Red-Peril

If my kids ever complained of boredom I just suggested that perhaps in that case they could tidy their bedrooms. Amazing how that always ended in untidied bedrooms and all of the, somehow finding themselves something to do 😂.

I do, I’m chronically ill and spend a lot of time either in bed or lying on the sofa so I don’t get to be outside much. I have houseplants but having a vase of fresh flowers I can see from wherever I’m lying always makes me feel much better 😍. I treat myself to a proper bouquet every so often but usually I just go for the supermarket ones.

Random list in no particular order. Loo frame to help you get on and off the loo (I have the one without the raised seat but those are good too, I’ve heard), my electric wheelchair (so much more independence than having someone pushing me, plus I get to talk to them as they can walk next to me as opposed to having a conversation with the top of my head), although don’t underestimate the sheer lack of awareness of most pedestrians, especially as you’re now lower than head height. Electric can opener, button hook to help with clothes buttons, a sock thing that helps you put your socks on (sorry, can’t remember what it’s called), my Kindle (books are HEAVY), a bath/shower seat, a jar opener, a hot water dispenser so you don’t have to lift a kettle, tap handle things that make crappy rented house taps easier to turn (not that I’m bitter 😂), pump bottles for shampoo, soap, body wash etc so you don’t have to squeeze things, water wipes for intimate cleaning and those adult wipes for the rest of your body on days when you just can’t. I find the body wipes are a little harsh on my lady bits, the water wipes are better for me personally although ymmv. Dry shampoo. Energy gels in your car and handbag for when you’re out and about and suddenly your energy levels just drain out of your feet - they’re not great to rely on as they can make you push yourself too far but when you just need that extra oomph to get you home so you can collapse in safety, they can be life savers. Hair towel wraps so you don’t have to manhandle an entire towel round your hair when you wash it, one of those long handled litter picker things so you can pick up stuff you’ve dropped without having to always ask someone else to do it or fall over when you’re out and try to do it yourself (not that I’d know about that🤭). Can’t think of anything else of the top of my head, hope at least some of this is useful, OP, sorry you’ve found yourself in the position of needing this advice. Hope you’re doing as well as possible given your new circumstances.

The DWP actually offer a service where a support worker will come out and help you fill out the forms. Apparently (I’ve heard anecdotally from quite a few people in a benefits group I’m part of) the success rate is much higher with this support because they understand the system and know what you need to say and how to say it, so maybe worth trying it? I do understand that you might not want to put yourself through this again, as I know from first hand experience how exhausting and demoralising the process is, but just thought it might be useful information for you and anyone else who might be thinking of applying. Link is here for anyone interested: [https://www.gov.uk/support-visit-benefit-claim](https://www.gov.uk/support-visit-benefit-claim)

Definitely do it. Back in the day, we went on holiday for two weeks with my parents-in-law (had a ball, they’re lovely folks) and came back to their beautiful Victorian house with soaked carpets and ruined ceilings. The hot water tank had, somehow, sprung a leak and had been pissing water over the house for two whole weeks. Luckily they’d turned the heating and hot water off so at least there’s that, but it has been sitting there wet and unventilated for a fortnight so not only was everything soaked but it all smelt musty and awful. It was a pretty massive insurance claim, loads of work needed doing (plastering the walls and ceilings, new hot water tank, new plumbing, new carpets etc) and it took well over a year before it was all sorted and the house was back to its original state. That was nearly 40 years ago and I’ve never forgotten to turn ours off since. Our experience was much luckier - our own hot water tank sprang a leak the day before we were due to go away for two weeks. Luckily it hadn’t done much more than make the carpet wet outside the airing cupboard and cause a small stain on the ceiling below it, and after some frantic phoning around to find a replacement water tank the same size, my amazing husband was able to change it the same day. But it did gave me nightmares about what we could have been facing had it decided to let go 24 hours later…

Out of Town with Jack Hargreaves. Used to watch it with my Dad when I was a kid, loved every second of it and the theme tune takes me straight back to being 7 years old and sitting next to my Dad on the sofa on a Sunday after getting my hair washed. Miss you, Dad.

I’ve been chronically ill for nearly twenty years, with an illness that leaves me mostly sofa or bedbound. One of the biggest things I had to learn when the horizons of my life shrank so drastically was to find gratitude in the small things in my life now that I could no longer do the big stuff. It took me a long time to learn this, but it’s made my life immeasurably better in so many ways - being forced to slow down and “smell the flowers” has, ironically, given the circumstances that forced it upon me, changed my life for the better. Being someone who was always on the go, and who has ADHD (and thus the attention span of a squirrel), this was really hard, but after so many years, being able to see the small joys in everyday life has become something really special to me. So, in no particular order, here’s my list so far today: \-sunlight catching the loch across the fields, the smell of the rain on my garden, my husband bringing me coffee and a hug, my cat asleep on my lap, waking up not in pain (doesn’t happen often so it’s great when it does!), hearing the seagulls and curlews outside, not to mention watching the lambs bouncing about in the fields behind the house with their long-suffering mums. The light patterns on the fields caused by the clouds blowing across the sky, my landlord waving at me as he goes by in his tractor, laughing at next doors‘ dogs having a lovely time tangling their owner up in their leads for the umpteenth time, my daughter sending me a silly photo of our other cat, and the really good coffee I’m currently drinking. Not to mention reading everyone else’s replies on this great thread 🙂

When my dad was in hospital years ago, he had a nutritionist called, I kid you not, Mr Whalebelly…

Far north of Scotland. I’m from the Home Counties, visited friends up here many times over the years, felt an instant connection to the place to the point I’d get “homesick” for it, finally moved up about 7 years ago and couldn’t be happier. Best decision we ever made.

Mobility issues mainly, plus if the delivepry has missing items then I’m a bit stuffed but if the click and collect does then it’s easy to pop into the shop and grab something else. Also, while it’s a ten mile drive to the supermarket from where I live, I drive past a forest, a moor, two lochs, a lighthouse, about a million sheep, at least three mountains on the horizon, and if we’re really lucky we might even catch a glimpse of the notoriously shy and rare Northern Highland Haggis. The local town has a pretty harbour and at least three beaches within a mile of the supermarket, plus a cracking coffee shop where they do a fantastic all day fry up so it’s really not that much of a hardship driving in and collecting my shopping once a fortnight 😉

Thank you, you too! To be honest, I didn’t really handle it, which was part of the problem. My husband worked from home so he could be around for the kids’ stuff and doing their tea etc but it just wasn’t sustainable. Teenagers need you just as much as toddlers do, just for different reasons and teaching, especially primary teaching, takes over your life and not in a good way. I’d already decided that I couldn’t hack full time teaching but my head wouldn’t let me go part time so I was going to hand my notice in and work at the same school with the same kids but just as a supply teacher which would have meant having all the bits of teaching I loved but none of the bullshit. My head was fine with this, weirdly, considering she didn’t want me to go part time as a class teacher, but unfortunately my health collapsed before I could put the sanity-saving plan into action. My life these days isn’t anything like I thought it would be, but I’m happy and mostly stress-free, my kids are all now in their early thirties and doing fine and I honestly don’t miss teaching in the slightest. I’m so glad things turned around for you too, I hope all the good things in life came your way 🙂

Another ex-teacher here, I’m so sorry that happened to you. I knew I’d had it with teaching when I woke up one Sunday morning and the first thing I did was cry about how exhausted I was just \*thinking\* about going back to work the following day. I taught Reception (so 4-5 year olds for those not in the U.K.) and I loved the kids but I just couldn’t keep on top of the workload (turns out many years later that I have AuDHD which explains A LOT). I was only in my second year of teaching and working 70 hour weeks with three teenagers at home who also needed me, and it just wasn’t a sustainable way to live. Teaching isn’t a vocation, it’s a bloody lifestyle. Anyway, my lovely husband found me crying and gave me a hug and just said I needed to take some time off and maybe talk to our doctor, so I told my boss that I was going to see my GP and not to expect me in. GP signed me off for two weeks for stress, and the emotional symptoms improved considerably after a couple of weeks off but physically I was so, so exhausted and ill and couldn’t even walk upstairs without needing a rest halfway up. It was like having the break had given my body permission to finally give in now I wasn’t basically mainlining adrenaline. The illness turned out to be the ME/CFS I’d apparently developed after never quite recovering from swine flu caught from a kid in my class. I’d been feeling exhausted and ill for weeks but just put it down to end-of-term-itis and stress (we’d had a bloody OFSTED inspection that term and \*everyone\* was exhausted). My lovely GP ended up signing me off for three months, then six, but I never went back, to that or any other job as it turns out. I’ve never been well enough to work since. I loved my job but it’s absolutely wrecked my health and completely changed my life. That was in 2010, and I was 39.

Hi, yes sorry I have my DMs turned off. We just used the Relate service so they match you with someone local to you. Definitely worth contacting them if you need some help navigating a relationship issue or just an MOT.  There's often a waiting list unfortunately but if I remember rightly I think we managed to jump the queue a bit because we were asked if we minded seeing someone doing their training, which we didn't at all, so we didn't have to wait as long. She was in the final stages where she was doing the sessions by herself but just having supervision afterwards so it wasn't like someone just starting out and she was actually great. Relate have a very comprehensive training programme for their counsellors so if you're offered a trainee they're still going to be pretty good. Hope this helps 🙂 

Yeah that’s really high. We have shitty Economy 7 electric heaters for our entire 3 bed house and in the winter our bills are about £300 a month. Obviously still a fuck ton of dosh, but there’s definitely something wrong with your bill/supply if you’re getting charged that much.

1979 when fucking Thatcher got in to power and laid the foundations for the neoliberal shit show that we all have to live in today.

John Lewis or John Ryan. I also have chronic pain and have a John Ryan Artisan Naturals mattress that’s about 15 years old and is still the most comfortable thing I’ve ever slept on, even now. Mattresses that you can’t turn wear out much quicker and really aren’t worth the money, in my experience - we definitely paid a lot do our John Ryan one but it’s absolutely been worth every penny. We recently bought a John Lewis pocket sprung mattress for our adult daughter’s bed (she is disabled and has chronic pain too) which was about half the price of the John Ryan - she says it’s very comfortable and sleeps well on it, but time will tell how long it lasts. If you’ve got the money, I’d definitely go with the John Ryan one, not only are their mattresses great, their customer service is second to none as well, and they’ll phone you when you order to make sure you’ve got the right kind of mattress for your needs - apparently height and weight of the people sleeping on it are the most important factors in how a mattress feels, which makes sense when you think about it. The same mattress will feel softer or firmer to you depending on whether you’re heavier or lighter. Hope you find something comfortable, whatever you end up choosing!

Hate the fuckers. Give me my old Miele every time.

No, but we had the Broadmoor “escaped serial killer” siren test every Monday at 11am which was REALLY loud from my school. This was back in the 70s and hearing a siren like that these days still gives me chills…

The Testi app which links your driving licence to the DVSA website and alerts you the moment the tests are released was literally the only way my daughter could book a test and we live in a really, really rural area of the Highlands that has two local test centres. Still had to wait six months for one, thankfully she passed first time last month but if she hadn’t, she‘d have been looking at April at the earliest to retake it. She’s an older driver over 25 (medical issues have meant she couldn’t hold a licence before now) so her insurance is a lot less anyway but when my son was newly qualified back about 15 years ago, his insurance was nearly £3k and that was with £1k off for me as a named driver (his mum, with a completely clean licence and no claims). Luckily he was working by then so he paid it himself as we certainly couldn’t have afforded it for him, but you can see why so many kids just don’t bother. My insurance as a new driver for my unsafe-by-today’s-standards rust bucket back in the late 80s was about £400, which is just over a grand today according to the BoE inflation calculator, so insurance prices for new drivers have effectively quadrupled in the last 40 years or so. Kids today have everything a lot harder than we did ☹️.

M&S do a great range of non-wired bras up to an K cup - I’m a GG and find them amazingly comfy and supportive, plus so much cheaper at about 20 quid instead of the £40 plus I used to have to pay for the civil-engineering-level underwired ones I wore before. I’ve worn both these [Lace Non-Padded Bralette F-H](https://www.marksandspencer.com/lace-non-wired-non-padded-bralet-f-/p/clp60451802) and these [Flexifit™ Lace Non Wired Bralette F-H](https://www.marksandspencer.com/flexifit-lace-non-wired-bralette/p/clp60619939) but they’ve got lots more to choose from 🙂

I started calling them Nob Jobs to make our (adult) daughter, who is the only person in our house who eats them, do the “eeewww” face which is hilarious to me, plus I feel it is my duty as a responsible mother to give her the ick as often as humanly possible in revenge for all the hideous things she put me through when she was little… 😂.

This is a great video about The Hum which suggests that it might be related to gas pipelines, if anyone’s interested. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zy\_ctHNLan8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zy_ctHNLan8)

I was looking into this a few months ago and I ended up using [“You Need A Budget”](https://www.ynab.com/) which is an app/website that works on zero-based budgeting. That’s where you allocate all your money when it comes in to differnt categories, so all of it is “spent”, which sounds like a stupid idea but actually it’s a really good way of managing your money. You allocate it in order of priority, so all the bills first, then whatever else you spend money on, so clothes, eating out, fun money, kid stuff, whatever you like. You set targets for the money you want to allocate to each category every month, and then you know exactly how much you’ve got to spend for each thing. So, for example, if you’ve got say £50 set aside as “fun money”, you get to spend that without worrying about whether not you can afford it because you’ve already worked out that you can! And if you get unexpected expenses coming in, you can “move” the money you need to cover it from another category. It’s linked to your bank account, but the money doesn’t actually move into separate pots, it’s like it’s in virtual envelopes, if that makes sense. I’m probably not explaining this very well, but if you have a look at the website, there’s loads of (much better!) explanations there about how it all works. I’ve been using it for a few months now and I find it so much less stressful to manage my money - we live off my disability benefits so we don’t have a lot of spare cash, but because I know where it’s all going \*beforehand\*, I don’t get nearly so anxious about it all. The difference is that what we used do by setting a budget of all our bills and then just recording the spending afterwards is really just expense tracking and is much harder to keep a track of where your money is actually going than by allocating it all (virtually) first so you know where you stand all the time. I’m finding it so much easier and less stressful to manage and I’ve always been bad with money (Yay, ADHD and poor impulse control ☹️). It is a US based site but you can absolutely set it up for the U.K. so don’t worry about that. It is a subscription service but they do a 34 day free trial to give you a good shot at trying it out before committing to it, and you don’t have to put any payment details in to use the trial, which I really liked. It works out at about £6 a month if you can pay annually but a bit more than that if not, but to me it’s been absolutely worth it - we’ve actually managed to save up nearly a grand in the last few months simply by knowing where our money is going and making saving up a bit of a cushion a priority. I’ve not been able to do that for a long time. Anyway, hope this helps.

Next, but I buy them on eBay as they’re so much cheaper. I’m tall, at 5’ 10” and have very long legs and an hourglass figure, plus I like high waisted boot cut jeans and Next are the only ones I’ve found that fit me properly. Last pair I bought on eBay were £15 and were hardly worn, they’re £50 a pair brand new 😬.

Depends who it is - if it’s my kids popping over then they can come when they like as it’s always the high point of my day to see my (pretty awesome) offspring, and my mum is always welcome although she does always check I’m well enough first, bless her. She, however, has a couple of friends who not only don’t check first whether it’s okay to turn up out of the blue, but used to let themselves into her flat WITHOUT KNOCKING FIRST (people often don’t lock their doors here and especially not if they’re home at the time), which I find incredibly fucking rude! This little foible ended abruptly the day they let themselves into her bloody flat just as she was getting out of the shower (she’d just got home from a very wet dog walk and was freezing) and although it could have been a lot more disastrous than it was as she was in her dressing gown, words were definitely had and apparently they haven’t done it since... My mum, even at 86, is not to be trifled with when she’s in a snit 😂

Honestly, he might be better off using a walking stick. You can get some really cool ones (mine is polka dot) including the classic flames one, and it stopped people giving me dirty looks and getting impatient with me walking slowly dead in its tracks (pun fully intended 😉). I also use a collapsible walking pole which I really like and actually prefer to my stick as I can adjust it to the height that feels comfortable that day, and it shrinks down to a stick about a foot long which means you don’t have to find somewhere to balance the bloody thing when you‘re sitting down. They always fall over and I find it really hard to bend over to pick them up so now I just shrink it down and keep in on my lap where it doesn’t get in the way. The grip is more comfortable too, and as your hand is vertical rather than horizontal, it doesn’t make your shoulder and/or wrist hurt with extended use in the same way, and on REALLY wobbly days I can use both of them as they came in a pair.

She’s pretty much the base cause of all our present ills. She introduced neoliberalism, privatised public utilities, broke the unions, allowed councils to sell council housing leading directly to the housing issues we face today, deregulated the City which lead eventually to the 2008 financial crash. She was a blight on this country and the damage she caused will not be healed in my lifetime and probably not that of my kids.

Citronella works on flies as well as biting insects - I also live near a farm with sheep in the field next to our garden and I have several (unlit) citronella candles on the windowsill which seems to stop them coming into the house but the lit ones seem to keep the midges at bay so might work outside for the flies?

No, thank you, I like my Scottish summers too much.

When he was in hospital for severe weight loss due to oesophageal cancer, my Dad was hugely amused that his nutritionist was called, and I kid you not, Mr Whalebelly…

Carers. My husband is my carer and he gets a grand total of £83.30 a week for 35+ hours of care. That’s £2.38 an hour. But we’re lucky, I have PIP so he can claim CA, but people losing out on PIP once the government changes to entitlement come in won’t even get that. It’s a disgrace.

An actual left wing government instead of this fucking bunch of wankers.

Bunch of us drinking at a mate’s house and one of them had brought a new girlfriend to the group. She seemed nice, if understandably a little quiet as there were only four women there including her and me, but we’re a friendly bunch and we tried to make her feel welcome. She didn’t say much at all and they’d arrive quite some time after we’d all got together so we’d all had a reasonable amount to drink by that point, and the boys started off Monty Pythoning as they did (and still do 30 odd years later 🤷🏻‍♀️) and were acting out the speech impediment scene from Life of Brian with Michael Palin as the senator with the lisp doing the Biggus Dickus bit. Cue lots of laughter from everyone apart from the new girlfriend - at the time we just thought she wasn’t a Python fan, which is fair enough as they’re not everyone‘s taste. But apparently it was more than that as we found out later. The guy who’d brought her along was furious with us all for taking the piss out of her, which we were all aghast about because that’s not the sort of thing we do, but of course, it turned out that the poor girl had a bloody lisp. We were all absolutely mortified -she’d been so quiet that no one had noticed and she thought we’d aimed the Python sketch at her. We did all, of course, apologise profusely but the damage was done and they didn’t last long after that debacle. Mind you, he’s been happily married to someone else for about 25 years now so he can’t really complain 😉 but I still feel awful even three decades later that she was so hurt and thought we’d done it on purpose. Poor girl ☹️

I buy mine from Biovea from the US.

It’s got a hinge!

SlackBladder

We are also in a rural house in northern Scotland but we have electric heating and pretty much no insulation. Our electric bill is £350 a month, and that’s only running two heaters and the hot water on Economy 10 with Octopus. We also have a plug in hybrid which is charged on the standard rate. Doesn’t help that we have to pay standing charges for 2 meters as we have one for the E10 heating and hot water, and one for everything else. We do pay much higher per unit charges here than most other places, which annoys the shit out of me considering I can see three wind farms from my living room window, but to me your bill does sound a little high considering you’re using oil as your main heating source. Might be worth getting one of those plug in electricity monitor things to see what’s drawing the power. Maybe you’ve left your immersion heater on or something (ask me how I know that’s a problem….). Hope you track down the issue, that’s a lot to pay.

Yes but they’re really thin ones, like 4 tog so they fit in the washing machine. My daughter and husband are both allergic to dust mites so we wash the duvets probably every month or so on a hot wash.

I just blip my hazards briefly now as my car‘s headlights on full beam could probably be seen from Neptune. Most of our local roads are single track with passing spaces so I have to thank people for pulling over a lot.

I’ve had mine for years - like you, I was worried about how I’d adjust to them but after just a couple of hours my brain had got used to them. They’ve saved me so much hassle from having to switch between driving and reading glasses, I love them and would never go back.

Your situation may need more help than this, but if you’re able to do some of the decluttering and clearing yourselves and are just overwhelmed and don’t know where to start, I can highly, highly recommend [the Clutterbug YouTube channel. ](https://www.youtube.com/@Clutterbug)Cas, who runs the channel, has pretty severe ADHD but she’s a professional organiser and her videos have really helped me with not only my own house but also with helping various family members (we all have ADHD, one is a hoarder and another has a brain injury which means their executive functioning is **really** borked) sort their places out. Her key thing is that she’s broken down the way people like to organise and store their stuff into four types which is basically whether you’re a macro or micro organiser (macro organisers prefer broad categories like “art supplies” whereas micro organisers like smaller ones like “paint”, “pens”, ”pencils”) and whether you’re a visual organiser or a hidden organiser, so whether you like to be able to see your stuff or prefer it hidden away behind closed doors. There’s a quiz on her [website](https://clutterbug.me/) where you can find out what your style is which will \*really\* help you with decluttering and organising your stuff so that it’s easier to stay on top of everything. She comes at it in a very supportive and non-judgmental way, having been there herself, and she’s just done a 30-day decluttering challenge with a short video each day which you might find helpful. She completely understands about the overwhelm of starting a decluttering of a house that’s filled to the brim with stuff, and there are lots of videos of her helping people in their own homes which I watch and then use as a sort of “decluttering-along” to have on while I do my own.  I hope this is helpful and I hope you manage to make your home function in a way that works for you. Homes are such a hard thing to manage, especially if you’re neurodivergent or have mental health issues (or both! yay me!), so be kind to yourselves and remember that “good enough” is more than good enough, if it works for you then it’s perfect. Good luck!

Seconding Biovea, I’ve used them for years for melatonin. Takes a couple of weeks to arrive.

Top Boy. Netflix. Watch the newer seasons first, then the older ones, which I think is called Top Boy Summertown or something similar. I watched them the wrong way round by mistake and actually I think it’s even more powerful seen like that. The story is good enough that you don’t need to have seen the first seasons to understand what’s happening as the events take place a few years later and the writing is good enough to mean that you don’t need to know who’s who from the getgo. Watching it this way, you get to see where the main characters ended up first, and then go back to see where they started and it’s just heartbreaking.

Tesco do frozen Swedish meatballs that are gluten free and very tasty. If you want to do pasta, Garofola GF pasta is the best I’ve ever come across, or Pro-fusion chickpea pasta is also great. Tesco Free From garlic bread is pretty good, according to the other two GF-ers in my house (I’m also GF but I can’t eat garlic, or butter ☹️). As other people have said, watch out for hidden gluten (barley, wheat, extracts of both) in bloody EVERYTHING but especially condiments and stock cubes. Mayonnaise (Helman‘s) is fine. You can buy decent gluten free beer at most supermarkets now. Wine should be fine but it might be an idea to check with your wife’s friends directly what they normally drink. Trust me, it’s no bother being asked stuff like this, we like that people are making an effort to keep us well and safe! You don’t need to disinfect stuff in the kitchen but you WILL need to use different chopping boards, knives and other cooking implements if you d separate foods for the gluten free and non-gluten free contingents. But honestly, it’s much easier to do the whole thing gluten free. You’ll be fine, and I’m sure you’ll all have a great evening 🙂

How do you handle disputes at work? Do you give colleagues the silent treatment when you disagree with them? Because I’m betting that you handle those situations just fine, and in an adult fashion, so what this “I can’t help it” line \*actually\* means is “I can control my behaviour like an actual adult perfectly well, I’m just choosing not to because I want to punish my wife for disagreeing with me”. Stop hiding behind being “stubborn” - it’s an excuse and you know it. You \*can\* help it, it’s just easier (and more mean spirited) to punish someone you’re supposed to love rather than actually talking about why you’re upset and trying to work it out between you like adults.

You need to be the squeaky wheel. Phone every other day for an update and talk to your buyer asking them to do the same. Every time I’ve sold a house I’ve been a total pain in the arse to the solicitor, I’m sure, but the first time we were in six weeks after making an offer and the last time a chain of four took ten weeks. It’s perfectly possible if people pull their fingers out.

Absolutely. We splashed out on an AEG one a few years ago (we went with this AEG model because it’s one of the only tumble dryers that has a reverse action, so your bedding doesn’t end up in a ball that’s crispy on the outside but still wet in the middle). It’s so, so much cheaper to run than the old standard Bosch one we had, to the point where I now don’t worry about the state of my electricity bill when I’m drying the underwear and towels in it. I use an electric airer thing for everything else which is pretty good as long as you’ve got somewhere for it to go.

Really positive. We went about ten years ago when we were going through some major life changes - life was just A LOT. It was a weird time for us both - we’d come out of the parenting years and sort of felt like we’d lost who we were as separate people and also quite who we were as a couple. We also had a couple of longstanding relationship dynamics which were unhelpful and tended to spiral and I wanted a better way to deal with that and how it affected our disputes. We’ve always had a strong marriage and partnership, and after being together for the best part of thirty years at this point, sometimes you need an outside view of what’s going on in your relationship. This wasn’t a crisis or anything, there was no thought of marriage breakdown or divorce, we just felt we could do with a marital MOT, if you like. A bit of a reset. We went to Relate and our counsellor was absolutely lovely. My husband is not a “talking about my feelings” kind of guy - ADHD means he gets easily overwhelmed by emotional stuff and kind of shuts down, but our counsellor was really great at giving him time and space to think (and eventually talk) about how he was feeling without pressure. We worked through a lot of stuff, some of which neither of us had any idea was even there, but honestly it was one of the best things we’ve ever done for each other. We came out of it stronger than ever and I definitely think it‘s something worth doing regularly and \*before\* there’s a problem, actually. Think of using it like necessary maintenance rather than emergency repairs.

Still sends shivers down my spine even after forty odd years of listening to it. My joint favourite with Comfortably Numb is the solo in Marillion’s The Great Escape (link below to a live version at a gig I was at) gives me the same shivers. [https://youtu.be/pQ74CwXcliM](https://youtu.be/pQ74CwXcliM)

Me too. The only people who EVER comment on my English accent are other English people, no me els up here in the Highlands seems to give a flying fuck. But we’re not cunts, so that might help 😉