Failed at Napping

As accessible as the world is trying to be it'll never be truly accessible. For most places, reasonable adjustments just means level or ramped access and maybe a disabled toilet. Some places go a bit further and allow more space for wheelchairs. Some go the extra mile and install a changing places toilet. We had a trip to Devon recently for a family wedding. The first motorway services was pretty good and had a usable changing places toilet. However the second services we stopped at, the changing places toilet was closed off. Well, they'd put a barrier in the way. The lock was smashed off and the hoist didn't work. We moved the barrier and used it anyway. Two person lift in lieu of the hoist and blocked the door with the chair. Thanks to traffic, roadworks, accidents, etc the journey took over 11 hours so it's not like we could get away without stopping. As anywhere truly accessible usually books up well in advance we had to find somewhere where we could manage. Maybe w...

As a parent to two kids with additional needs it seems like I spend too much time chasing other people to do their job. If all these supposed professionals just did they job they get paid for with prompting that would reduce my stress level by approximately 57.3% All together over the last two days I've spent about an hour on the phone to the GP surgery and then about another 45 minutes filling in forms online and about half an hour in the pharmacy. All because the surgery decided to take my kids of their books without telling me. That's over two hours of my time that could've been better spent scrolling through reels on Instagram. Anyway, here's a photo I took recently of somewhere nice a calm.

 Wow, 7 years since my last post. You'd be forgiven to think I'd forgotten about this blog. Life is a lot different now. We have a house we call home, we don't live there yet but we will. Eventually. We have a team of carers that help look after the boys and we have another dog. Main headaches these days are dealing with the Deputy, architects and managing a boot load of appointments. Oh and the knacker van. Shouldn't be a knacker. It's a Mercedes but since we got it it's had a liking of going into limp whenever it feels like it. It's spent a lot of time with the local dealer and they haven't been able to fix t. So yes, it's time to start thinking about a new van. Again. I used to talk about photography on here now and then. That's changed a bit for me. I now volunteer at a local place where I run a weekly photography group for neurodivergent adults and adults with additional needs. Which is great and helps me feel like I'm part of something....

Yep, a dog sleeps on me.

Dole life Once they've got you in the system they don't want you to leave. At least not until they've with you down and accepted your worthless existence. I could do with some more money, as could most people, so I looked into how earning some money would effect my benefits. I can earn £20 per week! Wow, a whole £20! Anymore than that would be deducted from my benefits. If I earn enough to replace that benefit then I'll be above the threshold for my carers allowance so would need enough to replace that as well. By then if probably be losing my other benefits as well. The way I work it out I'd need a starting wage of about £21k to be in the same financial situation I'm in now. But then I'd have to add on the costs of going to with (travel, meals, clothes, etc) and I'd be worse off. The chance of going into a new job at the same level as my old job after a break is pretty much non-existent. So this means I'm pretty much stuck on benefits. So is it ...

It's November and already I'm sick of Christmas. So, in no particular order, here's a list of things I hate about Christmas. It starts too soon. As soon as Bonfire Night is out the way the Christmas adverts start on the TV, Christmas stock starts appearing in shops, decorations start going up in shops and later in November in people's homes. It's just too much, too soon. Everyone wants your money. The shops want your money. New shops open up selling cheap junk to try to get more of your money. Charities want your money more than ever, t'is the season of goodwill to all men after all. Black Friday and other sales. Why do we even have Black Friday here in the UK? Again, it's just a way for shops to part fools with more of their money. The sales stock is all just junk they couldn't sell at full price so now they try to sell it for closer to what it's worth. New stock is also shipped in just for sales. This stuff might have the same brand on it but i...

You know those days where you wish you could just go back to bed, have another's hours sleep then start again fresh? Well today has been one of those days. My day started at about half five when John woke up. As usual I changed him in bed before carrying him downstairs. He's usually quite active when he wakes up but while I was changing him this morning he managed to kick me in the face. Twice.  This set me up for the day in a bad mood. Once you're in a bad mood, if you don't get out of it, your day is just going to get worse.  I tried to cheer up, I really did. But I was just too tired to shake off my grump. The day was full of all the usual little things that normally wouldn't bother me. But today, thanks to my mood, they did bother me. I was overreacting and snapping at things, not thinking things through, acting before thinking. I even managed to launch poor Matthew down the back of the sofa, head first! Eventually the day came to an end. The ki...

If you don't know what this is about it's probably best to get the background from the first post here:  https://sndad.blogspot.co.uk/2017/10/photography-project.html Ok, this is another image from the series. I like the concept but not sure about execution. You have to study the photo to see what's happening here, maybe that's a good thing. Anyway, in this photo I'm taking John for a walk with the dog. The dog doesn't want to stay on the lead walking the streets so I've got John in his off road wheelchair and we're going round a route I walk quite often. This could pass for an "other" road on an OS map and I've rode up and down here on my bike but pushing John up here isn't easy. The surface is scattered with large rocks and at the point I'm at it's very steep. However, John likes to be out and enjoys being out and has a good sense of adventure so as long as he's enjoying the ride then I'll take him anywhere I ca...

When you become a parent you pretty much forgo the opportunity to lie in bed undisturbed on a weekend. However, every now and then we have very little to do at the weekend. We use this time to lie in bed. Today I got up at about half five while my wife stayed in bed. By about nine she was up and it was my time to go back to bed. I quickly fell asleep. It was a beautiful sleep and lasted longer than expected. About half 11 I was woke by Matthew poking me in the eye.

When I say car, I mean van. When I say van I mean shed on wheels. I shouldn't really complain though. Whatever we get it will be bigger than the current car so we can fit more stuff in.

A few months ago I decided I would like to try to put together a series of photos about life with a disabled son, the problems that arise and stuff like that. I'm not 100% clear on the brief myself but I thought it will become more apparent as time goes on. Eventually I was thinking I could display these in a gallery setting of some sort, I just need to develop the concept further until I'm happy with it. I'm only got nine photos so far and I'm not even sure I'll keep all of them but I thought I'd start sharing some of them here. This is the first photo I took. It's very dark and without context it's probably hard to see what's going on. This photo was taken at 3:07am. John wakes up most nights and it can be a struggle to settle him back down to sleep. One way I try to do this is just to climb onto his bed, sit him on my knee and cuddle him. Doing it this way I can attempt to stop him throwing his arms and legs round and he settles down agai...

So far so good. I went back for the meeting with my booklet filled in. The guy there checked through it then proceeded to tell me all about how to apply for jobs through the job centre. Thanks but no thanks. Next step is to apply for carer's allowance and wait. This could be a long wait. Carer's allowance people take about 8 weeks to process new claims apparently. As I am applying for income support I need an income to support, this will be the carer's allowance that my wife was getting. Unfortunately you cant just transfer this from one parent to the other, so she had to cancel it and I had to apply for it. It's going to be a lean few weeks until this is all sorted but as long as I can pay the rent then I'll be happy.

The main problem with staying in hospital rooms is the total lack of ventilation. If you're lucky enough to have a window, chances are you can't open it. The rooms are super heated and there's just no airflow. This means that when I fart, it doesn't go anywhere. I have to pace around the room to try to get the air moving a bit to stir and hopefully thin out the atmospheric soup. After a few minutes of pacing this seems to work. Then you leave the room for a few minutes to get a drink of water and when you come back in the smell hits you. It never left, you just got used to it. You accept your fate and let another one go just in time for the nurse to come round for the obs.

Quick, hold him still while I take a photo! Still better than the school photo.

About three years ago I posted my thoughts about The Great School Photo Scam here , well it's come around again this year. This time the photo isn't too bad really. The poor quality sample on the order form probably hides the full quality of the image however it's still not great. The lighting is very flat and my sons expression is more bored than happy. As I said last time, I have a camera and I take some great photos of my son, I have no need for the school photo and I'm certainly not paying £16.50 to download it. In the last year or so I have been developing myself as a photographer. Is it time for me to step up and do some sort of pop up portrait session? Not because I want to make some money out of it but because I think people deserve something a bit better than what the school photo offers. School photo: Random photo I took while we were out one day: I know which one I prefer and if I took the time to set up lighting and a backdrop then I'm con...

A few weeks ago we noticed the sink in the bathroom was leaking. Instead of doing anything about it at the time we declared the sink out of use. It wasn't until a few days ago I decided to have a look to see where it was leaking from. I though the trap was full of sink goo and water was leaking somewhere because it wasn't flowing away properly. I cleaned out the trap and a nut (I later learned that this is called a flanged back nut) that holds the pipe to the sink fell apart while I was poking at it so it seemed pretty obvious this was causing the problem. Replace the nut, fix the sink. Simple right. I went to to a local DIY shop and bought what I thought was what I needed. it was a piece of pipe with two nuts on. It was size converter thing with two nuts as I didn't know what size to get. Got it home and quickly realised that my bright idea to get both size nuts didn't work. They were the wrong type of nut. What I bought So back to the shop for the correct n...

So now that I'm not working it's time to claim some benefits. I've been paying into this system for long enough, it's time to get something back. Housing benefit was easy enough, I was able to do that online and while it seemed like quite a lot of questions I got there in the end. The payments for this have gone up and down and every time you give them some new information it's re-assessed. However, I think I've finally got my head around it and now it's time to apply for income support, or whatever it's called. I figured this would also be pretty straight forward, a quick search online and it seems I can apply over the phone, saving me a trip to the job centre. I phoned up. I was on the phone for about an hour going through a long list of questions. I was quite happy with this and at the end of the call I was given an appointment to speak to someone at the job centre. Not ideal but there are hoops you have to jump through and this was the first. I w...

Just a quick update following on from the previous post. I crashed pretty hard. I took some time out from work and eventually returned in February. I managed four weeks before getting signed off again. It's now August and I haven't been back. Soon myself and my employer will be parting ways. They've been great, I haven't got a bad word to say about how well they have treated me over this time. But enough is enough. They're going to stop paying me eventually. The harsh truth of the matter is that no matter how hard I tried it just wasn't possible to maintain a full time job while being a full time carer for my son. He's grow and his care needs have grown with him. These days anything I do for myself needs to be planned in advance and can be, and often is, cancelled at the last minute.

If you run on autopilot, eventually you'll crash. And that, dear reader, is what has happened to this story's protagonist. It's hard to say what triggered the crash. Probably just a build up of various stresses and emotions, coupled with exhaustion but I decided it was time to visit a doctor. The result: I've been signed off work for a couple of weeks with depression. This should allow me time to get some rest, get some exercise and generally get my head and life back in order. I've been through this before. A few years ago I had about five months off work. I'm hoping that experience will work in my favor. I know what helped me through last time and I'm hoping it'll get me through this time, only quicker.

When I made my escape from Nottingham I bought a car from a guy in hyson green. It was a white m reg escort. 1.3 petrol and less power than a moderate fart. It cut out when the revs dropped as well and needed a bump start all too often. Cost me about £320 but I needed something to get me, Claire and all our stuff back up north. Driving back I had to stop at a red light and sure enough it cut out. An old guy, must've been in his sixties, came to my rescue and offered to give me a push. There was no-one else around younger so I accepted his help. He pushed the car and it as it fired up it jumped forward and the old guy fell on his face. While trying to keep the revs up I shouted back to see if he was ok. He waved and I drove off, leaving him lying in the road. I did see him getting back on his feet in the mirror but I still felt really bad about the whole thing. I got the car fixed, it got us back up north and while I was waiting to start a new job I swapped it for a green focus est...