Twenty One Days: Mike Rocks Everest

How Mike has continued to be a rock and roller with Dylan and Evan in his life, I’ll never know. He’s a hands-on father but somehow, he has managed to sneak in the writing and recording of 50 brand new songs over the last few months. The project is called ‘Counter Attack’ and has been written as a follow-up response to the most recent Alarm album, ‘Under Attack’, which he penned whilst unwittingly knowing about his impending leukaemia diagnosis. It’s quite incredible to think his inner psyche must have been aware of something happening to his body... Why else did he write songs like 'Without A Fight' and 'Under Attack'...

I started the day with an hour’s walk around our beautiful hilly village to clear my head. This made me feel close to Mike as we had trekked a lot together in the last few weeks in preparation for Everest Rocks. I‘d been awake over 8 times during the night (it was almost as if the boys sensed that Daddy had gone) and I felt like I had a hangover this morning (I should be so lucky!) Striding the paths of my locale, as I try to do on a daily basis, I soon felt in better spirits. I live in a fantastic community and everybody loves Mike, asking me about his travels and sending their best wishes. (Mike was born in our village back in 1959 and spent his formative years here). You can’t beat a bit of community spirit to set you up for the day.

Dylan has just started school and so I like to be there at the school gate. Juggling the school run and rock and roll is a whole new experience. Thank the Lord for the blackberry which enables me to get so much done on the move. I remember reading a hilarious piece suggesting that you could spot the Alpha Mum in the playground as the one on her blackberry!

Tuesday afternoon is my ‘Mummy’ non-work time with Dylan and Evan and so thanks to the glorious Autumnal weather here in North Wales, I set out on a play date to our local beach with Dylan’s mate, Carwyn and ‘mother of Carwyn,’ / my mate’, Delyth. I thought, “Mike’s on a plane from Barhain to Kathmandu” I won’t be needed for a few hours. How far wrong could I be! Within minutes, I received a call from Katrina (who runs Love Hope Strength UK, amongst many other things – thanks Katrina!!!) to say that BBC Radio 5 Live had been in touch, wanting to speak with Mike. The promenade was promptly turned into a mobile office and thanks to my trusty friend, Delyth, I was able to track James Chippendale down in Kathmandu and hook up the BBC Team with Mike so that by 17.50 UK time, Mike was live on air! We even managed to send out a global email to Alarm fans worldwide, courtesy of the ever dynamic www.thealarm.com webmaster, Steve Fulton in California (Thanks Steve!!!!!) What an amazing world we live in!

And all of this because news of Everest Rocks had hit the international newswire. Metro Magazine, one of London’s biggest free newspapers picked up on the piece and featured a story about Mike and his rock and roll trekkers and then the domino effect began...

Once Dylan and Evan were back from the beach and tucked up in bed, I began the mopping up process of the day. As well as Everest Rocks, we have 2 CDs and 2 DVDs in production, a postcard and mass mailout and the usual day to day activity of the Alarm Office (which attracts hundreds of daily calls and emails from Alarm fans all over the world). It’s hard to switch off, especially in this 24 hour world.

By 11pm, I was feeling exhausted and still hadn’t touched base with Mike Peters (I forget sometimes that he’s also my husband :) After some frustrating calls to his satellite phone, I finally gave up and tried the hotel in Kathmandu (I had researched on the website that satellite phones (obviously) only worked outside buildings. Instead of Mike, I connected up with the lovely Alex Coletti (Mike's room mate). Alex is a great friend of ours from Brooklyn. He is also the famous 'Alex MTV Unplugged Coletti' and is on the trek with Mike to direct the filming of Everest Rocks. Alex is like family and so we had a good old giggle and wind-up session, as you do. Alex was pretty overwhelmed by Kathmandu, and this was saying something, considering he worked in Time Square, NYC! He compared Kathmandu to the Star Wars bar! Mike being a MASSIVE Star Wars fan, must be in his element.

I finally spoke with Mike and despite the irritating time delay, it sounded like he was in the next room. Mike and I are used to a telephone relationship. When we met in 1986, he was on a huge USA tour and I was at University, so we are used to conducting our relationship, ‘long distance’.

We are quite a rare couple in that we have no problem working together. Most people I know can’t understand how we can work so closely together and be married! We thrive on the creativity, I think and I know that our relationship has survived because we have a shared understanding of life in the music business. I think it’s difficult to sustain a marriage in rock and roll, when one of you has a ‘day job’.

We were soon chatting away about the events of the day and it was such a delight to see how things were developing so well. Talk about small acorns! Mike was buzzing and I privately said a little prayer to remember how lucky we are that we have been able to reach such a point where Mike can climb to Base Camp Everest!!!! You can’t imagine how amazing this is, given the dark cancer days of 2006 when I thought I was going to lose Mike completely.

That’s why I feel so committed to Love Hope Strength. When I was reeling from Mike's cancer diagnosis (there was a period of weeks when we didn’t know how bad the CLL actually was, ie. what grade etc or even whether it was the more worrying Mantle Cell Lymphoma), I clung to the ‘google’ process and desperately wanted to find a ‘feelgood’ story about someone who had been diagnosed with CLL and actually survived! The doctors are not in a position to give you false hope but at that desperate low point, you need some false hope in a way, just to sustain yourself through the storm. It is my greatest wish that LHS and Mike and James' stories can assist people in riding the storm until they are able to think clearly and grasp the situation they find themselves in.

It’s late now and with my two boys tucked up asleep, I head for my bed, contented in the knowledge that my man is tucked up a million miles away too. It's a starry starry night here. I wonder what it's like in Kathmandu right now? I’m glad Mike stuck out for his dreams. I’m behind him every step of the way.