A few words from Rob Mansfield

Following his collapse last week, it’s sad to hear that Seve Ballesteros has been diagnosed with a brain tumour.

The reason I’m more interested in this than any other normal health/sports story is that my dad also has a brain tumour.

Brain tumour conjures up lots of images and, to be honest, I’m still not sure I totally get it. Basically, there’s some sort of mass growing inside your head that slowly starts to cause problems as it puts pressure on various other bits of the brain.

Sometimes, they can be operated on, but more often than not brain tumours are treated using radiation therapy and chemotherapy.

Many shrink, often enough to be removed through surgery, but not all do. My dad has been through radiotherapy and one-and-a-half lots of chemo, until the consultants in charge decided to stop, because his particular tumour is resistant to the chemo.

Life expectancy is hazy. It can be as short as 1 year and sometimes as long as 10-15 years - it’s a bit ‘how long is a piece of string?’ I’m not even sure how long my Dad’s had his - it was diagnosed about 18 months - 2 years ago, but was obviously there before it was eventually picked up.

I’m sure Seve will have access to top specialists, but that may not be enough. Even if they do get it once, tumours have a nasty habit of reappearing and you can never be sure you’ve got it all the first time.

Good luck, Seve!

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I’m a dad. And, in case you’re new to this blog, I should add I have two children - two beautiful daughters.

The oldest is now 5 and yet, I still don’t feel like a proper parent. I often take my children out on my own and am convinced that other people are looking at me and saying to themselves: ‘He doesn’t look like a proper father!’ or ‘What on earth is he doing with that child?’

You see, I still live in a haze of paranoia that someone will come up to me and say, you’re not doing it properly and are a crap dad. Here’s a black mark against you - one more and your child will hate you for life.

It doesn’t how many times I tell myself or C that you only need to be ‘good enough’, it still doesn’t really sink in.

All it needs is for my youngest not to come to the front door and greet me when I come home from work and I assume I’ve done something wrong and she doesn’t like me any more.

Or else I call up B to ask her how her day at school was and she refuses to talk to me, because she’s watching TV instead.

I keep pointing out to myself that I was probably exactly the same (and probably still am) with my Mum and Dad and that’s just the way of the world. In other words, you never truly appreciate what’s been done for you, until it’s almost too late.

I hope that one day I’ll wake up and have that Eureka moment when I realise that actually I’m doing an OK job and that people don’t judge me at every step, but I’m not holding out any hope just yet.

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Friend - it’s a simple enough word, but what it conveys means such different things to different people and in different situations.

Take Facebook, for example. There, the word ‘friend’ simply means someone who you know, to all intents and purposes.

I’m not saying I don’t like anyone among my Facebook friends (god forbid, I’m that shallow), just that it’s an odd way of expressing people who you have connected to.

I would say I can count my ‘real’ friends on the fingers of two hands at most. That’s to say the people who I care about the most and, I think, who care similarly back.

I’ve known them all for a number of years now and while the frequency with which I’ve seen some of them has waxed and waned, they’ve been there.

The funny thing is, having kids changes so much. My social life has pretty much vanished. Not only for financial reasons, but because I don’t enjoy going out and about as much, either.

I’d much prefer to come home and give my little girl her bath, than head into Soho and a (now thankfully smoke-free) pub, even if I am meeting friends.

It’s bad enough that five miles in London feels like 50 miles elsewhere, such is the transport nightmare on occasion. But also everyone else’s lives always seem more complicated or busy than your own.

Some friends have to be booked months in advance and then you find the appointment can be cancelled at the drop of a hat.

And ironically, as you get older, new friends are even more difficult to cultivate. It takes time to develop a friendship - something that, as priorities and responsibilities pile up, is more tricky to find.

While the benefits of kids are numerous, they also bring new challenges that you don’t expect.

Yes, the nappies, sleepless nights and tightening belts are inevitable, but I didn’t expect the isolation that comes with a reduced social life and disappearance from other people’s lives.

Sometimes I feel as if I’m walking through a tunnel with the odd window or door leading off. These openings are on a timelock and open for a short period of time, which allows me a glimpse of a life I used to lead, before slamming shut leaving me back in the semi-darkness of the tunnel.

There is a light at the end, but I’m not really sure when I’ll get there. Hopefully, to cheesily paraphrase the Beatles, I’ll get by with a little help.

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