Multiple Sclerosis

I work (for now), I love, I live, I have fun. Just with wheelchairs and drugs and spasms and stuff...

20 February 2020

What has Disability Ever Done For me?

That was a poorly timed Monty Python joke of a title if you weren’t sure… RIP the spamtastic Terry Jones. And he’s not even in this picture. Oops. I so wish I wasn’t disabled. I wish to the depth of my spasms I didn’t have Multiple Sclerosis. It hurts on so many levels, it’s relentless and it is utterly, mind-bogglingly exhausting. But do I wish life were different? Nope. I am delightedly, delightfully, deliciously, dottily married. We have two stupendous children. A lovely extended family. I am knicker-droppingly‌ gorgeous. Obviously. If balding, ageing and sometimes smelly. What more could I want? (Crème brûlée more often possibly, if I am being picky?). I was prompted to think this through […]

3 December 2019

Is Blogger’s Block a thing? It is now. Thanks, messed up brain…

So, legions of adoring fans, I haven’t written for a while. ‘Lesions’ of adoring fans, if you know your MS stuff and like a bad pun. The complaints at my deafening silence have been flooding in. Not really. Am not sure anyone has noticed. Hey ho! I have lots of draft blogs which are nearly there, honest… Writing and thinking is therapy anyway, and probably stimulation for my foggy brain. ‘Cos that’s what it is. Foggy. Cloudy. Hazy. As if I were simultaneously a brain forecaster for Mark Webb and for UK weather. I can confidently predict more mist and storms to come. With rare but glorious clear spells. Look at me sat in a wheelchair and you guess, correctly, […]

21 July 2019

On stage with text behind him, mark is seated. And dressed smartly!

Since When Was I Disabled?

My short-term memory may be shot to pieces by Multiple Sclerosis and hardly helped by chronic fatigue. Yay, I can blame everything on MS! But my long-term one is crystal clear. I can vividly remember the first time I mentioned the word ‘disabled’ about myself, and it was a fight to get the words out: Costa Coffee, Leighton Buzzard. 2009 perhaps, two years after diagnosis. Ordered myself a Latte and a Tiffin (that’s rich chocolate and crunched biscuit naughtiness for the uninitiated). And realised as I ordered that I was having a particularly wobbly day. Only half the coffee would reach the table if I carried it. “I’m slightly disabled, do you mind bringing the coffee to my table?” I […]

16 July 2019

A Glutton for Funishment

Oh dear. There was me thinking I had come up with the word ‘Funishment’ all on my own. I was wanting to describe my Tough Mudder/Wheelchair Rugby/Skydiving adrenaline fetish. And it turns out fetish is thoroughly appropriate. Funishment is apparently defined as ‘a pleasurable way of being punished, usually in a sexual way.’ Oh. There was nothing sexual whatsoever about being manhandled like a sack of potatoes by a dozen guys and gals over, under and through 15 devious Tough Mudder obstacles. Especially on the multiple occasions I got a wedgie, or my ‘special pants’ were on display while being dragged over the line or a high wall. Why exactly did I love it? Why do I […]