Ian makes waves for Cancer Research

AUTHOR and Hibernian FC columnist for The Irish Voice, Ian Colquhoun, made waves for Cancer Research recently as he completed a fundraising swim that brought in more than £1400 for the charity.

Ian (above), an AuDHD double amputee with PTSD, set himself the goal of taking part in the charity’s Swim 10k Challenge in March and raising £500. He not only completed the challenge seven days early, but he also nearly trebled his fundraising goal.

Explaining the motivation behind taking up the challenge, Ian said: “Three of my uncles died from cancer over the years. My best mate was stage four in 2018 and survived. One day in February I googled charity swim events and the Cancer Research UK one came up. It seemed like a sign.

“I had to swim twice as much as I usually do and twice as often, I even did some of the lengths with one arm because of arthritis in my rotator cuff. The most difficult thing about it was the fear of getting an infection or injury that would've made it impossible to complete in time. I’m now thinking of swimming the channel for Macmillan Cancer Support this summer!”

Perhaps what made the fundraising feat even more impressive was that Ian was working on two novels at the time, which he has now completed.

“The swim coincided with me finishing the two novels that I started writing in November, so the timing was perfect—from brains to brawn,” Ian said. “My ADHD helps me hyper focus sometimes, I'm now in burnout, rest mode now though!

“These are the first two books I have written since my ADHD diagnosis in 2023. I can’t say too much about them but I’m really pleased with them—my imagination is unleashed. They’re both dark fiction with a magic realism theme in one, set in central Scotland outwith the two big cities, in towns along the M8. They’re funny, harrowing, gritty and working class and set in the late 1990s house/trance/drugs scene in in the UK.”