So the first thing you notice when you move from a smartphone, back to a analogue phone, is that this (Taps Screen) does nothing.  Then you bring the phone to your eyes because your eyesight is worse than it was in 2007. Then your wife offers you one of those very useful pouches that granddads have so that you can put the phone on your belt. As you continue the experiment you realise that there are more profound changes. You have to remember routes through cities.  There are no maps any more. You have to think. And then you realise how much you have changed in such a short time. How we’ve all changed. We aren’t just outsourcing jobs around the world to a place that does it cheaper and better, we are outsourcing parts of our very selves to our technology.  The momentum is dizzying.

At 1.30 pm on the 6th of December 2010. I changed irrevocably and forever.  That was the moment when every trauma of a catastrophic childhood, dammed up behind the wall, came crashing over me in the middle of a business meeting. Suddenly the whole world felt like the back of a spoon, and this fear, no terror came over me. Apart from knowing that something desperately wrong had just happened to my brain, I had no idea what was happening to me. I struggled through the rest of the day, hoping I would feel okay. I went home.

I worked for a tech company at the time. I had a small 4 year-old son, an amazing wife, and was right in the bloody middle of all the good things in life has to give us. No matter what I did try to do to stop the feelings of terror, they keep happening. No meditation, No CBT, those things didn’t even touch the sides of what I was experiencing. What do you do when the breaks don’t work. What you do is that you try and grab things as they rush past. You reach to those that are near and those that your trust.  You try and grab on to something real. You tell no one at work because you have to keep your job and you are ashamed, and over the next 3 months, full of this secret terror, you are becoming incompetent at your job. You are leaking the oil of what it is to be you. Projects start to be given to others, and verbal warnings begin to get issued.

Now. Every lunch-time, you leave your desk and you run to the British Museum. You sit down with a sketchpad to try and draw.  You haven’t drawn in years bit you do it anyway. It is something to do. You reach out to humanity, thousands of years of humanity, someone somewhere has been through what you are experiencing.  It has to be the case.

And in the middle of the night, when the museum is shut, and you are in the dark and your wife is asleep and you are terrified of everything. What do you do? What do you do with the rage of incomprehension? You reach out. You reach for your phone. Your face glows. You are a terrified 38 year-old glow dad. And you look at forum after forum trying to find a story of someone else who has been through what you have been through and survived.  You doubt you can survive this for much longer.

At 1.30 pm on the 6th of December 2010. I changed irrevocably and forever.  That was the moment when every trauma of a catastrophic childhood, dammed up behind the wall, came crashing over me in the middle of a business meeting. Suddenly the whole world felt like the back of a spoon, and this fear, no terror came over me. Apart from knowing that something desperately wrong had just happened to my brain, I had no idea what was happening to me. I struggled through the rest of the day, hoping I would feel okay. I went home.

I worked for a tech company at the time. I had a small 4 year-old son, an amazing wife, and was right in the bloody middle of all the good things in life has to give us. No matter what I did try to do to stop the feelings of terror, they keep happening. No meditation, No CBT, those things didn’t even touch the sides of what I was experiencing. What do you do when the breaks don’t work. What you do is that you try and grab things as they rush past. You reach to those that are near and those that your trust.  You try and grab on to something real. You tell no one at work because you have to keep your job and you are ashamed, and over the next 3 months, full of this secret terror, you are becoming incompetent at your job. You are leaking the oil of what it is to be you. Projects start to be given to others, and verbal warnings begin to get issued.

Now. Every lunch-time, you leave your desk and you run to the British Museum. You sit down with a sketchpad to try and draw.  You haven’t drawn in years bit you do it anyway. It is something to do. You reach out to humanity, thousands of years of humanity, someone somewhere has been through what you are experiencing.  It has to be the case.

And in the middle of the night, when the museum is shut, and you are in the dark and your wife is asleep and you are terrified of everything. What do you do? What do you do with the rage of incomprehension? You reach out. You reach for your phone. Your face glows. You are a terrified 38 year-old glow dad. And you look at forum after forum trying to find a story of someone else who has been through what you have been through and survived.  You doubt you can survive this for much longer.

Then one night, I clicked on was an interview with this man.

You might remember his face. His name is Police Constable David Rathband and at 11pm on the 3rd of July 2010 he was parked on a drop kerb at a roundabout on on the outskirts of Newcastle. He parked there because he was on the look out for this man.

He has been released from Prison two days and was convinced that his girlfriend, who he’ broken up with in Prison, was going out with a Policeman.

The two men had met once before. But on this night Raoul doesn’t know that. Moat crawls on his hands and knees until he is at the door of PC Rathband’s police car. He stands up. Taps on the glass, and shoots David twice in the face, the force of the blast forces him into the footwell of his car.  David describes the noise as an axel grinder, turning on his in head. He thinks he is dead. Suddenly in his mind’s eye he sees his son. He reaches out to him. From somewhere he gets the strength to click on his police radio and say he has been shot.

This portrait of David was taken a year after the shooting. It is a face of someone who has been through numerous operations to be where he is. You can see fragments of gunshot still coming out.  Everyone of them like a daily bee sting.

The photographer, Justin Sutcliffe who took this portrait, told me that the eyes that David is pointing to are brand new. Made of medical grade plastic acrylic.  They are like a babies eyes. That is why the portrait is so striking. He is getting used to every aspect of being blind.

When I first clicked on the link, I didn’t know any of this. This is what I heard.