A local trundle to end last week…..

Hope you can see that I have new logos to click on when you’ve opened my blog today. My ‘Technical Director”, aka Gemma, had time to do me a revamp. So please click on these wonderful organisation, who are very close to me and do so much for me as well as me doing so much for them, to find out more……..

Last Friday saw me heading to nearby Market Weighton….I’d had a rubbish few days so was looking forward to being with people again……

Me and Cathryn Hart from Humber Trust do a twice yearly Recovery College Workshop at various venues across Hull and the East Riding and Friday it was the turn of Market Weighton.

Our 2 hour workshop is called “Living with Dementia, and the things you can do to help”

Katie and newbie to the research team, Jade, were picking me up and arrived as planned on a wet dull day but, no matter what the weather, it’s still always a nice drive over the Wolds…..we had a chuckle all the way as Kates windscreen wipers had decided to fiunction on fast only and she had to press the STOP button at just the right time for them to be in the right position and not halfway across the screen……much hilarity followed with all our heads following the windscreen wipers and then shouting stop for Katie to press the button…….😂🤣😂🤣…….

The venue was the  town hall in the high street, where a lovely smiley man met us and showed us where everything was….

While Katie and Jade got stuff ready I typed away at this……

Me and Cathryn do a double act of ‘winging it’ as we call it, as we wait until we see who turns up, what their relationship is to dementia, whether they’re healthcare professionals or people affected or a mix, so we can tailor it to fit the audience…….that’s of course the royal ‘we’ as Cathryn steers me and leads the conversation….and when I forget what I’m saying she knows the perfect words to use to spark the sentences from within…….we like to make it informal as possible so that people feel comfortable speaking and it usually works….

People started to arrive and my lovely playmate Bob, arrived with his wife Sue with amazing homemade cakes….so many hugs followed as people arrived….Sandra Burley, who I know from Facebook and is running the Dementia Friendly Market Weighton initiative arrived, as did my partner in talking, Cathryn, with a lovely pressie for me as the next time we see each other, in December, I’ll be heading straight for London, so she brought it today…

We never know how many people will turn up as the Recovery College only charge £1 for attendance at their workshops to cover minimum admin, so that opens all their wonderful workshops up to anyone…….

People came up to me that I apparently knew but sadly I didn’t recognise them…..always makes me sad but nothing I can do about it…..I’d even shared the stage with one man a few times….but didn’t have a scooby doo….😔

Atcho, from the Recovery College arrived…with his lovely smile so we had a piccie with him and Cathryn….

We started off with me saying a tad about me and then I went round the audience asking what was their connection to dementia so we could work out what sort of audience we had…turned out it was a lovely varied one, with people living with dementia, supporters, Care home staff and healthcare professionals so a wonderful mix…..people could say as much or as little as they wished..

I then did my my bit talking about this that and everything and someone from East Riding council videod it …..we then opened it up to see if anyone in the audience had any tips or tricks to share and some wonderful things came out of it…..contrasting colours, tips for noise, tips for eating and bathing…….wonderful……sharing…….just how it should be…

We stopped for a break and people chatted more before we finished off the session by talking about research……and the gap it can fill where services are non existence…….

We ended by sharing more local tips from Barry, Sandra telling everyone about the work going on in Market Weighton and then me reading the Billy paragraph from my book so that everyone left with a smile on their face…such a welcome relief after the previous days…..and as people left we just remembered to take a piccie of those involved with Market=y Weighton alongside me and Cathryn…..

P.S

A man arrived near the end, having got lost in a strange town…..he’d come  all the way from Ponterfract just to see me and was living with dementia – now that was wonderful enough as I lived there until I was 18…….but he came up to me afterwards, took hold of my hands, apologising for his late arrival, but when he heard I was speaking here, had to come and see me, as when he was diagnosed he went into a bad place….

“You  brought me out of the deepest depression so when my son told me you were here, I had to come just to say thank you”

Words failed me……..humbled…….