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A week of blogs – Introduction
On 22 August is will be the anniversary of Nico’s death. Another anniversary. Another year come and gone and we are still riding on the justice train, a train which has stalled, broken down completely...
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A week of Blogs –“Cunning” (a poem)
Grief is cunning It slides in slyly Leaving you longing for the mundane Small trousers blowing on the line The telephone call at inconvenient time Leaking bottles of Osmolite Getting up endlessly in...
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A week of blogs “Seeing Clearly”
I hadn’t been to see the opticians for a while. Every time I thought about going, it brought back so many happy memories of taking Nico to see the opticians that I couldn’t bring myself to go. Nico...
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A week of blogs “Smiley Face”
My friend and colleague from “Making Families Count”, Frank Mullane (of AAFDA) has shared his own personal experiences of dealing with grief in the workplace with me and given me permission to use it...
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A week of blogs “The tale of two families”
Once upon a time there were two families. They both lived in the same county but as it was a big county, they lived far away from each other. They had never met and each family didn’t know the other...
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A week of blogs “What does good look like?”
In May 2011 I sat very nervously in a room crowded with strangers. Lots of people there knew each other and no-one else on my table spoke to me, they were all too busy catching up with conversations. I...
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A week of blogs “Holes in the net”
We start out in life believing that wrongdoing will be punished and evil destroyed. We know good from bad and we know that if a bad thing happens there are people who will come and deal with it and...
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A week of blogs “The film of our story”
I don’t want to write a great deal here. I want the film to do the talking. But before you watch it I want explain the background of this film and why I’ve decided to show it in public now and include...
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Learning to swim
In the past three years I’ve just been treading water, but now I feel as if I’m learning to swim. Writing “a week of blogs” has been very hard, not just in terms of the actual sitting and slogging...
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From Little Acorns
One of the strangest things for me about writing a blog (perhaps because I’m still fairly new to it) is that while it almost feels as if I’m writing a letter, you have no idea who you’re sending that...
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2 Days
I remember asking my English teacher at school what the word “juxtaposition” meant and she told me it was a way of using two different and contrasting ideas so that both would be highlighted by each...
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Dear Sara
Dear Sara I’m very sorry but I won’t be sitting in the coroner’s court on Monday to support you. I’ve given this a huge amount of thought but I just can’t bear to go back into that room again. I am...
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Light up
Monday 5 October – the first day of Connor Sparrowhawk’s inquest. I decided that I would follow the live twitter feed from the inquest which was going to be posted by one of Sara Ryan’s support team...
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Halfway Through
Is halfway through a good place to be or a bad place to be? Halfway out of darkness, half into the light. But do you always know that you are halfway through or can you only know this looking back when...
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“Heroes – every one”
One of the upsides of self-employment is that I’m very often home in the day. One of the downsides is not earning much money, but let’s face it, a lifestyle that allows you to get up later (sometimes)...
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Down like waters
I’m a pretty tough person. I’ve survived a lot in my life. But Nico’s inquest nearly broke me. Even now, 10 months later, I find it difficult to think about and even harder to write about. We are...
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Knowledge Bombs
Recently I wrote a blog called “Halfway Through” about how the years building up to Nico’s inquest and the actual inquest felt like the first half of our campaign. I saw the Independent Investigation...
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Naming the rooms
On Friday I was contacted by a woman called Jeanette Long who works as a producer for the BBC covering social policy and mental health issues. Ahead of the publication of the Mazars report into deaths...
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Skinning cats
I come from a long line of cat owners and lovers. I am the granddaughter, daughter and mother of cat lovers and I’m one myself. However, my grandmother had an expression she was extremely fond of...
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Mexico
A luxury family hotel room in Mexico with an open plan loo in the bedroom. What’s wrong with that sentence? If you can work out the answer you already have a fascinating and hilarious glimpse into our...
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