The Lakeland Flying Tigers

My man crush on Matt Damon is maintained - gratuitous abs and buttock shots are fine with me. The Martian is a great yarn, if not a great film. It isn't going to usurp Apocalypse Now, or It's A Wonderful Life, or The Godfather (Parts I and II), or The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, or several others from my all time top 20.

But it was a thoroughly entertaining SciFi yarn which was funny, exciting, tense, uplifting. My feeling is this isn't a date movie, unless, like me, your date is another nerdy bloke. Don't tell Mark Kermode, but we saw it in 3D and other than it being slightly dark, it's the sort of film that I'm sure would be fine in 2D but worked well in 3D too.

I have a strange relationship with Ridley Scott. I feel I should dislike his approach to film making. He seems macho, and overblown, and he comes across rather arrogantly (and stepping back I guess you need some arrogance to be film director). But then I look at the list of films he's made and there are some absolute stonkers in there - Blade Runner, Alien, Thelma and Louise, Gladiator to name but a few.

I don't know if Ridley is a regular reader of the blog, but if you do then I apologise for not giving you the benefit of the doubt.

So last night was a win for the Martian and a draw for the Martial as United come home from Moscow with a Champions League point.

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So here I am live blogging from the Oak Road Treatment Centre at The Christie. Some readers have expressed interested in the process of how the chemo is administered. And it's fairly simple and quick (about an hour) in my case.

First I have a canula inserted into my lovely fat veins:

and then the drug, which comes in a plastic bag is put up on a drip stand and pumped into the vein via the canula.

Then at the end a saline flush is pumped in to make sure all the goodness if used. If you look up Docetaxel, you'll find it's also used for breast cancer treatment too.

One downside of the process I've found is that I am given Dexamethasone the day before, and the day of, the chemo treatment, and this is making me a little bit hyper and as a consequence I'm knackered through lack of sleep. I also think it kicks off hot flushes a bit more too. Luckily it's only two days every three weeks. The dexamethasone is designed to ward off any immediate impact of the chemo, allergic reactions and the like.

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Hat of the Day

The Lakeland Flying Tigers are a minor league team in the Detroit Tigers farm system. Their home is the Joker Marchant Stadium, Lakeland, FL, named for local Parks and Rec administrator Marcus "Joker" Marchant, was opened in 1966 and holds 8500 people. It is the Grapefruit League Spring Training home of the Detroit Tigers. In mid-1990's and early-2000's I came to Florida for Spring Training and saw the Tigers play here. I didn't buy this hat. This hat was bought for me by my good buddy Phil who came to see the minor league team last year (?). Where possible Phil and I by each other baseball hats because we can't buy enough of our own (ahem). You'll see a lot more of Phil's gifts over the next few weeks.

Phil is a happy man just now, as his team, The National League Franchise Team for New York - the NewYork Metropolians - have reached the World Series. I'm not rooting for them, but Phil knows why.....(I'm a Jonah).