My wife and I got together when I was in my 30’s, she was 29. We had both already had long term, meaningful relationships before we met. I have some dear friends who are in rich long term relationships that started when they were significantly younger (basically people who I see as being considerately more sorted than I am!) but for me, someone I think was a late maturer in the relationship stakes, I believe I started this one much better equipped to be a supportive and meaningful partner than I had been able to when I was younger. My wife, though younger than me, is more street-wise, more emotionally capable and undeniably tougher than I am. On the (thankfully rare) occasions when we’ve strayed into rows, she’s had no problem in reducing any unjustifiable arguments I might offer in haste into dust, and me to a quivering blob of goo cowering in the corner. Whilst I’ve always believed we...

I started the journey home, content to sit in silence and give myself the space to try and get things to sink in a bit. Three things were on my mind. The first was talking to my wife who I suddenly felt as though I had let down in a way that I never thought would be possible, it was a dreadful feeling. The second was just how staggeringly beautiful the world was. It had been a nice drive through the country on the way, but the same route on the way back revealed treasures, hidden depths and jaw dropping scenery that was so perfect it almost hurt my eyes to look at. I’ve read that people who think they are going to die sometimes feel like this, but experiencing it first hand genuinely took my breath away - it was really as though I’d never bothered to look at things properly before and a whole new level of reality revealed itself to me, easily and willingly; it was absolutely magical...

I started to sit down in front of Dr. B and literally before my arse had made contact with the seat he said “I’m afraid I have some very bad news for you today”. No preamble, no “how are you feeling?”, no nothing. One one level I sort of felt sorry for him, it must be a hell of a thing to have to do and maybe the truth is that there just isn’t a way you have that conversation with somebody in a ‘good’ way. On another level though, I was put out at what felt like a lacking of tact and kindness in that single moment. Didn’t he understand what I was going through? Didn’t he know about the beautiful children I had at home, so perfect, so innocence? Didn’t he understand all the complex, subtle details and shades of my lovely precious life, all the joys, challenges and relationships, my family, my friends, my work-mates. I found myself momentarily hating him for daring to fuck everything up so...

The next day I went back to High Wycombe for another MRI. In fact, they actually completed both and CT scan (without and with ‘contrast’) and the same for the MRI. The contrast die felt hot for the CT scan and cold for the MRI. Dr. B’s secretary had called me in the morning and already told me that I would be seeing him the following day in Stoke Mandeville hospital so I knew I wouldn’t get any additional answers on that day. The ‘episodes’ that had started only a few days before were now coming thick and fast. I had 2 in the morning before even going to High Wycombe for the CT / MRI scans, I even had one whilst I was laying in the MRI scanner. It was so strange that these feelings which only a few days earlier had triggered a trip to A&E were now becoming familiar enough that I was just enduring them whilst waiting to find out what was happening; I didn’t even bother mentioning the ones...

The voices in your head and the bones rattling under your bed at 5am….. Go here to the start of the journey. Go here for next blog entry.
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The day after the first MRI scan I started the day with an experience which has now become a part of my daily life; I awake, lay for a few brief moments blissfully unaware of everything that is happening, then I remember. The momentarily state where I make the transition between being asleep to being fully awake is like a tiny buffer which gives me a brief respite from the current of electric energy that then sits burning in my core self until I fall asleep again the following evening. After I got up and thought through what Dr. B had said to me, I decided (as best I could) that there was no real point in worrying about what was happening and I would just have to wait until the next scan to see what the outcome was. I decided to be proactive and gave Dr. B’s secretary a call (I found out me was based in Stoke Mandeville hospital) but she hadn’t had a chance to see him yet but promised to...

So only the day after the suspected mini-stroke, I got a lift to High-Wycombe hospital to attend the TIA clinic, the aim to work out what was happening to me and whether or not I was indeed on the build up to a stroke. It was a bank-holiday Monday and the hospital was strangely quite, it was almost as though we had the place to ourselves. I had an odd feeling - on the one hand I felt absolutely normal and on the other there was an inner fear that I could theoretically had a stroke at any moment and therefore my life was in danger. I was absolutely gutted that I might be looking at a stroke at only 42 - if I had knew what was coming next I would have been praying for one! Dr. B was an unassuming man who talked me through the MRI procedure and briefly discussed what the issue might be - I can’t explain exactly why but I liked him immediately. His initial thought was that the symptoms I...

Seeing,
a black grain of sand,
on a black chip of stone,
resting on a smooth black pebble,
sitting on a jagged black rock,
wedged into a large black boulder,
lying on a forbidding black mountain,
1000 miles beneath an icy black sea,
that covers the surface of a huge black planet,
surrounded by nine black rings,
which slowly rotates around a burning black sun,
in the beating heart of a black solar system,
lost in the vastness of a black galaxy,
in the blackest of all regions of space;
it is nothing to the dread you would feel, if you could know,
the lurking darkness that hides in the very centre of my black, black heart.
But I still love this life so.
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Star Trek - Borg Intro;
Fatboy Slim - Acid 8000;
The Orb Vs. Meat Beat Manifesto - 1855;
Andrew Weatherall - La Sirena;
The Fun Years - Powerball Annie;
Isaac Haile Selassie - My Life In A Bush Of Lies;
Tino’s Breaks - Sympathetic Vibrations;
Unknown - Unknown;
The Orb - A Huge Evergrowing Pulsating Brain That Rules From The Centre Of The Ultraworld;
Bass Science - Transmissions from Planet Dub;
Meat Beat Manifesto - Want Adds One;
The Streets - Lets Move Things Forward;
Burial - Pirates;
DHS - Atomic Clock;
DHS - Suspended Animation;
Unknown - Unknown;
Unknown - Unknown;
Amon Tobin - Ruthless;
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That ambulance ride to the hospital was the first time I had ever felt I was in real trouble. I’ve got myself into a state before for sure, silly self-inflicted nonsense, but not like this. The care that the ambulance crew and the doctors and nurses gave me was kind, thoughtful and respectful. The A&E department was so busy I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, I felt completely humbled by the people working in this environment. I felt ashamed how difficult the environment they were dealing with was and I suddenly felt very unworthy in the grand scale of life when comparing my own contribution against that given offered by these people. After about 4 hours of tests and discussion they decided that they thought I had something called a ‘TIA’ which is a kind of ‘mini-stroke’ which is something that can sometime signal an impending larger stroke. I was booked the next day to be sent to a...