It’s Lizzie and my daily walk with the dog. We do the same route we always do, over the fields by Bunton, then circling back so we’re walking towards the North Cotswolds – which stretch out slumberingly across the horizon.
Peppered across the fields to either side of us, are hundreds of sapling trees protected by upright plastic tubes. They’ve been planted there by the Heart of England Trust – an organisation set up by the late multi-millionaire publisher Felix Dennis (he of the Oz Magazine obscenity trial fame/infamy) to re-forest the Midlands.
The multiple samplings, in their white sheaths, look a little to me like hundreds of thin little gravestones – like the kind of pristine, regularly-spaced, rectangular ones you see in US military cemeteries in TV shows.
As we walk with Cedric, I witter away about this blog I’m going to write – and how I’m setting myself regular deadlines to get all the material together.
Lizzie’s expression suggests she’s thinking what’s this about a blog? What blog? Yet again, the entire subject appears to have drifted off her radar.
‘When I’ve finished it,’ I say, ‘I might speak to this organisation I’m teaching screenwriting for.’ (For months now, I’ve been teaching on an online course based on a successful ‘how to’ screenwriting guide). ‘They’re obviously well-connected in the book world. Maybe they can help get it published.’
Lizzie’s expression suggests she’s thinking… get what published?
‘You never know,’ I continue. ‘Maybe we can make some money out of it!’
Lizzie’s ears suddenly prick up. Now that’s something that’s got her attention. Lizzie has always been very interested in money… and how to get it. Our great tragedy as a couple is that she’s settled down with someone who’s pretty hopeless at earning it.
All of a sudden, Lizzie’s full of questions – and positively full of encouragement – about this blog I’ve now been writing bits for for several months. A blog (maybe even a book) which could potentially make us some money.
Have you written about this bit… and this bit… and this bit?… she asks.
‘What about my farting!’ she suddenly interjects. ‘Have you mentioned how much I’ve been farting, since my chemo began?’
Lizzie’s farting has indeed been out of control, since she began her chemotherapy. Never a shy farter to begin with, she now seems to be letting rip at every possible opportunity.
‘No, I haven’t written about that,’ I say. Of course, it is a truth universally acknowledged that farting is always funny. But perhaps I haven’t written about Lizzie’s farting, I think, because it might actually seem a little disrespectful to be describing a cancer-sufferer’s flatulence.
‘Write about it!’ says Lizzie, excitedly. ‘It’s funny!’
As the walk continues, the suggestions keep coming. Eventually, as we walk through the farmer’s gate which marks the ends of the fields, Lizzie asks… ‘will you be writing about this conversation, do you think?’
‘I don’t know,’ I reply honestly, as I swing the gate shut. ‘But, you know, the problem is, if you begin to think the whole time I might be writing about everything we say and do, it might change the way you act around me. Which might…’
‘… kill it,’ concludes Lizzie, getting it.
I nod. Lizzie nods back. We drop the subject.
Although, I think, as she has just given me the thumbs up… I will now write about Lizzie’s farting.
P. D. Clifton 
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