For the people of Rotherham

Here's a bit of a thought for the 900 people living in Rotherham's Herringthorpe leisure centre at the moment, because of the floods.

Hope the sun starts shining for you soon!

Sanity Fair - BIG THANK YOUS

When I got home on Saturday night, my feet just began to throb and throb. I hadn't noticed them all day. In fact the only thing I had noticed was the excitment and fun and sense of community that saturated the air (along with the rain later in the day) But even the rain just added to the excitment for me.

Sanity Fair happens because people want it to. It's so easy to say 'no'. But everyone said 'yes'. It takes time and commitment and thought and causes worry and stress and stuff - but it's fantastic that people come together and help give the public a better understanding of mental health, a more positive, clearer, more realistic sense of what it's all about. It goes along way too, in encouraging people to think about what affects their own mental health.

We wrote a list of 'people we must thank' and there were over 100 individuals on there. A hundred people without whom...

For me the lead up to the day was also really enjoyable and one moment in particular when all the people who regulalrly come to MAGMH were working preparing for the day - it encapsulated what Sanity Fair is all about.

Thanks again to everyone - it was remarkable.

Let it snow!

I love snow. I make a point of going out in the snow and walking miles. I did it today.

Snow always brings back such fond memories. When I was a child we lived opposite our Junior school playing fields which had a hill on it. My best friend and I used to spend hours sliding down the snowy hill. We would make the perfect sledge run and use thick plastic bags to slide down. You couldn't even stand at the top of the hill because we'd made it sheer ice. And it snowed every year - I'm sure it did. We would come in frozen and soaking wet. I remember that gloves were always in short supply so we would wear socks on our hands. And we would make huge snow balls - I mean 4 or 5 feet - my brother would sometimes help, because they became too heavy to move.

If we got kicked off the playing fields (why on earth is was such an issue I could never understand!) we'd sledge down the middle of the road. One would act as look out for cars and shout a warning if one came. Because you were heading head first down the road, the noise made it difficult to hear and I remember turning to see two headlights no more than two feet from my heals - can't imagine how we were allowed to do this. But no-one ever got hurt.

It was utter bliss and all I could think about as I made my 6 or so mile round trip from home to work, through Stoke and back home again today in the snow. Loads of kids were going sledging, but perfect sledging has to be done when it gets dark, so the orange glow of the street lights reflects on the snow.

Brilliant.