Crazy Brindle

 So COVID Christmas Day was discussed and planned with my over 70s vulnerable mum but having a plan didn’t make it better. A bit of context.... my Dad died in 1989 and although Mum had dated others she never found someone proper to live up to my Dad.  Since I’ve lived back very locally since 2010 I’ve always had Mum for Christmas, it was family Christmas law, and something I would never not do. However this year because of COVID her coming for Christmas could’ve put her at risk, and she’s what they describe as vulnerable. So, we especially made her individual Christmas cheesecakes (our traditional thing) and we made her a full Christmas dinner including treats and delivered it to her, and then we used Facebook and FaceTime later with my sister and her family to stay in touch so she wasn’t alone throughout the day. But OMG!!!! Have you ever delivered a Christmas dinner to a loved one who is on their own and then knowingly walked away to let them eat it alone..... it’s the most ...

 So since the early days of the last lockdown in November 2020 I have been working on a secret project for my Mums birthday. It’s a remake of a music video using family members, a bit of fun, but it took some time to edit together syncing up music, miming and dancing to the right beat. I filmed our household during some of our many walks, filmed my shots and character in our garden and got the family to send me clips of them dancing to the tune.  I really hope she likes it, I’ll post it on here once the secret surprise is out. With the COVID situation she can’t see the family right now, and hasn’t for months so I thought it would be a great way for her to watch her family having fun, and watch it as many times as she likes too :)

 Some context A little bit about me and my world... I’m a mid-forties cancer survivor, a few years ago I was in the middle of my chemotherapy treatment, followed by radiotherapy and hormone treatment, I’m still on the hormone treatment and ‘enjoying the early menopause’ because of it. But, menopause aside it’s so far, so good and I’m doing very well. I have a massive lust for life and see the beauty and look to see the opportunity in everything. I’ve also stopped being as sensible and reserved as I used to be before the big C. My first ‘not so sensible’ thing I did last year was get myself my dog. Not just any dog but the breed I knew as a child and a dog I’d always wanted to own myself ....a boxer. Now if you know boxers you’d know that they are quite a big responsibility to take on because they are absolutely and utterly hyper and crazy!!!!  Mine is a gorgeous ‘Crazy Brindle’ called Stanley.

Welcome Here we go again.....another Boris announcement to pretty much cancel Christmas.  Luckily we hadn’t made plans because we didn’t want to put family members at risk, but also we’ve decided a Christmas party in the summer in the garden seems like a much better plan to look forward to. So, why this blog? This year has been really quite a weird one. It started in February with some of the worst flooding seen in Worcester and I remember work was very busy with meeting the accessibility regulations in our web content and project plans were temporarily put on hold ‘let’s wait until the flooding goes down before we really get stuck in’.  We had a strong plan for this accessibility project and knew we had a busy year ahead addressing all of our content, as well promoting SCULPT for Accessibility at work and beyond, including speaking at national conferences about our plans, an exciting year planned. We were confidently moving accessibility forward as a team and looking forward ...