Star I found ‘lost in her own world’ comes out flailing over the tragedy of her son 17

Should social media ever be the place to share your horror and heartbreak as Sinead O’Connor is doing now?

Sinead went. over a short period of her life, from being the beautiful, ethereal face of the Nineties to become a subversive, divisive and heart-broken harridan of politics and religion.

She became the girl who had everything and lost so much of it to mental health problems.

Sinead, the Irish girl with the golden voice, became lost in the tinsel of pop stardom, the gypsy swagger of boots and tats as she hit what she saw as the hard road ahead.

She wanted her voice to be heard everywhere.

Her impromptu performance decades ago of Bob Marley’s War on Dylan’s anniversary bash was stunning, powerful and outrageous. But more than anything, it was emotionally pure and provocative.

But from there on in the girl who for some years there was nothing to compare to, became more and more erratic and difficult to relate to.

People, including many former fans, actively started to dislike her.

Sinead is intelligent and political… but it was her politics and peripheral way of being that ultimately damaged her artistic career.

She had ripped up a photograph of Pope John Paul II live on US television.

|And in 1999, she was ordained by a breakaway church in Lourdes.

In 2010, she called for Catholics to boycott Mass until there was a full investigation into the Vatican’s role in the issue of child abuse.

And she had – and still has – a right to do with what she will with her own voice. But so many other things happened and she has been accused and derided for what is described as ‘over-sharing’. It had become her modus-operandi, just as it does for some many of us who feel hurt and lost.

I met Sinead briefly in the 1990s in a pub in Birmingham. A friend of mine was writing about her … she was still a star with the ability to shine over her own narrowing horizons. Sinead was enigmatic, mysterious, vulnerable and gentle. Nothing like the firebrand of skewed politics and skinless tub thumping she was becoming known for.

She sipped her drink but smoked heavily. Her fingers were brown. She had a fashionable gypsy quality back then and I liked her.

But now she is sharing again, graphically, angrily and despairingly over the suicide of Shane. He went missing in Tallaght, South Dublin, with Gardai launching an appeal to find the teenager. The police confirmed on Saturday that the search for Shane had been ‘stood down’ after a body was found. Shane had hanged himself.

In a plethora of tweets Sinead has said: ‘Suicide will not bring you peace. It is a lie. Therefore the next poor well meaning sod who says to me about my son “at least he is at peace now” is going to get their lights punched out. How does anyone know he’s at peace?”

In another she said: ‘I can tell you his face was as tormented as it’s been for months. No difference at all.’

O’Connor went on to rail against Tusla, promising retribution for her son’s death and alleging that a CAMHS psychiatrist said ‘planning a wedding is no different to planning a funeral’ upon her son being discharged, despite him having left ‘detailed funeral plans’. 

‘Message to Tusla, a storm is coming that you haven’t rehearsed for. Kids are dying in your care every day. Now my kid is one of them. Big mistake.

‘My child has now been dead on Tusla’s watch for over 48 hours and the only contact I have had from anyone representing Tusla was yesterday from their media office, concerned for themselves over the negative publicity.

‘A month ago Shane was brought to CAMHS after vanishing leaving suicide notes including detailed funeral plans. They discharged him. Said he had no plans. When objections were raised by the adult with him she was told “planning a funeral is no different to planning a wedding”

‘That was the CAMHS psychiatrist… I’m here to tell CAMHS that planning my child’s funeral is nothing remotely similar to planning his wedding. Which will now never happen. Because you’re unfit for purpose.’

The Irish singer also alleged her son learned how to make the noose he used to commit suicide on the computer in the child’s psychiatric ward at Linn Dara hospital.

And if her allegations are true, then the method of making a noose – or so many other ways of taking your own life – must be viewed as a major iniquity of the internet.

But is Sinead, with her own problems, doing herself and the memory of her son a disservice by sharing her despair and anger in this way for the world to see? She still, despite the tattered flag of her career, has a major publicity machine at her disposal and, I’m sure, sympathetic advisors and indeed family members she can turn to.

It won’t be long before the social media dragons and other media beasts will turn against her as they have done in the past and this will only serve to have a long-lasting kick in the guts of her obvious agony.

The shallow angry world of social media cannot be the place for people to share their personal agony…

#suicide #shane #sinead #sineadoconnor

Sinead O’Connor’s teenage son has been found dead two days after he was reported missing.

His mother took to social media saying singer ‘Shane decided to end his earthly struggle’. Only days earlier Sinead had threatened the hospital where Shane was being looked after with legal action for ‘letting him out of their grasp while he was on suicide watch’.

But her later tweet was devastating: ‘My beautiful son, Nevi’im Nesta Ali Shane O’Connor, the very light of my life, decided to end his earthly struggle today and is now with God. 

‘May he rest in peace and may no one follow his example. My baby. I love you so much. Please be at peace:’

Shane, who went missing on Thursday, was one of Sinead’s four children – Jake Reynolds, Roisin Waters and Yeshua Francis Neil Bonadio.

Sinead, who changed her name to Shuhada’ Davitt in 2018, also tweeted a Bob Marley song which she dedicated to Shane,

Shane went missing and was last seen in Tallaght, South Dublin, on Friday, with Gardai launching an appeal to find the teenager. The police reportedly confirmed on Saturday that the search for Shane had been ‘stood down’.

I met Sinead briefly in the 1990s in a pub in Birmingham. A friend of mine was writing about her … she was still a star with the ability to shine over her own narrowing horizons. Sinead was enigmatic, mysterious, vulnerable and gentle. Nothing like the firebrand of skewed politics and skinless tub thumping she was becoming known for.

She sipped her drink but smoked heavily. Her fingers were brown. She had a fashionable gypsy quality back then and I liked her.

Sinead is intelligent and political… but it was her politics and peripheral way of being that ultimately damaged her artistic career.

She ripped up a photograph of Pope John Paul II live on US television.

In 1999, she was ordained by a breakaway church in Lourdes.

In 2010, she called for Catholics to boycott Mass until there was a full investigation into the Vatican’s role in the issue of child abuse.

In December 2011, she annulled her fourth marriage to therapist Barry Herridge 16 days after their wedding.

About four years ago Sinead went on Facebook saying that she was all alone and struggling to survive.

“I am now living in a motel in New Jersey. I’m all by myself,” she said. “Mental illness, it’s like drugs, it doesn’t care who you are, and equally what’s worse, the stigma doesn’t care who you are.”

She said then hat her family has abandoned her, criticized them for not taking care of her for the past two years and said she only has one person she can trust. “There’s absolutely nobody in my life except my doctor, my psychiatrist – the sweetest man on earth, who says I’m his hero – and that’s about the only thing keeping me alive at the moment… and that’s kind of pathetic.

“My entire life is revolving around not dying, and that’s not living,” she added. “And I’m not going to die, but still, this is no way for people to be living.”

Here at The Society our hearts go out to Sinead and her family. And I will never forget this star I found ‘lost in her own world’…

#sineado’connor #menta;hea;th #bereavement #tragedy

Sidney Poitier, the first black man to win a Best Actor Oscar, has died, aged 94.

His death has just been confirmed by Bahamas Minister of Foreign Affairs Fred Mitchell.

Mitchell said, “We’ve lost a great Bahamian and I’ve lost a personal friend.”

#poitier #sidney #dead #actor

More than anything, for an elderly man of generally good reputation to face discreditation at a time he is brilliantly topping and tailing his vast legacy to the world, is a tragedy.

Particularly, when the allegations involve sexual abuse.

And at 80-years-old this is what Bob Dylan is facing. But finally, through his lawyers, he is publicly fighting back.

Yep. Bob’s been a bit of a lad, drinking, cavorting, in and out of love, in and out of beds, flying and crashing. Yep, he’s been out there making money, working hard getting to the top of his profession, buying cars and houses.

And in that way, he’s just like the rest of us … he made his own dreams come true. It has to be said too that along the way he showed so many of us the way to our own.

But now, in his dotage, he is staring into his dream gone wrong.

And it is getting like a psycho nightmare from one of his mid-60s songs.

Dylan’s lawyers, according to reports, say  that his accuser is a strange psychic who claims she was abducted by aliens.

This is said in court papers filed a few days ago,

The woman, who filed her suit last August alleges that in 1965 when she was 12 years old our rock’n’roll hero plied her with alcohol and drugs and sexually abused her at the Chelsea Hotel.

She remembers it well…

But in the latest filings, Dylan’s lawyers say that the woman’s accusations are “fantastical and fictitious being exploited for financial gain.”

The lawyers say that JC – we all know who she is but can’t say – claims on her website that she is a psychic who can channel deceased families members for those in mourning.

The lawyers say the accuser has publicly claimed to have piloted a spaceship during an alien abduction and channelled early 20th century famed escape artist Harry Houdini.

Dylan’s lawyers claim her suit is filled with “ludicrous” allegations that are “chronologically impossible” — and “a pernicious attempt to extort Mr. Dylan.”

This is supported by Dylan experts who say the time and place of the allegations don’t fit in with Dylan’s touring commitments.

The claims in the suit say the assaults happened in April and May. But Dylan was overseas for the majority of May, playing almost a dozen dates in England detailed in setlists.

He was also all over on the West Coast in April, playing in Berkeley, California. (April 3); Vancouver, British Columbia (April 9); Portland, Ore. (April 23); and Seattle (April 30).

Swedish researcher Olof Bjorner, who documents Dylan’s live performances and recording sessions has highlighted these events.

Then on April 25, Dylan went from Seattle to the UK to begin his Don’t Look Back tour, Rolling Stone magazine says. Upon arrival in England, he gave a press conference at the airport, which documentary filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker seen in his 1967 film Don’t Look Back.

The tour ran from April 30 to May 10, then he flew to Portugal with Sara, says Dylan scholar, Prof Anne Margaret Daniel. Dylan then returned to London on May 23 where he actually went in to hospital for a number of days.

One of J.C.’s legal team said in repost that more than half of Americans believe in psychic phenomena.

Now, let’s face it, if Bob and his lawyers have got it wrong and he is guilty, then he deserves his own cold irons bound.

But if he isn’t and so many of us want to believe that … well.

Yet, this isn’t the only claim hounding at his heels – the estate of a Dylan’s co-writer Jacques Levy wants a court to revive a lawsuit seeking a cut of the estimated $300 million sale.

Bob’s lawyers are demanding the courts throw out this renewed claim.

#ROUGHANDROWDY #BOBDYLAN #SEXCLAIMS #COURTDYLAN

Sir Keir Starmer supports Sir Tony Blair’s latest honour.

He says that the former prime minister deserves it.

Is the man mad?

More than 600,000 people have already signed a petition calling for the appointment by the Queen to the Order of the Garter – Britain’s oldest and most senior British Order of Chivalry – to be removed.

What about the Iraq War, Keir?

That’s what they are asking you wonderful man of the people!

But Sir Keir insists the honour is not an issue and that Sir Tony had been a “very successful prime minister”.

Has Sir Keir forgotten Blair decided to enter the Iraq war on our behalf? He was instrumental is causing the Third World War and we are still under daily threat from an almost invisible and proudly suicidal army.

Oh, and don’t forget Blair has quite happily raked in millions by advising foreign despots ever since.

It is true that Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter is a hollow honour, one extended to every former prime minister – and it is telling that Her Majesty waited 14 years before granting it to Blair.

The Queen is sold to the world as a non-political animal. But this is far from the truth. And the making of the honour has reintroduced Geoff Hoon’s claim in his memoir that he was ordered to burn a secret memo about the 2003 Iraq invasion.

So, surely if Blair had a shred of honour he would reject the honour.

Anthony Charles Lynton Blair, aged 68, a simpering, lisping, lying, hand-wringing, grinning war-monger who became Middle East peace envoy is supported by a particularly pointless rich boy who still thinks it’s trendy to be on the left of anything that’s right.

Did Keir not notice that that nice Tony even exploited the pandemic?

He keeps trying to reinvent himself as the saviour of the country over Covid.

He was among the first to advocate leaving a 12-week gap between the first and second Covid jabs to maximise the number of people with at least partial immunity. But then Health Secretary Matt Hancock said it was his idea, which Blair had stolen.

After his side lost the Brexit poll, the arch-Remainer demanding a reversal of the largest democratic vote in British history.

And don’t forget Blair took the country into war in Afghanistan and 457 British lives were lost. Two decades later the Taliban is back in control.

But nothing is bigger than the £8bn war in Iraq, a war in which 200,000 civilians are said to have died.

The conclusions of the Chilcot report into the war accused Blair of being a liar and a warmonger. The 2.6million word report said: ‘The UK chose to join the invasion of Iraq before the peaceful options for disarmament had been exhausted. Military action at that time was not a last resort.

‘The judgments about the severity of the threat posed by Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction – WMD – were presented with a certainty that was not justified. The planning and preparations for Iraq after Saddam Hussein were wholly inadequate.’

But Blair insists he has no regrets.

As names on the petition go ever higher, Blair should give up the knighthood and war crime charges should be consider.

#keirstarmer #tonyblair #thequeen #garter

The Painted Desert is about 300 miles from Vegas. If you ride there on the back of a Greyhound it takes 13 hours. Unlucky 13.

13 steps to death in Gallows Town, 13 whispered lies against God.

The Painted Desert is in the badlands of Arizona and leads eventually into the Petrified Forest. Route 66 once took you there, now it is buried under the dust.

But if you are brave enough to go, you will find yourself driving headlong into the depths of your personal sense of humanity.

Tom Wood lives 24 miles from the glitz of Vegas with the ‘destiny’ woman it took him so many decades to find.

He spent a lot of time in Red Rock Canyon in the painted Mojave Desert where once there stood an old telephone box … it used to be said that it had one pre-paid call waiting for anybody who got lost there.

You could either phone home or the next station on your own freedom road.

Freedom Road is a mythological network of hope and escape. And that’s the road Tom – an old blues man now – has been on ever since his time began in the 1950’s flames and burning altars of St Louis.

Tom is a contented man since his destiny, Tamara, waltzed back in to his life after a meeting arranged by some musician friends.

But before their ‘beautiful encounter’ his journey had taken him headlong into his own sense of humanity.

Tom has been to the deserts, the dark forests and the badlands. And in there he found the trail to his Freedom Road.

Although Tom says he was never affected by the racism of St Louis in his formative years the endless rows of dead black bodies and the terror of the white horsemen are never far from his boot heels. They snap like dead dogs.

Tom’s Freedom Trail smacks of a mythological underground railway that began in North Carolina and from there it had many dark shadowy stations. But no end.

And the bodies of all the lynched black people would stretch from Vegas to the Painted Desert and back again. Over and over. Over and over.

And their miserable ghosts still shake the strange fruit in the Petrified Forest and ring them bells of St Louis.

Tom’s Freedom Trail is an indelible link between racism, death and freedom and is masterfully told.

Howard Fast’s Freedom Road revealed just how iniquitous American society can be, a society that allowed the Ku Klux Klan to employ terrorism to keep the black labour force in slavery.

And in 1951, just before Tom was born, Fast wrote one of his best-known novels, Spartacus … the story of a slave’s battle for the dignity of life.

Freedom Trail is another brave step down that road.

LISTEN HERE …

FREEDOM TRAIL

People lives are at stake you don’t mess with it (sing 4 times)
A shelter for fugitives on the run
Those homes are stations for a railroad
Watch for a signal to move on
Move along the underground railroad”
” Big dipper praise the north star
Bright beacon telling you where you are
Moving downwind out of sight
Moving north through the twilight”
CHORUS > ” If you wanna go run faster than the wind
                       A conductor leads your way
                       Moving closer to freedom everyday”
” Freedom trails freedom trails
Glorious rails of the railroad
That freight you’re carrying to freedom
They are the ones who live to tell the tale”
REPEAT CHORUS>
” People lives are at stake, you don’t mess with it ” (sing 4 times)

People lives are at stake you don’t mess with it (sing 4 times)
A shelter for fugitives on the run
Those homes are stations for a railroad
Watch for a signal to move on
Move along the underground railroad”
” Big dipper praise the north star
Bright beacon telling you where you are
Moving downwind out of sight
Moving north through the twilight”
CHORUS > ” If you wanna go run faster than the wind
A conductor leads your way
                       Moving closer to freedom everyday”
” Freedom trails freedom trails
Glorious rails of the railroad
That freight you’re carrying to freedom
They are the ones who live to tell the tale”
REPEAT CHORUS>
” People lives are at stake, you don’t mess with it ” (sing 4 times)

VISIT

TW (mongomon.com)

#tomwood #bobmori #mongomon #freedomtrail #racismdead #stlouis #painteddesert #grandcanyon #mojave

Every year as the sky grows dark on the last year – 2021 was a helter-skelter of downward twists and turns – The Society looks back at what had it jumping over the moon!

And in 2021, yep, it was the same as in 2020 … Bob Mori’s independent video of Bob Dylan’s magnificently moving and powerful Murder Most Foul.

So, while telly regurgitates Die Hard and Love Actually and Netflix wraps its tentacles around you with Squid Games, take 17 minutes off and watch Bob’s vision of – well – Bob’s vision!

The song and the video are brilliant – and we’ve decided to vote it the best vid of 2023 as well!

Here it is, thank you Bob and Bob:

Try this one too …

Murder vid genius Bob Mori talks to us and reveals his stunning take on I Contain Multitudes

It’s been a funny year, 2021 hasn’t it. Well, when I say funny I mean there’s not been much to laugh at … apart from Stumbling Joe, Boris the Buffoon, Andrew the non-sweaty *rseole, Mad Max from France, that big f*rt Trump, and that very nice Mr Put-it-in-to-the-Ukraine-and-the Western-world who we lived just around the corner from for a while.

Oh. what a world we live in.

I couldn’t warm to those glue-eared insulation protesters either! Could you? They went home for Christmas, you know, but promised to be back soon… Ear! Ear!

And what about all those jab-bering Facebook fools who who complained about all those little pricks that still could save the world.

Still, no ‘arm done eh boys and girls!

And what about all those social media gloaters who stared blindly at all those bodies washing up on British beaches – they didn’t care that the majority of them had paid a fortune to conmen criminals to cross from France in plastic colanders to start a new life away from terror.

Disgusting!

And what about our embassies? A lot more about them later – suffice to say, if you’re a Brit abroad don’t go to the embassy for help. Oh No!

The poor luvs are working from their armchairs in their middle-class homes and have Loose Women to watch, dogs to walk, cups of tea to drink … and a totally useless pointless website to refer you to!

Ask the Afghan translators they dumped all over Afghanistan.

We’ll tell you our own embassy horror story soon.

What about the coppers who superimposed their faces on to dead girls? What about the copper who killed a young wife? What about Cressida? Is she really a Dick – or does she really not care what’s happening on her watch?

Oh! And what about electric cars eh? Have you tried them? Shimmying down the road inside a big bulbous vibrating dildo… smells like Ozone tho, nothing like diesel and spicy sex. And when your new little car begins to go a bit flaccid cos its batteries are going flat like a good old-fashioned rubber tyre what do you do? You plug it in! That’s what you do! Plug it in for a day or so and go and watch sofa ads on a smart telly!

Just like an embassy worker. Embassy? Ah! Consulate! (Very, very, very old joke, sorry)

But don’t get me wrong – some really good things happened in 2021 too!
Britney got freed and China announced that giant pandas had been taken off the endangered species list.

And Oprah’s interview with Meghan and Prince Harry showed them up to be the completely pointless tits they are … and Squid Games appeared on our screens!

Brilliant and good and bad and ugly year.

All the best

Have a good one … Leigh and Andrea xxx

It happened outside a little old cafe in Istria as we sat under a skylight moon.

She looks beautiful, my daughter. Haughty and proud … I can smell coconut-oil in her hair on the salty night breeze from the Adriatic at the end of our ancient crumbling street.

Jess is 24 and I am three years short of 70.

We have spent nearly 20 years apart. In fact we have barely been together from the day she was born.

What a tragedy.

I actually lived in a village only six miles from her front door. Occasionally we would even pass on the street and pretend we didn’t see each other.

There is no doubt, and it is perfectly understandable that, like any child caught in the tail-spin of the incendiary break-up of her totally mismatched parents, our daughter suffered.

In fact on a rare meeting in a local beer garden a long time ago, she asked me with the defiant directness of her youth: “What did I do to make you hate me so much that you never wanted to see me?”

But that isn’t how it happened.

And no matter how it all happened …. and why we could pass each other like boats lost at sea – none of it should ever have happened to her. No child should ever be allowed to feel responsible for the failures and sins of their parents.

It was the parents who made a decade of mistakes.

So, here we are in the glorious city of Pula in Croatia, its beautiful wreckage of a Roman amphitheatre glowering in the distance like an ancient killer’s skull with a thousand empty eyes.

We are in the old town, near the harbour, on these ingle-nooked streets that still have embers from cooking glowing, dying and then coming back to life again.

There is no doubt that the world’s Covid panic has taken its toll here too … souvenir and trinket shops, cafes and bars are abandoned.

Some are boarded up like coffins.

It hasn’t stopped the locals who still have the ability to trade though, they hit the streets with all the charm and noise of their Italian ancestry, selling, cajoling, laughing, splashing carafes of red wine and cooking with panache.

***

Jess and her boyfriend have flown for four hours or more from the UK, masked-up like air-borne bandits on a coughing and sneezing elastic band to meet me and my wife.

Andrea and I have driven more than 600 miles from Slovakia, in our old black American sedan, to meet them.

And it’s gone brilliantly, that’s all I can say.

Lots of talking, lots of finding out about each other. And lots of laughter. It’s as if the love we lost never died. Now it’s like a wisp of a ghost wafting slowly over these historic cobbles, seeking us out, finding us.

And Jess and I are at almost total peace with each other.

I say ‘almost’ for one reason and at first it might seem a strange inconsequential one. But something happened.

We had a cigarette together.

Inconsequential yes. But it matters.

You see, I haven’t smoked at all, almost since the day Jess was born. I used to be a heavy smoker, particularly when I was writing in the metaphorical miserable garret of my tumble-down Victorian cottage in the Midland’s Village of the Damned.

They say that the addiction to tobacco is so strong that the moment you stub a cigarette out you want another. And already I’m back to twenty a day and feel unable to even make a phone call or meet friends in a local bar without sparking one up.

And I am also addicted to Jess, who I gave up 20 years ago too.

****

Now, I phone her, text her, WhatsApp her almost every day, sometimes three or four times – and if she doesn’t answer, because she is busy making her way in this strange old disease-ridden world, I feel stressed and uneasy.

So, I make another phone call or message almost immediately, trying to spark up a conversation.

And I think love, when you’ve lost it and found it again, does that to you doesn’t it?

That grey-blue smoke that you take into your brain and you soul and blow out of your mouth into the sky to watch it dissolve. Then immediately you want it back again …

A famous man said ‘you can’t turn back, you can’t come back, sometimes we push too far’
The next line says simply ‘one day you’ll open up your eyes and you’ll see where we are‘.

Well, that’s what I saw during those enigmatic and beautiful days in the breeze by the side of the Adriatic. I saw where Jess and I are.

And as I press ‘dial’ on my phone and light another cigarette, I know I never want to give her up again.

#daughter #parentalalienation #family #broken #cafcass #familycourt #holiday #Istria #pula #newyear #mobilephones’#communication

OUR CARAVAN OF LOVE AND HOPE …

The Society is publishing the true story of a woman who went to hell and back because of breast cancer. This is Kaye Howarth’s story in her own words. Thank you for wanting to share with us and the world Kaye.

Biography … Bald Bird Surviving Breast Cancer

Part 9 Next Week

Dave suggests booking us a holiday. We walk slowly round the shops in Weymouth, I feel like an old lady in a young person’s body. Thinking of laying on a warm beach sounds like heaven.

Staring in shop windows we see a few deals and go in and ask for details. We then ask if the package entails health insurance, something we can’t travel without I remind Dave. This brings us down to earth with a bang. £500.00 for a week. I say forget it lets just go to Gould’s Garden centre for a mooch round, tea, coffee and some cake.

Sitting in the garden I exhale and just enjoy not feeling sick or dizzy. Dave has gone quiet. He’s up to something. I follow his gaze as he sips his coffee that follows a path to second-hand caravans.

 Having finished our drinks, we follow the path to caravan heaven. Some are expensive but tucked up in the far corner is a four berth Winetta.

The Salesman came over for a chat, saying she was just in and needs cleaning, but would we like to take a look, yes says Dave.

                                    70.                                    

Key found we enter caravan. Dusky pink lounge carpet. Four berths in good order.

Double bed at backroom. Tidy kitchen and working loo. Dave buys it then and there for £400.00.

Winnie the caravan joins our family. That evening Dave calls round work colleague’s looking for storage for Winnie. A farmer in Chickerell rents a field problem solved.

The following weekend we go to Durdle Door with all the kids. The great outdoors.

Caravanning is great, we play cricket, tennis, walk the dog, eat lots, and play cards during the evening, before bed.

All too soon the weekends over, time to pack up and leave the caravan field, that only as us and one other caravan.

                                                              71.

My last Chemo.

24.05.00

I have had my last chemo. I’ve done it, my families done it yippee! I thank all the nurses for there never ending support. Jan and I arrange to meet in six months and promise to keep in touch by phone. We hug. My last Chemo, I am anxious to not to be having more of these wonder drugs, which cease s my cells to develop in mad patterns.

I go home and phone Fran, she is two years post treatment, and knows where I’m coming from. Fran is calming; she tells me we are in charge of our bodies.                 That the Chemo stays in our bodies for a long time. And that lastly, I would have three monthly check-ups for the first year, and mammograms yearly, umm calmer now.

Chat about our families, and then work. Fran is now back to work full time. I’m planning to go back September. First, we have the children’s six week summer holiday. I will use this time to re cooperate. Good idea Fran says, don’t rush back before I feel really well. We say goodbye and good lucks.                                                              

Through the ensuing weeks, I have various lumps and bumps checked, I find out I also have an extra rib.

Jan and Linda Baldry support me by responding to my panicky messages, swiftly.

                                                               72.

 I join the local Breast Care Support Group that is held in a church hall in Weymouth, there is a lady there that had a Mastectomy 20 years ago, also a lady that has Secondaries…. I also meet another lady called Mary, we become friends and arrange to meet. She had a Mastectomy five years ago. If anyone walked into this room now, they would question if they were in a keep fit class the way people are so bubbly.

                                                                  73.

Getting back to life.

The summer holidays fly by, we enjoy hot sunny days down the beach, picnics.

For me searching out a shady spot, I am sporting a new swimming costume; the top is like a bikini sports top, covers down to my ribs. I am aware of the red scar on my back, my life scar I have called it.

We build sandcastles and enjoy just being. George gets into a large sand fight, Dave has to intervene, as sun bathers are getting covered, little sods. George comes back looking like a sandman. Ice cream is brought, and everyone settles back down.

Emily, Rosie and Katie and making sand mermaids, using seaweed for hair. The sky is blue, and the sea gently laps, life is good, no life is brilliant. I look at my family and sigh content just in that moment.

The holidays are ending; my children have had a fun time being generally

spoiled, by family and friends. They seem extraordinarily strong little people now; they are more independent of me, more self-sufficient. Dave continues going to work, seeing Rosie and Katie.

My beloved mum has at last had the news her drains are now sorted in her house, and she can shortly return home. That will feel strange I’ve got used to her being around.

                                              74.                  

Back to work.

Holidays are over, its September school gates creak open, and swarms of children sway up the street on the path back to education. They pretend not to be happy about this as they chat excitedly to reunited friends that they have missed over the halls.

Emily and George have gone, the house is empty apart from Barney and me. I can even hear the mantle clock ticking. I sit and have a coffee, having tidied away

Breakfast dishes go upstairs to get my work shoes. I pause and look at my reflection; I wonder how my colleagues will react to my return. I have gained a little weight now, and my hair is now short and wavy, darker than my Strawberry blonde before.

I put Barney out in his kennel, check he has clean water.

“Well Barney this is it, I’m back to work!” Barney lays down on his blanket looking at me quizzically. Walking back through the kitchen to hall I pick up keys from hook.

Stop, turn round and take a last look. I thought this day would never come.

Driving to work I feel the rush of exhilaration.

I am away from home. I’m going to work!

                                                  75.               

Arriving in Dorchester, drive around for five minutes; trying desperately to find a parking spot (Always difficult in a hospital car park). I have to give up and decide to try further afield. Cutting down the back streets, I turn into Dagmar Road. Dagmar Road, number 32 that is where I lived with my first husband Kelvin Emily and Georges Dad. Gosh that seems a lifetime ago. I park outside. Pause and smile. I slip through the back alley to Williams Avenue and cross the main road. Before I go to the main hospital. I pop in and say hello to Gill one of the secretaries in The Children’s Centre.

After I walk up the steps towards the Pencils (Large mobile of different coloured pencils-Some Architects dream) turn left and get lift up to Hardy Ward. Pass the large photos of staff”. Hello, it’s good to be back.” I say this quietly as I pass by.

Balloons are attached to our office door. I enter” Welcome back!” banners go across the room; more balloons are attached to the walls. I see a card for me, signed from Debs, Karyn and Pippa.

I turn then get into my in tray.

                                                               76.

. Life slips to normality. It is September 2000.

 However, I find that after a while working in a hospital environment challenging. Feeling the need to change direction work wise I look into doing a Reflexology Course, at the Weymouth College a Holistic Course.

Ringing up find the course is 3 weeks in but if I feel ok about it, they have one space. Passing the interview, I grab the course! The course is one day a week (Perfect) and will fit in with my working hours. I’m rather proud of my whites, looking like someone from Daz Advert. I have also decided that I want to change my job, I have always enjoyed working with the Elderly and would like to go back to working in the community.

After many walks with mum at Abbots bury along the beach path (This is where we always churned things over) debating should I, shouldn’t I give up my hospital job decide to do just that. I have learnt such a lot in this job, and the characters I have met I will never forget. Especially my very first patient Jimmy. Following his Stroke all he could say was the F word. But every Christmas Jimmy sent me a Christmas card.

Debs and Karyn were sad I was leaving but understood and wished me well in my new position with Carewey. I had got a job with an elderly lady and her son who lived six doors up from me. Couldn’t have worked out better.

                                                77.

Time ticks by, the children relax; mum is well settled back in her house now.

Barney lolls around the house. Rabbits sunbathe in the garden. Pickles, well she’s just the same, sneaking in with the Guinea pigs.

We all regain our independence. I catch up with friends that found my illness difficult to cope with. Emily and George have as many friends round as we can pack in. I can recognise who these are by the trainers in the hall.

I relish not having to drive to work and enjoy making new work friends.

Through “Bosom Buddies “a Support group I joined, I meet Monica Fosse who lives on Portland just round the corner from me, she also works for “Weymouth and Portland Housing”.

 Monica asks if I would like to apply for a part time cleaning post at Lady mead Hall.

I go for the interview but am offered not the cleaning job but a Wardens position starting in February, it’s all happening!

Emily’s loft conversion is now complete- Ems takes up new residency, George switches rooms, and paints with Dave his room, yes Orange and red again. Complete with new bunk bed and desk underneath. Katie and Rosie have their bunk beds in George’s old room,

                                                             78.

Health check-ups pass well, 1 month, then 3 months.

Then it’s Christmas. Dave cooks, and we all celebrate. What a year!

. Feb, March slip by, April, May, June and then July & at last I qualify as a Reflexologist!!!! Whoopee doo!

. Now I work occasionally (voluntarily having got through the vetting process) as a Reflexologist for Ham wick House, treating Cancer patients. This is, as and when needed. It’s the least I can do after all. Now I can give something back to the N.H.S as a thank you for all the care I received.

Not the end!

ISBN:9798662933149

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