The importance of moving forward and having fun things planned in the diary

The journey continued and I was now over a year post accident.  When I look back now it all feels very surreal.  But then I have never paid this much attention to my life before.  As I become more thoughtful about what I have been through one of my reflections is how much do we all take for granted?  Friends, experiences, families, jobs etc play crucial parts in our life and we often take them for granted.   I suppose a lot goes on that we really aren’t mindful of.  Anyway……enough pontificating….. 

 My friends Patrick and Emma were getting married in October 2019.  Patrick had organised a stag weekend in Aviemore to do some MTBing and a few sherbets with a few pals. The week before that, I had organised as part of my rehab, a trip back to Mallorca for a yoga retreat organised by the soul seeker yoga.  The yoga studio where I have been going for my weekly sessions since shortly after the accident.  Rachel, my occupational health support, and I decided it would provide great mental and physical benefits from the sunshine, yoga, social interaction, and meditation. And getting there would help me test my planning, organisational and communication skills as part of my cognitive recovery.   I was due in court, if my case actually went to trial, the day after I returned from Mallorca and then down to Aviemore the day after that. It was a struggle to organise all of this with the brain still in recovery, but a great challenge.  

As it transpired the yoga retreat went superbly well, the case never came to court as the defendant pled guilty (all be it on a reduced sentence) and the Stag weekend was a great success.  A great group of guys.   I only knew the stag well, a few others from brief introductions, some from all the way back to Uni days and made some new friends.  We had some great fun on the MTB’s, a few ales and lots of fun over the weekend. 

Briefly back to the person that was charged for the accident that had caused my TBI. One of my councillors early on had councilled that I needed to use all the energy that I had to focus on my recovery. The legal process would run its course and it’s outcome would have no bearing on my recovery. Any focus on it would detract from my focus o getting better. Phenomenally great advice. I couldn’t tell you to this day the name of the person that caused my accident. I just didn’t think about it.

Back to the stag!! And perhaps most memorably of all (sorry Paddy) I met an amazing lady called Kerry :)  We were in the Winking Owl in Aviemore on the Friday night having a dance and chatting to some ladies at the bar, we met them again later in the local night spot, danced some more, chatted some more and I tentatively agreed to meet Kerry again later in the weekend.  Kerry, who is a freelance copywriter/marketing guru was in Aviemore for the summer working and planning to do some munros.  She has done lots of work in the outdoor, adventure, travel sector and had decided to get a mountain leader qualification to support and possibly lead groups as well as writing about other people’s adventures.  The Munro’s would help that. 

I got a call on the Sunday asking if I fancied meeting up.  I was home and quite tired but given my how well we had got on, and my free diary, I agreed to head over to Hopeton Camp site and meet up.  I had learnt by this point in my life, given what had happened, to live each day as it comes and say yes to possibities.  Carpe Diem!   We got on great and had a really fun night. We talked for hours. 

Kerry had 1 shift left at the backpacking lodge and then she was off for the week before she came to Inverness to watch some of her friends compete in the Loch Ness Marathon in memory of another friend.  And then she was heading back to Weston in The P (the name of the awesome VW camper she owned).  We met up a few times that week including a memorable night back at the Winking Owl to watch the Trad band Tweed.  Things were moving fast but it was all good and we had made a great connection.  Kerry suggested she could move into the flat for a couple of weeks over the period of the half marathon.  That’s Kerry’s style.  If it works, it works, was her conclusion And then one of the guys from the stag said why don’t you see if Paddy is cool with her coming to the wedding!  He was, so along with Mum and Dad (as Paddy had invited them to the wedding after meeting them so much around my accident) Kerry and I rocked up at the wedding.  The guys from the stag got a slight shock to see Kerry and we had an amazing weekend in Dunkeld at Paddy and Emma’s wedding.  It was a great occasion and I even managed to get through a reading at the wedding which Paddy had asked me to do.  I was so nervous, but I think I did ok.  Another test passed.   

And before that I had taken Andrew to see Greg Minaar (one of the greatest DH MTBers that has lived) speak live at Eden court in Inverness.  Another great evening with the Lad :)   

Then we headed on to Edinburgh to see Hannah who had started Uni at Queen Margaret studying Nutrition.    She was well settled in and loving Edinburgh.  She had some friends from home that were at other Uni’s in Edinburgh and was enjoying meeting up with them for nights out and her other new main interest of Hockey! (well ice-hockey in UK terms).  I have promised to take her to North America to see a game in the NHL in the next few years so that will be amazing:)   She was also loving the course.  

Somewhat bizarrely I was also studying an online nutrition course as part of my rehab at the time. I have always been interested in health, wellbeing and fitness so decided to take this opportunity to do some formal studying.   It’s an area of interest and a good way of testing the brain as it recovers.  It gave me some structure to my ongoing recovery and helped me to explore areas of interest for the future.  The whole area of health and wellbeing has always fascinated me. With the experience of the accident, and the importance of mental and physical health to my recovery, I was exploring how I could communicate what I was learning and maybe inspire others.    So Mum, Dad and I headed back to Inverness, and we had to sadly say farewell to Kerry. 

The end of another amazing chapter in my recovery.  We had got on so well and Kerry had totally clicked with Mum and Dad.  In the 7 months I had known Kerry, her ability to get on well with people was/is most definitely one of her best (well she has many) qualities.  

I had already made plans to fly down to Bristol and spend 3 weeks of November with Kerry.  

So, a trip to Weston was organised which included a flight back to Inverness halfway through for me to see Aimee perform a fund-raising concert on her 16th birthday!! An amazing gesture from the young lady.  She loves performing and using this talent to organise a fund raiser on her birthday was incredible.  She persuaded many of her friends (and her wee brother!) to join her on stage to perform a range of songs over the evening. To say it would be another proud moment would be an understatement for so many reasons.  Seeing your kids so happy and doing what they love is a wonderful experience. And she performed at another fundraising concert at the Drumossie Hotel ( above) So talented!!  More moments I was so grateful to be here to see. 

But before travelling down to Weston to see Kerry another of my friends David had organised a trip to Tallinn and Helsinki.  David is a big fan of the show called the Travel man, where the host, comedian Richard Ayowade heads to a major city and visits it “in a hurry” over a few days making sure he sees all the main highlights.  Inspired by his trips to Tallinn and Helsinki David had planned his own express trip with me along as his sidekick.  So, we headed off for a week from Inverness.  We left at early o’clock from Inverness and took the flight from Edinburgh to Tallinn.  We had 2 nights there before catching the ferry to Helsinki for 3 nights. We then returned to Tallinn for two more nights then home.  It was a super busy but excellent trip.  We saw so much.  David had it all planned and organised and I was more than happy to be along for the ride and exploring and seeing a new part of the world.    Once again just amazing to be out doing normal stuff and my huge thanks to David for organising it all.  I’m sure he’ll let me off for texting Kerry for the whole trip! At least England lost the final of the Rugby world cup when we were there.  Phew!  They did beat the All Blacks in the semi-final in an amazing performance but as all Scots out there know, victory in the final would have been unbearable to hear about for the next…….

Next up was my trip to see Kerry.  While I was down in Englandshire we spent a week with Kerry’s friends on the south coast near Wareham where she was doing some marketing work for them.  This was another relaxing time spent walking, running, and chilling.  And on the way back to Weston we stopped at Glastonbury Tor which was very cool.   In my second spell we were back in Weston and did a bit of exploring in Bristol which was great.  We walked a lot around Weston and had a lovely walk out to a point where we could see Wales and down to the Southwest.   I managed to fit in a visit to see an Danny, old Uni pal in Gloucester which was great.  

I popped up to Leicester to attend a conference on sports and exercise science as part of my rehab plan.  This was fascinating and another aspect of health and wellness I had always been interested in.  More exploration of what the future might hold.  The conference was held at the home of Leicester City Football Club.  Simon, one of my old bosses in Scottish Enterprise was a huge fan of the football team and glories of their unexpected Premiership win a few years ago were all around the stadium.  The whole experience was pretty cool and demonstrated to me that Mark 1 was still in there. I was able to engage in a topic area with little past experience and met a few interesting people.  It was also interesting to note that more and more research is getting completed in the area of exercise links to health and wellbeing.  Funding in sport is still largely driven by metrics like the ability to win Commonwealth and Olympic medals but that is changing.  Again, I have personally seen the benefits first-hand on myself before and after the accident, but the wider benefits of exercise and movement to mental and physical health are significant.  More and more initiatives in the UK are starting to focus on this and I think this can only be a positive thing for the wider population’s wellbeing.  

So the rehab continued and the brain was getting put through its paces.  It would be fair to say it was recovering, it was hard work to put it into these different scenarios, but it was coping and the managed stress was seeing it recover.  The words of Dr Shona Macbryer were never far from my mind.  You will go through tough times, but things will get always get better again.  Keep moving forward, make sure you have fun things in the diary and always be very grateful for the good things that you have.  Words I still live by to this day.