ABOUT

A four minute history

1968 - Born in Lancashire, England.

1976 - (8) Suffers maternal abandonment.

1979 - (11) Starts smoking cigarettes.

1982 - (14) Hospitalised in Belgium for acute alcoholic poisoning.

1985 - Starts smoking cannabis regularly.

1986 - (18) Accidentally takes a "Heroic (life changing) dose" of magic mushrooms.

1989 - (21) Leaves university with 3rd class honours in chemistry.

1989 - Cannabis causes panics, whilst his life feels wasted, so he begins learning classical piano.

1990 - After a year in his 1st job, he leaves it due to feeling anxious and paranoid.

1992 - He leaves his 2nd job after extensive bullying, but over 20 years later on, he learned that the derogatory voices in the 3rd person he had been hearing, had been imaginary.

1992 - (24) He's admitted to a mental hospital and is diagnosed schizophrenic. Thankfully (!!) psychotic depression becomes apparent.

1992 -  Living on benefits he volunteers at Winwick hospital.

1993 - He risks his income to be an MSc in computing student, but by chance they find him a grant.

1994 - (26) Starts seeing Clare from the MSc, a much older women. He graduates shortly afterwards.

1994 - Suspicions and distrust remain innate. He lasts three days in a commercial programming job.

1995 - Clare gets him weekend work, piano tuning in a large Dickensian like warehouse.

1995 - Twice he annoys the brilliant, elderly piano player and teacher, who is also working there, and who Michael idolises. It results in a verbal annihilation, and hospital again.

1997 - (29) Gets a job where he did his MSc.

1998 - Suspicions/ paranoia rise again, especially about Clare. He's hospitalised (hopefully) for the last time, because he receives a bipolar diagnosis that indicates lifelong lithium therapy.

1999 - Converts to Catholicism after reading C.S. Lewis' "Mere Christianity", and because Clare plays the organ at weekly Mass.

2000 - He's given nothing to do at work for a decade, but finds some meaning in life by writing poetry at home.

2010 - Made redundant and placed in the DWP's ESA Support group. His extra free time means his poetry and English improve greatly, and he becomes increasingly serious and prolific with verse.

2012 - (44) Square one: Clare dies. He's alone, unemployed, with low self-esteem, on £500 a month, and caring for his incontinent elderly dog, that he's no heart to euthanise.

2013 - He begins walking dogs once weekly as an RSPCA volunteer.

2014 - (46) Psychology sessions highlight avoidance. He is "prescribed" a local writing group. By reading his better poems, he gets his "foot in the door".

2014 - Michelle "winks" at him on match.com, because of his RSPCA dog walking.

2014 - They quickly begin seeing each other. Michael proposes. Shortly afterwards Michelle becomes pregnant.

2015 - (47) After six months together they get married, and share 12 week baby scans at the ceremony. A later scans reveals tragedy. Rose Megan, their only child, has severe spina bifida. After second opinions she is stillborn.

2015 - Despite subsequent miscarriages and more, they remain happy. With Michelle also being bipolar, their union is at least a one in 10,000 chance, and perhaps the most significant piece of luck, if not an irony, that either had experienced. Essentially, they'd never lost hope, and held out until middle age, for a chance in life.