From planting to Bethlehem

I am at the airport again.

Ron & I are flying to Tel Aviv to work in Bethlehem for the next week. We are really looking forward to this trip to catch up with old friends and see how recovery is developing in the hospital. John Jenkins who is in charge of the programme & Ron have known each other for years & share the same birthday which happens to fall on this trip after I have returned, so no doubt they will be celebrating their birthdays in style some where in Jerusalem.

I was in Dundee last week, running a mentoring workshop for Dundee hearing voices network. Pat has trained up a fantastic group of people to be befriender’s & mentor’s. I took them through the PATH tool which every one loved & everyone took away a plan that they were going to implement.

I also met up with Susan from Plus Perth who I mentor she is an excellent leader & is developing a dynamic, forwarding thinking organisation it s well worth visiting Sue if you are in the Perth area.

Once I drove back from Dundee the rest of this week has been a whirlwind of activity in the garden. All the seeds I had sown a couple of weeks ago are now all through so Ron helped me plant & re-pot every thing.

I am torn about this trip as the weather here is fantastic, there is loads more to be done in the garden , my peats have been cut and now need to be turned and I am not going to be here. Its ok wanting a simpler life on the island but its hard work & still seems to eat up money trying to buy every thing we need for the croft. So I think I will be travelling away working for a few years yet.

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Ron Coleman and Karen Taylor have an international reputation as speakers and authors. They are the directors of ‘Working to Recovery Limited’ an innovative international consultancy, training and publishing company with a cutting edge approach to supporting and improving mental health provision.

How do I cope? Well the island helps ...

It’s a while since I wrote my last blog, but I have been extremely busy. The weather apart from the odd day has been glorious up here. So all my spare time has been spent in the garden. We have managed to get Ron’s poly-tunnel completed as we finally had a day with hardly any wind. John, Ian with Seppi & myself managed to get the cover on stretched and dug into place. Now I am busy filling it with germinating seeds. So if everything goes to plan we should have most vegetables we need during the summer, autumn & winter. I have salad stuff , spinach, carrots, onions, leeks, cauliflower , cabbage, sprouts, potatoes, parsnips , beetroot, leeks, borlotti & cannelloni beans , runner beans, marrows, courgettes, tomatoes, cucumbers & pumkins.
The new chickens are now laying & are in a nice new large run on the croft, keeping the pigs company. It is already still light until 10.30pm & the sunsets last week were spectacular. Today It was so warm I sat down on the beach with the dogs watching the surfers.

People often ask how I cope with the pace of the work, sorting out all my kids & run a home, but it is the time I now have on the island that is rejuvenating me ready for the next lot of training. when I am outside I often just break out into a huge smile thinking about how lucky I am.
In just a few weeks though I will be the other side of the world , leaving my kids & the croft behind for 5 hard weeks of training & consultancy in Australia, in Tasmania where there will probably be snow & Canberra, where there will hard frosts, so I hope the good weather continues up here for the next few weeks.

Ron is away most of the time at the moment, travelling around Europe & the UK He has just returned from a week in Italy , next week he is in Wales , Norwich & south Yorkshire, then has a short respite at home then we both travel to work in Palestine , I return after a week and he stays on to probably work in Gaza & celebrate his birthday with John Jenkins who shares the same birthday, then he flys straight to Ireland working in Cork for a day.
Its Sunday evening & the kids are screaming for the cheesecake I made earlier!

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Ron Coleman and Karen Taylor have an international reputation as speakers and authors. They are the directors of ‘Working to Recovery Limited’ an innovative international consultancy, training and publishing company with a cutting edge approach to supporting and improving mental health provision.