Design for Living

I didn’t watch any of this summer’s Paris Olympics, the Games of the XXXIII Olympiad if we’re being pedantic. As a schoolchild I was able to recite the Olympic host cities from 1896 to 1976: Athens, Paris, St Louis, London, Stockholm … Let’s stop there, in 1912 when, incidentally, the first Olympic medals for literature, music, sculpture, painting and architecture were awarded. It’s unclear if those were spectator events but if they had been and if they had continued into the modern era (sadly arts events were last awarded Olympic medals in 1948) and if they had been shown on TV, then as a kid I would have watched them. I was Olympic-mad then.

Where are we now? 2024. I doubt I watched any of the 2020 Olympic Games either, off-hand I can’t even say where they were. The 2016 Games were hosted by Rio, that I know, but again, they passed me by.

London 2012. Now that was a bit special although in the lead up, I didn’t want it to be, as if that was going to make any difference to the success or failure of the Games. I had become angry after reading Iain Sinclair’s book Ghost Milk published the year before, in which he describes how houses, businesses, allotments, football pitches in East London had been bulldozed aside to make way for that whitest of white elephants, the Olympic Park.

In the gold-rush land grab of flexible futures - hyper-mosques, evangelical cathedral-warehouses (£13.5 million offered to the Kingsway International Christian Centre to move off the nine-acre site they were illegally occupying) - legacy is all-important. It’s like reading the will and sharing the spoils before the sick man is actually dead. ‘The legacy the Games leave is as important as the sporting memories,’ said Tony Blair. And the legacy is: loss, CGI-visions injected straight into the eyeball, lasting shame.

Still, what anger I had in me evidently was fleeting: my copy of Ghost Milk has a bookmark at page 158, not even halfway through. I should get back to it, Sinclair is an observant writer who, like Toto in the Wizard of Oz, continually pulls back the curtain to reveal the truth, however unpalatable.

The opening ceremony of the London Olympics was a tapestry of British bonkersness directed by Danny Boyle spoiled only by the appearance of Paul McCartney warbling his way through The End and Hey Jude. But the highlight was the Parade of Nations, usually a dull as dishwater affair. Indeed, for the most part it was (“Are there really that many countries that start with the letter C?”) but it exploded into life at the very end when, to the sound Heroes sung by local lad David Bowie, the Great Britain Olympic team appeared, led out by cyclist Chris Hoy carrying the Union Jack. A moving moment unsurpassed by any sporting achievement over the following fortnight.

In an interview with the Sunday Times at the weekend, Chris Hoy revealed that he had received a terminal cancer diagnosis and been told by doctors that he had between two to four years to live. At the same time, his wife, Sarra, has also been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. I have few heroes, but six time Olympic gold medallist Hoy is one of them. As well as - literally - being the flagbearer at the 2012 Games, he was, along with the likes of Vicky Pendleton, Mark Cavendish and Bradley Wiggins, one of British cycling’s metaphorical flagbearers. An inspirational figure and yet so grounded, so down to earth. Of his diagnosis he says: “As unnatural as it feels, this is nature. You know, we were all born and we all die, and this is just part of the process. You remind yourself, aren’t I lucky that there is medicine I can take that will fend this off for as long as possible.”

My Mum died from Hodgkin Lymphoma, a cancer that develops in the lymph system. Remembering when life events occurred isn’t particularly important although if there is a pecking order, that ability should ideally be prioritised before being able to recall when say, Helsinki hosted the Summer Olympics (1952). However, to my shame, if ever I need to call to mind the year of my mother’s death I have first to think of when England won the Rugby World Cup. Stick with me here.

There was a Rugby World Cup last year, 2023, in France, didn’t watch any of it obviously. These jamborees are held every four years, Mum passed away early this century, so 2023 minus 20 = 2003, sounds about right. And that’s important because the Sunday that England beat Australia to win the tournament was the last time that I spoke to my Mum, the last time that I saw her conscious. She was in hospital but on pretty good form, laughing away, although I have to say, she emitted a groan, when I told her the result from Stadium Australia, Sydney. She passed peacefully two days later.

It was in her 1969 book On Death and Dying that Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross first introduced what are now the commonly accepted phases of dealing with death: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Thinking back to when my Mum passed away and in the aftermath, I can’t recall experiencing those feelings. Does that make me a bad person? No, it just makes me a person who doesn’t conform to the Kubler-Ross methodology of dealing with death. In the end for my Mum, it all happened very quickly and in front of me.

It’s only recently, 21 years later, practically a generation on, that I’ve begun to acknowledge the loss of my Mum and feel her absence. There have been occasions where I’ve found myself thinking, I’d like to tell Mum that, or show her this. And in truth, these are thoughts that I wouldn’t have had two decades back, we didn’t have that sort of relationship. It’s not just the big stuff - I would have loved her to meet Andrea - but stupid things like looking at rediscovered photographs from family holidays past, or, even stupider, showing her the two sunflowers in our garden which, against all the odds are just starting to flower now in late October. You don't know what you've got until you lose it.

I don’t think Mum told anyone outside close family about her battle with cancer, so we’re talking seven people. For all I know, any or all of my grandparents may have succumbed to cancer. But it was a disease that simply wasn’t talked about or, if it was, only in hushed tones and certainly not in front of children. And, with my Dad being a doctor, doubtless over the years he had to endure more than his fair share of those hushed tone conversations from concerned friends and neighbours seeking advice about their relatives. I can picture him offering quiet words of sympathy, in the circumstances, the only medicine he could dispense. But, at the same time, desperate to end the conversation, to get back to the sanctuary of his greenhouse, where he could tend the tomato plants and listen to the radio cricket commentary.

Our family certainly wasn’t unique in that approach but attitudes to discussing cancer have changed over the last 60 years. Part of that is that we’re all - or most of us are - more open to talking about personal issues, although whether that makes the UK in 2024 a more caring society than it was in 1964 is debatable. But we also talk about it because there has been massive progress in our understanding of cancer, in detection of cancer, in its treatment and in care. All of that has led to improved survival rates and that means more people are around to tell their stories of how they beat cancer.

My Mum always had a small notebook to hand in which she recorded her thoughts, plans, titles of books she wanted to buy, any manner of things she heard on the radio. There’s no order to these entries, one page contains the opening times of Earlshall Castle in Fife, the records chosen by actor Joss Ackland on Desert Island Discs and a brief biography of Scottish geologist Hugh Miller (1802 - 1856). This isn’t the ramblings of a confused mind, quite the opposite, evidence of an intelligent and very active mind.

The last entry in the last notebook is undated. But, by reference to the dates of the previous entries on the page before, my Mum must have written the following words shortly before she went into hospital for the last time, early November 2003:

Carpe Diem
= Enjoy the present day, trust the least possible to the future

Whether that quote from Roman poet Horace was a message to herself or to us, I’ll never know; I didn’t discover it until a few days before her funeral.

In his interview with the Sunday Times, Chris Hoy says “Hand on heart, I’m pretty positive most of the time and I have genuine happiness. This is bigger than the Olympics. It’s bigger than anything. This is about appreciating life and finding joy.”

Enjoy the present day, appreciate life and find joy. For those of us who are privileged to be able to do so, perhaps Horace, my Mum and Chris Hoy have between them stumbled upon a design for living.