A Life More Ordinary

Miles Kington had a regular column in The Independent, and just before he died of cancer he started a column like this: "When you have cancer, you realise that any person who starts a sentence with the phrase "When you have cancer" should be shot." Or something like that anyway.

It can be terribly easy for a person who has cancer to think they have been given the opportunity for some incredible insights into the nature of life and living - you know, the fact that we all know we are going to die is one thing, but a person with "terminal cancer" is forced to live with the fact of their own mortality every day, and that this provides some special way of being, and a sense of urgency to life. I know I've already said that, personally, all I crave these days is a life so normal it would make a spinster librarian look dramatic and interesting, and I also don't think being "terminal" suddenly confers upon me some special status, and certainly not wisdom.

Yet there are a few things I've noticed since getting ill, and, as I don't think they border on the "When you have cancer..." kind of self important pontification, I'll risk writing about them. The first is how life becomes compressed, like a squeezed concertina, where the ups and downs experienced by every human being become higher and deeper, and far more frequent. It's like my life and Sarah's have gone from an emotional seismometer measuring the seismic activity in Wales to one in the centre of a volcanic crater in the Phillippines! The pen marking the activity went from a relaxing somnambulent and hypnotic tidal movement of mini peaks and troughs, to a frantic and manic scratching struggling to keep pace with the rapidity of variations - in a Hollywood movie, you'd know that the hero is just about to have to run through/over a steaming cauldron of sulphur to rescue a scantily clad damsel in distress from the path of flowing lava about to envelop her.

The second is a slow motion "life review". If your life is supposed to flash before you when you experience sudden death, then I think those of us facing a death at some time in the not too distant future (of which the doctor's have kindly made us aware) seem to experience the same thing, but in a very slow flashback. Events in my life are coming back to me which were long since forgotten! And not even very important events, the ones that a novelist would describe as character forming and explaining the actions of their protaganist. Things like: the girl in infant's school who ran after me trying to give me a kiss (and looking at the photo of the manly hunk of flesh above, who could blame her) who had two snot candles running onto her top lip such that being caught would mean for ever being traumatised by the sight of a discarded handkerchief; or the time in an English lesson at school when I temporarily forgot how to spell the word "who", and wrote "hooh" in the essay; or when I went to a Lord's test match between England and Australia on my stag do and somehow ended up trying to flick peanuts up the nose of my Best Man as he lay sleeping on the pavement recovering from the excitement of the day (and perhaps the amber nectar he had been quaffing).

The third thing I notice a lot more is old people. God they can annoy me now, with their 80 plus years of life and walking about like a flitting sprite when compared to my laborious walking stick pace. In our street, there is a man who I used to feel immensley sorry for as he tottered up to the corner shop and back with his walking stick tapping out a military tattoo: now the bugger overtakes me regularly as I make the same trip with my own stick - God the temptation to trip him sometimes is overwhelming!

Then, of course, joggers! How I hate those bastards flaunting their health at me as they breeze past in their tracksuit bottoms and i-Pod headphones - especially the women, who all look wonderfully fit and sexy, deliberately rubbing my nose in the fact that I have a permanent urinary catheter and complete lack of sexual function and couldn't run out of a burning building, let alone go for a few miles healthy jogging.

I cannot believe the amount of things I just miss! Like kicking a football (to do so now would only result in a pratfall), or sitting on a chair for more than an hour to watch a movie or a play, or riding my motorbike (sadly sold in '06 when I was first diagnosed and I knew I wouldn't enjoy sitting on that hard seat for three minutes, let alone long enough to ride out somewhere and find a bendy road), or just cycling along the river path into York with the family to go shopping.

And of course, I notice cars parked in disabled spaces without the badge being displayed. The moment I was diagnosed as incurable, I was given a blue disabled person's badge for the car, and at first I thought I'd be a fraud to ever use it. Now, it's actually damn useful, and without it I'd be much less able to get out and about. My mate Nick told me of a friend of his who, being disabled from polio at a young age, once told a fellow Londoner that he had a blue badge only to get the response "You lucky bastard!" - I get looks communicating the same thing when I'm in York on one of those busy days and can get parked without having to queue in the car parks. I notice shops without ramps, as I notice any set of stairs or even just one step. Our upstairs bathroom and toilet for instance has a step down into it, and I have to be careful not to give myself a boost of the drugs when I'm in the bathroom for fear of being stuck there for twenty minutes unable to tackle the 0.3 metre mountain in front of me.

The final thing (and this does border upon the pontification of a prat, so I'll have to be careful) is how much conversation I hear during the day is about absolutely nothing of any import at all! Snippets come to my ears as I'm sitting in Starbucks (globalisation of capitalism be damned - their stools are the perfect height for me to half stand, half sit drinking my americano), and I laugh at how significant people get to sound as they discuss the most ridiculous inanities: the business bloke on his mobile talking about "synergistic qualities" of his company and that of the bloke he's boring to death on the other end of the line; the woman complaining to her friend about the fact she's got to cook a meal for 8 on Saturday night (I want to shout at her:"Uninvite them if you don't want to cook, you daft cow!"); or the couple of younger women (girls to my eyes really - any female under thirty looks like a girl to me) talking about the clothing they've just bought and are going to wear on Saturday when they go to the Gallery (I think it must be a night club in York - what I still call a disco, to show my age).

There's nothing wrong with it, and only some of it I find annoying. People complaining about things they actually have a choice about is the one thing guaranteed to get my goat! I tell Sarah I want to go up to some people and say, "Well, thank F*** you don't have anything serious to complain about like terminal cancer, 'cause then your life would really suck, wouldn't it!" And, truth be told, I can usually laugh at most of it.

Last year, one of my close friends Mike said, "God listen to me moaning! You're the one with something to really concern yourself about!"

I said, "Mike, I only have one thing to worry about. Before this, I had a thousand and one things I'd worry about, like work stuff, paying the bills, whether or not Crystal Palace would get demoted again. Life's so much easier when all you have to worry about is staying alive." So, honestly, the trivia doesn't bother me, but I am really amazed at how much of it there is filling the conversational space!

And before I go this time: thanks so much to all those people who have dropped a line to Sarah, or given us a call. It is so good to hear people asking after not just me but her and Emma. Sarah faces the prospect of having to look after her ailing husband, and possibly comforting her daughter while she too is grieving. Please, keep letting her know she is not alone!

Thanks again to all those who are donating to the cause, and a really big thanks to Wendy at Triumph, who put the link onto the company website: believe it or not, I have actually had emails from some of the people I did some training for, saying thanks for the training! Bugger me! You mean, some of it actually made a difference, and what's more, some of it even worked!!?? Thanks for the thoughtfulness in getting in touch with me. If anyone else wants to do the same, the email address is at the top of the page.