I wanted to call this "two sides of the guardian" but I can imagine people saying "the guardian...again?"

Yesterday the paper had an article on couples and housework - how they viewed their own share as well as their partner's.
Five couples were featured. One of mixed race, one of mixed ethnicity (apparently Japanese isn't a race), a male couple, a female couple and a mixed European (of course ) couple.

It's as if they went out of their way to find anything but Mr and Mrs Ordinary and their 2.4 children. You can be inclusive without doing this.

But what really moved me to make this post was another of those articles that make the Guardian such a brilliant newspaper (sometimes).

Cancer, Clare and me: actor Greg Wise on the death of his sister
It's a stunning piece. You'll laugh and cry. This bit particularly resonated with me.

Grea article, well written with some very salient points, truly reflecting the book, I’m sure. I think the comment of death making us appreciate the unpredictability of life particularly true. I’ve always thought the positive to come out of coping with death is to make the rest of us realize that this is it, and it’s up to us to make the best of life, however that works out. Thanks for the link.

I don't know...

I skimmed the house keeping article and thought, why am I reading how other couples manage their domestic chores? Everyone and every situation is different. It's irrelevant in a way.

As to all these article and books and blogs on coping with terminal disease, it seems that there is so much of it (as a genre). I remember reading John Diamond's "C" years back, and he I think broke the taboo on writing about this kind of thing, but the pendulum had swung too far in the opposite direction. It's almost like a kind of "grief porn" (to be slightly uncharitable). I can understand it being cathartic for the writers (whether victim or onlooker) but it's become too public IMO.

I remember those columns. Clive James has done a bit too.

Book aside, this article is a one-off and is a little different for two reasons. There's the we know who they are, plus it was the different kind of love. There's a uniqueness about it.

Three reasons. Diamond and James were current. This is after the event. In fact, some time after the event and looking back. I think that makes it different enough.

Being a breast cancer survivor twice over, with a 16 year interval between and the second being a new cancer NOT a recurrence of the first ....... I tend to avoid reading these kinds of articles.

I didn't have a very hard time, but it was hard enough dealing with the news and having to think over what might happen on 2 separate occasions.

Plus OH had what might have been a dire colon cancer operation in between my two.

I don't think I'm an an ostrich head in the sand person ................ but I've had enough!

Although I am an eager consumer of journalism, as I get older it annoys me about what "journalists" think I might/ought to be interested in. Frankly, unless you find a cure, I'm not interested in your cancer story - chances are it's not much different to millions of others, they all are rightly sad to the people involved, but just noise to people who aren't.

John Diamond's journal was different, it was groundbreaking in its raw honesty in a national paper, but at the same time, it was generally emotion-free (unless time has been kinder than I allow).

Clive James is similarly fascinating because (i) he is so erudite, (ii) death is rarely his main point, despite being "almost dead" for a few years now, and (iii) he refuses to allow any room for sympathy - and why should he?, he's a fantastically successful, well regarded and very old man. If he sought sympathy I'd be very disappointed.

I didn't really take it as "cancer" though . I took it as the book title said - a different kind of love involving brother (helped by wife) and sister when usually these things are about couples.

Plus, of course, the "part of you is grateful and then you try not to give yourself a hard time for being grateful" commented upon below the line.

It might be the case that as we get older, we've seen it all before. Most national journalists are excitable 20-somethings, and there's been many a story where you can sense that the journo has just discovered something that you may well have been aware of thought about of decades ago. Then there's the recycling habit, where one journo comes up with a new topic or obscure bit of research, and then over the course of a few weeks the same topic is re-written and re-packaged by different papers/websites.

So this thread is just another one for discussing newspaper type topics? The title always throws me a bit.

More so the contrasting quality endemic in one paper in particular. At least that was what prompted the thought

But no reason why it couldn't be anything at all and not just limited to media.

Say, for example, Oxfam. Good work on the one side and scandal on the other.

Ah ok, so like a pros and cons thread.