What my clients have taught me

I was very impressed with the wisdom of an eight year old girl I worked with.  She told me "People make bad choices if they're mad or scared or stressed."  
"Wow" I said, "That's great."

"I know" she said, "it's from Frozen; the Trolls sang it."

I tried using a metaphor with a wonderfully precocious 9 year old girl.  I described family life as a bit like being in a boat. The idea being that you're stuck together so you might as well make it as good as it can be.

"Yes" she said, "and ours is The Life of Pi."


In a parenting group I tried to explain the solution focused idea that in amongst negatives, positives can be found.  

I said "it's a bit like looking out at you back garden and seeing lots of weeds.  Then you notice some roses are flowering, and you push the weeds back, and enjoy their beauty."  

One of the women in the group said, "Andrew, I go to my back door and look out at my garden and say I'm going to slab the lot of it."

A seven year old lad told me he hated school; he was being bullied.  "They kick up" he said.  I made a suitable escansed expression and asked him how it made him feel.  With great expression he said "Angry".  "And what to you do?" I asked.  "I kick 'em back", he said with satisfaction.  "Now, now" said his disapproving mother, sitting near by.  "What did I tell you?  "Oh yes", he said , "wait until the teachers not looking and then kick 'em back".

One young man, let's call him Oscar, came into my clinic room and immediately slumped on a chair.  He then began breathing deeply and emitted a light snore.  I sat down and watched this for a while.  Eventually I suggested to Oscar that he appeared to be very tired.  Oscar opened one eye and said, no, he was not tired. It was just that he knew visiting me was going to be a complete waste of time so he thought he would make the most of the visit by catching up on sleep.

I once made the fatal mistake of trying to catch hold of a boy in my clinic room who had been kicking furniture and was about to run off.  I didn't catch him, and my attempt ensured that he ran off like the clappers.  I said to his father that I would call him on the phone the following day to check how things had gone, and he sped off after his son.  Then I remembered that the following day was a 'teacher day' and as Margaret was a teacher, it would be me looking after Joanna, aged 3 and Elizabeth aged 5. Still, I thought, I can call the father from my home and be true to my word.  I settled down in our siting room, phone in hand and called the father.  Just then, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Elizabeth and Joanna making their way to the front door.  Elizabeth opened it and pushed Joanna forward.  I heard her say, "run away now, as fast as you can."  I quickly apologised to the father and abruptly put the phone down before streaking off out of the down and down the road after Joanna muttering, "you think you've got problems."

Leicester to Leeds

Every fortnight I travel by car from Leicester to Leeds.  It's about 100 miles.

Here is a geographical study.

Cut through the charnwood hill to junction 22 of M1.  This is by Markfield.  Not visible from the road are three enormous granite quarries.  Barden Hill is the highest point in Leicestershire which is also next to the deepest pit, giving it a tremendous cliff face.  Unfortunately it is known to the suicidal community of coalville.

Innocent by stander with the longest look down in leicestershire

Garendon Park- before it was flattened to make a
 motorway junction.

Up the road, junction 23 passes over the historic home of the DeLisle family, who then moved to Quenby Hall, and now are downsizing even more.  All that is left is the temple to Venus.

Temple of Venus

Junction 23A is where the A45 (leading to M45) joins the M1.  It is a massive transport hub, and is to also get the crossing of HS2.  Amazingly this train will not stop at East Midlands Airport, and will only stop on the edge of Nottingham in Toton.

The M1 crosses the county boundary and into Derbyshire/Nottinghamshire.  You can see the rapids on the river Trent.

Sawley rapids

Here there are a series of hill top houses and castles to spot.  Hardwick Hall, and then Bolsover castle with it's two council estates tumbling down the hillside on either side.

Hardwick Hall

Bolsover Castle

 Next the road off to Chesterfield.  Then off through Sheffield and Rotherham and into Yorkshire.  Soon you can see the impressively tall Emley Moor  Radio Tower.

Emley Moor Radio Mast

The second mast at the site collapsed on
19th Marrch 1969

North of Sheffield is Wortley Hall.  Conurbations near the road at Chapeltown, and then Barnsley.  Passing Wakefield is the sign that I am nearly there.

Wortley hall

I normally visit my friends in Halton Moor, on the edge of Leeds.  I pass signs for Temple Newsam Hall.

Leeds University pleases me with it ultra modern Health Sciences Building so the journey's always worth it.

Charkes Thakrah Building
Home of Family Therapy

What I want to say about Charlie Hebdo

 I was interested by two letters in today's Independent.  Readers helped the journalists out as 'journalists' are now the victims.  Journalists find it difficult now because they have been personally affronted, and so are still smarting in collective agony.  It could have been them.

...freedom of speech...one of the western world's enduring myths.  We have never had to be more careful about what we say, rightly or wrongly, and mindful of ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, disability, colour, social background and belief.  We all know the drill.
George Sharpley Gloucester.

We all know what he is saying, but I would also say 'about time too.'  The powerful have been at liberty to provoke the weak for too long. The other way round has always been forbidden.

Steven Garside from Manchester asks,
At what point does the 'right to offend' slide into Muslim-baiting and old-fashioned racism?  ...Readers might want to check out the Charlie Hebdo cartoon "The Koran is shit" and reflect on how this compares with the lurid depiction of Judaism in Der Sturmer in 1930's Germany.

Commentators have said 'this is not about religion, it is about power: the power of violent intolerance versus the power of free expression.'  I agree that it is about power, but it is the expression of powerlessness of a less powerful religion, from a poorer and more dependent part of the world, versus strong insensitive, bloody minded western dominance.

The jokes made by Charlie Hebdo and others are not funny, and are akin to bullying.  The response is not justified, but it is expected, given that the killers were from sad deprived and traumatised backgrounds.  Who is there to grieve for these two thirty year old brothers?

The violence in Paris feels analogous to that in Northern Ireland, so we Brits should understand.

A Western perspective of comedy and humour (free speech)

An Islamic perspective of the same humour.

Furniture in Leicestershire

Planning a tour of furniture in Leicestershire.

Stoneywell 
Ernest Gibson's design for his brother Sydney in 1899.  Newly acquired by the National Trust, it will be the first National Trust property in Leicestershire.  http://ntstoneywell.wordpress.com/

A large Cottage in Charnwood Forest

 

 

Kelmarsh Hall

A Palladian Villa situated south of Market Harborough.  Currently houses the Croome Court Furniture while this property is being restored.

Kelmarsh Hall - Northamptonshire

The Croome Court Exhibition (From Kelmarsh Hall Website)

The 6th Earl of Coventry identified the skills of the then young Robert Adam, who was

engaged in 1760 to update the interior of the house. Adam’s designed a range of garden

buildings, fireplaces, furniture and tapestries, resulting in a fabulously furnished house

which reflected the changes in fashion of the day and the 6th Earl’s stylistic ideals.

The 6th Earl was greatly influenced by French neo-classicism and started collecting in

Paris in 1763. However he was also inspired by these designs and commissioned very

many pieces from important London cabinet-makers, British designers and craftsmen.

He retained the leading London cabinetmakers of the period, most of them grouped in

and around St. Martin’s Lane, and their accounts are in the main extant, a rare survival.

The Earl was amongst the first to cross the Channel in August 1762, immediately after

the Treaty of Paris ended the Seven Years War.

He returned to London imbued with the first flush of French NeoClassicism and a love of

everything French, having purchased remarkable tapestries and porcelain and, through

the marchand mercier, Simon Phillippe Poirier, furniture and objects.

Some of the furnishings which served in creating a very prestigious and impressively

furnished home at Croome Court, are now on exhibition at Kelmarsh Hall. Now as with

the archive, it awaits a wider audience.

The collection on display includes furniture from Mayhew and Ince, France and

Bradburn, Vile and Cobb, Chippendale, Chippendale and Seffrin Alken; paintings by

Filipo Lauri, Allan Ramsey, Richard Wilson, Francesco Zuccarelli.

Best Walk in Leicestershire

I've mastered how to get an edited map onto my blog.

(I've gone on about this walk in the past, but still come back it it.) http://parentsguidetopets.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/new-look-at-leicestershire.html