Apparently it looked like I was dreaming that I was running - like an idiot dog - sprinting my little heart out against Usain and Linford and Kriss Kezie Uche Chukwu Duru, arms and legs pumping like an express train, but going nowhere. Travelling only slightly slower than I do when awake and on a football pitch.
Helen has since told me that she'd given me a quick nudge to wake me, then, realising I wasn't going to stir that easily, turned the bedside lamp on.
And there I was, like a three-year-old pretending to be a choo-choo train, punching and kicking, drooling and murmuring, biting and struggling. A mixture of dribble and blood from where I'd bitten my tongue nearly clean off was making its way down my cheek and chin. My eyes rolled back into my head like two bloodshot cue balls.
I can only imagine how attractive I must have looked. Helen must have wondered whether to call an ambulance or strip off. On reflection, I think she showed an incredible amount of self-restraint.
Twenty minutes later I'd stopped convulsing and was lying unaware of what had happened, or indeed what was happening, with the impressively responsive ambulance crew preparing to lift me from our trampled bed.
At this point, apparently, they were asking me questions such as if I knew who I was, where I was - and who Helen was. Scarily, I only knew the answer to the first two. Helen's heart sank.
I was walked like an injured left-back from the bedroom to the front door before I was properly aware that something odd was going on. I don't quite remember it - my famous masculinity remaining unfettered in my own head - but apparently, like a child at playschool, I simply refused to go anywhere without Helen holding my hand.
Helen has described this agonising period of time to me many times. I can't quite imagine it. But until that second, she had thought that I had suffered some kind of mental breakdown as a result of a (now unimaginable) weekend's over consumption of Guinness and green.
This is the moment in time that I find myself returning to when I'm forced to think about how this whole escapade has affected my life. A moment when I was there but not present, awake but unaware, alive but dead.
It is what I think of when people speak about the true importance of memories. We're nothing without them, and, for just a moment, I had nothing.
In the weeks, days and hours before my operation, which I'd been told could remove the tumour but affect my memory further, this was the thought that kept returning to me - what am I risking here?
Am I making the right decision?
What's worse? A hole in my head or a hole in my past?
Helen has since told me that she'd given me a quick nudge to wake me, then, realising I wasn't going to stir that easily, turned the bedside lamp on.
And there I was, like a three-year-old pretending to be a choo-choo train, punching and kicking, drooling and murmuring, biting and struggling. A mixture of dribble and blood from where I'd bitten my tongue nearly clean off was making its way down my cheek and chin. My eyes rolled back into my head like two bloodshot cue balls.
I can only imagine how attractive I must have looked. Helen must have wondered whether to call an ambulance or strip off. On reflection, I think she showed an incredible amount of self-restraint.
Twenty minutes later I'd stopped convulsing and was lying unaware of what had happened, or indeed what was happening, with the impressively responsive ambulance crew preparing to lift me from our trampled bed.
At this point, apparently, they were asking me questions such as if I knew who I was, where I was - and who Helen was. Scarily, I only knew the answer to the first two. Helen's heart sank.
I was walked like an injured left-back from the bedroom to the front door before I was properly aware that something odd was going on. I don't quite remember it - my famous masculinity remaining unfettered in my own head - but apparently, like a child at playschool, I simply refused to go anywhere without Helen holding my hand.
Helen has described this agonising period of time to me many times. I can't quite imagine it. But until that second, she had thought that I had suffered some kind of mental breakdown as a result of a (now unimaginable) weekend's over consumption of Guinness and green.
This is the moment in time that I find myself returning to when I'm forced to think about how this whole escapade has affected my life. A moment when I was there but not present, awake but unaware, alive but dead.
It is what I think of when people speak about the true importance of memories. We're nothing without them, and, for just a moment, I had nothing.
In the weeks, days and hours before my operation, which I'd been told could remove the tumour but affect my memory further, this was the thought that kept returning to me - what am I risking here?
Am I making the right decision?
What's worse? A hole in my head or a hole in my past?
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