Category Archives: Laughing boy tales

The bathroom renovation

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Part 1

The bathroom renovation. An extension built fifteen or so years ago thinking about LB’s long term future. A downstairs bedroom and bathroom (always surprisingly) reached through a door under the stairs into what was a narrow garage.  A never quite [don’t ask] finished space steeped in emotion and history. ‘Valuing People’ an unformed kernel of an idea back then. ‘Still Valuing People’ to come. Still.

A failed attempt to complete it a few years after LB’s death. And silence.

Now. The clear out. Shelves of untouched stuff. Dust art installations to fascinate, intrigue, repulse. How does undisturbed dust work? Shake down, replenish and/or pile up?

Who is this little fella in a glass?

“The glass is from the Queen’s coronation” offered Rich.

A 68 year old glass. Seven years of dust. A mystery figure. [And 107 days…]

Sadness and excitement about reclaiming the space.

Part 2

This morning. Just after 7.30am. Shaken awake from strike slumber in a panic of door knocking and dog barking.

Christ. It’s the builder.

You go.

You go.

We grub around for bits of clothing in the dark.

He’s early.

Yeah. That’s a good sign.

Yeah.

I run downstairs and open the door.

Paul.

Sara.

Sorry, I’ve not been well. I may have to leave to get to the hospital quickly.

Crumbs, sorry to hear this. You shouldn’t be at work.

I’d rather be working to be honest. I’m fed up with doing nothing at home. I just can’t lift anything heavy. 

I offer him a cuppa. He’s not allowed fluids other than water before 10am. He’s brought water with him.

“What’s that face for?” asked Rich coming into the kitchen.

Nothing.

Part 3

We learn fragments of Paul’s life across the day. Family, health, (not) stockpiling bog roll and stories from decades of renovating bathrooms. A second builder pitches up to help. His wife texts to check on him. I learn about the technical background to the extension and plumbing failings. No damp stone is left unturned.

Love, quiet graft and commitment fills the space. And, with no whiff of cheesiness, hope.

Stolen time, mother blame and writing back

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Gawd. Not written a blog post for what seems like yonks. I think this is a good thing. I’ve also been on strike for what feels about a decade which is generating unusual space to think and reflect about stuff.

This morning crafting vintage crochet squares my eyes/thoughts drifted to beautiful, beautiful photos of our kids. And reflections about stolen time. Time spent enduring accountability processes, on fighting, meeting, demanding, researching, reading, raging, reading, raising, howling, meeting, missing, fighting, raging, howling and missing. Missing so bloody much.

I totted up one strand of this stolen time.

It is unnecessary. These processes shouldn’t take years. Or force families to become almost vigilantes in pursuit of justice.

I also thought about the tenacity and strength of the tentacles of mother blame that continue to try to drag me/us down. Me/us flagging here how the ‘mother blame’ stain works to circulate a narrative of ‘unbalanced woman’ disconnected and distinct from a loving family and friends.

Undertones, hints and hammers 

The still busy blame work continues across diverse settings and spaces. Examples from the last few weeks:

A comment in a Hampshire newspaper. Mazars a tool to discredit one trust or just to appease a certain someone?

A Facebook discussion. What worries me is her being in this position of power over very vulnerable people and seemingly completely unaware of what’s she’s saying.

Disproportionate indignation and the personalising of a wider, independent work outcome.

An extract from a draft manuscript in which a senior exec is portrayed as victim in contrast to an obstructive mother who really should have been offered grief counselling early on.

Writing back

A form of writing back, to borrow from post-colonial literature, is part of my/our personal, academic and activist life. Rich and I talk about it. Katherine Runswick-Cole and I have published about it. #JusticeforLB ran with it and, with George Julian’s clear vision, generated new ways of being, doing and acting.

Writing back is about trying to redress oppressive and enduring imbalances. Of reappropriating and resisting harmful discourses. Shades of refrigerator mothers, accusations of hysteria, irrationality and, ironically, imbalance.

The techniques available to public sector bodies wanting to silence people include discrediting, crushing and co-opting. In this order. I was never big on titles or throwing about my business so early attempts to discredit were short lived. Hints of a generic single mother on benefits are hard to sustain when you are married with a senior academic post. From being invisible, the Dr (‘Dr’) title assumed almost comedic proportions as events unfolded.

Attempts to crush are woven into the fabric of accountability processes as well as the everyday actions of senior health and social care figures. No funding for legal representation at inquests without punitive and intrusive scrutiny. Interview transcripts with NHS staff with sub-sections titled ‘My Relationship with Dr Ryan’. The secret review by Oxfordshire County Council in which the author spoke to everyone but us spinning a teeth achingly biased yarn. The commissioner’s letter about the terrible harm ‘my’ campaign was causing. Countless crushing examples.

Co-opting can be an effective tool in terms of maintaining the status quo. Selfie slide shows of families with ministers, politicians, big charities… People sign up to working with different strands of health and social care to generate change, working with and influencing from the inside. Rich and I dipped our toes into the co-opting pool. Both were short lived experiences as futility shone through. Outrage and incredulity this week from long term National Autistic Society supporters as the penny finally dropped. This is a corporate, self-serving beast.

And what if the silencing techniques don’t work?

Mmm. This has been a ponder and a half. The following point all overlap…

If the techniques don’t work you are not playing the game. You are at fault.

If you remain uncrushed you are clearly not assuming the appropriate, culturally ascribed role of grieving mother. You are stripped of feelings, your bereavement stolen.

People you’ve never met develop a strong and irrational (again heavy on the irony) dislike of you. A disproportionate monstering. A danger to others…

If you resist co-opting there is no resolution. And there is no resolution if you don’t. Superficiality of ‘improvement’ efforts continue with an ever ready queue of co-optees while necessary structural and cultural changes remain untouched. From the outside we don’t have the distraction of insider tinkering and remain a nuisance.

Finally, and what gets lost in all of this, is bereaved families are the only interested parties, to use coronial language, who are typically not directly connected to or part of what happened. This makes the attempted silencing and subsequent monstering all the more monstrous.

The end. For now.

[Please chip in with comment, reflections or criticism; these are very much half formed thoughts.]

Quest Craven and the end of a decade

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I’ve drafted posts on paper, on this blog and in my head on and off for weeks and months now. And kind of enjoyed not posting them. It feels right. I may revisit some of these ghost posts. Or not. Some (many) are about (malingering) grief. About the intense pain and sadness I feel. And always will. With patches of pretty much happiness. That’s cool. I don’t want to always be Captain Bringdown. I remain in awe of feelings of contentment.

I’ve got a sort of manageable grief gig thing going on that kicks in along my walk to work in St Aldates. A space of enormously wide open sky. Taking in an ever present smorgasbord of coaches outside the Ashmolean. Mentally ticking off the die cast models LB collected while acknowledging post-death models he could only dream of. The road ahead leads to the cemetery.

Tonight I want to write about one atrocity story. Before we leave this decade.

Back in the day I would likely have laid out the pre-story to this. In considerable detail with links, drawings and other illustrations. [This blog with JusticeforLB.org and 107daysofaction produced by George Julian will no doubt provide a weighty and comprehensive account of the utter shite that passes for health and social care for certain people in the 21st century. Ripe pickings for students to unpack in years to come.]

I’ve lost my appetite for up to the minute documenting. For calling out, calling on, demanding, raging and howling at the moon and the stars. Six years on the resounding response in terms of demonstrable action is ‘we really couldn’t give a flying fuck’.

The swears no longer work.

Quest Craven

This is a story about a private provider called Quest Haven who run two ‘care homes’ for learning disabled people in Surrey (amongst other ‘care’ related practices). I strongly urge you to:

  1. Have a graze of the CQC inspection report highlighting the harrowing failings in anything approaching what could be described as ‘care’ in one of the two properties.
  2. Reflect on the longevity of this company (set up in 1997) and the fact that until November 2019 the Directors (three members of the Tagoe family) claimed to be Registered Nurses.
  3. Have a look at the Quest Haven website.
  4. Note that the claimed Registered Nurse status of all three Directors has now been revised to, er, not Registered Nurses. The Directors of this private provider were all faking their credentials.

Apparently the Nursing and Midwifery Council and Care Quality Commission couldn’t give a flying fuck about this fakery. Classy bunches as ever. We have no idea how widespread this practice is and the limp response suggests there is little or no appetite to root it out. Particularly, I suggest, when those receiving the non care are of so little value. Tinned mac n’ cheese on a budget of (an estimated) £3k+ a week is apparently rock and roll.

So, as we enter the third decade of the 21st century the appetite, guts, knowledge and integrity necessary to shift entrenched failings in practice and support remain elusive. Talk is talked. Big salaries are drawn among public and third sector organisation bods. Family members continue to be co-opted and effectively silenced.

Meanwhile in a bungalow in Surrey people continue to be treated like shite by fake nurses who don’t know their care arse from their elbow. Quest Haven rakes in the readies as commissioners across the country remain apparently glad to wash their hands of ‘troublesome people’. A regulatory and commissioning system continuing to choose to look the other way.

Way to go. Way to fucking go. We need a new plan for the next decade. One that does not bolster and help sustain this rot.

What do you do with those tears?

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I sat on the Oxford Tube heading to London this morning. Beautiful, beautiful, warm sunshine. Listening to an accidental playlist I don’t remember making. As we approached Lewknor unexpected tears kicked in. Alan Silvestri’s Forrest Gump? Christ. Silent weeping at the back end of a packed coach to London. 

I started the surreptitious eye wiping routine. Left cheek. Swift wipe with the back of the hand. Wait a mo. Right hand, right cheek. Swipe. 

The woman sitting next to me studiously studied a Housing related journal. Two beautiful young boys on the other side of the aisle silently swung their legs, gadgets charging. Absorbed in technologies that weren’t a distant speck when we used to chug up to London on days out. Bus and heavy haulage spotting. Waiting to get there.

Are we nearly there yet?

I stared up at the skylight trying to back the tear flow. A half arsed study of sky through dirty streaked tinted plastic. Forrest Gump. Where did that come from? Those fucking tears. Falling in a space of strangers.

What do you do with those tears?

The Bayswater Road was closed. I got off at Shepherds Bush.

Wave for Change Day. Muswell Hill. Mixing, mingling and fun. Thorny issues around who speaks for who discussed in a space of openness and acceptance. I rolled with the waves. Listening to people talk about lives and experiences. Imagined futures and fears.

My phone ran out of charge on the way home.

Home.

I turn to memories. Dusty photos and love. The kind of love that makes tears tumble at the drop of an unexpected tune.

Pembrokeshire. Circa. the good times. Paddling in the shallow shallows. Orange binoculars. Early Learning Centre police tabard. Baseball cap. Hoofing up your shorts. Living your best life.

I love you.

Beasts, bombs and brilliance

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Beasts, bombs…

Last week we witnessed the Care Quality Commission (CQC) prioritise its reputation over the people it’s meant to serve and protect on live television. It was grim viewing. CEO Ian Trentham and Paul Lelliot were hauled in front of the Parliament Human Rights Committee to answer questions about Whorlton Hall (I previously wrote about this here). The Committee published correspondence between Barry Spencer Wilkinson, inspector, and the CQC from 2015 which painfully and painstakingly demonstrates how the Whorlton Hall provider kicked up a stink about Barry’s negative inspection findings complaining the inspection team was too large. Harriet Harman was on blistering form as she picked her way through evidence of a cover up during the session. Lelliot and Trentham blathered on, refusing to answer or chucking blame at pretty much anyone.

‘We have to wait for the findings of the investigation into the 2015 inspection report…’

‘We commissioned two independent investigations into this… TWO’

‘100s of people went in and out over that period and no one spotted abuse. NO ONE…’

After the provider complained, Barry’s report was shelved until a tiny team went in to re-inspect six months later and found lots of good stuff. The published report regraded Whorlton Hall from ‘Requires Improvement’ to ‘Good’. Things like unregulated use of a seclusion room and complaints of staff bullying fell by the wayside until Panorama pitched up three/four years later to record the abuse. [At this point my brain cannot go near what people must have endured in that time or how often this burying of negative inspections happens.]

Barbara Keeley MP has written a cracking letter to the CQC CEO raising numerous concerns.

An immediate outcome of that revolting performance was the resignation via Twitter of four members of the Expert Advisory Group for the current CQC restraint review; Chris Hatton, Julie Newcombe, Jeremy (Beth’s dad) and me. Others may have done so.

And Brilliance…

The following day Rich, Tom, my parents, sister Tracey and hub Jeremy set off for Ross on Wye for the naming ceremony of #ConnorsRig. The backstory to this is that Rhiannon Davies works for Safe Lane Global, an organisation which ‘detects, identifies and mitigates potential threats on land and in water’. Rhiannon and Richard’s baby, Kate, died in appalling circumstances in 2009. Rhiannon and I hooked up electronically a few years ago and spent many hours sharing swear and drink drenched messages of pain, rage and despair as we faced obstruction and worse from the respective NHS Trusts responsible for our children’s deaths.

A couple of months ago Rhiannon emailed me saying that Safe Lane was taking delivery of a new rig and ‘everyone from the c-suite to the drillers and workshop staff would like to dedicate the rig to Connor…’ Just wow.

We tipped up late morning to a boardroom full of treats and #ConnorsRig high vis jackets. [Sob]

Over coffee and homemade cake, Adam Ainsworth, CEO, Paddy and other staff explained more about the work of the company. It was fascinating to hear experts in such an unusual and important area talk about their experiences. We walked down to a nearby field where #ConnorsRig [sob] was parked next to an army tent. With rain hammering down, Paddy talked us through various types of bombs including the beast on the floor they’d detected somewhere in the UK. So many stories, so much passion and commitment.

Next it was lunch during which a barrage of further questions were answered then back to the rig for the red ribbon cutting, a toast to Connor and demonstrations. The afternoon finished with Tom driving the rig out of the field, through the carpark and onto the truck for its return to Kent (a six hour journey). There are brilliant photos and a video [tissue warning] of this wonderment here produced by Richard.

I can’t put in to words what this day and rig naming meant and continues to mean to us. The tears started when I saw the high vis jackets and pretty much carried on into the early hours of the following morning as I thought about how much Connor would have loved the whole thing. Heavy haulage, World War Two ordnance, his beloved London (the rig is small to enable it to access narrow spaces), health and safety… saving lives. So many boxes of joy and intense interest ticked.

I also thought about the contrast between the two days. Senior CQC figures posturing, conniving and obfuscating in response to clear questions by the Human Rights Committee. Demonstrating no apparent understanding (or even interest) that people are brutalised as an outcome of limitations and shoddy practice by the CQC. Little or no decency or integrity to be detected.

And Safe Lane Global staff just doing humanity. Treating us with respect, kindness and generosity. Adam, Paddy, Julia, Ian, Jaymie and others spent hours with us, answering a billion and one questions and giving us a day we will never forget. Memories to feast on forever and the wonderful #ConnorsRig to look out for as it makes its way around the UK snaffling out ordnance and more.

Rhiannon and Richard what can I say? Indefatigable decency and love…. You bloody legends, you.

Thank you.

 

 

The Whorlton Hall disclosures

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My blog is developing a bus theme which would delight a certain cheeky chappy we miss off the planet and to the moon and back. I wrote a CQC related post about the shoddiness of Mencrap provision yesterday evening after a longish gap and then, 24 hours later, comes another CQC related post.

After Panorama exposed brutal and cruel treatment at Whorlton Hall recently, the CQC today published the series of edited reports that begin when Barry Stanley-Wilkinson, a CQC inspector, wrote a report about the provision after an inspection in 2015. He found Whorlton Hall required improvement on all domains inspected. The report was not published until today.

We welcome the disclosure today in the rarely seen spirit of transparency. It offers an insight into an inspection process that should probably be chucked into the nearest skip. Coincidentally there was “a large skip within the hospital car park, which contained debris as well as long planks of wood which had large nails attached” when Barry and team visited.

So today we can trace how a CQC inspector writes a report which goes through layers of review. At each stage meaning is stripped back to bordering on the meaningless, words substituted for more vacuous ones (selected by a ‘word coach’ using a quasi scientific tool). The report then, apparently stripped of the layers of editing (audit trail) bounces to a final review stage which, in the case of this particular report, led to it being punted into the, er, nearest skip.

More evidence was needed apparently though it is not clear where that decision came from in the documents released today. Six months [six months] later, nearly 12 months [12 months…] after Barry’s inspection, Whorlton Hall mysteriously received a good inspection rating. And that was history until the Panorama team went in this year.

So what did Barry’s original report highlight?

  • Environmental risks including the skip and parts of the building in which people couldn’t be observed.
  • Incomplete record keeping (including observations) and lack of risk assessment review.
  • Poor quality reporting of multi disciplinary team meetings.
  • Recordings not legible and no treatment or discharge plans formulated.
  • Out of date medication policies and no rapid tranquillisation policy
  • Lack of plans around sexuality and sexual behaviour and poor take up of annual health checks.
  • Inappropriate staffing levels and poorly trained staff who lacked understanding of the Mental Capacity Act and ways of communicating with people.
  • A low stimulus room used without protocols or procedures.

Basically a cornucopia of potential and chilling human rights abuses which were allowed to flourish for another 4 years. Between the CQC, NHS England, Hancock, ineffectual and careless commissioners, limp processes like Leder and self serving and greedy charities like Mencrap, it really ain’t hard to work out what underpins the stark and devastating disparities in the life outcomes of learning disabled people.

I seriously hope the Human Rights Committee are all over this on Wednesday afternoon.

In case readers need reminding of what living lives we all have a right to live look like, here are Dawn, Gina and Jess enjoying a beer after walking 100kms of the Camino de Santiago last March.

 

 

We really need to talk about Mencrap (again)

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Struck by the almost radio silence by the big charities over the CQC restraint interim report, Whorlton Hall film and Leder report, I found out this week that Mencap [alleged voice of learning disability] currently have eight supported living services and residential care homes with a ‘requires improvement‘ rating by the CQC.

Eight. Bearing in mind how difficult it seems to get anything approaching a failing rating (Whorlton Hall and St Andrews both had ‘good’ inspection ratings until the shite hit the fan), the Mencrap cluster must be quite something. A quick tot up (by someone better at maths than me) suggests a minimum of 206 people are currently getting sub-standard care from the same bunch who forever call on the government ‘to improve’ things for learning disabled people. The grim irony is almost curling my finger nails back from my fingers.

While they keep on with their relentless self promotion and trying to raise money through terrifying already terrified parents and families, I thought I’d have a look at these eight inspection reports [County House (Swindon), Mencap East Cornwall Support Service, Mencap east Hampshire Domiciliary Care Agency, Plymouth Support Service, Royal Mencap Silverhill Bungalow, Tevershall Bungalow (both in Notts), Royal Mencap Woodlands Residential Home (Norfolk) and Treseder House (Cornwall)] to see what strands of the provision are failing so badly.

Christ. What a thoroughly depressing read…

All eight failed to be well led, 7 failed to keep people safe, 3 failed to be responsive and 2 failed to be effective. I mean how can the voice of learning disability with the groaning resources and endowments they continue to pretty much bludgeon out of families (unsolicited will writing seminar garbage continued to arrive for about 3 years after LB’s death) fail to provide well led and safe services?

A few other low lights:

  • No (or absent) registered manager (3)
  • Issues about staffing numbers/availability (4)
  • Medication management issues (3)
  • Hygiene and environmental issues (6)
  • Problems with care plans/record keeping (5)
  • Problems with quality monitoring (5)

The story told across these reports is chilling. In one service people are so scared of a neighbour they are too terrified to go out. While noises were being made to resolve this the inspector noted it has gone on unchecked for some time. Another place was so dirty a family member commented they wouldn’t let a dog live there. Across all eight the impact on people’s lives extended to little or no opportunities for going out to do stuff the rest of us can do. Tablets and TVs a substitute for activities including watching church services on a tablet. “Records showed one person’s care plan had been updated and reviewed the day before the (announced) inspection”. On questioning it became clear that the service hadn’t been providing the support described for a significant period. An ex-care home now badged as ‘supported living’ was still run as such with pooled budgets and daily menus. When it was decorated one person went home while the remaining inmates were decanted to two caravans for the duration. There were the usual issues around MCA misunderstandings, lack of training and people’s rights not protected.

Eight failing services with echoes of the shite care provided in the home Danny Tozer died in. Failings his parents repeatedly pointed out and even paid for a second provider to come in and train staff. This simply ain’t good enough. You should be trailblazing dazzling support, care and provision that enables people to lead flourishing lives, have fun and do stuff they want to do. With such a bunch of heavily bloated directors you should be kicking that ball right out of the park.

Instead, your focus is on reputation, raising dosh and muscling your way into any media opportunity. I’m out of words. Well other than get your own fucking house in order before you dare to make claims about changing the world for learning disabled people.

The full panoply

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A rare post. I’m on leave for a week. At home. Writing what I’m calling ‘book 2’ about families with disabled children (a contracted gig). This has involved sifting back through time, space, context, hisory, stuff. I kind of got stuck revisiting the documentary The Silent Minority made by Nigel Evans in 1981. About St Lawrence’s Hospital, Caterham and Borocourt Hospital near Reading. Long stay institutions for learning disabled children and adults.

We moved near to Borocourt Hospital in 1982.

Sun drenched summers, fun and laughter. Lager and black booze filled evenings and country pub lock-ins. A different terrain to our Southend childhood. Borocourt standing to attention faintly in the background. Carelessly, thoughtlessly ignored. A magnificently austere red brick gothic building. A place that almost bothered me. Borocourt people muttered.

Nigel Evans is someone I wish I’d met. The humanity and humour he captures in this documentary alongside footage that almost demands a trigger warning before viewing is extraordinary. ‘Inmates’ offer warm, heartbreaking and thoughtful commentary:

Perhaps (I dunno, I found it all beyond moving, harrowing and devastating) the breathtaking stomach punch was when staff noticed that Terry Green was trying to move the wheels of the chair he was sitting in but couldn’t quite reach them. They sorted a different sized chair (temporarily) for him.

Evans describes how

After 40 years in bed, 10 years on a bean bag, Terry Green takes his first inching steps towards independence. For decades the full panoply of the medical profession has tripped through this ward and nobody had the wit, the initiative or imagination to give Terry this opportunity. This kind of neglect invites a whole new definition of the phrase ‘mental handicap’.

No wit, initiative or imagination… The full panoply of the medical profession.

I had to google ‘panoply’. It means ‘an impressive collection’. My respect for Evans speaking these words grew exponentially. And, with a bit more digging, I found out he did some fudging in terms of gaining consent for the film (according to the enraged health boards of Surrey and Reading). It was in the public interest he said unapologetically.

It was. And it is. We have a public and unassailable record of the treatment of learning disabled people in the 1980s.

Today further details of the latest (now already dated while still not published) Leder annual review were leaked by the Health Service Journal (@rebeccasmt). The Times did a piece on Sunday (@RosamundUrwin) highlighting the lowlights. The HSJ offered the 12 recommendations with commentary.

The report documents the usual shite. 38% of deaths haven’t been allocated a reviewer, consistently dire premature mortality rates and more. The recommendations are truly grim. And include a call for guidance that ‘learning disabilities’ should never be an acceptable rationale for ‘do not resuscitate’ or used as the underlying or only cause of death on a death certificate. Forty years after Nigel Evans called out the medical profession for its inability to be human.

With unexpectedly fab weather and ‘holiday’ time on my hands I’ve reclaimed a patio area Rich built in the corner of our garden 15 odd years ago. A bit of ivy and other weed/rubbish clearance and I’ve ended up with a small, perfectly formed, shaded outdoor office space to sit and work in. The main tree, a Canadian maple we were gifted as a sapling from a garden across town, has in the intervening years grown to form a canopy of brilliantly bright leaves merging with an overflowing grapevine from next door.

This has distracted me this afternoon. My brain scrambling, jumbling and stumbling over the full panoply, the ‘impressive collection’ of people who still, 40 long years on, think learning disability is a cause of death or a reason not to resuscitate.

And our beautiful, beautiful boy, who spent hours in this garden each summer as the Maple tree slowly grew, one of the many dead. Dead. Not by ‘learning disability’ (you ignorant bastards). Death by the full panoply of the medical and other professions.

The home movie

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Watched a home movie from 1999 this afternoon. A mate dropped the DVD round a few weeks ago. I treated it as a priceless thing at the time.  Looking at it. Wondering about it. Half remembering those carefree days. Touching the box. Kind of feeling something I couldn’t articulate. Sad, so fucking sad.

I realised we couldn’t play DVDs anymore. Times are a changing.

Last Wednesday

Tom wasn’t well. He wasn’t well earlier in the week. He messaged us about his illness from Sheffield. Rich rang him and said come home. I met him from the station. He wasn’t well.

Thursday

Our GP surgery wasn’t taking calls for standard appointments. Only emergencies. By early afternoon we called it as an emergency, phoned and re-registered Tom. He got an appointment (with cracking support from the surgery staff), was diagnosed with tonsillitis (in a nano second) and prescribed antibiotics.

Rich and I were due to fly to Oslo for a wedding leaving at 4am the next day. A plan involving my mum walking Bess. Owen and Rosie pitching up early evening for the weekend.

Around 9pm we were in a cab heading to A&E. Something was clearly wrong.

Tom was triaged immediately and had a convoluted 3 way IV gig put in the back of his hand. Diagnosis: quincy. IV steroids and antibiotics started in the inner sanctum of the A&E waiting room. Tears (and terror).

Friday

Around 2am a bed was found in the Vascular Ward on the West Wing of the hospital. A long, long walk, Tom and drip wheeled in a chair by a kind and sensitive guy. Bed in a ward/room with two other patients. A youngish guy opposite. And much, older guy next to him.

Rich went home. I sat next to Tom.

Such a long night. Punctured with crying, bell ringing and help seeking noises. The pretty much one nurse run ragged. Sad, dark sadness. Tom slept on and off with a snaggy snore punctured by terrifying silences. Brief whispered convos in the darkness. The odd chuckle.

I went to toilet about 3am.

“Hey, you can’t stay here,” said a new nurse in the brightly lit corridor. “It’s a men’s ward. They sometimes walk round with their tadgers out.”

I ain’t fucking going anywhere.

Rich came back after dawn and Tom was moved to the GP referral unit gig by an equally kind porter. There followed a day of exemplary attention, action, IV bag switching, care and kindness. A sackful of prescribed medication/mouthwash packed and delivered hours before the last bag of antibiotics had discharged its duty. Tom discharged two hours earlier than expected giving him time to watch the Liverpool match.

We went home and hung out.

Saturday

A new return ticket to Oslo was organised by the kindest of kind friends. Rich stayed at home. I set off for Heathrow in the morning. At Terminal 5 I waved goodbye to the cheerful driver unloading cases. At check-in I felt oddly light.

“I left my case on the bus…?” I said to the man standing next to me.

I rang Rosie.

Help. Love action.

“Wait at the bus stop. The bus should do a loop back from the central bus station or your case will be in Cowley to collect next week.”

45 minutes later the bus returned.

“What were you thinking?!” said the driver, pulling out my case.

Sunday

Yesterday

At home with Tom. And his playstation. We were able to watch the home movie.

Beautiful, beautiful footage of our beautiful boy. His curiosity and absorption in the spaces. Like the little kid in the photo above, running down the slope. With joy. Surrounded by people who loved him. There was even a clip of the ‘What a Wonderful World’ school play.

Love, love and laughter.

 

‘Did anything strange or startling happen today?’

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I’ve been in awe over the last couple of days watching the depth of support for the idea of a lorry named after LB unfold in response to a tweet by Eddie Stobart asking for ideas for names. Some background can be found here. If you search for Connor Sparrowhawk on Twitter there are literally hundreds of tweets ‘voting’ for him. It’s truly extraordinary. Particularly the spread of tweeters; learning disabled people, self advocates, parents, siblings and other family members, medics, social workers, the police, tv producers, film makers, social care directors, academics, activists, MPs, a shadow Minister, human rights experts, senior execs from NHS Trusts, regulators and third sector organisations.

My dad used to come home from work just after 5pm every day when we were pups and always ask my mum ‘Did anything strange or startling happen today?’ before giving her a kiss. I’m not sure it ever did to be honest.

This has been strange and startling. With an equally brilliant background. LB was a huge Eddie Stobart fan. We’ve a trunk of memorabilia and bits scattered around the house still. He enjoyed nothing more than a trip on a motorway to silently and beautifully enjoy Eddie spotting in solitude. When Edward Stobart died, he wanted to express his sadness online.

LB’s auntie Sam contacted Eddie Stobart in August 2013, a month after he died, to ask for a truck to be named after him. This was the information she sent:

The company again responded sensitively:

Dear Sam,
Thanks for your email.  Due to the Stobart tradition of naming trucks after females we are unable to name a vehicle after Connor however we have wracked our brains and if you felt it was appropriate we could include a tribute piece in the next edition of Spot On the members magazine. If this was interest please could you send me a photo of Connor. I look forward to hearing from you.
Kind regards, Bonnie
Sam sent this photo of Connor and Rosie flagging up that the sweatshirt might be a pirate version.

[I don’t know if this was an authentic Eddie sweatshirt but it features in the top photo almost unrecognisably. The unit excelled in boiling and shrinking clothes.]

Some of the tweets in support of naming a cab after Connor have referred to social justice and what such a decision would signify for a typically marginalised group of people who are too often denied an opportunity to lead anything approaching a flourishing life. Wendy Greenberg captured this:


It’s within the gift of the Eddie Stobart company to balance the justice scales a little bit and generate warmth, delight and priceless joy to have a ‘Connor Sparrowhawk’ cab beetling around the motorways of the UK and abroad. I can’t even begin to imagine making sense of what this would mean for us amidst the horror of the last six years. Connor never stopped reaching for the stars [his family tree produced by the unit psychologist included Dappy and Tulisa from his beloved NDubz on the sibling line]. The idea of a lorry named after him is the stuff of dreams. It would further be a cracking reminder for health and social care staff (and others) of the importance, value and brilliance of people like Connor.

I hope you can do this. Looking at the hundreds of replies to your request for names Connor is belting it out of the park with little or no competition.