Nothing. Everything’s got me to this point and I had to learn lots of things. Maybe I just wouldn’t have been so terrified all the time and I would have got up a bit earlier – I missed quite a few mornings.

Going through a divorce.

I should have known that I might not like what my brain scan showed, just as I should have known that the symptoms of prostatism that were increasingly bothering me were just as likely to be caused by cancer as by the benign prostatic enlargement that happens in most men as they age. But I continued to think that illness happened to patients and not to doctors, even though I was now retired. Twenty months after I had my brain scanned, I was diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer. I had had typical symptoms for years, steadily getting worse, but it took me a long time before I could bring myself to ask for help. I thought I was being stoical when in reality I was being a coward. I simply couldn’t believe the diagnosis at first, so deeply ingrained was my denial.

As I look back on those days, it’s just like a dream. The only thing that bothered me was that we waited so long to make this protest and to let it be known wherever we go that all of us should be free and equal and have all opportunities that others should have.

Last week, lying under a hat on Folkestone beach.

Like you are seen.

Angelina Jolie, because she really seems to get shit done.

Paprika Plains by Joni Mitchell.

This morning, at the last school assembly of the year, because those tinies are so adorable.