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An eternity.
Late last Thursday night I got into Heathrow from Erbil. The next day I took a train (well, two trains) to Cheltenham, where I met up with Alan for a weekend of loveliness at this place. The occasion, apart from being together again, was our tenth wedding anniversary. I’m not going to go on about how wonderful the last ten years have been, or how happy we are, or how I still get a little thrill from waking up and knowing Alan is next to me. Because if you are in a happy relationship then you will know exactly what I mean without me trying to describe it, and if you’re not then it will sound like showing off. ...
Source: Bah! to cancer - October 21, 2013 Category: Cancer Authors: Stephanie Tags: Emotional Well-Being Life is Good Recovery From Breast Cancer alan anniversaries marriage relationships Source Type: blogs

Where do you get your ideas from? Part 3
Alan and I do like a do. We like the planning and the dressing up and the meeting old friends and talking to new people. And I always bring the placecards home. And they always make me think: Who wrote these? Did they also buy the cards? Did someone make the decision to handwrite rather than print the names and, if so, why? Was writing these cards a delight, or a chore? Was the person who wrote them coming to the event too? Did s/he know the people whose names s/he was writing? Did the person practice their handwriting before they began? Or were they chosen to do the job because of their handwriting? If they were, how did...
Source: Bah! to cancer - June 4, 2013 Category: Cancer Authors: Stephanie Tags: writing ideas Source Type: blogs

A balance to be struck
I didn’t take a lot of pictures at all, during our Christmasness this year. I think it’s partly because I am getting better at being in the moment; and I feel that sometimes, in my desire to capture something, I actually miss out on it. But anyway, here’s what I got. Alan and his formerly-long-lost brother, who we went to visit in early December, in front of the castle where their mother worked: The splendid gingerbread house that my nieces decorated, with my splendid nieces. My precious goddaughters playing with their newly-acquired dollshouse, which belonged to Joy once. The only picture I took on The Day was t...
Source: Bah! to cancer - January 9, 2013 Category: Cancer Authors: Stephanie Tags: Life is Good christmas Source Type: blogs

A random Monday
1. It isn’t snowing here, but the clouds are the peachy-pink that means they are thinking about it. 2. I am writing, writing, writing. The studio is full of scribbled post-it notes, there are lists all over my desk of things I need to find out, and it’s SO MUCH FUN. I should hit 20,000 words today. 3. I have got the crochet bug good and proper. I apologise for anything I might have said in the past that implied that crochet involved little except counting and creating stiff-yet-holey things. My granny square blanket is going to be a doozy. 4. My daughter claims that there should be a special acknowledgement in ...
Source: Bah! to cancer - January 14, 2013 Category: Cancer Authors: Stephanie Tags: Musings random Source Type: blogs

Passing through
There was going to be more blogging.  There really was. But I arrived home yesterday after a 24 hours that had included (not in order): 3 flights, 1 arrive-at-10.30-leave-at-8 hotel stay, an intense (and rewarding) morning’s work, saying goodbye to friends until the autumn, four sets of security checking, packing, replacing a broken suitcase, and the worst episode of food poisoning I have suffered since the Stratford Incident of (I think) 1987. I will spare you the details, but I will tell you that the vomiting was so violent that I ended up picking bits of regurgitated food out of my hair from the splashback…...
Source: Bah! to cancer - June 29, 2013 Category: Cancer Authors: Stephanie Tags: Musings Uncategorized Source Type: blogs

I’m going to need a bigger list
Four and a half years ago, I made a list of what I’d like to be happening in my life in five years. The original post is here, but in brief, I said: to be well, for those around me to be well, to be with Alan, to have published two books, to be an expert/specialist in de Bono’s work, to own one of Anita Klein’s angels, and to see the Northern Lights. I’m doing pretty well. Wellness and love abound; I have three beautiful angel prints; the work I am doing in Kurdistan is all around de Bono and I can feel how much I am learning and growing as a trainer through my work there; two books are out and two ...
Source: Bah! to cancer - July 4, 2013 Category: Cancer Authors: Stephanie Tags: Life is Good birthday Source Type: blogs

A big, beautiful, five-year Bah!
It just so happens that I’m in Kurdistan for remission day, which is rather fitting, because this great Kurdish adventure – without doubt the highlight of my training career, and one of the privileges of my time on earth – is exactly the sort of thing that the pre-cancer me may well have been too scared to attempt. (Not that Kurdistan is at all scary, once you get here. But we all know how un-encouraging the press for this part of the world can be.) Later, there will be drinks, and food, and lots and lots of laughing, with my son and my daughter and my friends here. (I will do drinks and food and laughing wit...
Source: Bah! to cancer - November 18, 2013 Category: Cancer Authors: Stephanie Tags: Life is Good Remission Source Type: blogs

New Year’s Eve, again
… and as you read this post, Alan and I will be on our way home. We might get back in time for me to plant bulbs in the light; if not, I’ll do it in the darkness. (It’s something I did on New Year’s Eve last year, and I got such pleasure from it that I’m determined to do it again.) Today marks four years from my first round of chemotherapy. This year, that feels like an abstract, something that happened to someone else; or the sort of ‘oh yes, I remember’ you have when someone reminds you of an old schoolmate or a shop that isn’t there any more. The fear, the unhappiness, the...
Source: Bah! to cancer - December 31, 2012 Category: Cancer Authors: Stephanie Tags: Emotional Well-Being Recovery From Breast Cancer anniversary chemotherapy coping ith cancer new year Source Type: blogs

One of my nine
Every time I listen to Desert Island Discs, which is as often as possible, I start to wonder what I’d choose in the hypothetical situation where (a) I am on a desert island which is mysteriously equipped with the ability to play records, or (b) I am asked to appear on ‘Desert Island Discs’ myself. After a little bit of thinking about this, I have to go and have a coffee and something nibbly, as I am so exhausted by the effort. But there’s one disc that would go with me for sure. Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong singing ‘Summertime’. Not only is it gloriously happy-making, but it would...
Source: Bah! to cancer - January 26, 2013 Category: Cancer Authors: Stephanie Tags: Musings desert island discs summertime Source Type: blogs

Easy as plums
I cut up a couple of punnets of plums. (I didn’t take the stones out, because life is short, and the people who will be eating them – ie mainly Alan and I – are quite capable of taking them out.) I broke a couple of cinnamon sticks over them. I added a sprinkle of ginger and drizzled some honey on top. I added a glug of orange extract, which is not strictly necessary, but does add a certain je ne sais quoi. I put the dish in the oven, at 180 degrees for half an hour, but that was really only because the oven was already on, cooking parkin, and the parkin had half an hour to go. The oven part is not an exa...
Source: Bah! to cancer - January 29, 2013 Category: Cancer Authors: Stephanie Tags: Life is Good baking plums Source Type: blogs

Variously:
1. I am back in Kurdistan, for two weeks this time. It’s pretty much as I remember it: the people are welcoming, the city sprawls and grows almost as you watch, and the work is exciting. The main differences from my last trip here (apart from knowing the lie of the land) are that I have a colleague with me, and it’s about eighty degrees. Both of these differences are adding further gladness to the proceedings. 2. I am knitting for a baby who isn’t born yet. This is one of my favourite things to do. I love the idea that even before he knows what it means, this new little one will be wrapped in something th...
Source: Bah! to cancer - April 5, 2013 Category: Cancer Authors: Stephanie Tags: Musings Uncategorized knitting kurdistan travel Source Type: blogs

Not even a night off
Well, my friends, yesterday I pressed the button that sent the document-that-is-approximately-the-shape-of-a-novel off to my editor, Lovely Emma. ‘Breaking Bread’ is done. Well, I say done. Lovely Emma will read it and (if ‘Surrounded By Water’ is anything to go by) make some suggestions that will (a) make the document-that-is-approximately-the-shape-of-a-novel into something approximating a real book and (b) have me slapping my forehead and demanding why I didn’t think of that myself. (This is the asymmetry of creativity in action.) So, once I’d sent the manuscript off, I felt a little ...
Source: Bah! to cancer - March 27, 2013 Category: Cancer Authors: Stephanie Tags: Breaking Bread Uncategorized writing Source Type: blogs

Intermittent and random
1. I haven’t forgotten you. The interwebs of Erbil are temperamental at best, and can go off and sulk for three days if you so much as ask them to upload a photo. 2. I had a fabulous fortnight. Kurdistan lived up to all I remembered and loved about it last time, and more.  (I could have done without the sandflies and the mosquitoes and the equally temperamental hot water. The trick was to have a shower when no-one else was. 5.45am and 3pm were my biggest successes.) 3. Today I will be reunited with Alan and we’re heading off to France, via a couple of nights in Portsmouth. I can’t wait. 4. I have ideas f...
Source: Bah! to cancer - April 20, 2013 Category: Cancer Authors: Stephanie Tags: Musings erbil kurdistan pank resort Source Type: blogs

Back
As I write this, it’s exactly four weeks since I was waiting for a cab to take me to the airport for the first leg of my trip to Kurdistan. (It’s not a complicated journey. Newcastle to Heathrow, night at the Hilton, get up at stupid o’clock, fly to Vienna then on to Erbil. About 7 and a half hours in the air, about 24 hours altogether. In knitting terms: a sock. In reading terms: a book, though not a fat one.) It’s been quite an almost-month. The work in Kurdistan was rewarding, not to say compelling, and the place itself ate up a little bit more of my heart. The friends I made last time turned out...
Source: Bah! to cancer - May 2, 2013 Category: Cancer Authors: Stephanie Tags: Life is Good Musings Travels Source Type: blogs

Special occasion
I always make an effort with how I look, but today I dressed with special care. First, extra-pretty underwear. I have always liked good underwear – at 36DD, if you’re not prepared to invest in some decent bras you end up with what Joy calls ‘Grandma breasts’. (For clarity: this is a generic term, not a specific reference.) And, post-cancer, I’ve become even more keen on beautiful bras and matching knickers, reminding my body on a daily basis that it’s doing a damned fine job of wellness, and I appreciate it. But today I chose one of my favourite sets. Then, a short dress covered in butte...
Source: Bah! to cancer - May 3, 2013 Category: Cancer Authors: Stephanie Tags: Cancer Diagnosis mammogram Source Type: blogs