I’m at an age, and been in the industry that created this social media monster for so long, that I think I’ve lost touch with what is right and wrong here but, somehow, as an alter-ego I’ve managed to drag my real world and real people into my fiction. I never intended this.

As a result, as well as real-life friends, I also meet here on this page with old friends and work colleagues – people who in another age I may have lost touch with – and also many ‘friends’ I’ve only met once and, staggeringly, some I’ve never met at all. All are now involved in my thoughts and life dramas.

As such, I’ve alluded to the ‘fictional’ Lady B, in reality the love of my life, my gorgeous, beautiful and talented wife Gail, being ill and referenced her ‘battling’ and being in hospital without really explaining anything as I thought it too …what? intrusive? Then why mention it at all, you may ask. A question I’m struggling to answer here right now.

The fact is, at this very moment in my real world, Gail has been moved to Addenbrooke Hospital in Cambridge, is seriously ill and in intensive care. Those who can or want too, feel free to message, call me or email me if you want to know more. I thank you for your thoughts, prayers and kindness and I hope to be back – perhaps – with better news.

I have a lot of trouble with what I wrote that morning and it haunts me still nearly 20 months later. For reasons which I can’t fully explain; reasons I have been to counselling for but still not resolved. I took time to write the above and post it before I left for Addenbrooke’s hospital on the morning of July 29th 2018. Had I not written it I may have got to the hospital in time to be with Gail at the end. But I didn’t.

I could tell you that I’d had ‘get here now’ calls before and Gail had pulled through. I could mention the comforting message from the Doctor who spoke to me as I left the hospital on the previous evening. I could tell you that years and years of battling Lupus alongside Gail  sometimes made me feel (and I know this is terribly wrong but anyone who has lived with a loved one is ill all the time will understand) that I had the illness myself and I was exhausted physically and mentally. But all that means nothing.

All I know is that I got a call from the hospital prior to Gail going into intensive care and I could have left home then, and then I got the second call to come in before which I felt the need to post a message. My inability to be there at the end is to be a recurring theme for me, but knowing I posted a blog before I left to see Gail is a source of incredulity and shame for me.