Sheep. Boy. Love.

During one of the long, lazy summers of my youth, while the schools were on their extended break, I worked for a fortnight – along with my older brother - on my godmother’s farm. I think I would have been ten-years-old at the time, and, thinking about it now, I’m not sure that was entirely legal…  or at all safe… but I was young and I needed the money… for sweets.

On hindsight, it was a mostly ghastly job. If I wasn’t scooping up cow poo from the cattle sheds, or choking on the dust from lugging around hay bales, I was putting rubber rings around baby baa-lamb’s scrotums or chopping off their tails with a very sharp knife… at the time reassured that it didn’t hurt them at all, though that seems like complete twaddle as I write this.

There was a lot of death on that farm, but not a lot of care. I remember finding drowned kittens in a water trough, watching crows vaporise from the blast of a shotgun… It didn’t do much for my appreciation of farmers. Ronnie, who ran the place, was the sort of guy who would shoot your dog and not bat an eyelid. Farming was in his blood, though… that’s the life he’d lived, all his life, and as the farm had been passed down through the generations, he knew no different.

One day, Ronnie had us all – my brother and I, and two of my godmother’s boys who we were the best of mates with – jump in the tractor trailer, and he drove us up to one of the fields, telling us there was a lame sheep that he had to take to the vet… which was quite a surprise, because I would have assumed that he’d have preferred to have shot it, while laughing.

When we found her, we could see she was in a state. She must have caught her leg in a barbed wire fence, as the flesh had been ripped quite badly… and while struggling, she’d used her forehead to try to break free, leaving a nasty wound.

Ronnie tied her legs – so she couldn’t leap away, not that she looked as though she was in the condition to do so – and we loaded her into the trailer. Obviously, she was in a lot of pain and agitated, but my brother and I sat beside her and stroked her, giving her as much reassurance as we could offer. Before long, as we drove the few miles to the vet, she had calmed down… her breathing had slowed and she seemed very relaxed when we reached our destination.

We took her down from the trailer and into the vet’s, and – since Ronnie was obviously a very busy man and had things to shoot – headed back to the farm.

A year later…

… I was fishing in a stream in one of the farm’s fields, in a beautiful, mossy glade, far away from roads. It was just the countryside, a few grazing sheep, the sound of birds and me… never any fish. I was a completely rubbish fisherman.

I was just sitting on the bank, whiling the day away, when I was nudged in the back, nearly knocking me into the water.

I turned around and saw a sheep standing there, just looking at me…

… and she had a bald patch on her forehead, where there was a large, healed scar.

She’d remembered me. Those brief moments of care and attention the year previous must never have left her, and when she recognised me, she came over to say hello.

Maybe my brother and I were the first (and perhaps only) human beings who had ever treated her with love, rather than as a cash-crop?

She sat down beside me for a while as I continued not catching fish, then went back to the flock when Ronnie appeared in his tractor on the far side of the field at feeding time.

I never saw her again… but I smile when she crosses  my mind, though that’s tempered with a tinge of sadness, as I’ve never been vegetarian for more than a few months. She was no dumb animal. I saw her in pain, she responded to love, and she remembered me. It seems so callous that I’d still eat her kind, when I know how intelligent they are. It’s time to make another life-change.

My First Mountain (Video)

Despite having spent a lot of time working in the English Lake District, and having them all around me, I never climbed a mountain until I moved to Lochgoilhead, in the Scottish Highlands, a week or so after my awakening.

The Steeple – standing at 1,279 feet – looms over Loch Goil. Although it’s fair to say it’s not one of the tallest mountains in the Highlands, it looks all the more mighty due to its proximity to the village – basically, once you step off the mountain, you hit civilisation.

I recorded this video (and took the photos) on the second day of my HappyTwoBirthday celebrations, on April 9^th, 2010. I’d just been cleared of a cancer scare a few days before, and obviously I was on top of the world… but I went a little higher!

Super Mark, one of the Scout Leaders at the camp I worked in, could run up and down the mountain in about 45 minutes… which is a bit crazy, but he’s mega-fit. It took me around an hour, and it was a pretty hard, steep slog in places…

Getting to the top was very satisfying indeed, and the views were breathtaking, as I’m sure you’ll agree from looking at the photos and watching the video.

Not that I noticed him at the time, but it appears that Darth Vader was standing behind me when I recorded the video clip… how odd!

(Click on the images, below, to see them full size!)

Proof of Yetis (Video)

Men of science and wonder have been searching for the elusive Yetis for hundreds of years, but the best they could come up with was some dodgy footage of a man with hairy arms walking through the woods…

Here, for the first time ever, is conclusive, unarguable evidence that yes… Yetis are real, they’re among us… and they’re breeding.

I took this amazing footage on the slopes of The Steeple, a mountain in Lochgoilhead, in the Western Highlands of Scotland.

Strangely, the local folk didn't talk at all about their Yeti issue - but I expect that's the same sort of insular defence system that the people of Yorkshire fall back on to hide their werewolf problem.

A Baby Yeti - Staring at me...

Yetis... everywhere...

We Might Be Giants

I was out walking the other morning, when I was suddenly transfixed by… a streetlight. 

I’d seen the same one and many just like it countless times before, but this time I stopped and stared at it. It wasn’t because it was shining so brightly it had caught me in its glare like a hypnotised rabbit – in fact nothing to do with the illumination from it at all - but because of its height.

I looked up at it, gauging – in relationship to my own height – that it must have been around ten meters, and I thought: “That’s how tall I must look to a cat.”

I imagined a huge, lumbering humanoid bounding over towards me, saying: “Come here, little human! I just want to give you a kiss and a cuddle.”

I would immediately call the Ministry of Defence and request an airstrike. And they’d send it.

With that sort of difference in size, you’d hardly expect the approaching ogre to be gentle, would you? To be able to pick you up without squeezing the life out of you; to ruffle your hair without accidentally snapping your neck?

No wonder birds fly away. It doesn’t matter how kind a heart you have – I would make a quick getaway, too, if something the size of an office block was approaching.

It should really come as no surprise that kittens let out that very worrying ‘mew’ when they’re picked up and dragged into the sky.

And try to empathise with the fright of a spider when it sees some mountain-sized figure with a cup and a piece of paper chasing after them?

Yet, you watch the average human when they’re playing with their pets, and how delicate and soft their touch is (unless it’s rough and tumble with a dog) or how carefully they hold a bird with a broken wing, or oil in its feathers, in their hands.

In the vast majority, we are a caring, kind, considerate and compassionate species, with an immense appreciation of life.

If we didn’t care, there would be no happily rehomed dogs, no kittens and cats rescued from trees, no mass efforts to save oil-soaked shags* after environmental disasters, or hosing water onto distressed, beached whales, sitting with them and comforting them while waiting for the tide to come back in. There would be stains of former spiders everywhere.

* Shags are goose-sized dark, long-necked birds similar to cormorants. Always gives me a titter, mentioning them. Juvenile. Sorry.

We are giants to these beautiful creatures in more ways than one.

Many times, I’ve heard people say, about their cats or dogs, that these animals show them complete and utter love, without judgement or criticism or any condition attached…

Do you see why this is, though? It’s because we show them complete and utter love, without judgement or criticism or any conditions attached.

If a cat could express itself, vocally, in English, it would probably say something like: “I don’t know why you love me as much as you do, but I love you, too. Now, can I have some din-dins, please?”

Compare a relationship between a human and a human, compared to a human and a pet..?

If, five years ago, your cat had peed on the television and shorted it, you wouldn’t – all that time later – hold it against them, would you?

If your husband or wife did it, you’d probably have divorced, and you’d be telling your friends, up to this day and probably for the rest of your life: “Well, it was the time they peed on the television which stands out as last straw in our marriage.”

If you’d stood on your dog’s paw and it had turned and snapped at you, you wouldn’t say to it, years after: “I can’t believe you did that. I’m never, never going to forgive you.”

Yet, in an argument with a human, perhaps in the heat of the moment, hurtful words are spoken and held on to… rarely forgotten… played over in the mind again and again and again.

So… why do we perpetuate conflict with humans when we let misdemeanours slide so quickly with our pets?

It’s another trick of the mind. We are capable of forgiveness to all, but we selectively hold these things against our  fellow humans, when we would let go of them with animals.

Another thing I realised… a cat lover is a cat lover… a dog lover is a dog lover… a bird lover loves birds. There are many different types, colours and personalities amongst those species, but we generally don’t have a sense of prejudice against a particular colour or breed.

How absurd would it be for some woman to love her ginger pussy ** but have a bitter hatred of grey or black cats? Or for a guy to see his male dog trying to hump another male dog, and being outraged that the pet he used to love was displaying homosexual tendencies, so he abandons the dog in the street or calls for it to be put down?

** Juvenile again. Sorry!

I find it very worrying when people announce that they hate cats, or they hate dogs… it’s a strong sign that they’re of a generally hateful nature, however unconscious that nature is.

We could learn so much from the relationship we have with our pets… in that love is love; it is expressed without demand and without condition. Mistakes are quickly forgiven and we do not judge them by colour or actions, however curious we may find them.

Imagine if all in the human species could treat their fellow humans with such unconditional respect and love?

We’d be living in Nirvana.

And… you know what? It is possible. We could have it today if we all woke up to ourselves.

The Time I Had Cancer (Part Two)

'The Melanoma'

If you haven’t read the first part of this blog, you can reach it by clicking here… or here… or even here. But NOT there – really… don’t click there! You’ll regret it!

It’s a very strange thing, being told by a doctor that he suspects you have cancer.

If some random stranger came up in the street and shouted “You have cancer! I can smell the filth in you!” you’d probably take no notice of the information they’re attempting to express to you, most likely running away instead.

But a doctor… you know they’ve trained for years to recognise that sort of thing; their words carry a weight of authority, so that when they tell you they suspect you have cancer, you suspect you have cancer, too.

To say the news was a bolt out of the blue was an understatement…

An hour previous to walking into that surgery for my appointment, I was living the greatest time of my life… I was happier than I’d ever been, I was content in my job, I was filled with such an exquisite sense of inner-peace all of the time, and after decades of allowing myself to be tossed and blown around by the storms in my mind, I had finally reached a point where I could look at my thoughts and find nothing,  absolutely nothing that could hurt me.

Walking back down the road from the doctor’s, I have to say that I was shaken out of that peace… mentally and physically, with tremors in my hands.

It wasn’t that I wanted to sit down somewhere and cry about it… there was a numbness to it all… a feeling that it just wasn’t fair.

I mean, it felt like a rotten trick – after all these years – to be happy, and for that happiness to be slashed away through the news that I could have some sort of terminal illness; that, now I’d found out what real life was about, it could be taken away from me.

Despite the doctor’s advice not to worry, he was working on the assumption that the mark on my toe had only been there for a couple of months, whereas I knew that it had been there for significantly longer.

I don’t know why I didn’t tell him that information. I guess I felt stupid – faced with the prospect of it being cancer – that I hadn’t sought help as soon as it appeared, because of course I would have spoken to someone about it if I’d even had the remotest of a suspicion that it could be life threatening.

So… it wasn’t just the possibility of having cancer that was a concern, but the possibility of having cancer and, through complete ignorance, allowing it the time to spread.

I made my way back to the Scout camp. It was running with a skeleton staff (not literally, which was good, because that would have made things even scarier) and there was only one person covering the kitchen that day… a young chef named Nicky.

I was still in a state of shock when I asked if I could talk to him. I supposed I felt the need to talk to someone, but, on hindsight, Nicky probably wasn’t the best option and he confirmed that by bursting out laughing when I told him the news from the doctor.

He said: “I am really, really not the person to talk to about this.”

I’d reached that conclusion already.

I know there was no malice in his reaction… that it was probably a nervous thing… but there was nobody else around and that left me feeling a little lost.

I went back to my room, sat on my bed and tried to take it all in.

I didn’t have my computer up there at the time, so I couldn’t even get on Twitter or Facebook to post a status update: Les is now in a relationship… with cancer.

I couldn’t phone my Mother about it as I didn’t want to worry her. She had turned 71 a month earlier and wasn’t in the greatest of health herself, so I didn’t want to be telling her that her ‘baby boy’ might have something terminal.

My ex long-term girlfriend,  a wonderful soul from Sweden who I was still good friends with, had lost both her grandmother and, more recently, her father to cancer, so as much as I wanted to phone her up and talk to her, I didn’t want to upset her.

I still believed in loneliness then, and, thus, I felt lonely.

I spent the evening up at Scout Rock…

The smile had turned into a frown; my brow was furrowed. The awakening occurred just over a month earlier, catalysing a time of pure joy, but there I was again, contemplating the dark possibilities.

I wondered, was it all over, so soon? Was this the descent back to how it was before?

Something was different, though…

I knew that if I’d been given that same talk by the doctor two months earlier, I’d have been a complete wreck. I’d have quit my job and headed back home, back to the comfort zone of feeling sorry for myself and having people around me who would feed me sympathy. I’d have entered a state of limbo and allowed my mind to torture me with all the possibilities ahead, and it would have burned me until I found out exactly what was wrong.

Instead, I was just a bit low… but I think it’s fair to be ‘just a bit low’ after a doctor tells you that you may have cancer.

I sat, watching the clouds drift by, staring at the mountains and the tide turning on the loch. It was wondrous. There was a bat darting around as dusk fell, running a circuit that brought it to just a few feet above my head.

I noticed that the memory of the day slipped in and out of thoughts. When I was absorbed with just watching the world, there was peace, but then I’d bounce back into thinking, and that’s where the mind’s discord began again and I’d follow the fear.

Then it hit me…

What exactly had changed between waking up that morning, happy, and then me being there, sitting on that rock, being worried and unhappy?

If I did have cancer, then at most there would be a few extra nasty cells in my body, but I didn’t feel any different… I hadn’t suddenly developed cancer pain and my hair hadn’t spontaneously fallen out (though it looked like it had, sadly).

The only discernible difference came from processing the information I’d picked up from the doctor, which I’d allowed to become a source of great discomfort… in my mind.

Yet, when my mind was silenced by the sensory overload of witnessing and being a part of the breathtaking scenery around me, there was no discomfort. There was no fear whatsoever.

Since the awakening and moving up to Lochgoilhead, I had been using the mantra ‘My reality!’ I’d say it when I was on the mountain, or standing by the loch, or sitting in my room in the staff-block… it was an affirmation of the present moment… of being alive and feeling happy.

I smiled and said it again, in the indigo dusk.

“My reality!”

Nothing had changed that day. I was as alive as I was when I woke that morning.

Even if I did have cancer, I was alive right then… so why would I waste my time fearing a possible grim future when I had all that life available to me in that moment?

This was before I’d ever heard of Eckhart Tolle, ‘The Power of Now’ or present awareness, and there I was, sitting on the mountain, practicing the lessons in a multi-million-selling book which I wouldn’t read until seven months later.

I woke up that day at peace and happy… and I went to bed that night at peace and happy.

The next morning, with a new group of kids due in, there were three of us in the kitchen – myself and two chefs, Nicky and Gillian.

Gillian was a big lezza, as she described herself, and such a lovely woman. She’d run up and hug me for no reason at all, so was much more supportive than Nicky hadn’t been the day before. Her mother had died from breast cancer, so she knew a lot about the process from referral to treatment and was giving me nuggets of very useful info on the whole procedure.

What she didn’t give me was sympathy, but she didn’t give it in a much more positive way than when Nicky hadn’t given it. She made me laugh instead of allowing myself to slip into feeling sorry for myself… and despite the revelation of the night before, there were those moments where I’d frown and think too much.

We always had music playing in the kitchen outside service times, and Bob Marley was the first song of the morning…

Gillian came up to me, with a smile on her face,  and said: “Bob Marley died of cancer. I think he died of toe cancer, too. Spooky, eh?”

Nicky started roaring with laughter, but I laughed too… probably calling them a bunch of bastards, and rightly so.

The next song was Fields of Gold, by Eva Cassidy – who died of cancer.

Gillian was practically crying with hysterics when that came on. I wondered if they’d both conspired to make a ‘died of cancer’ playlist on the iPod, but she assured me – after reciting the Twilight Zone theme – that it was just a coincidence.

The cancer jokes were thick and fast after that (and in the days ahead)… it may sound a little grim, but they were so helpful in keeping my spirits up. I laughed a lot, and laughing is an excellent reminder that you’re alive.

I received the letter from the hospital a few days later, confirming the appointment with the dermatologist, and I have to admit that my hands started shaking again when I read it.

The letter from the hospital...

Although I was generally doing pretty good, there were times when the possibilities hit me like a freight train… really shook me…

I had aches and pains in my back and sides… some quite brutal headaches from time to time, and I wondered – especially after reading up about that particular flavour of melanoma, and that there are often no symptoms until it is well advanced – if it had spread around the rest of my system.

Was the rapid weight loss really down to exercise, or was something more sinister causing it?

I was 35-years-old… I’d hoped, even though I’d left it late, that I’d find someone to settle down with and maybe have children one day.

It dawned that there was a chance I’d never experience being a father… or a husband… or even fall in love again… that I could be bones in the ground the same time next year.

I didn’t have the ‘skills’ I have now… so even with a positive mind set, those darker possibilities crept in. I’d shoo them away, but they’d keep coming back.

Then, sometimes I’d think that I was crazy even considering I had cancer… that there was no real proof except for what the doctor had said, and that he was wrong… but then I’d flip round and realise that he’s a doctor, and wouldn’t have told me that for the fun of it. He must have had real cause for concern.

The letter from the hospital was looked at too many times. It was unreal, but I’d keep reading it just to check that I hadn’t imagined the situation.

The pattern of gliding and crashing repeated over that intervening period, though the crashes were never really more than a bump on the ground before I pulled myself skyward again.

There was no prolonged terror… just the sudden realisation, now and again, that I didn’t know what was happening inside me, and I wouldn’t know until I got to that hospital and saw the dermatologist… and then there was another stretch of time after that, from biopsy to test results.

But… on the whole, I was filled with a determination to live, simply by living and enjoying my life. I increased my walking routine and would go up to Scout Rock two or three times per day. I enjoyed the company of my new friends… went to the pub a few times per week and shared the laughter, there.

Despite the possibilities, and apart from those moments I hit the ground, I was happy… and I’d never been so happy before in my life.

The morning of the appointment came… I wanted it out of the way… and it was snowing when I looked out of the window.

Mike, my boss at work, had offered to drive me to Alexandria, where the hospital lived, but when I went in to see him, he shook his head and said the pass had been closed. Delivery drivers had been forced to turn back… basically, nobody was getting in or out that day.

It was the mountains…

… and it was particularly shitty timing by Frosty the Snowman, who I’d previously had a lot of respect for.

So… I had to rearrange the appointment and was given a new time, a week later… which meant another week of having to fight that fear of the unknown…

I’d say that time felt longer than the two weeks, previous, because there was the added stress of wondering whether there’d be a fresh snowfall which would block the pass again – and also because I didn’t know what was going on inside my body. I could picture the docs telling me: “Well, if we’d caught it a week earlier…”

But I trudged on… sometimes creaking… the cancer jokes weren’t as fun anymore…

The day came, again – this time, no snow. It was two days before my 36^th birthday.

Mike had a busy morning in the kitchen, but he told me he knew the route and the time it would take, so there was no chance of me missing the appointment. I was getting a little nervous as the clock ticked on, but then we were on our way.

I kept looking at the clock as we were travelling, thinking that I’ll know what’s happening in a couple of hours… that I could plan my next move… if it was cancer, then at least I’d know it was cancer.

Just outside Alexandria, we hit a traffic jam, and I started to get a very bad feeling that I was going to miss my timeslot and have to rearrange again. We inched through the traffic for hours, even though it was only 15 minutes or so in real-world time…

Half a beard later, we got there. Mike pulled up outside and said he was going to park up and have a ‘power nap’ in the car while I saw the consultant, so I wandered around to locate the right part of the building and spoke to the receptionist. I was a couple of minutes late, but she assured me it wasn’t a problem, which was a huge relief.

A while later, after staring at daytime TV, I was summoned by a woman with a big smile, who led me up a corridor, into a treatment room.

Her small talk was ace and she put me at ease straight away, directing me to sit up on a bed and take my shoe and sock off.

I watched her face as she frowned, looking closely at the mark on my toe.

“I don’t think this is pigment,” she said.

I didn’t have a clue what that meant.

She grabbed a scalpel and took a sliver of skin away… then another…

“No, it’s not pigment.”

I still didn’t have a clue what that meant, until she looked up and smiled.

“You haven’t got anything to worry about, here,” she said.

Whoooo-hoooooo!

Gosh, I’ve got happy tears in my eyes just writing that down.

The relief was… something else. It was almost (but – really – not) worth thinking I had cancer, to find out I didn’t have cancer.

I grinned the bigliest I’d ever grinned as she explained that it was likely a haemorrhage – that I must have burst a tiny vein in my toe and, because the skin is so thick, it had settled underneath the layers, turning that shade of dark brown, which looks almost exactly like a melanoma. She couldn’t tell for sure until she cut the skin away. If it had been ‘pigment’ it would have gone through to the flesh.

All clear!

Marriage, children, happiness, peace… life… all back on! Decades suddenly stretching ahead of me again, rather than months…

It was a beautiful moment.

I was on a high for the rest of the week, despite getting back to the camp and being told by everyone that I’d just been attention seeking for the past three weeks by pretending I had cancer.

It was definitely one of my greatest birthdays, too… and very good to know that – unless I got cancer or something – it wasn’t going to be my last.

In fact, it was so good, that I had another birthday the day after, so the 8^th and 9^th of April are now my Happy TwoBirthdays.

Summing up… though I’m obviously delighted to report that I never actually had cancer, physically; on a psychological level, I went through the same process as someone who didn’t get such a fortunate diagnosis… and I’d say that highlights just how much agony the mind can put us through – pulling us out of real life and into that realm of over-thinking… of focussing on the worst possible scenario, rather than waiting until all of the information is in and then coming up with a positive action plan on how to deal with it.

When you’re sick, the last thing you need is your own mind turning against you.

There are so many inspiring stories of bravery from people who didn’t get the good news. As much as I can emphasise with that period of suspicion to diagnosis, I can’t relate to the knowledge that… yes it is cancer. I don’t ever want to know what it’s like, either.

But one thing seems clear… when that bad news is absorbed, the light of life so often shines the brightest it ever has in these people. They realise that, though time is short, they are still alive and they will squeeze every last drop of joy from that life while they can.

We’re here to live…

… don’t wait until your time is running out to realise that.

Life is right here, right now.

“With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.” 

- Max Ehrmann, ‘Desiderata’

Taken later in the afternoon, after returning from the hospital with an 'all clear'. :-)

The Time I Had Cancer (Part One)

Lochgoilhead, under 'The Steeple'

I moved to Lochgoilhead – a small village nestled on the shore of a remote tidal loch in the Western Highlands of Scotland – just a couple of weeks after my awakening.
 

Being six miles from the nearest A-road, accessible only by a one-car track that twisted over a mountain pass, it was the most tranquil place I’d ever been, surrounded by some of the most breath-taking scenery I’ve ever witnessed. The peace seemed a perfect match to the harmony I’d discovered within.

I worked in the canteen of a Scout Association outdoor activity centre, living on-site in staff quarters, at the foot of a 1,250ft mountain called The Steeple. It was minimum wage, washing dishes, pots and pans and sweeping and mopping the floor, but… and for the first time ever in such a position… I really enjoyed going to work each day.

As well as a great crew in the kitchen, there was an excellent team of Scout instructors – both senior and trainee, as the centre was also an instructor training facility  - who also lived in the staff block. They were generally a bit younger than me, but such a friendly, generous and positively charged bunch of good, good people – even the guy in the room beside me who occasionally complained because my coughing (and once, typing) was keeping him awake at night.

The kids who visited were another source of positivity. For many of them, it was their first time away from home without their parents. I reminisced the excitement of the legendary ‘Four Day Trip’ that I went on with my school when I was ten-years-old, and knew they must have been having an amazing adventure in their stay there.

It actually made the job rather humbling. Although they wouldn’t remember me directly in the years to come, they would always remember Lochgoilhead, and with my work in the kitchen, I was part of the mechanics of making sure those kids had enough energy to get through their day, to take part in all the activities the instructors were taking them on and to squeeze as much enjoyment from the experience as they possibly could.

Added to that, I’d adopted a walking routine, hiking a few hundred feet up the mountain to a place called Scout Rock – a crag with character, used by the centre for abseiling and rock climbing – and I’d sit at the base of it and just watch the world (and catch my breath). 

It wasn’t long until I realised I’d lost a lot of weight, which was just an added bonus to everything else going on in my life. I’d been a bit of a chubster on first arrival, but after just a month or so, I’d really trimmed down and toned up. I hadn’t been dieting or planning to; it was just the result of increased activity and regular exercise.

I was so happy… after literally decades of not being so, I just was. I felt so alive.

Then I had a strange day…

I’d gone deaf in my right ear a week or so earlier – I presumed because of a build-up of ear-wax, which I’d had once before – and after hoping it would clear up with olive oil and spraying hot water in my ear every shower, it started to hurt, so I made an appointment at the local medical practice.

It was my day off, I seem to remember, and there were no kids staying at the camp, so it was very peaceful. I walked up to the clinic my usual happy self, optimistic that I’d have a quick ear syringe, then I’d be able to listen in stereo again. I’d always worn my iPhone headphones when walking up the mountain, and I missed the completeness of the music while not having two full-functioning ears.

I went through almost immediately to see the doctor, sat down and told him what the problem was. He had a quick inspect of my ear with his pointy-shiny ear-inspection instrument and told me that it wasn’t wax, but an infection. He wrote out a prescription of antibiotics and that was that – sorted in literally two minutes flat.

I thought I may as well get my money’s worth from the appointment slot, so I then told him about a pain I was having in the top of my right foot. It had been giving me trouble for longer than the ear and made me limp at times… although it wasn’t swollen to the touch, it felt like it was…

I took off my trainer and sock and he lifted my foot up and had a good look, then said that it was probably just the change in my life, from not standing up all day at work, to standing up all day at work. He suggested that even if it were an infection of some sort, the antibiotics he’d already prescribed would clear it up. Otherwise, I was to get some ‘support socks’, like runners, rather than pensioners use.

I was very happy indeed that I’d got a bonus ailment out of the way, and was just about to pull my foot back and re-sock and re-shoe it, but he didn’t let go. He was looking very closely at something else.

“This worries me, though…” he said.

He was looking at my second toe – the one beside the big toe – and the black mark on the tip.

“How long have you had this?”

He’d pulled a swing-armed lamp closer and was studying the blemish intently. I told him it had been there for maybe a month or two… though I’d actually seen it more than six months earlier.

After further inspection, he said he was going to arrange an appointment at the local hospital – with a dermatologist – for a biopsy.

Even at that point, it wasn’t a concern. I was smiling… a bit surprised that something totally unrelated to the ailment I made the appointment for was now taking us past the scheduled timeslot.

I put my sock and trainer back on at last and gave him a cheery “Thank you!” and readied to leave, but he asked me to sit down again… he said he wanted to talk to me.

There was real concern in his face as he explained what he believed the mark on my toe was – which until that point, I believed was just a mark on my toe.

He said he was ‘almost certain’  it was an acral lentiginous melanoma.
The word 'melanoma' stood out.

Then I realised… he was giving me ‘the cancer talk’.

Argh!

He told me not to worry myself too much (I should have suggested he didn’t tell me about my cancerous toe if he didn’t want me to worry too much, but was quite subdued by that point), but he was going to arrange an ‘urgent referral’ to the hospital, so I could be seen at the very earliest opportunity.

Argh!

I nodded a lot and listened, but most of the words didn’t sink in. He was very kind and we spoke for maybe another 15 minutes about what would happen next.

Even the receptionist had adopted a ‘bedside manner’ tone by the time I spoke to her about the referral… the doctor must have phoned her the moment I left the room and asked her to begin the process while I was walking up the corridor to reception. It all seemed very urgent indeed, which was quite troubling.

She reassured me that the hospital would be in touch within a few days, and then the appointment with the dermatologist would likely be within a couple of weeks.

After picking up the antibiotics, I went outside, and started to shake.

That was pretty shitty news for anyone to spring on me… let alone a doctor… someone who I should have been able to trust!

I went into the surgery with ear-wax and came out with cancer.

(Continued in Part Two)