birthday weekend...

Happy Birthday teenager!

birthday on friday...dinner at Nandos with the after-school girls, people who love and care for Ix....a present, a digital camera designed to be dropped and taken out and about...

( his dad made no contact til 8.30 P.M - saying "sorri I didnt get the text msgs" - the one the evening before telling him Ix was off school and around in the morning and lunchtime to meet, the one on friday morning from P saying do you want to meet....i move from the "no response" zone and say: you have no excuse. he admits "i did read the message but i am not well.."

saturday - Ix out with E, no word from dad til 11.00 but they do they meet dad in the cafe which Ix does not usually go to on saturdays - at dad's insistence...myself and girls walk past this cafe on way back from buying halloween gear - they see us and Ix get stressed, later E calls me -they've gone off, left the food here ! they come back later...E and Ix go to bookshop, dad too, says he has present for his son but does not go and get it???? hard to comprehend...not even this can motivate him to get over his intention to be "ill" and "unable to cope"?

later, myself, girls and Ix go visit friends, it was A's birthday too on thurs, we have cakes and candles. Ix smiles and enjoys our singing this time. enjoying his new Horrid Henry DVDs...

Sunday - just me and the kids, N fails to make any contact, he has not arranged any one to come with him to see his son... a walk to the community cafe - Ix's saturday cafe - for the usual - fish fingers with chips and salad - just the cucumber and tomato please... i watch the waitress serve a vision-impaired man, an elderly gentleman, who does not talk...she is attentive... he writes laboriously on a paper his order, then - hand over hand, here is the food, here is the fork...clearly a regular like Ix... this is why Ix comes here on a saturday, they are so accomodating. food is cheap and fresh, is vastly different from the posh deli-cafe a short walk away.

then we walk on down to regent's park.



clown of eastern european origin and little English is slightly flummoxed at Ix's desire to tell him about the time when the nurse took blood at the hospital

but the police man is spot on - he starts with a "hello what's going on here" jovially seeing Ix feel his car, then immediately twigs that Ix is different - but talks to him directly and lets him sit in the car.



no one complains it's been a great outing on a lovely autumn day






relaxed, happy - we/I have come a long way since this time last year.

later, aunt visits with more cake and candles.

"dad is sick" - oh well. it is his responsibility to get the help he needs....later i text him about financial issues, there is 4,000 needed for managing agents of joint-owned flats...and get back "i cannot cope with this". "can you help me?" "i was fine when we were together" "i am sorry i was violent in 2007 and 2008 - but i wasn't before that was I?" ...but in some ways this needy, whiny, justifying, you-could-save-me phase is easier than the bullying, aggressive phase... now that i feel immune...as somebody once said: "the opposite of love is not hate; it is indifference"...tho I do feel angry on behalf of the kids.

the train to Holyhead will leave from platform 7...

so many journeys along the North Wales coast line from Euston...yet the one to the speed course was the first time alone on a train in so long...

remembering the journeys....heading home from first trip abroad, hiking with Girl Guides in Switzerland, a mammoth train and boat journey...seeing the sea along the North Wales coast through the dark...

heading home from a summer language refresher course in london age 18, fresh from teenage romps in regents park with a public school boy - the first i met (and maybe the last?) - catching the sun set as the train heads west and seeing the sea again....

heading home, many times, as a student from uni in London, nursing the hangovers and all-night-party headache...sitting in corridors on rucksacks...

heading home on the train from three months study in Leningrad in the Soviet Union in 1985, eyes and brain swimming with the culture shock, the colours, the adverts, the availability of "stuff"...

heading home from Mexico after a post grad year there teaching English, lurching to the British Rail toilet every half hour, belly swollen with what later proved to be a large intestinal worm...or worms, plus who knows what other parasites...

heading "home" - now, home has changed...I am a mother so is my mother and father's home still "home"?

i have a newborn son, three weeks old, his dad has gone off with work to United States so i head "home" to mum with small baby.

to make a point, she provides a cardboard box lined with old blankets - "it is all they need"... he feeds, on and off, a lot..."not a problem so long as he is putting on weight" says mum.

but he is not...the health visitor has told me to get him weighed while in wales...i don't....i have niggling doubts, this is not as it should be...

now, years later, trips to north wales have been in the car, with one child, with two, with three...more often than not without their dad who is "too busy working", and later he is an ex so doesn't come..

so now, returning home to London on the train ex-Holyhead to Euston which I have picked up in Chester...

filling in the survey form about my child's use of a voice output communication device...that baby who was not feeding well turned out to have so many issues....

tick the boxes:

does the VOCA improve your child's life - yes

family situation - has having a disabled child affected your relationship - tick, yes

married, separated, single.... tick, separated.

it has been a long journey, many journeys...but now I am going home to my complex, complicated wonderful son, my two argumentative, clever, funny daughters, my life....

more journeys to follow, tracks travelled before, repeating that journey to North Wales with the children, even by car the first views of the North Wales coast still have that tug - see, the sea! the first glimpse as you speed (well not actually speeding obviously..) down the A55...which wasn't there on those first train journeys, it was a long and winding coast road then....the sea view never fails to disappoint....

today, new tracks to find and follow...seeing the girls begin that journey of life, see them begining to discover, to plan their futures; seeing my son grow physically into an adolescent teenager, planning (for him) his journey into adulthood...

there is comfort in knowing that the ritual of journeys to North Wales will continue for some time...

welcome to the club....

of those who travel half way across the country to attend the North Wales police speed awareness course!

yes - hands up - we had all sped at between 33-39 mph in a 30 mph limit road...

taxi driver at Fflint station knew exactly where I needed to go - "been naughty then?"

but I hadn't travelled the furthest - they come from Glasgow, Brighton, Bath....

in my group was Mr White Hair - who had "been driving 53 years and never had an accident".


White van man, younger, shuffled sheepishly...


Mrs well-dressed-lady from Stafford said she had four boys in late teens/ early 20s - she was always telling them to be careful when they went out in the car but they now have the ideal retort: "you are the one on the speed awareness course, mum!"

North Wales police caught her on a mobile Smart car with camera...

oh well. the trainer was quite jolly and it was worth the £60...and we all left speed aware. street lights mean 30 mph!!

other clubs I have inadvertently not expected to join: special needs club, autism club, coeliac (parent of child with) club....dealing with a (ex)partner's severe mental illlness/mental health crisis club, angry and controlling partner club, emotional abuse/domestic violence...

there is a U.S based child neurology forum which welcomes new members thus: "sorry you have to be here - but glad you found us". there is something heartwarming about getting somewhere where other people understand where you are coming from, people who feel the same pain but are keen also to seek (and give) support and help....

Special Kids in the UK is a great place to be if you are in the UK and have a child with special needs...one club to stay attached to.

And another U.S/UK internet club I regularly visit - here are long-time friends, we have "known" each other (some of us) since 1998 as parents of children with hypotonia...we watch each other's children grow into teens - see ourselves grow too...

A week or so ago I met some lovely ladies from the "divorced and separated" club. we ate dinner, drank - had collective moans and a laugh. it was uplifting...

This week - I joined a book club. this one - probably the first club in a long time - I choose to join of my own free will. No links to my life other than a love of reading. It was great to Read and Discuss. nice bunch of people, meeting in a north London pub....set books to read now for next month...

life moves on, and new clubs to join....