A chink of light

There was a news item recently that really upset me and I can't stop thinking about it.  A young girl went to a wine bar to celebrate her 18th birthday and drank a cocktail that was concocted using liquid nitrogen; a few hours later in terrible pain she was rushed to the hospital where she was told they had to remove her stomach or she would die.  I can't begin to comprehend what that must feel like for her, because her life will now be changed forever in a really profound way, and all because of a drink!  I have personal experience now of abdominal surgery, and I can tell you it's bloody painful, and like her I had no choice; if I hadn't had that operation I wouldn't be here now.  But what she is going to have to endure is way beyond anything I went through, and the consequences for her mean that she will never be able to function normally again; life can so cruel sometimes, but stuff like this shouldn't have happened to a little girl; because that is what she is - a little girl just turned eighteen, studying at sixth form with the rest of her life before her, and it is so tragic and unfair, and all because someone had the bright idea of constructing a colourful alcoholic cocktail that foamed and bubbled, to entice young people to drink.  I know now just how important a healthy gut is and how devastating it is for some people when cancer or other illnesses affect the stomach.  From the day I was informed of my cancer I never cried; I just for some reason apologised relentlessly to my wife, Sarah, because I somehow felt I was letting her down; worrying how she'd cope if I didn't come through it and all that kind of stuff.  And all through the pain and indignity of the whole medical process I somehow held it together.  But what affected me more than anything was seeing other patients in the ward who were really suffering much more than me; hearing them cry out in pain, clamping my hands over my ears as a doctor was breaking the bad news to a guy in the next bed that his illness was terminal, watching people struggle with the reality of having to face the rest of their lives with a bag stuck to their side.  But one guy in particular, called John really got to me; early twenties, he was a handsome kid, though terribly thin because he had had the whole of his large intestine removed and was in constant pain.  Every day his beautiful young wife whom he had just married would come and sit by him, stroking his forehead as he slipped into a welcome torpor as the morphine hit him - and believe me after a few hours of that kind of pain you long for that morphine shot.  He had been in hospital for a month, and things kept going wrong for him; constant emergencies where he would be rushed back into surgery and they would cut away yet another piece of his stomach.  He had a stoma, which he would have to cope with for the rest of his life, and many other complications that I won't go into; needless to say he was suffering a great deal.  I got to know him quite well, and we'd talk about stuff, football mostly; especially as we were both West Brom supporters, and one day after spending hour after hour vomiting up green bile, struggling to breath through his pain, he declared - "I just want a chink of light; just want to know that things'll get better than this one day... just a chink of light."  That stuck with me and always will, because it sort of summed up what we were all looking for in that hospital ward - a chink of light to signify we were on the mend and might one day recover and get back to our loved ones.  When I did eventually come home, frail and wasted and weighing less that eight stone, I sat on the sofa with Sarah and Lucy, not quite believing I was back, feeling somewhat disorientated and shell-shocked, and Lucy asked me what it had been like, and so I began to relate various stories about my treatment and of the other patients in there, and then I told her about John and how badly he was suffering and suddenly and for the first time since my diagnosis I found myself weeping inconsolably, sobbing and choking just remembering the poor guy and how fate had torn his life to shreds.    I find it strange that when some people learn that you have had bowel cancer one of the first questions they ask is "have you got a bag?"  What's that about?  Why do they want to know?  What business is it of theirs anyway?  It so happens that I escaped that particular trauma, but I now know people who do have to cope with it, and I think they're really brave, and I know that most of them would prefer to keep that piece of information to themselves, because why would you want to discuss something so personal with anyone other than your family?  I have always felt uncomfortable when someone jokes about disability, and the colostomy bag has always been a target for a cheap laugh - well you never know one day you or someone close to you might just find themselves having to carry one around stuck to their abdomen, then I think the reality of having to live with 'a bag' may just make those jokes feel rather unpleasant and tasteless.

And now I find myself crying for a person I don't even know - a young girl for whom a chance event has left her forever dependent on medical help; her stomach has gone and I don't need to point out what that would mean to a young woman just beginning her journey into adulthood; the implications are just too horrible to contemplate, but the poor soul will have to learn to live life in a very different way from here on.  God damn any fool who would take smallest risk with such a young life by selling them something so inherently risky as a drink that is made using liquid nitrogen!  The alcohol industry sees our young people as potential consumers, and something like this is the consequence of their cavalier attitude when trying to reel them in.  I hope that she finds her chink of light eventually, but my God the poor girl has got a momentous task in front of her. 

Glorious 9th

Some work at last!  Just a few days acting, some radio drama for the BBC at the Mailbox in Birmingham, but it's the first booking for ages and I'm anxious to get back to it.  Also good to meet up with fellow performers; I'm not really very good at the 'networking stuff' and consequently don't bother attending some of the events where those things happen, so I tend to lose touch a bit with what's going on locally, including a few castings.  Some great dramatic scenes for me though playing the villain again - I love it!  I bumped into an old friend while I was there - the producer Rosemary Watts, who very kindly arranged the choir music in my radio play A Miracle In No Man's Land some years ago.  She sings in a choir herself, and so I asked if she had anything coming up, and it turned out that her choir was at Symphony Hall that very evening performing in Beethoven's 9th Symphony, conducted by Andris Nelsons, and Rosemary thought there might be a chance of picking up a return ticket or two if I turned up early enough.  I love Beethoven, and the 9th has always been a piece of music I've wanted to hear live - I knew I couldn't miss this opportunity, so I rang Sarah and Lucy: they hopped on a train and I met up with them in town following my recording and we hung around the box office for absolutely ages waiting for returns... but they were all too expensive, we could only afford the cheap seats.  However after a while someone took pity and sold me a £20.00 ticket for a tenner and then another, finally just before the performance someone else turned up at the box office with a return and the woman at the booth pointed me out, saying that I had been waiting all afternoon and would he consider selling it to me; it was pretty much the best seat in the hall and way out of our financial reach, but the guy shrugged, grinned and said he could see how much I wanted to see the performance, so he didn't want anything for it - he gave me it!  And so I sat just above the orchestra and was just blown away by the whole experience.  The evening began with a short tender piece by Brahms called Nänie, which I've never heard before, but was quiet moving, the choir really hitting a poignant spot for me, lots of colour and delicate tones.  And then - the 9th!  Wow - it was incredible; I know it so well, but to actually experience it live was an event I will never forget.  Nelsons is a brilliant conductor, I couldn't take my eyes off him; he conducted the orchestra with his whole body: his face was bright with emotion, expressions changing with each bar, sometimes stern, sometimes pleading, sometimes joyous, often he would clench his baton in his fist and literally jump up and down like a mad general, the next moment he would be leaning over his score reaching into the string section as if he was pulling the music out of the instruments himself; energetic and personal summed him up - he was living the score, feeling the nuances, experiencing them and translating them into sublime sounds - amazing.  The soloists too played their parts to perfection: I was anticipating that bass voice which begins the vocal section, but when it eventually came and Georg Zeppenfeld's deep rich sound filled the hall, it took my breath away, and then of course came that intricate balance of tenor (Toby Spence), mezzo-soprano (Mihoko Fujimura) and soprano (Lucy Crowe) which just sent shivers and shudders straight through me, and then - that massive choir and the 'Ode To Joy' just erupted like a musical volcano, and together with the titanic orchestra of the CBSO it eventually reached Beethoven's amazing climax.  It's the first time I have heard the 9th other than on a recording, but I don't think it has ever or will be played as well again; I just can't imagine it.  I can't stop reliving the whole evening, the music is still ringing in my head - I've even been dreaming about it - one of those things you should do before you die has now been ticked of my list.  Thank you Andris Nelsons and the CBSO and the generous stranger who gave me his ticket...  I'm not bothered if I ever hear it played live again, that will do for me.

Dolphin and chips

Had a holiday at last, just a week in Wales (all we could afford) with Sarah and Lucy and some friends; good stuff though - lots of great walking, some spectacular coastal paths along steep cliffs around Cardigan Bay and thereabouts, checking out the local wildlife, which includes dolphins and seals too!  Also visited Cors Caron nature reserve, an amazing landscape of raised peat bog that unfortunately is so rare now... and it was breathtakingly beautiful: deep pools flanked by reed beds, cotton grass and wild flowers.  We had to go back a few times because it was so very unique, walking through it was almost like stepping back through time; our landscape was once liberally peppered with such sites, remote and teeming with wildlife.  Sadly Britain's wetlands have all but disappeared, and recently we have government ministers openly discussing developing the greenbelt, the last peaceful refuge for town dwellers.  But once something like that is gone it's gone forever, and I can't help wondering why the countryside isn't given more protection, because without that bolt hole to escape to from the pressures of work and everyday life what do we have left?  A conflagration of towns, a massive road network and shopping malls that pretty much look the same wherever you happen to be.  Anyway, I managed to recharge my batteries and put a few bad memories behind me for a while, breathe in some good Welsh air and ate some fantastic fish and chips too while watching harbour porpoises dip and dive in Newquay harbour... I really like fish and chips.

Doctor Rock!

Healing slowly, but still have blood tests ahead.  In the meantime I've been working on getting fit again and have been out running; just between four and five miles at the moment, but a lot of it uphill because you can't really avoid that living in Malvern!  I used to go running regularly with the Malvern Hash Harriers - a running club that meets at a country pub somewhere different every week; we all then run a circular route, mostly across country and often through some tough terrain, but always ending at the same pub for a pint and a bite to eat; good fun, but it clashes with my band rehearsal night, so unfortunately I had to make a choice.  It's been good to be to hanging out with the band again though, and it's one thing that I was looking forward to getting back to when I was recovering in hospital.  In fact the day before I went into hospital we had a band rehearsal and recording session, and rather than spend the night at home, fretting and thinking the worst I decided to go - a good decision; positive adrenalin, although telling the guys I wouldn't be around for a while was hard... they knew something was up though, because I hadn't been in the pub with them for a while.  We're called The Dirty Harry Band and I'm the lead vocalist, we play mainly rock standards I guess - a mixture of stuff that includes Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Foo Fighters, etc. and we're always adding to the list.  We played a private party recently, which was my first chance to perform after my op: a gig in a beautiful massive garden on a fantastic sunny day; loads of people dancing and whooping for more - we was good!  And this last weekend we did a couple of gigs for the 'Malvern Rocks' festival in aid of Acorns - the local children's hospice; a cause given what I've been through recently that's important to me.   It's great to be up on stage again, jumping around, screaming my head off and generally acting like a demented kid half my age; I couldn't quite imagine it a few months ago - just what the doctor ordered really!  

And God said let there be particles

We learnt last week that the Higgs Boson particle is no longer so illusive - it actually exists.  It really is a momentous discovery and from here on the science of quantum physics is going to become very interesting, because this is the starting pistol that will send scientists flying off in all sorts of directions to find its brother and sister particles, and from there perhaps make discoveries that will reveal the secrets of creation and the very fabric of existence.  For me there is something almost spiritual about this stuff; the mystical quality of the quantum world and its various strange properties: particles that seemingly blink in and out of existence, the many peculiar dimensions of space and time, the fact that there may even be other universes out there; somehow these anomalies have a deep significance; perhaps because of the way it tells us everything in the universe is somehow connected.  I suppose the Higgs Boson field is a kind of cake mixture that binds everything together - you, me, the earth we stand on, the very air we breathe and the stars and planets and myriads of galaxies spinning away out there.  I don't feel either that there has to be a conflict of interest between religion and science when it comes these kind of revelations, after all belief is personal to each individual and I feel the more we know about the world around us the closer it can bring us to a truth, whether its a bald scientific fact or a deeper connection with your God (whoever he or she may be).  Anyway I believe the more we know about the universe we all share, the more enriched our lives are; knowledge after all is wisdom.  Time for a joke I think: 'The Higgs Boson walks into a church.  The priest says we don't allow Higgs Boson's in here.  The Higgs Boson says, but without me how can you have mass?'

Jazz cred

I heard over the weekend that Andy Hamilton, saxophonist and elder statesman of the Birmingham Jazz scene also died recently, and while any death is a sad occasion, Andy had lived a long and fruitful life; he was 94 and had a string of albums and tributes to his name, including an MBE.  He was a great guy and I actually played trumpet in his Blue Pearl Band for a while and had a few lessons off him too.  My first lessons were literally just blowing a high C.  "You gotta blow it sweet" he told me, "ain't no point learning nothing till you can play sweet."  So I blew and blew until he reckoned I could hit that pure note; listening to Miles Davies helped too - that guy always played 'sweet and pure'.  I bumped into Andy once in a lift at BBC Pebble Mill Birmingham where he was doing an interview, and Sarah was there too, to sit it on a recording of some music for a radio play of mine.  It had been a few years since I had last seen him and played with the Blue Pearl Band, so I was dead chuffed when he recognised me and asked me how my playing was going; especially as Sarah was with me and I wanted to impress her with my jazz credentials.  I told him that I hadn't played the trumpet for ages.  "Aw, you should, man, you should - you were good!" he rather graciously replied, especially as I really wasn't half as good as the rest of the brass section in his band.  We saw him again a couple of times, including at the Symphony Hall and he always had the time to speak to me when he saw me.  An individual who proved that 'cool' has nothing to do with how old you are - he was cool right up to the end; a guy you wanted to be seen with, even at 94.

Pilgrims

We went to Henri's funeral last week at Worcester Cathedral, a special place for all of us for all sorts of reasons.  It was while I was wandering around there some years ago that I came across the grave of a medieval pilgrim whose remains had been excavated a few years earlier.  His staff, boots and cockleshell hat were on display in the crypt; the shell signifying that he had walked all the way to Santiago de Compestela and perhaps even the Holy Land; an amazing journey, particularly at that time, and his skeleton bore the marks of it; deformed and twisted by arthritis and disease - he was obviously in great pain when he died.  But whom he was and how he came to be buried in such a significant place, no one knew.  And so I invented his story; a story of a battle for true faith, which I wrote up as a radio play and was directed by Peter Lesley Wild for BBC Radio 4.  The Cathedral staff and the Dean allowed me to research priceless documents and manuscripts in their amazing medieval library, and following the success of the radio play, the Dean commissioned me to write a son et lumiere production for the Cathedral, charting the history of the place from the founding to the present day, and some time later, Peter directed the stage version of The Worcester Pilgrim in the Cathedral itself with the Cathedral choir dressed as monks, singing plainchant.  Peter and his family are neighbours of Henri and her husband Erik who came along to see the play, and that's how we got to know them.   Henri's son sings in the choir now and so their family have strong links with the building too.  And so the service in that building meant something to all of us I think, and the choir added to the poignancy of the occasion, particularly when they sang Tavener's arrangement of Blake's 'Little Lamb Who Made Thee?' - it's so tender and moving, and was one of Henri's favourite pieces of music that she chose for her funeral before she passed away.  Afterwards we went to the wake, which was held at a nearby hotel on the banks of the River Severn.  Erik knew about my surgery, because I was working at his house when I was diagnosed.  I hadn't seen him since then, and so much had happened to both of us in a very short period of time, profound and serious and tragic.  I'm lucky - I'm still here and consequently the whole day for me had a strange significance; and not one for crying, I none the less found myself constantly fighting back tears, especially when Erik, recalling the past mentioned that Henri would often sing the Velvet Underground song, 'I'm sticking with you cause I'm made out of glue' to him.  Uncannily Sarah has been singing those very same words to me too for many years, and in fact sang it softly, holding my hand while I was lying in my hospital bed, veering between intense pain and blind panic.  Henri's three children are talented folk musicians and at the end of the day, together with a local band they played jigs and reels, reminding us all of how the family are united by their love of music and art.  And placed on an easel at one side of the band was a framed photograph of Henri laughing, leaning back in a deck chair with sun hat, shades and a pint of lager in her hand, just as I remembered her on the holiday we all shared that long weekend at Cropredy Festival.  Before we left, Erik told Sarah to make sure I got well and urged me to get out there and get on with the rest of my life.  I hope the rest of my life amounts to something; and it would be great if I could rustle up a few commissions and get my work out there again, and I suppose my writing has always been about searching for some kind of meaning, making sense of this crazy planet we all share, so I hope I can find some kind of truth along the way.  I guess we're all pilgrims really, bound together on a journey that will end the same for all of us, but searching for happiness, love and some kind of fulfilment along the way.  All in all a day that reminded me of the important things in my life, not so much my work, but my daughter, family and friends, and my beautiful, beautiful wife who through sickness and health is still sticking like glue.