Kate Copstick remembers when she got on her bike…
Today is the last in Mental Health Awareness Week.
Coincidentally, this week’s Grouchy Club Podcast includes my co-host Kate Copstick talking about depression:
COPSTICK
Your brain or your mind just becomes detached from everything else and you can’t make it work any more. I was a bit like that for a while. I had a couple of wibbly times when I was in my teens and my twenties and my thirties – I’ve been wibbly quite a lot. It’s the kind of thing that, when it gets bad, you would sit there and, if somebody came and just punched you in the face, you would just sit there and let them punch you in the face and, inside your head, you’d be going: “He’s going to punch me in the face”.
In The Bell Jar, I think Sylvia Plath’s description is pretty fucking good.
Anyway, this night after that – and there were a couple of other incidents – I don’t know… I had a bit of a moment and I wanted to sort of feel something. So I got on my bike .
JOHN
A motor bike?
COPSTICK
No. Push bike. Dressed in black, of course. No surprise there.
JOHN
Of course.
COPSTICK
And I cycled down to Shepherd’s Bush Green and Shepherd’s Bush roundabout.
JOHN
That’s the big roundabout with almost a motorway spur going up to Westway.
COPSTICK
Correct. And I cycled round it the wrong way, into the headlights of cars.
JOHN
And this is a serious roundabout. It’s almost a motorway spur.
COPSTICK
I had no lights or anything on my bike and they all swerved and everything. It was about one o’clock in the morning. The cars were going a bit faster and I think I just wanted to see if I could be frightened or panicky or that something would click and I’d go Oh, good grief! I’ve come out of it now and it’s all marvellous!
And what happened was it was a white van man who screeched to a halt in front of me: “What the fuck? Wah! Wah! Wah!”
FULL 29-MINUTE GROUCHY CLUB PODCAST IS ONLINE HERE
Shepherd’s Bush roundabout from Google Maps
SO IT GOES - John Fleming's blog 