LUMP

Brace yourself for an ending, of sorts... in a special edition, recorded live at The Head Gardener Hair Salon in Inverness, Pen is joined by some remarkable women to share stories, memories and favourite moments from the series. Is this the end? Possibly or possibly not... Lump is produced in Scotland by Adventurous Audio and sponsored by The Head Gardener It was recorded by the legends who are Da...

Pen's first year check up looms but a return to the breast clinic is the last place she wants to be. "However warm and caring and gentle the staff, there’s no getting round the fact that the breast clinic is not about good news, even the good news I did get there was set against the context of the fact that it could have been much, much worse news. Learning something isn’t as bad as it could have...

Pen starts to find strength through her fellow breast cancer warriors, leaning in to their common experience and challenges... "I’m not sure the collective noun for breast cancer survivors but there’s so very many of us I’m tempted to coin one.  A ‘bruise’ of survivors perhaps, because we all are, bruised, we’re black and blue with it, even a year on hardly any of us are fading to green and y...

Pen starts to realise its possible for cancer to recede and start to play second fiddle to the other things and people in her life. It doesn't get to be centre stage anymore and the realisation feels like a total triumph. Lump is produced in Scotland by Adventurous Audio and sponsored by The Head Gardener It was recorded by the legends who are Dave and Johnny at The Music Shed Recording Studios Sp...

Pen keeps being asked if she's 'back to normal' and the question bugs her... "This week I’ve been snagged by the word ‘normal’, kind of a dull, grey, word at best. Normal doesn’t sound like she’d stay out all night, doing drugs and shagging random strangers, no, Normal sounds more of a nice cup of tea and a biscuit (probably a custard cream) kinda girl. Normal is a bit more Norma Jean than Marilyn...

For loads of people, the first anniversary of their diagnosis is significant and Pen's no different but in considering how she feels about the looming 'cancerversary' she realises there are crumbs of comfort lurking in the shadows... "Of course I will always remember when I found out I had cancer, why would I forget, but I don’t need to do anything more than let myself acknowledge it and, if I do...

Surely, surely, its time to stop banging on about cancer! Although Pen finds herself desperate to draw a line and move on, she can't. The physical and psychological ripples of cancer continue to cause shockwaves through her life as you'll hear in this utterly honest episode which captures her on going fury about what's happened. Lump is produced in Scotland by Adventurous Audio and sponsored by Th...

The great bra throwaway is looming but Pen's feeling reluctant... "maybe that turn of the year, spring clean thing, is kicking in.  It suddenly feels pressing. But it’s a spikey, gnarly, tear stain of a decision.  I’ve never been one for fancy, expensive underwear but maybe that means the few nice bras I do have carry more significance.  I need to throw away my old bras because they...

"a shaken snow globe is exactly how a cancer diagnosis feels.   Suddenly there you are, trapped inside your fragile bubble, desperately trying to remain upright while the soft petals of everything you ever took for granted and thought you knew, fly around your head. Everything unsettled, dislodged, the only certainty being that nothing will come to land in quite the same place ever again...

Its a year to the day since Pen first found the lump in her left breast. The moment has her paused, ruminating on just how much life has changed since that singular moment in the shower... Searingly honest, heart-breaking, often sweary and laugh out loud funny, LUMP is one woman’s rollercoaster ride through the mind meltdown which comes with learning you have breast cancer.  Utterly human and...

In the aftermath of another point of friction with her daughter, Pen takes a long hard look at herself and comes up with some uncomfortable conclusions about her attitude to conformity. Searingly honest, heart-breaking, often sweary and laugh out loud funny, LUMP is one woman’s rollercoaster ride through the mind meltdown which comes with learning you have breast cancer.  Utterly human and co...

"As time stretches out between me and the shock of those early diagnosis days, I’m spending more and more time with cancer as a back note, a gentle hum to my day. I cook, I write, I read, I see friends, we laugh, alot.  All of these things I do with a body that doesn’t work as well as it did and probably never will again. All of these things I do with a body which is significantly scarred and...

This was one of the hardest episodes for Pen to write and then read back. None of us likes to admit when we're being a bit of a dick but its only by being honest about ourselves, how we're feeling and perhaps our less appealing qualities, that we get to go to work on feeling a bit better. So here Pen wrestles with the notion that she's jealous, something she hates to admit. Lump is produced in Sco...

One of the hardest things about cancer is that it rips away the sense of having choice over your life, you lose control. In this episode Pen wrestles back control by choosing to take a walk up the hill above the house in search of understanding as to why she still feels so angry at cancer for stealing choice from her. Powerful, insightful and inspiring, writing which takes you way beyond the subje...

A call from an old friend prompts Pen to mull over what we give of ourselves to others. Should she worry about how honest she's been in writing her blog (and by association in this podcast), should she be fearful of the message that being so brutally honest sends out? "We want to be known.  And we do.  But we want to carefully curate what is known about us.  Look at facebook, twitte...

After making her exit from 25 years at the BBC, Pen ruminates on what on earth she'll say if she's asked "what do you do?". We're so hung up on labelling each other and ourselves but what label do you choose as an ex-BBC ex-Radio producing ex-cycling cancer warrior? Searingly honest, heart-breaking, often sweary and laugh out loud funny, LUMP is one woman’s rollercoaster ride through the mind melt...

Time to leave the BBC and push 25 years of her life to one side, but leaving a workplace during lockdown over zoom is distinctly weird... "It feels ever so slightly like attending my own wake.  People say lovely, generous, heartfelt things which make me squirm with embarrassment.  I’m deeply suspicious I tell them, people always say nice things after someone dies, always sing their prais...

E-bike at the ready, Pen contemplates the significance of getting back in the saddle and the cycling alongside David once more. For some reason the associated fear and anxiety prompts memories of a terrifying moment from years earlier... "We flew down the hill in pairs, spreading out, a distance opening up between myself at the back and the front group where David was, I was further up the hill, l...

Like loads of other people facing the fallout from cancer, Pen has taken some radical decisions about her career, but as the time to leave the BBC draws closer, she contemplates all the years she's spent there, half her life, with mixed emotions... "even though I know this story is finished, there’s that curious thing that happens with a great book or adventure.  Part of you wants to hurtle t...

Pen finds a new way of getting active again but she's torn up with the notion that she might be somehow cheating... "Tears pour down my face as David drives us to the shop.  I should be excited, elated and a small quiet corner of me is but right now, right at this very second, I’m broken hearted about what this trip and this purchase represents." Searingly honest, heart-breaking, often sweary...

Pen's in a reflective mood, mulling over her response to cancer in her writing... "As human beings we’re better at expressing the difficult, chewy stuff perhaps, than we are at emoting about how great life is and how happy we are.  But all those songs aren’t about love, they’re about lost love, they’re like a reverse print of the thing you should actually be looking at.  Flip the heartac...

Pen discovers a good friend has been diagnosed with cancer and it flings her back to when she learned of her own diagnosis... "What did I want when I found out?  Who did I turn to? What did I need in those first desperate days and weeks? So when he calls and stutters out his shock and fear and sheer disbelief at the path he’s being pushed down, I don’t tell him it will all be alrigh...

Pen's daughter asks her one of the toughest of questions and the mental journey it takes us on is both profound and profoundly moving... "‘Where do you want to be scattered when you die?’ B asks out of the blue.  It trips me up in more ways than one and I’m rendered speechless.  I don’t know why I should be so surprised at the idea of B considering my death – after all there isn’t a day...

Romance is on the cards this ep when Pen suddenly becomes what David calls his 'FW', Future Wife. Pen turns into a veritable bridezilla and starts a whirlwind of planning, that bit's easy, the struggle comes when she has to find a suitable dress... "so one Thursday morning shortly after, we find ourselves in a land so utterly feminine and sparkly and girlie that I’m struck dumb.  Never in my...

The easing of lockdown brings a rush of visitors which finds Pen collapsed in a heap only days before the inevitable return to work but the transition from recovery to the real world isn't smooth...  "Work. But not the work I was used to 6 months earlier before my operation.  My return to work means I sit in the spare room and stare at an endless series of other people’s spare rooms in a...