Don’t forget you’re human. It’s okay to have a meltdown. Just don’t live there. Cry it out. Then re-focus on where you’re heading.

And so dear listener, apologies for the lack of a blog last week.

As some of you know there have been hiccups with regard to the settlement of my sister’s estate. I can’t say much as, by its very nature, it’s a legal process, so I can’t say much. But I have changed lawyers and I have known my previous lawyer since university days (the first time) so some decisions have been hard.

I have a new lawyer and I think we’ve found the tunnel but I’m still not sure whether that what we’re seeing is the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel or the light of an oncoming train.

But I’m happier and what I refer to as moments of anxiety and depression are beginning to recede but they are real and usually the coping mechanisms that I talk about help but no amount of going for a walk can sell a house you thought was already sold altho’ it hasn’t not been sold.

But I did have to clear away a lot of dead wasps from my sister’s house last weekend AND altho’ she’s dead I don’t think I’m unusual in still thinking about her and what she would make of the various happenings.

But I did mention some of this to another friend from my first time at university and therefore of that generation. His advice was to ‘wake up and smell the flowers’. It’s funny. I’ve done suicide intervention training on two occasions, and used it successfully twice, when working for Blue Triangle.

It wasn’t easy and it might have been so much easier had I been able to say to them ‘Wake up and smell the flowers!’ No, I didn’t get thanks and I had loads of paperwork to do after it.

And then I got a message on social media from someone from whom I had not heard for years but who does seem to follow me and this show somewhere.

Here’s one quote; ‘I have to admire that you can pull out the positives and I wish I was more like that.’

So, dear listener, which of the messages had the more positive effect? Or need I ask? Thank you Chris. 🙂 🙂 🙂

And finally, it’s been a bit of a one-subject blog but there have been good things this week. It’s my grand-daughter’s fifth birthday this week and I did get her a proper card as opposed to the one that said ‘Sorry, I forgot your birthday’ that I started the week with, I was at a smashing conference organised by the Scottish Drugs Forum (#stopthedeaths), it’s been a wee while since I’d eaten at the Hanoi Bike Shop so thoroughly enjoyed eating there again , I’m slowly working my way through a 100,000 word edit and I’ve been shown the actual bin where I can drop off used coffee capsules for re-cycling.

But maybe more of that next week,

Tioraidh, and an Oxfam collector in Buchanan Street recognised the Prostate Cancer Awareness badge and let me past, and still keeping it simple.

Iaint850, and what I do do is take a wee walk in the garden when it’s dark but I do have lights so it’s very pleasant and very relaxing,

Last week, when the blog didn’t happen, I had planned a political ending.

I was, either, going to have a go (as I have done before) at Iain Duncan Smith whose think tank has proposed setting the date for your pension at 75, or Harry, Meghan and Sir Reg Dwight.

IDS is the idiot who approached Alcoholics Anonymous in 2011 or 2102 and suggested that convicted drunk drivers should be compelled to attend AA meetings. What he didn’t realise was that AA meetings are voluntary and the word ‘Anonymous’ means you don’t have to give your name and so there is no record of attendance. What an idiot!

As is Sir Reg Dwight who felt that paying for H & M’s private jet AFTER the event (and I’m saying nothing about the ecological impact) would stop the criticism of them taking a freebie rather than a commercial flight.

Have you ever been on the Glasgow to Edinburgh train (on quieter times than last weekend) and decided to chance your luck in First Class but you only have a normal off-peak return and the conductor comes in and you offer to pay the difference but he says ‘no’ and he chucks you off at Linlithgow saying, ‘try it on the next train’ (a friend, honest, and a long time ago).

Where’s Sir Reg when you need him?

So, in the real world, I note that there are concerns that children no longer have invisible friends but they have friends they ‘make’ through computers.

Skippy’s doing fine thank you. She’s travelling the world at the moment and sends postcards from time to time – invisible postcards of course. She seems happy and I’ll pass on your best wishes.

Skippy is/was a coping mechanism but you’d guessed that a long time ago, didn’t you?

Maybe so are you, dear listener, and I thank you for listening.

So, in the latest in the well received series of good looking women in country music, here’s Dolly, Lind and EmmyLou……..

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My father said I always enjoyed the alphabet spaghetti he fed me, but I realise now he was just putting words in my mouth.

And so, dear listener, this may well be another short show. The editing is still pretty hectic but it is about to slow down and I was down at the Scottish Drugs Forum for two days this week.

But first, looking back at last week’s blog, a couple of you did notice that it ain’t always easy, peasy, lemon squeezy, between me and the students for whom I edit. 🙂

Of the two that I fell out with last week, one did apologise and I finished what I’d started but I heard nothing from the other. That’s fine.

And I’d a wee problem with another student this week. If you tell me that you’re going to send it at a particular time and don’t then I am well within my rights to mail you and to ask when I’m getting it.

And if you fail to reply to that, then stuff that for a game of sodgers, I may have turned down work in order to do yours and you have already cost me money, so my next mail is the one that says, ‘I hope you have good luck, at this late stage, in finding a new proof reader’. It’s all part of growing up, isn’t it? 😦

I mean it’s not as if I meet them …well very rarely…well I did this week. I did some editing for the SDF and realised, as I walked in on Wednesday morning, that the people whose work I’d edited were, in fact, reading my suggestions – and smiling….but that didn’t stop my face going bright red. 😀

They seemed happy. They’re a nice bunch.

I was actually in helping with some interviews for a job and I’ll maybe say some more in a few weeks’ time when decisions have been made and folk have been told and feedback given.

But I took it really seriously; I wore black denims and a shirt cos I felt it gave me a sense of gravitas……….but I then realise that I have to be careful what shirts I wear as one or two of them seem to have shrunk………I’ve spoken about the fact I need to lose weight before and I think I need to be ‘fat-shamed’ rather than to be told I carry it well. 😦

That does not help……But I promise I will never ever do the thing where I buy Ben Sherman shirts and wear them outside my jeans or whatever I happen to be wearing……..

But, yeah, the interviews went well and a big well done to my fellow volunteers and the worker who kept us all to time.

And I was given yet another variation on my real name……..I was called JoJo 🙂

And finally a slight ethical dilemma with my neighbours.

We are all reasonably good at taking in parcels for each other. So, on Friday morning I took in a parcel for Number 4. (I don’t think it’s giving away too much to say that I am number 3 and have
two massive rotweillers that never leave the house)

On Friday afternoon I heard voices outside and saw that Number 4 had gone to Number 6 and had retrieved a package from 6. Ah, I thought, 4 will come to me, 3, next but they didn’t.

So how long do I wait before I take their parcel over to Number 4 cos it looks a wee bit heavy and I don’t see why I should do heavy carrying? Any suggestions?

And, now, some very domestic catch up.

e and c’s house is now very warm; my grand-daughter is now at primary school; and I am looking ahead to daytime evening classes for next academic session, but I’m not sure what. 😀

And I have a new laptop and I am waiting for Son Brian to come over and to help me get it up and working. At the moment. for the editing, I can use my old one but the new one has features, well Windows Ten and all that kinda stuff……….and a female voice, that when I switched it on just to see flashing lights, startd to tell me what to do. It’s not Siri or Alexis and she does seem very helpful but it struck me I may have to switch some passwords so that she doesn’t hear them and if my son can do the installation downstairs I can do the new passwords where, what i thought was the old one, doesn’t seem to work……..and then dash downsatirs and do all the asterixes…..It’s a plan 🙂

And isn’t it nice to see people you worked with doing well. Lousie Pirie was a researcher I woeked with a wee while back who is now working as a documentary producer/director and has a documentary on Monday night on STV called From Syria to Scotland, which I feel will be well worth watching. WEll I certainly will.

And finally, signs, maybe, of a change in direction, finally, in the settlement of my sister’s estate but a long way to go……….but the depression’s lifting.

Tioraidh, still wearing the badges and still keeping it simple,

Iaint850, still not too sure of what’s happening but can’t help but feel I’ve missed the best of the Summer.

Last week I highlighted the good looking and very talented High Women but, before them, there were the good looking and talented Dixie Chicks who, in 2003, put their careers on the line by criticising George W Bush and America’s involvement in the war in Iraq.

This was possibly the first time I’d heard of them and also the amazing Steve Earle. It was said they’d never work again but they did.

The next year I walked out of the BBC newsroom and never went back apart from the prostate cancer stuff I later did.

This/these are the Dixie Chicks and Travelin’ Soldier.

A smile is the light in your window that tells others that there is a caring, sharing person inside. Denis Waitley

And so, dear listener, this is probably going to be a short blog. In one way it’s been a very busy week but, then again, it’s not been a very exciting week.

And it’s been a wee bit depressing. All I’ll say on that front is that I’ve changed lawyers with regard to the settlement and I’ll leave it at that. Who knows who reads this? Sometimes between 120 and 150 people but more often seventy to eighty, so I’ll say no more publicly. But I could have done without this happening. 😦

Let’s do good stuff. 😀

After a month’s break from the Scottish Drugs Forum I was back for a course on Multiple Risks including the in-vogue ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences) and I have some slight reservations BUT I am no longer a frontline worker so it was really good to take part in a course which, from my point of view, was learning for the sake of learning and it may help with some of the writing I do for SDF.

And I’ve been doing some editing for them which is pretty unnerving. Normally it’s all done by email and I never see the students. This time I will be meeting my clients ‘face – face’ and it’s really nerve wracking. There’s a lot less sarcasm and irony……..

Incidentally I have been asked if, as a ‘proof-reader’, I allow the word ‘multiple’. Yes, but my interpretation of it is ‘many and varied’. It should not a synonym just for ‘many’.

But, aye, learning without having to do anything too much about it. My aim is for some form of non-vocational course this year….not social care or drink’n’drugs or the homeless and nothing that sees my fellow students writing essays and galloping ahead like Psychology of a couple of years ago which was also part of an access course for university.

The couple of Glasgow Uny short courses I did recently were good but I’d be happy with homework but not essays. The Glasgow Uny short course and night classes brochure had landed and I’ll look out for Strathclyde’s as well. I’m not sure GCU and UWS (Paisley) do too much in this area.

Last week’s walk using the Clyde, the Molendinar and St Enoch’s as the three boundaries was really good. Townhead was really a surprise. I’m not sure when I was last in the middle of it like that.

Son Brian, for various reasons, sent me a link to the inside of an empty Townhead Primary to let me see the renovations there. I may return. If we ever get good weather again.

And it wasn’t the weather that kept me away from Firhill – the other night. There’s still a wee bit of anxiety there but, also, I do have a lot of editing to do. This is a surprisingly busy time with various business schools offering Masters and I also had a meeting with a student at Glasgow Uny and it looks like I’ll be reading her PhD in September. 😀

My busyness also comes as a surprise to students who approach me asking if I can read 12,000 words beginning tomorrow and giving it back in three days’ time. Eh, no, but I do find it difficult to say No, which is why there’s an Out of Office on my email but I did refuse to do work for two students – one of whom I had done some work for before and he(?) sent me a screengrab from his phone which was the feedback from his tutor and had also attached it to the mail saying I(!) had to avoid English erroors and the other person was new but had set out to impress the tutor with big words but had ignored the fact that he had repeated three sentences in the first three pages.

Please take it seriously and re-read your work before you send it to me and I can make such a difference (AND I am not your flunkey!)

I pointed out my unhappiness with both of these and I have yet to hear back.

Yes, it’s an income. Yes, it satisfies my academic interest. But, yes, it does give me a good feeling to know that students appreciate what I do and when they come back. At the moment, that’s a big help. 😀

And finally while we’re on the subject of education, a big well done to good friend e on her latest qualification……..maybe more later.

Tioraidh, still wearing those badges and still keeping it simple and short

Iaint850, the smile’s coming back

And here’s another track from the Highwomen who I think are really good looking as well as talented and I don’t care who knows it.

“I like geography best, he said, because your mountains and rivers know the secret. Pay no attention to boundaries.” ― Brian Andreas

And so dear listener, for the first time in some time, I am not starting with a sitrep on my health (‘sitrep’ being short for situation report). Instead I start with tales of a walk through the streets of Glasgow but as a guided and informative walk. It was like being a tourist as we strolled through Townhead and the fabulous St Andrew’s Square and followed the source of the Molendinar and looked at where the legendary Schipka Pass once existed. 🙂

It was a guided tour and one of the three short courses I was attending looking at, basically, old Glasgow. This one was based on the fact that, at one stage, Glasgow was bounded by the Clyde, the Molendinar and the St Enoch Burn. And good it was too. 😀

Although sometimes I have a big mouth, don’t I?

We started off on the Clyde Walkway with our guide identifying some of the buildings before we moved on.

‘And that was the Waterside Club where they used to hold ceildihs and stuff like that,’ he said.

‘Em, it was called the Riverside Club,’ my voice said.

‘And there was a discotheque over there, one of the first in Glasgow…..’

‘Yes. Panama Jax,’ my voice said……..at which point I shut my voice up and moved slightly to the back.

But it was good and introduced me to bits of the city that I’d either not seen for a long time or had faded from my memory but I think what I’ll remember most is that feeling of walking through the Calton, as a group, with a couple of guys grabbing a fly fag outside a boozer doing that real lookout thing of watching you without moving their eyes.

‘It’s okay, we weren’t interested in your dodgy tobacco, we were more concerned that we all got across the road at the green man. We did.’

I’m missing the one next Saturday. It’s a visit to a couple of Glasgow graveyards to discuss grave robbing. I have no idea who practical it will be. I have something else on. Unusually.

So it’s been a week when my unhappiness with people who I expect to do a job, but they don’t, has been showing. Maybe more of this soon but full credit to someone who did do a job and did it well and did it when he said he would.

My next door neighbour and I now have a new fence between us. The old one was badly needing replaced and someone who does a lot of work in the area was highly recommended. So we contracted him. And he turned up on time. And someone came and took away the old fence as soon as it was brought down. And a new one was up by the end of the day. 😀

But he had a quirk. At about lunchtime I opened the back door to them and showed them where the coffee and tea and cups and so on were. At the end of the day I went down to say thanks. Only for him to say,

‘Listen, but I hope you don’t mind but I like to put honey in my tea and when I saw all your cooking oils and herbs and spices I said to myself, there’s someone who’s bound to have honey and I’d a wee look and I found some. So I hope you don’t mind.’

Well I didn’t but I did wait until he was away before I went and looked at the use-by date. May 2019’s not too bad is it? 😦

Incidentally, after various stops and starts, and a tutorial from Son Brian, I can finally work the Tassimo Coffee Maker. As soon as you see the yellow light come on, you hit it……..so, if you’re passing……..

And finally, by the time you read this we’ll (probably) know whether or not Scotland has won its first ever Eurovision title…..and it’s a choir called Alba.

Of course the lovely Joy Dunlop is involved. It was she who spent six months of her life trying to teach me incredibly elementary Gaelic but that was when the Anxiety and Depression was kicking in and my brain was staying in the kitchen even when I’d left to put the TV on in the front room.

My favest memory of that time was when, in the news section that we did at the start of the class, I stuck my hand up and shouted ‘me, miss, please me, miss’ and read out my carefully constructed news that I now had a grandson to go with my grand-daughter. 😀

The only time I topped that was when the birth of Son Brian was announced on BBC Radio Scotland by Jimmy Mack and all of Scotland knew that me and my then wife had a son and heir…….

And quickly back to Joy who has assembled, with considerable help, a choir to sing, in Gaelic, at the Eurovision Choir Contest on Saturday………I’m sure the blessed Nicola will send them best wishes and will take great pride in announcing how well they’ve done….I’m sure. 😉

(NEWS JUST IN)…….unfortunately they didn’t make it to the final three which was a shame as it was a different song AND it had a dancer….. 😦

Tioraidh, still wearing that badge and still keeping it simple

Iaint850, who’s never turbo-charged anything in his life and had no idea what Tory ministers are talking about.

And I was going to talk about style guides and how badly Boris Johnson and Donald Trump wear suits or how there has been no government of any note in the United Kingdom, Scotland or Northen Ireland since 2016 BUT instead here’s a quick mention of a report from NHS Scotland which shows that Minimum Unit Pricing has been implemented effectively although there has been ‘anecdotal’ evidence that people are driving south of the border to buy booze ‘ – ‘anecdotal’

Listen if you are spending all that time and money on petrol then may I suggest that you have a possible problem. Keep a diary of how much and when you drink and why (maybe the social situation?

Be honest with it and then sit down with someone you trust and ask how it looks.

So some of the most popular music I’ve played recently was by the Highwaymen. Well, there’s a new supergroup in town and they call themselves the Highwomen. Say both Highwaymen and Highwomen a couple of times one word after the other and then you will understand the nice play on the sound of word.

This is Redesigning Women by the Highwomen