This diary is about my on-going experience of aphasia. The NHS says aphasia is a condition that makes it difficult to communicate. It can make it hard to speak, read, write and understand others.
I first heard of aphasia about February 2025. I am not an expert. The diary sometimes ambles around. Ignore parts if you like.
Adapting Jane Austen’s first sentence in Pride and Prejudice is a good start: “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a mingled man in possession of aphasia must be in want of a life.”
I find it very difficult to correct spelling errors. I have used the ‘Spelling’ tool on my laptop, but things slip through. I’ve done my best.
When it all started: the Interrail trip
It started around April 2022. I promise that this will not be all gloom.
It was then that things started to go wrong. James and Rosie, my step-children (children! In 2022 they were 41 and 35) said they were worried about me. I was forgetting things, memories, scrabbled words, or nothing came out. Chris, my wife, told me that a few people said I’d “lost my spark”.
I didn’t know what was wrong, but I think that having a Interrail holiday didn’t help.
It happened like this.
In May 2022, Rosie rang Chris to say that we mustn’t miss an opportunity: half price tickets, a flash bargain, to celebrate 50 years of Interrail. Chris was enthusiastic, but as the tight schedule to get tickets was running out I was more worried. I always worry, whatever it is.
The tickets were purchased and then we had about four months to arrange our tour. That meant setting out the routes, allow time for connections, contingencies, changes of timetables, trains mysteriously disappear, no seats reserved. And book the hotels.
My tactic was to do nothing and hope that it would be called off. Chris, who is legally blind, was determined. So four months dwindled to two weeks.
I had a couple of long train rides in France in the 1980s. The trains were lazy. Passengers didn’t get on the train until the “garde de train” whistled a few times. It’s different now. The stations have loads of platforms. 36 platforms in Basel Station is daunting. The main Berlin station has platforms that go east to west, west to east, and south going north, and north south, and suburban platforms, and the underground.
Changing trains was a nightmare: how much time do we need if the train is running late? How much time do we need to get from the platform 1 to get to 36? And don’t say that Swiss and German trains always arrive on time. They were the worst.
Day 1, Brussels. Good. Nothing went wrong…
…except that, when we got off the train, and five minutes from the railway station, we saw a man on an electric scooter, probably 40 years old. We saw the tree roots, he didn’t. It was serious. Fortunately, there was a hospital adjacent and some people could help. My only contribution was to try to speak, in Spanish, in Brussels. Spanish? Why? What was I thinking???
Berlin, four days and Munich, two days
During the holiday I was checking and checking, and again, checking. I was getting apprehensive about small things. What I didn’t do was to see the water from the shower cascading into the room. Gallons. I didn’t expect that. Chris was having a shower. She couldn’t see that the shower had a very shallow basin, and she likes a long shower.
The staff were not happy, and flowers were needed to placate the concierge.
We thought that we would avoid the Munich Oktoberfest. Who would know that it starts in mid-September? Arriving at the station, we were joined by middle aged men in costumes looking like boy scouts, with the addition of steins of beer and strudel. The same for the women.
All boring journeys up to now. Then it all changed from Munich thereon.
Innsbruck, four days, no we didn’t have a go on the Olympic ski jump
The Munich to Innsbruck train journey was leisurely, with the train sweeping through a sequence of valleys. Innsbruck greeted us with a sequence of road works, and then our taxi crossed the river. We got an upgrade for our room, and free passes for the buses and trams. There was sun, but also mist. I know we stayed for four days, and we saw a lot, but I don’t remember much.
Verona, five days, then on to Basel
We continued through the valleys towards Italy, the mist disappeared, and the sun took its place. The valleys broadened out, and then the train sauntered through the plains, and then to Verona, Italy.
Our five days were mostly devoted to pizza, ice-cream, more pizza, and a miserable sandwich in a miserable outside cafe. We found time to look at the Arena di Verona, Giusti Gardens and we had a day trip to Venice. Thinking back, I had pizza in Venice as well. Chris was probably more sensible.
Leaving Verona we changed at Milan, and then Switzerland. Beautiful lakes, fantastic landscape, awesome engineering along the steep banks. It took most of the day, including delays, to get to Basel. We arrived at our hotel at about 7pm, and left the next day about 7am.
Basel, the train station with 36 platforms (remember?), was a short trip to Mulhouse just inside France. We changed to Paris. We ambled to Paris. This was my favourite journey. Slow, and twisting.
Chris and I had first class tickets. By this time we were not looking our best. Other passengers thought that if we could travel in style, they should be able to do it. The guard enjoyed banishing them to the second class.
A scam in Paris
The first we saw of Paris was the Basilica of the Sacré-Cœur. Utterly beautiful. We saw it close-up the following day. It was still beautiful, but we had to share the forecourt with tourists, and also a number of young women suggesting that you donate €20 for the deaf. Each. We were not sure that the donations got into a charity box. We were smug. We weren’t going to be caught out like the others. But that was because we got caught by the same scam in Verona. At least we only gave €5.
Paris was the last place before coming home. We were having a great time in Paris. Beautiful places, good cocktails, fabulous food. On the second, and last day, we went to the Cité des Sciences. Amazing. A Planetarium, aquarium, cinema, and a submarine which was in use until 1982, and now you can walk through it.
An accident
Then we were off to the Gare du Nord to go home. We were both tired from the 21 days, and the last days with a hard mattress in the hotel. Chris didn’t see the bench which sent her flying.
We weren’t sure if it was just bruises. Chris made a sling. She dosed herself with small bottles of wine, (and it would be churlish not to join her), and got on the Eurostar with more bottles of wine.
Getting home, A&E confirmed that she had broken her shoulder, and elbow. That did for Chris’s table tennis for some time.
There were many beautiful places we saw on our interrail adventure, and some bad. I was very happy to get home.
A GP visit
It took me about a year to decide to go to my GP.
The GP asked me a set of 30 questions ranging between arithmetic, knowledge, remembering sequences. ‘Normal’ people get about 25 questions correctly. I got about 20 right (I thought I had done much better than that). It wasn’t OK, but it was maybe on the border. See how it goes.
To be continued…
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