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Showing posts from March, 2020

A Child of Mine - In the name of Thiago - Day 87

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Thoroughly shattered today. Just completely overwhelmed by the enormity of my grief and everything else going on with this bloody virus. I found it so very hard to go to the cemetery and the truth of the matter is that I probably wouldn’t have done that on Sunday had Angelica not put the idea forward. It was something that needed to happen though and I am glad that I did it but it has made me realise that this is all still extremely raw to me and I am finding it very hard to cope. So with all of that in mind at lunch time today I made a call to ‘A Child of Mine’ . They are a charity that supports bereaved parents and their founder is a lady called Gayle Routledge who herself lost a son, when he was just three. It was very comforting to talk about Thiago with her. She was a great listener and discussing my feelings with someone who had been there and come through it all and made it out the other side made me think that no matter how shit things are right now, I

With a little help from my friends - In the name of Thiago - Day 86

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Whatever rubbish might happen in the day, once I switch on to my time I am lucky to say that I have a small number of incredible friends, who truly do mean the world to me. One of those people is this fella Stephen Tibbals. ‘Tibbals’ is the only person I know who is referred to by their surname alone. Occasionally people stray towards using the affectionate term Tibbo but apart from the odd minor indiscretion, he is universally known as Tibbals. Tibbals has a plan, a very fine fundraising plan. A little while ago, he achieved notoriety in one of the tabloids when a social media marketing gimmick suddenly threw him into the national spotlight.  Every Friday through the summer of 2015, Tibbals and his workmates would strip off as the temperature soared both literally and figuratively. The posts on his social media profile proved, shall we say, popular! And the top man that he is, he’s now looking to see how a re-enactment of that – hopefully when the weather

My boy's life in pictures - In the name of Thiago - Day 85

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As I said yesterday, today's blog is going to be a little different. Angelica and I went up to Keele Cemetery to say hello to our little man today and give him a bit of a tidy up. It's very sad to see but there are some other children there for Thiago to play with so he wasn't the only little trooper to be dealt the shittiest of shit hands by life. I gave him a little cuddle as you can see and told him I loved him. I also gave him a special squeeze from his Nanna in Australia who is the spirit and the inspiration behind today's blog. The following photographs all appear as pages in the beautiful book that Angelica and I received yesterday. Thank you and good night.  I love you Mum x If you can folks - please help me fundraise so that other children in the future might have a better chance than my beautiful little boy. Take care.

What constitutes necessity - In the name of Thiago - Day 84

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I think I’ve got the fear. I don’t definitely 100% need to go shopping – we could get by for another couple of days eating like dogs. But now it’s a psychological push pull between the genuine anxiety of going to the shops and being judged and the actual ‘need’ for doing so.   This is weird as fuck frankly and not something I’ve ever experienced before. I mean not unlike a lot of chaps I’ve always had a slight fear of shopping. My learned friend and linguist Andrew Tanner informed me on Faceslap earlier that this is known as ‘officinaphobia’.  (Ultimately I overcame my anxiety later in the day after getting myself together in the car for 10 minutes first. At Lidl social distancing was observed impeccably outside the store at least) This anxiety has manifested itself in recent years specifically in clothes shopping. As I’ve got bigger and bigger over the years, the realisation hit me that finding stuff that fits has got that bit more difficult. And to be fair, alt