So with the nest well and truely empty, what happens next is that Jen and Joanna swan off to New York to see Nathan. They left on 16th November and my radiotherapy started on the 21st.

No pain involved, just the inconvenience of schlepping up to Bart's every day for a roughly midday appointment that fluttered around but always alighted on a time totally different from the one on your original list. Didn't like it much, spent too much time in the waiting room with people making loud mobile phone calls about cancer related topics, or moaning that their transport hadn't turned up. Saw the Cancerbackup woman who told me I wouldn't get travel insurance while I was still getting treatment, so that was my trip to New York down the tubes. The only jolly bit I can remember in my radio therapy saga was the story of the missing shepherd.

Went downstairs as usual, clothes off, shove them in carrier bag I bring with me, gown on and into the room with the big machine. Give my date of birth, lie on the couch, get lined up very precisely. They go out, machine makes a funny noise, I count ( can't remember how many now) they come back in, do something else (I've got my eyes shut all this time) go out, funny noise again and that's it. Except this time there's lots of twitching and whispering and,

"They didn't!"

and stuff like that, so I ask what's the matter. Nice radiographer tells me that they were sorting out their Christmas decorations, and someone has taken two of the figures from their nativity scene. They think the radiography team in the next room is to blame, but can't prove it. Next day the plot thickens. Someone has returned one of the figures, but has put up a notice in the staff room. It is a picture of the missing shepherd, but he's behind bars and they are demanding a ransome. My radiographers might be willing to pay this, but there are no details on the notice of how this might be done. The next day I slide into Marks before my appointment and buy a bag of chocolate money. I write a silly note saying,

"Here's your money, now release the shepherd or else!"

or some such twaddle, and slide it into the office next door as I leave. The next day I arrive to discover that hostility between the two rooms has escalated. They have been accused of sending the note ! They have had to supply handwriting samples to prove it wasn't them! I tell them it was me, obviously. Obviously to anyone who knows me, but not obviously to these lovely young women for whom I daily bare my breast and scar tissue in a way I don't to my nearest and dearest. Maybe they think it's not necessary for them to know me, but for me it is necessary. Without being asked I join in the game because I would, wouldn't I?

Meanwhile, across the pond....

Whoever thought of that stupid expression must've been mad. Across the pond is where the fairies live, not the Americans.

Nathan was discovering that all those birthday cake wishes weren't wasted. The longed for web-slingers never arrived in time to impress Archie and Ashton and the rest of the Benthall Gang, but at the age of 21 he was allowed, encouraged even, to walk up 5th Avenue in a Spiderman outfit and spend all day wearing it at work.

So chemo must have finished at the end of October, then Joel appeared for a week to say goodbye before he and Gina went off into the sunset for their adventure. Strange to say goodbye to Joel with no Nathan there, I'd already lost him to the exoctic clutches of American Eagle in New York. We skated over the goodbye because to dwell on it might have been a bit painful for both of us. Neither of us wanted a repeat of the day he left for college.
There's something very undefinable about your relationship with the first born. First borns, first loves, it's all very unforgettable and special. This is Joel's story.
When you have a baby, the world is immediately divided into the people who have had a baby, and therefore have some clue of what you've gone through, and those who haven't. Jennifer came in to the labour ward to take Joel away and count his fingers and toes. She said,
" I know, it's awful isn't it. But you soon forget, people do, or they'd never have another one. And just imagine, our mother had three!"
I remember trying to put it into words to tell Sean. Who knows why, it's just how it was with me and Sean.
"It really hurt. I shut my eyes and there was this blinding white light that was the pain, and I was moving towards it, and I thought, when I hit the light I'm going to die. And then I was there and Joel was born."
"That's interesting," said Sean, " I suppose it's one of the times when people are closest together, but it sounds like you were thinking what Joel was thinking."
And blessed by that statement I always felt that Joel and I would understand each other, with or without words, ever since.
So Joel and Gina went off to the other side of the world on the 9th November 2006 and I just let them go. What else was there to do ?

This will have to start as a retrospective. As years start and end in September for me, I can look back over the past, rather vacant and unstructured year, and at least pinpoint a few moments when something was happening.
Last Septmeber, I have to remind myself, was still a time when I was up and down the line to Paget Ward for my chemo. Dressing up to try to pretend to myself that it was a treat, which of course it was. Someone, namely Ellie the lovely nurse, was trying to do something helpful for me. Let's just ignore the sticking needles into an arm devoid of anything resembling a vein. Bless you Ellie, the only nurse who seemed to be able to find one. Good bits, (were there any?) looking for blackbirds in Finsbury Circus and striking up a relationship with the very surly Eastern European woman who brought the trolly round, snapping,
" Sanvichis, drink."
at the little clusters of people clustered around the bags of dripping fluids, hopefully poisoning the poison out of us.
And so it was for September and October, life revolving around the trips to Barts and scattered with invitations forcing you to grird your loins and wrap your head and stride of into the great normality, hoping you can cope with the way people look at you and determined to be positive. Going to nice places and eating lovely meals you can't taste. What a cow I sound, I know they all meant well. It was just such a trail to have to make light of it all the bloody time.
Then a sparkle of light relief when I organised the Church Hill Road TulipWatchers to plant their Spring Green bulbs on November 5th for me and Monty Don. That was fun, or at least something like it. Carol and Ivan won with this amazing effort. Miranda, Malcolm, Mick and me trailed in a few days later. Never did find out what happened to Valerie's.

I feel I should be typing with my left hand, I'm so hesitant about this. Keep having to remind myself that it can't be any more difficult than knitting. Oh shut up and get in the water !
Splash !!!