Charity calendar is a monument to Shropshire man's illness

"I was struggling to write, and I fell of my bike a few times on my way home from work, and I began to wonder if I'd had a stroke," he says.

However, when he went to see his doctor, the news was worse than anything he could have imagined. At the age of 41, he was told he had a brain tumour, and had just six months to live.

"I was stunned, nothing can prepare you for that, I had no idea it was that serious."

Five years on David, who lives in Muxton, Telford, is still alive – and his prognosis remains the same.

And he has now published a charity calendar featuring pictures of the Duke of Sutherland's monument at the top of Lilleshall Hill.

It is a poignant undertaking for the 46-year-old. The calendar reflects the change in seasons – and the fact that David has been able to keep visiting the monument during his illness. He is hoping to raise £5,000 from his calendar.

At the time of his diagnosis, David was working as a computer programmer in Scotland. But on being given the devastating news, he made the decided to cash in his life insurance policy and return to Muxton, where his mother Gillian still lived.

"At the time, it seemed the obvious thing, I didn't have long to live, and my mum was 71, so she couldn't be expected to travel to see me," he says.

"However, over the next four years I spent all my life insurance, I had about £60,000, and after three years my money had run out."

"I knew nothing about benefits, I didn't know what my options were, and I was feeling a bit better in 2013 so I started to think about getting a job."

Then, at the start of 2014, he was told for a second time that he had only six months to live, and he took to cycling to Lilleshall every Sunday morning and taking a picture of the monument, which he would post on Facebook. "The initial reason for this was to show I was still alive," he says.

"But by the start of this year I had been doing this for six months, and that's when I started thinking about producing a calendar with all the profits going to the Severn Hospice."

David, has been attending the Severn Hospice Day Centre at Newtown for 18 months, and says it has provided him with invaluable support. He says: "The staff and volunteers helped me come to terms with my position, and also being able to speak with others in a similar position has also been of value. In the hospice there are a lot of people who are retired, but there are others like me who are younger.

"The middle-aged people often need extra help, particularly if they have a low income.

"They need help with their benefits, they need help supporting their families. If you have got children aged six or seven, they think you are going to live forever, it must be really hard for them. It's hard for me, and I am a single guy with no family."

Each month of his calendar shows a photograph of the sun breaking out over Lilleshall, with the only common theme being that each picture features the monument in one way or another.

"It shows the changing seasons, with each picture being taking during the relevant month," says David, who is a former pupil of John Hunt School in Trench.

He has set himself a target of selling 1,000 calendars at £7.50 each, which will raise £5,000 for the hospice once the production costs are covered.

But he hopes the calendar will be just the start of a fundraising legacy which he hopes will continue after his death.

"I have set up a charity, because I wanted it to be tax efficient, and I have set up a website," he says.

"After the calendar, this can be used for other things, if somebody wants to do something else for a different charity," he says.

David says that his diagnosis, and meeting other people in a similar situation has caused him to reflect a lot on life.

"To me this calendar is more than just a fundraising exercise," he says.

"Hopefully it demonstrates that despite being constantly told you are about to die, there is always hope that you might live longer than expected.

"Who knows what the future will bring? The main thing is to do your best with the time you've got."