Well stanley lost on penalties at Rotherham tonight and my kids are blaming me for jinxing them!!! I had been keeping Gary up to date by text and at full time it was 2-2, so with it being a cup match it went to extra time....stanley scored...yippee.... 10 mins later looking at the clock I knew extra time was nearly up. So got a triumphant text ready... and what happens??? Rotherham scored in the dying seconds, oops. so now it went to penalties and we lost 3-2. So now I'm been made a scapegoat for them losing!!!! Oh well roll on saturday, FA cup qualifier at home.....

Today was a turning point for the review process at work. I had arranged for nearly 30 people to get together today to discuss how we currently work. These people...

harwood red

Well I think I can officially say that the change in the season has definately got to me..... well that and a few other things...

I finally went to the doctor again about my back and she decided to put me on a high dosage of anti inflammatory tablets for next 2/3 weeks. As I don't like taking pills it is hard going, also am finding they are pretty much knocking me out or.... again is that just the season change???

If a week after finishing taking the tablets I am still in pain then she will refer me to the skeletal/muscular thingiebobbie people and see if they can get to the bottom of why I am still suffering!!!

If I stand still for any length of time I end up in agony so it can look quite funny...

harwood red

To this day I have no idea how I got across that busy road alive as I never once looked to see if anything was coming… I just remember putting one foot in front of the other but never taking my eyes off my dad in the shop.. I got to the door and suddenly froze, looked back at my mum in the car and saw the look of, well not quite sure what I saw. It was a look I have never seen before or since. I can only explain it as maybe a look of mixed emotions… anger/pain/pride/fear/loneliness all rolled into one. Now that only fed my resolve and I pushed the door open and walked into the shop..

At first I stood at the back of the queue waiting to speak to my OWN Dad but when another customer came in I just thought I could be here all day...

harwood red

I approached my mum and explained as best I could without deepening her pain any more that I was fed up with the way Dad had been with me over the past few months, meaning the way he picked me up for a meal and had me (as my brother no longer went) home practically within an hour. Then to cap it all off to treat Christmas, which was always a major event in our house as a non entity… well I was having no more of it and now I felt I needed to tell him.

My Mum was great and always believed that we had the right to express ourselves as long as it was done in a respectful manner, so she sat me down and asked me how I proposed to tell Dad how I felt about it all. I was 11 and trying to think of something respectful and to the point,...

harwood red

Before we went on our xmas holiday, I had tried to contact my dad but got nowhere… I had never been to his house so didn’t know where to go and didn’t have his home phone number. I had stopped asking questions of my mum as I knew it was all still so painful for her, so instead I just analyzed the situation over and over in my head. I had tried him at another one of our shops that I knew he worked at but he wasn’t there and left a message for him to contact me but he didn’t before we went.

As I said in the last part, the holiday probably came just at the right time and I returned from it feeling more positive and refreshed than I had done in the past few months.

Now at the age of 11, Christmas is still about what...

harwood red