As soon as I noticed that he was awake he was transferred, complete with his customised winter residence, to my “den” where he will occupy half of my workspace for the next few months until the weather is warm enough for him to go out to the garden. Meanwhile, he has supplementary heat and light to ensure that he gets enough of each until nature takes over, not to mention a five-star room service.  The latter supplements my daily exercise by ensuring that I have two or three extra opportunities to climb the stairs daily to deliver Henry’s diet of miscellaneous vegetation.

It was an interesting experience, slightly uncomfortable but perfectly bearable. I won’t go into the gory detail except to say that the procedure was very similar to the prostate biopsy that I had some time ago, except that instead of taking tissue samples, the doctor was actually inserting (permanently) tiny bits of gold. So I guess that my scrap value is a bit higher today than it was yesterday, which can’t be bad.

To minimise the risk of infection following the biopsy, two antibiotics were supplied at my previous hospital visit. The same applied this time. Three tablets of each antibiotic were supplied complete with instructions. These must be taken exactly as instructed, that is, one of each two hours before the appointment, another one of each six hours after the appointment, and the last one of each the next morning. It is important to read the instructions on the packs and in the leaflets that come with these tablets because the timing of the doses are not the only details that the patient needs to know. For example, alcohol should be avoided while one of these antibiotics is being taken and, when taking the other, it is important to avoid milk, indigestion remedies and medicines containing iron or zinc. So, given that the third dose will be taken at breakfast time, breakfast cereal, porridge etc. with milk will be avoided together with milk in tea or coffee. Similarly, I will not start taking another daily tablet called Stronazon until the day after my third dose of antibiotics, because Stronazon contains three varieties of iron oxide.

I’ll bet that you never thought of rust (iron oxide) as an ingredient of medicine! I will tell you about Stronazon in Part 8.

After the treatment I was asked to remain in the hospital until I had passed water without problems and to have a blood pressure test. When I was ready, daughter Jennie kindly returned to take me home, saving me from the discomfort of two bus journeys and an extra hour of travelling each way.

The hormone injections (leuprorelin acetate) that I have been having at 28-day intervals will continue at least until some time in April, when I will be assessed following the radiotherapy which is expected to occupy most of March. The injections might continue for some months after April, depending on how I respond to the radiotherapy. The only obvious side effect has been hot flushes but I gather that they are nowhere near as uncomfortable as those suffered by pregnant women. Indeed, so far as I am cencerned, they can be a bonus on cold days!

The next appointment will be really interesting. This (as I understand it) is where I will take up my position on the radiotherapy machine and my treatment will be planned in detail, especially for me. I visualise that this will entail adjusting the machine to target, very accurately, the cancer cells in my prostate and retaining the settings for when the actual treatment takes place. It will mean that I will have to occupy exactly the same position on the machine every day of the treatment (five days per week for four weeks) and there is more…   …as I will attempt to describe in due course.

So I set off on my first shopping trip of 2012 with the last of the morning commuters and the other early shoppers, on the half-hour bus journey. I should have known better. Don’t misunderstand me. I have grown to like Cardiff in the short time we have lived here but there are aspects of shopping here which, though doubtless experienced up and down the UK, simply shouldn’t happen in a place that is a capital city. Wales deserves better. Instead of wasting half a day walking from one end of the city centre to the other without finding everything that I wanted – and interrupting the bus journey home to try yet another shop – I should have gone online and bought the lot with half a dozen clicks on the computer. But I am old-fashioned in some respects and like to support local businesses first, where possible, before rushing to the internet, even when those “local” businesses are branches of national chains.  At least they contribute to the local economy by employing local people. This preference also harks back to my time in retailing and in running my own shop for a few years.

So what else was needed? Well, a decent soft eraser (rubber, not kneadable and certainly not plastic), a double sharpener catering for pencils of different thicknesses and with its own reservoir for waste shavings), and a tough  A3 clipboard. I have found the latter immensely useful as a light, portable worktop which needs little storage space when not in use.

As far as I know, Cardiff city centre has three quite substantial shops selling some combination of stationery and art and craft materials, with a further even larger specialist in art and crafts just a short bus ride away. The double sharpener was easy to find, the soft rubber was in one shop only and the A3 clipboard was not found at all. Later in the day I contacted a major business stationer with a branch in Newport, a few miles away, but apparently they didn’t stock A3 clipboards.

This is a very minor issue in the great scheme of things but I come across examples all too frequently. I had plenty of time on the bus returning home to wonder why retailers are so unimaginative in the extent of the products they sell. Why, for example, did the large branch of a national newsagents/stationers/booksellers devote a display unit some 8-9 feet wide by 5 feet high entirely to soft pencil cases, dozens of which were the same in size and style and differed only in colours – but no clipboards at all. Less than a quarter of that display space could have been used for A3, A4 and A5 clipboards in a variety of styles and materials. Why did one of the major art materials retailers have no identifiable soft rubber erasers, yet found ample space for numerous plastic erasers of various shapes and sizes?

And theres is no point in arguing that no-one makes A3 clipboards or that there is no demand for them. One of the most successful online businesses sells them – and in a variety of materials at that. It doesn’t surprise me that amazon.co.uk is such a success or that the “high street” is fast losing out to online shopping.

I forget now exactly how the trouble started but by Christmas the laptop was becoming intolerably slow and unpredictable. For months I have been toying with the idea of a new computer in early 2012 but I simply don’t think that they are worth the hassle and the money. Why should I pay for a computer that, unavoidably, comes complete with a load of software that I don’t want? Take that software out, reduce the price accordingly and sell me a machine with a decent operating system and I will be happy. On second thoughts I won’t be entirely happy because, after just four years, I shouldn’t feel the need for a new machine at all.

As an alternative to a new laptop I have also been considering the feasability and likely effectiveness of clearing out the contents of the present one and starting again from scratch. By New Year I was sufficiently exasperated to give this a try and so, having copied my own files to a separate hard drive, I loaded the “Product Recovery Disc” (which came with the computer) and followed the on-screen instructions. It took most of an evening and I couldn’t begin to describe what was happening but I was left with a computer plus operating system and very little else. My spare time over the following day or two was spent reinstalling my favourite software packages. The result of all this is a noticeably quicker computer with around 24GB extra free space on the hard drive and all but one of  the original problems eliminated.

However, this so-called “Product Recovery Disc”  has not entirely lived up to its grand title. There are two new problems, and a couple of mysterious pop-up messages that I have never seen before. The problem that has not gone away is that it it necessary only to hover over a link briefly to activate it, whereas activation should require a definite button click. I can find nothing in the Control Panel to change this. The new problems are that the touchpad lights up unexpectedly – I don’t remember the last time it did this and had forgotten that it was able to do so – and I seem to have lost all references to Bluetooth from the laptop (and that was definitely in the Control Panel prior to the “Recovery”). Apart from the loss of Bluetooth (which I was about to start using to connect the laptop to another gadget – about which I will tell you another time) everything seems to be working.

The mystery messages? One refers to a failure to make a Windows connection – which I cannot describe further as I don’t understand it. The second message (which has appeared a couple of times at the bottom right of the Desktop tells me that this is not a genuine version of Windows! How come? The original was bought pre-installed in the new laptop. Clearly, the new messages must have something to do with the “Product Recovery Disc”. I am beginning to detect the odour of a rodent!

So if this post has one key message for men (it doesn’t apply to women as they have no prostate gland) it is get a check-up by your family doctor and make it an annual fixture.

All I would add to that is that you have nothing to fear. Yes, I would have been anxious about the prospect of a simple injection not that long ago but not any more. In recent months I have experienced a catalogue of medical and surgical procedures (as described in my recent series of posts entitled “The Patient’s Story”) including several injections and at least three blood tests, approaching each one with curiosity rather than fear and I would have no qualms about doing them all over again. So get yourself along to your GP and get checked. You might well save a life – YOURS.

Having concluded, most reluctantly, that I needed to own a car again I decided on my budget and I did consider a few modern cars. Nothing interested me enough to catch my attention for more than a few minutes and I was haunted by the long-held belief that most affordable modern cars are doomed to last only a few years thanks to built-in obsolescence, an early decline in spares availability and an inadequate supply of restoration skills and facilities in the average local garage. So my best bet was a well catered-for classic car which would be affordable and user-friendly to a DiY oriented owner, so that I would have the choice of taking it to a specialist or doing work myself when it becomes necessary.
The Traveller fulfilled all of these requirements. It helped that Charles Ware’s Morris Minor Centre at Bristol, arguably the leading specialist in these cars, is only about an hour from here by car or public transport.. Secondly, I needed the ability to carry larger loads than would fit in a saloon car and, thirdly, if I bought a good enough example to start with, it should be that much easier to preserve its condition during my ownership and thus avoid significant (or perhaps any) depreciation.

To my surprise, I felt a marked lack of excitement on taking delivery of the car.  I gave it a cursory inspection and put it away in the garage, from which it emerged every few days for short shopping trips.
After a while it began to grow on me. I had to admit that it always starts without delay and has no difficulty in keeping up with the modern traffic. It is very easy to drive and to park, being relatively compact and quite nippy. It is also very comfortable, especially since I acquired a couple of special cushions for the front seats  so that the passenger and I could enjoy a slightly higher viewpooint on the scene around us. The front seats shown in the picture below are from a modern Mini and form part of the upgrade to the “Series 3″ models now being built to special order at the aforementioned Morris Minor Centre. The Traveller puts smiles on other drivers faces and has started more conversations with total strangers on our local supermarket car park than I have experienced in years! How could it not grow on me?

After a month or so it became dusty and was treated to a wash and polish, by hand. I am sure that the woodwork had been more than adequately treated at Bristol but, a few days later when the car had dried thoroughly, I decided to add a further coat of Rustins Danish Oil. Apparently, varnish dries hard and eventually cracks as a result of temperature variations and general weathering. The cracks not only allow water to gain access to the wood but actually retain it while it helps to promote rot in the wood. Danish Oil, I understand, remains flexible enough to avoid cracking. However, it does need further applications twice a year, each consisting of several coats applied by brush. I was keen to ensure that there were no potential water traps along the inner edge of the wood or in the joints, So I took my time to apply a coating of oil to all the wood, not wiping it on with a rag, but applying it generously with a half-inch oil painters brush which, as you would expect, did rather a good job!
Whenever I have acquired a “new” car, even decades ago when I knew even less about cars than I do now, I have always been keen to inspect the beast from end to end, checking on oil and water and hydraulic fluid levels, and on the wear in brake shoes and pads, among other checks. It is a familiarisation exercise as much as anything else. I also make a point of obtaining and carrying the tools and spare parts that are most likely to be needed. It’s called “be prepared” and it’s ever so good for the peace of mind.