A Life Of Being Very Confortable With Being Uncomfortable

Jungle hard routine. Living and operating with the absolute minimum in order to get the job done. Cold food which is only fuel to keep you going. A small package of that food for 10 days, to leave room to carry ammunition, explosives and other equipment…something has to go!

From a bad start in life growing up in a Victorian tenement in Dundee. No bathroom, a once a week bath in the kitchen with my father’s dirty water in a galvanised bath. A toilet out on the landing shared by 3 other families, no sink, just cut up newspaper on an old wire coat hanger for toilet paper. When I got changed for PE at school, the other kids could read the football results off of my arse whenever I used the sports page.

To a life of roughing it in the military, and especially in the SAS.

You cannot help but become accustomed to being very comfortable with being uncomfortable…because for most of my young life it became the norm.

After my military life, one of my many uncomfortable tasks was working in the Middle East. Working with the media and living on a roof for weeks in Ramallah in the West Bank in 2002. It overlooked Arafat’s compound, and at the time of the Intifada was being hammered by the Israeli IDF. World opinion at that time was that the Israelis would either kill or capture Arafat, and if the latter, get him out of the Palestinian Territories altogether.

A great story to cover, and being in a key place that overlooked his compound, well worth roughing it for…even for a long period of time.

It’s like I couldn’t help myself, rough location, lots of danger, getting the story from the best location, and yes, so happy being uncomfortable.

I met my wife on that rooftop. Most of the drama was happening at night. So, I’d take short catnaps in the day time to catch up on long lost sleep. Suddenly I was woken by the most beautiful individual I’d ever seen in body armour. She represented another TV news network, and was only on the roof, having been asked up by our producer, for a quick piece to camera overlooking Arafat’s compound. She asked me what I was doing. When I told her, she thought I was nuts. Why not go back to the hotel and get some comfort? If I do that, we won’t be getting the story. Sometimes it would be just me, and a young Palestinian cameraman covering the event. That event would eventually be known as the 36-Day Siege. World pressure eventually stopped the Israelis from going through with their eventual act…whatever that would have been?

For all of that time, I was happy in my very basic and uncomfortable environment. Even after my dysfunctional upbringing and complete military career.

Today, I’m married to that woman, she still thinks I’m nuts, and we’ve been together for 24 years this year.

When we were dating, I brought her to my small rental home in Hereford. Having a love for cooking, the first thing she did was go into the small kitchen and look into the cupboards and fridge.

Where’s your food?

I told her to look in the last cupboard on the right. Inside was half a dozen tins of milk pudding. Behind that a tin of Milo. And in the fridge a bottle of milk.

“What do you live off?” she asked.

“That’s it” I told her…”that’s all I need.”

“FOOD IS FUEL” I told her…those 3 words almost broke off our relationship. I realised why, when she cooked our first meal.

Over the years, we’ve met in the middle. She knows her husband better than anyone else on the planet. But it took a long time of explanation and demonstration by myself in order for her to fully understand.

We couldn’t be different. I was brought up in a 50s into the 60s era slum in Scotland with an abusive father. She was brought up in a large house in the 60s and 70s with an amazing father who was a pioneering heart surgeon, and only wanted the best for his children, including their education…which she got.

So, with decades of being uncomfortable, both by choice and not by choice, it was really difficult to accept the finer things in life…it still is.

Occasionally, I’ll sit at home with a tin of milk pudding, eating it cold straight from the tin. I’m really comfortable with that, and would put that ahead of going out to some fancy restaurant. However, I have learnt that I need to go with my wife to a fancy restaurant now and again, meeting halfway is important ha ha.

It’s been a long long but very quick road, to being very comfortable with being uncomfortable…to enjoying comfort along with my wife, yet being allowed to play with my being uncomfortable now and again.

After 24 years of being together with this beautiful and extremely bright woman, I’m just really glad that she gets me…no body else would.