This is an AI transcription, apologies for any typos.

[00:00:00] David: We were going fast. There wouldn't have been time or whatever to look at the Speedo. It was, it was stressful riding, and I was aware of that from the, from the outside. I wasn't comfortable.

[00:00:12] Alex: Welcome to Stories of Men Beneath the Surface. I'm Alex Milia. Join me as we discover what it means to be a man in the modern era.

You could tell a lot by a gut feeling and other times in life we just put mistakes down. To bad luck, David was exploring the world and thriving in the literal, fast-paced world of multi sports journalism, running a magazine and living the dream. But as with all good things, sadly they come to an end and life sometimes has a way of knocking us off course.

[00:00:54] David: I was in, what was then my second proper job out of university. You know, I had nowhere near an enough experience where they, they immediately. Uh, made me editor of this brand new magazine called Quad Magazine. Um, all about yeah, ATVs, um, all terrain vehicles cuz we were the only ATV magazine uh, in the uk.

We got all the, all the invites from the manufacturers and we could access whatever quad bikes we wanted to ride. Bombardi is a massive automotive company from Canada, but they were just launching this new range of, of quad bikes. And I said, yeah, okay, we're gonna fly you out to Quebec, up to the Outback accepted.

And uh, off I went, you know, to Canada.

The first day of the launch, we got to this heathland area. It wasn't, it wasn't dense forest, it was like, uh, just this huge expanse of, of land really, like you probably don't, you know, really see it in England. And yeah, there were just these rows and rows of these immaculate brand new. Quad bikes. We went on this long ride.

This was trekking and it was led, we were led through these incredibly beautiful forest trails. We were going fast. There wouldn't have been time or whatever to look at the speedo. It was, it was stressful riding, and I was aware of that from the, from the outside. I wasn't comfortable. And the main reason was the, it had, it was a very, very hot dry summer in Canada, so there was so much dust created by the quads cuz there's dozens and dozens of quads hammering around and the plumes of dust, like just incredible amounts of dust.

So it was like there was this brown fog, but the only thing I could see were the other riders. I was fixating on the other riders ahead of me, but at the same time aware that that is not a safe way to ride. You can't just try and follow by fixating on a target of another rider in front of you. You know, you really need to know what else is around you in your immediate vicinity.

So yeah, I was, I was determined, as I say, to keep up with this other small group aware all the time that I really could not see well enough. To ride safely at the speeds we were doing and just suddenly, I, like, I hadn't, hadn't seen anything in the lead up to this. My bike stops dead and before I know it, I'm cartwheeled over and to this bridge.

I realize I'm on a bridge. I'm, I'm clear of the bike. Fortunately, I'm, I'm spread eagled on this bridge and I'd hit full on impact into the side of the bridge.

[00:03:41] Alex: But obviously you survived. So what happened next?

[00:03:43] David: Even though I'd hit it at some speed, I'd just somehow come clear of the quad. I didn't get tangled up with the quad at all. I didn't hit the bars. Somehow as I came off it, I just skidded across the bridge. If I'd hit at a slightly different angle, I'd suddenly realized I'd have gone down this.

Steep, incredibly steep drop into this creek, and I would've definitely been seriously hurt if not killed

[00:04:13] Alex: after the ride had finished. David, what was your, what was going through your mind, or you know, about the fact that you were struggling to see certain things and you had this humiliation, you had this, this fear, the, the pit in the stomach feeling that you mentioned, and after the crash, obviously what

[00:04:30] David: happened then?

Yeah, I mean fortunately everyone in terms of the, uh, Bombardier staff were really nice about what happened, even though I totaled one of their quads. It was evident there, this big budget company, and they were just like, this happens, you know, we expect this to happen. They, you know, we've budgeted for this.

Don't worry about it. Your magazine's not gonna be billed for the, the broken quad. At the same time admitting it was a write off. But yeah, so everyone was really nice about it. I still felt. I felt pretty gutted, you know, that, you know, I looked like an idiot. And that was, that was at least the fear, uh, from having this inexplicable.

What must have looked, looked to other people like a bit of an inexplicable crash? Um, I didn't really dwell on it, I don't think like, At the time, I guess I, I thought you can't really afford to, so much else was going on. You were being taken from one bit of this launch to the next, but I did certainly felt like an idiot for what had happened.

And yet, luckily there was the positive part of the, you know, the trail ride and the stuff that I'd managed to reassure myself that I could ride one of these things. And I didn't analyze it too much. I, I, I still didn't think that the crash had happened because of a problem. With my vision and I probably should have done in hindsight, but at that point it was just unexplained.

[00:05:50] Alex: So you kind of just going about your life without actually knowing anything's wrong with

[00:05:54] David: you at that point. Well, to caveat that slightly, I knew that I had rubbish night vision, but I had always had rubbish night vision. Like from as young and age as I can remember, I'd always struggled. More than other people after dark.

So it didn't need to be completely dark. And I was, you know, for all intents and purposes, completely blind. I used to really love fishing as a, as a kid, and I remember like I would, I fell into a ditch one, like carrying all my fishing stuff and I just walked straight into this ditch. At the time I thought, well, you know, it was dark.

These, these things happen. It was evident that I was different from other people in that. Sense, but at the same time, I just thought some people see better after dark than other people. So I hadn't dwelled on that very much, to be honest. I hadn't thought this means I've got a problem with my, with my eyes and nor had any of the adults, you know, nor had my mum or my dad.

No one, no one had ever raised the question that not being able to see very well after dark could signal a serious, uh, vision problem, which is how it turned out. It seems to

[00:06:58] Alex: me that you had some kind of imposter syndrome for the fact that you were a brand new. Rider to the industry and also you, you kind of described yourself as kind of more of an an amateur quad bike rider.

How did the feelings or your perceptions about yourself change after that incident in Canada, after that whole

[00:07:17] David: trip, I suppose. I think what I felt was a hangover from having a dad, and this is, you know, this is not particularly unique, an old fashioned dad who you can never do anything well enough for.

And the main reason I'd got into motorbikes, although I didn't analyze this at the time, was because my dad was into motorbikes and I'm sure somewhere in my unconscious, I, I wanted to impress him. I wanted to be a decent. Motorbike rider and you know, if I could combine my skills as writing, you know, I did English at university skills that he didn't have.

You know, he wasn't educated. So if I could combine these skills that I've learned through education, he didn't believe in education, but. He was still impressed by it. You know, it was one thing he did respect. Um, and I thought if I could put together the skills I'd, I'd picked up with riding bikes and I, you know, maybe finally I get his approval for something.

So certainly all of that in the background.

[00:08:15] Alex: Yeah, for sure. And is is interesting because if you'd not had this sort of feeling of wanting to impress your dad, where would your life have gone? Would it have gone in a completely different direction?

[00:08:25] David: Yeah, I've thought about that. I have thought about that at times, and I do.

I mean, it's stupid. You can't, there's no point having regrets. But I do think if I'd lived a life. Truer to me from a younger age. And again, I'm not reluctant to do this cuz it's sort of beating yourself up, isn't it? But if I'd, I don't know, like if I'd just taken a different path with journalism or with writing from an earlier point.

But yeah, as I say, if everyone was able to stop and reflect, I'm sure we could probably all highlight. Such things. Yeah.

[00:09:00] Alex: It's fascinating to me how your formative experiences can really shape who you are, because I remember my stepdad from the age of about six or seven introduced me to Bruce Lee movies, so I became obsessed with Bruce Lee.

Then I started to learn about Hong Hong Kong. Then I went to Hong Kong to actually do a teaching program for a year. Then I stayed there for a few more years and I started a, an online English teaching business. So I'm thinking. That's been, that's probably been about 12, 13 years of my life that I had, well, seven years on and off in Hong Kong, and then the, the online teaching business, so on and so forth.

You think, wow, if my dad had not introduced me to Bruce Lee movies, which kind of direction would my life have gone in? Now,

[00:09:44] David: I do think that as guys, it's drummed into us that we have to define ourselves through what we do too much. A, and my dad was certainly that like, and his thing was, work your worth, your virtue is working hard.

He took that to the point of insanity. He would, he never took a day off. He was a grave digger and most of the graves were dug by hand during his career, if you can call it a career. And he just never missed a day. And he would, he would work with crippling back pain. He would work with the flu, anything, and.

He died quite young and I think partly because he just, he literally just really worked himself way too hard.

[00:10:26] Alex: Is it something that you've taken on from your dad if you've got some kind of illness or something you just think, you know, I have to work through it? Or have you kind of learned from, I suppose the mistakes that he made?

[00:10:37] David: I think I've learned a bit, like, I've learned that that's crazy just to, to work when you know that your body's telling you not to. But I've certainly made mistakes of a similar. Kind or driven by the same kinds of motivations. And one of the things I'd put into that category is, The way that I got into long distance running after diagnosis, when I look back on it, I kind of have criticisms of myself for how I went about it.

I did become obsessive and it meant too much to me. I was so eager to define myself. Through athletic endeavor then, um, and I think that was to do with, right, okay, my retinas are dying off and there's absolutely nothing I can do about it. But right now I can see well enough to run and I can just run and run and run and run and I can prove to myself that the rest of my body is working.

Absolutely perfectly. I think I was quite selfish through a lot of that time. I was very self-absorbed before flying out to Germany, cause I was gonna do the Berlin Marathon. I felt this cold coming and I thought, that's it. All these weeks and weeks of training and gonna come to nothing. And I remember just in front of my mum just broke down.

It

[00:11:52] Alex: is devastating, isn't it? When you've worked so hard for something and it comes down to one day and you think you can't actually go through with this. It

[00:12:00] David: is, but you know, I think there's more to it than that really. I think, you know, although I ended up running the race and doing the better than I imagined, I would maybe that, maybe it was psychosomatic, even thinking I had a cold, but it didn't come to anything.

[00:12:13] Alex: It's really interesting you're talking about this because there's a, a book I read quite a long time ago called Masks of Masculinity by a guy called Lewis Howes, and he talks about. I think there's about maybe eight or nine masks that men use to show that they are a masculine guy or show what kind of man they are.

And one of them is the ath athlete mask or the athletic mask. And if you, you're trying to compensate for certain things in your life by. Absolutely smashing it with whatever physical pursuit you're trying to do, whether it's going to the gym in your case, whether it's, you know, uh, running marathon, running ultra marathon, running, cycling.

And it's this, I'm going to, I'm going to put my body through hell so that I can be more of a man, but it actually. In a lot of cases it can be detrimental and I mean, I, I did the Hong Kong marathon in 2000 and I think it was 2011. I couldn't, couldn't walk for about five or six weeks and I was working at a school at that point.

I had to walk six flights up, up the stairs. To pick up the kids and then walk all the way down again. I was just hobbling like a, like a 80 odd year old man, you know, with a walking stick and it was just, I put my body through hell for 16 weeks training for that.

[00:13:29] David: Totally, totally. I love what you, you, you said about the.

The sense of, of wearing a mask. I mean, I, I just read recently read, um, one of Belle Hook's books and it was incredible. And that's one of the lines in, in that, I wrote it down actually before this interview. She's the first rule of, of patriarchal masculinity is you have to wear a mask at all times. Um, and it's even contained in the word the mask and masculinity, uh, which I never really thought about before, but you're so right.

You're so, like, I. That's exactly how I was. I'm sure that athleticism, the, the run a mask was absolutely what I was doing in hindsight. Again, it's complicated though, isn't it, Alex? Because I don't regret that. So I'm like, the, the immersion in the marathon project is so seductive. There's something about that just like having that plan mapped out in front of you, knowing what you're gonna.

Eat afterwards. Know exactly what you're gonna do in that session. Like put, like that military planning. There's something so brilliant, just so absorbing about doing that. But it is double-edged. There is a risk to that of just, just over committing to it and, and forgetting that there must, there has to be much more to life than proving yourself through that kind of project.

[00:14:48] Alex: Seductive is definitely a good word to describe the marathon running, however I say that, but on the other side, I didn't actually do a marathon again. That was the one and only marathon I ever did, so perhaps it wasn't as seductive as I initially thought it was. I think maybe the six weeks of not been able to walk very well, kind of put me off

[00:15:07] David: the same for you.

I tried to, I was, I think, uh, the next year or the year after, I was still running reasonably well and I, I was determined. I ran two hours, 28 in that Berlin Marathon, and I thought, oh, you know, this is probably close to my limit. But if I, if I just train a bit more, if I do a hundred miles a week in the lead up, maybe I can take a couple of minutes off it.

Two

[00:15:32] Alex: hours. 28 is insane. Uh, I got 3 37 and I was. Pretty happy with that, you know, to get under four hours. People said you've done well to get under three hours, but to do 2 28, man, that's incredible. I wanted to ask you, when you said about the, you, you gave this really good quote before about the the patriarchal mask.

Do you felt like you always wore this mask in front of your

[00:15:56] David: father? I don't think I even wore a mask in front of my father. I think I tried to. Disappear into the, into the walls. Any attention that was gonna come from my father, I think I worked out 10 years old, say, was going to be negative, or at least that's how I began to think about it and anticipate it.

And so I didn't speak, didn't really speak to him, and he didn't really speak to me and I was just afraid of him. That really, that's the only emotion I associate with my dad, was feeling afraid. The, the flip side of this is that this was not him deliberately trying to be cruel. He, his father, and, you know, it is taken me a long time to properly come to terms with this, but I know that his father was, had he lived in more enlightened times, been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, I think.

But back then they called it manic depression cuz he had electroconvulsive therapy on his, on him, and, uh, which my dad did once reveal. He very, very rarely spoke about his own father. Apart from, to sort of make occasional bitter complaints about how hard his upbringing was and how we didn't understand how lucky we were.

So his father literally didn't speak to him at all for many years. Um, And was abusive to their mother. And so I do realize, and you know, obviously something I've thought more about in, in the years since my dad passed away is, you know, he, what he went through with his father was properly traumatic and he, he never recovered from that.

And he certainly, it left him unable to be a father in any kind of emotional way. So

[00:17:40] Alex: it's, it seems like he did the best with what he had available to him. The tools he had at his disposable because we can't change our parents and however much we would like to the experiences he went through with a distant, emotionally vacant father himself.

Didn't really leave him with much, many tools or much preparation in how to deal with you and your

[00:18:01] David: brother. Totally. And I think the other thing is like he was born in 1945 and things have changed a lot since he, he was old fashioned even for his day. And I think fathers then, so you know, I was born in 82, my brother was born in 79, but he was harking back to like, almost like he was like a Victorian father being a father.

What did it mean? It just meant you inseminated a woman and a child was born and at some point, you know, you might. Brag about what they'd done or something. There was no active and certainly no emotional involvement. And that was certainly his mindset. He, there was no nurturing role whatsoever. If there was a role, it was to make sure we were tough enough to survive.

Um, but again, even, even that was, you know, done in a, in a very unhelpful kind of way.

[00:18:54] Alex: Talk about your dad kind of making you tough enough to survive. I mean, whether it's him or whether it's just inbuilt within you to be able to do two hours, 28 to be able to do a hundred miles a week is an incredible achievement that the majority of the population would never be able to achieve.

So maybe there is something in, maybe you did get some elements from him and maybe there's some elements of this was already

within

[00:19:22] David: you. Oh, totally. I mean, I, you know, when, when a father is a very dominant personality, you become aware as you grow older, that you've, you have inherited certain traits, like even physical, like look in the mirror and I, I, you know, I'm not totally dissimilar from him, but yeah, personality traits as well, that sort of bloody mindedness.

I've certainly got elements of that. You know, he was someone who. Yeah, he could hold terrible grudges if you did him wrong, did him wrong once, and that was it. You know, he'd cut people out and I'm not like that, but I'm aware of, uh, a latent potential to be like that if I'm not careful, if I don't keep an eye on it.

[00:20:01] Alex: So it seems like your, your dad, and, and same for you, have a lot of integrity. You know, you don't deviate from the way that you see life to people Please. Or, or whatever it is really. And one, one thing I was gonna say, David, is. This probably leads us on to telling us more about your diagnosis when you got back to the UK from Canada, and also your dad's response to that diagnosis as well.

[00:20:27] David: Yeah, so I, I don't remember exactly what motivated me to seek investigations on my eyes. There is one event that happened, which I, I think, may, may have been the spark that caused me to, to question it. Not that long after coming back from the Quad bike launch. Various things went wrong with the, with the Quad Magazine.

Um, you know, not. Completely unexpectedly gi given how the mag had been set up with this inexperienced editor. I'm not taking, I'm not taking the blame for the demise of the magazine. But anyway, I ended up seeking, uh, a new job and um, I thought, well, I'd much rather be on two world motorbikes. And writing about them.

So I wrote to Superbike magazine cuz they were based in Croydon at the time, which wasn't so far away from where I lived down in Sussex. I knew it was like a commutable distance. They invited me up for, uh, an interview and offered me a job. Like not, not an advertised job. They just met me and thought, oh yeah, this guy's got motorcycling experience.

And they, they were looking for a staff writer. So it felt almost like, like landing my dream job, even though it wasn't quite how it, it turned out. But, um, this, this is the closest I actually ended up getting to my dad was that when motorcycling became like an interest that we could share in together, um, a couple of times we did, um, track days together.

Uh, one of them was. Well, it was a trip, it was a small trip with three track days. I think like you, you'd have two overnight stays. And so my dad came along on, on this trip and we did the, this series of, uh, it was two or three track days. And I remember, I think on the first night we were, we were in the bar after the, after the track days and um, I knocked over a bastard.

I was just walking back to where everyone was sitting and inexplicably knocked over a. A bar stool just ran into it with my, with my knee. And yeah, I think for the first time I thought, Hmm, that's a bit weird. Maybe I could just like see on everyone else's face. It was a bit beyond clumsiness and I, you know, I, I'd not had a drink yet.

This was the first drink we were about to have. And at that, that planted the seed, right? Mm. Next time I go to the optician, I'm gonna mention that I struggle. I really struggle when it's in dark or dim light. And so that's what I did. The next I'D routine, just a routine Specsavers opticians appointment.

But I, so I said to the optician, by the way, I really, I struggle at night or in dim light. And all credit to the optician cuz she, and I've heard countless other cases where it's sort of dismissed when someone raises the fact they don't see well after dark. But the optician was very thorough and said, okay, well right here and now we've got a, a, a peripheral field test machine just in the next room.

And the peripheral fields test machine for people who've not. Used one, you sit, uh, with your chin resting on the, on the edge of, of a, of a box. Uh, you look inside the box and you focus on a central illuminated dot, and then randomly, small lights will come flash on and off in your peripheral. Field. So at any other point within the box, they put a clicker in your hand and each time you see a light, you're meant to click it with your thumb.

Now, I don't know how well people with normal vision score in these tests, but I assume they probably get a hundred percent or close to, and during the test you'll see many, many, many flashes. I, again, assuming, because I sat there and saw none, I saw the central light, which stayed on. And no other flashes.

The clicker in my hand went un troubled, and so the test came to an end. The machine went buzz or whatever it does at the end of the test, and the optician came over and said, Hmm, you may have a problem. And you could just, I could just tell instantly from the, the tone that something, this was something serious.

This was not a routine, this was not some common site. Issue. She wouldn't be drawn on what it might be. She said, you, you probably have to see a consultant, but there may be an issue here. And obviously as soon as I went away and and Googled what peripheral vision problem means, it takes you straight to retinitis pigmentosa, which is the most common cause of sight loss among working age people in the west.

It's rare, but it's not. Massively rare. So about one in 3000 people, uh, have rp. And so I was kind of knew at that point and this was probably what I was gonna end up being diagnosed with, and that was ultimately the case.

[00:25:32] Alex: And can you tell us what your father's reaction was to

[00:25:35] David: it? I don't think I had a discussion about it with my dad probably at any point.

I told my mom, obviously immediately she would've told my dad and I remember her. Saying that he'd not really responded, like he'd not seemed to have much to say, but it, it became evident within a few days that he wasn't willing to accept the reality of this. So I remember one time in on, in the lounge, we were sitting at the lounge, my dad, in his normal kingly position, lying flat on the sofa as he did after work.

And my mum said she started to, she raised the, the fact that I was going to be shortly gonna be diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa. I was losing my sight. I might eventually go blind. And my dad just said, I, I don't think there's anything wrong with him. Probably he went back to reading his paper or watching the news or whatever he was up to, but it was clear that he wasn't, wouldn't, or couldn't engage with the fact that his son.

Had been diagnosed with a degenerative eyesight condition. It was, it was not something that was gonna break through to him.

[00:26:46] Alex: So David, I know you do your own podcast. Can you tell us a little bit more about

[00:26:49] David: it? Yeah. I started my own podcast recently. It's called The Ways of Not Seeing Podcasts. So it is conversations about life with sight loss and after sight loss, talking to people predominantly directly affected, but also just.

Experts in the field such as researchers, anyone with a very strong interest or expertise in sight loss,

[00:27:14] Alex: it must be an incredibly difficult thing to have to come to terms with when you realize you have sight loss and you have rp. Especially as he experienced good eyesight as a child. David wants to do as much as he possibly can before his eyesight deteriorates further. It's almost his keyhole closing in feeling where David is trying to grasp as much as he can of the world before it closes forever.

I heard a story about a photographer called Ian Reon who has RP and he's known as the blind photographer. His mission once he became diagnosed with RP was to capture as much of the world as he possibly could. Before he totally lost his vision. He used his diagnosis as fuel, and David is very much the same.

It must have been challenging for David to not only come to terms with the diagnosis of RP that he had, but also the fact that his role model his father. Was not willing to come to terms with this new condition and this new reality. A lot of fathers want to right the wrongs of their own fathers. Of course, we all want to give our kids a better life than what we feel we had.

It's like, for example, when I was a kid, my mother said to me that when she was a child, She was restricted from freedom. She wasn't given the space to be who she wanted to be, and so she always said, she always promised to herself that she would give my siblings and I all the freedom that we needed to be whoever we wanted to be in life.

And I always, always felt grateful for that. What does a good male role model look like in your life? How can we ensure that going forward we support our kids and the people who look up to us to be whoever they want to be in life.