RETIREMENT for most can be the most relaxing years of your life.

Enjoying gardening, time with your loved ones, and for Clive Green, it could have meant years spent on the road in his beloved VW Camper van.

But after 48 years of working in the building trade and being exposed to asbestos, Clive, from Bridport, has been terminally diagnosed with mesothelioma, a fatal form of cancer commonly caused by exposure to asbestos.

Instead of planning camper trips, Clive is now planning his own funeral and a camper convoy to take him to Weymouth Crematorium when he dies.

Clive, 63, has lived in Bridport for 17 years with his wife Karan. They’ve been married for 46 years and have two children and grandchildren.

Clive said: “I’m from west London originally, I was born in the same ward as my wife, I was 19 and she was 17 when we married. I was a tearaway and skinhead and used to ride a Lambretta scooter.

“When I met my wife she changed me within 18 months, I wouldn’t be where I am today without her.”

Clive and Karan decided to sell up their home in Hampshire and move to Bridport after falling in love with their holiday destination.

But after a successful career as a painter and decorator and building up a client base in Bridport for 16 years, Clive has been forced into early retirement by his industrial illness.

Clive said: “I’ve always worked in the building trade since I was 17. I’ve known for years I had been exposed to asbestos.

“People don’t realise the asbestos is out there and it can travel in the air and kill you. You only need one speck to kill you.

“I never wore a mask and I had dirty overalls which I would wear in my work van. My wife would wash my overalls and my children would come in my van, so they could have been exposed.

“It’s the sawing, filing and drilling of the stuff that puts it in the air.”

Clive said: “I’ve been expecting this to happen and last summer I started to get a cough and I was getting breathless going up stairs.

“Then my lung collapsed and fluid started building up. In Southampton they drained 3.6 litres of fluid off my lungs caused by cancer.”

Mesothelioma is a cancer of the pleura, the lining of the lung.

Tragically, just small amounts of exposure to asbestos can cause the cancer.

Clive said: “I was put in touch by the hospital with the lung nurses and the charity HASAG who have been so helpful.”

HASAG are a charity who were set up to help support asbestos disease sufferers in the south by a family who lost their father to mesothelioma.

Clive said: “I want to thank the help I’ve had from the GP, Dorset County Hospital, district nurses, Weldmar Hospice and HASAG.

“My wife and I both have had anxiety problems over everything and have been having counselling through Weldmar Hospice every three weeks. I go to artistic counselling which helps you express how you feel.

“I’ve worked for 48 years and I was two years off retirement. It’s thrown our lives up in the air.

“We’ve toured Scotland three times with our camper van, and Anglesey and we love going to Devon and Cornwall. Our idea when we retired was we would spend three months a year in the Mediterranean. Now, I’m just hoping to get past next year.”

Clive said: “My anger is pointed at the government who didn’t ban asbestos earlier. The government knew asbestos was killing people. I feel I’ve been robbed of my retirement.

“I have paid my taxes and national insurance for 48 years and have been robbed of my best years.”

Clive is having chemotherapy for his condition. The cancer, diagnosed as stage three, has no cure.

Clive said: “It’s only going to slow it down, it will kill me.

“ I may have a year or it may just be months.”

He has started planning his own funeral and preparing his home for his death.

He said: “I’m having a non-religious funeral in my camper van. Wakely’s will be driving my camper van.

“They will go down to West Bay and along the coast road with my box in it - which is going to be decorated with campers and scooters. I don’t like calling it a coffin.

“My family are devastated, I’m the first to die.

“I’ve been assured I will get all the help I need when it’s time.

“I’m angry, I’m deemed as young to have this condition. I’ve been training my wife how to garden and getting the house up to scratch. As it’s not if, it’s when. I know I’ll be bedridden.”

Clive said: “As you go through you do start to accept it. I’ve got quite a black humour about it and can be very blunt. But I’ve had wonderful cards from my clients here I’ve had for 16 years.

“I’ve accepted I’m dying, the only reservation I had is I was frightened I would die in pain, but I’ve been assured the pain relief will be there.”

Looking around the living room, Clive said: “I’m dying here at home. The hospital supply a bed which I will be setting up in here.

Clive said 2500 are diagnosed with the industrial illness each year, and asbestos still exists today in buildings. It wasn’t banned in the UK industry until 1999.

He said: “If what I do saves one life I will have achieved something, because I know it is going to kill me.”

Dorset Echo: