Is a problem shared a problem halved?

It’s always the way.

You get your head around one problem and solve it when another comes along and takes its place.

This week has been all about LJHA and its (lack of) customer service and sensitivity and overcoming the possibility of a move to the bottom of a hill.

Despite all sorts of calls, it took the treat of a legal challenge using the Human rights act to get them to sit down and accept that they do have an awful lot of problems internally with staff.

Anyhow, we resolved all of that by agreeing that they would put in a gate allowing me (almost) level access to a public footbath and look into the aforementioned internal problems.

Then I get an email from my daughter who lives in the middle of nowhere with her Mother and step father asking me about being Bi-Polar and what it’s like for an “extended qualification project” for 6^th form.

Now, as a sufferer, I’ve only ever written about it from my point of view and to have to put it into ways that a fairly intelligent 17 year old could not only understand, but also as it’s my daughter in a way as not to scare her silly, was daunting to say the least.

Anyhow, after clarifying just how much info she wanted and to make sure it was confidential, I wrote about my problems and how in the past I had used “unconventional” means to stop the worst excesses of the mood swings.

It was the telling of these unconventional methods to my daughter that had me worried.

I am not overly ashamed of what I was doing, but to have to explain why I was doing it to an impressionable girl was worrying all the same.

Anyway, I wrote all she needed to know and hopefully, she will get a decent result and my illness will have at least served some good to someone other than the legions of social workers and shrinks that seem to gather whenever a mental health problem arises.

Anyhow, I am later this month starting a writing course with the OU as part of my degree. I am so looking forward to it. My tutor from my last course is doing a reading at the Ilkley literature festival in October and has asked a few of her students if they want to attend.

I can’t wait!

I find her engaging, witty and a very good writer. To hear her read ahead of beginning to write myself will be a real pleasure. You can read more about her here:

www.nickyharlow.com

I really hope one day, someone, somewhere will ask me to sit on a stage and read from my book of poetry, as its poetry where I feel my talents lie. Anything else is incidental.

I love reading poetry and I have had some success with writing it. Things like this are just to get me in the habit of writing free flow and to see what actually arrives on the page…

I am just starting to get the smell of the chicken I put in the oven, nearly 90 minutes ago on a very low heat for dinner. Add to the fact I am doing mashed potato with spring onion and carrot along with broccoli and dinner for a Tuesday is looking lovely.

This is what I want to be able to do. Listen to the radio, write, post on twitter and cook

I would be a very happy man.

Perhaps my next gig should be as a food writer?

After all this started out as a freeform writing exercise, not a blog post, but I’ve decided to share it with those who can be bothered to read my raving on here…

Thank you for reading.