Live, Not Live

0:04 Hi, you love Lante here sansu w C why cray you whake up America. It's time for the adventure. So fight man on W four cy dot com. Lis Pond Beach is number one internet radio station. Here's your host, the Pipe Man. I'm running a retreat in twenty twenty five in dizzitth North Wales. Please send your email and nominate yourself or another person to Alarm calling at mac dot com. For all you breast survivors out there, please come and join me for the treat retreat in Wales, January twenty twenty five.

0:52 This is the pipe Man here on the Adventures pipe Man W four cy Radio and this airview. I'm very excited out because, first of all, it includes a passion of mine, which is music and great music, but also motivation, positivity and hope as well as a very very good cause in a great way. And so with no further ado, i'd like to welcome to the show Jules Peters from the Alarm and Love, Hope Strength. How are you, Jane. It's lovely to be here, oh man, lovely to have you. And I just got to say I think, first of all, it's great that you're here to do what you're doing for other women and other people around the world, as well as your husband. And you know, you guys are great musicians, but I think this is even better.

1:55 So tell me a little bit about your guys organization, tell the listeners a little bit about it and kind of your story. Yeah, Hi, thank you, Dean. I'm the keyboard player of the Alarm, but I'm also married to the lead singer of the Alarm, and we've been together since nineteen eighty six. Our life has been dominated by rock and roll, and we've been really fortunate and privilege to tool you know, most of our married life together. But when I was twenty nine and Mike was thirty five, Mike discovered some lumps in his neck and it was pretty It blew our world. I can only say. Mike was diagnosed with leukemia in nineteen ninety five, and we went from having no responsibility other than rock and roll and touring the world to suddenly dealing as two quite young people having to deal with a very traumatic cancer diagnosis. Back then, leukemia was a bit of a death sentence. And please to report that with all the development of drugs that now people who get diagnosed with leukemia can hopefully look forward to a much happier and longer future. But I think it definitely characterized our lives, changed our lives in many ways. You know, both Mike and I have been raised in a small town in North Wales, not far away from Manchester and Liverpool.

3:17 We were raised to be at beating positive people. But I think, you know, I can diagnosis when you're young can go either way. You can either feel very angry why me. Mike, however, is a very positive, upbeat guy and he's been very easy to be married to. And I think we just decided that not why me. You know, We're just going to work with this. This is this is part of who we are, not to panic, to take each day at time, and I'm very fortunate that Mike, he just celebrated his sixty fifth birthday in America last week. Yeah, all thanks to you know, a lot of his attitude I think has helped. But also undoubtedly he's received some fantastic care here in the UK, all for free via the National Health Service. So I think, you know, Mike has grown up, has been like the incredible lead singer of the Alarm in America, has been very very good to us. He's also known as the Man in the Camo Jacket, the Man who wears Green.

4:15 When he was diagnosed with leukemia, he decided to come to America and continue as to all. I wanted him to stay at home and staying near the hospital and concentrate on the treatment, but Mike felt that if he gave up on his music, that would lose his mojo. He needed to keep on being that person who he was, and music is Mike's life, so I had to support him. We all have to deal with these things in life in our own way. And we flew to Boston. I remember it was a very cold day. As we got off the plane, I was actually broken, you know. I thought this was the beginning of the end. But Mike consulted a faith healer, which was most unlike him, and she said to him that green was his protective color. I think really from her point of view, there was a link to star signs because he's a Pisces.

5:01 But for whatever reason, I didn't believe it. I thought it was a load of old blooney. But Mike believed it, and that's all that we needed. And we landed in Boston. We went straight to an army outfitter's shop and he kicked himself out in green camo from head to toe and he never took it off until he was put into spontaneous remission. So, you know, I've always had Mike. Mike is eight years older than me, and I've always sort of respected the way that he's dealt with life. So then I get diagnosed with breast cancer in twenty sixteen, and yeah, you could have knocked me down with a feather in that kind of naive way. I thought that he'd taken the cancer bullet for our family, which was a ridiculous attitude to have, really, But I grew up around cancer with my you know, like I said, I was a young woman. We didn't have children. When Mike was diagnosed. It impacted on everything, our fertility. Would we ever have children? But yeah, I was absolutely devastated when I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I never thought it would happen to me, and I had a few wymy moments, but of course I had to practice what I preached all those years ago and try and stay positive.

6:14 And I said to Mike, I said, I don't want you to be all softly softly with me. I need a bit of tough love. For those of the listeners who maybe have some experience with breast cancer, it can be a very brutal journey. I don't want to say it always is. I don't want to scare people out there, but my story, my journey was pretty brutal. Chemotherapy, hair loss, radiotherapy, complete loss of femininity, brutal breast surgery, rebuilding yourself and so a lot of what I do is to try and mentor other women going through this process so that I can say, look, you know, I'm here. I never thought i'd get through it. I can help you get through it now. So yeah, as I said twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen, actually we came to America again, America. We are both raised in North Wales, but America seems to be where we come to in times of trouble. I've grown up since a very young nineteen year old coming out to the United States. So when I got diagnosed, we'd already planned a month in New York City. So we approached my consultant and said, look, we want to go. We want to get our heads in order, we want to decide how we're going to face up to this, and it did me the world of good. I came away and by the time I went back a month later to Wales to face the music, it was all rolled out for me that I was going to have to have chemotherapy. You know, once I'd learned that hopefully the

7:45 regime that I was going to entertaate would save my life, you then start to worry about other things. You know, not everybody, but for me and a lot of women like me, I was very upset about losing my hair. Mike and I both seem to be known for having our hair, and I was devastated at the idea of losing my femininity and I tried everything to keep it. But I lost my hair and I created I managed to get a wig called Tricksy Vixie, which was a bit of a marry and faithful wig that I waltzed around. And Mike was an incredible support to me. I thought, this is the test. Now, after all these years of me going in by his side into chemotherapy and holding his hand through it all, is he going to support me in the same way marriage test right there? And I'm happy to say that he's been incredible sports me so much, so I think he did raise a few eyebrows in the hospital when he walked into my little room where I was having my chemotherapy with a full entire recording studio. Yes, he recorded an entire album through my six months a chemotherapy. But that's how we try and deal with things. You know, no one wants to have to live through cancer treatment, but it's been so much much part of our lives. And I'm careful the way I say it, because you know, not everybody gets through can I'm always conscious of those who haven't made it through. Mike and I've been incredibly lucky, and I think we probably feel like our life has been enhanced going through our respect to cancer bustles. It makes us very very clear on what matters in life.

9:20 We don't have much time for fessing and fighting, and we just are extremely grateful for each day that comes our way. Yeah, and you know what I mean. First of all, I love the attitude, but I love the honestness because even the most positive of people, when something like a cancer diagnosis happens, it can definitely bring you down. You know, you could be the most positive person in the world and it could be as you put devastating devastating. Yeah, I always say to people, you know, I feel like my life went from technicolor carefree to well as carefully his life is with all the responsibilities that we have. But it definitely went from technicolor to black and white, and I had to battle hard. That's why I said to Mike, you know, you need to be my tough love guy.

10:11 If you show me too much soft love. This isn't for everyone. It was just my personality. I become quite self indulgent, I think, and had felt very sorry for myself and found it very hard to get out of that pit of self pity. So he went complete the other way, which was hilarious because it was so out of character for him. And we had a few moments where I remember one day he came in and he said, right, I need to go into the studio. He was going into the studio with Billy Duffley of the Cult, who also has a side project with Mike called Color Sands. And I love Billy, you know, he always makes me feel really happy. He's great to hang out with. But Mike said, right, you're going to have to get your act together. I've organized for our parents to have the children, and we're going off to Liverpool to the studio. And I was like, I can't look at the state of me. You know, I looked like a little boiled egg. I had no eyebrows, no eyelashes, no hair. I did not feel like getting my gear on at all. But he just gave me tough love and he was like, fifteen minutes, get your wig on, get your cowboy hat on, get your skinny jeans on. We're off, We're going.

11:18 And I was upset. I cried. I think I threw things at the door as he walked out in my little office. But you know what, it was the best thing for me because we walked into the studio, Billy was there. Billy was so kind to me. Im McNab was there from the Ice School Works, and they both like looped their arms into me and stooped me up and took me to the pub. And then I looked back at Mike and he just gave me the thumbs up. And yeah, I felt a very different person. So I totally understand what it's like to be at the actual brink because I struggle harder than Mike does. Mike has a very natural positivity. But I try and mentor people to say, just trying to up over the over the doorway for me. You know, when I approached chemotherapy, I thought, I'm going to walk for five miles a day, and even though I don't, I'm going to put my beanie on, I'm going to put my wig on. I'm going to and I dragged myself out, and I say to people, please drag yourself out because by the time you've walked I live in a little village. By the time you've walked around the village and interactive to the other human beings, all your troubles do start to evaporate slowly you've shared them. Don't stay in, don't let it all build up inside. And I carried up that on through my journey.

12:35 You know, I did chemotherapy, like I keep saying, and I've it was very, very difficult and very scary at times. But by the time I got to radiotherapy, which was relatively the sort of simpler part of the journey, I actually found it more difficult. I walked in, you know, it's a big empty room. All the radio therapy people are in a little room. You feel very lonely, very insecure. I had to take my wig off either and I walked out. Mike was waiting for me. I said, I'm going to walk five miles to my radiotherapy. And when I walked out, he thought we were going to going to catch the bursts of grab a cab. But I upset. I was on the floor and I said said, where are you going? I said, I'm walking home.

13:16 He said you can't walk home and that's ten miles. I said, I have to otherwise I will just ups in a puddle. So that's what I did. I turned radiotherapy into a journey. I thought, you know, people in Africa probably can't even get radiotherapy, change the mindset, thinking may hate. Radiotherapy is a gift. And I thought, I'm not going to drive because it's always difficult to park. I'm going to walk. And so I invited friends, family and they walked with me, and I walked ten miles a day, five miles to the hospital, five miles back. And you know what, it was a brief experience. Hilariously, I was quite disappointed to finish my radio therapy because I just it's we only have it within our friends and family can help. But you have to flip oh, no doubt, no doubt about it, and you know everybody does have a different journey. As you're saying, I have to say, what a great husband that basically did what you needed instead of who he needed to be.

14:18 And I think that's a very important thing in any relationship. And I get it too, like sometimes people need tough love to just like kick them in the butt so that they trigger their own thinking. It's not like you're forcing them to do something. It's just you're it's almost like kicking a car into gear. You know, It's like absolutely that's how it was for me. Yeah, And like I say, you know, I never want to come across as, oh, aren't we so good? We said positive? You know, that can be really annoying. It's not that at all. It's just that is the way it works for us. And when I see people getting upset and said, I just try and talk them through it and say it's fine to be upset. And so it's fine I to have those as I've had millions of them, you know, I still get them now because there's checkups and there's you know, I've gone on to have a very scary year with Mike just recently in twenty twenty two, and he relapsed when I least thought he would. I thought he was out of the woods. I never thought I was going to have to worry about him again. But I was very, very wrong. In twenty twenty two, we finished a massive UK tool and he developed pneumonia, which is always something warned, you know, that he needs to avoid at all costs. I think it was kind of swerving out of COVID and he was a very poorly boy for about six months. We eventually got him into hospital and he was rebuilt by our fantastic local hospital. But it was difficult, you know, and I still he's got a little bit of a cough. We've just been away for a week

15:50 together and he develops a cough. I have to learn very much, as you know, I've been the patient and I've been the curer the same for him, and I have to learn to switch off the worry button. And I struggle with that and Mike tries to teach me to just switch it off. He's like, there really is no point in worrying. You know, worry when there's something to worry about, but don't pre worry. It's a waste few anything, but as a male female way I think of responding to things. It was so funny that you mentioned about worrying because in my show last week, I was just talking about that because I have this thing where, like so many people worry about things that may or may not ever happen.

16:34 And then yeah, and then if it doesn't happen, you think about all that wasted energy that you did worrying about it. You know, now I'm older, I try, I try my best, you know, to be like that, like, hey, say love me, and you know, jokingly, when I was younger with Mike and I touched on children, you know, when Mike was diagnosed early, so it questioned fertility. And then, as it turned out, I developed the fertility problem which bore everybody with But it was because I had an appendicitis operation when I was nineteen rendered me in the time. I always thought it was going to be Mike, you know, that was part of the problem. We then embarked on a very tough Yeah, we must have been quite bad in previous lives because we then embarked on a very tough IVF journey in vitro journey, So you know, we've been as a couple. We have this incredibly privileged life because we have all these amazing people, especially in America, who follow us and it gives us the gift to go and travel. But we've also had some incredible roller coasters of you know, family was everything to us, having children with everything, and when we found out that it wasn't going to be simple, it maybe wasn't ever going to happen. You know. Again, those kind of relationships can either pull you apart or pull you together, and luckily for us, it pulled as together. And we now have two gorgeous sons called Dylan and their musicians themselves, and Dylan's coming on the road to this to

18:08 America when we embark on our we're coming out in may Ful, I think on the last count's forty seven shows in the United States. Nice. Yeah, Dylan will be accompanying us and part of the road crew and running the show. See that's so cool, And you know, I love that you shared what you did because so many people they look at people that are in bands or on TV or radio or what have you, and they see what is shown to them or what their perception is. Yeah, but you know, everybody's just normal people that go through good bad roller coaster. It's just a different roller coaster. That's all absolutely say. We're all human, we all bleed in the same way. And you know, I think I think Mike and I both of working class backgrounds in North Wales, and we've we've always if we've always shared our journeys. I think we've maybe held back on going public sometimes with our cancer journeys just because with me we didn't quite know where the journey was going to go. With Mike the same And then so I can honestly say to people it's it's personally, I find it's better if you share it. Generally, human beings are incredibly kind and empathetic and want to help you. When I actually came clean and told everybody what was going on. You know, sometimes people are embarrassed or shamed about a cancer diagnosis

19:41 or they think that they've done or the life they've led, and I always try and say that has nothing to do with it. You know, you just people just get bad luck, and our bad luck has been cancer. But I guess we've we've seen it as good luck in a way, you know, Like I keep saying, we run a charity called Love Strength, and it's a line of a song that micro when he was a young man in his twenties, the song Strength that was very popular in America. Give me Love, give me Hope, give me Strength. And little did might realize how significant the song I would become during his adult life. And we've gone on to, you know, do amazing things of love, hope, strength, because our our just burning desire for some reason is to just try and help others. He follow in our footsteps because you know, when I was that young kid of twenty nine, when I was told my husband had leukemia, my world just my world fell apart. But all I wanted to do was google quickly you know someone who's survived leukemia and is having a happy life. Well there you go. Yeah, I can really find many stories of them modest and so I wanted to put our story out there to say, hopefully we can give you a little bit of hope that you can go And yes, our life can be incredibly glamorous and we have a wonderful life because of rock and roll. But I just want to share and and yeah, we've done a couple of documentaries for the BBC where we've opened the doors into our home and they've seen me crying, you know, they've seen me

21:12 with my boobs out being checked over by my consultant. Just to say that we're all human. It's okay to be not okay. But at the end of the day, I'm happy to report with our charity that there's more and more good stories now, you know, there's I can mentor a lot of women going through breast cancer and bring them through the other side. I see lots of people being diagnosed with leukemia and going on to live long and happy lives. That's the the I often think, yeah, that cancer should be maybe rebranded with a different name, because I think sometimes mentally it still flows people that world. Whereas you know, when I was diagnosed with breast cancer and thinking how my children were only nine twelve, they were kind of used to cancer. You know, their dad had cancer. Yeah, But I was mentored by another woman who I didn't know that well, and she just said to me, look, why don't you just not mention the word cancer?

22:07 And I was like, that's what I would do. Oh yeah, yeah, And that's so that's what I did. And my kids have come through relatively unscathed. I just said, mum's got a lump. You know, Mum's going to the hospital to get rid of the lump. She's going to take medicine to get rid of the lump. Might make a hair fall out. And I think as long as you're they would see me getting upset. They'd see me with my wig on, they'd see me pull my wig off, they'd see me. Bould just tried to make it. I said, look, you know, we're like cars. Sometimes the have cups fall off, but it's the car stops. But don't panic. You know, sometimes we do car restarted. And it is those words and you're inner vocabulary to yourself because I mean, basically, that word cancer just has no positive connotation to the word itself and the other words that they use, like sick and disease, and it's like, yeah, I've had two heart attacks, okay, And I don't look at myself as sick. I don't look at myself at like they like to say, you have cardiac disease, and I'm like, yeah, I'm not saying that, you know, and look at you in a different way, wouldn't they if you use that word cardiac disease right exactly yourself. Yeah, and even for myself saying to myself, it's like a different type of feeling. And I think with a lot of people, like you said before, you said, like you never think it's going

23:40 to happen to you. You know. It's like one day you're like really healthy or so you think, and you're living your life, and the next day it just changes forever, and people don't realize that. Like, even what you've been going through lately is like every day you have to wonder if if today's the day. You know. It's like, so it's like to have that positive attitude. I think it's a necessity because if you think you're sick, if you think you're diseased, if you think all these words, you know you're going to live life in that way opposed to going out and just living life to the fullest, you know, and and enjoying what you have instead of worrying about what you may not have anymore. Oh so much so, you know, you were saying it as we first started our interview.

24:37 You and I are old and I were actually around about the same age. And it's that advice, isn't it that you could give to your younger self that I still think now it's the fact that I'm a mother, you know, and how to give advice to two people coming through. You can't because you've got to live the life, haven't you. So as you're older, you definitely realize that, you know, if there's people you fall out with, you better walking away, have no toxicity in your life. You can't have that attitude in when you're young because you're making your way and you have to put up with people that you don't like and to make your way, it's just the way life goes. Yeah, you can be a little bit more choosy. Yeah, And I was just having a conversation with my son yesterday and I'm like, you know, at this point in my life, I eat extremely healthy and I'm very active. I'm not gonna jet and do all that stuff which I don't even really want to do. You know, Like people don't realize when you're sometimes when you're picky eating at places.

25:40 That's even annoying too, because people think, oh, you know, like you want to do that, like like you want to be that way. And I was like, I'm not going to take all that work that I'm doing and ruin it by getting upset at somebody or gain an argument, I'm just going to walk away. When I was younger, I would walk towards them, you know. And it's like and life would have been boring obviously without a few arguments, right, exactly you are and sometimes there's moments for confrontation and having a good old But yeah, I think as you get older, I think there's certain people possibly that you care less about so and that's not sounding unkind, that's just being that's positive. You're just knowing who you are and the older you get, Hopefully, it's the way it works, isn't it. You you become less of the people pleaser. You want to please the people that you really love, but you care less to please the people that maybe you don't really care about well, and you always and you also realize when you go through stuff like this that there's a lot less people on your side than you thought. You were always so busy people pleasing that you never paid attention that they weren't reciprocating as far as a synergistic relationship.

27:00 And that's what I really enjoy. Being less of the people pleaser is fair, I know, right, That's what's really cool about your event that you just did, your retreat that we're doing again in twenty twenty five. Yeah, yeah, because it just it gives you a chance to bond with other people and everybody to bond together, where with people that understand what you're going through number one. And I'm sure that having had a heart attack, you know, with breast cancer. I've got amazing friends, amazing family, but thank god, most of them haven't gone through breast cancer, so they can only understand so far and then they sort of they nod along, but they don't really understand, and that's not their fault at all, and they're still incredibly helpful. The retreat came about and you're sitting in front of my lovely chapel in North Wales. That the chapel. Just to give the listeners some sense of what the chapel is all about. Mike and I purchased a chapel.

28:02 It's in the village. It's all very authentic. It's in the village where Mike Peters was born. I'm from the next town and it's a beautiful chapel that was a fully functioning worshiping chapel up until we bought it. People in our village heard that we were looking for a space, and as the congregation dwindled, is happening so much across the United Kingdom that there was a need to sell the chapels. So they knocked on our door literally and said, we heard you were looking for a space, would please would you buy the chapel, so that they knew they you know, we live in the village. We would never do anything awful with it, and so we turned it into our studio and our recording space and we've made films in there.

28:45 It's been a very, very creative hub. But during lockdown obviously we couldn't tour. We'd always plan to eventually convert this beautiful space, which is situated opposite as seventy foot Waterfalls in a tiny little pitch s Welsh village from where we live Mike Can I live just up the road with our kids and our Golden Retrievers, Ziggy Stardust, and it's all pretty idyllic, you know. It's where Mike and I from, so we know everyone. We went to school with them from the age of two or three. It's like friends reunited wherever you go, and we love it and that's what always draws us back here. But we developed the chapel into these five beautiful apartments and they're used for lots of things, you know, people just booking to come on vacation.

29:29 But as time elapsed, we we had I'm a massive follower of yoga. We were talking about, you know, being present in the moment. I would love the whole If the whole world did yoga, it would all be a very different, different world. But that's a whole other interview. And I'm here in Costa Rica right now, and I'm doing yoga while i'm here because it's a yoga meca. So you know, I'm a little bit jealous there. I'd love to come and to yoga in Costa Rica. Oh yeah, you should. Definitely my little list it is. But so yeah, we had a lot of yoga retreats, yoga teachers who came and stayed in the chapel and then we'd send them up to the little community hall because we didn't have a studio in the chapel. And then this one particular yoga teacher said, I've seen this studio you have in the back. Well, the studio actually belonged to Mike and because we developed the whole place into apartments.

30:18 He wasn't able to stick on his guitar and make as much loud music as he used to because we'd had people stay in there. So long story short, and Mike was very very good about it. He realized he's very good at letting things go, Mike, and he realized that it was time to move on, and so we emptied his studio and his beautiful studio is now a yoga studio and a pilate studio, and it's an old it's also the old Sunday School, so it's a beautiful space with all the original beans in there. And we've gone on. I opened a yoga studio four months ago and we now host regular weekly yoga lessons. I'm trying to turn on my whole village. We have men on the mats on Tuesday night because they just want to come in, all guys and not have as women in there.

31:04 That's fine, all learning to be more flexible. And from that, I just thought, right, you know, I can use the space to a good cause. So once a year, and this is where I hope you're going to help me, Dean, to find some people out there in this particular tree is about breast cancer. So anyone out there who's been through breast cancer, if you would like to say, you can nominate yourself or you can get somebody else to nominate you. And basically you just come and stay with me for three days in the chapel. It's all for free. You get fed, you get wined and dined. We go to our sister.

31:45 I bought the village pub by the way about eighteen months ago. It's very yeah, I've got the chapel and next door I've got the pub. Everybody thought I was bonkers, but it's all worked out well. When Mike is home, he comes in DJs. It's turned out that my Peters is an incredible DJ. He knew. Wow. We have all the village pouring out their doors on Friday night and it's called Friday Night the Red. So we bring in all these breast cancer survivors. They come and stay in the chapel and then we go next door. We rock at the Red and we just spoilt them silly, because they deserve to be spoiled. You know, they've all gone collectively through a very harrowin journey. Some of them were still going through chimney therapy. Some had gone with survivors for five years. We were all at different stages of our journeys, and we laughed, we cried together. We had the most amazing time. It was very therapeutic. They didn't want to leave, if I'm honest, they just want listen. I'm thinking right now I should be moving the wells because maybe I have to do cardiac disease retreats. You know what's funny about that is I've been talking about something like that because both my heart attacks happened after surfing. Oh did they?

32:59 Yeah? So basically to the end of twenty seventeen, I brought my son family to Hawaii. I was going surfing. An hour later, had a heart attack. And what they did in Hawaii, their medical system is like the worst in the US, and that's saying a lot. And they basically they caused a second heart attack. And so I went through a year of recovery and I was not feeling it over the year, and like seriously, like you were talking about before, during that year, I felt things I never felt in my life, because it's like one day you're invincible and then you're not, you know, And that's exactly what it felt like.

33:46 And then a year later, the choreologists in Florida released me. You know you're good, you're bad, you can go back to normal activity. I decided to celebrate and go to Costa Rica and surf. And what happened. I had a massive heart attack surfing. Oh my god. But it wasn't from the surfing, it was from what the basically, they put a stent in, they misplaced, it floated out of my main artery and healed over during that year time. So then I, you know, went through another year recovery. I came and got cleared, I came back to That's a whole nother story. We only have time. Costa Rica took such great care of me, the best doctors, the best people. These people here were the most helpful, gracious people I ever experienced in my life. They treated me one hundred percent for free here because my insurance company would not give them approval to do a life or death procedure because it takes forty eight to seventy two hours to get an approval on insurance claim. So but I went through that year recovery, came back. I decided to come back to Costa Rica and I went surfing, didn't get a heart attack, didn't die, and then and then I went back to Florida and three days later we were locked down for COVID. Really wow, gosh. Yeah. So so you together

35:23 together with you know, people maybe your age group who have been through it, to give them the confidence to go back to that active life. Have to go into it exactly. That's the whole point, because they also read something. This is what gave me the idea. In France, they do not treat heart attacks with medication. And I'm somebody I'm not big about big forma at all, So any medication I don't have to take, I'm fine with. They treat it with surfing. They actually they get they diagnosed, they give a prescription to them to go surfing something. It What a phenomenal idea that would be to like arrange surf trips for people that have had heart attacks as their way of getting healthier, but also like you, bonding with other people that understand what they're going through every day, because, like you said, breast cancer, unless you have had it, yeah, I don't care if you how much you've even been exposed to it, you can't understand what that person's going through unless you've been there. And that's what's beautiful about your retreat is like people can see that there's other people because when you go through these things, sometimes during that beginning phase especially, you think nobody else knows what you're going through. But there are people out there that do.

36:54 Yeah, I'm glad to be unestin that I could bring people face to face. You know, a lot by text and by email, but I'm not a major fan of a lot of the groups that exist out there because and everyone's doing their best, but I think naturally we can all talk each other down into a bit of a panic. Whereas the beauty of the treat retreat as we called it, it's a retreat, which is a treat, was that we were there was like, you know, put the screens away, let's just we did yoga, pilates, hiking, dancing, music, and then I think the icing on the cake was we surprised them. Mike was kind enough to come in into we all congregated in the penthouse space, which is very rock and roll. It's a beautiful space. And then next minute, like SlowMo, Mike walk down the corridor. Oh, I'm getting chills right now. Yeah, Yeah, they loved it. There was lots of tears, and because I think for them as women, because obviously men can get breastcuns to two, but it was just women on this retreat. They really related to Mike being the care a role and he sat there and he formed a song called Heroin, which is what he wrote while he was in the hospital with me when I was getting my keeen therapy, and he dedicated it all to them. Not a dry dry eye in the in the penthouse barrel was either side of one of his Yeah, it's great you'll been able

38:29 to come here today and sharing your experiences that you've all been through together. You know, really admire you for what you've been through. And as a care of for Jewels, I can relate to some of the challenges you have to go through because it's it's quite a brutal challenge that you've all had to face. And to see all here today on the road to recoveries, very aggressive and very proud of you all for making it through. And I'll sing you a song for this is a song I wrote for Jewels. She was going to surgery, the radiation of the chemotherapy and it is a very challenging time. Jules is in hospital a nurse surgery that last hours and hours and hours the corridors, and just started writing these words into my phone. Ever since, I've always jewels have been my heroine, just like you'll be hearing still the people in your life who've you've seen what you've been through and understand and appreciate the steps you've made to stay alive. It's called heroine. My love to me, then God gives me work face that's no My love.

39:52 She flews through my face like heart beat in my cold dry my lother's need to be My love, my love, my love, my love, my love mine. My love is a lot of She comes when I am so far away, but that's nothing left to say. My love speaks to me.

40:42 She aches well hold of my bones. They bray went cheers street down on my faces. My love is love for me, my love, my love, my love, my love, my love, my love. My love is a viz. My love is closer to me than God. My love gets me, my my faith does not. My love is alive.

41:32 My love is a lie. My love is a live, My love is live, and she's my Harold with herold, My herold with Heroin, My love is of Alarm. I was watching the video when I was having a hard time getting the video, Okay, I mean, it's just amazing what you're doing. And really, I think everyone you know, look at you.

42:20 You know, we all do our best, don't we. You're not doing it for praise or you're just doing it from the heart. And you know, I'm lucky to have this beautiful space. And sometimes it's not busy, sometimes it is. I'd rather open it up to people as and when we can, you know, And that's what we want to do for next January. And we had a girl from New Jersey who actually flew over especially for the retreat. Yeah, she's called Lee and and she because I'm very open and honest about my experiences on social media, so she found that she was an Alarm fan and she found herself diagnosed with breast cancer a few years ago, and she suddenly remembered my blogs and my opening up about what I was going through, and so she sort of reread them as a now someone that was living through it herself and reached out to me. And so we connected that way and just communicated via email and then she came to a gig and then it all rolled out and I said, I think, you know, you need to nominate yourself for this. So that's what we say.

43:22 Nominate yourself, ask someone else to nominate you, or if there's people out there that know of somebody who thinks they should deserve, you know, to come over. We more than welcome Americans into our little village. We love welcoming Americans into a little village. I love it. And I'm a Jersey boy. I'm originally from Jersey, New Jersey. Oh yeah, we love New Jersey. Yeah see, And you know what's funny is I just met somebody recently. Say that again, you haven't got the accent. Oh yeah, well, like I kind of killed it when I was younger, try and not s out sound like I'm from anywhere type of thing. Well, if I go around Jersey people, it comes out in certain words like water and dog and coffee, and you know those are like automatic type of thing.

44:14 But yeah, I just met somebody recently I was hanging out with who's from Jersey in the UK and so yeah, so it was kind of cool we were talking about that, you know, because you would you wouldn't believe how many people in actual New Jersey don't realize why it's called New Jersey. No, I'm sure, well, because we all just accept where we are, don't we have? Yeah, if you started reading into everything, it would probably send you d lally, you wouldn't it. Oh Yeah, So let's tell everybody first. Let's tell everybody about the foundation and how they can connect and help with the foundation, because the Foundation covers a lot of different things and a lot of different ways to help people. Yeah, Love, hope, strength, like I said, was from a line in the song that Mike wrote as a young man, Strength, and the line is give me love, give me hope, give me strength. And when Mike was diagnosed, Mike wanted to come, actually to when Mike finally got to the point where he had to have chem therapy, he managed to avoid having a stem cell transplant, but when he was diagnosed halfway through keeen therapy, he frustrating for me as his wife and Cara, he announced that he wants to come to Austin, Texas to perform at south By Southwest. And this was like, you know, in the very early days when south By Southwest was just a sort of very emerging festival. I felt frustrated. I wanted to stay at home and just get him well, but Mike turned to me and said, you know I won't get well if I can't keep playing my music.

45:46 So so I reached out to a radio DJ that I knew, not a DJ, sorry, someone linked to radio A guy called Richard Reese and he was in Austin, Texas, and he said, right, I said, I need to know where the hospitals are so that I've got a plan. This is me always second guessing. And he said, I can do better than that. I can put you in touch with someone that's just come through a stem cell transplant easily kemia survivor. His name is James Chippendale. And that's what he did. And James kindly from he was from Austin, and he picked us up from the airport. Didn't know us, a bit of an alarm fun and oh my goodness, he took us under our wings. He took us to Dallas Hospital for a second opinion. He took us to see Lance Armstrong's doctors, and he just strengthened me. He just made me feel like I could be ready for the fight. He was this gorgeous, handsome guy. It gave me confidence that we could maybe get through this.

46:42 And because he was a lukemia survivor, he'd already started a charity himself, a foundation. I just met up with him actually in Dallas two weeks ago, and it was incredible. He's like our brother, and we founded the charity together. It was mainly founded by Ike and him because they were both leukemias. Well, Mike was going through the chemo therapy at the time, but they're both leukemia survivors and so he was the American side and me and Mike with the British side. So we said, well, we'd like to climb a mountain in Wales to raise funds for our hospital that's taking such good care of Mike and then subsequently such good care of me. And then James, in that classic Texan style, said well, you know, I think I think we should go even higher. And we were like, what do you mean, and he was like, I think we should do base camp Everest. So we were a perfect much the confidence of James and everything they brought with him from growing up in Dallas, and then our maybe slightly more reserved manner coming being raised in the UK and in Wales and we established Love Hope Strength together. James came over and stayed in the chapel funny enough, and this is before we developed it into apartments and we stood at the altar and James just saw a T shirt that was lying around with Love Hope Strength on the T shirt and he said, that's what we need to name the charity. And while the charity was born, and we did climb Snowden, which is our highest mountain, and we've gone to climb it every year

48:14 and we've raised When I say we, it's not we's it's his we. But with a massive team of volunteers who join us and hike and you know what, we turn it into fun. We try and joke that our charities like sexy charity. You know, we don't want it all to be too serious. Come along, hike with us, have a beer with us, you know, live life with us, however, the way you want to live your life. Raise a bit of money with us, but have an experience of a lifetime. So that's really how we've we've modeled of hip strand we just go off on tracks and people register onto the tracks. If you go to live Hip Strength dot co dot uk or live hip Strength dot org. You can see this year we're we come straight back from America and then we had straight off to Spain to trek the Elchem in a way. Last year we went to the Alps, Rock the Alps. The year before when Paul Mike was in hospital, I left him behind and I took fifty people with me to the Sahara. We have loads of people from a lot of people from across America who join us. We've done bass Camp, Everest, Kilimanjaro, Matchi, Pichu. But you know what I love about it.

49:22 It brings people together and it's a real level of you know, you step away from the comforts whatever comforts it is that you have in your home, and you're you're there more with a sleeping bag. You might be in a dormitory and a tent. It strip it all back, and I think it does all the world's a good. It's like a recent every year. So I try and nag and conjole everyone I meet to come and join us, and they generally do because it's like you know, it's sitting around the campfire, guitar guitars out, it's incredible. It's life changing, and we all we have a brilliant, brilliant time, but we raise a bit of money together and we help change the lives of people less fortunate than ourselves. I love it. I love it. It's given me chills because that's why I dig about your organization and you're a retreat. It's like something different, it's not Yeah, it's creating something and experience that people will never forget and that that's yeah. It's a short life, isn't it, Dean, And I want people to live it big, live it loud if that's the kind of thing that they want to do. And if you like music, if you're affected, you don't even have to be affected by CANCI. You know, you can do it for someone else that you know. It's not it's not just cancer survivors, but we're also you know, a big part of what we do is encouraging people to register to the bone marrow donor registry because Mike, you know, all through his life has been faced with potentially needing a stem cell transplant, and fortunately for us, so far, touch and Wood, he hasn't had to have that. He's had lots and lots of relapses,

50:52 but the new drugs that have come through have been able to rebuild him. But whereas James Chippendale, our partner in the charity, he had to have a full, full transplant. So we try and encourage people get on that. We have run a program called get on the List. So when people come to our gigs or our other friends who are musicians. I mentioned Billy Duffy earlier, you know, we get everyone to Billy's come on a lot of our treks. He went on to be diagnosed with prostates cancer himself a few years ago, so he's now part of our little group of survivors and we just encourage people. It's a swab test and you can you can potentially save somebody's life. You know. James, our co founder, was his life was saved unbelievably by a German guy literally because this German guy happened to register to the bow Marrow Registry and James was dying effectively and if they hadn't found him a donor, he was a young fit man, knocked down in his prime with leukemia. But because this wonderful German man registered many years previously, they suddenly boom found a match and his name is claud and Klaus save James's life, and James was from America to visit him in Germany and to give thanks to him. Without Klaus, there would be no James Chippendale and the world would not be as an exciting place. But we're heading back to Everest as well, Deane, I'd like to point out, so we first went to Everest in two thousand and eight. I think I'm not being

52:24 good on my figures. I was able to go because thankfully I'd just given birth to our second child. I mentioned our fertility battle. We had a huge battle to bring children into the world. And Mike disappeared with all his musical fans, Slim Musical pals, slim gym Phantom from the Straycats, Glenn Tilbrook from Squeeze. It was a phenomenal chap to base Camp Everest and they disappeared for three weeks. So we've decided it's the twentieth year anniversary in four years time, so we're getting everybody to other and taking a big group the road back to Everest. So we're excited of it. And so let's tell everybody too how they can nominate themselves or somebody else to the twenty twenty five retreat because it's probably going to be bigger and better than this year. I'm sure, yeah, I think so. I think we'll probably have to turn it into a week stay at some point. You know, it's a funny your thing we live. It's the year twenty twenty four, but in many ways where we let you know, half the time, we're jet setting all around the world in all these glamorous places. And don't get me wrong, my village is very glamorous because it has a waterfall, great people in it.

53:39 But it's you know, my eighty year old mother, my eighty three year old father, my seventeen year old son. It's a bit like the best family wedding you're ever going to go to. So it is quite a unique situation. I think if you look, there aren't many musicians of rock bands who own a pub and the chapel in the place where they were born. So you know, all that lends itself to quite a unique situation. So every Friday night, you'll imagine us, This Friday night, we'll be heading down to the to the red and socializing with everyone people that you know, I was born with that Mike was born with. It's pretty special. We feel very fortunate to come from such a place where there's strong community.

54:21 We have strong roots. You know, we couldn't move even if we wanted to, and we don't want to, but we have a very very strong There's a word in Welsh called here i and it means a desire, a desire, a return, elonging for where you come from, and Mike and I look to have to have that. So I think when people come on these retreats, they tend to fall in love with the locals, and the locals fall in love with the retreaters. So that's why nobody wants to leave. It's a bit like Fantasy Island, you know, it's a little village. No one wants to go home. So my passion is, you know, I've I'd like to do it for I'm definitely committing to doing it every year, probably the end of January, because I know that I'll be home around that time. So if you want to nominate yourself, please do.

55:13 All you have to do is email Alarm Calling at mac dot com, Alarm Calling at mac dot com and just or go to the alarm dot com and you'll see the email address there and just write a little description about what you've been through and why you'd like to come, and then we just literally study. I have an amazing woman called Kirsty who helps me run the charity, and she's phenomenal, a survivor of her own. She's had a benign tumor in her brain, but is living life to the full. So between us, you know, we try and for everyone in and this time, you know, they're literally apart from two or three people, we had twenty two people staying and I only knew two or three of them, and we all just the emails have had in since of how it's helped them get through.

56:06 Personally, I would live them to all, just to be able to keep coming back each year. You know, who knows, I'd quite like to do it for leukemia survivors as well, So I'll just see how that how that goes. We're extremely busy, you know, even though we're older rockers now we seem to be more demand than ever and we just like living our life traveling. You know. Mike, Mike's just been commissioned to write his own book, and I've actually also been commissioned to write my own side of the story. So we're both in nineteen eighty six right now. It's quite funny. It is true the older rockers they seem to work a lot more than the younger rockers ethic. Yeah, we know how to work hard, that's right. We come from a generation at the Alarm. They just there was lots of knocking on doors, There was lots of rejection, there was lots of rebuilding. John. Then in nineteen eighty it was like return from London back to North Wales, rethink, rebuild, right back out on the road. Yeah, got a gig with the stray Cats. You've got to work, You've got to build that following. And that's how all those kind of bands simple mind you to the Alarm. And again, you know, the ones that were fortunate enough to be appreciated in America as the Alarm have been very, very fortunate. But you know it's all those years have come into radio stations. Mike and I always we never saw it as a grind, like I know some members of bands do. We We loved coming too

57:37 into radio stations. And you know, we've so many of the jocks. From nineteen eighty three onwards, we met with a very famous DJ called George Gimmark from Dallas. He was the first guy to play the Alarm and Bono was late. So Bono is an iconic interview with Mike and Bono and we met him in Dallas two weeks ago. How nice is that? Nice? Yeah, in a record store with our kids, and our kids were going off to find the Alarm. You know, you know, you do that trick, you find the record and you put it to the front of the All the Alarm fans do it as well. Absolutely, yeah. And George, my gosh, that was nineteen eighty three, I think was the interview.

58:24 And here we are nearly forty years later, No, over forty years later. What am I talking about? It's the fortieth Alarm anniversary. Wow. Yeah, forty years later meeting up in a record store in Dallas talking about music because that's what it's all about. That is what it's all about. And man, I love your music. But like I said in the very beginning, and I'm going to say here at the end, I love this stuff even better because what you're doing for people and the mindset you're giving people, and the help and the hope and the love and the strength and everything is just absolutely amazing and definitely anybody out there if you want to nominate somebody, if you want to nominate yourself, you owe it to yourself for this experience of a lifetime. And man, I don't even know what to say to you, Like I'm going to be in tears, thanking you for doing this for other people that need it so much and especially need to share the message, you know, and anybody out there who is struggling. You know, like I said, we've been talking about positivity, but trust me, I know what it's like to feel a little bit down in the dump.

59:37 So if I can ever help, you only have to have only an email away alarm calling at mac dot com, regardless of the nomination. Just if you want a little pick me up or someone said make you feel like you know there is a future, you know where to find me. I'm always here to help. Well, yes you are, and I hope that we see a lot more of you and you help so many more people, and people are going to love this. Thank you for everything you do. Thank you for the great music, and thank you for being on the Adventures of Pipemin Thank you Deane, Thank you for having me hope to see you in Florida, a Costa Rica sometime soon. Yeah already, UK, I'll be there in August for festival, so okay, drop me a line.

1:00:20 Absolutely. Thank you for listening to the adventures of Pipemin. I'm w for CUI Radio. Hey, this is Jules Peters and you're listening to the Pipemin at W four CY. I'm running a retreat in twenty twenty five in Dizzerth, North Wales. Please send your email and nominate yourself or another person to Alarm calling at mac dot com. For all you breast survivors out there, please come and join me for the treat retreat in Wales, January twenty twenty five