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Tomorrow I resume my chemo treatment, so today I made the most of having some energy and an appetite and did housework, gardening, mended a loose bit on the shed and even attempted to paint the kitchen ceiling which was slightly damaged by a leak from the bathroom above.
I think I have just felt so useless for the last fortnight that I wanted to do something to contribute and after so much enforced lethargy it just felt amazing to be doing anything.
As much as I claim to enjoy the enforced holidays that cancer has given me in the last few years, it's actually the worst thing possible to feel useless. Worse than useless. Actually adding to the to-do list.
I was also aware that today was likely the last day for a week or so where I'd want to eat stuff, so I made sure I ate whatever I felt like and went out to get some nice food.
I am not sure how compromised my immune system is at this point, definitely a little bit, but I took the chance of an early morning trip to the supermarket to get some stuff for dinner. If anyone needed a sign that global warming is a real thing then surely it is this: Waitrose in Hitchin had almost ground to a halt as all of its freezers and fridges were unable to cope in the heat. This is ground zero folks. If all the statistics and deaths and the evidence of your own sunburned skin are not enough to convince you. If Waitrose in Hitchin can no longer operate then we know this is serious.
To the future historians trying to piece the story together. THIS was the moment that the world sat up and took notice.
Yes, sorry it was a bit late.
The middle class of Hertfordshire were stumbling around the shop, confused and upset, like ants that have lost their trail. They didn't all just go home or to another supermarket. They tried to make it work. I managed to find a tiny portion of the milk section that was still working and got some milk, but otherwise all was lost.
Later I would walk down to Sainsburys, promising I wouldn't go in if it looked too busy. But once I was there it seemed crazy not to whizz round to get the couple of things I needed. Obviously I was masked up like it was the height of Covid, but there were lots of people there and it did feel mildly risky. The last thing I need it so pick up an actual infection and delay my treatment more. But my family needed food. And I am brave and foolhardy
Sainsburys' fridges were working, but were emptying fast. I was trying to buy some steak, but there was a guy standing by that fridge seemingly picking up every possible packet, looking at it and then either putting it back or putting it in his trolley or putting it in his trolley and then back in the fridge.
He saw me waiting and let me nip in, but I didn't want to get too close and so just grabbed a couple of steaks and scarpered. "All the ones on the offer are gone," he remarked, "Typical." Was he searching for an offer or did he just need to touch everything?
I went round and did the rest of my shopping, but realised that the steaks I had were pepper ones and the kids wouldn't eat them, so after 5 minutes I returned to the fridge, confident the sweaty, heavily breathing, disease ridden man would be gone. But unbelievably he was still there. Still looking at every single piece of meat and changing his mind about which ones he wanted. He had moved one fridge down but I thought he'd recognise me from before, because I was in a mask, so I nipped in, got a plain steak for the kids and skedaddled before he could see me. He was, it turned out, still too obsessed with looking at every piece of meat to notice. What was he doing? Maybe he was hoping to rebuild a cow, like a jigsaw puzzle and trying to find the bits that fit together. A sort of Frankfurterstein's bovine monster.
I queued to pay for my food, keeping my distance as best I could, remembering the paranoia of 2020-21, but suddenly living in a world where I was the only one aware of the danger. Like a version of the rubbish film Yesterday where I was the only one who remembered Covid - though much more difficult to capitalise on that skill, especially as I don't know how they made the vaccine.
I sat in the park to drink a diet coke. A man in very baggy trousers was lying on his back on the grass nearby moving his groin up and down. I couldn't work out what was going on at all. He might have been unwell, he might have been on drugs, he might have just been getting the air to his nether regions. I couldn't quite work out how it'd work if he was doing something brazenly sexual as his hands were nowhere that they shouldn't have been. It might have been some form of exercise. He was very committed to it whatever he was doing.
It was nothing directly to do with this, but I thought about something else that had happened in this park recently and realised there was a possible weird stand-up routine in it that would fit nicely into Oh Shit I'm 60! It spiralled into madness and came out pretty much fully formed - though it's the kind of routine that I will just be able to keep building on. I think it will be good. Might be shit. I guess we'll find out.
