Mystery Creek is a Field Day site and in the late seventies, while I was working there we hosted two big events. The first was an agricultural field day – where we rode around on tractors, got shouted a whole lot of beer and got to meet John Hore Grenell.

The second one was a transport field day and I don’t remember it at all. I fell off the back of a tractor apparently and still have a 24-hour memory blank over what happened that day – they told me that I went into some kind of fit.

It happened again so I went to my doctor who told me I had a scarring to the brain and that it can cause grand mal epileptic seizures.

I stopped driving at this point – he put me on a course of Dilantin and warned me to stop drinking.

I stopped drinking at this point but couldn’t swallow that medication – it dulled me down and messed with my gums so I continued to have these episodes.

At first they would come out of nowhere and my mind would just suddenly split into two different places that didn’t even know that my body was thrashing around on the ground. Then I got to sense them coming on – but not always. Sometimes I’d just come to with people standing over me looking horrified.

In a superette on Courtney Place in 1980 I had a bad one and knocked down some shelves and I resurfaced to anger and hostility. I wrote a song about it that we would perform as Negative Theatre – Panic in the Supermarket…

Who’s that there behind you?

They probably think you’re drunk or something

Panic in the supermarket

Everything’s knocked down

We were playing at a girl’s college with the other Art Centre performers – clowns and magicians, a fire-eater and dancers. When we had finished our set and I got backstage I went into a major seizure. People rallied round and when I became cognisant someone handed me a cup of what we thought was water. As soon as I took a slurp I knew it was the fire-eater’s kerosene – that had to be the worst time.

Who’s that fellow what’s he doing?

Lying on the lino shaking

Where’s his friend he must have one?

He can’t do that here

They began to happen less and less and by my mid-twenties had stopped altogether – I got off really lightly. I had good friends around me and strangers could be very kind too so I didn’t suffer too much stigma or physical damage.

Everything’s knocked down

When they happened they happened by storm and just blitzed everything…

He can’t do that here

It’s like the mind just goes off the planet and the body twists away – needing it to come back.

You better look away now

I hope they never come back.