On 2 June less than one month after my dad died I started training for the 5k Big Fun Run having never run before and having not exercised for years.  Today, along with friends Josie and Fiona, I finished 5k in just under 43 minutes.  Thank you to Josie and Fiona for their encouragement and support and running (and just a little bit of walking) with me.  Thank you to all for their kind donations and especially to Jackie Clark.   All together my friends and I have raised over £2,000 for cancer charities. 

Pink was my dad's favourite colour - he wore pink ties, pink shirts, and probably pink pants.

On 22 October 2009 my dad retired after working hard all his life without a day off sick.  He was looking forward to enjoying his retirement.  He had so many plans - to spend more time with his grandchildren, to learn chinese, to travel, to write a children's book, to research the family tree, to go for long walks in the Dales, to see HMS Victory...  He never did any of these things.  In March 2010, he was diagnosed with bowel cancer.  By the time he was diagnosed the cancer had spread to the liver and the lung.  The cancer was so advanced that it was surgically inoperable and there was no point in chemotherapy.

His condition initially deteriorated week by week, but by April he started to deteriorate day by day. The decline was shockingly quick.  His memory started to go, he muddled his words, he was irritable and at other times detached as if on a different planet, he planned his funeral, sorted out his paperwork and started to give away many of his clothes and belongings.  On Good Friday, we went to Morley for my dad to visit his father's and other family graves for what I think my dad knew was the last time and had fish and chips in the car at Tingley Bar as we used to when I was growing up.  By mid April he found it hard to walk and an effort to climb stairs, he no longer could drive, placed by doctors on a restricted diet, he reverted to childhood, with jelly as his favourite food.  On 15 April I took him to Ripon Races - he loved horseracing and once owned a leg of a horse, "Little Miracle", that never won a race - with my little girl, Georgie.  It was the first time I saw him smile since being diagnosed with cancer.  He started to have a lot of falls and his independence declined.  By early May he needed help with dressing and toileting.  On 3 May he asked to go to a hospice, he didn't want to die at home.  On 5 May I helped dress a very proud man who never said goodbye to his home of twenty years and his beloved dogs, Charlie and Millie.  We knew he wouldn't come back home.  He was transferred by ambulance to St Michael's Hospice in Harrogate.  He died there in the early hours of 8 May at the age of 65. 

He was buried with a kind donation from HMS Victory along with a letter I wrote and Georgie's last present to him, a lighthouse from Flamborough Head, and the Yorkshire Evening Post's souvenir edition on Leeds United. 

A lifelong supporter of Leeds United, he died before knowing that Leeds got promoted.  On 6 May I told him the exit poll results for the General Election and on 7 May I told him there was a hung parliament.  He never lived to see the Lib-Con coalition.  He was looking forward to the World Cup, an event that, sadly, he is not here to see.

Born in 1944 in Oldham to parents from Morley, Leeds and with a background of family who worked in farming, textiles mills and labouring, his dad had worked his way up from office boy to MD of an engineering firm.  He worked briefly in his dad's factory making aluminium castings on piecework. His dad died of bowel cancer aged 55, his sister of cancer aged 3, his brother aged 40 of cancer and his mother the longest surviving dying of cancer at 80. 

He was brought up in North London and Morley, Leeds, where he lived till 1988 before moving to the Dales in 1990.  He studied Law at St Andrews University and became initially a criminal defence barrister before becoming a prosecution barrister.  He was made a Circuit Judge in 1993 on the North Eastern Circuit sitting at Durham, Teeside, Newcastle, Leeds and York but predominantly Bradford.  A keen sportsman as a young man, in later years he watched all sport and loved his golf and football.  And the only man I know who never missed an episode of Coronation Street - recorded even if on holiday.  He leaves my mum, my brothers and me, and his four grandchildren.  A fun and loving grandfather who sadly will not see Georgie ride a bike without stabilisers, her first day at school, swim without armbands...

Bowel cancer can be treated if detected early and is the 2nd most common cause of cancer death in the UK.  Survival rates are the lowest in Europe.  Please help me to support Bowel Cancer UK to save lives by raising awareness, campaigning for best treatment and care and providing practical support and advice.  If you have a strong family history of bowel cancer, please please please ask for genetic testing and regular screening. 

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