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. 

My right nipple is swollen and sore.

I had the same happen to my left one 3 years ago. It was like that for ages, and that muscle has never been the same since – it’s as though part of the pectoral muscle stopped existing, never to return. Now it’s happening to my right side.

One of these days, I’m sure something good will happen to me….

The terrorist attack on Saturday happened just yards away from where I stayed for months in the autumn, and for 10 days only last month. I’d go to the front courtyard of Southwark cathedral, where there was a cafe. Pia was the last person to meet me there, and we had a cup of coffee. Had the attack happened then, and someone like Pia had been indiscriminately stabbed, then to me it have highlighted (even more than it does already) the sheer evil and wrongness of what the terrorists are doing.

I’m very proud of those that fought back, fought the Good Fight, the young guy that waded in, using his skateboard as a weapon, the martial arts guy that got as many blows in as possible, before being stabbed. I find the scenario running through my head. What chance would I have had? I’m sure that I’d have been a target, as much as anyone else, the wheelchair making no difference, it not inducing any sense of guilt.  I’d have weighed up the situation quite unemotionally, I think. My motorised chair at high speed would do a lot of damage to a man, and a knife wouldn’t have saved him. I’m sure that I’d have died for my actions, but I think I’d have died if I’d done nothing too, so I’d have made the right call.

As it is, I’m very relieved that no one I know and love was killed as a direct consequence of being there because I was there.

I hate these people with a passion, as I’m sure everyone reading this does.

Good luck to my brilliant friend, Rob Colliver, who is 724 miles into his 5100 mile race across America, by bicycle. 

Rob and I did the 1000 mile canoe race together. Back then he had me for his only company. This time he is very much by himself.

Blimey, that’s a toss up as to which you’d prefer 🙂

As is somehow always inevitable when you’re bloody tired, lots seemed to go wrong with the start of the trip abroad.

No sleep at all in the Travelodge before the flight ( 4am check in – my fault for booking that early ), not being able to get on the shuttle bus ( inconsiderate driver ), a wait for another,  getting off at the wrong terminal ( I just did as I was told ), having quite a lot of medical supplies ( which made the bags cumbersome too ), seeming to travel on the busiest day of the year, and only hours after a MASSIVE terrorist incident in London ( which had everyone on high alert ), not being assisted at all by the airport Assistance staff ( as they were supposed absolutely to have done ), as a consequence getting to the gate last rather than first ( resulting in there being a huge panic by the boarding staff that were there to be in control, rather than lose control ) being transferred in a very amateur way by the Assistance staff ( so that I felt very vulnerable to falling out of the narrow ‘ aisle chair ‘ that they perch me on and strap me to, to get me to my seat on the plane – tbh I feel like a right tw** being dragged along backwards and then lifted into my seat ).  I spasmed all the way to Faro airport…

Having arrived in Portugal, it got briefly better for a bit, though there was much confusion as to how to get my chair from the hold to the luggage hall, as with thé Triride attachment, it was too long for me to use in the airport lifts. They stuck me in a different wheelchair for half an hour or so, before repatriation with my own, making me very uncomfortable in the process. Having got a taxi to the apartment, things seemed to be ok at last…. until we realised that the key code that we had been given was wrong, and we were locked out of  the accommodation ( on a Sunday, when office staff that run this stuff aren’t at work, or answering their phones ). At that point, I felt that I was again cursed by misfortune.

An hour later we were, however, in, but had no food or drinks, having not had time for breakfast. Compared to the other stuff, that was nothing though, and within a couple of hours we had a coffee in a cafe 2 miles’ wheelchair away, and had bought some food  too.

Pre injury, everything was so easy. Now everything is so much more challenging, and harder to resolve.

It’s 4 years to the day, in about 10 days. At this time last year, I was counting down to a suicide attempt ( that didn’t work out ) but this year it isn’t quite so depressing.  Days like today make those thoughts feel easy to have. My very existence seems to hinge so often on things that do or don’t happen to me, either way without my ability to influence them.

So…. a trip abroad, ‘ on holiday ‘ without my family, coming up, starting Sunday. It does feel a little strange, but I guess that it’ll be ok. I hope that the friend coming with me can cope with me ( seriously ). If she can’t, then I’m a bit stuck, let’s face it. I’ll let her win at all the games, and stay sober ( ish ) so that I don’t annoy her.

There’s nothing like testing a friendship than going on holiday together, apparently ? She has the additional pleasure of looking out for me all the time. Fingers crossed then…

On Saturday night, it’s Depeche Mode, in the London Stadium…. a blast from my distance past, but they’re still going strong. The keyboardist, Pete ( or Depeche Mode Pete, as we call ‘im ) lives practically next door, so has offered us backstage passes… which sounds good..

Angela, I loved seeing you last night, and Mike, you too. And thanks to Cherie for joining me down at the river and watching the strangely fascinating man who seemed to have an unnatural way with the local pigeons. I think he’d taken pigeon fancying to a whole new level, but each to his own, I say.