The 29th October 2023 would have been our twentieth anniversary of being together.  Like, the first time we kissed (when I have sometimes told some people about our two anniversaries, they have genuinely seemed to have been hung up on what I meant by getting together, so I'm just being precise!).  It was about three weeks after I moved in to Roslea Drive, in 2003. I've already written about the time we first met in person; I was rain-soaked, sleeping in a hostel in town.  I'll try to describe that brief period of time between moving in, and us becoming a couple.  After speaking to Siobhan on the phone, and finding out I was indeed who she wanted as a flatmate, I packed my few things into a bag and later that day took them to Roslea Drive to move into my new room.

I arrived at the flat with a steak pie in my hand, which I'd bought from a fish and chip shop on Duke St.  Siobhan was in the living room, chatting with our neighbour Jonathan.  And she was not impressed by my pie.  It was a Scotch pie, which for those unacquainted, is quite a dense filling of mince and oil.  Siobhan could have very strong reactions to certain foods, and just the smell of the greasiness of the pie was making her boke.  She had no problem telling me that she found it disgusting.

Food was a big part of those first few weeks.  It is only in hindsight that I realise Siobhan introduced me to a lot of food as actual recipes.  She always always loved to follow a recipe to the letter.  When I moved in, I was barely aware of any recipes, I just freestyled most of my meals.  My main meal was known simply as Pete Pasta.  At the time, I wouldn't eat tomatoes to the extent that even a pasta sauce was off limits.  So I ate pasta with fried onions, garlic, peppers, mushrooms, gallons of olive oil, and a mountain of cheese.  Actually, that sounds quite tasty to me now, but it wasn't my only meal.  Siobhan used to remind me of one particular concoction that I made, which was a tin of Heinz spaghetti, with half a tin of corned beef mixed in.  Again, this was too much for Siobhan's eyes and nose.  It wasn't real food, and I guess I'm less inclined to try that recipe again, than my Pete Pasta.

Another culinary mistake that I apprently made was reintroducing Siobhan to biscuits.  She claims to have been biscuit-free for about a year before I moved in with her, bringing bourbons, penguins and custard creams into the flat.  I do believe that even without my influence she would have eventually found her way back to the tasty, tasty biscuit world.  These are pleasures that everybody deserves.

It wasn't just eating though, there was a relationship that was forming.  It was a busy time.  I was starting my PhD, adjusting to a new city, a new country even.  After I moved in with my single bag of possessions, my sister helped to bring the rest of my things in her car.  We planned to meet up with our cousin, who was staying in Glasgow, and organised to go to a Chinese restaurant.  I invited Siobhan along.  I sat opposite Siobhan, and I think we were quite flirty, and I think everybody else probably suspected that something might be on the cards.

In fact, I was a terrible flirt, which is to say I wasn't very good at it, but I was giving it a good go.  I remember putting my sister on the spot, saying something like "doesn't Siobhan have a cute nose? Isn't it perfectly straight, and pretty?" which was true, but a weird thing to have your brother force you to confirm about his new flatmate.  Also, with what would become an infamously amusing story to Siobhan, I complimented the panda patch on her t-shirt.  I remember the top really well, it was blue, with slightly fuzzy almost flannelly piping.  It had plain sleeves, and a patterned body, with a little cute fuzzy panda patch: "I like your panda", I said, slightly nodding towards the top.  "What panda?", she replies, not understanding.  Easy answer though, right, the one on your top?  But as the words come out of my mouth, they are actually "the one, er, the one on your breast".  This moment of verbal clumsiness made for an awkward giggle, at an odd compliment from your flatmate.  But was something that stuck with Siobhan, and she often laughed about it when we thought about those first few weeks.

I remember that I went to the cinema with Siobhan and some of her friends, the Cineworld on Renfrew Street.  We went there quite a lot in those early years.  I do not remember what we saw, Siobhan would have been able to say, whe had an excellent memory for that kind of thing.  But I think this was maybe the only time we went out together with Siobhan using her electric wheelchair, and if it was more times, it wasn't many more.  Soon enough Siobhan felt more comfortable with me pushing the manual chair.

I had new colleagues at work: one who lived in a flat almost directly across the road, and some others that I became instantly good friends with.  I would discuss my situation with them, I liked Siobhan, but wasn't dating your flatmate a bad idea?  Still, we were getting close, and were spending our evenings watching TV or listening to music.  Until the 29th of October, when we were listening to Zero 7, and we kissed each other.  And I said, "isn't this supposed to be a bad idea, with your flatmate?", but luckily neither of us took that question too seriously.  We both just had a good feeling about it, and were happy to see where things went.

So Happy Anniversary Siobhan!

Love Pete x

This post is about 'Boom and Bust' cycles of energy, and how people (especially those with noticiable constraints on their energy levels) can push themselves so hard when they do have energy, that they simply crash into a new low.  I'm using energy levels as a catch-all term here.  This could be times of greater or lesser pain, depression, or whatever constraint you live with that affects your ability to live well.  This is something that I believe Siobhan learnt at a pain workshop at the Buddhist Centre in Glasgow, though I don't think it was particularly a Buddhist topic.  I do not claim to speak authoritatively about anything at all here, I'm only relaying how the information has seeped into my head.

I am actually hoping to write a whole collections of posts around the theme of 'the wisdom of Siobhan'.  Some pieces will take more research than others.  And I'm going to dip in and out of topics, I'll write about things as they come to me.  This topic touches upon health issues, and I've got plenty to write about that too, but the main discussion of that will have to wait.  

Siobhan certainly taught me lots about how to live.  Clearly, since she was highly educated in psychology, counselling and psychotherapy, she knew plenty about how people work and how they can help themselves to live better.  But she lived that experience herself, working hard towards personal change.  Having a life-changing illness, and having to live within new constraints, means that you need that introspection to set new goals and find out how to live your best life.  And living with poor mobility, low energy and a degree of pain can exaggerate problems that exist for everyone to a certain degree, but that most people can push through and avoid the difficultly of the personal change that goes along with dealing with it.  Watching it first-hand made me realise that, although these effects were smaller for me, noticing cycles in my own energy levels helped me to at least acknowledge and accept that how I was feeling as a natural thing.

I suppose the first thing to notice is that energy levels do naturally vary in peaks and troughs.  There are things that we can do to affect these things to an extent (diet, exercise, all the good things that are hard to do) but in the background, there are external factors that we just can't control.  Sometimes we wake up naturally feeling very rested on a few hours sleep, sometimes we can get a full night's sleep and feel exhausted in the morning.

And if you are used to being tired or in pain, and you wake feeling amazing, a common reaction is to launch into a flurry of activity.  The relief of feeling good is so great, that you want to see friends, go out and work productively.  But the cost of that productivity is not immediately felt, but it will come soon.  And the more you take advantage of your available energy, the harder it will hit.  

Perhaps the less thought about side of things is the tendency to do less when you wake up with no energy.  But this is certainly a thing, and that malaise can become reinforcing, increasing the time it takes for your energy levels to recover.

The obvious dilemma, then, is how to act when you notice yourself in this pattern of behaviour.  And I think the sad answer is that you need to experiment.  I'm sure a textbook answer would be that you lower your activity levels so that you can provide a constant energy level: pushing through and doing something in low energy settings, and not using all of your energy when you feel you could do more.  But to really know what a bit less or a bit more consists of is obviously a bit of an art.  

Often the first step in doing these things would be to keep a diary of what you're doing.  Then form some kind of estimate of the amount of energy expended, stick it into some kind of spreadsheet.  Keep a nice chart of energy over time, and balance it all out.  This is the kind of thing I would have offered to help Siobhan with, but the obvious problem with this is the sheer amount of energy it takes to maintain.  And Siobhan would just hate that kind of thing too, although I was always trying to solve problems, she just really wanted me to be her husband (not a big surprise I guess).  So you end up back to square one, just waving your hands and saying something like 'I did too much today'.

I've read in some of the autism books that some people estimate their own energy expenditure in spoons.  Imagining they have, say, five spoons of energy a day.  Meeting a friend might take one spoon, going to the train takes four.  And that's it for the day.  I couldn't be disciplined enough to really think in those terms, so well done to those that do manage to do that for themselves.

Probably of the same, or greater, importance is keeping sight of the longer term cycles.  It's easier to settle into a low activity plateau, but this encourages the kind of sedentary habits that lead to more problems in the longer term.  Siobhan found this with walking - it was difficult to find time when she had enough energy to get outside for just a small walk.  But, not walking created a negative feedback loop, where it was even harder to get outside to walk.  Gradually trying to increase energy levels over time by doing all of the right things: diet, exercise, good sleep, socialising.  

I guess that for most people, rather than some major way to change your life, this is just something to be aware of, and recognise in yourself when it's happening.  If you're feeling low energy, at least try to do something.  If you're feeling energetic, leave something for tomorrow.  See if you can feel the effect.

And right now I'm certainly very aware of this lesson, though not because I'm doing all of the right things.  I am pushing myself incredibly hard to socialise, to work, to parent, to learn.  And frequently I'm just running into a wall.  I am fully aware that I'm doing this, but I am mainly telling myself that this is a short term thing.  That my baseline of what I need to do is already really high.  That I'm also needing to keep busy, so I'm filling every second with something.  Until, of course, I can't any more.  But that's a problem for future Pete.

Love, Pete x

I thought about just making this post the words "Siobhan believed in green cats".  But I'll attempt to pad that idea out a little bit.  There were a few things that one or the other of us wouldn't understand about how the other understood the world.  And one of these things was the existence of green cats.  Siobhan would talk about a green cat, and I would chuckle, and then laugh, and ask to see a picture of a green cat.  

Obviously (unless you believe in them) she could never produce a picture of a green cat.  And Siobhan didn't agree with the use of Google to settle an argument.  As soon as I would reach for my phone, she would try to stop me, and I guess the old fashioned way of just not knowing things is quite nice sometimes.  But saying that, I am pretty sure I know that green cats don't exist.  I think that what she meant were tabby cats, which if you stare at them long enough, might have a very feint green tinge on some of their fur.  But I think you have to stare for a long time, and really think about the colour green.

There were lots of these types of things, just sort of low-level jokes that ran for years.  Surely she knew that there weren't green cats?  Or maybe there are, and I can't see them!

Love, Pete x

I ring the buzzer at the front door to the close, I get buzzed in, and then Siobhan opens the door.  I'm drenched from the incredibly heavy rain outside.  I hold out my hand and say "do you want this can of Coke?".  She didn't, but the reason I had the can of Coke to offer to her in the first place was all part of my arrival in Glasgow, and not yet understanding enough about the place.

Having arranged to visit the flat to meet Siobhan, I confidently moved to Glasgow. I had enough cash for three nights in a youth hostel, and two flat viewings booked in.  In another demonstration of my youthful stupidity, I didn't see any issue with this.  I had a PhD bursary guaranteed, and I was sure that the university would give me an advance on my money as soon as I arrived.  

My first task was running round Strathclyde trying to get access to my bursary, probably one of my first experiences of these Catch 22-like bureaucracies, where I had to be enrolled to get my bursary but couldn't get enrolled without me having proof of my bursary from the finance department.  It probably wasn't as complicated as it seemed at the time, but I was naive, and assumed that people had organised the world in a way that worked.  Needless to say, I didn't get what I wanted right there and then.  

But there was no time to waste - I had a flat to view.  I'd worked out the bus route that I would need to get to the flat, I'd catch the bus on High St, and get off somewhere on Duke St somewhere near Roslea Drive.  I would ask the driver to let me know when to get off.  As soon as I stepped out of the university, it started raining so heavily that the you could see every drop bouncing off the ground.  The kind of rain that makes your trousers stick to your legs because they're soaked through so much.  But on I trudged to the bus stop.  

I just miss one bus and wait fifteen minutes for the next one to turn up, and I'm the first on:

"Duke Street please, along as far as Roslea Drive" I ask, and I learn that this will cost 84 pence.  I hold out a five pound note, and the driver gives me that look you get when you try to buy anything with a fifty pound note.  But surely, I think, you must have change for a fiver.  What I didn't realise was that the concept of change on a Glasgow bus didn't even exist.  For anyone who doesn't know, they simply have a clear drop box for you to put in any amount of money greater or equal to the fare, and they will happily take all of it.  There was a small queue behind me, and a paper shop right next to the bus stop.  

I'd try to get change as fast as I could.  So I ran into the shop and asked to change my five for five ones.  "Not without buying anything".  I look around and grab the nearest thing: a can of Coke.  Straight back outside and just manage to get on the bus.  I get off the bus and then have to walk up Roslea Drive, looking for the right flat.  Now absolutely drenched, I find the door, ring the buzzer, walk up the close to the door.  Siobhan opens the door, I hold out the can of Coke that I just bought, and ask "do you want this can of Coke?".

"No thanks," but how was I to know at the time, Siobhan only drank Diet Coke.

What do I remember about the first time we met?  Siobhan was wearing a top that had little hearts in columns, running the right way up and upside down in alternate columns.  She had a denim skirt on, and some sky blue chunky leather trainers.  She told me about how she'd come to be in the flat by herself.  From a distance, I could see CDs in her CD collection that we shared in common.  So I had a closer look, and there were Foo Fighters, Terrorvision, Ben Folds Five.  We talked about music for a while.  Lots of 90s bands we shared in common, it was nice to meet someone with similar tastes.  I remember seeing her electric wheelchair, in the study.  Her explaining that she needed it when she left the house to get around.

She told me she'd had a few other people viewing the flat, and she'd make up her mind in the evening.  I would phone her in the morning to find out whether I could move in.  I had another flat to view later that day.  I came away from Roslea Drive thinking Siobhan was going to say no, and that if she was going to say yes, she would have said it immediately.  So when the next people were super keen, I thought, well I'm probably going to be moving in there.  

But I was asking myself, if Siobhan says no, am I brave enough to ask her out on a date?  We had got on well.  But I think the answer would actually be no, because I'm not very brave.  So I'm lucky that when I called back from a payphone the next morning, she said yes and that I could move in.  I sounded surprised, and now had to phone the other flat and let them down, and for me that's actually a brave thing to do as well.  Having done that, I could now carry the two bags that carried my earthly possessions out of the hostel, and along Duke St to my new home in Dennistoun.  The hostel even refunded me for the two nights that I didn't now need.  I had succeeded in my unlikely mission of moving to Glasgow with no money, and finding and moving into a flat having paid no money up front.  Things were looking up.

I had met Siobhan in person for the first time.  Would I say it was love at first sight?  Probably as close to that as you will actually find in the real world.  It was only three weeks before we were a couple, and maybe if I was brave it would have been even sooner.

Love, Pete x

I've just got back home to Marsden after visiting Scotland, with lots of memories brought back just from the drive.  Driving is still quite strange for me now, especially long distances.  Siobhan couldn't sit in the front seat of the car, because the movement from the traffic and the road would mess with her vision, and make her dizzy.  She always sat in the back seat on the passenger side, and so I've always been used to an empty passenger seat in the front, glancing back in the mirror to see Siobhan.  And now, in some ways, it's one of the times that I feel she's more 'present' to me.  Apart from the glancing back, everything about the drive feels the same, I can even hold my left hand back and imagine grabbing her hand.  Even though I'm making myself cry a bit now, it is a comforting thing in the car.

We lived in Glasgow for almost a decade.  So driving to Scotland was always a homecoming of some kind: either literally going back to our flat in Dennistoun, or excitedly to visit friends and family after we'd moved to England.  The same things always surprised us, like just hearing Scottish accents in shops and on the street.  Anywhere in England, Siobhan's ears would prick up whenever we heard a Scottish accent, and it's difficult to reacclimatise to the situation where it's not a novelty.  Usually the weather told you that you were coming back to Scotland.  So many times that we could see ominous clouds on the horizon while we were heading North.  But you're also heading back to longer days in the summer, a bit cooler, subtle shifts that signpost the change in environment.

One of the main treats on anyone's drive to Glasgow along the M6 is Tebay Services.  I don't think anybody needs to be told, but it's not like any other services, it's more like a cool farm shop and has none of the regular chains that you have to tolerate at a normal services.  After I learnt to drive, and we discoverd it, it was like our little secret.  I really do still think that not many people knew about it at that time.  

We used to call it Westmorland Services, but when other people discovered it they called it Tebay (it seems like it's sort-of called both).  And it just became one of those things - you can't awkwardly have conversations where you're each calling something by two different names - so Tebay it was.  They used to serve a chicken curry, that was a really nice old-school style curry with a mainly curry powder base.  If someone at Tebay reads this, then bring my chicken curry back.

In the car, as in all aspects of our lives, we were quite ritualistic.  Almost verging on the superstitious.  Silly games, like the game of horse, where you just have to shout 'horse' when you see a horse.  Or the game of Delph, where you have to be the first to shout 'Delph' when you're driving through Delph.  

But maybe my favourite was reserved for driving to Scotland.  The start of the ritual was all down to me, and I would have to time it right.  When we were approaching the 'Welcome to Scotland' sign, with the big Saltire, I would start chanting "we're in England, we're in England, we're in England, we're in England..." I'd start quiet and slow, and build the pace up as we approached the sign.  But I wanted to do it kabaddi-style, without taking a breath, that would definitely make it a failed attempt.  And you can't get away with just a few "we're in England"s, you're just not building the drama.  And of course, as soon as we pass the sign: "we're in Scotlaaaaaaaaaaaand!" both together as loud as we could.  

There is just a bit more excitement about arriving in Scotland than there is in England.  If I've been away, I'm always happy to get home, but I don't have the same happy surprise the first time I hear an English accent.  And we never attempted the same kind of celebration when we drove south of the border.  Prove me wrong, but I don't think anyone has excitedly shouted "We're in England!".

Love Pete x

I guess I'll start from the beginning.  Or our beginning at least.  The year is 2003, it's in that long long holiday that you have for some reason at university, where the exams are finished early and the next year is a world away in October.  In an unusual bout of clarity I realised that this could be the last summer that was going to be like that.  In the October I was starting my PhD at Strathclyde Uni in Glasgow, and the summer holidays wouldn't be the same routine of coming back home.  

The sun was shining all summer and I've got really vivid memories of lying in the back garden with my mum and Tom after they got back from the club, looking at the stars on warm, clear, crisp summer nights.  I played computer games at my sister's house on a Sega Dreamcast that her friend brought over, eating pizza from Pizza Shop 1 or Pizza Shop 2, which were next-door rivals.  Playing Virtua Tennis, never getting bored.  Playing some amazing rhythm game, where you were a spaceship driving down any one of a number of tracks.  Each track was a different instrument, and if you didn't get the groove, the instrument wouldn't play and then getting back on track was near impossible.  

Fast-forward twenty years, and here I am staring at the Wii that Siobhan used to love playing Just Dance on.  Her excellent rhythm just one of her magnificent talents.  She was never happier than when she could show her moves.  We've got a big old poster in the kitchen: when in doubt, dance it out!

I digress.

In that long summer holiday, we had family over to my mum's house.  It was my younger cousin's birthday, and we were playing in the garden with bubbles.  I know this for a fact because I have a photo of it, and this is the first day I spoke to Siobhan.  

For her part, Siobhan had gone back to uni after a couple of major operations, and had moved into Glasgow to a flat in St George's Cross.  Having decided to move out of that flat, she decided to risk-it-for-a-biscuit, and move into a two bed flat and advertise for a flatmate.  

She found a flat on Roslea Drive in Dennistoun, in the East End of Glasgow.  Then she put an advert online and waited.  I guess this wasn't the early days of the internet as such, but it was before the all-pervasive thing that we have now.  I'd found a university-run accommodation site where you submitted interest in flat-shares via a web form, and that would be forwarded to the folk looking to share.  I'd responded to a few of the adverts, and planned to see some flats when I got to Glasgow.  And whilst I was playing outside, the phone rang, and it was the first of the potential flatmates to call back.  

"Hi - this is Siobhan - I'm calling you back about the room in the flat"

"Hiya - great - sorry I've just been outside playing with my cousin, it's her birthday"

I'm told this detail endeared me to Siobhan immediately.  She loved kids, and being playful and silly.  I arranged to visit the flat the first day I was in Glasgow.  And it's funny how even my own reasoning process can be burnt into my memory sometimes, especially when I'm stupid.  The advert online mustn't have had her name on, because I had to ask again: "Siobhan Murphy" she said.  I very clearly remember thinking, "like Che Guevara, and Michael Vaughan" as I wrote down "Chevaughan Murphy".  I don't think anyone could have spelt it any worse.  That won't be the last incident I talk about where I get things wrong, but I also got things right on that day, or at least things fell into place.

Summer of 2003 - I salute you.  An amazing summer of warmth, idling and meeting the love of my life.

Love, Pete x

Afterword

I sit and write these words the day after our twelfth wedding anniversary, the first without Siobhan.  It's a bank holiday Monday, and I put Radcliffe and Maconie on BBC Sounds from yesterday, from our anniversary.  It's something I would do with Siobhan - we'd rarely be awake for the breakfast show starting at the weekend, but we liked to listen and we'd just catch up whenever we could.  To my surprise, the show is exclusively playing songs from 2003.  

What synchronicity, on our anniversary, playing songs exclusively from the year we met.  And one of those was Hey Ya! by OutKast which was our song to dance to at a wedding, or a party, or anywhere.  Is there a better song to express a simple joy and an uncynical fun?  Listened to the whole show end to end.  Apparently their album of the week had been Fever to Tell by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.  Also a huge fixture in our musical lives.  One of the bands that we didn't get to see live, but we would have loved to.  

Much love, and shake it like a polaroid picture, when you get the chance x

This is Petering About, a brand new site by Peter Gregory that's just getting started. Things will be up and running here shortly, but you can subscribe in the meantime if you'd like to stay up to date and receive emails when new content is published!

I had the idea for a long time that I'd write a blog about the cafes that have been important in my life.  There are a lot: cafes are a massively important part of my life.  Kind of like a personal history through the lens of where I sat drinking coffee.

Before I could do that, I was hit by the tragedy of the death of my wife, Siobhan, at the age of 43.  So now, I'm going to write the same type of blog, but fill it mainly with memories of Siobhan.  Some big things, some small things.  I've got lots of ideas, from just looking at individual objects of Siobhan's, to remembering gigs that we went to, holidays we went on.  Si0bhan kept photo albums, scrap books, lecture notes.  I will be digitising these things over time, and many will find their way here.

I'm going to talk about our relationship, our little boy, and our life together.  I'll do some armchair philosophising I'm sure.  I won't talk about other people by name without their permission, and in the same way, I won't publish photos of people in the same way, unless they're happy for that.

I just want to build a picture of Siobhan and our time together, and share that with whoever wants to see it.  I'm sure I'll end up talking about lots of other random things too, we'll see how it goes.  I'll almost certainly talk about living with a disability, and how that constraint can change life for the better.  I hope some people will enjoy what I write, but even if I'm just talking to myself I think I'll be getting some comfort from the memories.

Love Pete x