Archives: Transplant

I can’t even begin to describe the emotional impact of the last week, especially the last few days.

After an enforced media blackout over the weekend, I was hoping to be blogging from Tuesday about my adventures down South, where I’d gone to take my Direct Access motorcycle training course, which was full of adventures, bumps and bruises (although luckily nothing worse than that).  Life got in the way, however, with the effort of keeping a bike on its wheels becoming too much for my recovering body and leaving me mostly too shattered to even think afterwards, let alone form coherent sentences.

But of course last week wasn’t really about the motorbike course, it was all about the run up to the Tresco Marathon and the event itself.

I’d love to go back and give you a day-by-day,  blow-by-blow account and maybe at some point I will, but right now, having got back from our travels at 4.30 this afternoon after an epic 27 hour journey (with a stop in London), it’s WAY more important that you guys know where your sponsorship money went.

That, people, was towards helping me push myself through the hell that was the last mile of the Tresco marathon, which I not only achieved, but in record time, too.

The marathon on Tresco is simply one of the most amazing experiences it’s possible to legally have in the world, without a doubt.  Author (and personal favourite of my Uncle) Bill Bryson was invited along one year and now he refuses to miss it even when, as with this year, the birth of a new grandchild is imminent, such is the level of warmth, friendliness, inspiration and all-round beauty, both human and natural.

It’s fair to say that the troup of 10 Marines from M Company, 42 Commando Royal Marines made quite a stir.  Standing out on the course (which runners have to complete a draining 7.5 laps of to achieve the full 26.2 mile distance), you could feel the excitement in the air every time they came into view, moving at pace, all in time, wearing 30lb back-packs and full kit.  Everyone there to cheer people on spent the day looking out first of all for their loved one, but then for the next time the Marines were coming round.

My brother, when he first put himself and the gang forward for the challenge, told the organisers they’d do it in 7 hours.  Chatting on the ferry on the way over to the island, he confided that he was hoping they’d get in under that.  Speaking to their Sergeant, he was determined they were going to break 6 hours.

As they rounded their last lap and past their well-manned rolling pitstop point for the last time, I started my walk back up the course and up the hill to meet them at the 25 mile marker on their next way round, glancing at my watch the check the time.  As I stood on top of the hill watching the turn for them to emerge, my stomach flipped and I realised just what it was I was undertaking.

The course organisers came flying round the corner on one of the islands ubiquitous golf karts, stopping in front of me to check who I was before announcing that I was runner number 140 and leaping out to pin my number on me – news to me as I didn’t realise I was to be a registered entrant in the event.  As he pinned me front and back, I stole a glance at my watch and realised something horrible: they were on course – at their pace – to break the 5.5 hour mark. 5hours 30minutes with 30lbs and jungle boots.  These guys were on another level (“machines” as the marathon’s instigator called them after trying to keep pace) the only thing standing in the way of them achieving a truly remarkable time was me.

Around September/October last year we – as a family – decided that we’d grace my Godfather and his family in Ipswich with our presence at Christmas. They did invite us, it must be pointed out, we didn’t just decide we were going to descend on them and then inform them of their newly arranged festive plans. We were all looking forward to it – Mum because it meant she didn’t have to cook, me because getting away anywhere was a bit of a treat at the time, epic as it was to shift all my kit from place to place, K was positively brimming at the prospect of swimming on Christmas day.

We all know how that turned out, of course (or if you’re that much in the dark, check out the blog entry for Tuesday 20 November to get abreast of my detour), much to everyone’s consternation, not least Mum’s as it meant she not only had to cook, but subsequently take me to hospital while hurling my insides up on Boxing Day, lucky lady.

I jest, of course, being as we were all delighted to have the world’s greatest Christmas present thanks to the generosity of one family and their amazing loved one who took the time to sign the ODR. That being said, my lovely “Auntie” Norma has not stopped chiding me since my op for abandoning them over Christmas.

As wonderful a Godson as I am and as much as they berated me, it’s taken me until the end of March to find the time to take out and go to see them all. Mostly, that’s down to the hospital visits being way too regular to get over to Ipswich and back across to Harefield and enjoy anything of a stay there. In the end, once the docs decided they were sick of the sight of me and told me to go away, I managed to phone Norma and let her know we would be imposing ourselves for the week this week.

Best laid plans and all that, the week turned into 3 days after I planned a CBT on the Monday, which was (as you may have read) snowed off and switched to Friday, meaning we’d need to return from the East on Thursday night for me to make the 8.30am start.

Still, 3 days is better than nothing at all and it was a wonderful opportunity not only to see them all for the first time post-op, but also to get some good gym work done in their fantastically appointed gym and swimming pool, which has recently been complimented with a gob-smacking spa complex to boot.

So after a mad morning of rushing around trying to get a prescription done last-minute (because I’m a womble and I forgot), we set off and headed down/across/up/whichever way Ipswich is and found our way there after only going wrong once (quite an achievement considering the tiny, twisty, back-country lane they live down) – and that was on the main road, too.

After chilling out a little, it wasn’t long before my Godfather, ex-Army man that he is, had me bashing the treadmill to show him what my new lungs could do. They held up admirably to the strain, I have to say, Graeme working me harder than I’ve ever worked on these lungs and although I felt like I was just about to be flung full-force backwards across the gym by a treadmill turning way too fast for my ever-weakening legs, there was actually an amazing sense of accomplishment afterwards.

It wouldn’t have been a visit to G&N’s without a quick dip and K had me in the pool no sooner had we finished in the gym, K proudly sporting her new swimming leggings and imploring me to teach her how to swim, completely over-looking the fact that the last time I’d been in a pool was quite possible over half a decade ago and the last time I’d had anything approaching a lesson I’d still been shy of single digits.

We swam all the same, and took advantage of the gorgeously relaxing rainfall shower in the spa before drying off and heading in for dinner.

Best part of the day, though: hands down the after-dinner retirement to the top floor cinema room, with drop down screen and Blu-Ray projector with U-shaped super-comfy sofa on which we settled with tea, cake and biscuits to watch Atonement, an amazing flick which is one of the few adaptations I’ve seen in recent time to do their literary counterpart justice. James McAvoy is remarkable and Keira Knightley very good, but it’s director Joe Wright’s grasp of the subtlety of emotion and deft handling of the varied viewpoints and tricky time-lapses which give he film its weight. Some of the choices on dialogue delivery weren’t my cup of tea, but I could acknowledge them as a strong stylistic choice and as such not something to do the man down for, nor was it anything which would spoil the film as a whole.

Suitably buoyed up by the happy-go-lucky flick* we all stumbled off the sofa in the direction of our beds, with another day of activity – not least another gym session – ahead of us.

*not an accurate reflection of the film. It’s more down-beat that something incredibly down-beat with strong undertones of “somber” and a slight edge of “depressing”. But still very good. And surprisingly warm.

Today was supposed to be spent with my legsa astride a throbbing machine, but sadly they don’t let you learn to ride motorbikes in the snow.

I woke up bright and early (and surprisingly alert) at 7am, cooked myself a nice, filiing fuelling breakfast of scrambled eggs on toast, then – having glanced outside and taken stock of the conditions (light snow, which wasn’t settling, and cold, dark skies) I stuck on a multitude of layers of clothing including nice warm thermals and set off for the CBT (Compulsory Basic Training) centre on the other side of town.

15 minutes later I pulled up to find the instructor warming the bikes up while sheltering in a large shipping container from the elements.  Seeing the bikes out gave me hope that he might have decided it was OK, but when I approached him it was fairly obvious that he’d already made up his mind about it all.  We had a quick chit chat and went over the weather situation and even though it wasn’t supposed to persist, he pointed out that any sort of snow technically disqualifies him from teaching, which means if the DSA were to turn up for a random inspection (a not-unlikely possibility), he’d have been in the doo-doo.

Sufficiently disappointed, I toddled myself back home and made with the productivity.  Knowing that I had a good 3 hours before her ladyship was likely to be roused, I set about ploughing through a whole stack of work that had been slowly piling up over the last couple of weeks, waiting for my attention when I finally stopped running around the country like a lunatic for half a day.

Satisfied with my morning’s work and with a finally awake K, we were joined by Dazz, who popped up to use our ‘net for some bits and bobs he wanted to do (mostly to do with adding photos to Facebook, I think).  After lunch had settled, K and I decided to be good little Easter bunnies and take ourselves off down the gym for an hour, me completing another mile on the treadmill, K doing circuit set of cardio and weights.

We got back and chilled for a bit before having to head over to my ‘rents to get our weeks’ washing done – having a kaput washing machine is starting to get ever so slightly annoying, now.  Luckily, this weeks’ laundry duty happened to coincide with my ‘rents getting back form their skiing holiday in Italy, which meant we had chance to catch up with them, peep out their photos from the week  and hear all their stories about the Fawlty Towers hotel they stayed in.

In the grand scheme of things it may not seem like much, but this holiday for my mum and dad marks almost as big a landmark as anything I’ve been up to of late.  For the last two-and-a-half years my parents have been as UK-bound as I have, having to remain accessible just in case that call finally came.  For two-and-a-half years they’ve had to put their usual holiday plans on hold and stop their preferred overseas holidays so that they can be around for me.  Last weeks’ trip to the Italian Alps, just by the Mont Blanc tunnel, is the first time they’ve been able to book, take and enjoy a holiday abroad for any extended period since I was listed back in 2005.

So it was great to hear of their adventures and even though it sounds like they got what they paid for in their bargain-basement last-minute hotel-and-flight deal, they really enjoyed themselves.  I can’t describe how happy it makes me to see my mum and dad finally able to do the things they want to do and to enjoy themselves without having to worry about me or what sort of state I’d be in when they got home.  I only spoke to them once while they were away, whereas in the past it would have required almost daily updates of how I was doing.  Transplant affects so many more lives than just mine and it feel amazing to be able to enjoy it from a whole new perspective.

After we’d got through all of our washing and I’d stolent the left-overs from the ‘rents roast lamb, we headed back home to find Dazz stranded in boredom at the flat.  Turns out when we left him, telling him to feel free to use the ‘net and that the keys were on the side in the kitchen for him to use to lock up then post through the lettter box, he’d not heard the latter part of the sentence, so had been sat in waiting for us to come back for close on 2 hours.  In the meantime he’d been joined by Cliff, who came to occupy him with a game of Simpsons Operation.  I’m not sure how interesting it is, though, because they both looked pretty bored when we got there.  Mind you, they had a whole WALL of DVDs to choose from, so I’ don’t have that much sympathy.

We sat down to cups of tea and K threw on Curse of the Were-Rabbit, while I jumped on my computer to write/update my CV in the vague thought that I might apply for a job I’d seen in the paper today.  I’d forgotten how long and dull CV writing is, getting through most of the film before I’d done with that and also caught up with the various bits of charity stuff which needed my attention before I ran away for a few days tomorrow.

By 11 I was finished and so was the flick, Dazz and Cliff had departed and K was in bed.  I hastily rushed through my ablutions before hitting the sack and vanishing into the world of sleep within minutes.  It’s been a long time since I’ve been up at 7am, done a full day’s work including a gym session and not had a nap.  Feels good, though.

Being exhaustedly tired didn’t seem to do much – if anything – for my ability to sleep as I once again lay awake until gone 3am.  Annoyingly, it was the kind of lack of sleep where you are so nicely chilled and relaxed that getting up is pretty out of the question, but somehow you can’t complete the transition from awake to asleep.  At least it was 3am tonight, not 7am like last night.

As promised, apart from waking for Tac at 10, I did manage to sleep myself through till midday, which was a lovely battery-recharger.

Many moons ago, soon after Emily got home from her transplant last year, she offered to pass on to me her smaller, more portable oxygen concentrator, which gave me the freedom to visit other people’s houses without worrying about when my O2 was going to run out – all I had to do was plug Claire in and I’d be sitting pretty for as long as I liked.  Since I’m now blessedly no longer in need of it, Em and I put our heads together and came up with a friend of ours who would benefit from Claire’s friendship and emailed her to see if she wanted her.

Since the initial email about 2 months has passed and I have forgotten no less than 3 times when I’ve seen Em to pass Claire on to her as Sam only lives about 15 minutes from her.  After my final act of stupidity last week when I was in London seeing Em and only about 15 minutes from Sam’s house myself, I decided that I couldn’t beat about the bush any longer or try to wait for or engineer meetings to hand stuff over and just bite the bullet and drive to South London (Sutton) and drop Claire off.

As it happens, there was almost no traffic at all on the roads yesterday, everyone travelling for Easter clearly having done so the day before or that morning.  So while everyone else in the country was playing happy or not-so-happy families, we trundled our way down the M1 and round the M25 through some of the craziest, mosy bizarre but brilliant weather I’ve ever seen.

We would go from bright sunshine to torrential rain through sleet, snow and hail all within the space of a few miles.  There was one amazing moment on the M25 when we were driving along in brilliant sun and ahead of us we could see what looked, totally honestly, like a piece of cloud had broken off and fallen down onto the road.  There was just a sheet of grey mist falling sideways across the carriageway and dumping itself onto the road in front of us.

Surprisingly, there were no crashes and no major hold-ups and the journey took precisely as long as the AA website told me it would, which I had thought pretty generous considering quite how far round the London-loop we were going.

On the way round, K spotted a signpost for Southampton, where my Dad’s family are from and near where his dad and sister still reside.  Once K had pointed it out and mentioned (in jest) that we could go, I got to thinking that I’d not seen any of my Aunt’s family since my op, apart from my eldest cousin who stopped in to the hospital the week after her mum had.  And from South London, it’s really not that far to their house.

So, once we’d dropped Claire safely at Sam’s to start a new life of independence-making (hopefully), we set off down towards the South coast to drop in and surprise my Aunt and her clan.

We eventually arrived (after a slightly longer journey than we anticipated…) around 6ish and everyone was duly surprised, luckily in a pleasant “great to see you” kind of way, not the usual “oh no, not them again” kind of way.

We stopped and stayed for a cuppa (or two) and my Uncle introduced me proudly to Jeeves, his pride-and-joy in the garage.  It’s an old… car that’s really very pretty and cool and as my cousin pointed out, means they can now play gangsters up and down their road properly, as they have the wheels to hang off with their Tommy guns and three-piece-suits with Trilbys.  Being that they live right out in the contryside not far from Winchester, there’s not a whole lot of people to gangster at, but I suppose they could always go rough up some sheep.

After persuading them that we really didn’t intend to impose ourselves on them for dinner and that they didn’t have to make it stretch (which they probably couldn’t have anyway, what with my appetite and three near six-foot teenager boys in the house), we headed off just before 8pm and rolled back up the A34 through Newbury and Oxford to MK, rocking up at home just before 9.30pm.

Having not been to the flicks for over a week, I couldn’t pass up the offer of catching The Cottage with Steve at 9.50, so I pretty much headed straight back out again, leaving K behind cooking fairy cakes as Easter presents for our little nieces and nephews tomorrow.

The Cottage is an absolutely hilarious horror-comedy with the always fantastic Andy Serkis (who made his name by not actually appearing on screen at all as the motion-capture performer for both Gollum in Lord of the Rings and Kong in King Kong – although he also played Lumpy the Cook in the latter) and Reece Shearsmith of League of Gentlemen Fame (not a show I’m a fan of, but he’s great in this).  Jennifer Ellison plays the kidnapee in what starts out as a fairly straight-forward ransom-thriller with deft comic touches, the quickly changes pace mid-way through and turns into the most hilarious stalk-and-slash horror movie I’ve seen in a long time.

As a Brit-flick, this was always destined to be compared to Shaun of the Dead, another comedy-horror which took the world by storm back in 2004, and it’s to its enormous credit that it actually stands up to the comparison.  It’s a very different film, not just in genre of horror, but in the way that while it manages to include pretty much all of the stalk-and-slash horror staples, it never directly references any specific film, whereas Shaun of the Dead was full of nods, quips and homages to the very best in Zombie horror.

There are some brilliantly nasty death scenes in The Cottage, but never have I laughed so hard at so many people’s unfortunate ends.  Makes you feel terrible at the time, but the sheer inventiveness with which they knock off one of the main characters is near-legendary.

It doesn’t pull its punches and it’s a pretty full-on gore fest at times, but if you like horror movies, especially the good, old-fashioned slasher pics with an iconic bad-guy, you’ll get a kick out of this.

I got home from it around midnight in time to catch the end of Devil Wears Prada, which K had settled into on the sofa – a slightly difference flick to my night’s other watching.  By the end, my eyes were closing and I dragged myself off to bed, where I get through a few pages of my book before conking out.

Without doubt this has been one of my best days post-transplant.  When I woke up, it felt like a real chore to be getting into the car and schlepping all the way down to Town and back, but when I took a second to realise how cool it was that I could actually even consider jumping in the car and heading South, it cheered me up.  Coupled with being able to exploit a random whim and scoot off to see a family with whom I share so many of my happiest memories and still having energy enough to go and catch a great film afterwards, I can’t imagine a better way of showing the fantastic difference a transplant makes to anyone’s life.

We wake pretty late – around 10, when my Tac-alarm goes off – and slowly grind to a start.  I didn’t sleep at all well, waking up pretty much every hour, so I’m feeling decidedly sluggish, although a quick shower kick starts me very nicely.

We head across to the house to see what we can help with.  K has been there ahead of me and is knee-deep in cakes, arranging a display of confectionery to make the least-sweet toothed person fancy a nibble.  All will be on sale throughout the after noon and, come 4 o’clock, all will have been sold and many eaten.  Not least by K.

I am put to work on various bits and pieces to do with the silent auction and raffle, both of which will be running throughout.  A silent auction, for the uninitiated, is an auction in the traditional sense, but instead of having an auctioneer at the front of the room reeling off the prices and bids, each lot is given a piece of paper on which you write your bid and then keep checking to see if anyone has out bid you.  The best thing about silent auctions is that they can run a lot longer than regular auctions without really winding people up – especially the people who aren’t interested in bidding, for whom a traditional auction is the worst kind of dull.

After almost an hour of beavering away on whatever I’m set-to by the awesomely organised and surpringsly-not-in-the-least-bossy Lucinda, CF-mum and helper-in-chief to Suzanne, the lady-of-the-house who appears to currently be engaged in doing absolutely everything all at once, I have to scurry off to make myself look presentable for the incoming hoards.  I feel somewhat ashamed that the elite team of ladies have been working away since goodness-knows-when (certainly before I was awake) and my little contribution adds up to little over an hour’s stuffing things in envelopes and putting things on tables.

Still, take myself away I do and smarten myself up.  I find K knee deep in hair-product getting her new ‘Do to behave (which it does, and beautifully), slip into my posh frock (wait a sec…) and head back over to the house to be there when the throng arrives.

To my immense surprise, said throng is almost perfectly on time.  I had this crowd pegged as the fashionably-late  sort, but not a bit of it.  On the dot the majority of them came steaming in through the gates (yes, they have gates…!) and parked up in the courtyard (which you’ll remember from yesterday), unloaded themselves, their friends and – occasionally – their babies, and headed up into the house.

Once they’d all settle into the food service (aha – captive audience…), Stephen kicked things off my introducing himself, the idea behind the marathon and the reasons he and the rest of the team were involved.  Then he introduced me (and I’ll forgive him the “brave” comment purely because it’s the only foot he put wrong the whole time I was there…) and I was left to fend for myself in front of 2 rooms full of 100+ ladies (I didn’t count because then I’d just have got all wound up about it).

When I speak in public, I tend to talk without notes.  I usually know how I’ll start and I like to plan something punchy to end on (although Stephen stole the “downhill” joke from me in his intro, so that was that scuppered), but the rest of it is left up to the mood of the room and the feel of the day.  What that mostly means is that I often talk for 10-15 minutes and finish off having absolutely no idea what I’ve just said.  You’ll have to talk to someone else who was there to find out if I was a) interesting or b) any good, but I was happy enough I hadn’t droned on for hours nor been too deathly dull, although one can never tell.

Managing to get myself some lunch afterwards, I got a few appreciative nods and comments from people, which was good, and the silent auction seemed to start to rattle along a bit after in-speech plugs from Stephen and I.  Unwinding from the talk and chatting to the guests, it was good to hear a number of people being educated for the first time about CF – although it’s hard to imagine that there’s anyone out there who’s not heard of it, the truth is it’s rarer than a lot of conditions.  The advantage of introducing it to people for the first time – especially at a fundraiser – is that they often want to do something immediately to help out.  When you combined the charitable urge with the enormous efforts the marathon team are putting in, I was hopeful we’d give the team a decent boost to their sponsorship coffers.

I can’t express my admiration for these guys enough.  Not only have they completed other marathons together, they are now working as a team to meet the challenge of the world’s highest marathon – a feet so insane and counter-intuitive that I simply can’t contemplate it.  And they’re doing it all – off their own backs – to raise money for the  CF Trust and help them pursue their gene-therapy trials in the search for effective treatment and – one day, maybe – a cure for this horrible disease that takes too many lives.

I’m one of the lucky ones who’s been given a second chance at life – a second crack of the whip.  There are still too many children and young adults who only get the briefest, quietest crack and who we lose every week.

Please, please, if you are as inspired by their efforts and their self-lessness as I am, if you are even remotely touched by their attitude and sense of adventure, if you have any concept just how hard a marathon is, let along one at the base of the world’s highest mountain, go to their Just Giving page and leave a donation – it doesn’t matter how small, every tiny bit counts.  And if you know any benevolent marathon runners, pass on the link, let them see how insane it is for themsevles and get them to leave a donation , too – www.justgiving.com/THCF

At the end of the afternoons activities, having drawn the raffle (and walked away with a food mixer and Christmas hamper!), closed the silent auction and totted up cash donations through tickets, raffle and cake sales to inexcess of £2,300, plus cheques totalling more than £1800 and over £3000 in auction lots, I was well and truly shattered.  Surpsingly so, in fact, but I think the combination of a bad night’s sleep, adrenaline and nerves from the talk and being on my feet for almost 5 hours straight had taken their toll and I needed a kip.

Excusing ourselves in the middle of clear up (here comes the guilt again…), K and I headed up to our room and laid ourselves out for an hour to recharge.  When I woke, I plodded back over to the house and met up with the rest of the marathon team who had joined remains of the day (with the exception of Jodie, who couldn’t come for cross-infection reasons with me).  Both Guy and Barry are exceptionally nice blokes and seeing the hilarity as they tried on some of their cold-weather mountain gear and their thermal sleeping backs and blow-up matresses almost made me wish I was going with them.  then I remembered they were running a marathon on Everest and the urge miraculously disappeared.

In the evening, K and I took ourselves off into the centre of Durham (thanks to Alex’s wonderfully kind taxi service) for a nice meal between the two of us, followed by a walk up to the Cathedral to wave at Castle.

When we got back we sat and chilled with Family Cronin for a while, catching up on the day’s gossip and chatting about all sorts of various disparate subjects from the Mac vs. PC debate to modern horror films and shooting stage plays.

By the time I’d got to the bottom of my beer it was pushing 11 and I was acutely aware that everyone had things to do tomorrow, not least the two of us to make our way all the way back down South.  We were already imposing on the family a day longer than we’d expected to (after I realised the inherent foolishness off trying to drive home from the party in the afternoon as tired as I was), so I wanted to inconvenience them as little more as we could manage.

We headed back to the room, brewed a cuppa, sloped into bed and I don’t know about K but I was asleep within minutes of hitting the pillow.

… I was flat on my back in intensive care having just had my rubbish old blowers swapped out for a pair of shiney new ones.  And what a corking pair they’ve turned out to be, too.  Already I’m off galavanting around the country meeting new people, doing new things, catching up on the life I missed out on for most of the last 12 months and more before my op.

I’m reminded today of how special a gift my new lungs are – and just how lucky I am – by the simple horrible day a dear friend of mine has had.  A CF-sufferer like me, she’s been on the Tx list quite a while now (rather embarrassingly I don’t know how long), but last night she got the call she’d been waiting for.  After the usual battery of tests, they sent her down to theatre and put her under.  They even got as far as beginning the surgery.  And then something – no one knows quite what – happened with the new lungs and the whole thing was called off.

Now, I had my fair share of false alarms in my time on the list, but this goes WAY beyond anything I evere had to deal with.  There’s disappointment and then there’s this – it’s so far beyond anything I can imagine I can’t even find the right word to describe it.  I feel devastated and it’s not even me it’s happened to.  So for those of you who are so inclined, Scotland could do with some of your happy thoughts right now.

As for me, well I seem to be generating my own happy thoughts for the time being.  So busy have I been in generating the happy thoughts, I’m now being berated on all sides for the lack of updates on the blog.  I have to admit, rather sheepishly, that I hadn’t even realised it had been a full week since my last update.

So I’m now going to diligently recount the last few days for all those curious people out there – keep your eyes on the earlier dates for the week (yes, I can back-date my entries – a fact which appears to have eluded some of my fair readers over the last couple of weeks…) to see what I was getting up to, which will form some sort of very lame defence of my lack of bloggage.

Thoughts and prayers to Scotland, please – Heaven knows she needs them.

That’s what I reckon, so I didn’t go to the gym today.

I’m not skiving, honest, just being careful of my leg and not wanting to work it too hard (click here for more on the Calf of Death – not bovine related).

K, however did go, and now has a nice and shiney new programme of weights workout to add to her regular C-V workout, which is lovely for her. And energetic. It’s my turn to ramp up the weights next, so I’ll be booking myself in when I go for my session tomorrow.

Apart from taking K to the gym, today I actually managed to get a lot of work done, which has made a change. I don’t know quite why, but Durham totally upset the balance of everything as far as work and projects were concerned – I was away for all of 4 days and it’s taken me 7 to catch back up. Weird.

This morning was delightful, though, as I ran K down to Lea’s house to get her hair snipped, which meant I got to spend the morning playing with her delightful little one. I’m trying to ignore the fact that I had to break my self-imposed vow never to watch and/or read and/or know anything about Igglepiggle by reading “All Aboard The Ninky Nonk” a total of 17 times. She liked it, which is the main thing. Me? I still don’t really understand it. Although I think the Tombliboos have something to do with the small personification of evil – that may be reading too much between the lines, though.

Yesterday was equally grand – spending time with our littlest niece and nephew for the little lady’s 3rd birthday. It was amazing to see their little faces light up when we got there and then I spent an hour of the afternoon reading/playing “Where’s My Pants”, which luckily is the book we bought her and not a genuine, house-searching game.

At one point, having to make a quick phone call, I escaped to the top of the stairs to grab myself 5 minutes, only to be spotted and joined, perched on the top step, by both of the littl’uns who proceeded to sit silently by my side while I finished my conversation. Cute isn’t the word. It’s much… well, cuter…

I also had a meeting yesterday with a filmmaker from MK who’s interested in collaborating on a few things. I’ve been looking for people interested in filmmaking around MK to work with on some short film projects to get me back in the groove to work up towards shooting something bigger, but have mostly drawn blanks. Now, happily enough, I’ve made contact with a few people and after this meeting yesterday, I’m hopeful that there’s more guys out there than I first thought.

The thing about filmmaking – and all work in the arts, really – is that it’s so much about the contacts you have and the people you can work with. Part of the reason I’ve had so much fun and success in the Theatre has been thanks to the place I worked enabling me to meet like-minded people and also set-up my partnership with Suze, which is ever-fruitful and enjoyable on so many different levels.

I still keep catching myself and realising just how amazing life is now – I’m still not taking any of it for granted and the most mundane things can get me grinning like and idiot at the fact I’m able to do them. And now to be talking about new projects and planning possibilities is so exciting and gives me so much drive and determination to succeed.

NOTE: for the unobservant among you, the Durham trip has been detailed in back-dated entries for the weekend in question.  They’ve been up about 4 or 5 days now, barring the last day’s worth of notes, which are imminent, I promise….

Up far too early this morning to get off to Harefield for my first trip there in a month. Slipped into clinic still dripping from the torrent of water being unleashed from the heavens in the short walk between the car park and the main building, to be greeted by a very quiet scene after an apparently large number of cancellations. All the better for me, though, because the fewer people in clinic the earlier I get away.

Went through all the usual rigmarole and emerged the other side pretty much unscathed – weight’s up a kilo, SATs looking pretty stable, temperature good, lung function moving up smoothly.

K had the day off work, so took it upon herself to take us both shopping in Watford thanks to our 3-hour hiatus afford by the usual clinic practices of waiting for results before seeing the docs. Somehow, we managed to walk the entire length and breadth of the Harlequin Centre in the middle of Watford (albeit mostly looking for food) and come away without spending any money whatsoever and a brand new Blackberry Curve for me. I was impressed.

Proceeded to return to H-base and got into see the great MC pretty snappily. He was perfectly happy with my progress, which was something of a relief as last time I’d seen him he was mildly concerned about my slight plateau in lung-function and indicated that if it didn’t improve I’d have to go back in for another Bronch et al. My issue was I didn’t know how much he wanted it to have improved by in order to skip that part of the plan. Turns out, it just needed to be going steadily the right way, which indeed it was. More than that, some of the more obscure numbers (rather than the simple FEV1/FVC numbers we are given) had apprently jumped further than he’d have looked for. So win-win really.

Also managed to catch up with Emily briefly after we missed each other in the morning thanks to her having a bit of an “off” moment. Really weirdly, having not seen each other for months and months and months (since I was in hospital after my initial op), we’re now down to see each other twice in a week as we have a Trustees meeting for Live Life Then Give Life on Friday. Funny how the world works.

Managed to escape Harefield by just after 3, which had us home and dry by 5 after a brief Tesco-and-petrol detour on the way back. After half-an-hour or so of sitting doing nothing, itchy feet took over and we settled on a night out at the flicks to catch The Other Boleyn Girl.

Although on the surface – and in large parts – it’s a very ordinary (if star-studded) costume-drama/book adaptation covering the lives and loves (well, love – Henry VIII) of both Anne and the lesser-known Mary Boleyn, there are moments of brilliance smattered throughout.

It’s testament to the two leading ladies, Natalie Portman as the Queen-to-be-beheaded and Scarlett Johansson as her younger, less fortunate(!) sister, that one still feels fairly hefty pangs of emotion at the denoument that you’re well aware of before the film even starts.

In the hands of a lesser pairing, Anne’s betrayal of her sister and her semi-sadistic schemeing to win the heart of the King and the throne she believes to be her right would be too much for an audience to forgive. And while I can’t say I went the whole hog to total forgiveness, to imbue such an innately unsympathetic character with enough humanity to carry such weight on her death is remarkable. But it’s not solely down to Portman’s work – without Johansson’s pain, anguish and subsequent forgiveness and the enormous risks taken at the end being wrote so large and ingrained so deeply within her performance, the audience wouldn’t be allowed the access to the emotions we’re lead to feel.

It’s not a flawless film, by any means – there’s a few stilted performances and even some of the big guns involved take a while to hit their stride, but it deals deftly with the passage of time and there are some emotional beats within the story that the film nails as perfectly as any movie I’ve seen this year. Worth a look if historical and/or costume dramas are your kind of thing – not one to be immediately dismissed if they’re not.

I wake to my Tac-alarm (the 10am call that stirs me every morning I’m not up in time for my morning dose of Tacrolimus, my main immunosuppressant) and sit and read for a while as K comes to.  Once we’ve rolled out of bed and managed to get some clothes on, we hop in the car and run ourselves into town.  The walk along the river yesterday was great, but knowing we’re going to be exploring all over the hills of Durham today, we opt to take the car in to the centre so the journey home is easier if we’re exhausted by the end of the day.

We park up in their multi-storey by the Elphick Bridge and wander out through their “shopping centre”.  I use inverted commas because it’s not so much a shopping centre as a centralised collection of shops in a U-shape off a parking structure.  Given the olde worlde nature of the rest of the city, the cul-de-sac of high-street shops is somewhat incongruous, but we let it slip past us as we wander off and up the Bailey in search of breakfast, which we find not halfway up the street in the shape of Saddler’s, a small-but-perfectly-formed little cafe which does breakfast till 12 (we make it by 15 minutes) and other luxury items throughout the day.

Having charged ourselves for the day ahead, we continue up the Bailey towards the Palace green and the Cathedral which towers over the whole of the centre of Durham.  I pull out the camera to snap some pics as we approach only to discover I’ve forgotten to charge the battery.  I swear at myself a lot.  Mostly under my breath, although a couple of passing pigeons may have heard a little bit of blue-air in passing, for which I profusely apologise.   What makes it more galling is the fact that the weather forecast for the next few days is terrible, including snow storms tomorrow.  As we walk up to the Cathedral, with the castle bearing down on us from behind, the skies are a crystal-clear blue with barely a smattering of clouds, the city bathed in a warm Spring glow which fails to dissipate through the day.  I’m furious with myself for missing the best part of the weekend to snap decent pics of one of my new favourite homeland locations.

After an interval that would seem short for even the most temperamental five-year old, I clear out of my funk as we enter the cathedral.  It’s magnificence defies even my power of description.  I’m relieved to see all the signs telling me photography is forbidden, making me mildly less frustrated, but am soon distracted by all the point-and-wonder beauty of the inside of the building.  From the windows to the pillars, ever inch of the cathedral is steeped in over 1000 years of history.  The cathedral itself used to provide a respite for fugitives and law-breakers.  With a single knock on the great door, they would be admitted for safe harbour, given 30 days to sort out their affairs or leave the country through the nearest port.

The main hall of the cathedral is adjoined by a cloistered area and a dozen or so more rooms which afford the place ample space for coffee-shops, souvenirs and all the additional gubbins of a modern-day historical site whilst still allowing it to go about it’s regular daily business as a place of worship.

We eventually decide that it’s too much for us to take in after a big walk and with feet starting to ache, so we adjourn for the day to lower climbs down at the bottom of the hill over the bridge where we settle in for lunch at the Swan and 3 Cygnets, a pub which doesn’t end up providing the rustic-pub-grub that we had been hoping for, but it’s decent enough sustenance all the same.

While we eat, we talk to Pops, who’s calling it quits on her day’s work and heading down to meet us, nothing at all to do with the cafe opposite the pub having, “the best cake in Durham” (a direct quote from the text message).  She and her other half wander down and we head over the road to the Cafe Continental and seclude ourselves away in their uppermost room, where the two of them have lunch while K joins them in dessert.  I restrict myself a mediocre milkshake, but I’m assured by all and sundry that the cakes are, indeed, magical.

Totally failing in our planned return to the college to catch some Z’s before the later afternoon’s programme of events, we instead end up sitting and whiling away most of the afternoon in the cafe with Pops and Alex, covering as many conversational bases as it’s possible to cover without slipping into a brain-frying tangential spiral more akin to Eddie Izzard.  Mind you, we still manage to fit in a good few tangents all the same.

We head back to the college, paying our extortionate parking charges on the way, and grab a quick feet-up 20 minutes before we head back up to Castle for the afternoon’s main attraction, the Big Chill With Bill – an opportunity for the Durham students to come and meet their Chancellor that surprisingly few of them take up.  I’m not too disappointed though, as the group who do arrive mean the afternoon is passes in an intimate chat about organ donation and the amazing gift of life – both Pops and I relaying our various personal stories of transplant (her brother being a heart-recipient 2 years ago), with interjections from various people in the group to ask questions or find out what more they can do to help.  In any of the talks of events I do, however formal or informal, I always feel that if one person goes away and talks to someone else, or signs someone up to the ODR, then it’s been a worthwhile use of my time and that’s exactly how I feel as K and I walk away from the Castle to shoot back to the college to change for the main event of the evening.

The Hatfield College Charity Fashion show is an annual event that is run entirely by students (as the Master of the College’s wife was so keen to inform us).  Having never been to a fashion show before, I have no idea what to expect, but manage to take the majority of it in my stride.  Sitting on top table as guests of honour (well, of the Chancellor, anyway), we are afforded one of the best views in the house, which is only a little uncomfortable when watching the La Senza section as the barely-out-of-their-teens models (my God, I sound old) parade themselves mere inches from their Chancellor’s face.  I’ve no idea what he’s thinking, but I don’t know where to look, so take to alternately bitching with Pops and K, sitting either side of me.

The main highlight of the evening (apart from a 3-item attempt at an auction, which included dinner with one of the male models) is the group photo after the fact with all the models in My Friend Oli t-shirts, myself and Bill.  Promotion/attention seeking as I am, I have high hopes that the free t-shirts will be worn and talked about all over Durham and the photos will find their way into as many student publications as  Alice and Pops can persuade.

Torn between wanting to experience a night out in Durham and the fact that we haven’t managed the rest we needed during the day, K and I finally decide we don’t want to push it too far, so after saying our farewells to Bill, who will from here on out be detained on Uni duties and too busy for the campaign (we have spent our allotted day of his time, which is more closely guarded than many a club door on a Saturday night) , we head back to the college to crash out, which we do by 11pm. 

Today was, hands down, the longest and most tiring day I’ve had since my release, but seeing as it did a trip down to Guildford to visit C, my other Godson, it was completely magical.

I used to visit him quite often (at least every major school break), but gradually I slipped backwards as I became more unwell and my annual trips to his birthday parties in the summer came off the rails and I began to rely on his parents bringing him up to see me at my mum and dad’s, where they could handle the catering and things and I just had to focus on having enough energy to play board games with him all day and even that was often a stretch.

So it was an experience beyond comparison to be able to drive down today and catch up with him properly – take him out for lunch, explore some bits of Guildford and generally have a totally awesome day.

We were up at 8 and out of the house by 9 (no more 2 hours of treatments to clog up the morning), making our way mostly cross-country to the big G thanks to rubbishness on the M25.  K ably navigated us off the motorway and through the brilliantly named Egham which has some of the most sumptuous and gorgeous houses this side of Ascot.   Although it takes a little longer, K and I often prefer the country routes to the motorways for all the little gems you find along the way.

Bizarrely, as we slipped through the traffic into Guildford, K spotted on the pavement a friend of hers from school she hasn’t seen in 6 years.  Small world doesn’t even begin to cover it.  We managed to pull over to she could chase her down and catch up, before strolling on to C’s house just the other side of the town centre.

With everyone else either at school or work (his brother’s school had half-term the week before – parental nightmare or what), we had C all to ourselves, or rather he had us all to himself.  Or whichever way round works.  After a quick cuppa, made in brilliant team-work between me and C, we set off to find an indoor climbing centre where we had decided to try out C’s bravery and my new lungs.

Disappointingly, there was nothing on their website to tell us that pre-booking was a must, so we couldn’t actually climb, which came as something of a relief as the sheer size of the indoor walls (the full height of the industrial warehouse which housed the centre) made me slightly concerned that C’s bravery would entirely show me up.  Although, being a grown-up, I managed to artfully hide my near-panic at the potential mess I’d gotten myself into, I have to confess to feeling pretty much precisely the same emotions as were written all over C’s angst-ridden face as we stood and gawped at the men dangling precariously from the over-hangs.

We vowed to book ahead for the next break and to take it on together, however scared we may be.  We moved on, instead, to the Electric Theatre in the centre of town to the altogether more sedate but brilliantly enjoyable Doodle Wall.  Set up in one of their function rooms was a 6ft high wall of paper which ran the length of the room, on which anyone could come in and leave their mark in whatever fashion they liked.

It was a brilliantly simple concept, but brilliantly great fun.  Something we thought would be a quick 10-minute stop-over on the way to something more exciting turned into almost 40 minutes of intense, concentrated art-working and we all came away pretty chuffed with what we’d managed.  Being that I can’t draw to save my life, I instead chose to add a nice big block of colour to the wall.

Once we’d doodled ourselves out, we headed up to Jo Schmo’s – a restaurant of C’s choosing – which supplied me with the world’s biggest burger (since the one I had at the Burger Co in Carnaby Street), which I once again managed to demolish with my hands and by minorly dislocating my jaw in suitably snake-like fashion.

Hardly able to move post-burgers, we settled on spending the rest of the afternoon sharing turns on the Wii back home, including the new Lego Star Wars game which had both K and I bickering about who killed who and weren’t we supposed to be a team, much to C’s amusement.  Once his mum got home we then rocked a bit of Cluedo, which I managed to gmable on and lose spectacularly by trying to out-wit the other three and jumped the gun at hazarding and accusation.  I found myself much more suited to Wii bowling, in which I found my niche after being destroyed by Chris on both Golf and Tennis.  Lucky we didn’t do the Boxing or I’d have been even more humiliated.  By a 10-year-old.

After catching up with Mum, Dad and big bro once they all got back in, we eventually shuffled off about 7pm for the 2-hour drive home, again using up a mix of motorway and back-roads once our patience with stop-start M-way traffic wore too thin.

Arriving home at 9pm, we had just about enough energy to sack out in front of the TV and catch the recorded episode of the outstanding Extreme Dreams we’d missed that evening before kicking our keks off and jumping into bed.  I don’t think I’ve fallen asleep so quickly – or so early – for a long time, but when it follows a day like today, it’s not only very welcome, but sleep arrives with a wonderful wave of the most delightful contentment with life, the universe and everything.