Raise it. Run it. Beat it.

Today I ran the Hopetoun House 10k for Cancer Research with ‘Team Mairead’. We managed to raise almost £10,000 including Gift Aid supplements by the end of race day, and more donations are being made. I am so pleased. It was amazing to see so many of Mairead’s friends and family out supporting her fight with cancer – and people who you haven’t spoken to in a few years donating online. Thank you to everyone who contributed to the team’s fundraising.

I spent last week down in London with Mairead, as she is is recovering from an operation to remove the tumors. It’s incredibly frustrating to want to help someone so much, but to not have the power to fix things there and then. Time has been pretty strange for the past few months. Sometimes things go very quickly, sometimes painfully slowly. Mairead is very brave – she really is an amazing, wonderful and strong person. I hope that the recovery goes quickly, and as well as it can.

Coming up

Sorry for being so quiet on this blog recently – our Internet was disconnected at home, and there is a strange problem preventing me from authenticating with WordPress on mobile broadband.

I’m down in London for most of this week visiting Mairead who is in hospital. Next weekend I am running 10k for Cancer Research – you can still sponsor me and the team.

Over the next few weeks I’m putting together a few tech-related things which I have been working on over the past month or two… so watch this space.

1898: Great-great Grandad on film

My Great-great Grandad was golfer Willie Fernie. He won the Open Championship in 1883 at Musselburgh Links.

One of the first known film of a golf match features William Fernie. It was shot in 1898, and has now turned up on YouTube:

Can you spare some money please?

In May my girlfriend Mairead was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer.

The past few months have been difficult, tiring and strange for Mairead and those around her. It’s been tough for her physically and mentally – but I have been proud of the way she is coping with the illness and treatment.

A team of Mairead’s friends and family have decided to get together to raise some money for Cancer Research UK and show solidarity with Mairead by running the Hopetoun House 10km in October. I will be part of that team. I am also running the Glasgow half-marathon in September.

That’s why I’m asking you for a donation to help fight cancer.

Cancer affects all of us at some point in our lives, whether it’s directly, or through those that we love. Please do give generously – thank you!

Christopher Hitchens in Vanity Fair

Christopher Hitchens writing on the Topic of Cancer in Vanity Fair. The article struck a chord, and is worth a read:

You’ve heard it all right. People don’t have cancer: they are reported to be battling cancer.

Myself, I love the imagery of struggle. I sometimes wish I were suffering in a good cause, or risking my life for the good of others, instead of just being a gravely endangered patient. Allow me to inform you, though, that when you sit in a room with a set of other finalists, and kindly people bring a huge transparent bag of poison and plug it into your arm, and you either read or don’t read a book while the venom sack gradually empties itself into your system, the image of the ardent soldier or revolutionary is the very last one that will occur to you. You feel swamped with passivity and impotence: dissolving in powerlessness like a sugar lump in water.

This is what I didn’t know two months ago, but know now. When Mairead was diagnosed with cancer I had very little idea what chemotherapy even entailed. The action you can take to help someone who is suffering seems so very limited.

I will be running a 10km in October to raise money for Cancer Research. I don’t have the charity giving page set up yet – but if you want to give then you can contribute to Andrew Reeves’s Fundraising Page, as he is doing the same race.

Cancer will affect all of us either directly or indirectly in our lifetimes. Please give generously. I will be asking again.