Month: August 2024

It’s my journal

Why do you blog?

During my working life I have so far experienced, 17 traumatic suicides on the railway. I am more often than not the first person on site and have to make access to the site, safe for all the emergency personnel about to arrive en masse. I have seen things no one should ever expect to witness. And I sincerely hope you never do.

For this reason, I have had health issues mainly around PTSD that I was diagnosed as having just two years ago, after a young lad ended his life on my shift. That one affected me, though i often go into self denial that this was the cause. Though in all seriousness it was probably the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.

I used to journal as a result. It wasn’t a private journal, I used to have it beside the bed and actively encourage my wife to read it. At the time I was hiding a lot of my feelings from my wife, I was the typical bloke that wouldn’t talk, however I was storing this all inside and even I could see this was heading straight towards becoming the perfect storm. I’m glad I did that as it helped her and it also helped me to prompt conversation and off load some of that weight from my shoulders.

Blogging became the natural progression from the journal. The family now have links to this blog and they all check in on a regular basis to see what I am doing. I include all the hobby stuff and it is now more of a website than a blog site.

I sit here typing as I am now at 4 in the morning and the wife will turn to me and say, “Are you doing your blog?” And I will say yes. She knows that this is my way of healing some scars by just offloading the excess baggage that life supplies sometimes. And do you know what? It works for me. I don’t do it for followers as that’s not what I’m about. To be honest it wouldn’t bother me if not a single person read my site, for me I have a history at my fingertips where I can check my progress. I have bad days, I have days where I do nothing but whinge, but I can now see why these things happen and that’s all down to this blog.

That’s why I blog, this last month has been awful as my constant companion, Alf, our dog, another who would just sit and listen to me wagging his little tail passed away and it has just ripped the hearts out of my wife and I. See his pictures here: Alfie. All hobbies and interests have disappeared as we have just entered that, “Can’t be arsed” stage of grief. We will come to terms with it in time, and again this is where the blog helps.

Hopefully people will understand this. I’m just a guy who is suffering but I have found a way to let off that steam, accumulated as a result of other peoples desperate actions.

It’s tough, but I won’t let the demons win. It is a daily battle that I doubt I will win in the long run but hopefully I can put it aside for a good while longer.

I really wish for peace for you all.

Talk,

Blog,

It really helps.

Only asking

Interview someone — a friend, another blogger, your mother, the mailman — and write a post based on their responses.

Can I ask you a serious question?

“Piss off you slimy little turd”.

At that point I terminated the interview with my boss. He’s a little tetchy tonight 😂

I have no friends as such, Mum died 15yrs ago and the postman’s an even more miserable git than my boss.

Would have been a boring interview anyway.

Peace all.

Tired & Cranky

How are you feeling right now?

It’s late or early depending how you look at it.

I’m tired

Cranky

And am not suffering fools gladly.

Though tonight they are out in force, it’s like a zombie apocalypse.

That’s the East Midlands of England for you.

Just don’t mention the farmers.

They’re crackpots. And they’re feeding us.

Worrying times

Stay safe.

I do it for that damned Taxman

What daily habit do you do that improves your quality of life?

Getting up at god knows what ridiculous hour, getting myself out that front door and spending 8-12hrs earning an honest wage.

If I didn’t I’d have died years ago a raging alcoholic. It gives me purpose, and that alone ensures I have a life not just quality of it.

But I do detest working for the taxman, he alone does his best to ruin my quality of life. I guess I’m not alone there.

He really is a nasty bastard.

Takes his cut until the day you die….and some.

Peace to all, except the taxman.

Alfie’s ready to come home…

That was the call we’ve just had from the vets. A lovely and quite melancholy call to be honest, just as if he’s had a minor procedure and he has awoken and is now ready to come home.

Reality is a little more stark. We are now heading down to collect our little fellah after he has been cremated.

Our beautiful lad has come home

We didn’t know what to expect to be honest, do we take a bag? Is he in a polythene bag? My wife was upset as she’d taken the call as I had been on nights and was in bed. I had this overwhelming feeling yesterday that he’d be coming home today, so in a way when I awoke I wasn’t surprised, strange isn’t it?

We needn’t have fretted, it was all so professional. He’s in a lovely woodland scene tube, we didn’t want a sealed casket as we wanted his ashes to go with ours in the end, please don’t judge us, it’s what we want and you will never understand just what this little character meant to us.

Paw print
Lock of hair
A beautiful paw print photo frame

We also have a certificate of individual cremation, with lovely words, we have a lovely little picture frame memento with his paw print, we now have to pick a picture from the thousands we have of him, no easy task and I suspect we will have words about this. The vets have taken a cutting of his fur and put it in a small phial, lovely touch. We have two beautiful cards with his paw print on, and I will be using one of these to get a permanent tattoo on my arm with his pet name as he was known to many in the family- “Alfie Moon”.

The feeling in the house at the moment is nice, all the doubt we had has now gone, and we are so happy with the professional service we have experienced.

We can now move on to the healing stage, as he is now home. It’s so weird that the immense feeling of grief has lifted and a modicum of calmness and happiness has returned, it needed to as it had been missing for some time now.

Our lad is home, where he deserves to be. And he will be with us forever more.

Welcome home son ❤️

What’s going on in Iceland?

What was the last thing you searched for online? Why were you looking for it?

Well, you asked so I have answered. I’m currently working a nightshift and it’s slowed down a tad so I’m just checking up on what was going on in one of my favourite places on earth. I usually check in and read the news and this is what I found.

Volcano still active

The volcano is still erupting around the fault line, it comes and goes quite regularly but this last one was quite spectacular.

An ice cave collapsed killing one person i believe, however all others have been rescued and are safe.

A 16 yo is in custody after stabbing some people at a concert, it seems the world’s cancer has now reached this beautiful place.

I kind of wish I hadn’t made that search.

Hey ho, that is quite depressing.

Stay safe everyone, who knows one day Peace might be infectious.

We can only live in hope.

Wot? No 4K

What TV shows did you watch as a kid?

I was a product of the 60s and the only choice we had back in my childhood was 405 or 625 lines B/W Tv. Once turned on you had to give all the valves good time to warm up until a picture appeared, in truth you could probably go into the kitchen and make a snack before the ghosting even started to appear on the screen.

An old 405 lines tv

Back then we only had two channels, BBC and ATV, that was the forerunner of ITV.

No Adverts and only a few hours scheduling a day meant that you were more likely to see the test card transmission than any real TV program.

To be honest I probably listened more to my little transistor radio, or tranny as it was known then, nowadays I’d probably be pulled up by the PC brigade for even saying that.

We spent most of our days outside playing and exploring so TV never really factored into my formative years, I can’t really pinpoint specific programs I did watch however one really stuck in my mind as a funny moment. That used to be when we would watch a program called “Pot Black” it was a snooker program. However it was hard to determine colours of the balls on a black and white screen. It was funny when the commentators mentioned a coloured ball that they would refer to as “the grey looking one in the top corner” In fact they all had this colour as they were all just shades.

Aye, what with all your 1080, ultra HD 4K super duper vision you have now, you’ve never had it so good. But back in the day when it was a new technology it was truly ground breaking. I remember my old man saying “it’ll never take off”, how wrong was he?

Have a great day all. Peace.

Coming home

What’s your favorite time of day?

Shift work kind of kills the typical, morning, afternoon night thing as being the favourite time of day. My whole outlook changes depending as to what shift I’m on as sometimes I’m coming home when others are heading out and vice versa.

Pondering

So for me my favourite time is always the coming home. Whatever shift I’m on. After 30+ years of marriage I’m still as excited to get home and see the wife as the day we first met. And that’s something in my book, to still have that same feeling about someone all those years later. It’s just the two of us now so it means more to me than ever.

So I experience that favourite time every day without fail.

It must be love.

And I fully recommend it.

Peace to all

Stupid question

Where did your name come from?

My parents I guess 🤷‍♂️

A day of necessary chores

Anyone who’s picked up on these posts of mine of recent days will know that we lost a very important member of our family on Friday just gone. Our dog Alfie went to sleep after suffering a number of ailments over the past years, culminating in a steep decline in his quality of life in the last couple of months.

It’s a tough and harrowing decision to make, bringing an end to a life that has brought nothing but intense joy and happiness to yours for the last 11yrs and 3 months.

But we had to do it, he couldn’t suffer anymore.

The hole that opened up in our family that day was immense. We stopped eating, our diet has been tears and cuddles and just constantly comforting each other. Along with this now is a list of chores that have to be done, like it or not his stuff has to be sorted, what do we keep? What do we donate? What do we dispose of?

Me, I want to keep it all but I have to be realistic, we don’t want to delete him from our memories as that will never happen, we don’t want to remove his presence from our home as it was his as well as ours. However there are unfortunate animals out there that would greatly benefit from Alf’s legacy and that’s what today is about.

Firstly we return to the vets, we have cards and gifts for the staff there who have all been super towards our little lad, we’re not looking forward to this but it has to be done, we have to settle his account as we left there Friday broken and gibbering wrecks.

Secondly we head to the Local dogs trust homing centre where we can donate Towels, Bedding and an elderly dog stroller

Thirdly we will go to the local hospice shop where we can donate other items, that again will help this wonderful charity.

It’s going to be hard, the house is going to be a little emptier today. But his legacy will be that he is helping others both canine and human, and isn’t that a wonderful thing.

I’m sure I will write a lot more about him on here and I’m not apologetic for that at all. My wife and I are still very raw about his passing and we will breakdown at a moments notice, however we are supporting each other, and doing what we can to ease the pain, and not forget him. Walks and talks are now our priority, it helps.

It’s amazing how, you can fall so madly in love with an animal, another species. Life really is wonderful and heartbreaking in equal measures.

Peace to you all