The fantastic Peer Support team at Leeds Mind are presenting a free Peer Support Conference on Friday 6th June. Could your organisation benefit from using Peer Support ? Do you want to network with other organisations involved in Peer Support?
– tickets are free but need to be booked here via Eventbrite. There are limited spaces so do book quickly!
The twitter hashtag for the event is #peer14
My
mind races,
My
Hearts’ been stopped.
My fingers
bleed.
She said,
Im yours
He repeated.
They were already taken
by the
sea
Here,
the edge is where i totter
drifting between opposing circumstances
containing fate.
Security
has long left my mind
my body
my home
my rationality
I always find myself running into such wild
uncertainty.
I can remember there was a time
when madness wasn’t liquified
in my veins.
Pumping threw me
alive.
Madness is a form of art,
a walk of life,
a nod of the head or
the shake of the hand.
Madness is a discipline
that tells you to dress well
to get a job-
to act accordingly
to create order;
or the thought order could exist.
Madness is a comfort
to the weary and disavowed,
to the lovers and the lonely
to the technocrats governing
us…
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How do! I think this is the only poem I’ve got that rhymes.
When snails cry
You can see tears
From their tiny eyes.
Eyes out on stalks
Eyes out for walks.
Behind those eyes
Lies a surprise.
No one knows
Their silent pain
But no one is to blame,
Fate plays a cruel game,
The shell of a snail
Makes it lame,
Weighs it down,
Like a pound
But makes no sound.
The voiceless cries
Of snails,
Their sticky membrane trails
Bring shame
Upon their kind;
But never mind.
So many healthy greens
Have been left behind.
The snail can pick and choose
Which makes up for its ooze.
By Daniel Tavet(c)
( image from maniacworld.com)
Photo taken by a contributor who suffers from bouts of severe depression, anxiety, and panic attacks. She enjoys capturing the world around her, whether it is with her Canon dSLR or her iPhone.
About this photo: “Flying is not easy for me, but seeing something like this makes it all worth it. This particular view looked like a living work of art, and I wanted to jump right in… to bounce on the clouds and dance along the line where the sea and the sky become one.
That vantage point, high above, made the world and my problems in it suddenly feel so small in the grand scheme of things. I think we all could use a reminder like that sometimes… Our challenges are just a tiny piece of the big picture.“
_____
**Visit Broken Light’s main gallery here. Currently accepting submissions.
*Facebook & Twitter @BrokenLighCo & @DanielleHark. Follow for e-mail notifications
To use the outline of a joke from a comedy one-man sketch-show from the 1970s/1980s; what occurs about 5 times a year, always on the same week-day, and have we recently had two of in three weeks? — I’m talking of course about Bank Holidays. (1).
Whatever one’s situation I’ve recently got to thinking that much like the Leap Year is described in a certain US sitcom about a radio psychiatrist as ‘a free day, a gift’ by the eponymous hero (2)., the same can be said of Bank Holidays. Indeed depending on a point of view, they truly could be seen as similar blessings. More often than not the sun is shining and the demeanor of people you might meet is instantly lifted. You sometimes get the feeling that people are generally happier because it is a Bank Holiday, and what’s more its sunny out.
I personally feel that it is gratifying to consider that on Bank Holidays almost everyone is on the same page. It is nationally expected in England that ‘the postman won’t come until Tuesday’ or ‘they won’t be open today, it’s Bank Holiday’. There is a breeze in the air, a familiar yet longed-for scent of fresh-cut grass, not to mention the added interesting yet forgotten element of surprise when it is remembered that buses on Bank Holiday Mondays work to the Sunday timetable.
A mysterious change happens literally overnight once May sets in, that sees over-coats changed miraculously into nothing more than a cardigan, and heavier boots of the warren-of-winter transform into those sandals which have served so well for 20 years. Of course fashions may have passed through your wardrobe and then out the other door, yet still those shoes still bear those unique foot markings inside; the proof of your ownership.
Then of course there is the feeling that the whole week stretches out in front of you. It’s like watching the Olympic Torch shimmy past your crowd one glorious Sunday evening in June, when you’ve got an early start for some reason on Monday. I personally always find the thought of a roast dinner particularly exciting on Bank Holiday Mondays, the smell of the lamb wafting through the house and sticking to the fabric of the curtains like a fond memory. As a matter of fact and speaking of memories, on a Bank Holiday Monday there is always the chance that some terrestrial TV channel controller will decide to show that one film you remember seeing before, but not in entirety.
How a person spends Bank Holidays varies as much as the difference in music listened to between individuals. I believe taking walks is particularly common among people I personally know. Another past-time might well be making use of the time to sort out the garden you haven’t seen since last summer, an activity inspired by the busy car-parks at gardening centres. I remember that this time on one Bank Holiday last year I personally volunteered, and the year before that when the UK was celebrating the Golden Jubilee with a 4 day weekend in 2012, my university work was in its final stages of completion.
I chose to write about my personal take on Bank Holidays, since two have recently surfaced in the UK and we’ve another one due on the horizon towards the end of May (26th). Much like Philip Larkin wrote in a poem about an ‘August Bank Holiday lark’ (3), so too these anomalous days inspired this blog piece. Some might relish in making these days their own, look forward to that rare meet up with another. Though perhaps for others, Bank Holidays are still the weekly Mondays with the added feature of fewer services. Bank Holidays then are there to use if one so wishes, it really is people’s choices what they do with them. On a similar topic, weather help or hindrance, I’ve been thinking something else about the recent frequency of Bank Holidays. They are so much like a proverbial bus lately; ‘three’ really have ‘come along at once.’
By A
Sources –
1.Based on a joke made by Kenny Everett in a The Kenny Everett Video Show / The Kenny Everett Video Cassette episode.
2. Frasier episode ‘Look Before You Leap’(1996) – Grub Street Productions.
3. Philip Larkin’s poem- MCMXIV (1964)
In England Now, Secret Garden, Stainborough by Su
when May follows’
A late April afternoon stroll, a mild gentle breeze heavily laden with blossom petals, saw me spouting poetry.
‘After April when May follows’, my companion didn’t seem to recall the poem, and me only in snatches,…’In England Now’, it’s refrain…..
’This is the weather the cuckoo likes, and so do I’, didn’t seem to fit the rhyme.
Once home I checked them out, the lines were from two separate poems! ‘Home thoughts from abroad’, Robert Browning, and ‘Weathers’, Thomas Hardy. Each poem encapsulating all that is glorious about spring, the earth’s rising energies, its flowers and shrubs demanding attention with their sudden awakening, fresh vibrant buds, blossoms in abundance, delicately perfumed, lasting only a few days, their transient nature potentially intensifying our enjoyment of them, ‘Visions’, Seigfried Sassoon, that wistful poignant feeling, if for any reason this season’s show passed us by.
The Japanese celebrate the blossoms transient nature as symbolic of the transient nature of human experience. The festival of Hanami, sees the Japanese, weather watching. The festival is not held on a set day each year. The blossoms dictate when the Japanese celebrate. In a nation renowned for their punctuality and precision, an interesting obeisance to nature.
Although I had many favourites poems whilst very young, their impact remains until today, often when in ‘pensive mood’ a rhyme or couplet returns to inspire me once again. I also like more contemporary poetry including rap, but time to read them frequently eludes me.
Perhaps the hazy days of summer yet to arrive, might see me making time to peruse poetry, ’outside at the Traveller’s Rest’ as ‘ maids come forth sprig muslin dressed’
Home thoughts from Abroad
Robert Browning
Oh, to be in England,
Now that April’s there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough In England – now!
And after April, when May follows,
And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows –
Hark! where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops – at the bent spray’s edge –
That’s the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!
And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
The buttercups, the little children’s dower,
– Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower
Credit where it’s due: The vast majority of reasons for people being referred to food banks are attributable to the Department for Work and Pensions. Could that be why the DWP is so desperate to silence the food bank charities?
Tories – what are they like?
The answer is, of course, even they don’t know – as evidenced by their current confusion over food banks.
David Cameron has enthusiastically backed their work at a Christian faith group’s Easter reception (and so he should, having sent so much of it their way), and Treasury minister David Gauke also praised them in an interview on Channel 4 News last week.
But the DWP says leading food bank provider the Trussell Trust is guilty of “misleading and emotionally manipulative publicity seeking”, with the rise in food bank use being the result of the charity’s leaders “aggressively marketing their services” and “effectively running a…
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