Oh I do like to be beside the seaside...

Greetings from sunny Eastbourne in West Sussex, the London and County Pub on Terminus Road to be exact.  It is a Wetherspoon pub and so has Wi-Fi.  I have just enjoyed a Portobello mushroom, chickpea and pumpkin seed roast and am finishing off a mug of rather strange Green Tea.  Have netbook, will travel.

I am having a veg out day after spending yesterday at Battle and paying my respects to Harold at the site where he fell in the Battle of Hastings in 1066.  William the Bastard (or the Conqueror) founded an abbey on the site of the battle and a town grew up around it, surprisingly called Battle!  Luckily the battlefield is not too big and I am very pleased with myself as my Nordic walking poles and I managed to make it round the battlefield, though at one stage I was beginning to wonder how many more rough steps there would be, and I really was beginning to think I had made a huge mistake.  It was a really lovely sunny, crisp October day and only 8 days after the 945th anniversary of the battle.  There were still flowers around the site of the High Altar of the Abbey which is the traditional site of where Harold fell.  Actually being at a site really gives you a feeling of what it must have been like, especially going down, and then up, the hill which had been flattened to may way for the Abbey anyway.

I am not exactly a Bucket List person.  I don't have anything written down, and I don't necessarily have a priority list either, just when the opportunity comes along I make sure I use that opportunity, rather than letting it pass.  1066 is possibly the most momentous date in English history, as it meant a sudden change in the entire power structure of the country.  So maybe for me cancer is my 1066.  Nothing will ever be the same again, and I know that I am a very different person today than I was when I was diagnosed 4 years ago.  When something like that happens there is no way that you can go back to the way things were.  You cannot undo the moment of victory that the cancer had, the scars from the battle that proved it has such power, but at the same time you do not have to capitulate and give in.  If you can find a way of connecting to yourself and what you really need in life then ultimately you are the winner.  For me the things that I need are fairly simple as life is lived in each individual moment and by definition they are ordinary minutes, but minutes that have meaning.  Life for most of us are not made up of moments of fame; most of us will never make it to 5 minutes, let along 15 minutes of fame but to be honest that is fine with me.  Looking out over the English Channel, which is right outside the hotel where I am staying, and seeing the sun and the waves is more than enough to make a special moment for me.