During my trip to USA back in twenty-eighteen there was an online raffle going on here in the UK. This was on Twitter. Not many of you will remember who won the book I was busy speaking about. Why would you, I didn’t know him either. We did have a couple of mutual friends over on Twitter but that was it. If you knew me back in twenty-eighteen and were behind me voting and cheering me on you will of course know that book would have been BROKEN. He didn’t even keep it.

Unbeknown to me there was a price I’d pay for the kindness of giving. A price I still pay today. 

That doesn’t change me—I still keep giving.

The man who won my book while I was away in America received his congratulations from me, for I was bought up to have good manners. I took time out of my busy schedule while away to do this. As an author he sought some help with a letter or two from me also. That was no issue as I was happy to help.

Resulting from all this I ended up blocking over thirty social media accounts in his name on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. When that didn’t work, he joined LinkedIn. He pretended to die then came back to life via e-mail a few times.  Not sure what he thought that would achieve... the bloke has had more lives than a cat! 

Again, I’m not sure what the family (or he) wants but as a behaviourist I have this underlying feeling that it will end in blackmail. He/they now email pretending to be/or is the son. So here it is out here in the open, what he put me though on social media. Sometimes openly “trolling” me that I deleted before blocking him.

Father or son (or indeed his wife). They must be proud...and folk wonder why I keep my children private.

I don’t stand for this. Nobody gets to pull me down again.

Savage knife attacks happen far too often and the death rate from such events is far too high. When you hear that someone has survived it gives you a lift—a victory over crime—something to celebrate!

Then you read just how long it can take to recover, that perhaps after twenty years recovery is still on going and you begin to realise the extreme effects of survival. This is Darren Barden’s reality. This is Darren’s story—its two years since Darren published his book, so in reality we’re talking twenty-four years since this near fatal attack.

Let's Skip To The Good Bits, Darren's book is available on Amazon
CLICK HERE

Delving a little deeper, you come to realise it’s a story of mistaken identity. A senseless attack on someone uninvolved in whatever might have been going on in whatever world he suddenly became mixed up within, when all he actually wanted was to continue with his quiet family life.

That’s unfathomable when you think about it—so we suggest you don’t try to analyse it too much.

Left for dead with his wife and baby boy (who was teething) upstairs, Darren bleeds out in the family home. Somehow, rather than calling out for his wife, Darren manages to phone the police and for an ambulance and then his parents—an act which he duly regretted.

Surviving his wounds turned out to be the easy part!

The battle that commenced against depression and PTSD would grip Darren for the years that followed—they took him to the darkest corners of his psyche and from reading his book his paranoia must have pushed his wife Wendy to her limits, but she turned out to be Darren’s rock.

Their story is also one of love and each time Darren tried to test boundaries Wendy was there to pull him in closer to her. They stood the test of time, they endured what most couples wouldn’t have handled—their love survived. Mercifully.

 Darren and Wendy Barden

Imagine, if you would for a moment (and this is something Donna can relate with all too well) that you experience trauma. There is a lot of action happening around you that perhaps you’re unaware of at the time. Your loved ones are very aware of what is happening, and they witness events you don’t. Darren has, by all accounts, [eventually] recovered well from what he physically went through but still struggles with what his family have experienced. Reading his account in “Lets Skip To The Good Bits” is brutal enough but to listen to him speaking, with a broken voice, during a recent podcast (Conversation with Criminals) talking about Wendy treading through his blood that was seeping through her toes is still too much for him to comprehend; that he phoned his parents and they were there unknowing if he’d survived, still to this day, too much for him—even after twenty-four years.

The moment someone picks up a knife there is intent to cause this much devastation, or death, and the consequences that leaves behind. Donna is glad to know Darren, that he both survived and had the courage to share his story and is now venturing into helping others. January (Covid-19 dependent) sees the beginning of a new venture and the start of filming of his own podcast, The Barber Chair, where Darren will interview inspirational people, also with a story to share.

Darren sitting in The Barber's Chair, the setting for his Podcast
YouTube LINK HERE