“Start where you are” is a simple little kernel of wisdom used by the Buddhist meditation teacher and writer Pema Chödrön for those wanting to begin or get back into a meditation practice when it doesn’t seem clear how to do so. How to start or indeed, how to re-start? Similarly, as a general piece …
Tottering uncertainly into the dim light of 2021, slowly emerging from the long dark tunnel that was 2020, an unbelievable realisation slowly dawns on me: if I make it to July, I will have lived 50 years on this planet – that’s 46 to 48 more than my parents were warned to expect for either …
It seems we are living through a massive crisis which will change us forever. It has hit quickly. Suddenly, we are being addressed by our leaders in tones reminiscent of wartime. Our elderly and vulnerable are most at risk: some of us will become sick ourselves (perhaps very sick), lose loved ones, bury colleagues. The …
A Grief Suppressed I don’t know how long my dad and I sat there in that room. Neither do I know what was more shocking for me at the time – the news of my Mum’s death or the howling cries I heard coming from my dad as he convulsed with all the pain of …
I knew something was wrong, when he came for me that day. Who could blame me, after three weeks of quiet waiting, not seeing her, not feeling her touch or hearing her voice? “Sister?” I heard him say crisply. Then, in an agitated, pinched sort of way, quite unlike him, “am just taking Simon upstairs …
One of the phrases that has come to stick in our collective consciousness in recent times is the slogan for Leave.eu’s referendum campaign, “Take Back Control”. Of course, the Brexit debate is a cauldron of complexity I am certainly not aiming to discuss here. But this slogan has caused me to think about the concept …
My life has been blessed by the fortitude and selflessness of brave women. I have written and spoken recently about my mother and the work she did to raise money and awareness for bone marrow (stem cell) transplantation during the earliest stages of its development. The early 70’s was “the Jurassic period” in bone marrow …
I expect that if you were to ask anyone who knows me what I am most passionate about in life, even those who know me only moderately well would mention travel somewhere near the top of the list. The letter to God that I wrote as a young boy (below) marked the beginning of a …
It is hard to believe that today, 27th July, 40 years have passed since my mother Elisabeth Bostic died, age 33, from a tragic and accidental overdose. One of my main objectives for this website is to tell her story. She was not just a devoted mother, wife and daughter. She was a forceful campaigner …
It is probably true that I would not be alive today if I had been born in almost any other country. It is most certainly true that I would not be alive today if it weren’t for the NHS. In 1973, I was the first person in the world ever to survive a bone marrow …