What another blood test

I cannot believe how angry my telephone call got me this morning. GPs can be so bloody obtuse sometimes. I phoned up as I got my prescription with a blood test form - well I've just recently had one. I love the bit where they talk to you as if you are a Doctor about what's needed. What does it all mean - it isn't for me to work out what these technical terms are.

So they want a repeat of part of the test because the results weren't what they expected. So were they high or low or what and what did it mean - after listening to a 30 second burst of which I understood one or two of the words at most I just got so the Doc wants you to do it again. As I didn't actually get an answer and was about to fly off the handle and I'm not sure why I got quite so angry quite so quickly I decided to query the crap form once again and ask if it was fasting to which she replied does it say so? well no it didn't but I don't want to sit around for 2 hours to only be told when I finally get to be seen that it should have been.

Anyway - they can sing for it as I'm disinclined to go as they can't tell me why, didn't even send an explanation, can't even tell me what it is on the phone or anything else. I'm certainly not inclined to do the hours of waiting and all so a Doctor can work out if a slight variance is repeated. I told them a long time ago I was pissed off with being used like a sodding pin cushion and don't have the sheer luxury of taking loads of days off so they can plot it out on Excel.

I can't believe how angry I am about this. I guess it just pisses me off these days I get pissed off with all this nonsense these days. I've gone past the bit of "because I said so" - maybe that's it - there is this complete lack of information and courtesy, no explanation - I seriously have no idea following the phone call what on earth the problem is but actually if it is bad they can call me and we can discuss it. At the moment - it can wait until I'm in a better humour or until I get some sort of explanation around the necessity of it.

I must re-examine this anger bit though - maybe I'm still raw from yesterday's funeral. Whatever it is I found myself really up for a fight with the GP's receptionist but she's only doing her job so I backed out but I see it more and more these days. It's systemic and if only everyone went to work and treated their customers the way that they would like to be treated it would be fine.

Luckily Flocky Bicep popped in bearing gifts of coffee and croissants we were rattling through some Lodge business. As a bit of fun we have now lent out names to some friend's pets! Guinea Pigs - how funny is that? :-) We had to laugh

Glad that is over

Said goodbye to my old friend and met his wife again - only met her once before in 1994! It was a very nice service but RC High Church with Requiem Mass and it was a good 1 1/2 to 2 hours I'm guessing of real tear jerking stuff. Lots of children and all sorts just kept prolonging the whole thing. I just told Mrs. F. 20 minutes maximum, pull the curtains, get out and go and have a drink... Don't hang around, it is difficult enough without all of this padding.

As it was, it wasn't as bad as I guess it could have been and I didn't go and see the burial itself - I'd had my emotions stretched extensively by then and whilst I also had a few "moments" of claustrophobia - the church was rammed full hardly any more space left - I was also able to control that as I knew how to get out and it was a big area in terms of clearance.

Bless him, Flocky Bicep has given me a call to see if I'm OK. I go back to my Uncle's funeral when the priest said that tragic and young death will mean that loved ones never see the deceased old or frail and in this case, it might even be that this will be something for the future to ease the pain but I sort of doubt it as well. It's just too tragic that at 54 this accident has robbed us of someone unique - an absolute powerhouse of a man - it was evident that he was well loved, respected and was a fantastic family man. Just tragic that the 4 children have lost him but, like us all we only share the fondest of memories and wonder at his energy levels and antics.

I;m sitting here having a brandy and just getting over the day - it takes so much out of me.

Why does it take so much out of me? Because every time I go to one of these I imagine that it may well have been me at this sort of time in my life had it not been for all the treatment I've had! We all have to go at some time of course but it brings it home to me how easily things for me could have panned out. You see it's me lying there in some of these circumstances and I'm just grateful that it isn't.

That probably doesn't make sense to anyone but me. :-)

Tomorrow - not looking forward to that

I'll get up early and get around the London orbital motorway to my friends for some breakfast and then we will head on up for our sad pilgrimage to our friend's funeral which will be a burial - I really, really dislike these I have to tell you. Crematorium I can just about live with it is all over when the curtains go around and that's it. Tomorrow starts at 12, carries on at 2:30 and then the celebration of life at 4:30 and so I can imagine that it's going to be a long day. It's set to rain and be windy and I'll just have to grit through and bear it.

Next week it will be my friends dads funeral - that is expected to be a very big affair - we may not even get into the chapel on that one so many people are expected to turn up. We will just have to see on that. I hope it isn't crowded knowing what I'm like.

Had a good day today and really got some of the business stuff sorted out, it is really begining to look accomplished now. However this Video came from a friend and I defy anyone to watch it without feeling a little queasy or feel an attack of Vertigo. It is absolutely terrifying.

So - I'd better get off to bed and get some shut eye - I'll be up early in the morning and get off for a long and sad day.

You know what?

Ssshhhhh - but it is 5 years this July since I was diagnosed, I keep thinking about that and just how well I feel now. It was great meeting up with my old colleague last week who saw me when I was ill and boy did I look it. I'm not sure if you look grey and drawn because of the worry or the treatment or indeed a combination of them both but rest assured once you got past that, moved on a bit and the BCG has grabbed you and thrown you about a bit and totally exhausted you it gets better. Suddenly you have other "stuff" to worry about and other things to do.

I realised that I would never have gone off and done this new business venture before - it wouldn't have fitted my plan of my life and how I envisaged things. Now, there is purpose and belief and commitment where I did feel at one time that I couldn't look that far into the future.

I think I was very much tomorrow, tomorrow when I was ill. You know, get through today, tomorrow will be better and each day will be better. Generally it was and life is pretty much up and down a lot for me not because I am a sort of up and down person but I am trying to alter to my new life and because - in reality - everything has changed. I don't think I have one relationship that hasn't changed in some way or other. My relationship with myself (if you can have one) has changed. I still regularly turn in on myself and get really angry that I am like I am or that I cannot relate to certain people, situations and other life stuff like I used to. The trouble is, that's the cards I'm dealt and that is what I've got to get on with - like it or not.

But does it make you any better a person? Surviving this far in - yes it does but you will probably never ever be the person you were before you got on the roller coaster. A little less brash, a little more human. Mind you there are things that I've said before about this - the emotional side, watching films and plays and other sad things really does it for me - I'm still a wreck when I see these things. I'm not certain how I will get on during Wednesday as it is my friend's funeral. I'm going with friends and it will be church, burial and then back to a local Hotel afterwards. I've tried to avoid funerals although I have been to a few, the terrible one with my friend's child and my other friend's dad. This will be awful - he had 4 children and I can only imagine how rough I'm going to feel about that. I remember my friend for all the right reasons and what great fun we had, what a great bloke he was etc. I can imagine that he was a brilliant dad - you just knew he would have to be - that was what he would have been.

Tragic stuff. Next week it is my friend's dad's funeral and that will be just as bad, he died suddenly and tragically too. I'm not sure what it is - I think it goes way back to when I was a kid and got a little traumatised in a graveyard in Rye, Sussex - it was pretty eerie as a huge storm flooded the graveyard and one of the stones was bubbling away and later a year or so later I remember my mum getting hit by a falling gravestone - either that or I'm just a woos!! :-)

Anyway - I was sat here today bashing away at my work when it dawned on me that I might be starting to lead a life away from bladder cancer and all the stuff that went on at that time.

What's surviving like? It's bloody marvellous - I just forget to celebrate that fact every day like I should. All the changes and all the things I've been through - they're fading memories now and things to be parked if possible to allow them not to cloud my future. Change is as inevitable as taxes and death I guess. I'll live with the first and hope the other two are a long way off.

2011 isn't starting off great is it?

Another friend called today - how are you? Well........

How about this poor chap - Colon Cancer, they're about to operate but find low platelet and cell count so they sort that out and get him in to do the operation they cut out the cancer but he gets a chest infection and things start to get bad, but he gets to go home, get back 4 days later with a worse chest infection - 4 weeks later he gets out but so weak and platelets and cell count so low they wont start chemo and now they taken some bone marrow to biopsy.

So we chatted about the ups and down the good days and the bad days and he said he wouldn't see me in February like planned but hoped that he'd see us in April when he was fit enough to get into the car!!!

Talking of cars daughter No. 2 L has just passed her driving test and so was very pleased about that and drove herself home last night. I don't drive the 2nd car leaving it for Mrs. F and A but now there are three of them for car No. 2 and I allow Mrs. F to drive the Jag. I'm not sure that I dare let a 17 and a 20 year old loose on my car. We will have to have a car rota up on the wall :-)

Just seen some of A's pictures of NY - impressed, I must go some time maybe when we get the business sorted out (or not).

Back from New York

So THAT'S what a Hershey's Bar tastes like :-) they were lucky to get back as it snowed and I understand there was 18" of snow and quite a few planes were cancelled. So A arrived back mid morning after a night on the red eye.

She had a great time in NY although her Aunt seriously impeded her progress in getting around so certain things she wanted to do were missed and she will just have to get over there again.

I've been pounding away at a piece of work I thought I'd finished. I completed a document and just wanted to check that I had covered everything and got some research done which proved that I'd not covered off many of the areas. It is a good thing of course that I checked but the document has gone from 90 to 127 pages and is still growing. It's been one of those things I've just had to do and something I've just had to complete - with a bit of luck I may see the end of it tomorrow and finalise it and get it out for review.

Drained

It was a draining experience last night going through the traumatic details with my friend but I was pleased that I did and I hope that it helped out.

Went up to town today and met a few people I haven't seen for years and years. Talk about chalk and cheese one was really extrovert and charged and the other was very staid and didn't really react a lot. Funny - I was expecting a slightly different reaction.

Anyway - there was a nice surprise awaiting me on my return with the delivery of some research work that looks like it will help me complete my document earlier than planned.

Today was quite good, once again, we found that our ideas are going down really well and that we are going in the right direction. Let's see if it converts to money or not before we count any chickens.

Support

Well I met my friend who's Dad died last Thursday morning. We met up at our usual location at the pub and it was as useful for him as it probably was for me. We Brits don't do emotion much but we had a bit this evening - necessarily so, his father was a very well known person in the news industry and there are a lot of people as baffled and as perplexed as us about his sudden death. He had a stroke but it was located on his brain stem and it was unfortunately one of those things you don't recover from. I've spent an evening listening to stuff that, only if you've experienced it, you can truly understand.

I say it was unexpected because this is a man that had life written all over him, he was one of those characters you come across who you were, as a child, a little frightened of. He was a funny man and so his humour didn't always translate when we were young but we grew to love him because he was such a lovely guy and we always had a lot of fun when we were around him. I'll put a link to him in here when it is published in the papers but tonight was about easing out some pain, letting my friend tell me ALL about it and I'm just beginning to feel the fall out of that now that I've got home. Fall out? What I mean is that I've listened and provided the environment to off load things that perhaps can't be said to family but can be said to your friends and some things I wasn't absolutely ready to hear but I could, thankfully, relate to from my own experiences. So there is an upside to cancer as the emotions that I went through early on, prepared me to rationalise and explain why it was better for such a quick resolution to the initial stroke and why it was all mercilessly quick.

What was poignant to me was that whilst there was life that person lived but when seen when they have passed away it isn't the person you knew at all - it is a shell. We both got pretty messed up around this time but I was able to just reflect on the fact that he had said goodbye and that his last words - which were very characteristic of his character and humour were "this is another fine mess I've gotten you into!"

Bless his heart - he had continued to be his cheery and happy self until the end and my friend - I hope - will remember that - this is how he always was and why everyone liked him so much and why he was held in such high esteem. We will have difficulty at the funeral because there will not be room for all of those who want to say goodbye to him and support the family.

It was good to have my other friend turn up a little later who had been through all of this with his father as he was able to take up the baton as I was beginning to fade fast after 2 or more hours of friends supporting each other.

There were lots of positives and many fine memories to reflect on too. It is one of those tragic things that happen that someone who appeared very healthy and in good spirits should succumb this way, this quickly. In a way, that's a blessing because if he had of survived he would have been trapped inside his body and that would have been awful for a man so full of life and energy.

I sincerely hope that when my turn comes that it is swift as this. I would hate for it to be a drain on other people or my family.

These events inevitably lead to the dark side of my own experience - these things leave me drained and physically and mentally empty.

Here we are again

1:20 in the morning - I'm wide awake - could do another 8 hours straight the way I'm tuned in at the moment and yet I know I ought to go to bed. My mind is just crackling at the moment the synapses are firing off lightning bolts and I'm really charged mentally although I am keeping a reasonable air of calm about me.

I managed to finish a great chunk of work today - really important - hard graft - unbelievably hard graft and it just kept growing and growing as a task the more I looked into it and then as abruptly as it can possibly be - I found that I had run out of research I was beginning to go around in circles and suddenly that task was done. I was pleased about that because it was seemingly open ended. I was able to fire off a request to an organisation that I am a member of to do some final checks for me. That should assist me to ensure that I've covered all the right ground and that I've included all the right organisations.

I can then get on with another piece of work that will pull together all my industry and customer research into one document too.

However, I have to switch my brain off and it just wont do that - it's getting exciting and it's "real" now - right there in front of us. We still need huge scepticism and reality checks and not getting carried away with ourselves. Now that I've gotten over the fact that it really is just the two of us pushing this, I feel that I can now step up to that challenge properly. The Elephant in the room is being addressed and it's one of those awkward moments - the ones where you suddenly realise that it's all down to you to make this happen (or try your best and not quite make it).

I need to re-programme myself so that I don't burn out.

A late night scuppers Saturday

I wasn't trying to be late on Friday night but whatever I did seemed to lead to me staying up quite late and then when I dragged myself to bed, I had just fallen off when my phone went around 12:30 or so. It was my daughter texting me from New York. Nothing bad in that except we are in the UK and so what for her was early evening was early morning for us. She needed some information which I had to search for and text back and then - I was awake - could I get back to sleep? None of it and when I finally came to on Saturday it was far too late to get up to London for the family history event.

So - I missed that and ended up working on the business for the rest of the day and then we went to friends for a Burns Supper at which I did, in my faux Scottish accent the address to the Haggis - luckily only the first 3 verses - I think no ones ears could have taken more than that. It was a lovely evening and one of those weird and wonderful things happened. I was thanked for donating my old laptop to the charity that my friend and one of their other guests are volunteers for. We got chatting as you do and worked out that this ladies granddaughter was our daughters best friend. These people don't live locally to us and we have never met them before. My friend would be likely to have met them through the Samaritans and so with 60,000,0000 people in the country it just so happens that we are connected to this person in two ways. What's the chances of that happening?

Today I've taken it easy and just lazed around as I recognise that I'm not actually taking too many rest periods away from work - even so I keep a jotter nearby to add notes. We are getting to that really intense part of the business and it is sort of make or break time - it is hard graft and it is particularly so now that, in effect, only two of us are actually doing all the work.

Anyway - another interesting week awaits. I hope it isn't as tragic as the week I've just had. There will be two funerals to attend to at some time in the next few weeks so I will just have to see if I am up to going to them. I've had a few issues with that since I had bladder cancer and whilst I've managed a few - I find that it plays on my mind a bit and I struggle with it. Need to face up to these ones although my friend's one is just awful and so tragic.

Family Hidtory Day

Tomorrow - I suppose I had better go and find the details and get myself sorted out on that - like train times and where we are meeting. It should be interesting as I haven't been to Stratford in East London for years and of course that is where (or near) the Olympic Village and all that will be for 2012.

I'll be looking to get there early and find a nice café to grab some breakfast. I may not stay too long as we are out on Saturday evening and I don't fancy hanging around in London too long and I'm not sure that I'll stay for the AGM - these things drive me barmy whenever I go to them and as there is no Family History Fair there this year - there wont be much to do so I'll make my excuses and dive off early.

Flocky came over earlier laden with coffee and pastries so that started the day off well. It has been hard work again slogging through some of my research work but I'm getting there.

How bad is this week going to get

Now a note from my friend that I've known from school, his dad died early this morning after a suffering a stroke last night. That's just so sad as his mum isn't at all well either. Very quick and of course traumatic as it wasn't expected. Managed to do the sorting out and get his mum looked after but can only imagine the trauma all that has caused as his wife lost her job after years of service because the new guy just wanted to change everything (arsehole spreadsheet manager!) so their year is pretty grim.

It's a pretty shitty start to 2011 already and we aren't out of January yet. At least Flocky is coming around tomorrow so that will cheer me up a bit.

Not that I am massively down. Glad to hear that A has arrived in the Big Apple and will be doing the tourist bit and off to Vermont tomorrow for some skiing. Good on her.

I'm "eating the frog" and ploughing through a really gutty piece of work that is just mind bendingly boring as I document all my research.

I am cheering myself up with the fact that I am going to the family history AGM on Saturday and will meet some of my far flung family and catch up with some of the latest news. We are also going to friends for a Burns night supper which will be a bit tempered by the news that their friend (and mine) was killed yesterday.

I've known better weeks folks...

The world's a little quieter this morning

I had a disturbed night - I expected that even after a couple of brandies. What an awful thing to happen and I'm still very withdrawn at the moment about it. I hardly know his wife and 4 children but my mind travels over to them every so often and it just makes me terribly sad to think about what they must be going through.

I'm able to start to remember the good times we had and some of my anecdotes about him - that will repair me I suppose. It's a bit like the shock of losing our friend over 30 years ago, in his early 20s he had a wife, another school friend, 2 daughters who were very young and a 3rd on the way and went to play Squash and no one knew he had a congenital heart problem. He collapsed and died. I was away, I didn't know until I came home and found out some weeks later. It was the most shocking thing, the circumstances and the timing (we were all getting married around this time) and I remember suddenly being aware of my mortality and taking the news pretty badly. The children are grown up now but when you see their faces, you still see him. That's always a strange moment coming face to face with someone who looks so much like him.

Anyway - a sad day and I'm feeling reflective and a little sad and a little morose. Not unexpectedly.

Silent and Shocked

My friend rang up and I missed the call somehow so called back an hour or so back. It was pretty bad news and he told me that our mutual friend had fallen off a roof and been killed earlier today.

To say I'm in shock is to under state the situation. He was probably a year or two older than me I guess and I worked really closely with him on a high stress, high profile project that defined my arrival on the high tech centred world some 19 years ago. We worked really hard and we saved my company millions and millions of pounds and we had an outrageous time doing so - we both learnt lots of things, we stayed friends since then and my clear recollections of him are singing goodnight to my friend and I as we left a Mayfair restaurant and hearing him half a block down the street serenading us before we caught a taxi to the station. We had some outrageous nights out in London and he was one of those larger than life lovely people you meet.

He leaves a wife and four children which is utterly tragic. He was rebuilding his business and he and I were only corresponding over the Christmas period about out plans to build our businesses.

I'm stunned. There will no doubt have to be investigations as to how this happened and why? I'm glad to have known him and sorry that he will no longer be around but I'm shocked at the way / how he died and the tragic consequences of the accident.

I said to my friend who called - "there but by the grace of God go I" and I imagine he and I both went back to the time about 17 years ago when another friend died after being hit by a train. I look back to 29 years ago when my boss was killed in a car crash leaving me to run the business and in effect close the business down. These tragedies - they're just appalling. I can hardly believe though that my friend is gone and that we won't be whacking back Oysters and Lebanese wine in some Soho restaurant ever again.

Puts things into context a bit I think. Not sure how well I'll sleep tonight but have had a couple of Brandies to see if that will help as I'm pretty upset by the news.

On a much brighter note A is off to New York in the morning and I hope she has a brilliant time. I've never managed to go been going but been cancelled and all sorts so I hope that she thoroughly enjoys that and that she gets to go skiing in Vermont at the weekend too.

Graft

It is indeed hard graft and quite plodding work at the moment. Lots of hard, essential grind before I can get to the interesting bit which includes the numbers. The trouble is I'm working too late and I need to make sure that I stop now and go to bed and get up early fit and ready for a heavy day tomorrow - planning out where we are going to go next. It should be fun and a break from the tedium of the work I'm doing at the moment (although it is of great value - it is just so boring).

I heard about my friend who had the Appendix Cancer - a massive tumour - larger than they thought being checked now and - unfortunately - lower bowel gone and a bag in place. he is off the drips and getting back onto solids. He is cheerful and alert - that's nice to know - he's a nice lad. I'll hear later this week what the results are but he is as well as can be expected. I don't even want to guess what it was like for him - you can hardly imagine what a 13 hour operation and the recovery from that are like.

It puts my stuff into some form of perspective!

Accept it and move on

Boy am I feeling better in myself today. I had a full blown swipe at one of the team for being an arse (or ass) and that made me feel better. A bit of the old me came out there as I finally decided that political correctness and pussy footing around was no longer the way to carry on. As Winston Churchill used to stick on his memos "action this day!"

Too right - I've worked out what was wrong (not what I thought it was) and now that I know what it is I can move on. In fact today felt very different in many ways. I am determined to get things moving now and I find that my reticence before wasn't needed. The problem is that being nice to people and trying to accommodate them all the time and "doing the right thing" all have their place but I look at it like this:

We're climbing a mountain, it's massive, every time you get a bit nearer it looks bigger and steeper and more dangerous. A big group of us started out and all said they'd come with us but for differing reasons they're not leading and they're not carrying our packs, cooking the food, putting up the tents or doing anything vaguely constructive any more. We knew this a long time ago but we let it go and we stumbled along with a heavier and heavier load and our crew kept our spirits up by telling us what a great job we were doing and telling us how we could improve our performance and even reviewing our diaries and memoirs so that we could accurately reflect how useful they had been to us.

The nearer we got and the more daunting everything looked the easier it looked to our followers - those rose tinted goggles and romantic visions of climbing the Matterhorn hove into view for them - planting their flag dressed in Harris Tweed and a stupid hat with a feather hanging off it. Perhaps only we knew what lay ahead because we had planned for this moment. Planned to go to the summit as a team. We got to base camp a few weeks ago and all that's left is us, some of our kit and a mobile phone so that our followers can call us and give us advice from a safe and controlled distance. Their advice is as useful as sun cream on a rainy day and in an effort to assist us they have resorted to stating the bleeding obvious and playing back our plans as their new ideas. Our crowning moment is for the team to now explain to us the basics of Arctic survival, quoting from Scott's diary and reminding us to slaughter our Huskies if we run out of food. It is perhaps one of those moments in time when the rhetoric and advice freely found from websites, wikipedia and survival books are replayed endlessly to us as if we haven't even thought about them and hadn't worked out that it would be cold and we would need to pack a tent! Thanks guys - all value added or is that added value - I never can remember - perhaps you'd be kind enough to go find that our for me then roll it up and stick where the sun don't shine - go figure :-)

Now we realise, this mountain is for us to climb, for us to conquer (or not - that's always an option) and the bit that everyone else has forgotten is that if we do conquer this and reach the summit, it will be our flag and our names in the history book.

This next step requires us to equip ourselves properly and take on the challenge. We are fully prepared and have packed all the right gear - we are a little fatigued having had to carry it all ourselves but that just means we are fitter and more resilient.

My attitude - bring it on, I haven't come all this way to not try and do this but I've been disappointed that not everyone wants to come with me despite their assertions and protestations that they would. It is frightening and daunting and it doesn't look a nice place to be but that's the challenge we set ourselves and so we just need to keep faith with our convictions, tread boldly and test ourselves out once again. If there's just the two of us doing it and we get there then it will be the two of us who take the kudos and the glory - will others want to reflect in that too - you bet they will.

I hate to say it but I now see how divisions and arguments can easily erupt when suddenly it dawns on the major partners that they are in fact doing all the work and others aren't pulling their weight. No matter, at least I know, I've made my feelings understood and I can take it to the next level now I'm aware of it.

Fellow Cancer Suferer Requires Some Funds

Here is a LINK to a blog about a lady in the US who is undergoing pioneering treatment but has to stump up the costs herself to get to and from the centre which is half way across the US from her home. She has just undergone Cyberknife treatment as well but just gets on with things.

If you can spare some cash to assist in the travel arrangements I'm sure that would be gratefully received and I'm guessing that if you are local you'll be able to assist in other ways.

Want to know a bit more click HERE. I'd commend the blog to you as well because it has an incredible main story and lots of other things happening too.

You know who your friends are

That's what it is in the back of my head bang, bang, banging away. What is it?

It is that you are on your own no matter what people actually say. Here's my nagging niggling thought. I've not been great in the head for a good few weeks and of course, it has to be a couple of things doing that:

1. Cancer undermines most of your self confidence and self esteem
2. I am finishing my old job at the Charity - I have to say good bye to it
3. The new job is in reality not a whole group of us but just the two of us

Let me explain:

1. The thing that cancer does to you is to make you worry about it coming back or coming back as something else - I mean if you've got it once - perhaps your body will do it to you again and let you down. So underlying absolutely everything must be that in the back of your mind and most of the time you get a quiet moment you think like that - it isn't negativity - although maybe it is in reality.
2. I've just wrapped up my identity access badge and sent it back, will do my last invoice and will alter my email etc. I've hung on long enough and you soon get forgotten no matter how popular you thought you were. No one is as interested in you as you'd like to think they made out they were. They've all gone back to business as usual and that's fine. I now need to break the bonds and ties.
3. Here's the real scoop. I asked one guy to do one thing last year - he has taken 6 months and delivered nothing in the whole of that time. Sad but true. There are two of us thrashing out the detail and the nicest bit about that is that there will be only two of us able to face the investors (plus our financial man) but the others are lost in the wake of the ship we've built and sailed - they haven't read the stuff we've produced. That's the way it is and so I just need to accept that as I thought it was a team effort but I see that just the two of us are going to complete this. No wonder it felt lonely.

Anyway - I have a new vigour to get on and get something happening. I really shouldn't have started a finance document tonight as my head will be full of numbers. So I've stopped now and will complete this post and then hit the sack.

The shock of that reality is the sheer amount of work I've got to do in the next 6 to 8 weeks - oh well we have a meeting this Wednesday to resolve some of that and let's see what happens there.

Purpose

That is an emotion you can struggle with. As I leave the charity and pursue something a little more entrepreneurial I see the question (besides work) of what is the purpose? Why, having cheated the really dangerous stuff and being much better and all that. Why?

You know that thing when your number is up and then it isn't? Fifty or more years ago it would probably have been curtains for me - I suppose they could have operated but who knows. Today I suppose you are more likely to survive or live a little longer but it just strikes me that maybe there should be a purpose.

I'd really like to think it is the new business, after all it is about social equality and access for all and if only we can get some finance, who knows what good it could do. I suppose that we will have to wait and see if we are convincing enough to potential backers. What I do know is that in business that may be my purpose but I'm not sure about private life? I need to think about that and adjust myself to it because at the moment I've lost one of my philanthropic activities and there is a bit of a hole left by it.

My Roller Coaster Life

Continues - and I'm stuck here writing my blog and messing around late into the evening. I've actually been to bed but cannot sleep so back downstairs. The last 4 or 5 years have been like this and I suppose I should be used to it or do something about it.

I'll just get to bed when I feel tired I suppose and until then I'll try and do something to tire me out which is just as likely to stimulate my brain rather than shut it down.

Crazy crazy stuff. If I were normal though I wouldn't be me!