If 2015 was a dramatic encounter with the past, this year began with the ‘innocent’ mark on my leg being diagnosed as a melanoma, that is, a nasty form of skin cancer which is potentially life-threatening. Executive summary is that I had it cut out and my lymph system checked and all is clear, the best possible news and I am mighty relieved and happy about this.

The future? Without going into boring details, the consensus is it ‘probably’ will not recur, I will be scanned and checked regularly, no guarantees, but when did life ever come with guarantees?

We know we will die without, in my opinion, quite believing it; we sleep walk through life until moments like this jolt us awake. The fact of death does not concern me whereas the process does and I am a strong supporter of the ‘dying with dignity’ movement. Anyway, enough maudlin and macabre pondering!

I apologise for being silent on this blog for the last 3 or 4 months, simply too much drama swirling here while ‘stuff’ from the past got dealt with and 2016 gets reorganised.

Now, my bucket list. So far, it is remarkably short! I have been lucky [yes, we make our own luck] to have travelled widely, to have had a variety of jobs which I loved and to have ‘ticked off’ many amazing experiences. Communing with the mountain gorillas in Rwanda, visiting the Mogoa Caves [Caves of the thousand Buddhas] on the old Silk Road, the Potala Palace in Lhasa, hiking the Compostella in Spain and the Via Podiensis across France and so many more life-affirming encounters with people and places.

And let’s not forget incredible family and friends – and a few buckets of manure slap in the face along the path of life. Yes, I have thrown my own buckets of shit and am not proud of that.

What have I come up with to date for my bucket list?

• Petra
• Northern Lights
• Kakadu and Arnhem Land
• Antarctica
• Esfahan

Piece of cake. Oh and I have submitted my novel ms to three publishers and started revising the sequel, the melanoma scare focused my mind and stopped my endless tinkering with what I had written.

So, it’s all good and life is good. Nothing like a shock to wake us up, we all need it sometimes.