Been a very long day with lots of delays but I got round the bend today.  Hurray!

Met some more interesting people - some just starting chemo, some part way through, some new nurses and yet another oncologist as they needed a safety check before they drugged me.  Was well fed with choccy biccies and a corned beef sandwich as the only thing I could have from what was on offer.

Had to explain to nurse that Sunday is a really bad day to send the District Nurse to do my blood boosting jab... hopefully next time they can manage a Saturday... we'll see.

Good to be home before dark.  I'm tired by the duration rather than the drugs... though am sure the flop effects aren't far away.

Today is scheduled as my fourth dose of chemo - the two-thirds mark - but on Wednesday my neutrophil levels were too low (something that happens to lots of people) so I have a retest at 9a.m. Here's hoping it's OK as the implication of a week's slippage would mean a floppy birthday a month today (to the date not the day) :-(

It's a drug change too - so last night and this morning I have swallowed large quantities of steroids which means if it stands still I might be tempted to eat it!  Evidently the new drug is derived from yew tree bark, which feels perversely apt for a 'vicar' who for almost six years had a Baptist graveyard on her patch and who as a young child used climb the yew tree in our garden (to the disquiet of my parents!).  This drug has slightly different side effects including the possibilities of bone/joint pain, peripheral neuropathy, plamar-plantar and of course falling off nails... sounds like the hill just got a bit steeper.  Last night I painted my nails blue to match my jumper and this morning discovered I could plait a cartoon fatness plait in my biggest headscarf!  What I look like I dread to think, but hey...

Enough of me, what about the New Zealand miners... will they be as fortunate as the Chilean ones?  I think of their families waiting anxiously for news and hoping against hope.

And it's Children in Need day.  Specifically I am thinking of children and teenagers with cancer today; some are treated in other parts of the hospital I'll be at today and some of them will be very, very sick.  I think of their families for whom  today has extra poignancy.  And children's and young people's hospices, offering respite and comfort for families where life-limiting and life-threatening conditions are part of daily life.

So, all being well by this afternoon I'll be round the bend... but if I'm not I have the gift of a 'false plateau' week with good energy levels in which to prepare for the start of Advent.  Seems like 'heads I win and tails I don't lose after all.'

Usually around this time of year I like to take a week off before the onslaught of the crazy-fun schedule of Advent and Christmas.

This year events have overtaken me and a holiday is not feasible, but I will be taking a week out from church (albeit one with at least two and probably three lots of hopsital visits) before a very scaled down but still fun Advent and Christmas.  I have a friend coming to stay for a couple of days and then I will be heading to the next 'floppy weekend' which coincides with a long scheduled 'free Sunday'.

All this means I am choosing not to post for the next few days as part of having a break.  So this corner of blogland will be silent but I will be back soon!

I watched the Royal British Legion Festival of Remembrance last night, something I've done pretty much annually as long as I can remember.  I remember the time I heard Raymond Baxter say that there was only one year since World War II in which a service man (as it then was) had died in active service; last night Huw Edwards said it again.  Since last year, he announced, another 111 service personnel had died - in Afghanistan.

As the poppy petals fall - they used to say one for each life lost - I am always saddened that each year there are more than the year before.  The sea of reddness a reminder of the military human cost of war.

Whether we choose red poppies, white poppies, both or neither, we do well to recall that still today there are young man and young women the world over risking their lives in the service of nation, cause or ideal.  And there are 'folk back home' anxiously waiting and wondering, grieving and mourning.

Today we are are using the BUGB DVD on the complex topic of Trident to centre our thoughts.  No easy answers, just a pause to think, and to remember.

Lest we forget we forget the old lie, dulce et decorum est pro patria mori (Wilfred Owen)

Lest we fail to remember those who still give their lives in the service of others

Like a lot of people I know, I watch Strictly on a Saturday.

Every week Bruce Forsyth winds me up, but he did it big time tonight with his ridiculous 'ay up, ay up' attributed to Blackpool/Lancashire.

What can I say?  How to offend the North West of England and the East Midlands in one fell swoop.

Ay up - with m'duck on the end - is definitely an East Midlands expression.

I have yet to meet a Lancastrian, Mancunian or Cheshire resident who would use that expression.  Ay up?  'Eck as like!

Ah, the south-centric nature of UK-wide broadcasting.  Mutter, mutter, mutter...