If you’ve been following my previous blogs, you will probably have picked up on the fact that as I start out, I haven’t got a clue where I’m going or where I will end. That is certainly true today. It’s also the case that I try to bring a certain levity to even the most serious of subjects. However, my opening gambit today is deadly serious. I’ve just been reading about 77 year old John King who ended his own life by removing a mask from his face that was essential to life. His wife was at his hospice bedside as he did it. He was suffering from Motor Neurone disease. I’ve personally known four people who had this awful disease. Three were colleagues and one a friend. One is still alive and battling extraordinarily bravely. For the other three, death was a very welcome release from a hideous ending to their lives. From the moment you are diagnosed, you know there is only one way to go and it will be excruciating and horrible both for you and for your friends and family as they watch you decline and deteriorate without any hope. There is no question in my mind that anyone in this position should have the right to say “that’s it, I have had enough” and to do whatever is necessary to either end their own life or have somebody help them to do it.
We were predicted to be whiplashed and drowned by the remnants of Storm Freya today, but as is so often the case on the Sunshine Coast the reality was rather less vengeful than predicted. However, there was a fleet of madman practising their windsurfing art in The Channel as the wind whipped up the breakers into a seething maelstrom of danger; or so it seemed to my inexpert eye. They were coping admirably though. I tried to learn how to windsurf on Lake Moehne in Germany, when I was based nearby in the early ’80’s. It’s dam, of course, was the victim of Sir Barnes Wallis’s famous bouncing bomb in the Dambusters Raid, but by then the dam had been rebuilt and the enormous reservoir behind it, which was long and relatively slim, created a fantastic wind tunnel effect for those who favoured sail over engine power. Having tried most sports and leisure activities at some point in my life I was disappointed to have to concede defeat. I was rubbish and quickly retreated to something involving a bat and ball. Although it was during my three year stint in Germany that I got seriously into Enduro motorcycling. I had a German made Maico 440cc single cylinder beast that would comfortably do 90 mph across country over rough terrain and fly through the air with the greatest of ease over big jumps created for the purpose. Amazingly I escaped with only minor strains and bruises, a cracked rib being the worst. I belonged to a Squadron of expert bikers, with many of my colleagues owning hairily speedy road bikes as well as the off-roaders. While I was there we converted from the very long in the tooth Scout helicopter (basically a flying Land Rover) to the much more sophisticated twin engined Westland Lynx. This required a massive upgrade in hangar facilities and the laying of acres of high grade concrete dispersals. The Regiment had a big party in one of the new hangars to celebrate its completion and well into the celebrations one or two fellow officers decided that a quick burn-up round the dispersal was called for. What they had forgotten (or hadn’t appreciated) was that the work wasn’t quite finished and there were still some drain covers standing proud of the surface. In the descending gloom and with the benefit of an alcoholic intake above the recommended maximum, a Naval colleague on an exchange tour with us, hit one of the aforementioned drains at some speed. Miraculously, he survived largely uninjured (no doubt thanks to the excess of alcohol) but his front wheel looked like something out of an early Flintstones movie. The shiny new Lynx arrived fairly soon after this disgraceful affair and life became a whole lot more serious.
The sister of one of my fellow Army officers was one of the four I talked about earlier. She was an incredibly vibrant, lovely, kind person which made her sickening demise all the more hard to bear.
ADayInTheStrifeOf 