Life Lately

I've been a little preoccupied lately. Distracted. Restless. Listless. Perhaps it's the fact that my 40th birthday is just a few weeks away, and while that's really nothing to write home to the bloggersphere about, it is one of those milestone birthdays that does make one stop and take stock of things.

I remember having a feeling of change around the time of my 30th. I spent that birthday in Paris (it was freezing but fabulous) just days before my second interview for the job that would be a turning point in my career. The job that took me out of the laboratory as a pharmaceutical research scientist and into the more corporate environment of medical writing. 

There are days that I love my job and then there are those days that make me want to run away and never come back (usually those days when Annoying Demanding Client is being particularly annoying and demanding and..... just being clientish). Deep down I wish I was doing something more exciting (preferably with a more creative slant and lots of exotic travel), but I know I have to be sensible and pay my bills. Because the same year that I turned 30, we bought our first house and became beholden to the Almighty Mortgage Lender. Then began Operation Overhaul Humble Hovel into a Liveable Home, and that really was time to start acting like a grown-up...perusing wall colour charts and carpet catalogues, boning up on the difference between Type 1 and Type 2 flues, becoming versed in the benefits of combi-boilers, and dealing with a seemingly never-ending stream of builders, plumbers, blokes that sort out the gas and so on.

As I approach my 40th birthday, I don't have the same expectations that things are about to change, and perhaps that is what is making me feel quite restless. And to top it all, I'm suffering from extreme wanderlust! Don't get me wrong, I know that I have travelled a fair bit in my life already - anyone who reads my blog has possibly worked out that I jump at every chance to explore another part of our amazing planet. But I crave the opportunity to really travel... to just head off for a few months and see where we ended up. To have no set itinerary, no agenda, no obligations. Unfortunately, such plans shall remain as dreams for the foreseeable future. We are still indebted to the Almighty Mortgage Lender, and too sensible to even contemplate (for longer than about five minutes) chucking it all in and sodding off into the Big Beyond. Would we ever be able to come back to reality? I fear not.

So, instead, I intend to make the most of the next year, and indeed every year, by....

Starting off the year in one of my favourite places in the world - Thailand! A few days of sun, sea, sand, and spicy (satay!) food will be the perfect antidote to the cold sleet, rain, ice and snow of the UK. Not that I have anything against ice and snow, but I do like to mix it up with a bit of fire too! And so I shall, with a trip to Iceland (the Land of Fire and Ice) booked for mid June 2014, coinciding with the Summer Solstice and 24 hours of daylight way up north.  Before that, I've booked a sneaky break to New York (New York!) over Easter.... I plan on walking all over the Big Apple and then some, as by then I'll be in the final stages of training for my power walking marathon, the London Moon Walk on 10 May 2014.....

That's the first six months planned for now. Stay tuned for more on all of these adventures....

My Dad

In the early hours of last Sunday morning (January 30th, 2011) my dad finally lost his long battle with cancer.

He was a brilliant, inspiring, funny and brave man who will be greatly missed by everyone who knew him.

My dad as a young man - circa 1960



A devoted husband, a loving father, and a loyal friend of many.

Wedding Day - 6th July 1963



A man with a positive outlook, who yelled "Bring it on!" at whatever life threw at him.

A hard-working man who wanted his family to have the best life possible.

My dad teaching me to swim - 1974

A perfectionist, who could repair anything and would not rest until he found a solution to a problem.

A man with a great thirst for knowledge, who read voraciously, graduated with a university degree in history aged 47, and taught himself how to program a computer back in the days when only a handful of people had even seen one.

An accomplished musician, and a talented golfer, rugby player and swimmer.

My dad playing his beloved violin - circa 1970

An eloquent man, with a great sense of humour and a love of political satire.

A man who laughed long and loud, and was not afraid to laugh at himself.

A man who packed a lot of living into his 75 years.

I am priveleged to have had him for my dad, and I am going to miss him more than I ever thought was possible.



In An Ideal World...

In an ideal world, I would not have spent the past week with my stomach tied up in knots of anxiety.

In an ideal world, there would be no diseases, no suffering, no cancer and its arsenal of horrible complications. My dad would not have needed an operation to circumvent such complications, an operation that would leave him so weak and dehydrated that his solo functioning kidney just couldn’t cope.

In an ideal world, we would have no need for intensive care units, and no one would ever have to walk quickly past other critically ill patients on life-support machines, desperately trying not to take in the seriousness of their situation, or see the young man crying quietly by the bedside of his unconscious father.

In an ideal world, no one would have to see their own dad looking so fragile and frightened, but so determined to keep fighting.

For the third time in just a year and a half my dad has been in a life threatening situation, but thankfully, he’s pulled through...again. He is slowly recovering, but he still has a long way to go.