Cancer 149

When you read about people who are dying, as I sometimes do, they often have bucket lists, even people who are not dying have bucket lists, lists of things that they want to do before they die. I don’t have a bucket list. I have done some stuff and I have not done some stuff. It might have been nice to do some of the things I haven’t done but I haven’t done them so I don’t know what I am missing, The stuff I have done has varied. Some of it has been fun, some of it good, some of it bad (not telling), and probably most of it inconsequential, particularly to other people. Like many people I am quite content with what I have achieved and not disappointed about what I have not achieved.

I saw a comedian on a video the other day. I can;t remember his name. He didnit do a bucket list. He didn’t have a list of things he was planning to do. Instead he had a Fuck it list, a list of things he was not going to do. I quite like that idea. Some of the things I can put on my Fuck it list include:

• Eating rice pudding. I love rice in all its forms except rice pudding, which to me is the same as the vomit of a child, particularly myself when I was a child, both in look and smell.
• Climbing a bigger mountain than I have already climbed. My lungs won’t take it. Actually, on a good day they won’t take more than a mile or two on the flat, so forget long slopes. My highest mountain by the way is Mulhacen in Spain at 3500 metres. I have been higher, such as in the Andes, but not by foot.
• Going to China. I have been twice. While the people are lovely I do not want any further experiences of someone gutting a fish on the road very near to a small child pissing on the same road.
• Being religious,. I believe (sic) that I became an atheist at the age of 3 when I had to be taken out of church because I was crying. I hated (and hate) being in church. I definitely became an atheist as I walked through a field to primary school sometime between 7 and 9 years and consciously realised there is no god. I haven’t deviated since, and looming death makes no difference at all.
• Swimming,. With my Hickman Line I can’t go swimming, whether in the sea, a river or the swimming baths. Never mind, I always preferred cycling for keeping fit, now keeping fit is a matter of walking a few hundred metres.
• Drinking coffee. I gave it up definitively when I developed heart problems. Prior to that I would drink it occasionally, more often in foreign lands where tea was unavailable or too disgusting to drink. I always disliked the smell. Now when I am on chemo I can’t stand being near it. I really dislike coffee shops that smell of coffee.
• Building a brick wall. I might have left the building trade in the early 1980s but I always got pleasure from small building jobs. I still have my original trowel from my apprenticeship days but I will build no more walls. Both breathlessness and a stoma make it impossible
• Going to the USA. Just before my diagnosis we planned a visit to the Rockies to further our experience of US RV holidays but imagine getting insurance to the USA with terminal cancer. It is not going to happen. I am happy to travel to Europe without insurance because they have civilised hospitals if I have an emergency, but third world countries like the USA are impossible.
• Re-reading Jane Eyre. It took me three months to read Jane Eyre for my A level English. It was painful and put me off 19th Century women novellists forever (except Mary Shelley of course). I did try Pride and Prejudice once but it was so dull. Some women novellists are evidence that women are a separate species, bu tthat is a topic for another day.
• Writing Fuck it lists. It is just as pointless as bucket lists, but it is the middle of the night and my brain can’t engage fully. It is 0510 and I have been up since 0200. I will go back to reading Evelyn Waugh. Great author.