Alright Tit by Lisa Lynch

For tomorrow

2013-04-05T22:38:00.001+01:00

As you might have guessed, it's been a rough few weeks here. For me, it's been a bewildering and exhausting time of grief, joy, meeting new people and, above all, learning more and more about who my incredible friend was. Was? Excuse me, IS. Because I can't help but think I fibbed in my last post when I said Lisa is still here with us. The truth is, that's a massive understatement. The last few

Thank you

2013-03-31T17:58:00.000+01:00

Lisa's family and I have received so many messages, cards, letters, notes and tweets of condolence during the past two weeks. They have induced many tears, much laughter and sustained us in such a way that we can't adequately convey our gratitude and thanks. You are all wonderful, wonderful people. You'll all be pleased to hear the 'festivities' lived up to Lisa's request for an 'inappropriately

There is a light and it never goes out

2013-03-13T19:21:00.001Z

I've been batting some words around in my head for the last two days searching for poetic prose to do justice to my world, my rock, my best friend, my lover and my wife. Alas, there will never be an easy way in which to tell you all that Lisa passed away very peacefully on Monday, March 11th, 2013. In a way that only Lisa could pull off, she left us in exactly the way she had planned (a year

Holding the fort

2013-03-01T10:34:00.000Z

Well, as you may have gathered, it's been a crappy few weeks for Lisa, and while she recovers from the latest The Bullshit™ has to offer, she's asked me, Jonze, to fill you all in on what's been happening. And so, while stepping into her shoes is a bit scary (I look silly in Louboutins for a start), I'm not missing an opportunity to sneakily take over (well, borrow) the reins. Before I do that

The grand plan.

2012-12-24T15:18:00.001Z

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Not enough words.

2012-10-16T11:15:00.002+01:00

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Zen and the art of the air rifle.

2012-09-24T16:41:00.002+01:00

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A birthday wish.

2012-08-06T13:55:00.002+01:00

Dear family and friends, Later this month it’s my birthday. I’ll be 33, like a long-playing record, or the temperate at which water boils. Or, interestingly (/uninterestingly), the one age I’m likely to share with Sgt Pepper. (In cat years, like. I’m not 4. Just to clarify.) Anyway, yes, birthday. There was only one thing I wanted for my birthday: to make it there. And, provided I can

Lisa Jane.

2012-07-27T19:15:00.001+01:00

There are two Janes in my life, one of whom you already know: my Mum. I suspect that, after one book and four years of blogging (four years!), you’d have a pretty good picture of Mum by now, but for those without the benefit of 49 months’ worth of my life story, allow me to paint a quick picture of the woman who brought me into the world, arse-first. The first thing to say about my Mum is that

A matter of time.

2012-06-08T18:19:00.001+01:00

Ordinarily, when I’ve been away from social media for a while, it’s a sign that all is not well. As any of my mates will tell you, I have a somewhat useless habit of ‘going under’ for a few days (all right, weeks) when things are particularly shitty, generally waiting until someone forces the problem out of me before I do anything about it. This last month or so, however, has been rather

Whaddya gonna do?

2012-05-23T16:42:00.002+01:00

As anyone following our respective Twitter feeds will know, P and I watch a LOT of Sopranos. We came to it late (which, I’m trying to convince myself, is the new ‘I was there from the beginning’) but, since discovering its genius, we’ve fired through that box-set at a rate of knots. This latest run through (at which we’re a tantalising one disc from the end) is, I think, our fourth spin of the

Coming out.

2012-04-25T20:34:00.001+01:00

The day before yesterday, with my husband at work, I got dressed, picked up a set of keys and left the flat, shutting the door behind me. Y’know, that thing – that ordinary, mundane thing – that you do every day. Boring, innit? It says a lot about who I’ve become since my secondary diagnosis, then, that this most uninteresting of everyday occurrences was one of the most exciting things to happen

99 problems.

2012-04-10T10:45:00.000+01:00

The problem with blogging about an illness is, when you haven’t posted for a while, people begin to worry. And the problem with getting to that stage of a period of non-blogging is that you then start to put pressure on yourself to post as quickly as possible, while – if you’re as hopeless an over-thinker as I – endlessly analysing the reason you’ve found yourself without the impulse to blog. And

Memories.

2012-03-15T19:50:00.001Z

Lately, I’ve been having some very exciting discussions about the BBC’s adaptation of The C-Word. I’m loath to ever say too much about what’s going on with the drama, for fear of jinxing it at a time when there’s still plenty that could get between it and your telly screen, but suffice to say it’s moving along verrrry nicely and, frankly, is making me feel like rather a lucky bastard. This

Marching on.

2012-03-07T18:17:00.000Z

You don’t need me to tell you how much The Royal Marsden hospital has meant to me over the past few years. You don’t need me to tell you about the excellence of its staff, the brilliance of its services or how it’s second to none when it comes to innovation in cancer care. You don’t need me to tell you that my medical team have thrown everything – both physical and psychological – at my

If I can make it there.

2012-02-29T15:52:00.003Z

As I’m sure any cancer patient would admit, one of the biggest mind games that comes with The Bullshit is the nigh-on-impossible task of continually having to separate what you can understand from what you can accept. I suppose in many ways it’s like the forgive/forget thing. I mean, I can just about forgive Take That for their horrendous cover of Smells Like Teen Spirit, for example, but 17

Blackbird.

2012-02-17T10:23:00.002Z

I'm getting another tattoo. I appreciate that opening one’s blog post with such a revelation probably isn’t the best way to break this news to those who’ll disapprove (actually, who am I kidding – it’s the perfect cop-out way to break the news to those who’ll disapprove), but there we have it. It’s happening. The choice has been made. Get over it. Yes, that means YOU, head-shaking little brother.

The wait.

2012-02-02T16:29:00.001Z

Waiting rooms are dangerous places. Sure, they might look innocuous enough but, over the many months I’ve surely spent sitting in them, I have in fact discovered them to be pretty bloody dicey. I’d even go so far as to say that they’re actually bad for your health – especially so in hospitals where they’re every bit as perilous a place as a gorilla enclosure at quarter-to feeding time. Don’t be

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