To quote his email to me recently: "This is a friendly world we all occupy, isn't it?"
indeed, Matthew, Thanks!!
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There have been a few times in my life when I thought I was about to die. I remember the first very well, although I admit to being a little sketchy on the exact date. I was young, probably around eight or nine, and we were living in a pebble-dashed terraced house in Staple Hill, a suburb of Bristol on the South West coast of the UK. It was the four of us back then; my mother, father, brother and I. We would have had a dog, too - probably our second dog Freya, she of the pie-eating and general food stealing fame. This was before the family move to Reading that followed a few years later. Back then, we lived in Bristol and Reading was what you did with a book in your hand.
That year, be it 1979 or 1980, my family took it in turns to contract flu. By that, I don't mean a heavy cold - I mean bona fide influenza. To date, I have never been as sick as I was back then and these days when I'm off work and return to fill out a sickness absence form, I always write 'heavy cold' in the description box. Once you've had flu, you don't call anything else by the name. I remember feeling really, really sick for the first time in my short life. I don't remember how long I coughed for, how long I stayed in bed for or how high my temperature got, but I do remember the day that my chest became so congested with phlegm that breathing became difficult. The more I tried to breathe, the more crap I sucked deeper into my chest and the harder breathing became. I got very, very scared and remember crying and shouting repeatedly that I was dying. In hindsight, I was making a pretty good racket so I doubt that lack of oxygen was really going to do for me as long as I could protest that vociferously but anyway, the point is that the fear was real. I remember it vividly and I sense I always will. I honestly thought I was going to die, right there and then.
Fast forward just over 20 years and 100 miles west. I don't know the exact date but I do know this isn't how it should be. It's a work night, it's late and I'm sitting on a wooden stool in the kitchen of my first floor flat in North London. I've lived here for a while now and I like it. My first marriage has gone south and, like some people do, I've jumped headlong into a new relationship and moved in with the girl. It's different, exciting. The sex is good (for now, anyway). There's only one slight problem - the girl I live with is standing in front of me with a kitchen knife against my throat.
How this came about, god only knows. I remember arguing with her, although not what that argument was about. It could have been something as banal as her being unable to find the television remote and then getting more and more angry, accusing me of not looking hard enough to help her and then of deliberately hiding it to cause her grief. Me being me, my response wouldn't have been overly supportive by that stage. Maybe that's how I got here - or maybe I'd got some freshly washed sheets dirty by accident and the argument had spiralled from that. Basically I should have admitted to something and apologised for everything a good ten minutes ago, if not sooner. Now, sitting on that stool at one o'clock in the morning, looking into a face that I don't really recognise these days, I wonder if this is the moment that I leave this world. Common sense would say not but let's face it, common sense doesn't put someone who claims to love you in a position where they have a large knife pointed in your direction. Time slows, moments are drawn out and you become aware of everything around you - almost as if you're preparing to take in one last gulp of life before the lights go out.
I find myself wondering how it came to this but, more importantly, how I'm going to get out of this. I talk, I admit to things I didn't do, intentions I never had and I promise to be a better person. Anything to get me off this chair. Eventually it works. I persuade her to calm down, put the knife away. I talk her back to bed and tell her that I'm just going out for a walk - to clear my head. I click the door shut behind me and tread quietly down the old wooden steps, never actually calm until I'm through the big front door and out on the street. I walk through North London, stopping at the all-night coffee shops run by the Algerians and the Moroccans. I order thick black coffee and smoke cigarettes with the locals. Then I do the same again. After all, it's not like I was going to be able to sleep anyway. Inevitably, hours later, I find myself walking back to the flat. Despite the area's reputation, I never feel in danger out on the streets of North London when I'm walking and it's late. I feel the wind and hear the traffic and smell the exhaust on the air and I wonder if I've ever felt more alive. I also wonder how many more times this will happen before I finally leave. Just the once, as it turns out.
Now hit the fast forward button again and come up to the present, to a well-to-do house in Sydney's affluent Northern Beaches. We have travelled down for the weekend to see family on Sunday but made the journey late on Friday night so that my wife and her mother could shop for cheap stock at Manly Markets on Saturday morning. I am distinctly unwell. My breathing's fine, my temperature's normal and no psycho ex is holding a knife to my throat, but I find myself nauseous, with absolutely no appetite and unable to keep any food down - or in - for prolonged periods. Maybe I should have stayed in bed at our host's place but I tend not to do bed-rest so instead I'm out at the markets with my wife, her son and her mother. Later after the markets are done, we send her mother home in a taxi and the three of us sit on Manly Beach to have lunch. It's a beautiful day, warm and filled with sun. We buy a large portion of hot, salted chips and I eat just five of those chips, only because I feel I should try and keep my strength up rather than through any real hunger or desire. Later we walk to the local gallery and I am grateful that there are public toilets nearby for me to throw up in. We walk around the coast to a lovely aquatic reserve cove and paddle in the crisp, cold surf - but my highlight is finding the one remaining toilet that isn't occupied on the two occasions I need it at short notice. That night at dinner I order a small bowl of soup; again to try and keep my strength up rather than because I'm hungry. The soup's a success - it stays down for around 2 hours before reappearing. It's at that stage I decide to go to bed and try to sleep.
My night is disturbed and my dreams are strange. I tell myself that this is just temporary, that normal service will be resumed as soon as possible. Deep down though, I'm wondering if this is something more serious. Maybe this is the start of something major and maybe I'll never be the same again. Maybe it's the start of bowel cancer, stomach cancer or something else entirely. Deep down I know it's just a bug but it's laid me low and ravaged me, more than any illness has managed since I was a young boy living in a pebble dashed terraced house. I find myself wondering if this is how I'll die - not suddenly through asphyxiation or stabbing but slowly, painfully and without dignity, in pools of my own waste. It's a long night and I'm glad when it's over and Sunday's upon us. I'm even more pleased when Sunday sees me able to keep down fluids and small portions of food. Maybe I needn't write my epitaph just yet.
The meeting with the family takes place in Sydney's Botanical Gardens. We have lunch together, I manage to eat and I am able to show some flashes of my usual self. My wife drives the three of us home just after 5pm. Although I know she doesn't like doing the drive from Sydney to home at night, she refuses my offer to share the driving and I love her all the more for that.
Monday comes and the bug draws its final breaths before expiring just after midday. I play it safe, calling in sick to allow myself time to recover for sure. That gives me an extra day of recuperation and that's fine with me as despite having packed so much into the weekend, I feel as though I was cheated out of a significant part of it. I cook spaghetti for dinner that night. Much like the North London air in the early hours of a morning all those years ago, it tastes sweeter than it has any right to.
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