Don’t worry, that’s not a typo. It’s definitely RISE and Whine, not rise and wine. No, things aren’t quite that desperate yet. The RISE part (all capitalised you will note) was the opening ceremony of the Bradford UK City of Culture Year and the whine bit is what I have been dong ever since.

If you want to know what I thought of RISE then you can read my review on Substack – Click Here

If you want to know what I’m whining about then stay tuned.

And it’s just a very short one today.

The RISE event itself was ok, just, but like I say, read the review, the problem was that it was outside in the perishing cold and I was on my feet for a lengthy spell of time. Neither of those two scenarios are at all in any way good for fibromyalgia; as the rest of the week has borne testimony to.

RISE was on Saturday night and I woke up on Sunday morning wondering where the gorilla had gone. By which I mean the gorilla who had been throwing my unconscious body against the bedroom walls for eight hours non-stop. It must have been a fully grown silverback gorilla because I can’t think of any other animal (maybe a male orangutan) that would have the upper body strength to do such a thing to a man of my bulging ampleness.

That was the only explanation for the screeching pain that came to mind when I woke up.

Of course, as my bleary and bloodshot eyes began to focus once more, I realised that there hadn’t really been a gorilla. I mean, how could there have been? Unless it had its own set of keys…

*note to self – check with building manager re: the possibility of gorillas having keys.

No, reality soon dawned on me that I was feeling thus because I had stood in a minus degree temperature on a rock-hard pavement for approximately two and a half bloody hours. During which time I was treated to seriously awful techno music, a mediocre show and had inhaled about twenty-five different odours of various fast food establishments. I swear you could taste listeria in the air.

Everything hurts like blazes and the TENS machine has had to work overtime ever since. Tramadol tablets have been pouring down my yearning throat like Zulus charging at Rourke’s Drift and my carefully managed supply of diazepam is now fast dwindling in a most alarming fashion. And I really try to go steady with that stuff!

So yes, I am whining quite a lot after RISE. But hey, at least I can say I was there!

Whoop-de-do!

Hope to bring you a more positive blog post next week x