Another late evening trip out for Hawklad, this time a couple of hours drive to the beautiful Peak District. It might well have been quicker but I managed to get lost in the dreaded Yorkshire Twilight Zone, otherwise known as the city Sheffield’s road network.
On the bright side, while lost we discovered a Dunkin Donuts store. One of those occasions where I happily ignore any gluten issues I may have for the GREATER GOOD….
The downside of evening trips is that you can far too quickly start to run out of light, BUT for those couple of hours, having somewhere as amazing as this place basically to ourselves, absolutely wonderful for Hawklad.
Summer poses its own set of challenges. This season’s weather hasn’t been great with few warm weather days. Yes there has been sun but it’s often felt more like late October than high Summer. But the weather hasn’t deterred the crowds. Try to go anywhere around midday and the car parks are mobbed. Hawklad doesn’t do mobbed car parks….
But leave it until the evening and suddenly the car parks are empty. Ok that usually means the venue is shut but not everywhere. Just like Dalby Forest. A few hours earlier this walk would have been rammed with hikers, dog walkers and mountain bikers but now at 6-30pm it’s all change. It’s quiet, we are the only car in the car park. A 2 hour walk and we didn’t see another soul.
Or just like 6-30pm on the North East Coast. A couple of intrepid surfers enjoying warming drinks on the beach. A couple of ball chasing dogs with well wrapped up owners. That’s it. Solitude.
Yes 6-30PM cuts down the places open but it opens up so much space and peace. It works for us. Just don’t forget the Woolly Hats, it is Summer here.
Just a few clouds make such a huge difference to the mood here.
Did I ever really grieve, TWICE
Back in 2016, almost to the day. I was sorting out mum’s funeral, broken yet my mind was on my seriously ill partner. It felt like grief had been put on hold. Then a few weeks later I’m sorting out my partners funeral and again …..
Was I really grieving, how much was I allowing myself to grieve.
My focus was on our son, trying to keep my head above the single parenting waves. Looking back I was living through Hawklad. If he was happy, I was happy. If he struggled, I struggled. Did I ever really think and meditate about what grief and death truly meant, how it was changing me.
Probably NOT.
Probably figured out way more about me as a PARENT.
Maybe the Mood will change one day and I can start to seek a little more clarity on grief and how it’s changed me, still changing me.
An April trip to Scarborough. Time to put on the Simon and Garfunkel cover of the old English Folk Song.
Are you going to Scarborough Fair…
Well I hope they got wrapped up as it was seriously COLD, AGAIN. Beautiful but COLD.
The Scarborough song is about asking too much of others, asking impossible tasks, love fracturing. Well it would mess up if one lover was expecting a Caribbean beach holiday and they ended up on a long weekend in not so tropical Yorkshire.
We had been over here for an appointment, the last bit of formal support Hawklad gets these days. One 45 minute session every 3 weeks or so. From about the age of thirteen the support levels have shrunk rapidly. Get to 18 or 19 and they will have completely disappeared. Not because the need isn’t there, it’s likely to be there more than ever, but because nationally access to services are being restricted. Years of cut backs and efficiency restructurings have led to ‘streamlined’ services being overwhelmed with demand. So we get frustrated and angry with the lack of local support but unless mental health is given the priority it needs nationally, then it’s an IMPOSSIBLE task to support every need, it just can’t happen.
Or is it IMPOSSIBLE, at least could we do better, could we give some more support to those who need it. I guess it comes down to a couple of drivers…
– Maybe those in charge see more votes in focusing on tax cuts and immigration crackdowns,
– There are just not enough profits to be extracted by greedy hands from Mental Health Services.
The UKs so called Prime Minister will give daily speeches solely focusing on how he is being tough and proactive on trying to fly a few desperate refugees to Rwanda at a cost of £500 Million (plus…), yet he never seems to ever raise an eyebrow at the mental health crisis unfolding across the country. But what is clear.
The money is there, the money to fund services is definitely there.
Pilot having fun or maybe a pilot realising that a packed lunch was left back at The Terminal.
Lovely blue skies from a few weeks back, it’s been definitely not blue skies since then. The fields keep on getting muddier.
Perfect weather to reread Wuthering Heights, no wonder the classic grim tale was set in deepest Yorkshire.
I was chatting with a postman this morning and he talked about a man who lives near a surrounding village. At the start of January, he had moved into an old farmhouse a few miles away from the nearest housing. He told the postman that it had been weeks since he had spoken to anyone. He has no family, he didn’t know anyone in the area and was really suffering from the isolation. He had signed up to a local walking group but the walks have been cancelled due to the state of the paths. He had signed up to the local golf course, but that had been shut for weeks due to flooding. The postman was his only social contact currently. What made it so much worse was that when he went shopping to the local city supermarket, no one would ever make eye contact with him. He described it as being ‘invisible’, like he didn’t ’exist’. The supermarket only has self service checkouts so he couldn’t even chat to someone scanning his shopping.
That got me thinking. How often do I go shopping with my head down, with my walls up.
I strongly suspect that’s happening way more these days, a pandemic certainly hasn’t helped. What is clear, more people are feeling isolated and cut off. More and more people are struggling, feeling unseen.
Tomorrow I’m going to make an effort to keep my head up when I go shopping.
Don’t get many of these around here. It’s a FORD. It’s about the only time my car gets a wash….
You can see the houses still have sandbags up against the front doors. These days this lovely village sadly suffers from floods way more frequently.
Parked up in a traffic queue waiting to cross a storm damaged bridge, I unfortunately got to listen to the NEWS. MOST Unfortunate as it involved listening to the Government Education Minister trying to explain why more and more pupils are not attending school. Record numbers. Apparently it’s down to a number of factors,
Bad parenting
Immigration
Really bad parenting
Not enough discipline
Truly awful parenting
Benefits culture
Liberal politics
Moral standards
Monumentally bad parenting
Not enough Parents being fined for letting the Country down. Well over a quarter of a million parent fines just isn’t enough….
I guess I am one of THOSE parents the system has a problem with. Well as ONE of those parents I was surprised that the School System and Government Education Policy wasn’t mentioned. No mention of school budget cuts. No mention of the complete collapse in Special Education Provision and Support. No mention of NHS Mental Health Services struggling to cope with the huge numbers of young people crying out for help. No mention of rising class sizes and overcrowded, unhealthy classrooms. No mention of crumbling school infrastructure. No mention of rising teacher workload and stagnant pay. No mention of increasing Government control of what is taught, how it’s taught, how it’s assessed. No mention of the fanatical focus on exam results and discipline. No mention of the drive towards Victorian Education Standards.
That’s a shed load of water heading towards the sea just a few yards further on.
Too many times in Hawklad’s school life, he came across an inflexible school system, setting him up to fail, blocking his path.
Two of many examples…..
He was struggling with French. The way it was taught wasn’t working for him, he was falling behind and getting really anxious. Parrot learning how to spell and read French for weekly tests. I approached the teacher to talk about this and our preference to try something different. A more visual and interactive learning App approach. An approach producing great results in some US schools for dyslexic pupils. We even offered to pay for the software. The response sadly predictable. No learning approach could be used that differed from the standard national programme. Even when I pressed on the fact that it just wasn’t working for Hawklad, it was a firm, he just has to work harder using the set learning script. In the end Hawklad was given just two options. Follow the class programme or drop the language course. So he dropped the subject, even though he really wanted to learn a language……
Computer Studies featured a significant element of learning and practicing coding. Month after month, trying to read stuff of a classroom screen then re type it. Get it slightly wrong and it errors out. A nightmare with dyslexia. Again Hawklad started to fall behind. Again the teacher was approached. This time more understanding but still inflexible. The teacher realised it wasn’t working for Hawklad and talked about in the past being able to try different things or switch out coding out for something else. But now the Teacher wasn’t allowed to do that even when the method isn’t working. He had to stick to the set curriculum. End result, Hawklad dropped the subject at the first opportunity…….
So many more examples but you get the picture. At no stage did school ever ask Hawklad what he wanted to do, what were his dreams, his big hopes, the things he was interested in. At no stage was the learning environment tailored to his needs or wishes. It was always, here is the education you must follow. What makes it worse is that this set education is ultimately dictated not by children, not by educational professionals, not by parents but by vested interests and politicians.
As a result far too many children are overlooked and forced into moulds that just won’t ever work for them. A WALL is built blocking the child from thriving, from enjoying developing, from dreaming big and for going down the path that works for them.
That’s a moody landscape, maybe it knows just how messed up this LAND has become. That it has become the LAND of BAD GOVERNING.
Every single day more evidence of corruption, lies, self interest, extremism, vacuous morality and staggering incompetence.
The Environment, The Economy, Education, The NHS, Public Services, Democracy, Governance, Law, Support to those in Need, Equality, Families, Communities, Futures, ALL being TRASHED.
But what do you expect when we vote in clowns and charlatans to lead this Land.
Case in point, The Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party and frequent spokesman for the Government. Lee Anderson MP who previously claimed ‘Poverty in the UK’ was NONSENSE has now stated that….
ADHD is down to BAD PARENTING.
That bad science bombshell is news to the actual Scientists, Experts, Professional, Families and everyone who better understand ADHD. ADHD is associated with factors such as Genetics, Brain Structure, Brain Chemical Reactions and with extremely low levels of associated neurotransmitter transmission.
This bloke from the Government is spouting unfounded urban myths and conspiracy theories, AGAIN. This time by stigmatising caring and loving families who are just trying their hearts out and doing the best they can. He is trying to turn people against them. Divide and conquer.
As a parent who still lives in the ADHD world, I’m not going to take any lectures from this CLOWN. He has no idea, he doesn’t care but sadly has a massive ego and even bigger mouth.
Come on people of the UK, when the time comes, DO THE RIGHT THING and get rid of the Charlatans.
Yorkshire has its moments on the peaceful walk front….
This walk had a definite start and end, the Car Park. Some journeys don’t have that luxury so how do you ever know when it’s nearly over.
It’s odd, I usually love this time of year. The AUTUMNAL colours, the freshness, the tranquil peace after the packed summer crowds – the new season arrives and we had this beautiful location virtually to ourselves.
Yet this year there is also a feeling of unease and melancholy. The shorter days, longer nights and yes, the feeling of increased isolation. Even family and friends seem just that little bit further away. I definitely feel significantly less prepared for that isolation this time around AND ITS NOT a surprise. For over a decade the focus has been on Hawklad and School. It brought purpose, provided goals to aim for, even provided a few too many battles to fight. Plans all had a set date, Summer 2023. All this was way more pressing than any feelings of isolation but now that date is history. The Plans worked but are now completed.
What happens next for Hawklad is taking longer to sort out than expected.
Currently life without Plans or more accurately, life while new Plans are still yet to be formulated. Without that immediate focus I’m kinda feeling in limbo. With me LIMBO is letting the mind wander off into feelings of isolation and melancholy. At this rate I might even have to sort out some stuff about my future, it’s been so long it feels like I have forgotten how to do that. At least when we know what Hawklad’s path is, focus will return.
But this time around, I also need to work on some plans of my own.
A Dad trying to cope with the loss of his Partner and becoming a single parent. 