Before there was Gangsta’s Paradise, there was Stevie Wonder’s Pastime Paradise. I love that song. I listen to it when I catch myself wanting my old life back - when I hanker for the ease of making plans without thinking too far ahead. When I remember the nonchalance I had for any unexplained twinge of pain. It’s a soft kind of longing. Easy to indulge. Easy to believe. But just like looking to the past and wishing to “make America great again”, such thoughts are dangerous. M

"There is a crack, a crack in everything / That's how the light gets in," Leonard Cohen 19 April 2026 is a significant date for me. It marks 5 years from my cancer diagnosis. Reaching 5 years is a major milestone in oncology, it signals a significant decrease in the risk of reoccurrence and the transition from active treatment to long-term survivorship. My specific type of breast cancer is a little bit tricky though. I had triple positive breast cancer (about 10% of all breas

One of the things a cancer diagnosis teaches you is that time is not something you can take for granted. Before my diagnosis I lived with the confidence that my life stretched ahead in a predictable way, and that the people I cared about would be around for a long time yet. Cancer unsettles that belief. It forced me to think about time differently. It made me appreciate time more. I am conscious of it and more anxious about wasting it. But even though I have learnt this lesso

The second Christmas after my treatment finished I was at the work Christmas party when one of the young lawyers asked me if I had any tattoos. “Yes,” I said, and I showed them one of my dots. They looked closer. “What is it?” Without missing a beat I said, “It’s the world from far away.” They smiled, slightly confused, and another of the young lawyers said “Really? That’s kind of cool”. The conversation moved on. But the words stayed with me. When I lay on the radiotherapy