.........from notebook to blog......a vast space in which to say what's happening in the Cockle tent.

Today my step-son Lucas screamed for me to climb aboard his hospital bed as his second radiotherapy loomed. I climbed. Sliding up against his warm body we locked arms. And as  Dad Peter and Chinniah the nurse talked upbeat nonsense the two porters glided Lucas and I down to the basement.
Treatment number two completed.

He's sleeping now and I'm watching as his pursed dry pink lips blow and suck air out and in to his body. Such a charming, funny and life affirming young man whose constant colourful antics leave everyone in a state of awe. Walking with a painfully wide gait, (so typical of Downs Syndrome) hearing not good, partially sighted due to brain tumours pressing on his optical nerve and a slow cognitive process all kinds of sick stuff and still he can't stop loving.

He loves me even though I'm old. But according to Lucas I'm 'new'.I'm 63. And that's one of the reasons I dig him. Not the only reason. He uses furniture polish like fly killer, I mean it goes everywhere. See a spec of dust? Kill it.


Lucas is 19, Downs Syndrome and lives with his father Peter, his mother Eileen, a cat called Len and me, May, his step mother.
We live in a house which we call The Tent. It's falling down. It's walls are as thin as well rolled out pasta dough and raindrops fall onto the kitchens worktops. An abundence of stains.

He's having his obs done now by nurse Ally, and as she slots the thermometer into his armpit he yells saying 'it's too funny'. And wheres my fish and chips? And whens it daytime?
As his head resembles a fresh newly laid egg and his skin feels as rough as sandpaper Lucas is the joker.
The essential turn on the cancer ward.