Today I wee into a big bottle all day and all night. This process reminds me that I am a machine that needs fuel and expels exhaust. Not sure if that is earth shatteringly significant but it also reminds me of the artist who uses his own blood for his art (above) – frozen congealed blood. It is said that Nigella Lawson when married to Saatchi Allowed one to defrost in her fridge by mistake .

Unlike said artist, rather than capitalising on my meat-like humanness I am preoccupied with how to transport said waste inconspicuously. You don’t really want to walk along the street with a big bottle of wee as it is so easily mistaken for a well known brand of industrial drain cleaner (identical bottle, identical colour, provided you have not eaten beetroot) – to confuse the two while not disastrous would be counterproductive and somewhat ironic. (I know all this because I have perused the shelves for drain cleaner when we had our drain crisis last summer. “Look”, I said, “there is my wee in B&Q”. I don’t know if my readers remember said items, but at your grans you used to see toilet roll covers that were either poodles of pricesses – I am seriously tempted to put one of those on my Christmas list.

( is it just me or is there some sort of coincidental synergy between the two images in this blog post)

I am doing this as homework for my exam at the marvellous National Amyloidosis Centre tomorrow. I missed my last exam in the summer because I chose to hurl myself from the dizzy heights of a step stool – not even ladder really – just three steps. Since then my monthly numbers have been in a slow but steady decline toward ‘not good’ so I expect them to recommend more treatment before too long. As this is a certainty with my diseases I worry not a jot as there is absolutely nothing I can do to modify this trajectory.

I am back to churning out poems www.fleeting.eu:82/wordpress/ – the quality betrays how easy I find writing poems, they are nearly all unedited, I am too lazy to go back, but I should – no who cares! I enjoy it just as much as fiddling with the phone box and associate composing and programming. I cannot recommend it enough as a way of offloading and entertaining – oneself I should add. I feel forced to use the hateful word cathartic. Yuk yuk cliche cliche .My poetry readership consists of just three people – my unbelievably loyal sister (much too complimentary but I love it), my beloved wife (slightly devastatingly honest, thus a tiny weeny bit dispiriting) and my sons girlfriend (student on the masters Creative writing course at UEA – same one Shakepeare did – arghhhh! Fool that I am)

Here is my Christmas morning poem, so that all my blog readers may enjoy are rare insight into my heroic tussles with my muse. Btw The really hilarious thing is how often my poetry site is a target for hackers from all round the world – should I be flattered or fearful? Perhaps it so bad that Anonymous has vowed, as they have against ISIS, to take my site down.

Crying into the light I woke to silence.

Then….
My ears popped
And…
I heard her first words fall like brown pears drop.

Then…

My mum Mary.
Sweet and blue as a baby boy
Licked me with black lips
Scratched me with straw
And fed me her shitty smells
And cough candy breath.

So…

Warm as a slipper I lay and bathed in her gaze.
Her eyes, egg wet
Her nostrils wet with green
Her breasts wet
My bed wet.

Until…

My mother’s snout spoke steam.

And …

I replied –

‘Moo.’

I am now at the hospital waiting.

It’s 18 months or so since was first diagnosed and I feel pretty at home with this whole process. I was saying to Maria that sometimes I missed the feeling of feeling really, really well. But the truth is at 58 I think one is fairly lucky not to feel really, really ill. Everyone I know has aches and pains, allergies, viruses, worries, addictions or whatnot.

I often do my blogging while waiting here. It’s more absorbing than reading and can be interrupted with no great loss to continuity. The vibe in here is nearly always positive. A few of the newbies are clearly nervous and those unlucky enough to have bad reactions to chemo are not exactly chipper but most of us are pretty jolly. It can’t be that we are all on uppers although maybe we are. I still cannot understand anyone who does not make full use of all the wonderful drugs you are offered. From pain, through sickness, anxiety, depression, low energy, hyperness, every remedy is on offer and all for free. So much better to be a drug addict than in pain, sad or unchipper.

Wei, a nurse, has had a really great experience with one of those therapies where you get rocks put on you but you are not touched. Energies or something. As she, along with all the other nurses, were extremely sceptical, and she is a very sensible, intelligent person I must admit I am tempted to have a go. Apparently the cancer care extra services need to be supported otherwise they get cut – so I just might do something that I firmly believe to be utter baloney – mainly because I like and respect Wei but also I don’t want to see the daft, spiritual la di da cut, just because I (and apparently all the doctors who were dragged to the demonstration) am a sour cynic.

As I was saying I am not a big reader unlike everyone else in my family. A standing joke in the family is that the only novel I ever read was ‘Bom the Little Drummer’ by Enid Blyton. Since being ill I have read a lot more but still see it as a bit of a chore compared to TV, sleeping or gluing…

Two days later – oops forgot to finish this blog. Interrupted by treatment.

Had a fine old time at hospital. My haemoglobin levels are deteriorating very slowly so hopefully it will be a long time before I need another dose of poison. As another dose is inevitable I take this as great news. Fingers crossed on that, as it’s entirely unpredictable. And can suddenly accelerate. I asked my consultant if there was anything I can do to to help, to which he answered emphatically no. I really like this answer. So much better than all that bullshit about a positive attitude or take milk of a pregnant ass on a windless night facing east.

Nurse Richard looked after me this time. He is so nice. He is being promoted to a Haematology specialist nurse with a special interest in myeloma so I am delighted for him and for me. I told him he should find a cure and fast. So he’s going to do that. He also provided me some very simple advice I had had before but forgotten. Drink more water. Partly cos it fills your veins so makes the needle probing easier – it hurts a bit these days – and partly cos it flushes your kidneys which for myeloma is very important. So I tried this yesterday and do you know I felt amazing all day. Drank about 2 litres of liquid over the day including tea and coffee. Conclusion – It’s perfectly possible that my obsessive nature that causes me to forget to eat and drink when my head is down in a project, is not good for me. The only obvious side effect is pissing all night long but who cares about that. Today I have already had more energy than normal and feel great. So I have found something to believe in, at least for now. Drinking.

The phone box progressed at a phenomenal rate compared to some days and has just one last sensor issue to be resolved. As some of you may one day experience it ‘live’, so to speak I will give nothing more away, suffice to say I am now really just a day or two away from putting the physical/technical side of the box aside and moving onto the cerebral/technical. I know I have said that before but this time I think it’s going to happen. Btw the webcam issue was unresolveable – the camera I bought was just too cheap to do exactly what I wanted, so the only way to view the inside of the box online is to use the username and password I distributed (didn’t I?). No great loss. Red window bars and a rusty incinerator. The view from the outside seems to work fine. At night it’s fun to watch spidey spinning her web across the lens.

The hens no longer feature so strongly in my life partly because they are almost entirely cut off from us by a ‘verdant darkling’ undergrowth plague. (Observe as I rekindle my poetic chops) All other wildlife seems to be outside the house for now so that’s good, but I kind of miss ratty and his or her intrepidness. A spaniel with a pink sparkly collar popped into the house yesterday morning. I was delighted and he seemed set to stay. His owner seemed unperturbed indeed moments later a very overweight Labrador joined us. Bobby our tabby was more surprised than scared. Perhaps the pink sparkly collar and the near coronary flab took the edge of the threat.

Maria is doing the great tomato bottling ceremony for her mum. The smell is divine. She is making excellent progress as director of Dido and Aeneas. We came up with a very snappy poster for her concept. Whose clever enough to spot the musicological pun/reference? Clue: Maria has transposed the action to a modern day TV experience.

Bored writing now.

Monthly review at the hospital plus 30 minute of intravenous bone nourishing goodness. I am always somewhat adrift when it is in the middle of day. I need to be nice and clean for John, my nurse who gave me such a bollocking last week for driving under the influence of painkillers. So plenty of bathing and shaving. I told Maria I was shaving my legs for him but she didn’t get the joke and called me a numpty. I am looking forward to showing of the degree to which my class A dosage is down. I can manage on none but the nights are a struggle cos everything seizes up so I have to be weak at around 11pm. Still a big improvement.

I have driven a few short distances. To be honest I’m still not entirely happy. I don’t know whether it’s in my head, my new glasses or indeed whether these drugs have a sort of half life and take some time to completely decay. I cannot really describe the experience but things like reversing out of a carpark really tax my brain. I have to crawl so slowly it’s embarrassing and very uncool for a virile male like me.

So long since I have been outraged, what has happened. Ah yes, the phone box obsession.

Here’s an outrage.

The Tory smugness is driving me mad. Let’s be clear what they mean – the only people they care about are hard-working (whatever that means – nothing!), property owning, aspirational, do-gooding, family making – tosspots! Who wants to have anything to do with that sort of person. This country is drowning in them – send them back to where they belong I say, in Volvo wheeled, Barrett boxed, ‘my child is doing after-school-D-of E-poor people-caring-classes, French chalky Teal – container ships bound for somewhere bijou in Normandy. Grr. As I have said many times being a hard-working member of the mediocrity is a crime against the human spirit not a virtue. Long live Teresa May, at least she sings the Tory theme song at full voice and shoots herself in the foot at the same time. They are not all evil dudes nor is every socialist a nice dude but the essential message of conservatism (let’s forget the conservatives for a moment) is always one of conformity. It celebrates enterprise only if that enterprise is targeted at reinforcing some version of the status quo. I suppose the horrifying thing is that that’s what most people want – especially me.

Forgive me if I am repeating myself but when will I learn a basic rule of fixing technology. I spent several days trying to fix a MIDI communication problem between the phone box and the house. The signal kept coming and going. Needless to say I worked on all the hard things first. Laboriously tracing data paths and drivers and everything dense and tricky that I KNEW would be causing the problem. What I discovered 3 days later was that every one of my terminals (miniature binding posts) had been made inaccurately and a tiny sliver of plastic was interrupting the signal periodically. A few strokes of a nail file later and problem solved. THREE DAYS THOUGH? Rule: check – is it plugged in, switched on, is the battery flat is the cat sitting on something important, before reaching for a screwdriver or tinkering with the code, or as all Microsoft users will know, the dreaded, downloading a new driver.

So I have passed some time. I can complete my make-up routine and prepare myself for a probing from John. I was listening to Julian Clarey yesterday. So funny.

These posts are not in chronological order. A few days before the announcement of the birth of the phone box I mistakenly tried to speed up my reengagement with a not so ‘early-Pink Floyd inspired-world’ by dramatically dropping most of my pain killers. The back pain had really got so much better and as you know I was eager to get to Maplin. I thought I could make do with just one three times a day, exceeding the hospitals expectations and hopefully getting their praise and admiration for my fortitude – and for almost a day I felt ok – then wham – first I thought I had the flu – then I seemed to be overtaken by complete lethargy, could not be bothered with anything not even the box – then disproportionate self indulgent despair, which to be honest I kept quite, but it was eating at me from the inside out, aggressively  consuming the sense of well-being that has been propping me up. The world turned horrible. Then I read the back of the packets and heeded the advice of my lovely wife – slowly, slowly, slowly – so here I am first thing in the morning happy as Larry and back on five a day – phew. Only interesting development is that despair in life is replaced by despair in dreams- I woke up having had what seemed like five hours of coming to terms with my own mortality through consultation with a shop assistant at Wilkos who said I was irresponsible not to be concentrating on growing potatoes for my wife and family as I was sure to die very soon. So advice, don’t disbelieve the warnings of withdrawal symptoms from prescription drugs – I thought it was a load of old ‘Trainspotting’ nonsense and that I was too tough to pussy foot around with that sort of health and safety crap, do read the instructions that come with the drugs and do worship at the temple of the pharmacists who make life and pain so much better so easily. As you may have gathered my continuing state of relative incarceration has revitalised my blog writing. Send me all your news please and plant those potatoes.

Oh dear, sorry about the mess that was my last posting.

Well I suppose it had immediacy and liveness but in every other respect was a scraped D+ at GCSE. I am going to leave it there despite the damage it is doing to my literary and academic reputation because I could not give a toss and anyone who could, is a tosseur.

Last night I thought I was a Victorian bed part made of cast iron and thus unable to be bent and fitted in place, and I saw all flat surfaces of a pale colour as furry. Toilets, baths and magnolia walls were particularly hursuit. This was actually occurring while I was writing and continued at home in bed when I had to ask Maria not only where I was but what I was – so it just goes to show that you can still manage certain complex technical tasks such as uploading to a blog on an IPad using an iPhone as a network hotspot, while being completely, and I mean completely out of your head. I was sweating so much that the sweat ran in streams off my ear lobes onto the floor producing splashes that with close attention you could hear, however my temperature was normal. The nurse described me as ‘cold and clammy.’ I asked “why?” she said ‘you must be ill.”Not the most startling intuition given where we were.

Me and my ‘rough’ friends continued to share our gallows humour until 10.30 pm when I was sent home with a secure bag of class A drugs, I could tell one of the gang was envious. My best friend was told he needed a liver biopsy and my extremely rough friend, yes he had been ‘inside’ and whose son had recently beaten to a bloody pulp a bunch of lads who were out to steal pensioners prescriptions as they came out of the surgery – this fearless incident was apparently greeted by applause from the doctors who had been unable to rid the environs of these nerdowells , he produced a gallon of phlegm such that the nurse privately commented she could do all excreta bar phlegm with indifference but phlegm ****– poor lovely thing..

How we laughed at all the bits that had fallen off our bodies not as much as we had laughed at Johns testicles, (hopefully in the singular by now) but a stroke, 3 heart attacks (shared between two friends) an ulcer, a gangrenous leg (now gone as in missing), a lost thumb, lung something or other, heart something or other, my cancer, amyloidosis etc were great material to riff on the meaning of health, death, Jeremy Corbyn, Manchester United (whoever they are), our pets, twoking, expectorants, how all immigrants except the nice polish couple next door should be sent home and bourbons or digestives. We ended up as firm friends and I agree with Arthur I found the whole experience really life enhancing. People have so much more niceness amidst so much stupidity.

I am home now. Still pretty Ill but so much better. I can sit, stand, almost lie, sleep (sadly only within furry walls and in a Victorian furniture factory) piss, pooh, eat and drink. I have my glorious and complete immediate family with me today. I cannot ask for anything more.

Btw. I was so, so so touched by the phone calls, texts, e-mails, blog comments and everything my dear friends do to keep my pecker up. Many made me laugh a lot. Don’t forget presents though. I like them best and don’t feel you have to be modest. I could start a John Lewis ‘Chris’s post constipation list.’ I wonder if you can get Enemas on EBay – save a lot of trouble for next time. Perhaps Maria could pop it in.

I have been spending quite a bit of time in hospital. Unplanned mainly and my first time on a ward. Not a glorious experience but really not so bad. The problem has been my wimpish approach to pain. I don’t like it one bit and as a consequence seek out strong chemicals to counteract it. Trouble with these chemicals, morphine and such like is that, for all the good they do, more or less all of them bung your bowels up like an escaping mole entombed up a drainpipe – Maria and can vouch for the immovability of a stuck mole after Paddy our cruelest cat led one to such a fate.. Well anyway along with the back pain a new and stronger pain began to grow along with extreme distension of my stomach. I am talking, a perfectly round, balloontaught, Alien’s womb affair. Anyway I found that, plus a few other ridiculous symptoms like hiccups that reverberate in your back, too much to bare and after two visits to A&E I was finally admitted to ward 14 with non acute something or other.

Ward 14 feels quite doomed. It is a kind of reception area of a run down comp with beds in. In other words everyone is a generalist, no one knows much about anything and the staff here are significantly ‘less’ in every respect than either the staff in A&E or certainly Oncology, including of course numbers. The result was a seven hour wait to see a doctor preceded by a less than encouraging conversation from a nurse, which consisted of “oh no you are in bed 17 I suppose” I was not sure where the disappointment lay, was it me or the dreaded bed 17? – anyway she has continued to this hour to be useless and pretty incompetent. After seven hours of this level of joviality, many accompanied, thank God, by my wonderful wife and son, I saw a doctor who pretty much instantly did the right thing and had me ‘enemaded’ commenting that my constipation was off the scale. I love that brave man! Thus I have been blessedly liberated from that pain but held up in hospital while they do it all again, just to make sure it wasn’t a one off and now at 19:00 we await Dr Bradfords last word and the endless filling in a forms. Could be a long night!! Hopefully though they will kick me out and not find a pretext to keep me here another night

Staying overnight was not as awful as I expected. My friends (I am still here so I can observe them as I type) are heavily tattooed, significantly butcher than me, possess strong Yorkshire accents and are very nice. I feel a bit like Hugh Grant amongst them. I just wish I had some working class credentials to flash about. There is a builder a plumber an ex miner. It is incredibly hot and humid and I stink. One is about to loose a testical and can endure pain like a Buddhist monk. His stoicism and good humour completely puts me to shame. Some people really are amazingly strong- how he has put up with the delays and I do not know. I would be in floods of tears and clawing the walls. Another friend has had troublesome blood results (been there got The T Shirt) he has been sat in the ward, perfectly fit, but exceeding anxious about what might lie ahead. I don’t envy him. The youngest guy in here has some sort of problem emanating from eating too much fatty food. It may be an ulcer or something. The eldest has a version of the miners disease is is currently sat sucking on a five foot gas tank. There is definitely a Yorkshire humour that I cannot quite tune into and equally my Sevenoaks humour seems not to travel. Thus I am condemned to being a tolerated outsider. Not alien enough to get a UKipping although for all I know I could get a scargilling politics stays off the agenda in hospitals which is a shame given the inordinate amount of time one has to contemplate it – yes I am still here 7: 7:15 pm.

No transplant for now!! I am relieved to have a verdict as the uncertainty made it hard to plan ahead. Both consultants agree although the National amyloidosis centre would be a bit more gung-ho were they given the chance. So that’s that. For now…

This week I have been more than usually physically active. I can only ever do one thing at a time – either cerebral, technical, physical – I am in my physical phase with the telephone box which is approaching being watertight and well on the way to aesthetic completion. I then go into the technical stage which due to my modest programming and electronics skills could be very extended and finally the cerebral, creative fun bit. From which will emerge my ring cycle/unmade bed.

This stage is quite fun, although some of the DIY skills take some acquiring. Needless to say a good deal of me, the house and the garden is now painted red. The fact that it is the authentic red used on phone boxes prior to 1957 does not diminish it inappropriateness as a colour for grass, baths or indeed a very friendly sheepdog called Madge who came for a cuddle and returned to her owner looking like she had been in a Tarantino movie – I exaggerate a bit – actually her owner remarked that Madge always got covered in sheep dye when the sheep get their smit marks (coloured stripes) so this was nothing new. I have not enjoyed the puttying. Modern DIY materials take minutes or at worst hours to dry, real putty takes a modest 21 days before it can be painted – enough time to have constructed and painted an IKEA city. It’s been fun being nerdy about the bits and pieces I need to finish the job. A neighbour has very kindly made me a stand-in for the original light fitting a real one on eBay is £300 – even I draw the extravagance line at that.

Naturally I am supporting Jeremy Corbyn for the new labour leader and have acquired a vote as a registered supporter for £3.00. I really hope he wins as the rest of the field are a well meaning but uninspiring lot. I would prefer to vote for a woman but the two on offer are tainted by this tiresome move to the centre ground and may even be guilty of using that hateful phrase ‘hard working families’ YUK YUK YUK! I believe a real left wing alternative would bring about an adrenalin rush to British politics particularly for the young and those not yet terminally disillusioned like me. Besides which, Corbyn does not wear a tie and looks like he might like Jazz and Alan Ginsburg and expresso. The new leader of the Women’s Equality Party was on Woman’s Hour and was fab – she gets my vote if I ever reengage with the political hurly burly. I might. https://womensequality.org.uk

I appear for about 10 seconds on a radio programme on voice. I gave 30 minutes of my brilliance and have been ruthlessly whittled. Not good for the ego but excellent for the programme. I sound like I care which is nice but I am credited as a media theorist which I am not – don’t even know what a media theorist is. I would have preferred poet, husband and father, ebayer, anarchist, phone nerd, polymath, middle aged middle class git but media theorist is truly ghastly. Who wants to share a jacuzzi with a media theorist. The programme is really good but I have only concentrated on my bit. https://www.cbc.ca/radio/stripped/episode-four-lost-voices-1.3157977

That’s it for now. Today I have to seek out a plywood floor, a BSW tap and die set (bet you don’t know what that is), 4 glass panes, brass pins for the window frames and a backboard.

One less regular hospital visit at least for now – hurrah and phew! Professor Cook and I discussed guitars, he has a bought a very posh one but has not told his wife, Scottish accents with speech recognition technology (he has one and uses it) hilariously bad – check this out https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sAz_UvnUeuU and my health prospects. The verdict is no transplant for now but it is to be held in reserve. I am very happy with this outcome. I thought it was now or never, but it seems not. They may harvest my stem cells while the going is good but that’s no big deal – I just involves laying still with your arms outstreched like Jesus for 4 hours,  the transplant itself is a very big deal cos it can make you extremely ill and or dead, hence the year of deliberation and uncertainty. I am reminded that I have been keeping an opera DVD Charles sent me for my stay in hospital  I can watch it now. Charles I have also gone back to the Thomas Pynchon but can barely manage a page without glazing over with frustration at the hip language – What are they on about??? I am so sorry. Did you ever watch the Peaky Blinders I sent you and did you fancy the lead cos I did? I sort of want to be him – a gypsy bandit bad guy with heart of gold and fab accent.

Happily I feel very well, probably better than poor Maria who has a slipped disk, currently slipped back in I am glad to say. She is seeing a brilliant sports physio who does not talk tofu sandals or yogurt knitting. I will continue to have this stuff called Zometa every month but other than that I am good to go for however long until it comes back – hoping a good while.

So I can focus on my big project which progresses very well indeed but remains secret for now. We will be down in London in August for yet another outing for my our little melodrama ‘My Voice and Me’ at the Tete a Tete festival. Paul the composer is either in Chile or in China at the moment – the legendary spell checker strikes again. Paul where are you?

Life is good, boys and girl well and happy, cats lazy, hens have been sunbathing – yes they lie down as if dead on their sides and sunbathe – how weird is that. I feed them bread so they are getting tamer and tamer and more and more pushy. Arthur tried feeding and one of then nicked all his bread and ran off. I also witnessed them mating – not a pleasant sight while nibbling a corn on the cob on the balcony (me not them) – strewth nature is brutal.  I have my timetable for teaching next semester so – onwards and upwards toward reassuring hum drum.

Love to all

I coped with my weekend existential self discovery, if that isn’t an oxymoron. Since then I have been locked in a most heroic struggle with an extremely tedious task necessary for my next great project. But too rays of sunshine lit up my rainy weekend 1. A friend of mine confessed to finding his own company boring, something I rank lower than my reaction to selftime which is one of gloom. To find yourself boring has got to be to plumb new depths of self scrutiny. I am really impressed – wow! Personally I find myself to be the most fascinating being in the universe, bar none. Second I received a poem from a friend. Sadly it’s not about me but it is about a present I bought her at the car boot sale. I could not resist getting her a ceramic container for a Brillo pad. Just knew she would be delighted and to top that I knew she needed one. Who doesn’t! Anyway here is a picture of the item and below that the splendiferous poem written in its honour. The bard is Barbara Evans of the parish of Worcester. I believe this to be opus 1 but stand to be corrected. More poems on domestic artefacts are most welcome.

Penelope Posonby Penstemonn Prillo, who paid insufficient attention to safety at the sink and was early cut off in Dreadful agonies

A Cautionary Tale by
Hillarious Bollocks

Barbara O’Donnell had never had
A receptacle for her brillo pad
Thankfully she had a mate
Who saved from a dreadful fate
The like of which I’ll now relate

Penelope Ponsonby Penstemonn Prillo
Was scrubbing away at her pans with a brillo
(The butler was off- he was quite a cumudgeon
Housekeeper and servants-resigned in high dudgeon)
She scraped and she scrubbed at the fat from the bacon
Then suddenly cried “Whats that noise the dog’s makin’?”
(A creature called Fluff- with a very loud bark
Who often made out he was sick for a lark)
As she rushed in a panic towards the back door
The brillo pad slid off the sink to the floor
When she’d scolded the dog and returned with the vac
She slipped on the brillo pad, fell on her back
And there she did lie for a number of days
Until the old butler, who’d mended his ways,
returned to her ladyship’s home full of smiles
To find her prostate on the floor on the tiles
“Who am I? Who are you?” she cried. “If it please yer”
The butler replied, ” You be sick with amnesia.
Just sign this new will. You can leave me the lot”
And when it was done, killed her off with one shot

So Barbara be thankful when reading of this
That you have such a friend in the generous Chris
To save you from injury his dearest wish
As he Scoured the car boots for a brillo pad dish.

I am actually really beginning to believe there is something in the notion of writing as therapy. I know why I am teensy weensy bit stressed – it is because Maria has the nerve to be away this weekend. Two whole nights!! Despite writing an insultingly objective analysis to woman’s hour of the recipe for a successful marriage (the male perspective was the brief (I doubt they used it)) – it was all a complete lie – I adore her, worship her and alarmingly for her, depend on her totally for my mental well being as well as my physical. Mind you that sounds some distance from the recipe for a happy marriage – more like the motivation for a plot to a Nordic noir. Obsessive neurotic lecturer husband self immolates in Fjord. Thus In anticipation of this disasterous weekend of blubbering heapness I feel the need to offload – so here goes.

I hate my own company- hate, hate, hate it. I can not put it strongly enough. If I were cast way on a desert island with my eight records I would throw myself and them in the sea before tea time – Fact, unequivocal, no lie. Those smugly self sufficient souls on the show always talk about making a shelter and enjoying the tranquility what they really mean is hoping they packed 20 Valium and screaming like a baby until they were dead with narcotics or exhaustion. That said I have managed to endure just a few memorable occasions of isolation. When I was 21 I hitch hiked around Europe for a month spending 90% of my time on my own or linguistically alone. The odd encounter with someone who would speak to me was a restorative sufficient to last a day or two before I started to collapse like soggy cardboard and wanted my mum. After Guildhall I spent 5 months in Italy but can only really count the first month as alone because after then I formed so many friendships (in desperation, a few undesirable ones for sure) that I actually had to change apartments to get away from some of them. Since then my alone times have been short and grim. I know when I am in one. There is a very particular feeling that starts in my stomach and then spreads until it has consumed every positive thought or feeling in me. I see a world peopled by Bosch – the artist not the power tool – flaming demons erupt from my indigestible (that’s another symptom) cornflakes. It has no rationale and for a bit there is no escape. Then it flys away for a bit – anything can trigger a temporary stay of the nonsense and exuberant joy a radio programme, the cats fighting, a telephone call. While bouncing between these two extremes I feel I can really empathise with those who suffer from bipolar disease. But now…

I have my writing. I have never had this outlet before and this weekend I will conducting a study – as follows: Does writing a blog help those pathetic individuals who can’t cope being alone cope better? Blubbering tear soaked phone calls to all and sundry will prove the null hypothesis.

Chris