Wednesday, February 22, 2006

Today's review

Amusing myself by writing film reviews; here's how today's started

"The Pink Panther, a movie delayed more times than a Tantric orgasm, finally hit the screens this week. And like a Tantric orgasm it made more of a splash than anyone was expecting"

I do amuse myself... just as well really

Red cells, white cells, platelette count all a-okay

Nausea a thing of the past

Fighting fit and raring to go here

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

DOLLYWOOD!

When Quokkaboy (I have no idea what it means and am afraid to ask - he's British) suggested that I head to Dollywood for a vacation he knew that I'd take him seriously.

I know that there will be bits of it that remind me that cousins shouldn't be forced to work in close proximity generation after generation and that there will be bits so sugar-coated it will be like being force fed donuts for a weekend - but ultimately the idea of visiting Dolly Parton's themepark is something that I can't resist.

And I will be visiting without tongue in cheek, eyebrows raised and with cynicism unplugged. I'll be there as a genuine visitor hoping to soak in some old style goodwill rather than there to gather some 'Dolly's second cousin is SO too fat for sequins' stories.

Don't ask me why I make an exception for Dolly - but I do and I will

So the job now is to convince Jude that a Xmas spent at Dolly's Tennesee Mountain Home (TM) would be an exercise in warmth, good heartedness and uncommercial Xmas spirit and not an exercise in my indulging in high camp at the expense of the people there for the spiced apple cider, acoustic singing and simplicity of it all.

The good thing is that I'm thinking about vacations in August and Xmas plans... two months ago I was thinking about whether I had the energy to make the bathroom or whether I should vomit into my dressing gown (bathrobe) pocket - again.

Blood work today - all was good again - now have 10 days to chill, feel good, visit friends and get ready for Chemo III (milking the formula)

Peace Out - as they still say in some quarters

Monday, February 20, 2006

Villa au hostellerie?

To (mis)quote Julian Clary 'Im strangely torn"...

Actually that would have been rather a fabulous quote from the man exiled from British TV for having claimed to have Fisted Norman LaMont (Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time) but already I'm off point.

So friends, family, casual viewers and disappointed Googlers (if you searched for 'fisting' or for 'Norman LaMont' I very much doubt you intended to end up here... try google images) here's the quandary.

We've settled on a vacation island - St. Barts.

It's famous for very little other than being the place where celebs get snapped naked in their villas (think JFK jr, Brad, Gwyneth etc.) but that-s what we want - not naked pics in OK magazine but beaches, sun and a break from the norm.

Our dilemma is this.

Do we rent the fabulous villa and spend our time sipping supermarket wine and badly mixed cocktails by the pool, pausing only to raise a towel above waist level when the maid service arrives

OR

Do we head for Hostellerie Des Trois Forces - a holistic hotel, run by a French astrologer with a penchant for the Buddhist. He sounds mad, his food sounds wonderful and the place is described as either 'basic but spotlessly clean' 'unlike anywhere else on earth' or as 'that dump with the junk yard car park and the mad old French guy.'

I'm thinking Hostellerie Des Trois Forces - a little yoga, some massage, some meditation, lunch by the pool, a great wine list and conversation with the Gerard Depardu meets Hermes owner. It's leaping out at me in a way that I seem powerless to resist.

But then you're my friends. It's your job to help me resist things that leap out at me, rendering me powerless if they look like a bad idea. The COMMENTS section is now open to all - you don't need to be a member of Blogger so feel free to weigh in on the matter... but hurry I feel my credit card burning a bigger whole on my wallet than the chemo is in my chest.

As filler to this and to prove that I still have half a brain I wrote my best intro to a film review since I said of Sahara

'Rarely has a movie been as aptly named as Sahara - an arid film, devoid of any real distinguishing features
that seems to go on forever'

This time I amused myself (if no-one else) with this opener to a review of hideous potboiler 'Firewall'

There are some people (of whom I'll admit to be one) who will see 'Firewall' as further evidence that Harrison Ford is coasting on autopilot toward an Indiana Jones IV payday that will keep Calista Flockhart in SlimFast for decades to come.

The plot of Indie 4 ' tentatively titled 'Indiana Jones - your grandfather's front room' has Harrison - now older than time - rediscovering an old box from his childhood, realizing through the medicare haze that it is the arc of the covenant and subsequently taking it down to a local filming of the Antiques Roadshow... just for insurance value purposes.

It's a surefire winner - and more tightly plotted than the Potboiler by numbers 'Firewall'

As I said it amused me


But enough of my old wank - blood tests then WORK tomorrow - yeh!

Fat Virgin

Have been whiling away the long weekend (it's president's day) looking at Villas in the Carribbean. We're planning on taking some kind of vacation once treatment is over and of course therein lies the rub. We don't know when / if treatment will be over.

Chemo should be finished in May. It's then quite likely that I'll do radiotherapy too. That could be anything from 6 to 12 weeks. Of course there's then a 50% chance that I'll be in full remisssion (can't clam 'cured' for 5 years as 80% of people relapse). If the flip of the coin doesn't go my way we start to look at weird and wonderful new treatments - like stem cell transplantation - which can take another couple of months (locked in a room)

All of this needs to be balanced with the fact that it's been a tough year, it's sub zero outside, Jude's been working 100 hr weeks and we're running on fumes. We need a break - and I think that we'll take one at the beginning of August.

The brief - warm, clean, close and absolutely no cruise ships. Having stayed in Nassau I have come to detest both the floating pollution chambers that are the ships themselves and the badge wearing locusts that disembark from them - devouring all tourist tat in their wake and believing that a country's culture can be found within a half mile of its Duty Free shops. These are the people who take their homes with them and believe that they've travelled the world; and they fill me with more hate and resentment than is healthy for a man who owns as many Buddhist books as I.

So we've discounted St. Martins and all of the US Virgin Islands and are now looking at the British Virgin Islands generally and Virgin Gorda (the fat virgin) in particular. A villa will give us some privacy and autonomy, our own pool and a saving over a hotel and might even mean that we can invite a couple of friends to join us. I miss taking a bunch of people to a sunny paradise island for the weekend.

To that end I'm also looking at Necker. 26 of us could take over an entire island for about US$1000 each. Staff ratio is 1:1, we'd have our meals cooked, our own boat and helicopter transfers to wherever we want. But do I have 26 friends? I guess when it's a cheap private island jaunt on the line I could find them.

Anyway the question - do I say 'screw it' and book for August or do I play sensible and wait and see how the chemo goes before doing anything? Decisions.

An aside... whatever I do, I won't be getting travel insurance. Cancer ridden chemo patients booking months in advance are a pretty high risk of no show apparently - who'd have thought?