Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page.

UPDATE: Date has been provisionally set for Tuesday 15 May!

Anyone who could put up with me for more than 36 years had to be someone special. I couldn’t have asked for, wanted or found anyone who I’d rather have shared my life with. Our sons are a testament to her abilities as a mother (I was away a lot of the time) and those that knew her will know that although she could be a little bit houseproud our house was always a home.

 Pancreatic cancer is a killer.  The doctors will tell you that without chemotherapy you’ve probably got 6 months but with chemo a bit longer. Pat opted for the chemo as she wasn’t ready to hang up her duster but it got her, the day before her 56 birthday and 14 months after diagnosis. She had her moments, who wouldn’t, but she wasn’t going to let a simple thing like cancer get in the way of what she wanted to do. Of course, it did get in the way and the last five or six months were hard work for her. The tumour was interacting with nerves in her back and as well as a constant background discomfort there were many periods of agonising pain that would crop up anywhere. A niece called Pat a formidable women; our District Nurses called her inspirational. I’ll not argue with any of them

 Now, I could be asking here for you to donate to cancer research but I’m not. I would have no say in where or on what research any money would be spent and this is more personal than that so I’m asking for donations to St Catherine’s hospice. They looked after Pat for the last 6 months of her life. Pat wouldn’t go into the hospice for treatment, preferring to stay at home, but that wasn’t a problem. The doctors, nurses and staff at St Catherine’s were always available when help was needed; and it was. As well as helping to prepare Pat for the inevitable they worked incredibly hard to try and alleviate Pat’s pain and to improve the last part of her life. It wasn’t easy, get on top of one specific pain and another, maybe worse would crop up.

 I truly hope you or your family and friends never need the help and support of your local hospice, it’ll be a bad day.  There may perhaps come a day when all cancers can be cured but there are many more illnesses that can kill and so even if a cancer cure is found there will still be people that need palliative care in their last weeks or months of their lives. St Catherine’s and all the other hospices around the country will still hopefully be there and ready to do what they do. However, they are charities. They probably get some funding from the NHS but rely mostly on charitable donations. A couple of months after Pat died St Catherine’s had its funding from the local NHS Trust cut.

 So, as I said, this is personal. I appreciate that St Catherine’s probably isn’t your local hospice but hey, I’m the one that is going to put the effort in here so it’s my choice. What do you get for your money? You get a 61 year old man doing a marathon 28 years after he last did one. This time though I’m not running (give me a break, I’ve had a triple by-pass) I’m going to row the 26 miles 385 yards on a Concept 2 rowing machine. I think I’m good for the distance (but who knows) so to make it a sensible sort of challenge I intend to beat my time set in the 1984 London marathon of 3:37:42.

So, the old boy wants you to dig deep if you can or to dig a bit shallower if need be. I'm not setting a target amount at the moment but will see how it goes. I haven't set a date yet either but it will definitely be before the middle of May - I need to talk to a few people in the village and I want some tourist sponsor money as well. I'll update this page regularly and will post a date as soon as I have everything confirmed - it starts getting warm in May usually and I don't need that sort of extra pressure.

So, please dig as deep as you can and donate now. Thanks.