rivers2cross

Chapter 8 in The Record features my meeting with Rupert Moon the former Welsh rugby international at The Principality Stadium in Cardiff on an unseasonably warm October afternoon in 2018. It was one of those occasions where the whole experience just could not have been any better. I travelled by train from Reading, and I would have been quite happy to have done the photograph outside the stadium, but Rupert really came through for me. He gave me a personal tour of the amazing stadium, and I found Rupert to be a really nice man and really interesting to talk to. It really was a chapter that wrote itself.

Rupert has strong links to The Alarm, and is a great friend of Mike & Jules Peters. He has participated in a number of Love Hope Strength fundraising events, and is a regular attendee and volunteer at The Gathering in Llandudno. Rupert’s first record is a classic million-selling track from the 1970s…

Little did I realise how popular the band’s t-shirt I was wearing would be. This began at Reading Station when a guy came up and asked me if the band was still going, and told me he saw The Alarm support U2 in 1982. At the stadium in Cardiff it seemed that just about everyone there was a fan of The Alarm, including a man from Spanish television, there for Wales v Spain football international, who came up and told us how much he liked the band. 

The Record was written in memory of my mum who died of bowel cancer in August 2016. All profits are donated to Bowel Cancer UK, and over £870 has been raised to date. I am hoping to reach £1000 during 2020. Click here to see all the ways to order a copy of the book.

Bowel cancer claims 16,000 lives in the UK, and is the second biggest cancer killer. However if caught early at stage 1 it is very treatable, and the five year survival rate is over 90%. When detected at the late stage 4 the five year survival rate drops dramatically to 7%. This shows how crucial early diagnosis is to getting a better outcome. Knowing the symptoms is so important.