Covid and mental health

Burt Blank said:
- - - I can count on one had the occasions we have been parted in the last 10 years for longer than a few hours.
Click to expand...
There is a song for this: Tango Jalousie :whistling:
No, seriously - coping well with one another day in day out and wanting to share things and experiences with someone for years is a sign of true love and companionship. Kudos for you, Burt Blank and your missus.

My hubby works as a middle school teacher (teaching kids from 13 to 16) with relatively short class hours (lots of work at home, though), so as I work and study from home, we spend most of the time together. A 10 week annual summer holiday + weekly leaves during autumn, winter and spring are a big bonus in the educational field so I'm happy I didn't end up marrying someone like my father (a restless businessman). In my opinion, we've been pretty happy for more than 30 years together. He has his interests (nature, birds, football/soccer, snooker, badminton etc.) and I have mine (online shopping, making shopping lists, organizing shoppings, picking my face, thinking about recipes, clothes and shopping) so we're fine staying in our own cocoons with the doors open, mumbling occasionally about Trump or CookingBites and having an invisible umbilical cord in between.
 
Speaking of day drinkers...

in-20-years-this-country-will-be-run-by-people-hom.png
 
Last edited:
Burt Blank said:
My Bona fides. My kid brother has been a Governor for Salford Mental Health Trust for a long time. The trust has an exemplary reputation. From time to time I was a Volunteer Prison Visitor. He asked me to do the same at Salford. I will say two things, the Nurses and Doctors in the secured units were some of the finest humanitarians I have met. I befriended one guy who had been sectioned. He lived with his new wife and her kids in his council flat. They had been in temp accommodation before they married. She cheated. He was removed from the flat and she was granted a restraining order. He had to keep financially supporting her and the kids even when she moved her new boyfriend in. He exploded and entered the flat with a chain saw ( they were out ) he cut all his furniture into matchwood. Neighbors called the Police and he was rightly sectioned. He was due to be released, I got him out early with the offer of a job and accommodation. He worked faultlessly as a lorry driver for six years. He met a woman with two kids they married, I met her and the kids at a bonfire night party we put on. She cheated. His foreman came to me one morning and said Steve had not come in for work. He was not answering his company cell. I and three employees went to his flat, kicked the door in and found him dead in the living room. Opening the bedroom door was one of the hardest things I have done. I buckled a bit when I found it was empty.
To the people who work at the coal face within metal health care this is every day life.
Click to expand...

That would a nightmare. I couldn't be a prison visitor I think it would make me depressed. You're a good man burt.

Russ
 
Burt Blank, you and I have that in common. I volunteered to help a ministry in Louisiana (a Southern state in the USA) which had a prison ministry in which we would go into the prisons each week for them to share worship service and hope. I helped them develop a community re-entry program in which the men would live on site for a pre-determined period. There they would learn how to manage their finances, get help with job applications and interviews and share family-style meals each week on Sundays. Yes, cooking for the group was my favorite part. ;-0

I really enjoyed my time with the ministry and became close to the couple that ran it. The wife was the closest I ever had to a loving mother. She was also abused as a child and never judged or rejected me because of my past. She was the definition of an "angel on Earth".
 
Last edited:
rascal said:
That would a nightmare. I couldn't be a prison visitor I think it would make me depressed. You're a good man burt.

Russ
Click to expand...
Thank you mate I did try. I never broke any serious laws in the UK but a number of my friends did. A prison visitor in the UK is and official position not a happy slappy religious thing. You are vetted by the Home Office. You can turn up unannounced at any time of the day to the establishment in your remit. I could enter any cell I wanted. The recidivist prisoners were generally very laid back. First time new inmates were very edgy. The most challenging wings were youth remand and the segregation unit for sex offenders. I could not ask what the people in the cell had done, they could give me their version. The most depressing part was the kitchen and meals they produced. I soon realized that for officers it was not a job but a sentence.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom