Brian Daley The Return!

[brian daley]

Before I write another word just let me say thank you to all you wondeful people on YO!". Your e.mails, cards and phone calls were as good as any medicines the doctors prescribed me. Well I'm out on bail now and am looking forward to meeting you wonderful people very soon;just got to confirm the date with my doctor because they want me back inside for a bit more work on my plumbing. I'll make the most of my freedom by getting some posts on,
Cheers,
BrianD

[hmtmaj]

Welcome Back Brian.

Martin

[Jeff Glasser]

Well done mate, so good to have you back. We wuz a bit worried there for a while.

Jeff

[lindylou]

Hello Brian !

great to see you back

[ItsaZappathing]

Good to have you back mate.

[Norm NZ]

Good to see you back on your feet Brian, take it easy, and look after yourself mate, Cheers

[Ron B Manderson]

Great to see you back brian.
Now I can send all the missed jokes.
If you send me your tele number at home I'll give you a ring.
ron

[Waterways]

Welcome my old boy!

[brian daley]

Darkness and Light

What follows is an account of the dreams/nightmare that I experienced during my recent stay in hospital.
I shall indicate the dream from the reality by the use of asterisks.
*On Friday 13th of March ,I was driven to the Meriden hospital by my son in law, Mohsen,I was feeling very ill and wanted some advice from a consultant surgeon who had operated on me exactly 2 years previously. I was booked into Derby Royal Infirmary the following week to have some procedure on my nose. I wanted to be sure that this procedure was going to be the answer to my problem hence my visit to see the consultant in the Meriden .As we travelled down the motorway my condition worsened and by the time we arrived at the Meriden I was almost unconscious.
Mohsen helped me in to the hospital and was seen by the surgeon immediately. He could see that I was in distress and within minutes I was on a gurney and taken for an internal examination by the means of a miniature camera. I was able to see my thorax and lungs on a screen and even I could make ..out that there was a lot of harmful mucous down there. Without more ado I was admitted to have an operation; Mohsen accompanied me to my room and I said goodbye and then sank into blackness*
It was now 1939 and I found myself sitting in a boardroom of a large company. We were seated at a conference table and there were a lot of men sitting around it. This turned out to be an inaugural meeting of the Emergency Medical Transport Committee and we were tasked with co ordination of ambulances and the setting up of emergency field hospitals in the event a bombing campaign by the ?enemy?.
Most of the people present were known to me and I was the logistics co ordinator. The chairman called upon me to report on the readiness of the ambulance service to cope with mass bombing victims. I attempted to rise to make my report and found that I was without any limbs, I was in a coffin like box and no one remarked upon this fact. I spoke from this position and reported that we had present my consultant surgeon ,who had been collating the information with regards to the present situation in the Midlands. He gave a clear and concise report of the state of emergency services and sat down to great applause. The strains of martial music could be heard and I was carried to the boardroom window .
In the grounds below I could see dozens of flag poles , each with a union jack snapping smartly in the breeze. The sound of heavy aircraft filled the air and soon we could hear the crump of explosions as the bombers shed their deadly payloads. I could smell gas and my ears buzzed. I awakened in a small town that lay between Coventry and Birmingham, I was a salesman for an advertising company and I had come to head up a campaign to get publicity for a newly opened shopping centre.
The whole town seemed to be owned by one man and every shop had the same colour scheme , there was a small pleasure park ,this too was in the same colours as the shops. I was filled with unease and wished that I was elsewhere. There was that smell of gas again and my ears buzzed, I awoke at my cousins house in Liverpool. My elder sister Jess was there and my cousin was relating the story of how my younger sister had met ,and fell in love with ,a distant cousin from Canada. He was half native American and half English, Charley was his name, Charley Hengler . I was greatly surprised at this information , they had met on Facebook and could not wait to get married. Charley was an outdoorsman and made his living by trapping exotic creatures and selling them to zoos or rich collectors. He was in England and had brought with him an extremely rare creature, the fabled sabre toothed tiger wolf.
I found myself in a snow filled field in which there was a huge cage, Charley was standing in front of it and was explaining how he caught said animal.
Charley was the handsomest man I had ever met ,tall and muscular, he had a lived in face that had been turned to mahogany by the many years he had spent in the frozen north .He was wearing a lumberjacks shirt over a black flannelette, long sleeved sweatshirt. On his feet were the calf length boots much favoured by trappers
He spoke with a soft North American accent and was telling how this animal was vicious, its sabre teeth were capable cutting a man in half when it was full grown ?This here creature is only baby? he said ?It will be at least a year before it reaches full size? . I stared at the creature as it sat at the far end of the cage, it had the most beautiful eyes and lashes that a lady would die for. It stared at me and I felt that it would not harm me. Its razor sharp teeth gleamed brightly and it stretched languorously and then strolled to the bars in front of me and made a purring sound.?Let me go into the cage Charley? I said. ? Are you crazy man?? retorted Charley ? It will chew you into little pieces ?. ? I?m going to take that chance , open the cage!? Charley turned the key in the lock shaking his head as he did so. I stepped in and the ?cat? came and nuzzled my legs ,looking up at me it?s eyes shining with love. I tickled the back of its neck she wound herself around me as Charley said ?Well goddam, she has never done that before!?
Suddenly it was daylight and there were pressman and photographers surrounding the cage, I sat in there with ?KITTEN? as the lights flashed and the reporters asked Charley a thousand and one questions. Two fat guys chewing on expensive cigars and wearing expensive suits and loud ties appeared, they were film producers and had heard about the Kitten. They were keen to make movie about her but when they saw Charley they went crazy. Next moment I was standing in the boardroom of a movie studio, Charley was being signed up to be the leading man in a blockbusting James Bond type movie, they signed me up to play his fat friend. Our pictures were splashed across the pages of the tabloids and movie magazines. I had the gilt edged contract nestling safely in my jacket pocket. We were to go on location in Yugoslavia in a town with an unpronounceable name. It lay above a ravine where two great rivers met and joined up to make an even greater river that flowed into the Adriatic. The country across the ravine went by the name of Hravatski Democratic Peoples Republic. There were gun towers dotted along the clifftop. On our side of the ravine things were somewhat different; we were ensconced in a soda parlour and the film crew were setting up the cameras to do the seminal shot of the movie. This was to be where Charley and I took a dive from the top of the cliff to land on the remains of an old Ottoman bridge which had been destroyed in a recent war between the neighbouring states. The bridge was 2065 feet below us and we were told to freefall with our arms stretched which would enable us to glide down to our destination ???..the remains of the centre span. It was filled with water and would cushion our landing. When were in position we were to unstrap our heavy machine guns from our backs and fire at the opposite bank. The magazines contained blanks and they looked very realistic but we were told that they were harmless. I strapped on my equipment stepped to the edge of the cliff and when the director cried ?ACTION? I raised my hands above my head and dived forward into the ravine. The feeling was exhilarating , I flew downwards toward the solitary span and landed, as directed on to the remains of the centre pan. With shaking hands I unstrapped the gun and fired at the opposite clifftop. L looked around for Charley ,he was nowhere to be seen.
I concentrated my fire at the ramparts on the opposite side of the ravine, I could hear screams and yelling and thought this was realistic ?????.and then chunks of stonework started explode out of the bridge I was standing on????.they were returning fire. I wasn?t firing blanks some ******* had put a magazine of live bullets in the gun.
The gunfire increased from the opposite side and was getting closer to me, I had to make my way out of there fast. I climbed down the brick pier and swam toward the cliff face, hauling myself out of the water I made the slow ascent up to the soda parlour. As I neared the top I saw that some troops of the H.D.P.R had made the crossing and were waiting for me to show myself above the cliff top. The soda parlour was still in Yugoslav hands and I made my way round the cliff face until I was directly beneath the balcony. I waited there until darkness fell and then climbed over the balcony . The film crew were nowhere to be seen, the owner, a Serb called to me from inside ?You are wanted by the H.D.P.R.? I asked him how I could get out of there and he said that I must crawl to his ice cream van and climb aboard it, making sure that I was not seen by the enemy. Once I was aboard, he came out and got into the driving seat. He started to drive toward the town and told me that he was an undercover operative of the CIA. The whole movie thing was a ploy to instigate war between the two countries. It was daylight and we drove through the town, which was very pretty ,the buildings being Venetian in style with lots of balconies and window shutters ,all in different colours. The place was empty and we could hear the sporadic firing of machine guns in the distance. The driver told me about the H.D.P.R, the President for life was a tyrant and the people hated him ,he had presided over a regime of torture and death for over forty years There were frequent assassination attempts made upon him and he used prisoners surgically altered to look like him , and they would be used to act as decoys for him whenever he made trips through country. They would be lipsticked and rouged to make them looked like him and would sit in the back seat dressed in the uniform of a generalissimo. Presidential decoys did not have a very long life, they had their larynx removed and their lips sewn together. The president rode in a separate car because there was always the fear of being assassinated. The life span of a decoy was very short, if an assassination attempt was not made then the poor victim was given to his security guards to practice their technique on.
Soon we were out of the town and driving through open countryside, in the distance was a forest and the driver headed for that. We came to a clearing and stopped there and pretty soon I could hear the thump thump of a helicopters rotors. It was flying at a height of about 50 feet and a ladder was thrown down, I clambered hastily aboard and got into a seat. An airman passed me an oxygen mask and I put it on and smelt that gas again.
I came to in a black void, I could not see any part of my body but could feel a steel deck beneath my feet ,was this another ship?
I sat waiting for something to happen, in my worst nightmares I could not have dreamed what happened next.
As I lay on the deck I could feel creepers crawling up my body, like ivy tendrils they had little barbs with which they attached themselves to my skin. They were everywhere and no sooner had I torn one off there was another in its place. They started to creep up my face, entering my mouth and nose. I grasped one and pulled it toward me and, as I pulled it, I touched another mans hand. I gripped it with both hands and pulled him toward me, he seemed reluctant to fight me and the darkness prevented me from seeing who my tormentor was. I wrestled him to the deck and I felt a stone by my knee, I lifted it in the air and yelled that I would crush his skull if the lights were not put on . I was answered by something even worse than the dark. Psychedelic lights came on, with strobe lights and there a buzzing sound that seemed menacing. I felt mortally afraid and found myself reciting Psalm 23,?The Lord is my shepherd,I shall not want ,He makes me down to lie in green pastures ,He leadeth me to quiet waters and restoreth my soul??????..? I repeated the words endlessly and they seemed to provide some comfort but the gas came again. I looked toward heaven and beseeched the Almighty to end this living nightmare. Of a sudden ,I found myself in a blue liquid,it was the colour of a perfect sky. It wasn?t water but like an amniotic fluid. Shafts of light beamed down through liquid and my heart was stilled .This was peace, perfect peace, and I felt all the hatreds and bitterness that had been part of my life fall away. I was weightless and no more than a thought for I had no body, just a pilgrim spirit seeking to find a home. In the middle distance I spotted a shape almost like a little bean coming towards me, as it got closer I could see that it was an unborn baby, I felt my spirit enter into the babe and I became as one with it I felt restored and full of bliss then I noticed the most beautiful light ,it was like a chrysanthemum. A wave of euphoria swept over me as I passed into the light and I could see faces looking down upon as through a white veil.
A gentle voice called to me through the veil, it was the voice of Sue my wife. My heart ran full of love, I was awake and back in the land of the living
*I had spent three and a half weeks under sedation ,eleven days of which were a coma. Shortly after admission to hospital my condition took a turn for the worse and I was taken from there (the Meriden) to the University Hospital in Walsgrave, where they had an intensive care unit. I was unaware of any of this having sunk into a coma. My wife and children were called and, as they tell me ,I was laying on a bed with an oxygen mask which was like a space helmet. They were told that I was not responding to the treatment it was suspected that I had pulmonary hypertension and that I might not make it through the night, although I was unconscious I managed to say ? Is this the end for Brian?? The doctor then suggested that he could administer some morphine to ease the pain I was suffering from.
I was put on a ventilator and progressed from there. That 23rd Psalm, I have always thought it the most beautiful of Psalms but in reality this is what happened. My Moslem son in law, seeing the distress I was in, and hearing the doctors prognosis, asked if he could say an Islamic prayer for those in peril. He came to my bedside and told unconscious me to say the prayer with him It was in classical Arabic and I, apparently, repeated it word perfect, indeed, I am told that I repeatedly said the prayer for that night and the day after.
I am now starting the fourth month of my incarceration and look forward to getting back to the land of the living. I would like to thank all of those who took the time to send cards and e-mails. I awoke to a pile of print outs and a shed load of cards, watch out for me in the future,
God bless you all,
Brian D

[Ron Ham]

Speak of the Devil Brian ! I was just enquiring about you to Alehouse today on another site & lo & behold here you are ,welcome back lad ! We ancient mariners are getting a bit thin on the ground ,cant afford to lose any more just now Ron Hamilton ,N.Z.

[brian daley]

Meet up in the Liverpool Bar : Update
I have been asked by a couple of Yo'ers if I could save them a sandwich or two,the answer to that of course is ,yes! So we've moved the start time for meeting up to 4.30 p.m. on Wed the 8th and we won't bring the nosh out until about 6.00 p.m. The four of us coming up from the Midlands need a bed for the night so if any of you know the name of a good hotel , not too far from the Pier Head , I would be grateful for any advice in that department.
Please let me know of any decent ones(No , not the Lord Nelson Blackie )
We've got about 35 booked in so far so please let us know if you are coming and we can make adequate arrangements on the catering side.
Catch you soon
BrianD

[bangorreg]

Meet up in the Liverpool Bar : Update
I have been asked by a couple of Yo'ers if I could save them a sandwich or two,the answer to that of course is ,yes! So we've moved the start time for meeting up to 4.30 p.m. on Wed the 8th and we won't bring the nosh out until about 6.00 p.m. The four of us coming up from the Midlands need a bed for the night so if any of you know the name of a good hotel , not too far from the Pier Head , I would be grateful for any advice in that department.
Please let me know of any decent ones(No , not the Lord Nelson Blackie )
We've got about 35 booked in so far so please let us know if you are coming and we can make adequate arrangements on the catering side.
Catch you soon
BrianD

Hi Brian, So pleased you are up and about, I think you must have left somebody behind, so I am sending her back to you.
Reg.

[brian daley]

Hi Reg, where did you dig up photo from ? We were engaged for a month or two but I had to give her the push because she had a bad case of halitosis.
Did'nt stop old Kong from chancing his arm with her ,he thought she was lovely.
BrianD

[kevin]

So it's smoking that causes prostate cancer?

[Ged]

Nah, that's all me arse that.