It’s strange isn’t it, you get through life taking every day as it comes and then boom, your world gets turned upside down…

… I’ve never really been unwell, nothing more than the average guy I suppose, the normal coughs and colds and the such like but being told that I have cancer is something that I hadn’t planned for, or even thought would happen to me – after all, cancer is something that other people get, and they are old, aren’t they? Not like me I still feel like I am in my 20s! Anyway, all is well, they have told me that it is not going to kill me and that I am well but it has seriously made me think about how I live my life.

I don’t feel like I take things for granted any more, and it is really odd to say this but I see everything a bit differently now, I know I probably sound a bit of a weirdo saying this but well, I don’t feel like it is all guaranteed any more, like I should make more of the time I have here, like not waste any of it, does that make any sense?

It has also made me think about what people might say about me if I had died, and I suppose I will die one day, and what memories people would have of me. There are probably some people I have met along the way that would no doubt be glad to see the back of me ha! But my kids, I would like them to know a bit more about who I am, who I was when I was growing up, and sort of, well you know, record something about the mark, however small it is, I have made on the world.

I sometimes think about my grandfather, he died when I was young and there are so many things that I would so love to talk to him about now. He was such a lovely human; I remember when I and my cousins were kids, we would get his old naval uniforms out of the attic and dress up in them. We were so beautifully innocent then, there’s a photo somewhere of us saluting in these uniforms that were way too big on us and looking super proud. When we stayed over, we would have the run of the garden, I remember the plants and the flowers all seemed huge and I felt so small, but maybe that was just because I was smaller! He made the best piccalilli and grew amazing asparagus on his allotment, I didn’t know at the time but what an absolute luxury to sit down at the dinner table with a mountain of fresh asparagus in a Pyrex dish – it wasn’t until I was an adult and went to buy some in the supermarket that I fully appreciated how special that was. And making breakfast – that was something else, it would either be a huge fry up or I would make him his porridge, in fact that is the reason I know how to make porridge today and I still do it in exactly the same way that he taught me. We had such a free reign then when I think about it, doing what we wanted with him encouraging us, taking us wild camping in the woods, teaching us about the wildlife and the different fungi, I could talk about my grandad for ever.

But I wish I could talk to him, and ask him all of the questions that I never asked him when he was alive. Maybe I was too young to know it at the time but I really do wish I had and that I could hear his voice. All of his life, his successes, his experiences, his challenges, his wishes, died with him and this is why I want to record my story, so I don’t forget about my life, and my kids and their kids have a record to listen to if they want to. I want to be able to record all of my thoughts, experiences, history, the good and the bad and the sometimes rather ugly, but all of the stuff that has made me the person that I am today.

So here we go …