Author makes use of spare time
They’re walking to raise awareness
A family who lost their beloved father less than seven weeks ago are wanting to raise awareness of the disease that killed him.
Veteran Sandy Fleming was a well-known character in Longforgan where he ran the village shop with his wife Wilma.
But the 67-year-old’s world changed forever in January 2020 when he was diagnosed with prostate cancer.
He fought the disease through the COVID-19 pandemic - and bravely kept his shop open through the first lockdown despite his illness - to support the local community.
But in September his condition deteriorated and he died in Perth’s Cornhill Macmillan Centre on January 25.
His daughters Sharon Johnston (43) and Lynne Gibson (41) wanted to do something to remember their dad so are taking part in the March the Month virtual challenge.
This sees them walking 11,000 steps a day throughout March to “represent more than 11,000 dads, partners, grandads, sons, brothers, uncles and mates who die from prostate cancer every year”.
“He was still young,” Sharon, from Perth, told the PA. “He had not had a retirement to enjoy. He worked six or seven days a week.
“From January to September he still worked. He was attending hospital appointments but he kept the shop open right through the first lockdown to make sure the village was well served.
“He knew he had cancer and that he wasn’t well. It was September when he had his last day in the shop.”
Sandy had to go into Ninewells in September where he stayed until December.
It was a devastating time for the family with only Lynne allowed in to see him.
“We were not able to visit him,” Sharon said. “We had to nominate a person and it was my sister.
“Then when we moved into tier four, no-one was allowed at all.
“Because he got so ill and they knew he was nearing the end of his life, he was allowed to come home.
“He was then cared for by the district nurses then the last week of his life was spent in Cornhill.
“It was all very quick.
“I think the pandemic was mentally draining for him. His body was failing and I think everything just contributed to it.
“My dad was ex Black Watch. He was a fit guy, didn’t smoke and hardly drank. It was just heartbreaking to see what it did to him.”
It was Lynne, who lives in Angus, who suggested she and Sharon do something.
So they signed up to March the Month and have been amazed at the support they have received.
Sharon, who can be seen pounding the streets of Perth when she finishes work at
Struan Motors on Crieff
Road, said: “We wanted to raise awareness.
Especially with men who often don’t like going to the doctors.
“At the start we set a target of
£150. We thought people might struggle with being on furlough and the pandemic but it has really taken off. Last night it was sitting at £3100.
“Everyone has been so supportive.
“My dad and mum owned the shop in Longforgan and the village has been amazing.”
Wilma (65) is still working in the shop she and Sandy owned for a decade while a sale goes through.
Like the rest of the family, she is coming to terms with life without the man she married 44 years ago.
“She’s struggling like the rest of us,” Sharon told the PA.
“I think dad would be so proud of us. He was such a good guy, so chatty.
“He would go out of his way to speak to you. Just an all round good guy who would help you with anything. I sometimes think
‘why him?’”
Aberfeldy writer Alan McIntosh Brown has used his time confined to home during lockdown to publish an eBook novel with events focused on a part of the Perthshire countryside familiar to him.
Alan’s setting is Loch Tay and part of the action happens at the time of World War II.
Then the story does some time-travelling to the present day as well as looking back to more superstitious times.
He named the book‘The Loch Tay Boat Song’.
“The action is interwoven over three timescales,” explained Alan.
“The first is the age of legends, when uncanny events, which we would find hard to believe in these sophisticated days, took place.
“Then there’s 1940 and the wartime experiences of some of the families round Loch Tay and further afield.
“Finally it’s the dawn of a new millennium and the journey of a young Polish girl who fulfils a promise by travelling to her late mother’s birthplace by the loch.”
Alan is well known in Highland Perthshire as a compere and musical entertainer and this is his second published book.
“My first novel,‘The Old Music’was published in 2014 and I think I’m still the only author to have appeared at Pitlochry FestivalTheatre’s‘Winter Words’event with a Kindle-only book,” explained Alan, who chose to write during the lockdown when others busied themselves with home maintenance and garden renovation.
The book is available in Kindle format only. A free Kindle app can be downloaded to a PC or laptop so it can be read that way and additionally Alan has made a couple of sample chapters possible to downloaded free of charge as a taster.