A Strange Father’s Day

For the first time in living memory I am a Father alone on Father's Day. I know it's a commercial thing (unlike Mothering Sunday) but even so it has amplified the absence of family. My own Father died in 2006 of Motor Nueron Disease a rapidly developing disease which took him from an active man [...]

Weekly Photo Challenge: Focus (Venus, Mars and a later Moon)

A submission to this week's photo challenge : Focus. Taking photos of the night sky is difficult - my Canon EOS 70D needed a lot of tweaking to get something and in truth my inexperience got less than focused shots of the sky on that occasion. It was however, too good an opportunity to miss [...]

Work Day

Today has been a day of work. Its been a bit strange but nice to do something purposeful. It seems strange to me at least to be enjoying the fact of doing work. I generally prefer time off to work. However, after seven weeks in which most of the time I have been doing nothing [...]

Missing Mwanza

It's been seven weeks since I arrived in the UK and almost nine weeks since I left Mwanza. This town in north western Tanzania was my home for the past two and a half years and my departure from the town was both unplanned and unexpected. My family are still there and will not be [...]

Weekly Photo Challenge: Coffee Friends

A submission to this week's photo challenge: Friend. Taken outside the Fish Market in Mwanza last November. We were on a walk around the lakeside peninsular with Fiona, a walking friend, when we came across these guys drinking Kahawa (coffee) - they invited us to join us in a brew and we enjoyed several steaming [...]

Weekly Photo Challenge: Feathered Friends

A submission to this week's photo challenge on the theme of  Friend One thing I really miss about Tanzania is the bird life. The wide variety of birdlife in our garden there cannot be matched in the UK - the vast majority of photos were taken in our garden in Mwanza. You can find many [...]

Twenty Two Years

Today is our twenty second wedding anniversary. We are spending it over 4000 miles apart. The toughest part for both of us has been the trans-continental split in the family. We have been apart for over almost six weeks and will be for almost two months more. The challenge of the Myeloma and its treatments [...]

Better by Far

As I am in the middle of my second bout of Chemotherapy it's time to reflect on where things are. I expected that the chemotherapy would be making me ill. You here scare stories of hair loss and sickness. Maybe that will come, though I am assured hair loss is unlikely with Valcade.  In truth [...]

4:30am

It's just gone 4:30am as I write this.  Just after dawn here, the early morning light peeking through the curtains. This is the start of the day for me now, the time when I am awake in my new reality. It's become habit.  It started in hospital - about now is when the nurses would [...]

Guilt

I'm home now. I'm feeling better but am I well? People say I look well They are encouraging  me,  I know  Bur... Part of my response is guilt! Guilt because in my head that means I'm well. Well enough to work?  I feel guilty 'cause I'm not. It's a geographical impossibility. My job in Tanzania [...]

Wrenched Away

The whirlwind which has blown through my life in the past month has taken its toll both physically as well as emotionally. The speed of the process has been the most devastating. Little did I think when I boarded  the overnight bus to Nairobi on the 2nd April I did not imagine that would be [...]

Falling off a Cliff

The past two and a half weeks have been a whirlwind. It seemed that for a long time my body was struggling on with all of the various ailments I was suffering which I put down to age and aching muscles and I carried on virtually unaffected until I broke my fibula. Even the shoulder [...]

Robbery

I was stuck in ACH and desperate to talk with Anita - she knew I had gone there to look at a potential DVT but no more. Yet for over 20 hours we did not communicate. Thoughts ran wild! She was over 4000 miles away. Had there been a car crash, was she or my [...]