| Onuoha on loosing his mum on 18:16 - Mar 19 with 3574 views | numptydumpty |
| Onuoha on loosing his mum on 18:01 - Mar 19 by Juzzie |
I did the poo test a few months ago. All OK.
Best of luck Phildo, hang in there. |
Money side of things irrelevant at such a time.
Some people can't function at all at a close bereavement
Lost both my parents close together but going to work was my salvation at the time. Ie focusing on something else.
All money means is you just as affected but in a much larger living space
My uncle was a millionaire but died relatively young in his 60s. Am afraid the money clearly obviously means nothing at such a time.
Green eyed monsters is probably relevant here. |  |
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| Onuoha on loosing his mum on 18:45 - Mar 19 with 3503 views | enfieldargh |
| Onuoha on loosing his mum on 17:46 - Mar 19 by BostonR |
I was diagnosed with stage 3 bowel cancer in August 2022 - a few months before I was retiring. No symptoms but detected when I took a poo test, which has ultimately saved my life.
I opted for robotic surgery and underwent post surgical treatment as well as being in the 5yr surveillance program. 18 months on and I’m doing really well with no signs of a return of my cancer.
Good luck to anyone who is going through that journey.
For me, money doesn’t come into it when you lose a loved one. We all deal with death differently. I must admit when I was diagnosed it made me think how short life is. I really do live every day as though it were my last - you just never know what’s around the corner. |
Just been diagnosed with soft tissue sarcoma on my femeral artery. Waiting for the opp date.
Yes it does really hammer home how fragile life is.
Lost both my parents whilst holding their hands when the moment came.
Bugger!! |  |
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| Onuoha on loosing his mum on 19:00 - Mar 19 with 3463 views | numptydumpty |
| Onuoha on loosing his mum on 18:45 - Mar 19 by enfieldargh |
Just been diagnosed with soft tissue sarcoma on my femeral artery. Waiting for the opp date.
Yes it does really hammer home how fragile life is.
Lost both my parents whilst holding their hands when the moment came.
Bugger!! |
Good luck to you Enfield. Hope it all clears itself up quickly.
I lost my mum, and sadly half an hour before she passed, was the time she finally met my partner, who was always going to be the lady, am with for life.
Was special moment but so tough at the same time.
I think it kind of helped her, knowing I was going to be alright and she then kind of decided, my time down here is now done and she said "see you upstairs when you get there" | |
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| Onuoha on loosing his mum on 19:25 - Mar 19 with 3401 views | Konk |
Good luck to all those with health concerns at the moment - I wish you all the best.
My Mum died 18 months ago, and my boss/work were unbelievable. I'd been there 2 days(!) when I had to fuc k-off back to London to be with my Mum and family. I was told to take as much time as I wanted and only come back when I felt ready. I was also told to just go home if things got on top of me. My wife works for a food manufacturing company and her boss has paid for people on the shop floor to fly home to be with sick parents/attend funerals and given them a couple of weeks compassionate leave. My older brother just tells his reports to unofficially spend whatever time they need with sick family/grieving. My mate was given 6 weeks paid leave to come back from the US to be with his Dad when he was dying. It comes down to whether or not your boss is compassionate - I'm sorry that your boss was a cu nt when you were going through that with your Dad, Sheffield..
But it's not a competition. Losing a parent is brutal, and I don't hear someone talking about how difficult it is having a sick parent or losing a parent, and resent the fact that they might not have had it as tough as me. [Post edited 19 Mar 19:29]
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| Fulham FC: It's the taking part that counts |
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| Onuoha on loosing his mum on 22:06 - Mar 19 with 3181 views | BostonR |
| Onuoha on loosing his mum on 18:45 - Mar 19 by enfieldargh |
Just been diagnosed with soft tissue sarcoma on my femeral artery. Waiting for the opp date.
Yes it does really hammer home how fragile life is.
Lost both my parents whilst holding their hands when the moment came.
Bugger!! |
Wishing you well. If it helps I decided to do exactly what I was told by my medical team. They were brilliant and I was very well taken care of. Best wishes. |  | | |
| Onuoha on loosing his mum on 22:58 - Mar 19 with 3123 views | nix |
Take care Enfield and Phildo.
Hope you both get the best of treatments. |  | | |
| Onuoha on loosing his mum on 23:49 - Mar 19 with 3070 views | Konk |
| Onuoha on loosing his mum on 22:58 - Mar 19 by nix |
Take care Enfield and Phildo.
Hope you both get the best of treatments. |
Absolutely this, fellas. Sending good wishes and love from sunny BS3. | |
| Fulham FC: It's the taking part that counts |
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| Onuoha on loosing his mum on 00:06 - Mar 20 with 3045 views | Konk |
I should add that I'm of an age now where a lot of my mate's parents, aunts and uncles are dying, and it's been a wonderful thing to be able to go to the pub or for a walk to talk about how we're coping with losing those special people. All of us see the opportunity to work through our grief as invaluable, so the more blokes talking about loss and grief, the better for me. | |
| Fulham FC: It's the taking part that counts |
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| Onuoha on loosing his mum on 09:37 - Mar 20 with 2817 views | francisbowles |
Good luck and best wishes to Phildo and Enfield. |  | | |
| Onuoha on loosing his mum on 09:44 - Mar 20 with 2795 views | TheChef |
| Onuoha on loosing his mum on 00:06 - Mar 20 by Konk |
I should add that I'm of an age now where a lot of my mate's parents, aunts and uncles are dying, and it's been a wonderful thing to be able to go to the pub or for a walk to talk about how we're coping with losing those special people. All of us see the opportunity to work through our grief as invaluable, so the more blokes talking about loss and grief, the better for me. |
Yeah seems once you're past 80 (and unless you're very lucky) everything goes downhill fairly quickly.
Conversations with my mum (just turned 81) tend to be around which of her friends are well/unwell/having an op, etc. |  |
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| Onuoha on loosing his mum on 09:53 - Mar 20 with 2771 views | robith |
| Onuoha on loosing his mum on 16:00 - Mar 19 by Phildo |
Well i was diagnosed with bowel cancer on Friday last - luckily caught early and with excellent prognosis but i have to say i read your post and thought - oh do fk off. Man talks about difficult life experience and you denigrate it on the basis of the amount of money he has. Take a rest. |
Jeez Phil, that's rough but positive the prognosis is good. Thinking of you, one of the good guys |  | | |
| Onuoha on loosing his mum on 12:53 - Mar 20 with 2541 views | Paddyhoops |
Best wishes to anyone going through treatment on this forum.
Lost my mam at 67 and sadly my niece at just 20 .
My mam had a decent life but my niece had just strarted it.
Tough to take for Anyone .
Doesn’t matter what your financial circumstances are , this desease doesn’t discriminate.
Get yourself checked out .
Lots of middle aged men on this site so even more important. | | | |
| Onuoha on loosing his mum on 14:26 - Mar 20 with 2409 views | dmm |
Phildo and Enfield, wishing you both receive the very, very best care and happiest of outcomes. |  | | |
| Onuoha on loosing his mum on 14:38 - Mar 20 with 2386 views | slmrstid |
Good luck Phildo and others - my Dad is also going through the same currently.
On my mum's side (my parents divorced in 2002) - she died in 2019 six months before I turned 30 and the day before her 61st birthday - she'd been an alcoholic all her life and it catches up with you eventually. Having an alcoholic mother is something I'd never talked about to anyone outside of family/spouse but am a lot more open on now - its a lived experience I have and I can't hide it away forever but is also, ridiculously, easier to talk about now she's gone.
She was an only child and both her parents were still alive - my sister lives in Belgium so me and my wife were the only living family left in the country for my Grandparents. Of course in 2019 we're just before Covid, couldn't see them all through Covid other than a few flying visits. In November 2020 my Grandma had a stroke and was dead 6 weeks later, never returning home, my Grandad and her husband of 62ish years never saw his wife alive again after she got taken out of the house in an ambulance. The same time of course "parties" in Downing Street were occurring - never forget, never forgive. The loss of my Grandma broke him. He died 18 months later, I think he gave up on life more than anything without my Grandma around in the end. All that time me & Mrs SLM tried to make sure we visited as much as we could (100 mile round trip) and did our best to make his last months as nice as possible but even now 2 years on I wonder if it was enough or if we could have done more and I will probably think that forever. The estate took over a year to fully close down (house sale dragged on and initially went on the market right at the time of the Truss/Kwarteng budget - dreadful timing!) and we had to make sure everything at the house and garden was maintained through all that period. It was a lot of work.
So anyone going through it - I've lived it, I've breathed it, I've felt it, and all the stress and strain and feelings of guilt no matter what that follows from it.
Nedum, and everyone else who has to deal with it, has my sympathy - how much money you have is irrelevant. Money cannot and does not change mental health. My employers were supportive but I still had to juggle all of life's commitments through it. Horrible, horrible times. |  | | |
| Onuoha on loosing his mum on 14:55 - Mar 20 with 2340 views | Konk |
| Onuoha on loosing his mum on 14:38 - Mar 20 by slmrstid |
Good luck Phildo and others - my Dad is also going through the same currently.
On my mum's side (my parents divorced in 2002) - she died in 2019 six months before I turned 30 and the day before her 61st birthday - she'd been an alcoholic all her life and it catches up with you eventually. Having an alcoholic mother is something I'd never talked about to anyone outside of family/spouse but am a lot more open on now - its a lived experience I have and I can't hide it away forever but is also, ridiculously, easier to talk about now she's gone.
She was an only child and both her parents were still alive - my sister lives in Belgium so me and my wife were the only living family left in the country for my Grandparents. Of course in 2019 we're just before Covid, couldn't see them all through Covid other than a few flying visits. In November 2020 my Grandma had a stroke and was dead 6 weeks later, never returning home, my Grandad and her husband of 62ish years never saw his wife alive again after she got taken out of the house in an ambulance. The same time of course "parties" in Downing Street were occurring - never forget, never forgive. The loss of my Grandma broke him. He died 18 months later, I think he gave up on life more than anything without my Grandma around in the end. All that time me & Mrs SLM tried to make sure we visited as much as we could (100 mile round trip) and did our best to make his last months as nice as possible but even now 2 years on I wonder if it was enough or if we could have done more and I will probably think that forever. The estate took over a year to fully close down (house sale dragged on and initially went on the market right at the time of the Truss/Kwarteng budget - dreadful timing!) and we had to make sure everything at the house and garden was maintained through all that period. It was a lot of work.
So anyone going through it - I've lived it, I've breathed it, I've felt it, and all the stress and strain and feelings of guilt no matter what that follows from it.
Nedum, and everyone else who has to deal with it, has my sympathy - how much money you have is irrelevant. Money cannot and does not change mental health. My employers were supportive but I still had to juggle all of life's commitments through it. Horrible, horrible times. |
That sounds like a really rough time for you, mate. I think there will always be regrets and it's natural that you question whether you should have done more or done things differently. A great, simple piece of advice I was given, was to be kind to yourself because you'll always find something you'd do/say differently if you had the chance to go back. Loved ones know that for most of us, it's a question of trying to juggle everyday responsibilities and obligations with trying to be there for support/company. You can't be everywhere at once, especially not when there's distance involved. | |
| Fulham FC: It's the taking part that counts |
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| Onuoha on loosing his mum on 17:12 - Mar 20 with 2181 views | Hooping_Mad |
Best wishes and get well soon gents, I've also just had 2 more rounds of tests. Got lucky with the first round waiting on the second. Been waiting 3 years to be told I'm in remission, I've got to believe it will happen one day.
The thing with Ned is he was always a professional and an example to the younger players. All the club achieved I expect was other players looked on and thought nah I wont bother going the extra mile here.
Do managers take their lead from the dressing room on things like this? | |
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| Onuoha on loosing his mum on 19:19 - Mar 20 with 2073 views | numptydumpty |
| Onuoha on loosing his mum on 14:38 - Mar 20 by slmrstid |
Good luck Phildo and others - my Dad is also going through the same currently.
On my mum's side (my parents divorced in 2002) - she died in 2019 six months before I turned 30 and the day before her 61st birthday - she'd been an alcoholic all her life and it catches up with you eventually. Having an alcoholic mother is something I'd never talked about to anyone outside of family/spouse but am a lot more open on now - its a lived experience I have and I can't hide it away forever but is also, ridiculously, easier to talk about now she's gone.
She was an only child and both her parents were still alive - my sister lives in Belgium so me and my wife were the only living family left in the country for my Grandparents. Of course in 2019 we're just before Covid, couldn't see them all through Covid other than a few flying visits. In November 2020 my Grandma had a stroke and was dead 6 weeks later, never returning home, my Grandad and her husband of 62ish years never saw his wife alive again after she got taken out of the house in an ambulance. The same time of course "parties" in Downing Street were occurring - never forget, never forgive. The loss of my Grandma broke him. He died 18 months later, I think he gave up on life more than anything without my Grandma around in the end. All that time me & Mrs SLM tried to make sure we visited as much as we could (100 mile round trip) and did our best to make his last months as nice as possible but even now 2 years on I wonder if it was enough or if we could have done more and I will probably think that forever. The estate took over a year to fully close down (house sale dragged on and initially went on the market right at the time of the Truss/Kwarteng budget - dreadful timing!) and we had to make sure everything at the house and garden was maintained through all that period. It was a lot of work.
So anyone going through it - I've lived it, I've breathed it, I've felt it, and all the stress and strain and feelings of guilt no matter what that follows from it.
Nedum, and everyone else who has to deal with it, has my sympathy - how much money you have is irrelevant. Money cannot and does not change mental health. My employers were supportive but I still had to juggle all of life's commitments through it. Horrible, horrible times. |
Slm
Absolutely best wishes from me.
The COVID situation ,meant that so many could not support their loved ones in their dying days to ease their end days with dignity.
I only lived four miles from my parents but mum passed in 2020 and dad in 2021, so all covid restrictions made things especially complicated and get you with your grandad not coping alone after your grandma passed.
My dad already had a terminal cancer but the loss of his long time wife and no chance to meet inside with others for many many months after her loss was awful so get what you are saying.
With regards to whether you could have done more etc.
When my mum and dad passed, one of my mates said you will be asking lots of questions of yourself and whether you could have done more. But he was very insistent to remind me not be hard on myself
What ifs are a normal reaction but am sure like me you did the very best you could have done and although it's always very hard and challenging , it is just a part of life's cycle etc...
Grief is a challenge and can affect some with anger, bewilderment, some people can disengage from life
I found the first few months seemed like years.
I got a mate who lot older than me , in his mid 70s and he lost his wife in 2021 and even today he will have a cry at home occasionally but he was fortunate, he has met another woman who he gets on great with, but some men it's very hard when they lose long time partner, so can understand your grandads feelings etc after.
You did all you could at very challenging times and .ife was amazingly difficult back then anyhow, added with the etra stress from close bereavements, main thing be kind to yourself. It was very tough scenario.
I would not dream criticising Nedum of chatting about his own situation he experienced. As proven by this thread, it's good to get these situations out in the open and chatting about it, even if online, can be very cathartic and ease people's worries.
Good for him for doing this.
Men generally always very closed with emotions.
Better out than in, as they say, although that particular saying might be for alternative reasons !!! 😆 [Post edited 20 Mar 19:23]
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| Onuoha on loosing his mum on 20:37 - Mar 20 with 1997 views | Northernr |
Firstly, to those who’ve posted who are going through it, love and respect to you all. Enfield, who has sat behind me for as long as I can remember – probably what caused it (sorry mate). BostonR - I’ve never forgotten that phone call we had at the start of the lockdown mate. That meant a hell of a lot coming from somebody I didn’t know who I’d spent most of the previous ten years gently digging out about Ian Holloway. Keep fighting the good fight mate.
Secondly, I’m really pleased this thread has gone in the direction I knew it would. As Numpty says, blokes can be really bad at this, but if you are going through stuff we have a wonderful community here that can help you out with everything from flathead screwdrivers to pancreatic cancer. It’s a real privilege to host the site with things like this, we’re all here for each other.
The point I’m really interested in, and have thought a lot about over the last 20 years, is the reaction and response of the employer.
You all know I lost my dad when I was 14 – absolutely zero money concerns or considerations for me at that point because British schools are too busy teaching you what Pythagrus thought about triangles to be bothered introducing you to the realities of mortgages, interest rates, pay day loans etc, and let me tell you it still fcking stings whether there’s a financial element or not.
The grief, I’ve never got over. I still think about him every day, what life would be like, what it would be like following QPR together, what he thinks about me.
But to be honest the thing that has stuck with me more is the anger about how my school handled the whole situation. They’d allowed me to be bullied basically throughout his illness ABOUT HIS ILLNESS because, to quote the deputy head, “kids are cruel, they’ll always pick on what they know is your biggest weakness, to some extent Clive is just going to have to suck this up and put up with it”. After his death they got straight into my mum about the importance of ‘normality’ and getting me back in class because, oh my God, remember he’s got YEAR NINE SATS. (They needed the results from a boy who could actually string a fcking sentence together to propr up their shambolic league table placing). My mum, all over the place, swallowed it. He died in March, what I needed was pulling out entirely and taking on a long holiday somewhere warm and peaceful, then either start Year Ten in September or, preferably, start Year Ten in September at a different school. In that place my ‘normality’, before he even got ill, was abject misery. In the end they made me go back to school even in the week between the death and the funeral. How we laugh about that now – not.
I had another experience in my first job on a newspaper. One of the junior reporters (same age and same level as me) got leukaemia. He’d just got married, wife was pregnant. The company would not budge off its standard sick pay rules which, to memory, was something like 3 months on full, 3 months on half, and then you’re on your own. It basically forced him to come back to work while undergoing treatment after 6 months because, baby on the way, they had no other choice. They propped him up in the corner, half his body weight, popping cancer drugs, and off for a saline drip at lunchtime, and got him to sub the cricket results for a month, at which point he had a horrible relapse and died.
I tell these two stories because the way my school dealt with me has left me embittered for the rest of my life to date. I am really bad with authority and people telling me what to do. Still.
The way my employer dealt with my friend left the rest of the reporters in absolute uproar and basically work to rule for the rest of our time there. We were all actually under the impression that the higher ups were quite glad when he died because they were, at that point, arguing very strongly that he hadn’t been back at work long enough and contributed enough to qualify for resetting the six months and going back on full sick pay while he was in a fcking hospice. This was the most junior rank in a multi-million pound publisher (Johnstone Press) on the FTSE500 or whatever. Luckily Richard did the decent thing and died, saved them their £15k.
Johnstone Press got nothing out of any of us for the rest of our time there. We were all fully in “fck you” mode. Every appraisal I had was “Clive needs to live and breathe the job and remember journalism is a 24/7 vocation”. The editor used to ring me at 2am saying “there are four fire engines at Belper College can you get there”. Hahahahahaha, can I fck. I got a horrendous bollocking for sacking off a BNP march that turned into a riot to go to Sheff Utd 3 QPR 0 at Bramall Lane. Again, hahahahahaha, fck you, it's Saturday.
Both of these incidents have affected me throughout my life and career since. I’ve turned down so many jobs over work life balance – “oh we’ll need you to move to the patch and work five weekends in every eight”. Oh, well I’ll be fcking off this way then, cheers. My dad worked every hour God sent, stressed himself out horribly, drove himself to drink, and then at 44 he was dead. What did he get out of that? 25 years solid graft for a faceless conglomerate, two kids he never saw, and death. It’s too short lads, it’s too short.
I’ve always felt there’s this real macho culture in this country about how much you work.
The editor used to tell this dickswinging story about how a sister she’d fallen out with and had been estranged from for ten years flew in from Canada to reconcile because their mum was dying, and when she arrived she made her get a cab from the airport rather than pick her up as previously arranged because she had to rush out to a “big plastic factory fire near Diss”. She said that like it was something to be in awe of and aspire to. I just fcking laughed at her. I always thought she was a bit mad and uncaring, but it turns out you’re legitimately insane and a complete fcking cow. ‘I haven’t seen my sister for ten years but, my god, we better beat the East Anglia Daily Times to that big story about the plastics factory burning down’. Fck off, honestly. Fck off all the way over there and then fck off all over again.
Even in the example of my leukaemia mate above, the head of the NUJ Union chapel for the district was saying things like “well that is the sickpay rule as laid out in the company handbook that we agreed to, we can’t make an exception”. Yes. Yes you fcking can. You can be a human being. For the 24-year-old boy with leukaemia and a pregnant wife at home you really, really can just give him the fcking lousy £15k a year.
I’m glad to hear stories like Konk’s. That’s how employers should be. They’ll get way more out of their employees by being that way, and even if you don’t there are more important things than fcking work. I’ve been with my present employer for 11 years, because they’re very decent people who look after you. Lo and behold, in an office of circa 40 people, I think there are a good dozen of us who’ve all been there for more than ten years – and we all go above and beyond for the company when it’s required, in return for being treated like humans.
I had hoped the pandemic would sort of change this culture. We all surely learned that there are more important things, that work life balance is important, and that (shock, horror) lots and lots and lots of us can quite easily do our jobs in the place we’ve chosen to live with the people we’ve chosen to live with rather than somewhere else with a load of people we’re thrown together with without choice. Stories like Konk’s… good, perhaps it has. But I still find it weird, not that newspapers are full of “get back to the office you fcking slackers you’re killing off all the Pret sandwich shops” and columns about how “your commute is part of you and you miss it really”, but that so many people are willing to buy into it and push it. I get why Elon Musk and Alan Sugar don’t want work from home, but I don’t get the amount of people at the shop floor level who respond negatively to things like studies into four-day weeks and buy into this bitching about the plague of WFH civil servants. Shouldn’t we all… I don’t know, want us all to work a bit less and have a bit of a nicer time?
Konk’s story gives me hope we’re moving in a better direction. As this thread stands testament to, life’s way too short.
My other learning from all of this is once you’ve moderated this thing for long enough you do turn into Ingham.
This post has been edited by an administrator |  | | |
| Onuoha on loosing his mum on 21:21 - Mar 20 with 1918 views | numptydumpty |
| Onuoha on loosing his mum on 20:37 - Mar 20 by Northernr |
Firstly, to those who’ve posted who are going through it, love and respect to you all. Enfield, who has sat behind me for as long as I can remember – probably what caused it (sorry mate). BostonR - I’ve never forgotten that phone call we had at the start of the lockdown mate. That meant a hell of a lot coming from somebody I didn’t know who I’d spent most of the previous ten years gently digging out about Ian Holloway. Keep fighting the good fight mate.
Secondly, I’m really pleased this thread has gone in the direction I knew it would. As Numpty says, blokes can be really bad at this, but if you are going through stuff we have a wonderful community here that can help you out with everything from flathead screwdrivers to pancreatic cancer. It’s a real privilege to host the site with things like this, we’re all here for each other.
The point I’m really interested in, and have thought a lot about over the last 20 years, is the reaction and response of the employer.
You all know I lost my dad when I was 14 – absolutely zero money concerns or considerations for me at that point because British schools are too busy teaching you what Pythagrus thought about triangles to be bothered introducing you to the realities of mortgages, interest rates, pay day loans etc, and let me tell you it still fcking stings whether there’s a financial element or not.
The grief, I’ve never got over. I still think about him every day, what life would be like, what it would be like following QPR together, what he thinks about me.
But to be honest the thing that has stuck with me more is the anger about how my school handled the whole situation. They’d allowed me to be bullied basically throughout his illness ABOUT HIS ILLNESS because, to quote the deputy head, “kids are cruel, they’ll always pick on what they know is your biggest weakness, to some extent Clive is just going to have to suck this up and put up with it”. After his death they got straight into my mum about the importance of ‘normality’ and getting me back in class because, oh my God, remember he’s got YEAR NINE SATS. (They needed the results from a boy who could actually string a fcking sentence together to propr up their shambolic league table placing). My mum, all over the place, swallowed it. He died in March, what I needed was pulling out entirely and taking on a long holiday somewhere warm and peaceful, then either start Year Ten in September or, preferably, start Year Ten in September at a different school. In that place my ‘normality’, before he even got ill, was abject misery. In the end they made me go back to school even in the week between the death and the funeral. How we laugh about that now – not.
I had another experience in my first job on a newspaper. One of the junior reporters (same age and same level as me) got leukaemia. He’d just got married, wife was pregnant. The company would not budge off its standard sick pay rules which, to memory, was something like 3 months on full, 3 months on half, and then you’re on your own. It basically forced him to come back to work while undergoing treatment after 6 months because, baby on the way, they had no other choice. They propped him up in the corner, half his body weight, popping cancer drugs, and off for a saline drip at lunchtime, and got him to sub the cricket results for a month, at which point he had a horrible relapse and died.
I tell these two stories because the way my school dealt with me has left me embittered for the rest of my life to date. I am really bad with authority and people telling me what to do. Still.
The way my employer dealt with my friend left the rest of the reporters in absolute uproar and basically work to rule for the rest of our time there. We were all actually under the impression that the higher ups were quite glad when he died because they were, at that point, arguing very strongly that he hadn’t been back at work long enough and contributed enough to qualify for resetting the six months and going back on full sick pay while he was in a fcking hospice. This was the most junior rank in a multi-million pound publisher (Johnstone Press) on the FTSE500 or whatever. Luckily Richard did the decent thing and died, saved them their £15k.
Johnstone Press got nothing out of any of us for the rest of our time there. We were all fully in “fck you” mode. Every appraisal I had was “Clive needs to live and breathe the job and remember journalism is a 24/7 vocation”. The editor used to ring me at 2am saying “there are four fire engines at Belper College can you get there”. Hahahahahaha, can I fck. I got a horrendous bollocking for sacking off a BNP march that turned into a riot to go to Sheff Utd 3 QPR 0 at Bramall Lane. Again, hahahahahaha, fck you, it's Saturday.
Both of these incidents have affected me throughout my life and career since. I’ve turned down so many jobs over work life balance – “oh we’ll need you to move to the patch and work five weekends in every eight”. Oh, well I’ll be fcking off this way then, cheers. My dad worked every hour God sent, stressed himself out horribly, drove himself to drink, and then at 44 he was dead. What did he get out of that? 25 years solid graft for a faceless conglomerate, two kids he never saw, and death. It’s too short lads, it’s too short.
I’ve always felt there’s this real macho culture in this country about how much you work.
The editor used to tell this dickswinging story about how a sister she’d fallen out with and had been estranged from for ten years flew in from Canada to reconcile because their mum was dying, and when she arrived she made her get a cab from the airport rather than pick her up as previously arranged because she had to rush out to a “big plastic factory fire near Diss”. She said that like it was something to be in awe of and aspire to. I just fcking laughed at her. I always thought she was a bit mad and uncaring, but it turns out you’re legitimately insane and a complete fcking cow. ‘I haven’t seen my sister for ten years but, my god, we better beat the East Anglia Daily Times to that big story about the plastics factory burning down’. Fck off, honestly. Fck off all the way over there and then fck off all over again.
Even in the example of my leukaemia mate above, the head of the NUJ Union chapel for the district was saying things like “well that is the sickpay rule as laid out in the company handbook that we agreed to, we can’t make an exception”. Yes. Yes you fcking can. You can be a human being. For the 24-year-old boy with leukaemia and a pregnant wife at home you really, really can just give him the fcking lousy £15k a year.
I’m glad to hear stories like Konk’s. That’s how employers should be. They’ll get way more out of their employees by being that way, and even if you don’t there are more important things than fcking work. I’ve been with my present employer for 11 years, because they’re very decent people who look after you. Lo and behold, in an office of circa 40 people, I think there are a good dozen of us who’ve all been there for more than ten years – and we all go above and beyond for the company when it’s required, in return for being treated like humans.
I had hoped the pandemic would sort of change this culture. We all surely learned that there are more important things, that work life balance is important, and that (shock, horror) lots and lots and lots of us can quite easily do our jobs in the place we’ve chosen to live with the people we’ve chosen to live with rather than somewhere else with a load of people we’re thrown together with without choice. Stories like Konk’s… good, perhaps it has. But I still find it weird, not that newspapers are full of “get back to the office you fcking slackers you’re killing off all the Pret sandwich shops” and columns about how “your commute is part of you and you miss it really”, but that so many people are willing to buy into it and push it. I get why Elon Musk and Alan Sugar don’t want work from home, but I don’t get the amount of people at the shop floor level who respond negatively to things like studies into four-day weeks and buy into this bitching about the plague of WFH civil servants. Shouldn’t we all… I don’t know, want us all to work a bit less and have a bit of a nicer time?
Konk’s story gives me hope we’re moving in a better direction. As this thread stands testament to, life’s way too short.
My other learning from all of this is once you’ve moderated this thing for long enough you do turn into Ingham.
This post has been edited by an administrator |
This country has its elements of total madness and in particular with many workplaces.
So tough to lose your dad as a boy. My partners daughter lost her dad when she was only fifteen and it had a delayed impact on her. Three years were fine but for a few years when she was eighteen, she wasn't properly on this planet.
Sadly was volunteering some years back, had a period of unemployment, and helped out at an eco friendly community based charity and could not believe what I heard when they were discussing their attitudes to their bereavement policy and it was said that any funeral would need to be taken as leave. Now that was truly bonkers.
I think more major corporates are much more on this nowadays than the smaller organisations generally but have heard that the culture of the UK is very unlike many European counterparts where some retirement age is late 50s. Been said to reach 71 soon here.
The solution though is obvious. Go and watch a team in blue and white hoops attempting to play football. It's the only sensible response !! | |
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| Onuoha on loosing his mum on 21:41 - Mar 20 with 1885 views | BrianMcCarthy |
| Onuoha on loosing his mum on 18:45 - Mar 19 by enfieldargh |
Just been diagnosed with soft tissue sarcoma on my femeral artery. Waiting for the opp date.
Yes it does really hammer home how fragile life is.
Lost both my parents whilst holding their hands when the moment came.
Bugger!! |
Much love, Enfield. Be well. |  |
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| Onuoha on loosing his mum on 22:03 - Mar 20 with 1839 views | Hunterhoop |
Kudos and sincere best wishes to so many of you on this thread. Certainly agree it is important men are more open about these things (regardless of income) and talk more with each other to remove any stigma.
It takes more strength to be vulnerable than to not be. |  | | |
| Onuoha on loosing his mum on 22:05 - Mar 20 with 1835 views | Konk |
| Onuoha on loosing his mum on 20:37 - Mar 20 by Northernr |
Firstly, to those who’ve posted who are going through it, love and respect to you all. Enfield, who has sat behind me for as long as I can remember – probably what caused it (sorry mate). BostonR - I’ve never forgotten that phone call we had at the start of the lockdown mate. That meant a hell of a lot coming from somebody I didn’t know who I’d spent most of the previous ten years gently digging out about Ian Holloway. Keep fighting the good fight mate.
Secondly, I’m really pleased this thread has gone in the direction I knew it would. As Numpty says, blokes can be really bad at this, but if you are going through stuff we have a wonderful community here that can help you out with everything from flathead screwdrivers to pancreatic cancer. It’s a real privilege to host the site with things like this, we’re all here for each other.
The point I’m really interested in, and have thought a lot about over the last 20 years, is the reaction and response of the employer.
You all know I lost my dad when I was 14 – absolutely zero money concerns or considerations for me at that point because British schools are too busy teaching you what Pythagrus thought about triangles to be bothered introducing you to the realities of mortgages, interest rates, pay day loans etc, and let me tell you it still fcking stings whether there’s a financial element or not.
The grief, I’ve never got over. I still think about him every day, what life would be like, what it would be like following QPR together, what he thinks about me.
But to be honest the thing that has stuck with me more is the anger about how my school handled the whole situation. They’d allowed me to be bullied basically throughout his illness ABOUT HIS ILLNESS because, to quote the deputy head, “kids are cruel, they’ll always pick on what they know is your biggest weakness, to some extent Clive is just going to have to suck this up and put up with it”. After his death they got straight into my mum about the importance of ‘normality’ and getting me back in class because, oh my God, remember he’s got YEAR NINE SATS. (They needed the results from a boy who could actually string a fcking sentence together to propr up their shambolic league table placing). My mum, all over the place, swallowed it. He died in March, what I needed was pulling out entirely and taking on a long holiday somewhere warm and peaceful, then either start Year Ten in September or, preferably, start Year Ten in September at a different school. In that place my ‘normality’, before he even got ill, was abject misery. In the end they made me go back to school even in the week between the death and the funeral. How we laugh about that now – not.
I had another experience in my first job on a newspaper. One of the junior reporters (same age and same level as me) got leukaemia. He’d just got married, wife was pregnant. The company would not budge off its standard sick pay rules which, to memory, was something like 3 months on full, 3 months on half, and then you’re on your own. It basically forced him to come back to work while undergoing treatment after 6 months because, baby on the way, they had no other choice. They propped him up in the corner, half his body weight, popping cancer drugs, and off for a saline drip at lunchtime, and got him to sub the cricket results for a month, at which point he had a horrible relapse and died.
I tell these two stories because the way my school dealt with me has left me embittered for the rest of my life to date. I am really bad with authority and people telling me what to do. Still.
The way my employer dealt with my friend left the rest of the reporters in absolute uproar and basically work to rule for the rest of our time there. We were all actually under the impression that the higher ups were quite glad when he died because they were, at that point, arguing very strongly that he hadn’t been back at work long enough and contributed enough to qualify for resetting the six months and going back on full sick pay while he was in a fcking hospice. This was the most junior rank in a multi-million pound publisher (Johnstone Press) on the FTSE500 or whatever. Luckily Richard did the decent thing and died, saved them their £15k.
Johnstone Press got nothing out of any of us for the rest of our time there. We were all fully in “fck you” mode. Every appraisal I had was “Clive needs to live and breathe the job and remember journalism is a 24/7 vocation”. The editor used to ring me at 2am saying “there are four fire engines at Belper College can you get there”. Hahahahahaha, can I fck. I got a horrendous bollocking for sacking off a BNP march that turned into a riot to go to Sheff Utd 3 QPR 0 at Bramall Lane. Again, hahahahahaha, fck you, it's Saturday.
Both of these incidents have affected me throughout my life and career since. I’ve turned down so many jobs over work life balance – “oh we’ll need you to move to the patch and work five weekends in every eight”. Oh, well I’ll be fcking off this way then, cheers. My dad worked every hour God sent, stressed himself out horribly, drove himself to drink, and then at 44 he was dead. What did he get out of that? 25 years solid graft for a faceless conglomerate, two kids he never saw, and death. It’s too short lads, it’s too short.
I’ve always felt there’s this real macho culture in this country about how much you work.
The editor used to tell this dickswinging story about how a sister she’d fallen out with and had been estranged from for ten years flew in from Canada to reconcile because their mum was dying, and when she arrived she made her get a cab from the airport rather than pick her up as previously arranged because she had to rush out to a “big plastic factory fire near Diss”. She said that like it was something to be in awe of and aspire to. I just fcking laughed at her. I always thought she was a bit mad and uncaring, but it turns out you’re legitimately insane and a complete fcking cow. ‘I haven’t seen my sister for ten years but, my god, we better beat the East Anglia Daily Times to that big story about the plastics factory burning down’. Fck off, honestly. Fck off all the way over there and then fck off all over again.
Even in the example of my leukaemia mate above, the head of the NUJ Union chapel for the district was saying things like “well that is the sickpay rule as laid out in the company handbook that we agreed to, we can’t make an exception”. Yes. Yes you fcking can. You can be a human being. For the 24-year-old boy with leukaemia and a pregnant wife at home you really, really can just give him the fcking lousy £15k a year.
I’m glad to hear stories like Konk’s. That’s how employers should be. They’ll get way more out of their employees by being that way, and even if you don’t there are more important things than fcking work. I’ve been with my present employer for 11 years, because they’re very decent people who look after you. Lo and behold, in an office of circa 40 people, I think there are a good dozen of us who’ve all been there for more than ten years – and we all go above and beyond for the company when it’s required, in return for being treated like humans.
I had hoped the pandemic would sort of change this culture. We all surely learned that there are more important things, that work life balance is important, and that (shock, horror) lots and lots and lots of us can quite easily do our jobs in the place we’ve chosen to live with the people we’ve chosen to live with rather than somewhere else with a load of people we’re thrown together with without choice. Stories like Konk’s… good, perhaps it has. But I still find it weird, not that newspapers are full of “get back to the office you fcking slackers you’re killing off all the Pret sandwich shops” and columns about how “your commute is part of you and you miss it really”, but that so many people are willing to buy into it and push it. I get why Elon Musk and Alan Sugar don’t want work from home, but I don’t get the amount of people at the shop floor level who respond negatively to things like studies into four-day weeks and buy into this bitching about the plague of WFH civil servants. Shouldn’t we all… I don’t know, want us all to work a bit less and have a bit of a nicer time?
Konk’s story gives me hope we’re moving in a better direction. As this thread stands testament to, life’s way too short.
My other learning from all of this is once you’ve moderated this thing for long enough you do turn into Ingham.
This post has been edited by an administrator |
I couldn't agree more about a work life balance. I have friends who have worked insane hours in incredibly stressful jobs, which have made them largely miserable. Needing to earn big money to afford to live in a big house in an expensive area because of the proximity to stressful, well-paid jobs that allow them to afford to live in a big house in an expensive area, which they choose to live in because of the proximity to stressful well-paid jobs...
I have always been terrible at coping with stress at work, so like you, have turned down numerous job offers from clients and colleagues over the years (some daft cun t thought I'd be a great trainee fund manager, when I would actually have spent the whole time crying in the bogs). Money would have been welcome, but I'd just have been a thoroughly miserable bloke living on a nicer street.
My Dad worked for the same company, in the same role, for 36 years on not great money. He liked his colleagues, it was an easy commute, he liked his clients, and he was home for 5.30pm every day, with his weekends free for football and cricket. He watched all of our games for the school and clubs. That approach has very much informed my decisions when it's come to work.
I wrote my boss a note thanking her for being so kind and supportive at the time of my Mum's death and she just said to me, "There's nothing that happens in this building that is more important than being with your family". If I'm even working five minutes late she tells me to pack-up and go to collect my son. Probably the best run department I've ever worked in and she is genuinely loved by the whole team. | |
| Fulham FC: It's the taking part that counts |
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| Onuoha on loosing his mum on 22:27 - Mar 20 with 1773 views | enfieldargh |
| Onuoha on loosing his mum on 21:41 - Mar 20 by BrianMcCarthy |
Much love, Enfield. Be well. |
Cheers Brian.
I actually cant believe I've been told I have this.
I feel 100% fit, am still working and intend to be at Brum game provided my surgeon hasnt found someone who can rebuild the artery should it get damaged during surgery.
This all came about from getting a DVT on a flight back from Japan in August. An unidentified mass showed up near the clot on various scans.
I was told if I had worn flight socks then I wouldnt have got a blood clot. If I didnt get the blood clot they wouldnt have discovered the sarcoma.
I've put the whole thing out of my mind until I get the call to come in for the opp so in the meantime I'm worrying more about Gary Rowett than the scalpel.
Phildo we can beat this mate. | |
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| Onuoha on loosing his mum on 06:34 - Mar 21 with 1647 views | californiahoop |
| Onuoha on loosing his mum on 16:00 - Mar 19 by Phildo |
Well i was diagnosed with bowel cancer on Friday last - luckily caught early and with excellent prognosis but i have to say i read your post and thought - oh do fk off. Man talks about difficult life experience and you denigrate it on the basis of the amount of money he has. Take a rest. |
Unbelievable | | | |
| Onuoha on loosing his mum on 08:46 - Mar 21 with 1562 views | slmrstid |
Numpty / Konk - thank you for your kind words. Really appreciate you both taking the time to reply.
All the best :) | | | |
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