Life is what happens when you're busy diong other things.

It has been a while since my last blog. What to say? I had a life changing experience in the jungle and then decided to study. You know how it is...
The first year of study is now at an end, give or take a few essays. Have I learnt much? Undoubtedly.
The most useful thing I learnt is that anyone can do it and it's got everything to do with attitude.

A. and I were walking  into the refectory one Tuesday lunchtime between classes. Passing the cash line machine, A. spied a note sticking out of it. "Somehow I am always lucky", she declared. She was too. It was a £20 note. "I'll treat you to lunch sometime", A. laughed.   She told me that she had stepped on an envelope in the M&S restaurant a few days before going home for a holiday a few months before. "I just picked it up and it was stuffed with Euros. It paid for my holiday.."  There were other examples and I told A. she should try the lottery...

During this Access to University year there were many little trials and successes. Being in the same class brought a comraderie and a closeness there would not have been in other circumstances. A. and I were sitting close to each other in Maths and both volunteered to be weighed for a body mass calculation. A. was a little lighter but not much. Why is this random memory so poignant now?
Even then A. complained she was losing weight. She wasn't feeling like lunch, toyed with it, often she felt sick.
Her boyfriend left her, she was distraught at the betrayel.
She started wearing baggier clothes. She kept losing weight. Then started to miss classes.

The Easter holidays were long this year. We were away from College for nearly a month.
I had a wedding to help plan and was quite pre occupied. A. changed her phone and I somehow didn't get her new number. I asked L. and C. what happened, then interpreted their evasive answers as A. being depressed about her ex.
I wish now I'd told her to see a doctor.


How strange life is. We had that lunch last week. We talked mostly about the diagnosis.
I'm starting literature studies in September.
A. is starting chemo therapy this month.