Don'tya Just Love London?

Say it With Flowers

Questions of finance are exercising my mind... How am I going to eat and pay my bills and health insurance whilst I work full time on my book?

Photographer Jessica Jones is kindly offering a very special price on her sublime flower prints – a perfect mother’s day gift.

Fresh flowers epitomise the beauty of impermanence, but these delicate flower photographs will endure for a lifetime.

These are signed, archival giclée prints on fine art paper. Image size approximately 10"x12" on paper size approximately 12"x16".

Order now for the special price of only £50.

All proceeds will go to help keep the organic carrot juice, petrol and electric light flowing whilst I canter for the finishing line writing my book.

To order, please email: chemochic@o2.co.uk.

Here is your chance to give real practical support to Chemo Chic.

Blue Ranunculus

Pink Peony

White Ranunculus 1

Black Ranunculus

Brown Ranunculus 2

Bus Rozes

Synchronicity

An email arrives from Mum with a photograph of Tasmanian apple blossoms that she picked by the roadside. Mum says she always carries a pair of secateurs. To my mind that is tantamount to going out armed with intent to commit burglary but Mum doesn’t see it that way at all. “I’ll give you and Nick some secateurs too when you come to visit,” she says.

In Mum’s email there is also a link to an interview with a man called Arnold Mindell. She is keen that I show it to Flossie and Meg. This is what happens. One gets ill and then one’s friends and family all hook up and start going off together on all sorts of wild, esoteric tangents.

Anyway, Arnold Mindell is a proponent of something called Process-Oriented Psychology that my mum is rather keen on. She says that one of his techniques is to ask us to notice anything in nature that attracts or ‘flirts with’ us and then follow where it takes us. As a person who spent much of her childhood with her head stuck under cars trying to talk to cats, I can grasp the concept.

Most of the interview goes right past me. I find the language opaque. But a few things jump out. At one point Arnold Mindell says: “...the unpredictable, the event that only happens once, is itself very meaningful.”

I have noticed that a great deal of extraordinary and unexpected things happen all the time. I have also noticed that there is a high level of synchronicity at work in these unusual occurrences. Here’s one that I hope I never forget. It happened a couple of years ago. It was a drizzly, damp day, much like today. I was feeling miserable and overwhelmed by the pressures of my life. As I sat in my car in bumper-to-bumper traffic on Ladbroke Grove I did not think to myself “how lucky I am to have a nice warm car to be sitting in on a mizzly day like today.” No, my thought process went something like this: “Why do I have to work and pay the bills and get the car taxed and do everything all on my own? It’s too hard. I’m so lonely. It’s not fair!” As the windscreen wipers schlumphed back and forth a small tear of self-pity rolled down my cheek. I looked up with bleak eyes into the queue of tail lights stretching down the hill. In front of my car was a white Transit van. I focused on the number plate. It read: HI I IUV U. A moment later the van indicated right and was gone. I burst out laughing.

Arnold Mindell goes on to talk about illness. He says: “...as soon as someone gets sick, they fight the illness, rather than trying to find the meaning or purpose behind it.” Then: “...it’s almost never illness, but some intense process trying to happen.” It seems to me that he has hit a nail on the head there. I’m not sure how to explain this but I strongly have the feeling that cancer is not something to be endured but rather it is something to be done. I feel that is some kind of ‘superhighway’ from one part of my life to another. I’m not sure that it has a “meaning” as he says but I am convinced that it has a “purpose”. By that I mean that I don’t think it is necessary to spend time and brain cells trying to analyse everything and figure out if it has some sort of coded message for us. Rather, it seems to me that all these occurrences, whether they appear momentous or inconsequential, may be like signposts showing one which way to go next.

Maybe life is a bit like following a breadcrumb trail through a forest? Which breadcrumbs we choose to follow determine which paths we end up on.

Does that make any sense to you?

I’m just dozing off on the couch after reading the interview with Arnold Mindell. And then an unexpected thing happens. The phone rings. Well maybe that’s not so unusual. But it’s Marianne on the other end of it. Marianne was a close friend of my cousin Gaby. Marianne nursed Gaby and was with her when she died. “Marianne, are you in America?” I ask. “No, I’m in London for a few days,” she replies. It will soon be the anniversary of Gaby’s death. As Gaby was dying, it was too hard for the family to accept what was happening. Our denial made it difficult for Gab to fully experience the end of her own life. Gaby really needed a friend like Marianne who was outside the family. Gaby felt she could talk to Mariane about anything without feeling the need to protect her from the hard reality of it. I’ve wanted to thank Marianne for being with Gaby at the end but Marianne went back to America. Now I can do that in person.

My conclusion? Just about anything can happen at any time and invariably does. So be prepared.

An Avalanche of Assistance

I have spent most of my time and energy today dealing with wonderful offers of help from all my friends. I may have to employ a full-time secretary to field their calls and emails.

Justin drops by to help me eat lunch.

He brings a huge bunch of bright yellow chrysanthemums. There is nothing in this world more guaranteed to cheer me up than flowers.

How to Decorate Your Hospital Room

The door to my room opens and my eyes are filled with a vision of sunshine and beautiful flowers. There’s a gorgeous bunch of pink peonies and roses with a card from Nick, an extremely elegant arrangement of white peonies, roses and cow parsley from Cindy, a huge explosion of deep crimson long stemmed roses from Flossie.

Miranda, Nick, Eloise and Flossie are also in the room.

The nurses slide me onto the bed, plump up my pillows and hook my jugular vein up to the morphine dispenser. “Just press the button whenever you need it.” I press it immediately.

Miranda and Nick have stocked the fridge with fresh green juice (fennel and something?) and my favourite healthy sprout salad.

Iris and Jamie arrive with more flowers. There is a carnival atmosphere in the room. Everyone is chatting and ordering up cups of tea from the catering lady. Eloise pumps fistfulls of alcohol sanitising gel from the bottle at the foot of my bed and smears it all over the floor. She then begins scrubbing it all around with paper towels. Once the floor is awash with the stuff she pumps out several more big gloops and starts in on sanitising the doors. "Eloise," says Miranda sharply, "enough of that alcohol gel." "But, mummy," replies Eloise plaintively, "I love the smell." Flossie shoots me a knowing and slightly worried glance.

Jamie fetches some Blu-tack and sticks all my cards up on the wall. Eloise falls asleep so Miranda obtains pillows and blankets from the nurses and puts her to bed in the bath. Iris and Flossie buzz down to Marylebone High Street and return with a clock shaped like a gigantic pocket-watch. They hang the clock on the wall. It wouldn’t look out of place at the Mad Hatter’s tea party. In fact the whole event could be the most surreal and best party I’ve ever hosted. Beneath this avalanche of love and flowers and drugs I feel as though I’ve won the lottery.