I moved from my humble abode in Yorkshire to be with my wonderful partner in Newcastle in 2009. This wasn't so much a decision as an only choice. My partner had looked for work in my area and could find none. The country was bang in the middle of the worst recession in living memory and his current job was stable and safe. As a songwriter, I could move anywhere as long as I had a room that I could a studio. Besides which, I had sadly grown to loathe the town I was living in. Without a university of it's own, it was an intellectual desert, an ex-coal mining town, who's mines had long ceased to function. Whilst I loved my flat, the view from my bedroom window looked out on to a busy dual-carriageway, and the other window in my living room looked out on to a brick wall.
However, moving here, to Newcastle, hasn't been easy either. I knew a lot of people in Yorkshire, and also in neighbouring Nottinghamshire. Apart from my partner, I knew not a soul in Tyne and Wear, the county in which Newcastle Upon Tyne resides. I moved here in 2009. I think many different factors played into it, but gradually, over 2010 and 2011, my agoraphobia, which had always been slightly problematic, in that friends in Yorkshire often had to do a lot of arm-twisting to get me out socialising, reared it's head to a monstrous degree. Loneliness was certainly one of the contributing factors. On top of this, whilst we have the most fantastic views over Tyne and Wear, we live on the 13th floor of a 14 floor block of apartments. I had only ever lived one floor up at the most, and this sense of being so far up, lent itself to feeling incredibly removed from society. My partner at the time was also working exhausting twelve hour shifts, which would leave him wiped out and not particularly sociable when he got home, and conversely, I would have spent day after day alone, save for phone calls to my friends and family.
In November 2011, unfortunately I suffered a short period of psychotic anxiety – a build of agoraphobia that had become so bad that I was too scared to leave our bed. I couldn't even leave the flat to walk the thirty feet down the corridor to dump the rubbish down the garbage chute. This period of psychotic anxiety then tipped into a complete mental breakdown. Had my partner's workplace not been so generous and magnanimous in allowing him such a lot of time from work to look after me, along with acute services from the Mental Health Service's Crisis Resolution Team, I would have been slapped with a Section (hospitalised involuntarily). I was only told this when I was getting better.
Of course working went out of the window. And several key things were put into place. Most importantly were psychoanalysis. To be given this (which I'm still receiving, unbelievably – most people are granted no more than 8-10 sessions. I've had between 40-45) on the National Health Service is akin to being the Crown Jewels. I was also given a superb CPN and Support Worker/Therapist who specialises in Exposure Therapy. This is all thanks to the best psychiatrist I have ever been granted. For better or worse, I've been “in” the mental health system for over eighteen years with a slew of anxiety disorders and OCD, which all psychiatrists seen have told me are going to be with me for life. The good news is that this psychiatrist has told me that she will find ways of pulling my quality of life up to a reasonable standard – and she has indeed kept her promise.
One of the oddest, things to have come out of this bumpy journey since late 2011 is my relationship with my Cab firm. I get a government discretionary payment, which few people with mental illness or disability get, called Disability Living Allowance. This money is effectively used to pay for me to be able to get “out and about”, and it works out at about fifty pounds a week. I've always believed in “brand” loyalty, if the brand are good, or reliable, or good value. And so, taking these baby steps back in to the big wide world has meant that I've been set “tasks” by my Exposure Therapist. Things like go and pick my prescription myself.
So, over the last eighteen months, I began using this Cab firm. During one journey, the taxi driver noticed that I was highly agitated and anxious, and I explained the story I've just recounted (and also the fact that my agoraphobia in it's inception was really borne out of a stroke I had whilst on a train on my way to visit a friend, and so I started associating going out with catastrophic events). I think during chit-chat back at the Cab office our journey must have come up in conversation, and, to my surprise, the next time I booked a cab, which was to a supermarket (which had a late night chemist), the Cab driver asked me if I was ok, and I said yes, and they said they wouldn't charge me waiting time. The cab driver knew my name, even though I hadn't mentioned it to them, or when I booked it (although I gave my address). Because I was booking more and cabs over the weeks, everyone quickly knew who I was, and whilst my journeys were almost always for the same thing – to a chemist or to pop in briefly to a supermarket, they always, without fail asked me if I was ok, and they never, ever charged me waiting time. Suffice it to say, I always tipped them generously.
Then a couple of weeks ago, one of the cab drivers said to me, “you know, there are about ten or twelve of us that go swimming on a Thursday and a Saturday, you shouldn't be cooped up there in that flat all the time, come out with us, you'd enjoy it.” Then he gave me his mobile. He made no mention of my mental health problems. Finally, today, a different cab driver had to nip me up to the supermarket chemist, and he knew I was feeling particularly anxious. Without any prompting from me, he said “I'm going to come in with you”, he switched off his engine, and came into the supermarket whilst I went to the pharmacy. On the way back he said, “Matthew, I thought you were going to come swimming with us. It would be really fun. Give me your number and I'll call you if I know we're going on Thursday”.
If one was being cynical one might say that the people at the cab company are just cozying up to a customer in the hope of more trade. But I don't believe that for one second. I've never once been charged waiting time whilst I've been waiting for my prescriptions, they've often tried to stop me from giving them tips. I've been astonished that this group of burly Cab drivers have shown such incredible sensitivity and kindness towards someone they hardly know. The kindness of one stranger can be incredible, but to be hit by a wall of it has been amazing. Kindness they did not have to give, offers of their time and company they did not have to offer. If anything has restored my faith in human nature, quite strangely my Cab firm has. They truly are a lovely bunch of guys. I'd better dig out my swimming trunks.
