Pain and fatigue ebb and flow. You don't know how you will be from one day to the next, take as much rest as you can. On Boxing Day, you leave the house, go for a long walk in the cold air, supported by H and your mum.
You have to remind yourself that you weren't always like this. Weren't always puffy faced from steroids, reliant on endless painkillers, a terminal case being slowly managed toward the exit. Before all this, you took your chances, lived a little.
I wrote the following in 1995, long before I met my wonderful wife.
On your last day in Paris you buy an English newspaper, trot down into the Metro station. It was the last day you would see her. You take a seat, open the paper. Britain, the header read, the West Trial. Reading the article makes you feel a little sick. Then, your stop.
You're late, half an hour. Meet on the platform she'd said. You glance around, through the bodies streaming towards the exit. The crowd passes, and you wander over to her. You couldn't get the Wests out of your head, but down there in the brilliant light of the tube station, you couldn't imagine such darkness.
You're late she says, pretending to tell you off. Has she seen this about England? She'd rather talk about something else. You can understand that. She takes you lightly by the hand and leads you through the Chinese Quarter. In the lift, as though to hammer home the point that yes, you really are in a French Arthouse movie, she says - Embrasse moi and it all goes a bit
At her grandmothers apartment, you kiss, and when she slips out of the room for a moment, you think, how could these two things exist in the same world - the Wests and what they had done, and this day.
Afterwards, you lay there and want to stay that way for ever. In an old woman's flat with old woman's things. A thought tries to pass through your mind, but it won't form properly. It's something like, funny how and where we find solace. But that wasn't it. Not exactly.
You have to remind yourself that you weren't always like this. Weren't always puffy faced from steroids, reliant on endless painkillers, a terminal case being slowly managed toward the exit. Before all this, you took your chances, lived a little.
I wrote the following in 1995, long before I met my wonderful wife.
On your last day in Paris you buy an English newspaper, trot down into the Metro station. It was the last day you would see her. You take a seat, open the paper. Britain, the header read, the West Trial. Reading the article makes you feel a little sick. Then, your stop.
You're late, half an hour. Meet on the platform she'd said. You glance around, through the bodies streaming towards the exit. The crowd passes, and you wander over to her. You couldn't get the Wests out of your head, but down there in the brilliant light of the tube station, you couldn't imagine such darkness.
You're late she says, pretending to tell you off. Has she seen this about England? She'd rather talk about something else. You can understand that. She takes you lightly by the hand and leads you through the Chinese Quarter. In the lift, as though to hammer home the point that yes, you really are in a French Arthouse movie, she says - Embrasse moi and it all goes a bit
At her grandmothers apartment, you kiss, and when she slips out of the room for a moment, you think, how could these two things exist in the same world - the Wests and what they had done, and this day.
Afterwards, you lay there and want to stay that way for ever. In an old woman's flat with old woman's things. A thought tries to pass through your mind, but it won't form properly. It's something like, funny how and where we find solace. But that wasn't it. Not exactly.
