This story begs the question, do we ever really present a truthful representation of ourselves to the world? Or, do we settle upon a version of ones personality, be it accurate or not. Memories can play cruel tricks upon ones mind – a group of friends will quite often have completely conflicting memories of incidents from their shared past. The end of a relationship or friendship will be seen from two opposite points of view.

It it only as one gets older that we are sometimes forced to confront our perceptions, and re-evaluate past events – in the process perhaps reaching a conclusion that we would rather not have reached at the time.

Life will often throw up unwanted and sometimes unexpected surprises – this novel captures a mans attempts to cope with this, in the process accepting what he was always too blind to see.

A very moving and thought provoking novel….

• Over 5 million people in the UK have asthma
• Every 7 hours somebody in the UK dies from asthma
• Every 16 minutes a child is admitted to hospital because of their asthma
• 40% of people with asthma were diagnosed after their 18th birthday
• 90% of asthma deaths are preventable
• 1 in 10 children in the UK has asthma

All nice and easy! However, I’m only allowing myself three days to complete this task, and of course I can assure you all that I’ll be fit enough by September to do it!

The reason I’m doing this is to support Asthma UK. This charity is very, very close to my heart. My mum Dyan, died as a result of a severe asthma attack aged only 44 years – a tragic loss of life, and way too young.

So, as I race toward middle age, it’s important for me to do this; not only to remember my mum, but to support and raise a greater awareness of a condition, that with greater research and more effective treatment will help save lives, young and old.

So, now the part I hate when I have to ask you to sponsor me. If you feel able to support me, then any amount will be more than gratefully accepted. I do realise that these are difficult times for many people, so vocal support during that weekend, (23/24/25 September), would be more than welcome if you live nearby…..

Just Giving Page

Thanks!!

The brilliance of the day…..

I’ve never been totally at ease with this direction; perhaps some of my writing has been too personal at times; one has to be careful not to cross the line, and I know I’ve come very close on more than one occassion. Since the turn of the year though, my number of readers and visitors has increased massively, so now that I’ve reached the one hundred posts mark, I’m going to take a day or two to decide whether to change direction again, or even if I’ll continue at all. After all who wants to continually read the inane ramblings of a miserable, middle-aged man?!

Thank you to every single person who has visited over the past three years, I do appreciate the support and feedback I’ve received, especially this year.

It always seems to be the case that events take over my very well-ordered life and leave me frozen to the spot, unable to make a move, or make a decisive decision; even a bad one. So, yet again, a culmination of new and older incidents has left me floundering; without going into too much detail, I received some possibly bad news about work a few days ago, and this, combined with some long-standing personal anguish has almost broken me.

If I could think of a really poor way to describe this, I guess it would be that I feel like a really out of date computer that no one has any use for anymore, and at this very moment would probably be found out the back in a skip, waiting to be taken to the rubbish dump. I promise not to continue this computer metaphor any longer, but it’s got to the stage now where my brain needs a serious system reboot.

There comes a point when one has become so tired that you just need to stop, step outside yourself  and objectively examine each problem; of course, this all sounds very simple, and it probably should be; the execution however is somewhat different. It can become increasingly hard to fight your way out of the mire when you simply don’t have the strength, or the energy to carry on. I’ve always possessed a certain degree of inner strength; regular readers of this blog will have some idea of the sometimes self-inflicted battles that I have put myself through over the years. This fortitude is not infinite though; there surely has to come a point where one can not take too much more, or the set backs and dead ends become too much. I’m not sure how many times one can start again, regroup or fight back.

This isn’t designed to be some massive moaning session; far from it. It’s simply an attempt to begin to clear my head, to try to regain a sense of perspective about my life, to sort out which pieces fit, and perhaps to remove those that don’t. My brain is fit to burst at the moment; I’d be the first to admit that I sometimes make too much of various situations; and there can be little doubt that I think too much and quite often over complicate things. The simple truth is that my life should be far less complicated than I sometimes make it, and the solution to that is something that I need to work out sooner rather than later.

The longer one continues to remain frozen to the spot like a frightened animal, the harder it becomes. So far, my poor attempts to resolve this have mainly involved drinking huge amounts of wine and quite often anything else that I’ve got to hand; this is a dangerous path to take, not least because I’m not really supposed to be drinking at all; but also because drinking to forget really does not work. In my case, it makes things worse, and only leaves me feeling a sense of loss for something that I can’t really begin to explain or express. In reality this feeling probably relates to many things; age, personal relationships and my failed attempts at them, work and many other things too dull to mention.

So, I’ve decided to try to start again. It’s time to stop, take stock and re-evaluate my life; keep what’s good and throw away the bad. It could take some time.

Jealousy becomes all consuming, it clouds your judgement, defies all reason, it knows no bounds.

Bitterness and jealousy, rising from within you like acid from your stomach. All that remains is the foul aftertaste; mistrust mixing with what was once only love, in a destructive cocktail of self doubt, anger and loss.

What was never there will never come to pass.

Obviously I’m chuffed as chuffed can be; this is all very exciting, and hopefully I’ll get to try lots of things I’d never normally dream of putting in my mouth!

So, as a nod to my new part-time boss here is a link: Culinary Pursuits Information page

I think it takes a great deal of courage to admit and be open about depression, even in these enlightened times; after all, even though you might be able to talk about it, no one really knows the pain and suffering that a person goes through during these times.

During most of my twenties, I myself went through several bouts of serious depression and panic attacks. These episodes became so serious, that at one point during the mid 1990′s, I went through what could probably be considered a complete nervous breakdown. It’s very difficult for me to describe to you how this felt; at the time I certainly felt unable to talk about it; I was embarrassed, almost ashamed, and considered myself to be very, very weak. Throughout this whole period, I struggled to maintain a normal life; including holding down a full-time job. I became very withdrawn, and although I’ve always been a very sociable man, I quite often felt like shutting myself away from the world. Panic attacks added to the pain; I occasionally would be unable to set foot in a shop if too many people were there, I would become a nervous wreck if someone as much as spoke to me. There was one incident where I ran out of a hairdressers half way through a haircut; I simply felt unable to be around people, or any amount of pressure. Sporadically, I also started to drink a lot; a hell of a lot.

The root cause of my problems was the sudden and unexpected death of my Mother in 1993. I had no idea how to deal with this at the time, so I shut it out; I almost pretended it hadn’t happened. The last thing I would have been able to do at the time would have been to talk about it; that just didn’t seem to be an option, and of course, over the next few years, the pressure of this continued to build up inside me to the point where my behaviour began to become increasingly unpredictable and self-destructive.

I don’t think I can begin to describe just how dark these times were; there are periods that remain firmly locked away in my head; to be honest they will probably always stay there, and this blog is certainly not the place to relive them. This is down to self-protection;  I’ve tried very hard to maintain an image of being very thick-skinned; however, this is only partly true. I have become fairly tough over the years, I’ve had to, there wasn’t really any other option. It was, and sometimes still is, just a question of surviving, of getting through the day, and of waking up the next morning.

Days, months and years soon pass, and I left it too long before deciding to try to get help. I have untold amounts of respect for anyone finding themselves in that position. The first step is always the biggest and hardest; even before you feel able to discuss your problems, you have the far harder task of coming to terms with it yourself. This took me a long time to do, and I often wish that I’d been able to take that great leap of faith far sooner than I did; after all, my illness took its toll not only on me, but also on those around me, and especially upon those closest to me. It is one of the greatest regrets of my life that I hurt those I loved due to my inability to talk or express my feelings; even now this still crops up from time to time, it has prevented me from allowing people to become too close to me; this has always been a great sadness in my life, and I’ve often felt that I’ve missed out on a lot of living.

Receiving treatment can be a long and painful process; I went through a very tough period whilst taking prescribed antidepressants. At the time it didn’t feel as if they were actually doing anything to help me. Of course, realistically, you don’t start taking these and suddenly wake up a week later feeling and acting like Mr Happy and on top of the world. They simply help to provide balance in your life, they level you out; although, in my case the side effects were horrendous. I found therapy to be of much greater use; the beauty of this is that they don’t actually say that much too you, they leave you to talk, to release everything that you’ve storing up over the years.

I found that over time I was able to discuss not only my Mothers death, but also her in general. I was able to go back to my childhood, talk about my parents divorce, address a lot of issues that I’d long kept buried. It was a long and very rocky path, taking probably the best part of a year to even myself out. However, there is no magic cure, only acceptance, and an ability to recognise the signs of oncoming depression. What I managed to learn was how to deal with depression when it comes knocking on my door; for example, these days I only really suffer during the winter months, and I find the Christmas period very hard to deal with. I now know the signs though, and I deal with it accordingly. It’s been eight years since I last visited the doctor, or took medication for depression, and touch wood, I’ll never have to again for the remainder of my life.

We shouldn’t judge those who suffer from this illness. It can and does take over your life, dramatically changes your personality, and can leave one feeling totally helpless and useless. What we need is more acceptance, understanding and empathy for those people who are undoubtably going through the fight of their lives.