rivers2cross

I have been fortunate enough to have attended some fantastic gigs this year, and the Shed Seven concert in Northampton was as good as it gets. I went to meet Rick Witter, the band’s lead singer, for my forthcoming bowel cancer charity book before the sold out gig at The Roadmender. I’d made contact with him a few months earlier, and the Northampton gig was the perfect opportunity to meet up. I thought I’d committed a schoolboy error as the date clashed with the England v Belgium World Cup match, but instead of having a support band, the game was shown on big screens in the venue.

The gig was brilliant, which more than made up for the disappointing football score. The band played songs from their whole career, including tracks from their current Instant Pleasures LP, which is fast becoming one of my all time favourite albums. As you can see Rick was a great sport wearing the bowel cancer tie to help raise awareness about this awful disease. My mum died from bowel cancer in 2016, and all proceeds raised from the forthcoming book will be donated to Bowel Cancer UK (Beating Bowel Cancer Together). The book will be called, The Record, and everyone taking part is revealing the first record that they bought to me. Rick’s first record is a belter! For each chapter I write up about the experience, and Rick was a really nice man, and probably the coolest person I’ve met on my adventure so far. I am aiming to publish the book during 2019.

Bowel cancer is the second highest cancer killer in the UK claiming 16,000 lives each year. However if detected early at stage 1 it can be successfully treated in over 90% of cases. At stage 4 this figure falls dramatically to just 7%. Therefore a massive challenge is to improve the early detection rates giving more patients a better chance of living longer. At the moment only 15% of bowel cancer patients are diagnosed at the early stage 1.