My Lung Tried To Do A Runner (Typical)

So picture this: I’ve had an absolute stinker of a session — the sort where you think, “Right, that’s me done, send the bin lorry, tip me in.” Next thing I know, I’m in hospital. Not for a cheeky overnight, not for a “let’s stick you on a drip and see how you feel in the morning.” No. I’m there for about a month.

When I finally come round enough to be parked on a normal ward with the other plebs, in wanders this doctor. Fresh shirt, hair all neat, looking like someone who’s never once had to leg it for the last train home from East Croydon. He goes, “Right, we’ve got some good news and some bad news.”

Already I’m thinking: fantastic. Here we go.

“The bad news is your lung collapsed,” he says.

Then he stops, tilts his head, and goes, “Actually no, that’s the good news.”

At this point I’m thinking this man has completely lost the plot.

Then he says, dead casual: “The bad news is we need to operate now. And you’ll need to be awake while we do it.”

Awake. While they open up my lung. Like I’m popping into Superdrug for hair dye.

I’m lying there thinking, mate, I’ve been through Croydon town centre at midnight, but this is pushing it.

Anyway, they get cracking — literally — and the moment they open the lung, it forces you to breathe in the wrong direction. And by “wrong direction,” I mean every single cell in your body immediately starts screaming, NOPE. It’s like trying to reverse down a one-way street while a bus is coming at you and the bus is on fire and also you’re on fire.

Afterwards, they leave some bit of medical kit in there to keep the lung propped open, basically like wedging a brick under a dodgy fire door. And I’m just lying there feeling like the world’s saddest inflatable mattress.

Cut to years later. I’m at home drawing these weird, organic, squiggly shapes — proper odd little things. Didn’t think much of it. Then Kevin's mate looks over and goes, “ these are lungs.”

And suddenly it clicks. My subconscious is clearly still dealing with the fact that one of my organs tried to leggit like it was sneaking out of a club to avoid paying for coat check.

So now whenever I look at these drawings — all soft lines and branching bits — I think, yeah. That’s my little runaway lung. Still haunting me. Still doing the absolute most.

But at least my art now has a theme: “The internal organs I have beef with.”