First day out this year

 With the weather warming up and the Covid restrictions easing we managed to get out today for ther first time this year! Being in a wheelchair 🦼 I suffer from the cold but with the temperature set to hit twenty degrees C I braved the big outside and Heather and I drove over to Sandwich and ate a sandwich on the Quay. I did mean to take a photo of the road sign THE QUAY but forgot. I did manage a few others. I hop you like them.

Help depression with photography

I started blogging twenty years ago I posted 100’s of posts some bad most even worse than that, then about four years ago I deleted everything! Five different blogs and all posts I erased fifteen years of work. Why? Because one day I woke up depressed very very depressed. My depression was ongoing I had been taking antidepressants for years but that day I was super depressed! I couldn’t cope and days in bed feeling like crap eventually gave way to feeling slightly less depressed and slowly very slowly I got over things! I am not there yet but I am coping.  My Multiple Sclerosis has taken a turn for the worse and I am a lot weaker than I have ever been. Cheerful ain’t I? Cheering you up yet.

The reason for this post is to help other people and at the same time help myself. Well maybe we can both gain from the words I am feebly trying to get down. I read an article in the amateur photographer magazine today. Yep it was about how photography can help people suffering from depression. I deleted my photography blog on that day five years ago, years of posts hours and hours of blogging not so many photos. My photos look awful even the good ones are bad so maybe no great loss to the world when I hit that delete button! But I suffered oh boy I suffered. All of those posts those dreams the hopes the memories were gone, no more could people read about what I had enjoyed putting out for anyone who wandered world. I had planned to use film cameras made since my arrival here on earth, anyone who reads the amateurphotographer will have seen a regular article about using a different film camera for every week for a year. It was so popular it went on and on finally finishing after ten years and five hundred and twenty different cameras!

Back to you and your depression, anything that can get you less depressed is good! I know about stopping and concentrating on the shot it helps me and it helped the people in the article I read today! The breaking of the norm the stopping the waiting, the looking at something other than whatever your brain wants you to hang up on. I recently heard depression described as like listening to a out of tune radio, it’s always playing in the background, you can’t hear it properly but you listen to it all the time and in doing so you miss out on so much good stuff that’s going on around you. Well that’s me done for tonight, it’s twenty to one in the morning even though this iPad recon it 16:40. One of the many things I need to sort, I only got this on Monday so still on a learning curve. I’ll finish up tomorrow as I wanna add some photos and links and mention lockdown

Lockdown, how has it been for you? In all honesty for me it has been much of the same as normal. Heather has to hoist me out of bed and do pretty much everything for me! I have helped with comments on what to get for shopping 👍 not always useful. I know many people have been finding it very difficult. There are any different places to go for help and my answer is always seek help. You know it makes sense but the hardest step is always the first one. I am often guilty of leaving things to long, last year I ended up in A&E blue lights and everything with suspected sepsis. I got better with antibiotics! The hardest part for me has been not seeing the family our daughters stop at the front gate and have a five minutes chat but it ain’t the same is it. I know all of you reading this will be suffering your own personal problems and FaceTime is good but it’s not a patch on meet-ups and a chat over a brew.

Kate Bradbury the Wildlife Gardener

I have just finished this wonderful book. Gardening for wildlife is one of life's joys. Seeing birds visit your bird table or watching them flit to handle from feeders is for me better watching than most things on the television. Personally I have been a bird watcher from an early age and still remember receiving a copy of the Observer book of Birds at around age of seven and I had a vast array of wildlife books around that time from aunts and uncles. Now at the tender age of 62 I still  enjoy watching birds and although I cannot get into our garden anymore (wheelchairs don't negotiate steps) I give the odd direction to the wife. We both like to see nature flourishing and Kate Bradbury has written this wonderful book to help and encourage even the most timorous of gardeners.
The photographs are excellent and are all in glorious colour. The text is written for the beginner as well as the expert. The cover has a quote from Alan Tichmarsh describing it as "a joyous book" which is praise indeed.

I recently also read The Bumblebee Flies Anyway: A Year of Gardening and wildlife also written by Kate Bradbury. So if you really want a wildlife fest go get a copy or do as I did and order it from  your local Library. Kate is a good writer and draws you into her wild(life) world. She writes for several publications Gardeners world Magazine (BBC)  the Sunday Times The Guardian RHS Magazine and many others,