Sams

 I last volunteered for Samaritans nearly seven years ago.

Despite excellent supervision and training the calls eventually took their toil and I felt I lost my empathy with some callers which, as anyone in the trade would tell you, is the first sign of burnout.

I resigned and was happy to go

Another sign of burnout.

In my years working for the charity, one call will always stand out with me.

It kind of haunts me, even to this day and can still move me to tears if I think about it carefully enough.

It was from a young teacher, I will call David.

David had had a difficult year. His work had been stressful and many of his class had not achieved the grades that he and they had wanted. He felt a failure, isolated and miserable. 

He also, more importantly, felt responsible .

He was sat in his car, near a beach, somewhere in the UK 

He had no discernible accent and I could hear seagulls crying nearby.

He was drinking from a quarter bottle of Rum and had, he told me , taken enough tablets to put a horse to sleep.

He had started to slur his words and had cried for much of the call.

I felt as though I was losing him and called a colleague in to listen to the call. 

She listened and shook her head and squeezed my hand and told me I was doing alright.

But, I was losing him and I knew it.

He took another pill and I heard him swallow it.

And I asked him about his favourite music, his taste in films, and his best friend.

Anything to engage him in conversation.

Anything to create a hole in his depression.

Every trick in the book.

We had been on the phone together for over an hour and I sensed that he was wrapping up the call.

“ I just wanted to hear a kind voice John” he explained and at the end of my tether I asked him not to go.

But he did go.

With a gentle “Thank You” he ended a call which may of been his last conversation with another human being on earth

And that was the day, I knew I had done enough for the Samaritans .

from Going Gently https://ift.tt/GtYyvjV

AI

AI means Artificial Intelligence. We have all heard about it but now through Microsoft Image Creator we are seeing evidence of AI in action. It is getting closer to our everyday lives. I was telling my daughter about it and she sent back some amusing images that were also created with the aid AI but obviously not Microsoft Image Creator. They made me chuckle.

Here's Mr B.Johnson cleaning a staff toilet. At last he has found a suitable niche in this complicated world...

Here's another former prime minister, Ms L. Truss, working behind a bar...

And here's Britain's obnoxious right wing Home Secretary Suella Braverman shown on a migrant boat...

Meanwhile back in  the real world, this afternoon we enjoyed a lovely Sunday dinner at Frances and Stew's new house. Frances had made the dessert without the aid of Artificial Intelligence. It's an Easter-themed fruit pavlova...

from Yorkshire Pudding https://ift.tt/puQWf5m

Roger and Peter Ustinov

 

Pull up your knickers and tighten the bra straps 

Another fairly bland post is on its way.

Roger went missing this morning.

He was politely waiting to jump into Bluebell to go on his morning walk and poof ! he was gone.

He has only mastered jumping into the footwell of the car by the way, and can’t quite compute the slightly bigger jump straight on the driver’s seat. But I had turned my back for a gnat’s crotch of a second and he had vanished.

The lane was empty . He’d gone off like a rocket, so I checked up into the village towards the main road  first…nothing then down the lane to Trendy Carol’s ….not a sign. 

I was beginning to worry.

The main road is lethal for a dog of Roger’s IQ and so I drove around the main village calling his name.

Not a sausage.

So I drove down the lane again , parked outside the sheep gated field and called him.

Still nothing.

I was beginning to get worried.

Lambing time is no place for a dim dog to be roaming lost in fields.

I called him again.

And suddenly he was there in the lane with a black plastic plant pot in his mouth, 

Looking nonchalant and relaxed

Another treasure stolen from a ditch or a garden .

He brought the plant pot home with him, showing it off to the others with a toss of his head.

They weren’t interested.

So that was the mini drama for the morning.

Please no more today. I’m on nights now until Tuesday morning.

I made some coffee in my mokka coffee pot and have sat down to watch Parkinson on YouTube .

Now I loved Michael Parkinson in the 1970s

As a teen I was privy to the crem de la crem of the talk show , where icons such as David Niven, Peter Ustinov , Peter Cook , Kenneth Williams and Billy Connolly were given time and space to shine.

And shine they indeed did. 

Strange that the only woman of note I remembered being interviewed by Parkinson was Catherine Bramwell-Booth The Captain of the Salvation Army and she shone by virtue of a natural warmth and power

I treated myself to a low calorie brunch of eggs and potato cakes made from dried potato and herbs.

Bloody lovely….

And am presently watching Kenneth Williams in all of his full camp fury

The camellia has eventually flowered by the back door. I’ve had it five years now and it’s the first blooms 

It’s a good sign 

A good one

The neighbours behind me are beginning to get noisy as they do when the sun is shining

I’ve put Waloyo Yamoni by Christopher Tin on full blast to drown out  chihuahua  Charlie’s yapping

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