Alive

There’s a documentary coming up next weekend: “The culture Show – Alive: Rankin Faces Death” (10:10pm, Saturday 13th July, BBC2), about the photographer Alex Rankin and his most recent exhibition “Alive in the Face of Death“. Not light subject matter, I grant you, but interesting, and taboo busting, which as you know is a big thing for me.

The Alive project happens to involve three people I “know”.
Phil Kelly juggles the twin challenges of a young family and myeloma, as I do. Phil set up an “under 50s” group for people affected by myeloma, which has helped me enormously.
Lou Page (pictured) was a friend of a friend, who died of bone cancer a few weeks ago. Her writing and talking about living with terminal disease has inspired me, both for her honesty and for her ability not to be consumed by anger.
Ben Brooks-Dutton, I don’t really know at all, but he lives very locally to me, has a young child and works in PR, so we share some superficial aspects of lifestyle. When his wife was killed by an out-of-control car it made the papers and put my own issues in perspective.

I know Dial M has a mixed readership. Some are looking for practical stuff on myeloma, some just checking I’m OK. And that’s cool – all are welcome! But those who (like me) find this journey opens up all sorts of other complicated thoughts, might find “Alive” interesting.