Danny Furlong
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Post twenty one

28/2/2014

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Let deeds match words ... Plautus

It's a great day to be alive - warm and sunny and oh-so-pleasant. I wouldn't be dead for quids! I'm just can from taking Bruno for a few kilometres. His second walk today and we'll get in another one if I can tear myself away from my writing. I sent Ellydd Gate to Gemma last week for a final proof-read before the publisher, so now I've started going through the second book in the trilogy before getting it edited - by, I hope, Gemma. This book is called Arathea, which as I'm sure ever in the world knows is the magical home of the equally-magical faerls.
... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...

Bendigo Home and Hospital for the Aged. Continued ...
I didn't want to be in hospital. I was starting to hanker bad to be home, but I had no choice. I still had a trache, and traches need regular cleaning. Only much later did I learn that trache maintenance can be done at home by the wearer or any helper, but my lack of this knowledge turned out to be to my benefit. If I'd been full bottle about traches I'd have been content to leave hospital with one permanently in my throat, but as it was I got rid of it completely.  

Two days after the nosogastric was taken out my impatience got the better of me. That day the ward doctor popped in to say good day like he does from time to time.
‘I want the trache out today’ sez I (spelt I, actually - with the Etran board).
‘Hello, Danny’ sez he. ‘How's life?’
‘Ha ha - I want my trache taken out’.
‘No way’ sez he. ‘It's too dangerous.’
‘How do you know?’ asks I. ‘You told me I'm the first trache patient you've ever worked with I want it out’.
‘Maybe next month’ sez he, ‘or maybe the one after. It's too early yet - you'll aspirate, you'll die.’
‘What's aspirate mean’ asks I.

He said stuff about me filling my lungs with my drinks and choking on my food if I didn't have the protection of the trache. (Traches have an inflatable cuff around them to prevent any food or liquid dropping into the wearer's lungs from their mouths.)  Neither of us could be termed a medical expert on traches, but he was close to being in the dark. I at least had a rough idea about my present capacities. That's rot - I had absolutely no idea if I'd be able to breathe through my own airway, but I figured it like this:
What the hell - let's give it a go. At the worst I won't be able to breathe, so I'll suffocate. I'm, um, not too keen on that idea, but I'm in a hospital. There's no better place to be if I do aspirate and need resuscitating.’

Remember that bill of rights, Danny I thought on, but then I decided it'd be less agro to get there by other means. We compromised - seemingly. The cuff would be deflated for progressively longer periods every day for the next month, after which I'd try eating and drinking with it down. If I handled all this OK, the trache would be taken out in about six weeks time.

I didn't tell him I had no intention of waiting that long.
 
We started the six-week training regime that very day and ten days later I was trache-less. All it took was a few lies, a bit of bluff and the pretence of a positive attitude. The first time the cuff was let down was that day at eleven thirty for an hour. Lunchtime was normally at midday, but I was instructed to delay mine until after the trache cuff was reinflated at twelve thirty.  At midday an innocent nurse brought me my lunch, and asked me if my cuff had been reinflated.
Go for it’ I thought fleetingly, giving a casual Yes answer.

She'd nearly finished feeding me my meal before the doctor came in at twelve thirty to check on me. I was choking and coughing like hell at the time and he guessed why. He started carrying on like a pork chop at the nurse, but once I’d recovered somewhat I let him know I’d tricked her.
‘Now we know it's safe' sez I. 'I'll eat all my meals like this.’
‘Ah, yeeeeees, I suppose, but promise me you won't try liquids yet’ sez he.  

After lunch I was wheeled to wait in the hallway to be collected for my daily physio and there Sister Murphy went up in my estimation. I was waiting near the open door of the nurses station and I overheard her talking to the doctor.
‘I could've easily become defensive that time he complained about the night nurses, and I nearly went and gave him a piece of my mind for lying to my nurse today, but in a way these things are good - they show he's beginning to take positive interest in his life again.’
‘Positive interest? He must think he's James Bond with the foolhardy way he acted.’
‘No, he's terrified about this trache business, but he knows that unless he takes the risk we never will.’

The nurse who fed me dinner had been warned not to trust me, but after eating I asked if my cuff could please be reinflated so I could have a drink. I did this again the next lunchtime to get back in the nurses `to be trusted' good books. At dinner that evening the nurse asked me about my trache and I told her it was OK, so she gave me my meal and drink as normal. I coughed and spluttered quite a bit while drinking the liquid, but that happened sometimes. After I'd finished the drink I couldn't suppress a huge grin. She saw it, and she knew what it meant.
‘Oh, Danny - your cuff's down. I'll get into trouble for trusting you. ’

We reached an agreement whereby she'd give my drinks with the cuff down and I wouldn't let sister Murphy know what she'd done just now - not that I would have anyway. After about a week I was drinking well enough to prevail on sister Murphy to test my drinking ability. Two days later my trache was removed.

The doctor had been right about the aspiration bit, but not about its degree, because I didn't die. The first three or four or fifteen meals without the trache in my throat ended halfway through with me coughing and choking all the way to tears and sobs, but I sailed through number sixteen. I sailed through and only choked badly twice and those two times didn't get me crying with fear and pain.

It would've been so much easier if I'd let them vitalize the food smooth, because then it'd slide down no pain, but I had these visions, y'see - visions of gummy oldies in the dayroom with their minds lying topless on Costa del Sol sunning themselves. The nurses call these oldies Love and Dearie and shovel vitalized mush into them, and wipe it off their tufty chins asking, ‘Have we had enough yet’.

I choked on nearly every spoonful, but not too badly, except for those meals which ended with me coughing into tears and the nurse scared I was going to die. I wouldn't have it vitalized, though – apart from giving them the foot in to patronize me like with the oldies I was determined to beat the eating business if it killed me.

Most of the other patients ate communally in the ward dining room and many had worse table manners than I did. Some patients had suffered bad one-sided strokes and looked quite yuk as they battled to feed themselves. Other patients whose minds had left to see St Peter years before their aging bodies oozed mush down their chins as nurses crammed it into their mouths.

I ate in my own room. I knew that were I in the dining-room when I was choking and dying I'd become the centre of attention. Many times in my life I've done outlandish things to make others react, but I didn't want all eyes on me when I wasn't calm and controlled. Besides, I imagined elderly patients dropping like flies as my noisy bouts brought on their heart attacks.  
... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...
Continued travels. August to November 1976. Greece to the UK.
The Traveller
Whole planeload milling Singapore Hilton,
or was it the Holiday Inn?
Unscheduled stopover for repairs,
New wings or something.
Getting rooms like bees swarming honeycomb
He hangs back ‘til swarm fades.

Now just him and a girl waiting for honey-cells
‘One double left. No more. You share. Yes?
Yes, you share?
One room. Two beds. Yes?’
Both tired, too tired to fight
‘Yes’

He drops his backpack one side of the double bed,
She the other side.
‘So much for two beds’ she says,
‘You stay on your side, I’ll stay on my mine’.
She climbs in, clothes and all, but not her shoes.
Her simulated coma says ‘Stay away from me.’

He rummages his pack for a mate’s Going Away present
‘Don’t open it ‘til London’. He opens it anyway. ‘Holy shit.’
Peanut tin crammed with marijuana -
He’s smuggled grass to a county where they machine-gun drug crims.
He rolls a joint and she revives at the smell.
Both indulge, and again, and again, and -
Dope can cultivate sexual activity - even in the comatose

Thessalonika
Grey-black storm clouds banking over blue sky, foreboding doom
‘It’s going to bucket down’
The traveller leaves the empty highway, dashes ‘cross empty wasteland
Empty warehouse - forsaken industrial dream.
‘Home for the night’

Water bubbling vapour from the small billy
on a tiny gas-can cooker.
Nescafe bottle, bagged sugar, teaspoon, mug,
Small pan ready for eggs, bread for toast.
A kingly hot meal with rain drumming the industrial tin roof

A battered car coughing outside, tappet concerto
On its last legs.
Four figures scampering through the drumming rain
Drawn to the warmth and home of his candle in vast industrial blackness
Moths with moth-eaten wings, Gypsies poor and worn as church mice.

The traveller rummages his pack -
More eggs, more bread, olives, cheese,
Tinned fruit with tinned cream for dessert and biscuits.
Two days rations for one meal.

Pour one coffee, empty canteen into gas-heating billy.
Steaming mug and sugar to one, gesturing to the laid-out feast.
‘All join me please’ with his smile
Better-than-nothing and friendship for five

The chapel on the rocks
You’d reckon storm waves could crash right over it in a gale
Must be OK though.
It had a seaman flavour inside, and seamen know where it’s safe to build close to sea,
but it seemed so perilous metres from the sea in rocks ‘tween shore and land.

It was a small whitewashed chapel, Orthodox Greek
Alter paraphernalia, icons, pictures, cloths, chairs for half dozen devout
As-new whitewash - no water stains, no water wear
Untouched by hand of God.

Tall Swedish girl and the traveller been roaming Lesvos daily out from Mitilini,
Lesvos from Greek myth, home to the first lesbian.
Leggy Swede a bit of alright - lilting accent, tall, blonde, legs all the way to her bum.
He reckons he’s in with a chance.

Been cultivating her for a week nearly.
Tonight could be the night
‘Lovely place to make love on rocks here near vee church’ Swedish telling the traveller
‘Is all vee do in Sveden, but I having holiday from that.’

Discretion
Village of whitewash, donkeys, shrill chatter from laneways, cafenions for men.
Sitting under a carob tree by the highway, patient for a lift from cars that never stop,
Patiently the traveller chews another sickly-sweet carob pod.

Woman from a nearby house brings out a covered plate shyly -
feta, olives, fresh-baked bread oven-warm.
She waits shyly while he eats
Then she takes him shyly to her house for coffee
She brings a decanter of ouzo, a jug of cool water, one small glass.
He knows the drill -
scoffs half the straight ouzo she hands him, tops the glass with water cool,
sips it empty while they ‘talk’

‘My husband drives a truck’ she conveys to him in Greek less shyly now.
‘He’s away many days at a time to Germany and France.
This time he’s gone to England, all the way to Ireland where the bombs are -
Dublin’
‘I’m so lonely’ she says imploringly and cow-eyed
(The traveller can hear cow-bells sounding loud in his head - warning and alarm.
‘I’m desperately desperately lonely,’ she says.

She pours for him another ouzo, like for her husband home from away,
then begins to unlace his boots unshyly now.
Images of a shotgun booming in a darkened bedroom and the traveller stands up
‘I’m out of here.’

Priorities
Toasty toast waiting for eggs scambling and cooking in the pan
Paprika, salt and lemon go in too.
He eats unhurriedly, water on the boil for coffee
Last night memories awash in his alcohol-fuzzy head.

Memories of the cafenion with retzina and ouzo and calamari nibbles from the sea,
guitar on fire, men dancing like Zorba , plates smashing
And not a woman in sight.
On top of the world last night, cotton-wool hangover dully drumming a funeral in his head this morning.
Sleep must be to blame.

The traveller with one ear out for any traffic, no ride since midday yesterday.
Kombi noise distinctive through the village
Carefully placing breakfast, the traveller assumes the kneeling supplicant role,
hands clasped on chest beseeching a lift.
‘To Munich we’re headed
With someone else in here already’
‘You beauty. But only if there’s time for coffee first’

The squat
Together they sat in the back of the Kombi
Politely sharing the Germans’ hash at times,
Then bussing together to England
She was English, going home from three months diving in Red Sea.
First time scuba-diving with first time female lover – a new holiday experience.

‘I’m heading to a squat in Hampstead Heath’ he said. ‘Crash for the night, clean up before you go home’
‘Let’s go to the pub’ the squat leader said once they’d stowed their packs
‘I’ll get changed first’ she said, unbuckling her belt
The traveller ambled to the door, but the squatter stood stock still, waiting for more
‘Excuse me?’ she said nodding to door. ‘But you stay, Traveller’.
Jeans off, shirt off. Knickers only, no bra - good night ahead for the traveller?
‘I want to tell you ‘cos I’m practicing for my parents’ she said to him, dressing afresh.
‘I liked it lesbian. I’m staying that way forever from now on.’

Dreams
London City is an oyster shell.
Smooth-glazed mother of pearl with St Paul’s cathedral, Tower of London, Hyde Park, Big Ben and more inside.
Many indeed are London’s pearls.
London City is Christopher Robin’s London just as it should be.
London’s suburbs though - London’s suburbs are dark mussel shell
‘Very ordinary’ springs to mind. ‘Very much the same’ springs to mind.
Featureless, humble, bland - English.

A chance meeting on the high street in Hampstead Heath
A five billion to one chance, or destined certainty?
A long street with a pub, Sainsbury’s, a betting shop, three travel agents and sundry other small businesses
It could be any of dozens of London’s suburbs

‘Last I heard you were motoring Switzerland in a vintage sports car’ said the traveller
‘On your way to Egypt, I heard.’
‘Plans change’ the traveller’s brother replied. ‘Met Lord My-Shit-Doesn’t-Smell in the Alps.
Milord offered me work restoring his mansion out Windsor way’

Back home the traveller’s brother built stone houses - stonework that is a pleasure to the eye.
Solid, neat houses to last a thousand years without English correctness and regular lines
His houses were undisciplined Aussie privates –-
They didn’t salute British officers but by jove you wanted them on your side in a fight
His houses were the free Aussie feel of Cold Chisel’s music pumping out of a sex-selling Bangkok bar.

‘Milord’s hundred kilo daughter giving me the eye and he’s saying
‘Son, this could all be yours’
‘Stuff that. Cold cheddar cheese life with cold cheddar cheese sex.
I’m leaving, driving home to Australia on Friday. Want to come?’
‘Sorry, busy this year’ mused the traveller. ‘Dreams beckoning.’

Pursuing dreams, the Life gourmet’s caviar.
Reykjavik icily off Greenland’s coast
Istanbul minarets pale blue in a Moslem moon
Timbuktoo staging camels sailing Saharan seas
But first Lumb Bank, a small village up near the Scotland border’

The office
The traveller travelling the world with typewriter in backpack, books, typing paper and no change of jeans -
Just underwear, teeshirts, shorts, sleeping bag.
A writer’s workshop at Lumb Bank, small village before Scotland
Hilly country and green
Learning such important stuff as ‘No word in the English language rhymes with orange’
and
‘In his latter years Shakespeare suffered from hemorrhoids’

Margaret was a skinny single mum nearing thirty, two kids at home in stifling Sheffield.
This a stab at life.
To her the traveller’s no-rush, no-fuss, everything-in-his-relaxed-stride manner
and his Australian accent set him apart, attractive, desirable.

He was her one-night stab at life
Bonking like rabbits bare-arsed on the darkened office floor - no cold cheddar Margaret.
‘Click’ - bright white overhead light.
Lecturer entering, showing six would-be writers his first editions.



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Post twenty

21/2/2014

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He who stops being better stops being good ... Oliver Cromwell.

I mentioned in my last blog three weeks ago that we were in the middle of another heatwave here in Victoria. I was so engrossed in my writing after lunch that day that I didn't realize the house was getting too warm until it was too late. The stroke that caused my mute quadriplegia also clobbered the body temperature control centre in my brain, making me react adversely to hot or cold weather. That hot afternoon I realized I had to drive to the wall and nudge the big switch with my elbow to turn on the air conditioner (A/C). I reached for my wheelchair controls, but my arm muscles had already tightened with the heat. I was trapped at my computer, unable to move my chair to turn the A/C on and get the temperature down.

Just half an hour later I could feel a 'Turn'
coming on. Occasionally I have these turns -going pale, sweating profusely, feeling sick, too weak to move, etc. Long ago a doctor told me the name for it and said its not uncommon. I find its brought on be extreme discomfort, or prolonged pain, etc. It passes within the hour.

So I knew I was fast going dead white, I could see my jeans and teeshirt turning dark from sweat, I was repressing the heaving that leads to vomiting and I was slumped in the chair too weak to even lift my head. Dying would have been good right then except that I knew it would pass. I prayed no one would turn up, because they would (understandablly)
panic at the awful sight of me and would want to call an ambulance. I was fine again an hour later, except for being wiped out for the rest of the day. Would you believe it - the next day was just as hot and the exact same things happened.

My feet swell in summer from the hotter weather. That heatwave made my right foot swell more than ever. So much so that a small amount of the fluid buildup began to ooze out around one toenail. Whenever Bruno was let off the lead he would make a beeline for that toe and lick it clean. Not a bad thing as we all know dog saliva is good. 

A few days later red splothes appeared on my thigh, the next day they had spread right down my leg and covered my now grossly-swollen foot, and the day after that I was in hospital being treated for Cellulitis - an infected and badly-swollen leg and foot. Cellulitis, I was told, is often passed on from animals through an open wound - hmmmmm. I was released from hospital a week later, but I used the fuzzy-head and stomach from the high doses of anti-biotics I was still taking as an excuse to skip another week of this blog.
But I'm back now.
... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...

1984. Bendigo Home and Hospital for the Aged. Continued ...
For six months it's very doubtful that I ever got a real deep long REM sleep. The bottles of thick and yukky liquid food that drip-fed my nosogastric tube lasted two hours and I was being fed ten bottles a day. I'd often be down at physio, occupational therapy or speech therapy without the drip feed for some of the day and it'd have to go on until well in the night to catch up - even when I was asleep. Every two hours I'd wake for between five and ten minutes because a nurse with a torch would be fiddling about changing the drip-food bottle - occasionally for longer because the tube would block up and she'd spend ages unblocking it with my overhead light turned on.

At different two-hourly intervals the nurses would do their rounds and they'd roll me onto my opposite side to prevent me getting bedsores. The more diligent and less feeling nurses would vigorously rub my behind, thus ensuring good circulation and most especially wakefulness. And then I had the extra problem that only by lying on my back could I get comfortable. After being put on my side I'd sleep no more than a hour before pain and discomfort woke me and prevented me getting back to sleep. No, I didn't get much sleep.

Not long before I left Prince Henry's hospital I began having tentative feelings that I was more in contact with my condition than anyone else did and the move to BHHA cemented these feelings. In fact, in some areas it was an accepted truth. A few senior nurses had seen traches and noso-gastrics many years before, but trache patients were so rare in Bendigo that the vast majority of nurses who were locally trained knew of them in theory only. I think it says a lot about these nurses that they had the commonsense to learn from me - many nurses get to be up themselves because they're Registered Nurses, and as such would rather do a thing wrong than be guided by anyone other than another RN or a doctor.

I recognized at BHHA that five months of intimate experience had made me the most knowledgable person there when it came to traches and nosogastrics and it seemed a fair bet that I'd also be more au fait with my general care too. Nurses are very aware that bedsores can easily appear on a bed-ridden patient who isn't turned regularly, but the two-hourly position changes that were inflicted upon me every night at PHH had been a bane of my life. I'd never had a hint of bodily pressure soreness there and I figured this was mostly because I was lying on sheepskins on a special `anti-pressure sores' air mattress.

When the BHHA nurses came to reposition me in my bed for the first time I decided to test if I really needed this regular turning. I lied that I hadn't ever needed this pressure care and they believed me. (From that night on I've never needed to be turned. I've slept on my back ever since then and we even ditched the air mattress soon after I left hospital.) The only thing that intruded on my sleep was the cursed bottle changes to my nosogastric tube, so I decided it had to go. I was handling oral feeds OK - well - I guess honesty requires that I admit that my meal-times were sheer hell, but I lived through each meal (just) and I figured that to be close enough to OK.

I spelled out that I wanted the nosogastric removed, but the medical staff didn't believe I was ready. At PHH a friend brought me the patients' bill of rights, so I said I'd have legal proceedings started if the nosogastric wasn't taken out. Later that day the doctor told me that I was ready.
‘We'll take it out tomorrow, Danny’.
I'd often had to have blocked tubes replaced at PHH, so I knew that tube removal was merely a matter of pulling its twenty centimetre length from my nose.
‘Uh uh - I want it out now.’

I was beginning to display the pigheadedness that was to make me strive for continued improvement for years to come. I'm still like that. It's a crazy way to be, considering I've been told time and again that I'll never improve significantly. I've made very minor changes happen in me but in terms of energy expended to achieve this it hasn't been all that worthwhile. Had I accepted those expert opinions I'd have given up long ago. That wouldn't have been too terrible a way to live. No more need for a brave front, no need to make myself appear positive and hopeful, no more work work work, no more obligation to try. My family and friends just assume I'll go on fighting because I'm me. If I gave in they'd be disappointed at first, but they'd understand and their pressure would be off. Imagine the waves of relief I'd feel as those pressures were lifted. I could spent a life of physical ease with nurses to tend to my every physical need. Wouldn't life be easy?

I can't give up, though, can I? People see me still fighting the odds and they think I'm brave, wonderful and heroic. Actually I'm none of that. I'm merely acting on my inherited characteristics. Don't praise me for being determined, for never giving up - I was born that way. Don't praise me for fighting the odds - I was born that way. Don't praise me for retaining control of my life - I was born that way. Don't praise me for not taking the easy way out - I was born that way. Besides, as long as I try there's very faint hope, and as long as I have hope life can be fine.


... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...
Continued travels. August 1976, Greece.
Would you believe it, I’m back in Greece. All that hassle with Sinister’s secret police and I still didn’t even consider the un-wisdom of coming back. Not that I’ve had any problems. All the young guy at the desk did when I was going through Greek Customs at the border was check my passport on his computer screen and wave me through. Sure, he looked at me hard for just an instant when he looked up from the screen, but considering my wild-looking hairiness -
‘Hitch-hiking?’ he asked pleasantly as I turned to go.

I’m beside the highway that runs all the way through Europe to the English channel on the Belgium coast. Actually, it probably only goes to somewhere like Paris or Amsterdam and roads from there get you to the ferry ports in France and Belgium. I don’t know – exactly. I haven’t got enough brains to plan ahead exactly and read maps exactly. All I care about knowing exactly is where I am at any given time – sort of. The highway doesn’t go through Athens, though. It comes from Istanbul and runs across the top of Greece before turning north into Yugoslavia and the rest of Europe. You have to go south a couple of hundred kilometres to get to Athens.

Last night I lay my sleeping bag out against a half-built wall in a construction site in Alexandropoulos. I was woken this morning by the cheerful voices of labourers pouring concrete just three metres from my head. I stopped for breakfast as I walked out of town then the very first car I thumbed brought me to the village back there. God knows what it’s called. I suppose I could get my map out and look it up, but do I really need to record another odd-sounding name?

I’m sitting in the grass beside the quiet highway tapping on my lightweight typewriter. At first I stood there expectant and eager, but cars are few and far between here. Most of them don’t even spare a second glance for a hippy-looking b like me as they whizz by, so it wasn’t long before I dug a book out of my backpack. I sat down to make a coffee after an hour or so of very little traffic and didn’t get up again. Once I’d had my bread-and-cheese lunch I gave in and pulled the typewriter out. It’s warm, it’s sunny, it’s really pleasant here in the long dry grass and most importantly I’ve got my typewriter on my lap. I don’s mind at all if no-one stops today. I’ll just lose myself in writing until it gets dark then walk back to the village to buy dinner.

It’s the next morning, about eleven o’clock. It’s yet another day of light traffic with no-one even slowing down to give me the once over. I can hear a car, but it’s coming from in front of me. Pity it’s going the wrong way, because it looks like it’d give me a ride. It’s slowing a bit as it passes me. Shit, it’s one of those big black jobs with two black suits in the front seat! It’s doing a U-turn and coming back to me.
‘Mister Furlong?’ One suit is out and ‘helping’ me into the back seat. ‘We will give you a ride to Athens.’
‘Thanks, but I’m on my way to the border. Just drop me where our roads part.’
‘We will take you to Athens. Mr Sinister is waiting for you.’
How did they know? Of course – that young Customs guy. I must have been flagged on his computer.
-
Sinister had come from Chois just for me. It seems we had a lot to talk about. Takes his job seriously, that one. It’s possible I was just a tad terrified at various times during that long night with him, but he knew he was just going through the motions. On the morrow his underlings took me to a travel office and booked me a bus ticket to England. A magic bus leaving the next morning at seven AM. Magic buses are simply cut-price coaches that cater mainly to backpackers. They run almost express to London – with stops for fuel and meals.

I was at the travel place just before seven, along with thirty or forty others – mainly young Germans destined for Munich. Sinister and his heavies were parked across the narrow street. Dead on seven a woman stepped out of the office.
‘The bus will be thirty minutes late.’
Many grumbles around me. Agitation. Me, I sat down on the footpath and cooked eggs on toast for breakfast. I was finishing my coffee when the bus pulled up. Everyone clustered around the door to pile on. Again I was the odd man out, taking my time to pack my gear and go into the office to fill my little billy with water. Why rush, I thought, we’ve all got pre-booked seats. Besides, the driver was still in the travel office. I followed him out to the coach and sure enough there was one vacant seat left near the back.

Sinister got on as the coach was about to pull off, a heavie with him. Plainclothes cops the world over look like plainclothes cops. He said something in Greek to the driver before coming to speak to me in a loud, threatening voice.
‘I told him you are not to get off before the border.’
Is he trying to intimidate me again and tell everyone I’m a bad man to be avoided? Doesn’t he know he’s just increasing my standing with this young crowd?
He left without another word, but then poked his head back inside the door and looked directly at me. He was smiling the first genuine, friendly smile I’ve had from him.
‘I received your postcard.’


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    Author

    I'm Danny Furlong.

     
    I'm a non-verbal quadriplegic confined to an electric wheelchair.
    A mute quad.
    I've been that way ever since I had a stroke out of the blue thirty years ago.
    I live alone in my own home in Castlemaine, near Bendigo in country Victoria. DHS-funded carers come in morning, noon, night and nighty-night to do the basics for me. 
    I don't know the C2 or C7 stuff. All I know is I can't talk and can't move except for minimal movement in my left arm, which means I'm pretty well stuffed.

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