
Arrest and conviction of prominent Reform politicians on information supplied by the security services;
Major hurricane damage in southern US States and up the Eastern seaboard of US coupled with removal of disaster relief funding and infrastructure ramps up probability of, or triggers, US civil war;
Major flood damage in England forces climate change seriousness;
‘Black Swan’ event(s) – eg major volcano eruption, North Korea does something unfortunate.
I dare say there are other things I could think of but I’m more likely to put them in a notebook for future stories.
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