Start here: What's it all about then - this End Of The Line?
A serialised draft of End Of The Line about my journey with Parkinson's disease and to all the end of line stations on the London Tube - with many diversions along the way.
Beginnings are hard but endings can be harder
In 2019 I was diagnosed with a terminal illness - which a year later seemed a reason to write a book about journeys to all the end of the line Tube stations. The draft is chronological and includes lots about my developing symptoms and much else besides the journeys themselves.
By spring 2023 I was running out of steam on the whole project (typical). Putting what I written so far up on Substack in serial form I hope will give me some extra energy. (And of course is an excellent displacement activity).
So far I’ve written very selfishly - putting down whatever I thought was interesting - to hell with you lot. Friends keep telling me I’ve got to think about the reader - and putting this up on Substack in an invitation to you to tell me if it unbearably self-indulgent.
The book started off as sort of flaneurish account of journeys to all the end of line Tube stations and then it took on a meta-ish turn as I started writing about the pain of writing.
At the start I didn’t think this might be of particular interest to people with Parkinson’s or their friends, family, practitioners etc. But as the disease has progressed (and I’ve become more self-obsessed) it has dawned on me that perhaps my account of some of the intimate (and sometimes gross) minutiae of my symptoms might be of special interest to the Parkinson’s tribe.
Why you might want to subscribe
I’ve written about 75,000 words and I reckon that will generated around 80 posts. So my plan is to publish a new part every week on Saturday morning at 7am GMT/BST.
I chose Saturday mornings to publish as this is when new episodes of the recently launched and very wonderful Movers & Shakers Living With Parkinson’s podcast are released (see below) so you can get a double whammy of PD content.