Walking Thoughts

A friend told me the story of the boiling frog. He said that if you drop the frog in the boiling water, the frog will leap out. But if you drop a frog into cool water and gradually, over time, warm that water up the frog will stay in the water. Another learned friend tells me that psychologically as a species, we are not wired to react to a slowly-approaching threat; If something rushes at us we run away, but we’re just not wired to respond to a threat that creeps up on us, as global warming has. Indeed, I am guilty of using the phrase ´softly, softly, catchy monkey‘ as my mother did before me, which is a very old idiom (Sorry Mum) and tells us the same thing. These are the best explanations that I have as to why, when we keep seeing evidence that climate change is biting deeper and deeper, and yet we continue with the behaviours that emit the greenhouse gases. Don McLean put it rather better than me in his song ˋTapestry’, released before I was born and at a time when atmospheric CO2 ...

 It is often said that all of us are only three things going wrong away from becoming homeless. I found this to be true. My mother was dying in the hospice. I was a single mum. I had returned to working full time after 13 weeks from giving birth to pay the bills. The first half  of my money went on childcare. A reminder was to pay rent and food and nappies and all the bills. It was the coldest winter in 30 years when mum went into the hospice. Everything froze. My pipes at home froze. I was at the hospital with my terminally ill mother. While I was there the pipes burst and my house was flooded. This rendered me without a home. I rented a house and continued to work, and pay the nursery and visit mum in the hospice. Mum died and my landlord evicted me. Landlords have a right to evict tenants with one months notice, not due to any fault., just if they choose to, for example to sell the house. This rendered me homeless. Mum had died in debt, including negative equity, so she had...

 I was offered a job a year after I got my degree. The job required me to be able to drive and to have a car. I started in one month. I took work at McDonald’s to pay for driving lessons.. and I’ve booked my driving lessons as my means of getting to work. A driving lesson to get to McDonald’s for my shift and a driving lesson home. Five hours a week and a test in time to start my career.. I passed my test and bought a £300 car from the shopping centre car park.

 Nothing is more natural than for a mother to feed her child. There is joy and satisfaction in feeding your child. From the moment you begin to breastfeed and nurse to the day you see your teenage son shovelling in mounds of home-cooked dinner. This is why my heart broke when I heard about the child that have been deliberately starved for his parents. It is just so unnatural, just to be not getting joy from feeding but deliberately withhold food. The day that news broke. I was in a café and we were having tea and cake. My son had too large a slice of cake because he was only 4 and I was filled both with the fun and joy of my son, thinking he was going to try and eat this enormous cake, and hearing the news of the child that had suffered at the hands of his parents with holding something that brings me so much joy  So when your child has diabetes, it is a sword sword of pain and sorrow and its the cruellest kind. Because the cruelty is administered to the most fundamental joy, ...

 I can hear mum’s voice. £104 on the shopping. Just shocked her. She wants to know why I would spend £4.20 on chocolate milk. We have to have that you can’t change that it’s Jonathan’s chocolate milk. She says why why is he so special to spend so much money. And I say because he’s diabetic.. he deserves to have some nice things. Because Jonathan’s diabetes breaks my heart. When mum did the shopping, we would take our wheeled shopping bags to the Tesco’s. or to the Lipton‚s to buy the value range because it was cheaper. and we can get the potatoes from the greengrocers or from the market and everything was bought at the cheapest price point And they were really were very few frivolities. So the chocolate milk would’ve been extravagant, I very much doubt it would’ve happened. It’s unthinkable what would’ve happened if any of us had had a serious illness or disease are required time and attention to manage. Frankly, at home situation didn’t really work at all and definitely would not ...

As part of my role as a leader,  I mentor  young professionals. I do not necessarily mentor, my boss, the CEO. A very recently promoted line manager, so recently promoted infact that He doesn’t yet have anyone to manage, but we have been recruiting the reports for him came to me to expressed his concerns. He was worried that my boss, the company CEO had planned to run, in public, a marathon for charity, highly publicised, while wearing a filter mask designed for dangerous atmospheres.. he was concerned of the visual that would give us. The city is very polluted but the community. of course, are very proud of their city and it is a very black population. Mostly black, because the industry of the town is built on the labour of emancipated slaves, and the town once served as a route to freedom for slaves. Someone suggested that the CEO run the marathon in secret place I think was a joke or the costume could be devised to cover the filter being worn.. maybe a pillowcase or some ki...