I recently mentioned the sad death of a man that I interviewed, in 2018, with advanced prostate cancer.
His name was Richard.
I have become great friends with one of his daughters, DeeDee. She would perhaps tell you that I have become the bully brother that she never had and never knew she always wanted.
I asked her if she wanted to update the blog and she was totally up for it. What I was totally unprepared for was the incredulous, heartbreaking story she would tell me.Read More »
My six-monthly prostate appointment was on Thursday.
I will be honest I wasn’t hopeful knowing how my run of good things happening to me, always pans out.
The week before I had taken a ghostly empty train ride into London Bridge. The new norm is to look at fellow passengers and nod over face masks. I did just that with a fellow traveller walking through the train carriage. We nodded that nod that said we were both on the same page. Ready to open a window and eject anyone with so much as a pre-cough.Read More »
It’s my birthday today. Yeaaaah!!
I am fifty-two. It was two years and one day ago that those faithful words were uttered in my direction,
“It’s not good news and you cannot, not do anything about it’
Ripping my little world apart. Ahhhh, bless.
Not one to dwell on it, I shall be spending my big day with a Spiderman Victoria sponge cake, building a model Star Trek Voyager and for dinner a pandemic bag of fish and chips. The Uber delivered fish and chips being a rare and eye wateringly expensive indulgence.
A week ago, I had a Deja Vue moment. I wondered how I managed to find myself back, for the second time, derrière exposed on the surgery bench as I did almost exactly two years ago.
It was a hurried, clandestine meeting, we could not meet in our usual place. I really had no choice, it was forced on us. I knew it was going to be difficult as we sat there in my car in the middle of a supermarket car park. I tried not to make it sordid, I hope she didn’t feel that it was. She looked beautiful, she had made the effort and I told her so. I didn’t have much notice beforehand, none of us did. We were not likely to see each other again for an unknown time. There was genuine sorrow and anxiety on my part. Selflessly, I didn’t consider her feelings.
Perhaps it was better that way.
I looked at her. She looked back at me. I momentarily closed my eyes as I stroked her cheek and ran my fingers across her head. I escaped somewhere beautiful, special and far away in her unmistakable perfume that gently caressed my senses.
I said goodbye.Read More »
