Do amazing things. See amazing things. Be with amazing people.
Get home. Burst into tears. Yet again. As the voices and parts say and shout so much.
Today:
Do amazing things. See amazing things. Be with amazing people.
Get home. Burst into tears. Yet again. As the voices and parts say and shout so much and I have to argue even to have a cup of tea because one of them has been seeking to impose a 9pm curfew on it.
....
Some things I laugh about. The banana argument two of them had this week is funny to me even though it resulted in my head hurting quite a bit from being hit. But what's now been recognised as this complex dissociative disorder is pretty damn shit. I would not wish this on anyone. I laugh because what's the alternative? I might be able to do some kind of stand up comedy about it but it's mostly horrible to live with and I do have to hold back or the comedy would get very dark indeed. (Very fortunate to meet someone this year with an equally dark and macabre mental health comedy streak.)
...
I wrote a rant about something today. I wasn't going to post it but Beth says that I should. She supports and understands and has endured twenty-five years of my mental health with the highs and lows. I've been bloody fortunate to be married to someone who stuck by me through so much and for so long.
And this rant is where a few things get very honest. You ain't seen nothing yet! Some people won't like it one little bit.
They don't matter. The people I nearly cried on massively earlier this evening about it supported it. Probably because every one of them knows me - we've met together for quite a while - and has seen at least some of what it's taken to be a part of that group. It's taken a lot for all of that group to be there.
I'll post the rant tomorrow. It'll be extended. With more honesty about childhood, family, dissociation, and so on.
But there will also be gratitude. For all the people, groups, and organisations around me at different times that have stood by me in my struggles to not only stay alive and exist but to push myself (sometimes rather too far for me) into recovery (with set backs - it's only a couple of weeks since I very, very, very nearly committed suicide - I can perform some kind of theatre show but I am far from being well) and a live that's more than worth living and is filled with things beyond anything I dreamed would ever be possible for me.
Without all those other people I would not have made it through this year. I am incredibly fortunate to have all those people. On the other hand I only have them due to years of sodding hard work to get to the places where I've met them and done amazing things with them, often being enabled by their own wonder.
Being incredibly fortunate is one thing. But DID - or DDNOS - is crap. Very crap. Clarity isn't bringing peace. The beginnings of clarity is making things many times harder. In the short term. No, as I said, I would not wish this on anyone even though I were filled with infinite hatred for them. Nobody deserves this.
[Note: All photos in this post are taken from the gratitude diary I kept throughout 2016. Note too that I pretty much free wrote the following. It's not an essay, struggled over for weeks.]
I am a great believer in gratitude.
It's no secret that I have plenty of hard days, that my mental health is sometimes shot to pieces in ways that make it hard to see the light.
Yet there is light. There is always light somewhere. Always awe, always wonder. Feeling the warmth of the sun in the day - or the strength of the storm when the sun is hidden. Watching the night sky and considering how far away each point of light is from us and from each other. Or smiling at the closer lights of Jupiter, Mars, and Venus, the glorious face of the moon, and the chance of spotting the International Space Station.
Sunrise, viewed from Cullercoats
Today I could be miserable. Mentally I'm finding today very tough. I am also anxious about something I can't change. My thought patterns run wild. I could be telling myself I have nothing much to celebrate. There was a time I couldn't find positives. I would sit for an hour with a piece of paper to write a list. Sometimes I only wrote one thing. Sometimes I wrote nothing.
Yes the positives were there and are here now. I sit on a comfortable sofa surrounded by soft toys and books. Music is playing and I had the freedom to choose to play it. In this room I have a guitar, a bubble gun, art materials, and many photograph albums covering my entire life. I have notebooks, a giant rosary on the wall (honest!), pictures on the walls - some drawn by a friend, blankets, a clarinet, and a window letting in light. Through that window I see a tree and the sky and I hear the singing of the birds.
Beyond this room I have family. I have friends too. Most of my friendships are recently formed. Because I have chosen to go out and meet people. Some are embryonic, some more full fledged. I can travel into the city centre and get involved with all kinds of things run by good people. And - as much as my health allows - I'm choosing to do that.
I refuse to not live. And I strive to be grateful for what I have, who I am, and the opportunities around me.
I began to learn more about the power of gratitude last year. I joined an online gratitude group. The idea was that each day members would post words or photos expressing gratitude for something in their lives. It didn't have to be a big thing. Whether it was a plate of beans on toast or a massive life changing event didn't matter. I posted in that group nearly every day - I missed ten over the course of the year. Focusing on the positive in that way helped me, one of many things last year that helped me. Seeing other people post their positives helped too. And for me it changed my life. There were plenty of days on which I would go out and seek positives and find previously unimagined things for which I could be grateful.
In short, I believe in gratitude. I don't believe in ignoring the horrible parts of life or pretending they don't exist. This isn't some method of positive thinking that loses sight of realism. I believe in acc-ent-u-ating the positive. But not e-lim-i-nating the negative.
Recently I decided I wanted to go further. I don't just want to be thankful. I want to act in thankfulness. If I am thankful for a person, to say so. If I am thankful for an organisation, to say so. If I'm thankful for the great cake at a cafe, to say so. Not just to myself. Not just in an online group. But to the person, organisation, cafe or whatever else I am grateful to and for.
As an intentional part of this process I have begun a little project. I wouldn't have thought of it without the suggestions of a friend who pretty much came up with the idea. Together we brainstormed - and I really hate that word! - and came up with a plan.
We, as autistic people, would seek to thank those people - especially but not exclusively the not-autistic people - who have helped us, supported us, and accepted us. There were events leading up to this decision. I don't need to recount them here. Let it just be said that on a recent occasion one of us was badly hurt and mentally wounded by a group of autistic people who treated us very badly and didn't accept our autistic needs. It was a group of not-autistic people who came to the rescue. They understood, accepted, and gave lots of support through what was an extremely difficult situation. We looked at this situation knowing there had been betrayal by our own community and acceptance outside it. The one of us who was hurt didn't behave badly and wasn't being mean to anyone.
Autistic Pride Wrist
As we talked together, that group of non-autistic people was the first thought of to be thanked. They really were marvelous.
But then my friend took it further. Why not thank other non-autistic (neurotypical, allistic) people and organisations? The ones whose actions and attitudes can be described as examples of good practice. The ones who believe in us and lift us up. The ones who encourage us to be the best versions of ourselves we can be. The ones who will sit with us in silence. The ones who will see us through meltdowns and shutdowns. The ones eager to learn and understand if they don't already. The inclusive ones. The ones for whom autism acceptance and appreciation is already a given. Why not thank them?
I'd been getting annoyed by some things I'd seen online in autistic communities. Particularly the way people can be treated if we perceive them not to be doing things just right. I might agree that the things aren't right. I'm no big fan of ABA or Autism Speaks and there are far worse things than either of those. But I'm less of a fan of the times that people who might like ABA are made out to be evil. They're not evil. They're doing their best and children given ABA or restricted diets or any of the rest of it have parents who love them and want the very best for their autistic children. While I might disagree about methods I'm not going to disagree about love.
I think there's a tendency online to find a bad particular situation and apply it broadly. Not just with autism. In every sphere. Take politics - hey, the UK is leaving the EU and there are many memes telling how the people who voted to leave are majorly racist. Some might be. But I firmly believe most are not. Of course they're not. Or Muslims get called terrorists. And all Christians get called homophobic bigots. The particular is applied too widely.
A woman wants to cure her child. That gets applied to many women until, in extreme cases, the "autism mums" are all seen as bad mothers who hate their children. In reality of course nearly all of them deeply love their children and may be desperate to get them the best support there is. Because they do need support - raising a severely autistic child isn't exactly easy. Sometimes desperation may lead to unwise paths. Sometimes. But not to unloving paths.
Then there's Julia. The new autistic character on Sesame Street. One of the most autism positive things I've ever seen, as least on a TV show. The puppeteer's son is autistic. The designer of Julia felt very strongly about things because of all the autistic children he's known. And the makers of the show have tried to do as good a job as they can having decided where on the spectrum Julia might be.
I have seen so many posts about how Julia is a terrible thing and how the makers of Sesame Street should be ashamed. I don't need to give the reasons I've read. Many of them were total rubbish. Perhaps the makers need to continue to learn. That's true and they say so themselves. Perhaps Julia isn't some totally perfect autistic character, perfectly portraying every aspect of the condition. It looks like she'll do a very good job though.
So I've been getting saddened when, especially online, the autistic community can sometimes [The word there is sometimes, not often. That's deliberate.] spend a lot more time and energy blasting things and not much time at all congratulating people and organisations for the good they do. We can get so stressed about whether we are autistic or have autism (and we can't agree on that ourselves) that we miss the picture of caring non-autistic people working their butts off for the sake of autistic people.
The Autistic Fringe Yurt, Edinburgh 2016
We decided we wanted to say thank you for the good. Not ignore the bad. But say thank you for the good. So my friend and I planned. I confess she was the instigator of the whole thing. Our planning didn't take long.
April is known as Autism Acceptance Month. It's a month in which many of us will campaign to be accepted. And I will be glad to campaign - as long as autistic children
suffer, while there aren't resources for brilliant child-centred early
intervention, while adult support can be almost nonexistent, while
people push for cures or in desperation use bleach solutions, while the
situation elsewhere may be far worse than in the UK, and so on. As long as there's
a need I am happy to campaign.
But my friend and I want to spend the month rejoicing over the places and people where we are already accepted. We want to rejoice over good practice. We want to rejoice that there are lots and lots of great people out there. Both of us know that there is much campaigning still to be done on many fronts. Here in the UK and across the world.
So what are we doing? My friend has bought cards and found out addresses. She is sending personal thank you cards to people throughout the month of April. "You've done this for me. I appreciate it and you. Thank you for your support/care/acceptance/creative compassion." Or something like that.
I have started a Facebook page. This one: https://www.facebook.com/AutisticThanks/
I plan to publicly thank someone each day in April and to let them know that they have been thanked. Sometimes I'll have to anonymise what I write on Facebook - but they'll know who they are because I will thank them privately.
We'll thank the people who behave like this for us.
My hope is that other autistic people will be a part of the page and thank those who have helped them, accepted them, loved them, supported them, in large ways and small. My hope is that autistic friends might join in the game and maybe some autistic strangers too. My hope is that the page will be a place filled with gratitude and positivity. I also hope that others might see the page, see what kind of things autistic people appreciate and seek to act along those lines.
It's a little daunting though. I have to find thirty people and groups to thank and I haven't made my list yet. I've also got the first thoughts of another project in mind that will take a lot more work than posting thirty things on a Facebook page.
Beyond that I don't know what will happen.
One of my soft toys enjoying Greenbelt festival.
We hope to bring smiles to ourselves and each other as we remember all the good people in our worlds.
We both hope that we can bring smiles to people and encourage them for what they're doing and being for us.
We hope that our simple thank yous will enrich the lives of those around us.
We hope too that saying thank you will not prove controversial. I've already been told that it is and I've had grumbles about we poor marginalised autistic people thanking privileged neurotypical people. Enough of that. Please. I know we could thank autistic people - for a start we could thank each other for acceptance. But this time, just this once, we're going to look outside the autistic community and hand out a whole load of gold stars and celebrate autism acceptance in our own possibly peculiar way.
Autism Acceptance Month begins in two days. This year I am looking forward to it.
2016 is over. If you are reading this then you survived all the highs and lows and the joys and sorrows. Well done. Give yourself a pat on the back.
This is the end. The final set of gratitude diary entries. It's January now and the first day in a year on which I'm deliberately not posting anything. For me it's served its purpose and I am moving on to whatever exciting things happen this year.
2017 is the year for doing. That was in part of a message received yesterday by/through a friend. She's crazy but she speaks sense. This is a year for doing. Not just talking but doing. Getting on with it. Getting on with whatever the vision is and with embracing self and others and walking the path. That's what my friend said anyway. And do you know what? On this occasion I believe her.
Perhaps the song by The Doors isn't appropriate.
Because this isn't just the end.
This is the beginning.
26thDecember
Grateful to have tidied a room. I can now see the desk table again.
I put things on the walls again, securely, that had fallen off.
And my collapsing Catholic pictures now have the addition of a ten foot rosary, an essential item for any forty foot tall Catholic enthusiasts.
27thDecember
Grateful for new writing ideas and for hope.
Grateful for sorting out the CDs I cleared out months ago and that selling some of them - not the ones in the picture - should nearly pay for my Lit & Phil membership.
28thDecember
Grateful that I can move on from a game obsession after a week of wasting too much time.
I have reached this point.
Let's just ignore the thousands of user made levels and move on. A good idea!
29thDecember
Crappy day of a PIP tribunal that didn't happen. They adjourned it. It was not pleasant.
Grateful for these tasty treats forming a most unhealthy dinner.
31stDecember
Grateful to have spent the end of the year as I wish to begin the new. With family, crazy people, and friendship. With reading and writing. With walking and seeing the sea. With meditation. And with a lot of hope.
Grateful too for the way Blob Thing helped me in 2016. It's his first birthday.
Yes it is. It's getting very near the end. I wanted to present to you The Beatles recording of the reprise of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band. Unfortunately all the YouTube videos of that have been blocked on copyright grounds. And that means that none of you will hear the performance and rush out and buy the album. Instead, here's Cheap Trick.
The end is over. It's January 1st 2017 and my challenge to post every day in the Sunday Assembly Gratitude Group for a year is complete. I didn't quite succeed. On average I missed posting on one day a month. Now I'm moving onto other things. I've started a blog to post free writing on as many days as I can manage it, without worrying about quality although hoping that generally the quality will improve as the year continues. That blog can be found here. I've started another blog in which I want to consider the Gospels from the New Testament from my post-church, post-Christian, post-theist perspective. I also know that there will be many things I write this year that won't ever see daylight. I'm just going to enjoy myself with it.
The gratitude posts helped me a lot in 2016 but in all honesty I am glad to be leaving them behind. Maybe if the group had remained a place where lots of people posted I'd be happy to stay. But it didn't. There are so few of us and I know it's time to move on, with gratitude for the memories and gratitude for the change.
You can almost tell in these entries - or perhaps you can tell without a shadow of a doubt - that I have been quite looking forward to leaving it all behind.
I sit here on the afternoon of January 1st 2017 with reading books, writing books and with a Bible I wasn't expecting to be reading. I sit here with unformed plans and hopes and know that the year will contain surprises, triumphs and setbacks. I sit here believing that 2017 is a year for living more fully than I have ever lived before.
21stDecember
Grateful for a quiet day. The tree is up but undecorated!
Grateful for reading, silly games, DVDs.
Grateful that though the exercise from the physio is (swear word) painful it should do some good for my spine and leave it slightly less the wrong shape.
22ndDecember
Grateful that people have liked the story I posted a few days ago.
Maybe it could be edited, proof read (it has typos!) and tweaked and submitted somewhere for next Christmas.
23rdDecember
Grateful that all the shopping is finished without too much pain.
Grateful that none of the things I had to in town were Christmas related and that they included seeking refuge in the Lit & Phil and browsing a magazine about writing.
Think I'm going to enjoy using that place as a refuge. Once I've bought myself a decent flask so I don't have to pay for tea that comes in mugs that aren't large enough and isn't chai.
24thDecember
Grateful to have free written something about Christmas in addition to the 15,000 word story posted a few days previously.
Five more days. They were good days. I spent them in Manchester staying with an awesome person, the creator of my soft toy Blob Thing. She's a very busy person these days, excelling in her passion and slowly working her way towards her dream. I believe that she will achieve that dream. She has found her niche and it's a place where that great passion is combined with a talent and definite flair and I believe that she is going to affect the lives of lots of people in a very positive way as she continues to walk this path. Autistic children will benefit massively and so will their parents/guardians and those around them. They already do benefit massively but this is only the beginning. One of my joys over the past sixteen months since meeting her has been to watch the way she has run down this path with such total enthusiasm and to watch the way that she has begun to create something pretty damn marvellous. When I met her this thing did not exist anywhere but her head. And now it does. And there is much more in her head to become a physical reality at time progresses. I am looking forward to watching it happen.
Five more days. Since Amanda is so busy I now have to occupy myself quite a bit when I'm there. I am finding ways to occupy myself and know that there is never a cause for me to be bored either when reading and writing at her house or when I go out - walking, visiting a town, writing in the library, or finding new places and people.
This visit was no exception and below you will find a few things I am excited about. And a cafe that I'll be returning to. It even has convenient plug sockets for a laptop. Southport has also given me a writing prompt for a story that is churning in my head right now. At some point it will come to rest and I'll know the broad outline of the tale. But that's not something for now. I'll just tell you it involves palmistry and an impossible fortune becoming possible.
Something else. I am typing this at the Literary and Philosophical Society Library. I joined today. Yes, I am now officially a member. I plan to spend lots of time here writing and reading. Perhaps there will be people to meet too and it will become the source of more surprises in my life. I hope so.
16th December
Grateful to have found amazing places and things while having to spend hours in Manchester city centre without a plan.
Here:
A brilliant free creative space in Afflecks. With a possibility something similar might happen one day in Newcastle.
The awesome art cafe.
Some great street art.
So many pictures to choose from.
17th December
Grateful for a great day with Amanda in Southport.
Chips, ice cream, charity shops, a carousel, and tea. Our kind of day.
And it was the first time I have ever seen the sea it Southport. On every other visit it was miles away.
18th December
Grateful for darkness and light. The not-church church I attended in Manchester was based on the theme of darkness. I liked the people there. I don't think it would be "my" place but I did like them and I liked the honesty and openness that was greater than that seen in most church churches.
And grateful for the women's toilets here in Nexus Art Cafe.
Yep, a gratitude post about a toilet.
19th December
Grateful to spend most of the day with Amanda.
We caught the bus to Leigh for charity shops and to visit a very good cafe there.
A screen in the cafe displays slideshows of someone's photos. As I was paying I noticed the photos at that moment were of Newcastle.
20th December
Grateful to have achieved the front seat on the coach back from Manchester.
Grateful for an easy journey.
And grateful for roast chicken. Because I am still a corpse eating monster.
Five more days. The solstice will soon be with us and then Christmas. And then the close of this year of gratitude. I'm still undecided on what will replace the gratitude diary next year. How about this:
Each of those contains a writing prompt for each day of the year. I think personally I prefer the look of the first set. I also have a couple of books with daily writing prompts. Maybe that should be the replacement. A short piece of writing every day from a prompt. It would be both enjoyable and a challenge. I wouldn't be too religious about it or force myself to catch up if I missed it every day for a week.
At this point I don't know how my writing will develop in 2017, how much I'll be sitting in the Lit & Phil Library, whether I'll be entering any competitions or submitting any work in the hopes some editor will like it and publish it.
At this point I don't particularly care what I'll find out about those things. I do expect my writing will develop, that I will be sitting in the Lit & Phil, and that I will probably see some competitions or calls for submission that look enjoyable enough to play with and not care about so-called "success".
So here, five more days of gratitude.
I type this while sitting in the Nexus Art Cafe in Manchester. In a couple of hours I'll be back in Salford. I arrived here at 10.30 for a not-church church thing called Sanctus and stayed to write and be in a nice place for a while. If you're in Manchester I can highly recommend the place. Unless you need wheelchair access or can't deal with steps. It's in a deep basement - with a window into a back courtyard - and the place doesn't have a lift. Apart from that, I can vouch for the toasties, the tea, and the cake. Also the toilets. They're pretty cool too.
I spot that I haven't posted anything apart from gratitude posts recently - unless you include Blob Thing's blog which has been a little wild recently. I'll try to post something else soon. I hope to get a story posted here by Christmas. It's a Christmas story so it should be posted by Christmas! I'm quite happy with it and, at 15,000 words, is by far the longest piece of fiction I've ever written.
It's all progress. Looking forward to the progress of 2017. It's going to be special.
11th December
Grateful to have been able to spend more time than expected with a friend.
Grateful for her treating me to lunch at Tea Sutra.
And that she wrote something meaningful for me.
12th December
Grateful the new printer works so I have been able to print the Christmas story for a friend so she can be the first to read it.
Grateful too for a year old memory shared.
Cheating - but it's the only photo!
13th December
Grateful for a quiet day.
Grateful for new internet, and new electricity and gas meters.
Glad to have finished two of my many unfinished books. That's almost miraculous.
14th December
Grateful to have found the item I needed to complete Amanda's present.
Grateful for everything said at the school parents' evening.
Grateful for comments about the last Blob post. It's the graveyard one at blobthing.blogspot.co.uk Unless it's a .com.
3400 words of an event I don't remember.
15th December
Grateful to have returned to Manchester.
Grateful for Megabus tickets and odd sights in Salford.
These were excellent days, not to be spoiled by impending anxiety and panic. The decision half made on one of these days is now fully made and I'm looking forward to indulging myself in the results of that.
Pressing on. Life is good. Sometimes autism and mental health combine to make it very difficult indeed. But it's a wonderful life really and I plan to make it more wonderful in 2017. This year I've made more discoveries about myself. Pleasing discoveries. Next year I will live them as fully as I can on each day.
Is that a brilliant plan?
6th December
Grateful to see a certain friend for the first time in ages.
Also grateful for Snowdog memories and for them raising a quarter of a million pounds in the auction.
Blob and Winefride watched most of the auction online although Winefride did get bored near the end and wandered off.
7th December
Grateful to learn friend will be returning very soon.
And grateful to have achieved choir in spite of major anxiety nearly scuppering the journey.
Our first little performance is on Saturday. It'll be great.
8th December
Grateful for a decision more than half made to join the Lit & Phil and to spend time there next year writing in a pretty distraction free environment.
This may be my new second home, already home to books such as this.
9th December
Amanda gave me a writing prompt a while back because I asked her for half a sentence. The prompt was this:
"He saw the Christmas lights had been up for months, and he thought to himself"
Grateful that I just finished writing the draft of a story from that prompt and I am shocked at how it managed to top 15,000 words.
Grateful to be writing and for my loose writing plans for next year and the fact that there is no pressure beyond writing because it's good for me, having as much fun with it as possible, and not worrying about where the process will take me.
A year ago I wouldn't have dreamed of writing as much as I've written this year and wouldn't have thought that 15,000 words could flow relatively easily.
I wonder whether they are any good!
10th December
Grateful for an utterly awesome afternoon at the Bicycle Garden in Fenham.
I was there for a final quick rehearsal before performing with SHE Choir at the event there.
But there were also the joys of eating stunning homemade and garden cooked food, being with excellent people, and getting smoky from the fire.
An added unexpected extra: Making my first ever Christmas wreath. Several of us made a wreath, weaving our rings out of willow and adding all kinds of good things to them.
It's getting much colder. Except when it isn't. The last few days were much warmer than average. On average we can I suppose expect warmer than average days since 2016 is globally the warmest year since records began, beating 2015 which was the warmest year and which beat 2014 which was also the warmest year. Climate change is real and 2016 saw the election of a man to be President of the USA who has stated that climate change is a Chinese hoax. There is much to be worried about environmentally - are we all doomed already?
There is also much to be worried about economically and socially. In the UK there are increasing reports of malnutrition, one million people now are forced to rely on food banks to feed themselves, homelessness is rising and laws to persecute homeless people are being introduced. Disabled people are losing out under government policy and the rich poor divide continues to increase.
Across the world there are wars - often fought using the weapons sold by the UK and USA - with all the human suffering that war brings, and the civilian suffering and fallout is perhaps greater than ever with so much fighting taking place not on the battle field but in the cities and towns. The refugee crisis is increasing rather than declining and across Europe refugees face another winter. I saw a video a couple of days ago about the situation in Greece, posted by a local woman who I've met but don't know. Maybe next year that will change. Her Facebook feed has lots about the crisis, about human rights, and about the humanitarian work she is involved with both here and overseas. Since much of it is publicly shared I'll share it here. It's under this link. If you would like to look at the video I mentioned, Ruhi's post is here.
December. The final month begins.
So it's not the final month is it? It's only the final months of one particular version of a yearly calendar.
Though there is much to be worried about and much that I'd like to find a way to become more involved with in 2017 there is also much to smile about. I've been trying to smile and be thankful each day this year. Sometimes it's been very difficult indeed and my mental health has been wildly changeable. But I'm glad I've done it. I'm glad I've kept up this diary. In another month I think I'll have stopped and will be finding another way to be thankful or to channel positivity and passion.
The final month begins. You'll see that it's not all roses and sparkles. But so far the month has been pretty frabjous.
Just wait until the next gratitude post. You'll see some very joyful frabjousness. Or should that word be frabjosity?
1st December
Grateful for time spent with a Sunday Assembly person. Good times.
Grateful to hear Laura Bates who started the Everyday Sexism Project.
Grateful to have so much good in my life and to have written about some of it last night.
Picture is some wise graffiti seen under a bridge. Sometimes it can be easy to forget it and to want to give up.
2nd December
Grateful for Snowdogs!
The elusive Patchwork Northumberland
I was able to take my soft toy friends to the farewell event. Really good to see the dogs again.
Bye bye dogs. We enjoyed you.
Newcastle and Sunderland Football Club Dogs
And you will raise lots of money for a good cause.
3rd December
Very hard day.
Grateful for silly computer games.
And grateful to have spent 20p when out, on a new little friend.
This is Merghost. He's a merghost.
4th December
Grateful for the choir. An extra rehearsal today for a couple of hours.
Great to sing with great people. And fantastic to be totally accepted as a woman within a women only space. It's the first time I've deliberately joined a women's group.
Photo was taken on a dark street afterwards.
5th December
Grateful that I managed to get to the Sunderland autism drop in for the first time in a year.
Pictures: A sky on the way there, a light tree there, and a hopefully not to be returned to piece of the past on the way back.
