68. Oh My, The Food!

Okay, so I've got my wheatgrass shots and my vitamins and I'm doing my best to keep to a ultra-healthy diet but even the fear of the ego will allow a festival celebration. In fact, despite the early panic when we got to Cyprus, it (and I) were so happy to let go for the day.

The Christening feast was half-way across the island at a magnificent beach restaurant called Kalamies where we were thrilled to be sitting with Tim and Natasha and Ariadne and surrounded by Greek folk who know exactly how to have fun. And the food just kept coming...

I love Greek food particularly kleftiko and I ate for England. The only 'shame' was no fish on this particular menu but I even had a slice of chocolate cake. Oh boy! It's been a while...

There were gifts for the guests, flowers everywhere—and we got to take some back to the hotel which was lovely—and the beach was golden sands with a bright blue sea. Quite a difference from Dartmoor.

I spent most of pudding time sitting on the beach, glorying in the sunshine and the water and so incredibly grateful that I got here; incredibly grateful for Lion's constant support and incredibly grateful for the love that has surrounded me on this journey.

We drove away at about 4pm but next day was a feast day too. A picnic on Konnos beach at Ayia Napa with just Tim, Natasha, Ariadne and a few close friends. We were not to worry about bringing food so we didn't and the fare was great big bread rolls full of tuna and chicken and both savoury and sweet pastries.

I was hungry, so I ate 'em and appreciated them. Yummy. And I thought how presumptive it was of me to have assumed there'd be salad or something not quite so glutinous. I've begun to get used to taking my own food on journeys because there's really nothing out there which is gluten-free or ultra-healthy. Even the salads at M&S etc need a good examining for contents if you're on a restricted diet.

But I did crave my salads and vegetables. And out here I've grown an addiction for fresh orange juice even though I've brought my vitamin C powder. One day of feasting was great; two days perhaps not so good. However, the beach was lovely, the company excellent and the sunshine, glorious.

It's always worth remembering two of my favourite teachings of Jesus:

"It's not what goes into the mouth of a person that defiles them, it's what comes out of their mouth that defiles them" Matt 15:11.

And

"First clean the inside of the plate and the cup and then the outside will be clean" Matt 23:26.

Diet alone won't cure a life-enhancing dis-ease. Yes, it can stop it and even reverse the symptoms but you have to keep to that diet forever unless you get to the root cause and heal that. If that diet stops you from living in your deepest heart and soul, where is the benefit in that?

I had another worry-ego-chunter about not having chemotherapy the day after the feasts because I had a bout of physical exhaustion that looked a bit like a relapse. And because when anyone finds out about the dis-ease that is always the first thing they head for: "Are you having treatment?" Whenever I have a worry-ego-chunter, my energy drops existentially but, this time, my guidance was having none of it.

"God's chemotherapy is Divine Love. You are receiving Divine chemotherapy. Shut up."

Yes. That's good enough for me.

How do I become Divine Love? It's inherent; you just have to drop the barriers against it and that's the whole of this journey. For me, it's in the gratitude—and in the blessing. The blessing of everywhere I go and everything and person, creature and spirit that I encounter. And blessing you, reading this right now.

Thank you.

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68. Cyprus Christening

I'm not a maternal kind of person. I'd have puppies like a shot but I've never had a child of my own.

Lion has two grown-up children, Chris and Karen. Their mother died when they were in their teens (I can only imagine the horror of that) and we have a good relationship in a peaceful, slightly distant kind of way. Neither Lion nor I come from cuddly got-to-keep-in-contact families but the bond is still there.

When I told my brother about the diagnosis, he—the hotshot international lawyer who I see about twice a year and who had, just a moment before, been slightly testy at my insistence on talking with him on the phone—said 'shall I come? Shall I come now?' He was just about to go into a high-pressure meeting 200 miles away at the time but all the veneer just falls off at the vital moment.

But Tim is our son ... and Ariadne is our grand daughter. Not a speck of blood contact but Tim's face when he saw us and his open arms to embrace us was what it must be like to have 'real' children.  And Natasha, his wife, acknowledges us as parents/grandparents as well. Tim's blood mother wasn't there—I didn't know if she would be and was quite prepared to take a back seat if necessary. His father, as mentioned previously, was murdered in 2006. They had been divorced since Tim was two years old.

The Christening, in the tiny but beautiful St. Paul's Anglican Cathedral (which doubles as church for several other denominations nowadays too which I think is a very good idea), was short and lovely. Just the Baptism with the minister explaining to the agnostics what was going on, including the fact that the font is by the church door as it is welcoming the child into the community.

The ceremony included the traditional 'renounce the devil' aspects which modern people find so hard. Again, for the mystic, it's fairly simple; it's about dealing with the demons of the psyche inside so that you can be a clear channel for the spiritual guidance of your Godchild. Ariadne's Godparents are young and I don't know what level of faith they have but it was interesting that Tim came up to me afterwards and said, 'When I was a child I would go and hide in one of the dog kennels (his mum is a breeder) and phone my Dad in the dark to ask him all sorts of philosophical questions. I am so happy that Ariadne will be able to do that with you.'

The other significance, for me, was that this Baptism—the recognising of a new life in the world and in the Christ consciousness—was on my birthday. Three hundred and sixty two days after I found the first lump. It does seem like a rebirth; a new responsibility and a new start. This day was a day to be born again.

I don't usually write about the signs and portents and all that that I get but I'll risk it this time. I went up to the altar after the ceremony while photos were being taken and prayed for everyone there and for the church and all who come to it. And I asked that I might live until Ariadne's 21st birthday and be a source of spiritual guidance to her should she ask for, and need it.

Very clearly, I got '25 years.' 

Thank God for waterproof mascara.

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66. Cyprus

Tomorrow we are heading off to Birmingham, taking my Mum home after her week's visit, and the following morning we head off to Cyprus.

We wouldn't be going without your kind generosity and I do so very much appreciate it. We both desperately need a holiday and some sun ... and to be visiting Tim for the first time since he and Anastasia moved to Cyprus two years ago is such a treat. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

It seems so significant that a year minus two days since I found the first bump, we are going to a Christening of a much-loved son's daughter. Ariadne's Christening is on my birthday, in the cathedral in Nicosia.

Tim's father, Jon, was Lion's best friend for 18 years. He was murdered in 2006 saving the life of an elderly lady who was being attacked in their block of flats in Croydon. Lion and Tim had met at Jon's second wedding and known each other off and on through more than a decade. But I first met Tim when we picked him him at Kings Cross station in London four days after Jon died. He had taken the train from his home in Edinburgh and we had driven down from Worcestershire to pick him up and take him to identify his father's body.

This tall red-headed lad came out of the station and smiled nervously at us and climbed into the back of our car where Puzzle, our 11-year-old beagle (an experienced mother), pressed her warm furry body against him and, when he opened his arms to her, climbed on his lap to love him.

He held her with his head buried in her fur all the way to Croydon and, when he had stood with me for a moment looking through the glass at his father's body, said 'yes, that's him,' he walked out, he took her lead from Lion, who was waiting outside, and walked her round the block.

He stayed that night at the home of another friend of Jon's just half an hour from his Dad's home, David got him comfortingly drunk on good wine and food and put him to bed. Lion and I stayed in Jon's flat (which Lion and he had shared in earlier days) and searched for his will. As we hoped, it left everything to Tim.

For two days, we talked with police, sorted stuff out and made plans and by then, Tim and I loved each other. Maybe it was the war spirit but I have no physical child of my own but if I had, it would have been Tim. Karma perhaps—past-life stuff—I don't know. But his Christmas cards read 'Mum and Dad no. 2'

We were with him at the Old Bailey as the man who had killed his father sat in the dock, we talked of the whys and wherefores and we loved his visits at Christmas and New Year.  And when he and Natasha got together he wanted us to meet her before they flew off for their new life together.

So, on 26th of April I will hold the grand daughter I never thought I would have in my arms and I will give her my grandmother's pearls with a note telling her their provenance and how Margery Hayward met George Crosbie when a Zeppelin came down in Suffolk at the end of the First World War. He was guarding it and she rode out on her bicycle with a raincoat over her nightdress to see what on earth had happened that had lit up the sky in flames.

They say that blood is thicker than water but soul-connections are stronger even than that.

N.B. This isn't what I intended to write at all this evening—but there you go. I was going to write about the love and healing and forgiveness between my mother this week. But that will have to wait for another day.

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