Category: Life Lessons

The stationery thing

At the start of each academic year, usually when I have known them for a week or so, I make … More

Get out of the house while you can

Dear Ant So you’ve had your first chemotherapy treatment. That first night, when you came home and carried the sick … More

Spun in drafts

Damp white imprints dog the feet; snowbound trolley, snowbound street. Her tip of glove to lip and cheek, “Goodbye.” Go. … More

The crying boy at the airport

My wife and I are at the airport of a European capital city. It’s late on a Friday evening, the … More

All you have is now

  Dear Ant Isn’t it strange, how quickly you notice your passing from one world into the next? One minute … More

Walking into the light

  We walked into the brunt light, towards the hospital. The air was dry, February-cold. Traffic was going about its … More

You’ve got to eat

The Day After I made a leek and potato soup the day after, prompted by the look of the peeled … More

Cancer patients’ reviews of Riddance

Riddance has been reviewed by cancer patients, and former patients, under the aegis of Macmillan Cancer Support. You can find out … More

When did I get this?

One year go I celebrated with friends the publication of Love for Now, my journal-memoir of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a cancer of … More

By the way, you live

Dear Anthony I’m writing to let you know what you already know in your bones, as you put it much … More

I Am Not I

I Am Not I I am not I.                    I am this one walking beside me whom I do not … More

No poem to write

Sometimes I think it’s gone forever -Ken Smith I want to write a poem, Seamus Heaney says, but I have … More

Heal into time and other people

I have been thinking a lot recently about the gap between what is expected of us and what we think … More