He was 72 and had been diagnosed with lung cancer a couple of months ago. He had a weak heart and had been suffering from pneumonia as well, which meant that because his general health was bad, he was unable to stand up to regular chemotherapy treatment. Instead of weekly hospital visits he had only been able to have three sessions since February, and last Saturday his heart gave out.

We got a call to say he had been taken to hospital, the third time in a week the family had dialed 911 for him. Soon after that, it seemed like minutes, my wife’s brother phoned with the news he had died. The two of us and our daughter jumped on a plane to Charlotte within a couple of hours, and stayed in North Carolina for a week.

When something like this happens it hammers home how important your family are. They define you and instill your values and set you on your life path. They (by and large) create your personality and are responsible for how you view the world. Nature, nurture, it all comes down to the same thing… My wife is so like her father in so many ways.

It’s hard when you live so far away from them. My wife is hundreds of miles away from hers, I’m thousands of miles away from mine. I grew up around my grandparents, spending summers with them and sleeping over at their houses, but our daughter will never have that experience. For better or worse, we set up home in a city built on a swamp with no familial ties for either of us. Of course as with anything in life, there are drawbacks and benefits.

It was the first funeral I’ve ever been to in the States, and a Southern Baptist goodbye is certainly a lot different to those back home. But the geography and culture doesn’t really matter in the end, it’s all about closure with someone you loved.

Now we are back home and I’m back to work, teaching my three different writing classes and working on next season’s football schedule at my daughter’s school. And putting off cleaning out a blockage in our gutters after the heavy rains we’ve had, in what was apparently the seventh wettest March on record.

So RIP Bud Wiggins, 1939 – 2012. You will be missed.

I discovered recently that my website doesn’t work with Apple, something of a disadvantage with the recent explosion in popularity of the aforementioned tablet. To be fair to my web designer Papillion – an eco-pirate children’s entertainer who did a great job on my site – the iPad wasn’t invented when he created my cyberspace three years ago. Or at least on sale. But obviously everyone and their dog has one now (everyone and their dog but not me), so it’s become a problem. Apparently, and I only discovered this on Sunday thanks to a fellow Chelsea fan, it’s because the makers of Flash and Apple don’t like each other or spilled drinks over one another at a party, or one’s a Liverpool fan and the other an Everton supporter or something. Probably.

So I need to do something, an apt metaphor for my life in general. I know it’s two or three grand to get a new website and that’s too rich for my blood, but even just transferring things over or patching it or drawing with crayon or whatever, is going to cost $600 according to this other designer I met. I refer you to the previous answer.

But it’s not a pressing concern. If you are reading this then you are only one of dozens, and I haven’t had an order via the site in, ah, well, a long time. So I’ll get around to it, and I have a dream that one day, in the not too distant future, iPad and pc readers can sit side-by-side and read my words of wisdom in peace.

We’ve had Mardi Gras and St Patrick’s Day. Now I need to knuckle down and lose some weight. My writing class starts tonight, and we’ve had enough students sign up for three different classes. So I’m going to be working every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday night for the next eight weeks. So I want to at least sound like I know what I’m doing.

Busy summer ahead. Great line-up at Jazzfest, Chelsea in the USA, Iron Maiden in Houston… If I get all my work done.

Till next time, Stephen

I have not written a blog since November. I skipped December and January. Two whole months, gone, missing. Disastrous.

I’ve just checked back, and since I set up this site three years ago I have managed to post some words of wisdom every single month. Nearly. I missed October 2009 and February 2010 if you are interested, but now in the last three months I’ve skipped as many months as I have in the last three years. Even worse, I missed February 2010 because our computer died, so at least I had some sort of excuse. Shame on me.

My sorry excuse this time? I’ve been busy. Aren’t we all, eh?

My mum visited from sunny Belfast and more mundane activities got suspended (and what is as important as your mum, right?). The girls’ football team I coach have an intense truncated season – just three months – and that’s occupied me as well. But my main reason is that I was frantically trying to get the work on my house finished.

And now it is. Kinda. Ten minutes ago I added two more places to my list of walls to touch-up with paint. But all the major sheet-rocking, plastering, painting and renovating is done. Thankfully.

It took me a week just to clean the house last month. A layer of dust coated everything, from my daughter’s toys to my books to my wife’s photos. It’s hard to concentrate or even think straight when your home is upside down, but now we’re done. Inside at least. And I’m working my way through another list, this one entitled, Things I Have Neglected These Past Three Months. Obviously writing this blog was near the top. Right behind, Take A Shower.

So I’m back, I’m back, as a matter of fact, I’m back (in the words of a certain 70s glam pop star we shouldn’t really mention). Did you miss me?

See you next month. I promise.

No, not really. A day when the temperature dips down into the fifties hardly qualifies as the Arctic Tundra. As I write the sun is shining and by next week we will be back up into the eighties. It’s still “short-sleeve order” in these parts, as we used to say in school.

You’ve heard the expression, “living here thins your blood?” I’m beginning to think that may be true. Do people who live in hotter climates really have thinner blood? Does that make sense? Us fearless warriors from the chilly inhospitable regions of Northern Europe – well, we have thick, sludgy blood that traps heat and means we can stand for 90 motionless minutes on a windswept terrace watching football. On the other hand weak Southern Louisiana inhabitants have insipid watery blood which constantly sloshes around their body, leading to their inability to sit still and watch the Saints for more than three seconds without needing to run for a beer or more nachos.

Can you tell I have no medical training? It doesn’t make sense, you know, when you poke fun at the thought like that. But after seven years living the American Dream, having switched chilly Belfast for sultry New Orleans, I do feel the cold more. Is that just me getting old – 42 next month – or has my body adapted to its new habitat? How come I could wear shorts in Northern Ireland in January but now need trousers in Louisiana in October? Old age? Yeah, probably…

In other news, I start my new football coaching career next week. Should be fun. I’m enjoying both writing classes I’m teaching at the Walker Percy Center, and I’m delighted that there’s plenty of first-rate ability amongst the students. I’m lucky so many talented writers signed up and produce interesting pieces every week (and no, I’m not just writing that in case any of them are reading this). I finally finished our bedroom and have now moved onto painting our bathroom. How people renovate a whole house at one time and still live in it is beyond me.

Anyway, next month my mum arrives in New Orleans, Stephen King arrives in New Orleans, my birthday arrives in my house, and Thanksgiving arrives all over America. Maybe Old Man Winter will arrive and rattle this old man’s aching limbs as well.