{"id":3,"date":"2014-03-20T08:00:23","date_gmt":"2014-03-20T08:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/francesthomas.org\/blog\/?p=3"},"modified":"2014-03-20T09:12:31","modified_gmt":"2014-03-20T09:12:31","slug":"the-best-of-times-the-worst-of-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/francesthomas.org\/blog\/?p=3","title":{"rendered":"The Best of Times, The Worst of Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"P1010100\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Well, there are many reasons to regard this as the best of times. I\u2019m lucky enough to be living with Richard, my lifelong partner, in a most gorgeous part of Wales. Every morning there\u2019s something new and lovely to see from our window, changing light on the hills, the network of trees, shadows etched into soft green slopes, red kites circling in the sky, fast moving clouds during the day and a dazzle of stars at night.
\nI\u2019m lucky to have two daughters who still speak to me, after what \u2013 looking back now \u2013 seems a somewhat haphazard and muddled, though well \u2013intentioned, sort of mothering. I have two beautiful grandchildren, whose own mum and dad are making a great job of their parenting.
\nWe were lucky to have spent our sixties catching up with our travelling, four visits to India, trips to Egypt, Greece, Sicily, Spain, Pompeii, all the places we meant to go to when we were younger and busier, and never did.
\nI\u2019m lucky too, in that since all I ever wanted to do in life was be a writer, I can look at a shelf of books, properly published, with my name on them. Some have even won prizes. I\u2019ve written all sorts of books, baby books, adult novels, a biography, I\u2019ve contributed to a book of children\u2019s poetry and some short story collections. My ideal level, though, seems to be stories for girls of about 12-14 \u2013 the age when I was a most avid and involved reader. I\u2019ve got plans in this direction, which are some of the things I want to talk about in this blog, and I\u2019ve also made a tentative start on a longer term plan, which is to be the biography of a well-known woman writer, and I shall be talking about that too. I want to write about poetry, too, and how reading it can inform and inspire your life.
\nSo that\u2019s the good stuff. The bad stuff sidles up sneakily alongside now. Two bad things to be precise. Last March, Richard was suddenly taken ill with what might very well have been a fatal heart attack, but was fortunate enough to be rushed to hospital in time, and patched up. He\u2019s doing well now, but his condition is something he has to manage carefully and will always have to do so. Then about two months later I had a diagnosis of cancer \u2013 myeloma, a nasty one. Well, what do you say about cancer? This isn\u2019t intended to be one of those Brave and Heartwarming narratives about My Cancer Journey. Cancer\u2019s a bugger. It elbows its way rudely into your life without a by-your-leave, won\u2019t take no for an answer, and doesn\u2019t budge. You all know the dinner guest who refuses to take the hint when everyone has long gone home, and continues to sit there, a complacent grin on his face (it\u2019s usually a him, I\u2019m afraid) telling tedious stories without noticing that you\u2019re not joining in the conversation, your eyelids are drooping, and all you want to do is load up the dishwasher and get to bed. Well, that\u2019s cancer for you. It stops you doing things like going on holidays, walking in the hills, spending precious days with your grandchildren, and instead mucks up your bodily functions and generally screws you up by making you attend to its dreary monologue. I\u2019m lucky so far in that I have a good medical team and a reasonably pleasant centre to go to, but it\u2019s still a hospital, and now Richard and I seem to spend an inordinate amount of time discussing our various conditions, something I vowed when I was younger that I\u2019d never end up doing. I don\u2019t really feel scared, distressed or depressed by my state. \u00a0I\u2019m just saddened that I\u2019ve stopped being quite the person I used to be, and annoyed by the Unwelcome Guest.
\nI don\u2019t intend to write too much about the Unwelcome Guest, and since this is early days for me, I don\u2019t really yet know how our relationship will work out, only I know his plans for me aren\u2019t good. But I intend to ignore him as much as I can and get on with the interesting things that still remain. He can\u2019t stop me looking, or imagining, or thinking, or writing. There are still lots of things I want to be doing – plans I want to complete. And I mean to do so. So I do hope you\u2019ll drop by from time to time and share some of the good stuff with me. You don\u2019t have to commiserate with me about the Unwelcome Guest \u2013 if you\u2019re nice people I shall take that for read, (and if you\u2019re not \u2013 if you\u2019re going to be abusive \u2013 then I shall delete your comments.) So, welcome to my blog. I hope we\u2019ll be friends.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, there are many reasons to regard this as the best of times. I\u2019m lucky enough to be living with Richard, my lifelong partner, in a most gorgeous part of Wales. Every morning there\u2019s something new and lovely to see from our window, changing light on the hills, the network of trees, shadows etched into […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/francesthomas.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/francesthomas.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/francesthomas.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/francesthomas.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/francesthomas.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/francesthomas.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17,"href":"http:\/\/francesthomas.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3\/revisions\/17"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/francesthomas.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/francesthomas.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/francesthomas.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}