Like a leech it waits for me to push my way through the mud of the week until I turn up for medication. A row of dentists chairs I take one Chemo Chemo Chemo All in a row And down the other side of the room too. She gets the leech thing out of its sterile bag now the mouth is wide open as it comes towards me wanting my blood. Now getting its pleasure by gorging on me I can tell by the silence. And all the while guided by a small and gentle hand so skilled at concealing its real intent. She even laughs a bit to distract me But I’m not fooled. ... View more

I have a photo on the wall of the little room where I like to sit these days - reading, writing and surfing – that makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck every time I look at it. It’s not a medical x-ray or an ultra sound or a CT scan or any one of a hundred of those damned things I’ve looked at in the past couple of years. It’s nothing like that at all. It’s my photo of Tiger Woods on the 18th green at Hoylake in 2006. He’s holding the Claret Jug up in the air with one hand and saluting the crowd with the other. Red shirt. Black pants. The Open Champion again. And I took the photo. It’s been three years now and I still can’t quite believe I was there. It’s got to the point where I do enjoy it being a lovely dream most of the time, just for the fun of sitting down in my chair and finding myself looking at the photo and realizing all over again that it is in fact real. Am I waking up or starting to dream? And does anyone else care? It’s a little game I have learned to play with myself. There are other games. But I won’t tell you about those. I don’t know how they end. Rolling that word around my tongue, like a lolly - a ‘Hoylake’ - is one of my first golfing memories. It was 1967 and the Argentinean Roberto Di Vicenzo, whose name was equally exotic, was the story of the tournament. I read all I could about it in the newspapers. I bought every glossy magazine. I imagined how it must be. For nearly 40 years the lolly stayed in my mouth, now and again releasing a sweetness of sound and flavour. Hoylake. So I went there. In 2006 Hoylake was so baked it had given up being green, then given up being brown and had settled for being a silver haired old man. A wise one, too. Only a wise golfer could keep firing shots through that wind, half of them heading for Wales, the other half heading for Ireland. For four days. So that’s what he did. Then Tiger walked round the corner of the old race track that has become the practice fairway, towards the final green. The tents, the pointed flags, the encircling rows of seating, the waves of crowded emotion; all blended together on the Wirral, the Dee Estuary, ‘cross the Mersey. It became in that moment a medieval jousting tournament. And then came the noise I’ve thought about since 1967, when I first heard of the Open, Hoylake and Roberto Di Vicenzo. It started as Woods approached the green. I could hear it for the first time. It was real at last. So I watched and cried and stuck my camera up in the air with all the others and took this wonderful photograph. I’ve guarded my Hoylake story for three years. I’ve sat in my chair and looked at my photo. I’ve lain in bed crying because I felt so sad that my joy in it would never be shared like this. Or so I thought as the chemotherapy went on and on. Maybe it’s just that some things take time to settle into a form that can be communicated. And they need a purpose for doing so. Well, now I’ve told the story. I’ve lived to tell it. I guess I can hold that trophy up in the air. ... View more

Dear Tom I decided to type this as my handwriting isn’t great. I find myself preparing Action Memos for Jacinta and then tearing them off the top of the pad and scrunching them up. I start again and wonder what’s been happening to my muscles, co-ordination, timing and sense of audience. I have been writing in a journal and it’s pretty awful to look at. After a day or so I can neither recognize nor remember my own words. But that’s OK in my journal at the moment. It’s more important to write it down than to have it presentable. The other day I was cleaning up my desk, which over two long years had taken on the aspect of the Western Front in mid—winter. I took great pleasure in collecting together all your lovely letters. They were all there, with one envelope that gave me your address. They were embedded with lots of cards and messages from our work colleagues, in piles at various places along the precarious ridge of desk-top. Still recognizable in this ruin were about fifteen preserving jars (for tomatoes, chutneys and olives), three sets committee papers posted to me out of courtesy and a treason of dispatches and coded messages to the pathology industry, the health fund and Medicare. I have disassembled this war ruin and replaced it with my drawing table. On that I have now placed, front and centre, a pencil sketch of one of my Italian slippers in very soft calf. I think it’s the right foot. It’s a much nicer desk top now. And I can compose at the keyboard and stay away from handwriting. On top of my computer table, as I write, is your perfect sketch of a lily pond, complete with frog’s eyes and sword grass and the text: “Look! An old pond. So much activity! Age is never dull.” I have framed it and delight in it often. Do you remember it? And do you remember writing that “each day can be a universe of itself”? I can reach out and touch what you mean there. It’s like – now. That has been such a torturous realization for me. I am bogged down with 53 years of habit, expectation, poor judgment and hurt as I carry on my back the things I know I want to keep dry and free of mud. I am learning to put the backpack down and enjoy having with me the many things that I value. I can make a day out of that. Yes, each day is a universe in itself. From all the letters and cards, Tom, that’s what goes into my backpack. I am feeling self-conscious here, because this is the first writing I’ve done other than in my journal. I am mulling and trawling and shining a torch into dark corners, sensing that something is about to happen soon. I’m getting interested, getting ready to put some energy into writing. Getting my mind clear to compose sentences that ring. I’m trying something out on you. I hope that’s OK. I had a very difficult second half of 2008. I stopped treatment in July and spiralled into depression until late in the year. It’s a very strange thing that happens to a lot of people when they are untied from the medical industry and set adrift downstream to fend for themselves. Do you know the movie The Shawshank Redemption? A character in the movie is released from prison after a long-term sentence. He doesn’t deal well with life on the ‘outside’ and hangs himself. I don’t feel that despair, but I recognize the feeling of being exposed again, without all the physical, chemical and emotional attachments that had become my life for so long. And then I realised it’s something that happens to cancer survivors. It’s a ‘normal reaction to an abnormal situation’ as the cancer network mantra goes. One thing that has come out of it for me is that I’ve entered into discussion with my hospital about starting a writer’s group there this year. They think it’s a wonderful idea. I realised that I needed to be in a writers group with other people mulling and trawling and shining lights into dark corners. I couldn’t find one in Melbourne and so I came to the conclusion that I had better start one. It’s the first time I have backed my own perception of things in a long time. It feels great. I have got a positive reaction from the hospital and I’m looking forward to it immensely. It’s a bonus that the CEO of the hospital is the daughter of the man who started World in Action and devised and produced the Seven Up documentary, which was then taken over by Michael Apted. My universe expanded hugely when his daughter said “As it happens…” Wow! My idea is that there’s a place for a writer’s group, not as a therapy, but because it’s therapeutic. I don’t want to “cure your cancer by writing” or “resolve your issues in a supportive group” because like Susan Sontag, John Diamond and Pamela Bone (whose books I’d highly recommend) I have a growing intolerance for the New Age view of illness, cancer in particular. I forgot to mention earlier, that one of the items on the desk-top was a plastic bag full of apricot pips that I’d received in the mail some time in 2007. (See Susan Sontag’s Illness as Metaphor for a complete destruction of the apricot pip therapy – it’s been completely and utterly discredited for 30 years, but I still got some in the mail!) What I am interested in is the additional string to the bow of recovery that writing can provide. I’ve been researching it and there’s a wealth of material (lots from within the New Age paradigm, of course) to draw from and get something happening here in Melbourne. The journal writing and personal writing cultures are rich with material to draw from to mull, trawl and shine… For me it’s also a reconnection with writing. I have published a fair bit (two books and lots of newspaper and magazine credits) but have steered away from it for more than a decade. It’s time to reclaim it as mine. And you, Tom? I was disappointed (selfishly) when I heard you were retiring and it seemed to happen very quickly. But we agreed to keep in touch and I’m interested in how you are travelling. I’m sure there has been a significant process of change going on for you. And a lot of that can’t readily be communicated. I imagine it’s something that you would need to call your own shots about, fiercely protecting your instincts as each day presents you with the proforma for ‘retirement’. I know Mac feels that tension very deeply since his retirement. Nevertheless, how is life on the ‘outside’? Regards to your family. H. January 2009 ... View more

I couldn’t move for days. I lay there under the saline bag and prepared myself carefully before every breath. But most of them hurt anyway. Broken ribs are painful. Then I couldn’t move because of the morphine. They gave me another drip line and a bag of dreams. I could pump as much as I wanted into myself. I had no reason to move. Bad news was waiting: kidney failure; spinal disintegration; chemotherapy; hair loss; gout; a stuffed immune system; and a few other things besides. All ready and waiting for when I returned to earth. So I decided to stay away as long as I could. I would reach my hand out for the drip line and feel my way up the tube till I got to the plastic dial. It was like adjusting the electric blanket before lapsing into sleep. ‘Lapsing’ is not the right word, though. With morphine the fun was only just beginning. It’s the slowly floating down that’s so good. You forget you can’t move. You transcend movement; levitate on the spot. And when you think you’re about to land you suddenly take off again for another circuit. Another frolic. Just for the fun of it. High-jacked. That seemed to go on for some time. In between flights it wasn’t so pleasant. I felt a weight on my chest, pushing down, squeezing me into the mattress, constricting my breathing. I thought of the two miners trapped underground for two weeks in Tasmania, waiting to be rescued, with the rocks squeezing them and a dead body beside them. I scared myself awake with these imaginings. Not knowing when it would end. Not knowing how it would end. Would I be rescued from beneath these rocks? I’d reach out and feel for the tube again. The questions were always there, though. How do broken ribs heal? And if they heal, how do kidneys heal? And my spine that’s made of Swiss cheese, how would that heal? And, anyway, how does cancer heal? Does it heal? I lay there in the departure lounge thinking of these things. Thank God for the morphine. ... View more