Coming Back to the Page

With a Slight Limp but Always a Full and Optimistic Heart.

Happy Friday Friends.

I haven’t written a blog since Christmas. That wasn’t the plan. The plan was to keep tapping away at the keyboard, offering the usual mix of half-baked wisdom, pragmatism, sustainability and social impact gold, gentle sarcasm, buffoonery, quirky eccentricity and the occasional sentence that made sense on the first read. Life, however, had other ideas. Life tends to do that. It rarely checks your content calendar.

So let’s get the practical bit out of the way first, because that’s how I’m wired. I felt the need to pause temporarily, take a breath and a break after being diagnosed with prostate cancer… and then my mum died.

Those two sentences look odd sitting next to each other, like strangers forced into conversation at a bus stop, but that’s how some things arrive in life, close together, unapologetic, and well, just exactly how challenging and upsetting as you would think they would be.

Lots of men, including me, believe they have to be strong, not show weakness and be brave in front of their mates and for their families sake, and never admit when they are struggling or feeling vulnerable.

Despite the real and understandable concerns from my in-house business and personal gurus Bob and Tom about oversharing my personal life, I thought it was important to tell the story about what has happened, and what happens next because, well because, that’s me really, isn’t it!

The cancer part first, because I know that’s where most minds go. I’m grateful, deeply, sincerely grateful, that it’s treatable. That’s not optimism by force, me putting a brave face on it, it’s a fact grounded in early testing, competent doctors, and the sort of medical progress we sometimes forget to appreciate until we’re sitting in a waiting room pretending not to read the leaflets, I’ve been lucky compared to others.

I’m being looked after. I have a plan. There is a road ahead, and while I wouldn’t have chosen it, it is very much a road and not a cliff edge.

In the context of my role at Syntech Biofuel I’m enabled to engage with wider conversations in the communities we exist and create meaningful social impact. Particularly with the collaborations and partnerships we have built in the construction and infrastructure sectors.

Evangelism/Storytelling is my game. Why know something and not shout about it for the good of others? Syntech ASB has been an easy outlet for my noise but it struck me I can do exactly the same job in being a force for good in my fellow men’s health journeys.

So prepare yourselves for plenty of social media from me and Syntech, advocating Prostate Cancer Awareness in March, which is 2 days away, March is Prostate Cancer Awareness month. This is where I can gently but firmly use my small platform to say something important, especially to men who’d rather reorganise the garage than book a test.

During March there is a Prostate Cancer Research fundraising and awareness campaign getting people to walk 32 miles,11,000 steps per day during March for them. I’ll be walking my 32 miles obviously.

The number 32 is being used because sadly 32 men in the UK die from Prostate Cancer, some of these could have been prevented with a simple blood test.

So get checked gentlemen. Early testing and early detection save lives. Full stop!

There’s no heroism in ignoring your body, no medals handed out for “toughing it out.” If a simple test can catch something early and dramatically improve outcomes, then the sensible, pragmatic, boringly responsible thing to do is take it.

And please understand gents, testing is not what you may be worried about or frightened of, it’s a simple blood test now. If this blog nudges even one man to have that conversation with his GP, then something good has already come out of my diagnosis.

Now, my mother.

Her funeral was last Friday, and it was a send-off befitting a woman who was loved by all, which sounds like the sort of thing people say because they’re supposed to, but in her case it happened to be true. The room was full. The stories were warm, funny, and deeply human. There was laughter and joy, all of which would have pleased her enormously.

She had been living with dementia in her later years, and in an odd, quiet way, that gave us time. Time to adjust. Time to grieve in instalments. Time to say goodbye slowly, which is both a gift and a peculiar kind of ache. By the time she died, the woman she had been so vividly, so completely, had already begun to loosen her grip on this world. What remained deserved a rest.

Which brings me back to this blog.

I really enjoy writing the blog even if I don’t have the big numbers or ever ‘go viral’, so this return is cathartic, not because everything is “fine” now, but because life happens. Get on with it Michael.

If there’s a thread running through all of this, cancer, loss, absence, return, it’s awareness. Of time. Of health. Of the people we love while they’re still here. Of ourselves, and the stories we tell ourselves about what it means to be alive and to be making a difference and making the most of every day.

Thank you for indulging me, normal service will be resumed next week for #blog100😉