As the title suggests, after 40 years working in catering in various roles from trainee chef to catering manager and more recently as relief chef in several care homes around Suffolk, the time has now come for me to finally hang up my kitchen whites for the last time. It’s been a fulfilling and rewarding career for me, but I now find the shifts too long and demanding.
As a result it is now time to find something else to keep me busy. I don’t think I mentioned in my last blog that I signed up with our local school to work as an Exam Invigilator. I helped with the GCSE exams during May and June which was great fun. I will stay on with them and cover any future exams as required. I have also just been appointed as an Admin Support Officer working with Mid Suffolk Council on a temporary contract until March next year. I’m actually really excited about taking on a new role. We had a week in the Bordeaux region of France last week, which is where I had my interview over Teams. That was a new experience for me, being interviewed while sitting on our hotel terrace overlooking the river Lot. It was quite surreal. I am due to start next week if we can get all the paperwork in place in time.
The lesson from this is that it’s never too late for a career change. I’ll let you know how it goes in the next blog, unless of course I get sacked in my first week, in which case I may not mention it again!
We have plenty of other news to tell you about. There is so much going on in the country at the moment, with a new Prime Minister and a new King all within a week.
Before I give you a health update, I will tell you about our trip to London to see our late Queen’s procession from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Hall. On Tuesday, Bim suggested we should go and be part of the history that is being made this week, so we bought train tickets and arrived in London at about 11am on Wednesday. We had no expectations of being close enough to see any of the formal proceedings but hoped to go to Green Park to see the floral tributes. We are not ‘City Folk’ and do not really know our way around but incredibly we found ourselves right at the gates of Buckingham Palace. We were the last people allowed into the official viewing area and had an amazing view of the gates and the top of the Mall. We only had to wait for an hour before it all started, and during this time we saw all the guards and marching bands arrive. The crowd went completely silent just before the procession started (apart from one annoying woman who kept talking on speaker phone, until Bim told her to turn it off). It was an incredibly moving moment watching the coffin being transported on the gun carriage with all the family walking behind. We feel very lucky to have witnessed it.
The sea of flowers in Green Park was also amazing to see. It is worth the trip to London just to see them.
I have added a few photos from our day, and the link for a short video of what we saw and heard.
Health Update
Before I give you our latest health news I just wanted to mention Bill Turnbull who died at the end of August from Prostate Cancer. He was diagnosed a year after I was, and I remember being jealous at the time because he said that his doctors had told him he may have up to ten years to live, where I was given a four to five year life expectancy. This shows the uncertainty of what to expect after diagnosis. Sadly his disease progressed quicker than was expected. I enjoyed watching Bill when he was on Breakfast TV and more recently as a presenter on Classic FM. He will be missed by many.
Right, time to give you our health update. If you have been paying attention, regular readers will know all about my PSA levels. At my last blood test this has finally gone into double figures, reaching 11.4 this week. As a result my Consultant has said I will start my next treatment regime (which is still only the second one). I will be given Enzalutamide which is an extra hormone tablet to take daily. Hopefully this will slow down or even reverse the cancer spread for a while. I am likely to have fatigue as the main side effect from this treatment, but hopefully that should be manageable. We will just have to see how it goes. We will keep you informed.
As usual our normal reaction to this sort of news is that we ought to book another holiday! It’s Bim’s 60th next March, so we are hoping to book somewhere special for a week or two. We hope to return to the Maldives again, if my health allows.
I think it is time for Bim to write the next issue of this blog. We see the Consultant next week so perhaps she can give you a further update then.
Just one more thing. It was the most bizarre event, that while standing in a queue of possibly a thousand people to get into Green Park I saw someone I thought I recognised from my school days. I did have a chat with him. We hadn’t met in more than forty years. I remember having all sorts of adventures with him, nearly all of which are best not repeated here! Great to see you again Mark.
As always, thank you for reading.
