January 2022

Crikey but it's nearly been a year since I wrote a Blog post! Far too long, but in my defence; I've had a very dramatic year since last February. In March 2020 I caught COVID and very nearly died. 

Yes, honestly, I went into hospital and was soon to be put on a ventilator and told that it was likely I'd die as so many in that first 'wave' who were put onto a machine to help them breathe did not survive.

I was lucky - I was put onto the Steroid treatment (Dexamethasone) once asleep and this saved my life. I was in hospital for about 3 weeks and even when I did come out, I was very unwell. Breathless, sleeping 20 hours a day; even walking down the stairs tired me out. THe change to my body, my mind and my stamina was major and I'm still suffering a little even now, having scarring on the lungs and made easily breathless.

At some point I'll no doubt write about that year, possibly in a fictional story, maybe not. But I have notes and a lot of poetry that I was writing, and kept writing, throughout the year. In fact, I managed to keep my average poetry writing 'score' (of just about 1 every 3.5 days) and ended up with 102 poems for the year. Not bad when you consider I was asleep for nearly 3 weeks in total!

I'm now in the process of editing, formatting and sorting out my 2021 book of poetry ('Amazing Skies') ready for publication. Anyone reading this who has a knowledge of how I like to do things will know I aim to get this intensive work out of the way early in January and be ready for the book to be published on February 1st the following year (so under a month for all that work and to get it printed, which takes about 5 days).

But since COVID I have had to adjust my expectations for myself and understand my abilities are less than they were. Thus, I am now aiming for the first week of March for this to be ready to buy in print. Whether I can do it sooner for the Kindle version I'm not sure.

But I will do it, and I'll try to update this website a bit more often as well.

You have been warned!  

Stay well, stay healthy, stay safe all,

Alan