Double ton up – In the name of Thiago – Day 200

 

Of course I’m only speaking from recent experience, but reaching a landmark has that joint effect of making you feel proud of what you’ve achieved and posing the question of how much longer you want to carry on for. The truth is that though the words for my blog often flow unimpeded like water in a stream, getting the motivation to set about my work after doing what I’m actually paid to do for a living, can be tricky.

 

Lying ahead is the walk of course, which runs from September 19 to October 16. It goes without saying that I’ll still be blogging then. November 28 marks a year to the day since Thiago died – it feels appropriate to still be writing then, while I plan to close the fundraiser down on 1 December. I’m thinking that no-one will want to hear some bloke droning on about his late son leading up to Christmas. All things to think about but perhaps, another day.

 

 

I’ve not had a bad day by any means, but I have been wound up by social media today. Yes, I know, I know it’s hardly a reason to stop the fucking press, (I wonder how much longer we’ll be using that expression for with or without an expletive), but there it is: Twitter pissed me off. You know that bit on your stream which says ‘recommended for you’? Well today I was recommended to read about the death of someone’s pet and perhaps comment on little Moggy’s passing.

 

Just to be clear, if anyone does have a pet that’s just died or perhaps is about to die, please don’t bother telling me about it, as I promise you I won’t give a flying fuck. I know that sounds very mean, but please just don’t do it to me. You’d think some of these utter fuckwits had actually lost a child themselves the way they carp on. Sorry, not remotely interested.

 

 

This is Angélica’s friend Vikki sat with her ladyship in Hanley Park today. For Elisa, it’s been a complete turnaround this week compared to last. She’s been out every day and been very active with it – the poor little toerag looked mortified when she got in shortly after 4pm only for me to tell her that she had a dance class at 4.30!

 

I was a little surprised about an hour after her class had ended that she told me she had something she wanted to share that might just impress me. Elisa has decided that this summer she is going to try to recite pi to 100 decimal places using the classical piece of music ‘In the hall of the mountain king’ – by Bergen’s finest export Edvard Grieg. She’s got a phenomenal memory but surely that’s an impossible task. She’s not Rainman for fuck’s sake!

 

 

Here they are, the two monkeys just monkeying about. I have enormous respect for the energy levels that my good lady has when it comes to doing stuff with Elisa. Already this week, Elisa has been treated to a beach on The Wirral and two local parks. Angélica now has to work four of the next five days – it will amount to at least 50 hours – at which point my little pocket dynamo will be utterly broken. I wouldn’t want to see her on Monday as she’s finishing if I’d done the off duty!

 

Today is a day of landmarks. To celebrate 200 days of blogging and pretty much the same amount of time fundraising, I can tell you that thanks to my wonderful friends in Brighton, Trish and Dave and the lovely Heather much further way in New Brunswick, Canada, I have now topped the £8,000 mark and am 80% of the way to my target.

 

When the corporate sponsorship comes in, that will be 90% of the way to target, so you can well imagine that I’m feeling both happy and quietly confident. Please help me to continue helping those that need it most at the NHS. They are always there for us, I want to be there for them.