2 Yrs (by sarah)

2 yrs ago I was drawing to the end of my PGCert in Science Communication - I had had a huge relapse of chronic fatigue, pain, my bleeding had grown heavier again (I had been bleeding since Mary's birth in 2011). I was starting to think it really was that I just couldn't take stress... my stomach was on the blink also and a new thing had started happening during the lecture clusters I attended.

So everytime I tried to go back to education or proper out of the house with people work I got sicker - a lot sicker obviously it was stress.

Plus the new thing - the new thing was migraines, I was getting headaches but not just headaches, as I stared at the various smart screens and projectors and especially if they room had flickering lights or they turned the damn things off all together I would get vertigo and weird colours arching through and around the lighted up screens.

Migraine with aurors - my blood pressure was up - not really very high but bar my labour with Jean my blood pressure has always been low. This was potentially an issue with the headaches, obv. it was because I was also fat. Well doh of course I was my arthritis was bad, my pelvis was bad, I was aneamic and worse I was eating 1600 cals on a day and still whopping on weight and I could tell that was getting worse - infact before I'd gone to the dr I had worked out my money and deciding I was really too ill to attempt the second year and wanting to take Cuddly Science further without the worry of academia I used my left over cash to by a recumbant exercise bike with padded broad seat and back and a £7 pedometer - the pedometer was inaccurate and infuriating and lasted about 3 days when I dropped it and it died.

Dr sent me to the diabetic-thyroid-dietician nurse and gave me pills (which do also help regulate thyroid though I think they were the second lot of tablets and they are for the headaches primarily). Due to blood clotting issues there was also the risk of strokes if things continued as they were.

This is where I discovered that my maintain calorie count is actually a depressing 1400 (thanks to being short and having a lighter "Asian" bone structure rather than the dense bones of "Europeans") and to make it worse I found that when I publically announced this people began messaging me to say it wasn't that bad - well it was it was FREAKING HELL! Because I wasn't on 1400 which to be frank I am always going to be hungry on even when it is whole foods, but I was on a strict cal count diet to attempt to shock my system into working again. 1000-1200 cals a day.

I was passing out, I was grumpy, I got bad breath and starvation headache (to go with the tension headache, sinus headaches and migraines I was already suffering from). One of the many emails I got was from a friend who had had similar issues to me with back pain and I knew she'd lost a lot of weight etc... I was skeptical, and I was very hacked off at people telling me what to do especially as they all had different advice (and yes I know you were all trying to help and you kind of did but I was still grumpy!). Anyway she said that her key had been to stop eating wheat... my sugar levels were erratic which is why I was passing out I spoke with the nurse and I decided to go back on what I term my "Mary Pregnancy" diet which is meant buy buy to bread and pasta and stuff and knowing from all the tests I had at Chelsea and Westminster back during my degree I knew I had a sensitivity to wheat which is why I wasn't supposed to have white bread - so maybe that had gotten worse.

I cut wheat out... I cut it out mainly because it was the easiest why to drop my cal count and still fill I was eating something - Mushroom as pizza base here I came... without the cheese boo (oh and soya was making the bleeding worse so that was out too plus my sensitivity to latex and chilli had gotten worse - so that was the allergies and the intollerances because you know I have to collect the whole set!).

Sugar levels were a bit more stable so I continued hobbling my way to the climbing wall with my walking stick for the girls clubs etc... which I couldn't do whilst passing out and I mean what was that from anyway? The aneamia? Sugar levels? Pick and choose - I thought I was screwed for life I thought I was on the walking stick if not crutches for ever.

Now I still walked alot with the stick, I was slow and shuffly and it wore me out and I almost cried when the Dr asked didn't I do anything more "energetic"? And my emotions got worse with the suggestion of swimming - I was bleeding heavily enough with failed attempt at coil and oral pill etc... that I was given the choice of having laser ablation or hysterectomy and I didn't want them but I was thinking about them seriously, so how could I swim? Please just believe me flow was too heavy.

I struggled my way through 50 cal burns on the exercise bike I was walking 10 k steps a day just doing like house work and kids clubs but that was it there was no energy for anything else.

I had a pull up bar put in the house - I couldn't even reach it but I was damn well going to try and reach it everyday.

So it was after the 2 or 3rd visit to the nurse that cut out the wheat and six weeks or so on from that when... I started getting better. It was early autumn I'd gotten the bike in May (so year approx two years ok!). It was warm and sunny and I was walking with Jean to her climbing and I suddenly thought hmmm I'm not really leaning on my stick that much today, so a walked abit without. Now with the pelvis and chronic fatigue etc... I sometimes had good spells anyway so didn't think that much about it but was kind of hoping I was going to be in remission for a bit.

People at the climbing wall started to say how I didn't look "bloated" anymore. And it was true my hard painfull stomach was not, it was still fat and blobberly but not in the same way.

The next walk in I started off not using my stick and got to the first corner, then the a bit further the next time, the stick is a folding one so I could take it with me just incase.

(p.s. I will confess I only got the swanky pedometer to prove to the dr that I was walking as far as I said I was because I knew with weight and stick it seemed unlikely and though not said I'm pretty sure she didn't believe me but with the app I had graphs!).

Anyway armed with extra information that my aunt and mother have celiacs disease and the fact that the nurse, dr... etc where kind of amazed at the improvement. They suggested that I may or may not have it but definatly I react to wheat, to be tested I'd have to go back on it for 6 weeks - that was not going to happen, we know from my record that I have an autoimmune system reaction to wheat and from my point of view it doesn't really matter the prescription food contains other foods I'm allergic and intollerant to and would be just for me and what ever it is it makes me sick.

Looks like it was my packed lunches and economy university cafe food that was making me sick - realised that when I am at home I eat very little bread and paster - enough to still be causing some problems but not enough to cause full out body-gemmon (remembering my body loves autoimmune diseases so as far as I can tell it needs any old excuse to eat itself).

My arthritis cleared up, my pelvis stopped shifting about, gut calmed down, the hernia and seperated muscles sorted themselves out. Then the bleeding stopped, I was loosing weight!

My cal count was getting upped.

About a year in and the bleeding stopped, my bloods for everything then came back normal a little while later. I started swimming. I could stand up and reach my pull up bar I kept trying to pull myself up - it wasn't working.

By January last year I was well enough to started climbing, me climbing with new purple climbing shoes - I could only manage 15 mins the first week but that soon increased. I was doing the digging at the allotment, trying to convince Al my back was good enough to carry and lift things - I planked!!!! I increased planking time to 1 min.

It was amazing (I'm trying not to use religous words here!). My other food intollerances got less sensitive - though the allergies seem slightly worse (boo so now no strawberries or bannanes). I had a few blips, times of feeling like flu, fearing I was just in a good patch in the chronic fatigue but then it turned out that some vinegar is made from wheat, some chocolate has malt extract in, barely, spelt and a swath of other things are just wheat in disguise, oh and my favourites... someone bought "gluten" bread in the house and toasted it in my toaster and no you can't use the knife from the other cake and fish/onion rings etc and the chips all fried together. Other thing that caught me out - glazes of some ham, some fizzy drinks have malt derived stuff :/

Pretty much every flare up I had we then found I'd consumed something with probably only trace amounts of wheat in :/ It's a pain feeding me now but the difference is amazing.

I got down to about 11 stone from almost 14 (with the uncontrolled gestational diabeties during Jean's pregnancy I had gone from about 8-9 stone to 16 stone by eating hospital food and then I really struggled to loose any of it in the following years but I did loose a couple of stone with Mary's pregnancy where I knew what I was doing with the diabeties and was in charge of my own food I put on 1 stone during the pregnancy and was 14 at the end of it. It was then going up and down depending on pain etc... issue being feed back loops and loading on seperated pelvises and insulin tollerance etc... I was very worried that I was failing to maintain my weight I had lost some and then got put on hormones to try and stop bleeding and on and on but I was off of those and had been for a while and my weight had still been going up... which is why I was releived when the Dr mentioned help with weight). Then cuts came in and my nice helpful nurse had her postition axed and went off to find a job in the private sector or Australia or as she put it "somewhere I am allowed to actually help people" - well she helped me but the next appointment I had was a nurse saying "I'm not qualified to deal with you, you no longer count as over weight enough even though you are not in your target weight, if you want monitoring go back to the Dr and get referred to the hospital but they wont have anyone qualified to deal with you either."

So that was that - and we bought a pair of scales for the house which Al guards so I can't check my weight all the time and he gives me rewards - I got down to 10 stone earning myself nail vanish and things...

We found Free From sections in supermarkets are huge now and calories still count.

The idea being 1400-1600 cals a day and the remaining weight lose through exercise. I got myself medals to attempt marathon type walks and planned to take up and kind of did take up running.

My skin conditions cleared up!!!!

I could raise my feet off the ground, not once but several times but only from one way round and I wanted to be able to do both types of pull up. I managed 150 cal burns easily on the bike.

Of course at the beginning of the summer (2015) I got a little carried away with this new found movement of body and was dancing my little cotton socks off with my 10 yr old at one of the festivals I work at. I was having a fab time, so was she we were waiting for a band I hadn't seen since I was like 17 doing Summer on the South Bank as part of the "youth" component. I felt weird and dizzy and couldn't regain my balance and fell over backwards off the grass onto the concrete.

And that was the headbang whilst headbanging and the not acting my age or knowing my limits. Scans and stuff showed sinus polyp growths from my food allergies and an ancient compacted vertibrea or something (they told me whilst concused but it's been like it so long it wont be causing problems - I assume it is from my bike accident as a teen or something). Sadly there is still on going stuff from that but functioning wise for kids and things I am still so much better than I was 2 yrs ago - more on that when I know more.

During the two months of main recovery I was eating when ever and numbers and memory where shot and I was asleep most of the time so calorie counting didn't happen. And even though I was eating ALOT when we did remember to weigh me I had lost weight taking me down to the 9 and a half stone - I vaguely started trying to do some exercise in the autumn but was restricted with what still hurt the head including the damn impact site.

There were more head issues around Christmas but I managed to start exercise again properly in the new year - mainly after the weigh in showed I'd put on 1/4 of a stone! Eeking me periously near that 10 stone mark once more.

This is actually an upbeat post honest!

So anyway I lost the 1/4 of a stone but am still stuck at 9 and 1/2, giving me a stone and a half to loose for target but weight was never really the focus - health was.

And I can now do 200-300 cal burns a sitting and try for 500 on the exercise bike, my body shape has changed itself around to adjust to the weight lose - belly is still a huge flap and as promised by the Dr is even flappier! But my bum is skinnier so I had to take the chocks off of my exercise bike as my legs are now apparently longer! I can manage 5 almost full pull ups one way and one the other, I can do a minute planks (still only 1 minute it was one of things I couldn't due after head bang as it made everything thud!) I don't wee myself as much when attempting to run (TMI?), I haven't made it back climbing but have been swimming - co-ordination simply was not good enough and part of the problem with the concussion is it's cumalative and this wasn't my first headbang by far so now I am trying to work out how to prevent future ones without stopping doing the stuff I love.

I kind of want a six pack - I've always wanted one but was actively disuaded from various exercises at school as they could apparently dislodge womb and overies - since been told by exercise experts that that is a load of bull and you know I may not have ended up with those seperated muscels in the first place if I'd done what I wanted! But anyway did I mention I was doing my weights again - I've had to go back to the very smallest and it is really the first time since having Mary and she's 5 now!

Oh year my RSI is a lot better too - I assume due to my body not being inflammed all the time.

Anyway I basically wanted to do a before and after pic but I never really wanted/want photos taken of me so I got Al to take the current photo of me in the star dress - kind of hoping I can trim those arms up a bit more and vanity does have me - I started the weights again as with the weight loss I did kind of have bingo wings!

The before pic is one Jean sneakily too of me on our way to or from the climbing wall - I am hunched over the stick attempting to put my bag back on my shoulder - I didn't know she'd taken it or it on my phone or I probably would have deleted it at the time.

So yeah - I thought the two photos highlighted more than the weight change!

Health, Weight and Stuff (by sarah)

So everyone has noticed I've lost weight - and yes I have 4 stone all told except that it's been stuck at 9 and 1/2 since about the summer. I ate loads and didn't have a clue about calories after the head bang but at the same time actually was kind of just randomly loosing weight too - the net result was that though I was eating lots including 3 breakfasts one day if Jean is to believed, I lost half a stone bring me to the 9 and a half. And there I have stayed :/ I put on a quarter of a stone over christmas - I have lost that again - I am still not in my target weight and I still have the dreaded belly flap which is as the Dr warned more flappy than ever.

But that's fine - I am keeping an eye on cals but trying to loose weight via exercise now - my pedometer is bust so no more gaming inspiration and it turns out that I need that as a driving factor :( Due to change with schools and the climbing wall and Al's job there has so far this year been no climbing, swimming or proper running - boo and hiss.

I do however have my exercise bike which I believe is coming up for it's 2nd birthday! It is a recumbant and though I am surprised that people are still commenting on the weight as I haven't actually lost any I probably shouldn't be - the shape of my body has been altering to accomodate the weight lose. This means I get to wear stuff I wore as a teen again - it also means that my bum has less padding so that my legs are now apparently longer and the issue I had with being too short in the leg for the bike is no longer an issue. The upshot of this is that the special chocks my dad made me so I could cycle without damaging my knees had to be taken off the bike!!!

Also I finally reached the 1000 km I was hoping to reach on the dam thing the Christmas after I got it - instead a year later and I missed the christmas deadline again! But completed the challenge on valentines day :)

Of course I started a new challenge - a new 1000 km of which I have managed 200 km already :D the improvement from when I began on the bike is astronomical - I can easily do 300 cal burns on it now in one sitting! I really like reading whilst cycling or binge watching scifi or fantasy epics/series, it is set up in front of the TV.

Health wise I seem to have a few remnants from the head bang - still hopeful for a full recovery and am working my way through a concept of super better. I have been failing at writing, at blogging but that's ok - I will get there. Yesterday I was at the nuerologists and it was a struggle to do his tests and things like that still make me zonked.

But I played my first game of scrabble Jean beat me 294 to 234 - I think she is one of only 2 people to beat me as an adult the other being my friend Olly who had done stuff like remembering all the two letter words! I was alarmed at how hard it was to play though and that my score was way below 300 I would normally consider a score beneath 350 to be a bit pathetic :(

Anyway social board games are good but I have to be gentle, sadly computer games are right out at the moment. I've also set myself the challenge of learning the flute - it's something I've always wanted to do, it's a new skill, uses both hands (I am struggling with my left hand side).

I am water colour painting like a loon and trying to get my pencil sketching back - having issues with faces - if I measure and put guide lines in then it's fine if I don't it's all crooked. I'll get there - setting myself challenges and goals and trying to complete things and put them out there for people (I did set up a Patreon account for those who would like to help me in this).

Learning things (by alaric)

I love learning new things. I'm usually struggling to find new things to learn; the last fun bit of computer science I learnt about was Bloom filters, and they didn't hold my attention for long. The last really fun bit of computer science I learnt about would be content-addressed storage, and I'm still having fun with that, but I can't find any more to learn about it. I'm having to make stuff up myself, which is rewarding in its own way, but much harder work.

Of course, this past week I've been learning TIG welding, which has been awesome. It's been a while since a whole new field of things to learn has opened up to me, and it's nice to work on a new class of physical skills. My routine physical learning is my weekly Krav Maga training, but I crave variety. My lust for learning benefits more from intensive two-week courses than an hour a week for years. I'd love to go and take a proper welding course at a college, but I can't spare the time; I have to practice when I can in the evenings and weekends. I'm getting good at horizontal/flat welds, but I'd like to master vertical and overhead (because if I work on anything large, such as the festival trolley, in my cramped workshop, I often can't rotate everything around to be nice and flat). Also, suspecting that the trouble I was hitting with stick welding is at least partly to do with the limitations of my old cheap AC welder, I want to use my new welder's capability to do nicely regulated DC stick welding and see if I can learn to do good stick welds. And I'd like to get some practice in welding aluminium and stainless steel, as I have applications for both of those.

So that's physical skills sorted, for now. Mentally, I've been learning how antennas work. There's no particular reason for this; it's something that's always puzzled me somewhat, but what's triggered the recent interest was a birthday gift from an old friend, of the ARRL handbook, which goes into some detail; and then meeting an interesting guy at a Cheltenham Hackspace Open Evening who turns out to design broadcast transmission antennas for a living, who answered a load of questions left open by the books. I still want to get a better intuitive grasp of the quantities involved - how many volts and amps appear on an antenna feeder line? What field strengths in volts per meter would you expect to find at what distance from an antenna? Does that relate to a corresponding magnetic field strength in tesla?

I've also been learning Morse code. This is quite interesting. I thought I'd memorise that table of dots and dashes and that'd be that, but it turns out that this technique tends to maroon people at slow morse speeds, as they mentally record a sequence of dots and dashes then mentally look it up in the table to find the letter. To get fast Morse skills, which tend to tend towards one or two characters per second, you need to learn to recognise the sound - "di di dah" - as a letter directly. So I've been using a combination of the Farnsworth and Koch methods to learn Morse; growing my "vocabulary" a letter at a time, and using an enlarged inter-character spacing. The latter is because I was tending to find that I'd hear a character, and write it down, but while I was writing it another would have been and gone, which was confusing. I want to reduce that inter-character gap, but I might wait until I've learnt the entire alphabet via the Koch method, so I can mentally be writing entire words rather than concentrating on a letter at a time - with a reduced alphabet, Morse training tends to involve writing down random gibberish (so far, I know M, K, R, U, S and O; at least the old Nokia SMS beep now makes sense to me... di-di-dit dah-dah di-di-dit!). Again, I have no particular reason to learn Morse - I learnt it as a child, but then forgot it through not using it, which had always faintly irritated me. I've often wondered about using it as a crude interface to tiny embedded computers, although it'd be frustratingly slow for most uses. The usual reason to learn Morse is to do CW amateur radio; that's an idea I've toyed with in the past, but being able to talk to random people over radio holds little appeal (I can talk to random people over the Internet much more cheaply and easily). However, I'd be interested in getting an amateur radio licence as a mental challenge, or as a means to some other project that requires radio communications capabilities, so I might go for a course if one comes up at a good time. I'd like to be able to operate a radio transmitter in an emergency situation, too.

I love to learn things, but I feel sad about not using the skills I pick up. Ok, I don't want to use my Krav skills - they tend to involve hurting people, and are only useful when already under danger of harm coming to me or people I'm protecting, which is nothing to be happy about. But I practice welding because want to make metal things. But by no means do I only learn things when I have a need for them; I learn stuff because it looks interesting and the opportunity arises, then I try and find applications. I've already been excitedly thinking about how aluminium welding will simplify the construction of one of my old back-burner projects - making a hiking staff out of aluminium tubing, that has a stack of lithium-ion batteries inside it at the base, a computer with a keyer in the middle so I can interact with it, and a high-brightness LED lantern on the top so I can have a variety of illumination options (white all around, white forwards only, red all around, etc). I had been working out complex systems of brackets and bolts to hold it all together, but TIG welding it would be much easier, neater, lighter, and stronger. Now, I had considered having a button that could be used to strobe the lights for Morse emergency signalling - and the logical next step was to include a co-axial semiconductor laser in the top that could shine a bright beam for signalling in Morse (and, at a pinch, be used to light fires; you can get 2W laser modules off the shelf these days, and all those lithium ion batteries are going to be able to source a lot of power...). So perhaps I should get a ham licence, and make the staff in sections joined together with insulators, and make it be a two-meter band dipole antenna (which is one meter long) with a CW transceiver inside, so it can also send and receive Morse by radio? That might be fun, and not much extra hardware as it'll already have a decent ARM microprocessor inside.

For now, though, I'd better focus on finishing off my server chassis (which I'm building my welding skills up towards), and make a new welding bench (mine is curved, and wobbles because the floor is uneven and the legs are too weak), and do some metalwork that's needed around the house... I'd like to do some more focussed Lojban study, too; right now I'm just picking up vocabulary by looking for words for things I don't know yet when I need them, but re-reading the reference grammar to remind myself of bits I rarely use would be good!

Learning the Recorder (by sarah)

I'm relearning stuff at the moment due to the old whack on the head - so this mainly means I am colouring in but the girls want to learn the recorder and I have a hang up about the recorder...

Anyway to cut a long story short there is a Frozen recorder book on it's way to us and we have received a rather disappointing Elsa/Frozen "recorder" which is a crap plastic all in one moulded toy that is pretty useless but Mary loves it and it was stupid cheap so hey you get what you pay for (I was still narked if it says recorder - I expect an actual recorder!).

With panic I realised the book would probably be all music notation even though it says easy on it. I can't read music, I have a stab at learning it every few years but nope doesn't work. I normally just work things out by sound etc... this is actually what got me chucked out of my recorder class in school.

Apparently according to the then music teacher you can't be a musician without reading music. You can't play music. This crushed me. What had happened was that she hadn't noticed I couldn't read music, I was watching her and the other kids and working it out by ear and progressing nicely. Even when they started setting homeworks it wasn't too bad as it was nursery rhymes and I just worked them out but then... then they wanted us to do "proper music" story pieces as backing for singers or as part of the orchester. I did not know these songs, my parents were not into classical music - BAM a glass ceiling.

They were complex with different sized recorders - everyone else would turn up knowing the piece, after three weeks of this I knew that something had to happen for me to continue with recorder. So I asked my mum if I could have extra music lessons, she said yes and wrote a letter explaining the situation and that I could not actually read the music - could I have extra lessons (paid for) or did they know who to ask etc... to sort this out.

The letter was the death nell - in front of the enter wind section I was castigated - told that if I hadn't picked up reading music by now then there was no hope - I simply could not be a musician.

I left angry, and confused and crying, a hot mist of shame clouding my vision. I clutched my two recorders, one of which was basically shiny knew and the classic dark brown and cream, my nan had bought it for me as I'd moved up a group.

Being me I became kind of resigned and militant about this. I didn't really want to be playing the recorder anyway - I wanted to play the flute. Being a glutton for punishment I went along to the flute try outs. From my prospective it seemed to be going quiet well, I could get a sound out of the damn thing unlike the others in the room. But then the teacher took the flutist aside and hard the mutterings about not being able to read music, or writing for that matter and so on - I would like to add that I was also not the only child in the room at this point but I think the teacher had forgotten I could now hear properly as it was just after the second lot of grommets had been put in.

I doubt my pitch was perfect (I'm pretty sure it wasn't), I don't do sound as just a hearing thing anyway, I like to feel it, if I can't feel it I can't know if it will fit properly.

Anyway they came over to me and I looked up, "I'm afraid your arms are too short for the flute," he said.

"What about the picalo?" I asked - I was desperate to play the flute - this was because a blue telepathic animated character out of a cartoon series called Ulysses 31 played an epic flute made of gold and lights that she vanquished monsters with. Also I had curly hair - somehow I felt that meant I was destined for the flute.

He hesitated, "you have to learn the flute first before the picalo." He said gravely and I left the music room once more with the angry confused mist of shame and tears and snot.

My mother was furious but we could not afford flute stuff outside of the special schools programme.

Then because you know I never know when to quit I went for the choir in the final year of juniors with the same woman. But I was sick on the day the auditions were supposed to happen. When I got back there were four people out of the entire year who were too bad to go in the choir - they were the people I had extra reading lessons with in the special room.

I am a shy person. I was still determined, I was made to stand in the school hall in front of the entire year and given a piece of sheet music that the teacher knew I could not read. I didn't even know what the song was going to be. I was petrified, everyone knew I wanted to be an opera singer (it was down as part of my three fold dream which involved being a spaceman and archeologist so I could look at rocks - I thought as an opera singing I would get to design the costumes, write the stories and build the sets as well as doing singing, dancing and acting).

I recognised the song, I tried to sing, my voice stuck but then it unstuck and I started to sing.

The teacher loomed in putting her ear right in front of my mouth making comments. But I wanted to be in the choir so much I kept going.

She stopped the music, and announced I was in tune but too quiet and there was no place in the choir for people who couldn't pull their weight. Everyone knew how much I wanted to be in the choir. I don't know if I imagined it but at this point I was sure they were all laughing at me. My form tutor came and rescued me and sat on the stairs with me whilst I cried.

"Hey we can't all be good at everything, what if I told you you hadn't gotten onto the football team? You wouldn't be crying then would you?" we both knew I would never have gone for it as I was still learning to run without falling over at this point.

"I would." I said and she looked at me sitting there in her sports outfit she never took off - she knew me and sports, "if I'd tried out for the football team it would be because I wanted to play football so of course I'd be upset if I didn't get it especially if I was then told I was rubbish and would never be able to do it, in front of EVERYBODY."

She smiled and laughed, "Sarah you are amazing, you'll find away, it will be your own way, now come and see the stuff I've got planned for you lot, you're going to be so glad you aren't in the choir."

And I was - we made things and explored things, including creating our own papier mache puppets and sets. I am also still friends with two of the people who were in that group with me.

Of course I also then went and joined lots of choirs, and learnt the guitar and have sundry instruments in my house. Now I know I am not brilliant at music and I know I panic when ever technical stuff is mentioned but I love music.

These events did mar music for me though and looking at it now from where I am as an adult I feel that, that music teacher was most definately in the wrong. She was also my second year class teacher so I would have been 8? She was my least favourite of the junior school. I did revisit the school once before my work experience (which was in the infant school anyway), I made a special trip to her classroom to tell her how I'd been excepted into the choral society as well as having performed in a local performance of Joseph and his Dream Coat and so on - what I didn't mention was that I still wasn't having any school music or drama classes as I was still having to go to a special room to learn to read and write properly - I did however mention that I had been given a solo without being able to read music. I am glad I didn't know the term passive aggression as I would not have done this and I feel that in all honesty it needed to be done.

So back to the here and now as I am sure I've blogged about this story a couple of times before!

I have a recorder that I play merrily we row along to get children to sit down at readings and workshops. It turns out to be the only song I can remember since hitting my head though Jean says I could play lots of hymns (makes sense they are songs I would have known well enough from church to work out by ear).

Anyway she doesn't get recorder lessons at the school - she's had a bit of uke but they are not a big school and the teacher who could play, left... so I taught her merrily we row along. It took her about half an hour to master and remember and now she is playing it CONTINOUSLY!

Then I was struck by the panic - she was asking for other tunes and I can't remember any and I don't think I was particularly good anyway. That and the realisation that the book though saying EASY recorder would no doubt expect music reading skills... I turned to youtube.

I found this vid of Happy Birthday.

My dad was coming down the next day - it was his birthday - it took me 15 mins to get it down pat and I then remembered it in the morning for the kids to sing along to.

I was so proud of myself.

Jean is keen to learn and Mary has always loved the recorder :)

(She is now 4 and not the little thing in this video!)

The first thing that happened was my mum mentioned the teacher and we both had the same thought, if I can teach myself using youtube videos whilst suffering with the tail end of a head injury then how the hell did a qualified teacher stuff it up?

I realise I was a "special needs" kid but still... also there were like over 60 kids in my year - that is a 60 strong choir that was not a super duper choir so would 5 "bad voices" have made that much of a difference espcially if they were far away from the mics? And was it coincidence that we were all the "special needs" kids? I'd never thought on that connection before but it is there.

Anyway - I think I need to rest and then learn another song... well actually I am also setting up a section on here of educational stuff so Jean can find it when she wants to learn without me. It should also be useful to others and I may include links to good education workshop leaders etc... not really decided yet.

One last thing - it turns out I know random stuff about the recorder and sizes and stuff and got very defensive when Alaric suggested that only kids play them and that you never see adults playing them!

10 Years Ago…. (by sarah)

Ten years ago today Alaric got to the train station and thought "you know what I don't want to go to work today, my pregnant wife is very sick and in that hospital just there, I'll go and see her instead". This was an unusual thought for him, as it was he mostly worked from home and only went in once a week for meetings.

It was bizar behaviour on his part but something I am so glad he did. He held my hand as I sat on machines that monitored my vitals and then he went to get my breakfast. I think I fell asleep, something was going on, nurses were running past the door, Alaric came and with a nurse helped get me to the breakfast room with it's TV.

He explained a bomb had gone off, we watched the news as it unfolded with a sickening sense of relief, Alaric could have, should have been on that train. Then the panic as we realised that it wasn't one attack but several - that it was hitting routes we knew. I tried to phone my friends and family who worked in London. Unsurprisingly the networks were jammed - in hindsight we should have been leaving the phones for emergency stuff but we weren't thinking we just wanted to check everyone was safe.

Our Drs started to disappear as they left to help or be medical stand by, my parents turned up thinking they were going to have to tell their very ill very pregnant daughter that her husband was missing on one of the blown up routes. They had been trying to phone him, none of the phones were working.

They were angry with him in that way you get angry when a child didn't come when you called, and you imagine the worst. Then he got hugged. And then the maternity ward began to break down. They say there is no stress induced pregnancy but woman after woman came in with blood pressure problems or in labour or both. The ward filled, there were women on trollies in the corridor - we were not on the labour ward but one woman ended up in the advance stages of having her baby in the maternity ward with me. They pulled the curtains round her bed, she was calling for her husband - her parents didn't know where he was, he had not done an Alaric, he was either dead, injuried or stranded in a motionaless London.

There was not enough beds or staff and bloody foot prints appeared and stayed on the floor. I was bewildered.

After much trying we got hold of as many friends and family as we could, checking they were all ok. More than one had had a near miss, were sitting still in London, sitting on steps crying or telling me how eeri it was with all the traffic stopped, with the hush, and with everyone being kind. London is normally a free for all, pushing, rushing, ignoring the press of humanity but that wasn't what was happening. Everyone was milling, quiet and in shock, everyone knew they were the lucky ones.

Everyone had been expecting the attack since 7/11 in the US, in truth London commuters had been being a bit nicer to each other since that point all fearing that this day was coming. If your train was delayed by more than ten minutes and you had no reception but someone else did - they would lend you their phone to phone and say you were alive. This affect multiplied on the day, I did not really register the stories at the time - I was too ill and mainly wanted to know that the people I cared about were fine.

That is not saying that I had no feelings for those who weren't, it was horrific but I needed to know my friends were fine.

When he got home Alaric found we'd been added to shout outs, it was before the days of social media but we did have blogs and mailing lists and everyone was checking that we were ok. People were worried.

My friends and family were lucky, but mum's friend son - not so much. He's alive due to the carriage he got in but bar the shock of the actual explosion and minor injuries he then had to be escorted past the carnage. Last I heard he still hadn't gone back to work, not all the scars were physical ones, not all of them could heal.

Much later on I realised that it had been even more of a close call for our little family, if I had not been ill and in hospital then we could all have been on the train. It's a strange twist of fate and one that wedges inside me, that me almost dying potentially saved all three of our lives. I say potentially because we might have been late or delayed or I might have weed myself on the way to the station or a million other things, but all of those things are nothing but grace as was me being so ill Alaric felt justified in not going to work that morning.

Terrorism is a horrendous thing, life taking for political gain, for power, religion, to make a point, to drive the wedge... murder is the only name for it.

It was muslims that time but it followed a tradition of London bombs. Someone asked me how I could still travel on the tube into London - the answer, "The RIA didn't stop us, oil disputes in the 70's did not stop my mother, hell she even had her bank hijacked, so why let this lot?". They weren't all muslims like the RIA were not all the Irish, the point of the bombings was to divide, to make an us and them, sadly with some people they succeeded and that is sad. Muslims were killed on the trains and buses, muslim doctors came and aided people straight away - before anyone really knew what they were dealing with, weather those drs were putting their own lives at risk or not.

Terrorists don't really care who they kill, who they injure or maim, that's kind of the point of the bombs. Ever wondered why we don't have metal bins anymore?

Anyway that is all besides the point. Today there are people remembering loved ones who should but aren't still here and no amount of photos shown on international TV is going to heal the wholes in those families. Later today I am going to light ten candles - one for each year, for the yawning chasm of pain, for those who were lost and those that still bare the scars.