Having been advised to stay well away from people due to being in the at risk catagory re the Coronovirus I like to think it’s mainly because of my health conditions and certainly not my age. Which proves this isolation has not taken my ability to think wishfully.
It is that ‘thinking’ part of isolation I’ve been thinking about over the last few days. I now realise I just can’t stand at the front window and make faces at the number 11 bus as it passes to and from town. I’ve run out of funny, (mostly crabbit) faces anyway.
So, I thought, what am I going to do? Then it dawned on me. There are people all over the world that have been isolated for years and are still there. Political prisoners hidden away in small cells with not-one sound, except that sound of torture from afar or slops squeezed through a slot in a door. My house isn’t that bad.
Then I remembered that I used to be a community educator and all the people I’d worked with, auld folk, parents and the kids and I remembered the fun we’d had learning from each other, and the progress many of us made.
I thought about the Open University and the group of parents attending classes in our community centre and how much the challenge of learning affected them and gave them hope.
Then I got to thinking. If one has to be isolated then this must be the age to be in. We have food delivery services. A great many of us have PHONES, (so please phone your friends and family regularly), Many, but not all, have TV and some have internet access, (so make sure you email or facetime or Skype your people regularly).
Now here’s the rub in all this thinking I have decided to come out of retirement and become a community educator. Dinnae worry over much about what this means as I’m not sure myself but what I’m proposing is that all those who are isolated, or indeed their friends and families whose worries and anxieties will be through the roof at the moment begin a course of learning.
The Curriculum, as they call it in more hallowed circles will be yours. It might be something you’ve always wanted to study but didn’t have the time that you have now. It might spring from what you see from your window, (not the number 11), or something in your house, (a vase, a piece of electrical equipment, a brush or broomstick).
We can teach each other to cook, to bake, calming techniques, poetry, creative writing, (God forbid), anything that takes our fancy really.
Maybe we could start with a dedicted facebook page? Maybe we could have dedicated times for telephone learning and we can all be both teachers and learners?
Community Education came out of the need for survival. For the need to progress from the hardest of times. Lets do it.
Alan

Now let’s be honest, if you were standing with Bob and Tod inside the window of JP’s office and you saw a well dressed young man repeatedly step back from getting on the bus, would you not be intrigued?

But what would you do about it? Would you get involved, go out and ask what the problem was, or would you choose to ignore his plight?

Those are questions that come to haunt many of JP’s associates in book 5, questions that lead to some very interesting conclusions.

On Thursday 27th February I attended my first session at the NHS Pulmonary Breathing Rehabilitation Class at Leith Clinic. Two minutes slow walk from the offices of JP Associates on Great Junction Street.

I didn’t see any of the associates though, as I drove to the clinic, but what I did see was the NHS at its best; physiotherapy staff going that extra mile to help myself and others feel confident and secure as they put us through our paces, teaching us that the trick is to keep breathing, even in times of physical activity and trepidation.

As I left the building after that first two hour session I couldn’t help but think how lucky I was to have such dedication and care as our NHS and as Arnie once said, I’ll be back!

Still didn’t see any associates though I did notice a suited-up young man at the bus stop.

After what seems like an eternity and a writers block the size of the banana flats, I have once again returned to the keys. This has given my editor the greatest of pleasure, in that she can start moaning again about my distinct lack of relevant punctuation and good grammar. I’ve got to say, despite that, it’s good to be back.

Thank you readers for your patience and kind encouragement. It worked. Working for Josh will be published…ASAP.

Wishing everyone a guid and prosperous New Year!

I just wanted to wish all my loyal and patient readers a very Happy Christmas and Guid New Year!

Wishing you aw the very best of times!

Words, words and yet more words. 27,000 of those tricky thought foxes in fact.

That’s how far I’ve reached into writing the 5th book in the JP Associates series. Some days ten words, some days three hundred, all depends how talkative those characters are.

Rebecca is fairly coming into her own, much to Tracey’s chagrin, but young Mark’s really quietened down since he got that PhD. Funny that eh.

Either way the novel, Working for Josh is slowly but surely taking shape, no thanks to Bob and Tod, who just can’t seem to leave well alone.

Bear with me folks, it is coming!

What with Brexit and the UK parliament closed to dissent and happenings extraordinaire, as Poirot would say, it’s no wonder I am worried about the Reverend Callum Mackie and young Mark le Mot. The last I saw of them they were on Big Jake’s bench at the end of the Kirkgate. It’s not that, we’re now well into September and Leith is getting cauld, and Jake isn’t getting any younger. Must get them off that bench and somewhere warm. Heard there’s a nice wee cafe up at our parliament, and it’s open for business.

To all my readers who have wished me well recently and who are interested to know when Working for Josh, the fifth novel in the JP Associates series, will be on the shelves, I am sorry, but I cannot yet give a completion date. The work was making good progress until another prolonged period of ill-health, due to my having ME, stopped me in my tracks.

I am hoping that things will get back to normal soon though and I can get back to the keys. I’ll will keep you posted.

Thanks again, Alan

Even the basking sharks just off Leith have stopped basking and are mair than likely lying on the sea bed wie the o too cool lobsters and crabs. Sun worshippers are aw away tae Portobello, cars and biling buses crammed wie bairns still off school.

Me, I’m skulking in the shade, too hot, too wabbit, and certainly too crabbit, for summer.