1997-8

I didn't feel good for the whole week between Christmas and New Year.  I put it down to a kind of flu thing.  I was able to go out with my friends to the Edinburgh Hogmanay Street Party, my first time there, with around 300,000 people crammed into Princes Street I think.  After some scary moments of crushing, I don't think they ever allowed those sorts of numbers in again.

I returned to work after the New Year and within about a month I was ill again with the same symptoms I'd had during the Christmas period.  I needed about a week off work.  Then it happened again about a month later.  For most of 1997 this was the pattern... I'd be off work for a week, then return for a few weeks, then off again for a week, and gradually a week became two weeks and by the summer I was almost off work more than I was there.  I'd been going to the doctor during this time but he couldn't explain it.  They took blood tests, urine samples but I had to keep going back to work and saying its a "mystery virus", which is what the doctor called it.  My work then sent me to BUPA as we were entitled to free healthcare with them.  They did more tests, heart scans, brain scans but nothing was showing abnormal.  Yet I felt terrible everytime I came down with this "mystery virus".  It was like a really bad flu but with extra weird symptoms, like reading the clock backwards or being unable to watch tv or read the newspaper.  I'd just be in my bed staring at the ceiling and often couldn't sleep.

It reached August 1997 when I made the decision to resign from the job.  I was getting sick of the negative comments from colleagues who thought I was pulling a fast one.  To their credit, my manager and her assistant were great and really supportive throughout.  My manager's name was Grace.  I think she expected I would probably quit myself and she was sad to see me go but understood.  My doctor signed me off work and I claimed Incapacity Benefit for a few months.  I was diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (or M.E.)

It was during this period that my love of Music really grew and took off.  Since I now had lots of spare time, when I felt well, I began writing songs.  I could only play a few chords and not very well at this point but songwriting came very easily and naturally.  As this developed, I gave tapes of these songs to my Dad and he encouraged me on.  I would simply use two standard tape recorders and record something on one, then play back this tape and overdub myself onto the other tape recorder.  Back and forth I'd do a few overdubs.  I really loved that.

So when it came time for the doctor to sign me off Incapacity Benefit, I began looking at options in Music.  I looked into paying for special courses on Sound Engineering and Mixing but they were really expensive and then my Dad spotted a free course at a school nearby where he lived.  If you were unemployed you were entitled to sign up for free and so I did that.  It started out only 3 of us on the course plus the teacher, who was a Beatle fanatic.  This was an unusually low number they told me, it normally got about 8 people.  One or two more joined when I was on it and we learned the basics of recording on an 8-track tape machine.  This introduced me to multitrack recorders.  By June 1998 the course had to be cancelled because sadly, the tutor had died of cancer, unknown to most of us he was even ill.

Soon after this, my Dad suggested I get a 4-track portastudio and I entered the world of home recording.  I totally loved this, creating my own little audio worlds from my songs.  I remember getting the portastudio during the World Cup in France, watching the games with the sound muted whilst making little demo tapes of my songs.  Over the next year or two I gave these tapes to my Dad.  He would play them with his friend sometimes, who was quite into his music.  He liked Neil Young and a lot of folky stuff.  They both felt I had a knack for arranging.  Nobody was sure about my voice or guitar playing!