I woke up at 3am once again. It’s not a problem as I’m feeling fine. I just couldn’t sleep again. Never mind, I now have a nice long day to plough through.

It is now 7-30 a.m. We have had breakfast and tea and now Barbara will feed and tend to the 80 odd cockatiels and canaries in the aviary, let the hens out, sort out Orry our African Grey parrot, feed the ducks, swans and geese on the Silverburn and then it will be Skipper’s turn. I am now in to my 4^th week of chemo. I started to loose my hair yesterday and I am still shedding it today. 52 years ago at around about this time, I was loosing my eyes to cancer. Loosing my sight does not appear to have caused me too much grief and of course my sight did not and will not grow back again. So a temporary hair loss seems a very small price to pay for ridding myself of cancer yet again. There are so many occasions in my life where I have felt grateful, healthy and wealthy. Yet outwardly I guess I might have appeared to have little of these things. I recall one night in Birmingham back in 1970. I was at engineering college and had decided to visit the pub, “The Old house at Home” for a couple of pints one evening. The pub was about a mile from the college. With about 6 shillings in my pocket (30p to new comers), I set off with my white stick. Along the way I got talking to a couple of people waiting at the bus stop. They were going to bingo. As I stood chatting to them, the busy Birmingham traffic roared by, lorries, taxies, cars and busses, brakes screeching, dogs barking and folks generally scurrying about. I told the couple I was from the Isle of Man. They thought they had heard of it but, were not sure. Their bus came along and I bade them goodbye. I continued my journey to the pub. As I walked I started thinking about the very nice couple of folks. They probably got on a busy Birmingham bus each morning to go to work and did the same coming home. They had never walked along the banks of the Silverburn, never heard of Langness and, walked on its grass carpet and listened to the sky larks over head. They had never walked on the beach late in the evening and heard the curlew calling out across Castletown bay. They probably never would. At least I was only in this city temporarily. They say that Birmingham has more canals than Venice. Well maybe that’s true, but I think you can see and touch the canals of Venice. I lived in Birmingham for two years and didn’t know they had any. I arrived at “The Old house at Home” and met up with a chap who was home on leave from the Navy. I joined him for a pint. Brilliant I thought, a man after my own heart, we will speak the same language. I was 17, sorry about that landlord just in case you come across this blog. Well my seaman friend was a Royal Navy man and I soon discovered we had very little in common. He didn’t know what a half hitch was. He didn’t know what was the beam or draught of his ship. I have know idea what his job was in the Royal Navy, but back in those days, at 17, I thought everyone that went to sea was a seaman. I wandered back to my college digs having spent my 6 shillings and considerably more than that of my Navy friends. When I woke the next morning, I was skint, hung over and in Birmingham. However, it was just another page in life’s rich book. My chance meeting the night before with the couple at the bus stop taught me how lucky I was to be just visiting this noisy busy city. Yes for sure the couple at the bus stop were probably just as happy as me. But then they knew know different. My navy pal in the pub was probably very well versed in his job in the navy. He had not been brought up among the boatmen of Castletown who knew their knots and terminology, could navigate and work the tides of the Irish Sea and further more, they imparted their knowledge to a young blind kid growing up in the town who was always hanging around the harbour looking for a sail with some unsuspecting boatman. I didn’t appreciate it at the time, but yes, I was indeed, wealthy, healthy and very lucky to be growing up in such a wonderful place. Even though cancer has decided to return to me again after all these years, I still feel healthy and sure that just like some of those bad memories of childhood when I had to leave home, cancer will again prove to be no more than a second bad chapter in the beautiful book life.

Until tomorrow then, Tom Glassey news at 8-31a.m. on the banks of the Silverburn.