Amazing light, late night gardening and Ron leaves for Palestine

The light here is amazing at this time of year, We turned the lights off to go to sleep last night at midnight and semi daylight streamed through the edges of the blinds, it truly doesn’t get dark.
What is strange is how it affects you physically. The kids aren’t able to go to sleep until after 11pm, I often don’t feel tired until gone midnight, the other night I found myself gardening at 11.00pm. Would this be described as slightly manic behaviour on the mainland? What is interesting is the kids aren’t acting as if they are over tired & I feel full of energy.

I presume that on the dark winter nights all of us will want to sleep from early evening and catch up on all the lost sleep.

The light is certainly good for Ron’s tomatos. Never thought I would be jealous of a plant but he nurtures and talks to them more than me.

Ron is off to Palestine tomorrow. He will be working in Bethlehem hospital and other health centres on the west bank; unfortunately Gaza is still out of bounds.

Ron is going to be doing more in depth voices training with the staff; next week Dirk Corstens a fantastic social psychiatrist from Holland will join him. They will be doing some training together with the psychiatrists on voice dialoguing.

People are much more open to our ideas there. I wonder if it is because they have very little money to spend on anti psychotic medication so are more open to other forms of treatment.
Last time we were there together and ran a 5-day recovery course making recovery champions with some of the staff from Bethlehem hospital and the surrounding CMHT’s. The staff invests a lot of their personal money and time in gaining good degrees and postgraduate training.

What was truly amazing though was because of the crisis with receiving no eec funding the staff had not been paid for 6 months but still carried on going in to care for their patients, some how I cannot imagine that happening in the UK.

Sexy Leonard Cohen .... a new piglet .... and the cold realities of being on the road

What a weekend. Leonard Cohen was absolutely amazing. If I have that vigour, sex appeal and stage presence when I reach 73 I will be well happy. He played for nearly 3 hours, the crowd was wonderful, relaxed and friendly, and we ended up in the local pub with a few people we had been sat with.

Ron loved it, sang along, shed a few tears and had a big grin on his face throughout the concert.

Back to reality though, arrived home at 7pm last night and was out of the door by 5.45 this morning, firstly to catch the ferry to Ullapool, drive down to Glasgow, leave the car at the garage to be serviced and now I am waiting for a flight to Birmingham.I have another 3 days with Stafford forensic services; with 20 staff looking at recovery and person centred planning.

Ron is home on childcare duties. He has just informed me we have another 8-week-old female piglet on the way –company for Charlotte. This will be interesting to see how they get on.
I am now on a train travelling from Birmingham to Stafford its ¼ past 8, I have now been travelling for 14 ½ hours, I have a stinking cold, feeling sorry for myself, the plane was late the train was late and I now wont arrive at the hotel until 21.15.

This is definitely the unglamorous part of training. I need bed, a bowl of soup and some lemsip!

Yours in sickness Karen

Birthday Prezzie for Ron - Leonard Cohen in Dublin!

Ron’s birthday went well, the weather stayed dry but breezy.

One of his presents from me was 2 tickets to see Leonard Cohen in Dublin tomorrow Friday13th.
Cohen has been one of his musical heroes, but even I was suprised how emotional Ron was when I told him. So first thing tomorrow we fly to Dublin for the weekend for the craic and the wonderful music and poetry of cohen.

The break together will do us both good. We are not taking a laptop and are going to have a well earned rest .

I will report back early next week

Lul

Karen

Recovery champions in Swansea .. haute cuisine on Lewis and a Birthday Boy ...

Sorry this blog is late it has been a very busy few days.

Ron and I were in Swansea until Thursday night. We were running a 4 day version of Making recovery happen course with 15 participants who wanted to become recovery champions for Swansea. What a group, Swansea is not going to know what has hit it. They were so motivated and passionate , If they are given the space to bloom then Swansea will be a centre of excellence for recovery in a few years time. The group was truely multi-disciplinary with Psychiatrists, nurses, OT’s, a psychologist, social workers, voluntary sector staff and a fabulous support worker and true to form, as we were in Wales, fabulous singers.

I returned to Lewis Friday morning car-less ,with no chance of a hire car wondering how I was going to manage , as Rons family were going to be foot passengers on the evening ferry arriving for Rons 50th birthday bash.

Luckily my very dear friend Seppi came to the rescue and I borrowed her car for the morning, even more luckily Grants garage managed to fix my car by lunchtime so I was able to pick everyone up.

With the help of Seppi’s van we have managed to put up all the family at the house which is pretty incredible seeing the size of our croft house.

Last night 10 of us went for a fantastic meal at Sulair a restaurant in Port of Ness. If you love beautifully presented & cooked modern Scottish food , you must visit Lewis and the restaurant. I think it would be hard put for me and Ron to think of any where in the world we have been and tasted food that was any better.

Today it’s Rons proper birthday so we are all having a big BQ, I think I may stay off the wine though as my head is still throbbing from last night.