Christmas train to Glasgow
“Everything is fine as long as it all goes to plan!”
I’m sat on the train from Euston to Glasgow. Very exciting! I turned up 2 hours early - I tend to do that in general just to be on the safe side...the nice people at Euston put me on the earlier train. I still have to have assistance to be able to find the right seat number. All was going well until we hit Carlisle - there seemed to be a problem on the track so we all got taken off the train. I didn’t know whether I was going to make it up to Glasgow or not. All is ok but it’s the real life problems (which everyone has) that stress me out and that I find hard to deal with. Weirdly on the train I bumped into a guy who I went to Uni with who got on the wrong train and it was his wedding anniversary. I suppose it could be worse as he’s missing his wedding anniversary and I’m just on my way to Glasgow! He’s called Russel and he was in my student accommodation at the Old Bank. Fingers crossed it all went well for Russell.
Other things for the RNIB: For my birthday they got me a cake which was very unexpected and I thought that it was a really lovely gesture from the team at the RNIB.
Garry and the team at the RNIB.
I met a lady called Marvel. We had a product shoot for the RNIB with products that blind people use - we had a lot of fun. Some of the participants were partially sighted or fully blind. Marvel was a marvel as she told me about her own blindness and climbing Kilimanjaro. She was quite a character and we all got on very well. One of the other ladies had a right sided Hemianopia very similar to me and she was incredible. We all decided that we were going to make our own version of ‘Loose Women’! It could be quite a story, I’ll suggest it at the RNIB.
The RNIB have been great in entertaining me with lots of jobs. I’ve started doing some stuff on the RNIB radio connect in the Camden studio. My first interview was with Lauren Bateman who’s blind after she had toxoplasmosis and cataracts. She has been through hundreds of operations but is now fully blind. Lauren is 1o years younger than me. She has er own guide dog called Grace who is gorgeous and we had a great interview on the radio. She is amazing because she travels the world and she had just returned from a trip to Helsinki with her guide dog and boyfriend to get Grace used to travelling which is fantastic. She is hoping to travel more in the new year.
Lauren and Grace at RNIB radio.
So, I’ve had yet another birthday! It was great. One of the highlights was going to dinner at an Italian place called Gloria’s. It was amazing food but also felt very surreal and quite kitch but good fun. The food was to die for. I had a fantastic Carbonara which I shared with my Mum. Boris Johnson’s Dad Stan was in the restaurant - hilarious. More food back at home with old pals and family. We went to a Thai restaurant and it was great to catch up. The day after we went to see DJ Yoda with my old Portland Street Massive! It was a really good night where I bumped into lots of old faces. We all really enjoyed reliving our youth! From now on I’m going to be going backwards and staying in my 30′s!
I had to go to an annual check up at the Royal London where I had to go for yet more tests...straight after we went to a silver lining meeting - my Mum’s first one and it was really busy. There were so many people there that it made me think there must be more and more people getting brain injuries all the time. The stats are showing that there were was approximately one admission every 90 seconds to UK hospitals in 2016-17 and rising all the time.
Me and Mum also went to the UKABIF conference (United Kingdom Aquired Brain Injury Forum) - it includes people with brain injuries as well as support workers and medical practitioners. It seems this is turning into my specialist subject and meeting lots of different people. I ended up being invited to go to the ABIL conference (Aquired Brain Injury Forum for London). There were a lot of people there who suffered following a brain injury and who were speaking about their experiences. Maybe I could do something like this next year. It was great to meet all of the key players in this brain injury field. I brought my flyers to both of these events to promote my podcast.
I had my annual Acast Christmas party. They are doing really well there. It was nice to see them so busy and how many podcasts and podcasters they are now dealing with and hearing what their expectations for the new year were. Well done them!
I finally finished my podcast with John Lawson. We had to redo it because we had some technical difficulties on the first try but John was happy to redo it. John was quite a famous chef. He used to work under Gordon Ramsay in Australia and then he had a brain injury following a stroke. He then had to have a Craniotomy (an operation on the brain where you have to be awake during it). John now has a vegan restaurant in Leigh on Sea. He is a survivor and a very nice man who talks a lot about meditation as part of his new life. The podcast episode with John as well as 2 other new episodes will be coming out in the new year. So hopefully you’ll look forward to that!
When I arrived in Glasgow it decided to be quite rainy but I guess that’s quite typical when you go up North. Me and Yvonne went for a nice walk and saw Highland Cows.
We then went out for dinner, drank a lot of G&T’s and caught up. Seb was up for the weekend too and joined in with the shenanigans. On Saturday we watched the boxing with Anthony Joshua winning and then we followed that with a huge Christmas dinner on the Sunday which was lovely. So good to catch up with everyone.
Back to the train journey...I ended up having to change trains 3 times but made a new friend on the journey - hopefully he’ll listen to my podcast. All in all it was a very tiring, long trip. I left London at 1:30pm and arrived in Glasgow at 10:30pm which was much later than expected. But this does mean that I get compensation for the inconvenience - the silver lining!
Merry Christmas to everyone and hope you’ll still read my blog in the new year :)