CosmiKnot

  I’m like a fish out of water Think about it for a moment Do you see a fish on a bicycle? Gliding through the medieval theme tune Of an English university town? Or do you perhaps see a dace? Glistening in the small pale wet hands of a 13-year-old boy Offering up the catch to the lens of his father’s smart-phone A grin spreading like mildew over a photograph in the attic J R Hartley remains stock still in his grave at this moment  A fish out of water floundering on the unhooking mat on the bank It is not necessary to use one but against regulations not to As I wake into each day I am such a fish Lured from the velvety depths of my freshwater natural habitat Dreaming of my other son’s desire to buy a sports car Or my own promotion to transgender Professor I flounder motionless under the duvet and gasp for something. Air? A reason? A light? My gills flap as I struggle to readjust  to my new circumstances in a world of actual pain. Living is the oxygen of pain see. My gills ...

I’ve been searching for an analogy to try and explain how it feels to have fibromyalgia. I’ve come a long way in a year. This time last September I was pretty terrified by the tumult of pains that suddenly pummelled my body. In a panic I asked my doctor to test me for lead poisoning. I needed an explanation. The same doctor told me I’d have two weeks off max if I were a premier league footballer. And he told me this apropos of what exactly I still ask myself? It was after sending a two-page complaint about his bullying attitude and compulsive need to make me exercise in front of him that my diagnosis began to take shape. I got referred. Eventually I saw the much-respected Professor Powell and in April he diagnosed me with fibromyalgia as a result of the head on collision with a bandit vehicle two years earlier . He was pretty unequivocal and even when I said I didn’t want to jump to conclusions assured me that this order of events was pretty normal (all the other usual suspects have no...