#MHAW: It's good to talk...

It's Mental Health Awareness Week and Twitter is awash with a fantastic array of initiatives and awareness campaigns, as well as with some commendably open and honest personal accounts of individuals' battles with mental health. This is something that can affect any of us at any time and I am not afraid to admit that I have struggled - and am still struggling - with my own mental health in the wake of my cancer.

I was lucky, my cancer was caught early and my treatment has, by all accounts, hopefully cured me. However, this terrifyingly close encounter with my own mortality has left my emotions scrambled. I now - three months after surgery - have insomnia, often find myself feeling inexplicably low, unsure what should come next, where I should be focusing my energies and on the verge of tears at the most unexpected of times. I'm not sad though, I know how lucky I am and am incredibly thankful for the life-saving treatment and compassionate care I received. However, I still have the spectre of 'why?' bouncing around inside my skull.

'Why?' Is such a pointless and ultimately destructive question. It's sole purpose is to make us question things, more often than not about ourselves, our actions and the things we cannot control. Why did I develop prostate cancer, when the odds of doing so at my age are 10,000 to one? Why did I have to go through six tortuous months of tests before my diagnosis? Why did this happen to me when I have two young children to take care of? Why do I now have to live with the fear of my cancer returning?

The world's most destructive word?

But 'Why?' only ever leads to fear and that can be a difficult hole to dig yourself out of. The more you dwell on it, the deeper the hole gets and even when you try everything possible to take your mind off it, a glimpse of a cancer advert on the telly or the word 'cancer' in a newspaper is enough to send you back down the hole.

I know I need support to come to terms with what has happened to me over the last year and, with the support of my wife, I'm going to make sure I get it. I don't have the answers, but I'm hoping that those who do can help me to draw a line under this chapter of my life and get on with living the rest of it, as a husband, a dad and a cancer survivor.

My advice to you, if you're struggling to come to terms with your diagnosis, treatment or life after cancer, is to reach out too. There are some fantastic organisations out there that can provide counselling and psychological support, over the phone or in person.

As Bob Hoskins once said; it's good to talk.

Go green for your prostate!

I am a self confessed tea addict. I have been for as long as I can remember and it will be a cold day in hell before I go more than about an hour and half without a brew. However, over the last six months the previously unthinkable has happened; as a result of my cancer I have ditched traditional tea in favour of green tea. And you should too, for the sake of your prostate.

Like Popeye giving up spinach in favour of carrots, Superman developing a taste for Kryptonite or Mary Berry deciding that baking's a bit shit afterall, switching away from black tea and its milky wonders, just wasn't something that I had ever considered possible. However, today - six months after ditching the PG - I can now only drink the green stuff, and I have no regrets whatsover. It's tastier, it's healthier and it's saving me a fortune in milk.

My indoctrination into the world of green tea began around three months before I was diagnosed with prostate cancer. I was in the middle of a series of blood tests to measure levels of prostate specific antigen (PSA) in my blood. A raised PSA level can be an indicator of cancer, so I consequently read as much as I could on the subject to see how I could naturally lower my PSA level and improve my overall prostate health. This, it transpires, includes eating lots of tomatoes - ideally passata - pomegranates, olive oil, oily fish and green tea.

Go green, for your prostate!

I subsequently threw myself into this prostate diet and made my way through gallons of passata and a school or two of mackerel, neither of which particularly phased me. However, the thought of sacrificing my cup of tea for something I had only ever previously had in a chinese restaurant, filled me with dread. But the benefits were clear, green tea is packed with B vitamins and antioxidants with antibacterial, anti-viral and a whole host of other health benefits, most of which are missing from black tea. There has also been a great deal of research undertaken by white-jacketed boffins who know their way around tea bags and human organs and, although there is a fair bit of contradictory evidence as to the long term health benefits of green tea, most seem to conclude that it is better for you than black tea. Apparently it comes down to polyphenons, which can slow the progresion of prostate cancer and improve prostate health, and green tea has lots of them.

I was committed to making the change and endured a period of cold turkey in regards to traditional tea, eyeing Typhoo-drinkers with hatred and daydreaming about steaming mugs of hot tea with a dash of milk. However, my taste buds changed within a couple of weeks and I began to love my cups of green tea just as much as I had always loved the tea of old. What's more, it took half as long to make - bag in cup, pour on water, done - and eliminated the milk issue that had previously made me reluctant to accept tea from the over or under pourers in my office.

As for my prostate, it turns out that I had cancer anyway, so the tea switch was unnecessary in the end, but I'm nevertheless glad that I changed my cuppa and I'd urge you to do the same. There's not a great deal men can do to look after their prostates, but if drinking green tea, sticking a can of passata in your spag bol and the occasional mackerel sandwich can reduce your risk of a disease that kills more people in the UK than breast cancer, surely it's worth it.

Anyway, enough of all that, time to put the kettle on.

Why every parent secretly hates the sunshine

It’s the hottest early May Bank Holiday on record and as I write this I am sat outside in the garden, the children are playing blissfully on the climbing frame and I have an ice cold Coke at hand. All is well with the world, except it wasn’t about half an hour ago.

Unfortunately, the arrival of sunshine and of temperatures that send millions of Brits to A&E with undercooked sausage-related food poisoning, means that parents across the land are obligated to perform a ritual that sends blood pressure soaring; the stand-still-while-I-put-suncream-on-you nightmare.

Applying Factor 50 to your offspring is possibly one of the most stressful things you can do on a hot day. Right up there with dressing your children on a snow day, it’s one of those thankless tasks that parents have to endure. However, unlike clothes for the winter – which should ideally stay on for the duration of your child’s exposure to the cold – sun cream requires day-long attention, commencing with the drama of the initial application.

Headache in a bottle

Sun cream, for some reason, doesn’t rub into children’s skin. It’s like spraying them with chip fat, you liberally apply it all over their skin and then spend half an hour wiping it around their bodies before giving up and letting your children out into the sun looking like albinos. Then there’s the issue of staining. For some reason the manufacturers of sun cream have never managed to make a product that, once mistakenly dolloped on to your child’s favourite T-shirt, is easy to wash off. The result is that my children’s summer wardrobe is essentially a collection of oil stained rags.

Next up, once you’ve gone through the stress of applying the suncream, you have the pressure of wondering when you need to top it up. How long does it last? No one knows. Does sweat decrease its sunblocking capabilties? Probably. And what about the swimming pool? Surely once they’ve been swimming in the sea or in the hotel pool – with all the other children, meaning that by midday there’s an oil slick covering the pool that’s a danger to passing seabirds – I have to reapply? The bottle says no, but my parental instinct says yes.

Is it worth it? Why can’t someone invent a better solution to sunburn than suncream? We’re meant to enjoy the sunshine and be grateful for the nice weather but come on, let’s all be honest for a moment, 10 minutes is probably enough. Life is so much easier when it’s cloudy and overcast.

And if anyone is prone to disagree with me, let me say just one further word in relation to the suncream nightmare: sand.

Point made.

Why you should never watch Star Wars with a seven year-old...

As a child of the late seventies, I grew up with Star Wars. I collected the action figures, I role played epic  space battles with my brothers, I used sticks as lightsabres and I had the obligatory Star Wars duvet cover and lunch box set. The Star Wars universe captured my imagination and the magic of George Lucas’s creation has stayed with me throughout my life, reignited at regular intervals with the release of new films that allowed me to momentarily tune out of real life and escape into the fantastical world of the Star Wars universe anew. Well, that was the case until about a year ago anyway, when I introduced my son to Episode IV and everything changed.

Introducing your children to Star Wars is a rite of passage, or so I thought. For years I had wanted to indoctrinate my eldest into this new chapter of his film-viewing life, carefully choosing the right moment to do so. Prior to this point his movie experiences had been restricted to Pixar stories of talking cars and perennially lost fish; soft, cuddly and entirely good films that were a feast for the eyes, but bereft of any decent baddies or heroic human characters that he would want to emulate in the playground. At seven, and as he was beginning to tire of Woody and Buzz, I thought that the time was right to dig out the DVD of Episode IV, close the curtains, turn up the volume and open his eyes to a whole new galaxy, far, far away.

"I should have got a Land Cruiser!"

In my mind I had pictured this moment as being one where the boy sat quietly, absorbed in wonder as the saga unfolded before him and the names of Skywalker, Kenobi, Solo and Vader became implanted in his imagination as seeds of a lifelong love for the franchise. In reality, it was like watching a movie with a highly irritating waist-high robot. Question after question after question tumbled out of his mouth as he deconstructed every scene, picking holes in the characters, creatures, vehicles and spaceships, like a 70s TV detective disassembling the murder suspect’s seemingly watertight alibi. He was ruthless and unforgiving, caring not a jot for the sentiment of a movie that had meant so much to me and, worst of all, a lot of what he was saying made perfect sense.

“Why’s Luke’s speeder floating? What’s the point? Why doesn’t it just have wheels, it’s only a little bit off the ground?”

It was a valid point. Luke would have surely saved himself a few quid if he’d just got himself a Toyota Land Cruiser and made do.

“Why do the stormtroopers wear suits of armour all the time, even when they’re not in battle?”

Again, fair point. Do stromtroopers sit watching telly in full battle gear, or is there such a thing as casual wear for the Empire’s army of faithful soldiers? I’d never thought about that until now, it’s ridiculous.

“Why’s there no blood when you get hit by a laser?”

“How can R2D2 go upstairs?”

“Why’s Obi Wan Kenobi wearing a dressing gown?”

“Why’s Jabba The Hut so dangerous, he’s a big slug, you just have to run away?”

“What’s in the middle of the Death Star?”

And perhaps most unexpected of all…

“Where’s Chewbacca’s willy?”

I may well have watched the film a hundred times, but in one viewing - his first viewing - my son had seen things I had never seen before. Chewbacca is, by all accounts, naked - bar an over the shoulder number that seems to serve no purpose -  but despite being tackle-out 24/7, we never see the wookie’s undercarriage, a fact that my boy spotted within 10 minutes of Chewie’s first appearance.

This incessant questioning continued throughout the film and subsequently through Episodes V and VI. However, despite turning into the grand inquisitor, he quickly developed a love for the films, ensuring that the questions continued long after the credits had rolled?

“If C3P0 is so clever, why can’t he walk better?”

“How do the houses in Cloud City stay up in the air?”

“How did the Ewoks build all their weapons so quickly?”

“Why does the Emperor want to kill everybody?”

“How does Darth Vader breathe and talk at the same time?”

It seems that while the children of today struggle to take things at face value, the magic of Star Wars can thankfully live on. Unfortunately, however, it also means that the magic of Star Wars merchandise lives on too and my penalty for introducing my seven-year-old to it all is that I’m now forever building Star Wars Lego with him. It’s a tough life. Now, where did we get to on the 7,541 piece Millenium Falcon?

The Joy of Beavers: Every dad's need-to-know guide...

It's unfortunate that the word 'beaver' is often associated with female genitalia. It's even more unfortunate, with this in mind, that the most junior section of the scouting movement in the UK is called Beavers. Explaining to other adults that you habitually spend your Monday evenings surrounded by hot and sweaty Beavers therefore often leads to awkward silences and a rapid change of subject.

Beavers, however, is one of the best things that has ever happened to me. I am an Assistant Beaver Leader and I have been for the past two years, joining with my son - when he was six and I was considerably older. At first I became a parent helper, for the primary reason that it enabled my son to jump the waiting list, but I was also keen for him to join the scouting world. I had fond memories of my own experiences as a cub - mostly getting very dirty and throwing gooseberry yogurts at my mates - and helping seemed like a great way to share in it all with my son too, at least until he was old enough to be embarrassed by my presence.

My parent helper status soon changed to that of Assistant Beaver Leader and, when the colony's existing leadership team decided to move up to Cubs, I rapidly recruited two friends with similarly aged offspring and together we fast-tracked our way to leadership of the Monday night colony.

As you are reading this I am imagining that you are forming a picture of me as an Arkela-type figure with a proud history of Scouting and an intricate knowledge of Lord Baden Powell's ethos and beliefs. Either that, or you've got me down as a wannabe Bear Grylls, complete with an Evian bottle of my own urine. The truth, I'm afraid to say, is that neither I nor my new colleagues had a clue about scouting when we joined our little group. Indeed, you could say we were ging gang clueless. However, we were pleased to discover that the anorak and thermos image of scout leaders past is no longer true of the modern scouting movement. The ethos is simply around providing new learning experiences for youngsters in a fun and engaging environment, letting them try things that they may never have tried before and safely allowing them to push the boundaries of their comfort zones. 

For the adults, meanwhile - who are all unpaid volunteers - the experience provides something completely different. Leading a group of 18 six to eight-year-olds is as rewarding as it is challenging. Their attention spans are minute, so all your sessions have to effectively be broken into five or ten minute chunks, but their fascination and enthusiasm is infectious. Sit a group of five Beavers around a table and tell them you're going to allow them to light a candle with a match and you'll be rewarded with five of the broadest grins you'll ever see in your life. You're giving them freedom and responsibility that they may never have experienced before, at home or at school, and they soak it up like sponges.

Of course leading brings with it responsibility and a duty of care - together with a baffling amount of administration when it comes to awarding badges - but none of that side of leadership should ever put anyone off trying it for themselves. It is a genuine privilege to be charged with a group of young people for an hour a week and I think every dad out there should try their hand as a parent helper and see how they get on. 

Scouting is the UK's largest mixed youth organisation with 450,000 young people currently enjoying the new adventures that it brings. However, every colony, pack, group and district is run by volunteers and it is only through them, giving up their time, that your children can enjoy all the incredible things that Beavers, Cubs, Scouts and Explorers can give them. So my rally cry to you all is to join me and the army of volunteers out there and discover just how rewarding modern day scouting actually is.

Dib dib.

Introducing the all new CluedUpDads

This on-off blog began back in 2010 following the birth of my son. For a time I was an ardent blogger, enthusiastically recalling the episodes in my youngster's life that often left me exhausted or exasperated, usually both. It was intended to be nothing more than a bit of fun and a vehicle through which this frustrated writer could vent his frustrations.

However, with the birth of my daughter in 2012, the pressures of work and the realisation that my time was no longer my own, the posts became fewer and further between, eventually becoming annual - which made this blog about as appealing to its followers as hayfever. CluedUpDads had effectively gone into hibernation.

Over the past year though, my life has taken a wholly unexpected turn. In December 2017 - seven months after my 40th birthday - I was diagnosed with prostate cancer.

Not the 40th I had anticipated

I had endured countless tests, scans and biopsies, but despite suspecting that I was going to be told I had cancer, the news still struck me like a sledgehammer. I was a husband and a father, I was 40, my children were seven and five, how could I have cancer? It seemed so unfair, so out of my control and so frightening.

Today, however, as I write this - four months after that date in December - I can say I am technically cancer-free. I have had the surgery I needed, I have come out the otherside and I can honestly say that cancer is not always the demon it is portrayed to be. Thanks to our brilliant National Health Service, it can be conquered.

My road to recovery continues, but as I am now back at work, running (slowly) and keen to get on with life, I thought it about time that I really relaunched CluedUpDads, not solely as a vehicle to recount all the times I find myself arguing over missing shoes and empty school bags, but also as a place to talk about prostate cancer. There is so much to say, so many things I have learned and so much that I would like to share, to breakdown the stigma surrounding men's health issues, to help other men in similar situations and to demystify prostate cancer for men in their forties.

So please continue to read, follow, like, share and spread the word in any way you can. Let's enjoy our forties, as loving dads who love life.

Take care,
Tim

Birthday party politics

Few things are more awkward than standing on the sidelines of a child's birthday party with other parents, watching your offspring gallivant around a sports hall and attempting half-hearted conversations with fellow party chaperones who don't want to be there just as much as you.

What's more, there's no escape. All the children have them and therefore the scene on recurring weekends is the same, with the same group of parental hangers-on willing the time away at soft play centres, football pitches, lazer quest, trampoline parks and, worst of all, at community centres with happy-pill-filled children's entertainers.

Never is the emotional experience of child and parent more different than at a birthday party. For the child, this is the pinnacle of weekend entertainment, a heady cocktail of prescribed fun, sugary food, loud music and party bags. For the parents, it's two hours of pretending you're answering work emails on your phone and forcibly smiling as a 20-something youth in an ill-fitting Spiderman costume tells the children to shout louder.

Then there's the politics of the party food. Just as the children are at their sweatiest they're summonsed to the table and presented with an insane amount of food. There's usually enough sandwiches to feed the lunch crowd at M&S Covent Garden, as well as assorted dishes of sausages, crisps, biscuits, cakes and the well intentioned mum's bowls of carrot sticks and cucumber.

Ignoring everything that isn't covered in either icing or sugar, the children pile their plates high while the parents help with opening bags of crisps or sticking straws in cartons of drink. What happens next is unspoken, but universal. Every parent in that room is thinking the same thing; there's no way on God's earth that these children are going to eat all that food. I want it, but can I be the one to dive in? No one else is, everyone is holding back. Surely someone will take one of the 4,000 ham sandwiches remaining on that plate? It's lunch time, I'm starving and I haven't even been offered a chocolate finger! I'm going to do it. That sausage roll has my name on it. There's half a bowl of Frazzles over there begging to be eaten. Sod it, stuff you lot and your 'I'm too good for this children's food' conservatism, I'm doing this for the hungry fathers out there. Oh, no, hang on, it's too late, Mum and Gran are tidying it away. Damn you unspoken children's party etiquette!

As for party bags. with the obligatory slice of cake and kilo of Haribo, great idea. That's just the battle I need in the back of the car on the way home. Not for me a serene journey with exhausted child napping in the rear seat, I'd much prefer a 20 minute shouting match in which I'm repeatedly told I'm the worst Dad in the world.

Same time next week everyone?