Archives: Family

Blimey, life moves at a hundred miles an hour sometimes, doesn’t it?

A friend asked me the otheer day how I think of things to put in this blog everyday – and I have to admit sometimes it does seem a little pointless to be writing when nothing much has happened.

And then you get days like today, where it’s ALL happened!

It all kicked off at 10am this morning when the phone woke us up.  Until today, I’ve been up and about by 8.30am every day for over 2 weeks – completely naturally, waking of my own accord.  But the first day I sleep in, it all kicks off.

Steve from Tin Racr Design was on the phone, asking if I’d got his proof of the programme through yet, which I had to confess I’d not seen because I wasn’t out of bed.  Hastily rolling out of bed, I plonked myself in front of the computer and checked my mails to discover not just the proof, but also an email from the printers we thought were handling the printing for us saying they could no longer do it.

To say I panicked would be overstating it slightly – I’m not really a panicky person –  but let’s say my calm took a bit of a dent.  Rolling K out of bed, I thrust the phone, a yellow pages and an outline of what we needed into her hands and got her dialling while I jumped on the job of proof-reading the awesome-looking programme.

In the middle of the chaos, other emails kept firing in from various sources, all seemingly demanding instant attention.  I can go days without getting any emails (well, ok, not at the moment) and usually you can sort them into various piles of urgency, but almost every one that came through today seemed to need an immediate response.

Understandably, with all my activity and the prospect of an exhausting rehearsal session at the Theatre tonight still to come, K was getting anxious that I pace myself and make sure I was keeping enough in my tank.

I pride myself on working well under pressure and although I had a couple of moments of dread at points today, I managed not only to address everything I needed to, but also to make sure I had enough time to have a proper lunch and take time to lie down in the afternoon to recharge before work.

As well as signing off on the programme, today has seen me: get hold of a follow-spot for the show, finalise two auction lots, get a sponsor for the programme (the legendary Dunham’s Solicitors in MK), confirm all the technical details with the venue and recruit a stage manager to handle the back-stage organisation for the show (well, nearly recruit, anyway, as it’s dependent on getting hold of someone else first – but we’re nearly there).

Not only that, but I’ve had a three-hour rehearsal at MKT for the Youth Theatre show, including an hour-and-a-half working solely with my three wonderful Hamlet cast members who have taken to the whole thing so much better than I could possibly have hoped.

Shakespeare is not an easy thing to grasp and there’s a lot of nuance and little touches to the text which can take an age to go over and discover in the rehearsal process.  I was so happy tonight to find that the cast have already got a good grasp of the text, but also that they are keen to share ideas and work with me and with each other to find a balance between their characters.

It’s been a long time since I’ve worked specifically as a director in a rehearsal setting and it felt great to be putting something together again – I realised tonight just how much I miss that area of the Theatre and how much more I want to do down that avenue.

On top of which, I also delivered the final part of the piece I’ve written to open the first and second acts of the show and it went down really well with the cast, which is always a good place to start.  I was concerned it might need a bit of redrafting, which would have been a headache considering how limited the rehearsal time now is, but it’s actually looking like it’s going to be OK as-is.

And now I find myself back home in front of my inbox again (with another 12 emails come through since I left the house at 5.30 tonight) and discovering a whole new load of greatness to polish off my day.

We’ve got some really good media interest, which will hopefully convert into coverage, and a few more pieces of the auction have fallen into place – including securing a workshop for people to see behind the scenes on Avenue Q, which I’m so insanely excited about it’s funny.

I’m now tired enough to go to sleep almost immediately, but I’m also pleased that I don’t feel totally exhausted.  I suppose the true measure is going to be how I feel when I roll out of bed and drag myself over to Oxford for clinic in the morning, but I think I’ve got the Big Guy on my side this week and he’s making sure I’ve got the fuel inside to see me through the weekend.

That said, I’m not taking anything for granted: I know I have to look after myself and pace myself or I’m not going to be able to make the most of what’s going to be one of the best night’s of my life.

Four days and counting!

I’m always loathe to jump up and down and rave about having a good few days without any enforced bouts of bed rest.  Well, let’s face it, I’m always loathe to jump up and down full stop any more.  All right, I’ve ALWAYS been loathe to jump up and down.  Even when I could.

Still, it seems that the last few days have been particularly encouraging for me – a full day’s shooting all day Saturday, a nice, restful Sunday which still managed to include a trip to K’s parent’s for a lovely Sunday/Brithday lunch for her Mum and a middlingly-active day today getting K sorted for her new job and fixed up with sexy new specs.

I seem – seem – to have found a nice equilibrium with my energy levels for the moment – succeeding in balancing a need for restful periods with achieving the most important goals of the day without running myself completely into the ground.

I’m hesitant to be fully excited until I get a couple of days further into the week with no repercussions, but so far, so good.

The day’s shooting on Saturday was really good fun.  Although we had quite a bit of time pressure to ensure we were out of the public areas of the Theatre by the time the matinee audience came in, we actually got all of the stuff we wanted relatively quickly and with very few hiccups.

We did, unfortunately, realise later that we’d miss-shot one scene and made a fatal error known in the trade as “crossing the line”.  This is far too hideously boring to explain in full to anyone not familiar with the term, as it’s a bit of a pedantic, anally retentive technical thingy to look out for, but unfortunately it’s one thing that can completely ruin a film when it’s all cut together.  Most of an audience would never be able to point it out, but would undoubtedly know there’s something wrong with what their watching.

Luckily for us, the scene in question with the minorly-major technical hiccup (or f**k up, depending on your view) is one which we still have to shoot a couple of additional shots for, so shouldn’t be too much of a problem to go back and rectify.  Fingers crossed.

Today I spent another morning in front of a camera, this time giving an interview for a student film for Bournemouth  University’s journalism programme about transplant and life on the list, as well as what can be done to increase donor rates.

It’s nothing major, but I was put in touch with the filmmaker through UK Transplant and as I said at the time I agreed to it, any publicity is good publicity.  I think it’s particularly good because there’s a chance it’ll be seen by a good number of students at the uni and that the message it sends out will get through to one of the most campaign-aware sectors of the population.

There’s huge amounts of resources sitting around university campuses in way of students who can be incredibly vocal about any subject close to their heart.  Make just a few of them aware of the importance of having people signed up to the organ donor register and there could be a whole new wave of Live Life Then Give Life supporters coming through the system and shouting louder than we have before.

Arrangements continue apace for Laughter for Life and I’ve spent a large chunk of the day on the phone to various people and rapidly swapping emails to finalise press strategy for the week, with local MK releases going out tomorrow.  Our national campaign should begin in earnest this week, too, although we’re a little disappointed that Bill’s not able to help us with shouting from the rooftops due to his already manic schedule.

That said, we’ve got an entire 3-hour gig lined up for Sunday night with some of the countries top comedians donating their time for nothing and for which we’ve already sold out a 600-seat Theatre, so it’s pretty hard to be unhappy about anything!

Here’s hoping the rest of the week stays as smooth as today.  We’ve got a few auction lots to finalise and gather, as well as the press and media work to cover.  I’ve got some technical gubbins to double check and artists to liase with.  We’ve got an auction to plan and sales to figure out, and I don’t even know what I’m wearing yet!

Gosh, it’s all go!

It’s funny to read people’s observations on my posts on here, both in the comments on the site and emails I receive.  A lot of people seem to have had the same thought: that I do too much on my Good days, which in turn leads to the Bad days.

I have to admit that this is something I have thought of before, but I just don’t seem to have taken heed of my own warnings.  I think my family probably think the same thing, but then how often does one really listen to one’s own family when they’re telling us something unpalatable which, to an extent, we already know?

I certainly think that the thought must have occured to my Mum and Dad but they’ve refrained from bringing it up with me because they know it’s a lesson I need to learn for myself and won’t accept being told from outside.  It’s the way my family has always worked, and it’s made me all the stronger for it.  It’s a strong parent who can take a step back and let their kids make “avoidable” mistakes in order to help them learn and grow – and it’s something I’ll always be grateful for.

But having had comments on here now confirming my worst – and most hidden – suspicions about my general appraoch to getting on with things, it really seems to have sunk in.  Well, I say that now, but we’ll have to wait and see where it goes from here.

I feel almost like I’m turning over a new leaf – making a pledge to myself to try to regulate the amount of things that I do so that I can either maintain a constant energy level throughout the week, or else build in sufficient rest periods for the times immediately following major (or minor) exertions.

Yet again, I’m reminded of the value of this blog as so much more than merely a record of what I’m doing with myself from day-to-day.  It’s helped me to learn and grow and stay in touch with the essential elements of making sure I live my life to it’s fullest for however long I’m given.

I have to accept that things aren’t going to be a breeeze and I’m not going to be able to do all the things I want to do.  But I can also promise myself that I will do whatever is necessary to get the most out of the experiences and activities that mean the most to me.

So thanks to everyone who’s emailed, commented and talked me through my highs and lows – you make a big difference to the way things go around here.

Keep smiling, because I am.

I’m thoroughly confused.

I should be used to being confused by my body by now, I really should – nothing should really throw me about it’s day-to-day fits and wobbles and ups and downs. But somehow I just haven’t got used to the unpredicability of it all.

Take yesterday, for instance: after a really rather awful, moody, tired Sunday, I slept averagely well and woke up at 8.30am full of energy and enthusiasm and raring to go. I actually wanted to eat breakfast, which is something almost wholly alien to me, since my appetite doesn’t usually kick in until mid-morning at the earliest, so the extra energy boost was great, too.

I spent all morning ploughing through mountains of work and knocking things off my To Do List left, right and centre. I amazed myself at the speed with whihc I rattled through all the things I wanted to get done and I’d almost achieved everything by midday.

I felt entirely un-guilty about taking some time out in the afternoon to pop over to K’s brother’s to play with the little ones – one of whom has just discovered how amazing it is to be able to propel yourself towards whatever it is you want. I wouldn’t so much call it crawling, just yet, it’s more like commando-crawling as he doesn’t appear to have worked out that using your legs can help, but he’s on the cusp of a major revelation, that’s for sure.

Back home after an hour of fun and games (OK, an hour of sitting on the floor playing with Fifi and her Flowertots – don’t ask me who they are, we were just sticking them to the magnetic board….), I settled in to polish off the rest of the pressing bits and bobs which needed dealing with before close of play, then settled on the sofa to watch some TV and hit the sack.

Now, today, after an identical night’s sleep, with perhaps an extra hour in bed, I have managed to achieve almost nothing. Since getting up this morning I have felt entirely drained of evergy, lacking in any kind of resource to keep my eyes open and my brain switched on.

Compared to yesterday, I’ve got next-to-nothing done, although all the important stuff has actually been dealt with, but I had to go back to bed at lunch time and it’s really only since taking K to college this evening and sitting back at my desk around 6pm that I’ve been able to engage myself to do anything at all.

It’s immensely frustrating because I just don’t know where this energy-drain has come from. I seem to be yo-yo-ing up and down from day to day with little or no reason behind the ups and downs.

I remember saying here previously that I’d be OK with it all if it made sense and was plannable, but it’s impossible to know what each day is going to be like at the moment and I can’t work out whether it’s OK to plan things or if I should just wipe my diary and play each day by ear.

I don’t suppose I can really start doing anything differently, other than, I guess, be strict with myself at stopping when I don’t feel I’ve got the energy and making sure I rest myself when my body says no. But when you’re trying to plan for a major event just 10 days away (how exciting!), it’s frustrating not knowing how much you’re going to be able to do all day.

Still, all moaning aside, I can’t really complain about today because I did get to further explore my media-tart side of my personality with a live phone interview with Peter Allen on Five Live Drive for the BBC this evening.

The wonderful Fi Glover, who’s Radio 4 show Saturday Live I did a few weeks back, passed on my details to the editor of Drive and, sure enough, I got a call at 11am this morning to talk about things and asked if I’d come on the show live this evening at 5.25 – pretty much prime time.

It was a bit of a tough interview because, obivously, I was mostly interested in plugging Laughter for Life and transplantation, but it seemed that they were more interested in the CF angle of things. Which was nice but, you know, not really “news”… Still, I managed to get through all the CF awareness stuff, plus a plug for the gig, plus a load of awareness raising for organ donation AND a mention of the Live Life Then Give Live campaign. Not too bad for 3 minutes air time, I thought. Even if it did involve a little bit of talking over Peter Allen as he tried to interrupt…

So the publicity machine ploughs on and the date of the show gets ever closer. Things get more exciting by the day and I’ll be sure to post updates on here as soon as I get them. hopefully, I’ll have more warning of the other interviews and things I’ll be part of, which will mean I can put heads-up posts on here ahead of time.

I’m in a bad mood: a grump, a fog, a depression, a dip, a lull, a negatively-buoyant, anti-happy smudge of a grey-day melancholy.  And I don’t really know why.

It could be the over-exertion of spending a day on my feet shooting the Youth Theatre video yesterday, where I was less than proficient at keeping my energy levels boosted and trying to stay seated as much as possible so as to conserve as much energy as possible.

It could be because this afternoon I went out to the cinema to see Hot Fuzz (which is great) when I should have been lying in bed forcing my body to recover from yesterday’s runabouts rather than forcing more activity on it.

It could be because I missed my dose of steroids at lunch time and didn’t catch up with them until nearly 6pm this evening, so my system is significantly down on it’s currently beefed-up power supply.

It could be that after going to the cinema, which I shouldn’t have done, following a day of shooting which I didn’t manage well, forgetting my steroids and driving over to Mum and Dad’s and back again just for a bite of dinner and not taking oxygen along for the car journey, I’m just a little bit pooped.

It could be that I’m just tired.

Whatever it is, I’m in a really bad mood.

This is supposed to cheer me up – my blog and blogging on it.  It’s supposed to remind me that when the going gets tough, the tough get going – or at least in my case the tough laugh in the face of the other toughness and tell it to be on it’s merry way because tough isn’t welcome in this part of town and if it doesn’t go away swiftly-and-I-mean-right-now then I’m going to do something really drastic like laughing even harder.

It’s not.

I’m still just feeling pretty grumpy.

So I’m clearly beyond help.  Far beyond the outer reaches of the depths of the far side of the distant part of somewhere that’s really not very close to the vicinity of the place where I am and help’s ability to reach me.

So there’s only one thing for it: I’ve just got to go to bed.  And sleep.

Like all big problems in life that at times seem insurmountable,  I’m confident that this will see me through.

Actually, thinking about it, there’s not many insurmountable problems that are cured by sleeping.  Insomnia, maybe.  But not cancer.  Or AIDS.  Or even HIV, for that matter.  War is rarely solved by sleeping, although I suppose if all the people on both sides were sleeping then they couldn’t be shooting each other, so it’s a kind of solution, but not really practical or workable as peace-plans go.

Murders aren’t solved by sleeping, and dogs aren’t walked by sleeping.  Sleeping does nothing to stop the spread of malicious rumours regarding the alleged illegal exploits of footballers or politicians, nor does it make any headway into the resolution of global warming.

It does, however, stop mindless, idle drivel like this, because when I’m asleep I can’t type.

There are many things on this earth and in this life for which we should all be thanking the Good Lord who watches over us.  And me being asleep and not writing any more of this is one of them.

Good night all.

I did it!! I actually managed to go out on a Saturday night without a) running out of steam after half-an-hour, b) not being able to get out of bed the next morning and c) feeling too self-conscious about wearing my O2 while I was out.

It’s a big step for me, really, and I’m really happy this morning. It was K’s Dad’s 60th this week and the whole family (the 4 off-spring and relevent +1’s) headed out to Sam and Maxie’s, a new place in the “Hub” where the new business/hotel-type district of MK is going up.

If I’m honest, I’ve been fretting about it on and off all week, what with my somewhat unpredicatable blowers and anti-biotic reactions at the moment, because I really wanted to be there and share the night with the rest of the family. K and I have known each other for a long time, and I’ve known her family for most of our friendship, but it was also the first time I was joining up with a full family gathering as “one of them” and I really didn’t want to have to bail out because my chest was being beligerent
(sorry, Nick, but it is in the dictionary if you want to check…).

It’s probably going to sound funny to people who know me, but last night really did feel like a bit of a watershed moment for me – like I was being welcomed into the family. There was no fanfare or special treatment or anything like that, but just that feeling of comfort you get when you stop worrying about whether or not everyone is really happy that you’re there and accept that it really does appear that they can tolerate your company.

Of course, it was helped hugely by being able to bribe the twins round to my side my being a taxi, but you never get anywhere in life without the odd backhander, eh?

But I think most importantly for me last night, helped by feeling welcome and comfortable, was that I managed to get through the whole thing without worrying about how I was feeling. I seemed to have the perfect energy levels for the night. I didn’t arrive home exhausted, nor did I feel that I had to not do something because I wasn’t up to it.

I was about to say that I suppose that sitting in a restaurant having dinner isn’t too taxing, so I shouldn’t really make a fuss, but actually, on reflection, it shows how far I’ve come in my recovery since before Christmas that my mind is working like that. Back in November/December, the idea of spending 3 hours sat in a restaurant, oxygen or no oxygen would have been enough to send me to bed to sleep for a week – so it really is a big deal for me to have got through it.

It’s funny how these little victories often nearly go unnoticed and it’s one of the things I love about doing this blog. In the same way I said when I started out that I hoped writing it all down would encourage me to see the wood for the trees and not get bogged down in hard times, but remember to keep smiling, I think it helps me not to overlook the upsides which might otherwise get glossed over.

Whatever way you look at it, I’ve come a long way since the turn of the year – like any period in life it’s had it’s ups and downs, but it’s worth reminding myself that I’ve done some amazing things and I’m doing better than I perhaps would have hoped in terms of moving forward both physically and mentally.

A week in hospital for respite pre-show this week should also do me a lot of good and although I know I’m not going to like it much when I’m there, it’s been reassuring to have the knowledge of an impending stay to let me prepare for it, rather than the usual course of getting it hoisted on me when I’m at my lowest.

The next week can’t really go quick enough, but at least I’m on a high going into it, which should stand me in good stead for keeping my spirits up through it.

Today has been, frankly, a pretty rubbish day.

Yet again last night my drugs and brain conspired to keep me awake almost the whole way through the night,  letting me finally drift off for more than an hour just before my 6am alarm call for my morning IV’s, followed by my usually solid sleep-time of 7-11am being interrupted by phone calls, deliveries and other distractions.

So a bad start to a long day as it was, which put me in a less than fabulous mood for the rest of it, which in turn annoyed me because my cousin Katie was down from Brum to catch a show at the Theatre and we were planning on having a bit of a day of it.

As it was, I could hardly muster the energy to entertain, although we did have a good chat and a cracking Game of Life with K (which I won, natch…).  But I still had to collapse into bed mid-afternoon to catch up on sleeps.

My body was simply not keen to play ball today though and stubbornly refused to wake itself up from my nap, which dragged me further into struggles for general awake/happiness.

The thought of getting through an hour and a half’s work session was, I have to admit, less than appealing, so it came as some relief when Rheya phoned to pass a message from Suze to say that since most of my group weren’t in for tonight, it made more sense for me to stay at home, so I delivered Katie to the Theatre and sorted her tickets before heading straight back home.

No sooner was I back than my chest started playing silly buggers again and givingg me all sorts of grief – mostly muscle-related pain, I think, from where I’ve been sleeping and holding myself a little strangely due to the IV access in my shoulder.

Being both exhausted and in pain is never a great modd-enhancing combo, so I was getting spectacularly downbeat and po-faced when I discovered perhaps the funniest thing I’ve seen on TV in a long time.

Curled up in bed with K, we flicked onto Never Mind The Buzzcocks and I laughed so hard I’m sure the pain from my chest has migrated to my stomach.

I’ve really no idea who Donny Tourettes is – or even if I’ve got his name right – but he made for some of the most unintentionally hilarious TV viewing since You’ve Been Framed made people laugh.

Watching Bill Bailey and Simon Amstell (both newly minted personal heroes of mine) ripping into Donny’s bizarre attempts at either rebellion or humour, coupled with his own self-image of sex-god punk rockstar out to diss the world had me doubled over in laughter and nearly falling off the bed.

It goes to prove that no matter how lousy things get, I was right all along when I said that the only way to deal with the tough times is to smile through it.

God bless you, Buzzcocks.

Ah, well, you can’t have it all going your own way, can you?

After the best part of a week spent luxuriating in the delights of life – happiness, exciting prospects, wonderful surroundings, beautiful people and all the rest of it – I knew that sooner or later things would come crashing back down with a bump.  And bump they did.

Yesterday, as I hoped, we went down to Mazda to order our new car and things seemed to pass off without a hitch.  But low and behold, I get back home this afternoon to find a voicemail message from the dealer telling me that Motability won’t insure an under-25 on a catagory 9 car – so I’m 4 months too early to get the Mazda 6.  How ridiculous is that?

Having phoned Motability, they’ve said I can appeal it in writing and they can take it to their insurers and see if they’ll make an exception, but it seems crazy to have to go through all of that palaver for the sake of 4 months!

But actually, although the whole car thing is a bummer, I have to confess that that’s not really what brought me down this week.  What really dragged me off my happy perch was a visit to Milton Keynes College on Thursday afternoon.

K is doing an access course to get her set for uni entry in 2008 and had to enroll officially before her class on Thursday night, which meant we had to go down in the afternoon and do the enrollment necessaries.

I suppose I should have thought about it ahead of time and prepared myself for it, but I didn’t.  The surprise element may have been a factor in my difficulties, but I can’t blame that entirely.

The problem, largely, is being around groups of teenagers and young adults, hanging out in corridors as they do and being themselves at their supremely judgemental young ages.  I know that this is a MASSIVE generalisation and that not ALL teenagers are hugely judgemental, but I remember being a teenager, at school, and what I would think of people walking past me in the corridor and how much we used to jump on anyone or anything that was “different”.

And, for the first time since my health dipped and O2 became a big part of my life, my worst fears came true – I felt like a total freak.  It didn’t help that we were forced to walk almost the entire length of the campus between two departments we needed to see, which had me not only navigating through huge throngs of students, but doing it even more breathlessly than normal while lugging one of my really heavy black O2 cylinders with me.

I also know that most of the negative vibe I felt I was creating almost entirely within my own mind, but that didn’t make any difference to how I felt, or how I feel about the experience.

It was supremely negative – something which I’m not very used to in my life.  Almost any situation I can look at, take a spin on and come up with a positive side, or a brighter perspective.  Even this blog is titled after my attitude to whatever life chooses to throw at me.  But for the first time in a very long time on Thursday, I felt small, insecure and very, very different.

What made it all the harder is that I’ve spent so long now building myself up and repairing the somewhat fractured self-image I had in my final years at school that I don’t have the coping mechanisms to help me through feelings like those.  I seemed to go into a sort of semi-shock, no use to man nor beast for an hour or so.

I was only lucky in that I had to go straight on to another meeting, this time on friendly turf at the Theatre with Rheya to go over our video shoot, which managed to occupy my brain long enough to push the negative thoughts from my head and start me off on a clean bill when I got back to my own space.

I suppose what I have to take away from the situation is a knowledge of how bad it can get.  Although this may sound mightily pessimistic on the surface, it’s important to me and actually something I find quite positive.  Life is all about the ups and downs and I’ve now got a whole new barometer  for the downs – college on Thursday was tough, and way beyond anything I’ve experienced like that for quite a while. But that also means that i’m unlikely to find another experience like it for a while, either.

And when I think I have, I can just remind myself how bad this was, and almost immediately make myself feel better that it’s not that bad.

I was saying all through the ups last week that I was enjoying them because you never know when the downs are going to come in the roller-coaster of life, and having them to cling to when the week’s got rough has made a big difference.  Where once I would have been bummed out for days by an hour’s worth of bad experience, instead I can focus on all the good things that have happened and are still happening and turn my face away from the rubbish that I don’t need on my mind.

Enjoy the good times and remember the bad – just don’t let them rule your thoughts.

Tuesdays are traditionally oone of those nothing days, aren’t they?  They’re not Monday, so there’s no real reason to hate them, but neither are they Friday, with the joy of an impending weekend, nor Sunday, with it’s laid back, pipe-and-slippers feel.

So it was a wonderful turn up for the books yesterday when we seemed to have a belated Christmas of good tidings all tumble into our laps over the course of a happy, exciting, smile-making morning, afternoon and evening.

First thing in the morning, we kicked off with a wonderful double-whammy for K where in the space of 30 minutes she discovered not only that she had she been accepted on her college course – a 12-month access to healthcare which will set her up to head to uni to study Speech Therapy next year – but also that she’s been granted an interview for a job which would fit both her and our needs perfectly.

Coming directly on top of that, I had a HUGELY productive morning working on the Laughter for Life show, getting to grips with a number of pressing issues.  Most unbelievably generous and fantastic for us was the agreement of Steve at Tin Racer, who do all the design work for CF Talk, to design the programmes for the night for free.  Not only that, but he also offered to talk to his contacts to see if we can get it printed for free, too!

After beavering away on all things funny for the morning, we then popped out to Mazda to test drive the Mazda 6 – a proper, grown-up car which I have to confess I’ve rather fallen in love with.  I’ve been looking to change my current car on the Motablilty scheme since November, when I realised that in order to stay mobile when I’m less well, it may be better for me to have an automatic gearbox, to take away some of the physical exertion of driving.  It now looks like we’ve found the right car – and may well be off to order it tomorrow!

On top of all of that, K then started her college course in the evening (cutting it fine on the admissions front, MK College…) and came through the evening unscathed and looking forward to what the next 12 months hold academically.

I spent the time she was in college hanging out with a friend who I haven’t spent a lot of time with for ages and we caught up.  Adding to the Super Tuesday feel, he was filling me in on his new relationship (early stages, but hey, it’s still a relationship) and I couldn’t have been happier for him.  I know he’s feeling a bit conflicted about it all at the moment (loooooong story…) but I think it’s fab and he should enjoy it!

Every now and again one of those days come along where everything just seems to go your way.  So often in life we can only remember those days when everything seems to go against you, so I’m determined to hold on to the memoryof my Super Tuesday and use it in future to blast away the cobwebs when I’m starting to doubt my productivity or the wisdom of things.

Everyone should have a Super Tuesday at some point, and when you do, make sure you lodge it in your memory and share the good news with all around you.  Nothing like a ray of sunshine through the snow to make people smile.

Believe me, I know how strange this sounds coming from someone who’s spent the last two months writing about the various different ups and downs in his live, but just now I’m finding it unbelievably hard to find the right words to describe just how happy I’m feeling.

This is one of those periods of life that just make you sit back and smile – to count your blessings and realise that the world is not really a big, evil place that intent on wearing you down, but rather that if you put yourself in the right position to be the master of your own destiny and you look at the world from the right perspective, things will sooner or later start to swing your way.

I can also appreciate how bizarre it might sound for someone who is currently waiting for someone else to die so that he can have a chance of a fresh, new tilt at life to even begin to decribe himself as the master of his own destiny.

But success or failure, good or bad, up or down is all a matter of perception.

Paul McKenna, in numerous published writings (not least Change Your Life in 7 Days, which I would recommend to anyone, even the most sceptical of self-help depreciators) cites the words of Thomas Edison when questioned as to how he felt after failing for the 700th time in his attempt to invent the electric light:

“I have not failed 700 times. I have not failed once. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated all the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”

Right now, in as much as these things matter to me, everything is going my way:

I’m back living at home in my lovely little flat with my girlfriend whom I’m very much in love with and I’m honoured to say is very much in love with me.

I’m working on 3 projects which not only motivate and excite me, but also give me aims, objectives and reasons to keep well.

My chest is behaving exactly as I expect it to.  It’s not ever going to fire on all cylinders again, but that’s why I’m on the transplant list.  All I can ask it to do now is support me as best it can until such time as God sees fit to call time on these knackered old blowers and give me a fresh set.

I’m surrounded by people whom I love and who love me back – my friends are fantastic and don’t ever make me feel bad for not being able to join in  things, nor complain when I pull out of things at the last minute; my family all go out of their way to do whatever I need of them, no matter how little or unreasonable; people I work with make huge allowances for what I can and can’t do and never bat an eyelid or make me feel like I’m stretching their patience (even when I know I must – I stretch my OWN patience with some of the last-minute turnarounds, it can’t be easy for others to deal with).

Every once in a while all the pieces in your life seem to align just so – like the planets and the sun, or the cogs of a machine – and for a moment life seems just right.  And it’s so, so, so important to seize that moment, to recognise it for what it is: fleeting perfection of it’s own kind which will last but a flicker, but if you see it and grasp it, it will last forever in the memory.

I’m under no illusions that this will continue unabated; I know there will be trouble ahead – harder times, darker times, more challenging and less fun times, but damned if I’m not going to enjoy the good stuff while it’s here.

Like the song says: while there’s moonlight and music and love and romance, I’ll be the one on the dance floor.