When It's Spring Again, We'll Bring Again ...

Mary and I are just back from a child-free weekend in Amsterdam. What joy! My brother Phil, his wife Rosemary and their family came over to look after our cherubs and off we flew on Friday evening. It was our first visit to the city and we weren't disappointed. As the photos show, the people of Amsterdam very much took us to their hearts, even if they were a tad reserved.
(It is amazing what you are prepared to do when far away from home and responsibility. Mary had to be talked out of jumping up to sit in the arms of one of these fine men, and those of you who know her will realise that she was very serious!)

Now ... the lastest trip to the consultant. There have been no further scans, so in a sense they were just seeing how I was. That said, so as not to disappoint they managed a disturbingly thorough examination and said that there didn't seem to be obvious developments. I always find some of the questions alarming, such as "Have you started having difficulty breathing?" and "Are you managing to work?" It is an indicator of their expectations for me. However, I am still living day to day life in a normal fashion thanks to my pain killers and so at the moment it is still a case of 'just getting on'. Even life at school seems to be fairly smooth ... it is quite unnerving. Maybe I should try and introduce something wreckless and radical, such as a theory that there might be meaningful life outside the village, or I suppose I could try and persuade the community that 'National Bullying Week' isn't the opportunity to practise and thus become better at it!

I am starting regular blood tests so that the doctors can monitor my tumour markers. The first set of results and the next consultation is due on 14th December. This will guide them as to when to re-scan or start treatment. I was thinking today that on 7th February 2003 I officially had a 40% chance of being alive on the same date in 2008...

And so a poem, as it has been a while, on the theme of determination and persistence:



Knocking
One of his disciples said to him, "Lord, teach us to pray.” … He said to them, "Suppose one of you has a friend, and he goes to him at midnight and says, 'Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, because a friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I have nothing to set before him.' I tell you… because of the man's persistence the neighbour will get up and give him as much as he needs.” (Luke chapter 11)

My memory guides me through the darkness
to my neighbour's door.
.
It is tight in its frame,
trapping warm breath from mouths
dry with wine and words,
now slack with slumber.
.
A guest waits in my home,
distance burning in his joints, hunger eating his belly.
.
I beat a pulse into the dead wood,
strain against bolts,
shake rust from hinges,
force words through cracks and gaps.
.
This door will stain my fist black and blue
until the skin swells up and cracks,
as if warm and full of yeast.
.
Bread is what I need ...
even dried out, crumbling,
cut up and thrown for sparrows.

Living Room Poets

Can I start off by saying how surprised and yet delighted I was about the flattering descriptions of my dance ministry left in the 'comments' section of my last posting. I had only recently decided to permanently hang up my liturgical leg warmers, cat suit and headband, but I am now thinking that All Saints, Poppleton might just be ready for the return of my ministry. I think I'll start off slowly, however, by dancing an unannounced and unaccompanied version of Kum By Ya this Sunday enhance by my WWJD poncho ...

I have just returned from a very brief visit to Scotland to take part in a poetry reading with the very fine and talented Mr. Ronnie Kerr. Ronnie is based in Fife and we met and read at the home of our dear mutual friends, Malcolm and Mel. Thirty five friends, neighbours and colleagues attended and helped make what was, for me, a very enjoyable and memorable occasion. There is something very intimate and relaxed about living room gigs that can't be replicated in libraries, village halls or festival tents. Thank you to everyone who came. All funds raised by tickets sales are being donated to Cancer Research UK. I am eager to repeat the experience, so if you have a living room that you feel would benfit from a gathering of friends and 'live poetry' from myself and at least one other poet, email me. Have note book ... will travel.

I am on a count down to the next visit to the consultant. It happens on Friday 2nd November. I think the focus of this visit is to decide whether or not to re-start treatment. I haven't had scans since the last one, but they intend to monitor my pain levels. The point at which my cocktail of brufen, codeine and paracetamol falls short is the point at which they will probably book me in for the big radiotherapy blast. This can happen only once, and so I want to postpone it as long as I can. I will, of course, let you know the decision.

My computer has been refusing to go on line which is why this post is late. I hope this new connectivity lasts ...

Thanks for visiting the blog and taking interest. It means a great deal to us.

Och Aye...

I just want to share this photo of Joel dancing at a Scottish Fiddlers Concert. Martha is part of the Poppleton Fiddlers Group and they unite with a similar group from Ayr for a concert in Poppleton every year. We attended last Saturday. Predictably it was full of people in kilts with very tenuous links to Scotland. You know the sort..."Me? Scottish? Well my Godmother's cousin has a neighbour who holidays in Fife..." Anyway, Joel (who had just shouted "It's a gorilla!" as the conductor took to the stage) insisted on an impressive display of free movement to express his genuine 50% Scottish geneology, (sadly equalled by his 50% Essex heritage from Mary's side.) He is now the only Halliday male willing to dance in public...thankfully.

Sunday Evening

First of all, thank you for the various caption suggestions that arrived by email, relating to the 'poetry reading' photo in the last post. Sadly, many of them can't be shared in this arena so the rest of you will have to guess what they were. Thanks also to those of you who commented that the three of us were looking haggard. It was a festival!! You are meant to look haggard and a bit rock 'n' roll... Anyway, I was trying to associate and blend with thousands of unshaven, worse-for-wear, desperately in need of 'Lifebuoy' campers, and in doing so conceal the fact that I was actually staying in a hotel.

This is just a quick post to say that Mary and I are gathering with just a few friends for a short service at York Minster on Sunday evening (23rd September). We do this from time to time, in the context of the Eucharist, to pray specifically for my healing . It is an important occasion for us, acting as a reminder that this is where our hope lies. The future is obviously very unknown and, if you believe the prognosis, very bleak. Our faith, however, provides important possibilities in what quite often seems like an inevitable situation. We genuinely believe that healing is possible; we would never say inevitable, or even likely, but we genuinely believe it is possible. If you are of a similar mind, please feel free to pray alongside us at sometime on Sunday evening wherever you happen to be. We would be very grateful for that. In the meantime, the pain relief is working pretty well, I am therefore slightly less grumpy and am resuming my weekly spin classes tonight!


I leave you with a poem about prayer...


Carried
They made an opening in the roof above Jesus and,
after digging through it, lowered the mat the
paralysed man was lying on. (Mark ch 2 verse 4)

Your fingernails break the surface
of the parched clay roof,
gouge down and through
until the words from the packed room beneath
well up,
spill towards me.
I wait as the hole begins to gape;
my route to the floor a fan of white light.

I have callused your feet
and blistered your fingers,
pressed to this canvas sheet.
But you feed the ropes through your hands,
leaning to counter my weight,
shrinking over the short distance
as I sink lower.
I feel the tremor of tight arms
transmit down lines
that will still be held
long after I have come to rest at
the speaker’s feet.

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The Scan

Before I mention the news from the scan, can I invite you to double click on the photo to the left (taken during the poetry reading at the Greenbelt Festival) and interpret for me the expressions on the faces of my two writing colleagues. Is Cole flicking through the book thinking, "Goodness me, I hope the others are better than this..." and is Martin plotting an escape route out of the tent? Perhaps we'll run a caption competition.

The news from our meeting with the oncologist this morning is mixed. The good news is that most of the cancer is stable, in that it hasn't spread since the last scan. The oncologist did, however, refer to "..all the little shadows on your lungs", and we had thought there was only one! The truth will out... Anyway,all the shadows on the scan have remained more or less the same. The bad news is that the cancer has invaded the bone of my lower pelvis, and this is new. I have been struggling with pain recently and this is why. They are going to leave it for now, as my new 'round the clock' pain management regime seems to be dealing with it. When this ceases to be the case, they will blast me with a single dose of radiotherapy to the affected area and they feel confident that this will reduce the tumour bulk and ease the situation at least for a few months.

Mary and I feel okay about this latest consultation. Of course, we would love for the doctors to be stunned by sudden and inexplicable recovery, but the nature of the illness means that whenever we go to see the oncologist we are braced for news that can always be bad, and sometimes very bad. Today, we have discovered that there has only been one change and that the doctors think they may well be able manage that when the time is right. We still, of course, stubbornly hope and pray for the stunning recovery and will continue to do so.

The family are well. We are all back to our various schools after a really good Summer holiday. Joel has had a couple days in his new school and seems very happy there. Today he was off donkey riding at the Donkey Sanctuary. A great way to end the week ...

How Green Was My Valet.

Mary and I had been debating recently whether or not we should trade our car in. It is just about to reach the 60 000 milestone and is in reasonably good nick. How sad it was, therefore, to discover three days ago on our way home from town that the answer to the questions, "Why am I inhaling astonishingly potent fumes and why can I only see purple?" lay in the fact that a can of green hammerite paint had emptied into the car boot at the last roundabout. We stopped to survey the damage ... Tinky Winky looking a lot more like Dipsy, sandals that would never see another beach, a car carpet that was proving to be very absorbent. Mary and I, not for the first time, enjoyed a short time of open and unstructured expression. She focused on the theme of surprise whereas I chose to make short statements of sadness and regret. So, a major cleaning project has been undertaken and the carpet has been ripped from the boot. A scrap dealer nearby has provided another and so we should be able to trade it in once the smell has gone(four years).

The picture at the top of this post was taken in Polperro, and we have recently returned from a holiday in Cornwall. (They haven't grown to become giants; they are sitting next to a model village). We had a week of beautiful weather and visited some lovely beaches (... patches of sand from them are now a permanent feature of our car boot!). We also spent great days with great friends and so the whole experience was a really positive one. We are now back and trying to savour each day before school begins again. The term always starts at great speed with harvest festivals, Christmas plans (yes, that soon), a batch of Governor meetings and we have the school's 50th anniversary to organise for the end of September. Any ideas for that?

On the health front, I have a scan due on 31st August. It is one of the three-monthly checks that they do and we will get the feedback from the oncologist on 7th September. We are really pleased and grateful that I have been able to get through the summer without any treatment. It is an obvious thing to say but our hope is that the disease remains stable so that I can keep working, and living fairly normally. There is the matter of the additional tumour to consider, but if that hasn't grown dramatically then I can hopefully push on to Christmas chemo-free.

We are hugely grateful for the prayers and support that we receive from you, and the interest that is shown in our situation. We never take it for granted and we thank you for it.

Greenbelt 07 ... shameful self promotion

Forgive the lack of subtlety, but the picture to your left is in fact the cover of a new book that I have co-written. It is a collection of poetry featuring three writers - myself, Cole Moreton and Martin Wroe. Cole is the author of two books (both published by Penguin) and is a lead writer with The Independent on Sunday. Martin is a journalist, formally on the staff of The Independent and The Observer but now writing mainly for The Times. (You can see why I feel a bit like Andrew Ridgely, or Ringo). We have each contributed twelve poems and they basically show our view of the world at the moment, "glimpsing the glory that lies in the dust". As Cole has said in the intro, "We write things down, uncertain where words end and prayer begins."

It is being launched at this year's Greenbelt Festival, with a joint reading at 4.30pm on Sunday, in the literature venue (wherever that is ...). The event is called 'Speaking of Heaven'. If you are at the festival, drop by. My recent visit to St. Luke's church in Cranham has made me aware that this blog is read by many people I haven't met, so if this includes you, please come and introduce yourself. I'd love to meet you.

If you would like to purchase a copy of the book you can do so by going to www.Lulu.com and putting one of our names into the search. It will shortly also be available from Amazon and Barnes Noble. If you are having any difficulties with this process, contact me and I am sure I can get a copy to you somehow.

Enough! My mother would be ashamed of me ...