According to GodDaughter2’s Dad in one of his recent emails, Churchill once said something about how we just have to keep buggering on. Either that or GD2D made this up. Anyway, that’s what I am now doing, as best I can.
Today started going to hell last night when the Royal Marsden rang to say that the telephone-appointment they had been saying for about a fortnight would be at 3.30pm might actually be at more like 11am! Which meant that cricket lag (which it turns out I am suffering from) came into play. Instead of sleeping during the small and then not-so-small hours of this morning, I instead had a succession of coughing fits, all made worse by the thought that, come the telephone-appointment, I would be struggling to stay awake. The only way to stop the coughing during the night was to get fully up, sandals, sweater, the lot, and sit for an hour or two in front of my computer like it was the day. Being vertical being the only way to stop the coughing. Maybe it’s just because I now have words for what is wrong with me, but my lungs, while I was coughing, seemed truly about to give up on me, if not now, then some time rather soon.
But at least, having got me up at the crack of 10.30am, the appointment was indeed at just after 11am, so there was that. So, back to bed for the afternoon, including a bit of sleep, and then an early evening during which various further details were sorted, to do with who would live my life for me in the event that I became incapable of living it myself. Once again my Senior Designated Friend was driving all that along. Without her, I’d not yet be dead but I’d probably be wishing I was.
Now, I am trying to avoid eating or drinking anything that might keep me awake for yet another night. Quite easy because today I consumed a massive fish pie at lunchtime. But will I sleep tonight? Weird how I can sleep through great chunks of one of the great fourth innings run chases of all time, but could not, last night, just sleep. So maybe it’ll be the same this coming night, with, again, no cricket to relax me.
Tomorrow, at a genuinely early time in the morning, I am off again to the Marsden, for a Covid jab and for research tests associated with that (they want to know how lung cancer sufferers react to the Covid jab), and I’ll also hope to be picking up an inhaler, to stop me coughing being the idea of that. We shall see. At least I’m finally getting the jab.
Just taken another daily magic anti-cancer pill. Will it ever have any effect on the cough? Like: end it. That would really be something.
That does sound unpleasant. The covid jab is good news. Sending you wishes that something will stop the cough and help you sleep. Maybe you’ll just have to watch more cricket.
During the war, Churchill always drew strength from visiting with those on the front lines, whether it was in the bombed-out ruins of London or in the Western Desert of Egypt. Medical professionals, today’s first-responders, were not neglected. In March 1944, Churchill spoke to the Royal College of Physicians and said: “The discoveries of healing science must be the inheritance of all. That is clear. Disease must be attacked, whether it occurs in the poorest or the richest man or woman, simply on the ground that it is the enemy; and it must be attacked just in the same way as the fire brigade will give its full assistance to the humblest cottage as readily as to the most important mansion.”
Churchill himself had to absorb many shocking blows during the war. On 10 December 1941, just three days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Churchill received news that Japanese aircraft in the Far East had sunk two British battleships, HMS Repulse and HMS Prince of Wales. At a blow, six hundred officers and men were drowned. “In all the war, I never received a more direct shock,” Churchill later recalled. Yet the very next day, his Private Secretary John Peck recorded that the Prime Minister’s dictum was “‘We must just KBO,’ which, he explained, meant ‘Keep Buggering On.’”
Rob Fisher – thanks, as always, for the good wishes. Everything got done, including the jab.
TonyB (aka GD2D)
Apologies for accusing you of maybe making this up. I just couldn’t quite believe he ever said such a thing. Very interesting.
And yes, there is something about the sinking of great ships that must have been especially jolting. For both sides. I’m thinking: Hood. But also: Bismarck, Tirpitz. Although I think the “sinking” of the Tirpitz happened when it was bombed while in harbour, rather than sunk in the open sea. By the Dam Busters, as I recall.
Have a quiet, coughless night
Thank you.
I find myself contemplating the way that what might be expected to be expressions opposite in meaning often are not – slowing up, for example, is not the opposite of slowing down. I once heard a chap in a street market selling inflatable something-or-others, and telling potential purchasers that they could have them blown up or blown down. What prompted these musings was the hope that you, cousin, would keep buggering on, and not bugger off.