Kevin

This is bizarre. Next Friday I was supposed to be going to the cinema to see Ikira, a film about a man dying of cancer. Instead I'm going to a pub in St Alban's to see Kevin, a man dying of cancer.
 I met Kevin on a charity trek on the Great Wall of China. Climbing the Wall was on Kevin's bucket list so his friends got together and paid for him to go, and in particular raised the money for the massive insurance cost. In the end they covered their costs and raised thousands more for charity.
 You see, Kevin was diagnosed with terminal cancer some time ago and has already gone two years past his sell-by date, as he put it. I don't know how old he is but he's probably around 50 and has young kids. Imagine what that must feel like. Better still, don't.
 Because you would end up feeling sorry for him and the one thing Kevin is not, is sorry for himself.
 In China he impressed us all with his demeanour, good humour and, incredibly, his fitness. Although the cancer meant he had half the lung capacity he used to have, he was still able to get up and down the strenuous sections of the wall better than most of us, a remnant of his days as a regular marathon runner.
 He made the rest of us ashamed every time we complained about the odd blister or primitive toilet facilities or repetitive food.
 The group of strangers who became friends during 11 days on one of the wonders of the world included firemen and nurses and people who have raised thousands and thousands for charity. And yet to all of us, Kevin is probably the biggest hero most of us will ever meet.
 So next Friday a few of us from the walk are going to meet in St Albans where, if we're lucky, Kevin may just about get through a couple of hours in the pub before he has to call it a night.
 And while it may seem to be a morbid thing to do, many of us know we're going so we can say goodbye to Kevin for the last time. I guess it's not that often you get the chance to say your goodbyes to someone before they go - usually you do it over the coffin when it's too late.
 As I did with my mum, who also died of cancer, it is - from a purely selfish point of view, admittedly - more than a little liberating to be able to say goodbye properly.
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Right, enough of all this. Things that have cheered me up this week. My son may well get the part of Ben Gunn in the school production of Treasure Island. This cheers me up for a number of reasons. One, it's only his second term of school and this is a major boost to his ego after failing to make the football team. Second, although the school is in East London, it's a private school and one of the reasons he may get the part is that he 'does' a good Cockney accent - well, I can't have my kids being too posh can I?
So, hopefully he'll be making his acting debut soon. But I won't be pushing him into stage school. That's just too Essex, even for me and I suspect his future lies elsewhere.
Of course it was Robert Newton as Long John Silver that first did that accent all pirates now have. Why are pirates called pirates? Because they arrrrrrre.
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Friends have been asking me, as a Spurs fan, if I'm against the club moving from Tottenham to the Olympic Stadium at Stratford. In truth, most of the guys at the Lane seated around me are against it. They cite the tradition of being in N17, the fact Stratford is in East, not North London, that the Olympic Stadium will be flattened anyway for a new one so we don't get the site as it looks now, and that it's a bit close to West Ham.
Personally, I've always felt Tottenham as an area is a bit of a shithole. Every week as I walk through the estate to get to the ground I see another lamp post festooned with bouquets and grammatically incorrect messages of sympathy to the latest 'gangsta' stabbed to death there.
And seeing as no one in the ground on match day actually comes from Tottenham, I don't give a fig for the geography. Everyone there comes from Hertfordshire, Essex and beyond - and Bill in the next seat but one to me comes from Bromley.
So, with Stratford being half a dozen stops on the tube from where I live, it suits me.
As far as I'm concerned, sell off White Hart Lane, flatten the Olympic Stadium, build a new one in Stratford and let's go for it. Best of all, it will really piss off West Ham supporters. It's a win win situation.
Thanks for reading and by the way, you can vote for this blog by clicking the button on the right. Stroll on....Solly