So, where do I begin.  I really don’t know where or how this will start as I’m going to be trying to talk about some pretty big stuff, stuff that has burst my head like a 10 foot cannonball hitting a melon at 10 times the speed of sound.

Pfffft, I’m waiting for the download to hit and the fingers to run.

Right, I’ve been trying to talk to you about what a quasi religious experience this is for me (please don’t be scared by words like ‘God’ or ‘religious’, they will crop up a lot today, take them as you please, if you believe or not, but just sit with me a while and hear my tale with ears not covered with any kind of pre-judgments.  Walk away with your original opinions at the end, but just listen for a while, I’ll try not to take too long).  I’ve felt so overcome by love and the power of it within me, within every pore, I feel like I could reach beyond.     I lie with my wife and as I said it burns in me so much, not just love for her but a love for everything, absolutely everything.  It feels like it could overwhelm me at any point, I feel like I’m at the edge of control.  I lie down and close these tired, yellow, withered eyes and I can feel layers being pulled back before me, I see the unity, I glimpse the forever and I feel burned by love and guidance from a distant place.  Like when I was talking about Crying at the news and that divine calm that swept over me, it’s like that, it sweeps me over and pins me where I lay and I feel like these eyes could glow as hot coals and be young again but equipped with far more power, power to see in to the ‘heart’ of everything that lives.  When I have gone through so much unbearable pain I have cried out to my God, Telling me how humble I am before him and test me, test me hard but please don’t break me.  I came close to being broken when suffering the piles agony, the dark and pain almost filled above my chin and drowned me from beauty forever.  Then came the news but then, also, came the calm.      My piles no longer hurt at all any more, I don’t even need the cream, the chemo is no longer raking my body and soul, drawing me thin.  I feel unshackled at last.

All the time through my life, since I’ve started believing in God again and since I’ve been through pain I’ve begged for some sort of sign, anything, something to make me feel  at peace and then I can take all pain, all darkness, all withering.  After a magical day, and I mean magical, amazing walk through the park with the missus topped off by a seat overlooking the golf course and two teas to warm our hearts and hands.  I squeezed her hand as we sat and just….looked, breathing it all in again.  And the rest of the day was very special.  We sat down to watch a film in the early evening, Amazing Grace, about William Wilberforce, the man who campaigned for the abolition of the slave trade in this country.  And that was the sum total of what I knew, I had seen the trailer and bought it on the back of that, I hadn’t realized ‘amazing grace’ the song was written by a preacher mate of his, which was shown in the trailer, I fucking love that song, beautiful.

The film began, well, I won’t spoil individual scenes  but one bloke saying ‘bring my n*’  (horrible word that was deemed acceptable then to describe a black person) who he was going to use as a stake in a card game.  I got so upset at that straight away, and that was before any of the facts about just how fucking brutal the slave ships were.  On it rolls.  He’s sat on the wet grass looking at the sky and the nature all around him and he says something about ‘God, I had to come to talk to you in private’.  He didn’t realize his butler (well, home help bloke, not butler) is stood there.  He enquires about what to do about a beggar that has knacked and walks off when told what to do.  William calls him back and tells him he realizes it isn’t normal to sit on the wet grass.  He says it’s none of his business.  To which he replies that ‘it’s god’ and his mate says ‘you’ve found god?’ and he says ‘well, god found me’.  He then goes on to say how he ‘just wants to study dandelions and bloody spiders webs’  My heart skipped a little and he goes on to say how he has a glittering political career ahead of him yet in his heart are ‘spiders webs’.  His mate jumps over and lies on the grass and says ‘It is a sad fate for a man to die too well known to everyone else, but unknown to himself’.  He looks at him quizzically and his mate says ‘francis bacon.  I don’t just dust your books sir’.  Top quote I thought (and in searching for that quote before deciding just to re-watch the scene I found another top quote by him ‘Small amounts of philosophy lead to atheism, but larger amounts bring us back to God. ‘   I feel very much the same).  I had to pause the film to breathe in as me and the missus just stared at each other.  For new readers I wrote this on October 15^th on a visit to westerham:-

‘Passed by two huge spiders webs which were quite amazingly beautiful things.  I got to wondering, how did that behaviour and ability evolve?  How is that imprinted as instinct on their brains, to form such an amazing design that is such an effective trap but so complicated a construction?  How did the first mutation benefit from (presumably) having some sticking going coming out of it's hind quarters?  Would it have just laid a splat down and hoped a fly landed on it?  Because surely at the early stages it must have been very primitive, but immediate evolutionary advantage would they get from that?  It seems unlikely to trap a fly by chance so how did it survive to go on to evolve this amazing ability to string this stuff that is stronger than steel at equivalent thickness in to complex web designs?  I just don't get it.  Not that I'm denying evolution here folks, don't panic.  I realise that it's almost impossible for us to imagine it playing out over timescales we can't even imagine.  Millions of years and countless mutations have created all things but still look at something as tiny as a spider with this amazing construction and think 'ah?  that blows my brainbox'.  Maybe I'm just too tick to visualise these things, I'm sure and evolutionary biologist would have a plan for how and why it evolved but I suppose they are only guessing because I doubt there's much of a fossil record for spiders.  So you just have to accept it and resort to 'well, it just must have happened and had a reason for surviving as a trait and evolving to this extreme, amazing conclusion'.  But still, every time I see a spiders web like that I just think 'amazing'.’

Now, at this point, and forgive me here, I thought ‘it’s my sign..that’s it’.  You can say ‘coincidence’ till you’re blue in the face, I probably would in the same situation, I don’t mind, but to me it was like something huge smacking my face.  I talked to the missus for about half an hour at the time about the webs, they awe me.  We continued to watch the film once I’d got my breath back and later on he’s ill and this woman says ‘how long have you been taking (some opiate), I know it’s presence’, and he says about how he’s been ill with his stomach and his doctors tell him it is colitis.  *bang* goes my head again.  Crohn’s disease is a form of colitis, just a separate distinction of something that is still colitis.  And I have suffered with Crohn’s for 17 years or summat now.  Say coincidence again, I really understand but that’s when I knew it was my sign, I just knew.  I had to stop the film and head out for a late night walk with the missus.  My head was singing.  I know of people who’ve talked of being touched by god and I’ve always just thought ‘nah’ but now I think ‘fuck me, I know now.’  On the walk I saw something that looked like a strange cat.  As I got closer I realized it was a fox, but he was very young, just cat size.  The most beautiful creature, a glorious coat with a magnificent tail.  I got closer and I got within 10 yards as he just looked at me under the streetlight.  It was just a magical moment, a moment I can never forget.

I stayed up for hours and I felt like the feeling was going to overwhelm me, it just got stronger and stronger.  My mind felt 100 miles wide, I felt like the whole universe was within me.  I can’t describe the feelings, they really are so so intense.  I was half scared that it would overwhelm me and I would just burst, burst out of this body that felt so tiny.  I felt like it was such a tiny fleshy cage, I felt my very being rattling at the seams.  No w I know how ridiculous this all sounds, call it the ramblings of a dying man call it desperation, call it whatever you please, I totally understand but to me it was the most incredible experience, by a thousand miles, of my whole life.  My life is forever changed, you just try and rob my serenity now, it isn’t possible, it really isn’t.  I feel so pure and touched.

I’ll continue this later, I imagine you’ve had enough for now.  But I thank you for sitting and listening to me.

And for those that are interested, my piles are calmed right down, they are still present as an object but those pain orbs are gone, I no longer need the creams even.  I was worried that I was a touch blocked as I have been like a machine when it comes to eating.  I was hungry all the time before but on steroids now and you could pour any amount in and I wouldn’t be full.      But I wasn’t pooing enough out.  I was concerned I would have to resort to the old lactulose which might upset the delicate piles.  But then my body thought ‘switch modes, move to ‘soft’ handling’ and my shite became all soft and then it flowed.  And my  oh my has it flowed.  I crapped 5 times in one morning and all of them were fucking MEGA loads.  I just keep going, it’s ace.  I’ve been about, ooo, 7 times today, probably more, delivering massive shitty loads down the toilet.  One I did, I had a fucking massive shit.  I went and sat down and not 10 minutes later ‘hmmm, toilet again…can’t be….but it is’.  Off to the toilet for an expected small amount of dregs.   ‘Woooooaaaaaaoooaaaaahhhh’. I held on as it fucking flew out of my arse, mountains of it.  I felt like I’d shat out a weeks worth of poo in twos shits.  Amazing.  So things are all good on the bowel front

More later, I’m knackered