Tag: cancer
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120: PARP
It’s the next day and I’ve just arrived at the open mike event – for local authors – at our nearest town’s literary festival. The time is 7.30pm… and the event appears to have started earlier than advertised on the ticket. When I walk into the room (which is in a chain hotel near the…
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119: CREATIVE DRINKS
I’m in a bar in our local town, having ‘creative drinks’ with a bunch of local arty types. To be honest, I didn’t realise there were many arty types in our local town, bar the handful who congregate in their favoured coffee shop… plus a few painters Lizzie knows. But there are a surprising number…
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118: RETURN OF THE JOURNAL
It’s the third day of the week I’ve booked off work… and I’m continuing to use the time in a pretty lazy manner. Sitting in cafés having coffees. Sitting a lot at home, tapping at my laptop – when I can be bothered to even do that. I’m about to have lunch in our kitchen…
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116: NAME-DROP-O-RAMA!!
I’m driving Annie to school, through the West Midlands countryside. My daughter, as is her wont, isn’t paying me the slightest bit of attention. Instead, she’s focused on her iPhone… updating a playlist on Spotify and playing the tastiest morsels from it on my car stereo. Annie’s musical tastes are eclectic and multi-era-spanning. She listens…
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114: ROT
It’s the second bank holiday weekend in 2023. Lizzie has gone down to Devon for a few days to hang out with a friend and paint seascapes. And I’m having a proper old lazy time, in the way I only can when Lizzie is out of the house and isn’t making me feel like I…
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113: FERAL CAT
So, back in 2022, we decided to get another (i.e. second) cat. I’ve already talked about Rosie in the pages of this blog… our beloved calico mog who died of cancer in January 2023. Well in 2022, before Rosie died, we thought she might like a little feline friend… so we got ourselves (and Rosie)…
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112: BED RAIL
Lizzie and I are changing the sheets on our bed. That hardly sounds newsworthy in itself… except these days we don’t change the sheets as often as we used to (when Lizzie was ill) and I’m going to have to come clean (sorry for the pun)… they’re not exactly looking pristinely white. Maybe I’ve been…
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109: ROSIE
Our beloved cat Rosie (the friendliest, most easy-going cat in the world) hasn’t been herself recently. She’s lost a lot of weight (admittedly, she was massively overweight before… but now, worryingly, she’s beginning to look like a normal-sized cat). Also, her fur is looking straggly and has lost its lustre. In the last few days,…
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107: CHOCOLATES
It’s Valentine’s Day. The first Valentine’s Day since Lizzie got the all-clear from her cancer. And… … unfortunately… … it’s crap. I can tell things are getting off to a bad start, when I present Lizzie with her card and box of chocolates. The card goes down OK. After all, it’s a Valentine’s card. As…
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105: PORTRAIT
It’s the night before my fiftieth birthday… and Lizzie’s painting my portrait in the living room. I’m slumped down on the sofa with my laptop, scouring social media as Lizzie dabs away across the room – where she’s set up her easel. Occasionally, when I’m trying to think about something, I cup my hand around…
P. D. Clifton 