I have never broken a bone, despite being involved in skiing and mountain hiking for several decades. I have bruised ribs, the most notable was when I fell out of a punt (whilst sober!) on the river Cam and was helped back in by two people of very different strengths, one on each arm. That bruising led to the GP consultation, which resulted in early discovery of my cancer.

I have spent only three nights in hospital – two for wisdom teeth extraction and one after my alcohol-induced fit. I have had a few stitches all due to minor accidents to my head. Like any 68-year-old, I have suffered wear and tear. I was overweight for far too long, but I think have been lucky that it hasn’t affected my physical health, as much as it could have done.

I have practised active sports such as hiking, running skiing and court games, although have never enjoyed team sports such as football and especially rugby. I enjoyed playing golf for many years, but haven’t played a full round of 18 holes since 2010, when I spent over 6 hours on a single round, after which I decided that the hours spent mis-hitting a ball is a waste of my time. However, I do regularly play 9 holes of pitch and putt, which takes around an hour, mainly for the company of the other players.

My mental health went through a bad patch for several years towards the end of my first marriage and then the end of my drinking, but I used short-term prescribed medication and longer-term therapy and counselling to good effect. For example, I remember walking our labrador in a local wood and being absolutely convinced I was being followed.

Since getting sober, my sleep has not been as good as I would have liked. For instance, preparing for important and difficult conversations or lectures keeps me awake and I have learnt that analysing a mathematical problem helped me sleep. Such as “what percentage of the world’s power output would be needed to pull the moon closer to the earth by one metre per year?” and “if one drops a football into the Atlantic Ocean, what height is the ripple on the other side?”.

I don’t have regrets, but it is still a pity that I didn’t take up running a few decades ago. Apart from the physical health benefits in terms of cardiovascular and leg muscle strength, a couple of hours a week (say 20km) gives me time to listen to the radio and podcasts and think. I run about 20% slower since developing cancer, whether over 5km, 10km or a half marathon and initially, using home and hospital tests, I checked my heart flow and beating rate, my lung flow rate and my cadence and decided that it is my stride length, which has shortened by 15-20%. Age will be getting in the way a little, but I am now at peace with trying my best (I am competing only with myself) and accepting all the benefits without the overall speed. And, of course, running a half marathon in 3 hours rather than just over 2, gives more time for listening and enjoying the spectator support.

On diagnosis of my cancer, I went through a very difficult patch for about three months – very different from the sudden tragedies in my life, such as losing Ian, but once the osimertinib tablets started to work, I soon reverted to my old self with a very positive outlook on life. The osimertinib, although it is a chemical formula is not chemotherapy nor immunotherapy. It is one of a newer generation of drugs that is almost 100% targeted at unmasking the cancer cells (something the body’s immune system cannot manage) and affecting those cells chemically so that they become ineffective or die.

Our ability to cope with sudden and slow deaths is of course very different. We all live in hope, but if someone you know or love is seriously ill, one starts to grieve, whilst of course hoping for the best. This means that when death occurs, there has already been a level of acceptance of their death.

Both my siblings and my mother were ill for months before they died, although I hadn’t realised how ill my sister was. My father’s decline and death was pretty sudden (three weeks) but he was 86. I heard about the deaths of my two sons (and their mother) via telephone calls, which was quite horrendous.

With a strange co-incidence, my father lost the second of his two younger siblings in his late 70s, I did in my late 50s and Matt lost the second of his younger siblings in his late 30s.

Observing others, I have realised that every person has a different grief journey. Some of the differences are one’s relationship, any dependency (work, personal, financial), the age and reason for death, the frequency of recent communication, how closely one identifies with the person – age, sex, occupation, fitness.

Over the years, friends have asked and/or observed how I coped.

In no particular order to time or priority, I would say that:

I have not let grief either overwhelm or define me

I have asked for and been open to help from family, friends and professionals

I hope that I have rarely been selfish in my grieving – I remember only two occasions when I suddenly left a meal or party without telling anyone where I was going, simply to have space

I have very rarely been concerned to show my grief amongst family and friends, or in public.

I have researched grieving and tried to work out what techniques applied to me

I think I have only created one ritual – that of spreading Ian/Nam’ ashes around the world, and latterly of spreading a mix of his and Alan’s ashes – for instance in Antarctica in January 2024

I have busied myself with life, both as distraction mechanism and as a way of feeling I am contributing to others. This was given me a sense of purpose, a reason to get up in the mornings and has contributed strongly to my self-identity

I have spent a lot of effort in understanding how I cope with rejection, from a potential customer buying from a competitor, to a girl friend breaking a relationship, to the ultimate, when a child rejects my love and support. I have become more accepting of rejection as I matured, although where the bond is emotional, I still as hurt as I was in my 20s.

I have been told I am stoic and separately that I am resilient.

And I am sure that those are both to some extent true. But I feel that being resilient is emotionally demanding and whilst writing this book, I heard about the concept of Post Traumatic Growth. I have come to like that description better than stoicism and resilience.

At a recent conference of the International Association of Suicide Prevention (IASP), I learnt of two terms, postvention and Post Traumatic Growth.

From their website:

The International Association for Suicide Prevention is dedicated to preventing suicide and suicidal behaviour and to alleviating its effects. IASP leads the global role in suicide prevention by strategically developing an effective forum that is proactive in creating strong collaborative partnerships and promoting evidence-based action in order to reduce the incidence of suicide and suicidal behaviour.

I stumbled - very fortunately (my higher power?) - across the organisation, because I had a physiotherapy session shortly after Alan died, and a relative of the physiotherapist works for the IASP.

Postvention refers to the actions for the bereaved in response to a suicide. One of IASP’s roles is to promote research and best practices in postvention.

Post Traumatic Growth (the opposite is Post Traumatic Depreciation) appears to be what I have experienced. Although I can’t tell you how I achieved that growth, I have developed in such a way to handle my grief and to change my behaviour to positively help others.

Is this how I have avoided PTSD?

And finally, my feelings about my own death.

Like anyone of my age, I have been to many funerals, and the most difficult are those who have died young. Most of those who died young, were due to cancer or an accident, except those of my two sons.

As you have probably deduced, I do like to be in control of my life – I hope not to the extent that it upsets others (although I am sure I have), and I really hope that I can be in control of my death. I have been a supporter of assisted dying for many years. After experiencing my mother’s final two years, I am confident that the UK society will introduce procedures (as have Switzerland, the Netherlands, Australia etc) in due course, although unfortunately probably not in time for me.

Although I don’t know when it started (perhaps university where I had lectures six days per week) but in order to pack as much as possible into life, I have always planned my time carefully, and although I understand the adage “it is better to be on time, than in time” I would rather be on time. For instance, I am somewhat obsessed with being in the optimum seat on a plane or carriage on a train to exit the airport or station quickly.

However, I would not go as far as Ingvar Kamprad, the founder of IKEA who once said:

Time is your most important resource. You can do so much in ten minutes. Ten minutes, once gone, are gone for good. Ten minutes are not just one-sixth of your hourly pay. Ten minutes are a piece of yourself. Divide your life into ten-minutes units and sacrifice as few of them as possible in meaningless activities.

I have, of course, made mistakes – I’ve missed planes and have arrived at the wrong airport terminal and I have even arrived at the wrong seaport on Corsica – needing to drive four hours to catch a ship that was sailing an hour later. That time, when the boys were young, Christine and I were allowed to “hitch” a lift on a cargo ship to our destination, Marseilles.

And whether this is connected with my potential addictive personality or my entrepreneurial nature (or both) I don’t like regular weekly routines Of course, if I have had fixed weekly educational courses or badminton or bridge with others I try to adhere to those commitments, but I thrive from a slightly chaotic diary, packing weekdays (and many weekends) with activities.

Neither my parents nor school (I was one of the school “croakers” and not allowed to sing in music lessons) nor my piano teacher managed to instil a love of music in me. When Chris and I ran Brainchild, our university travelling disco, Chris chose the music based on his likes and what the audience wanted to dance to, and I provided the operational aspects of running the “business”. I have been to scores of pop and classical concerts, which I have mostly enjoyed, but can’t work out how to appreciate musicals and opera. I do enjoy most theatre, which I think is because I need a storyline to engage with a performance.

My first cinema visit alone was The Thomas Crown Affair in 1968, and cinema has remained an important part of my life and I visit about 50 times per year, half the time by myself (another spreadsheet!). I have eclectic tastes from foreign language films to sci-fi, from superheros to comedy. I can immerse myself much more easily in a dark auditorium than at home and will often cry whether out of sympathy or empathy. The Life of Pi which I saw with Alan soon after Ian died, was particularly difficult for me due to the drownings.

I don’t regard myself as a book reader, although I feel I should be. Reading books is one of the many parts of our lives that require prioritisation and I read less than ten books per year (another spreadsheet!). After a bad experience about ten years ago with a poorly researched novel (where the author wrote that an inquest was not just opened, but concluded just a week after a suspicious death – something I knew to be impossible) I mostly read to learn, rather than to be entertained.

Like many people, I adopted my parents' conservative politics whilst a child and was then influenced by my aunt in Australia, English friends in Germany, exposure to charities, Philip in Stamford (who was a local and county labour councillor) and Belinda in Cambridge. I am left leaning and float between liberal democrat and labour depending on promises, policies and personalities.

I have tried a couple of times and failed to believe in Christianity – initially at university and lately after my cancer was diagnosed, when I tried the Alpha course. However, I am content and relieved to believe in a higher power, albeit unattached to a deity.

I have owned motorbikes as a teenager and then in my late 50s, but in all cases as a mode of transport and not for recreation. I do take a lot of pleasure from driving cars, although nowadays would much rather take public transport, if that is a time-efficient option. My spreadsheet shows that I have owned 23 cars, have driven over one million miles, have spent nearly £1M (2023 prices) on cars and lost 20% per year in depreciation or £8,000 per year in the five decades since I bought my first car in Sydney. The fuel consumption ranges from 25 to 75 mpg (12 to 4 litres/100km). I have owned a couple of small dinghies, but have never been tempted to own a yacht, nor an aeroplane.

I have lived in about 20 dwellings for more than 3 months. Including my property business, I have bought a dozen and also sold a dozen houses over the years, and as a baby boomer, have been lucky to have made money out of most of those transactions.

I do enjoy good food and will travel for a special meal, whether it is the gastronomic theatre of the Fat Duck in the UK, or the exotic menu at Central in Lima, where each of the 14 courses is sourced from a specific altitude below and above sea level. There have been occasions when I would rather not eat, than eat poor food.

I used to enjoy and collect good wine until alcohol became an addiction rather than a pleasure. The only disadvantage I have found from being tee-total is that, until the last few years, there have been no drinks that will enhance a good meal in the way that wine does, but society gradually moves away from alcohol, the choices have improved tremendously.

People tell me that I have little dress sense and they are correct. I don’t have an eye to colour match my clothing and am renowned in Cambridge for wearing shorts at formal events (in the summer!). I wore a beard for 12 years from the time Christine and I hiked the 180km around Annapurna in the Himalayas (to save weight, we shared one cut-down toothbrush, and used our novels as toilet paper once we had both read a chapter) until my 40th birthday when Wendy suggested my beard should go. And again, later in life for a few years.

I was so pleased that suits and ties went out of fashion – another choice that didn’t need making!

The major crime I have committed was to drink drive, although I have been charged with several minor driving offences, including being caught speeding in the USA in the early 1990s and given a court date which I didn’t attend as our vacation was over. I worried about my next entry to the USA, but computer systems are luckily not always interconnected.

The only time I have been inside a prison was to install Camdata rugged computer equipment at a young offender’s institution in Liverpool, but as you have read, I spent a few hours in a police cell in Penrith after being caught drink driving.

I have been to court for my drink driving offence and once for a small claim from a sub-contractor of Camdata. I was also a witness in a neighbour dispute – two twin brothers who lived next door to each other and disagreed over the positioning of a fence between their gardens.

I have had a few crimes committed against me. My car was stolen when I lived in Bath and recovered a few streets away. Mementos from China were stolen from our car in Paris, but I have never had bicycles stolen despite living in Cambridge, nor any burglaries. I have had a few car accidents – about 50/50 my and the other driver’s fault.

I have been mugged twice – once with Alison on Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro and once in central Brussels – both leaving bruised pride, but no loss of property.

From being an early teenager, I have fully embraced technology. I am an early adopter – I had my first cellular phone in 1985 (although built into my car) and my first smart phone – an HP device, six years before the Apple iPhone. I owned an Apple II and then bought an IBM PC as soon as they were available in Europe in 1984 and then my first laptop in 1989. I have owned dozens of phones, Blackberrys, Palms and Psions. I bought one of the first shipment of hybrid Audis into the UK. In 2002, I rigged up two portable devices so I could send emails from ski lifts. One of my retirement activities was to learn how to program again, but I have been too busy.

I think I am curious almost to the point of nosiness – I love learning whether it is structured as in a university course or unstructured as in performing due diligence on an entrepreneur a co-investor, a customer or a supplier.

For many years, my WhatsApp status has been 'Strong opinions, weakly held'. This is a quote that was first attributed to Bob Johansen at the Palo Alto Institute for the Future. I have adopted this because I believe that one needs opinions to build a personal brand, but that those opinions should not be fixed in stone. I listen and learn from the many people I meet and will alter my views and am happy to share that I have changed my opinion.

I used to “collect” computer languages, but seem incapable of using that skill with human languages. Although my five years in Germany means I can still switch mid-sentence into still fluid but now rusty German. But after more than one hundred visits to France for work or tourism, and having owned a house there for six years, my French is still schoolboy level. And I am embarrassed to say that, although my wife Liesbeth is Dutch, I can catch some of the gist of the language (due to some similarities with German) but can’t speak a word.

Although I didn’t realise what I was doing, travelling to entrepreneurial, angel and VC events around the UK, Europe and then the world, helped me create my brand. I learnt how other startup ecosystems developed and matured around the world, met many interesting people and in time contributed back using my own and other people’s experiences.

I certainly would not want to analyse my own character, but would like to quote from a friend Phil, who helped me scale Camdata:

I always think of Peter as a pragmatic genius, if a little ‘rain-man’ around the edges, someone who could cut through the bullshit, and get to the nub of any situation or issue quicker than most. I think this pragmatism is reflected in his approach to his health and potentially his eventual death. I hope we get to keep Peter as long as possible, he is appreciated, enjoyed and loved by many, me included.

Thanks to my middle son, Ian/Nam, recognising my fear of public speaking and writing a specific poem for me, almost goading me to conquer my fear. Did he know when he was writing it, that I would speak it aloud at his celebration of life in Cambridge, with my younger son, Alan, hugging me as I read it?

Like so many life skills, practice makes perfect, and although I am far from perfect – I speak too fast, words tumble out when I am very passionate about a subject and I don’t breathe often enough – I am now comfortable in front of any audience size. But also pleased to say that my smart watch often warns me that my heart rate is too high, as “stage fright” still keeps me on my toes, in the minutes before the microphone goes live, or I walk onto stage.

For 25 years, I have offered more time than money to charities. I joined my first charitable board for experience, and soon realised I had business skills and experience to offer and hence helped charities for the following 15 years. Some of the charities chose me and others I chose myself, mainly as I had an emotional connection to their causes.

I love animals and they seem to be very comfortable with me, especially dogs, and although I have owned a couple of dogs, and love caring for Alan and Tasha’s two labradors, my life seems too unstructured to own a dog.

Liesbeth asked me during courting, what nourishes my soul. This took some analysis and, although perhaps a little unconventional I eventually replied “numbers and people”. I find comfort in numbers – storing and analysing them. As an extrovert I find I need to spend time with people, although with sufficient intellectual stimulation or when running, hiking or skiing, I can happily spend hours by myself.

I feel that I have always “worked” hard, by which I mean long hours – partly as I have enjoyed what I do, partly as I struggle to say no to another role and partly as escapism from other parts of life. I put “work” in inverted commas as I have probably spent as much time helping others voluntarily, as being paid to deliver something to a customer or employer. During the 46 years since leaving university, I have been employed for less than three years, and in the other 43 years almost always received an income for providing a specific service or product rather than “selling” my time by the hour or day.

And I have often asked myself if I work efficiently? I suspect not – I suspect that I have “wasted” time learning things that I will never need, when I should have been used, for example, finding new customers for Camdata or spending time with family and friends.

I have earned well, although less than if I had worked in the City of London or managed to climb a corporate ladder. Apart from cars and a reasonably sized house, I have strongly prioritised experiences over assets.

When Christine and I separated in 1995, I didn’t resume paying into a workplace pension, partly as I was short of cash and partly as I had lost faith in the pension industry. I bought the houses in Hull, partly to give income for life, although as the houses were low cost (less than £30,000 in those days for a 3 bedroom terrace house), the rental income was also low. Property development generated capital and that capital (together with income from other sources) was invested in startups. This is a risky strategy to create a pension – one that I definitely cannot recommend. They say that an angel should not invest more than 15% of one’s nett wealth (to avoid effecting one’s lifestyle if all the investments fail), excluding main home and pensions, but I ignored that advice, and as Roderick (MD of the UKBAA) told an audience of 100 on a webinar I was giving, Alison and I invested over half of our nett wealth. But with good judgement, helping my portfolio companies and a large dose of luck, that strategy has succeeded. At the moment, I have had exits worth nearly three times what I invested and have over 35 companies still heading to a positive exit, or of course failure.

I have often had conversations with people about how I relax. My usual retort is to ask their definition of relaxation.

I watch very little television - generally only documentaries and not dramas nor soap operas and even that may be on one of my three desktop screens, whilst I multi-task on the other screens. However, I am fully immersed in a cinema or a theatre.

I enjoy playing sports with one opponent or as a team of two, but I can never remember being engrossed as a spectator – for example when Alan (as a teenager) and I got courtside tickets for a basketball match in Denver, I soon resorted to reading a book when I realised there seemed to be more timeouts than play.

I love playing bridge, which combines intellectual capability, with some psychology and arithmetic, plus has a social side to it, except at the highest levels, However I am not patient enough to play most board games unless both tactics and strategy are needed. 30 years ago, Wendy introduced me to cryptic crosswords, and I enjoy this both as a solitary pastime and with others.

I love skiing and hiking – being outdoors, physical exercise, mountain views and with good company. I have SCUBA dived about 40 times around the world, and have not dived since running out of air after a dive that, I felt, was too deep at 38m for my experience level. My experienced dive buddy and I shared her air, and we had to make two decompression stops on the way back to the surface.

I need a level of intellectual stimulation for almost all of each and every day, hence am not particularly good at “small talk” – I know that is a derogatory and very subjective term – I define it as a discussion where I neither have an interest nor am learning – an example would be others talking about what shops are available locally, whereas I would happily discuss the future of the High Street.

I appreciate a tidy and colourful garden, but I don’t have the patience to put effort into creating the garden, and derive no intellectual satisfaction from doing so. For similar reasons, I am happy to repair things around the house or garden, but not to undertake complex or long DIY tasks.

I have already mentioned my dislike of musicals, opera, sport spectating, I struggle with working out in a gym, despite the obvious long term gain. I cycle around Cambridge as a means of efficiently avoiding traffic queues and parking charges, but very rarely cycle for pleasure.

Fundamentally, I need intellectual stimulation and an easy “win” to enjoy myself, but this does contradict with me running half marathons or long distance hiking in the mountains..

As I said before, I am an impatient patient, and when my cancer starts to take hold more aggressively, I will find it very difficult to handle being incapable of having a full life.

Have I used my 68 years on this earth efficiently? Who am I to answer that question? You will have read about my lost decade, but I do feel I have now caught up. As Jim, the CEO of one of my investments said:

To paraphrase Tyrell in Bladerunner: “The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long - and you have burned so very, very brightly, Peter.”

I am not sure if my risk appetite has increased over time, although I know my ability to analyse and measure risk has improved immeasurably. Whilst being an entrepreneur I have not risked as much money as risked “opportunity cost” – that is what could I have done that would been a better use of my time? I have long been comfortable that I can’t change the past, have analysed risks as much as I could have done at the time, and hence feel that I have always made the “right” decision.

Which of course, leads to the question of when to give up something that is not working? I feel I am loyal, and if I take an position with a company or charity, I will give it at least 2 or 3 years, before deciding I can use my time better elsewhere.

The school cohort that carried me into a good university. It was peer pressure and not parental pressure.

Deciding to spend my gap year in Australia and maturing with help of my uncle and aunt and experiencing entrepreneurial enthusiasm from Dick Smith

My brother dying and then being tempted by Lothar Ulbrich to move to Germany

Meeting, courting and marrying Christine, Alison and Liesbeth

Philip helping me enter recovery from alcoholism, hence improving my relationships, my health and creating time and motivation to help others

Taking risk with speculative property development creating wealth to invest

Mentoring and investing in Martin Kleppmann, hence learning what an angel investor is

Co-founder of the Cambridge Angels, Robert, trusting that I would be an active angel, despite my then lack of wealth

Robert Marshall trusting me sufficiently that I could help co-found Martlet

Tim Mills believing I could help the Angel CoFund and hence get noticed by the industry

Alan being available and willing to cofound the Invested Investor

The personal tragedies and my cancer leading to me writing this book

I never planned to build several categories of friends, but seem to have done so – maybe we all do? I class categories such as through schooling, social groups at university, sport, bridge, business – entrepreneurs and angel investors. Although, naturally, with some overlap.

Although I am sure it is no different from anyone else, I am attracted to people who are both interesting and interested in me.

I have always been pretty open about my life and this often leads to friends being open about theirs. For instance, I was on a flight from London to Toronto and after our shared reticence in disturbing a neighbour, we got chatting and we spoke for several hours about the trials and tribulations of our lives, both ended up in tears. As we left the plane, we hugged and acknowledged that we will never speak to each other again.

And by helping others, many people have helped me and I have been given and asked for emotional help very many times over the decades. I suspect that I show my vulnerabilities earlier in a developing relationship than many others.

I have lost touch with countless work colleagues and many employees, and also some people with whom I had friendships, usually due to one of us moving countries or cities. I have rarely fallen out with anyone and am still in touch with girlfriends from decades ago.

Of course, we all have our own views of which friends are close or not, and that friendships are not always symmetrical in their depth. And I have heard distinctions between real and “deal” friends. My conclusion is that we all have our own definition of what is friend or a close friend. One definition I have heard is that a close friend is one that you would give money if they were in a difficult situation – to my cost, I have found that it is wrong to lend money to friends.

I have had several important mentors, all of whom I have mentioned in the book and who I hope I have thanked sufficiently, and although I have mentioned some of my mentees, I am sure there are many others who have taken my advice and which has improved their life in some way.

The reader will have seen that almost all my life I have had a girlfriend, a partner or wife, and that I lived alone (no kids or adults in the house) for less than a couple of years in total – whilst in Bath, for a while in Stamford and during some months during Covid lockdowns.

Being an addict is really hard work. Daily life revolves around planning and financing the purchase of, in my case, alcohol, then planning the consumption around whatever one had intended to do that day. A sober, rational person plans meals, but for an alcoholic, those eating plans evaporate once one has started drinking. I learnt that ethanol (alcohol) contains 70 calories per unit, and on a bad day, I was drinking over 30 units per day – that is over 2000 calories, plus any other calories within the beer or wine. At that age, I needed about 2500 calories per day, but of course that cannot be derived solely from alcohol, so like other alcoholics, I was short of all the other nutrients that one needs to live healthily. Weight for me, like other alcoholics was also an issue. As it happens, I managed to keep a reasonable weight, although I was a little on the heavy side, as I was not drinking every day and was playing squash and walking. Others lose or put on a lot of weight.

But it is not only the loss of time, but the financial cost. When I stopped drinking, the cost of alcohol was about £8000 per year (2023 prices) but I reckon the actual cost was triple that with poor business and life choice decisions. And one cannot put a figure on the costs to my health and to my relationships.

And has my addiction been redirected to a different “drug of choice” – one that is not chemical but still triggers endorphin highs in me – experiences, helping others, the cut and thrust of a business deal?

Most people believe that alcohol addiction creeps up on you slowly, unlike for instance heroin addiction, which can develop in a fairly short time. It is certainly true in my case that my alcoholism developed gradually, over a period of perhaps 15 years.

A few years ago, I wrote the following for Shirin Dehghan, an entrepreneur and investor that I respect immensely, when she has a partner at a London VC firm., titled A letter to my younger CEO Self. This is on the web on my website at: https://www.petercowley.org/lifelearnings.

And so, I will finish this chapter with a different letter – a personal one to my late teenage self.

Dear Peter

You will go through tough times – many will say that you’ve had more than your fair share of family deaths, health issues and business failures, but you’ve coped and been resilient.

Some lessons that you will need to learn are:

You will be told many times that life is not a dress rehearsal and that you have only chance at it, so don’t waste your life – grasp opportunities, contribute to others’ lives, but also have time for yourself.

The saying “don’t sweat the small stuff” although hackneyed, is so important. Life is full of priorities and working out what you want from life and hence making hourly/daily/yearly choices takes time to develop.

You were born into a family with a comfortable income, but lacking the ability to communicate emotionally, and it will take until your early 40s to develop a level of emotional maturity. Read and use professional help as soon as you can to develop your Emotional Quotient.

You’ll never be worried about your appearance or collecting assets – stick with that programme!

But you should keep a better eye on your weight. You will reach your adult minimum weight in your mid-20s and then you’ll lose control of your weight for the following 40 years. Although you will continue to play squash, you could easily have needed new hips or knees.

It took you 64 years to learn how to enjoy running – start in your 20s, especially as with hindsight your joints will probably be strong enough.

You’ve worked hard through most of your life and earnt well, but you have lived almost beyond your means for many years. You’ve been lucky

You’ll develop an intense addiction to alcohol which could easily have killed you. You spent at least a decade in denial. I don’t know how you could have recognised that as a 19-year old.

As a late teenager, yYou are keeping a personal diary, and if you’d spent a few minutes a week maintaining that, this book would have been easier to write!

It wasn’t until after your middle son died in your mid-50s that you took his counselling and learnt how to enjoy speaking in public. You tried in your 20s and should have persisted then.

Many people feel they have not spent enough time with their kids as they grew up – you will become one of them – please don’t.

You won’t prioritise reading novels – try and allocate enough time to read at least one novel a month

Personal relationships are key to a good life. You will have three marriages – two with a relationship of over 16 years and one that will only last 16 years if you’re lucky enough to be in the long tail of advanced cancer survivors.

You will adopt “Strong Opinions, Weakly Held” in your late 50s. It will take that many decades to develop a big enough audience that your opinion is heard.

We all have and need stress in our lives, and you will learn to recognise that stress can be beneficial in avoiding procrastination. But you will also use and then abuse alcohol to anaesthetise yourself from personal stresses

And finally: good luck. Stick to your core values, never give up, help others, enjoy life and be kind to yourself.