If you’ve followed this blog over the last couple of years, I feel very humble. If you’ve taken the time to read the stories about my life and my up and down adventures thus far, I’m extremely lucky, so thank you.

I’ve mentioned in previous posts what I do for a living at the moment. For those who don’t know or can’t remember, I’m a care/support worker, helping to look after several gentlemen with very severe learning disabilities. However, this post is not about the gentlemen I help to support, it’s about one of the chaps I occasionally work alongside. His name is Steven (Stevie babe) and he’s not just a working colleague, he’s also a friend.

Steven spent the first 45 years of his life in his native country Nigeria, but he’s lived and worked in England for the last 20 years. When I first started working with him, it actually took him over 6 months to really talk to me properly. All he could muster was a very high pitched “Hello” without any real indication that he wanted to speak to me.

I must admit, when I first heard him speak, I thought he was deliberately making a weird sound with his voice. If you can imagine the British comedian Joe Pasquale’s voice after being smashed in the nuts several times, then you can imagine Steven’s voice! After a couple of months I began to refer to him affectionately as ‘Helium’. He seemed to take my name for him in good spirits because every now and then I would see him try to hide a smile as he ‘Dismissed’ me with a waft of his hand, ordering me to go away.

As I said, after a few months of trying to coax him out of himself with gentle quips, he suddenly warmed to me, unexpectedly telling me I was a nice man and that he knew he could trust me! In fact, after becoming comfortable with me, he often fired back at me by saying, in his helium fuelled voice, tinged with echoes of Nigerian ” You are educated man, yet you clean bottoms for a living”! and then he laughs at me until we laugh together.

I discovered over time that stevie babe is a very private man, rarely talking to anyone at work in the same way that he talks to me, in an open way that reveals his fun loving personality. Over the last couple of years, he has confided in me and told me about his life back in Nigeria and his family, all of whom, apart from his wife still live there. I am only writing the following account because he has given me permission to do so, otherwise I would never break his confidence.

We were sat in the living room, trying to stimulate one of the residents by talking to him when Stevie baby turned his attention to me and started to tell me about his past. We had the television on in the background, mostly for the benefit of the residents. News about Brexit came on and one of the people discussing it mentioned that British democracy was dying. Steven laughed at the comment and said “This man has no idea about democracy”. It was then that he started to talk about his country.

He told me this.

In 1993, he was sat in his house listening to the radio for the results to come through concerning Nigeria’s Presidential election. As the news came through about the ridiculous win for the party who could never win if the election was not rigged, he knew trouble would quickly follow. Steven explained as he turned his radio off, he could hear running and shouting out on the streets. He walked to the open door of his house and was met by his neighbour who asked if he had heard the result? When Steven replied with yes, his neighbour urged him to pack his things because “They will come”.

Steven went back into his house and heard guns being fired and people screaming in the distance. Steven told me that he had only just started to throw clothes into a bag when his window shattered and three armed militia came into his house and started to beat him with their rifles. He told me he didn’t think they were going to stop beating him, but they did. They ordered him to stand up, and as he struggled to his feet, all three of them jabbed the barrels of their rifles into his face and told him to beg for his life.

I didn’t know what to say to him until he said he begged them not to kill him. When I replied that I didn’t blame him for wanting to live, he nodded and said they hit him in the face several times and dragged him out into the street, where they forced him to get into the back of an open top truck. He explained there was nowhere for him to lay down because the truck was full of dead bodies and people who were in a similar state to him, bleeding from their wounds. He laid ontop of a dead body and waited for a bullet to end his life.

The bullet never came.

The truck was driven for hours until it stopped outside a township that he didn’t recognise, partly because blood was still pouring into his eyes.

He said for some reason he was dragged onto the dirt road, along with the other survivors and the truck drove away, leaving them alone, but alive.

Steven hasn’t explain to me yet how he made his way back to his home town, but when he arrived, most of his friends and neighbours had died in the carnage or had left everything behind them to survive. His father and brothers somehow survived, and it was from that moment that Steven thought about why he was allowed to live. He put it down to devine intervention.

His struggles went on for years after that ordeal until he came to England.

Ever since that day, Steven has believed completely in God. He doesn’t preach to anyone, but he believes in the existence of God. Maybe if I had been in that nightmare situation and survived it, I would have believed that someone or something was on my side, I don’t know.

He knows I have no faith or no religious belief and he accepts it, and I also accept that his belief is something real to him because I realise it gives his life meaning.

At times, he’s starts to talk to me about god and jesus but I gently remind him that I don’t believe in anything like that and playfully cover my ears with my hands and loudly hum a tune. He laughs with me and tells me he wants to save me from going to hell, to which I reply “I’m already unsavable, so save your breath and make us a cup of tea”! We laugh and he gives up.

If only he could make a decent cuppa.

Seriously, when he told me about his life, I realised that my life and the trials I have faced are nothing in comparison to his life.

I like him, I like his unbeatable spirit and the hope that burns in his eyes.

I’m proud to call him my friend.

Some of you may or may not remember a previous post about how I decided to but some vitamins K1 and K2 to try and help the wife with her joint problems. It was also supposed to help wake up the pineal gland, which according to Egyptian legend, opened up their third eye!

I can now report that the vitamins are having a remarkable effect, despite the fact that she hasn’t actually taken any!

She now seems to know about absolutely everything in the universe and appears to know what I’m thinking before I actually think about it!

In fact, she let’s me know when to think and what to think about!

K1 and K2, remarkable vitamins!

I went for the interview at 11.30 this morning. It went well, but after it was over I could tell that It wasn’t for me. I rely on my instincts more and more as I get older, and instinct told me I would probably become very bored, very quickly. The lady who interviewed me explained that they would let me know their decision in a few days but she said she was more than happy with how it went.

I thanked them both and walked out of the hospital, feeling satisfied but empty, if you get my meaning!?

Strangely enough I decided before the interview had finished that it wasn’t for me, so when they ring me up to give their decision I will say thank you but no thank you!!

As if fate had leant a hand, I was informed an hour later that a position had become available in a different job, not connected to the hospital.

I’m going to ring them tomorrow and make enquiries.

I was bitterly disappointed at the beginning of the month when I didn’t do the best job at the interview. It actually took me a couple of days to bring myself around to my old self after I had failed.

I have another interview for a different kind of job on Monday morning next week. It’s at the local hospital to work as a patient services and domestic worker.

I’m unsure whether to go for the interview because it would mean having to clean toilets, bathrooms, wards and clinical areas. I don’t think I’m to good for the work, but it would mean a huge drop in responsibility in relation to what I do at the moment.

The potential hospital job pays better and the hours are better but I have a nagging feeling that it won’t satisfy me.

Not sure what to do!

This is Asti, who is in the previous photograph in the park.

He’s taken over my chair, playing on his new xbox game we bought him for his birthday, wearing his new earphones which we bought him.

The cat is keeping him company as Asti is on his phone talking to one of his friends whilst he plays with him online!

I think it’s the game they call Fortnite!

Happy as the proverbial Larry!

This is one of my favourite photographs, taken 4 years ago, walking in the direction of the local cricket pitch in the park. My son left me with my grandson to run around the grass on the pitch. We were happily playing ‘Tiggy’ when the park keeper appeared from nowhere to ask us to “Get off the grass”!

We pretended to run away like scared children but I don’t think the guy was impressed with our reaction, which was to run off the grass in zig-zags, laughing as we went.

When I was at school (Which wasn’t very often) this group of teachers had the pleasure of trying to teach me!!

The gentleman to the front and centre was the deputy head for over 30 years. His name was Mr Whelan. He was a retired Sargent major who had served his country during the latter years of the second world war. I remember him being a very strict task master. Nobody was allowed to put a foot out of line. He used to have the whole school march around the school grounds every morning before first lessons in perfect single file. (No wonder I chose to go hiking through the local woods when I should have been in school)

However, he was strict but fair. When he noticed me marching in the morning he would make a beeline for me, and shout “You managed to make it today Burns! My office at lunch time”. I swear to this day that he had a slight smile on his face as he walked away.

When I knocked on his office door, he would shout through the door for me to wait outside. 10 minutes later he would shout “Come” and I’d go in, shut the door behind me and hold my hands out for the leather of the strap to warm them up.

‘Six of the best’ every day I could be bothered to go to school!

It didn’t seem worth going to school, did it?!

He would always say the same thing to me before he allowed me to leave his office. “Don’t waste what you’ve got Burns, wake up”.

I never really fully understood what he meant so I can only take a guess now that I’m a fully grown man.

Strangely enough I didn’t feel any animosity towards him for punishing me, I felt a respect for him that I’ve never felt again for anyone else in authority.

He would ruffle my hair if he passed me after the bell that signalled the end of the school day and say “See you tomorrow Burns ” knowing full well that it was a lottery!

I also believe that he had a hidden respect for me.

I heard that he died a few years ago.

I wish I had known because I would have liked to have gone to his funeral to pay my respects.

My three grandsons, Asti in the middle, Harry is on the left as you look at the photograph and Connor is to the right.

Love them so much. It was Asti’s birthday on Sunday 9th, he was 11. I didn’t get to see him but I get to spend most of this weekend with him. Lots of time to spoil him silly.

I enter the scene of this true story walking very slowly, sombrero pulled down to cover my eyes, cigarette hanging loosely from my trembling lips, Jeans slightly soiled at the back, the music from the good, the bad and the ugly accompanying my quivering entrance into a place that god dare not go!!

Welcome to Holmewood in the 70s and 80s, a village where the most battle hardened SAS veteran would probably defecate his pants!!

Holmewood in the years mentioned was a bloody battleground, especially on Friday and Saturday nights. I coined a phrase after working in the village for a short time in the late 80s, I called it ‘Britain’s first open air prison’, a prison that violently refused to have a warden.

So, I’ve painted the picture, now I’ll tell you a few stories about the place.

I worked in and around the village during the mid to late 80s. At that time, I was working for Northeast Derbyshire District Council, moving from property to property as a draft proofer. Over a period of about 2 months, I was part of a small team that worked on properties that were occupied, attaching strips of pliable pvc strips against doors and windows in an attempt to make the property draft free.

I had heard stories about Holmewood from friends but I didn’t really believe them until I actually worked on properties in village. The village was a bit of a bomb site back then, with shop windows missing, rubbish floating around front and back gardens and clanish pubs were outsiders were rarely welcomed. One particular house springs to mind. It was occupied by a single man who had one of his children living with him. (I actually remember his name, but dare not say it 🤣)

When he opened the door to us, head shaved, wearing a vest and scowled at us, asking us who the f$#k we were!! It was only after we explained that we were from the council to improve his house that his teeth stopped grinding (Probably anticipating the taste of our flesh) and he allowed us in, slamming the door behind us.

Once inside, his demeanour chilled out quite alot. He made me and my work mate a cup of tea and followed us around the house chatting away. He was surprisingly articulate but his house was a virtual gym, with weight benches in the living room and in his bedroom, with hardly any sign of furniture, apart from his son’s bedroom, which had large glossy posters of half naked women alongside model aeroplanes that hung from the ceiling and school clothes hanging from the curtain poles. Now, me and my friend didn’t ask him about his son, he just decided to talk about him and why his son lived with him. Apparently, the large gorilla type who was talking to us had taken great joy in repeatedly beating up the man who was having an affair with his wife!! He told us every detail and his eyes shone with excitement. He had discovered who the other man was, marched to the football pitch where a Sunday league match was underway, walked up to him, knocked him out and sat on him, patiently waiting for him to wake up! When he did wake up, he beat him unconscious again and waited for him to come around so he could repeat his punishment!! The football match came to a halt and everyone watched the assault without attempting any intervention. Whilst he was telling us, his mate walked into the house to tell him that the “Wanker” had just walked into the gorillas ex-wife’s house. (I felt sorrow and pity for the said “Wanker”) Gorilla looked at us and ‘Told’ us he would be 10 minutes and that he would trust us to carry on until he came back!! Then he took something that was metal and shiny from a kitchen drawer and disappeared out of the door.

He came back after a short while, put the metal thing back in the kitchen drawer, washed his hands, turned around to the two of us and asked very cheerfully if we fancied a cup of tea!

His gorillaesque friend looked at us and asked the lead gorilla, without taking his eyes off us, if he should go and get the lads for us?!?!

The gorilla of the house told him we were ok and told him to f$#k off, which he did. Baring in mind that myself and my work buddy were pretty big and physically fit at the time, I don’t mind admitting that I was beginning to hatch a plan of escape in my mind.

As it turned out, we were safe to complete the job (Double time) and get out with all limbs still intact!!

Strangely enough, I bumped into him a few years later on a Sunday morning. He was managing the Holmewood football team that was playing on a football pitch local to me. My mum loved to watch Sunday league football and came with me. The gorilla was pacing up and down the touchline, following the on-field action. He walked past us and started ranting and raving, every other word an expletive. I was chuckling to myself and so was mum when he turned around, recognised me, nodded, turned to my mum and apologised for swearing in her presence!!

So violent gorillas have manners!

That was the last time I ever saw him. I wonder what he’s doing now?!

I’ll carry this on in a later post.

Went for an interview today for a job a really wanted. I didn’t get it, I blew it!!! I’m a little bit pissed off with myself.

So right now, I wish I was sailing in that yacht alone with a nice bottle of single malt.