Page 3 of 6

Just over a year ago, my girlfriend Gloria and I had changed our lives and moved here. We liked Bristol. We liked where we lived and the city itself. I was working with some of the best journalists of my career on a wonderful newspaper. Everything was almost perfect, except that, inside my chest, there was this dark, whispering, spreading obscenity; which I imagined to be like the naked, black branches of a tree scratching against a window panes on a rain-swept winter's night.

I thought of the old joke: "If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans…"

And I thought a lot about God. Now, a person's religion - or lack of it - has always seemed to me to be an intensely personal thing and people who banged on about being 'saved' and 'finding' Jesus and being 'born again' were simply embarrassing.

To me, organised religion had always been an excuse for war, torture and showing off your Sunday best clothes.

But, deep in the heart of every human being, there is a yearning for Something Better Than Us; some would call it a yearning for God and with this comes a yearning for a place where there is no more pain or disease or tragedy. Some call this heaven. Others, like me, think of it as somehow going home. I imagine it to be a safe, cosy, somehow familiar place.

Despite these and similar thoughts, I tried very hard not to project, not to mentally reinforce the death sentence on myself.

Instead, I have tried to live and work as normally as possible. Of course, stupid, invasive thoughts would come calling from time to time, like unwanted guests who had sneaked in while my mental door was ajar.

Next page...