The best part of a year passes by and Bill comes to visit again. My health has deteriorated now but we try a more adventurous day out. We are at Dyfi Junction station earlier, this time for a seven o’clock train. And it is a little earlier in the year too; no hints of autumn this time. We walk to the end of the platform and look towards the local osprey’s nest. One of the birds is flying towards us but veers away when it recognises our human shapes. It climbs and circles, then folds up its wings and dives, stoops I should say, to attack a random crow that may be a threat to its young. Then the train comes in and we are off to Penrhyndeudraeth, from where we cycle to the foot of Snowdon, climb one of its sibling peaks, Y Lliwedd, and return home by bike and train. Quite a day out.
A couple of weeks later my partner, Flic, and I are on the bus home from Aberystwyth. I am feeling rough and we have a conversation something like this:
‘Is it that thing where you feel like you’re lying naked on a cobblestone street in the rain and an elephant, passing by, stops to rest and lies on top of you?’ she asks.
‘No, of course not.’ I reply. ‘That’s how it feels at night. Or not exactly how it feels but a measure of the discomfort. That’s how uncomfortable it feels in the middle of the night.’
‘So what is it now?’ she asks. ‘Is it like you’re just recovering from flu and have recently been run over by a bus?’
‘No, that’s what it’s like in the evenings, or not exactly like that but comparable, you know what I mean.’
‘What is it then? You don’t look too bad.’
‘It’s indescribable. You know how I am with words but this is indescribable. Only it’s a bit like... you know those science fiction films where the guy’s body is being taken over by an alien? Or when an insect has a parasite eating it live from the inside? It’s not like that but it’s... you know, my body feels unbearably weird and my speech and my movement and my facial expression are all fading away. And... and I never get used to it. It still makes me feel panicky.’
With the lack of a mountain to climb my body has packed up and we are abandoning a trip to our local seaside town. We talk about the hidden symptoms of my illness, the indescribable half of it, by means of ludicrous analogies. They are, of course, exaggerations, but not so much as you’d think. And today I’ve been unable to walk far at all and when we get home I have to do some thinking.
I have Parkinson’s disease, a neurological condition, in which the brain’s messages to the body are somewhat interrupted. The symptoms vary from hour to hour, day to day, and over longer periods. So two weeks ago I cycled 30 miles and climbed a mountain with Bill but today I can’t walk a few hundred yards along the prom. Why is that? I have to think this through.
There are, I know now, psychological triggers. The excitement of a new challenge or the stimulation of a friend coming to stay will have a beneficial effect; suddenly I can do more. And exercise, hard exercise like that of climbing what we in Wales call a mountain (anywhere else in the world it would be a hill), always makes my body work better. At the end of such a day I am much more functional than at the end of a day at home. More than that, I realise, is the determination to go on.
Y Lliwedd was tough. Cycling there I was hunched forward and to one side, as if about to tumble sideways off the bike at any minute. It took all my concentration to make my feet stay on the pedals. And when on the mountain we tried a steep short cut to the summit and my legs refused to work. I collapsed onto the slope and Bill had to help me to my feet. This happened a few times. Cycling home he fed me sesame seed snacks and encouragement when it seemed like I couldn’t go any further. Aberystwyth prom, on the other hand, is not a challenge and to carry on when you can hardly walk seems daft not to mention embarrassing.
There you are, I have explained a little why a man who sometimes cannot butter a slice of toast can climb a mountain. And why a man who cannot work can, with some help, have adventures in faraway places. That is what the disease has done for me; it has taken me to India and Nepal, Peru and Ecuador, Turkey, Morocco, and the Middle East. When we knew that I faced a future of severe disability Flic and I panicked. And in a spirit of now or never, we travelled. We saw a volcano erupting in Ecuador, were guests of honour at a Hindu ceremony in India, came across fresh snow leopard tracks in the Himalayas, snorkelled in the Red Sea, and much, much more.
We did it for the experience of being in beautiful and strange places not knowing that it would enrich our lives and change our understanding of the world in the long term. That’s a bonus. It makes me want to write about our travels and about the things we have learned. And there’s a temptation to look at the longer journey that I have made, that we all make, you know the one I mean. You’ll have to excuse me if I find myself wondering, just for a moment or two, about some of the deeper meanings behind such an adventure.