Grief
I work (for now), I love, I live, I have fun. Just with wheelchairs and drugs and spasms and stuff...
5 March 2022
It’s all about Ukraine isn’t it? Well this one is too. Kinda. Grief. Time to recognise nearly all of us are going through versions of grief right now: So many of us were already coming to terms with two surreal years. Thanks Pandemic. 😬. Lost loved ones. Lost freedoms. Lost businesses and careers. Lost opportunities. Lost contact. Lost health. Lost dreams. (Some of us in the vulnerable category are now grieving lost protections, but that’s a complaint for another day). And suddenly we are grieving – among many other emotions – for Ukraine. For democracy. For human beings. Those of us long in the tooth are sad we’re racing towards another Cold War. Putin fans are confused. And any dictator […]
22 January 2021
Back in the Noughties, I spent a happy three years or so working for the ‘leading premium health and fitness group’, or something like that. Fluffy marketing and pr-speak for David Lloyd Leisure. Thoroughly recommend: https://www.davidlloyd.co.uk/ . It was very much a lifestyle job. If you had a morning meeting, you could bet your bottom dollar – and indeed any excess fat on your bottom – that you would run into other attendees prior to that meeting on a treadmill, or in the pool. Or dosing up on a Full English Breakfast as a reward for all the worthy calorie-crunching. If the meeting was in the afternoon, the same exercise logic applied. But replace ‘Full English’ with ‘Pint of Beer […]
30 June 2020
It’s tough out there right now. As I write this, and in the U.K. alone, perhaps 50,000 family and friends, (more or less 20,000, because we’re in both a guessing game and watching political football), are mourning a loved one. Gone to a virus none of us had heard of just a few distant months ago. In that same brief, surreal period, others have lost equally loved ones to something else. Accidents, scary illnesses, and old age? Well, they trample on, regardless of what makes the headlines. And very few of us dealing with the mounting waves of shock, bewilderment and fear have been allowed to manage the grief process. No proper funerals with cucumber sandwiches and sherry. No final, […]
6 September 2018
“Life is good, just different”, is my oft-repeated mantra. And it’s usually true, honestly. Nothing Multiple Sclerosis has thrown at us has got me down for long. Well, maybe the excruciating nerve pain, a bit. And the phase when I was self-injecting every other day, each time basically giving myself the flu for 24 hours. Meh! I have a loving and much-loved family, a loyal, funny and indulgent set of close friends, and dashing good looks. Maybe not the last bit. At least my funky red wheelchair turns heads. Right now I’m in a bit of a wobbly phase. I am yawning my way through bouts of fatigue, increasing nerve pain attacks and a more-rubbish-than-ever bladder. The less said about […]