Be afraid

Funny thing, fear. I thought I knew what it felt like. An emotion so essentially human shouldn't, after decades on Earth, come as a surprise. But it did to me.

Having had a couple of days to ponder what happened, I believe I've been mistaking fright for fear.

I once came off a Scottish mountain by an unfamiliar route, enticed by a virgin snowfield spread beneath me, sparkling in the low winter sun. Having negotiated the steepest part of the descent, I took my hood off, so I could sense the isolation, hear the stillness and feel the cold from the snow that stretched away from me, as far as I could see. 

Instead what I heard was an echoing sound of rushing water from somewhere below my feet. I realised that I'd wandered onto a snow-bridge high across a stream in serious spate. My stomach lurched. I pictured falling twenty or thirty feet into a raging torrent, gasping for air and being seized and tossed by the flood, with no way out of the darkness, until I breathed no more. 

Gingerly I stepped backwards, following my own footsteps, until the sound of angry water faded, then turned and walked briskly away, my boots crunching in the fallen snow. There's no denying I got a fright. But I don't think what I felt was fear. It happened too fast.

Fear, I've discovered, needs time to build, as you slowly grasp what is about to happen. It also needs uncertainty. If you can take a fast decision and act on it, fright fades before becoming fear. 

Let me share with you how I learned what real fear feels like. 

It's late at night in Killearn and the wind that's been blowing from the west all day has dropped to less than a whisper. The skeletal, leafless trees outside my house are dead still now. A small glass of Dalwhinnie and a mince pie have served as a nice nightcap and I'm anticipating the delicious sensation when I slip between the sheets and every nerve-end in my body basks in the heat from the electric blanket. The intense pleasure often puts me to sleep in seconds.

Tonight, though, I want to read a few more pages of a Peter May novel. May has a knack of writing small details of place and weather that convince you it's fact you're reading and not fiction. Cast Iron is the last in a series featuring his forensics expert, Enzo McLeod, and although it grips and I want to know the ending, I'm thinking that's enough murder mysteries for a while. 

I expect you know this, but the thing about murder mysteries is that somebody always gets murdered. Read too many and you see serial killers around every corner. 

A young woman's body is being lifted from a lake as I start drifting off to sleep. I put the book down, turn the light off and lie quietly in the darkness. There is no sound anywhere in the world that I can hear. And then ...

Two loud knocks on my bedroom door,

I am fully awake instantly. My mind races. Did I dream it? I don't think so. Was it the wind? There is no wind. Can it be one of my sons, both of whom have keys to my house? No, because they don't knock; they open the front door and call out. Is it mice, a few of which have recently got in from my garden? 

I'm clutching at straws and I know it. Only humans knock on doors. I've had a bad fright and I don't know why, or what to do about it. I'm uncertain and confused. Fear starts to build.

I realise I'm going to have to get up, go to the door and open it. My best hope now is that I dreamt it. But as I'm pulling on my trousers the loud double knock comes again. 

I scrabble with both hands at the top of the bedside table and take three steps towards the door. Fear has reached a peak. Fright plus uncertainty plus the almost certain knowledge that something bad is about to happen.

I look down to see what I've grabbed to defend myself. A small hair-dryer and a ventolin inhaler. If my midnight caller has wet hair and a wheeze, I'm in a strong negotiating position.

I open the door quickly, fully expecting to be confronted by a large male, intent on who knows what. 

There is no one there. Moving fast, I search every room in the house. Nothing. As I return slowly to the bedroom, I hear the loud double knock again and this time locate it more precisely. It's not my bedroom door. It's the loft, immediately above the door.

I search the loft with a torch. Nothing.

Eventually I give up and go back to bed. Sleep proves elusive as I try to figure out what could so convincingly simulate a man knocking on my bedroom door. 

Days later, I still don't have an answer. If anyone does, please let me know. I welcome any sensible suggestions. I did an internet search, of course, and the answer came back clearly. 

Racoons.

I don't think it's racoons.

You can keep it

Well that's enough real life for now, thanks. You can't say I haven't given it a fair shake. 

I've been doing practically nothing but real life since I got the diagnosis five years ago. That's long enough to have formed a solid opinion based on hard facts. 

I once asked a friend what he thought about a TV programme from the distant past called Muffin the Mule:

"Tried it," he replied. "Didnae like it."

Well that's pretty much my verdict on real life. I might check back in five years, to see if the psychos, liars and bastards are still running our country, as well their own. But right now I'm going to focus on friends, family and writing, all of which raise my spirits, while current affairs have, for years, been dragging them down. 

There is a small problem, though, with having writing as your occupation and main method of relaxing. 

Critics excuse me while I spit.

Even my talented friend Gregor, who used to write a light-hearted fortnightly newspaper column, got the occasional bad review. I loved his stuff. So did almost everyone else. But you can't please all your readers. 

One serious-minded soul wrote to the paper, describing one of Gregor's offerings as "worthless and uninteresting small talk." Now despite his rugged looks and firm, well-muscled thighs, honed by cycling to a hardness that makes you  ... ahem, sorry. Despite all that, Gregor is a sensitive soul and he cried on my shoulder.

But only for a brief moment. Writers inhabit a world unknown to normal people, a world filled with rejection. The phrase you hear most often is "Not for me". I once got a rejection letter from some young punk straight out of journalism school who said he "aimed to discourage tired jokes and hoary old clichés".

Eventually though, if you persist, you find a few editors who like your clichés, offer kind words of encouragement and even pay you real money once a month. But to get there you have to turn a blind ear to countless critics, and maybe possess the kind of mentality that makes someone run straight at a bull.

So having been forged in the fires of rejection, Gregor soon wiped away his tears and doubled down on his trademark style of taking a lateral look at life and drawing lessons from the quirkier aspects he finds there. He wrote an entertaining piece on how he did his ironing, which his critic described as "ridiculous and juvenile" and the rest of us really enjoyed.

And isn't this, dear friends, a lesson to us all in these dark December days, made so much bleaker and more depressing by the prospect of five more years of Tory theft, hatred, ignorance and stupidity?

Don't let people talk you into giving up or changing what you know is right. Look after friends, family and anyone less fortunate than yourself. These bad times will pass. 

Scientific studies have shown that the vast majority of us are decent human beings, genetically predisposed to care for each other. The cruel, the greedy and the selfish are in the minority. They are running things now but they won't be forever. If nothing else, climate change might drown the fuckers when the Thames bursts its banks.

And if all that science can't cheer you up, take a look at Muffin the Mule, with his good friend Annette Mills. 

Why don't we sing along with Annette and see if the little chap will come out for us?

We want Muffin, Muffin the Mule,
Dear old Muffin, playing the fool,
We want Muffin, everybody sing,
We want Muffin the Mule.