Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 35 Comments

Blue sky or not blue sky

Sunshine, blue sky, dark cloud, storm clouds, dry, rain, snow, bright, dark.

That Yorkshire sky really sums up perfectly my mood levels since lockdown started. It’s a bit of everything really. Swinging from smiles to tear. Feeling full of the joys of spring to darkest winter coldness. Optimistic then pessimistic. Feeling contented then feeling boxed in. Calm then anxious. At ease with the world then frustrated.

Emotional never ending tides.

Yesterday I was fighting the tears. Life seemed bleak and so restrictive. Definitely feeling cut adrift, isolated and alone.

Yet today I can’t stop smiling. Ok life feels constrained but it also feels good. Filled with HOPE and WONDERFUL thoughts. Most definitely not feeling alone rather feeling part of a BEAUTIFUL world.

Ask me yesterday and I would say what am I doing. Today it’s WE can do this.

I’m the same person, I’ve not moved, I’ve not won the money lottery. No person or no asset has entered my world. So why the swing in mood. Could it be that we are permanently riding those emotional waves. Swings in outlook are to be expected. Good moments, bad moments. Maybe the secret is to look at each day. What are the things that weigh me down and try to do something about those. Then most importantly work out what are the things that lift me up so much. If you can identify those things (maybe it’s just one important thing) then keep trying to move towards those wonderful things in life.

Yes WE can do this.

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 53 Comments

Sporting life

As penance for being one of life’s great numpties I started supporting one of the world’s worst football teams. Think more soap opera than bastion of sporting greatness. But every week 52000 other lost souls descend on this place for our regular fix of mayhem and snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Decades of never missing a match.

Then things changed.

Single parenting and getting my priorities right.

Trips to St James Park reduced in number. Restricted to those days I can borrow my friends ticket and I can convince Hawklad to endure 90 minutes of torture. Restricted to days when Hawklad will visit my sister for an afternoon.

Then a pandemic hit. Trips stopped completely. The last visit was September 2019.

And that was for a rugby international and a group of seats that high up we were in the Jet Stream.

It’s a changed world. Changed domestic situation. Will I get to see the useless team again. I’m not entirely sure, maybe not for a few years. I guess that’s life.

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 52 Comments

Motorway

A typical Yorkshire motorway. Plenty of overtaking options. Having said that. One stray and stubborn sheep and it can grind to a halt really quickly.

I was reading an article about a sales executive and how her life has changed during the pandemic. A year ago she would get up at 6am. Grab a breakfast, fill up the reusable plastic mug with coffee and head off to work. She would then spend 2 hours trying to drive 20 miles on a clogged up 8 lane motorway. She would then work her socks off for 10 hours, maybe finding a few minutes to grab a sandwich. She would get back home just before 9pm brain dead. A year later it’s home working and a life. Getting just as much done work wise, but on her terms and allowing her to better enjoy life.

Apparently home working is bad for the country. Our hardworking, sartorially perfect and completely honest PM describes home working as ‘time off’, ‘slacking’ and bad for Britain. We all need to do our civic duty get back into the office.

Thankfully I am one of those Britain’s who think Boris Johnson is a self serving, dishonest clown.

Home working doesn’t suit everybody. But in the same way tradition office working doesn’t suit everyone. It’s down to each person, each family to work out what best works for them. Hopefully they can then find a way to follow that route. Life is not just about working and sleeping. It’s also about LIVING. To the likes of that prat Johnson that doesn’t matter. That’s why he keeps going on about Victorian Values. A time when the few lived and enjoyed the fruits of other peoples sacrifices. A time when the majority just existed. That sales executive. Me. You. Your neighbour. We all should get an opportunity to do some of that living. To find a life that best works for them.

My switch to home working was forced on me by circumstance but it’s one of the best things that has happened to me. It is NOT slacking. It is about finding that a better work/life balance for those it suits.

I wouldn’t give up that Yorkshire motorway for one of those 10 lane beasts. Not even for the PM.

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 57 Comments

Leaning

One of the first things you notice living in the hills is that you don’t get many poles that are straight up. There is always a bit of a lean to them. Nowt wrong with that. It feels like I’ve had a bit of a lean for years.

There is a really apt song line that Roger Waters wrote a few years back.

You lean to the left but you vote to the right.

This morning I read a work email exchange. One guy was saying that he had voted for Brexit because it seemed cool but hadn’t voted for higher food prices and more expensive import taxes. He certainly hadn’t voted for the nightmare it had become to own his time share in Spain.

Ok…..

Maybe its just me. 😳

But I guess we all do a bit of that lean to the left but vote to the right thing.

I’m not immune to that. As a kid I fell in love with football. What an exciting game it could be if I picked a great team. I then picked Newcastle United to support. If I liked football so much why did I pick that bunch of numpties.

Then there was a time when I was a fully paid up member of CND. Proud owner of the ban the bomb T-shirt. I picked what look like a really interesting University option. All went well until I found out where my option was based. The National Atomic Weapons Research Facility…… I’m not making that up. How on earth did I get through the vetting.

But it goes much wider. I wanted desperately to be a parent but not sure I would have initially voted to be a single parent. Definitely not this way.

So I guess there are times when things are out of our control. Life happens. But there are times when it is down to our decisions, our actions. If that happens you just have to own the consequences….

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Just in time

That snow shower is coming to get us. Better get a move on with this game of outdoor table tennis.

Thankfully I lost just in time.

What happened to the days when I would let him win. Build up his confidence. Do that parent thing. It’s all change now. Now it’s just about me salvaging any shred of self respect possible. A dad who was once a sporting King who is now one of the oppressed. Beaten down. Defeated. Can’t win a thing.

Time moves on.

Time moves on in a good way.

Sign that this parenting gig might just be working.

I do hope so.

A first walk for son outside. Ok it was late at night. Yes it was only 1 minute on the deserted road. Full decontamination when we came back. But it’s a start. The first time in over a year. As his health professionals point out. Until he can go into a busy cafe. Sit down and be at ease having a drink surrounded by people. Until he gets to that stage a return to school is out of the question. Will it be just in time for the end of this school year. Will it be just in time for a return before the end of 2021. How knows but it’s not a question of just in time. It will be in HIS time.

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 58 Comments

Brush with fame

I’ve had my brushes with the famous but on a really MINI scale

We were watching a silly comedy movie when one of the characters starting talking about all the famous people he had met in his life. Presidents, Popes, Hall of Famers, Astronauts….. you name it, everyone.

“Dad as you are about 50 times older than he is you must have 50 times as many famous encounters than he has…”

Sometimes even Hawklad can’t keep the smirk from his face before he has landed the verbal punch….

  • Ok here goes. My attempt to be 50x more exciting than that comedy character.
    • I once was smiled at by a beautiful international tennis star, kind of. We were walking in a small town in Switzerland when Anna Ivanovic walked past me and smiled at me…. Well actually she smiled and waved at the blue eyed toddler who was holding my hand. But that counts.
    • Years back I was out for a run when a bus pulled up and this rather familiar looking lady stepped out and asked if I knew the way to the local concert venue. I gave her the directions and it wasn’t until later that I passed the venue and saw the poster. Thankfully I had correctly directed Alison Moyet to the venue.
    • The former 6ft4 England Rugby captain once stood on my toe while I was waiting for strawberries at Wimbledon. I think the price of the 5 strawberries was far more painful than the trodden toe.
    • I was training at a gym in York when the world snooker champion came onto the mat next to me to do sit-ups. Bizarrely Ronnie O’Sullivan had a broken leg…..He was playing in a major tournament in the city.
    • At school we played cricket against a boy who would go on to be a fast bowler for England. Paul Jarvis. We lasted 4 overs as a team and got bowled out for 11. I bravely scored 8 of them. Two boundaries. Actually both were attempts to keep the 90mph ball from hitting me in the head. Paul Jarvis got 8 wickets. One lad refused to go out to bat. My claim to fame is that he never got me. I was bowled out by a spotty face kid who was barely strong enough to hold the cricket ball. He slowly bounced the ball down the pitch, I took the biggest swish with bat, missed and on the fourth bounce the ball trickled sadly into my wickets.
    • I once got the former European footballer of the year, Kevin Keegan to sign my arm. I didn’t have any paper…
    • Peter Ustinov walked past me once.
    • Some of the cast of the hit TV show Auf Wiedersehen, Pet stood next to me at a bar before a Newcastle United game.
    • I once patted the backside of the famous racehorse Red Rum.
    • When I was at college I picked up the courage to ask this girl to dance with me at a nightclub in Middlesbrough. She unsurprisingly said NO. But one minute later she said yes to an international footballer. Bernie Slaven.
    • Michael Caine might have or might not have sat at my work desk when a spy movie did some filming one weekend at the computer firm I was working for.
    • In my very early 20s I had been visiting friends in London. It was early Monday morning and I was making my way back home. I was stood on the tube platform looking an absolute state. Long, uncombed hair, unshaven, metal T-shirt, holes in my tight jeans. Next to me was this immaculately dressed old man in a pin striped suit and bowler hat. He kept giving me one of those LOOKS. The great unwashed look. That chap was Enoch Powell. A famous politician. Former Member of the Government. The person who made one of the most infamous and racially charged speeches in British political history. Clearly he wasn’t impressed with me. Which is ok as I was giving him a real Paddington Bear stare back…..

    That’s it. That’s my encounters with the Presidents and Popes of the world. Took me about 2500 years to do achieve all this. But it’s my own brush with fame….

    Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 73 Comments

    Autism

    It’s Autism Awareness week. It does feel like it should be Autism Awareness Week every week, every year until we finally start to make some real progress. Let’s not kid ourselves as we have are only just starting down that road.

    This years theme is centred around inequalities. Inequalities that have become even more stark and exposed during the pandemic.

    I tell you what is unequal. Bridge building. It’s always up to the autistic person to try and build those bridges. Our society, our institutions and too many of our communities are not interested. They see Autism through inaccurate stereotypes. Something to be ignored or brushed under the carpet. We’ve all experienced that approach. Individuality is frowned upon. People need to be forced into set moulds and templates.

    Yesterday I was listening to the words of a really wonderful, unique and brilliant teenager. He was talking about his struggle with autism. His daily fight with inequalities and ignorance. Why was it so hard for people to understand. He was saying that every day he heard so many false stereotypes. But in fact he had a sense of humour, he liked having fun, he liked having friends, he had feelings, he cared. He was as valid as an individual as anyone else.

    That lad wasn’t different he was UNIQUE. We all should be. It’s a better world for that.

    We all should be welcomed and supported.

    Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 31 Comments

    Avengers

    A day outside in the – wait for it – warm Yorkshire sunshine……

    An afternoon of outdoor table tennis. An afternoon of losing my pride. It’s never been my sport. One of the few sports I can’t pick up.

    “Dad Table Tennis is a MARVELlous sport. You do know the sport should be played like a game of chess. Carefully moving your opening around the table until an opening appears. That’s the idea. Your approach Dad is basically the Avengers Strategy. HULK SMASH…”

    No need to mess about with the delicate strategy. Why waste time when with one massive swing of the bat you can immediately move to the ENDGAME

    “But Dad you are supposed to play with VISION.

    Ok I’m out now, you win the pun war. Pick up your crisp packet. If you do then you can be scaAVENGERS hero.

    “I never THORt of that one Dad. Best keep the envIRON MANaged. I wonder if anyone else would understand these puns other THAN US.”

    *********

    Lets not forget the stereotype. Asperger Kids don’t have a sense of humour and can’t have fun ……….

    Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 70 Comments

    They got me

    Today I received my first dose of Covid Vaccine. The AstraZenenca version. The process was managed brilliantly by our wonderful NHS. Very thankful. It’s a start. But it’s not the complete solution.Will definitely continue to isolate. To social distance and be masked up. To try protect others and the NHS.

    We have such a long way to go before can say this fight is over. We can just hope that something can begin to open up the world again for Hawklad.

    Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 48 Comments

    Somersault

    Almost a summer sky and most definitely a winter wind – it’s freezing. Definitely a two jumper day…. But still nice. Would have loved to be outside more but pesky school got in the way of that plan.

    After two hours of trying to figure out how to insert graphs into an online test document…

    “Dad I thought you had a degree in computing.”

    Well kind of.

    “Well it’s not much use here. Admit it you spent those university years in the bar…”

    And on the sports pitches. Don’t forget in bed as well.

    “Well that’s not helping with this is it Dad. Might as well ask the toilet seat for help.”

    To be fair I focused on Artificial Intelligence and Expert Systems, not stupid school packages. What you sniggering at Son….

    “You. Muppet Dad. Are you sure it wasn’t Artificial Incompetence. Useless. Looks like you’ve just crashed the system now.”

    Yes definitely crashed. Think it didn’t like me pressing all the keys at the same time in a slightly angry manner.

    “How on earth did they let you into a university.”

    I think they were desperate. I was late for the entrance interview as well. I got lost and ended up at the wrong university, in the wrong city. When I did arrive i was 3 hours late only to find out that I had the wrong day as well. I had come a day early.

    “No wonder as a toddler I would talk with mum and just bash you over the head with anything I could find.”

    I’ve still got the bruises.

    “No Dad those are from last week where you tried to show me that you could still do a somersault on the trampoline. “

    I almost did it. Just my bum got in the way.