You Are Not That Mistake

On Wednesday morning, I read a story on the BBC News webpage which I found very moving. As I drove across to my dental appointment [it takes 45 minutes or more] I realised the guy from the article was the guest on BBC4's "Life Changing" programme.
Twenty years ago he was a top civil servant, who accidentally left some highly classified documents [about terrorist activity] on the train. He realised almost immediately what he had done- but the train had left the station and continued on its way.
Very quickly, somebody found the papers and handed them in to Frank Gardiner, BBC Security Correspondent. But Richard was guilty of gross negligence and more besides. He was convinced he had ruined his life- and that of his family. The press were camping outside his house, it was top story on the news that week...He began to fall apart - and felt the world 'might be better if I wasn't in it' 

His loving wife Maddie, and two daughters stood by him from Day 1, his boss and previous boss were really supportive, and in the programme Richard pays tribute to them. He was given a fine, and demoted. He left the Civil Service, and went to work on admin for the London Olympics, and then the Samaritans. 

Now he runs a company NewDay and is a lifecoach for people whose work is really stressful, and struggle with mental health issues. He uses his own experience to help others pull through their tough times. Here are his tips for people under stress who make a genuine mistake, and need help to recover

Get your thoughts out of your head. In a dark place, your mind jumps from "I made a terrible mistake" to "I am a worthless person" at the speed of thought. Writing it down or talking to someone slows things down to give you a chance to notice the illogical leaps.

Continue activities you enjoy. When you feel unworthy, you stop doing the things that lift you up. Work out what they are - the gym, a book, a long walk - and make them non-negotiable fixtures in your routine.

Remember your worth and your success. I keep an evidence board by my desk with notes of things I have achieved and kind things people have said. It's a tangible reminder that I am not that mistake, I am so much more.

Find your critical friend. You need someone who is your cheerleader but will also call you out when you let good habits slip. Anyone who is truly on your side.

Work out what you can fix, and what you can't. If you've caused harm, take responsibility: apologise and put things right where you can. But don't assume responsibility for things that were never yours to carry.

Don't confuse your worst moment with the whole story of your life. You are not that mistake. You are still the person who existed before it, and there can still be a person after it whom you haven't met.

The radio programme was quite emotional in places - but really positive and helpful. Thank you Richard, for sharing your story - many people will be helped by your words, I'm sure. This chimes with my word for 2026 -
  Restoration - Richard's experience shows that it is possible

 

An Extra Hour In Bed...

The end of British Summer Time, back to Greenwich Mean Time. 
We lived in Orpington, whilst Bob was a student, and less than three miles from our house was Willett's Wood, named for William Willett a local resident. Just after the start of the twentieth century, he was out riding one morning, and noticed how many houses still had closed curtains. 

William advocated moving the clocks forward in the summer "Daylight Saving Time". It was another 10 years before the Germans adopted his idea during WW1. Now most of Europe follows the pattern.

Every year people argue about the wisdom of this action - some say it is helpful, others say it is pointless! Willet's Memorial is a sundial in the wood - set to show  BST "I only tell summer hours" says the inscription.
It takes me a while to adjust each time the clocks go back/forward, less crucial now I am retired. I feel sorry for those are really affected by the change. 
But I am grateful for a warm home, and a comfortable bed. In my youth I'd often stay up late, because I had an extra hour, and did not want to waste it - This year I plan to use that hour for extra sleep!

It takes ages to adjust all the clocks in the house on the Sunday morning! We had a brief power cut a few weeks back, my cooker clock is still wrong!

I Know My PLACE

Do you remember the brilliant sketch from The Frost Report, with John Cleese, Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett

Today, as part of my work with Voluntary Norfolk, I am working as part of a PLACE team. PLACE stands for Patient Led Assessment of the Care Environment

The NHS website says "Good environments matter. Every NHS patient should be cared for with compassion and dignity in a clean, safe environment. Where standards fall short, they should be able to draw it to the attention of managers and hold the service to account. PLACE assessments will provide motivation for improvement by providing a clear message, directly from patients, about how the environment or services might be enhanced."
"The assessments involve local people [known as patient assessors] going into hospitals as part of teams to assess how the environment supports the provision of clinical care, assessing such things as privacy and dignity, food, cleanliness and general building maintenance and, more recently, the extent to which the environment is able to support the care of those with dementia or with a disability…The assessments take place every year, and results are published to help drive improvements in the care environment. [Note that PLACE assessments focus exclusively on the environment in which care is delivered and do not cover clinical care provision]"

A team of us visit a hospital, or part of a hospital, and consider how good the environment is. A few of the team are NHS staff, but some of us are local people [like me] who are deemed to be independent and fair-minded. We ask things like...Is it clean? Are the signs clear? Are meals delivered on time, and presented well? Is the building well maintained? Are the curtains round the bed giving adequate privacy? etc. We do not look at clinical care, or medical treatments. We ask the question 'If I had to stay here as a patient, or come in as a visitor what things would bother me, or make my time here less comfortable? We work within strict guidelines and have to give a careful report on all the issues. We make lots of positive comments - and we are given the same lunch as the patients will eat on the day of our visit. The food has been extremely good on every one of my assessments.

I've been doing this for three years now. I have learned an awful lot - and I am impressed to go back and see how suggestions have been implemented, and improvements made. NHS staff work incredibly hard, often in difficult conditions, old buildings, with tight budgets. But they are cheerful, and helpful. Patients are usually pleased with the care they are receiving
We are not Ofsted, we are not judging the staff. And we do not walk round with clipboards, ticking things off - we observe carefully and compare notes once back in our private room. Sometimes if we make a suggestion, staff say "Yes we would like to improve that too" - and our recommendation can help inform budgetary decisions.
Obviously it is all confidential -  so I cannot tell you where I have been. But it is good to know that there are people regularly monitoring not just the treatments, operations and medicines - but also the state of the bathrooms, the mealtime routines, and the general ambience of the surroundings. If  a patient feels comfortable, and is well fed, is close to a decent loo, and can look outside onto well tended gardens...all these things help with the healing process. I know my PLACE!

Keep Taking The Tablets!

 What do you think of when you hear the word pillbox?

1 a box for pills, especially a shallow round box
2 a small low concrete emplacement for machine guns and antitank weapons
3 a small round hat without a brim with a flat crown and straight sides

Obviously, 2 and 3 got their names because they resembled the medicine containers. Swanton Morley had three WW2 pillboxes, including a listed "Pickett-Hamilton Fort" . 

Situated on the runway, this is a retractable construction set in a concrete 'sleeve'. When the runway was in use, it was wound down to ground level, then wound up again to be used as a lookout/gun emplacement.

When I was six, I thought Jackie Kennedy was the most glamorous woman in the world, and decided that when I grew up, I would buy myself a pillbox hat and wear it proudly. 65 years later, I have to say I have yet to do this.

We never really had pillboxes at home, when I was growing up. My Mum had an array of brown glass bottles [later plastic] containing all her various tablets. Each one had a mysterious ball of cotton wool in the top. This was to stop the pills being damaged during shipping, and the practice began in the 1900s, but by the end of the 20th century pills were much less fragile. Nowadays all our pills come in blister packs. I wait till we have a bag full and take them to Tony at church, who recycles them for charity. 

But last week I bought myself a real pillbox.  It was £2 on a bric-a-brac stall on the market. It is small and round, 4cm diameter, with a lovely enamelled Rennie Mackintosh design on top, and inside has three sections. It was just the right size to hold three days worth of my meds for the weekend conference. Isn't it sweet? It looked very classy on my bedside cupboard. I wonder if Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis ever had a pillbox like this?

Do you use a pillbox? Or a dosette box with compartments for the seven days of the week? Have you ever had a pillbox hat?

Hip Hip Hooray!

...and Happy Birthday Steph, hope you have a wonderful day.  Looking forward to seeing you in 3 weeks time.

Hip Hip Hooray! for me too, celebrating the fact that I am not in need of a hip replacement operation. Peter The Physio says my hip pain is "gluteal tension" [!?] Entirely muscular and can be eased if I do daily exercises.
Prior to my appointment, I had convinced myself I did need one. I was chatting to an older friend at the conference, who assured me such ops were brilliant "I've had three" she said proudly, "and now I can do aquarobics and ride a tricycle". I confess that bothered me - do the prosthetic joints wear out? Or does she have a third hip?

Peter has given me a sheet of exercises to complete each morning. This is proving a challenge! I am doing my best, but I have many questions about this regime.

1. why does every chart show tall slim young women exercising? never dumpy little grannies
2. why is the middle exercise on the list the one which involves sitting on a chair? Getting up off the floor is an exercise in itself. I have moved the chair one to the end of the sequence
3. why does it keep remind you to breathe normally? I'm lying their panting, and groaning, and puffing away like a woman in labour!
4. how am I supposed to measure the 15-30 seconds duration of each activity when I am lying on my back staring at the bedroom ceiling? 
   

I finally cracked the breathing and timing issues, when I realised yesterday that my daughter is 42 today [apologies that birthday card has yet to arrive] If I sing "Happy Birthday to Steph" three times, that is long enough to keep my legs in the air, and muscles stretched for each repetition and helps my breathing.

Looking For Signs Of Autumn...

The blackberries came early, the figs didn't ripen properly, the weather has been really warm even though we are in mid October. So are there other signals that we are moving into Autumn? The shops sell "back to school bargains" before the Summer Term ends, and Halloween and Christmas displays went up in August. But here are three definite markers...

1 - The Royal British Legion have put their poppies on sale. They say there are no actual rules about when to wear them, but suggest from October 31st to Armistice Day [11th November] or Remembrance Sunday, whichever is later. [this year November 8th]

2 - Last Thursday we called in at  my favourite affordable hatshop in Dalegate Market. The manager has removed the displays of cotton bucket hat, floppy straw sunhats and natty cream panamas with petersham hatbands.  In their place are

fleecy beanies, fluffy bobbles, felted numbers, tweedy titfers,and earflapped jobbies. 

"I've gone fully woolly!" she announced. Or should that be "fully wully" or maybe "foolly woolly"? It is a phrase which sounds better than it looks! 

But I saw the definitive sign that autumn is on its way, as I stood at my kitchen sink the other morning, poking through the window to see what was happening in the Close. 

3 - Naked Running Man was wearing a teeshirt and a woolly hat! [Obviously NRM is not his real name]. He appeared at the start of the summer. He runs a loop round the village, once, sometimes twice a day. We are the middle of the run, I think - like the dog walkers, he comes round the Close, then through the alley back to the main road, and back down the hill again.

He is a young chap, always pushing a baby in a three wheeled "jogging buggy" But over the summer, he just wore trainers, a reversed baseball cap and running shorts. As he run towards you, the buggy in front of him, his shorts were obscured, and it really looked as if he was just wearing shoes and cap. All you could see was his trim, bronzed figure.[Remember those Diet Coke Break ads from the 1990s?] He is concentrating really hard, I suspect he is training for something. People who call out a cheery 'morning!" get a smile and a nod of the head, but he has no time [or breath] for conversation. I admire his diligence, especially now the weather is definitely getting autumnal. If he is preparing for a charity run, I would definitely sponsor him, he brings a smile to the morning.

What signs of autumn have you seen round your way?

Soups And Scoops

Now I am back from my conference, I need to sort out all my frozen goods. Things have got a little disorganised of late. I picked the pears and prepared and froze them, and did the same a little later with the apples. But it was all done rather hurriedly, and I didn't think through exactly where I would store them. They are packed in various sized lok'n'lok boxes, and tucked in odd corners of different drawers. And then there are half-used bags of frozen veg which fall into the gaps - and if I am not careful, disgorge a few frozen peas or sweetcorn kernels to lurk in corners.

And boxes labelled "Bob'sTom Sauce, September" "Ang's Spinach, blanched" and some boxes with no labels at all. There are a few neatly printed tags, curling up at the bottom of the freezer. Note; Brother P-Touch labels do not stick to plastic under freezing conditions even if they work in the kitchen. I decided to use up some of the foods just to make space to re-arrange what remains. I had a lot of stock, three tubs of tomato sauce, and a box of kebabs [mined meat] which never made it to a BBQ.
The stock went into the big slo-cooker, along with a load of small homegrown potatoes from the fridge [plus some tired carrots, a few spring onions and a handful of red lentils] That burbled away happily, and then I liquidised it to get vegetable soup. Warming lunches for autumn days.

I thawed and 'dismantled' the kebabs, and using Brontë Aurell's lovely book as inspiration I turned the mince [along with breadcrumbs, onion, an egg, and seasonings like Allspice and Worcestershire Sauce] into meatballs. These went into the tomato sauce, and that's 4 portions waiting for pasta, rice or potatoes for a comforting winter supper. 

One scoop of mince using my ice cream scoop is just enough to cut in half make two meatballs [I wore disposable gloves to handle and roll them] I'm pleased with  what I have achieved, and I hope to get the rest of the frozen foodstuffs properly sorted out next week.

How do you use up oddments in the freezer?