Listening to writer Hanif Kureishi – who suffered a spinal injury 12 months ago – guest editing BBC radio 4’s Today programme over the festive period made me realise that an update is well overdue. I apologise upfront since this has turned into a bit of a ramble. The programme is well worth listening to, …
Care: If you care for someone or something, you look after them and keep them in a good state or condition. A company is a business organization that makes money by selling goods or services i.e. Its purpose is to make profit for its owners. An oxymoron is a word or phrase that combines two …
I finally have some news worth writing about. There are a few other topics I might attempt to write about, but the worthwhile subject is my successful trip back out to Spain (where I sustained my life changing injury in April 2019) and back without any major drama. Hurrah. Not quite as epic as Bilbo …
This blog entry contains strong language, references of a sexual and religious nature that some readers may find upsetting. If you are of a sensitive disposition you may prefer to stop reading here. I read George Orwell’s 1984 in my early teens, when the year itself really did seem quite remote. To be honest, for …
I am long overdue an update. Apologies. Listening to the radio a few weeks ago I heard a geeky discussion about the future of artificial intelligence. The “expert” speculated that, within the next hundred years, AI would be able to simulate an experience virtually indistinguishable from real life with visual experiences, audio, smell, taste and …
I finally got around to writing my thoughts on safety for the cycle event that has left me so badly disabled. Hopefully, other riders won’t suffer quite such a catastrophic injury.*** Dear Xisco / Mallorca 312 race director, It’s now more than two years since I crashed in the 2019 edition of the Mallorca 312. …
What follows, of course, isn’t a real conversation. It’s a combination of actual conversations but mostly what goes on inside my head at 3 AM. NHS doctors really aren’t this sweary, even in Glasgow. Doctor: You are completely fucked. Me: Could you be a bit more specific? Doctor: Do you want the good news …
What to say? My crazy year has been well and truly trumped by recent events. I find myself in a doubly strange world – locked to a hospital environment by a freakish accident, then locked down again by the Covid–19 virus.
It’s now the beginning of September 2019. At the end of April, I entered a closed-road cycling event along with around 8000 other people. The plan was to cycle a hundred miles across the beautiful mountains and roads of Majorca. The plan didn’t quite work out. I ended up in hospital with a vertebrate high on my spine broken into three pieces and my spinal cord severed. It was a freak accident I was very unlucky to sustain and even luckier to survive. I require a ventilator to breathe today. […]