I saw my two buddies, Tweedledum and Tweedledumber ( aka Rick and Quentin ) tonight.
As i have a UTI and am on antibiotics, and they aren’t, only 2 of us were knocking back thé pints. It was a very funny night, as both are dry, but not as dry as I am, but they did their best to constantly take the piss, as only the Best of mates do ( well if you’re from Wales, or The North, anyway )
As they got more pissed, they started talking about this blog. Quentin has never read it, and Rick says he hasn’t for a year, but both were convinced that I should stop writing it. Understandably, I think, I asked them nicely what qualified them to have a strong opinion on something that they never ( have ) read.
They said it does me no good, essentially, or words to that effect, and asked what was the point of it? I said, as I always say, it’s just my diary and it doesn’t have to have a point, as it was never intended to, and not even started by me. I just sort of inherited it, after I came out of a coma.
Q told me for the first time I’d heard it, what the 4 hours were like in France that I lay in the road, as he was apparently holding my head off the tarmac, my back broken, lying on 14 broken ribs, and pleading to be moved. ‘Just move me, please’ over and over, along with ‘ when is the ambulance coming ?’ over and over again.
He told me about those hours of trying to get French people to NOT drag me off the road, to let the cars go by faster, and how I’d died in the helicopter, but was brought back, and how that happened again after the heli had landed in Toulon military hospital.
It was chilling stuff, though I listened impassively to it, I have to say, it being from another life almost ( though in fact the first hours of my new life – that of a paralysed person )
Rick asked why on Earth I didn’t know this story? I said that I’m glad I hadn’t known it a year or more ago, as it would have been too sad for me, but tonight I was immune to the horror of it, which represents my ‘ progress ‘ from morbid sadness to actually living again and not thinking about death a whole lot.
They seemed intent on pressing me for a reason for a blog though. I said that it’s really NOT my Raison d’être, and i perhaps spend a few minutes a day on it, sometimes more, but I never ‘plan’ any of the posts, I just write them as the thoughts occur to me. I said I have far, far too many more important things to think about than this blog, which then begged the question of why I bother.
I said that I reckon I include a fair bit about the unpublicised effects of disability, and also that you CAN come back from despair to happiness, and if that helps just one person, then it has actually been ‘ worthwhile ‘. I said I just talk about stuff that happens to me, that’s all, and the appalling world of the Care industry, which you’d have no clue about unless you were in it. Likewise the transport network, and how it caters ( or not ) for me.
I suggested that they actually read it, rather than condemn it, and they might even learn something… but no, they said they would rather not.
As i dont write it FOR anyone then, I’m not bothered if they read it or if they don’t, but interestingly Rick asked if any of my real friends actually read it. I said that as far as I know, every one of my real friends ( other than them ) does read it, and regularly have a laugh at my little adventures, and possibly a little cry here and there.
Anyway, they seemed determined not to read it for some reason, and that’s fine with me.
As they’re both Wan***s from the North of England, essentially, they will never know that I just wrote that.. will they ?
😂
