Walk The Black Dog

Category: Off The Bike

Sight
9th May, 2018

My Ninja 300 with Shane’s KTM 1290 Superduke, hours before I realised something was going very wrong with my vision.

I’d had a great couple of weeks. I’d just got back from visiting my Dad in Spain, along with my sister and beautiful niece (whom I had never met).

My sister and niece in Salobrena, Spain.

Yours truly in the hills of the Valle De Lecrin, Spain.

Spain had really inspired me this visit, and I dreamed of being able to take a bike to some of those pristine roads in Andalucia. Maybe next time.

A couple of weeks back home had seen the unusually long winter finally give way to rising temperatures, and the longer day allowed riding with friends after work again. I met my friend Shane for a short ride out and meal afterwards to see in the new riding season. During the ride I became aware of something in my left eye; what looked like a large vitreous floater; the kind of ghostly web that one sees occasionally, but much larger. Later on, in the pub, it came and went. I recall thinking that in a certain light it looked as if someone dressed in black was standing in my periphal vision. Due to a sense of optimism and well-entrenched morbid fear of hospitals and doctors, I thought I’d sleep on it and see how it was the next day. I wasn’t especially worried at this point.

Well, you’ve got some blood in there.

I awoke the next morning, and as soon as I sat upright that ghostly floater had turned an inky, impenetrable black. If you imagine your vision simplified as a rectangle, the bottom left-hand quarter was completely gone, replaced by a shapeless dark void.

Obviously this warranted a trip to the ER, which fortunately was just up the road. After handing over $100 (my ‘copay’) I was seen almost immediately. I described the symptoms and had to place a towel across my eyes, sit in the dark for ten minutes, and await the retinal scanner.

This machine, about the size of a coffee percolator, whirs and clicks as it locates your eye, then takes a picture. The ER doctor, a genial, middle-aged man looked at the images and said “Well, you’ve got some blood in there.” He suspected a ruptured blood vessel but was emphatic that he couldn’t say for sure. “We see about two per week. It’s common. Just not to you.” Fair enough, this was the ER, they were not going to be able to do much more. I needed to see a specialist at an eye centre as soon as possible, which as far as the ER were concerned meant the next day. There was no immediate urgency at this point; just a kind of calm hurry.

I called my local eye centre and was greeted by a receptionist with all the enthusiasm of someone that wished you were already dead. She told me they were full the next day, she’d have to ring around and would call me back (narrator: She didn’t call back). In the end I decided to call again and this time got someone useful that booked me in at a location the other side of town the next morning.

Sewickley, PA. 11th May, 1100hrs

Oh, that sounds like a retinal detachment. I hope not.

By this time, it had got worse. If I had to describe it in percentage terms, I’d estimate that around half the vision in the left eye was gone. I was scared, my family was scared, and I was starting to feel the onset of some panic. what could be wrong with me? Was it just my eye, or was something else happening?

The triage nurse was efficient, funny, and had a bedside manner that definitely needed a bit of work. She was also, as it turns out, right on the money. As I described my symptoms and she established what I could and couldn’t see by moving her hand around my field of vision, she casually uttered “Oh, that sounds like a retinal detachment. I hope not.” I could have lived without hearing the last sentence, but in hindsight (ho ho ho) I suspect she was referring to the fact this would not be a quick fix, rather than a gloomy prognosis. I was then left in the waiting room for an hour to ruminate (in an extremely anxious state, as you might expect) on what I’d been told. My eyes had some drops to dilate them, so I strained to read my phone (battery: 20%) to try and figure out just how much shit I was in, all the while sending nearly unintelligible text messages to my wife waiting outside with the kids.

Here’s Google’s card about retinal detachment, also featuring an image of an attractive woman in an art gallery, if you like that sort of thing.

When the wait was over and I saw the ophthalmologist, she was absolutely brilliant, warm-mannered and confident enough to greatly reassure me, and confirmed the triage nurse’s suspicions: It was a retinal detachment. I had three small tears at 9,11, and 2 o’clock, the most common form, known as rhegmatogenous detachment. Why? Age and plain bad luck (National Eye Institute, 2009). It would require an operation, and the Dr. told me she would be calling around to find a surgeon, and that I was not to eat anything as the operation might be that day. It was at this point I realised this was fairly serious, but the nurse and doctor confidently assured me I would be fine.

Word came I was to head to UPMC Mercy for surgery immediately. My wife, cool as a cucumber under what must have been enormously stressful conditions with two children to look after, took me there straight away.

UPMC Mercy, 1445hrs

You’re sitting there, minding your own business, and your retina just decides to go and detach itself.

I’d been lucky. I’d never had surgery. First stop was pre-surgery testing, which would typically involve obtaining blood for analysis, but actually turned out to be nothing but verifying paperwork in my case. No blood work required. Then I was admitted which was a matter of bagging my clothes and belongings, donning a gown and letting the scrubs-wearing ninjas get me ready. The surgeon and the fellow assisting him (both absolutely brilliant guys) came to see me, and he introduced himself with a jovial “You’re sitting there, minding your own business, and your retina just decides to go and detach itself.” They both examined my eye and told me the plan: A sclerical buckle, and probably a vitrectomy, due to the number of tear sites. A sclerical buckle is a small band that is fixed around the circumference of the eye like a belt (hence the name), the purpose of which is to apply pressure and help reattach the retina. Due to the offset of one of the tears, it probably would not be sufficient on its own, so a vitrectomy would be required. This involves draining the vitreous; the gel-like liquid inside the eye which maintains the spherical shape. Two precision techniques, laser and cryopexy are used to bond the torn areas of the retina to the wall of the eye. A gas is then used to form a bubble temporarily replacing the vitreous (National Eye Institute, 2009).

The surgeon marked his initials just above my left eyebrow. He described this was necessary to mitigate what is considered a ‘never event’. I’ll let you guess what…

I’d lost track of time at this point. My pupils were profoundly dilated. My watch had been removed and I could no longer read the clock above the nurse’s station. I was wheeled off to the anaesthesia area to prepare for the op. After a chat with the anaesthetist and a great deal of questions I was rolled into the operating room. An oxygen mask went on, the IV was started, and shortly after that, the lights went out.

I came round with no pain, intense nausea, and a big old bandage over my left eye. I had my face in a horseshoe-shaped pillow; until my follow up appointment the next day it would be necessary to keep my head down so the vitreous gas bubble would maintain positive pressure against the retina (Retinadoctor, 2018). The nurses were fantastic; one of them put something in my IV to relieve the nausea and it stopped in a snap. I couldn’t quite read the clock so I wasn’t sure if it was 915pm or 245am. It was the former, thankfully. My wife and kids charged into the recovery room and I felt a lot better.

The nurses helped me into my clothes and I was on my way, almost 12 hours after the day had started.

Aftermath

As I write this, it’s one week later. The follow up appointments revealed the surgery had been successful, now it was a matter of waiting for everything to heal. I feel pretty fortunate, as I never had much pain and the swelling (which was profoundly unpleasant) reduced rapidly. The vitreous gas bubble has shrunk as it is slowly absorbed and replaced by vitreous fluid; I can clearly see its circular shape in my eye. My sight isn’t quite there, it’s rather fuzzy, but it is improving, and it is all there. Best of all I have my peripheral vision back on the left side; I can drive again and I don’t feel dizzy anymore. There is a possibility of developing a cataract as a result of the vitrectomy (NCBI, 2014), which will require further surgery, but I’ll deal with that down the line. It beats being blind.

Some things fall into perspective at a time like this. One of them is, if you have a problem with your eye, don’t fuck about. I should have got it looked at immediately. It may not have changed the outcome, but it could have made things easier, and the extent of sight loss would not have been so great. I’m also fortunate to have such a great wife. We have no help, it’s just us and one or two friends. My wife looked after everything.

Life is short. One moment I was out having fun with a friend, suddenly I’m looking down the barrel of sight loss. Isn’t it amusing how many of these metaphors involve sight? I can tell you my sense of humour has had quite a workout in the last week.

I’m not dying (well, no faster than anyone else), I didn’t go blind, I’ll probably ride my bike this week. I’m pretty lucky, all told.
References
October 30, 2025
Why Scoobi Is Probably Doomed, In One Picture

UpdaTE:

March 2023: I was revising a lot of these posts from the previous WP blog and found out that Scoobi have ceased operating, as of August 2022: https://www.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh/inno/stories/profiles/2022/08/01/scoobi-shuts-down-electric-moped-operations.html

It is deeply unfortunate when any business shuts down – it’s jobs and people’s livelihoods, and even if I wasn’t enthusiastic about this scheme I’d rather they’d have at least stayed around.

These mopeds weren’t the right fit for the city, but instead we’ve got fucking hordes of these motorized scooters that are all over Oakland like a rash. The students – for the most part – seem to love them.

A Fish Out of Water

Utter madness.

I give it a very short amount of time before these are getting pushed over or vandalised by irate drivers. They’re all over the East End of the City, occupying car parking spaces. If you’ve travelled to London, Paris, Madrid or anywhere with a true multi-modal transport network you’d think this was absolutely absurd. Why don’t they use dedicated parking, or those nooks and crannies that so many cities have? Well, this is Pittsburgh.

Not Hotdog

Scoobi, in their own words:

Scoobi is a mobile application based on-demand mobility service for individuals in need of rides to their preferred destination by way of an electric scooter.

Translated, somebody has secured VC funding for a fleet of battery-powered scooters in a season-bound city that it is a textbook example of the primacy of the automobile.

I cannot think of a worse place to try this, apart from perhaps Antarctica. Somewhere with the cultural and legislative foundations like California, despite being worse for just about everything else, gets it right when it comes to two wheels. PA is still stuck in a time when two wheels means you’re either broke, a hooligan, or a dentist playing Easy Rider on a $30k Harley. Scoobi, for what it’s worth, is a great idea on paper. However, this progressive, environmentally friendly platform is in a city whose culture is heavily, but not totally (more on this later) dominated by the car. For example, here is an excerpt from the PA Driver’s Handbook:

A motorcycle is a full-size vehicle with the same privileges as any vehicle on the roadway.

Yes, dear reader. You read that correctly. And yes, these are considered motorcycles. Just roll that around in your head for a moment; savour the utter madness.

A motorcycle is a full-size vehicle
A motorcycle is a full-size vehicle
A motorcycle is a full-size vehicle
A motorcycle is a full-size vehicle
A motorcycle is a full-size vehicle
A motorcycle is a full-size vehicle

This removes the inherent advantages of a powered bike at a stroke. You can’t filter or lane-split; you are limited precisely to the same freedom as a car well over four times your size. There is zero dedicated infrastructure around the city for scooters and motorcycles. What could be a burgeoning market for deliveries and efficient commuting is stymied by totally backward legislation. Instead you wait in traffic and park as if you are a car.

The result? Individual scooters and motorcycles using a full car parking space, which – if you are familiar with Pittsburgh drivers antipathy to anything that isn’t a car – is not going to have a happy ending. Why use one? What you are you gaining?

The Exception that is BikePGH

BikePGH are little short of amazing. They have done an amazing job in cycling advocacy, and it’s fair to say they’ve successfully challenged the dominance of the car, at least in the city limits. Pittsburgh now has some dedicated bike lanes, and a growing cycling culture. It’s helped by some unusual unspoken privileges granted to cyclists; namely filtering and being able to sensibly roll some intersections; consequently cyclists that have overcome the fierce topography of Pittsburgh can get around more efficiently than anything else.

Realistically, powered bikes need their own version of BikePGH, or the roads will never be opened up in a manner which makes them truly practical. I can’t help but think Scoobi has put the proverbial cart before the horse.

October 30, 2025
Looking back

I’ve had a rough year, health wise. I’ll write about it at some point. Consequently I’ve had lots (too much?) of time to think, and as is human nature I’ve looked backwards a fair bit, so excuse the nostalgia.

I’m not sure what prompted it, but I got thinking about my college days. College in the English sense (further education, 16-18yrs) as opposed to university. My first run at university was abortive, so college took on particular meaning for me as it would become the closest I got to the 3yr university experience.

I’d been at a rural grammar school in East Yorkshire for 3 years. I absolutely despised it. It made me miserable, shattered my self-confidence, and I struggled academically. I had been in and out of schools my entire childhood due to frequent relocation around various parts of the world; I was already behind when I started secondary education and the truly shitty school environment only made things worse. My GCSE performance was predictably poor. I hated school, I didn’t want it, and it apparently didn’t want me – I was not invited to continue on to A-level study.

I moved to the city of York in summer 1990. I was to attend York Sixth Form College, but as my GCSE results were poor I had to complete a foundation year, which would mean I’d be there for three years in all, assuming I continued on to A-level; not everybody did, as there was a technical college (vocational) down the road that was also on the foundation year pipeline. Some people simply went straight into employment, with no continuing education.

The college was located on the southern edge of the city, next to the green belt. There was little beyond it but fields and the motorway. It had been operating as an FE college for 5 years, prior to which it had been a secondary school. It had around 900 students (the number surprised me. I would have guessed less than half that) and in hindsight with the benefit of years of FE/HE experience from the inside the college was small, utilitarian, and dated even by 1990 standards. And yet, it was more than the sum of its parts.

Front of the College, photographed 2005 by Neil Turner. Source

I had a lot of questions; and I was quite apprehensive. It was the first state institution I’d been to since primary school. I told myself I was worried I wouldn’t fit in, but the fear was deeper than that; would I even survive? It’s stupid and laughable now but having been in private educated for previous 8 years I picked up some completely stupid stereotypes about what to expect from state schooling. I considered it perfectly likely that on hearing my accent I’d probably get beaten up. I had an intake interview with the college principal and he seemed so kind and welcoming. Honestly, the fact he wasn’t a complete arsehole already put him ahead of much of my grammar school staff experience. It was a decent start. “See you in September!”.

I needn’t have worried about anything. My first year had some difficulties; I’d been relatively sheltered and I faced a period of shrugging a lot of that baggage off; I had to relearn who I was, loosen up a little bit, but the environment was simply amazing to me. You were treated like an adult; you could dress how you liked (within reason…) and were encouraged to be an individual. The teachers were fantastic, even though I didn’t quite recognise it at the time. The students came from everywhere, but predominantly secondary schools within York itself. A fair few of them knew one another, but generally making friends was pretty easy. The biggest eye opener was nobody gave a shit where I was from. I think I’d totally forgotten about my old school by the end of the first term. I felt like a different person. I grew my hair out, had a few illicit beers (sometimes during lunch!) and generally had a blast.

Academically I did better, but not much better. Just good enough. I was absolutely distracted by a new found social happiness and was for better or worse not worried about the future. I progressed onto A-levels, grew my hair even more, joined a band (We were shit. That wasn’t our name, but might as well have been) and just kept going. I had lost a few friends after foundation year. Some went onto apprenticeships or ‘The Tech’ down the road, but this wasn’t an impediment at college, largely due to the fundamental layout of the place.

Floor Plan. From Yorkstories blog

The building featured a large room named the ‘social area’. It was really the focal point of the block. It wasn’t huge, less than 100ft long and about half as wide, and was open plan, with moveable bench seating. They were beige and pink, as I remember. Before classes started in the morning and during lunch, it was absolutely rammed. Because of this, boundaries really broke down; it didn’t matter much what year you were in, or what you were studying, you could get to know people. There were certainly cliques, but everyone pretty much got along. It amused me how that room could change in character dependent on the phase of the timetable. During free periods it occasionally took on a monastic quality with just a handful of people in it. It wasn’t anywhere near large enough for the entire student cohort at one time, so people spilled out into the corridors and the canteen, but generally the social area or the immediate vicinity was where it was at.

Time continued its march and in June ’93 I completed my A-levels with fairly average results. A decade later after some epic fannying about, and in a different part of the country, I would end up working at an FE college. I never really made much of a connection before, but thinking about it, just being in that kind of environment felt right to me, and I’ve been working in education ever since.

York, March 2007

I’d been visiting my dad who had recently moved North again. We’d taken a trip into York on a rainy Saturday. It had been my first visit in about 8 years. He asked me if I wanted to go out along Tadcaster road, “go past the college” as he put it. Sure, why not. I already felt a bit subdued by the grey weather, and that odd feeling of knowing a place but not knowing anybody in it anymore.

It was gone. Completely gone. A huge, modern building was in its place. I was surprised to feel really quite emotional about it.

When I got back home I looked it up, emotion giving way to curiosity. It was a brand-new campus opening that September. In 1999 the College and Tech had merged. In 2005 the complex as I knew it was demolished to make way for the new buildings.

Demolition underway in late 2005. By Neil Turner. Source

It looks fantastic, and was quite necessary. I was sad to see the old building go with all those memories, but the college most definitely needed more space, not to mention the facilities offer for teaching. Like most further education colleges, there’s a strong vocational emphasis now, rather than the original purpose which was essentially a finishing school for university. The original college could only deliver so much given its origins as a modest school.

I wonder if it has a social area?

Google and a rose tint

York Sixth Form College existed largely before the digital epoch, and definitely before social media/web 2.0 (sorry) took off. There’s depressingly few photos of the place as I knew it. I have some envy for students nowadays as they have a glut of images to look back on when nostalgia descends.

I found a few on Flickr (which I’ve already posted), and some unlikely sources: Writer and journalist Sophie Heawood popped up from a Google search; I immediately recognised a photo she had posted in an article as being the bike shed/smoking area (the official one, anyway…). Those Portakabins in the background were ostensibly temporary. I suspect they remained to the bitter end. Anyway, It’s a good read, and if my arithmetic is right based on what she wrote, I may have been there during her first year. It’s a small world. A friend was also, er, kind enough to share one of me. Christ.

Askham Bar Park’n’Ride, 1993ish. Oh dear. Courtesy Stefan Berry.

Of course, not everybody feels the same way. My best friend from college was very frosty on the whole experience, and I suspect he thinks I’m mad for being remotely nostalgic about it. For most others I would think university superceded it in terms of sheer living experience. For me it was pretty special, and while I don’t wish to sound like I’m living in the past, it’s a nice place to visit once in a while.

October 30, 2025
45 pt. 2

Eyes

By March my vision had continued to deteriorate to the extent I was becoming quite afraid. I made an emergency appointment to try and figure out what the hell was going on. I got a visit with an ophthalmologist that just happened to be a retinal specialist. She is French, had only been in the country a few months, as luck would have it, she was absolutely brilliant.

Generally speaking, nost of the senior female medical professionals seemed better listeners, and thus far I wasn’t convinced I was being heard. My wife describes this as a ‘specialist trap’, in other words if a doctor can’t diagnose a problem, they become indecisive and fail to advocate for the patient. You must see the right people. The right doctor at the right time makes all the difference. In the US system in particular, you must learn to stamp your feet. It’s very hard for me, as I am a classic British never-complain type, but when you’re really sick, that attitude can kill you.

This particular specialist took complete ownership of everything, and the more difficult the case got, the more interested she was.

I had some images taken of the eye, and she immediately identified inflammation of the nerve bundle behind the retina. This is generally known as posteriour uveitis, and it’s potentially very serious.

I had to undertake a lot of tests, includng tuberculosis and syphilis,(symptomatically similar) which amused me (yes it came back negative, you shits).

I ended up being prescribed an oral steroid (prednisone) in a shock dose, tapering off as time went on.

Steroids do odd things, it felt to me like I was highly caffeinated; I couldn’t sleep, put on a load of weight (yay!) but avoided going crazy -Apparently some people don’t respond well to them.

My vision stabilised, you wouldn’t call it good but at least it wasn’t getting worse. Uveitis is idiopathic in about half of the cases. In simple terms, it it not known what causes it. At this point it was purely hypothetical that my vision problems were linked to whatever was growing under my arm, immunology is complicated and requires highly specialised domain knowledge, there isn’t a magical test for it. The test is basically ruling out everything else.

Tumour won’t wait

The mass under my arm was no longer leaking, had fully re-accumulated, and was now starting to press on surrounding tissue, which caused pain. Around 1am on the 3rd of Aoril, I realised I could no longer sleep. Heat, painkillers and and ice-packs did nothing. I remember sitting on the bed in front of the wardrobe mirror thinking that I have to do something.

My wife had a continuing concern that it might burst, which could be life-threatening. My plan was to go to the ER, perhaps they could drain it, or at least get me some pain relief.

The emergency room reception wasn’t busy, a TV played one of house-hunting shows where a couple have an incredible budget. It was set in Fareham, just a few miles from my previous home, which made me laugh at least. I got triaged quickly. The feeling of the nurses – rarely hesitant to give an opinion – was that this thing needed to be out. No shit. A young doctor told me she couldn’t do anything invasive as if it was potentially malignant as that could be harmful. so, no drain. In the meantime she saw me wincing with pain and suggested an analgesic. I got a long lecture about opioids “You’ve seen the news, right?” And then they injected something with a long name into my IV

It felt a bit like the drop off the lift-hill on a rollercoaster, I actually held on to the sides of the bed, I felt a kick of nausea, thought I might throw up, then it passed. I was now, to use the medical term, as high as fuck.

The doctor got on the phone to the surgeon (I think it was 3am) and got it done – I would be operated on the next day. My bed was moved to a remote end of the ER and I entertained myself sending Beavis and Butthead gifs to my sister.

I don’t really know why, when you’re stoned everything is funny. It had to bag up my clothes and belongings and put on a gown.

.

Dark, dreamless sleep

I got visited by the anaesthetist, who explained that I would be asleep through it all, and a reflexologist, as the surgeon was concerned my nerves were getting damaged by the tumour, but this was luckily not the case.

My abiding memory of ‘serious hospital stuff’ is the flourescent lighting scrolling overhead as you are moved on a stretcher,that and the smell of alcohol swabs and the chirp of ringing telephones. The operating room actually resembles a hotel kitchen, lots of stainless steel, aluminium, and dark tiling. Only the huge overhead lights set it apart, and large pieces of equioment that go ‘beep’. I had to move laterally onto the OR bed and had my inflatable stockings switched on, which feel a bit like a python constricting around your shins. That’s all I remember

Waking up from a general anaesthetic is abrupt, it sounds like people are shouting.You wake up with a start, It’s such a deep sleep. I wasn’t aware of any pain, but my armpit felt like it was completely gone, which was weird but also a relief. My treat was a cup of crushed ice. I hadn’t eaten in about 17hrs.

I spent a night in the hospital in a very pleasant room, and stood up for the first time in hours. I had a drain fitted, which is a plastic line from the surgical wound terminating in a rubber bulb.

Wound and drain line

This fucking thing would be the bane of my existence for a week. A fwwnurse ran in and told me if I needed to urinate it had to be into a plastic flask about the capacity of a litre. I filled that fucker to the brim, handed it to her and said “enjoy”. She didn’t even smile- heard it all before, I expect.

The surgeon visited and instructed me to monitor the drain, as he did not want it in there any longer than necessary, as it’s an infection hazard. He also explained the surgery was a success apart from having to leave some tissue which had tied itself around a vein. This would cause almost 5months of discussion as nobody seemed to think anything should remain in there, given how fast the tumour developed, but that story will have to wait.

At home, I had to learn to live with the drain, which was a great annoyance as the slightest pull on the tube was sharply painful. I had to sleep on my back (which I never do) so it was a tough few nights. On the very day I had just got used to it, I made the appointment to have it taken out.

It would be many weeks, and several labs before the tumour’s classification was known. In the meantime my oncologist wanted to discuss options. At that time it was possibly some radiation therapy along with some chemo. Great.

Black May

I had so many appointments in May I lost count. I’d had my drain and stitches out, my oncologist informed me that the mass was classifed as a ‘metastatic melanoma of unknown primary’ in other words, skin cancer, but no skin lesion would ever be found. This supposedly true in 10% of cases. I had the feeling the onvologist was not that convinced, but genetic markers gave him treatment options. I would be put on immunotherapy, which had the reputation for miraculous results.

I would require immunotherapy every three weeks for a year. I watched an educational video about chemo, and I mostly learnt to be grateful I wasn’t having chemo. The treatment building is a squat, brutalist structure near the mall. It struck me that nearly all of the people there looked very worse for wear. I asked the nurse if they looked like me when they walked in, but I don’t think she saw the funny side. </p

To be continued

October 30, 2025
Death and all his friends

February 16th, 2005

I’d got the call I was waiting for, from my older sister. “You’d better come”. It was time. My mum had been fighting terminal cancer since the previous August, over the new year we were waiting for the other shoe to drop. She’d become increasingly frail and had lost a shocking amount of weight. A couple of days earlier – Valentine’s Day, just to twist the knife a little – she’d had a precipitous decline. I didn’t fully understand the biological mechanism, but her failing liver being slowly consumed by cancer (which would go on to kill her) meant she was slowly poisoning herself, most evident of which was the loss of mental faculties. I had been warned she was in a pretty bad state, neurologically.

I had understood some of this when I arrived in Southwark, but not the extent of it. Leaving the underground at London Bridge and walking to my parent’s flat, a journey I had taken so many times in happier days, I did not know what to expect.

My sister opened the door. As I walked into the entryway I caught sight of my mum sitting upright in bed, apparently trying to get on her feet.

Is that my boy?

The words were feeble and quiet, but It sounded like an anvil dropping to my ears. She was obviously in very poor shape but wanted to get out of bed to meet me, to put on a bit of a show, to let me know she was alright. She wasn’t alright. Those four words were the last coherent thing I would hear from her. For the rest of the day she just looked into the distance, making no sound.

want to trip inside your head
Spend the day there
To hear the things you haven’t said
And see what you might see
I want to hear you when you call
Do you feel anything at all?
I want to see your thoughts take shape and walk right out

There was no life in her eyes. This hurt most of all. I remember looking deeply into them to see If I could see any flicker, any remnant of my mum in there (that U2 lyric would be swimming around my head for days. I still cannot listen to that song without thinking of the lonely evening train up to London) I was struck by the thought that his person – my mother – was no longer there; that all she was and ever had been had been taken from me, leaving just this corporeal thing, an empty shell. It sounds dramatic, but I had about 15 minutes alone with her and the memory is still absolutely devastating to me. She was so still and quiet. The slow destruction of a person -a parent – is a terrible thing to witness. In time I recognised this was worse than anything that followed. I wanted to scream, I was so upset, so confused, so absolutely wounded, but I kept it all in, because i was desperate to reach her. For me, this was worse than death; someone stripped of their faculties and their dignity, helpless, frail, and dying. What this disease can take of a person made me loathe it. This woman carried me into the world, and she had been so greatly diminished (she was tiny, tiny by the end) I still wince at the memory.

She would hang on for another 9 days, before passing away with us all there around 6.30pm on February 25th, 2 days after her 62nd birthday. I think my dad thought she’d held on for it, but I’m not sure if she had sufficient awareness to know either way. I almost had a nervous breakdown during that period, it came out as a bit of a tantrum in Tesco at Surrey Quays, but I was sleep deprived, under severe stress, and starting to crack. I had to get her a birthday card, and it sort of lit the fuse. No, I was not alright. I don’t know if I’m alright now.

I swore at the time that if anything like cancer happened to me I would not let it go that far, that I would not want anyone to see me like that. I have no idea what that might have entailed. Maybe I would jump off Beachy Head, or go and walk into the sea somewhere, let the waves claim me. I was, of course, completely full of shit, because I would get to find out. Life, as the saying goes, is a bitch. Also Irony when I think about it, thanks Alannis.

Who said God had no sense of humour?

Fate would take a run at me. I would get get the disease, not the same kind and mercifully not as severe, although in fact very dangerous. Melanoma is a big, big killer, and I really won the lottery in getting to remission. I may be half-blind, but in all likelihood it’s not going to kill me. Yes I’m tempting fate, but fuck fate.

Bad days are better than no days

There’s a sticker that says this at the reception desk at the infusion centre. It made me laugh at the time, because it’s a bit Oprah, but it’s definitely true. it’s easy to retreat into solipsism and self-pity, and I have definitely had those moments (“why me?” Why anyone, dickhead…) but you have to just keep going and be there. It’s a different story when you have a family. You learn to eat some shit and smile, then eat some more. Every day is a small victory. I know that if the worst were to happen to me, my family would be there to the end, and they would deal with everything that followed, because when the time comes, people find it in themselves. Every three weeks I sit down and get 200mg of immunotherapy drugs. The people there always impress me. Some are very much in the trenches with their illness, but they have such incredible spirit. It’s not at all what you might imagine a chemo treatment centre to be. I mean, it’s not cartwheels and fireworks – it’s still a godawful situation for all concerned, for fuck’s sake, but everyone just grins and bears it. For obvious reasons, I’ve a bad association with hospitals – the smell of disinfectant, rumbling air vents, and prospect of death – and I’ve come to realise it’s not like that at all.

This helped me understand what happened with my mum that day, finding that last shred of strength and dignity to try and show me that she’s okay; that through all she was enduring she would stand tall for her son.

I recently started to dream about her pretty regularly. The illusion of dreams is that you don’t really question context – “What am I doing here? Why can I fly?” I never question that she shouldn’t be there – although I had those dreams in the past. It’s just normal, she’s alive and we’re doing mundane things.

The month before she died, I think it was the first week of January, she had a distinct rebound, a period of high function I would learn is not unusual in the course of terminal illness. We had a nice weekend together, we chatted and watched a film (2004’s Collateral) and I thought for a moment that maybe she’s getting better. But it was not to be. Anyway, I mention because that’s how she is in my dreams. Just normal.

I don’t question it too deeply, but it’s a pretty comforting thing for my brain to do. Her headstone in a quiet hilltop Andalusian cemetary reads “Until we meet again”. I don’t know if that will happen. I don’t know if I believe such a thing is possible, but we’ll see I suppose. Hopefully later rather than sooner.

MCT, 23/02/43 – 25/02/05

October 30, 2025
Tim Bisley Is Wrong About Babylon 5

Spaced S02E02 is a playful tale about the pitfalls of fandom. I have to say up front that I am at great risk of doing exactly what Bilbo Bagshot (Bill Bailey) cautions against:

“…Defending the genre with terminal intensity”

Yeah yeah, I know. In the episode Tim (Simon Pegg) gets himself sacked by Bilbo for bullying a child over The Phantom Menace (seriously, watch Spaced, it’s brilliant), followed by the amusing efforts of a remorseful Bilbo to get Tim to return by means of getting himself fired from his new job. Tim achieves this by informing his boss (Martin Treneman) that “Babylon 5 is a big pile of shit”, and getting dismissed on the spot.

Tim decides on direct action to abandon Silent Reading

I like Spaced so much that this opinion seeped into my conventional wisdom, so it was a pleasant surprise to discover that B5 really isn’t shite at all. I’m not a devout Sci Fi fan, I don’t know the genre especially well, but I do enjoy a bit of TV and Babylon 5’s great strength is that it avoids a lot of modern telly’s problems, namely the writer’s room getting lost (not an accidental word choice) in the whiteboard. Too many shows have a brilliant premise, great characters, and just don’t land it (LOST), characters that lose any consistency (Walking Dead) start plot lines they can’t hope to finish (LOST) or wander out into the dark, talking to themselves, never to be seen again (Westworld). B5 for its minor flaws avoids this. I think much of this is down to J. Michael Straczynski, who had a story to tell, and apparently doesn’t compromise in telling it.

Babylon 5 is unashamedly long-form. It isn’t perfect (S4 is fantastic but has very,very odd pacing for reasons I understand but won’t go into here) and I write this having started S5 which is polished but feels a bit redundant (again, there are known reasons why). The fans are tough on S5, but I am enjoying it and sticking with it. A little bit like Blake’s Seven, you have to get past the production glitter (It looks pretty naff early on in S1) and seemingly hokey characters (“Who the fuck is this Napoleonic looking guy with the absurd hair?”) to reveal some real depth, and great, even brilliant storytelling. I was surprised how much I liked it.

Spaced was made just at the beginning of the dot-com boom. Internet ‘culture’, was not yet ubiquitous, the show barely mentioning it. In 1998-2001 social media didn’t exist and fandom as we now define it hadn’t really taken off; IRC, chat, and forums were still king but it was all still very niche, however writers Simon Pegg and Jessica Hynes were well aware of the ferocity that the subcultures were capable of. I wonder what they’d make of it all now, because now it’s fucking awful.

October 30, 2025
Dream Time

The North of England.

It’s a Sunday. My trip is over, and it’s time for me to go. There is a familiar feeling in the pit of my stomach – some call this butterflies – and I can feel the minutes tumbling away, as a veteran procrastinator can.

Somehow, It’s now the afternoon. I have of course been putting the return journey off. I am all too aware of the clock turning past 1pm. I’ve a long journey ahead of me, around six hours. I look at my mum in the kitchen, her soft smile invites me to stay, at least that’s what I want it to mean. If I leave now I’ll be home around 7pm. Plenty of time. And yet…

The sky dims ever so slightly, it’s later, I think around 5pm. I can still get home in time for bed. I’ll have to drive in the dark, but it’s not really a problem, but then I realise I have to retrieve my car. I know it’s parked further away, for whatever reason I couldn’t park closer to home. Where did I put it? I can picture the street. It’s somewhere in Pimlico, in London. I need to go and find it, so I set out, the journey and the confusion about the whereabouts of my car and the anxiety of the long drive ahead race around in my head. Do I even know the way home? I’ve done it so many times, but suddenly I realize I have no idea how to navigate home.

London is about 300 miles from where I supposedly am. I don’t question the spatial impossibility. I don’t question the fact my mum’s alive. These are the considerations of daytime; things just are in this dream world, and my higher functions don’t get a vote.

Wilson Adams / M2 Motorway at Night https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

If I leave now, I can just get home in time for work tomorrow morning. Maybe I’ll drive through the night. I just need to find the car. The dream – of course – becomes all about finding the car.

In the dream the journey never actually starts. Other times it starts, but I never get to where I’m supposed to go (I remember being stuck at a motorway service station, an actual nightmare of dour buildings and expensive shite sandwiches) It is the state of needing to be somewhere that prevails. The missing car is funny; this is a common theme, in another dream it was in a parking garage so tall and labyrinthine It was like a Terry Gilliam creation. There is always some obstacle to making progress, like Clockwise with John Cleese but deeply, deeply filled with anxiety. It’s closer to Mark Corrigan, honestly.

I’ve never felt these problems that much in real life, but I have always had butterflies about travel, a restless urge to get going. Friends and family have said that when I have somewhere to be, I get antsy.

London: somewhere on the underground.

I have to get to Waterloo railway station,I know I’ve got to change trains, this London Underground station is vast, with seemingly endless stairs and walkways. There’s people everyhwere. I need to get a through ticket to Southampton, too (why don’t I have one already?) I go to the ticket office – which is impossibly, ridiculously far away – but it’s all confusion and queues. I am certain that if I join a queue I’ll never make the train I need. I decide to go upstairs and outside. The outside of the station feels familiar but I don’t recognise it at all, it’s open like a city square, spacious and absolutely not anywhere I know. It’s like a version of those huge open spaces you see in places like Pyongyang (which I have also dreamed of…another story!)

By Yoni Rubin, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=58951668

I am again not sure where I’m supposed to be going. I did know, now it has left me, and it’s just the feeling of whirling anxiety and disconnection. I have to be somewhere. I’ll never make my connection, I don’t even know what time it is, or where It is going. I’ve tried to catch connecting trains at stations so vast it’s comical when I think about it. The overground train of my dreams in London ran on on tracks so vast they were like a huge metal belt over the city, 10 lines wide and undulating like an old wooden rollercoaster. You could also walk on them, if you wanted to. I (as usual) never really know how these end, but I don’t get there. Sometimes it’s a bus, but the stories the same – I am racing a clock, and sometimes the specifics of time don’t matter, I just know I’m running out of it.

Spain

It’s the last evening at my dad’s place in Spain. But it’s not anywhere I really know, it’s a strange little world I dreamt up. There’s a large hillside behind it which is actually from a childhood holiday In Scotland (try harder, brain) and a beach that I’m pretty certain is Dubai, and the dream shifts seamlessly to these places when I look at or go to the location. On the hill? Back on the isle of Skye. On the beach? This is Dubai. Again, I do not question it. It is my dad’s universe and I’m floating around in it. But what’s this you say? Yes. Time is running out. Of course it is. Don’t enjoy the scenery too much because you have somewhere to be, young man.

I have to get to the airport. I habitually (in reality) like to leave a couple of hours in hand for a flight. I haven’t really packed anything, so I tell myself to get on with it. Imperceptibly, moments pass and I suddenly realise time is now very tight. am in the car with my dad, I don’t think we’re going to make it. We cannot possibly make it. What flight is it anyway? I don’t remember. I’ll find out when we get there. I get to the airport and realise I didn’t even book a flight, so I set about organising one, as if it is like taking a train. The lines for the counters are so massive that I wonder if I will ever leave that airport. Sometimes i get on the plane, and the dream breaks completely; we have to drive down the road because there’s a problem with the runway. That’s right – the plane drives along the road, like a bus. This has happened enough times I don’t even question it.

University

I’m in a hall of residence (a dorm, in American parlance), my room feels familiar, but I do not know this place. It is an amalgamation of many places I have known, but again large and complex in the way only an imaginary thing can be. I can hear my neighbours running around. They’re all aged about 20, and apparently, so am I. I remember that I haven’t been going to class for weeks on end, and at some point somebody is going to realise. I’ve got a mathematics class this morning. I decide not to go. I don’t know if I’ve ever been, It’s impossible for me to pass the year now, this must be catching up with me. What am I going to do?

I walk out into the corridor and chat with friends. I am extremely anxious about explaining all of this, when the time comes, and come it will. I’m sure of it, and it is the only thing I think of as I contemplate the magnolia walls and beige carpet. There is a smell of disinfectant and stale beer coming from the kitchen, which doubles as a common room. I’ve never had a recurring dream that actually goes anywhere near a classroom, it is always a version of this place, but the place is different every time, but it has the same look and feel.

Sometimes it’s York university campus (of the 90s), or a version of it. Artificial lakes, paved walkways, 60s concrete buildings everywhere.

Arian Kriesch, CC BY-SA 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s huge though, far bigger than the real thing (see a trend?) and seems to go on forever, and I never get beyond walking around the little paths going from building to building. The dream always ends in this transient situation.

Sometimes it’s an obvious replica of the University of Huddersfield central services building (which I knew), that held accommodation, except the elevator is gigantic, like a living room, and as you go downstairs it becomes a rural hotel, but outside on top of the building are little rotundas with more accomodation in them – a total figment of my imagination, almost like science fiction but rooted in a sort of brutalist aesthetic. The places all start real enough but then my head doesn’t keep it all together and it becomes disconnected and ridiculous, but there is always the pressure, and the worry, about something that is like dreaming of having no clothes on at work or something daft like that. It’s this panicked feeling of missing work and classes and being found out.

Mtaylor848, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

. So what does it all mean? Well it’s pretty obvious, innit. It’s anxiety. These dreams come along like buses as soon as I have something on my mind. Just before I moved to America, I would have the travel dreams daily. Whenever I get busy or stressed they start up, and they’re a good indicator of that.

I also dream of the past a lot. Friends, exes, and loved ones. Sometimes it’s about being back in a living situation I’ve long since moved on from, and weirdly they’re almost always in England. I just don’t dream of America, and I’ve been here a decade, so this is very much my head ruminating on the past, for whatever reason. It’s a life I let go of. Or did I?

October 30, 2025
I’m Not Even Supposed To Be Here Today

Trailer has spoilers, as as is the fashion unfortunately.

Kevin Smith, without me noticing, made a third Clerks film, released Summer 2022. I’m not a Smith superfan by any means, but I would be lying if his films did not sit somewhere between guilty pleasure and cinematic comfort food. We’re not far apart in age, and his 90s output (I originally wrote oeuvre but got over myself) put his characters at my age, too. His stuff is relatable to me. I’ll say up front I find Kevin Smith’s comedy funny. If you don’t, I doubt the film or this post will change your mind. The guy was, and remains, famously Marmite.

The first Smith film I actually saw was 1997’s Chasing Amy, and I immediately loved the snappy, shit-talking dialogue, endless Star Wars references, and admittedly crass humour. I didn’t see Clerks – the Smith film – until a little later, and while I enjoyed it, the film didn’t grab me the way it did some people, but I did like the chemistry Dante and Randall displayed. At that time, Randall seemed interchangeable with Chasing Amy’s Binky (Jason Lee); to me the characters were written very similarly, but this is me splitting hairs, honestly.

In 2006 I was living with a Kevin Smith fan (at the time, I doubt he is now) who was a real child of the always-online internet, and I got swept up in what seemed like tremendous buzz around Clerks 2. There were web shorts showing behind-the-scenes stuff; long before it was fashionable. YouTube was in its infancy, Facebook was barely out of Zuckerberg’s balls, Tom was still shitting up your MySpace. Smith had a canny knack for the internet’s marketing potential, definitely. Everyone does it these days.

People say Kevin Smith isn’t a good filmmaker, but I don’t know enough about the art to notice. I think it is one of those perceptions that isn’t accurate but nevertheless persists. Zack & Miri was good. Red State was good. I ‘know what I like’ as twats say, and Clerks 2 delivered for me. It did feel a bit more SoCal, a bit Hollywood? Polished and whittled. It was a Miramax product, just before Smith parted ways after Zack & Miri underperformed. Definitely lost a bit of that Jersey patina.

I still think it holds up well. I did struggle a little with Dante and Becky (Rosario Dawson) having a relationship because to paraphrase Stirling Archer she was so out of his league it was practically inter-species mating. But I rationalised it as them being the exception that proves the rule. That’s a thing, right? You see these beautiful women with guys that look like Shrek and you wonder how that happens.

Clerks III is good. Someone on Reddit (yes, I know…) said it was the best thing Smith made in a decade. Maybe. As I watched it, I had the impression that – as much as I enjoyed the second film – this perhaps could have been it. It feels – by design – much closer to the first film, because without giving much away it basically follows the first film’s beat very closely. Yes, there is a film within a film. Yes, it works.

It’s autobiographical. Smith had a serious heart attack not long ago, and that’s the motivation for one of the characters in this third entry. What the film really pulls off is being genuinely affectionate towards its subject, fans, and earlier films. It is, at the risk of sounding like a tit, sincere. I said ‘comfort food’ earlier. Or maybe like a cigarette with a sharp beer, after a shit day at work. It gives you what you expect, and what you want. Of course, you have to like that kind of thing in the first place, and if you don’t, you’re not about to start. I don’t think I could recommend it to someone that doesn’t know, or more importantly, enjoys the View Askew universe, but it would be interesting to find out.

There’s a great scene where Randall is describing what is very obviously (if you’re a fan) The Mandalorian and the CGI regenerated Luke Skywalker turning up and just fucking everything up, like a virtuous stud. He’s so hot and young you don’t give a shit he’s not real. This is in contrast to the Sunday morning haggard and bitter Luke we see in The Last Jedi. Young, ass-kicking Luke – yes, the Luke of our childhood – is all we ever wanted, even if it’s not real.

This is a good metaphor for the film – it services the fan, which is treated like a regressive thing now, but the film is built on the premise that, why not? It’s okay to indulge and to be indulged, to relive the salad days of 30yrs ago, just for a couple of hours. We all die, soon enough.

October 30, 2025
LOST Is back, I have some feelings

Netflix, in their absolute unquestionable wisdom, have bought LOST. This is the show that is now regarded as the ‘Golden Age of Television’ in some circles. It’s not, that title will forever be owned by The WIre, and I am sorry, I will not be taking notes. LOST was the defining show of network TV, in much the same way Climie Fisher were the defining band of the 1980s.

So of course, I watched the fucking pilot, for the first time since the absolute crushing disappointment that was the original broadcast run of the show. LOST was a glorious mess, a one-trick pony the likes of which we will never see again, because you can only pull this shit once, and everybody sees how it is done. It killed Westworld, for a recent example. “This show feels a bit like LOST“, I remember thinking, shortly before it died early, before really doing, well, anything.

Mystery boxes – a perennial theme for showrunner Damon Lindelof, who got so badly broken by LOST he ragequit Twitter because people had the audacity to suggest his handling of the show was, like, shit, have a very short shelf-life. You can’t keep doing it. It’s boring, and it is not a substitute for solid storytelling. They were spinning plates, and they knew it, and by Season three, the audience knew it, too. Sky TV’s promo posters for Season 3, and I remember them very well, used to say “answers are coming”. It was an admission that the show set itself up for failure and had no hope for a resolution. We wanted to believe that they “knew what they were doing”. They didn’t.

Ironically, LOST had fucking spades of great stories. It remains one of the greatest character-driven shows ever made. On form, the show was magic, but the writers never nailed the big picture. I remember in Season 2 with ‘The Hatch’ and the endless exposition the uneasy feeling the audience was collectively having its pisser pulled.

Now the zoomers have got hold of it, and are fully embracing it in their weird little fanatical way. I wonder if they too will feel that burn of disappointment as the show goes on. Much is made of the ending. It’s okay, it’s just the show goes stale long before the finale.

October 30, 2025