The Princess of Wales visits The Chase community hospital (Image: Getty)
Christmas markets are back in the UK so while you’re working out whether you need an £8 mulled wine or a watery hot chocolate, topped with squirty cream and marshmallows for just £2.30 more, I think it’s acceptable to talk about new year’s resolutions. Every year since I was diagnosed with incurable bowel cancer, back in the summer of 2023, I’ve replaced my old resolution of “drink more cocktails” with “go outside at least once a day”.
The easiest days to achieve this are hospital days when I’m out early for a nerve-wracking scan, a blood test, or a morning spent having chemotherapy. The difficult days are when the days become nights not long past 4pm, when it’s really cold and the rain covers you like a blanket soaked in misery.
On those days it’s easier to sit inside and forget that resolutions exist, and maybe only venture outside to put the bins out. On those days I’ll have the words that Princess Kate said this week about nature and her cancer journey firmly in my mind.
She’s spot on when she says there are good days and bad days. And she’s precisely right when she flags just how important it is to get outside.
In my bit of the world it’s difficult to find a great expanse of nature, as my town is famed more for knife crime and tower blocks than wooded groves and babbling brooks.
But this just means that instead of being vague about going outside at least once a day, maybe next year a resolution should be to embrace the small wonders of the natural world.
There’s a tree in my street which is packed full of little birds as spring arrives. I could spend a few moments there listening to them sing.
There’s a delightful display of purple flowers near the entrance to my cancer hospital. If I got an earlier train I could spend more time looking at them instead of having to rush past for my first appointment of the day.
There’s an allotment near the bus stop I stand at after I’ve got scan results and need to work out what to do with the rest of my day. I’m usually preoccupied with my thoughts but looking at the people digging might prove to be a nice distraction.
The differing colours of leaves as they fall to the ground and become partly a street blanket remind me of my connection to the natural world. They are dying but after them will come new life.
And there’s a Scandinavian designed raincoat in my wardrobe that I bought five years ago but have never worn. I purchased it for a trip to Cornwall where, I’m surprised to say, it didn’t actually rain, so this winter could be the time to see if it’s worth the money I spent on it.
So instead of the cocktails of old, with quite a bit of rum and maybe a smidgen of pineapple juice, I can say the cocktail for happiness will be one part going outside, mixed with three parts paying attention to what I see there.
This means I may be taking a lot more photos to look back and make myself smile on tough days when I just want to be sick. And I’ll definitely need to track down some gloves in the forthcoming Black Friday sales.
The first step to all this, as Princess Kate says, is to find a sense of hope in the darkest of times. For me this will start with planting two bulbs in pots on my windowsill tomorrow, as flowers give me hope after a tough day of chemotherapy.
And it will continue by me hoping that my cancer doesn’t spread too quickly, so I’ll still be alive when the bulbs begin to sprout and flower in the spring. I have my fingers crossed.
