The second time I went there was the day after I’d cried in a Wetherspoons. (Not just cried, I’d cried loud angry tears that people could hear throughout the pub.) I was still an emotional wreck but a little less so than during my first visit, when I had tears rolling down my face while buttering toast. Three years on it remains the cafe I visit most frequently, even though it is more than 200 miles from my home and I’ve only been once this year. I go because I’ve always depended on the kindness of strangers and, even though they don’t remember, I’ll never forget how the staff consoled me when I was tearful back in May 2022.
They could tell that the tears streaming from my eyes weren’t because I couldn’t decide what to order for breakfast. Usually the worry in a cafe is how to ask the server whether I can swap the eggs for a sausage, but my emotions were pouring out because the reason for my trip to Saltash, in Cornwall, was to visit the grave of a woman called Beth Matthews.
She had saved countless lives by blogging and tweeting about her mental health issues, but sadly lost her fight in the spring of 2022.
Last weekend I was in Saltash for the first time this year, to put flowers on her grave, and so it made sense to return to the cafe where they had always been so kind before making my way up north to London.
Sipping a Diet Coke as I sat and watched the rain outside thrashing anyone who dared walk down the street, I contemplated just how much has changed since my first visit.
Saltashians (I’m not sure that’s a thing, especially as it sounds too much like the Kardashians) will point out that the cafe has changed this year. It has changed hands and is now called Lydia’s Brews and Bites, and has new dishes, and a different supplier of sausages than the previous establishment.
I will point out that the server who was so kind when I was crying still works there so the spirit of the old place lives on. I’ll also let everyone know that the sausages are so much nicer than they were in previous years.
I wish that the biggest change over the past three-and-a-bit years was the succulent sausages, but instead it’s the fact that I now have incurable bowel cancer.
My cancer is the reason why I can’t walk up the town’s punishing hills as easily as I used to. It’s the reason why I only managed one trip to Saltash this year.
It’s the reason why I got flashbacks of things that happened during previous visits while wondering how many more times I’ll be able to come back to Cornwall before cancer takes over my body.
And it’s the reason statistics suggest I’ve only got an 11% chance of still being alive in the summer of 2028. It’s also the reason why I’m leading the Daily Express’s Cancer Care campaign.
Cancer is the one group of diseases that all politicians like to focus on, with quick access to treatments seen as a way to measure NHS success and win votes at election time.
But the treatment patients receive focuses on just the physical aspects like cutting out tumours and using chemotherapy to kill cancerous cells.
It doesn’t take into account the mental health aspects of the disease, like the person I wanted to be being wiped out by the effects of the drugs, and knowing I probably won’t make it to my 50th birthday.
The Government needs to change this. It needs to ensure that all cancer hospitals take the mental health of patients just as seriously as they do their physical health.
This is why the Daily Express is campaigning for all cancer patients to receive mental health support both during and after treatment.