Follow your dreams (to the dustbins)

The air smells different today. I couldn't say why. Smell seems to lack a coherent vocabulary to describe its characteristics. It is September and though no Summer was really forthcoming this year, the scent of crispness that displaces that of cleaning products and cooking smells, greets my previously housebound nose unexpectedly and I find it somehow viscerally disappointing without really knowing why. 

If Summer implies freedom, friendship, picnics in parks and carefree laughter on sunny days (though in reality this rarely happens. But the illusion persists despite our experience.) then surely, the onset of cooler, darker seasons must imply the loss of such freedoms: The closing down of "outdoors" and the moving to the smaller more isolated spaces of our social lives.

But today, the differences in the air brought by the changes to vegetation and meteorology appear to suggest a more profound change of emphasis with regard to mood. A more introspective, calmer period is dawning: The resumption of "Real Life" after the frivolity of summer days demands our sensible attention.

Ok, so there weren't really more than a handful of long, warm days this year. Summer was officially a washout. The worst, wettest, coolest here in over a hundred years. But the days were long, if filled with unreliable weather.

This morning, on my way to work, people seemed more focused, less jaunty. There is a sense that it is time to be serious now and to shoulder responsibilities more diligently. The time for carefree is over for now. Time to settle back into routine.

I awoke form a dream where I was in Helsinki and had to get to the airport to catch my flight home, but could not find a taxi. I walked unfamiliar streets that looked a bit like Birmingham and a bit like Oslo, and got increasingly agitated at the growing probability of not getting to the airport in time.

Then as dreams are wont to do, I was at home in my bed with no confusion at the sudden discontinuity. But the bin men were coming and there was a panic in my head because the garage is full of cardboard, the black bin is full of general rubbish and I could not remember which day it was to put out which bin. In my dream, I hauled impotently as I struggled to haul a green wheelie bin over huge bags of discarded cardboard packaging to the drive where the truck was already moving past to the next house.

I am not a believer in the symbolism of dreams. That the unconscious should construct elaborate metaphors involving snakes, horses, cardboard or thwarted travel plans seems unlikely. If I was concerned about the direction of my life, surely it would just say so by providing a dream in which I changed my job or moved out to live on my own? It wouldn't couch it in oblique terms of domestic waste and impossibly cluttered garages. Would it?

Perhaps the above is telling me that my life is full of baggage and if I don't sort it out, time will have passed and I will have missed the time for opportunities, whatever my unconscious might deem those to be. Or maybe I am just fed up with the enormous amount of recycling piling up in my house and don't want to be domestically immobilised by another two weeks' worth.

However, the very fact that I find myself dreaming of such mundane scenarios must surely ring alarm bells. Does life become so grindingly quotidian that rather than dreams providing us with unexplained powers of flight, exotic locations, or even nocturnal physical dalliances, it instead fills our sleeping emotional landscape with concerns about refuse collection? I would be perfectly happy to discuss possible meanings by the way. Perhaps I am mistaken and dreams do contain profound truths about our states of minds. It's just, the Freudian approach sound so "made up" and when given to such flights of fancy, anything can mean anything. It becomes subjective and unhelpful opinion. But I am willing to hear anyone's hypotheses on the subject.

However, with the winding down of outdoors life and summer pursuits, it seems the return to routine is having rather too prominent an effect on my unconscious which may be manifesting as dreams about dustbins.

Perhaps I really just need to get out more, despite the season.

Overdoing it

I don't want to dwell on matters neurological but my journey back to health continues on its lurching rollercoaster path and it was suggested to me that writing it down at each stage might be helpful. I confess that the linear act of committing complex happenings into a narrative is very therapeutic for me and helps me make sense of what is going on in my still below par brain. So, I shall continue to document it and should you find it tedious, other content will soon appear which might be more interesting. Or not. Either way, I will point to that in the final paragraph, so if you are still reading and even mildly interested, but the find the rest of the rambling tedious, you could always skip to there.

So, after such a lovely two weeks' holiday with all the attendant joys of music and revelry and absolutely no intellectual activity at all, it came as rather a shock to go back to work. Opening my inbox to find 1496 unread messages as initially unsurprising, but once I had knocked off the easy corporate-spam, the  remaining 972 suddenly seemed quite overwhelming.
The nature of email is such that multiple threads of conversation can arise from a single initial question, copied to many people who then respond with their contributions to various different distribution lists. The result is a tangled mess of communication of varying relevance and currency. In fact I wonder how I ever managed it, or anyone does in fact!

Anyway, my brain crashed. Like a PC with too many windows open and too little memory for the new operating environment, the hourglass popped up and the whole thing ground to a halt. I sat there looking like I had been hit with a mallet.
Then the phone rang and I was "invited" to attend a meeting in Dusseldorf for which I would have had to have left at 4 a.m. tomorrow morning. My requests to change the date were rejected and my confidence and mental coherence crumbled into abject distress. In a state of agitation, I was forced to call Occupational Health and gibbered incoherently down the phone for half an hour until the nice lady calmed me down a little.
What followed was several days where The headache returned and I had to resort to painkillers to get some relief and eventually sleep.

And it becomes clear to me: The neurologist had said to me "You will make a full recovery, but it will take six to twelve months before you are back to normal. In the meantime, executive function will remain impaired. You can go back to work, but you will be disappointed."
He explained about cellular debris and what the pre-frontal cortex does and some of the effects I would continue to experience.

I did go back to work and I am disappointed.

Physical injury is no stranger to me. Over the course of my life, I have partaken in various daft activities and occasionally a hare-brained scheme would leave me with some injury or other. In each case, the doctor would say "Six weeks..." and I would think "Four weeks then.." and usually, I was right. The medical profession is by necessity somewhat pessimistic.

So when the learned fellow said "six to twelve months" I heard "Four months".
But I was grossly mistaken. Brains don't work that way. Ok, you see here a coherent thread issuing forth from a "working" brain. But what I hadn't anticipated was the subtle but profound problems associated with the remaining impairment. Categorising and comprehending information, and then adding it to an existing context is still incredibly difficult and this is pathological - something was damaged and needs to be repaired. It's quite fascinating in its way.

Each email I read contains information which swims before me like a myriad of tiny fishes, slipping out of my grasp and taunting me by darting away before I can even see what shape they are. It frustrates me beyond belief and must be a nightmare for those around me who merely want a straight answer to what seems a simple question. I just can't get it together (yet).

But it will get better. The necessary neural pathways just need to be built and reinforced. It will take patience and practise.

So, what can one do? Well, I was advised to attempt cryptic crosswords. I tried. It felt like writers cramp in the forefront of my brain. And anyway, there are too many conventions in each newspaper for me to know what is expected.
Then there is the Roald Dahl approach of puzzles and suchlike to challenge the brain. This was a helpful suggestion I received here (thank you Kay) which I am still researching and which shows promise.

But a friend suggested, as I lamented the dearth of plums this year, that I write down my wine recipes and methods. I do, though I say so myself, make excellent home made wine. My ginger had caused trained wine tasters to exult loudly and call for rich fruit cake as a worthy accompaniment and my damson has caused long minutes of silence with its richness and velvety gorgeousness. (The secret with the ginger wine is to put a couple of bananas in the must. But more of that elsewhere)

Last year's pink plum wine. Cheers!

The thinking is, and it seems sound to me, that by putting the recipes and techniques into writing, I can take complex information and organise it, thereby getting the hang of the whole logical sequential approach thing originating from an amorphous cloud of knowledge and information. I think it might help.
I had been meaning to write a book on this for some time and had started my sister blog in preparation for this very purpose. But it rather fell into disrepair. Well, perhaps now it is time to put it all together. So that's what I shall do!
But if anyone has any idea how to get better at cryptic crosswords, I would be very grateful!

Attention!

I was in a cafe today in Bath. It is Cafe Retro which is one of my favourite places to get a coffee or lunch when I am about town. I find it cheerful and unpretentious and the coffee is excellent. Coffee has been a great help to me these recent months. It helps me focus and clears away the confusion for a bit.
However, what struck me today was the hum of conversation in the place. Now, I have had some trouble with my brain of late, as you probably know. Some bits subsequently weren't working very well, causing me to feel a bit thick on occasion and to have trouble concentrating when there was a lot going on. A crowded place, with a lot of conversation has been a challenge to me, causing me to sometimes have to go and sit outside somewhere quiet whilst my brain cools down.

As an aside, I have had the last two weeks off as annual holiday.

Van in the mountains

We piled up the van with all manner of stuff and headed to a friend's farm in North Wales, where every year for the past, oh, maybe seven, he has cleaned out the barn and used it to host a private mini-festival. Everyone present is selected from friends and aquaintances and amongst those are a number of members of most excellent bands.  During the days, living was communal and if I picked up my guitar or banjo to play, often someone with a guitar would wander across to join in and ere long, a small session would be taking place.

Tents and vans appear in a freshly mowed field and we stayed from Thursday to Monday, helping where we could with preparations, clearing up and most importantly, haymaking. After all, it is a farm.

Children of the Revolution

So, the festivities and outdoor living carried on over the weekend and there was much singing, dancing and consuming of beer. 

Soundcheck in the now-clean barn.

Dogs roamed around with stolen sausages, children chased them laughing and not a care in the world was entertained for the whole time. It was a bohemian dream for a few days where pleasure, music and company dominated everyones' consciousness. I am chilled in a way I find hard to describe.

Party in the barn: Somewhere in this night, I got my brain back

And somewhere in that weekend, a switch seems to have been flicked in my brain. Something came back which I have previously lamented the  loss of. I feel complete again. More than complete in fact, if I articulate a feeling that is hard to explain. The experiences of the ghastly happening and subsequent recovery have left a mark which will stay with me forever. From the rudimentary consciousness of those first few weeks through the headaches and regaining of physical coordination and mental faculties, I have learned a tremendous amount which provides an almost endless supply of inspiration for curiosity. And gratitude. I met recently, before my malaise occurred, a survivor of a much more serious SAH and he was significantly different from his former self. I realise how much I have to be grateful for and shall never ever take my life, or my brain, for granted. It could do easily have been otherwise.

And so, as I was sitting in the cafe today, i remarked to myself how the hubbub of voices would have caused me a major "moment" a few weeks ago as my brain tried to make sense of it all at the same time.
But now, I find I can "float" on top of it all and "tune in" to individual conversations or voices. This is an improvement I welcome. But also, it gives me cause for thought.

Normally, where we direct our attention is not consciously under our control. Ok, we may sit writing an email in the office, or watching television, thinking we are concentrating, but if a man cam in wielding a knife or even wearing a silly hat, our attention would be drawn to him and away from the task in hand. This makes sense and is to be expected. However, it becomes clear that some process in our unconscious constantly monitors our surroundings and takes note of what to ascribe significance to and the relative weightings of pieces of information in our environment. And this is not visible to us, or even a process we are aware of.
Well, this has not been working in my brain for some months. All information is equally significant and my brain has been trying to process the whole lot simultaneously. This is obviously impossible and the attempts have caused me some distress. However, today, I sat in the cafe and realised that not only can I focus now and allow this repaired process to do its job, but that I am actually aware of its exixtence and of its operation. Where it was "below the waterline" before, now its workings are apparent to me.
And it is utterly fascinating!

Sitting listening to the hum of discussion, I note some voices demand attention more than others. Speech which is emphatic is more difficult to ignore. Emotional emphasis is flagged as more highly significant and more worthy of attention.
Some male voices are quite compelling. I cannot work out why, but a certain resonance or tone causes the attention to be drawn to it. Also, some bossy women seem more evident in the surroundings than before. I note that with the compelling or emotional voices, I am drawn to examine the content of the speech: With nagging voices, I am afraid the initial response is somewhat more visceral and less civilised.

To observe this process in action is utterly captivating. From a maelstrom of noise that would paralyse my consciousness for a period of time, now information is emerging and the process of extracting it and ascribing significance to it is becoming less of an effort and more unconscious. Unconscious and yet now transparent.

So, now there is another set of questions to occupy the curiosity: What are the criteria upon which our minds base their decisions of where to direct the spotlight of attention to?

These are questions I probably won't find answers to but out of a near-catastrophe, I have had the opportunity to examine some of the intricate functions of the human brain at first hand, as an observer. As a self-regarding mechanism, the brain does give us some wonderfully interesting insights into our own humanity.

So, next time you are in a pub, a restaurant, anywhere with a lot of enthusiastically interacting people, I urge you to just pause a moment to listen in to the whole, and then individual components of the verbal melee. And become aware of the incredible amount of work your brain is doing without you having to worry about it. It really is very impressive.

I am back! :-)

As a postscript, I would like to say thank you to those who have encouraged me to see the positive in all of my recent experiences. Your insistence that I be patient and that I was still compos mentis has been appreciated greatly. Thank you all.

Radio Silence

There's not much doing in my head these days. A cursory listen to the space between my temples shows something akin to a pub with no beer. Everyone has buggered off.
Whereas once it was a bustling, noisy place where a throng of voices clamoured for attention, now it seems to be deserted. I don't know where everyone went.
It used to be that an idea would spark a torrent of words, each one falling over itself in its rush to be expressed. One word led to another which led to another until ere long there was a number of paragraphs which somehow explained what had occurred to me and gave some release.
It's not that the words have gone. I can wield them as deflty as ever from the mace-blow of a blunt statement to the stilletto precision of a careful inference.
But the ideas seem to have departed. Things just don't pop into my head any more. Even writing this is like passing a kidney stone.

It could be that my brain is rewired after my haemorage. Indeed, given the area of my brain in question, this is quite likely. The pre-frontal cortex performs a lot of high level  executive functions and it may just be that the spontaneity of observation and reaction I relied upon, which  "just happened" just isn't working now.
I know some neurons, I don't know how many, will have died and with them some of the functions they performed. A loss of blood flow in the brain can do that, even a small interruption.
I know also that planning and attribution of significance to information is impaired. I confess, I don't feel as clever as I did before. Thinking is hard and makes me immediately fatigued. Perhaps all of this is implicated in the departure of the Muse from my life.

But I miss it painfully. I feel stupid, mentally clumsy, profoundly empty and somewhat lonely as a result of the loss of this drive to communicate. The long rambling email conversations I used to have with friends just dried up. The meandering discussions of abstract concepts, arcane but relevent to the experience of the human condition we all share just no longer happen. And I miss it all. Abjectly. I just find suddenly, I have very little to say. And I feel lesser.

Perhaps it will come back. I know the latest research on neurons seems to indicate that they do not regenerate. We do not make more of them as adults: Dead neurons are not replaced. However, there are an awful lot of them and those functions which were once performed by now defunct circuitry can be remodelled by the remaining adjacent neural machinery. This is "neural plasticity". To retrain the brain to do what it once did but is now reluctant to do takes application and persistence. I must do those things I want it to get better at. I must do them a lot. and the circuitry will gradually be built by that doing.
Whether this can return an ability that defined a character, I cannot say. Only time and experience will tell. But I am going to give it a bloody good try. And if it doesn't, then it doesn't and I will live with what I have available to me now. At least I still have my words.

Summer Evening Scribbles

I am sitting at the top patio of my garden in the dark. I know this picture is of the garden in the daylight, but the one I took of it in darkness was rather lacking in visual information. "Top Patio" makes it sound grand: The garden is really only 45 feet square. Originally on a thirty degree angle, Mrs E designed it cleverly such that it is now on five levels. I am at the penultimate level, shaded from the freshening wind by the  black bamboo on one side and hawthorn and hornbeam hedge on the other. The sultry heat which we had for a few rare and precious days has departed and though I enjoyed the novelty, this is far more comfortable.
It is quite dark now and I have a fairly rubbish wind-up lantern with which to see the keyboard by. (I can sort-of touch type but the variety of keyboards I use, their haptic differences and the relative placings of special characters necessitate me being able to see the keys)
In the hedge behind me is some insistent and occasionally indignant rustling. I would like to think it is tiny people who live in the base of the hedge and it was accepted in more superstitious times that hedges were impenetrable places which harboured spirits (indeed, I believe the words "hag" and hedge have similar origins). Sometimes when I work from home, I feel as if strange eyes are regarding me with amusement at the folly of my arcane daily transactions. When I look, perhaps I see a movement. Or perhaps it is just a blackbird or wren darting for cover.

Tonight, I was startled by the sound of something scrambling under the fence. Scratching and snuffling, a hedgehog squeezed under and proceeded to nuzzle around myopically for slugs in the leaf litter. So much life goes on around us without our knowing. A toad is waddling under a ledge of marjoram, frogs croak in the pond. And normally, I am indoors oblivious to this other world.

But tonight, I am out here in the dark, with a pint of Bath Ales' finest brown English beer. Actually, I just quaffed the last half inch from my glass and it causes me to muse on something that has been bothering me for a while: Enjoyment. Pleasure. Experience in general perhaps ?

I enjoyed the beer. I enjoyed the pouring of it, the settling of the bubbles into a creamy head, and of course the drinking of it.  I enjoyed the feeling of having three quarters of it remaining as I drank it. And I enjoyed savouring the last mouthful.
And now it is gone. I have the memory of its enjoyment. It's a good memory. I shall, as with many other good memories, revisit it. Beer does leave one with a wonderful sense of having consumed something so very satisfying and it made me ponder for a while upon what precisely I enjoyed about its consumption.

So, this brings me on to what I refer in my head to the "choc ice" question, which popped into my head yesterday as I ate a magnum double choc caramel Mrs E had thoughtfully bought for me:

If I have a choc ice, and you have a choc ice, and I eat mine in half the time you do, who, ten minutes later can deem that they had the most pleasure?
Or if one day I eat it in a minute and another I eat it in three, how can I know which of the two, from the vantage point of now, in the relative future gave me most pleasure? In both cases, I will have had the enjoyment of eating a choc ice. Did it matter if I ate it fast or slowly?

Ok, I suspect the answer is irrelevant anyway, but it gives me pause for thought each time I tear open the packet of a choc ice. How best to enjoy it for posterity. Or now.
In general, it seems most pleasures are best savoured. This gives a longer "now" in which the sensations can be enjoyed, But the subjective memory of a now that lasted three minutes is much the same as one that lasted a minute. Isn't it?

It seems a silly way to waste mental energy I know. But it has implications. So many pleasures are to to be had and how best are we to enjoy them? Long savoured or merely a quickie?

Beats me. Anyway I need another pint. And the insects are biting me so I am going inside. Goodnight everyone!

Hugs

Hugs come in all shapes and sizes. Unambiguously, an interpersonal statement of empathy and emotional support, the hug seems quite universal. I like hugs. But they do seem to vary in meaning. This is usually accepted without thought, since the meanings tend to be clear to us without having to think much about it, at least on an emotional level. I have mused on this a lot over recent weeks, since musing seems to be a calming passtime that soothes my addled and somewhat scrambled brain. I have come to no firm conclusions except to be hugged is, for me, a rather pleasurable experience. However some hugs are more enjoyable than others and this gives cause for a small meditation. Why do hugs vary in their capacity to provide enjoyment? It's a question that I have been thinking about a lot.

The variability of intention is something that has been made very apparent to me in the past few months. Since I came out of hospital, I have had more hugs offered to me (almost exclusively from ladies) than in the previous years of my life put together. It has been frankly wonderful if I am honest.
So, it would seem there are many variables in the mechanics of a hug, subtle variations of which denote the intention and attitude of the initiator.
The factors varied seem to be :

•    directness/obliqueness of contact,
•    proportion and height of contact
•    duration.

At the more "distant" end, we have the side hug, much favoured by more religious and emotionally repressed types. I have not had any of these. This hug is where an arm is thrown around a person, ostensibly drawing them firmly but safely to the initiator. But the participants remain side-by-side. It appears to be designed to show some level of support or solidarity without the risky business of face-to-face intimacy. I think personally that this is a uncommitted kind of hug unless the giver is truly uncomfortable with interpersonal contact, such as someone with Apsergers or Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, for whom even this type of hug might be a significant and touching pushing of personal boundaries for the benefit of the recipient.

Then comes the demure leaning-in, cheek-to-cheek, right shoulder to right shoulder hug, usually short-lived and its end signaled by the (occasionally patronising) pat on the back or left shoulder. All other parts of the body, especially the hips, are held at a careful distance. This one tends to (strangely) be favoured by well-turned-out ladies of an ectomorphic disposition. It may often be accompanied by the insincerely intoned "Oh, you poor thing!" as might be cooed to a lame but smelly elderly dog, or an ailing aspedistra with a phosphorus deficiency. I am not fond of these types of hug and they tend to leave me with a feeling of isolation and discomfort, as if an icy blast of wind has blown across my neck from a briefly-opened door. There is a sense of being perhaps a mildly unsavoury character from whom a safe distance must be maintained. I often wonder at my own personal hygiene after such a hug and slink off somewhere quiet to have a serruptitious sniff of my shirt.

As a hug becomes more intimate, it tends to be more face to face. Of course this is effectively infinitely variable depending on the level of intimacy the initiator intends to show. Full front-to-front contact is usually reserved for people who know you well or who would like to. Obviously there is the issue of what to do with one's head in such situation. Being tall, this tends to be less of a problem for me, but when the initiator is of a similar or equal height, The positioning of the head and face can indicate one's comfort or discomfort with the situation. I favour the keeping upright  of my head and staring straight ahead. But when a degree of affection or sincerity is require I may rest my right cheek on the initiator's head. Of course, there is also that occasional embarrassing situation when heads clash. Depending on the force of impact, this can bring a hug abruptly to a close or even, as once happened to me, cause the breaking of a nose necessitating a trip to hospital for an X-ray.

Along with this reduced obliqueness, comes the other parameter of interest: degree of grind. This is essentially, how much of the body, from shoulders through boobs, to belly, hips and finally thighs, the initiator is prepared to, or would like to press against you. Or how much movement is introduced during the pressing together of parts.
Often, it is just briefly immobile shoulders with a mere hint of boob if things are to remain respectable. But sometimes these are enthusiastically pressed against one's chest (or belly or face depending on relative height difference).
Further suggestion can be made by the enthusiastic application of hips into the equation. Sometimes, a saucy grind is offered whicch can frankly ether repel you or make your day depending on the person modulating their movement. Often, one is left in no doubt as to the intention of the initiator, were propriety not required to be be observed. Usually, when one of these hugs happens, alcohol is involved.

Of course, I use the word "initiator" here to imply the person offering the hug. I tend not to suggest hugs but to have them offered to me. This is probably because I am English and a man and as a demographic, we still are a bit unsure about this rather continential approach to greeting or showing affection.

It can sometimes be that upon being inducted into a hug, the recipient (and I understand this is more common if he is male) can decide to change the terms of engagement, grabbing the kind lady and moving her not only more directly in front, but also forcefully applying pressure to increase the surface area in contact. This is often referred to by ladies of my acquaintance as "creepy". It can even extend to "gropey" (or by the younger generation as "a bit rapey!") when some rascal of a chap decides to take a handful or two that was not offered. This is, in my opinion, taking advantage and not playing by the rules. Fellows doing this should rightfully receive a slap across the chops by the lady whose honour was so impugned, or at least some level of quiet but firm protest like a vigorous and painful pinch of the spare flesh of the chap's "love handles".

Duration: well, it has been discovered by reputable science-types that the optimum length of time for a "social" hug is just over three seconds. Any more and one party usually starts to struggle. This becomes a kind of wrestling. It can be comical to behold unless you are the one trying to escape. Of course romantic hugs can last much longer, extending even into hours. This never happens after the first flush of love however, but only when the oxytocin and vasopresin are in full flush at the beginning of a relationship. Or occasionally when it is very very cold.

So, here we have it: a whole panoply of interpersonal signals from mild or insincere affection through to emotional support to true love, hints of lustful intention and sheer lechery.
But through all of these is the shared expression of humanity and empathy. I think the world would be a better place if there were more hugs of any of the above types and I shall henceforth be initiating more hugs. Oh, I shall be respectable about it as befits a fellow of my age, standing and circumstances, but what better way is there to say "I too am, as you are, human, and need love too. Here is some, offered to you to affirm your position in the world and in my life".
And how much happier we all will be!

Back on the road again...

Perhaps it is the final step on the road to normality. I am sitting in the Westin Grand Hotel in Bogenhausen, Munich, eight floors up suddenly aware that what I thought were clouds on the distant horizon are actually the Alps. How suddenly they jut out of the otherwise flat land! They are some distance away so their stature is evident in the fact they are visible. Somehow their presence suddenly lends a different complexion to my stay. From being a business trip, I have a sudden tinge of "Holiday" feeling intrude momentarily as this exotic location in the distance becomes part of my landscape.
I have a headache. It's the same headache at the back of the head that I was so familiar with during my stay in hospital in March and in the following month or two. It's a strange back-of-the-head headache which was what grew to a pulsing crescendo on the dance floor that fateful night. I am not happy that it reappears, but when I asked the neurosurgeon about it, he waved away my concerns telling me it is "just a migraine". That may well be so, but it's presence still unnerves me.

But I probably deserve this headache. I did after all consume three half-litres of beer last night. About three pints: Not an amount I would normally associate with a hangover. But these are not normal times. Beer allows the confusion. I expect to be mildly confused after beer. It's a pleasant, familiar confusion that males all other recent experiences of confusion seem comfortable and unthreatening. But I wish it didn't give me that particular headache.

I was concerned about how I would cope on this trip. I am still somewhat vague where information is concerned and I get tired between my temples when two conversations are present in my field of hearing. Usually this requires me to go and have a lie down but I have been sufficing with escaping to somewhere quieter and breathing deeply. It works up to a point.

So, I managed the driving, the chaos of Heathrow and Munich airports. Getting to the hotel was easy and my presentation went quite well to a roomful of attentive people. I heard my own faltering voice explaining things and realised that I am not quite "there" yet, but given how I felt even two months ago, i am astonished to be back in circulation.

It's hard to work out what it all means. Oh, I m not one for undue symbolism, but I feel different. I saunter through the airport terminals feeling that I have had an experience that renders the petty tribulations of everyday travel somehow far less significant. It feels like a freedom to accept (or reject) expectations on my own terms. I feel I can just walk up to people with a smile and say "Hello! I am Pete. Who are you? What's that you are doing? Will you be my friend" because a whole new frontier of existence has been reached and in it, I am innocent and ignorant of convention: Many older conventions seem redundant now.
I said it was hard to explain.

But here I am, back in Germany, doing what I always did and this seems both familiar but new. I don't really know what to make of it all. I am sure it will all fall into place at some point.
But for now, my grumbling tum bids me head down for breakfast.