Working Full Time

I've been incredibly busy these three weeks with Blue Skies, the anxiety and depression support group I help run. In fact it's been almost like a full time job, the difference being I don't get paid a penny for my efforts. The role of Secretary has meant that I'm dealing with just about everything including publicity and keeping the website and Facebook page up to date. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind it. I like being busy and having things to keep my mind occupied.

I was in Sleaford on Wednesday this week at an NHS managed Care Network event showcasing groups who have successfully bid for money from the Mental Illness Prevention Fund. The event was very well attended and perhaps a little on the small size for the number of groups present. We didn't have a stand - our opportunity will come at the next event as we are a wave 2 group. I was able to leave some leaflets scattered about the place and some of the new business cards I've had printed. Many of the usual faces were there, such as our friends from SHINE and NHS Lincolnshire Partnership Foundation Trust. There were also representatives of the many groups, similar to ours, dotted around the county, groups such as 'Beyond the Blues' at Sleaford and 'New Life Craft & Social Club' in Spilsby. These fine groups are all doing their bit, helping people with mental illness, providing support and friendship and providing opportunity to acquire new skills and hobbies.
To bring all these groups together and to provide a single voice for mental health in Lincolnshire, we have the SHINE network of which we (Blue Skies) are proud to be ambassadors promoting their good work from our Spalding site. Never before has the focus on and attention given to mental health in Lincolnshire been greater. I get a real sense that people are talking about it more and in so doing, more people are beginning to come forward to seek help and support.

We have already seen an increase in our membership and we are beginning to see more referrals from within our local NHS. This is all great and we are anxious for it to continue.
The money given to Blue Skies and other similar groups is testament to how much the NHS and local authorities value the work we are doing. We are in our small way preventing those in our membership from falling ill and and needing the services of health care professionals.

This last week has been devoted to getting our new website online. We now own the domain blueskieslincs.org.uk - this was the cheapest of the variations on Blue Skies that were on offer. The domain enables us to have a website and to have an unlimited number of mailboxes for our committee and group members. I now have the bare bones published and I am hoping to add more content in the coming weeks. As a group, we are planning to make our own cards and other craft items to sell through our eBay shop and via our website. Much of it will be made to order and I will be developing the means for people to buy online.

We've been told that we need to spend all of the money we receive and I'm pleased to say that as far as the first payment is concerned, we have done just that. £2,500 sounds like a lot of money, but in less than two months, we have managed to spend the lot.  We do have a lot to show for it - a huge amount of arts and crafts material and a projector, screen and sound system enabling us to run our own training sessions, watch films or play Wii games. This installation wopuld alone have cost around £2,000 to complete though through the good will and generosity of a number of people, this has been done for free. All of this is aimed at reducing mental illness and encouraging our members to take an interest in an activity and stay well.

We're not alone in what we are doing. There are groups such as ours all over Lincolnshire. Occasionally, we come together at various NHS run events and it's an opportunity for us to find out what the others are doing and to showcase our project. Success can be judged by the people we are helping, their eagerness to come to each session and their individual testament to how they have benefited from what we are doing. It is this information that will help to build a quarterly report showing how the funding has been used to benefit people who suffer with mental illness. I'm expecting to produce our first report in July and I am looking forward to the opportunity to document our own success stories.

There's only problem with this funding and I have to reflect the good as well as the bad- it's the fact that the money has to be spent on the proposed projects and only the proposed projects. Although the projects are there to prevent mental illness, should any of our members fall ill and are at risk through lack of personal funds, we cannot help them by giving them the money for a meal or to pay a bill. It would seem to me that there are limitations when it comes to preventing mental illness and I have been witness to a case recently whereby we could easily have helped someone from reaching crisis point (an NHS term) and being admitted to Boston's Pilgrim Hospital. We had the money, but we couldn't help. Nothing is ever all that it seems sadly and it is a shame that we cannot help those that this whole thing is designed to do.

Wednesday 22nd May 2013

I am having great difficulty relaying into words my feelings and thoughts on the events of the last couple of days. Like many, my emotions are still very raw and I am sickened by the barbarity of what the good people of Woolwich have witnessed. There have been occasions previously where mental illness has been given as the reason for acts of similar savagery. This case, however, appears very different. The perpetrator seemed lucid and in control, explaining his actions and at one point even apologising for what some had seen. This is what makes this whole horrific event all the more terrifying.
Thoughts and prayers are with all those affected.

Spending Spree

I've been spending a lot of money, though sadly it's not my own. The money is the funding we (Blue Skies) have received from the NHS Mental Illness Prevention Fund in support of two projects we are running - Arts & Crafts and Computer Skills.
I do find spending money to be an excellent form of therapy but what makes it feel all the better is that the money is buying things that will make people's lives better. The arts & crafts equipment will allow our group members to make things they wouldn't normally be able to and to develop their creative skills thus improving their confidence and feelings of self-worth.
The computer skills project will enable our members without computers at home to learn how to use them and gain access to the Internet. We have provided the facility for them to scan and print documents and to even try their hand at digital photography. For many, it will be a new experience though I'm confident that within a few weeks, they will have developed the confidence and knowledge to log on to a computer and access the Internet.

Looking Back

I've kept a number of my diaries and from time to time, I look through them. Most of them I used when I was working and as I leaf through the pages, I see to do lists, meetings and appointments and post-it notes full of reminders to call people I once knew. My, wasn't I busy then... Where I've written notes, I am able to rekindle events in my mind such as when I was particularly busy at work, on-call and earning ridiculous amounts of money. I recall meetings with friends and girlfriends, long before I became married and a father. I remember with fondness days when I could do anything, buy anything and not worry about putting petrol in the car. I would drive for miles simply for the hell of it and not think twice about spending another £30 or £40 on a tank of fuel. My diaries speak of a different age and a different life, though scarily not that long ago.

I'm so glad I that wrote so many notes. I would moan about the hotel I stayed in, for I stayed in hotels for three months during my move from London to Peterborough in 2001/2. I would write about the food I'd eaten, the places I had been to and the people I had met. I would record when people I knew had died and I would note important world events.
Looking through my 2001 diary, I reach the page marked 11th September and see that I was busy building computers for use at my new Peterborough site. I see that I have written 'WTC bombing' and highlighted it in bright red. I'm surprised I didn't write more, but what could I write? I was in shock, we all were. The event was too big for words. On that day, everything stopped for a while and I joined the rest of my Churchill IT colleagues to watch live coverage. In the days after, life went on. The pages for the rest of the week show meetings, appointments and things to do with work that I needed to remember.
The pages from my diaries speak of a time when my life was dominated by work, by responsibility and of money. It all feels so alien to me now and I feel when I read the diaries as if I am reading about the life of somebody else, rather than me.
As I look through the pages of my 2001 diary, I find the day when my budgerigar 'Rubick' died - Tuesday 29th May. I see also the day my mate and colleague 'Blob' returned to work with us after a stint running his own company. I see that on the 23rd April I won £359, though I've no idea how or why. I also find the week when my Nan died and recall how left work early and drove like a maniac to get to the hospital in time.
Most of the pages in my diaries haven't been opened since the day they were written. Little did I know then just how valuable they would be to me in the future. Of course they are personal to me and most of what I've written will be meaningless to most people. Many of the entries made carry with them their own particular memories and recollections - some good and some bad and that I'd rather forget. There are things I've written which I don't understand such as on Monday 25th May 1998 were I've written the words 'Suffolk' and 'Dump'.
Amongst all the scribbles, the arrows and hundreds of phone numbers is a record of my professional past. It was a different world back then. Of course, it wasn't perfect but I lived for the day and didn't need to worry about the future. My diaries are a window on the past, my past and the way I used to live and work. They are the only link to who I used to be and the people I used to know... I'm glad I've kept them.

Enough Now Please...

Am I the only one to be sick to the back teeth of hearing about (Sir) Alex Ferguson? It's almost as if God has tweeted that he's packing the job in.
I've never liked the man. I'm not interested. Enough. Thank you.

A Vote of Despair

I really like this cartoon printed in today's Sunday Express. For me, it sums up the events of the last couple of days and their repercussions very well. I didn't vote UKIP, though I was tempted. Instead I plumped for one of our Lincolnshire Independents, Val Gemmel who lives locally and is in touch with local and rural affairs in this part of Lincolnshire. Mine was certainly a vote of despair having lost all trust and respect for the main three parties. As it is, the Conservatives lost control of Lincolnshire though it now has the status of 'no overall control'.
What is clear is the rise in support for UKIP and if this were to be reflected in a general election, where would this leave the other main parties?

Watching What We Use

We don't normally give the energy we use a second thought, apart from when a huge bill lands on our front door mat. Energy suppliers are often in the news for all the wrong reasons, with NPower and Southern Electric exposed recently for mis-selling. Indeed my relationship with my supplier has been a rocky one and we were forced last month to lodge a complaint with NPower which saw them admit they had mis-sold us our energy product last year. I have to admit that they were actually quite good about it and up front about admitting liability. They did pass us back to our old supplier Eon and refunded everything we had paid them during 2012.
Now were are back with Eon, there is a renewed focus on how much electricity we use and how much it is costing us.

We now monitor our usage thanks to a nifty little meter that sits on my desk, and our online account records and tracks each Kwh of electricity we use telling us if our consumption has gone up, or down. It even tells us our carbon footprint in miles driven by car - our last figure was 8,000.
I like this. I like to know what I am paying for and how much of it I am using. I also know how much electricity each appliance uses and I've been amazed at how much this can vary. For instance, I had always assumed that my three computers and two servers used a lot of electricity but my meter tells me that they don't - just 200 watts in fact.  On the other hand, our beast of a plasma TV uses 400 watts. Our storage heaters, designed to save us money, each use 1kw (1000w) of electricity when they are charging. We have eight of them throughout the house. Our electric oven draws 2kw of power each time it is used and boiling the kettle draws a further 1kw. It's been interesting these last couple of days going round and turning things on and off, not to mention a real eye opener. For the first time ever, there is a level of clarity to this thing called 'energy'. Our move to Eon has also revealed the fast that we have two electricity meters and that we have an 'Economy 10' system controlling our heating. Now I'd never heard of this - I'm familiar with Economy 7 and that's all.
Watching what we use certainly provides an incentive to keep everything to a minimum. Without wishing to turn into my father, it's all about maintaining a balance - keeping on the things that need to be and turning off the things that don't need to be. The magic figure I've settled on is 700w - this is the benchmark I use during the day and evening. There are spikes, i.e. when cooking and these are to be expected though anything above 2.5kw would be unusual.
In a way, I'm quite pleased for the hassle we had with NPower as the results have been very positive. I now have an excellent relationship with my supplier and I pay only for what I use. More importantly, I can see what I am using and when making it far easier to keep things under control.
Electricity just like any other product we buy should be quantifiable. We wouldn't go into a shop and pay for 100 eggs and only take 10, but that's what I've been doing for years - paying well in advance for something I may or not use. It's time things changed, and I'm happy I have.