Cold communist winds paint patterns on water

Catch late autumn leaves as they fall

Written on them are the phrases of their Marxist purveyors

Who kill cultures with cruel Islamist's calls.

Inky Black Sky

                                                         Inky Black Sky                

 

It’s a cold, dry Saturday, the 4th of November 2000. I've been married to a loyal and loving mother of two fine children for over a decade. Our small terraced home, near Sheffield's bustling city centre, is close enough to Endcliffe Park to escape into the nearby Pennine countryside in minutes, yet adjacent to Eccleshall Road's thriving social scene. 

We've worked hard since arriving, and our house is already decorated throughout. The small garden at the rear has new fencing and paving and a store large enough to house everything needed to maintain our competitive teenage son's ever-growing collection of cycles. The small, two-bedroom terraced cottage already feels like home. But South Yorkshire is far from the wild, rugged landscape of Argyll, in Scotland, which we left behind less than a year earlier due to an enforced career change in the ever-evolving NHS. 

We'd had several happy years in Minard, a small village on the shores of Loch Fyne, watching our children grow and flourish. It's a close-knit, friendly settlement of no more than a hundred souls, midway between Lochgilphead and Inveraray. Our small bungalow rested on a rutted farm track looking down over the tidal loch. The village, typical of highland settlements, is a community where everyone knows everyone else.

I had been one of the Directors for the local NHS Trust, based in nearby Lochgilphead, while my wife drove the 140-mile round trip to Glasgow’s Southern General Hospital each day for her job in the Neurology Department. However, as with most public service careers, change is never too far away, and Argyll's NHS Trust was decommissioned as part of government cuts in 1999. Some see change as a curse, but I have a nomadic streak and love the opportunities change can bring. Whatever the case, the days of NHS administrative responsibilities and helping develop care strategies for the small, widely dispersed rural population will soon be gone. 

But, if nothing else, 30 years in the NHS had taught me to roll with the punches. I sensed major changes in Scottish healthcare governance structures were afoot and grasped the opportunity to retrain as an Infection Control Nurse at Glasgow University. Infection Control had been one of my main interests as a Director so it seemed like a preferable option to the alternatives: sitting back on a protected salary after relocating to the Central Belt. This post-grad course (undertaken while recovering from a broken neck suffered in a mountain biking accident in August 1998) presented a challenge, but I felt driven to set up my own business in the field of hospital hygiene. This had become much in vogue, and I'd use my enthusiasm, experience and Quality Management Degree to improve patient services. I had dreamt of establishing a successful business in the commercial sector, but sadly, this couldn't happen in Scotland. The Infection Control network was - and still is - compact, and it was unheard of for any NHS Trust to employ an external review of service quality. 

So, with a carefully written business plan and strategy for bringing the idea to fruition, we moved to Sheffield. We're lucky; our home in Minard sells quickly and a timely advert brings a job in neurology for my wife, Allison. Financial security is secured when it becomes clear that my skills can be used working for nursing agencies until the business venture takes root.

Thanks to my various professional registrations, I can work for most nursing providers and care sectors, and to my relief, delivering hands-on care is both fulfilling and rewarding. The only responsibilities are to patients, full stop. NHS politics no longer impact the quality of care delivered to the patients. It's what those years of nurse training were for. After all, it's not hard to enjoy looking after people in need of care - a pleasure I'd lost while shackled by the governance demands of NHS management. Luckily, I find myself in demand and can pick and choose where and when I work.

Tonight, I'm working in a local hospital facility in the north of the city from  8pm until 8am. I need only work three shifts each week to balance the family income. As it nears 7.30pm, I pack a rucksack with work clothes and change into cycling gear for the four-mile trip across the city. My wife doesn't like me cycling through Sheffield’s busy streets in the dark, and I don't blame her. But, as ever, I’ll be lit up like a Christmas tree. Strangely, earlier that evening, we had been out in the cool suburban air, enjoying a coffee and sandwich in one of Eccleshall Road’s thriving eateries. As we strolled home, a young woman cycled past us at speed, gravity doing its job down the steep incline. She sat tall on the saddle and dressed in shorts and a sweater; she wasn’t wearing a helmet over her long, flowing locks. It’s almost as though she doesn’t realise that being so close to parked cars she can be stopped dead - literally - if a car door opens. We cringe and walk on. It’s only a year since I’d broken my neck in a cycling accident, and her actions seem unimaginably vain and stupid.

Later, unsettled by this, my wife repeatedly asks me not to cycle to work. She rarely protests, but I look at her long and hard before deciding she's been spooked by events, and the moment will pass, so I offer assurances that I'll be careful. Her concerns are understandable, for it can’t be pleasant knowing your partner has been airlifted for emergency treatment after breaking his neck a year earlier. However, I'm enjoying a return to my former fitness levels. Knee ligament damage ended my long-distance running exploits, so I enjoy the thrill of cycling in the great outdoors. With a smile, I fire the lights and a goodbye wave, cycling off toward the city with the distant bangs and crackles of early firework displays filling the cold evening air.

I’m feeling good as the busy A625, Eccleshall Road, nears. It's the main route into the city from its southern suburb and it seems like the world and its dog are out seeking its social offerings- pubs, clubs, bars, restaurants, and firework displays, so the high volume of traffic isn’t too surprising.

The exhilarating feeling of freedom I’ve experienced since my management career ended is something I could never have imagined before moving to South Yorkshire. I worked here before, at the old Middlewood Hospital - a one-time asylum - in the mid-’70s. I was a young Staff Nurse back in those heady days. I guess the liberation I’m now experiencing became lost back then after setting my sights on the never-ending chain of promotions leading toward nursing’s upper echelons. I’ve rediscovered who I am: relaxed, happy, smiling and carefree. I’m proud of my survival instinct; it saved my bacon, overcame NHS leadership in Edinburgh, and equipped me for a new career. 

I reach bustling Eccleshall Road and make a quick check-in in both directions, and then ease out into the nighttime traffic. I pedal hard and soon build up speed on the steep descent. I look back to check on the line of approaching cars, hurrying toward the city’s nightlife and breathe in deeply, senses alive to the surroundings: shops, houses, bars, lights, people walking hand-in-hand; all the fleeting moments of city life flashing past in my peripheral vision. The air is crisp and cool as I speed through the neon-lit scene, but I’ll soon warm up. As I approach Endcliffe Park a powerful firework explodes overhead. It’s one of those huge starburst affairs that can be seen for miles. I take a quick glance up at the sparkling colours bursting against an inky black sky, smile - and then nothing. Somewhere deep in my consciousness, I remember the car appearing as though from some hellish nightmare. I imagine I can recall my shoulder hitting first, and then my head, and then…

 

It's a funny old life, isn't it? One moment you're recovering from a broken neck, full of the joys of life, the invincible man once more; the next, you're lying unconscious in a pool of blood. Just my luck. I’m doing around 30 mph and a careless driver, accelerating hard to avoid waiting for the traffic behind me to pass, speeds across the junction. It's the entrance to Rustlings Road and crosses my path at an acute angle, so he’s come almost headlong into me.  

I'm lucky; very lucky. The first person on the scene is an off-duty nurse. She's also one of our friends, although she doesn't recognise the unconscious, battered and bloody lump of humanity lying in front of her. I'm choking on blood, so she carefully turns me over and clears the airway, saving my life. The shocked driver of the Honda CR-V that hit me hovers anxiously nearby. His car is written off by the impact. Luckily, being in the city centre means that emergency services reach the scene very quickly. The paramedics arrive within five minutes, stabilise me, and then I’m transported across the city to the Northern General Hospital. 

My wife and son are close by at home, unaware of anything other than the loud sirens until the phone rings. The road is closed, but she is ushered through. Horrified, she fears the worst for the mangled bicycle and wrecked car are there for all to see. She’s distraught, her worst fears brought to life in a reckless moment, but she still manages to drive to the other side of the city where doctors are fighting to save my life. Those same doctors later tell Allison that they'd never known anyone to survive such extreme trauma. 

Notwithstanding gentle explanations and brilliant care from kind professionals, consciousness and reality come and go, along with several trips to the operating theatre. Intensive Care continues for more than three weeks. Eventually, I begin to grasp what has happened. Both lungs had collapsed, punctured by multiple rib fractures; a broken neck (again); a smashed spine has ripped the spinal cord; renal trauma; serious head injuries, smashed mandible, uprooted teeth, limb fractures... It's a long, long list, and I still find it hard to believe that I survived. Perhaps the years of running and cycling have ensured I'm strong enough to recover - that, and a stubborn determination to hang on to life.

Eventually, I'm visited by the inspirational Martin McClelland, who, at that time, was one of two Spinal Injuries Consultants in the hospital’s Princess Royal Spinal Injuries Unit. He gently tells me that I'll never walk again. Although deeply saddened, I'm not surprised and understand the implications. I recall the moment, just a year earlier, when being treated for a broken neck in Glasgow's Southern General Hospital, telling my wife that I’d rather be dead than using a wheelchair. My wife reminds me of this and smiles. I’ve changed my mind. 

After doing a few recent agency stints in the Spinal Unit, I know the staff quite well. Coincidence? No more than the first person to reach my wrecked body as it lay on the road was a nurse - and our friend. Or one of the emergency department doctors fighting to keep me alive during those first critical hours being our next-door neighbour. I've been transferred from Intensive Care to the same close-observation bed in the Spinal Unit where, just two months earlier, I’d nursed a young spinally injured girl. Then there's my solicitor, Jane Wright. She was once the Principal Physiotherapist for Spinal Injuries in Sheffield before taking her law degree. Luckily, a few months after I was discharged from the hospital, that experience helped her to recognise that I was heading into renal failure. I'm lucky again, for she refers me to a consultant she knows for life-saving surgery. 

Anyhow, immobile and heavily drugged, I go through crisis after crisis and watch the family come and go. They all have sad faces, each one framing an expression of 'wonder if we'll ever see him again'. Those sad expressions are perhaps the hardest part of being in that critical condition. You can see the distress in people’s eyes, yet you can do nothing to alleviate their worries and anxieties.

But I survive - even after two lethal efforts by careless nurses to loosen my grip on life. First, I'm left 'unattended' when the experienced nurse responsible for clearing the tracheotomy every fifteen minutes disappears off to meet a friend. This is very important, for unless the excess mucous produced by your tissues is cleared using suction, you drown; it's as simple as that. He was a fine nurse but left an untrained colleague to look after me while taking an extended coffee break. Strangely, she looked on, unmoved, as I waved my arms, gurgled helplessly, and began turning blue. Luckily, despite tearing out the IV lines, I managed to reach the call cord, and the Ward Sister rushed to my rescue. The nurse is reported and forced to leave his prestigious post.

The second professional incident involved a qualified agency nurse and happened a little more than a fortnight later. During the evening drug round, the nurse tried to administer several times the prescribed dose of a dangerous drug. I refused to take it, pointing out her error. She blushed, grinned, and then re-read the prescription sheet.

"Sorry," she said lamely, moving on in search of a more compliant victim.

Horrified, I pondered that incident till morning. Do I put a second nurse’s livelihood in jeopardy, or do I count my blessings? By the break of the day, I decided she has probably learned a lesson, and so didn't report the matter. A year later, when I returned for aftercare, that same nurse was arriving for duty having been recruited as a Staff Nurse. Such is life and death in the NHS.

Eventually, I become bored. After five months of fighting to survive a 'spinal', I'm increasingly impatient to leave the hospital. I chat things over with my wife. In the end, with the road to recovery seemingly never-ending, I bit the bullet and discharged myself. It's the 23^rd of March, the eve of my 47^th birthday, and I don't intend to spend one more day in a rehabilitation ward. I'm repeatedly told by the consultant and experienced nursing staff that, given the extent of my injuries, it's at least one month too early for me to leave the hospital. But I won't listen, sign the DAMA form, and wheel off weakly over the horizon. 

I’m home, lucky to be alive, but lost. It's strange when you realise that things can never return to 'normal'. One day you're walking, the next you're not. My wife and I discussed what's needed for me to manage at home in the meantime. Our terraced house is small and impossible to adapt. We buy a single bed and put it in the dining room. The room is too small for a double bed, so the dining table goes into the bicycle storage shed. We raise the bed on blocks to ease my transfer to and from the wheelchair. The situation is not ideal, but it'll have to do until we can find an adaptable home. 

But my body hasn't yet recovered from the trauma. The professional staff were correct; it was too early to leave hospital care. Positional changes cause episodes of intense sweating, soaking the bedding as soon as I lie flat. This creates no end of work for my wife, but she'd rather I'm home than in the hospital. To add to the complications, I suffer from dizziness and occasional violent spasms that create muscular rigidity. One of these spasms throws me backwards over a small antique table, destroying it completely. It was a treasured heirloom that once belonged to my wife's grandmother. Damage aside, spasms leave my body rigid at times, making it impossible for me to sit up in bed unaided, so Allison finds herself helping me regularly. More worryingly, my breathing is shallow due to lung damage, and frequent bouts of coughing bring up clots of blood-stained sputum. 

To complicate matters further, I'm a psychological mess. Mood swings make me angry and unpredictable. So much so that I fear for my sanity. I can chat amiably, but my concentration is poor and my memory in tatters. Worse, if challenged, I occasionally burst into an uncontrollable rage. It's like a red blur, a curtain of paranoia coming down over any reason or logic. It recedes as quickly as it appears, but I'm aware of the potential for violence and fear I might do something extreme, perhaps even harm someone. It takes nearly four years for these outbursts to pass and for my moods to stabilise. 

The reality of a new life with paraplegia eventually sinks home. Throughout those long years, Allison has been patient and tolerant, more than should be expected of any partner. For better, for worse, eh? Never a phrase more appropriate in her case. I'm blessed, and I know it. She gets to work, helping me rebuild my concentration and patches of lost long-term memory that were wiped away by the head injury. Large chunks of the past have simply disappeared, so she helps fill the blanks. With her support, I try reading, but it's a struggle. The only book I’ve been able to follow is Harry Potter, which she bought thinking it might be an easy place for me to begin.

The recovery at home is slow and painful but is helped by urgent bladder surgery. This comes courtesy of our solicitor's medical contacts after she noticed my health deteriorating. She tells me I'm displaying the signs of renal failure, a view confirmed by the urologist. As a result, I lost several feet of the small intestine, which is used to create a cystoplasty, or bladder enlargement. This will mean a life of self-catheterising frequently. It also means a change in eating habits to cope with intestinal quickening, but no matter, the acute renal problems are resolved, and I gradually begin to feel stronger. 

Time passes, yet I'm preoccupied with little more than survival. I’m lost and can’t find my sense of freedom, my need to be (or self-actualisation in Maslow’s world). The emotions are still raw and refuse to heal. I’m angry and bitter that life has been reduced to the four wheels and searching for options that make freedom and accessibility easier. All the routine jobs I usually did around the house now involve paying professionals. This is something I intensely dislike. My bicycles lie in the shed, prodding at me, taunting me. I ask my wife to collect my mangled Cannondale from the police pound, but I look at it once and dissolve into tears. I'm irascible, confused and extremely impatient.

Eventually, despite her best efforts, I push her away. With little choice in the matter, she packs and leaves, distraught and disbelieving. We spent nearly five months apart while I learned to cope again as an individual. It's a wise move, for I rediscovered how to live as a disabled version of the person I once was, accepting the body image changes and physical damage. My determination to fully recover is unbending. I call my wife from the Lake District. I'm visiting family there and tell her that I miss her. It’s mutual, apparently, and after a brief courtship, we get back together. She's a very patient lady.

Time passes while I recover a modicum of sanity. Then three close family members pass away in succession, reawakening that cruel sense of loss and grief. After a long illness and wonderful healthcare in Whitehaven Hospital, my father died, struggling for breath. Luckily, with no other commitments, I'm able to drive from Sheffield to be by his side at the end. Soon after this, my younger brother, David, was diagnosed with leukemia. It's aggressive, and despite his courage, I find it heart-rending to watch him fight the inevitable. He is brave, stoical, and realistic. His end-of-life care is delivered in a wonderful hospice facility within Whitehaven Hospital, near the family home. It matters little, for I would happily swap places with him. Cranial bleeds result in memory loss and searing pain, but he still says he loves me before the end. My mother, Eleanor, tells me that I’d been David's hero. Several years his senior, I had no idea. I still shed a tear remembering what he went through. Her own struggle watching David being destroyed by illness so soon after losing Dad is almost too much for her to bear. Soon afterwards, she also relinquished her hold on life, supported by my sister and the wonderful Homecare team in Wasdale, West Cumbria. I’m lost and distraught. Life, as they say, is a bastard. 

It all becomes too surreal when, a year later, my great friend and mentor, David McKendrick, dies in Wigan Infirmary. He looked after me, providing guidance and wisdom during my early years in management. He refuses to die at home and make life difficult for his wonderful wife, so, to ease matters for her, he takes his own life after being admitted to a single room there. He always said that when the time came, he would finish the job himself rather than watch his wife and others struggle. He had supported his first wife through her terminal illness and was determined not to inflict the same horrors on anyone else. A brave man and a great loss to all who knew him.

We had moved from Sheffield to Gosforth, on the Lake District's western fringes, to be near family, but losing them as I fight to rebuild a life is deeply unsettling. Time passes, and the searing grief begins to fade, but I'm lost and desperately in need of a challenge, a reason to live. 

Then we discover France. After a year of looking at the property there, we decided to buy and convert a wrecked nineteenth-century barn into a home fit for a family, a wheelchair, and our German Shepherd dog, Mac. 

The rebuild process takes nearly three years, during which time I shuttle by car between an adapted caravan and our flat in Bearsden, Glasgow. 1100 miles separate the two ‘homes’ but we enjoy the journeys, chatting endlessly, listening to podcasts, or learning French together. 

I managed to supervise the building work with the help of a French friend, Denis Gatinel. He's married to an English girl and easily translates my needs and requests, which he then delivers to a variety of French tradesmen. We don't use ex-pat English builders, for most have no idea of an old French barn's structure and might do more harm than good.

By 2011, and with the conversion project complete, I was restless and once again keen to find a challenge. I’ve had health problems and several post-accident stays under hospital care for various procedures, but I still feel the old Maslovian need for self-fulfilment. 

Back in the 90s I’d written a couple of novels, but neither had been published. I study the files intently. My memory and concentration are wrecked, but I desperately need to regain some self-respect. More importantly, I still need to bury the self-loathing I hold after failing to listen to my wife's pleas not to take that damned bike to work!

I think things over for a few weeks, and an idea begins to develop. Despite loving thrillers, I imagine that writing a Detective novel might be a new challenge and force me to think about something completely different. My interest in the subject is spurred on by imagining that Scotland's eight regional forces could merge into one Force. Remember, this is still two years before the announcement that those changes would actually take place here in Scotland. 

I tell my wife of the fanciful idea. She looks at me and shrugs. No worries, I've always found police work fascinating and begin researching the subject. I study Scottish police structures, education and roles. These offer a notion of the main character’s potential job and functions. Finally, I decided the principal figure could be a detective who assists across all of Scotland's eight police regions and realise how the character could be presented. I’m not an avid reader, although I have the basic beginning-middle-end notions ingrained in my mind.

Eventually, Crieff Lamont comes into being. Lamont is derived from the medieval Lagman, or 'law-speaker'. It’s of the old Norse, Logmaor, which roughly translated means ‘to lay down the law’. The Lamont clan ruled the Cowal peninsula in Argyll, Scotland, until Castle Toward and their Clan lands were taken by Clan Campbell with the approval of Robert the Bruce. Lamont had stood against Bruce with MacDougall of Lorne during the Wars of Scottish Independence. By the end of the 15^th century, many of the clans had fled or taken other names. It shouldn’t then surprise the reader that my own surname is of Clan Lamont.  

 It took more than three years to scribe the first part of the trilogy. Once again, I had to learn to think logically and focus. It was therapy, plain and simple. Frequently driving between Scotland and our home in France meant that continuity was challenging, but eventually, the first novel had an ending with which I felt comfortable. The carefully crafted tale of child trafficking has grown from being a one novel, mental health recovery exercise into something much larger. 

It’s June 2015 it is finally published on Amazon. One year later, the second part of the trilogy was also published. It takes another year until the trilogy is complete. This final novel is titled after the birthplace of Lamont's fictional wife, Elspeth, and is named after a former church on the beautiful Hebridean island of Tiree. I had once visited the old church – now a guesthouse – as Tiree formed part of my professional remit as Director of Nursing.

Writing three novels has been a blast. Every minute was filled with fresh challenges, research, and trying to build on the ideas necessary to hold a reader’s attention. I have learned that I am, first and foremost, a storyteller. It's like working on a thesis each time a new chapter opens. I still write to this day, in 2024, but no longer self-publish my work. The cost of putting a novel out there is prohibitive.

Anyhow the trials and tribulations of the past 24 years are many, yet writing has helped restore my self-belief and confidence. It has also let me overcome a well-masked loss of pride. It is a fulfilling experience and provides me with focus and drive. Each written project is similar to studying an academic subject: it requires a beginning, a middle, and an end - and those seemingly never-ending corrections through editing and proofreading. It builds knowledge and understanding of anything needing further research. Without those facts, there are few logical foundations upon which you can build a novel or upon which you can build a life. They help reinforce your story’s credibility with an informed and hungry reader. The pleasure of writing is enhanced by trying to engage the reader’s intellect as well as their imagination. 

Whatever my novels do for others, they helped me restore the confidence I'd lost following the accident. Apart from sound personal relationships and good health, most of us probably need a little more. For me, surviving trauma was - and is - about setting realistic targets and working methodically toward them. First, it is important to realise that your abilities need not be hampered by dysfunction. With drive, enthusiasm and energy, skills can be developed in most areas of life. Your only enemies are yourself and those restrictions imposed by the man-made environment. Much has been done in recent years to highlight obstacles and create a more accessible world for all, although there are still many public facilities that need attention.

So how do I now feel? Well, I haven't forgotten the professionals and friends to whom I'm forever indebted. Those who helped save my life and stood by me as I fought to recover. Memories of their kind acts and generous behaviour will remain with me forever. 

On a personal level, I'm still stubborn and awkward and value my independence. This is important, for being dependent on anyone is disabling. If I say 'no' to offers of assistance, it's only because I'm fighting to retain my strengths and abilities. 

However, support and kindness from people across the years have been a humbling and enlightening experience. With few exceptions, I've had little other than smiles and generosity from the majority of people with whom I've interacted. Ignorance and bad manners are rare. Indeed, the vast majority reach out a hand, whether or not it's needed. Those delightful moments of kindness have helped rebuild my confidence and faith in human nature and for that, I'm truly grateful.

Thanks for reading. x

*There's a trilogy of thrilling Detective Lamont fiction novels; Moon's Rising, The Factor and Kirkapol are available on Kindle and Paperback on Amazon.

MOON’S RISING: A Detective Lamont Novel Book 1 by Rob Brown https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B079KJ5YS7/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_9EEZW1882QBM00VAX327?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1 via @AmazonUK