After seeing this image on Tumblr, I figured I should write the full story:

There was an old woman who lived in a shoe,
A mother, a daughter and warrior too.

This is the story of her greatest battle,
With a foe who loved to eat all the cattle.

Once an angry giant was attacking the lands,
With his big stompy boots and leather-gloved hands.

He’d eat all the food at the local farms,
Then fall fast asleep by crashing in barns.

But worst of all was his mid-morning snack,
Roasted humans (with salad) in a tortilla wrap!

The warrior woman could take no more,
So she grabbed her armour, shield and sword.

She searched the lands until she came upon the beast,
And shouted out loud “It’s time to end your feast.”

“No” said the giant, with a glint in his eye,
“I’ll eat you instead! Maybe cooked in a pie…”

“I gave you fair warning” said the woman to her foe,
As she brandished her sword and stabbed his toe.

The giant lost his balance and fell to the ground,
Squashing what was left of the warrior woman’s town.

She chopped off a foot, then went for the neck,
Before hearing the cry of an emotional wreck.

“Why me?!” sobbed the giant “What did I do?”
“You ate all our food, and the whole zoo!”

“Fair point” said the giant “I’d probably best go”
And so off he hopped, to the mountains topped with snow.

But what of the children of those humans lost?
The old woman took them all in, at considerable cost.

She converted the shoe the giant left behind,
Into a loving home (since the government wouldn’t provide).

But the crops had been eaten, and all the animals too,
She had so many children, she didn’t know what to do.

So she gave them some broth without any bread,
But at least they weren’t hungry, and each had a bed.

I’m ill.

And apart from me working 10 til 3, it’s not something people would usually notice.

I have no physical symptoms and I try my hardest to live as normally as I can.

I have M.E. – or Myalgic Encephalopathy for long.

It’s not that well known, although about 250,000 people in the UK live with it, so I thought I’d write this to give you a bit of an insight into it.

So here we go – Me & M.E.

Once upon a time, when I was about 11, I came down with a flu-like illness. It lasted longer than it should, so I was taken to my GP. After a few appointments and blood tests, I was told I had a virus that had affected my immune system.

For the rest of that school year, I went in for only half days – but by the time Year 8 came around, I was well enough to go back to full time. So I carried on as normal, getting back to everything I had done before my illness, including swimming lessons.

Stupidly, after only a few weeks of swimming, I attempted to go for one of the badges. For part of this, I had to swim 32 lengths of the pool. I managed about half before I had to drag myself out and promptly collapsed on the side.

After that, my mystery illness returned. During the first few years I had many more appointments and many more blood tests, until finally, one doctor diagnosed me with M.E.

After this, I worked with the doctor to regain my health – doing things like sticking to half days at school and trying to step up my fitness with graded exercise. I did manage to go back to a relatively ‘normal’ life for a few years after college. But I was never quite 100% and last year I relapsed completely.

So what is M.E.?

It’s a debilitating illness which can have many symptoms, and these are different for every sufferer. The effects of each symptom can range from mild to severe, making it difficult to both diagnose and treat.

The main symptom is physical and mental fatigue, hence the other name it’s known by – Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. This fatigue doesn’t go away with sleep and makes it difficult to do normal activities. Exercising is pretty much a no go, as it makes it worse – making you tired hours, or even days afterwards.

For people who don’t have M.E. it can be hard to understand what this type of tiredness feels like. It’s not a sleepy tiredness – it’s exhaustion, the type you feel after pushing yourself past your limits, like running a marathon or working all hours on a project for weeks. I just feel like that on an ordinary Tuesday morning.

But it’s not all the time. And that’s one of the frustrating things about it. Sometimes I’ll get to the weekend and feel like I can do anything I want. So I’ll catch up with all the jobs I’ve been putting off – I’ll go food shopping, I’ll tidy the house, I’ll finally clean that pan that’s been sitting in the sink all week. But that’s the worst thing I could do.

Christine Miserandino came up with the Spoon Theory to describe what living with this fatigue is like. To demonstrate the theory to her best friend, she laid out 10 spoons in front of her, explaining that these spoons represented her “energy” for the day – every time she did something, she’d take one away.

Christine asked her friend what her typical day involved. She answered that she usually had a shower before work, then drove in. “Wait a minute” Christine said “You’ve used 5 spoons already”. She explained that just getting out of bed was a big effort, so that was 1 spoon, then showering and getting dressed was another 2, and driving was a major one as it involves a lot of concentration, which affects mental fatigue.

Her friend was taken aback, asking how on earth she coped. Christine replied that she had to modify how she lived – she knew working would take a lot of her spoons, so she hardly did anything outside of work during the week. Then at the weekend she had to be careful, as doing too much would invariably use up all her spoons in one go, and even eat into the next few days.

So that’s why if I do the washing up at the weekend, it can affect me later in the week. Which is a brilliant excuse to use on your partner.

But I only really have a mild form of M.E. – many sufferers aren’t able to work and a few can’t even leave their beds.

Fatigue is just the start. Back in school, my other symptoms included a permanent headache, which I now believe was directly linked to the tiredness, and insomnia, but there are a range of others.

My symptoms have changed as time has gone on. As well as the fatigue, they now include dizziness, muscular pain, poor short-term memory and concentration, and difficulty organising thoughts and finding the right words – or “brain fog”. I can get halfway through a sentence and completely forget what I was talking about, or struggle to think of the word I want to say. Which is very helpful when you’re a copywriter.

M.E. scares me sometimes. Not because of the symptoms, but because of the impact it has and might have on my life. What if I can never work full time again? What if I can’t have kids because I wouldn’t have the energy to look after them?

I can’t answer these questions. All I can do is stay positive and enjoy life when I can.

There’s no cure for M.E., and no real treatment. But I can take heart that I’ve got through a bad patch before, and so I have faith I can do so again. I probably won’t ever be 100%, but I have learnt how to manage it.

So hopefully that’s given you a bit of an insight into M.E. and how it affects people. Thank you for reading.

NOTE: I’ve amended the story behind the Spoon Theory to make it shorter. The full version can be found here.

I’ll be honest, I’m mainly posting this to preserve the moment. But also to crow about it.

Yesterday was National Poetry Day and so, to get into the spirit of the day, I tweeted a limerick:

A writer who was rather ace. Created lines at quite a pace. Tried a limerick. Was meant to be slick. But then ran out of #NationalPoetryDay

— Neale Denaro (@NealeDenaro) October 4, 2012

It then got featured on the Telegraph’s website:

Obviously I was pretty pleased with myself, so I showed the link to my mum. She asked if there was a bit missing.

*facepalm*

This is the first in a series of Doctor Who Openings – first chapters/pre-title sequences of Doctor Who stories that I might one day flesh out. Yes, I’ve become a geek who writes fan-fiction.

—–

He bolted down the track as fast as his legs could take him. He couldn’t be sure exactly what he was running from, but since the whole of the village seemed to be running in this direction, he thought it was only polite to do the same.

Every fibre in his body was willing him to just glance round and see what was causing all the excitement. Except for his brain. That was telling him to keep looking straight on. His brain was being very clever – it knew that if he turned round just for a second, there was an extremely good chance he would lose his footing and get trampled on by the frightened mob. And just for this once, he listened to his brain.

Unfortunately he was far too inquisitive to leave it at that. He needed to know what was happening. So he did what he does best.

“Excuse me madam – why are we running?”

The old woman looked as if she’d just been asked what colour the sky was.

“On account of the big fire-breathing lizard that’s chasing us” she said with no hint of sarcasm in her voice. Almost as if running for your life from a big fire-breathing lizard was a daily occurrence for her.

“Oh that’s ok then. Thanks very much for your time.”

He turned away from her, trained his sights forward again, closed his eyes and then stopped dead in the middle of the crowd. A noise like a high-speed train roared through both his ears as the rest of the villagers rushed past him, and surprisingly managed to avoid knocking him over.

Then the noise stopped.

He opened his eyes again and turned round. The village looked completely bare of any life. Apart from said-lizard who just so happened to be advancing straight for him.

“Interesting.” He mumbled under his breath.

Before he got chance to decide what to do next, he noticed a girl lying seemingly unconscious on the ground between himself and the lizard. It was the kind of situation he thrived on. So without a second thought he ran towards the girl, scooped her up in his arms and headed towards the nearest building.

He lay her on the floor and did his best to try and revive her. She could’ve been no more than 18, wearing the same rags as the rest of the villagers. He wasn’t going to just abandon her. Suddenly she coughed her way back into existence.

“Are you ok?” He smiled at her.

“I’m…fine….I think. Where am I? Who are you?”

“No time for that now. We’ve got to get out of here.” Without warning he picked her up again and sped out of the building.

The lizard was now almost on top of them. So the girl had no idea what was on her rescuer’s mind when he headed for a big blue box that was directly in the monster’s path. He set her down next to the box and began to fish in his pockets for something. She quickly stood up.

“What the heck do you think you are doing?!”

“Wait….no….just a sec….it’s ok…..got it!” He proudly showed her the key, unlocked the door in front of them and flung it open.

“In you go.”

She stood there open-mouthed at the request. But considering a gigantic lizard was about to crush them, she felt she had no choice but to comply. He followed her in and shut the door behind him. The box disappeared with a ghostly whirr, leaving only a cloud of dust behind.

“How…what…but….it’s….”

“Yes the inside is much bigger than the outside. This is the TARDIS, which stands for Time And Relative Dimension In Space. Which basically means I’ve managed to transport us to a different place so that we didn’t get trodden on. Isn’t that lovely? And no, I’m not from around here. Anything else?”

The girl was slightly taken aback, but offered out her hand. “I’m Remmila. But you can call me Remi.”

The man sat down, out of breath, and brushed back his longish brown hair with his fingers. He looked up at Remi and his mouth stretched out wide into a big cheesy grin. He took her hand firmly and replied “Nice to meet you Remi. I’m The Doctor.”

So, after what feels like months of designing, creating and generally faffing about, my shiny new website is online! Although not quite as originally intended.

At about 7pm last night, the software I had used to design my site refused to upload it. Cue 5 hours re-doing one of the pages to make it work.

And now here I am, in a cafe in London, typing this blog post on my phone, last night’s craziness behind me.

Isn’t technology wonderful?