“Up…… ‘then down”!

‘UP……….then DOWN’

“Get out of the way, I’m going to throw it”!

I knew from whom this voice came, despite the words sounding unusually strained and ‘slightly distorted’ with both desperation and urgency, but I still had to quickly turn and look to clarify that my thoughts were correct, and they were from my elder brother and the object, that he was unconvincingly holding high above his head, was a large and obviously heavy large rock and he was, apparently, going to ‘throw it in the stream’! The big rock previously lay discarded, amongst others in a pile below a crumbling stone wall.

We had been sent out to play from our very small and minimal dwelling, which was a caravan that was really made for two people, but it now accommodated six people, ‘all-be-it’ that four of them were infants and one of those was still in a ‘carry-cot’! We were temporarily “without a father” and had recently vacated a very large and superior home in Surrey and escaping from this tiny caravan was a mutual necessity! So, we were always very dependent on dry weather, because staying inside that tiny caravan limited your entertainment options, which were either watching the portable black and white television or sleeping! I hadn’t yet started a school and couldn’t read and all of my games were in ‘storage’, which had been organised with the removal company!

I was playing alongside my eldest brother by the side of the stream that ran parallel with the edge of this grassy field, but our game would be temporarily interrupted by a sudden and desperate bellowing and this request was instantly repeated - “Get out of the way, I’m about to throw it”! My elder brother’s little skinny legs were turning inwards and they were trembling with the weight and support required to hold this big rock; “Where are you aiming for”? I asked, expecting to hear an unlikely aim, and I wondered why it should affect us?

I climbed the river bank and slowly approached him, to question further his ludicrous ambition- “Where are you hoping to throw that”? I asked with mocking disbelief,

”In that river ‘over there”, and I looked in both disbelief and concern because ‘that river over there’(where we were playing) was actually about 40 feet away, but he repeated this ‘far-fetched’ and hopeful/foolish claim and (“unbeknown to me”)was eager to ‘prove me wrong’! There was a slight lack of confidence in his ‘self-believed bionic power’ AND he was right to secretly have this doubt because it would have been an achievement beyond the ‘World’s Strongest Man’ let-alone’ a 6year old boy!

”Don’t be silly”, I said, rather annoyed that he had interrupted our game with this foolish claim …. “You’ll get nowhere near it” I said with both frustration and despair and I was angrily returning to my own game, that my eldest brother and I were previously involved with, when I heard the exaggerated sound of a strained lift and I presumed that my brother was throwing the rock to the floor with a frustrated annoyance but he had obviously and disappointingly ignored my words and persisted with his bold and foolish claim of trying to reach the stream!

“What happened next would dramatically affect and alter my life”!

I thought that I had walked too far away from my brother now to be threatened by this heavy and jagged rock, but I would be painfully proven wrong, because it landed very firmly on the back of my head!!!

I instantly saw red and could see nothing else, I was temporarily blinded and was very gradually losing consciousness! I honestly thought that the red, that I saw ‘before my eyes’, was blood from a cut to the back of my head that ran down my face, and I didn’t think about the proximity of the cut or that likelihood for many many years, but its warning was quite a regular and sometimes embarrassing occurrence in the form of migraines, that could be very violent with sickness and crippling headaches that only a darkened quiet room, with headache tablets, could aid!

‘Anyway, I digress’ and my eldest brother helped me to stagger back to our little caravan and I went straight to our shared bed and instantly fell asleep!

When I awoke on the following morning I was, apparently, like ‘a little drunkard’ who was staggering around our little caravan, and my mum was concerned enough to immediately order a taxi to take us to the local hospital to investigate this injury further!

We were now in the early years of the 1970’s(possibly 1976?) and the technology and the development of the NHS’s equipment in our local town was adequate, but not advanced, and although I had some close examinations and observations, I don’t ever recall going into a CAT scanner to examine further the possibility of any weaknesses or faults!

I was eventually released from hospital and I almost instantly ended-up back in there because I ran straight across the busy main road to run into my stepdads open arms and narrowly avoided being knocked over! I also received further good news that our home now was not a caravan anymore and, instead it was a house!

It was ‘all fun and games’, but I didn’t know the game that I was playing, but at that precise moment I was just enjoying the fun!

Our new and solid home was a rented old farmhouse that seemed very large and a place that we could proudly call home! The walk to and from my primary school was, thankfully, much closer, which I was instantly pleased about!

My years at Primary School were regularly hindered by violent migraine headaches, which happened regularly during the warmer summer months, and the ‘blinding’ sunshine, that constantly made me squint, would be the culprit to start and increase the agony of these headaches and severe sickness would inevitably follow! “I was beginning to really detest the summer”!

This annoying yearly cycle of migraines mostly being active in the summer months was a feared and embarrassingly inconvenient occurrence that would embarrassingly see me as “a collapsed and pathetic sick kid” that could regularly be seen lying next to a big puddle of sick!

These yearly embarrassments stopped after many painful years, and I just related them with ‘part of growing up’! I was probably about 15 or 16 when they started to become less frequent, and I was probably about 18 when they became very rare?

It wasn’t until I had finished with school and college and had finally got a job that I would feel and suffer the disabling consequences of the initial head injury, because my blood pressure rose and burst the weakened vein in my brain and I suffered, a ‘near fatal’, brain haemorrhage that had exposed and burst through that weakened vein in the brain!

I was, initially, in a coma and I wasn’t expected to live through the night, but after a month in a coma and many more months of hospital life with different therapies(“to gain an audible speech, relearn how to read, eat and to wash and dress myself”) I was finally allowed to return to my new home, which now needed to be adapted for wheelchair use and accessibility, because, ‘try as I might’, the luxury of walking unaided again was beyond my ability!

“Throughout the many many years since surviving this rare haemorrhage I have often compared this ordeal with a game, and ‘that game’ is ‘Snakes and Ladders’ (‘a board game with approximately 64 squares on it, that is decorated with many long or short snakes and many long or short ladders, and you roll a dice to determine your movements up or down the board and if you land on a ladder you can climb upwards and accelerate your movement BUT if you should land on a snake you slide downward and, sometimes life, especially this hospital life, can be compared with the game of ‘Snakes and Ladders’!

Life can be ‘fun and games’ if you want it to be! The situation seemed dire but I refused to give-up and I eventually regained a recognisable voice to socialise with the other patients, who, despite their old age, could be inspirational and they provided the fun in this game of life!