Where we let the eyebrows do the talking

Some songs become attached to a moment almost immediately, and I think Chapters, Emma Stevens' new single, will always take me back to this weekend.

Li and I went to Bath on Thursday for a wee city break - now, for anyone who doesn't know, my agoraphobia has been fucking terrible for about 18 months and at this point, I've barely left the house since... well, I can probably count on one hand the times I've left the house since February. But I'm back in therapy, doing exposure therapy and so on. We had not built up to me doing this. And Li said a few times last week that if I didn't feel up to going, we didn't have to. I just said, 'This is what we have diazepam and propranolol for'

So. Thursday. The plan was that we were taking Rolland (my wheelchair), with my sticks in his bag, and we were going by train - basically so that we could do the Baths and the gig, and I wouldn't have to worry about whether I could drive. It was a good call because the weather was cold and damp, and my hips and knees were unimpressed. I was super nervous about the train, on top of the anxiety. We'd prebooked assistance for each step - it was 2 trains in total, one from Honiton to Salisbury, then Salisbury to Bath. I took like 35mg CBD worth of gummies before we left the house. The guard was waiting at Honiton station with the ramp, but there were some issues: a power surge had caused a signal fault at Gillingham (I think?), everything was running late, and the train was going a different route. And so we changed at Westbury, but all the communication had gone through; a very friendly guard was waiting to get us off the first train. The second train was on the same platform about 20 minutes later. He chatted to us the whole time, and the transfer went smoothly as anything. Did you know there are seven different types of ramps on the UK train system? No, neither did we.

We arrived in Bath, and our hotel was basically about a 10-minute walk, over the river, down the side of it for a little. Now, one of the things about a manual wheelchair is that they are actually really hard work to push yourself, and there's the fun catch-22 of I can't push myself because I haven't built up the muscles but I can only build up the muscles by doing it myself, which I can't do because I haven't built up the muscles. But I was super proud of myself for actually being able to get from the station, through the tunnel, over the bridge and to the hotel car park before we hit a hill I couldn't get up and Li had to push. My upper body still hates me for that workout.

Our plan for Thursday night was basically rest after travelling, then go out for a nice meal since this was technically our honeymoon, our 6-month anniversary and our 6-year anniversary all rolled into one (Li says we're just efficient like that LOL). We'd found a couple of places online, looked at the menu and decided on an Italian place with a mouth-watering menu that was about a 10-minute walk down the river. And OMFG, did we choose correctly. The staff were super friendly - and a lot of them were actually Italian (not Hampshire guys putting on an Italian accent), but I wasn't brave enough to practice my Italian past 'good evening', 'please' and 'thank you '. We started with some pane fresco, with balsamic and olive oil and fucking hell, you could tell that was good bread because I ate the damn crusts! We also had some taralli, which were to die for. Li had a spaghetti carbonara, and I had a ragu genovese, and seriously, that was some of the best pasta I've had since I was in Florence. It was fucking incredible. Neither of us could eat it all because it was just that good. We did, of course, follow it up with some tiramisu, and I was so blissed out by it that Li took a bloody photo of me enjoying it! 🤣

We were up bright and early Friday morning, hotel breakfast, took another handful of CBD gummies, again about 30mg worth, then wheeled back down the river. Got a little stressed because we knew we had to cross this one bridge, but we couldn't figure out how to get from the riverside up to it; luckily, we found some locals who were able to direct us. There was a bunch of roadworks and some really uneven ground, so I ended up using Rolland as a walker to get along this one bit of street. It's not that I don't trust Li (although they're a learner driver); it's more my anxiety about getting tipped out.

Our tickets for Bath were pre-booked, and the staff jumped us to the front of the queue to check in, collect our guidebooks and audio tours, and they even gave us a map that showed the wheelchair accessible route, marked up where the lifts were. We'd used their accessibility guides before we went actually and they literally walked you through the entire site, told you what was where and what things looked like so I was prepared as I could be. I was not prepared for how jaw-dropping it is when you walk onto that first terrace, look down and see the Great Bath, and then all the statues of the emperors. OMG, it was amazing.

It turns out Li and I are very well matched when it comes to museum-type visits. I'm a look-and-read-everything visitor; Li is a take-pictures-of-everything visitor. And then I nerd out. So we went very, very slowly around the place, looking and reading everything... and we also discovered it was absolutely ok for us to both go at our own pace around each gallery and meet up again at the end of each section. Another thing we discovered, absolutely hilariously, is that I've apparently picked up enough Latin that I was able to start deciphering the transcriptions on various altars and tombstones. Not like fluently but enough to get the basics. And I have no idea how/when that happened!

We were in the Baths for probably about 3 and a half hours, went back to the hotel, had a nap, got burgers from the Travelodge bar, then got ready for the gig. We made the executive decision to get a taxi there because it was cold and wet, and my knees hated me, and I didn't want to use the chair, and we weren't sure I was going to manage the walk back into town. We were about the 6th people in the queue for the gig and... well. The venue website said 'one or two steps', when they actually meant 'about 8 that were quite steep', and let's just say it's a good thing I didn't need to go to the loo! But it was a very civilised gig- cabaret-style seating so we were able to grab one of the front-row tables to the right, with my back against the wall, and I could see both the main entrance and the fire exit. I grabbed a CD and a bracelet from the merch, Li grabbed us drinks from the bar, and (in typical me fashion) I got talking to the guy who'd sat at the table next to us. He was talking about how long he'd been coming to Emma's gigs, since 'before the pandemic', since just after her first album, and I was like, oh, you want to play that game, do you? Because my dude, I've been going to Emma's gigs for almost 14 years, and I predate the first album; I'm on the fucking credits to the first album. Emma even said to me after the gig that I'd been there 'since day one' But anyway.

Support was Rachel Sage, who was a lot of fun; I will definitely be checking her music out. Emma was absolutely amazing. As ever, I cannot sit still for live music - I'm chair dancing and singing my heart out and tapping out the beat, and the few times I looked around the room, everyone else was just... sitting there. Like. HOW? How does music not move you? How are you still? She played my favourite song 'The Star That Guides You Home'; she knows it's my favourite, and I got a chorus sung to me and a really big smile 🧡 At one point she was introducing her band, saying how good it was she had her guitarist Sammy back because last tour he was... and neither of them could remember where he was, and I just blurted out 'weren't you in like Denmark or something?' and yeah he was but Sammy just went 'how did you remember that?' and *shrugs and laughs* She played a lovely mix of old and new songs, including super brand new ones that aren't even on the new album that isn't out yet - that's how new! But they were fantastic, and a very different sound from her usual. Blew me away.

She did her usual meet and greet afterwards, and I usually wait until the end so we can have a good catch-up. I saw her tour her last album like 2 years ago, and it was the first tour post-COVID, so it was like Emma had got married and I'd got engaged... so this time I was able to introduce Li to her saying, "And this is my WIFE and OMG Emma about exploded with glee, so we had to tell her all about it. We talked about how nice the venue was, and we ended up talking about some of the... less pleasant places she'd played - which is when she told Li I'd been there since day 1. 🧡 And I said about how weird it is when everyone's so still and I'm dancing - and Emma said she loves looking over because she knows I'll be singing and dancing. And I was one of the few people there, it seems, who had learned the lil dance to Chapters.

And so, obviously, this week’s Music Monday song had to be Chapters.



Not only because it’s Emma’s new single, or because I learned the little dance, or because it has been lodged firmly in my head ever since the gig. It’s because the entire trip felt like a collection of chapters overlapping: Emma’s music having been part of my life for almost fourteen years; the last gig where Li was my fiancée and this one where I got to introduce them as my wife; and me, after barely leaving the house for months, somehow getting on two trains, travelling to another city, exploring the Roman Baths and dancing through an entire gig.

I don’t want to turn that into a tidy story about conquering agoraphobia, because I didn’t. The agoraphobia came to Bath too. So did the diazepam, the propranolol, the CBD gummies, Rolland, my sticks, the pre-booked assistance, the accessible-route maps, the taxis, the naps and Li quietly reminding me that we could stop or change the plan whenever I needed to. There were delays and pain and inaccessible steps and moments when I was absolutely fucking terrified.

But there was also incredible pasta. There was Latin I could unexpectedly decipher and 2,000-year-old history beneath my wheels. There was my wife beside me. There was Emma singing The Star That Guides You Home to me, and there were hours of happy stimming, chair dancing and singing loudly enough that she could look across the room and know I was having the best time.

I did something I hadn’t remotely built up to doing, and it was difficult and exhausting and completely, gloriously worth it.

This was such a bloody good chapter. 🧡