Hello Everyone! Happy New Year and welcome to my smart new website. This website was a birthday present from my son, Andrew, who is a senior web developer for a major online retail group. It’s terribly cool and I’m going to have to up-my-game to do it justice. But it‘s so clever that hopefully it will give you a reason to read my story and maybe get something out of it?

I’m not going to ramble on about my cancer, ‘cos even I find it a bit tedious. Unless you’re actually ‘dodging bullets’ it’s not too exciting (that might be the wrong word?), although I’m not looking for combat, live ammunition in my case, is most definitely on the cards! Suffice it to say that I’m two chemo sessions into my six/eight month programme and in a marginally upward trajectory with several surprise twists and complications. Still very tired, no energy and breathless AND a pain in the a*** to my long suffering but ever-loving wife Jane, who smoothes my way like the finest steam iron.

But being as described above, virtually housebound, I find I have a lot of thinking time and there are few stimuli to be found on TV, Netflix or Amazon Prime, unless one wishes to hone one’s skills as a hitman, drug dealer or money launderer, although my crystal meth laboratory is coming along nicely! (If that last bit doesn’t compute, you’ve got to get on Netflix). I’m afraid the fantasy stuff, like Game of Thrones, just leaves me cold with CGI overload and the certain knowledge that dragons really don’t exist. Also, the colossal weight of American popular ‘culture’ thrust upon us by US media has made me understand just how that orange gibbon, Donald Trump actually gained the presidency.

If you’ve got nothing better to do I strongly suggest you read a new book; ‘The Fifth Risk’ by Michael Lewis. Lewis is an American journalist whose credits include ‘The Big Short’, (about the scandal behind the global financial crash). I apologise in advance for Lewis’s awful US grammar and lazy, skimpy style of journalese, it irks me, but I have to forgive him because of the astounding avalanche of facts and evidence he assembles on the Trump administration,I use the word in its loosest defintion. This is not a hatchet-job on the quiffy idiot, he does that so well himself. This book assembles a huge and diverse list of unassailable facts on his corruption, cynicism, arrogance and pomposity, leaving the most powerful country in the world, the USA, unprepared and vulnerable and frankly blind-sided by the surprising fact that Trump Won! No one was more surprised to be president than Trump himself. If you want to see an example of someone so utterly out of his depth in a role he never imagined he would occupy, just re-run the last two years news items of White House blunders, sackings, conflicts, tantrums, stupidity and vulgarity. Watch the rictus smiles of his Republican allies, the grey embarrassment of seasoned Washington civil servants and gnarled media journalists. This is the NON-fake news that somehow the world has myopticaly tolerated and what America has become under Trump’s leadership and “administration”. Read it and weep. No, really… Weep! This affects us all because Trump tacitly represents us, the West. And I can’t imagine anything more dangerous.

Are you good at confrontation? No, I’m not thinking of going toe-to-toe with some huge lout in the street, I’m talking about confronting stuff that’s important, even vital, to you? We all get choices in life and we also get placed in situations we can’t control. I’ve always been a ‘fix it’ sort of bloke. I can’t abide, flat tyres, dud lamps, mucky windows or listless people who just can’t progress because a decision needs to be reached. – OMG! What if I get it wrong…..? I’m constantly baffled by the vital life choices some people make. Choice of life partner? Choice of career? Health Choices? “If something’s worth doing it’s worth doing well”, has always been an aspiration of mine, if not always carried through with the enthusiasm with which it was commenced! Weigh up the facts, discuss the risks and rewards, establish a clear objective, remove rose-tinted spectacles, and if the needle’s in the 66%+ area bloody well go for it. Oh, and don’t give up when the going gets tough, because the going always gets tough and there will also be that totally impossible situation that no one even considered. And of course there’s that other guy who lets you down, or acts like a prat, or displays criminal tendencies, or turns out to possess none of the skills his CV assured you he had in copious levels. Such is the path of endeavour and indeed life itself. For me, when something needs fixing, painful and scary though it may sometimes be, just do it, don’t whimp out, don’t say maybe later, bite the bullet, grit your teeth and sort it – You’ll be glad you did.

Here endeth today’s riveting text from ‘Old Sicknote’, as I’m affectionately known at my local tavern. Sage words I hear you mutter, but please be assured that, if I’m spared, there will be more such pearls beaming their light into the dim recesses of your collective existences, for which I shall make no charge whatsoever. Other that is, than to waft a foppish finger at the ‘Donate to the Christie’ button at the top right of this page. Should a surplus groat be found in a forgotten trousers’ turn-up, down the back of the sofa, or tarnished and forlorn under that pile of white fivers you stashed in that biscuit tin in the garage, what can I say? Place it carefully where it will do some good keep irritating buggers like me alive. Go on! You know it makes sense.

Lots of Love ❤️