writing, not drowning

Dear oncologist, are you listening?

It's two and a half years since I wrote about the alarming ignorance shown by my erstwhile oncologist (and by one senior radiographer) on the role of diet in the treatment of cancer. So, when I read that today's Food Programme (BBC Radio 4) would be on this very subject, I made sure that I was listening. The oncologist and radiographer are both still working at the hospital where I was treated - and where, thank goodness, the staff at the Breast Care Centre took a more enlightened view - so I can only say that I hope that they were also listening.

These days I rarely post about my  experience of being diagnosed with and treated for breast cancer (fondly referred to on this blog as the Massive Inconvenience). That's because I continue to be cancer free, am fit and healthy and, to be honest, cancer is not uppermost in my waking thoughts these days. But . . . I take nothing for granted.

It's not as if my pre-cancer diet was unhealthy but, from the point at which I received the diagnosis, I paid even greater attention to what I was eating and I still do. I chose to give up alcohol and certain foods, including dairy products, because the type of cancer I had was oestrogen dependent and I wanted to avoid anything that would push up my oestrogen levels. I missed cheese but, as neither alcohol nor other dairy foods, such as milk and butter, had figured highly in what I ate or drank, going without was not much of a sacrifice. I also stopped eating anything that contained sugar, which I am now convinced is the devil's food. (Did you know that sugar consumption in the UK has gone up by 31 per cent since 1990 and that the average Brit now eats 1.25lbs a week of the wretched stuff? Yikes!)  That's stopped as in routinely; there has been the odd glass of champagne at celebratory events and an occasional cake, but only very occasional. Yes, I enjoyed them at the time; no, I don't want them every day or even every week.

Lest anyone should think I lead a hairshirt culinary and dietary existence, nothing could be further from the truth. I love good food and I've always enjoyed cooking for family and friends - and for myself; I just don't want to eat stuff that does my body no favours. Also, as a woman of well over a certain age, I'm on a tight post-60 budget, so I can't and don't spend a fortune on food. But a healthy diet does not have to be expensive; nor does it require spending hours in the kitchen. The phenomenal success of A Girl Called Jack, a brilliant blog about eating well on a minimal budget, shows what is possible and provides a welcome relief from the increasing and often ludicrous excesses of far too many television food programmes. 

The photo above in case you are wondering, is a double-page spread from Nigel Slater's Tender: Volume 1, which I picked up for a snip (ie £5, that's about 1.54 US dollars) at a local charity shop on Friday. Pristine, still in its  wrapper and seemingly unused. A great, fat book, by one of my favourite food writers, it's full of wonderful things to do with delicious veg.

Yum. 

Music, Einstein and creativity

Picking up wehere I left off in my previous post . . . my own writing mentor, Briony Goffin, and I have often discussed the importance of finding ways of keeping one's creativity stimulated, to keep the ideas - and, in our case, the words - flowing. I live a long way from the cultural delights and opportunities offered by a city - art galleries, theatres, museums, exhibitions and that vibrant buzz generated by a city's diverse communities - so have learned to tap into what I do have.

Music is the most easily accessible pathway to creativity for me: singing with a choir and pushing my own boundaries, in terms of what I listen to. Which means that I now spend as much time tuned in to BBC Radio 3 as I do to Radio 4. R3's Late Junction, for example, described on the BBC website as 'a laid-back, eclectic mix of world music, ranging from the ancient to the contemporary', has long been the starting point for musical journeys of discovery and wonder. These days, I am never awake at the time it is broadcast, so have to rely on iPlayer to catch up, but no matter.

I usually listen to R3, driving to our choir sessions on Tuesday evenings, when the repeat of that morning's Composer of the Week programme is broadcast. Last week was devoted to the music of American composer, Philip Glass, whose work I find both compelling and mesmerising. I think it all started for me back in the 1980s, when I saw the film, Koyaanisqatsi, for which he composed the score, and then a televised production of his opera, Akenhaten; I had never heard anything quite like it before . . .

Glass describes himself as a 'a Jewish-Taoist-Hindu-Toltec-Buddhist', so therein lies some spiritual and personal resonance. Added to which he has worked extensively with so many writers, poets, singers, musicians, performers, film makers and artists whom I admire, including Leonard Cohen, Doris Lessing, Twyla Tharp, Martin Scorsese and Ravi Shankar; if they love his work, it follows that I might too. And I do.

So there I was on Tuesday evening, in the car park, all set to spend a couple of hours making music myself, when the programme presenter, Donald MacLeod, introduced this, Einstein on the Beach, Knee 1. It is an extraordinary piece, from an even more extraordinary, five-hour opera based on Einstein's life and theories, which therefore has a certain circularity about it . . .

I knew nothing of the relationship between mathematics and music until I was 30-something and studying the Open University foundation course, An Introdution to the Humanities. Oh, I thought, if only I'd learned about this at school, I might have paid more attention during our dreary Maths O-level classes. Ditto physics, where I got no further than a very basic introduction; in terms of the school's O-level timetable, opting for history, which I did (how could I not?), meant dropping physics. Only later, much later, did I realise what I had missed. The Tao of Physics, which I am convinced would have made a huge difference to my appreciation and understanding of the subject, was not published until 1975, more than 10 years too late for my schoolgirl self.

If only we'd had a better teacher for maths; someone who could have fired our teenage imaginations, as did our arts and humanities teachers, instead of spending her time dreaming up endless new stratagems to keep us away from the temptation of boys, back-combed hair, make-up, fashion, rock and roll, and just about the entire 1960s. If only . . . but we were left to get by as best we could and there was certainly no help available for anyone who was floundering. (Rather too many of us. Where were the school inspectors?) What a wasted and lost opportunity, not just for me but for the hundreds of young girls who struggled (or slept/gazed out of the window/read furtively under their desks) in her classes throughout the decades she spent at our convent school. Years later, my work enabled me to meet some truly inspirational and gifted teachers of maths and physics and I would listen to them in awe, wondering if their students knew how lucky they were. (It should not, of course, be a matter of luck. Young minds deserve the very best teachers.)

But back to Philip Glass and Einstein on the Beach. You can read more about the entire work here, which is probably more reliable than any attempt on my part to explain it. Meanwhile, I invite you to listen to Knee 1, as music, as meditation, as . . . what you will. For me, it is like listening to the heartbeat of the universe.

That was the week that was . . .

A huge thank you for all your kind and encouraging comments and emails, especially those of you who wrote to me about your own, very personal and very tough, journeys. You are all brave, strong, amazing women and absolute stars!

During what has seemed at times the longest and the shortest fortnight of my life, there have been a number of things that have made a profound difference to me and which, in some cases, have made me feel quite joyful. And joy, if I'm honest, was not something I was expecting.

So . . . 10 brownie points to the nurse (of a similar vintage to me) at Musgrove Park Hospital, who mopped up the tears and did my blood tests, who talked about Glastonbury and my Big Mama African beads that I had worn for luck (bought with my lovely Friend in New Zealand, on the day we walked with cheetahs at a conservation sanctuary in Eastern Cape when we were travelling across South Africa), and who urged me to go out, stand with my back to a tree and let that good old tree energy start flowing. (That's the great thing about the West Country; you get nurses who tell you things like that.)

And then there was the marvellous Rodgers and Hammerstein Proms concert over at BBC R3, which had me singing out loud and loving every minute. Available here on BBC iPlayer (sorry, in the UK only) until 5.45pm on Sunday 29 August and you can see the concert on BBC2 tomorrow evening (28 August) at 6.45pm. Trust me - it's worth staying in for.

Any number of family members and friends to thank, including (not previously mentioned) M, over at Random Distractions, who has walked this walk herself and who is still very much here, and V, the Builder's Wife, who found me looking a bit dejected in an M&S car park on Wednesday. She marched me off for a heart-to-heart over a skinny decaff cappuccino. (I'd introduced her to the habit when she was helping to transform my dear old house.)

Special mention for the basket of knitting in the women's waiting room at the Breast Care Centre at Musgrove Park, which is where I waited with Lucy, the young Russian who was looking after me on the day of my follow-up tests. Instinct kicked in and as soon as I saw the basket, I automatically picked up the needles attached to a big ball of pink (very healing, pink) wool and started knitting where a woman like me, who had waited anxiously, had left off. 

I knitted, Lucy and I talked about all sorts (including Russian literature), and then I was called in for the next set of tests. I had to put the wool down half way through a row and sent silent good wishes to the woman who would be feeling as apprehensive as me and who would pick up where I had finished - and feel better. Our efforts are forming knitted squares that will be joined together to make blankets for Romanian orphanages and I can tell you that it is a brilliant, brilliant idea and one of the most calming and most therapeutic things I have ever done.

And finally, one of those experiences that you cannot really explain or fathom but which take place at exactly the right time and which I have been urged to write about. Two weeks ago, I was having the ultrasound-guided core biopsy. If you've had one yourself, you'll know that, even with plenty of local anaesthetic, it's not a particularly pleasant procedure (well, it's several procedures actually, as four to six samples are taken), with each sample accompanied by what sounds like a muffled gunshot. It's invasive and, however hard I tried to be a plucky little woman, I started welling up around sample four and needed a breather.

"Do you meditate," asked Lucy.

"I do," I replied.

"Then take yourself to that place," said Lucy.

I knew exactly what she meant and was there in two shakes; and then . . . everything in the room faded away and suddenly, my much-loved mum, who died in 1995, was there, holding my hand. She stayed holding my hand until it was all over and then she put her arms round me and comforted me in the way that only she ever could. And then she was gone.

I have my own, private, Buddhist thoughts on what was going on and the psychologists among you will probably have a theory. Nothing like that has happened to me before and may never happen again but I had always had the (never articulated) idea that, if I ever truly needed her, my mum would find me and come to me. I think Shakespeare was right - there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in Horatio's philosophy.

When I eventually arrived home from that appointment, there was only one song that I wanted to hear, especially the opening lines . . .

No more grumpy old . . .

I never need much of an excuse to read or listen to journalist and broadcaster, Katherine Whitehorn, most recently on BBC R4's Reasons to be Cheerful series. Ms Whitehorn was castigating grumpiness (in programmes such as Grumpy Old Men and Grumpy Old Women, although, confusingly, both tended to feature not Grumpy Old but Grumpy Middle-aged Men and Women). There is, she argued, much more to be cheerful about than there is to set us moaning and she outlined some of the many changes in the modern world that have made our lives easier. At least, the lives of those of us in the developed nations.

The older I get, the more I agree with her. Yes, the world can be a harsh and frightening place but (and I'm now being UK-specific), the majority of us are not losing loved ones in the heat and dust of Helmand Province; we are not watching everything we have ever worked for being destroyed and carried away in the worst floods for almost a century. And even though we are promised public spending death by a thousand cuts, we have clothes on our backs, food on our tables . . . 

I may now be (officially but not in my head) a pensioner and my pension may be rubbish but I have turned things that I love doing into ways of generating the income I need to stay in the home that I love (the bottom having fallen out of the market for the sort of freelance work I was doing pre-retirement. And, besides, it was probably time to make space for younger writers and editors).

It's not that I don't have my moments of irritation or exasperation but I can't imagine that anyone would want to read about them. And, besides, any number of things have made me happy in recent weeks, apart from my travels with the Edinburgh Boy. For example . . . Divisadero by Michael Ondaatje, a subtle, thought-provoking and finely wrought novel by one of my favourite writers; Sophia Coppola's Marie Antoinette, a brilliant, ravishing film, with a surprising but highly effective soundtrack; various gorgeous and bargain items bought in Gudrun Sjödén's summer sale, (Gudrun Sjödén's clothes are described by one Mumsnet member as 'Boden on acid' and therefore guaranteed to bring out my old inner hippie); the kindness of my daughter and her husband in giving me a shiny, almost-new, flat-screen television when my older TV died a slow and painful death; finding an excellent local homeopath, whose skills and wisdom have got me back on the road to good health; and these characters, whose week-long stay almost converted me into a terrier fan.

 

And there was this, a song remembered from Family Favourites and my radio-fixated childhood, which featured on the soundtrack of a DVD I watched on my laptop on an overnight stop en route to Scotland. Seventy years ago it became - and remains to this day - the only Chinese popular song to become a hit in the West. There have been subsequent English language versions by Frankie Laine, Petula Clark and Aneka (of Japanese Boy fame) but none, I think, have anything like the impact of this, the original Méi gui méi gui zuì jiao mei by Miss Yao Lee. Evocative of another time, another place and quite wonderful.

An empty space at the Ambridge mic

 

Jill and Phil 

I've grown up and grown old listening to the man in the photo above: Norman Painting, who has played Phil Archer since the BBC radio serial, The Archers, began in 1950. To listen to The Archers is like wrapping oneself in a large, warm, comfort blanket.  I was just three in 1950 and now I'm . . . well, you can work it out for yourselves. So, hearing the news just a few minutes ago that Norman has died did give me considerable pause for thought.

Thanks for the memories Mr Painting; like millions of others, I'll miss that reassuring voice. Things will be rather quiet in Ambridge this evening, I imagine. And a glass or two raised in tribute at The Bull.