If you’re going on a long car journey, you’ve got to plan it in stages because I know I can only drive for about 45 minutes maximum without being really uncomfortable and having to shift about. And if you’ve got to shift about when you’re driving it’s no the best thing in the world to do.

It’s not the safest thing in the world to do so what you’ve got to do is plan your journey and take it in stages. Now if I was going anywhere in about 200 to 300 miles I’d have to plan that journey for at least the first two or three stops would be 45 minutes, then after that it would be as and when.

So I’d need to find out. I couldn’t be in the middle of a motorway with 20 miles to go and be in severe pain. If I knew I was getting a lot of discomfort and pain. I’d actually have to get off the motorway and start going on the A roads and B roads, just so I know I could be able to stop.

So you’ve really got to plan ahead for things like that. It’s all forward planning. If you want to make a journey, plan for an occasion it’s basically what I say planning, forward planning, forward thinking.

And make provision for eventualities, I always had to know that I could lie down somewhere if I needed to. I started carrying a camping mat round with me.

If we were going on a journey we knew wed have to break the journey so that I could lie down whenever I needed to and I think by then the children were old enough to feel rather embarrassed by having a mother who was sort lying on the ground, but they put up with it, but I think a lot of other people gave us some very strange looks, particularly places like motorway service stations where I would be lying on the grass and it might even be raining gently but I needed to lie down and it didn’t matter if I got wet. So we managed so we sort of picked up our lives as best we could.

You know sort of travelling by train if I’ve gone on some long journeys, you know I sort of if I’m carrying a really heavy bag, I phone up and get the guys to help carry my bag on and off the train.

The amount of looks I’ve had when I’ve gone to the restaurant car saying ‘Can you fill my hot water bottle up for me?’ And most of them have been pretty good but some of them just look at you and you know like huh ‘I’ve got a bad back. You always feel as though you have to justify yourself. You know they usually have filled it for me but I kind of, you kind of have to get past that embarrassment of carrying a hot water bottle down the train which I am now. Well past that.

Airports. They’re the worst possible thing. The amount, if you’ve ever been in Spain trying to get back from Tenerife or Malaga, you’re taken by the, and you’re on a package tour, you’re taken by the coach about four hours before your flight and then you have to stand in a queue which takes about two hours to get booked in and it’s an impossible situation for someone with pain.
Unless you say “Can I have a wheelchair please? Can I have special assistance”. Okay they’re the times you need it. Because if you’re in distress over these situations your partner’s going to be in distress because they’re worried about how you’re going to be. And these are the occasions you plan for.

I know that I can’t cope with certain situations. As an able bodied person would. So we have to say “Yes I have a pain problem”, there are certain situations which catch me out, airports are one of them, I know that. So I’ll prepare for it by phoning up asking if they can have a wheelchair available and they get you through the checkout. They get you through customs. They get you through passports. They get you onto the plane and off the plane without too much difficulty.

Then you can think about, ‘Okay, travelling is not as bad as it might be. The same thing going on the ferry boats. Well ask “Can we go'” because decks of ships on car ferries, theres all sorts of obstacles like big hooks and things like this, and they’re a bit uneven with bits of iron work and stuff around.

And then you have to shove and twist through between one car and another. So there I always say “Can you park us near the lift please?”. And so you get taken up in the lift. It’s things like this to think ahead and avoid getting into lots of situations which can really mean that you and your partner don’t enjoy your holiday. So these are some of the things that we tend to do.

And one of the targets I set myself was… I’d been, in my ‘ following my psychotherapy training, I’d been going to a college, residential college in [place], to do occasional sessions there on relaxation and pain management, these sort of things, to get back into some kind of teaching role.

And they were planning a trip to [country], a walking tour. Now at that time my walking wasn’t brilliant, I wasn’t walking very far. So this trip was what, 6/7 months in advance. By now it was about six or eight months since my wife had died. And I signed up for this walking tour. But in the meantime, because the tour, they, they were planning to do 10-12 miles a day in the [mountains], I thought I’d better do something about my walking. And I hadn’t walked more than about, if I walked ‘ of a mile it was going some for me.

So I started training for this walking tour and I used to go with my son-in-law into Snowdonia and we set ourselves targets. He was a walker, he was a runner, and he had to go at my pace which probably must have been frustrating for him [laugh].

But we would set off on walks, on his days off, he was a policeman, and on his days off we would set off for walks to get me back into some kind of conditioning and I used to find that quite excruciating doing that at first. But eventually I built up some fitness, built up some strength and I was able to survive the walks. So in the Spring I was able to go on this course. Not course, on this tour.

And managed to cope very well with the walking except, what I found I needed to do, was every morning before we went out on a walk I needed to walk for an hour to get myself warmed up because I was so stiff and sore. And when we came back in the evening I had to walk for another hour or 1’ to save stiffening up in the evening. If I could keep on walking I was okay but if I stopped I was in a mess. But it so happened that on that walk, on that holiday, I met [wifes name], who is now my wife. And we walked together for eight hours a day for the week and at the end of the week decided to get married!