Letting go of a not-so-vital crutch

It's been a crazy week, to put it mildly....

It started last Saturday (July 18) when Mrs Warrior and I attended a long-awaited reunion of some of my old schoolmates. Most of us hadn't met in person for 31 years, since our last day at school. Some of us stay in touch via Facebook, despite living as far apart as Dubai and Birmingham, but plenty hadn't been in contact at all.

Some still had the look of that long-forgotten school photograph (including The Warrior, apparently) while some have changed radically over the years. Whatever the case, it was a great night and I am already looking forward to next year's event.

The evening was made for me when someone called Paul Ferris came and shook me by the hand, then gave me a hug. Paul Ferris was the bane of my life at school. The class bully par excellence, he and a couple of his mates made life hell for the young Martin Warrillow.

Thirty-one years later, meeting for the first time since then, we could have let three decades of pent-up mutual dislike spill out. But we didn't. We gave each other a huge hug, I explained to Mrs Warrior who he was and felt as if the night had been made even more worthwhile.

Some people are nervous about going to school reunions at my age, just in case meeting people ruins their memories. After my experience, I won't hesitate to recommend them.

After a quick pit-stop at Warrillow Towers on Sunday, we were off again on Monday morning to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary with three days in Paris. At times over the last 18 months since my stroke, it has seemed as if we might not make that milestone. Yet we did and we even went up the Eiffel Tower and on a boat-trip along the Seine to mark the moment.

Yet in the context of my recovery from stroke, perhaps the most important event took place before we had even left Tamworth. We were rushing to catch a train at Tamworth station for the first leg of the journey to Paris when I suddenly realised that my walking stick was missing. With the train approaching the platform, we had two choices - go back to the ticket office to look for it (and miss the train and a subsequent one to London, onto which we were booked) or go to Paris without it and deal with the consequences.

So we boarded the train and I prepared for life after my walking stick. In the end, we walked miles during our three days in the French capital. For most of the time, I held Mrs W firmly by the hand to keep myself upright. At other times, I ploughed on ahead. Whatever, I coped - I had discovered what some people had been telling me for weeks and months, that the stick had become an un-needed support mechanism.

I don't propose to use it again and I certainly didn't enquire after it at Tamworth railway station on our return.

At times, life has a way of creeping up unexpectedly on you; we can never predict what is going to happen from one minute to the next. That's the story of this week, from my meeting with Paul Ferris to going without my stick. It's the story of my life since December 16 2013 when I suffered my stroke. It's why there's no point in being positive or negative about the future because we just don't know. What I do know is that The Warrior is ready to deal with whatever life flings at him.