“Metastasised” They said.

That week it was a new word for me. I had to google it.  It means the spread of cancer to distant parts of the body. I’d never heard it before.

And now, I’ve heard it three times in a week.

I sat down in the kitchen, paused the washing up, poured myself a glass of tequila. Tried to understand why the interviewed novelist on the BBC Radio 4 arts show had chosen to use that word, that big awful stupid bloody word, to describe her creative process.

I mean, writers do understand the impact of words, writers do grasp how to use the esoteric power of words, that’s the magic of spelling.

I wondered what self-defeating disgust she was expressing against her own art.

“Metatasised” she said “the characters simply metatasised into the internal drive of the narrative arc…”

I switched the radio off, gulped at the tequila, trying to drown the word in drunkeness.

I’m familiar with “frequency bias”, I’ve heard of “selective attention”, I’ve wikipediaed “confirmation bias”. Over and over again.

The second time that week that I heard the word “Metatasised” was from some second-rate TV celebrity. He was making a pre-emptive denial on YouTube, in advance of channel 4 running a damning exposē of his misogynistic abuse of his co-workers. “Metatasised” he said, “the media metatasised my open promiscuity into very agregious accusations…” he blustered in vain. The channel 4 documentary cut him down anyway, in spite of his invocation of cancer.

“Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon – a cognitive bias refering to the tendency to notice something more often after noticing it for the first time” As if Red Army Faction hijacking, kidnapping, bombing and assasination, as if violent delusions of terrorist revolution, was simply a psychological repetition of a re-repetition. Over and over again. As if a terminal diagnosis could be just clever hyperbole.

“Metatasised” He said.

Earlier that week I had sat with my friend in the clinic at Addenbrookes. That’s the first time I ever heard the word in my life.

“Metatasised” the oncologist said. He said my friend’s cancer had Metatasised.

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