Thoughts and Memories of a man Called Ray.

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1) Never take life too seriously
2) You'll regret the things you don't do far more than anything that
you'll ever do that turns out badly.
3) Just when you think you've seen it all, it'll still surprise you.

Apart from time spent with my friends my most vivid memories are of when
I've managed to hurt myself, not because I've ever been horribly injured or
pained but because most of the accidents I've had have been really stupid.
Luckily most of them have been to my head.

My first head injury was when I was about 8 or 9. After an argument in our
bedroom, my younger brother decided to get his own back by burying a cricket
bat in my skull. Running downstairs to my parents, they called an ambulance
and went to find my brother. They found him trying to hide under the bed.
When I got to hospital they shaved part of my head, and put a load of
something on it that matted into the rest of my hair to keep it in place. It
was great, I managed to spend play and dinner times for the next couple of
months inside the classroom in the warm.

One school holiday a few of us kids went up to Blaise Castle. This is a sham
castle built on top of a hillside. Running round and round the hill is a
path. Being at the top of the hill we decided it would be fun to ignore the
path and run straight down the hillside. By the time I saw the drop it was
too late to stop. I tripped over a tree root, somersaulted through the air
and landed on my head about eight feet below. Back up the hospital to be
treated for shock and concussion.

When I was around 12, running around the school playground one day I ran
round a corner of one of the school workshops and ran straight into the
steel pillar which held up the bike sheds. The impact broke my glasses and
bits of glass managed to get into my eyes. The trip back up to the hospital
was great. The crew let me sit in the front seat. Once there, they shone the
brightest light I'd ever seen into my eyes, it must have been about a
zillion watts and started removing the glass. Once it was all out they put
some yukky yellow stuff in them and told me to close them. When I tried to
open them I couldn't - they'd glued them shut until they healed.

When I was 20 a friend, Ian, and I set off to visit a friend of ours who was
at university in Stirling. On the way up we stopped off at a university
friend of Ian's in Barrow. By the way, I was far too thick to get into any
university, anywhere. Ian's friend came from a "nice" family. When dinner
was ready I picked up my knife and fork and started to "dig in".
Unfortunately everyone else started to say prayers. Oh well. Later that
evening we went out on the piss. Coming from the west country we'd bought a
couple of gallons of scrumpy up with us and proceeded to get very drunk.
Drinking on the beach when the pubs had shut we decided to light a small
fire in the dunes. Being a dry summer it rapidly got out of control until it
appeared all the grassland for miles around was ablaze. We left the scene,
with me sat on Ian's car with a gallon container of cider in one hand and
holding onto the roof gutter with the other. Driving along the coast road,
Ian rounded a corner, my hand slipped and I found myself flying through the
air. A short while later I was in Barrow Royal Infirmary, soaked in sea
water, sand and blood. After a couple of hours we left the hospital and went
back to Ian's friend's house. The next morning this guys parent's didn't
mention the fact that overnight I had acquired a fine collection of
bloodstained bandages, a great deal of skin was missing off the back of my
hands and face and I'd lost seven teeth. As I said they were a very nice,
genteel couple. We spent the day wandering round Lake Windermere eating
magic mushrooms.

That evening Ian and I left for Stirling. It was so nice there that although
I only had a fortnight's holiday from work I stayed there for around two
years. I never did get round to going back to my old employer to see if my
job was still open. The first job I got was as a barman in the Station
Hotel, this place was so rough that having a good few teeth missing made me
look like most of the regulars. I worked there for eleven days before I'd
had enough and left for other employment. In those eleven days there were 8
fights. The police were there 14 times, ambulances were there three times
and every night we'd have to collect various items of furniture from the
street.

After I got home from Scotland I found myself a room in a shared house. One
night I got on my bicycle and set off to the local Chinese for a chicken
curry. On the way back I put out my hand to signal I was going to turn right
and, well that's all I remember for a couple of minutes. Picking myself up
off the road I couldn't see my bike so I started walking back home, it was
only a couple of hundred feet away. Someone grabbed me, sat me down on the
bonnet of a car and told me I was going to be alright and the ambulance was
on it's way. I can remember thinking a) who'd been hurt? and b) why was it
raining so hard? Sat on the car people started bringing me strange mangled,
broken objects. Mostly bits of my bike, someone helpfully said they'd thrown
the frame into a nearby garden.

The ambulance arrived and I got inside. The crew had me sit in a strange
position, my right hand holding my left wrist and my left hand on my right
temple. On the way to the hospital I was thinking, if I'm in a ambulance why
the hell was I still getting wet. Arriving at the Royal Infirmary I started
feeling a bit sick, realising I wasn't going to be able to eat my supper
without being ill I gave the crew my chicken curry, still safe in it's
aluminium foil container. The nurses busied themselves around me as soon as
I got into A&E then said they were very busy and I was to lie quietly until
a doctor could see me. It was a strange time. I later found out that I'd got
myself run over the same night as the race riots down in Saint Pauls. There
was a guy who'd also been run over, he was a bit more unfortunate than me in
that he'd been run down deliberately, and the car had even reversed back
over him. Someone else had borrowed his dad's car to take his girlfriend out
and had crashed it. His parents arrived and from behind my screen could hear
his mum saying how everything was all right and how was her poor little boy,
while his dad was shouting at him about how he'd wrecked the car and by God
he'd pay for it.

A while later a doctor arrived to see me, he explained that I'd damaged my
head and that I'd a broken wrist. Even when he was stitching me up I didn't
really believe him until I sat up and looking behind me saw the pillow was
completely saturated and in the hollow where I'd had my head was a pool of
blood. He also explained that he was needed elsewhere and if I felt up to
it, could I find my own way down to radiology? About half an hour later a
nurse found me wandering around the wards and led me to the X-Ray
department. Watching a thin stream of blood making it's way down the glass
plate I asked the radiologist if they thought I was going to live. The next
day I was allowed home, I phoned a friend, asked them if they wanted to hear
something really funny and we spent the day in a local pub.

The accidents above really didn't hurt that much. The next two were
excruciatingly painful, and funnily enough both were to my legs.

When I wore "The Green" I got myself involved in the UKLFOP (United Kingdom
Land Forces Observation Post) competition. The competition tests your
strength, endurance, stamina and technical ability in a number of military
areas such as first aid, navigation, mine clearance, the rules of war,
aircraft and vehicle identification, military doctrine of various armies,
survival techniques and, of course, blowing the shit out of anything and
anyone who stands in your way. Once the two or three day competition starts
sleep is a thing of the past. You'll go over obstacle courses, run miles in
full kit over orienteering courses, fire unfamiliar weapons, set booby traps
and try and find those which the people in front have left for you, go on
forced marches with 5 gallon jerry cans - full of course - strapped to your
back and then be asked to identify what type of tank is in the woods 200
yards in front of you, when all you can see is the first three feet of its
gun barrel. I did this competition for a number of years until one day ...

I was making my way along the top of a 20 foot high wall when I lost my
concentration and fell off. The competition really does get to you and
you'll find yourself on an adrenaline "high". To cope with the demands
you're making on it your body is producing endo-morphs (natural painkillers)
like they're going out of fashion. Which is why, four hours later when I
cleaning my rifle I first became aware that my leg was aching. A couple of
minutes later my knee was stiffening and was very, very painful. One of my
mates went and got our officer who told me to try and stand up. This I did,
realised that the pain was very intense, then fell over in a faint. At the
military hospital, the doctor put his fingers under my knee bone and pulled.
When I finished screaming I got back down off the ceiling and he asked me if
that had hurt. I had damaged the cartilage in my knee, luckily it very
rarely causes me problems now, but I spent a very long, painful two months
of off work.

One day I did a parachute jump for charity at Thruxton aerodrome. Things
went very well, right up to the moment I crashed into the ground like a sack
of spuds. I'd thought I'd just twisted my ankle slightly, grinned and
carried on. Later that evening, sat in the pub, it began to ache, but not
that badly. Later that night I woke up and thought my foot was on fire. It
was so painful I thought I was going to be sick and it took nearly an hour
to get down the stairs and phone home. My brother called round my flat in
the early hours of the morning and took me to the hospital. He must of hit
every single bump in the road and given a bit more I would have happily
ripped his head off and spat down his neck, then tore one of his arms off
and hit him with the soggy end. It turned out I hadn't just twisted my
ankle, I'd damaged the Achilles tendon. Oh well, another painful six weeks
off work.

This wasn't an accident but an infection I once got. It's related to mumps
and is unbearably painful. Imagine someone hitting you in the balls with a
brick - repeatedly. That's how painful it is. For a couple of days I'd had a
pain in my groin. Being a delivery driver I thought it was a strain as I was
getting in and out of the van all day, and thinking it would get better on
its own didn't go to a doctor - a very bad mistake. One morning I woke up
and was struck by a terrible pain in my testicles. They fucking hurt.
Looking under the sheets I could see why. Waking my wife I told her she'd
better get a doctor. What was wrong? Well, my genitals looked like a couple
of jaffa oranges in a paper bag, I think you'll understand the reason I was
a bit concerned. The doctor arrived and that was the start of a very strange
week. After he finished examining me the doctor gave my wife a subscription
for a whole bunch of medicines and pills. She told me not to worry as it
wasn't life threatening but was going to get worse before it got better. The
first thing they put me on was strong antibiotics, these had the side effect
of making me feel sick. Doses of aspirin every couple of hours to keep the
fever down. The mixture of drugs was making was giving me diarrhoea and so a
few more things to stop that. All in all I felt miserable, I couldn't stand
the slightest weight of a sheet on me, my balls ached all the time and my
temperature went up to 104 and stayed there for two or three days. By then I
was past caring what happened to me and besides which I was hallucinating
anyway.

About a week later I felt well enough to try and get downstairs. That wasn't
a particularly clever move on my part and I spent another two days rolling
around on the sofa trying to find a position that didn't hurt. A couple of
days after that and being particularly stupid I thought I was well enough to
go to work. I got halfway there, turned round and had to spend another four
days in bed. By then my boss had received my sick note, looked up orchitus
and had even spoken to his own doctor about it. He phoned me, gave me his
condolences, wished me well and laughed his stupid head off. He was still
laughing a week later when I was finally well enough to go back to work.