Summer's almost over :(

Well, I've been off work since the 3rd week in July for the summer holidays - and it's been great.

Late nights and late mornings, no stress - no shouts of:

'Where IS your blazer?'....

'WHY didn't you do your bag last night?'....

'What do you mean you don't know where xyx is?'....

'You said you had NO homework yesterday when I asked'....

Just nice relaxed late mornings and catching up with programmes we'd Sky+'d to watch at a later date....Dj has the same sense of humour as me so I tend to set the Sky box to record comedy stuff that Rab doesn't like, then we watch it together whilst Rab's at work.

Today we sat around for a few hours watching 'Mock the Week' (political satire programme) which we both really like - it's doing laid back things like this that make the summer break so relaxing for me.

The time has flown past though, it feels like only last week or so that I was saying 'See you in September then' - and now I'll be back at work this Thursday.

So, I've relaxed and successfully ignored 'c' as much as possible...

I've ignored the nagging pain in my shoulder and the agonising one in my back under my ribs as much as possible...

I've ignored the fact that I can be in bed for 10+ hours and still feel tired when I get up (mind you, it doesn't help that I'm awake so often during the night with the stupid pain in the rib area and shoulder every time I turn over)...

I've refused to acknowledge the dull ache in the area of the original tumour....(well, I've acknowledged it in my head, got up and moved around to ease it off but not given it any public acknowledgement or excessive publicity).....

I'm successfully ignoring the fact that my breathing never did return to normal after the op..this is apparently 'not unusual' but feels pretty unusual to me :)

I've put to the back of my mind (mostly) that my next scan in September (think it's the 19th) is pretty crucial in answering the question about the lung area 'too small to call' spots...

I've done okay really, all things considered...and for that I'm glad that 'c' didn't dominate the whole summer break the way it managed to do last year.

Tomorrow is Dj's birthday - I will do a separate post on that one.....he's so excited and optimistic about what he may (or may not - lol) be getting in the way of presents. It's nice to see because as you get older you forget about that 'excited, optimistic' feeling that you get as a kid. Let's hope it's a happy memorable day for him.

Today he said 'You've had cancer since I've been in double figures'....he's right, he was 10 when I was diagnosed and now he'll be 12...I just hope that his lasting memories of me will not be 'my mum had cancer all through my childhood'....

So tomorrow's about making some memories that involve good stuff :-)

Catch up soon x

Thanks Cancer :)

I 'met' Shents last year on a Cancer forum (Cancer Chat - which is connected to Cancer Research UK) and we developed a cyber friendship via this forum which then developed into much more. We are both part of a gang of five who got together in the cyber world and built good friendships, communicating via the forum and email..... The five are Shents, Tony, Rose, David and me....sadly David and Rose are no longer with us and our plans of getting all of us together didn't materialise :(

On Saturday Shents and I finally got around to getting together in London for the day - along with her two totally gorgeous children (a 10 yr old and 7 yr old) plus Dj and we all spent the day getting to know each other and exploring London (in the pissing rain - lol) !

Those of you who know me well will know that I'm not good at meeting new people - but this didn't seem to apply to Shents as I already felt we knew each other pretty well. I had this idea of what she'd be like (in real life rather than cyber life) and it was spot on - she is the most lovely lady, warm, funny, kind and I just know that we'll be friends for life now.

The children all got on really well, Dj and the 10 yr old spent the day chatting non stop about 'things' (when I asked what they'd talked about this was the answer 'things, just everything really') .

Her 7 yr old daughter is a gem, the kind of little girl anyone would be proud to call theirs - she's beautiful, bright, funny and confident. The 10 yr old is also a blogger and I've followed his blog for a while now so felt I 'knew' him already - he's a totally lovely lad, handsome, amusing, intelligent, mischievous and again a total credit to his mum (and dad of course) :)

We spent the morning in the Princess Diana memorial park in Kensington Gardens then moved on to Knightsbridge to get some lunch.

Then the weather decided to let us down and the skies opened up on us for a few hours :( None of us had rain jackets or umbrellas because the weather reports had said 'dry, sunny and warm all day' for London ........mental note: do NOT trust the BBC weather reports in future......

Anyway, after sheltering in the doorway of M&S food store for a while we jumped into a black cab and headed for Trafalgar Square to take refuge in an art gallery. Our cab driver seemed to forget we were actually in the cab for a while and this had us all in fits of giggles when he suddenly snapped out of his trance and realised we were all there....

After the Art gallery we headed out into the Square and managed to take some quick photo's - despite the rain we had some fun there....

Then we decided to head off for a coffee and cakes where we all managed to dry off for a while. After that we hit the shops where bits and pieces were purchased to remind the children of their trip to London that day.

Before we knew it, it was time for their train back to Suffolk (where they were spending some time before going back up North later in the week).....the day flew past and it felt like as soon as they'd arrived it was time to say goodbye again. Lots of hugs, promises to meet up again really soon (hopefully next time in Matlock with another one of our cyber buddies) and then headed back home - tired but happy.

Dj said 'I had a really nice day today' and that simple sentence sums it up perfectly. I really enjoyed meeting them all and it was a really nice day :)

Thank you Shents for your lovely company, lots of laughter and fun, and for making it possible for us to finally get together - and thank you cancer for bringing us together. Without you entering my life I would never have met Shents and for that I take my hat off to you...

Shents has a blog about her journey with Breast cancer called 'Keep yer hair on' (in my blog list on the left)....she rightly points out that despite it being a dreadful period she would never have found the people who've walked this journey with her, had it not been for cancer...

It's not often we have the opportunity to say 'Thank you Cancer' but for me, this is the perfect reason.

So today, no 'F&*k you' cancer statements...... just a simple 'Thank you' will suffice :)

The Churchill Experience.......

On Wednesday I finally managed to prise Dj away from his PC ...(he's currently engrossed in an on-line game that he's been playing since the holidays started)...

Rab had a day off work so we decided to take my Mum, Dad and Dj to the Churchill War Experience Exhibition in Central London.

I knew Dj would enjoy this as WWII is one of his 'things' (things he finds interesting to the point of obsession) ...here are some pictures taken whilst we were there.

I hadn't realised that looting was a problem during WWII - people who took shelter in the underground shelters often returned to find their possessions had been stolen by looters! I actually think that's a lot worse than the looting that's taken place recently. During a war you'd expect people to be pulling together not robbing each other :(

Mum and Dj in the dressing up section - they have a variety of hats and uniforms that kids can try on


Dad and Dj....

Model of Churchill at his desk during the war years....


Evacuee's during WWII




After we'd finished in the exhibition we walked along by the River Thames between London Bridge and Tower Bridge and had a coffee...in the background here is HMS Belfast which is permanently moored on the Thames now...




As we walked under one of the bridges along the river front this sign below was on a door - Dj started to laugh and said 'When I was younger I used to think that sign meant that if you were in this area you could get stabbed'...

LOL! I do wonder about this boy sometimes y'know :-)

So we all went out, it didn't rain this time, forgot about 'c' and just got on with things for another day of our holiday.

Coming back home on the underground a lady got on the train, she was in her early 30's, with a walking stick and she had no hair plus was very thin and looked completely tired (chemo'd) out ...Dj looked across at me and just for a split second I saw a fleeting look of sadness cross his face.

He smiled at the lady and she smiled back and then we got off the the train - he immediately said 'Can I have a hug?' and that's when you know that even when you're trying really hard (all of us) to just ignore it, it's still there in my head, in his head, in all our heads.....damn cancer...

One month today until the next scan................sigh..................but in the meantime I'm still on holiday :)

On a lighter note.........

In my previous post on rioting and looting there are lots of pictures....dramatic pictures of fires, damage, unrest.....

This one is the only one that's so far made me smile....

I've since been given the website address for lots more pics just like this (thank you Sue)...if you need a smile too then have a peek through - the address is in the comments section below

Un...bloody...believable.............!

Following on from my post last night about the riots....

This government.... who right now should be listening to our Police, showing them respect and actually talking about other ways to fund the cuts instead of via our Police service.... this government has today appointed an 'advisor' to give them tips on how to handle the riots on our streets and how to take a zero tolerance approach.

So, you're thinking - "what's wrong with that?" Nothing except that he's appointed a 63 yr old American called Bill Bratton to tell him how to sort out this mess.

We HAVE people here that can tell Cameron how to sort out this bloody mess, but it comes at a price......

• We need our Police service to be left alone financially and cancel the 20% cut backs,
• We need our Police to be issued with proper riot gear,
• We need our Police service to be fully supported by this government not ignored and bypassed.
• We need our Police to know that if they need to 'robustly' deal with someone we will not be asking on the news the next day 'Were the Police too heavy handed last night' ....they need to know that they will not face disciplinary action for robustly dealing with rioters - or even idle spectators who really shouldn't be there in the first place anyway.
• We don't need Robocop from the US to deal with our kids - we just need OUR Police to be given the resources and back up to take action with full support, from both superior officers and the government.

After all the plans to slash their pensions, freeze their salaries and put a stop to overtime payments they are now ignoring people who have worked our streets for years and bringing in someone from outside the UK.

I'm seriously shocked by this decision - mind you, it's not the first crap decision that Cameron has made (just think 'News of the World ex editor')...

Bill Bratton has already made a short statement so far he's commented that we need 'more minority officers' and we must 'focus on calming racial tensions'........Piss off mate, this isn't about racial tensions, it's not a race war...and anyway, with the current 20% cuts in place we don't have the MONEY for MORE Police officers, black, white or flippin purple ones.

Police high up in the service are understood to be really really insulted by this decision and I totally understand why.

Their officers stood there for hours over recent days whilst youths threw bottles, stones, fences, metal bars and hours of insults at them....they've retained their dignity whilst the government threw a different type of crap at them and made changes to their salaries, overtime and pensions....and now they are being ignored and sidelined when we should be saying to them 'What do you actually need to ensure the streets are kept safe, how do we regain proper control in the long term?'...

How much more can we really expect them to take before we see mass resignations.....

Sigh...

What the hell happened in London?....

That was the question that many of you who emailed me asked.....What the hell is going on in London....what's the cause.....how did this happen.....etc.

For those of you outside the UK the background was as follows....Thursday, 4th August the Police shot a guy in North London. He died at the scene...

They were working with 'Operation Trident' which is a specialist group which was set up by the Met Police in London to deal solely with 'black on black crime'...in other words, they deal with black people (mainly young men) who either kill or want to kill other black (mainly young men) people.

After the shooting it was handed over for investigation to the IPCC (these are the people who independently investigate ANY shooting by the Police - not only by Operation Trident)...

Once it has been referred to the IPCC the Police are no longer able to comment for legal reasons.

The IPCC released a statement saying that the Police had shot this man after they had been fired upon and that they were investigating the incident and would report answers once their investigation had taken place.

The family of the man who was shot by police marched (with 100 of their family/friends) on the Saturday following the shooting to the Police station to demand 'answers'...

The police did not come out to give them those answers - so the friends and family staged a noisy but peaceful protest outside for a number of hours.

This protest was then hi-jacked by other young people who arrived after dark and then they took the protest to another level.

A bus was set on fire, buildings were set alight, shops were damaged and then looted. It took until the early hours to bring things under control.

Over the course of the following few evenings other areas in London then experienced large groups of several hundreds (mainly) youths rioting on the streets, burning and looting, various different areas at the same time.... Most of them who were asked by the media did not mention the death of the man during the shooting as a reason, most commented that they wanted 'stuff' from the shops 'free stuff' and they were there intending on taking it.

Others wanted to hurl abuse and items at Police officers citing their reasons as 'Police harassment' 'been stopped and searched too many times' - others wanted to 'teach the rich a lesson' - so they burnt down people's homes and small businesses that had taken years to build up and NONE of these people were 'rich'.

They were ordinary people who lost stuff whilst others just helped themselves to 'free stuff'. Of course, bigger businesses also lost stuff, large department stores had their windows smashed in and people helped themselves, large electrical chains also lost many many thousands of pounds worth of goods, a large SONY distribution centre was burnt to ashes after the looters helped themselves to what they wanted, a furniture business that had been there for almost 150 years was burnt to the ground. Sports shops and mobile phone shops were completely cleaned out of goods....

The police received 43,000 calls on Monday night and had 6,000 officers on duty. People have said 'Where were the Police?' but it doesn't take the brain of Britain to work out that they can't possibly be all over the place at the same time!

Looting attacks were organised by Blackberry messenger and twitter making it impossible for the Police to stay on top of a constantly changing situation....

So, put as simply as I can - that's what happened in London.

During this period, people lost their businesses, homes and possessions. Five people lost their lives during the unrest...one person was shot in a car in the Croydon area, three young men were killed in a hit and run incident whilst they were protecting their local community, one elderly man of 68 yrs was attacked and left with severe head injuries after attempting to put out a fire that rioters had started...he died yesterday after being on a life support machine for the past few days.

Police in London have spent the last few days knocking in people's doors and carting off those who thought they may have got away with it on the night....cctv has provided the Police with hours of useful footage and they have been busy publishing photo's and asking for the help of the public in identifying the people who took part. Some parents recognised their own children on the TV and duly handed them over to the Police....

The recent scenes of devastation were shocking to all decent people, very upsetting and disturbing.

Photo's of events in London during the riots....

After two nights of rioting in London, other areas in the UK also kicked off - namely Manchester, Liverpool, Nottingham, Wolverhampton to name just a few. These are all large cities in England and all had one thing in common, the youth wanted and the youth helped themselves....

However, I have to point out that they weren't ALL teenagers/youths, some were older and had jobs (responsible jobs too)

So when people say it's because the young have been left with no jobs, no future and no hope in some cases that could well be true - we do have young people who feel forgotten about, young people who have seen the bankers rewarding themselves after bringing our country and other countries to their knees recently, MP's who have robbed us and simply apologised for their 'mistakes in accounting', young people who have heard the MP's say they can no longer get their EMA - which has meant they fall out of the education system...(EMA is a small grant paid to young people from low income families to assist with the financial side of attending college) but during the looting other types of people also took part for example a 31 yr old teaching assistant, a trainee nurse, an athlete who was supposed to be a role model for young people for the 2012 Olympics, a model....these are not 'people who have no hope' they are people who simply took advantage of the opportunity to get something for free.

I believe the main reason for the riots and looting was, put simply...... 'because we could'..........

The MP's have said all the looters are simply criminals who took part in mindless violence and will 'face the full force of the law'......I seriously doubt that we have enough prison places for them all to 'face the full force of the law' and if we also locked up the corrupt MP's and Bankers as well then there definitely wouldn't be enough space in prisons.......

Meanwhile the Police had to deal with all this mess...111 officers sustained injuries, some serious. 5 police dogs were injured during the riots too.

The MP's who robbed us during the 'expenses scandals' a while back are now planning serious financial cut-backs to the Police service. They have agreed changes to salaries, pensions and overtime for Police officers meanwhile making sure they (the MP's) will still be well looked after and receive their huge pensions/salaries and no doubt expenses for whatever they can (legally?) claim for...

So the long and short of this is, some of our inner city youth are seriously pissed off because some of them feel forgotten about - they see corruption being rewarded at high levels and even they know this is wrong...

Our Police are (patronisingly) told they are 'brilliant, brave and effective' by the same MP's who have agreed severe cuts to their salaries/pensions and overtime.

They don't have the right to strike (it's illegal for a Police officer to take strike action) so they have to just accept their lot and continue to willingly face up to the angry youth who are pissed off with everyone and everything.

Meanwhile MP's sit and talk crap, listen to no-one, and go back to their huge family homes and eat caviar and drink champagne and will no doubt give themselves a round of applause for coming home early from their (way too long) summer break and 'sorting out the mess'.....

Just as long as they realise it's not over - nothing is solved - and they better hope the Police DO continue to willingly deal with this crap - or what then?

Lack of updates, murder in my garden, holidays and whatever...

I've not updated for ages now (as so many people have contacted me and pointed out)...

I've not updated because, well because ....ummm because....... I just didn't feel like it.

I ran out of things to say for a while, I wanted a holiday from cancer and all the things associated with it - just for a while I wanted to forget that it matters and I wanted to concentrate on other things...
So, that was what I did.

However, am back now and doing an update...

Firstly my garden - my lovely tomato plants and courgette plant were murdered! Yes, poisoned by someone.

At first Rab thought that it was maybe just co-incidental, maybe the feed I'd used, maybe the weather but I knew it wasn't. Once we dug the roots up he then agreed with me - they had been poisoned...(bleach has been the strongest suspect because of the condition of the central roots)
My plants went from healthy to dead literally overnight...
Healthy tomato plant....


The following day.......


Healthy courgette plant...


Then the following day......


I was SO upset about it at the time. Really disappointed.....I launched a murder inquiry and narrowed it down to one particular suspect - but then remembered something else too, so my suspect list is two people, both neighbours.

I considered kidnap and torture to get them to confess (I AM joking of course!) but then decided to just ignore it and grow some more next year..so that's the plan at the moment.

The rest of my beds are still doing well. My rose bush is thriving, I have a few little Pepper tree's growing happily, three of which have Pepper's growing on them now, all my mint and other herbs are doing well and the flowering plants are now due to flower in the next week or so.

I'll do better next year with the tomatoes and courgettes and might even do some strawberries too :)

I'm keeping on top of the weeding, no small task - and have today started on the front gardens - which are a mass of weeds, stinging nettles and blackberry bushes all overgrown to a silly level. I started today and it'll take probably at least a week to get it all under some type of control. I say a week because I do only what I can, when I can. That's my current project anyway.

I'm on holiday from work until the 1st September and we've been having lazy 'wake up when you like mornings' and late nights.

Dj has been awake most nights really late reading and then not getting up until at least 11am.
I can remember a few years ago when he was up EVERY day by 6am, full of beans and raring to go...how things change as they grow :)
However, no complaints from me as I've always preferred to have lazy laid back mornings once we're off school.

Last week Rab took a week off work and we took my Mum and Dad plus Dj's friend Dan to London Zoo.

We decided to go on the Thursday...bloody hell, what a mistake that was really...the weather on Wednesday was so nice and had been for the previous week or so then Thursday morning turned into torrential downpour time...

It was absolutely POURING down with rain when we got up (tickets already purchased online, non refundable, non transferable - must remember not to do that again)...We delayed for an hour then decided to just go and get on with it.

It did stop raining around 1.30pm whilst we were having lunch so the afternoon was fine walking around but quite a few of the animals had gone into hiding after the excessive rain during the morning. However the boys seemed to really enjoy themselves and Mum and Dad said they did too - so in the end it turned out alright.

Dj took these great pictures below whilst we were there..
They have the 'butterfly house' which is a tent that they keep at tropical temperatures inside and the butterflies fly freely around you - that was really nice.
The zoo lady inside seemed really impressed with the boys who bombarded her with (sensible and intelligent) questions about the lives of butterflies and moths.




These are some of Dj's favourite pictures...worker ants...click on the picture to see the larger version. He found them fascinating and spent ages watching them and taking pictures :)

One of my favourite cats, the Serval below


Like most typical 11/12 year old boys, they found this highly amusing when the Meercat's decided to mate right in front of them....


and to finish up I'll show you this one - just because I think the colours are great



So, apart from all that.... zoo's, gardening etc....I'm still full of aches particularly in the left shoulder and right rib area - which has also spread to more of my central back/spine now as well.
Getting out of bed in the morning and getting mobile is taking longer and longer, it seems that my bones stiffen up during the night and it's really hard to move around for the first half hour or so......

During the night I'm woken every time I move position but the only option is strong painkillers which I really don't want to get into taking regularly until I'm sure of what's going on.
The hospital still haven't written to my GP about the bone referral and my GP won't/can't refer me without that letter.
All they can offer me in the meantime is physiotherapy which I'd rather not do until I've had the scan/x-ray on bones and had a chat to specialist bone man.

I still have the pressure pain when sitting in one position for too long - this is in the original tumour site....

The rectal surgery wound still hasn't healed any further and may or may not now. It's not a problem really I suppose because it's dry and not likely to get infected - just would have been better if it had healed up the way it was supposed to.... But what the hell eh...just have to put up with it for now :)

So just battling on, ignoring things and just trying to enjoy being at home with Dj doing 'stuff' that doesn't relate to bloody cancer....

I'll tell you all about the London riots in another post! :-)

Much luv xxxx