...CATHARSIS...

Early 1994, Val de Grace military hospital, Paris

After a month into a ? prison ? hospital on the Toulon naval base where I could only go out for 15’ a day (I don’t smoke, so what’s the point!), I am sent back to my parents’ home.

Whilst there, I need to go for treatment at a military hospital. The same knee that will nearly be broken in 2009 and further damaged in 2019 (bye bye ACL, I miss you) is playing up.

I banged it somewhere on the aircraft carrier whilst doing a night round. No witness, no-one believed me...I refused to have an intrusive arthroscopy and so because the State didn’t want to have to pay a life pension to a cripple, the pressure mounted on me to “come clean”!

My right meniscus was in constant pain which I know years later was more psychological than physical. I had my bouts of self-pity, something I have loathed ever since: the “why me”. Not too often but they were there beneath the surface like spotlights ready to be turned on.

I needed a catharsis, a realisation that all was ok. Am a positive guy but when you have Army doctors and your superiors treating you like a fraud; you are truly in a “me against them” situation.

My first session of physiotherapy is scheduled at a famous military hospital...I remember its sheer size and two things that changed my life forever.

I took the lift to get to my appointment and someone came in just in time before the doors closed. His head was bandaged up, one eye covered, the other the size of an egg (from memory, it looks like an eye from one of those Star Wars generals). He turned to face the door and I could see one of his ears being stapled in place. I felt a little nauseous trying hard not to look or react.

What else could be waiting in that hospital for me to get a grip on my little problem?

Went through balancing and strengthening exercises with the physio. Then he told me it was time to do ultrasound to massage the knee.

There was one (or more - I can only picture one in my memory slot) soldier that was doing his exercises aided by his girlfriend.

He had blown up on a landmine in Yugoslavia (the aircraft carrier I was on, the Foch, was circling around in the Adriatic Sea to provide air cover for NATO troops on the ground). He lost an arm, toes, was blind...he was maybe 25 yrs old...not much older than I was...

That was the catharsis, the big “who do you think you are?!” moment I needed in my life.

Since then, I never complained about what had happened to me. No matter how painful setbacks, losses or injuries I experienced since that day, I have never ceased to be a fully functioning human who doesn’t need any assistance.

I come back sometimes to that scene (I just did) when I need to remind myself of my luck and that I have to plough forward with hope, with belief and with determination.

Where there is life there is hope they say (the opposite works too no?) and seeing that soldier going through rehab is a confirmation.

The current situation we are all experiencing is dreadful and it is structural: investors sit on their pile and don’t want to be blinking first; institutions have paused everything that is non-critical.

There is a structural trap encircling the economy and start-ups are at their most fragile point; I can only control my reaction to it.

I am always prepared for the worse outcome and it is closing on us but and that is a big one: we still have hope, belief and determination and more importantly we still do and always have options.

Keep believing, keep fighting, keep moving.