And then I heard the race caller yell out loudly over the speaker system, as he did for everyone who crossed the finish line, “Brendan Maloney, you are an Ironman.“ I cried.

I have it on good authority that the groom cried when he heard his old beetle pull up outside the church.

The last of the clouds were heading out to sea as the sun rose, revealing a beautiful, big clear sky. Birds started to sing, and I felt oddly like snow white.

“What have you two been up to?” she asked, smiling back at us, “you look like you’ve been up to something. Give it!”

Kylie made her way over to the car and gave me a big hug. I patted her very round belly gently and said, ‘You look like you’re ready to pop.”

I told him I was going on holidays, would be gone for a couple of weeks and it wouldn’t be right to stay in touch when I got back.

Our bodies were pressed together by the noisy crowd pushing in to reach the bar — I asked how I knew him. He maintains I said — why don’t I know you. It would become a running joke. 

One of Bren’s main fears was the pain he would be in, in the end stages of his cancer — for good reason.

The phone rang – it took me a minute to find it. It was Charles. He said Margaret had rung to tell him to come home. He was just checking that he really needed to before he booked a plane ticket.

When Andrew calmly and kindly said, ‘Brendan, looking at where we are today, we could be looking at about a month.’ My world crashed around me slowly, millisecond by millisecond,