I apologize to Joanie for hijacking her "Hello" thread, I have moved my last post to this new thread. Joan, as we know has had her own health scare, happily conquered
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Jump in if you feel like contributing to a depressing subject. The water's lovely.
As the headline suggests, we don't seem to be any good at generally staying alive, us McGookins, nor my mum's side, the Gibbs (Stayin' Alive - geddit?). I think it's less our particular family than West of Scotland Scots in general, we are totally open to everything from heart disease to dental caries, much more than Borderers or Teuchters. We don't help our case with our predilection for fatty foods and the van that brings "ginger" and fags to our very doors to save us the trouble of getting off our arses and actually walking to buy them. Also, stress is a huge factor. I believe the stressful nature of your average working class Scot's life contributes hugely to everything from cancer to diabetes and alcoholism.
Here's my previous post:
Thanks folks. It's been a very dodgy time as you can imagine.
Clive was the fourth eldest, the next male to me in line, so to speak. He was a time-served butcher as a young man, but decided that he was fed up working for minimum wage to pay for his boss's yacht (I kid you not, there can't be many Saltcoats shop owners who have a yacht parked up in Largs) and he went back to night school to gain his highers so he could attend teacher training college. He graduated and enjoyed a very successful and rewarding career as a teacher at Dreghorn primary, later moving to Greenwood Academy.
We're hearing more and more about his exploits prior to the funeral (Thursday), apparently he was genuinely loved by his pupils, he would play guitar, coach the football team and find a dozen entertaining ways of getting lessons across.
Clive died of lung cancer. He had been a heavy smoker since his teens (in fact he started out nicking dog ends from my mother's ashtray at about 9 years old).
My sister died in January, she also was a victim of a lifestyle disease, cirrhosis, but had serious smoking related problems too.
We're just not good at the hale and hearty biz in my family, and we seem to be getting worse at it. My grandad lived to nearly 80, but my dad died at 61. He now has two kids who didn't reach 55. Isn't mortality supposed to improve through the ages?
