Cancer and chemo - and tomatoes

It is fifteen months since I posted in this blog.  In July last year, after some investigations, the doctors told me that I had a widely-metastasised cancer. It was a breast cancer, though not detectable in my boobs. It was in my spine, hips, adrenal glands and liver.  I was put onto a course of chemotherapy - fierce and gruelling and that lasted until Christmas.  Things seemed to be going well. The tumour shrank and though I lost my hair and felt a bit weak, I was basically very well.  Andrew took fantastically good care of me and we slowly came to terms with what might happen, or what was in fact happening. 

I had scans from time to time, to keep a check on the tumours and in the late spring, it seemed the liver tumours started to grow again. This time, my oncologist Dr Jennie Glendinning, put me onto a different chemo therapy - a targetted treatment, whereby the antibodies in the cocktail make holes in the walls of the tumour cells, and then the chemo part zips through the holes and so have the biggest effects on the cancer.  It's true I have had far less challenging side-effects, but I am definitely very tired.  I am buoyed up by the fact that this treatment is very expensive. (I'm worth it, evidently).  I don't know how long it will have to go on.  I have kept my hair... whoopee!  And I have achieved a lot of things while I have spent a large part of my time lying down in or on my bed.   

Lately I had another scan, of my head. Dr Glendinning remembered she had not investigated my little grey cells... She gave the result. 'I am happy to say your brain is normal....'  (No, it isn't !) 

For instance, I have taken part in three art exhibitions now, or more.  One was dedicated to my cancer and chemo experience - drawings I made in oil pastel last year, a kind of speech-less account or journal of the first treatment.  It also had a series of selfie photos on my phone: these I amended and edited to make more lurid... charting the loss and regrowth of my hair.  And a set of nine single-colour panels which illustrate how things don't always turn out as you expect or plan. 

 

This show was on in the town centre (12 Marketplace) for a week free of rent courtesy of the Town Council because I used it raise funds for the Hospice and for Macmillan Cancer Support. I was invited to leave the show in place for a further week during which a friend was recruiting members for the re-formed NADFAS group....  I was not selling originals of any of the works on show, just prints. The maximum price was £25. We sold £1380 worth of these prints. I am more proud of this than I can say.   People came in, went out again as they couldn't face it (the whole idea of cancer is never really discussed....), or they came and cried, or they told me about their own cancer, or how their loved ones have had the cancer...   I am now seeking ways to put the show into other venues round the world. We are starting at St Christopher's Hospice in Sydenham, S London, courtesy of our friend and ex-neighbour from Brockwell Park, Prof Ian Judson late of the Royal Marsden Hospital.   I hope to get sponsorship and exposure from Apple or iPhone for the photographic selfportraits. These form a narrative on their own.  

I am here summarising a long period of time, a lot of events, experiences, visits, reactions ... Maybe I can come back to some of this later. Today I just wanted to break the omerta, the silence, my paralysis ... Just as the politics of the last few years have proved so depressing and alarming, this personal experience has also resulted in a kind of nothingness. I could scarcely read, let alone write. I have watched hours of crap television, retreated to a kind of contemplative stupor.  I have managed to write fictional shorties for the Inklings (and indeed joined in a public reading at the last Faversham Literary Festival), and so it has not been entirely null. But the works have been lightweight, impersonal.  Only gradually have I wanted to approach a more personal zone.

What triggered it today was to stop and look (as I do daily) at the tomatoes in my 4 hanging baskets at the front of the house.  As usual I have in each basked a fuschia, a geranium and a Tumbling Tom tomato plant. We have carefully watered and fed these through the season and in recent months been harvesting a few every day. I bring them in to ripen on the kitchen table in the sun, and then halve them and dry them for winter stores.  In the last 4 or 5 weeks, the leaves of the tomato plants have started to dry and wither, though the other plants have been as green as usual.  Strangely and miraculously, the little globular fruits are still appearing on the dead-looking branches. Today I picked a huge handful of them; yesterday these were all green and this morning they had started to lighten to a golden or orange or blushing red.  How is the plant doing this?   It is also pretty extraordinary to learn how tomatoes ripen in general.  I had always thought they had to go red on the vine. But no! You can pick them when they just start to turn colour - which they seem to do overnight, even if it's cold.  Bring them in, put them with their fellows, and gradually (away from the probing fingers of passers-by) they darken and sweeten and turn from various shades of green to the welcome red.  

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So - my thread here is about how death can come knocking, in a doctor's interview or down the branches of the plants - and we may not expect it and be worried about it, and expect the worst. But out of the new information we can also learn new things. That life goes on. That we always have resources. That things are not always what they look like. 

Story of a marriage, and of a diagnosis

This jolly picture was taken on the day Andrew and I married - July 18th, 1981. It was a lovely day and really was the start of a life together.  We chose it. We had some idea, or thought we did.  On the whole things have worked out really well for us. It was our fortieth wedding anniversary yesterday and we spent a grateful and relaxed weekend celebrating the good things.  We both know how frail a life can be. How much it can swing from one direction to another.  In truth, you just never know what's going to happen.  Good or bad. Hopes and plans, strengths and weaknesses.  You may feel more or less in control of what you're doing... But you never know. 

Back in January ('21) I realised something was not right with my digestion. I will not bore you here with all the details of the events and non-events which followed. (Remember this has all been during the Covid stresses on the NHS).  It has taken 6 long and anxious months to get a face-to-face meeting with the oncologists, and now - at last! - I have a diagnosis and a plan of action. Chemo therapy starts on Friday. Along the way I had blood tests ('You're diabetic'), a colonoscopy, an ultrasound, a CT scan, a gastroscopy + biopsy, an MRI scan, dental X-rays and examination, a diabetic eye test, more blood tests, a liver biopsy, and mostly a lot - really a lot - of waiting.  My GP turned out to be useless, negative, unhelpful, totally disinterested. In fact, speaking to a cancer nurse last week on the phone, I mentioned he had been almost no help at all, and she immediately said 'Is it Dr T--?'  That was a shocker in itself. 

The Cancer Care Teams - nurses who tell you their names - have been uniformly wonderful, sympathetic, knowledgable, helpful, direct.    Every single one of the people I have met or spoken to have been professional, kind, efficient, human, and all exhausted, working under the extreme pressures of the Covid pandemic and lockdowns, and the perennial underfunding.  But the communication between departments has been really patchy. This does, in some part, explain my GP's lack of interest... It seems he did not actually know I was having these tests, rang me once sounding very surprised to say he had the histology report from the gastroscopy.  He says he never got the scan reports, and was 'too busy' to ask. My anger and disappointment at his failure to support me in what has been a very frightening walk through a very dark forest, where I understand very little and really know nothing, and have no map, has been a major factor in my life all these months.

Along the way have been conversations with so many people - I wish I had recorded them all, but it's never too late to start...  I learned so much, have been on a helterskelter of learning, sliding down into unknown territory with each interaction, holding on to this, having to let go of that.... My thoughts have been wide-ranging: sometimes deep, sometimes practical, sometimes dark. Usually 'rational'... I think. 

One of my preoccupations already is how to tell everyone what is happening. My friend Ashley in Wales is well into brutal treatment for his own cancer in and out of hospital, and he and his wife Pat advise putting their news bulletins out in one place only (Facebook in their case) to avoid having to repeat the good or bad news all the time. They just don't answer random enquiries even from friends... it's all up there.  I think I will do the same and this blog may be part of how I manage it.  Many of my friends are not 'on Facebook' and in any case that is a very public forum with overlaps to many groups who are not remotely interested in my chemo or whatever.  So maybe a blog, and then links to it from FB, Twitter and WhatsApp.

As of today I feel really well. I am mostly very positive in mood, no pain, flexible, able to walk a fair distance, garden, think, paint, write, shop, etc.  It seems almost surreal to be thinking about flooding my body with toxins - forever, it seems. But everything has to change.  We have had the house on the market for the last three months, a depressing experience in that the agents were pretty well useless.  But we are taking it off the market.   Just four viewings in 12 weeks!  One offer, subsequently (we found out) withdrawn as the people couldn't raise enough on the sale of their own house though they loved this.  The agent didn't tell us the offer was withdrawn till we pestered.  Eventually I put a little poster in our front window giving v brief details and price - and someone wants to come and see the place - on Wednesday.  Our last viewer. If she likes, makes a sensible offer and agrees not to deviate, and has an achievable date in mind, we might go for it, even though chemo starts this week.   We have done a lot of decluttering... not enough, but (as I see from earlier blogs) there has been a lot of pleasure in getting rid of precious, garnered, things. Half a van-load went to auction and we'll get £600 or so. Not enough really for what we sold - but - we'll never need that stuff again, and it's great to have the space.   

We have a cleaner - Lore - starting on the same day as our viewer.   We have a WhatsApp group set up for people willing to help with whatever burdens weigh on us for the chemo... driving, cooking, shopping. Friends have been almost unbelievably kind. Leads to a little cry now and then. Thank you all! You know who you are.   The doctors say this treatment is for the duration, it is not a cure, but 'just a treatment'.  If it goes well, they may be able to consider other options - surgery?  radio? who knows?

Despite the horrible diagnosis (I didn't say - a new breast cancer which has spread to spine, liver and adrenals) I feel very robust and in a good place.  The oncologists both said they were surprised to see me so well... having seen the scans, they expected a very poorly person to come into the clinic. I ascribed this wellness to taking my JuicePlus+ capsules for 15 years which we know boosts the immune system... and that interested the Registrar, Joao Galante, very much. He said immunotherapy is really the only new cancer treatment which has been developed in the last few years.  He said, keep doing it!   So I start from a strong position.  When the consultant came in, Jennifer Glendinning, she too said she hadn't expected me to be as well as I obviously am.  So, I feel I have this extra support from the fruits and vegetables.    And, as my lovely school friend Sandy Birchnell (retired psychiatrist) said in a text this morning, the treatment is brutal but it works.  I have two wig appointments lined up.  We had two really lovely lunches out this weekend to celebrate our 40th wedding anniversary which was yesterday.... On Saturday, lunch at Posilippo with Kate and Andy Osmond (and she urged me to restart the blog), and yesterday in the courtyard garden at Henry's Bar and Chocolate Cafe in Hythe with Nicky Tolson (who lent me a wig), and John McConnell ... like the old days.  In weeks to come, they say I have to avoid sunlight and beware of picking up infections, so these two sunny outings were especially precious. 

 

Photos by Chris Calnan

The optimism and hope of a wedding - especially when the partnership has already had to overcome some difficulties, as ours did - is a wonderful thing. You can see in the photos the lightness of heart, the huge numbers of friends and family who came along, the spirit of the whole venture. It led on to our two brilliant and beautiful children, and all their adventures, and the adventures we ourselves have had - travelling, cooking, arguing, making things, working, sharing ... all the ordinary things of life.  We have been so lucky.. and all that was waiting inside us on the day we married.   Now facing chemo and frightening scenarios - so much unknown - there is another whole set of futures waiting for us. Each phone call, each meeting, each decision unrolls new possibilities, new ideas.   I have to be honest and say this illness - coming now - feels like a cutting-off of some of the things I had in mind to do - to move to Ireland maybe, to plant a new forest garden somewhere, to do more travelling.  I have books to write, and paintings to make. And campaigns to run in the community.  But, of course, I don't know if any of those will be taken away from me or not! It may all unroll as I hoped. Let's hope. 

Connected again

 The wifi and communication in general were really either non-existent or very poor where we have been in beautiful W Sussex. I would have posted while we were there but it proved to be so frustrating and difficult I just gave up.

I wrote this yesterday (Monday) hoping to post at a friend's house but it didn't work out, so I will do it today now we are home.  

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A few days have passed without my posting anything, mostly due to the difficulties of getting online. This part of the country has poor connections, and the campsite has no wifi in particular.  The campsite is pretty stressy, or was during the weekend. It used to be a rated/certificated site - with minimal facilities, but the new owner took over at the start of the year, not having run a campsite before, and of course with no idea that the lockdown would bring people in their droves.  What works perfectly well with 10 or 20 groups does not work with 150. One ladies’ toilet, for instance, is not enough……  

We were jammed in, so close and crowded we could hear everything and no doubt our neighbours heard us too. Dogs were roaming and barking and howling and pooing…. The showers quickly ran out of hot water.  Bonfires and music and clattering …. agh!  That was from Friday till yesterday morning when (blessedly) most people left.  Now it’s just lightly populated and we can hear birds singing.   

All this pressure was exacerbated by the extreme heat and humidity. We have been so grateful for the trees all around. They are lovely, blessed things. Their shade, their coolness, their beauty......

On Saturday we went to the Roman Villa at Bignor (wow!!!) and then to the painted church - St Botolphs's at Hardham.. the gracious little interior filled on every square inch with 12th century paintings… all the Bible stories. An amazing place, quite empty, so we had this treasure to ourselves. The wonderful lanky Adam and Eve are on the inside of the chancel arch, reminding the priest of the wickedness of man, I suppose, every time he faced he congregation.  They would be looking (among many other images) at the Lamb of God, the Annunciation, the Presentation, the Flight into Egypt, the trials of St George, what’s thought to be a scene from the Battle of Antioch (previously thought to be a dragon-slaying scene), the Magi, etc etc.  These paintings are glorious, humbling.  Coming straight after our walk around the mosaics at Bignor, it was quite a feast for the eyes all day.   

In the later afternoon we went up to Bignor Top, a clear space on the down… with fantastic far views. A cycling rally station was manned by a team ready to offer them water and oranges, but not many had made it up there in the heat and they were deciding how and when to pack up. This involved quite noisy phone conversations wth other organisers or team members…. it was a relief when they went and we had the place more or less to ourselves. I painted one scene - the ash die back …. the acrylics dried out really fast despite spraying but  I was quite pleased with the result. We did not walk to the very summit - it was really still very hot and that pathway had no shade.

Later we drove to Sainsbury’s at Chichester, to see if I could get a pair of cotton shorts. Yes.   We drove past he Lavender Farm where it seemed from the road way that families of African origin were wandering….

The shade from trees has been essential… we were lucky, in that respect, to get a pitch with more shade than some. And the countryside is so richly wooded, unexpectedly green and ancient… some of the woodland is being cleared out (to create stronger timber I suppose, removing the competitive undergrowths) but few of the roads through these lovely forests are fenced, so the feeling is very unspoiled. The villages are in the valleys (water) and  unbelievably pretty and quaint. One poor old thatched house in West Burton looked very sad… 

everything else is spinked up and looks pretty plush.  I asked the campsite owner about it. He said it would be owned by Lord Mersey, Ned Mersey,  He called him a bigot. He said he’d once had words with him. Mersey had ticked him off for being too close to his horse, and William retorted that the horse was lame…. ‘How would you know?” sneered his lordship. ‘Because we have horses, race horses, always have done…. Take that to the vet or the farrier….’   And late Mersey said to him, ‘you were right. The horse had an access in its foot…’    But  William don’t like him anyway.   William says he’s a cockney, though he was actually born in Shoreham. His family is split between Hackney and Shoreditch and Sussex.   He’s very tall, bald, scary looking. Could have been a boxer. Is now a builder and man of property (Vale of Health included), and since the start of the year, a campsite owner.  He has a fair amount of work to do here to bring it up to scratch.

 Yesterday I managed to wangle enough sitting-and-doing-nothing time to make a painting.  During the last few weeks, campaigning against that wretched man’s ambitions to build on Ordnance Wharf, my beloved and demanding art course has suffered… just not enough time to think or do….  And here too, on the holiday - Andrew’s drive to be doing something all the time has been difficult….Off we go again!  Just sitting and looking, if I am doing that, must be very frustrating for him. It looks like nothing.  But I have to do it to be able to paint.  I have taken so many photos, of the trees, the glimpses of distant landscape (so tantalising as we sweep past), the light and shadows.   I can hear him now, saying ‘Right!’ which means he wants to be off.  We will do a bit of shopping about, and then head towards Chichester again, for lunch w my friend Sandy. 

Getting our bearings

 I am finding the very small awning on this rig frustrating and difficult. In fact I’ve decided I’m never going to use it again (much to A’s annoyance. He said - OK, you buy a new one then). The tent next-door has a connection to the van but has a proper size bedroom and then an open front part which is so much more sensible and practical. Here we are so cramped & with nowhere to store anything. We have too much stuff. There are no points to hang anything, and we keep losing things. We have to grovel through all the various bags looking for things.

Despite the fact we (A) brought a huge tray full of food from the house, tins, jars, packages, etc., we called into a farm shop and bought salads, cheese, hummus etc. That was a good move as they will be shut over the weekend. Extraordinary. 
Then we went into Pulborough, to explore. At the library, they wouldn’t let us in, but said we could use their wifi which was kind of them - it meant in a rudimentary way I could post yesterday’s blog and leave the computer back in the car.  We met two very hot and red-faced traffic wardens ... We’d been lucky to bag a shady parking place.
We strolled down Lower Street, calling into a couple of charity shops to look for a salad bowl because our friends Mary & Stewart are coming for lunch on Sunday & the plan is to make a Salade Niçoise. We called into a brilliant delicatessen where the man advised us not to buy the mayonnaise because it wasn’t very nice, but we picked up various other delicacies. And then had a coffee at the Little Bean cafe where we had to give track-and-trace details, the first time for us. 
We picnicked up at Burton Lake, where we had once visited a few years ago. I’d completely forgotten about it but Andrew remembered straightaway. We hoicked our chairs & stuff through into the woods and had a lovely picnic in the quiet and cool. 

Outside the sun was beating down almost savagely at about 33°. 
The afternoon’s entertainment was to hire a boat at Houghton on the river Arun. We arrived in good time as they asked us and then spent nearly an hour waiting while they got everything ready. Our boat was a bright orange plastic thing and our lifejackets neat and easy to wear. We set off through the pretty bridge and down towards Arundel. After about 20 minutes chugging along, a man in a grey inflatable rowing forwards rather awkwardly, with a little girl as passenger, asked if we would give them a tow. He had been rowing since 2.15 - it was by then 5:20. He’d been against the tide most the way and had gone much further upstream than he planned. 

It took us 3/4 of an hour to get him down to the Black Rabbit, where we dropped him off at his request on some very dodgy looking steps. The little girl had been very distressed and he was very relieved not having to row against the swift and powerful waters of the river. However it made us late getting back because then we were against the tide - It was hard going even with a 6 hp engine. 
Luckily I had rung them to tell the boatyard what had happened. We did not have to pay an extra charge as we feared, and they said that this happened quite a lot. In fact they asked if was it a guy with an open shirt and a little girl, and we said yes- they had spotted them earlier on in the day. 
Back at the campsite we were amazed to see how many more tents and caravans and cars have been allowed in. It really is crowded now. Our neighbors in the yellow box box said ‘Don’t worry! they’ve built a whole new toilet block…’

We had a delicious supper of spelt and spinach pasta with pesto and a fresh salad. We are both very tired but not as tired as the night before.

Happy hols

 We went through London to drop Lucie back home to her flat, and then headed out through Crystal Palace, Croydon and on into Sussex.  The architecture of London fascinates me. South of the river, it’s never quite the same as my childhood roaming grounds, but still tells the stories of expansion and development, speculation and exploitation.  The Victorians were really so plumptious and proud of what the achieved and seemingly made attempts to include everyone in the feeling of wealth…. 

The obsession with a glorious past is everywhere - the endlessly reiterated story of the Golden Elizabethan Age appears in almost every street… gable ends, black-and-white, Tudorbethan… It defines the 19th and 20th century suburbs and indeed is still reigning supreme in the newbuild estates throughout the south.  All mouth and no trousers, these days. The developers spend money on the facades and leave the house itself poorly furnished in terms of sustainability, flexibility, use.   We look in vain for cellars, storage space, gardens, fireproofing…  

Still the Victorians knew what worked best and built - even in poorer districts - with confidence and quality. The brickwork and ornamentation is still really attractive. The contrast, when you hit Croydon is astonishing. Here every single domestic value has been junked in favour of glittering glass-faced towers with fantastic competitive styling and glitz.  Since this is the year of lockdown and zoom, we wonder if these towers will ever really be wanted. They look magnificently wicked but they may well be much less use than the Victorian streets which they replace.

So much of England is hopelessly out of date. Main A-roads wind along narrow country lanes… with hedges and fields. There is some glory in seeing how ancient landuse still prevails according to the geology… so in a remote outer suburb where clearly building values would be very high, nonetheless, on a one-mile strip of road across sandy soil, there are nine or ten market-gardens, a lavender farm (with flocks of families of African descent wandering among the rows of purple).  The market gardens - some open to the public as garden centres, some with poly tunnels, some much more pre-war in appearance - must still be earning enough money to resist selling up for housing.  You get this tenacious little patch of medieval landworking, in strips, with the Great Wen nearly surrounding it.

Our campsite is past Pulborough, not far from the Roman villa a Bignor.  The lanes approaching are pretty well free of traffic but the edges of the road are well-worn and beaten down, from constant parking over a long period of time. Not this year, presumably. 

We drive in past a rising field with one or two caravans or tents tucked into the edges of an open sunny field, and up a driveway to a huddle of pretty ropey old huts and sheds.  We are asked - did you get the email?  Our card machine isn’t working…… Are you electric or…..?   We say we are electric (true!), and are directed to a long mown strip cut through some tall old woodland… pines and oaks.   There is a double electricity supply cable slung above it, all the way.   Cars and tents are lined up down one edge, very very very close together.    Despite our fears, it seems there is a toilet and a shower facility set up in those sheds.   We have never ever camped so close to other people. I am thinking of Glastonbury … Social distancing is nowhere near this.   The owner looks like the Landlord on telly - a bruiser, in a golf buggy.  He’s affable but wants to know how and when we can pay. 

He says he used to come here w his grandad when he was little, to buy eggs. The grandad and the guy who owned the land had both been in the RAF, so they did business… He came back to visit and found the sons/family of the owner were selling it, so he bought it, though he is in reality a building in London.  Andrew said, we had often thought of running a campsite and quick as a flash he said ‘Wanna buy this?’     He’s only had it a few months, and seems to be regretting his decision.    He has a full-time business on his hands already.

It clearly has potential, but needs so much done to it… the whole thing is under-invested. The woods are lovely, but it needs opening up to offer more pitches, and it needs proper facilities such as water, rubbish disposal… etc etc.    In some ways it’s like a campsite in the 1970s - if you remember that Mike Leigh film Nuts in May…. which was filmed at the wonderful campsite near Corfe Castle, where we went to stay several times.    Trouble is, we are older now, and expect more. We have done our rough camping. We have been to France and Spain where the campsites are properly funded and are very civilised….. This is Britain in 2020. A wilful cheerful ignorance prevails. ‘We are inadequate and we like it like this. We don’t want to join in, or be up to date. We like bodges … We expect people to put up with things……  Yes, the pitches ARE that close together…….’    Our man has a lot to do. Will he do it? If someone wants a really good project, this could be it.  The Brits will not be flying off to Spain or Italy for a while. They will seek out home-grown holidays. Happy camping! 

It's lovely to be able to take time out to paint these trees, even though I feel very hemmed in...

All change

Leaving Malta, in March, where the lockdown was being effectively put into place, was strange enough. The main point was that most people seemed compliant. The supermarket queues looked so strange and irritating to us, but little did we know what chaos and confusion we would have to live through for the next several months in Britain.  Our flight home was about half full.  It was perhaps the last EasyJet plane out of Malta. 

Here our government seemed hopelessly out of touch. Common-sense precautions were delayed for months, if put into effect at all.

Planes are now mostly grounded. We hear the airlines have scrapped all the old ones. The skies have been clear and quiet. The occasional military flight, far higher than normal commercial flights, leaves a distinct trace in the perfect blue.  

The excellent summer weather - bordering on drought - has made life tolerable as we faced the worst fears imaginable, but carried on with gardening, cautious shopping, zoom-calling, missing our dear ones. People have died in their tens of thousands.

We contemplate another huge depression as the disastrous effects of Brexit are forced onto us... plus the lockdown which has shut all hotels, shops, restaurants and pubs, parks, theatres, concert-halls, any place where people gather.  Though the government has encouraged race meetings (where the directors are friends or family of cabinet members).  As things were loosened, people went in their tens of thousands to the beaches, hugger mugger...  leaving tons and tons of filth and litter as they dragged home.  As the infection rates had been sinking, gradually, then they started to rise again.   Schools must shut. Schools must open. Grannies cannot see their little ones, but cleaners and nannies may go in and out.   All beauty parlours and hairdressers must shut, or perhaps open.  People must stand 2m apart, or 1m.     So companies have gone bankrupt.  The travel industry is reduced to miniscule amounts... who wants to travel in a closed space with strangers for hours?  I foresee a total economic collapse, as in the Great Depression - and that lasted 10 years.  Eventually the banks themselves, and the insurance companies, will take hits.... who foresaw the collapse of Equitable Life, or Lehmann Brothers?  I wonder if money will survive? Pensions?  This may sound grim - but honestly, who, five years ago, would have predicted Britain crashing out of the best trade arrangements in history, the most peaceable... and on a voluntary basis, and  fighting in the streets about who should or should not wear a mask?

Maks? Hijab? Race riots in America and growling injustices here too... Race riots!!!!! A racist president in the White House openly inciting violence.  And we, peaceable us, are (in a small way) stockpiling dried and tinned foods.... And JuicePlus+ too I think.  Will the supply chains break down? It's entirely foreseeable that many many household items and food goods will become very very scarce.  

   

We are actually putting a box of some of these stored foods into the VW, along with amusements, awning, bedding etc, because we are going camping in Sussex for a few days. Lucie who came here on holiday for a week after 3 months solo in her flat, stayed on for six weeks, but we will drop her in Forest Hill and then go on to Pulborough.   She has been working from here, a sea-swimming, and biking, and wild camping with her intrepid friend Miranda who biked round the world on her own not long ago.   Various friends have been here to party in a quiet way.. the social distancing acting as a kind of safety net.  John and Laura Pool, Tasha and Tom Day (who have moved to her folks' place at Luddenham while they househunt and wait for their baby to be born), Tom Sutton Roberts, Daisy Perkins, Hannah who's down from Edinburgh, so her social scene has not been just us crumblies.  She likes it here (free hotel).

So much has happened. So many shocks and fears. It has been, or is, like being in the first act of a dark opera... so far, everything seems to be going along ok... but we know, we all know that catastrophe is about to strike. And again, and again.   The second act will start during this winter.   

But today, after a hectic, frantic fortnight campaigning against a planning application on Ordnance Wharf, in which I succeeded in getting Jonathan Neame to put in an objection, we are off till Tuesday camping in Andrew's VW.  I am not really looking forward to it.  No facilities, no wifi.  I have a lot of art work to catch up on.... loving my ten week deep course in feeling-art.  Already seeing changes.  Have a bag packed with art materials and somehow have to negotiate Andrew's urges to always be doing something. No rest.  Though he walks much more slowly than me.  Weird. 

Airport

After several days of anxiety and speculation about our flight home being cancelled, here we are at the airport. All looks fine.

We heard the Portuguese airports are 'rammed'.  This is empty.  Hardly anyone about.  I think the whole place will have closed down completely by the weekend. Lockdown all around Europe.

The car hire check-in man was born in Canterbury, lived in Deal for years, moved to Malta a few months ago. Loves it. Wants to retire to Gozo.  Has no regrets.  He said our car had no new damage on it, which was great.... we had wondered, as every single panel had a scrape or a dint on it somewhere..... He said, 'No wonder the Maltese only drive old cars!'  

       

The day today was cool, grey, very British.   That made it less of a pain having to spend so many hours waiting at the airport .... which seemed sensible in case of any disruptions (plus so many places closed all around... nowhere else much to go!)  The sun has come out now but we are upstairs in the Departure lounge.  Small airports are so nice.         Clean, quiet, comfortable even.   We have access to sockets to charge up our phones.   

We'll be boarding  in about an hour. This bulletin is not very powerful, sorry!  It's more a way of filling in time while we wait. 

The internet is ALIVE with  opinions, community groupings, advice, suggestions, rumours, warnings.  Almost everything has been cancelled.  People are worrying whether they will be allowed to go for a walk. Especially if they are 'old'. I do wonder what we are going back to!  People  have been posting photos of the empty shelves at the Faversham supermarkets.  A kind of madness seems to have seized people.... anxiety,  survival instinct, propriety.  'SMINE!!!'  

What a world!