I thought, or anyway hoped, that once I’d finished the chemotherapy I would spring back to vitality. Seven weeks on and I’m still creeping about like a two-toed sloth. Now and then I study my face and head in the bathroom mirror for signs of rejuvenation. The narrow skull now boasts a light covering of baby fuzz. Sprouting from my upper lip are some widely spaced bristles. But no sign yet of any eyebrows. From their pouchy sockets the eyes look back at me uncertainly.
Listening to In Our Time a few weeks ago, I heard Melvyn Bragg read aloud Thomas Hardy’s poem ‘I Look into My Glass’. The three short, deceptively simple stanzas, concluding with the phrase ‘throbbings of noontide’ undid him. He faltered and choked as though one of the guest academics had crept up from behind and was trying to strangle him.
It was a new wig: soot black, centre parting, wholly ridiculous
Hardy was still relatively spruce when he wrote his poem of complaint about an undimmed spirit imprisoned in dying flesh.
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