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Another visit to hospital this morning, just being cautious about a bump that I’d noticed on my side. It turns out that it’s almost certainly a lipoma which is a harmless deposit of fat cells (nice) which ironically has only become visible due to my recent weight loss. It was a relief to have this diagnosis and to see how seriously this was taken. I am going to go in for scans again soon anyway and this was a good opportunity to do some blood tests and find out what my testosterone levels are like.
I still feel like a man. As much like a man as I felt before.
My oncologist was concerned about my weight loss, but I told him I was on a diet and he asked why. I told him it was because he’d told me to lose weight. Maybe he’d just been making conversation.
A nice little boost to find out that my bump was nothing to worry about. Though I felt that after the first visit to the GP with my big bollock so don’t count your chickens. I enjoyed telling Right Bollock (the puppet of my murderous testicle) that his campaign of evil might actually increase my life. If it’s the impetus to get properly fit then that might stave off other more deadly health issues. Increasingly it seems that losing a nut was the best thing that could happen to me. It still doesn’t feel like I’ve actually had cancer. I am basically living in denial, but that might be the best way to stay living.
I was reminded on Twitter about the book Swallows and Amazons. My dad had loved this story as a child and in the 1940s and had been keen to share it with his kids a generation later. He attempted to read it out loud to my siblings and I on holiday on the Isle of Arran, but we found it boring. I don’t remember anything about the book, beyond maybe there being a picture of a row boat on the cover - there’s a character called Titty in it, which didn’t even strike me as memorable so it must have really turned my brain off. I do however remember how disappointed my dad was that we didn’t like his favourite book. I can’t have understood how that crushed his spirit then, but somehow that’s my abiding memory of it now. Poor dad.
But I guess if I tried to read the kids the Narnia books or Dr Doolittle stories now (though these were pretty old-fashioned in the 70s - Doolittle actually predates Titty) that they’d give me short shrift. Things move on and people decrying their childhood books getting cancelled by the woke crowd are mainly only just mourning the fact that tastes change and children need entertainment that speaks to them. Some things stand the test of time - Mary Poppins is a huge hit in my house - but others go and we can’t foist our own childhood experiences on our kids. Or at least should be pleased when they match up rather than surprised when they don’t.
I had a bit of a bad throat for Twitch of Fun, which shouldn’t have been an issue given that the other characters do so much of the talking. But despite my producer trying to get me cancelled and everyone claiming I was toxic to work with, which is fucking ridiculous, it went OK. Up as a podcast and on YouTube on Friday.
