The Cure is a tempting mistress, but we're not waiting around for you.

When running a marathon, or backpacking, you don't set off with a sprint. You find a pace you can sustain for the length of the event. And when the event lasts sixteen years, a calm steady approach looks best to me. With Frank's diabetes, we're now over two years in, with fourteen to go until it's his responsibility at the age of eighteen. Frank's condition has taught us much about diabetes, and much more about ourselves and our wider community.

Our National Health Service has come up trumps as far as we are concerned, and the Benefits system means that we can tick over without having to sell-up to fund the time we need to put in, to look after Frank especially during his younger years. So thanks to the UK taxpayers for helping us - and I'm one of them too!

So how do we deal with the condition, and how do we feel about a cure? I've covered managing diabetes in other blogs, so I won't go over the old ground of finger prick testing, multiple daily injections, observations every ten minutes during the day, and procedures during the night. We just have to get on with it all, we have no choice.

And "The Cure"? Well we're not holding our breath or counting down the days. Even before we had personal involvement with diabetes, we knew that a cure was many years away, so when we had the diagnosis, this lack of a fix on the horizon didn't come as a surprise to us.

We can't wait for a cure, in two senses. A cure would alter Frank's and our family's life, enabling us to jetison all the mental, physical and emotional effort in managing the disease, and avoiding all the personal discomfort for the boy with the fingertips of steel and the pin-cushion bottom. And we can't wait for a cure, as we've got to live our lives in the here and now; not some fantasy dream life at some unspecified time in the future.

The day-to-day management of Type 1 Diabetes takes all our capacity, and we don't think very much about The Cure. Sure, we support the efforts of the JDRF (Juvenile Diabetes Research Fund, an international organisation), and Diabetes UK who give lots of support. But we can't put our lives on hold until a miracle cure eventually turns up.

Frank's just an ordinary little kid, in almost every way. Apart from the time he's having medical attention, he's just charging about as four-year olds should. The picture shows him zooming off into the distance, on his scooter bike on the Wivenhoe Trail with his cousin.

We have benefited massively from the diabetes community. Thanks to the internet we have access to all the information we could ever want. But, even better, we have made contact with scores of people in similar positions, sharing experiences, looking at how best we can look after ourselves, and live a regular life. We have played our small part by forming Colchester Circle D, to support local families with Type 1 Diabetes.

There are super blogs out there (including "click of the light", "muffin moon", "instructions not included", "shoot up, or put up"), with lots of practical information, emotion and humour. I love these blogs, some written by people who have had diabetes many years. The way they pace their lives, and their approach to "bad days" are an inspiration. (For the information of non diabetics - even the most careful experienced diabetics have bad days - the condition certainly does not obey the rules that we follow when we do our best to manage the beast.) And little is said about a cure. They're all busy just getting on with their lives.

The Cure is a tempting mistress, and some type 1 diabetics are in hot pursuit. They expend lots of their energy pushing for extra funding, and posting on the internet to raise awareness of diabetes. Maybe it's our make-up, but we simply don't have the stomach for such a fight. Our energies are so focussed on getting by, that we simply don't have the capacity to be angry about the condition, or to lobby for its place in the public's and the authorities' perception of the ranking of Type 1 diabetes, compared with dozens of other rubbishy diseases.

It's Diabetes Awareness Month, and this blog is part of my contribution to this. So, if you were expecting me to beg you to donate to JDRF, or to rail on about our terrible lives, I'm sorry to disappoint. Actually, we enjoy a very good life and we're doing our best to get the most out of every day, inspired by our own brave little hero who just lives for the moment. The Cure may be a tempting mistress, but I don't think she's coming our way any time soon. But it would be nice, and hand over your money.....

Working Class Hero from Weybridge

John Lennon would have been seventy this weekend, and I'm getting to like him more and more. Alistair at "Crivens, jings and help ma bob" blog, http://crivensjingsandhelpmaboab.blogspot.com/ observed that he too wasn't that keen on Lennon during his lifetime. As a kid, I followed pop music, and was sucked into the media's battle of the bands between The Beatles and the Rolling Stones. I was only young and loved the Beatles songs, but wasn't that keen on their image. Firstly they had those Italian suits and I've always been averse to dressing up smart. Secondly, the Beatles were promoted as wholesome, whereas the Stones were ruffians. Even at a young age I responded to pop music as something rebellious and an antidote to the bland "family entertainment" that was served up by the BBC for our enjoyment - that black and white minstrel show could have damaged me permanently, and sent me off in various directions.

And I had something else against the Beatles. All we ever heard about was that they were working class lads from Liverpool, yet as soon as they made loads of money they moved to my home town, but didn't sing any songs about it. Lennon and Starr lived at St George's Hill estate in Weybridge, and McCartney and Harrison were also living in Surrey. The Rolling Stones came from my neck of the woods too. But I can't pretend I had ever seen, let alone be on nodding terms with Bill, Keith, Charlie, Mick or Brian, despite them being based in nearby towns familiar to me from maps and traffic signs.

Lennon's solo career seemed patchy, and it was so easy to sneer when the multi millionaire sang "imagine no possessions". Yoko's influence and Fluxus art ideas took John in other directions, to the dismay of those who wanted more Beatles stuff. Yet now and then he would produce something that moved me, and "working class hero" knocked me out the first (and subsequent) times I heard it. At the time his sleep-ins for peace seemed ridiculous to the unworldly me, but of course he and Yoko knew what they were doing to raise awareness of the issues.

As time went on I met many overseas visitors, students, lodgers, colleagues and friends, and so many seemed to be fans of the Beatles. And having revisited the Beatles' and Lennon's songbook, I have come to appreciate them so much more. Maybe, after all this time, I'll have to visit the zebra crossing at Abbey Road. But please don't force me to listen to any more of Yoko's singing, I'll stick with the Beatles "in my life" and a hundred others first.

Fred Slattern vaulted into top 100 live poets

From next year's Guardian "Fred Slattern made his debut public performance at Colchester Free Festival on 18 September 2010. With there being uncertainty about the exact time and place of Fred's performance, he couldn't depend on his loyal crowd of misfit friends to support him, and instead had to live or die on stage by his wits. Standing at a busk stop just inside the Castle Park gates, Fred had good footfall, and not all of it kept walking by. Witnessing an inspired performance from Colchester's wordsmith equivalent of Seasick Steve, some innocent members of the public has their ears assaulted by Colchester's self-styled slum poet.

Opening with a tale of sub-standard housing in suburbia "condemned" he led into "fear and loathing in Prettygate" a story of aging, isolation and fear. Slattern introduced each of the (mercifully short) pieces, his staccato delivery giving the impression of an accountant on EPO. He recited a piece about procrastination entitled "when I get my tattoo", a mordant ditty that he claimed he wrote at a "creative writing for no-hopers" course a few years ago. Upping the performance by several gears, he did a political piece about chavs, more specifically about those who revile them, with the cryptic title of "Council House and Van". Fred clearly fancies himself as the people's poet Rick from "The Young Ones".

Moving on to the whimsical "had James Dean lived, would he have shopped in Waitrose?", Slattern was into his stride, as he delivered some appalling wordplay involving car crashes and the cheese counter. Clearly Slattern had problems concentrating at school, or indeed at any other station in life. Then a topical piece written with an eye on the art gallery under construction and the vitriol in the local papers "when's it going to be finished?". But Slattern's session wasn't all about lampooning of the authorities and the media, it was about celebrating Colchester,with two pieces about the history lingering in our open spaces at "Hilly Fields" and "electricity" about High Woods.

Fred's finale consisted of pieces about the ever changing High Street "the High Street's full of cafes and charity shops" and "thanks for the sandwich" celebrating our Big Issue sales people. Twenty five people witnessed this tour-de-farce performance, vaulting him into the top 100 poets performing live today.

His banter between pieces was well received, and the sole poetry themed joke he could invent - about the iambic pentameter - was appreciated by at least two or three in the audience of mainly rural folk. A warm ripple of applause greeted the end of the show, maybe from a sense of relief, but mainly because these ordinary folks had, at last, found someone to blather on their behalf - a fanfare for the common man, with no side salad thank you very much. Fred Slattern, this modest man from suburbia, who has much to be modest about, has now been approached for other gigs."

harvest time at Big Swifty's vineyard

Hello Fans and Followers. From looking on here you might think it's all gone quiet at Big Swifty Towers, but the opposite is true, with blogs slipping down the prioritised list of tasks in hand. We've got news from all fronts, with diabetes stories, lots of paid work, home and garden, Colchester Free festival, and a holiday all taking our attention. So that's five blogs lined up for the near future, confirming the adage about a long wait then several buses come along at once.

We've been making a special effort to change our approach to life, looking at how we can best care for our little family. Following "Radical Homemaking" principles, our priorities have been to go even more natural with food. We have been active on the free food front, which is educational for Frank as part of his Unschooling, and also appeals to me as I'm so cheap. With a couple of pals, Frank and I have been picking wild apples (no, I won't tell you where the trees are) and we've all been busy making apple butter and puree. We have a bumper crop of quinces on the tree in our garden, and yesterday we stripped our vineyard. When I say vineyard, I mean one gnarly twig that looks dead in the spring, but this twisted bit of deadwood has produced about sixty bunches of grapes this summer. Amazing.As we render the grapes down, the house and patio smells sweet. But we'll soon put a stop to that pleasantness. Next year we want to grow more veg, and I've found several sources of free horse poo. I won't tell you where the apple trees are, but I can tell you the source of the horse poo - a horse's a***. Come back soon for more tails of horses, diabetes and slum poetry word play from our own Fred Slattern .............

Pump and circumstance

It's a big week ahead at Big Swifty Towers. Frank's diabetes management is incessant, 24/7 attention, but we're all doing pretty well (and hopefully pride doesn't come before a fall). At his most recent quarterly check-up Frank's HbA1c test gave as good a result as one could possibly expect for a four year old with Type 1 diabetes.

Poor test results with persistent elevations in blood sugar would indicate it's more likely that the person would have increased risk for the long-term vascular complications of diabetes such as coronary disease, heart attack, stroke, heart failure, kidney failure, blindness, erectile dysfunction, neuropathy (loss of sensation, especially in the feet), gangrene, and gastroparesis (slowed emptying of the stomach). On the plus side you get to wear a medic alert bracelet.

At present Frank has about eight pin pricks a day in his fingers, and four insulin injections. This keeps him in good health but does little for the flesh on his fingers and bottom. Some people with diabetes wear "fingertips of steel" T-shirts. If he takes up the guitar he will have ready made callouses on his fretboard fingers.

So what happens next week? We're off to Addenbrookes Hospital at Cambridge to open discussions about the possibility of Frank wearing an insulin pump. This should help us better match his carb intake with his insulin needs, being able to put smaller doses of insulin into his body, as and when required, without the injections.

And, yes, he can eat meals like the one in the picture, which he enjoyed at a cafe in Ipswich when we saw the mammoth. Type1 diabetes is nothing to do with the current obesity epidemic, and he does not have to avoid carbs in his food. Indeed, a mixture of carbs, protein and fats is pretty good, as he avoids the blood-sugar spikes that we would all have if we had high sugar fast release foods. Don't you wish you had a "full English breakfast" diet like Frank's?!?!

And finally, the usual disclaimer, I am not a doctor, and don't take anything I say as proper medical advice. After all, I'm the guy that thought that, if he shared an active lifestyle, and fed his young son a healthy diet of mixed foods, some wholefood and organic, he would avoid getting any of these chronic conditions everyone's getting these days. Pah.

Unhappy Meal at McDonald's

The beef is safe. I have a confession. I have been responsible for the destruction of the rain forest, I have destoyed the sustainable lifestyles of tribes of indigenous people, and I have punched a big hole in the ozone layer.

I have been a McDonald's customer since 1975 when I visited their Woolwich restaurant, their first in the UK. I know it's wrong in so many ways, but I love McDonald's.

But, from now on I'm not going to their restaurants ever again. On 2 August I dropped off some friends at Stansted airport, and at 05:45 I dropped in at McD's for a breakfast. I had a relaxed breakfast, with extra drinks, did some stuff on my laptop, and left at 07:56. And on 10 August I was issued with a parking charge notice, demanding £50 for exceeding the sixty minute free parking limit.

I'm sure there were signs up, but I didn't see them. I fully accept I'm responsible for where I park, but it never occurred to me that I should be looking. So my happy meal breakfast, has become a very Unhappy Meal.

I've got a message for McDonald's. The Campbells are coming. But Big Swifty's not, anymore. Unable to get a clan together to massacre my hosts, I can only resort to the internet. I've complained on their website, and expect to hear nothing, except maybe a bland computer generated reply (much like their food). A plague on all their houses.

Fred Slattern, Colchester's slum poet

FRED SLATTERN - Colchester's SLUM POET is expected to appear on the busk-stop stage at the Colchester Free Festival on 18 September. He will present his show “love, hate and prettygate”.

Fred is Colchester’s “x for no publicity” slum poet, and has been talked into appearing in public for the first time. His short pithy poems reflect Colchester life from the vantage point of anonymous suburbia. Listen to his tales, and spot yourself in his writing. He’s been watching you.

I have written some fairly upbeat pieces, mostly mercifully short, celebrating Colchester. I would suggest the material's more in the "amusing observations" bracket rather than proper poetry. Every now and then I like to challenge myself to do something different. This could all be a terrible mistake.