The Club

There exists a club, which will take anyone.

You can be a Child or an Adult, gay or straight, a Mum or Dad, religious or atheist, black or white, a prince or pauper, Human or Otherwise.

You don’t sign up for it, there’s no venue, and you probably don’t want to be a member… I sincerely hope you never are a member.

You join it the moment you are told that you have cancer.

The astonishing thing about this club is that no member is higher up than any other member, we are all on an equal level.

And I don’t think anyone can fully grasp that until they have cancer.

I had this unusual thing happen to me when I was going through cancer treatments, I was watching the news one night and heard that Kylie Minogue had breast cancer.

We’re both from Melbourne, I’ve never met Kylie and probably never will, but I thought of all the little things that I had thought about in private, my fears, the things my Mother went through and the things I saw and felt when I watched others receiving chemotherapy.

Kylie was about to go through that, and I understood.

I heard others pass judgement about Her, but I knew that if I had cancer, I would have grabbed at every resource to fight it, I wanted Her to fight it, and I wanted Her to win, not just for Her, but for all of us.

Steve Jobs had put on a brave face for the public, He may not have been brave, I doubt any of us really are, but we continue because, what else can we do?

In private, despite his fame, his bank balance or what people think of him, He suffered.

He would have suffered like no Human or Animal should ever experience, physically and mentally, and he would have seen his friends and family suffer because of his illness.

All we saw was a man lose weight, that can be easily brushed off, can’t it?

I saw my Father go from a giant of a man, to someone who looked a lot like Steve did in the end. Mum and I lived with Dads pain twenty four hours a day.

Neither of us imagined that someone so strong, someone who could almost run at the age of seventy, with a large Malamute in front, could suddenly become so frail.

The public don’t see the full effect of cancer on a victim or their close family, and they really cannot understand what’s going on.

Steve Jobs, whether you liked him or not, never should have gone through that.

There will come a day when Medical Science will ensure that nobody will be granted access to The Club, and I sincerely hope You and I live to see that day.

Wolfie!

That Nude Photo

People have seen that one nude photo of me in the shower floating around online, and I thought perhaps I would write about why I did it. I have never been the one to flaunt my body, I’ve always been a very insecure person, which got worse after puberty. If I went swimming anywhere, to a water slide for example, I would have left my t-shirt on… which was probably a good thing when you consider skin cancer.

When I was growing up in the 70′s there were lots of calendars around, of naked women, and I suppose I just sort of took it as normal, before feminists weigh in here, please take into consideration that I was a kid at this stage, around ten or so. And at this point I came to wonder why there were calendars of Women, but there were no Men, I found that very odd.

I suppose I felt both sexes deserved equal time.

I really had nothing to base my sexuality on, anything male seemed to be hidden away, or Men would appear in porn magazines merely to emphasise the sexuality of Women, but never alone, never by themselves, or with other Men. Not that I saw any of this until I was around twenty something. I just didn’t have access to that sort of material, which was sad because I really wanted to know.

Perhaps if I had lived in San Francisco things would’ve been different.

One thing that stuck with me was hearing the guy who created the Love Sexy cover for Prince saying something like “Female sexuality is an easy thing to photograph, while Men, were extremely difficult” as though my sex were sort of neutral, too dull to be photographed, not impressive, and kind of worthless.

Then I got online, and suddenly there they were, all the pictures of Men that I had imagined should have been on calendars in local shops, and should have been hanging up in grimy offices and so forth, It was an awakening.

What I liked most about these photographs were that the models were a lot more confident about their bodies than I was, and I felt after seeing them, a lot more at ease with who I was… but perhaps if I’d seen these images as a teenager, it would have helped things a lot more… but obviously there was no internet, as we have now, way back then.

It was 2005 when the cancer was discovered, and I feared that with the operation and treatment, that my body would change, so I wanted to take some photos of myself, before the operation, in the nude, not to be shown, just for my own purposes.

Before a bowel operation, a patient goes to see a stoma therapist. a stoma is a bit of your intestine which sticks out of your body, and a special collection bag is hung from this, which collects your waste, it’s not as bad as it sounds, the stoma is only about the size of the tip of your thumb, and the bag fixes to your body a bit like a band-aid, and is changed every couple of days.

The stoma therapist teaches you a bit about what a stoma is, shows you a model, and then works out where the best place for your stoma will be… so it’s not directly under where the belt of your pants would be, for example.

An “X” was marked on my body with a texta, and covered with a patch of what looked like clear masking tape, after my operation I would wake to find a stoma there, and a bag.

One morning when Mum went out shopping with my Sister, I set up my camera and took full frontal shots of me, which nobody would see but me.

After the operation I felt that with the stoma there, and the smell, and the minor accidents I was having with it, that I had become unclean, I wouldn’t touch food with my bare hands, I even used a spoon to eat twisties.

But as time went on and I became more adept at looking after myself, that feeling went away, and I began to return to normal.

Then Joe came to visit me from the US, we had planned this holiday months ago, but only a few weeks earlier Mum had passed away, so I was still in a strange mind-frame.

We stayed in this lovely cottage at Mt Dandenong, which was actually for new couples, I think, but it was right in the forest which is exactly what I needed, I love the forest and the sound of bellbirds.

The light was beautiful on the inside, and I felt like taking some photos as I had been doing frequently throughout the holiday, then I realised that I could probably take some nude shots.

I wasn’t prepared to do frontal shots as I had the horrible bag on, and I really didn’t want to do that anyway. I just wanted a lovely photo of myself having a shower in this gorgeous bathroom.

So I snapped a few photos using my Pentax SLR on a tripod and I used a timer, No flash was used as it would have spoilt the lovely yellow lighting there.

I never had the opportunity to photograph nudes, something I’d quite like to do, and so I really enjoyed doing this, I think in part, the photo was to say “This is me, I’m confident, I’m in one piece and I’m ok”.

Wolfie!

BTW: I had a reversal done in 2010, where the stoma was “removed” (put back inside where it ought to be) This has caused it’s own problems, but about eight months later, things are much better than they were. and showering is so much easier.

My Short Fuse

The PE teacher at high-school, who I almost bit on the ankle once, said that if we should ever feel angry, we should beat up our pillows… I was against that, for one thing, I’m a passive sort of fellow who rarely go angry… I think it’s because I’m large. You never see Clydesdale horses who are pissed off, they’re calm and together, while Shetlands bite. It’s the same with Dogs… Nine times out of ten it’s the little dog who’s full of agro, while your larger dog couldn’t care less.

And I am passive… oh you noticed that bit about taking a chunk out of the PE teachers ankle, eh? well yes, there was that, In the 80s Physical Education was a bit like boot camp, do this, do that, twenty pushups from you for doing the wrong thing… it was supposed to cultivate respect, or something… But I just thought he was a prick.

One day I was made to do these pushups for some crap I had apparently done, and he was standing, right there, within easy reach, and I was tempted, oh so sorely tempted to sink my teeth into his ankle, seriously too, drawing blood and all.

I was mostly angry with him, I hated sports and PE, and I hated wasting my time with it when I could’ve been laying around in the library, absorbing a book on inventions.

I stopped bringing my uniform, and kept saying “I forgot it, sir” which really meant “I didn’t bring it, you skinny cunt, I don’t want to join in”.

Once he bought me a huge pair of shorts, which would have fitted Dumbo, and asked me to put them on… I was torn between wearing them and having the balls to say that I wouldn’t… but years later realised what I shoud’ve done was streak naked through the high-school, who’s main building seperated each classroom with massive sheets of glass, making sure that everyone would’ve got a good view… and I would’ve been expelled, a good job too, I hated the place something fierce.

Sometimes I think that I am an angry person, that deep inside something is bubbling away like a sleeping volcano that may erupt.

I have no tolerance for religion anymore, it’s something that got in my way, stunted my views, tripped me up, blocked my path and basically made life difficult.

When I aired my views to my dear but brainwashed Mum, She yelled out “You’re a Heathen, Just like your Father”, What could a kid do? Although there were times that Mum raised her own doubts.

Dad used to say that he thought the Bible was “A big fish story”.

I highly suspect the reason I was packed off to Sunday School when I could have spent the day resting, was Mum was having problems with my emerging sexuality, and wanted to put the fear of God into me… not that the sunday school people were like that, they were pretty nice people, Not the fire and brimstone type.

Or it was to do with My Cousin who was going through relationship problems, so they’d send all the kids to sunday school to give them a free hours woman to woman chat.

There was a touch of tradition there too, Mum and my Sister had attended, and Mum had a family background with the Salvos and their band.

The first time I saw cancer, it was with Laddie, my very special collie x shepherd, who was my right arm, rather like Katie is today, it was always Laddie and I who did things together.

Laddie taught me responsibility.

Then the cancer came along, and he literally mented like an ice-cream in the sun, I prayed and prayed for him, but nothing could be done, and in the end he died at the vets surgery, just an hour before he got the needle.

I saw a tumour grow in Timothy, a lovely cat, this ball grew inside him at frightening speed, and there was nothing I could do about it, He was put down too.

The next was Dad, who writhed in pain in bed, he had tubes hanging out of him, and there was this smell, it’s always the same smell, like rotting wood, I know what cancer smells like now, I’m too familiar with it, it lingers in the room.

Dad would rush to the toilet and cry out in pain as he tried to move his bowels, there was a mess on his hands, on the walls, a pervasive odour of urine in stained Pyjamas. Dad was a giant, full of brawn and it whittled him down to this, there were prayers again, not that any of them did any good.

Benny, My lovely Malamute, which Dad gave to me after Laddie passed on, was out gentle giant, a loving being who adored everyone, including cats, especially cats, but never other dogs, even females. He taught me how to be open, and be myself, and not worry what others thought, Benny was the escense of Wolfie, had it not been for him, I would never have come this far. He could really let rip with his deep howls, which were useful as Mum lost most of her hearing in the weaving mills years before, She couldn’t always hear the phone ring, but Benny could, and it would get him howling… “What did the phone say?” We’d ask him, and he’d howl in reply… Visitors loved the show, and Benny was always very keen to show off to people.

Benny got cancer, and I prayed, I prayed a lot, but he withered away until eventually his back legs couldn’t hold him, he cried as the vet examined him in our Bathroom, He couldn’t move. His cries sounded like “Oh No!, Oh No!, Oh No!” It was like someone was mourning a child who had just been run over by a train, the sound stabbed me like a knife.

He was given the “green needle” and off he went, we carried him off in a bag.

There was myself, who I’ve written about before, so we’ll skip this.

Then I smelt that smell in Mums Room, That same musty odour, and I told her it was there, I knew that one of us had it, or the carpet was damp, I hoped for the latter, but it wasn’t long before Mum passed on.

Then the phone went one night and it was my Sister, She had Ovarian Cancer… She fought it for over a year, and I really thought she was gaining th upper hand, but she didn’t. Three lots of chemo I think she had, three lots?
I could barely handly one lot… I didn’t think She was as strong as that, and was amazed with her fight, but it was a fight that she lost, and she was cremated last September.

So don’t talk to me about how great your God is, how merciful, and how wonderful he is, there was no help from above. If God was so great, then why did we get cancer in the first place? why were we all forced to suffer? why was I allowed to remain alive even though all my family are dead?

Religion is my trigger now, it sets me off quicker than anything.

I despise it.

God botherers on twitter get a mouthful of abuse if they try to suggest that as an athiest, I’m wrong, I’m not wrong, I know from painful experience that I’m not wrong.

I hate being angry, I really do… there was a time that I was more tolerant, but I can’t be now.

In my opinion, religion has held back science to such a degree that had it been allowed, then perhaps medicine may have been decades ahead of itself, and perhaps there would have already been a cure, perhaps… my family would have still been alive.

I seethe with rage everytime some nut says that “Evolution is just a theory”.

Personally I think Science ought to be using a new word, call it a “fact” instead, get rid of that stupid word, why is science so precious about it anyway, If the whole of Australia suddenly feels that what we used to call biscuits are actually Cookies (Because as you know, The Americans are ALWAYS right, and as a second class country, we’re just not as good as them, they just know better) Then “Theory” can be changed to “FACT.

Science can do this, because unlike some people, we have that flexibility.

So I fight religion now, each and everytime I come up against it, I blog on athiesm, I retweet stories about how catholic priests rape kids and treat Homosexuals poorly, claiming they spread AIDS while simultaniously banning condoms, I post scientific literature on Facebook and discuss it in science forums, I add my voice to the many who are waking up from history and seeing the logical truth which we can clearly see in our age.

Religion is dying, allow it to die, it’s a sad relic of our tribal history.

So please forgive my little explosions on twitter and other places, I really hate being angry, but these days I am just a little more bitter than I’ve been before.

Wolfie!

What Religion does to People.

I had the misfortune to discover this wordpress blog tonight, as you know, I am completely over religion, the threats of an eternity in hell, the promise of an eternity in heaven… but only if you’re impossibly good, and most of all because of bigots who call themselves patriots and think that they’re so much more righteous than you and I because they carry a book in their hand which was probably written by a gang of pot smoking hermits.

I have lived through cancer, I saw my relatives with it, several of my most wonderful animals and I had it myself, and I have talked about this fairly often on this very blog, you may search for it if you wish.

What I read in this persons blog, was cruel, thoughtless and downright mean, if that is what religion does to people, then I don’t want any part of it.

When I was diagnosed with Cancer, I had the best oncologist I could get, I had the best surgeon, and a wonderful dedicated bunch of doctors and nurses who got me through, it was science which has allowed me to continue living, not mumbo-jumbo and imaginary friends in the sky.

And although I am an Atheist, I am loved, by friends, family and my beautiful household animals, and their encouragement pushed me to keep going when I wanted desperately to stop having chemo, it was this, not prayers that I value.

I don’t care who you are, no book or made up faith should allow anyone to become the kind of person who would write anything like this, and I sincerely hope that the time will come when people will drop religion and walk into the future with those of us who are now free of it, instead of digging your nails into the dirt and trying to drag us all back into the 17th century.

Here is a transcript of the page, just in case it’s deleted, I want everyone to see this.

***

Obama implies he’s not a believing Christian
Posted on August 15, 2009 by GodsGadfly| 2 Comments

“I just lost my grandmother last year. I know what it’s like to watch somebody you love, who’s aging, deteriorate and have to struggle with that,” an impassioned Obama told a crowd as he spoke of Madelyn Payne Dunham. He took issue with “the notion that somehow I ran for public office or members of Congress are in this so they can go around pulling the plug on grandma.”

I know people are going to call this a stretch, but one thing I’ve experienced first hand, and through many conversations, is how different the death experience for those who have faith and those who don’t.

One person’s “agonizing” death from cancer may be a time of family togetherness, all-night prayer vigils, hand holding and hugging and hymnody. Another’s death really is agony: dark-rooms, somber relatives, no one speaking, everyone standing at a distance.

We had a big conversation about this at my Carmelite meeting a few months ago. People told amazing stories of relatives’ deathbed conversions. Some talked about relatives who had no faith, whose deaths were *horrible.* “You could feel the demons in the room,” said one lady of her brother-in-law’s death experience. He was writhing in the bed, screaming. Suddenly, he asked for a priest. They got the priest who’d been waiting outside, blocked by the atheist relatives. The priest received the dying man into the Church, and the whole room changed.

When you hear liberals talk about death, they talk about the agonizing nature of it. And the liberals, and the media, just don’t get it. They think people have a “choice” about “end of life” care (to a certain extent, we do). They say that the Schiavo case was a matter of “choice” and “family decisions” in which the government had no place (even though it had been in court for years, and the federal involvement was merely giving the family a chance at an appeal to someone other than the corrupt judge who always ruled in Michael’s favor).

But you don’t have the choice not to accept basic nutrition. You have to the choice to refuse medical care, under certain circumstances . You do *not* have the choice to turn down basic nutrition or hydration, even to the point of refusing to provide nutritoin or hydration to a dying person when one has pulled the plug.

But his talk of the agonizing experience of watching his grandmother’s death–and how much did he actually experience? Was it agonizing because of his guilt of putting his own ambitions above family?–betrays the fact that he thinks death is something fearful.

Years ago, before my heart surgery, the topic was being discussed at a Cursillo Ultreya. Members were discussing their ailing parents and how sad it was they were dying in their 80s or whatever, and Dad said, “When John dies, it will be the happiest day of our lives. All he wants is to go to Heaven, and why should we be sad that he gets his heart’s desire?”

***

Here is the original link, you can comment on my page, as I’m sure the only people who will be allowed to post at their end will be those who agree with their twisted sentiments.

Wolfie!

Mary Mackillop’s day off.

And so we have our first saint, what a load of bollocks.

It’s 2010 and still the world clings to religion, what a sorry sight.

You may wonder what I have against religion, other than the wars which were started because of it, the people who were tortured because of it, the priests who raped little boys.

I’m against it because it’s held back science for hundreds of years, just think, if religion hadn’t been there to stop scientific discovery, then we may have already had cures for AIDS, Cancer or Blindness… but no no, You shalt not do this or that, but it’s fine to slaughter a few thousand who worship the other God, but we can’t tinker with a few stem cells which might improve someones health.

When poor Galileo saw that the Earth really did revolve around the sun did the Catholic Church, say “Wow, that’s Amazing” and pat him on the back? No, The Catholics told him to take it all back, say it wasn’t true (even though it was) and even threatened to whack the poor fellow in a dungeon.

Leonardo Da Vinci was very interested in anatomy, and stole bodies to look inside and see what made people tick, if he’d been discovered who knows what might have happened to him.

These men were not content to just go along like sheep and believe any cock and bull story that the church threw at them.

I have a lot of trouble with the story of Noah, basically because if you were from the Middle East some two thousand years ago, you would have been forgiven for thinking that there was perhaps about two hundred or so animal species in the world, and that you could possibly get them all loaded onto a boat, they didn’t have TV then and perhaps education was lacking.

But I defy anyone, apart from naturalists, to sit and watch a good David Attenborough doco and be familiar with every creature shown.

Estimates say that there may be about two million animal species on the planet (google it), therefore if there is two each (yes even two snails, as you still need two to mate) that means that Noah would have had to stuff FOUR MILLION animals onto his boat, and it still had to float.

Despite the fact that Mary was probably quite a nice lady who did her best for people, and therefore deserves respect, I find this whole canonisation thing frustrating when these same people who won’t stop bleeting about saints and gods and all kinds of gobbledegook can’t seem to understand that Stem Cell research could save a lot of genuine horrors and agony which people are experiencing at this very minute, and stopping this research has to be some sort of crime that I hope people in the future decry us for.

“Why on earth did they not push ahead with medical research” they’ll ask “If they had AIDS, MS and Cancer, Why were they so busy worrying about invisible people in the sky?”

Fortunately, despite the church, in some ways we have pressed ahead, and I thank Nicola Tesla for his invention which produced X-Rays, which eventually lead to Radiotherapy, and I suppose Chemotherapy was more of a combined effort between a lot of wonderful minds… those people and those inventions saved my life.

I give credit to my Surgeon, who sadly passed away due to the effects of Bowel Cancer himself, A heartfelt thankyou to Joe Tjandra

And also to my Oncologist, Peter Gibbs.

Had science been further along, perhaps I still might have had My beautiful parents, My Dad had extensive cancer all through him, believed to have started in his prostate. Mum had something that we suspect was cancer, but she died before diagnosis. My Sister put up a magnificent fight but still lost her battle of about 18 months with ovarian cancer.

I have also lost my dear animals because of that bloody disease. Benny the Malamute who died a terrible death. The cancer had got into his spine, and he was unable to walk… naturally at this point, he was in serious pain and had to be put down, it was one of the worst days of my life, I still hear his cries of agony even now.

Laddie was another who had it, My beautiful German Shepherd cross, such a good friend should never have had to go through what he did.

One of my cats, Timothy, swelled to the size of a bowling ball, his tumour grew at a frightening speed, he was also put down.

Another cat, Splinter, had feline AIDS, and although he fought for a year (he recovered for those months) it soon caught up with him and he died under a tree in the back yard.

Pray? oh yes I prayed, I prayed my tits off…I prayed for all of them, not that it did any good.

To you who push religion down peoples throats, whatever brand it may be, I have no respect for you, but I do have some contempt.

For you are holding us back, you are causing the pain, the disease to continue, the wars to erupt, for people to continue to believe in things that are no more real than the tooth fairy or a bunny who lays chocolate eggs (wrapped in foil of course, his arse must be sore).

If the rapture finally does come and take all you true believers away, how extraordinarily wonderful it will be to be finally free of lunatics.

Wolfie!

Parting of the ways

I visited my Sister last Saturday, She was alert and was happy that I’d come to see her. We chatted about little things for an hour or so and I held her hand. It’s always been a pleasure to hold hands with my parents or Jan, we were close like that. Her hand was warm.

Due to a stroke a couple of days earlier, she had gone blind. She thought, and hoped that all it was, was a severe migraine, as she’d been having a few beauts in the last month or so, but the doctors felt that she’d been having mild strokes all along.

I was with my neighbour in his renovated garage yesterday, where he sleeps and uses his computer when I got a phonecall from my teary Grand-Niece, April, Who gave me the bad news that Jan had passed on.

I felt sorry for April, as Jan and her had been very close. I had memories of being a child, fearing that one or both of my parents might die, and felt somewhat lucky that I was grown up before I lost Dad, and it was another nine years before I’d lose my Mother.

Dad was in hospital with Cancer, He’d been a big bloke, as strong as an ox, and now skinny and weakened, with catheters and drips hanging into and from him, what the cancer had done to him was utterly awful. I had been in tears going in to see him… which had been difficult as my own health wasn’t the greatest either, It would be eight years before I found out why I felt the way I did.

When Dad passed away, I thought I’d cry, but I didn’t cry much… and I should be, shouldn’t I?

Someone suggested that perhaps I was mourning while Dad was sick, I’d cried it all out then and there was nothing left.

Years later I was dreaming that I was on a grassy hill, by a grave, and Danny Boy was playing, it was so strange that the words spoke to me like they did, it wasn’t a song that I liked all that much and certainly wouldn’t have been playing on my radio as I always had it set to a rock station.

The song, at least in my mind, was sung by a Father to his Son, the Father had died and was in his grave. He was hoping that his Son would go out and prosper in the World, but asked that now and then that his Son thinks of him and pays him a visit.

I saw the whole scene from above, as though it was filmed from a helicopter, it was beautiful, and it was then that I cried my hardest.

2005 was perhaps the worst.

My beautiful Malamute, Benny, had cancer, and I still remember him crying in agony, he couldn’t move anymore, and his cries sounded like “Oh no, Oh no, Oh no” they cut into my like a knife.

I held him as the vet gave him that final needle, I felt absolutely crushed, he was my baby, I cried for the next few weeks.

I’d discovered blood coming from my bottom, and that began my own battle which took the better part of that awful year.

Then in 2006, My Mum passed away, I think it was cancer. She’d lost a lot of weight and was so thin. I wanted her to see a doctor long before this, but she had always refused.

One day she went to have her ears checked at the place where she’d get her hearing aids adjusted, and I waited for her. When her doctor came out, he whispered to me that there was a tumor in her ear and that he was sorry… I didn’t quite catch, or expect that, I tried to get him to repeat himself, but al he said was “I’m Sorry”.

I told Mum, but again, she refused to see a GP.

Eventually I did get her to go, she had x-rays which came back showing something white in her lungs, her heart didn’t look the best either.

I got up very early on that final day, which was unusual.

Mum and I had tea and vegemite on toast, and later that Day we shared a pastie.

She had been laying on the couch a lot, and feeling useless. I knew the feeling after months of chemo, so I didn’t mind her pottering around if she felt that she had the energy for it.

Then she sat down on the couch next to me and watched her afternoon tv shows, I was on the other couch talking to a friend on Secondlife via my laptop.

Mum said “I feel really good” and asked “Do I look good?”.

The afternoon sun shone through her hair, and she did look good, and I told her that she did.

Then we both settled down.

After a few minutes, she told me that she couldn’t breathe, I called the ambulance, but it was much too late.

She died in front of me, I had tried to keep her alive, mucking through what I recalled of CPR, but it seemed that her lungs were full of fluid, there was nothing I could do.

She passed away in my arms, she was so light, it was hard to believe that this was Mum, and dead.

I didn’t cry, what had happened to my was monumental, the person who’d always been there was gone, it was like a huge stone wall was inches from my eyes. I had no real emotion, just a weird frazzled, lost sensation.

I did freak out a little bit, I remember that much, I felt that, although I had tried to save her, that somehow I’d killed her in failing, I felt horrible. I remember telling my sister that “I felt evil” it was the strangest thing.

Once in a while, I did cry a little for her, but not like I thought I should have, perhaps we watch too many movies and think we should behave like the actors on the screen, and perhaps that’s not really true to life at all.

After Jan died, I felt an odd sort of buzzing in my body, and an odd sort of relief that she’d passed. but no sadness, not really… except that another family member had been claimed by cancer, and that I really should have seen her more often in my lifetime.

Months could fly by when I wouldn’t see her, and when I did, it was almost always rushed, Jans life, like her kids, was always scheduled, everything had to be pre-planned and booked in, they never seemed to have any time, it was like that song by Cat Stevens about the boy who told his Dad “we’ll have a good time then” and there never was any time.

It was partially due to my Brother in Law, who was jealous and possessive, I was thinking of this bloke last night, he hated anyone else having fun, he’d rant at me to go out and get some sun when I was a kid, knowing full well that I liked to be inside with my music… when I got a bike and found that I liked it, he took it and hid it, I thought it had been stolen. He made up some excuse that I shouldn’t have left it where I did because someone might have stolen it, and that was a lesson… but he only took it because he was an arsehole, yes, I got it back.

My Nephew had a small trike, which had been given to him by Mum one year, He loved it, he loved it more than the toys his Dad bought him… so that was hidden once.

He did the same to my Niece and Grand-Niece too, Mum had bought an NDS for April, which she enjoyed just a bit too much, so that was hidden.

He hated family, if anyone went to visit, there were snide remarks.

I relented on going to their place at christmas anymore, deciding that staying home with my dog would be much better, so I did.

The next year Mum and Dad decided I was right, so we began going to a Pub for Christmas Lunch instead, the atmosphere was a lot better.

He wanted my Sister all to himself, and what upsets me was that Jan complied with him. I felt disgusted, it was as though the 60′s sexual revolution never happened, She was a 50′s housewife, stuck in the 21st century.

He chased friends away when they got too close too, nobody visited.

Well Andy, you kept Jan away from everyone, Now someone’s taken her from you, Have a pint of your own medicine, mate.

My prediction for you is a long and lonely fate in a nursing home with nobody around you, it’s all you deserve.

Wolfie!

On Stopping CancerI

Cancer has affected my family, My Parents, My Pets and Myself.

At the moment My Sister is in hospital suffering from it’s cruelty.

Although we have treatments now, which have saved a lot of lives, including mine, there’s no silver bullet…
but at some point, science will have a cure, I’m quite confident of that.

While trillions of dollars are spent on terrorism, not enough is spent on cancer, and which of the two do you feel kills and maims more of us each day?

There are very bright scientists out there who are keen to knock cancer on it’s head for all time, but the rest of us want to help too, and the best way that we can do something tangible is to raise money, so that our scientists can get what they need to get their work done as quickly as possible.

Winning this fight means that we don’t have to see our family, friends, pets or ourselves suffering from this all too common disease.

I’d like to see a fun new charity form, and here’s how it works.

A lot of people, when they recieve letters from charities, read the letter and find there’s a series of boxes at the bottom.

What are you donating $20, $50, $100 or “Other”.

I’m not sure about you, but I’m not a wealthy person myself and simply don’t have that kind of money to give to anyone, despite the fact that I would help if I could. In general, a letter of this type ends up in my recycle bin, and I’m left feeling like a nasty person for doing nothing.

I bet this happens to others too.

So what I’m proposing is a Ten Cents Day, and here’s how it works.

We setup a collection station somewhere, and we have signs out explaining to people that we’re collecting for cancer research and that all we want is ten cents, we don’t hassle them for extras, if they give more, that’s cool, but the idea is that while people most likely would not donate $20 and upwards, practically everyone would be happy to drop ten cents into a tin.

I think Kids might really go for it too.

I’m not sure how we could go about setting something like this up, it’s certainly something I’ve had no experience with, but it’s a fun idea that might just work.

What do you think?