And, apparently, my eldest son, [son’s name], took me to [town] to catch a train to London on one of the occasions I was going up for treatment and when he came home, he was in tears and he said to my wife, I took Dad to the station. I put him on the train and I didn’t know whether I’d ever see him again. And I hadn’t, I didn’t know about that until I saw the film being made and I hadn’t realised how much it must have affected them – but I know that there were occasions when it used to make me very grouchy and bad tempered, when it was happening, because I felt so helpless.

If you break your leg and you know, you know, stupidly however you did it, you’ve broken it and it’s going to get better and you hope it’s going to get better. But in this case, it’s been the most frustrating thing ever really, and it’s been worrying for my wife in particular because shes got to drive me off to the hospital, and she goes away for a week’s holiday or something worried about me in case I might get ill. And alright, neighbours and friends can take me to the hospital or I can ring for the ambulance, but it’s always been a worry for her as well. She doesn’t say so, but it is really. And it’s scarier for somebody seeing you when you’re wired up to all these monitors and oxygen and all this sort of stuff. I’ve got a bit blasé about it and I think, Oh, well, you know, here we go again. But when somebody sees you in that state, well, shes got used to it as well but when you’re in a resus department and people are trying to come round after heart attacks, it’s a pretty sort of hairy place to be.

Actually, that’s one of the interesting things, sex hasn’t been a problem because I don’t know whether there’s some sort of thing in that you know, it’s the whether the body says, the genetic thing is saying, it’s procreating, therefore, it’s more important for him to procreate than it is for him to stay alive. So it’s almost as if the safety valve has actually been removed during sex because that [for him], it [an episode of AF] doesn’t ever happen during sex, which is rather intriguing and very useful too, thank goodness.

I remember I used to get so tired so quickly, which I just thought it was me. I didn’t realise and I had to build up strength in my hands. My stroke went down this side, my right side and I had to build up strength in my hands and right leg and everything again. I was on a walking stick when I first came out of hospital and it was I don’t think Jenny was working.

And everything was just an uphill struggle I suppose. I used to bounce a ball against the wall and catch it, stuff like that, because my coordination went all to pot and I tried playing golf again. I couldn’t even hit the ball off the tee and my right and my left hand went totally out of sync with each other [laughs]. But I’ve never been a brilliant golfer but it was really disappointing, but what else? What was the what was the question? I’ve forgotten what the question was.

Oh, goodness, it’s slowed me down. Look at the mess in my garden. That was partly my broken wrist and I mean I can’t go walking up the hills anymore and I used to, I didn’t do it a lot, perhaps just three or four long walks in the summer, well, I was doing bed and breakfast and I was doing, when I was doing evening meals I was pretty tired, you know. And then I was a home help for an old lady in [place]. She died when she was a hundred one and a half but she was in care for two or three years before that but I was her home help until she was well in her nineties and so doing long walks was not a daily possibility but, at the same time. And then dancing, Scottish country dancing, don’t speak to me about that. Were all either dead or crippled now [laughs] and we used to meet in [place] so I couldn’t go very often, you know, but definitely slowed me down, yeah.

And that could happen when you’re actually out on the street somewhere or actually driving a car, which is frightening, because you’re thinking to yourself, Oh heck, I’d better pull over and stop. [Laughs] and all the doctor told me to do, I said, What am I supposed to do, doctor, if I get an AF and I’m driving a car. He said, Well. He said, [name]. He said, Just pull over. He said, You’ll be fine. He said, Pull over for a couple of hours and stop until it goes off. I said, That’s all very well. I said, But I’ve got a special needs son in the back. I can’t very well stop with him for a couple of hours. Hes not toilet trained. I may have to take him to the service station and change him into another pad. I said, What do I do, you know? Oh well, you know. Just pull over. He said, Just pull over. So what I do now, when I go on a long trip, I make sure my son or my daughter is with me, so if anything happens or they can take over the driving or they can drive so far and I can drive so far, you know.

The biggest, biggest problem I’m having is because of wanting to go on this holiday, when I told my insurance company that I’d got AF and in answering their questions, I said I was waiting for treatment so they decided that they wouldn’t insure me and they wouldn’t insure me for the angina or the osteoporosis, which was covered, and I’ve had this policy since last July. So that was a shock and a big disappointment really because it feels as though it’s making this into something much more major than I than I than I feel it is and that’s been a bit of a nightmare over the last two or three weeks to see whether anybody would actually accept me with this condition.

Oh it’s very difficult to get health insurance. Very are very expensive and I went to Australia last year and I had health I had insurance taken out but they didn’t cover me for anything to do with the AF and I went. I thought, Well, I’ll never have to go to a hospital anyhow. I’ll take a chance. And I did. I don’t like doing that, however, when I want to go Europe I have the E one eleven card [now the European Health Insurance Card] and I think, because one of my daughters fell one time and they didn’t want any insurance. They just wanted the E one eleven. So I thought, well, I’ll have that with me as well. But it’s it has been very difficult to get, once you mention that you’ve had a cardioversion and I’ve been thinking about going along to the my MP to see if theres anything they can do because it’s very, it’s very discriminatory. Even though I haven’t been in hospital for four years and the only time I was and I’m a very healthy person but getting all, I think a lot of them, the companies won’t insure.

Can you pay extra?

Some of them just said they wouldn’t they wouldn’t insure, so there wasn’t anybody that said, because even if I would have paid the extra, particularly going long haul holidays but that’s the only thing and saying that, it hasn’t stopped me travelling.