The Roman Empire covered a fair chunk of the known world. Often hot, sunny places, well they did like a glass of wine and the occasional olive. But for some reason they headed over here as well, to the British Isles. A land not really known for its vineyards and Sun. But they persevered and probably started to invent things like scarfs, fleece tops, thermal underwear, woolly hats and Gortex jackets . At one stage our local city became the unofficial capital of the Empire as Constantine was proclaimed Emperor here. But as they edged further north the penny must have started to drop. What were we thinking of. Eventually they hit Northumberland and decided sod this for a lark. A giant wall was built across the country to mark the official northern boundary of the empire. The rest of Northern England and Scotland deemed too cold, too wet, with too many hooligans and way too many bagpipes to bother with.
Ok my O-Level History might be a tad rusty and unreliable these days….
A few days back we headed towards the edge of the old empire. To the nearly 2000 year old ruins of a huge Roman fort and town.
Then on to Hadrians Wall.
Once 6m tall and heavily defended. With the remoteness, the grim weather, you can see why it was the inspiration for The Wall in The Game of Thrones.
Midday, perfectly sums up the Yorkshire weather currently.
In a few months, is it really coming up 9 years…..
The latest Bridget Jones movie got me thinking. Good job we didn’t see Alvin and The Chipmunks, lord knows what I’d be thinking about then. Pest control maybe 😂😂😂
That first morning, waking up and everything had changed. Who am I kidding, no sleep that night. Trying to figure out what words to say to Hawklad. Trying to get my head round the new reality. Even the house seemed changed, very different. We often talked about the house being cramped for 3 but on that morning it seemed cavernous for just two of us. It wasn’t just too much space, it was too quiet. But there was something else. Everywhere I looked I could see objects that now had no purpose.
A cup…
A plate …..
Women’s clothes, coats and shoes….
A pile of 80s pop cds
Romance books….
A toothbrush …..
Study books…..
Makeup….
Perfume….
Hair products…..
Set of car keys….
Set of house keys…
So much more…..
Everywhere I looked there was now redundant items. Items that were never going to be used again, glaring reminders of loss and bereavement. Feeling like I needed to get those items out of the house as soon as possible.
Yes some redundant items found a new life through Charity Shops but other items stayed.
It’s 2025 and there are still items scattered around the house that have no purpose anymore. Untouched in 9 years. But something has changed, redundant items now making perfect sense. Making perfect sense that they are staying exactly where they have been for years. No use, will not be used again but they have a reason to be there. The house wouldn’t feel right if they weren’t there.
After the final online lesson of the day we headed to the cinema, bit of a risk on Valentines Day. Even riskier when the movie is a romantic comedy.
In our defence Captain America was just too full for Hawklad.
This mid afternoon Bridget Jones screening was half full and we were the only males in Screen 3…. As we headed towards our customary front row seats, I couldn’t help notice the amount of wine and champagne bottles that I had assumed had been sneaked in. Even just a small glass of wine there is eye wateringly expensive never mind a bottle. I smiled as I thought back to my childhood. To my seaside towns cinema on the beach. I remember going to watch a dreadful movie called I think ‘ BMX Bandits’ and some nutter managed to sneak a bike into the cinema. Proudly riding round the aisles to distract from the dreadful movie, that kid must have had ginormous pockets to sneak that thing past the ticket collector.
No such wheeled subtractions this time.
We’ve both enjoyed the previous three Jones movies, found them very funny. The latest version is funny but also this time around, sad at times, painfully sad. Anyone who has experienced loss will need at least one hanky. Recently I’ve become way less prone to movie tears, but this one got me.
Sorry no more movie spoilers….
Ok confession time. As I felt the tears roll that I was really conscious of being on the front row. I was reluctant to show signs of weakness for some reason, really daft as I bet I wasn’t the only one. I slid lower and lower into my chair before trying to brush away the tears. What a silly sausage.
With every visit to the optician there seems to be more and more technologically eye tests to complete. Focus on the balloon, look at for the white dots, green and red circles, track the moving line. They seem to change every year, shame the one that fires a jet of air into the eye never gets phased out. ‘Try to keep your eyes open’… try telling that to my eyeballs who clearly remember the last visit and what’s about to hit them. By the time you finally get to read the letter chart, you are definitely as Bruce would sing ‘Blinded by the light’.
‘Can you read the 3rd line’… well I might if you hadn’t covered up my good eye….
But at least I didn’t cheat. Years back, I took mum to get her eyes tested. She was clearly pleased with herself when the optician told her that her prescription hadn’t changed since her last visit. Driving home, mum casually let slip that she memorised the 3rd and 4th lines, as she waited to start the test. “I’ve got a perfectly good pair of glasses already, don’t need to change them…..”
Then the real nightmare starts. ‘You can pick your new frames now…”. Hundreds and hundreds of them. I always crack under the pressure. Randomly poking a couple of frames before grabbing a frame that roughly looks like my current ones. Then the optician assistant asks you to try them on to see if they fit. They never do, I don’t care what you do to them, as soon as I take them home they slide down my nose like a ski jumper picking up speed to fly. Then you get the inevitable sales compliment. This time it was ‘you look very handsome in those’. Clearly someone else needs an eye test……
I guess many parents have probably done this. A Ninja Argument with your partner. Our Individual flaws mean that things like arguments can brew up anywhere, anytime, sadly even when our children are present. What follows next is an argument while desperately trying to hide this from the kids. Trying to portray normality, happy families while having a right ding dong…. Using all the tricks in the book, those looks, silence, sarcasm, sign language, under your breath anger, referring to your partner in the third person….
One of those arguments sticks in my mind even now, even after something like 10 years.
This argument’s fires were stoked in the gift shops of Interlaken, reaching their zenith on the lake boat returning to the hotel. It was one of those arguments that we couldn’t even agree on the length of the conflict. Sat at a boat dining table, I’d moved to let’s park this argument stage. Withering looks, caustic comments and a well placed under table shin kick clearly indicating that feeling wasn’t yet mutual.
Here’s the madness, I can remember the argument yet I have no idea what we were arguing about. Parents with a wonderful son, in a wonderful location, so many adventures to be had and we were consumed on pointless, destructive arguments. No recollection of good moments, just the self inflicted negativity. Apart from the madness the only other thing I can recall from that day was getting seasick. Seasick for the only time in my life. I’ve been on really rough North Sea crossings, NOTHING. Yet on this beautiful, wave free Swiss lake, as the argument finally subsided on both sides, the gentle movement of the boat got to me. Everything was moving and swaying, wow was I feeling nauseous. Even trying to hide this from Hawklad. Stumbling off the boat at our destination and slumping on the nearest bit of dry land grass.
My last memory of that day was one more comment I heard – ‘that’s a little too over dramatic…”. All I wanted was the world to stop spinning. Now I just want to play out those few hours again. Replace negative memories with fun ones. Life can be such a wonderful adventure , if only we let it.
I’m always fascinated by this piece of natural art. It’s a great place to stop for a few moments on my run. Take off my earphones (according to Hawklad I should call them earbuds) and ponder why…
Why have I become so uncool….
Why does a branch suddenly decide to grow upwards after years of heading downwards…. Just maybe I can learn something from this.
Language is so important. More than ever it frames the debate, creates headlines, fills social media channels and sadly can alienate, castigate.
We all have different views on society, on politics. In the UK, to me the last few years has been unremittingly grim. And yes I’m not the only one who thinks that.
Am I pleased there was a change in government last year, YES, maybe the right word is RELIEVED.
Am I pleased with the new government. NO, but to me it’s way less bad than what came before it. A bit of good stuff, some puzzling stuff, some bad stuff.
The BAD stuff includes LANGUAGE. I don’t like the language the government often uses in terms of Mental Health and Disabilities, in terms of the many needing real help. Way too often the language is grim, divisive, and riddled with stereotypes which easily make its way on to the front page of gutter newspapers. It portrays a real insensitivity and a clear lack of understanding on the real issues and problems many face during every day life. What happened to the so called enlightenment that society went through on how it sees Mental Health and Disability.
I completely understand the need to control spending, to ensure it’s targeted where it’s needed. BUT…
The language often being used creates the false impression that most on Mental Health and Disability benefits are intentionally work shy, have a choice to either push through any issues they may face to work or to choose to stay at home, lead a life of leisure paid for by taxpayers. How the rising mental health crisis is just a sign of an increasingly work-shy population, it just can’t be based on real need. How the rising demand for special educational support is more down to pushy parents than actual individual child need. How every pound spent on a child with specific educational needs is in some way depriving the vast majority of pupils much needed new books or teaching opportunities. That those benefits that are essential to so many people are in some way an extravagance, a waste of resources, unfair on hard working taxpayers.
This language then fuels so much which is wrong in our modern world. False information, bullying, victimisation, mistrust, division and hatred.
Is it really 2025, is this really positive change and new hope….
I always wanted to stay a night here. Maybe one day. Almost touching distance of The Eiger, the famous mighty Swiss mountain.
The winter months, the inhospitable weather, deserted paths and seasonally closed cafes. This time of year always makes me more reflective, some would say EVEN more reflective.
I’ve been thinking about parenting, specifically before our family world changed and I fumbled my way into single parenting. With parenting you sometimes get things right, sometimes get things wrong and sometimes you kinda just drift about on the tides of life. Given that there is no parenting blueprint to follow and the propensity of our little raptors to transform the seemingly straightforward into sleepless, stress filled angst maelstroms, we can forgive ourselves for not always being perfect. As a couple we were very different with very different takes on how to bring a child up. Sometimes we agreed, more often we negotiated (possibly argued) our way to compromises. And YES we didn’t get everything right, sometimes we got it spectacularly wrong. Looking back that doesn’t frustrate me, we did our best.
But now, in 2025 something does bother me, frustrates me, makes me feel sad. It’s not the decisions we got spectacularly wrong, it’s the decisions and opportunities that we kicked into the future. We didn’t say NO, we just said not now. ‘Not now’ because of some fairly unimportant work stuff, because it took us slightly out of our comfort zone, because it will complicate things, because we don’t need to push now because we have loads of time to sort this out in the future….
Let’s think about it again next year…
Let’s not do that now but maybe later….
Let’s talk ourselves out of this even though it could be so wonderful, no pressure, plenty of time to get round to it….sometimes sitting doing nothing can seem better than having the time of our life’s.
We were fooling ourselves, time ran out….
I keep going over those moments. Often trips, adventures or holidays that didn’t happen. Like the big Christmas adventure, the chance to take Hawklad to Lapland to visit Santa. Never happened even though we could have done it and we both knew it was a great adventure. Yes just the two of us could do it now but it’s not quite the same after the pesky Art Teacher decided it was time for some festive tough love… What a missed opportunity because we thought there was plenty of time.
Then there are those moments, missed opportunities that yes we can still do (and sometimes have already addressed) but we left it too long for his mum. She missed out. Hawklad never got to experience these moments with her. Disney Florida, Panto, trips to see Whales, Horse riding, skiing, Yellowstone, Kennedy Space Centre, Patagonia….. I could go on. Especially this little beauty, I managed to film Hawklad’s first walk on an old video camera, his mum was at work. The camera wouldn’t connect to the TV, so I needed to get the tape converted to VHS. I never did get round to it, I put it off (plenty of time) and then it was forgotten in both our life’s. She never did get to see that special moment.
Now I feel sadness over those moments, moments his mum never got to experience, Hawklad never got to share with her. It’s a painful lesson.
The view from the top of the modern art gallery, The Baltic. A converted old flour mill set next to the River Tyne, on this cloudless yet cold Saturday afternoon. Trying to forget the proceeding two hours, where my alleged football team successfully donated 3 points and way too many goals to a visiting, actual football team….
The Baltic is the Joseph Rank building…
I’ve been thinking about the support Hawklad has had from the Education and Health services. Lots of ups and downs, hopefully a few more ups…. In the UK it can be a bit of a postcode lottery. Some parts of the country offer more support, more joined up support than others. Our area is definitely in the OTHERS column. An area that has prided itself on highly streamlined services, so streamlined that a few too many services have disappeared completely in repeated budget cuts.
Fortunately a few services survived and have tried to help Hawklad. So thankful for those. But even for those services, what hasn’t helped is the constant change over in staff. The longest Hawklad had the same nominated support clinician was 18 months, often they would change at least twice a year. He’s had 7 different Paediatricians. As for his Education Support Officer, they have changed more frequently than managers at my so called football team… Over the last 3 years, this officer has changed 8 times. This week we phoned to talk about exam support and yes, the person has changed again. Every change brings delays and the need to bring the new person up to speed on Hawklad, who he is and his needs. Above all things, Hawklad has to try and build up a connection, time and time again. That’s so not easy for him. It really doesn’t help him. Some changes are unavoidable, people move on, that’s life but frequently, the change has been down to management decisions. Too often we’ve read or heard the following words ‘unfortunately he’s been taken off my case list so I’ve had to hand his files over to another professional, hopefully they will be in touch with you soon….’
Continuity, hard thought connections and openness based on trust are so important to successful support and therapy. Listen to Hawklad and he will talk about this way better than me. But here’s another thing. How often do the services listen to the kids they are trying to support. In our area, the answer is I suspect somewhere near, never. To my knowledge, he has never been asked. Maybe if they did they might start to understand better the importance of qualities such as Continuity in the services they are trying to provide.
A Dad trying to cope with the loss of his Partner and becoming a single parent. 