Scopes Away

14th December in the morning for my flexible Cystoscopy - late morning so I'll have a good chance to hydrate ready for it and as long as I thwack back a few pain killers early on I should be OK - although having said that of course it may be different to the first one of these I had. I imagine that I shouldn't get the stinging I got first time. Famous last words indeed. I think the family are off to see the Nutcracker that day. It somehow seems appropriate :-)

Let it all out

It was an interesting comment, chatting to a friend who just went in to melt down, middle of a restaurant. Luckily his mates were with him and the waiter got turned away as did other helpful people in a nice way of course. It was interesting as I also read about someone not knowing what to do whether to laugh or cry and I can fully understand that - almost a daily occurrence things just set you off or trigger responses.

I was never receptive to these things before. With today's full on internet information you get a lot more stimuli than before and somehow I'm more connected to the news and people's experiences than I ever used to be which I fully attribute to the realisation of my own mortality.

Someone did say that your whole body goes out of tune and out of equilibrium, your natural balance of hormones just get out of sync. Your ability to call on reserves such as adrenalin for flight or fight situations often calls on reserves that are almost empty or are empty. Whether that is so or not, I'm not sure but I often have these moments, several times a day where I stop myself getting involved too deeply into something that will result in me feeling bad or make me get emotionally involved.

I'm sure there is something about this somewhere - there was certainly some stuff in the Post Cancer Fatigue document I read but in this country we treat the symptoms and are beginning to look at the cause but no one thinks too hard about the emotional wreckage that Cancer leaves behind for you and your friends and family. Interestingly MacMillan are doing something in their survivor programme. Learning to live in this post cancer world may take a bit longer than I thought.

Hennesey XO and a Chinese to savour

What a lovely evening. The Chinese restaurant was heaving - which on a Tuesday is pretty good as nowhere else seemed to be. A superb meal and a wander up to K's house and some rather nice XO Cognac and a few hours setting the world to rights was all we needed to round off a lovely evening.

On a cold winters evening a lift home from V was also most welcome. Just time to review my emails and consider what we spoke about and what I learnt tonight.

Most importantly - I have some very nice friends and we share very similar values. I feel uplifted and happy to have decided to have spent time with them. That will do I think.

We had an interesting conversation on "values" and I'll try and work some of that in to the blog down this week. Now back to the issue of trying to sort out all my misbehaving laptops and PCs!!

The pain starts when

You pay the bill. End of Root Canal work today and I suppose, on reflection, it wasn't too bad. I needed a few Ibuprofen later on when I got back but it was a difficult one, so he said, and I needed my jaw jammed open. I was there for an hour and 15 which was a long time. I was a bit too tense to start with but once the tooth was ready it was OK and I started to breathe a bit better.

This just leaves the extraction to come in a few weeks time, I gave myself a few days between Scotland and having this done. It will be early December and whilst I remember having it done some time ago - I have given myself a fair bit of time between then and Christmas to allow me time to recuperate.

I am out tonight with some of the team for a Chinese meal and I have to say I am looking forward to that immensely. It's nice to get out and have a chat with my friends. Unfortunately one of them has had to cry off with something approaching "man Flu" - poor chap :-)

My computer woes grow and it is just a pain trying to get this computer to talk to the rest in the house. I can see that there may be "words" soon if it doesn't start to work properly. It's just pants that this can be allowed to be the normal experience people have with their computers.

My fault for setting the house up with shared printers and services.

It's very cold here today and my feet are freezing - I may decide to go back to my warm office environment in the next week or two.

Whatever I did Yesterday

Has disappeared today and about midday the network on my PC broke again and I was left without network connections and without printing just when I needed it. I hate IT, I hate PCs and Technology just sucks, it never ever used to be this difficult, someone just decided to screw it up and make it insensible to us. And I know what I'm doing (or have a rough idea).

So today was reasonably OK and was a bit sticky being a Monday. My Car Alarm went off at some ungodly hour as Mrs. F. had popped the boot (trunk) and it was frozen solid. She decided not to get the stuff out as she couldn't open it and reset the alarm. Well all was OK until it defrosted and I couldn't find the key to switch off the alarm. It sure got my attention and probably everyone else in the neighbourhood. It switched itself off before I found where the key had been cunningly hidden - not in the drawer where the car keys are kept but in the kitchen drawer - silly me for not using the full set of receptors and mind reading capabilities I should have been born with! Anyway, the morning got off to that sort of start.

The day didn't get much better with the technical issues and reviewing the web site was a bit of a yawn but worthwhile. Later on Flocky Bicep called to say he could make the afternoon meeting of one of our related Lodges and so he came and picked me up and we went there for a very interesting meeting, we came out, grab a beer and some snacks and then went into our practice session afterwards.

Dentist for me in the morning at the crack of Sparrows. It should be, I hope, a simple procedure and I can get back to meet my Business partner and we can finalise the web site. We are then off in the evening for a few beers and a Chinese meal. I haven't had a Chinese meal out for about 3 years I guess so I am really looking forward to that.

I started a thought process today about some of the problems I've been having over the past 4 and a half years and have noted that I've always had problems in terms of self criticism and blame. It's in my nature so I reflected that I do look back at things I've done and decisions I've made and reflect on these in negative ways. There are things that I've done that I'm not proud of and there are things that, given a second opportunity, I would do differently. Everyone must have the same thing surely? The trouble is that I look back and defy all logic (as I am applying hindsight and modern values) to give myself a hard time about things that are history. I should be considering learning from these things but what I do is give myself a hard time about it. I even think about the time back in the 70s when smoking at concerts was OK, most people did it and I feel bad that I may have blighted someone's life for doing that. It isn't logical, it may or may not be true but there is this self-harming type of mindset. It doesn't want me to move on, it wants to pull me back in to the dark ages. It is as if there is some sort of self-destruct mechanism in place.

It's me that does this and I am my own worst enemy, always have been. I don't think I have a low opinion of myself or low self esteem but I just think that I have set myself high ideals and fail to meet them. I can't set low ideals, it isn't in my make up to do so.

It's a funny old world where you know what the problems are (or think you do) and you know how to get out of them (or think you do) and yet I choose to be negative about it. I will happily set on myself rather than work out a way to turn it to my advantage. It's the regrets for the past that are difficult to shake off I find, I'm not sure where I find the benefit in going over old ground to beat myself up over something I cannot change. I'd prefer to go over old ground and say don't do that again or don't make that mistake again, learn from the experience.

It just goes to show that Psychology and its branches wouuld not have been a good career move for me - I'm glad I didn't take that path :-)

Go with your gut feel

Sometimes that's the right thing to do I find. This problem with my new PC has been bugging me and so I thought let's think about this - it happened on the old PC recently when an update came in and by turning off the IPV6 setting I got it to work, I also thought, I would clear out all the old settings. As insurance I have downloaded some network tools and spent about an hour today sorting it out. Glory be, I can now see files, printers and everything else on-line.

Thank goodness for that - go with what you feel - worked for me.

I seem to have settled down a bit after quite a few months of being a bit fragile. I wasn't great last night and today, being Remembrance Sunday always fills me with sadness and Elgar's Enigma Variation - Nimrod - wrecks me every time I hear it, it is a haunting piece of music. All those people who died in all those wars, it just seems such a terrible price to pay for liberty and freedom. So I get a little down on this day every year, thankful but down.

I think the end of Summer also doesn't help the dark mornings and afternoons, the rain and general greyness are pretty depressing.

Yesterday was nice, I got a round of applause for my delivery of a Grand Lodge Certificate which was a bit of a shock, I've never had that happen in Lodge before but lots of people enjoyed it so that is great. It was a very nice meeting yesterday which was pleasing - just like it should be, it's about people and getting on with each other and enjoying other people's company. All very special as it was a 50th Certificate too.

At least I've fixed my PC so I am pleased and today was the end of the F1 season so I'm a bit sad about that but it was good going down to the wire in the very last race.

Someone mentioned Christmas to me - I knew it was Christmas as in August the adverts started :-) I need to try and get that sorted, at least I can do what I normally do and use my PC to do my Christmas Shopping.

A good afternoon

I hope - off to the Lodge. I'm Treasurer and I also get to do a bit of work today - that is presenting a Grand Lodge Certificate to one of my candidates. That will be great. I hope that I remember what I have to say and that I can read my crib notes too.

It is an old friend's 50th year in Freemasonry so he also gets a special recognisition certificate today it should be a nice pleasant afternoon and evening. It is our last meeting of the year.

Life's pretty good and I should get my tooth finally fixed on Tuesday. That will be interesting. It wasn't as bad as I thought - but I still have Tuesday morning to go.

This new computer keeps disconnecting itself from the home network which is such a pain, I've managed to get it to work occasionally but it just isn't playing nicely....

I haven't heard when I am due in for a scope, I hope they give us good notice as there is so much going on these coming weeks. Life's good - that's important.

I will be glad to see the back of this week

For no other reason than it has been one of those weeks that has just been hard work. It doesn't seem to be getting us anywhere and yet I know, deep down, that we have made massive progress this week it has just been like wading through clawing mud to get there.

I really cannot wait until the web site is up and running and when I will be able to let everyone know about it because that is when things will start to accelerate. Indeed it has been a bit of a "Phoney War" in terms of what we are doing generally as we don't appear to be doing anything. However, I am sure that will all change soon.

I was thinking of how well I feel and that's good stuff really, I do feel good still but the one thing I have let go is exercising. It must have been 4 weeks now and I'm certain that if I got back to doing that the weight would just fall off me as I am still losing weight gradually and fit into my shirts and suits again now which is a great relief I can tell you.

Perhaps when we get through this hard section of work I can recommence.

Bumpy days

Only bumpy because we are trying to get to a final point in the web site to get it finished and published. The creative process is quite bumpy and start / stop by its very nature it has to be I suppose. It isn't like good old logical project management where things get a tick or a cross a 1 or a 0 whether they are done or not!

So we have been looking over and over at out web site and its layout, the images and the way spacing is used etc. It is hard work and of course the more you look the less you like it so it is nice to get some outside opinions. We have really bootstrapped the web site but it does look slick even though it isn't for our final audience yet it looks as if it is.

Everything has just taken an age today down to silly things like getting an image to go on the site has taken me a couple of hours.

It is blowing a gale outside and at the crack of dawn this morning, some tree feller types came in and started hacking down next door's Yew tree. All very well but it couldn't have been much past 7:30 and so there was all that noise of chain saws and pulping machines outside the house until about 10:30. The gales look to be increasing and we had what looked like a baby twister out here a few minutes ago, a squall cam and picked up all the leaves on the road and dumped them against the windows and front of the house.

It looks as if it has calmed down again for a short while and the rain has stopped. All in all it has been a miserable, windy, wet and a dreary day and the work hasn't been much better either.

A nice evening out

And the last until Saturday. It was a small, friendly evening with some very nice people and we made the very best of it and filled in for missing officers and just got on and had a good time. That's what it is all about really and so tonight went really fast and I was home by around 10:15 so that too was good.

Today was a good day as we looked back over the past months, looked at the website and realised how far we had come in 5 months since our Boot Camp in June. Goodness, I've had an operation and good news since then and wasn't particularly great come June if I remember.

No problems. We are close to our major goals - those of having web site and sales messages in place. I've got 3 potential backers to talk to - after I've got the web posted and we are about to break cover after all these years, working in the background. It will be quite exciting. I've managed to start to change profiles and set up links but that is a tiny bit premature as I don't expect the web site to be up until the 19th November at the earliest.

We are a couple of months behind but, nil desperadoes, we shall just get on and tackle the next piece in the same methodical manner - it cannot be rushed.

I'm feeling relatively OK but concious that I am beginning to run out of steam a bit having done about 4 or 5 weeks full on. I am trying to get the children to make up their minds about a winter holiday but no one (once again) wants to make a decision. I hope that they do soon or else we just wont have a break and that is really what we could all do with.

We got the first look at

The web site today and I've started changing my business profiles to allow the web site to link up with my profiles. The site isn't live yet, far from it, but it has a certain wow factor now that the animation is working and the words are laid out on their various pages. There is still some way to go as we actually need to go and buy the pictures which will up the quality and just check over the wording which now, seeing it on a web site, looks wrong. But that is how these things work and hence why it is in test mode and hidden.

I'm off out tonight to a Lodge meeting, just as a visitor, which will be nice as I don't need to do too much, just turn up, stay awake and enjoy myself.

It's only Wednesday - it feels as if I have done a full week or work already. By the end of the week I will be exhausted! It all kicks off this weekend as it looks as if I only have one weekend free from now until Christmas! Crazy.

Life's good, my tooth appears to be fine, no real pain as such which is good, still slightly numb but probably to be expected after such serious work. I guess I'll be called in for a scope next month or January but I don't have a date as of yet.

A night out with friends

A great night out and as usual we had a good time but slightly tinged with sadness that one of our number had suffered a bereavement. It is the second time this year that he has had to deal with this and we sort of agreed that we are "or the age" where this is bound to be a common occurrence amongst our parents and even some of our older friends.

It is doubly sad because KP, who has an awful lot to do with me starting blogging in the first place, has had his own bad luck in terms of losing his job and retraining to find that the retrained jobs didn't exist and finally he has got himself a job in the Charity Sector which is just great. The Third Sector doesn't pay huge money but the work is infinitely more satisfying and re-builds your confidence, I know it did in my case and I am very grateful for it. I am though a tiny bit concerned over my confidence levels about what I am doing now, I do feel extremely confident that I can do what I am doing now and I am growing into the role. I felt it tonight as I was suddenly entirely behind the new business and could (at last) actually articulate what the business was about.

I have a slight headache from the work on my teeth earlier but have decided to have a glass of Scotch in a minute to see if I can numb the pain :-)

Everything is right with the world tonight. My Daughter A has returned from my parents and both L and A have a wonderful Dolls House and all the accessories to go with them. These were my Mum's pride and joy in the old house but they cannot go into the new one. I hope that she will be pleased that the girls have one each and they will be treated with the reverential awe and respect that these wonderful pieces of craftsmanship deserve. I was amazed to see the minute detail in each of the rooms (one house even has electric lighting). Sad in one way that these things had to go but I hope that them staying in the family and being treasured by a new generation will be some sort of comfort for their loss?

I've also got a whole load of books from my Dad that can go onto my library shelves to be read later. I have so many books that I should actually have retired when I was 25 so that I could read them all :-)

Life's good tonight, I feel really charged after seeing my old school chums, they always lift my spirits and we are very comfortable with each other's company - if you know what I mean - like an old pair of slippers :-)

OK - That wasn't so bad

I have to say if I never had Root Canal work again it would be once too often. I mean it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be and I've still got some work next week to finish off. I had to have a second shot to deaden my tooth. It was just a lot of work in an awkward place so took time and wasn't straight forward. The x-rays of the other side - to be taken out showed a tooth that may be a bit difficult to get out (a Wisdom tooth) although the one next door I had extracted cam out easily enough - this one may prove difficult but that is for a few weeks time, let's get this one done.

I have to say that the dentist is very good and I don't fear going like I used to but I did find myself unusually anxious only because Root Canal has a fearsome reputation - I can imagine if you hadn't got local anaesthetic it could be awful.

Anyway, it is with some relief that I sit here drinking my tepid coffee. Out with the old school chums tonight - although one is possibly not going to be there as his Mother-in-Law is very poorly in Hospital and may not make it through the night. Terrible news. So with that shocking bit of news and my mouth making throbbing recovery I will take my leave.

15 minutes to go

And I feel quite anxious about my visit to the dentist - it was nice of Flocky Bicep to drop by earlier and that took my mind off things for a while.

I have to say it is with some trepidation that I go off to see my dentist. Finger crossed it all works out to plan.

OK That's good

Mr Angry apologised for bad behaviour last week and bought me a pint of beer to set that apology right in a bloke to bloke sort of way. I graciously accepted and we carried on without it being a problem - that IS the way to deal with such things. I could hear him chatting to a friend of mine saying that he had really rattled me but luckily my friend was on the right wave length and said that all was forgiven and a beer was the right payment! Too right, things are back to normal and on an even keel. His wife isn't at all well but there you go.

I had a long liquid lunch - it wasn't meant to be like that but it just was. I met a friend of mine who has now been out of work for 7 months at 12:30 and we managed to drink and chat for the best part of 5 1/2 hours which meant I got home way after 6 and needed to stock up on food as I hadn't eaten all day!!! SO I threw down food and then Mrs. F (Bless Her!) said did I really want dinner to which I had to reply that if I didn't I would be totally unable to function! So I had a massive supper and then went out and had a few more beers in the evening!

Home now though thank goodness.

What will you leave?

I wonder what my legacy will be? I wonder what good I may have done in my life and what difference I will have made? I say this because I read a very moving tribute to some children's grandmother. They listed all the things they remembered and liked about their late grandmother.

They were the usual little things you remember about your grandparents or your relatives. there was a nice one about sneaking out for a MacDonalds which rather amused me but that sort of mischief has to be something that sits in your memory from years back.

I imagine you make many impressions and leave many legacies in your life, you mentor others as you were probably mentored.

I often thought that you had to have made a big impact but now I see that even the smallest things have an impact and affect people's lives.

I recollect a number of occasions where something almost insignificant and perhaps shared by just a few people made a profound affect on me. I recollect the words of wisdom from people I knew in passing - the odd phrase or gesture or anecdote - and consider that those people made an impact that they probably never realised. So we all make our mark and we all leave something, somewhere. We may not realise it at the time but our words and actions, our deeds or non deeds, our helpfulness or not all have an affect on someone. All I can continue to do is continue to do what I do.

I remember saying that I thought it was too late to change the world and perhaps that may be true but because it is late it doesn't mean that you should stop trying.

Interesting call

In case said "dickhead" turns up tomorrow and rattles me, friend called and let me know the circumstances behind last Monday's silliness. I'm OK with things. I did fancy letting the guy have a little more room to explain himself this week but I will gloss over that anything happened and if he does then that will be an end to it, we all make mistakes and I probably come off the rails more than many although I have to say I tend to do that in a different way and I tend to crash and burn and just end up as some whimpering idiot to my friends.

Last week was a bit strange as I didn't get the feelings I normally did going back to work. I felt that perhaps I couldn't go back there in any other role other than the one I am in as a part time consultant. I've been invited to the Christmas party this year - I guess I ought to go but just be careful what I wish for so as not to set my expectations too high or too low. These things can be somewhat tedious.

I'd really like for some outlook on my future there. I am doing good work in supporting the team but I'd like something a bit more substantial to get my teeth into. The thing is that the work I do is valued, its just that I sometimes don't see the value of the work I do. To me the things I do that I think are normal are outside of most of their experiences and they certainly don't do problem analysis and solving the way that I do so perhaps there is a value there. I just want to make sure that they are deriving some real value from my work.

The weekend was given over to repairing my friend's laptop which is now done and to doing some accounts that I needed to catch up with. My network crashed and my printer needs sorting out which has given me a few issues trying to complete things today. I do need to do some focusing on my time management this week. I have a number of meetings, the first of my trips to the dentist and I am out three nights this week too!

I think that an early night will be useful so that I can get a good run at the week ahead.

The Business Cards

Arrived on Friday - they look the business - well, they would of course.

Today I fixed my friend's Laptop PC, his kids had managed to infect it with something that looked and acted as if it was actually helping you and yet all along it was tricking them and screwing up their PC.

I managed to start it up in isolated mode and clean it all up there were hundreds of adaware, malware and trojans on it. Clever little program - it turned off all the firewalls, virus checkers and defenders and I had to go in using safe mode to fix it. Hopefully it is all done and he can now reuse it. I've even speeded it up for him too so with a bit of luck that will keep it clean for him for a while.

If he had had to pay someone in a shop to do that it would probably have cost £180 given the amount of time I had to attend to it whilst I did the analysis and effected various cures.

I'm feeling pretty good still, I was impressed that I'd lost weight and was now able to fit into my suits and shirts again. It is amazing how much of an uplift that gives you.

I need to do some more work over the weekend on administration as I find myself busy for the rest of November and December. It is hardly believable but I only have one free weekend between now and Christmas. It means I probably wont get up to see my folks before or after they move and maybe not until the New Year. Having said that, I am getting pressure to go away for a few days around Christmas as we didn't have a real holiday this year.

I feel that it is going to be a very interesting time these next 4 to 6 weeks.

The Art of Distraction

I must not get distracted, I must not get distracted, I must not get distracted, I must not get distracted, I must not get distracted, I must not get distracted, I must not get distracted, I must not get distracted, I must not get distracted, I must not get distracted.

The level of interrupt is quite high even though I'm not in an office or really involved with anything beyond what I am doing. I do tend to deal with things immediately they arrive. That way I don't have them hanging around my head. It is clearly one of those things I've grown up with I don't like leaving things in my in-box. I'm good at deleting stuff that is noise but quite a lot of things demand my attention if only for a few minutes, like small items of research and articles and news that relate to what we are doing. These distractions and time wasters just pull on your ability to tackle work in an organised and concentrated way. I have actually moved away from the computer and have been using my flip chart more and more to get my ideas down rapidly and then I can document them later. I can still write and draw faster on a bit of paper than on a PC any day.

Here's a little victory though, I finally fit back into my 16 1/2" shirt collar shirts, so all the really nice shirts I bought about 18 months ago are once again able to be worn as are my suits etc. It is also nice to see that all my belts are in a notch. I've dipped below 16 stone and I am very slowly heading downwards, I'm about 15stone 12lbs at the moment which is rather pleasing considering I haven't been doing any exercise for the past month. I am being quite careful about what I eat but the start of the Masonic season always makes things a bit difficult as the meals feel like they are chosen by my late Grandmother who always suspected that my mother wasn't feeding me enough and so made up for it by baking huge vats of stuff for my visits :-) So you get something like a soup starter, a Steak and Kidney Pie and then that is followed by some stodgy pudding like Jam Roly Poly and Custard!! Oh and then there are Cheese and Biscuits afterwards. Too many of those and I'd soon be back where I started.

At least at home I am limiting food intake and eating sensible foods.

I just realised the big distraction this morning - writing this blog entry :-)

The Office

Not the one with Ricky Gervais but the office of the Charity where I do some work occasionally :-)

I popped in on my way to lunchtimers and met the folks, it is quite nice to catch up with them but I am so glad that I don't work there any-more. What I am doing at the moment is so engrossing and so interesting that to go back to that sort of sedentary life might just polish me off BUT - let me not underestimate how glad I was to have that bolt hole and sanctuary during my recovery. I cannot dismiss that - the money - which is and was paltry wasn't the main thing, and making a difference was important so was recovery, rebuilding "me" and whilst I'm not fully reconstructed - there is a way to go until I'm healed - it was probably the very best thing that could have happened to me at the time.

I enjoy the people of course and I like the office up to a point but if they saw the amount of work I am getting through here and what they do - it would amaze them. Tell the truth it actually amazes me too.

I was declared the Chairman of the London Lunchtimers (at lunchtime) and we had a great meeting and a friend from Denmark or Damnark as his business card said (he mistyped it!) arrived too so that was great. As often happens, I met a chap last night at the Mark meeting and he did a response to a toast speech. He happened to also be at the meeting today - that's the coincidences that you tend to find all the time. A happy time and followed by a Shriners meeting where we had a Frenchman, A Finn and an English guy join the Shrine. Very interesting but they are trying to get me in as Treasurer, Secretary and all round good guy. I am however doing enough as is it. Perhaps in a year or two.

The business is really beginning to look good but the images for the web site are giving us headaches at the moment. It is very difficult to stop people pigeon holing the business and so we are trying to be quite cute with out images. We signed up for the hosting package and soon hope to have email and the web site in place - it will be a major hurdle and at last we can "come out" and start to put ourselves about and go for funding. It is a phoney war at the moment.

Talking of war I was able to do my Chairman's moment today which is nice. I did a bit about the national charities and what they had done plus a bit about Remembrance Sunday in 2 weeks time. Here is what I said - I hope you like it:

"Chairman’s Thoughts"

"I’d like to thank Brian for telling us about Prostate Cancer – which now ranks as the highest Male Cancer above Lung Cancer and Colon Cancer.

In 2004, £1 million was donated to The Institute of Cancer Research for research into prostate and testicular cancers. Prostate cancer is now the most common cancer affecting men in the UK. Each year 27,000 cases are diagnosed and 10,000 men die of the disease. ‘The Grand Charity of Freemasons Chair of Molecular Biology’ is currently held by Professor Colin Cooper who is working on developing a test to identify the aggressiveness of an individual’s prostate cancer. If successful, thousands of patients will be spared unnecessary treatment, whilst those with an aggressive cancer can be given the life-saving treatment they require to fight the disease. Our Deputy Chairman and I were privileged to meet and hear Professor Colin Cooper talk about the progress he has made in that work. There are some major breakthroughs coming. What scared me was that up until 14 years ago – there was little if any research at all into Prostate Cancer at all. If you ever get a chance to hear him speak you will be mightily impressed.

In 2008, it was decided that a substantial grant should also be made for research into a women’s health issue and a grant of £1 million was approved for Ovarian Cancer Action. Ovarian cancer kills 12 women every day in the UK and tragically a lack of awareness of the disease and its symptoms means that women are often diagnosed only after the disease has spread to other areas of their bodies, with an impact on the opportunities for treatment. Professor Hani Gabri – a leading expert in the field – is undertaking this research at the Ovarian Cancer Action Research Centre in London. Complementing this important medical research, the grant is also being used to help Ovarian Cancer Action reach more women with information about the symptoms and potential causes of ovarian cancer, with the aim of increasing the survival rate.

One of the reasons I joined Freemasonry was a belief that it helped others less fortunate than myself. What this brings home is that the benefits of this work affect everyone in this room and our children and our grandchildren so let us not underestimate the scale and the enterprise of investing this money. As a Cancer survivor myself, I can tell you how much I appreciate what these scientists are doing to identify cancers early but not just that, this work is fundamentally about prevention in the long term which has to be a good thing.

I am reminded that it is again November and soon it will be Remembrance day. The day before we have the pomp of the Lord Mayor’s Show and the next day the sombre but respectful tribute to all those who have perished in the service of their country and in many cases their adopted country. Last meeting we remembered the few for it was 70 years since their great exploits and so today I’d like to consider the many. There are no remaining Comrades from the First World War which is perhaps 3 generations removed from today’s children but a grateful country continues to remember into the next century that war to end wars. The second World War and the wars that followed continue to take their toll on our brave service men and women and in more recent conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, lives are lost, bodies are maimed and they will continue to do this. It is right that we should spend at least those few moments in silence remembering their sacrifice."