How it was bc (before cancer)

May has always been my favourite month. When tree and leaf, grass and flower are lusciously on their way to their annual peak of existence. The perfection of fresh unsullied beauty, saturated colour and richness of texture – just before it all goes over the top and slides through June into the dry and hazy dustiness of July and August.

This year, on one particularly perfect and beautiful May morning, I wound slowly northwards through Hyde Park and across the Serpentine, past the huge trunked oaks with thickly fresh green leaves and marvelled at the moment. It felt as though the whole of the park and indeed the whole of London, this Spring, was preparing, with me, for Aimi’s wedding.

A year earlier Massimo had taken her to Venice for the weekend. I said, teasingly, "Good place for a proposal – it’s very romantic". Don’t hold your breath Mum said Aimi with slight annoyance.

Two days later, an excited international phone call announced the engagement!!. Massimo had gone down on one knee in a Gondala (very tricky I understand) and popped the question. It was slightly dark, and Aimi who hadn’t a clue what was coming, and who thought he was larking about had said "Get up dipstick". "Is that a yes or a no?" said Masimimo producing the sparkling solitaire diamond ring he had had made at Hatton Garden three months earlier.

The year had followed at a fairly measured pace, mainly due to the fact that my daughter is mature beyond her years(and mine) and an efficient and organised young woman who knows exactly what she wants and finds a way to get it without apparent effort.

I was placed in no doubt that my role as Mother of the Bride was not as organiser, but as helper and supporter, and the more I agreed with everything and learned to keep my mouth zipped up, the smoother the journey became.


It was the most beautiful wedding (I suppose every mum says that) and the happiest day of my life. Old friends had come from afar. Dr John Hughes who had delivered Aimi at the Red Cross Hospital, Taplow came with his stunning wife Lynn. Beppie, our first au pair when Aimi was two came with her husband Bunno from Holland. Godparents Leapy Lee and Jenny Lee-Wright (Benny Hill Show) came from Majorca and Cobham and so many of our most treasured friends and relatives mingled under the same roofs for a few blissful hours. I felt as if I had gone to the cinema to see a romantic love story and suddenly realised I was in it!

I was in peak form having lost weight at weight watchers, excercised to firm fitness with the new Power Plate system and had a dazzling new smile having had my front teeth re –done. I read the first reading, took most of the photographs and made a speech at the reception thanking John for bringing Aimi "safely into the world and into our lives" and I thanked Massimo and his parents for the happiness they had brought into our family.

Life was good. I felt really well. I had no worries and my daughter was happily married to a loving and hard working husband who would take care of her and my darling granddaughter Mia who adored him.

Of course there was the anti-climax after the wedding. For a few weeks I felt rather directionless and off track but I fixed my feelings, as usual, with business and a flurry of activity, spinning plates that didn’t really need spinning; hours on the internet lead me from Google site to Google site like flotsam on a river. In retrospect these times are not wasted. I remember the late astrologer, Patrick Walker telling me that the barren or depressed times in ones life when nothing seems to be happening and one feels stripped of all colour, creativity, and direction, were really the most important times because, as with the fallow field, the best crop follows the barrenness and in fact, the soil is being fertilised under the surface and prepared for new growth.

And so, as in nature, I had, blossomed and peaked and was now lying fallow and being prepared for the next chapter.

They say that 90% of what you worry about never happens and I believe it may even be 99%. But watch out because, it seems to me, that that 10% happens out of the blue when you are not looking and not worrying.