This blog entry is a ‘biggie’ for me. How my MS has affected my friendships. Well, here goes…
I’m not aware that any of my friends have ever let my MS ‘drive’ our friendships. But looked at through the opposite lens, I know that I have let the effects of my MS have an effect on those friendships.
What do I mean? Read on to find out.
I can only guess the comfort Mac took away from our call.
Afterwards, he did tell me how anxious he’d been before the call. Apparently, he’d been ‘stewing’ for a couple of days. Stewing over ‘do I or don’t I’ make the call.
As for me…I found the call fucking hilarious.
For whom the bell tolls, part 1
People usually remember where they were when World leaders are assassinated. Or, when World ‘life’ events happen…the Berlin Wall coming down…a Royal Wedding etc. But I can’t remember the day Mac called. That’s the sort of life-changing effect the conversation had on me. Not.
Looking back and trying to piece things together, I do know that when he called, I was probably doing similar to what I’m doing now. I’d have been hunched over my iPad, sat at the kitchen table, drinking coffee, flicking at the news and clicking through my blog, making sure the hyperlinks work or thinking of what articles to write next.
Or I’d be looking at my Social Media go-to’s – FaceBook, (the kids tell me using FB makes me soooo in my fifties), and Instagram. Apparently, IG is just about acceptable.
Jingle Jangle. Jingle Jangle
Anyhow, snatching me from my iPad reverie is my bloody annoying, jingly, jangly iPhone ringtone. The bloody annoying noise is my fault. I chose the ringtone. Not like the macho warehouse guy I met once on a job. He thought he was a Grade A, Alpha male. UFC wasn’t hard enough for him.
But, his ringtone story still makes me smile. Over one weekend his youngest daughter thought it would be a great idea to surprise Dad by changing his ringtone to her favourite song. She thought he’d be smiling with parental sentimentality when his phone went off.
I’d have loved to have seen his face when his phone went off at their usual Monday morning meeting, and he was greeted by a loud rendition of ‘Somewhere over the Rainbow’. Serves him right for not having switched to ‘silent’.
Anyhow…I really must change my ringtone. It’s definitely gone past its sell-by date.
I think Apple
It’s funny how life changes you. When I think Antelope now, I also think Serengeti. Just as I did when I was a kid. But not in Apple’s playful way
At 51+ years, I have the image of a knackered Antelope, breathlessly running at a breakneck pace, straining every sinew just to get away from the Lion that’s gnawing its arse. Safari anyone?
In my defence, I blame David Attenborough with his multitude of TV documentaries and Disney’s Lion King. It’s all the ‘Circle of Life’ after all. Anyhow. I digress.
For whom the bell tolls, part 2
My iPad screen tells me I have an incoming call from Mac. Who’s Mac? Well, Mac is a very welcome blast from my past. He’s a childhood friend, (see how I’m introducing my story thread?), and when I say childhood, I mean it.
We met when my family moved to Westhoughton when I was 9. And, Mac was one of my first friends at my new Primary School. He was a friend despite also being the first person I had a scrap with.
This ‘scrap’ was a very pathetic standoff between two nine-year-olds. Both trying to stand tall, yet all the while pushing each other with our arms folded across our respective chests. I don’t think the concept of throwing a punch had reached us.
Seconds out…
In retrospect, it was more a case of ‘Handbags’ than ‘High Noon’. It was no Marvin Hagler vs. Sugar Ray Leonard.
I can’t recall who threw the first punch, or if anyone did. I do remember there were no haymakers, hooks, jabs or blood.
Even though I can’t recall why it started or how it ended, I do know that we remain friends to this day. So, it was hardly an Albanian blood feud.
Does this sound familiar?
We went through Primary and Secondary School and Sixth Form as part of the same close-knit group. Then our lives started to drift as Mac went off to University, we both met our respective girlfriends, (now our respective wives – we share conservatism as a ‘friendship bond’) – and then onto work.
We were both hungry and ambitious. The ‘corporate ladder’ was a worthwhile(?) challenge to us. We wanted to test our multi-faceted, highly engineered brains in every conceivable way possible. So…we both became…Chartered Surveyors. Chartered what? What the fuck do they do?
Generally, and I’ve seen exceptions over the last 30 years, a person becomes a Chartered Surveyor when they can’t argue as well as a lawyer can, yet they can outdrink most Chartered Accountants.
If you’re still wondering what a Chartered Surveyor does, think bricks and buildings and it’s a great ‘Starter for 10’.
Since being in our early thirties, we might have seen each other maybe once every year or two. There’s nothing deliberate about this. It’s been a case of life getting in the way. Careers, kids & health in particular.
That’s my recollection, albeit my one-sided recollection. If you want a counter-balance, you’ll need to catch up with Mac. And he’s very quick on his feet. Athletic bugger.
Anyhow, back to the story…
For whom the bell tolls, part 3
This isn’t verbatim. But it went something like this:
Me: Hi Matey. How’re you doing?
Mac: [sounding massively relieved] Hursty…Is that you? Thank fuck for that!
Me: [laughing] What do you mean? Are you OK?
Mac: [slight pause] I’m fine. Are you?
Me: [slightly confused] Yeah…why?
Mac: I’m just glad to hear your voice Mate…[a long pause] I’d been told you were dead.
Me: What?
Mac: [talking over me] I’ve been holding off calling you for a day or so…trying to get more information.
Me: Information on what?
Mac: On whether it was true…Fuck me Mate. I’m glad to hear your voice [relieved – very]
Me: I’m fine…and certainly not dead. Where’s that come from?
Mac: From Frackers [unbelievably great guy we both used to work with – he was my mentor when I was doing my professional exams]. Jenks told him [another great guy we both used to work with]. Remember he was pally with Turner? [a bloke I used to know from another 6th form, back in the ‘80s] Well, he told Jenks you were dead.
Me: What made Turner think that? [all the while I’m thinking Turner’s an ex-copper. But Police or not, he’s a piss-poor detective. I suppose that explains why he’s now out of the Force!]
Mac: No idea. But he’s scared the shit out of me, and some others. I’d best give Frackers a call and let him know you’re still alive.
And so our call went on. Nothing momentous. But, far more importantly, we caught up on our kids and life generally.
Anyway, all of this got me thinking about my friendships, how they’ve changed over time, and how my MS has affected them.
We weren’t Enid Blyton ‘kids’
When we were kids growing up, we weren’t the Famous Five or the Secret Seven. But we were a close-knit group.
As kids, and all the while into our late teens at school, we were generally the same impenetrable group. We always hung around with each other and consequently shared many of the same experiences.
We shared the shit – the death of someone’s close relative. We shared the funny – like Johnno pissing on me as he was trying to put out a small fire, (that we’d started), with his own ‘hose’. And we share the memorable, timeless hilarity of phrases such as “When we get home, we’ll be the Wham Boys of Westhoughton…”
If you’re struggling to make connections on this last one, have a gander at Wham’s music video for Careless Whisper…and read on. Sorry, but this is one video that I can’t embed…don’t know why…but it’s lots of yachts, ocean spray and dreamy, loving looks.
Are there any Canaries on the Canaries?
Around the time this video was topping the charts. I’d taken Fordy – another of the ‘impenetrable’ group, and arguably my best friend – on holiday to Tenerife.
For those that don’t know, Tenerife is one of a group of volcanic islands, called the Canary Islands, in the Atlantic Ocean. They’re south of Spain and to the North West of Africa. That’s the end of the geography lesson.
Well, some bloke my grandparent’s knew had a yacht. And we managed to blag a free trip on it, going round part of the island.
We had the essentials. There was sunshine. There was champagne, (well, probably Cava but who cares. We were 16 and ‘living the life’).
There was also a flotilla of speedboats and jet-skis furiously and longingly, crisscrossing the bow of our yacht. And they were all manned by chisel chested hunks with girls who wouldn’t have been out of place on a VW or Renault advert…who can forget the fur coat stuffed in the rubbish bin and the cute French girl forever asking for Papa?
Well, there was at least one speedboat.
We were a million miles from Wessie in every respect. And then came Fordy’s Wham Boys comment to shatter the serenity.
It was at the same time such a shit comment, and yet somehow so apt. And I’m sure the bastard had himself as playing George Michael.
We were… ‘living the life’. And why not. It was endless sunshine at that age. Then along came… jobs, universities, new girlfriends for some, mortgages, marriages, kids. And then, for me at 31 a devastating diagnosis of MS.
And the answer to the title of this section is YES. But the islands aren’t named after the little Tweety Pie bird. It’s because ancient Romans named them the Island of the Dogs – Insula Canaria, in Latin. My God. He’s educational as well.
We know how MS affects your body, but what about your relationships?
By the time of my diagnosis, I was already in a different place with my old friends, my ‘impenetrable’ group.
This was no conscious decision – not on my part and, I assume, not on theirs either. We’d just all moved on.
We were moving in different circles, (not in any snobby, canapes & champagne way). Truffle Oil anyone? We now had different outlooks and horizons, and the different groups of friends that go with them.
Most of us had left the Centre of the Universe that is Wessie, (Westhoughton to the uninitiated). Our families were now our Centres. But Wessie was still our home. Falling ‘apples’ and ‘trees’ spring to mind.
Pre & Post MS Diagnosis Friends
It turns out my MS has made me (unconsciously), stratify my friends. They fall naturally into 2 broad groups – pre-MS diagnosis friends and post-MS diagnosis friends.
The latter is the group that only really knows the ‘me with MS’.
They’ve seen me move further along the MS curve. They’ve seen the stiffness in my limbs…become my lack of balance…become my clumsy, drunken gait…become my falls, and now, I’ve become Dave in the wheelchair.
They’re work colleagues who have become good friends and those others who’ve crossed our paths later in life.
But the former is the group my brain romanticises about.
We were the ones that were going to rule the world. We were the ones that Tears for Fears wrote that song about. ‘Everybody wants to rule the World’? Our generation ran it in 10-kilometre chunks. Fun run?! Now that’s an 80’s oxymoron if ever there was one.
We were the ones dancing on the tabletops to Dexy’s ‘Come on Eileen’ in Tenerife. We were indestructible. We didn’t get chronic illnesses…
I never consciously turned away from my ‘old’ friends. And I’m sure they didn’t turn away from us. But for most of the last 20, MS years, we have been out of each other’s lives.
I didn’t ‘avoid’ their calls, texts or emails. I took them. I just didn’t make my own calls, texts or emails in return. Sure there were times when our paths inadvertently crossed. Some of us had kids at local schools, and a sports day’s not a sports day unless parents do the ‘egg & spoon’ or ‘sack race’.
There were also catch-ups through work as, bizarrely, three of our ‘impenetrable’ group became Chartered Surveyors. Yes, you read that correctly. Two boring bastards in our small group wasn’t enough. We went that extra mile and added a third.
Chance work meets always went the way of “…OMG. I can’t believe it’s been [x] years since we last went out. How are the kids? How’s [x]?” And then the killer…”We can’t leave it this long again. Give me a call and we’ll get something in the diaries.” Fuck spontaneity…we were talking diaries and planning. But I didn’t do the diary part.
Pseudo-psychiatry or just the blindingly, bloody obvious explanation?
Lisa has her own theory about me ‘running away’ from my past.
She thinks I’ve been happy to let friendships with my original ‘impenetrable’ group slide. She says that every time we do meet, I’m a nightmare to live with for the next day or two. She puts this down to me being kicked in the balls by the memory of the pre-MS me. And the opportunities MS has robbed from me.
We’ve never fallen out over her theory. Well, not a major fall out. I’ve called her pseudo-
But ultimately, she’s right. She’s always been right. Well, about this one thing. I’m not giving her carte blanche credit for other arguable points. It’s not Christmas for a while yet.
Anyhow. This is enough introspection from me. The great and unexpected thing about me blogging and starting on social media is that I’m now back in touch with the old gang.
I’m enjoying the reconnections as they appear, and I’m thankful I have any friends. Long may this continue.
Bye for now. David
