Angry (not so) Young Man! (Hepatitis C (Hep C) Blog)

Since I started writing about my experiences as a Hep C sufferer on this blog and facebook and the like, I have received so many words of support from friends, both old and new. So many of the people I have met in recent times like me, are ’Heppers’ and understand completely what I’m going through and have been a great help and support to me.


But, being the highly sociable person that I once was, I have so many old friends who, like me, feel bewildered and bereft by the situation that I now find myself in. And so today I thought I’d write and spare a thought for them, in the hope, that we can figure out how we will both come through this thing, together.

Take my very old friend Ali. And she is getting on a bit. I’ve known her for umpteen years, I met her when I was just a boy and she was a young woman! Enough said. But anyway Ali has always been very much like me, apart from, she is ginger, got big tits and loves sleeping with men. And on these points we differ greatly, but I wouldn’t mind a big pair of jugs like that! But anyway, as I was saying, despite these obvious drawbacks, Ali is a wonderful human being, a ‘bon viveur of the highest order, and a bloody good friend. Now I know what you’re thinking; does her collar and cuffs match. And the answer to that is, I don’t know. Though it’s not for the want of trying on odd occasions, but that was usually because she’d poured a load of alcohol down my throat and various pills! Which, if you ask me is tantamount to date/rape, but I won’t hold it against her. In fairness, I was completely safe unless she’d have had a lolly stick and a couple of elastic bands handy. What she should’ve done is use the little blue pills; some bloody mate!

Anyway, as I was saying, Ali is the sort of girl who could make a party happen, anywhere. A couple of baubles off the Christmas tree, a party popper and half a mouldy mince pie that Santa left and she’d be off! She’d organise a ‘posse’, choose a venue, add a twist of alcohol or something and before you know it, everybody was hammered and having a great time. On so many occasions I’d sat in a late night club with her watching her adoring crowd running around with furniture on their heads whilst we sat back and ‘pushed the buttons’ And that’s the kind of girl she is. So why am I writing this? I’d almost forgotten I was having such a good time with all that mist in my eyes...

So there I am on New Year’s Eve / Morning. I’ve watched ‘em on the telly in Trafalgar Square, counting out the old and ringing in the New Decade. Someone was letting fireworks off in the village and terrifying my dog. And I’m sitting in bed with a glass of Schleur (non alcoholic) and that half a mince pie I was on about, thinking “that’s enough of all that, let’s hope 2010 brings some respite!”

And I started to contemplate what a let-down the first Millennium decade had been. As one ‘twitterer’ put it in 140 characters’; “Jet Packs, they promised us Jet Packs, what happened to our Jet Packs?”

And then I started to think about the last decade and what it had meant to me, on a personal level. And I can tell you this, for me personally it was a decade where I watched just about everything completely f**k up! Just about every constant that I took as given seemed to go completely la-la, and it got worse as the decade went on!

All that hope that we all had as we watched the dawn of the New Millennium, how they’d banged on about it prior to its arrival and the things we was going to achieve during the next decade. A new government, a new leader, a new era! Everything was booming and I too was being swept along with it. For me, things couldn’t have been better!

And then, at no particular defining point, everything started to go wrong. To me, an agnostic, it seemed like the biblical struggle between good and evil had indeed come to pass as predicted for the Millennium and at some point during the ‘Noughties’, evil triumphed. And again I was being swept along with it, suddenly for me, it all fell apart.

That is with the exception of one thing, People! My saving grace and the reason why I hope I will prevail in the end. But this is what really does my cake in. How come there are so many good people out there; and I know this because so many of them are good friends of mine, and things can still go so terribly wrong?

So, there I am with my half a mince pie and my Schleur (non alcoholic) getting into a bit of a rage about everything and crumbs are going all over the bed. And suddenly I thought, I know, let’s get the laptop out! And then I’ll send out some really sad well-wishes to the people who are out revelling and won’t even get them ‘till the next day when they try and find out from their mates on facebook, what they got up to the night before. (That’s what I always used to do!) That’ll perk me up!

So I sat the laptop on my lap, as you do and fires it up. And there, to my amazement is a message sat in my ‘inbox’ from Ali and it read as follows:

“Well, Bonne Annee our Rio. Midnight on New Years, gigantic fireworks going off here (probably cause a bloody avalanche), but I just felt like saying hello to you. I so wish you weren’t going through this, and let’s hope this is the year that you get all mended. In the words of Benjamin Disraeli; "Never apologise for showing your feelings, when you do so, you apologise for the truth!" Keep writing what you write, it’s amazing. Right now I feel like I’ve spent a bit of New Year with you. Chin up lad - Ali x”

And there it was; enough to restore my faith in human kind, certainly. But also, enough to make me feel bloody angry. Not at Ali, God no. But just bloody Angry, mainly at this situation I’m in and how it’s gonna change so much of my life. And how it’s gonna change the relationships I have with Ali and so many of my old friends.

And if I came across Benjamin Disraeli today and he uttered those words too me, then, like Washington who could not tell a lie, I would have to reply “Sir, I am not apologising, I am fighting! Fighting against an enemy that I cannot touch, see, smell or hear, but against an enemy that I can feel, and it makes me bloody angry! And frankly Sir, I’m just about ready to twat someone!”

Ali wrote that note because right now, I need some kind words from my mates, and probably like me, she’s clinging on to a memory of something that will never be the same again. That’s why I’m so angry, because that isn’t the way I knew her before, but it will probably be how I know her for a long time to come. As it will for so many of my other good friends.

All I can say to them now is this, Guys, deep inside I’m still the person I once was, and you know if there ever was a guy who could pull it round, you know it would be me! I’ll be back soon, it will be different, but I will be back.

And Ali, if you do see Disraeli on your travels, tell him I’m sorry, I didn’t mean what I said back there, I’m a lover not a fighter but sometimes these days, I can be such an angry, not so young man. I’ll see you in the 20teens, on the other side of this thing, ‘till then.... chin up lass – rio x

Keep well everyone - Ian