I recently started writing for a new website. Spectrum Culture is based in Portland, US, and focuses on music, film and books. Its editor approached me after reading some of my work elsewhere on the web. After penning a short blurb on the latest Stereolab album for Spectrum Culture's 2025 music roundup , I offered to review Our Secrets Are The Same - a new book by Simple Minds' mainstays Jim Kerr and Charlie Burchill (with author Graeme Thomson) about the Scottish band's his

As the season of Lent begins again, it's like slipping on my aged blue woolly jumper. Probably about 15 years old, the jumper is stretched and saggy and, following Lisa's frown, I tend not to wear it in public. But it's often my go-to for warmth and comfort. This week, after a fun family Shrove Tuesday evening enjoying savoury and sweet pancakes, I realised Lent, like my tatty pullover, was my go-to season. As I woke on Ash Wednesday, I welcomed Lent's reassuring presence and

When I was a kid, possibly a teenager, I found out that a friend of our family had cancer. This man appeared old and frail at the time but was middle-aged, probably younger than I am now. I remember watching him and feeling like I was looking at a ghost - someone who would not be in this world much longer, someone with one foot in the next world. This made him seem distant and out of reach, as I looked on with a mixture of youthful pity and curiosity. Now, over 30 years later

I'm four chemo tablets into today and feeling pretty good, considering. The sun is spilling between the part-closed curtains into the spare room, my 'Fall' playlist is swirling out of a blue-tooth speaker, and the only side affects I currently feel are a warm wooziness in my head and lead-lined heaviness in my body. It's been an interesting six weeks since I hopped back aboard the chemo train following an 18-month break. Overall, this treatment - which includes ten days of L

This week has had that in-between season feel: I'm peeling open chocolate Christmas coins while the roofer on the house opposite works in...

It's been many months since I've felt the urge to capture a day in words before it fades into a sea of memories. Wednesday was one of...

As I haven't posted on here for a month or two, there's a lot to catch up on. When I trained as a newspaper journalist in the 1990s we...

Take good care of your feet, Pete - Brian Wilson Only grief permits newness - Walter Brueggemann I'm starting my first post in a while...

One thing we've learned over the past two years is that we usually see life more clearly in hindsight. After a flurry of blog posts...

I'm facing a wall mirror as I type this in Macy's downstairs bedroom, and catch a glimpse of myself. It's surreal and a bit surprising to...

The other day, Macy arrived home after a tour of Lichfield's charity shops. She was excited to show me the second-hand Mercury Rev CD...

Yes, I know it's been less than a fortnight since my last post! But quite a lot has happened and I also promised to try and blog a bit...

It appears the cancer may have finally woken from its nine-month slumber. Lisa and myself went to Burton Hospital on Wednesday for my...

Discombobulate is one of my favourite words. It sounds just like it feels. To be discombobulated is to have lost your sense of balance or...

I'm sat in the lounge while the rest of the house snoozes (except for diligent Dan who is at work, freezing somewhere on the side of a...

Yesterday, I preached at church for the first time since my diagnosis. Even though I've written about my cancer journey at length here,...

And so the reprieve continues - five months since I last had chemotherapy, I'm still off treatment. Following my last post (apologies...

I've been off chemo for over three months now - by far my longest treatment break. Some days I feel like a ship unmoored and adrift in a...

It feels like a lot of mileage has been covered - literally and metaphorically - since my last post almost three weeks ago. Since then,...

Tomorrow (Friday) Lisa and myself will board the 7.14am train from Lichfield to London for an appointment at the Royal Marsden hospital...