Midwinter

Today is the winter solstice. The shortest day of the year. The marking of which is the source of many Christmas traditions. Such as the bringing of holly, ivy and mistletoe indoors. Such as the building of fires and feasting. Such as the making of offerings and gifts for a fruitful second part of the year, when the days get longer and the warmth of the sun returns.

I now have an early Christmas present. Amongst more rejections, I got a request for the full manuscript of my novel from a large and long-established London agency. I’m overjoyed to have reached the next step on the road to publication. My sample of work had interested them enough to warrant a look at the whole novel. So I reviewed my manuscript and sent it off.

This is an important step forward. But, of course, it doesn’t mean that my novel will now be published. No doubt many agents request the full manuscript and then decide that they don’t like the novel enough to take it any further. I did ask how long it might be before I got a response. Six weeks they told me. So fingers crossed for some good news.

However, I still don’t have any news from my consultant. Apparently she had contacted the surgeon who did my last operation and asked him to review the pictures from my CT scan. But he hasn’t yet responded. So I am still in the dark about the longstanding pain in my side.

Isn’t that just how life goes: the light is always tempered by the dark. But this time of year is all about celebrating the power of light over darkness. So I will light a candle, raise a glass of non-alcoholic mulled wine and send all good wishes to you and yours for the festive season.

 

Approaching an Agent

To get a novel published, you first need to find an agent to represent you. There are around a hundred literary agencies in the UK. Almost all are in London and most have a number of agents. Each agent is quite specific about the sort of novels that they are looking for. It took me a week of research to come up with a shortlist of agents to approach. The next step was to send out my work to them. Each agent specifies what they want to see. The basics are a covering letter, explaining why you’ve contacted them, a short pitch of your novel and a brief writing bio. Then you enclose a one-page synopsis of the novel and a sample of your writing. Some agents want just the first ten pages of your novel, others the first fifty pages. So I wrote the emails, attached the files and pressed send. Surprisingly, I got a reply from one the very next day. Were they so impressed with my glittering prose that they wrote back straightaway?

Unfortunately not, it was a rejection. Despite submitting my literary endeavours for twenty years, the stab of rejection still hurts. I’ve had countless rejections. You just have to shrug each one off and keep going. If you gave up at the first rejection, you’d never have any successes. It’s a hard lesson to learn, but rejection is a normal part of being a writer. Reassuringly, many famous writers had their first novel rejected multiple times (e.g. William Golding, JK Rowling, etc). One of the agencies I approached stated that they received 10,000 submissions a year and ended up taking only ten of these. Those are not good odds. They are probably worse than submitting to most poetry journals.

In fact, I should be pleased that they bothered to write back to me at all. A good number of the agencies stated that because they received so many submissions, they didn’t bother to respond to the ones that they weren’t interested in. If you hadn’t heard from them within a specific number of weeks, then you should assume the worst.

A Good Step Forward

I’ve got the result of my cancer surveillance CT scan. In the words of the radiologist: ‘Stable appearances. No evidence of recurrence.’ They never say ‘all clear.’ Nonetheless, this is a huge relief. However, I did come away from the meeting with my oncologist with an important question that still needed to be answered. For the past three months, I’ve had a pain in my left side, which also follows the line of my ribs. I first went to my physiotherapist. He told me it was a minor muscle tear. But a month later the pain was unchanged. So I went to my GP. He sent me for a series of blood tests and an X-ray. All of these were normal. And still the pain continued. So when I got the appointment for my CT scan, I rang my oncologist’s secretary and reported my symptoms. She was concerned. My left kidney was where the cancer had first appeared. She told me that Radiology would be asked to specifically report on my left side. Unfortunately, their report did not do this.

At the meeting, I explained that I was afraid my left diaphragm had become damaged again. It was surgically repaired with mesh five years ago. My oncologist examined me and concluded that there were a number of possible diagnoses. The repair could have become damaged. Or some scar tissue could have torn. I have plenty of this, and some nerve damage, due to repeated surgery on my abdomen. Or this pain could be an early sign of something malign that had not yet grown enough to show up on a CT scan.

She said she would contact the surgeon who had done the repair on my diaphragm and ask him to have a look at the pictures from my scan. I was delighted she was going to do this. It would have taken me ages to get to see him again. She also booked me in for another CT scan in three months time, to check again whether any recurrence could be seen. I was reassured for now. She had been thorough, covering all bases. And these were good steps forward. I could sleep a bit more easily.

What Keeps You Awake at Night?

I’m still waiting to hear the result of my cancer surveillance CT scan. It’s been two weeks so far. I try and take each day as it comes, but that’s not easy to do. My main coping strategy has been distraction, primarily by immersing myself in other things. This takes a lot of effort, and only seems to work some of the time. I didn’t expect to hear anything during the first two weeks. I know it will get harder from here on in.

My primary distraction has been to work intensively on my crime novel. The report I got from the professional editor was very positive and encouraging. He also gave me a series of suggestions for improving the novel. In particular, he pointed out where I could cut some back-story and some scenes that he felt slowed down the momentum of the novel a little too much.

It’s so much easier for someone else to see where you could make structural edits to your manuscript. I did realize that it needed improvement and I recognized that the opening act was where I most needed to focus my attention. But I couldn’t see exactly what edits ought to be made. If truth be told, I was also resistant to making further structural changes. I had already rewritten a good part of the opening act of the novel over previous months. I’d invested a lot of time and effort in it.

With the editor’s prompting, I took a very hard look at what I had written. I noted down what the key plot points were in each of the scenes that he had identified as potentially cuttable. I soon saw that all of these could be placed elsewhere in story. I thus ended up cutting four scenes and one sub-plot. And now the opening of the novel does flow much better, with a more immersive intensity.

He also pointed out that my narrator tended to use certain exclamations and speech tags rather a lot. Turning to the ‘find and replace’ text command, I discovered that my narrator said ‘bloody hell’ 65 times over the course of the 281 page novel. Rather too many, don’t you think? Even for a crime novel. I ended up removing or replacing plenty of these. As I did for several other words and phrases that were overused.

Oddly enough, I can lie awake at night imagining alternatives to ‘bloody hell’. I’m not going mad. It’s just my distraction therapy in action. If I wasn’t worrying about my novel in the wee small hours, I’d be worrying about the return of the big C.

Alive and Kicking

It’s come around again quickly. Tomorrow, my cancer surveillance CT scan takes place. I currently have a nine month interval between scans. It’s been eleven and a half years since my first tumour was found. It’s been six years since my last tumour was removed. And it’s been five years since I’ve been under a surgeon’s knife. The type of cancer I had does not respond well to drugs. So the primary treatment is surgery. I hope and pray that I never have to be chopped open again. Each time they go in there is collateral damage. This, it seems, is inevitable, however beneficial the purpose of the procedure.

My abdomen was slit open four times in six years. The end result is that the tissues of my torso have been seriously weakened. Indeed, the lower part of an abdominal muscle was removed completely during emergency surgery seven years ago. As the tissues repaired after each of these procedures, I was left with lots of scar tissue and adhesions. These give me pain and loss of function in different parts of my torso. I know each of these sites intimately, especially when they nag at me in the small hours. The worst is my left side, where my ribs were cut open five years ago.

Ah, I hear you say, but you’re still alive. Not many of those who’ve had Stage 4 cancer are still with us. Don’t get me wrong, I am delighted to be amongst the lucky few. Learning to live with the unwanted results of surgery is a luxury, compared to the other option. But I don’t seem to keep this knowledge in the front of my mind. Like anyone else, I naturally try and do things as part of normal everyday life. But when my body brings me up short with a stab of pain, I have to step back. And say, no, I just can’t do this anymore.

It’s a challenge to accept your limitations. In my head, I’m still a younger man. T is doing her best to stop me injuring myself. She has taken on plenty of arduous tasks. And she acts like a conscience, telling me to stop if she sees me embarking on anything too foolhardy. I try my best. But from time to time, I do too much or I go too far, and I end up hurting myself. It’s not easy being a survivor.

In Joyce's Country

This is the view over Lough Corrib from our cottage. We spent a lovely two weeks there. The cottage had a sunroom with a large picture window and we often sat watching the light change on the lough. It was also the only place in the cottage that had an internet signal. There was no phone reception at all. But that didn’t seem to matter. We sat and read, went for walks and bike rides, and recharged our batteries. The nearest village was Clonbur, one mile away, which had a good shop, a bakery and three pubs, two of which served food. The cottage was whitewashed and sat amongst fuchsia bushes and fruit trees. It had been the home of the grandfather of the current owner, who had improved and extended it. We ended up being one of the last holiday lets, as he had recently retired and was moving in there next month.

The surrounding area marks the border between counties Galway and Mayo. It’s called Joyce’s Country, after the Anglo-Norman landowner, and consists of Lough Mask, the Partry Mountains and the densely wooded margins of Lough Corrib. Nearby is Cong, famous for the Augustinian Abbey with its fishing house built on the river, and for the country seat of the Guinness family, which has now become a very posh hotel. But 1000 Euro per person per night does not buy you exclusivity, for the grounds of Ashford Castle contain a number of rights of way and thus are open to the public. We walked there through ancient woodland beside the lough and had lunch in the tea room.

Despite having pulled an abdominal muscle a week or so before our trip, I still managed some good bike rides. There were plenty of quiet back roads to explore around the shores of Lough Mask and across the stone-walled farmlands of South Mayo to the old market town of Ballinrobe. T did plenty of writing. I focused on reading. I’d brought a selection of crime novels with me. I really enjoyed ‘Christine Falls’ by John Banville, the first of his Quirke novels, and ‘The Searcher’ by Tana French, a novel with a frontier feel, set in the West of Ireland. I also enjoyed ‘I Know What I Saw’ by Imran Mahmoud, a novel with PTSD and memory loss at its core, but was jolted by the final twist which left me feeling somewhat cheated. The good thing is that they all gave me inspiration for my next redraft of my crime novel, which is what I should now be getting down to after the holiday.  

Finding Treasure Island

I’ve just bought a secondhand copy of the first book I ever owned. I think I got it as a Christmas present when I was either four or five. It was published in 1956. I really loved this book. I don’t think I could read all of the words at first. But each page of text had dramatic colour illustrations. Like many other children, this book sparked my imagination and stimulated my sense of adventure. I don’t know what happened to my book after I’d finished with it. I suppose it got handed on to my younger brothers and then on to nephews and nieces. It was no longer in the house when we came to clear it after my parents died. I’m delighted to now be reunited with this lovely book.

I was an avid reader as a child. I quickly graduated to the full text of Treasure Island, followed by a series of other classics: The Three Musketeers, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, The Coral Island and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. These would all have been Christmas or Birthday presents. We had hardly any books in the house, apart from a set of cheap encyclopedias, first published in 1922, which I devoured. So I used to read my father’s crime novels after he had finished with them. These were pulp paperbacks that I suppose he’d bought in Woolworths.

Around this time, a teacher asked my primary school class to bring in the book they were reading at home. Many kids brought in picture books, some brought in children’s classics, I brought in a pulp crime novel. The teacher was horrified. My parents were summoned to the school and given a stern lecture by the headmaster about the suitability of reading materials for young children. I would have been seven or eight. There was no mention of my advanced reading ability or that I might have been a gifted child.

The rest of my formal education included many beatings from teachers and regularly being told that I was stupid. It wasn’t until I returned to study at the age of 27 that I discovered I had a good brain. A distinction in my Masters led to a Manchester University award enabling me to study for a PhD, then followed a career in Higher Education that culminated in an Emeritus Professorship.

Treasure Island really did sow the seed of adventure in me. This took me rock and ice climbing, high altitude mountaineering, fell running, wild camping and on long-distance cycle tours in developing countries. These adventures were an education in themselves, and built qualities of resilience and determination in me that I’ve needed to call on many times in my life.

The Big Heat

This film noir, directed by Fritz Lang in 1953, is infamous for the scene in which Lee Marvin assaults Gloria Grahame with a pot of boiling coffee. But I’m referring to the remarkable week of sunny weather with unbroken blue skies that we’ve just had in Northern Ireland. With temperatures of 25 degrees and over, it was more akin to what you’d find in the Canary Islands. In truth, NI only has two real seasons: it’s either ‘boilin’ or ‘freezin’, with the latter holding the upper hand for most of the year. ‘Boilin’ usually puts in an appearance for a day or two at best, before cool conditions return. But this last week has been exceptional and has done wonders for retailers of sunscreen and ice-cream. Indeed the heat built up so much in the house that we had to keep the curtains closed all day. Even so, it was still uncomfortably warm at night. Had the heatwave gone on, we would have needed to commence the Spanish practices of having a siesta and eating at 9 pm. Today our normal summer weather has returned: overcast skies, drizzly rain and only fleeting glimpses of the sun.

I realize that most of Western Europe and Southern England have been suffering from intense heat for many weeks. But the weather is very different here. We don’t have any glaciers to melt, our rivers have not run dry and the grass is still green. Unbroken blue skies and sunshine all of the time sounds lovely. But in fact it becomes burdensome and tedious. I lived in California in 1992 and ended up looking forward to the periodic rainstorms. This taught me that it’s variation in the weather that makes life interesting. It also probably shapes the culture and norms of these islands. I’m just owning up to enjoying a week of bright sunshine amidst the months of overcast skies.

The Joy of Food

A week ago, I got food poisoning on a trip to Derry and Donegal. And since then the runs have continued. So my constant companions have been sachets of Dioralyte and rolls of Andrex. By the fourth day, I was feeling rather weak and exhausted, so I rang my GP. He told me that most food-poisoning was caused by viruses, but there could be other culprits. So he needed a sample to send to the microbiology lab. T went to the surgery and collected a large brown envelope he had left for me. Inside was a small container, a wooden spatula and a pair of surgical gloves.

I put a plastic picnic plate in the neck of the toilet. It wasn’t long before I had to go. The watery diarrhoea collected in the plate. I scooped some of it up with the spatula, screwed the cap onto the container and sealed it in the plastic envelope. I also made a mental note to never look for a job in a microbiology lab.

The doctor also included a prescription for an anti-spasmodic drug. You take one tablet a half an hour before eating. He also advised me to only eat dry toast, mashed banana and plain boiled rice. This is not much of a menu. But at least it was something to munch on. I remembered one of my times in hospital for cancer treatment when I had to fast for twelve days. After four days I lost all interest in food, and by the end I had to learn to eat again.

I have kept to my plain menu and the anti-spasmodic tablets. Indeed, for last night’s tea, I had a very exotic dish: broth with slivers of boiled chicken in it. And this has managed to stay in. So I am hoping that I’m now turning a corner. I’ve heard nothing from the microbiology lab, so I don’t know yet what bug has laid me low. But I am looking forward to maybe trying a bit of boiled carrot with my chicken broth tonight. I don’t think I’ll be taking food for granted again.

The Agent Submission

I’ve now reached the final task on my Advanced Crime Writing course. The agent submission comprises my writing bio, the synopsis and the first three thousand words of my book. The opening is the most important part of any book, because it either gains a reader’s interest or it does not. And the reader I am trying to interest at the moment is one of the literary agents at Curtis Brown. They will be reading the openings of the novels of the thirteen writers who have completed the course. If one of the agents is interested, they would then ask to see the full manuscript. Over the past week, the course organizers have been lowering our expectations. An expression of interest in our work is possible, but unlikely. And all of the agents are ‘very busy’. So we would not hear anything for several months, if at all. But hope springs eternal.

During the course, I’ve been preparing my submission with great care. An earlier draft of the opening of my book got helpful feedback from the tutor and other participants. Since then, I’ve formed a feedback group with several of the writers on the course. And over the past week we have been reviewing one another’s submissions. The deadline for the agent submission is tomorrow. So today I have been making final edits to the opening of my book. The structure and content is already there. It’s more a matter of a word change here or there, and a comma instead of a full stop. But small details matter.

When I finally send it, I will cross my fingers and breathe a sigh of relief. But that is not the end. For then I have to go through the rest of the manuscript and make it as good as I can. Editing is painstaking and rather laborious work. But it has to be done, and done carefully and thoughtfully. In a couple of months, I just might be getting a request from an agent to read the manuscript. Please wish me luck.  

 

Masterclass with Lisa Jewell

The most recent event on my Advanced Crime Writing course was a brilliant masterclass with Lisa Jewell. Knowing that she had published 20 thrillers in the same number of years and had sold over 10 million copies worldwide, I was expecting a rather formidable person. But she was very engaging, down to earth and disarmingly open about her craft. The masterclass proceeded in a Question Time format. All of the course participants had submitted their questions in advance. I was delighted to be called. What is the most important skill for a writer of crime fiction? I asked. And why?

Lisa’s reply was quite long and covered a lot of important issues for any writer of fiction, me especially. ‘Trust and believe in your natural instincts as a writer,’ she said. She told me that she began her books with one or two characters and a setting. And she did not construct a plan of the plot. She inserted dilemmas and challenges into the characters lives and saw where that took her. This organic process worked really well most of the time. Sometimes she found that she needed to put events in a different order; cutting up the story with scissors and stitching it back together again

For her first few books she thought that she was doing it wrong as a writer of fiction. She told herself that she really ought to have a plan for the book. Then she gave up worrying about it and just carried on writing in her own way. She said that readers remembered characters rather than plots. She wrote with her instincts and constructed the plot as she went along. This, she said, required confidence, positivity and faith.

I thanked her very much. I said that I had written my novel in this way too. And I had also thought that I was doing it wrong, because I didn’t have a plan. I came away from the masterclass with a great sense of validation and empowerment. And I returned to my manuscript with fresh energy and insight.

 

My Free Lunch

There’s supposed to be no such thing as a free lunch, but I think I’ve found a way. Boosted by my fourth vaccination, I headed out on a little trip. The destination was the Strandfield Café in Co Louth. I was meeting a friend of mine, who lives in the ROI. He chose the venue because of its covered outdoor seating. But Strandfield is more than that. It comprises a bakery, a café with a great menu and a specialist grocery. Despite not being far from the motorway, there are plants and greenery all around. I did feel anxious being among people again. Almost all of them weren’t wearing masks.

We sat outdoors and chatted over tea and cake. I hadn’t seen my friend since before the pandemic. He is a film-maker. And he’d been busy, making programmes for both RTE and BBC NI. I told him about my novel and the Advanced Crime Writing course that I was doing. It wasn’t long before we were talking about story and narrative.

Unsurprisingly, the worlds of film and fiction are closely intertwined. I found myself telling him about my plot problems. And he told me about storyboarding the new documentary that he is working on. And before long, I realized that he was offering me a very helpful lens through which to see my plot problems.

We chatted for a couple of hours, and then went to our homes. The next day, I found myself reworking the first act of my novel. I repositioned some of the scenes, moving several between chapters. I also cut several scenes out. The end result was a much better and tighter opening to my novel.

I’d highly recommend the Strandfield Café. It’s got great food and a comfortable ambience. You never know who you might encounter. And just up the road towards Carlingford, you can buy diesel at 18 pence a litre cheaper than in NI. With a fill up of the car, your lunch at the café is effectively free.

The Moderna Booster

I’ve just had my fourth Covid vaccination. And I realize what you might be thinking. Well, I am an old git. But I’m not quite that old a git. I discussed the matter with my GP and he put me down for the jab. I am clinically extremely vulnerable, but I’m not immuno-suppressed or over 75. Not yet, anyway. I had no reaction to my previous vaccinations, other than a day of tiredness and a sore arm. I was given two Pfizers and a Moderna before. But this time, I did have a significant reaction.

About half an hour after this Moderna vaccination, I began to feel very tired. And this increased. Within a few hours, my head was befuddled and I started the shivers. It was just as if I was down with the flu. I also felt very hungry. All I could do was to sit in an armchair. I actually watched the Giro D’Italia broadcast in Welsh. I don’t speak the language, but I enjoyed the pictures of sunnier climes.

I went to bed early, thinking that I’d wake up feeling back to normal. But the flu-like symptoms persisted for the rest of the next day. I began to wonder how long I would be stuck with these symptoms and whether I was having an unusual reaction. I also realized just how bad it would be to get Covid itself. Thankfully, the following morning, my head had cleared. And I was just left with the normal post-vaccine tiredness. By the end of the third day, I felt pretty much back to normal.

It’s strange how the reactions have intensified over time. And also that they were significantly different to the Moderna booster I had last November. I suppose the fourth vaccine is different to the previous ones, as it is trying to protect you against new variants. Anyway, I am now up and about and grateful for the opportunity to take part in the world again.

Advanced Crime Writing

I’m very pleased to have been selected for the first Advanced Crime Writing course run by Curtis Brown. Entrance to the course was competitive. I submitted the first 3000 words and the synopsis of my novel. The tutor is Emma Kavanagh. She has written six crime novels and one non-fiction book. She has a PhD in psychology and is an expert on the effects of trauma. I’m hoping to learn a lot and to improve my manuscript. At the end of the course, our book proposals are circulated to the agents of Curtis Brown.

The course takes place via Zoom and Curtis Brown’s online learning platform. During the course, you have to submit several extracts from your novel for comment from the tutor and the other participants. You also have individual tutorials with Emma. The weekly Zoom sessions cover key topics for crime writers.

The course is just starting and the participants have introduced themselves to one another. They include a novelist with two books published, a TV scriptwriter, a memoirist, a short story writer and a non-fiction writer. There is a diversity of work experience, from the Louisiana State Police, to a bookseller, a special needs teacher and a meterologist. The participants come from the UK, USA, Australia, Ireland, Germany and Hong Kong.

Over the next two months I hope to improve my understanding of crime writing, get insightful feedback on my novel and to be stretched as a writer. Emma’s introduction said that she wanted to help us get to the ‘next level’ as crime writers. I’m really looking forward to that.

Cutting 'The Cut'

Editing is a special and essential skill for a fiction writer, as I discovered when revising my crime novel, The Cut. And what’s more, it is a skill that requires a lot of practice to develop. In essence, you are learning to look dispassionately at what you’ve written and to think about it forensically. You have to ask yourself a series of difficult questions about your writing. And find the answers that are going to make your book better. Editing is also a very immersive experience. You are focusing on the fine detail of your writing and how well it fits into the overall story. This was very welcome during my long wait for the results of my recent cancer surveillance scan. Editing the manuscript was the only thing that managed to divert my mind from worrying about the threat of recurrence for a few hours. So I did a lot of it. Draft two did work much better than draft one, and ended up being 35,000 words shorter. I then submitted this draft to a professional editor for feedback.

This, however, was another source of anxiety. I felt sure that the editor would be critical of my writing and find many flaws. After all, he was an experienced author with several prize-winning novels to his name. But when the report came, it was quite the opposite. He told me that much of what I’d written worked extremely well. He was very complimentary about the voice and character of my narrator, the relationships between the characters, the witty and believable dialogue and the richly realized setting. I felt a glow of pride as I read on. Then he got to a series of suggestions for improving the book. He felt that the motivations of the characters weren’t consistent in places. He also felt that the book would work better if certain scenes were altered and moved to different positions in the narrative. The final problem he saw was that the book was still too long and needed to be at least 10,000 words shorter.

So I started work on draft three. I began with the structural changes that the editor recommended. These also involved adding several scenes. The main job is now to condense the overall narrative. This means going through the draft again, scene by scene, and cutting out all but the essential elements. Then asking yourself, does the scene work a lot better after these changes? Could it still be improved? How well does it fit with the scenes that precede and follow it? Is the tone consistent with the development of the characters that are in the scene? Are there any continuity problems with the content of the scene? And so on.

I’ve certainly become better at editing. And the draft is improving all of the time. But places where I can cut text are getting harder to find. I’m still a bit away on my word count. So I’ll have to get whittling. And perhaps a little more ruthless.

 

Ten Years Young

Today is the tenth anniversary of me blogging about my cancer journey. On 17 April 2012, I was almost one year on from my initial diagnosis, still in severe pain from the huge operation I’d had months previously, still coming to terms with being told I was unlikely to live very long and still trying to make sense of my partner abruptly leaving me. I had recently started getting counselling from Cancer Focus. This was a godsend. But it was only for one hour a week. I was climbing the walls for most of the other 167. I spent many dark hours searching the internet for help with my predicament. I was looking in particular for something from or about men with cancer. But I found nothing much at all. Then I came across a blog by an American cancer patient. It was a revelation. Rick was expressing exactly how I felt. I read back through his previous posts. He spoke about cancer being a deeply disempowering disease. And how speaking out about it had been empowering for him.

This made so much sense to me. I knew that speaking about my experience privately with the counsellor was helping me. So I began to speak about cancer more openly with friends. But most people I tried to talk to about it were unwilling to engage. They tended to close down the conversation by assuring me that I would be alright. Something I regarded as unlikely to be true. I now appreciate that this was because cancer was too fearful a topic for them to pursue. In the end, I decided to emulate Rick Dancer and blog about my own experience. Unsurprisingly, in that first post I wrote about my fear and how everything seemed to have changed for the worse in my life. And with great trepidation, I pressed the button to publish it.

To date, I’ve published 340 blog posts, received 42,695 visits to my blog from readers all over the world, and gained thousands of positive comments. Over the past ten years, I’ve done my best to write openly and honestly about what has been happening in my life. These years have encompassed two recurrences, Stage 4 cancer and more big operations. But not only that. There has been so much more. They have also featured my dearest T, marriage, publishing success, poetry prizes and a lot of good health.

But the greatest accolades I’ve received have come in messages from many individuals living with the Big C, who have found something that spoke to them and was of help in their time of need. Having cancer is like joining a special club. When you are in it, you understand. And when you have been in it, you never forget. Looking ahead, I sincerely hope that this is a club I never have to rejoin.

Mongrels

T gave me a lovely present. A DNA testing kit. It was simple to use. I put a small amount of my saliva into a test tube. Added the blue stabilizing fluid. Screwed the top onto the tube, put it into a sealed bag and sent it away. After that, all I had to do was to register my details on the Ancestry website and wait. They said the results could take six weeks. At first I began to ponder what sort of old git I might be. Then I promptly forgot about it. Until I received the email telling me to log on and find the results.

My ethnic origins were traced back for 1000 years. England and NW Europe counted for 60%. The remainder was Scotland 15%, Wales 11%, Sweden & Denmark 6%, Ireland 5% and Germanic Europe 3%.

These results were very intriguing. Especially as there are no Danish, German, Scottish or Swedish connections in my family within living memory. But these make up 24% of my DNA. So how did this come about?

Stories of journeys, encounters and intermarriage are the stuff of living memory that is spoken of by Grannies and Granddads at family gatherings. What my DNA test shows is that this has always been true. My forebears moved around in search of better circumstances and interbred. Then they settled for a while, until the next move took place, however many generations later.

This is what has made me a mongrel. But I’m not exceptional. The other people on these islands are going to be mongrels too. These islands have been inhabited for around 30,000-40,000 years. And until 8000 years ago Britain was joined to Europe by land. So to move somewhere new and intermarry, all you needed to do was walk. And after that, our forebears became good at building boats.

The other thing it shows is that there is no such thing as ethnic purity. This means that national identity is a social construct (and not a biological one). So whatever flags we may choose to wave. Underneath we are all mongrels. And we have much more in common with one another than we have differences.

 

The Verdict

Early last week I got a letter from the Cancer Centre giving me a telephone appointment with my oncologist. Finally I was going to get the result of my cancer surveillance scan. But just a couple of hours before the appointment, I got a call from the secretary cancelling it. And then I really began to worry. Because exactly the same process had happened six years ago, when I had a recurrence of my cancer. The review appointment was cancelled at short notice to give the oncology team time to consider what action to take. Then a further appointment was made to tell me the bad news and what they were going to do about it. In a terrible rerun, another letter from the Cancer Centre duly arrived making a new appointment for this week. Our anxiety levels went sky high and remained there, day and night.

At last, the day of the appointment came. The letter said they would speak to me at 1.30 pm. I sat in my office beside the telephone, trying to stay calm. I was desperate to be put out of my misery, but I was so very fearful of what they were going to say. I found myself flicking to newsfeeds from the war in Ukraine. An hour passed and no-one called. Then another. And another. I was beginning to think that they’d forgotten to tell me the appointment was postponed again. Or even worse, that they weren’t going to call at all.

At around 4.30 pm the phone rang. I picked up the handset and pressed the button. Although the phone was ringing, no-one was on the line. I shouted to T, ‘There’s something wrong with the phone.’ She ran down the hallway towards the kitchen for the other handset. In her haste, she tripped over and went flying. But she still managed to crawl into the kitchen. As T grasped the handset, the ringing stopped.

I helped her up. She had bruised her elbow and grazed a knee. She was badly shaken. The phone began to ring again. It was my mobile. I ran down the hallway to my office and answered it. T hobbled after me. It was the Registrar. After asking me how I was feeling, he said, ‘I expect you want to know the result of your scan.’ My heart was going nineteen to the dozen. ‘It’s fine,’ he said. ‘No real change from the last time.’ T, leaning on my shoulder, began to cry.

Limbo

I don’t mean the Trinidadian dance. Not with my poor old back. Nor have I died and become stranded in some other world. But I am waiting for the results of my cancer surveillance scan. I had the CT scan itself in the Cancer Centre two weeks ago and since then I’ve been dangling. Despite having been in this limbo plenty of times over the past eleven years, it doesn’t get any easier. Twice a year I also have a set of surveillance blood tests. I got the latest results from my GP three weeks ago. My kidney function score was significantly lower than usual. And soon I have to get a retest. But this has given me extra material to worry about. Because I know that the most likely place that my renal cancer would recur is in my remaining kidney.   

Limbo is a state of betwixt and between; traditionally between heaven and hell. This is very relevant to me. Because I’m in a strange place that is neither cancer-free nor cancerous. Both of these options remain possible. And I can’t cancel either of them out. It’s only when I have confirmation of the scan result that my status can become settled. Normally I get a hospital letter giving me the date of an appointment with my Oncologist. This would usually arrive a week or so before the appointment. But I have no letter. That means I won’t find out my result this week and probably not next week either. So my limbo continues.

Years ago I developed a simple strategy for living with the threat of cancer. Live just one day at a time. It is easier said than done. But I’ve become a little better at it as the years have gone on. During the day, I can immerse myself in writing or cycling. Or distract myself with television or a book. But the night is much more difficult. I often find myself awake at 4am, imagining the worst. Sleep doesn’t come easy to cancer patients. Perhaps I should get up and practice some Trinidadian dance moves.

The Old Git and the Drug Lords

I had a lovely birthday. Thank you very much for all the good wishes. I am now officially an Old Git. In common with those getting on a bit, I don’t feel I’m an older git than I was before. But the calendar doesn’t lie, unlike my memory. T has been spoiling me. After opening my cards and presents, she took me on a secret outing. We drove up to Belfast and then well beyond. After a series of turns, we followed a narrow road to the edge of a forest and parked. She had taken me to the World of Owls, the only sanctuary for birds of prey in NI.

It’s a fantastic place. And we had it to ourselves. Around sixty birds of prey live in large net enclosures in the Randalstown Forest. They have all been rescued. Many are exotic species who were bought as pets and then neglected. There were five eagle owls, several eagles and snowy owls. These birds are huge. The owner told us that several of the birds had been rescued from paramilitaries, who had been keeping them in the backyards of terraced houses. Drug lords do seem to have a fetish for exotic pets. Pablo Escobar had pet hippos. After he was arrested for cocaine trafficking, the animals escaped and now have colonized part of western Colombia.

The owner of the sanctuary is a falconer. He gave me a leather glove, tied a cord to it and put a Lanner Falcon on my hand. After a minute or so, he took its hood off. The falcon flapped his grey wings, steadied his yellow feet, gripped my hand in his black talons and gazed at me with large dark eyes. His yellow nose swept into a dark curved beak, above a cream throat and a white breast with brown bars. The falcon had settled on my hand and was keeping watch. At any moment, I expected him to take flight after a pigeon and come swooping down on it at 100mph. It was marvelous to be connected to such an intelligent and agile bird. I could see why falconry became such a popular sport with the aristocracy.

After a fine meal at The Dunadry, we drove back home through heavy rain to find an unexpected present from the NHS. An appointment for my next cancer surveillance scan. It was strangely appropriate. After all the treatment I’d had over the past eleven years, the recurrences and the bad prognoses, I should be glad to reach my big birthday. Not many people who have stage 4 cancer go on to be old gits.

The Birthday Present

My birthday is coming up soon. And Chip has given me a present. To a semi-feral cat, a rat is a great delicacy. I’m honoured to receive the front half. Chip probably decided to see how it tasted and ended up eating a bit more than he intended. He is only six months old. This gift shows that he holds me in high regard. Chip does follow me around the garden and has invented some chasing games that he plays with me. And I am the one who fills his bowls with food and lactose-free milk each morning.

I don’t think I’ll be having his present for dinner on my birthday. I must admit I’d prefer to visit one of my favourite restaurants: Hara in Hillsborough or The Mourne Seafood Bar in Dundrum. Although, because of Covid, I haven’t actually been to a restaurant for the past two years. But I have had some fine meals from Hara as they do an excellent ‘home’ menu, where they prepare the three-course meal and you finish it off in the oven at home.

All of this reminds me of an unforgettable meal I had in Croatia, hosted by a famous professor. He took me to a renowned seafood restaurant in Istria. It’s the peninsula below Trieste with fortified towns that were once part of the Venetian empire, and has been written about by Dante and Thomas Mann. Anyway, the famous professor ordered a local delicacy, a whole fish cooked in wine and herbs. I must admit it was a marvelous meal washed down with a bottle of fine white wine.

I cleared my plate apart from the head, backbone and tail of the fish. I was just about to thank my host, when he said, ‘I see you’ve left the best bits till last.’ I had to admit that I didn’t exactly know what he meant. ‘Let me show you,’ he said. He inserted the point of his knife just behind the gaping mouth of the fish and levered out some flesh. It was the cheek of the fish. He told me that these muscles are very well developed in fish and are especially tasty. I followed his example, ate the cheek of my fish and put down my knife and fork.

‘And now for the greatest delicacy,’ he said. I smiled, thinking he was going to order something else. But he picked up the head of his fish in his hands, lifted it to his lips and sucked the eye out with a great slurping noise. ‘Aah,’ he said, ‘lovely.’ I smiled nervously. My fish looked up at me from the plate. I was very anxious not to disappoint my host. ‘Aren’t you going to eat it?’ he asked. I told him that I was, regretfully, completely full. He grinned, picked up the head of my fish and sucked its eye out.

 

Drive Safely

Have you seen this man? He was found guilty whilst trying to renew his driving license. The crime? Smiling. The computer took one look at the photo I uploaded and said, ‘No’. I took another with a glum expression. The computer accepted that one and prompted me to check the categories of vehicles I was allowed to drive. I was shocked to discover that I can drive seven ton lorries and minibuses with trailers. But the computer told me that these entitlements would be removed if my license was renewed online. So if you see a lorry or a minibus roaring up behind you, it won’t be me in the driving seat.

I didn’t buy my first car, a Ford Fiesta, until I was 30. I couldn’t afford one before that. I was a mature student who did a Masters and PhD part-time at Manchester University. I needed to work in all sorts of part-time jobs to pay my way. So I was pretty poor for most of my twenties. Hence, I had a succession of motorbikes, from a Honda 50 to a MZ 250 to a BSA 500cc with a sidecar. I loved these bikes and had some adventures with them.

Immediately before going to Manchester to study, I was working in Cambridge. I’d just become interested in hillwalking and was reading a book about the mountains of Scotland. The book was full of praise for Knoydart as the remotest and most beautiful part of the Highlands. So I decided to go there for a week’s holiday. I strapped my rucksack and tent on the back of my MZ and set off. I hadn’t realized quite how far away it was (about 500 miles). It took me two days to get there. The final stretch was 20 miles along a narrow track beside a loch that finished in a dead end. And all the way along it I was being followed by another motorbike.

I got to the end of the track and parked. I was at the mouth of a great glen with high mountains all around. The other bike stopped beside me. I was apprehensive as the other rider approached me. But he turned out to be the stalker who was responsible for Glen Dessary. He lived alone in a cottage a little way down the glen. He showed me where to camp, beside a grove of trees not far from his cottage. That evening, he invited me in for a drink, whisky of course. I had a great holiday, going for hillwalks and chatting with the stalker in the evenings. It was also my first introduction to the Scottish Midge.

I actually began to drive at sixteen. I bought a scooter from money I’d saved working for a local farmer. With my green parka, Ben Sherman shirt and jeans, I felt very cool on my Vespa Sportique. It was also very handy, as the village I lived in was six miles from my school. I had some adventures on that scooter too. I remember being chased by four lads in a Ford Zodiac, who were throwing empty cider bottles at me. They were drunk, so their aim was bad and I escaped. Today I drive and old Ford Focus. My teenage self would be horrified.