Emerging from the kitchen with a beaming smile on his face, my friend clutched a bowl, or jug, or other suitable receptacle, of jelly. Puzzled drinkers who hadn't seen him carefully mix the gelatinous cubes with boiling water several hours before were puzzled about where the wobbly food had come from. But all were happy to put down their bottles of Hooch or cans of Holsten Pils to pull of a bit of wobble with their hands.

Years later that friend is now the chief executive of a mattress company (one of the big ones which advertises on TV) and parties just aren't the same. These days the closest I get to that kind of party is going to Sophie's Surprise Party in Soho, central London. It has the fundamentals of a house party from yesteryear in that there are crisps in a bowl and at least one bottle of WKD Blue.

And it also fits like a square peg in a round hole in the familiar trope of American high school movies with a Goth, a Jock, a Geeky Girl, and the one a filmmaker would set up to be the girl everyone would want to take to prom until, dun dun dun, the twist at the end.

But, unlike parties of yesteryear, it has intentional fire and what-the-actual how do they do that style tricks and stunts. And it's a show by very talented performers rather than a party hosted by whoever had a free house in 1997.

I've been going since 1 BC, aka one year before cancer, aka 2022. It's always been incredible but ever since being diagnosed with cancer in 2023 it's gained a special significance in my life.

Usually wherever I am in the world and whatever I'm doing there is always a part of my mind that's thinking about cancer. I'm thinking about when I will die. I'm thinking about the dry skin on my feet. I'm thinking about getting next to my appointment on time.

I'm thinking about whether I'll have to cancel a night out due to chemotherapy side effects. I'm thinking about whether I'll have to cancel a night out due to appointments not running on time. And I'm thinking about whether it's okay to see my GP to talk about the mental effects of cancer.

When I'm at the Sophie's Surprise Party I can, and do, completely forget about that. Instead I really get caught up in believing that a woman they've picked from the audience really is called Sophie for the evening, and may or may not be 29.

And I can wonder at the magic of talented performers doing amazing heart-stopping things both in the air and on the ground.

For 90 minutes of my life I can forget I have incurable cancer and am unlikely to make it to the 10th anniversary celebrations for the show in 2032.

In life it's important to remember things, but even just for a short time it can be even more beneficial to forget worries and troubles.

This is easier said than done and I know that this usually isn't possible when you have cancer. I know for certain I wouldn't have been able to forget if I'd received bad scan results at the hospital earlier that day.

As you may recall if you read last Saturday's piece, I've been in a state of panic after CT and MRI scan results showed it looked like one of my tumours was growing and so I had to have a PET scan, so people far cleverer than me could get a closer look and what the cells are doing.

I wasn't expecting to get those results back before December 22 at the earliest but thankfully I got them this week.

And extra thankfully my medical team isn't too concerned. It looks like a tumour has grown from 8mm to 9mm which, in their eyes, is only a teeny tiny growth so treatment continues as normal.

Part of the treatment is obviously going out and about as often as I can, including trying to get to Sophie's Surprise Party again at the Underbelly Boulevard before it closes on January 10.

Another key part is leading the Daily Express Cancer Care campaign. All parts of the "cancer journey" can be nerve-wracking, not just waiting for test results which could indicate that the treatment has failed and death is a certainty, and every patient needs mental health support.

This needs to be both during and after treatment.

I'm glad my recent test results have shown I'm not destined for a box six feet under quite yet as I won't stop fighting until every cancer sufferer gets the mental health support they need whenever they need it.