Alright Tit by Lisa Lynch

Black or white.

2012-01-24T14:00:00.001Z

One of the trickiest things about trying to organise my life right now – especially with the increase in the number of times we’re having to visit the hospital – is that, inevitably, the days on which we’re at our various appointments frustratingly tend to coincide with the days on which I’m less ill. It’s just the way it has to go, really: you go in for your tests or your consultations or – more

Promises.

2012-01-09T22:39:00.000Z

I’m not the hugest fan of January. It’s not all bad, I s’pose: telly gets better, there’s the FA Cup to rekindle a bit of sporting excitement, plus a crapload of new toiletries to try out… but, those things aside, it’s just never had a lot going for it from my perspective. I have my explanations – the taking-down of everything twinkly and romantic that made Christmas; the tentative peering around

Thanksgiving.

2011-12-30T22:02:00.002Z

Christmas this year had the potential to be really sad. I’d spent the run-up imagining what folk might have been saying about my family and I: the ‘sheesh-what-a-Christmas-they’ll-be-having’ conversations and the ‘cor-it’ll-be-a-difficult-one-for-them-this-year’ observations. And those imaginary folk might well have been right, were it not for my family’s laudable ability to make good – no, to

Christmas crackers: #3

2011-12-22T13:24:00.000Z

I like to think that, last year, you did pretty well out of me at Christmas. In this blog’s first ever guest-posts, I gave you the gift of Chris Ward and Toby Jones: two of my bestest mates who also happen to be writers of an exceptionally talented, incredibly funny, dammit-I-wish-I’d-thought-of-that nature. Despite them having likened their invitation to post at Alright Tit as akin to me

All you need.

2011-12-15T19:56:00.003Z

I was chatting with Mum at chemo yesterday about the blog and how, though it’s a marvellously effective means of keeping everyone posted about what’s going on both health-wise and mind-wise, the people who most need to know that stuff are aware of it already. Yes, they can get the lengthy, considered version here if they so wish but, where the day-to-day realities of The Bullshit are concerned,

Retake.

2011-12-11T19:07:00.001Z

I really hate talking about what I've ‘learned’ for fear of coming off like some wanky X-Factor contestant who refers to themselves in the third person by week four of the finals but, occasionally, these things must be done. Worse yet, though, is that I've written about this particular learning on at least one occasion before which, in our continuing X-Factor analogy, is surely the equivalent of

Eat me.

2011-12-07T23:13:00.001Z

I’m not one for bucket lists. Never at any point since learning of my secondary cancer – hell, at any point at all – have I ever looked back at my life so far and found gaps in the things I’ve done. Go on, then. I haven’t visited every continent, but I don’t need to. I haven’t become a best-selling author, but I don’t need to. Everything I could have hoped to achieve in my life – let alone

Faith.

2011-11-28T18:05:00.001Z

It’s been difficult to know how to get going with this post. After the awful bombshell of the last, and everything that’s had to come with it over the past fortnight, it’s been pretty impossible to figure out how best to construct an update on everything I ought to be filling you in on: something that has, daftly, been keeping me awake at night as much as the reality of the situation itself.

The worry.

2011-11-13T20:55:00.001Z

It started with the worry. Not that worry is something that’s become new to me since The Bullshit came along, of course – I’m a born worrier. I even was as a kid. My Dad’s always had the kind of job in which he’s been required to travel which, when I was little, tended to mean extra presents whenever he returned from somewhere far more exotic and interesting than Derby. My favourite of all the

He's here!

2011-11-12T13:32:00.001Z

My nephew, Corey James McFarlane, arrived on 10 November at 13.09, embarrassingly early and completely gorgeous (just like his dad). I like to think my influence has already been exerted...

Every third Wednesday.

2011-11-03T19:23:00.001Z

I spent the entirety of Tuesday writing a post which, at 10pm after a particularly laboured day, I decided was rubbish and therefore deleted. It’s no big deal; just one of those things that happens sometimes. Anyone who writes must accept that some days it just doesn’t work out right, and be prepared to be brutal with the backspace button. I think the problem with Tuesday’s crap post, however,

Cross purposes.

2011-10-20T15:06:00.002+01:00

I’ll begin today’s post with a confession. Right around now, if The Bullshit hadn’t come along to screw everything up, there’s a strong chance I’d have been opening this post with another kind of confession: that I was shaving my head into a punk-rock mohican. It was early September when I equated the probability of P and I having children as ‘no likelier to happen than either of us getting a

Upgraded.

2011-10-14T13:04:00.000+01:00

Much as I loathe the reason for being there, I’d forgotten how much I relished certain aspects of being at the hospital. There’s plenty I hate about it, mind – the smell, the waiting, the (ugh) other people – but that tragically inclusive feeling of being in a place where folk know your name is something I fear I’ll never stop appreciating. As you may have read the last time I was having

Textual healing.

2011-10-11T17:18:00.002+01:00

As I mentioned last week, there are a lot of questions for me to answer at the moment. The one that’s asked more often than any other is, of course, the simple ‘how are you?’, the answer to which can never be quite as easy, given that it’s never the same one day as it is the next – hell, often even one hour as it is the next – which makes responding frustratingly difficult. This week, however,

Question time.

2011-10-04T13:28:00.005+01:00

If I have a talent for anything, I like to think that it’s rapping my way with words. But, to my mind, not even the most gifted of scribes could find an easy way to tell people that they have incurable cancer. Nor is there an easy way to know what to say in return. And so what comes in response is, for the most part, a barrage of questions. How did this happen? How was it allowed to happen? How

Virtual insanity.

2011-09-27T15:16:00.001+01:00

For the past two nights, I’ve taken part in a ‘writing collaborative’. And, without wanting to toot my own horn too much here, they’ve been pretty big deals. I mean, Jack Black invited me to the first one. In I walked to the pristine white, hangar-like lecture theatre, all pigeon-chested and Smythson-notebook-cocky, ready to blind the likes of Steven Spielberg, Richard Branson, Stephen Fry and

The post I never wanted to write.

2011-09-23T13:41:00.001+01:00

Early on Tuesday morning, I lied to my Twitter followers. ‘Hello,’ I tweeted. ‘I’m going away for a few days.’ But, in fact, I wasn’t planning a week off, nor was I packing my sun hat for yet another of my Judith Chalmers jaunts. In fact, I’d just been told that I have cancer. Yes, have. We’re back to that bastard present tense. And so, since some of you may have noticed in the interim that I’ve

How to be.

2011-09-04T20:08:00.005+01:00

I’m reading Caitlin Moran’s How To Be A Woman at the moment. I’m only a handful of chapters in, but already it’s chimed with me in more ways than I care to admit. The book begins on her thirteenth birthday, a day she spends being chased by insult-and-gravel-hurling boys. Given that my own thirteenth birthday was spent on a plane from Florida and the only put-downs I ever had to handle as a kid

Dave Grohl ♥ Lisa Lynch

2011-08-29T09:33:00.001+01:00

Well, he had to realise it sooner or later...

Nip/tuck.

2011-08-22T18:46:00.002+01:00

‘How did your Mum’s reconstruction go?’ asked a male friend of mine who, for the sake of his cheek colour, shall remain nameless. ‘Really well, thanks,’ I answered.‘And y’know, er… are they okay?’ he asked, endearingly awkwardly.‘Are you asking me about my Mum’s tits?’‘Er, yeah, I suppose I am. But in a very concerned, non-pervy way.’‘Then my Mum’s tits look amazing thanks, mate. I’ll tell her

Ask me anything.

2011-08-12T18:13:00.004+01:00

It doesn’t take a super sleuth to work out that my lack of activity on the blog front might have something to do with what I talked about in this post. But while half of me feels continually guilty about it (and gets unnecessarily snippy when someone asks where the next post is coming from), the other half has, I’ve got to admit, been loving the freelance life. Yes, I’ve rather suddenly gone from

Hello, you.

2011-07-22T16:44:00.003+01:00

You don’t know me yet, nor do I know you, but I’ve been wanting to say hello for a wee while now. I know your blog-reading days are a way off yet, but I always feel a bit daft talking to someone else’s belly, and this is as good a platform as I have for getting a message out into the unborn ether. Maybe your Mum or Dad will read it to you when you’re keeping them awake with your kicking one

A reminder.

2011-07-11T16:20:00.001+01:00

Last week, blogger @billygean tweeted me a link to a story about familial breast cancer; specifically, about some poor bugger who’s had it seven times. As it was, I somehow missed the link and so when, later, Billygean mentioned it, I had to admit the truth that I would be giving the story a miss. ‘Think I’m going to swerve it, pet,’ I said. ‘I’m not giving the c-word any attention today.’ In

A Brazilian.

2011-06-21T19:53:00.010+01:00

Forgive me, dear reader, for not writing a lengthy post this week. Truth is I’ve been up to my eyes in baby wipes, Super Noodles and bacon (read: packing for Glastonbury). But, actually, it’s given me the perfect opportunity to show you something I’ve been doing excited little jigs about for the last week or so: the cover of the Brazilian Portuguese edition of The C-Word. Ain’t it great? I'm

The rhythm of life.

2011-06-14T23:56:00.002+01:00

My morning routine is thus: wake up to the sound of P’s alarm, hide under the sheets while he gets a shower (always sneaking a look over the top when he comes back in the bedroom and drops his towel), tell him he looks handsome in a suit, kiss him goodbye on his way to work, roll over to his still-warm side for a 20-minute snooze, wake up again to the sound of my own alarm, sit up, tell Sgt