Thank you for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page.

You will know Jon has spent the past seven years living with bowel cancer. Although there have been difficult and sometimes frightening times, we feel so fortunate to have received effective treatment and care which has enabled the five of us to deal with Jon’s cancer as a part of life and our path through it.

The trek is the most arduous for the patient of course and there are routes much more difficult - and shorter - than ours. Our dearest friend Phil set out on a difficult course with this disease only last year. In their weekly phone conversations, he and Jon are as brothers in arms: they share their love and support for each other in sometimes a gruesome tone yet always combined with sure understanding and accompanied by great swathes of humour and laughter. Val and I will listen in the background as they sip their wine and continue on their mission to put the world to rights. A mission which has so far spanned 38 years!

During the past twelve months, Dame Deborah James so valiantly pointed out to us the critical importance of ongoing research into managing, controlling and curing bowel cancer. Jon and I are also mindful of George Alagiah’s recent return to treatment.

I complete my 60th year with an acute awareness that many people do not and huge gratitude for the years of life I have had. You will have played some part in these six decades; we will have enjoyed happy moments creating precious and fond memories to return to. Thank you for being a part of my life and thank you for your gift in supporting a charity most significant to me.