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My Sony RDS radio entertains me as I work at my PC in one of my bedrooms. Behind it is the window, but often the window is obscured by a large piece of hardware. I use it to block the sun so that I can process photographs on my PC with a uniform light and colour balance. A modern dark room as it were.

The hardboard is precariously supported by a barometer on the wall. One day, I failed to secure it properly, and I returned to the house with the hardboard squashing the radio and LCD monitor flat on the table.

The radio was on, and loud. I know that I had switched it off when I went out. I tried to turn the sound down but even at the lowest position of the volume control, the sound was still quite strong. Most, most odd. After switching it off and on again, all was well.

This is strange enough, but fairly regularly now when I return to the house from one of my coffee shop sojourns, I can hear the radio blaring. The exact same symptoms return. This time, with no ready cause.

I guess this has happened a dozen or so times now, and I think very little of it.

Except that it never happens when I am in the house.  It would frustrate the life out of me if it happened over night, but it has never done this.

So not only does it behave strangely, but it chooses when to do so. I might be tempted to believe in ghosts!

Yesterday was interesting. I awoke as normal with a headache, and dulled thinking. A very common plight. But I’d recently become intensely frustrated by this pattern. That’s understandable, of course - only I am making my headaches, yet I do not want them. Oh to be able to switch off the auto-headache function.

But I had a great day, and was able to work mostly unaffected by my condition.

I simply focussed on what I wanted to do, and let myslef flow into it. Each time my head complained of pain, or my thinking was impaired, I ignored these negatives and returned my attention to the task in hand - writing my book.

The point is, that when you have a headache, tooth ache, stomach ache or whatever, it is your body’s way of forcing you to take action. Pain is a communication mechanism. If you felt no pain, you would repeatedly damage yourself.

But when the pain is a tension headache that is generated simply through habit, then you really should try to ignore it each day (yet long term of course seek to remedy this chronic condition). The headache cries out for your action - ’stop and rest’ - ‘take it easy’. But by focusing on it you legitimise and amplify it. And you think about it - how unfair it really is (the friend I meet most days is always in top form, never struggling with any kind of ill health). So you get frustrated and angry. And before you know it, lots of things irritate you and you are seriously struggling with your day.

When I focus on what I want to achieve - the things that propel me through life - even though I really should not be able to think clearly enough to do them, things change. Your energies are positive, and forward moving. You do not make desctructive comparisons and feel sorry for yourself. And more often than not, the headache will fade - your mind no longer wants to complain about life with tension when life is going well.

Sorted? Well, kind of - this change of focus takes a lot of mental discipline. And when you awake tired with a headache, you are not exactly well blessed with the faculties required to make this focal change. Today is particularly difficult - someone who I do not know texted me  at 5:45 am. The idiots who designed my mobile phone assumed that it was OK for it to bleep every few minutes at this early hour to tell me I have a message. Those same idiots gave me functionality on my phone I do not need,but no facility to turn the bleep off. I am a light sleeper and was woken at 5:45 - by the time I had gone down stairs to switch the phone off, I was wide awake, and barely got any more sleep.

Maybe I should adopt the common practice of the young these days, and drink to oblivion, regardless of the next day hangover. The hangover is a day long pain, but at least its there for a reason.

The last 7 mornings, I have awoken with something akin to a hangover, afflicted day long by head strain and a curtailed ability to think.  But for no reason that I can perceive whatsoever.

I didn’t do anything tangibly different than the first 14 days of the month when I had no such headaches.

I awake after a fine, undisturbed, restful sleep feeling relaxed. So how can I have a tension headache, that persists all day long? As far as I can see, it is a simple habit that my brain has, totally, and utterly in direct conflict with my desires. I categorically do not want, nor do I do anything that would encourage a headache.

The dulled thinking is as much a blight as the headache.

I have been gifted with a wide range of skills, such as drawing, writing, designing, photographing, thinking, socialising and so on. All of these are severely hampered by a bad head. These wonderful abilities are never wihtin my control. I can never know when I will awake in a state that allows me to use these skills.

The frustration of being able to do so much, yet hampered day in day out by a foggy head that is there for no reason whatsoever is a deep one.

Of course, I can get on with menial tasks, as I wait, day in day out for my head to sort itself out.

And of course, I am the cause for this malaise, but I have no idea whatseoever how. Nor how to reverse it.

I had to write this blog to get it off my chest.

The 14 days was a stark reminder of how debilitating my headaches are. The lucidity of thinking I had then, whilst ill with anxiety, light headedness, stomach cramps, extreme tiredness and cold symptoms was staggering. And this is how I used to think when younger.

Anyway, enough whinging - I must just accept the headaches and work round them. I have all but given up trying to find a means of removing them.

I regularly photograph Weddings. This involves meeting and emailing couples before and after the big day. I have now come to terms with the fact that most couples, and hence, most people, are not very conscientious when replying to emails.

My favourite example is a recent email reply I received from a delightful couple I photographed in Castell Coch (the Red Castle) near Cardiff. I asked her what cover photo she wanted on her album, and the address I should send the album to.

Big mistake. But you may ask why?

The mistake was in asking 2 questions.

It appears that the liklihood of questions being answered rising exponentially when it exceeds one.

So she told me what cover image she wanted but not where to send the album!

You would imagine that this would be a wise question to answer, since it was of her direct benefit as much as mine.

It does not stop at questions. More than 1 topic and you stand a tiny chance that all topics will be responded to.

An email to my sister suggesting that she tries L-Theanine was enlightening. I told her I was taking it because I was suffering with all sorts of ailments, and that she might take it. She jumped at the idea and told me she had ordered some.

But expecting her to focus on or comment on my ailments is one topic too many. I did not receive, nor really expected to receive, any sympathy for my plight. The focus was on the medication, not on me. You see, I also failed to enquire about the conditions she was suffering with that gave her cause to want to take the tablets. I am far from above this blinkered email habit. A habit at least partly fueled by the simple fact that the person we are conversing with is not in front of us.

Underlying this is a tendency most of us have to focus on our own interests and plight, one at a time. We can easily become blinded by our current focus. This of course extends beyond emails. It is just that emails encapsulate the problem well.

Out of the frying pan into the fire. My anixety and light headedness thankfully receding into the distance I think. And lo and behold, back comes the day long head tensions. So staggeringly frustrating - when I sit and write there is no flow to my thoughts. The blockage feels like my mental capacities are quartered.

And so the bad head yields irritability as well.

The irritability, this raw sensitivity to noises and the myriad of other things that normally wash over me, is simply a voice of anger from my frustration.

At least that is what I think it is.

The anger is rooted in a feeling of loss of control - I cannot write when I want to because of a headache I never wanted in the first place that serves no purpose, and is not the result of any excess of behaviour.

What triggers your irritability, if you do indeed get irritable?

I’ve had pretty intrusive anxiety for 7 weeks now, along with bouts of head-cold symptoms, stomach cramps, excessive fatugue, and frightening light headedness.

Some of these physical symptoms, all tangled up with anxiety, is a nasty mixture. Strangely, however, my headaches have all but gone.

Today, I had light headedness that really petrified me. It felt as if I was on the verge of a heart attack. This persisted unabated all morning. In the afternoon, I decided to do an experiment - to ignore my condition and work on my book. The book was so absorbing, that this wassurprisingly easy to do.

Lo and behold, by mid afternoon, I felt fabulous. The light headedness had gone, replaced by a clarity of thinking, and a healthy lightness of head - as if a fan were blowing cool air onto my forehead. I have a feeling that the anxiety may even be a reaction to this healthy state of affairs. An anxiety about change - even if the change is beneficial!

Regardless of this diagnosis, I assumed then that my earlier light headedness was caused by my mind and not a complaint by my body. So I celebrated with some chocolate, and worked right through the afternoon. Had a great chat in the coffee shop, did the ironing and then meditated. All fine.

The corollary is that my anxiety also created the stomach cramps and fatigue. But is my experiment enough to be sure of that? If I can find a reassuring way of differentiating between symptoms of anxiety and of a real physical problem, then maybe I have a mechanism that I can use to placate the anxiety.

That of course would be great, but when the anxiety goes, will my headaches return? Maybe, beacuse I did notice that the freedom from anxiety late afternoon coupled with the happiness of relief to start the familiar cascade of positive thinking that is the precursor to a manic state. Manic states tend to lead to wrecked nights of sleep. You see, the anxiety has also resulted in regular 8 and 9 hours of sleep for weeks now. Apart from the odd episode where I awake anxious.

You the reader, unfamiliar with ill health may feel that I obsess with my health. Can’t I just get on with life? Sure, this is exactly what I try to do most of the time. But day long headaches and debilitating anxiety really do make that desperately difficult at times. Hence the analysis.

I’ve suffered with tension headaches for 14 years. Most people who know me know this. And they’ve heard it too often. I understand that - if they hear me complain of a headache many times when they see me, they will tire of it.

If I were to be injured in a spectatularly visible way, I would reap much sympathy. At least for a while.

It appears to be basic human nature to be much more responsive to the novelty stage of someone’s plight. Repetition over weeks, months and years desensitives us.

But the very nature of a long term illness is the one that deserves, and often requires, the greater attention. The sympathy we are likely to get appears to be inversely proportional to the duration, and hence weight, of the condition.

So I have to mostly suffer in silence - “Yea, you’ve always got a headache” - as if the longer you have it the more delighted you are with life. It is true that you develop coping mechanisms, and can detach yourself from the discomfort of your condition. But it is sad that you have to fend so much for yourself.

Except that I would, and do, do the same to others. We very swiftly determine when we are likely to be burdoned with a great load - this dismissal of the importance of another’s chronic condition is a defence mechanism we use to try to avoid our own chronic potemtial - the chronic involvement of our time in sympathy or support. We just do not have time or energy to support the needs of all we meet. We have to balance our own needs with those of others.

We are ultimately social creatures, despite what you might be lead to believe otherwise. But the salient point is that adherence to social pressures is a very powerful force. The majority of people regularly lie in order to conform to social needs, even when they declare themselves to be honest souls.

If you tend to behave on occasions in a way that just does not quite sit well with your colleagues, you will generally make efforts to curb that behaviour.

For example, you may be like myself, and have a tendency to talk much more than you listen. And to steer the conversation to subject matter that interests yourself. Or you may get irritable with some mannersims of others.

These tendencies I describe as instincts - they are in essence what we are all about. Some times we can let them flow, but on other occasions, we have to reign them in.

But what we must not do is punish ourselves for them. We humans all have our strengths and weaknesses, and the sheer effort to prevent any inappropriate behaviour would be so demanding that it would be neither sustainable or desirable - we would become puppets in the hands of others.

My humble view is that we should accept these instincts as being a part of us, and just exercise due dilligance in managing them. This balance between expressing and controlling ourselves is part of what life is like - a balanced compromise.

I’ve had a viral type illness for over 6 weeks now. It started with a vicious double combo of a panic attack and vomitting. It has persisted with bouts of light headedness, stomach cramps, excess tiredness and cold symptoms. And all of these exacerbated by a hair trigger tendency to an extremely anxious reaction to each symptom - I have to disregard the symptom as much as I can or suffer waves of debilitating illness.

There have been times when I have felt that I was going to pop my clogs. The relief that I was not was empowering. The strange situation where some days left me feeling supremely healthy - totally at odds to these symptoms - saw me driven to write in fluidly on my latest book. The difference between these oasis days and days beset with a struggle for health are enormous.

So frequent have my dips into ill health that I am treasuring just being alive. I am revelling in my writing. Sometimes, especially on these high health days, I get a writing flow that sees time evaporate by. I rarely have to rework what I write. But I always remember the feeling of good health slipping away and I drive on in celebration, the opposite of complacency.

Or at least this is what I thought.

But after a day and a half of feeling well, my memories of my ill health are almost gone. I start to fret about the trivia of daily life - should I have eaten that cake or will it add to my waistline.

This capacity to forget even profound things is mostly ignored by most people. They vaguely realise that the ‘flu’ they had last week knocked them outfor a few days, but are all too engrossed in today - they have moved on.

Of course, many things do plague us - emotional baggage drags us down all too often. But in this instance, I really really do want to learn a constant lesson from this bout of illness, assuming of course that does eventually go away. I feel determined to treasure each day. But I know that the process of treasuring will work with a memory that fades so rapidly, it very swiftly becomes only a vague echo of the urgent force that I want to remember it as.

Mothers give birth again because of the power to forget. And we get drunk again because we seriously distort our memories of the last time.