Round Four

This is Odysseus hearing the supposedly irresistible song of the Sirens whilst tied to the mast of his ship, as advised by his late hostess Circe. She was herself an attractive witch, so she understood what the Sirens were really up to. They actually want to lure him to his death, so cunningly appeared an alluring form - a useful skill if you are going to do some luring - as imagined here by the now forgotten English artist Herbert James Draper in 1909. All a bit risque for a late Victorian gentleman, but because the subject was respectably classical he got away with it. The oarsman can't hear the song because Odysseus stuffed beeswax into their ears, but they clearly disapprove of the ladies and suspect their esteemed leader is in the process of losing his marbles.

Actually I think this famous tale could well be one that Odysseus made up. It does not appear as part of Homer's narrative but as a fairly short episode in Odysseus' own long account of his travels which he relates to the Phaeacians and their King Alcinous, his most generous hosts. Homer makes it clear that Odysseus was not one to let the truth get in the way of a good yarn, and he begins his tale after a good feast involving plenty of wine. In fact he could have invented the whole thing. Later on when he arrives on his home island of Ithaca he makes up all sorts of stories to hide his identity, even fooling his wife Penelope, so he was an accomplished liar, possibly even better than Boris Johnson. In this version Odysseus himself looks a bit bemused, as if the song is familiar but he can't quite remember it. Or perhaps, despite their reputation, the Sirens were actually out of tune.

I identify with Odysseus here, not for any musical reason, but because for me the painting portrays the sort of helplessness you feel when you can't move and things happen to you.

I do not get tied to a ship's mast but I do get a cannula pushed into my arm with a lot of tubes coming out of it attached to a machine which pumps mysterious solutions into me, makes movement difficult and has a mind of its own. Every now and then the machine starts beeping, and as there are over twenty of them in the unit, at least one of them is going off at any one time. Given that they sound more like irritating sirens than irresistible Sirens, I drown them out by streaming music through my airpods rather than stuffing my ears with beeswax. As a result, the only sign that the noise is coming from my own machine is when nurses rush up towards me. Sometimes it is just letting them know that it has finished pumping, but more usually it is upset because a tube has developed an airlock. This is usually resolved by pressing some buttons on the machine and giving the tube a careful squeeze and shake, but during round four, for reasons unknown, the cannula got blocked and they decided to take it out and put another one in. Another sharp scratch. I've lost count of the number of holes I've had dug into my arms since this all began. It's a good job I have two of them.

The other reason for being disturbed by nurses is that they want to measure my blood pressure. (It's that fascination with blood again. No-one in the medical profession seems to escape it.) My nurses are less pressing than Odysseus' Sirens but they are still quite insistent. It's rather tedious, but I understand that it's necessary and it just involves a firm squeeze rather than a sharp scratch.

The week before the treatment session I had an MRI in the cardiology department because they want to learn more about my how my heart is functioning. This was a super-MRI with a cannula in both arms! I suffer from atrial fibrillation, which is when one of the upper heart chambers beats very fast and erratically. This not a dangerous condition in itself, but it can lead to an increased risk of strokes and heart attacks, so they want to deal with it. The scan showed that my heart is pumping out less blood than it ought to, and the atrial fibrillation is indeed the cause (there are other possible ones). The cardiologists want to address that with medications to start off with, some of which I am already taking, and are sending me a piece of kit to give them some more information. So it looks like I am getting something of a system overhaul.

I asked them what causes this condition and the answer was that nobody really knows, but the most consistent correlation is with age. Well, in a couple of weeks I will have used up my Biblical quota of summers, so what can you expect?

It nevertheless looks increasingly unlikely that the lymphoma will lead to my imminent termination. The symptoms are reducing and my reactions are increasingly stable. I still get out of breath quite easily, but the last lung drain helped once things settled down. My energy level is more consistent and the coughing has now reduced. I only get out of breath after a long walk or cycle. It also looks like I may have put on a little bit of weight. I am not out of the woods yet, but I feel I am in a clearing and light is filtering through the foliage.

So before the summer is over, I think I am ready to step beyond the Wild Wood and follow in Mole and Ratty's paw-steps by trying the therapy of messing about in boats - on the same stretch of river that they used, but as it is today, unenhanced by Grahame's imagination, or Homer's for that matter. By all accounts, the Thames is Siren-free.