“Come on my old son, for goodness sake, get a grip,” 

 

I caught myself thinking and to my consternation, mouthing the words as I did.

 

“Where did this strange story begin?” I was now speaking to myself out loud; had to get a grip of that.

 

I was concerned with my current predicament which was not altogether making sense, but talking to myself, that was something else?

 

Talking to myself I had always considered being a sign of either completely losing the plot, so to speak, or conversely employing an essential means of problem analysing as might be recognised by some early Greek philosopher. I was no philosopher, my head had enough to consider without thinking about thinking; I was going round in circles.

 

How did I come to be sat in this incredibly comfortable armchair with its very pleasant covering of smooth, snooker table green leather, was also a part of this strange tale as did the open book resting on my lap?

 

The odour of freshly printed paper, a curiously pleasant smell caught my senses. It was coming from the book but it was intermingled with most pleasant ‘green leather’ from the easy chair in which I was sat.

 

I had been requested to read the book all the way through which should not have been too much of a problem. I was supposed to know its contents thoroughly and in advance because, as it was pointed out to me, my name was on the cover and in the fly pages; I was the author.

 

What I had read up to this point told me this was true. It had to be because of how I had found it so familiar and also my instinctive and correct anticipation of what each successive page held. Not the detail, mind you, but the overall story progression.

 

I guessed needed a break; that’s why I stopped to inform you, my friend the reader, of my current predicament, and of this book I keep referring to. It was easy going on one level but somewhat hard-going on another. Concentrating upon its contents was a difficulty taxing the old grey stuff mainly because it felt like exam revision; I was going over old stuff I somehow already knew.

 

I had been told that reading it was essential to my well being, to my continued recovery and understanding.


I needed to recover, perhaps come to accept and accommodate if what I had been told was indeed true, though fanciful perhaps or with a certainty; I was not sure which or what to believe.

 

It’s where I am, not this chair in which I’m sat my friend, but the place in which everything I can see including a bed is located, a hospital.

 

Not one of the types I had ever had the dubious pleasure of visiting before, and I have been in a few over my lifetime; broken bones, angina and breathing issues – the list had got longer as my age had progressed. I noted the smell of this place and it definitely was not ‘hospital’, more like ‘hotel room’, a plush ‘hotel room’.

 

The book now on the arm of the chair, which you will also have the pleasure of reading shortly, is the central point of my mystery. I have been told that reading it is the key to my rapid recovery but from what? How can I explain this to you and indeed myself, properly and in a sensible manner, I’m not sure?

 

Perhaps I should recount my tale in the order in which it has already come to my mind, a rather cloudy place at present. Perhaps telling you, the reader, will also help me to clear the mists and reinforce what I have already come to understand.

 

The one fact that seems to be with me repeatedly as a welcome guest of sorts is this book in front of me. It definitely has my name on it, it seems to be a friendly, familiar read and I am told by the chap in the white coat that I most certainly am the author.

 

Where my thoughts may have been that I should find the urge, an inner urge (was it inner?) to put pen to paper, or tap it out on a keyboard when my working days were spent concentrating on sensible technical reports and the like, I simply didn’t know. The technical stuff had been my bread and butter for nearly thirty years as I had stepped up my game from being a draughtsman to a design engineer; this much of my life I could recall.

 

A year ago, I think or so it seems, I had been compelled to write some simple poetry and where that urge had come from again I have no idea but it seemed to be correct and a sort of natural thing to do.

 

This had quite surprised me. I can still recall sitting at my desk with something or other of an engineering nature in front of me but distracted to scribble down words of regular rhyme. I was amazed at myself but not for long as my head had to quickly return to the tasks at hand.

 

I had to reflect, close my eyes, sink further into this welcoming chair and reflect; go over events that had brought me to this point in my life.

 

It wouldn’t matter in which order I could bring myself to collect together those events of which I was aware. They would rearrange themselves into the correct sequence I hoped, or they might simply make sense as each stood on turn, but remember more clearly I surely must.

 

“Relax Ian,” I thought to myself; probably the best one I had had all day.

 

“Book down and sink into the chair.”

 

I obeyed my own thoughts, slumped, let my head fall back against the softness and closed my eyes.

 

“Let your thoughts take you where they will,” I again consciously thought, “but don’t sleep. Let the ideas come.”

 

This was an old technique for designers. I guessed I still was one, in theory at least, although with retirement looming large on the horizon; this much I again recalled.

Designers are never asleep at their desk, they are designing, do not disturb them. This was an old mantra but really so true; perhaps we all thought in different ways to ‘normal’ people.


I’m beginning to think that I was no longer thinking normally but snippets of memory were certainly real and they did make sense.

 

Where to start to tell you? At the point I woke up, I guessed, as good as any.

 

And so I let my thoughts wander to that first strange awareness.