In the main the older you get the more likely it is that you’re going to need medical intervention. When you get to my advanced years it can feel that life revolves completely around your next trip to the doctor’s or to the hospital. I’ve had a reasonable share of medical procedures over the years but nothing like what started to happen as 2021 drew to a close.

In my quest to be a musician one thing I could rely on was my voice. I may not be a good musician but I’ve always been able to sing. OK, so I wouldn’t pass the audition to join the Three Tenors but I could hold a tune. That started to change around October/November 2021. I developed a cough. A persistent, nagging cough that would occasionally erupt into a coughing fit. The result was that every time I opened my mouth to sing I was more likely to burst into a cough than hit a note.

I could go for hours without any problems or go for hours just coughing. There was no rhyme or reason to it, it didn’t matter where I was or what I was doing, there was no consistency to what triggered a coughing bout. But singing became all but impossible. Not only was I likely to dissolve into a coughing spree but my throat was shot to ribbons by the constant coughing. I sounded like Tom Waits on a bad day, a very bad day.

Plus, I didn’t feel like recording anything when I’d spent the day having one coughing fit after another. It was miserable. I went to the doctor’s and she prescribed various things that didn’t work at all and then decided the only thing was to start seeing consultants. I use the plural term because once I started with one it quickly became two, then three then four.

All of them asked the same questions, nodded sagely as I gave my answers, referred to each other’s notes and instigated their own little batch of tests, each time starting with their own version of prodding and poking. They snapped on their plastic gloves and got to work on the various regions of my body. I had x-rays, ultrasound, scans and even the joy of sitting in a sealed box whilst every test that could be done was done.

And the result? Nothing. Not one of them found anything wrong with me. Now that may sound like a good thing but actually as I was still coughing like someone who had smoked 60 day since they were five it wasn’t that reassuring. What I wanted to hear was that they found something that could be easily treated and I would return to normal very quickly. Instead they all pronounced me OK and passed me to another consultant who would gleefully snap on the plastic gloves and start prodding and poking.

In the end I ran out of consultants. My medical journey was at an end. But there was no resolution. I spent the back end of 2021 coughing, the whole of 2022 and 2023 and I’m still coughing today. All the grand recording schemes I had went right out the window. There was no chance I could risk performing live, no-one wants to see someone coughing instead of singing.

To be fair it’s not as bad as it was but I’m still as likely to start coughing as not. So my recording has had to fit around whether or not it was physically possible to sing and I’ve learnt to live with it. But when I listen to the songs that made up my second album, Collateral, I can hear the effects of all that coughing in the vocals. And I still have no idea what caused it or what I can do to stop it.