writer's moll

It’s nice to be blogging again after the weeks just spent looking for alternative cancer treatments for Rob. His tumour continues its relentless invasion of his neck, its sinister tentacles now wrapping themselves round his muscles and voice box. He hasn’t responded to the first two sessions of his new chemotherapy course, and I’m disappointed and puzzled that conventional treatment sits so uncomfortably alongside any alternatives. His last blood count was 11 (normal is 16 or 17) but there’s been no attempt to try anything new, not even a mention of nutritional supplements. He decided to take a simple iron supplement, plus a hefty daily dose of Himalayan Goji juice, and whilst I’m not talking about a cure, in two weeks he’s put on half a stone, his blood count has gone up to 11.8 and his normally chalk-white complexion has some colour in it. With that encouragement, I’ve now ordered him some more ‘magic potions’, which of course brings up the moral dilemma, which is that if the people selling this stuff are charlatans, buying one of their products encourages the exploitation of vulnerable people. But can I afford not to take a chance?

I know my loved one has written about the rain during Festival week at Hay-on-Wye so I’ll only add that I was born in Wales and every time I go there I remember that my Dad took us back to England because it never stopped bloody raining. You’ll always hear the local joke that if you can see a particular distant hill, it’s going to rain, if you can’t, it is raining. But it is still a small price to pay for the special buzz you get at the Festival. One of the most endearing things about it is also the most infuriating, namely the peculiarly English amateurishness of it. It’s held in a large field and the marquees, loos, eating places etc. are nicely laid out, but for those without 20/20 vision the signposting can be somewhat taxing, and only the English could come up with a system of getting the thousands of people in and out of the site via a box office designed to hold no more than the local Women’s Institute’s weekly meeting and the cunning plan for controlling the traffic flow is to put arrows on the floor indicating the way in and out, which can only be seen when the box office is virtually empty. BUT, when we arrived for our first session my loved one and I looked at each other and said 'who's got the tickets' and chorused 'you have'. Yes, all £290 worth of them sitting back home. A charming volunteer at the ticket office sympathised, telling her own disaster story of planning a 17 week tour of Africa. She’d been in charge of organising the itinerary, which she’d produced and copied in duplicate and her husband was in charge of the paperwork, but somehow the packing of the itinerary had fallen between the two job descriptions and they arrived with no idea of where they were going. We all had a laugh and she gave us duplicate tickets. Now that’s the good side of amateurishness.

Although this was our eighth year and we should have known better, we went to 7 sessions one day, the first at 9 am, the last at 9 pm, ignoring the obvious fact that you’ll end up completely knackered if you go to more than 5 in a day, and if you have an early morning session, for God’s sake don’t book a late night one as well. Nul points for that then.