An interview with Malcom ( transcript)
When I was 15 I was allowed to ride a motorcycle.. which carried on, until a couple of years ago.
I’d had various little accidents, when I mean accidents, I mean really little, just bruise or something like that. In 50 years.
And then one day I happened to be on the M5
and me and a BMW car decided to use the same bit of road. Nobody really knows what happened, because a police car was one car behind me and he still didn’t see what happened, he didn’t know what happened. Anyway. I ended up in hospital, over in South Meade – Bristol.
I virtually destroyed this side of my body. My feet, my knees, this hip decided to come out of my backside!
I didn’t know it at the time, I nearly lost my life, on the operating table.
Anyway. I uhm, cut a long story short …I wasn’t working anymore. I’d already retired. But I had…you know, I used to ride a lot on my own, as well as with a group of people. But, uh, after the accident. Um, they said I’d probably never would walk again.
I just went down, I really went down uh, because the main thing at the time was I had a lot of mates was, I was motorcycling and things like that …. And um, if there was anything going on in the street, you know, I’d be at the centre of it, like, you know, barbecues, things like that, you’d beat it up. We always had stuff like that going on most weekends through the summer.
Everybody I used to ride with, and that sort of thing, just suddenly disappeared like that! Not sort of tinkering off… because I was not living in the same sort of world they are ….(inaudible) one bloke, I worked with…I worked with him for 30 years…and he saw me once in hospital…I’ve never seen him since and he lives in Ponty!
It’s not a million miles (away) it’s just over the hill. Of the hell. Well anyway. I just went down and down and down.
I got to a point that suicide actually became an option. But I mean, serious option. I planned it, I knew where I was going and I knew exactly what I was going to do.
What can I say, it seemed to empower me, because now I was doing something….that I…. I could do it, you know?
I had a Community psychiatric nurse used to come and see me, and I was in a bad way, a really, really bad way. And she said, Mal, do you want… would you like a support worker? Well, first ‘how much does it cost’ and two what do we do? ‘’Well, it don’t cost you anything and really you can do whatever you like’’
So, she came in, the next week, with the Community psychiatric nurse, and as soon as she opened her mouth it was like somebody running their fingers down a blackboard.
‘’ello Malcolm!’’ Anyway, an absolute gem! Swears like a trooper! And anyway ‘’do you want to go to Men’s Shed?’’
Men’s Sheds? No, it’s not for me ….I’ve seen all these councillors, I’ve seen psychiatrists, I’ve seen all this know this.
Yep. You know I’m quite happy thinking of dying at the moment, you know, but anyway, uhm we came, we came to Men’s Shed, with Dave and a few others up in Dewi Sant (Men’s Shed), and I thought…
you know, there’s blokes, there’s people who want to talk to you, you know, but that’s what I wanted, you see, because I was so independent on my, you know, when I had the motorbike I could do whatever I wanted. If I was, you know, wound up, I could just shoot out, go for a ride for a couple of hours, come back, you know, give me a break like…
But anyway, It was just like I came in and people wanted to talk to you, they’re interested in you. When I told the boys my story, we were all in bloody tears.
It gave me direction again. Because I, I, you know, I lost everything, including myself. Yeah, really. Yeah.