I Should Write a Book, Apparently

By Andy W.

For anyone who has loved and lost, loved and not had it reciprocated, tried and failed, tried something else and failed again, run from something, locked something away or set something free, hidden from the world, or reached for a dream, there is something in my lifeand thus this bookto relate to.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Jun 10, 2013
• ISBN: 9781481784771

Andy W.

Well, I’m twenty-eight, male, technically unemployed (at least as I begin this project), and English. I’m probably one of thousands who match this description, granted, but I have at least been somewhere, done something, struggled, hit rock bottom, and clawed my way back.

Book preview

Introduction

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Saturday night. She was standing in the club near the bar next to her two friends coyly looking up at me through her hair. I knew her friends through my sister. The girls had all been in the same year at school together.

I was making stupid jokes to her friends, and was conscious of the fact that this girl—their friend—to whom, at that point, I had not been introduced, was extremely cute.

Having recently discovered the joys of the flesh of the opposite sex properly for the first time, I was bowling around like a dog with two dicks, and was, you could say, enjoying my newfound confidence with the ladies.

As I did my best to make the girls laugh, acting like the alpha male I would have dearly loved to have actually been, I noticed the new girl shooting her friends a certain look.

One of them whispered to me. ‘You should talk to Thea.’

Having already smashed through the ice with some undoubtedly brilliant jokes, and feeling that I had a good ‘way in’ by way of being friends with her friends, I took the bull by the horns (apologies, my angel, you were never a bull) and spoke to her directly.

Looking back, our mutual friends seem to have played their part of ‘wing girl’ superbly, if that is, of course, what their intention was. To be fair, I have never asked them. Anyway, they moved away slightly, leaving us to it.

Being the gentleman, I offered her a drink. I had heard that this was the ‘done thing’ to do, plus the extra Dutch courage would have definitely been of assistance to me, as would her own slight inebriation (my apologies again, princess).

We talked for a bit longer before hitting the crowded dance floor.

I’m no Justin Timberlake, but I like to think I can hold my own, or at last do a half-decent job of pretending to be able to dance. We threw shapes for a few minutes before a friend of my sister’s boyfriend interrupted by coming over to chat to her. I didn’t like this guy. I felt my sister’s boyfriend was less than a good catch for her, and I automatically transferred my dislike for him to this boy. He disregarded my presence, which put my nose out of joint. But I let it go. The last thing I wanted to do was to act like a typical prick and be all like, ‘Oi, dickhead! Hands off my woman!’

So I let him talk to her for what seemed like five minutes, but it was probably half that before my patience ran out. I suggested to him that he had taken up enough of our time and that he might consider pissing off.

He didn’t take too kindly to this suggestion and sized me up. He was two years my junior and in the same year at school as the girls, so I was not going to be mugged off by ‘some kid’.

I can’t remember who said what exactly, but he, my sister’s boyfriend, and a couple of their mates ending up giving me the eyeball outside the club shortly afterwards.

Truro is a small town in the southwest of England, and I was not in a rush to lose face, so I stood my ground. As their insults—and, indeed, mine—heated up, a hushed whisper spread throughout the growing crowd that had gathered.

Sh… shh… shhh! Look, it’s Karl! They’re in fucking trouble now! I, of course, did not hear these comments. Neither did I realize that a very good friend of mine had just appeared behind me.

Karl had a very well-known reputation in town for being not only a really friendly and nice guy with a kind word for everyone, but for also possessing a tasty left hand that he wasn’t too worried about using.

It must have been pretty comical for the onlookers to see four lads backing off without another word whilst I continued with, ‘Yeah, that’s right, girls. Fuck off before you get hurt.’

I was, of course, completely oblivious to the fact it wasn’t me they weren’t so keen on taking on. Imagine my surprise when I turned and saw my friend. Imagine the look of disappointment on my face when I realized the above!

The following Monday, after finishing work, having only met her over the weekend just gone, I gave Thea a call as I walked back to where my car was parked. Two years later I would have despised someone like me for that exact action, but I wasn’t to know that at the time. Luckily we had exchanged numbers at some point that Saturday night, and I was able to give her a call to say hello.

Looking back, I realize I must have really liked her as I actually called her instead of sending the usual cop-out text that most people fall back on. She answered, and we had a really nice conversation for ten minutes or so whilst I made my way to the car.

I had bought my car—‘her’—a month before, brand new off the forecourt: a Citroën Saxo VTR. I had wanted one for three years after seeing one parked in Newquay on a night out and thought it looked awesome.

I was young. What can I say?

Before the call ended, we arranged to meet up for a drink later in the week. And with that, young Andrew swaggered into his car, wound the windows down, turned the stereo up (I cringe thinking about it now), and cruised back home.

We had arranged to meet up one night that week, and, at the appointed time, I drove to pick her up after making sure my little Saxo was spotless.

Typical of me, I couldn’t find the exact house on the street she lived on. She giggled down the phone when I told her I was on the right street but couldn’t find the right house. She told me she would come out and find me. Turns out I was only twenty metres from her front door.

Classic me.

I like to think I got out and opened the door for her. I’m pretty sure I would have, as she came bouncing up the pavement towards the car. Either way, I’m sure we went out for a drink somewhere nice where we talked, our conversation sprinkled with plenty of giggles, hers being far sweeter and more angelic than my screech or cackle, as anyone who knows me will testify.

I dropped her home, and my bloody memory fails me as to whether I kissed her goodnight or merely pecked her on the cheek, but whatever happened was obviously okay by her as we continued talking and texting each day until we met up again at the same club at the weekend.

I was out with Karl as per usual, and Thea was more than likely with the same girls again. To be honest I don’t know. I wasn’t particularly interested in anyone else there that night other than her, to be fair. Carmen Electra or Thierry Henry could have been there in the flesh and I wouldn’t have given a fuck. Okay, I lie. I would have been all over Thierry like a rash, but you get the idea.

Thea ended up coming back to Karl’s place, as I had use of the spare room. A gentleman never tells, and her folks might read this one day, but I must say that the next morning I found myself wearing only my socks. I woke up with the sunlight breaking through the curtains onto her sleeping face, her beautiful, straw-coloured hair falling across her angelic cheeks and jaw. It was at that moment that she went from being cute to absolutely, breathtakingly beautiful—and I fell for her completely.

The moment was interrupted somewhat moments later as Karl crashed into the room stinking of booze and waking Thea from her peaceful-looking sleep. He had a massive grin on his face, ‘All right, bro!’ He looked down at the foot off the bed. Seeing my white sock poking out of the covers he cried, ‘Dude! You left your socks on?’ His tone barely contained his hysterical laughter. Quick as a flash, he realized that the combination of his noticing my sexual faux pas, and his tone laced with ridicule would have made me look like a twat and quickly added, ‘Only you could pull that off, bro.’ He left with a nod of approval.

I guess that was it. We were a couple from that moment on. From that day, everything just continued to get better. I was already doing well at work at Carphone Warehouse, earning good money, especially for my age and by Cornish standards. I was also stoked to have just bought a brand-new car for my first car. Granted, it was only because the bank had given me a loan for it, but still… And then there was Thea, whom I judged to be one of the most beautiful girls in town.

It wasn’t just the fact she looked good. She was also one of the most wonderful human beings on the planet. Sure I am biased, but there isn’t a single person who would disagree. If there had been, I was fiercely protective of her and would have defended her honour even if the bad words muttered had come from Arnold Schwarzenegger himself.

She had a unique style. She didn’t conform to what the High Street style posters or adverts dictated. She wore her makeup her way, her hair her way, and her style her way. Okay, maybe it was influenced by Audrey Hepburn, but seeing as she has just been voted the most beautiful woman of all time that is obviously no bad thing. Thea was passionate about art and jewellery, and her passion for all things beautiful certainly rubbed off on me.

The funny thing is that thought literally only just occurred to me as I wrote it, and it has put a big smile on my face.

She was funny, had the cutest and most infectious giggle. She was kind, sweet, caring, and everything any man—or woman for that matter—could ever want in a partner. With her in my life, I was inspired to work even harder so that I could provide her with the life she deserved. I wanted her to have the best of everything. I wanted to be able to spoil her rotten.

We ate out once or twice a week, and she had a bouquet of twelve pink roses every fortnight. She would have had a fresh bouquet every day had I been able to afford it. You get the idea. I was absolutely smitten. She was my princess.

Thea worked in Ernest Jones, a jewellery store across the road from where I worked. In eighteen months at Carphone, I never got a single lunch break let alone hour. Each time I rushed out to grab something, though, I would try and pick her up some sour chewy sweets. She loved those things, so I’d deliver them to her at work before scarpering back to Carphone to stuff my lunch down my neck and get back onto the shop floor to serve another undoubtedly moronic customer.

I would get so excited to see her as I pushed through the people in the street who stood between me and my angel. I was completely focused on the task in hand and had tunnel vision as I bounded towards the store like a lovesick puppy. The entrance to Ernest Jones was tunnel like—huge floor-to-ceiling glass windows stuffed to the rafters with jewellery and watches on either side. Her desk was situated behind the right-hand side of the tunnel’s display window inside, which was always a large Audrey Hepburn Longines advertisement. As I passed it, Thea would always come in and out of view, her little face lighting up if and when she caught sight of me.

Depending whether she had customers or not, I would slide the sour sweets across her desk to her with a mouthed ‘I love you’ and a cheeky smile before I had to rush back to work.

We were absolutely inseparable for six months. I’d collect her from work as soon as I had left my retail prison. She’d either be waiting for me in her store’s doorway in her little red coat or she’d be in the process of locking up the security gate. We’d either head back to hers’ to eat with her folks or back to my dad’s place to eat and spend the night there. I got on with her parents and Edan, her little brother, extremely well. Her family couldn’t have made me feel more welcomed or more part of the family if they tried. The same applies for my dad, who absolutely loved Thea, and for the first time he and I began to get along, as I was a much better person for having her in my life. My dad and I had always had a difficult relationship. I knew he loved me, but it had always been difficult for us to get on. I’ll go into it in more detail later.

It wasn’t long before Thea and I started speaking about how ‘this might be it’, as in we wanted to get married and be together forever. I remember a conversation one night at her place when she was unusually quiet and had had a worried look on her flawless little face all evening. ‘You’ve only slept with one other girl,’ she finally said.

‘Yeh?’

‘But what if, in a few years, you think you need to sleep with others?’ She looked as if she might burst into tears any moment.

‘Baby, how could I possibly ever want anyone else if I have you?’ And I meant it. I would have married her the next day if it would have had reassured her.

The corners of her mouth turned upwards; that was all the reassurance she needed. ‘I love you,’ she said with a smile.

I remember the first time she said it. It wasn’t that long after we started seeing each other—maybe two weeks, maybe four—but it really wasn’t very long at all. However long it was, I know I wanted to say it to her long before she told me. Maybe she had wanted to tell me sooner, but it’s not as if it was a race.

We had been on another night out on the weekend and had gotten really drunk before stumbling back up to her place where we crashed, giggled, and ‘shhh’d’ our way, so as not to wake her parents as we made our way up to her room where I collapsed onto her bed. She stood at the side of the bed in her little red coat, a wonderfully cute but short skirt—nothing but layers of gauze with tiny flowers printed on it—and her hair up exposing a face that could have lit up the entire world. She began to wriggle out of her skirt and let her coat fall back off her shoulders

‘Leave it on.’ I grinned at her.

As she lay in my arms afterwards, her little head on my chest with me practically asleep the moment she had laid beside me, she whispered. ‘I love you.’ My chest almost burst with happiness. I was almost asleep, but I had still heard, and I managed to say for the first time in my life, ‘I love you too.’

Over the next five months I continually worked harder and harder at Carphone and really began to excel. I continued to treat her like a princess, and we spent every day together in a happiness that I had known before only in fairy tales.

We only ever argued the once. Another night out in the same club, good old Truro. Some chopper from her year at school who had obviously liked her for a long time but had as much chance with her as David Beckham, nice as he is, has of being invited into Mensa, spoke to her as we passed him in a doorway. He looked at me. The hatred and jealousy in his eyes was painfully obvious. He shot a skinny arm out and grabbed my hat like the pathetic weasel he was. My arm snapped back at him grabbing it back. I growled, ‘What the fuck are you doing, you prick?’

Everyone with any social etiquette knows you do not take off another man’s cap in a club, especially if that man could (A) rip your head off, and (B) already hates you for being an aforementioned weasel that slimes on his girlfriend.

I pushed him in the chest with one hand after claiming my hat with the other. Instead of calling him an idiot, Thea kicked off at me for being aggressive. I could not forget the smarmy smile on that tosser’s face as she dragged me out of the club and frog marched me back to her place. She busted my balls the whole way as I trailed two steps behind like a smacked child. Two hundred metres from her house, after walking for five minutes whilst being berated because I had reacted to her friend ‘joking around’, I’d had enough. I didn’t want to be yelled at or in trouble anymore, especially as she couldn’t see how this prick hadn’t been joking but had been mugging me off in front of her to try and show me up. I resorted to the only option I had left after my reasoning had fallen on deaf ears.

I feigned an asthma attack.

It was all I could think of to get me out of trouble. I was clutching at straws but it worked. It took me five years to ever admit this to someone for fear of her somehow hearing me, and being pissed off with me. She wouldn’t hear reason then, but you can guarantee that, if possible, she would have ‘heard’ that though. I like to think she would be giggling at that admission now though wherever she is, bless her.

All of her anger and annoyance at me disappeared. Mission accomplished.

With Christiano Ronaldo’esque acting ability, I picked myself back up, and with her supporting her ‘seriously in need’ boyfriend, we made it the short distance back to her place where she tucked me into bed and gave me a nice cuddle. She made sure that I was okay before stroking my head to help me get to sleep. She loved, looked after, and doted on me as much as I did her.

Other than that incident, it was blissful in paradise. Our only time apart was when we were at work, dancing with our own friends, and the week I was snowboarding in the French Alps, all expenses paid, courtesy of Carphone Warehouse—a reward for finishing among the top fifteen salesmen nationwide in a three-month-long sales competition. In those six months with Thea, I really upped my game and performance at work. I went from working hard enough so that I could afford a big weekend each week, to busting my arse big time to ‘maximise’ every customer and every single sale so that I could spoil her with the lifestyle and presents that she deserved.

I called her every single day from France that week. My phone bill was horrific. Thankfully, it was only from calls and not data use. Anyone who has used data on a mobile abroad will know their next phone bill will be tantamount to legal daylight robbery. Even so, if it had been the only way to be in contact with my angel whilst I was away, it would have been worth it.

It was that during that week that I fell in love for a second time. Snowboarding completely swept me off my feet, and I’ll come on to that later as well.

When I got home, it was business as usual, working my arse off at work where I scooped another two top prizes in nationwide company sales competitions over the next two months. Not bad considering I was in competition with sales assistants in London, Manchester, and Liverpool—cities with millions and millions of potential customers and beating them from my little High Street branch in sleepy Cornwall. My friend and manager at the store, and indeed also the area manager, wanted to fast-track me onto a manager training course—and me at the ripe old age of twenty-one. Things were really going my way.

Every evening I would then bathe in relationship bliss with my beautiful girl, and for the first time in my life I would be able to say I was happy and content with how everything was going.

As had been the norm over the previous six months, I was having Sunday dinner at Thea’s place, as ever cooked up by her wonderful mum. Thea didn’t cook and would giggle and shy away from the question when I proclaimed that she would have to learn to cook one day if she was going to make me a good wife.

I will digress momentarily to highlight further how angelic she was—in case I haven’t made that clear enough already. She would swear to me that she had ‘never ever farted’ and that ‘girls don’t poo’ whilst keeping a poker face that Phil Ivey would have been proud of.

Back to dinner that evening. After we had finished, we were to take her grandfather a plate of Sunday roast that her mum had put aside for him. Thea’s folks had just bought a little Volkswagen Polo, and Thea was named as one of the drivers. She wanted to take this car instead of her own car as her rear brake light was out. She was on her parents’ insurance, so there was no problem with that.

The weather in Cornwall is never particularly good, but that April it was fucking horrendous. We drove to the small village near Newquay where her grandfather lived. Edan, her six-year-old little brother came along for the ride. When we reached her grandfather’s house, we rushed inside to avoid getting drenched, and we delivered his dinner. We didn’t stay long. I say we. I didn’t stay long. I headed back to the car before she did, as she wanted to give her granddad a big hug. Edan followed me back to the car.

It was fucking pissing down. I looked outside and can remember thinking that the rain was so heavy it might crack the car’s windows. Thea ran back to the car covering her hair in a futile attempt to avoid frizz. As soon as she closed the door, she started the ignition to get the heat going again and get the wipers on. I looked at her face. She was soaked; her drenched fringe sticking to her skin. ‘Ughhh, its horrible out there!’ As she said it, she smiled and giggled.

Even though I had never seen such dark, grey, miserable, atrocious weather it was instantly a beautifully warm summer day inside that little red Volkswagen.

We drove to Newquay and parked up on the cliffs so that we could watch the storm and massive swells of the ocean. Although it was truly horrendous out there, there was a beauty in Mother Nature’s awesome power sending the rain hammering down, and causing giant waves to smash over the rocks below whilst continually buffeting the car with howling wind. We were probably parked up on the cliff-top for five minutes whilst the elements relentlessly battered the sides and roof of the little Polo before I got bored and started to whine that I wanted to be tucked up in bed.

Wide asleep

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‘A ndrew… Andrew?’ Her voice was soft, comforting, familiar, but I couldn’t place it. I had no idea how I knew it, but she sounded as if she knew me. ‘It’s okay, Andrew. It’s okay.’

What’s okay? Is this woman crazy or something?

‘Andrew, Andrew, you’re okay. Wake up. You’re safe.’

A piercing bright light broke through my eyelashes as my eyelids parted barely a millimetre. I tried to flinch away from the light but somehow couldn’t.

‘It’s okay, Andrew. You’re doing great.’

What the fuck is going on?

I opened my eyes again, slowly, cautiously. The light hurt. Badly.

The strange voice began to take shape—a female form. She was wearing a hat. As my eyes opened slightly more and things began to focus, I saw that she was wearing a uniform.

She’s a nurse? I don’t remember going to hospital!

That was it. I was back out for the count. I don’t know for how long. In fact, I didn’t know how long I had been out. In fact, I didn’t know anything. I just fell back into a deep sleep.

I don’t really know what happened next. Morphine is a powerful drug, and I had been up to my eyeballs on it and who knows what else for nearly three weeks. The hospital records would know what, how much, and for how long, but I’m not particularly interested in that and neither are you, unless you’re a doctor, in which case you might have a small modicum of professional interest. But does it really matter?

Next thing I remember is looking up to see my bed surrounded by faces. They were smiling faces, but smiles that masked a hidden emotion—or at least an emotion the owners wanted to keep hidden.

I only ever seemed to be looking up, though. I couldn’t work out why; it was all very confusing.

My dad’s face sometimes got in the way of my view of the ceiling, and sometimes it was my sister’s. My aunts’ faces were often blocking the white ceiling tiles, and other times it was my grandparents’ faces.

I’m not sure how long it was before my friends’ faces started to appear. I figure it must have been a couple days after my family appeared, though, as it’s family only at first, right? If you’re an intensive care doctor or nurse, you might be either nodding your head or shaking it as you read this, but that’s not of any help to me right now.

More and more different friends’ faces appeared. It seemed to me that I might not have seen some faces as recently as I had seen others, but I was pleased to see everyone either way.

I slowly became more coherent and aware of what was going on around me even if I couldn’t really communicate. I didn’t know why I couldn’t exactly, but I couldn’t speak. In fact, I couldn’t even attempt to speak, which was weird. I could only properly move my eyes and eyelids, whilst I could move my hands and legs only a bit. Being able to close my eyes was convenient for when the light was a bit too bright, perhaps, but it didn’t exactly leave me a decent method of communication.

The fog started to clear a little. Who knows how long I’d been out after the second time I awoke? It could have been days. It could have been weeks, I didn’t know. However long it had been, though, I was finally able to understand and absorb what the nurse was telling me for the first time.

I had been in a car accident. And I was in intensive care. I questioned the car accident in my mind as I had no recollection of one, but I figured she was telling me the truth about the hospital. After all, there were nurses and doctors… tubes, beeping—lots of beeping, lots of tubes. I was poked and prodded often, too, so at least that made sense.

I’ll soon work out what happened to me, and put this nurse right. Car accident? Pfft! I would remember that surely . . .

Again I fell asleep and have no idea for how long.

Oh? Thea’s parents. That’s really nice. Ooooh, Thea. Where’s Thea? Fuck, I can’t ask them where she is. I know, I’ll mark a ‘T’ with my finger . . . wherever my hand is and whatever it’s resting on . . . yeah, good idea.

They looked down at my hand’s movement and just nodded and smiled. Their eyes looked sad and worried though.

But good, she’s okay. Its daytime. She’s at work. She works in Ernest Jones. Yeah, she’ll be here after work.

Nap time.

Paul’s face appeared—my friend and manager from Carphone. ‘Hello, big boy. How are you doing?’ I squeezed his hand, which he’d placed in my open palm. I still couldn’t look down to see for some reason.

Looking back, and knowing Paul, he would have loved to have joked that I hadn’t just squeezed his hand but his cock, but he didn’t make the joke. A missed opportunity for a brilliant gag, but perhaps it wasn’t an appropriate time for such a hilarious joke. The next time I speak to him I’ll bring this up and say that, if I’d had my wits about me and the ability to talk at the time, I would have said, ‘That better not be your cock, big boy’.

Wait a second. That’s it. There was no car accident. That fucker pushed me off a stool in the stockroom in a sneaky, cheap, and swift attack. The cheeky prick. I’ll get him back for that! I remember he wrestled me on the floor a bit, but did the fucker put me in hospital? Surely not. I would have kicked his ass! Hahaha!

But I was in hospital. I couldn’t really move anything, and I couldn’t talk. Okay this is really weird now.

There is a big blank after this. I guess I was asleep. I was really, really tired all of the time. I just wanted to sleep.

Different friends came and went. I gave everyone big smiles—or tried to anyway. My efforts may have made my face smile. I don’t know. Considering I couldn’t feel my mouth let alone move it, I was happy enough with the attempt. But I did at least squeeze everyone’s hand really hard. Yeah, a big hand squeeze. That tells people I’m okay.

Either my dad or my sister was always there though. They got lots of hand squeezes. So did my aunts and Nan and Bap.

I wish these nurses would stop poking me, though. Jesus!

‘Okay, Andrew, we’re going to take your ventilator out.’

What the fuck?

A nurse stood on either side of the bed. One of them reached for my face. I couldn’t resist. I still couldn’t move. They started pulling from inside my throat, which was confusing as their arms weren’t in there!

Hang on a minute. I’m gagging. What the fuck is going on? Okay, what the fuck? This fucking hurts, and I’m fucking gagging now!

A long plastic tube came into my vision, and the gagging stopped, but my throat felt really scratched, and my jaw hurt all of a sudden.

Ah, good. More sleep.

The next time I woke up, I heard myself groan for the first time in what seemed like ages, but I had at least felt like groaning all that time. My dad and sister were by my bed. I felt my jaw move. I wonder if I can talk?

‘Th…’

‘She’s okay.’

‘Th…’

‘She’s okay, Andrew.’

Okay. Good. She’s okay. But where is she? Why isn’t she here? Fucking Ernest Jones. I’m in fucking hospital, and I want to see her. Why doesn’t she want to see me?

I had some more sleep. Sleep was good. It helped.

Karl was standing at the foot of the bed. Ooooh, Karl. I’m exhausted. Sleep for me.

Then Karl transformed into Tom. Ooooh, Tom. Tom looked funny, as if he wanted to say something but couldn’t. Is his throat all right? ‘How are you doing?’

‘O… ugh… o… kay. Thank you.’ Fuck, man, I really should stop going to sleep, but I literally can’t help it.

The next time I woke up properly my throat felt a bit better and my dad was beside my bed. It looked late—really late. I tried to smile. He looked down at me, and I tried to say ‘Thea,’ but he talked over me before I’d even managed to get the first sound out. ‘She’s okay. Don’t worry.’

Even more sleep.

When I woke it was daytime, and my dad was still there, sitting in the same chair, in the same clothes, with the same look on his face. He looked tired, as if he hadn’t been sleeping. I had been sleeping lots. Why hadn’t he? My throat was feeling slightly better again though. ‘The… Thea?’

‘Yeh. She’s okay. Don’t worry.’

‘Wh—where is she?’

‘She’s at work. It’s the afternoon. She’s working.’

‘But I want to see her.’

‘I know.’

‘I’m calling her. Bring me a phone.’

‘You can’t phone her at work.’

My mood changed, I wanted to see my baby and who the fuck was Ernest Jones to stop that from happening? ‘I fucking can. I’ll tell them to let her come to see me because I’m in fucking hospital.’

My dad’s face went red. I thought he might be angry, but his eyes glistened and his lip trembled. ‘Andrew, she didn’t make it. She’s not here’.

That’s it. I was out. Fuck knows for how long. There have been countless times over the last six and half years when I have wished I hadn’t had woken back up. It’s fair to say that the majority of those times were in the first year after I got out of hospital. Each year that has gone past, I suppose that number has dwindled. It’s been peaks and troughs. Sometimes I’ve wished I wasn’t here more often than others. As a general rule, if there were a line graph of the number of times against a timescale, it would resemble the country’s recent economic slide into recession.

When I woke up again, I felt completely numb—my entire body and mind. I couldn’t speak. My throat was fine. I didn’t want to speak. I can’t even be sure of how long I didn’t speak or how long I was out. All I know is the next words that came out of my mouth were again to my dad. He was sitting in the same chair. He didn’t look as if he had slept no matter how much time had passed. ‘Was I driving?’

‘No’.

I suppose that, if I’d had time to feel any emotion, I would have felt an instant relief, an instant release of anxiety and any subconscious questionable guilt that I may have had. But there was no time. It was as if a wave had knocked me unconscious again.

Whenever I next opened my eyes, I saw my friend Hannah. Hannah was my good friend Leo’s girlfriend and a good friend of mine too. She was, and is still, one of my closest girlfriends. She was holding my hand and looked teary. It was obviously late. She was there by herself. No one else appeared to be around. With pursed lips she forced a tiny knowing smile with only the corners of her mouth. Her lips were pressed tight. It was a look that said, ‘I know its bad, but it’ll be okay.’ It was reassuring. She is a good girl.

I woke the next morning. Karl was back at my bedside, as was my dad. ‘Let’s go for a ride, bro!’ said Karl. Karl was holding the handles of a wheelchair. There was a male nurse by his side. He was quite ‘fabulous’ but that didn’t hide the fact he was obviously concerned about me being thrown around in that wheelchair.

‘Let’s go!’

Karl whizzed me around the hospital corridors in this wheelchair and out through an external electric glass door. I had no idea how long it had been since I’d been outside. It felt good, though. The poor nurse walked briskly alongside us, and as Karl picked up the pace, his hips started to wiggle. The nurse’s not Karl’s. ‘Pleeeeaase slow down,’ he begged. ‘Your friend is still very sick.’

I wanted him to go faster. I wanted him to keep on pushing. I didn’t know where, but I didn’t want the nurse to keep up with us. I wanted to escape.

Maybe it had all been a bad dream and Karl was rescuing me, leading me away from it. Maybe when I next woke up things would be different.

With all the excitement and fresh air, I was hit for six by sleep again. I was in good hands, though. Karl was a military man after all.

I woke back in my hospital bed. I don’t know if anyone was around. I don’t think there was. There certainly wasn’t anyone around my bedside like normal, and I needed to take a leak for the first time in I couldn’t remember how long. I could vaguely recall a nurse talking about a catheter being removed before I woke up and saw Karl inviting me on a road trip.

Either way, all of a sudden I needed a piss. It was late though—night-time obviously—but all the nurses were rushing around. I thought maybe they were admitting someone who was in a bad way. I hoped the person was all right whoever it was. I certainly wouldn’t disturb the nurses. Someone obviously needed their help more than I did; after all, I only needed a piss. There was probably a toilet around somewhere.

I swung my legs off the side of the bed—or at least I tried to. I became properly aware for the first time that my physical restrictions were caused by a foreign object, and not just an inability to move anything. That’s right, the nurse said something about my neck and a halo frame or something. Never mind, no big deal.

My bare feet were very close to the floor now anyway, and after a little shuffle off the bed, I could feel the cold floor on the soles of my bare feet. Easy. Slowly I eased my weight onto my feet for the first time in what I later learned had been three weeks. I had been in a level-four coma for nineteen days. My drifting in and out of consciousness had taken place over a seventy-two-hour period or so.

I pushed even more weight onto my feet and staggered slightly. My legs didn’t seem to want to take the weight, but the nurses were all busy, and I still needed that piss. It wasn’t going to go away, and I was sure I could see a toilet sign only a short distance away. I shuffled towards the sign. I felt so weak. The effort required to keep myself upright—from falling—was immense. I crashed into and through the toilet door. My momentum spun me around, and my bare arse landed on the toilet seat. The judges would have definitely awarded me an eight for style, possibly even a nine after taking into consideration the nonchalance—despite the difficulty—of the manoeuvre. The joke was on them, it had been out-of-control mayhem masquerading as nonchalance.

I drained my lettuce and flushed. I probably didn’t bother with washing my hands. I’ll be honest. I was more concerned with how the fuck was I going to get back to my bed considering I was now absolutely physically exhausted.

It just now occurred to me that, as I staggered back to my bed, my bare, hairy arse was on display through my open gown. The nurses definitely weren’t paid enough to have to deal with that!

Suddenly, a nurse spun around in front of me as she looked in the direction of the sound of the closing bathroom door. She was obviously looking for me. I was in trouble. ‘What are you doing out of bed! Why didn’t you call us?’ She stood by my side and helped support my swaggering body.

‘You were busy’

‘That doesn’t matter. Let’s get you back into bed. You call us next time! That’s what your buzzer is for, okay?’

‘Sorry.’

‘Don’t be silly. We were worried about you. You disappeared.’

‘I needed the toilet, and my cathy thingy was gone.’

‘Yes, that was removed earlier, remember?’

‘Not really…’

She helped me hop back into bed and tucked me in, placing my buzzer in my hand. ‘You call us if you need us, okay?’

‘Okay… sorry.’

‘Don’t be silly. You go to sleep.’

And I did.

Kidulthood

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Yes that’s a name of a pretty good English film about a bunch of teenagers in London, but I like the title, so I am borrowing it.

My mother is the oldest of the three daughters of my Nan, who is a London girl, and my Bapoo. Pappous is Greek for grandfather. It’s pronounced ‘pa-POOH’, but I call my grandfather Bapoo, I could never pronounce it properly. He is Greek Cypriot and moved to England fifty-odd years ago to work as a barber and a mechanic. My Nan is my Nan. I don’t know what she did. If it has come up in conversation over the years, I can’t remember. Sorry, Nan. Maybe I’ll e-mail you and ask. Well, I would e-mail, but you don’t have an e-mail address, unsurprisingly.

Why don’t I just call her you might be thinking. The simple answer is, I am writing this now whilst in Sydney, Australia, and my Nan is back in Cornwall in the southwest of England.

So, anyhow, my mum was five years older than Debbie, who was three years older than the littlest sister, Lisa.

Being the daughter of a Greek man in London wasn’t easy for the woman I came to call ‘Mother’, supposedly. Bap was apparently quite strict about boys and curfews, understandably so too. He was brought up Greek Orthodox in Cyprus but came to London in his early twenties.

My Nan is a plump ‘Laandan’ gal and possesses a ‘bit of a mouth on her’. She freely admits this, and usually has a bloody good laugh over it. I guess she’s where I get my ‘eyebrow raising’ laugh from. I don’t know how they met, or how they hooked up, but I’m told that Bap chased her around for ages trying to woo her, as she was ‘a hot piece of ass’ back in the day. As he was a pretty slick Greek boy and a rather handsome devil at that, I’m sure he didn’t have to try too hard. As an added plus, he was a bit of a bad boy. He was into motorbikes and grease, and he smoked ‘rollups’—all the usual James Dean stuff that used to (and still does) get girls’ engines running.

Bap worked as a mechanic. He loved cars. As a little boy growing up, I would always be wowed by his stories of racing cars around. One story in particular comes to mind. He says he once drove a rear-wheel-drive Corvette down the street having to use the street lamps at the side of the road to navigate as the nose was pointing skywards like a dragster. As a little boy, to me that was a trick that only Superman could do. He also says he used to fix the Krays’ cars for them, and I have no reason to doubt him. (The Kray twins were famous British gangsters of the 1950s and 1960s.) My Bap is a legend.

My Nan hasn’t told me much about her youth at all. To be fair, I remember she would always talk to my mum and sister when we visited them when I was a kid, and I would mostly just sit in awe of Bap and his stories.

Nan and Bap’s place was on the ground floor of a council house block in Southgate, London. Obviously it was a bit rough, but I was always so excited to visit them as it was fun, exciting, and I loved them both lots.

My Aunties Debbie and Lisa also still lived with them, as they were quite a bit younger than my mum. ‘Mother’ had me when she was twenty, so my aunts were fifteen and roughly thirteen years older than I respectively and were really good fun to play with. They made a huge fuss over their little nephew and niece.

That’s their brief background stories sorted. Now I can carry on with my story.

When ‘Mother’ was eighteen they all holidayed in Cornwall together and stayed in a farmhouse on the farm on which my dad worked. My dad was eight years older than ‘Mother’ and lived in a caravan on the farm. At some point during the holiday they obviously got it on and as ‘Mother’ wasn’t in a hurry to return to London. They eloped and were married soon after.

Going from a council estate in London to a caravan on a farm in Cornwall was probably more of a culture shock to ‘Mother’ than she imagined it would be. They got married when she was still only eighteen, and I came along shortly after that.

I was a big baby when I was born. Rumour has it that the doctors had to use forceps to get me out of there because I had a massive head. This makes me smile now. It may well have been pre-emptive payback on my part. Although, now that I think about it like that, I wonder if she could well have harboured a grudge for thirteen years until she could get her revenge. I’ll come to that in a bit.

Gemma came along twenty-two months later, so then it was the four of us. We moved into a farmhouse on another farm where Dad had gotten his next job. He always tried to better the home life for his young family. Ironically, at the time he didn’t think he could bring up two children in a small caravan.

I don’t know the exact ins and outs of my childhood—where we moved and when. It doesn’t really matter. I have read enough autobiographies that have bored me to tears to realize that it’s bloody dull when the author prattles on and on about a childhood that no one could give a fuck about.

My dad was a ridiculously hard worker—eighteen-hour days and six or seven days a week were not uncommon, and they still only paid peanuts so he would continually seek out ‘better’ jobs so that he could provide a better for his family. We moved around the south of the country, but I can’t remember much of anything about it really until I was around seven. It was at this time that Dad decided he’d had enough of farming, and the eighteen-hour days rooting around in cow shit for the pittance that went with it.

We moved to Surrey where he got himself a milk round business. He was still up at the crack of dawn every day, usually in the cold and pissing down rain, but this time he wouldn’t have his arm up to the shoulder in some cow’s arse. He saved that until he got back home and saw ‘Mother’. I joke. I have no idea of their sex life.

Either way, he was still up early and working long, hard hours in the cold and wet, although this time it was for himself rather than a landowner. He was also making better money, and that provided us with a fairly comfortable rented bungalow in a nice village in Surrey.

It’s at this time that my memory of my youth begins to kick in properly. I went to a middle school in Dorking, Surrey. Again, I wont bore you with trivial guff. It should all be pretty standard stuff