andrew mitchell

Halfway through my month without a smartphone, I’ve noticed one thing above all else: noticing itself. The small details that return to you when your gaze is no longer swallowed by that black pool of narcissism we stare into for far too many hours each day.

Most of my working week is spent at a small Ikea desk in our spare room, tapping away at websites and developing projects. To my right is a modest window overlooking the yard and back lane. Two rows of red-brick terraces face each other, divided by a strip of tarmac. Cables hang like tangled vines, rusted satellite dishes tilt dutifully toward the sky. It’s hardly bucolic, but it’s alive.

Lately, I’ve been drawn to this window more than I have in years. Instead of wasting free moments in the endless scroll, I find myself gazing at the comings and goings of my immediate community. I’m beginning to understand why it’s such an integral part of Sidney’s day. That boy can turn watching into an art form.

From here, I’ve seen a father teach his son to ride his first bike, shouting encouragement while his trousers slipped ever further south. I’ve watched a neighbour scatter chicken scraps for a band of cats who wait patiently by her back gate, punctual as clockwork. Those same cats patrol the lane like detectives, sniffing tyres, nibbling weeds, swiping at butterflies before collapsing in a patch of sun.

Every few hours a flock of starlings gathers on the rooftops, their noisy chatter carrying through the lane as they devour bread tossed onto a flat roof. Lazy seagulls balance on chimney pots, idling away their hours, watching as I do.

This week, a Goldcrest appeared, a bird I’d never seen in Dunston, darting along the narrow path while an older man swept his step with a kind of devotion I thought belonged to the Beamish.

An L-plate motorcyclist emerges daily, wheeling his bike between two parked cars before sputtering off on a reluctant 125cc. Delivery drivers thrash the tits off their vans down the back lane, desperate to hit the next drop. Parents push bairns in buggies. Dog walkers do their loops. The hours fill with these small stories.

Even the clouds have become companions, after I stumbled across a cloud-watching site that drew my gaze skyward. An endless procession, shape-shifting and drifting quietly by.

If this is boredom, the very thing we’ve tried to cure with those pay-monthly slave masters that ping, buzz, and vibrate for our attention, then I’ll take it. I’m glad to have switched.

It’s been three years since I broke my hip. Not a hairline fracture, not a sprain; proper shattered. Three breaks in the left femoral neck, which required a dynamic hip screw and months of physical rehabilitation. The sort of injury that alters the way you move through the world. I remember being sat in our spare room, strung out of my mind on top shelf painkillers, unable to do much.

At the time of my calamitous fall, I was told I shouldn’t run again. Or ride a bike. My hip was repaired, but fragile, thanks to a diagnosis of osteopenia, a condition where your bones begin to thin. As 40 hit, I started to, quite literally, drop to bits. It was the kind of warning that you don’t ignore.

So I stopped running and cycling dead. And, for a couple of years, that was that.

Running had once been a small but steady part of my weekly routine. Always done through gritted teeth; I knew it was good for me despite having never once felt the runner's high I've heard so much about. I'd twice before completed the Great North Run, raising money for Parkinson’s UK, a cause close to home. Emma’s dad, Dave, lives with Parkinson’s, so the GNR had always been about more than finishing times. It was about whacking hundreds in the fundraising tin. It was a way of turning helplessness into something active.

Still, I accepted my consultant's verdict, no more running. I focused on recovery. Strengthened the hip joint slowly with multiple rounds of daily exercises. Every day, teaching my body how to trust itself again, and not collapse in a heap. BTW looking for a quick mobility fix? Stand on one leg while brushing your teeth and swap legs halfway through, it’s a gamechanger.

But then came Emma’s diagnosis. Suddenly, our lives were overtaken by new routines; hospital appointments, consultations, endless scans. And in that shitty sea of uncertainty, Macmillan Cancer Support became a lighthouse.

They were more than a resource. They were clarity and calm. Along with Bowel Cancer UK's incredible forum, Macmillan’s website was the only one we truly trusted. Free from the noise and misinformation that seems to echo around a diagnosis like this. I'm looking at you Robbie, Emma's sisters downstairs neighbour and your 'Turbo Cancer' bullshit.

Beyond their online outreach, their physical presence within NHS wards, and dovetailed integration into the cancer care system, was invaluable. They were woven into the fabric of Emma’s treatment, and, as a result, our lives.

So when watching the 2024 GNR on the telly last year, eyes filled with tears in awe of the everyday athletes, how could I not sign up for another go?! Even though, physically, I still probably shouldn’t be running. But let's not dwell on that one eh?!

Starting Over

I slowly began running again in Autumn last year, using a version of the trusted Couch to 5K as my restart. Soon after, I signed up to the Runna app to structure a plan, complete with a body weight programme, to build up key muscles to help with the discomfort. My hip was NOT happy, flaring up more than once, groaning and aching at what I was putting it through. My gait had changed, as had my speed. Mr. Tumia, my consultant, had warned me, this isn’t a great idea. But I had to try.

Running had always been solitary for me. Headphones in, podcasts on, eyes fixed forward, one foot in front of the other, all through sensationally laboured breathing. But then in April, everything stopped. Emma went into surgery, and I became her full-time carer. Training fell to the wayside, despite it being somewhat of a release, a way out of the house at 5am before she woke up. However, when someone you love is recovering from a giant operation, the rhythm of your life changes entirely.

Alongside the change in routine came a shift in my mental health. I live with cyclothymia, a mood disorder on the bipolar spectrum. After spending much of the past year in a state of manic energy; cooking, cleaning, crying, caring; the pendulum, as it always does, swung back, dropping me into a deep depressive phase. The kind that makes even small things feel enormous. The kind that makes getting out for a run feel impossible.

My bodyweight exercises fell away. The consistency I'd built crumbled. But I kept the race in mind. Friends and family had joined in and Team Booze, the name given to our first GNR dalliance a decade ago was reborn. We were back under starters orders. There was zero chance of me not making the start line in September.

A New Kind of Running

On the longest day of the year, I joined Sarah, Emma’s sister, at a Macmillan fundraiser at Fausto Coffee in Roker. We met at the ungodly hour of 3.30am to hightail it to Sunderland, where we ran a few gentle miles along the beach with fifty or sixty others. Afterwards, we toasted the dawn with mimosas and an amazing picky breakfast. It was the first time I’d ever run with someone else. and you know what, it felt great!

The simplicity of it. The shared pace and support. So, since then, Sarah and I have been running together. Not all the time, but at least once a week. We’ve found a rhythm. My pace has slowed slightly. Hers has picked up. Benjamin Button style, we’ve met somewhere in the middle, where conversation is easy(ish) and the need for headphones and specific BPMs fades away. .

For me, it has completely changed the nature of the run. It's no longer about personal bests, it’s about being present. Being together. Emma and I lived with Sarah for several months when she was diagnosed and our house was being fettled. Our coming together to run 13.1 miles felt right.

So Race Day is looming again, and while a part of me still would love to break the two-hour mark, having missed it by 30 seconds last time when my legs worked properly. But that’s absolutely not the priority anymore.

This time, I want to take it in. The atmosphere, the energy, the stories of other runners, each with their own personal quest in front of them. My previous two efforts on the course were blinkered by that ridiculous need to achieve.

After both mine and Emma’s surgeries, I’ve learned not to take movement for granted. Whether it’s walking after injury or simply managing to get out of the house when depression tries to anchor you down. This run isn’t about achievement. It’s about acknowledgement. About marking the end of a year of treatment and fear, twelve months of resilience and support. I’ll be a clip at the end.

Support Us

Sarah, in the most generous act, has even chosen to include fundraising at her 40th birthday party later this month. There’ll be a big raffle, full of wonderful donations from lovely people, with all the proceeds going to Macmillan. It’s a selfless act, folding support for others into a day that should really be all about her. But that’s who Sarah is. I couldn’t be more proud to be running with her.

If you’re able to support us, we’d be incredibly grateful. Every donation helps Macmillan continue to provide information, guidance, and face to face support for people facing the hardest chapters of their lives. We’re proud to run for them and hopeful for a future where they’re no longer needed.

But until then, we’ll keep going.

Pop a pound in the hat here – https://www.justgiving.com/team/teambooze

Starting August 1st, this Friday, I’ll be switching off my smartphone for an entire month. No mobile social media. No phone camera. No banking apps. No browser. It will stay at home, out of sight.

Instead, I’ll be carrying a dumbphone for calls and texts only, the Punkt. MP02, that I was sent to take part in their annual Digital Balance Challenge. Throughout the month I’ll capture moments with a point-and-shoot camera, jot down my thoughts in a paper notebook, and read from a stack of paperbacks I’ve been meaning to get to for far too long. Not the one's I ruin daily for Paperblack Writer I hasten to add.

A few months ago I picked up £20 MP3 player for offline music while running. The player, a tiny Mechen H1 Pro, equivalent in size and shape to deck of playing cards, runs a hugely outdated version of Android but is still able to handle albums downloaded from Tidal.

I’ve had music in my pocket since my first Walkman at age seven or eight. Progressing through a series of tape and CD players, minidiscs, iPods and phones. However, in keeping with the spirit of the month, I've only loaded up actual albums. No playlists or algorithmically generated radio stations. I also have my wonderful XHDATA radio for the allotment. Do I intend to turn the greenhouse into a metal framed, short wave antenna booster? You better believe I do!

The erosion of boredom

In recent years, I’ve noticed how little time I spend being bored. Every moment of nowt; whether waiting for a bus, the walk between the shops and home, lying in bed; all have become an opportunity to check something, to cehck anything. I’ve eliminated boredom from my life almost completely. But that surely comes at a cost.

Psychologist and neuroscientist Bruce Hood, in his 2024 book, The Science of Happiness, who was recently interviewed on the excellent 10% Happier podcast, explains that social media and smartphones hijack the brain’s reward system. The constant feed of novelty; likes, reels, news, endless memes, all keep us hooked, but rob us of focus and deep satisfaction.

“We are cultivating habits of mind that reward distraction,” Hood writes,“and eroding the mental space where imagination, creativity and problem-solving happen.”

Boredom is not a flaw in the human system, it’s a feature. As a child, I filled my time with bike rides, running around woods or waiting impatiently for my favourite TV shows to come on. It's hardly like I was luddite child. After being bored of playing my computer games on my Spectrum +2, I got a book out of the library to learn how to code. And I learned by typing out pages and pages of BASIC, for hours on end.

Living less efficiently

The month is also about breaking habits, like tapping my phone to pay. I’ve been using banking apps, and mobile payment platforms for so long that I simply don't use cash, ever.

This August, I’ll go back to carrying coins and notes where possible. A minor friction, but one that reminds me I’m actually spending something real, something earned. The disconnect between my wages and ordering things online is genuinely terrifying. Things just arrive magically don't they?

So for one month;

• I'll still take photos, but I'll not edit or share them instantly.
• I'll still listen to music, but not on shuffle and I only what I specifically want to hear. Unless on the radio, I get zero say in that one.
• I’ll still capture thoughts, but with pen and paper.

Life will be slower, quieter and undeniably messier.

A pause, not a renunciation

I’m not quitting smartphones forever; my current job is in digital innovation after all. This isn’t a performance or a purity test. It’s a reset, kicked finally into gear by the Digital Challenge.

Like many of us, I often feel totally fragmented; information rich but insight poor. I'm even turning my back on podcasts for the summer. I was there when audioblogs, courtesy of the name from Ben Hammersley, became podcasts. Remember when the only wway to find and suscribe to shows was via RSS feed on the PodcastAlley website? I certainly do. I was even broadcasting them to my car radio on FM as, at the time, bluetooth wasn’t a thing. And amazingly, it was illegal to do so.

I’ve been feeling the need for boredom for some time;  for space, for a mind less tethered to the all deciding algorithm.

As Neil Postman warned in Amusing Ourselves to Death, long before smartphones,

“People will come to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.”

That undoing happens quietly, notification by notification, swipe by swipe, until the ability to simply sit still, look, and wonder feels like a lost art. I don't even know if I have it in myself to reclaim the attention I’ve so obviously lost along the way but I'm excited to find out. Excited to let things slow down and see what surfaces in the silence.

I’ll report back in September. Maybes.

Our allotment sits just over 200 metres from home. It;s hard to imagine a more conveniently placed patch of earth. A cluster of around fourteen plots lies tucked behind a row of houses on our street. For years, we didn’t even know they were there. A locked gate world of fruit, veg and greenhouses; a sprouting shanty town if you like, kept safe from rogue elements by tall metal fences.

In our eighteen years of living in Dunston, I’d never once stepped inside, until our cat Sidney went missing last year, during Emma’s chemotherapy.

That first visit was anxious: cat box and apacket of Dreamies in hand, searching for a feline needle in an overgrown haystack. At the time, many of the plots had been abandoned. Trees, hedgerows, and brambles ran riot. Old bathtubs, shattered glass, and the relics of half-finished projects, filled the space. The rent was so low that many tenant simply left their plots to wilderness while continuing to pay, keeping the site frozen in disrepair.

I spent a week scouring the village, walking over 70 miles, distributing posters, and searching by torchlight. At last, someone spotted Sid, retreating within the fenced-off allotments. With help from the Cat Protection League and one of their humane traps, I was able to bringhim home. After seven days of heavy rain, his white coat was pristine. He’d clearly found shelter in one of the old sheds. The allotment had been his refuge. And in many ways, it's become ours too.

Earlier this spring, the Council began clearing part of the site, hoping to revitalise it and welcome new growers. Miraculously, having only been on the waiting list for a year, we were offered a plot. The catch? It was in a super rough state, used for years as a dumping ground. A dense tangle of roots, branches, and nutrient-starved soil, all of which would become our probelm to sort. Despite Emma’s looming surgery, we jumped at the opportunity. We started sketching plans for what we might grow.

Before we received the key to the ancient padlock guarding the entrance, I was invited back to view a different space. A half plot once tended by Paul, the site’s former treasurer. At 78, Paul was in declining health and struggling to manage the full area. His offer came with warmth but also caution. Many newcomers, he said, arrive with energy but quickly abandon their plots.

I met him at 7am a few days after getting the key, sitting in one of his orderly sheds while he brewed tea on a Calor gas stove. Rain tapped the roof softly as we talked. He was kind, generous, and remarkably, someone I may have crossed paths with him years ago in my days as an Energy Officer in South Tyneside.

He’d worked the allotment for close to forty years. Handing over even half of it was no small thing. He's shared photos of the allotment was he first took over the plot and also of it in its productive pomp. I promised we’d pick up the reigns as best we could.

With the plot, came Paul's knowledge and care. The soil is rich and living, a legacy of his years spent watching, turning, growing. Paul text me often, always ready to lend advice or tools. He’s also preparing his “Nature Area’” for Emma/ a peaceful corner spot with a pond, bird feeders, and seating, somewhere to for her rest while I tackle the heavier tasks.

Back while Emma recovered from surgery, I spent two weeks, in between hospital visits, peeling back the fallow year. Cutting brambles, digging out stubborn roots, revealing the shape beneath. Now that Emma can visit, we’re restoring Paul’s greenhouse, laying new paths, and gently shaping the space into something that is both old and new.

I’d initially thought of the allotment as a little more than a garden. Now I see it differently. It’s a healing space; for Emma and for myself. I hope it to become a sanctuary where Emma can reconnect with nature’s rhythms, and where we both begin to rebuild.

We’ve kept much of what was already growing; rhubarb, raspberries, old fruit bushes. Our leeks and courgettes are settling in. The cabbages, well, you can't win everything.  Every micro harvest feels like a celebration. But more than the crops, it’s the process that matters.

The hours I spend there, pulling endless weeds, strimming grass, watching bees and butterflies dart among the blossoms, have all become hugely important. Time slows. It breathes. As Paul reminded me: the most productive thing you can do on an allotment is sit; sit and watch.

Back at home, time is measured in appointments, alerts, and scrolls, purchases, likes and shares. But here, it flows differently. Weeks pass when little appears to change. Yet underground, everything is shifting.

Reading Neil Postman recently has led me to discover Wendell Berry, a Kentucky farmer, poet, and activist, whose work speaks deeply to this slowness. In The Art of the Commonplace (2002), Berry writes:

“Slow down.

Pay attention.

Do good work.

Love your neighbours.

Love your place.

Stay in your place.

Settle for less, enjoy it more.”

Berry believes that caring for land is an act of moral attention, done as a rejection to the speed and abstraction of modern life. Tending the earth becomes a political act; not of protest, but of care. Gardening is not quaint; it's radical.

This slow type of growth isn’t always comforting. Often, after hours of graft, the plot looks unchanged. But that, I’ve learned, is the real lesson. It refuses instant gratification. It asks for trust, attention, and faith in the unseen.

Berry puts it simply in Standing by Words (1983):

“It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work, and that when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey.”

This slow journey is where something real begins to grow.

I’ve set up an album to whack in photos as the allotment changes, feel free to have a look.

Our Saturday was the kind of day you might easily overlook; some dumplings in the Grainger Market, a couple of pints in pubs, all sountracked by the endless lashing of rain. But for Emma and me, it marked something far bigger. Fourteen weeks after her surgery, fourteen weeks that have reshaped how we go about our days, Emma suggested, completely out of the blue, that we go into town. It wasn’t for a hospital appointment, a scans or a dressing changes. It was just: let’s go out, because we can.

We had gyoza at Dumpling and Bun, on one of the busy alleyways of the covered market. Eight, hand pleated parcels, the tang of vinegar, the umami of soy. Simple. No flourishes. The kind of food you try your damnedest to eat slowly, because it will be hoovered up too quickly otherwise. It felt amazing to sit together and enjoy something so simple.

We’d first eaten gyoza in an izakaya in Hiroshima, sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with strangers, late at night years ago. Crowded on a countertop, surrounded by jubilant Pride March participants, it felt like we were starting to sketch a blueprint for our future. Maybe it won’t be long before we're able to go back to Japan, it really does feel like anything might be possible.

Now, it absolutely pissed it down all day, but it didn't dampen our spirits one iota. Not after everything. Sitting with pint of Jarl in the Bacchus it came to me, we’d crossed the Rubicon. Wew.

Of course, there will be check-ups, scans, anxiety. But from this point, we move forward. Emma will be able to do more. Our world is opening up.

As I try to make sense of changed priorities and endless swirling thoughts, I’ve been reading Neil Postman’s book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, mainly as an antidote to my own digital malaise.

Despite using social media as a platform to chart Emma's illness, doom scrolling always followed each and every update I posted. Clicking the ads that were served to my feed with pinpoint precision.

This pretty remarkable work from 1985, makes it hard to ignore what we’ve lost by using these engagement fruit machines and, in turn, what we're doing to ourselves. Incredibly, this is a book written forty years before the algorhythmic ascendency. Postman writes about how our culture has shifted from a serious and considered mode of discourse to one shaped entirely by ephemerality. In the eighties it was the march of twenty four television that the author honed in on, but his words apply all too well in today’s digital hellssape.

Postman didn't fear that we would be destroyed by what we hate, like Orwell feared in 1984, but, instead, by what we 'love'. That we would drown ourselves in distraction. That we’d forget to pay attention to what really mattered most to us.

Perhaps it isn't a social media feed we need, but instead, perhaps, a social media field. Somewhere not to consume, but to plant, to grow.

That’s why this trip out mattered so much. The satiety of a delicious meal, the warm rain washing away the stains of last year, the feeling of Emma’s hand in mine. The old me would be one to the next thing by now, but I just can’t shift it.

I'm continuing to learn from her recovery; most importantly, to remove the unrequired. To pare back. To have simpler goals. To stop trying to fill single fucking moment with something, with anything. Instead, to let time stretch out. Recovery teaches you that intentionality is good, it's healing. You realise how rare and fragile it is to get to share time with someone you love and not be lost in our own skull sized kingdoms.

We’ve spent so long living from one hospital appointment to the next, that we had lost track of us. We’ve been ruled by the clock; for nursing visits, for timed medication, for pelvic floor exercises, all while being distracted by the screen. But Saturday reminded me that time can still dilate, it can stretch and soften, if we let it.

Four hours can feel like much more.

I’ve been wondering what my blackout poems are really trying to say. On the surface, they’re simple: a black marker, a paperback page, and the slow excavation of meaning.

But beneath that, something deeper is happening. I think they’re speaking to me—more than I’d realised.

Today’s poem read:

care about your future the walls of the office have you manipulated

I didn’t set out to write something that questioned my work life. Yet those are the words my eyes landed on. There’s a pattern emerging. Despite my choice of pages being completely random, from completely different books, what I choose, the phrases I circle, the words surviving erasure.

i was overwhelmed

by it all finally

i could hear

‘are you okay?’

and

i tried so hard

but slowly

i found myself

more and more alone

i am so sorry

And one that really hits.

it sounded like

the perfect distraction

and now

it was a pain in the ass

I started this a deliberate creative outlet; tactile but quick, deliberate but easy. It’s helped to regulate my thoughts, helped with the doomscroll. Sitting down with a page and searching for meaning brings a type of mindfulness I’ve struggled to find elsewhere.

And it’s not super performative. Unlike my Working Men’s Club project, where I was trying, several times a day, to conjure up a fictional world, a riduclous narrative arc, and semblance of social commentary, all at once. This feels far less full on.

After a year of creating only to explain Emma's illness, this is starting to bring me back. But these fragments, rinsed from someone else’s story, keep echoing my own thoughts and feelings. It’s as if my subconscious is curating the poems and leaving me breadcrumbs in ink.

After long stretches away from work over the past twelve months, caring for Emma through her illness and surgery, I’ve felt out of step with my role. What once felt creative now feels procedural. I know I'm not fulfilled, but seeing these words stark on the page, feels like someone, something else stepping in, and saying what I can’t.

Perhaps this erasure project isn’t just about removing, but revealing.

And what’s being revealed is a call for change.

I should have spotted the signs. Looking back, they were plain as day. The dream was simple. I’m on a small boat in a storm; rough seas with grey swirling water and driving rain is knocking me off my feet. The boat, a tiny vessel in an unending ocean, is being tossed around, the faceless crew and I hold on for dear life.

Then it comes into view, a horrifying rogue wave rises on the horizon, powering towards us, growing larger and larger. Within moments, it’s upon us, towering before the bow of the boat, like a wall of swirling fury. There’s nothing we can do, but wait for it to crest, and submerge us.

As I pondered the dream on waking, I knew it was significant, even thinking about it now, it’s a potent image in my mind. Unlike the majority of dreams, which fade into the ether like passing clouds, instead of taking it as the omen it so obviously was, I got on with my day, filing the nautical hellscape away in my mind. I spent the next few days in good spirits; I reconnected with an old school friend, bringing each other up to speed on the last 25 years, while we drank great beer and reminiscenced. I spent time in nature; walking the trails at Gibside, listening to Goldcrests sing in the hazy Spring sunshine. It was serene.

However, on return home, a deep exhaustion washed over me. Even napping and food didn’t help. As I tossed and turned in bed I awoke, or I thought I did. Our bedroom seemed larger, more detailed. It was disconcerting. Then I saw it; a spectral figure slowly gliding down our hallway. It silently entered out bedroom, two jewel like eyes bore into mine. Terror struck me. I tried to move but couldn’t. It came closer walking around the bed towards me, never once looking away. I tried to muster the ability to shout, to wake Emma, to get her out of the room.

Closer and closer it came until it stood directly over me. Staring down, inspecting its prey. I’m struggling to think of a time when I was more frightened. I tried, one final time to scream as the being began to press down on my chest, when Emma shook me awake. The room snapped into a dimmer, lower resolution. The being was gone. Apparently I was making unintelligible noises that had woken her up, she’d known something was very wrong.

I’m well aware of sleep paralysis, sometimes known as ‘Old Hag Syndrome’, when your brain awakens, but your body remains asleep. The phenomenon is one in which the sleeper feels the presence of a supernatural, malevolent being which immobilises the person as if sitting on their chest or the foot of their bed. I originally came across this while reading the Fortean Times as a weird child. I thought it sounded amazing. Young Andrew, you were an idiot.

Pulling myself together from this terrible night’s sleep I drove to work feeling incredibly low. Thoughts of Emma’s illness, her forthcoming surgery, of weekly enforced office time swirled in my mind like the sea in my dream. Everything suddenly felt hopeless as I sobbed my way along the A69. The darkness contrasted starkly against the light of the weekend; my cyclothymic brain fluctuating from manic happiness to crushing depression.

Cyclothymia is a mental disorder that causes extreme shifts in mood, energy and ability to think clearly. People with Cyclothymia experience rapid mood swings between hypomania and depression. While the exact cause of Cyclothymia is unknown. It is widely believed to be the result of chemical imbalances in the brain and seems to run in families. It is also thought to be triggered by stressful circumstances or situations.

Suffering from Cyclothymia can be a uniquely wild ride. During manic phases you can feel full of boundless energy, highly ambitious plans, and endless ideas. It’s like a drug come up, with a euphoric plateau you never reach.

It can be incredibly exhilarating if you’re able to realise what’s happening. Usually however, I’m too busy building a website, or setting up a business to take any notice. This is where my Working Men’s Club project emerged from; a manic evening of conquering the then nascent Midjourney, to create an unending series of bairns smoking tabs and sculling pints.

Thanks to Cyclothymia, you also make some spectacularly bad decisions. Such as spending a terrifying amount of money on things you absolutely can’t afford. You don’t sleep well, don’t want to eat, all while being highly animated one moment, and full of rage the next.

Mania has been a mainstay in my life, however not until my diagnosis, could I give these fun packed episodes a name, or even try to explain my actions.Odd behaviour had been with me from childhood; from obsessive collecting of bottles, magazines, posters, and any other old shit I could lay my hands on, hours would be spent compulsively cleaning my bedroom or I’d spend entire sleepless nights just watching the same movie on repeat. It was simply, as my family and friends will attest, just who I was. At no point was my behaviour ever challenged, which goes to show how self absorbed the eighties were.

As I got into my early twenties financial recklessness became a big thing. I amassed over £20K in credit card debt before leaving university and earning just £6 an hour, then walked out of a six-year job on whim at the age of 23, despite it being the only thing paying my rent and keeping me afloat.

Safe to say, manic behaviour is somewhat of a mainstay in my life.It wasn’t all bad, mania allowed me to talk myself into TV writing roles, filming commercially released BTS music videos, receiving a cease-and-desist notice from Police Academy star Steve Guttenburg about the ridiculously offensive comic book I co-wrote, blagging jobs in the brewing trade, and even getting to fly to Los Angeles to make a documentary about Cold Steel Knives president Lynn C. Thompson.

Did I parlay said documentary into further work in the industry? Absolutely not, instead, I sold all of my camera equipment, deleted all my editing software and moved on to the next thing.

With my highs, however, came the crushing lows. As each phase of mania peaked with whatever ridiculous thing I’d ended up doing / buying / imbibing / agreeing to, came the race to the bottom.

The depressive yin to my elevated yang succeeded in sucking the joy from everyday life and filling me with dark thoughts, extreme lethargy, and crippling anxiety that make each day feel like a hopeless struggle. A breakdown of a relationship in 2008 triggered my worst phase; a spiral into a deep depression and borderline alcoholism that lasted several months. I was unable to work, isolated myself from family and friends and entered a pattern of, not to put too kind a point on it, risky behaviour and a freesion of suicidal ideation.

It was a dark, self-destructive time but one which, finally, saw me reach out to a professional for help. My then employer offered a counselling service I was able to access. One late night teary and drunken call to their 24-hour helpline saw me placed with a counsellor in Newcastle whom I visited for four months, while my GP trialled me on various anti-depressant medication.My highs and lows continued to fluctuate over the years but thankfully never to the debilitating extent they had in the past. With a strict focus diet, exercise, and mindfulness meditation I managed to, for the most part, self-regulate.

Then came the ol’ Panny-D. The loss of order and routine was the fan to my mental health’s flame. My drinking increased, I started smoking again after years of hiatus, all while exercise and self-care went quickly out of the window. Naturally, my patterns of manic behaviour increased dramatically.

From buying countless vintage digital cameras, an expensive guitar despite having not played in the best part of two decades, to starting a T-shirt side hustle. The latter did raise a solid amount of money for Hospitality Action to be fair, I’d show you the website had I not deleted it on a whim like I so often do.

All my grandiose planning and plotting was quickly followed with a depressive cliff edge drop sensationally soon after. This time was slightly different; I’d started to hallucinate. I’d catch glimpses of people in my house in my peripheral vision.

Whether cooking a meal, watching TV or working from home, I would often be on the hunt for these invisible visitors in and around my home. It was unsettling to say the least. My cycles of mania and depression began to heighten in both strength and duration, culminating in me taking a calamitously drunken fall down a flight of concrete stairs after a particularly exuberant night.

I somehow managed to walk four miles home with ripped jeans and huge, bleeding cuts on my legs. Incredibly, just one year later, I slipped off a curb outside my house and shattered my hip in three places, finding out in hospital I had osteopenia. I can only guess that my sensationally drunk state somehow saved me from destroying every bone in my body. Bizarre.

This, however, was the wakeup call that I wasn’t going to get better under my own steam. I needed to get professional help. Again.

I reached out not just to my GP, but also to my employers, to access our counselling services. These sessions were a genuine lifeline. Up until this point, I’d felt adrift, unable to tackle the thoughts and feelings I was experiencing. Counselling was a genuine tonic; allowing me to work through my current feelings and patterns of behaviour while being given the opportunity to look back over similar occurrences and triggers in my past.

My sessions gave me the insight to keep myself within an acceptable window of tolerance. Counselling has also guided my treatment plan; helping me provide much needed information to the mental health team who were able to quickly find me the right specialist to work with.

It is difficult to put into words the benefits that come with talking therapy. Gone are the difficulties in speaking to loved ones or any potential embarrassment about opening up to friends or colleagues; it’s completely impartial. Talking about your issues is the first step in making sense of them.

In the maelstrom of awfulness affecting Emma at the moment, it’s become obvious that I’ve been in a manic phase for around eight months. Looking after Emma was and is my sole focus. However, having returned to the world of work after a long period of absence, my brain is seemingly struggling to balance the nine to five work tasks with the forthcoming unknowns of Emma’s surgery.

Several months of counselling last year have kept the rapid cycling to an absolute minimum as Em’s treatment was all consuming, but now I’m thinking it is time to look into mood stabilising medication, and getting an ADHD assessment I’ve been putting off since forever.

The last thing Emma needs is a carer who is suddenly obsessed with playing the xylophone or something equally ridiculous. Now just the small matter of paying for it. I’m sure I’ll have three hundred ideas on how to do just that on my next trip on the mental rollercoaster.

Discuss...

Trigger Warning: This article contains detailed descriptions of a cancer diagnosis and treatment, including: Bowel cancer diagnosis, invasive medical procedures, chemotherapy side effects, mental health challenges and emotional trauma related to serious illness.

In late spring 2024, my wife, Emma, and I embarked on a whole house renovation project; re-wire, new central heating system, new kitchen, new bathroom; the absolute works. We'd planned this for the best part of five years, squirreling money away for a complete re-do of our home. We organised tradesmen for each of the phases of work and set about ripping the house to bits, uncovering an endless list of worrying issues, hidden behind the endless amount of plaster we removed from the walls. It was an incredibly stressful time with bills mounting up from the difficult discoveries we made.

Thankfully we'd moved out of the house, away from the dust and dirt, living out of two suitcases in my sister in laws attic room in Gateshead. We made frequent trips home to clean up / put our head in hands as we surveyed the devastation. A property developer I am not.

As we battled through the filth laden chaos Emma came down with a bout of constipation. Initially we thought nothing of it but, as the days passed, we thought it best to get her checked out at the doctors. With Emma in her early forties the GP decided to schedule a flexible sigmoidoscopy at hospital to rule out anything suspicious. We duly attended the appointment not really giving it a moment’s thought as we tried to firm up definitive dates and times from our elusive Tradies. Following Emma's procedure, I was called in to meet the doctor.

The mood suddenly shifted; the doctor looked serious, checking pages of notes on a clipboard. She'd found something “sinister”. The doctor explained it was undoubtedly bowel cancer and Emma would need urgent scans to ascertain the stage, size and type of the tumour. Emma went ashen white, gripping my hand as she looked around the room for answers that simply weren't forthcoming. I felt sick. The next few hours are a blur. I remember calling Emma's sister, her parents and mine but I have no recollection what I told them. Emotional shock plays havoc with memory processing.

Over the next week we returned several times to the hospital for a dizzying array of lengthy CT, PET and MRI scans to assist in allowing the surgical and oncology teams to devise a collective treatment plan. Although the waiting was interminable, endlessly playing through 'what ifs' in our minds. Amazingly, it only took ten days after her initial appointment for us to meet with Emma's surgeon to hear the news.

It wasn't great.

Emma had a six-centimetre, stage 3, rectal tumour that was too large to operate on. She required months of chemotherapy and radiotherapy to shrink the tumour to a size where it could be removed. However, due to the tumours position it was vital for Emma to have a stoma formed to ensure her bowel didn't become blocked and delay her treatment. Stoma, coming from the Greek word meaning ‘opening’ or ‘mouth’, is an opening on the abdomen that can be connected to either your digestive or urinary system. This will allow waste (urine or faeces) to be diverted out of your body. Emma required a colostomy and, although this is sometimes a temporary measure, this would be permanent in Emma's case.

Emma's stoma surgery took place just two days later. Over three hours her surgeon rerouted her lower bowel, forming her stoma on her abdomen. The incredible nursing staff worked with her to show her how to change her bags, clean her sutures and adapt to her new life. Her diet was one of an eight year old’s dreams. Cake, white bread, chips. Protein and fibrous veg was replaced with carb heavy stodge to allow her bowel time to adapt and heal. She spent ten days on the ward before I was able to bring her back to her sister's, where we spent time processing the difficult journey ahead.

It was tough; emotions ran high, some family members and friends found it hard to take in, shying away from her diagnosis. Anxiety robbed us of sleep and time seemed to slow to a crawl but, through it all, Emma took to her new life as an 'ostomate' in her stride. Bobby, her given name to her stoma, healed well with only a couple of late-night visits to the hospital with complications from small blockages.

At the Freeman Hospital, a fortnight after her surgery, we met Emma's Oncologist, Dr. Hashmi. He is a straight taking man in his early forties, who was laser focussed in his directness at our meeting. Her tumour was large and, given Emma's relatively young age, he wanted to throw the harshest form of chemotherapy at it. Four drugs, delivered in six rounds, with an initial seven-hour infusion on a ward and an additional 48-hour infusion, delivered at home through a connected Baxter pump. She would have twelve days of recouperation between rounds. The drugs were incredibly potent, with three, terrifying A4 pages of potential side effects.

This was, he explained, the harshest form of chemotherapy Emma could potentially endure, and it would be, in his words, absolutely awful. She would lose her hair, eyebrows and eyelashes, she would be in pain, she would struggle to eat, she would have insomnia, she would get cripplingly painful neuropathy in her hands and feet, she wouldn't be able to drink, eat or touch anything cold. Catching coughs, colds or, God forbid Covid, could hospitalise her. To help Emma stand a chance of recovery they needed to poison her; destroying her immune system to allow the drugs to melt away the growing tumour. Without it, Emma would have less than a year to live.

But wait, there was more. The radiotherapy side effects would be just as bad; horrible burns and troubling inflammation, but with the absolute cherry on the cake of a rapid onset menopause which she couldn't receive medication for until her cancer was in remission. The final boss level of her treatment would take place in the New Year. Once the tumour was significantly reduced in size, Emma would need an Abdominal Perineal Resection; the removal of her lower colon, rectum, and anus, leaving her with what is affectionately called a 'Barbie Butt'.

As playful as the name is, this is a major surgery that will require months recouperation with another laundry list of potential life changing issues. We were told to expect Emma to be unable to work for well over a year. All of this was laid out for us in fifteen minutes of rapid-fire chat that was sensationally difficult to take in. The news was seasoned with a carrier bag full of leaflets and information sheets. To say we were reeling from the news was an understatement.

wo days before her chemo commenced, I rallied people to come together to help get us back into our home. Although not fully finished, the house was liveable. The people working on the house, on hearing of Emma's condition, pulled out all the stops to get us back in. I'll be forever grateful to the electricians, plumbers, kitchen fitters and decorators who worked late into the night, rejiggling their schedules and, in some cases, refusing payment, to help us have the space for her recovery. The project was only missing Anneka Rice and a dune buggy to complete the charitable aesthetic.

Chemotherapy started in August at the Tranwell Unit at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital. The unit was previously a secure mental health ward, where we were greeted for our frequent visits by Fred Watson's imposing concrete sculpture, Inside Outside, a 3.5 tonne of carved granite symbolising the mind's ambiguous relationship with internal and external worlds.

“Dominating the composition, a stairway and arch represent social hierarchies and institutions. Against these large, roughly carved masses, a dangling telephone, carved in intricate trompe l'oeil detail, focuses sharply on the lack of an answer, a listener, or communication. “

As Emma was struggling to talk about her illness and her feelings with those closest to her, the significance of the sculpture was not lost on me.

On the ward, Emma had a line fed from her forearm into her shoulder, an area with less nerve endings. The main drug, Oxaliplatin, was known for causing discomfort and severe nausea. It would feel like molten lead was being poured into her veins. The first session took eight hours and left Emma severely ill. Fever and exhaustion buddied up with projectile vomiting that, to clean up, required me to dress like a Hazmat operative due to the incredibly toxic nature of the drugs in her system. The heavy hitting antiemetics kept the majority of the sickness away but she felt dreadful and I could do nothing but wait for the side effects to subside.

My own mental health had taken an absolute hammering during all of this. Having had a mental health crisis pre-pandemic and broken hip a year later I knew the tell-tale signs of both mania and depression. The thought of losing Emma was interminable, manifesting in nightmares, panic attacks and abnormal heart rhythms. I was holding on to so much tension I pulled a muscle in my shoulder and was offered diazepam to help calm me down. As we progressed through Emma's chemotherapy sessions, I started attending counselling sessions at FACT (Fighting All Cancers Together), meeting with Debra who helped me to process the maelstrom of emotions. Having worked in cancer care for years, she understood the medical jargon I brought to my sessions and she was able to empathise around the complexities of treatment. The sessions were a lifeline, a safe space to unpack what had happened, and what was yet to come.

Chemo was tough; really tough. Despite her stoic nature, Emma was terrified that her drug regime wouldn't work. Chemo, for small number of patients, is completely ineffective, causing more problems than success. Three rounds in, we met again with Dr. Hashmi following a second round of scans. The tumour was shrinking, her treatment was working. It was only at this point that Emma cried, thankfully, for all the right reasons.

Heartened by the news, Emma arranged a wig fitting at The Wonderful Wig Company in the Ouseburn. As part of the package of care she received a voucher to subsidise the cost of wig. Lack of body confidence during chemo can have a dire effect of patients so we spent two wonderful mornings there while she tried on various shapes, styles and colours. She was getting ready to go back out into the world, in a limited capacity admittedly. The company couldn't have been nicer, treating Emma with such kindness and sensitivity, finding the perfect new look for her. Armed with her new locks, a colour returned to her face that had left her back in the Q.E months before. When I asked her what she thought the change was she immediately fired back with quote from Alec Baldwin's character Jack Donaghy, the Vice President of East Coast Television and Microwave Oven Programming for General Electric from the NBC television show 30 Rock, “Andrew, your hair is your head-suit!” I had married well.

Chemo continued, but under a different, softer light. The severity of it didn't diminish but our attitudes were changed. We met so many others enduring their own battle. Watched in sadness as some were told the treatment wasn't working and cried tears of happiness as others rang the bell to signify the end of this part of their journey.

In late November, Emma was disconnected from her infusion bottle for hopefully the final time, looking resplendent in her Happy Hour t-shirt as it was her turn to cathartically sound the bell. To applause, tears and hugs of the nurses and family members, its resonance a calming, joyful balm soothing the last fifteen weeks of treatment. We had reached the first base camp.

Chemotherapy was, of course, just the start, with radiotherapy starting only a few weeks later. Daily fifteen-minute sessions of concentrated radiation targeted at Emma pelvis with the aim of further shrinking her 'bulky tumour'. Despite the short nature of the treatment this didn't factor in the travel to and from the Freeman, blood tests and meetings result in a good three hours spent there each and every day. We'd been given the laundry list of side effects to expect but had crossed our fingers we'd been lucky in dodging them.

Sadly, our luck had seemingly run out. On New Year's Day, following five days of intense sickness and diarrhoea, Emma found a large amount of blood in her stoma bag causing us to present at A&E. Ten hours of waiting in an assessment room, while Emma lapsed in and out of consciousness, was far from the New Year's vibe I was looking for. Her initial diagnosis was one of Radiation Colitis; where radiotherapy causes large scale inflammation and bleeding of the intestines. However, it was slightly worse than that. Her blood work showed Neutropenic Sepsis; a very worrying condition for cancer patients where their white blood cell count is abnormally low. While standard white blood cells help your body fight infections, neutrophils are important for fighting infections caused by bacteria, and Emma had none. The hospital was experiencing a huge influx of winter sickness bug patients when we arrived, so Emma had to be isolated from patients and visitors.

She spent nearly a fortnight in hospital; initially in Gateshead's Q.E, before being transferred to a specialist cancer ward at the Freeman. Unable to eat or drink, Emma remained on a drip to raise her potassium levels and injections to kick start white blood cell regeneration in her bone marrow. Thankfully, the meds stemmed the tide and Emma, now being monitored closely by her Oncology team, was able to continue her radiotherapy in hospital before being deemed fit enough for discharge.

As radiotherapy wraps up, we are, of course, still filled with a nervous hum of anxiety and worry. The disorientating sights, sounds and smells of hospitals, coupled with the worry of “will this work” is ever present, but now this plays pianissimo as opposed to the fortissimo overture that soundtracked our initial months post diagnosis. Realising and accepting we are not in control of the situation has allowed us lean into the treatments and interventions; to put our trust in the hands of the specialists working on our behalf.

If any good can come from these awful circumstances, it's this; we've been given an odd sort of freedom. Emma's cancer diagnosis has reframed our day-to-day life. Long term planning has been replaced with short term, impactful moments. When the chemo and radio exhaustion permitted, we took a walk along the river, or went for a coffee, or watched a ludicrously formulaic movie on Netflix. These micro adventures, however trivial, offered a chance for gratitude, to spend time together and to appreciate our relationship. Removing everything other than the essential has been incredibly liberating. No longer catastrophising on “but what if X happens”, instead leaning into the little glimmers of hope and happiness and luxuriating in them. A slow walk around Saltwell Park became a calming moment in nature, not just an allocated hour on an exhausting list of must-dos.

Excepting help from friends and family, something I, in the past, had actively shied away from, became of a cornerstone of our days. Whether it was receiving help moving our possessions back to the house or enjoying lovingly cooked dishes delivered by a team of faux meals-on-wheel drivers offered respite from the day-to-day household admin. We're a long way from all of this being resolved but we are certainly en-route, navigating our way with a basic but helpful roadmap. And certainly not one gleaned from Google. If you, or people you know, end up on a similar path I implore you to avoid the all too easy to access digital encyclopaedia; there be monsters. For us, the magnificent MacMillan, Bowel Cancer UK and Colostomy UK have been our guiding lights.

As the chaos of Christmas and New Year were replaced with a very different set of circumstances, I am minded by Derek Mahon's translation of one of Horace’s Odes, titled ‘How to Live’. A timely reminder to set worrying aside, and to give thanks for the time we have with each other.

Don’t waste your time, Leuconoé, living in fear and hope

of the imprevisable future; forget the horoscope.

Accept whatever happens. Whether the gods allow

us fifty winters more or drop us at this one now

which flings the high Tyrrhenian waves on the stone piers,

decant your wine: the days are more fun than the years

which pass us by while we discuss them. Act with zest

one day at a time, and never mind the rest.

— Derek Mahon, The Hunt by Night (1982)

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