Mingo.Life

By the end of Week 4, the guys had built some walls, knocked a large hole in another one, the temperature hit 35°C, the building work filled the kitchen with dust and I concluded that the best way to renovate a house was just to stop living in it altogether. This was not the sort of chaos I had expected when I agreed to it all and signed the paperwork. I didn’t really give it much thought if I’m…

In the first two parts of our blog series “Making Room“, the extension, renovation and disability adaptation of our family home was still something distant that we could occasionally stand back and admire longingly. An idea, if you will, born out of necessity but not actually erm… Born. Yet. There had been a lot of nodding, gesticulating and chin scratching going on. Numbers and dates wildly…

Two years ago this week, I met an old man named Colin. The following few hours would change the direction of my life. A routine dental surgery turned into a disability. A life lived on medication, threatened by severe migraines around every corner, and filled with future uncertainty. At least… I think Colin was his name. I never actually asked him but, “Hello, Elderly Gentleman Opposite Me in…

So. We had a cup of tea, and “right” said Dad, “time to get the roof off”. The scaffolding is up, the garage door is off, the shed is erect. And you can read more and catch up with a link to WEEK 1 HERE. … I had just spent a thrilling morning counting roof tiles. I’d had a few quotes from roofers come through and it worked out that roof tiles for my particular roof cost about £5 (+VAT)…

Last week, I was trying to sell a surfboard. Partly in a symbolic “letting go of the past” sort of way, as my nerve pain is highly sensitive to cold water. Sadly, my days of riding the waves are over. My two feet remain firmly on land… For now. Six feet of fibreglass that had spent considerably more time leaning against walls than riding waves. A man came to buy it.He looked exactly to me how…

So by now we have hired the builders, achieved full structural design, drawings in hand and planning permission granted (twice – because of an adjustment to Poppy’s disabled access door). We now knew the existing structure/foundations were good to build on too. In this update:Garage clearanceShed installationLoft boardingScaffolding installationPreparing for a wheelchair-accessible extension for…

Someone said something to me last week that I haven’t quite been able to shake. “Every upwards trend has a dip.” He wasn’t talking about the stock market.He was talking about life. Which is interesting, because I’ve spent the last year feeling less like I’m on an “upwards trend” and more like I’ve fallen off the graph entirely and landed in a separate spreadsheet labelled Miscellaneous…

Little water vapour,Thousands of feet in the air.Floating amidst a cloud,Of gravity, it does not care.Should it fall, it does not matter,Little droplets feel no pain.It wants to come and meet you,But we just hate the rain.

This is the final part of a very personal series. Grab a drink and settle in. **** Part One: There’s Nothing We Can Do To Fix This Part Two: Open Wide! Part Three: I Can’t Sleep Part Four: Dr. Pain & The Ward of Strange Gentlemen ****It’s been a while since I last wrote.Christmas happened to all of us, and calling it chaotic would be generous. It wasn’t all bad news, however, as there has…