My slide into morbidity ( I now appreciate ) had been preceded and accompanied by a period of pretty consistent alcohol consumption. I’m no stranger to drinking, and pre injury there was no real downside- I didn’t even get hangovers that dented me in any significant way. Back then I was very stable, and had nothing to complain about, after all.

Now things are very different. I have lots to complain ( internally ) about, and I am not stable. Let’s face it… I’ve got a fair bit of shit going down.

I now think that drinking when unhappy is the worst thing that I can do. It doesn’t make me think particularly bouyant thoughts, and if I drink a lot it definitely makes me markedly depressed. The next day, things seem even worse, and of course then the temptation is to have another drink to cheer yourself up…. except in my case it doesn’t work like that  – it simply makes it / me worse.

A few days off and I have very much bounced back. I’m going to a party today, and it’ll be full of alcohol, as always. I’m not going to drink anything alcoholic, and I’ll see what happens. I think I have sufficient personality to not need the prop of alcohol, and since I already have Tourette’s tendencies, I m not exactly dull… aka a bit of a liability as it is.

I also ( at last ) see my daughters tomorrow, so I can do without being under a negative cloud to begin with.

Will I ever drink again? Of course I bloody will, but I think I now know when NOT to drink.

Obviously I’ll be healthier and less prone to putting on weight too, so it’s a bit of a no brainer as a choice, at least for a while.

🙂

Thanks to those who got in touch after my last desperate post, which doesn’t make fine reading. I could of course delete it, but then I’d be disguising my reality, and that’s not the point of this diary.

Today I’ve spent with Pistol Pete, Leigh, Cherie, Ian, Cherie, Toby, Sam, Dickon, Pia and Dan. Thank you so much all of you for your presence. The reality if my situation is that I’ve, out of intent and curiosity, after they’ve all gone, despite their obvious cheerfulness and love, investigated how hard you have to push a sharp knife into your neck in order to pierce the skin – and it’s actually very hard  – far harder than you might imagine actually.

It’s a weird thing the whole self injury thing – it’s obviously contra- intuitive and against all self preservation- and I can certainly testify to the fact that killing yourself isn’t easy to physically do, at least not in a calculated way. I think that bridges, level crossings and tube trains give you more certainty and spontaneity, whereby the end result  swiftly becomes some other person’s trauma ( not good for them, tho by then it’s too late to feel any guilt.

i will therefore journey into my fifth post injury year, not presently knowing why I’m really  bothering …

Good to get a message from my family ( Alwyn ( brother) ) today.

im on the left  

Whilst in Portugal last week, I met a lovely couple that I’d known there 5 years ago, and Video’d my daughter, and theirs with my Go Pro camera in the pool.

A few   things struck me. Firstly, that I could hold my breath for quite a long time…. and secondly that I really miss being able to do anything like this now.

And that it’s hard not seeing your kids, as well as everything else that I have to endure…

It’s 4 years on Wednesday since my crash. It was actually on Fathers Day.

The video was taken a year before that.

Kate, thank you for sending this, and for being so lovely.

My buddy Rob has dropped off the pace in his bike race, having ‘had the shits’ for 4 days. Cycling with diarrhoea is a bad combination.

Being paralysed and having the shits is a worse combination, as you have no idea when your arse is going to empty. It’s not as though you can jump up out of the chair and rush to the pan….

As I do actually have the shits myself, and now have a handy little bag that it goes into, I am spared the repetitive humiliation of that eventuality.

So there you go – one plus already….

Thank you to Leigh and Bev for coming to dinner, and thank you even more to Jo, for saying that she’d be my ‘date’ and for offering to cook.

It transpired about 20 minutes before L&B arrived that I’d forgotten to mention to Jo that there would be 4 of us, not 2. Not knowing that much about cooking myself, I was under the impression that with 20 Minutes to go, it wouldn’t be that difficult to ‘ cook some more food ‘ . Jo seemed to go into a bit of a panic though ( obviously caring far more than I do about food/ feeding people/ giving a good impression to dinner guests ) The more I laughed, the more Jo seemed to rush about…. cooking things.

To me, the company and the alcohol are the principal things about getting together, with the food being almost insignificant. Apparently that makes me quite unusual, most people caring/ taking pride ( even?) in meal preparation.

I can’t understand it myself, but I will in future make a mental note to tell the chefess approximate numbers of attendees.

As it was, all went very well and all 4 of us had food, and even a dessert, which I actually assisted in ‘ preparing ‘, against my instinct ( which is ‘what do you mean, make a dessert? What’s wrong with ice cream?’ )

So sincere thanks to Jo for her culinary skills, and more so for tolerating my obvious lack of communication skills.

Thanks to me for joining in the drinking of wine, and for playing some good music, surely as important, if not more so than the food?

I suppose when i hear ‘ dinner party’ the first half of the expression sort of goes in one ear and out of the other. I can’t help it, I’ve just never cared about food. I recall being offered a ( free ) place on a cookery course thingy a long time ago, and it just sounded like the daftest waste of a few days to me, so obviously declined within half of a millisecond. If left to ‘fend for myself’ I wouldn’t starve, but there really wouldn’t be an awful lot of variety. If I go to a supermarket by myself ( more difficult now, in chair ) I only buy about 5 things, because I just find the whole ‘ food thing ‘ a bit mystifying.

To me, that makes me really straightforward, but to everyone else it makes me really weird.

As I’m unusual in lots of other ways, maybe I actually have some kind of very rare syndrome, or something? I like that concept, as then it’s not my fault, is it….

🙂

My hat comes off for Amanda, someone that I really hardly know, for agreeing to go abroad with me.
It’s not easy at all coping with the demands that my condition makes on both myself and someone ‘ looking after me ‘.  The helping me to transfer to the bed, to cars etc is really not straightforward, and if it goes wrong then I end up on the ground, which would be way too difficult to pick me up from without 1-2 other  strong people.
I’m prone to depression too, as anyone that reads this blog will know, so that’s always a risk, that my mood slides downhill fast ( though I can be turned around fairly quickly, providing there’s a will to make that happen )
I carefully selected Amanda from a large pool of volunteers ( well, one volunteer – Amanda herself ) but I can confirm that she did a great job. It takes a few goes to get the techniques right, to help me, and by the time we left Portugal she had sussed everything – I should have booked for longer, in retrospect… but I figured that 4 days was enough for anyone, particularly a novice helper.

We had a laugh, and definitely drank too much, on top of eating very little, as is my wont.
Everyone that spends a few days with me loses weight, as they feel guilty about eating a lot more than I do….
Would she volunteer to go on holiday with me again ? I’m not so sure, but she seemed to smile a fair bit.

Maybe that was the wine?

When Amanda and  I got to the apartment, on Sunday, as well as not being able to actually get into it, there wasn’t proper bedding, and no foodstuff or liquids left there.

The place had been vacated 12 hours before my my ex wife and the kids, plus Pringle.

To be honest, in my sleepless and ragged state, I thought I’d  demonstrate my displeasure by leaving a bag of poo in the apartment as a welcome gift for my ex wife, who is returning here with her friends shortly after I leave.

Having had the benefit of sleep and sunshine, I have very much taken the moral high ground ( as I do ) and left the apartment clean and stocked with provisions – milk/ water/ wine and some crispy snacks.

I sincerely wish them all a wonderful trip.

Rob is in 5th place, with only 4,221 miles to go

I reckon Bilbo ( as I call him ) will definitely be back by Christmas.