Tom 2.0

The slings and arrows of acute brain injuries eh guys…

Now please excuse the potentially over-dramatic title blurb; but what are you if you can’t make light of adversity eh?!

I thought I would write a piece charting the difficulties that I have encountered since my little skydiving escapade at the end of 2017; if anything else just to provide a slight support framework and structure for anyone that needs it – in case GOD FORBID anything like this were ever to happen to anyone I know again..

Sleep
Now one of my loudest and most pained gripes since ‘o tombo’ (Portuguese for ‘the tumble’) has been my sleep. Having never been a particularly fervent, dedicated or successful sleeper for the 22 years before my swan dive; I now sleep even less, and am probably clocking on average about 5 or 6 hours a night, all things considered.

(Having said all of these things, one of the results of my insomnia and my skeleton-thin sleep timetable is that the wee hours of the morning is the time that I love to write – so it’s not all doom and gloom!)

Indecision
One of the larger frustrations of this new incarnation of my person has been my new-found inability to make decisions; about even the smallest, most insignificant and inconsequential things….
Now I know this afflicts far more people than you would guess – my ‘blood brother’ himself, Mr Benedict Field has been a long-standing sufferer of ‘indecisionitis’ – but this doesn’t make it any less irritating; the fact that suddenly I cannot make my mind up about ANYthing!

Forgive me for being greedy but I for one would love to know the science behind it. I sometimes wonder who the evil genius behind all of this is; he (or she; 2020 guys come on!) almost professionally pulling the strings and watching us all squirm in ignominy?

Hopefully one day, as our understanding of the human brain becomes more and more superior, I will know the answer to my question, but for now I just guess I’ll have to sit and wait… (to bandy around the words of our favourite acoustic guitarist Jack Johnson.)

Not picking up on hints/mood swings
I would say that I was marginally harder of understanding these days than I used to be which is, well, kind of annoying yeh! These days I just don’t pick up on hints as easily/seamlessly as I used to, however subtle or glaringly obvious they may be.

This is the thing Tom, no one saw this coming, but it’s happened now, so quit moaning and make do with it to the best of your capability!

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It’s not all doom and gloom however, and there are a few things that make me the slightest bit glad that I took a tumble all those months ago.

Spice
Ask any of my friends, pre-tumble I was roundly PATHETIC with spice. I mean seriously, I would get hot under the collar from eating a packet of Chilli Heatwave Doritos, which was both annoying and the slightest bit pathetic if you ask me.

I now, and I’ll be damned if I know the science behind it, absolutely LOVE spice – and can challenge even the most hardened ‘spice merchants’ in a head to head…

Maybe you should have gone base jumping earlier sonny Jim!

‘A nicer guy’ now I would say; more considerate for others 

Now I don’t know if this is a result of my growing up and finally shrugging off the shackles of adolescence – and hopefully would have happened anyway – or is some strange effect of la chute, but I do feel, in my everyday life, a more conscientious, thoughtful, and generally ‘nicer’ guy.
What’s not to love eh my brothers and sisters?

I just want to round things off with a wee bugbear – a slight niggle in the day to day life of a young Tomzinho Biggart. Having not taken a train for about a year there or thereabouts, for obvious reasons, I am now chained to First Great Western like an unhappy marriage. (Annoyingly too, it’s a loveless betrothal too as it’s one without even the rage sex… “so what’s in it for you I hear you say ?!”
Regret and a healthy dose of Piles is about the totality!)

With this newly-enforced reliance on trains – I had to “temporarily surrender” my driving license just afterwards (don’t ask I’d rather not talk about it!) – I have realised, to my great expense, that trains are almost insurmountably expensive these days…
If I am unlucky enough to have to travel during peak time (I know, he who travels at peak time is nothing but a fool !) then it would cost me somewhere in the region of 80 big ones to get from Banbury to London and back, a journey of a grand total of 55 minutes…It’s daylight robbery and I reckon we’re all in the wrong game guys; we really need to be fleecing Joe Bloggs for everyday travel expenses!