Three hairy days left #hairhack

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged, been off grid for most of June. Not before the #hairhack fundraising target was smashed though, thank you all so much. We’re past £5k now, beyond my wildest dreams, and it’s such an amazing feeling to know I can donate a decent pot of cash to Rowcroft Hospice […]

A good death, a bad death. It matters.

It’s 581 days since my Dad died and I can honestly say there is rarely a day that passes where I don’t have a fleeting thought of gratitude for Rowcroft Hospice, our local hospice who supported our family in Dad’s last year of life, especially in the weeks up to his death. I often think […]

Life after Bobby: Father’s Day

I can’t remember Father’s Day last year, I suspect I dismissed it as a hallmark holiday, a little grumble and moved on. This is my second Father’s Day since Dad died and I’ve been raging all week when I open my inbox!! Lots of really drossy, ill considered, spammy emails…earn extra [insert generic loyalty brand] […]

Social Care Curry Club’s 1st birthday

One of the first tweets I saw today was this one, from my mate Matt Bowsher: Just over a year ago we got into a conversation on twitter about curry and who we’d most like to have curry with in the social care world. The twitter account was the first development, followed by a gmail […]

A month to go #hairhack

If you missed it at the weekend an amazing thing happened and Amanda Palmer, musician, connector, gracious lovely person shared my blog post on facebook with her fans, adding a commentary and exploring the point I made in the last post about people choosing to focus on her eyebrows, rather than her talk. I added […]

Asking for help

I watched a TED talk by Amanda Palmer last week, it was doing the rounds on facebook in one of those articles that is guaranteed to put me off! Enough people I respect commented or shared it for my interest to be peaked and I’m really glad I watched it. I would highly recommend the […]

Attention seeking

I was about eight when I realised I was never going to be a leading lady. For years I’d auditioned for school assemblies or plays and without fail Maria or Sam or Joanne got the main female part, and to add insult to injury nearly every time I was cast in the same role. I […]

Samson and Delilah reflections in Riverford

I wrote yesterday about some of the initial responses that people have had to the news I’m shaving my head. They have ranged from intrigue through to a sort of allergy to the idea. I hesitate to call it contempt, but there is definitely a deep mistrust of it. I’ve pondered this over recent weeks […]

Head shave: Rationale and intial responses

A couple of weeks ago I blogged about Life after Bobby: being remembered, where I reflected on Dad’s responses to the question of How would you like to be remembered? and offered some musing of my own. In this post I shared my plans to shave my head, to raise funds and awareness for charity: […]

Can social media improve service quality? #NCF2014

Last week I had the absolute pleasure to attend #NCF2014, the annual conference of the National Care Forum. This year’s conference saw a room full of Chief Execs, Trustees and colleagues from care provider organisations debating the eternal question of how best to focus on Bringing Quality to Life. The conference opened with this film, made […]