Any news on the Driver who had that nasty accident?
Caterham posted an update on their official Facebook page yesterday.
"Both drivers involved in the accident received medical care at the circuit and were transferred to hospital for further checks and treatment. Both drivers (and their families) send thanks for the actions of the trackside teams, and for the many messages of support they have received. We would like to thank the trackside crews, marshals, medics, BARC and the Ambulance and hospital teams for their incredible work."
One of the driver's wives commented that he is receiving specialist care at the Royal University hospital in Stoke and echoed the praise of the marshals and medics at Oulton as well as the hospital staff.
The marshals are unpaid volunteers who put in hours of practice so that they can give drivers first class care when the need arises.
Balance at last update £21.44 Current balance £16.70
Not a good week with the poker. One bad call on Thursday was key and today I was card dead. With playing no more than half an hour a day on two 4p/2p tables, there are going to be swings from week to week.
Meanwhile, with life in general, it has been a good week…
I have been waiting since November to register my Speech Therapy Charity for Gift Aid. This was the final step in the registration process which has gone on for far longer than I ever imagined – a couple of years. At least the registration process was very thorough!
Anyway, the charity is called Saluto – which is Latin for “to greet; to wish health to” and is going to deliver speech therapy, initially in the Chester/Wirral area but I haven’t really set any geographical boundaries. I just want to help as many people as possible.
Speech therapy is something that is very close to my heart. Cerebral Palsy affects my limbs and mouth; it comes as a surprise to many that the communication difficulties arising from my speech impediment are far more frustrating than being unable to walk.
…and yet, I feel society as a whole doesn’t understand the importance of being able to communicate. At school my legs were exercised every day right from nursery age through to the end of my secondary education but I only had about 18 months of speech therapy during that time.
With 5 years of board room experience at a couple of not-for-profits since retiring from the day job in IT, much of it with responsibility for fundraising, I realised that I now had the skills to (hopefully) make an impact in an area that mattered so much to me.
Everyone I spoke to confirmed that there is still a pent up demand from service users to receive speech therapy.
While setting up the charity, I decided to self fund a course of private therapy but it took 9 months to find someone to deliver it. (They are now one of my trustees – “Head of Therapy Delivery”! She has loads of contacts who can provide therapy)
From a practical point of view, it has given me greater confidence to engage with people when I am out and about. On Saturday, I was at Oulton Park and spent the lunchbreak, when there was a pause in the racing, chatting to a guy I had known for a few years but had only communicated with via WhatsApp. In the past, it was very difficult for him to understand me when we met face to face however this weekend we had a proper natter.
It’s a small thing to many however for me it was fantastic! It took him a few goes to catch what I was saying but we both persevered.
Conversations with people outside my immediate family (who are used to me) have been rare.
With my mum now 91, she is getting frailer and unable to accompany me as often to act as translator, I was going to become very isolated if I didn’t improve my speech. It also helps with carers who give me a shower in the mornings. New carers are picking up what I am saying right away. Previously, when I support workers when I worked in an office, it took them a few weeks to "tune in" to me.
The aim with my charity, is to help others in a similar situation (a course of therapy is not cheap at circa £500), make therapy more accessible by supplying it and highlighting it as a career choice so there are more therapists and generally raise awareness of how important communication is.
For more info about the charity, here is a link to the website www.saluto.org.uk
To launch the charity, we are in talks with the local radio station about them running a feature on us.
Furthermore, SkyPoker have agreed to the return of the Tim Carter/Quickfeet Heads Up Cup – to raise funds for Saluto. So I guess it will become the Saluto Cup. I will launch that in a separate thread in the next week or two. SkyPoker have generously offered some tournament entries as prizes. I plan to set up a GoFundMe page so people can donate when playing in the tournament if they wish but having looked into it today, I need to first set up Saluto as a charity on the site so... a few more hoops to jump through!
Best wishes to you and the charity, as I was reading that I started to think sky should run a tourney to raise funds, so when I got to the part of sky doing this it made me smile, good job sky poker!
Balance at last update £16.70 Current balance £18.48
Having been -ve for the past 2 updates, nice to see my bankroll heading in the correct direction.
I haven’t spent that much time on the 4p//2p cash tables though, busy with writing reports about the Easter Monday British GT races at Oulton Park and launching my charity, Saluto, on Wednesday. Then on Thursday and Friday my cousin Meryl (Mel) came down from Cumbria.
There is only 4 months between me and Mel so we spent a lot of time together as children. She is more of a sister to me.
Mel comes down around once a month to restore “order”. My mum always was abit random and is more easily distracted than ever – particularly when putting clothes away. The day before Mel arrived, I was running out of things to wear! Mel was able to search all the cupboards in the house where I can’t reach and now the contents of my wardrobe are restored.
Mel also thoroughly cleans the rooms. It’s no longer as big a job as it was after lockdown when we first realised how frail my mum was getting. Nowadays, my carers do abit of tidying and cleaning each day so that things don’t build up as much.
A couple of months ago, a charity called Groundwork UK emailed my charity and suggested that Saluto enrol in the Tesco Community Grants scheme (Groundwork manage the scheme on behalf of the supermarket). I don’t know where they got our name from as we’d not launched at that time, must have been the Charity Commission’s website.
Under the scheme people can vote in-store using blue tokens to determine which local charity gets funding. The three charities with the most votes in each area get £500, £1,000 and £1,500 respectively.
Voting runs from the start of April until the end of June. One of our Trustees took a picture of the voting silos at the local store on Friday and I was gob-smacked to see that the Saluto silo (in the middle) was in the lead. There is a long way to go though.
Hopefully, I will launch the Saluto Heads Up Cup soon. I had been planning to use a GoFundMe page to collect donations and had been waiting for them to accept Saluto as a charity however, last night I came across www.thebiggive.org where when the public donates to a charity through a campaign on their platform, they ask funders (philanthropists, foundations or corporates) to match that donation so it gets doubled. I have applied for a Saluto account with them – that would be really good!
I go to Tesco at least three times per week, & the staff all know me, so I'll lobby them in the morning & see if we can get Saluto on their charity Board.
Checked at my local Tesco this morning, & they are showing three local charities. (Derbyshire). Understandable I suppose. Anyway, I'll have a word with one of the Suits there when I next bump into one.
Thanks @Tikay10 The scheme is for local charities. Did you once mention that the company that owns SkyPoker has a charity of the year? Is there any way Saluto could pitch for that? It would have a huge impact for us
Thanks @Tikay10 The scheme is for local charities. Did you once mention that the company that owns SkyPoker has a charity of the year? Is there any way Saluto could pitch for that? It would have a huge impact for us
It's been a while... a heck of alot has happened with my mum.
When she was young, her house had an outside loo. I had been hearing her moving around in the night quite alot and then one night in May I got up at 1 in the morning and found her in the kitchn quite agitated. "One of my brothers has blocked the back door." she said.
I managed to quickly establish that she wanted the toilet so I got her to hold the back of my wheelchair and guided her across the hall to the bathroom.
I realised her head must have gone back to her childhood home. I contacted the doctor because I thought all the nocturnal movements that I had been hearing were due to her trying get out of the backdoor for a wee. The GP diagnosed chronic memory loss and referred her to the Memory Clinic at the hospital... however there is a 6 month waiting list.
In the day time, she also became more confused. I had been having to guide her when making meals since last Summer. But there were also times when she was really on the ball.
Even at the start of June, she was quite easily able to do a meal of microwaved potatoes, pre cooked chicken and boiled veg with a little guidance from me but within a week she had gone rapidly downhill. Fortunately, my cousin Mel was staying with us.
On the Friday morning we found mum on the floor of her bedroom at 5 am and that night she was going to the loo every 40 minutes but was so weak Mel had to support her when she walked from her room.
It was a nightmare weekend with calls to 111, visits from paramedics, GPs and the Hospital at Home. None could find much physically wrong with her but the latter discovered she was very low on sodium.
The admitted her to a day ward at the hospital the following day and put her on an IV for the morning but when I went to see her in the afternoon, it had made no difference. She was fidgeting in a world of her own. Not only did mum need support going to the loo but she had to be told where to sit when she got there. She needed physical help with her clothes too.
The hospital said because her sodium is now topped up there is nothing physically wrong with your mum, we are going to send her back home.
I explained that wasn't practical as I can't physically help her in the loo and Mel had gone back to Cumbria where she lives.
They decided to keep her in and look to discharge her to a care home. Mum has always pleaded with me not to put her in a home so it was a pretty grim evening. Although she didn't have much idea where she was....
But the next day, everything changed. Mum had been moved to a general ward where they had scanned her bladder and found it was full. Looking back, that is why she wanted to go to the loo all the time.
They drained her bladder over the course of the next week or so and mum greatly improved. She regained her physical capabilities. She was able to feed and toilet herself but was still pretty confused.
So I was able to bring her home. While she was in hospital, I was visited at breakfast, lunch and tea times by carers. They continued to visit after mum came home to prepare all the meals for both of us as well as showering us in the mornings. Mum also has an overnight carer who sits in a chair at the bottom of her bed to soothe her when she wakes up confused. She has good nights and bad nights. The bad nights continue into the day when she is constantly on her feet. I need to give her 100% attention on those days as she doesn't really know what she is doing.
So my life has been put on hold really. Mum can't be left alone so I rarely go out other than for half an hour to local shops unless my relatives come and sit with her. But my mum dedicated her life to me, because of my disability she has had to do much more for me than most mothers do for their offspring, so this is the least I can do for her. I assume it is dementia - we wait for confirmation from the Memory Clinic - and mum has an enlarged heart. It's not a surprise as she is 91 so it's just about living in the moment and making the most of every day.
There has been lots of paperwork as well as supervising mum. I have had no time for poker or setting up the Quickfeet Cup. Not much time for anything really but I have made some progress with Saluto - The Speech Therapy Charity that I have been setting up over the past few years. I have a new very energetic trustee with links to an adoption charity. Many of their kids have communication issues due to the neglect they have suffered so we are working to put together a proposal to raise funds from various trusts for them to provide grants to fund a Therapist to help kids from deprived backgrounds.
So I am still around, but my mum is the priority at the moment.
Comments
Any news on the Driver who had that nasty accident?
"Both drivers involved in the accident received medical care at the circuit and were transferred to hospital for further checks and treatment. Both drivers (and their families) send thanks for the actions of the trackside teams, and for the many messages of support they have received. We would like to thank the trackside crews, marshals, medics, BARC and the Ambulance and hospital teams for their incredible work."
One of the driver's wives commented that he is receiving specialist care at the Royal University hospital in Stoke and echoed the praise of the marshals and medics at Oulton as well as the hospital staff.
The marshals are unpaid volunteers who put in hours of practice so that they can give drivers first class care when the need arises.
@QUICKFEET
That's excellent news, thanks for getting back to me.
Current balance £16.70
Not a good week with the poker. One bad call on Thursday was key and today I was card dead. With playing no more than half an hour a day on two 4p/2p tables, there are going to be swings from week to week.
Meanwhile, with life in general, it has been a good week…
I have been waiting since November to register my Speech Therapy Charity for Gift Aid. This was the final step in the registration process which has gone on for far longer than I ever imagined – a couple of years. At least the registration process was very thorough!
Anyway, the charity is called Saluto – which is Latin for “to greet; to wish health to” and is going to deliver speech therapy, initially in the Chester/Wirral area but I haven’t really set any geographical boundaries. I just want to help as many people as possible.
Speech therapy is something that is very close to my heart. Cerebral Palsy affects my limbs and mouth; it comes as a surprise to many that the communication difficulties arising from my speech impediment are far more frustrating than being unable to walk.
…and yet, I feel society as a whole doesn’t understand the importance of being able to communicate. At school my legs were exercised every day right from nursery age through to the end of my secondary education but I only had about 18 months of speech therapy during that time.
With 5 years of board room experience at a couple of not-for-profits since retiring from the day job in IT, much of it with responsibility for fundraising, I realised that I now had the skills to (hopefully) make an impact in an area that mattered so much to me.
Everyone I spoke to confirmed that there is still a pent up demand from service users to receive speech therapy.
While setting up the charity, I decided to self fund a course of private therapy but it took 9 months to find someone to deliver it. (They are now one of my trustees – “Head of Therapy Delivery”! She has loads of contacts who can provide therapy)
While I am never going to be doing voice-overs on TV, the therapy has greatly improved my speech – see this video
From a practical point of view, it has given me greater confidence to engage with people when I am out and about. On Saturday, I was at Oulton Park and spent the lunchbreak, when there was a pause in the racing, chatting to a guy I had known for a few years but had only communicated with via WhatsApp. In the past, it was very difficult for him to understand me when we met face to face however this weekend we had a proper natter.
It’s a small thing to many however for me it was fantastic! It took him a few goes to catch what I was saying but we both persevered.
Conversations with people outside my immediate family (who are used to me) have been rare.
With my mum now 91, she is getting frailer and unable to accompany me as often to act as translator, I was going to become very isolated if I didn’t improve my speech. It also helps with carers who give me a shower in the mornings. New carers are picking up what I am saying right away. Previously, when I support workers when I worked in an office, it took them a few weeks to "tune in" to me.
The aim with my charity, is to help others in a similar situation (a course of therapy is not cheap at circa £500), make therapy more accessible by supplying it and highlighting it as a career choice so there are more therapists and generally raise awareness of how important communication is.
For more info about the charity, here is a link to the website www.saluto.org.uk
To launch the charity, we are in talks with the local radio station about them running a feature on us.
Furthermore, SkyPoker have agreed to the return of the Tim Carter/Quickfeet Heads Up Cup – to raise funds for Saluto. So I guess it will become the Saluto Cup. I will launch that in a separate thread in the next week or two. SkyPoker have generously offered some tournament entries as prizes. I plan to set up a GoFundMe page so people can donate when playing in the tournament if they wish but having looked into it today, I need to first set up Saluto as a charity on the site so... a few more hoops to jump through!
Hope I avoid reigning and defending champion @madprof AKA Purple Poo.
A stunning post, from start to finish.
Pleasing news about Saluto - I'm sure it will be a huge success and benefit many people once it's up and running.
Shall look forward to the heads up cup
Current balance £18.48
Having been -ve for the past 2 updates, nice to see my bankroll heading in the correct direction.
I haven’t spent that much time on the 4p//2p cash tables though, busy with writing reports about the Easter Monday British GT races at Oulton Park and launching my charity, Saluto, on Wednesday. Then on Thursday and Friday my cousin Meryl (Mel) came down from Cumbria.
There is only 4 months between me and Mel so we spent a lot of time together as children. She is more of a sister to me.
Mel comes down around once a month to restore “order”. My mum always was abit random and is more easily distracted than ever – particularly when putting clothes away. The day before Mel arrived, I was running out of things to wear! Mel was able to search all the cupboards in the house where I can’t reach and now the contents of my wardrobe are restored.
Mel also thoroughly cleans the rooms. It’s no longer as big a job as it was after lockdown when we first realised how frail my mum was getting. Nowadays, my carers do abit of tidying and cleaning each day so that things don’t build up as much.
A couple of months ago, a charity called Groundwork UK emailed my charity and suggested that Saluto enrol in the Tesco Community Grants scheme (Groundwork manage the scheme on behalf of the supermarket). I don’t know where they got our name from as we’d not launched at that time, must have been the Charity Commission’s website.
Under the scheme people can vote in-store using blue tokens to determine which local charity gets funding. The three charities with the most votes in each area get £500, £1,000 and £1,500 respectively.
Voting runs from the start of April until the end of June. One of our Trustees took a picture of the voting silos at the local store on Friday and I was gob-smacked to see that the Saluto silo (in the middle) was in the lead. There is a long way to go though.
Hopefully, I will launch the Saluto Heads Up Cup soon. I had been planning to use a GoFundMe page to collect donations and had been waiting for them to accept Saluto as a charity however, last night I came across www.thebiggive.org where when the public donates to a charity through a campaign on their platform, they ask funders (philanthropists, foundations or corporates) to match that donation so it gets doubled. I have applied for a Saluto account with them – that would be really good!
Excellent news Dave.
I go to Tesco at least three times per week, & the staff all know me, so I'll lobby them in the morning & see if we can get Saluto on their charity Board.
Every little helps, eh?
Checked at my local Tesco this morning, & they are showing three local charities. (Derbyshire). Understandable I suppose. Anyway, I'll have a word with one of the Suits there when I next bump into one.
Did you once mention that the company that owns SkyPoker has a charity of the year? Is there any way Saluto could pitch for that? It would have a huge impact for us
They do have a "Charity of the Year" each year, but this year's Charity has already been chosen.
If you download their widget thingy here, https://www.easyfundraising.org.uk/causes/saluto/?utm_campaign=raise-more&utm_medium=clipboard&utm_content=rm-cpl when you shop at one of their affiliated stores online, the store makes a donation to Saluto.
When she was young, her house had an outside loo. I had been hearing her moving around in the night quite alot and then one night in May I got up at 1 in the morning and found her in the kitchn quite agitated. "One of my brothers has blocked the back door." she said.
I managed to quickly establish that she wanted the toilet so I got her to hold the back of my wheelchair and guided her across the hall to the bathroom.
I realised her head must have gone back to her childhood home. I contacted the doctor because I thought all the nocturnal movements that I had been hearing were due to her trying get out of the backdoor for a wee. The GP diagnosed chronic memory loss and referred her to the Memory Clinic at the hospital... however there is a 6 month waiting list.
In the day time, she also became more confused. I had been having to guide her when making meals since last Summer. But there were also times when she was really on the ball.
Even at the start of June, she was quite easily able to do a meal of microwaved potatoes, pre cooked chicken and boiled veg with a little guidance from me but within a week she had gone rapidly downhill. Fortunately, my cousin Mel was staying with us.
On the Friday morning we found mum on the floor of her bedroom at 5 am and that night she was going to the loo every 40 minutes but was so weak Mel had to support her when she walked from her room.
It was a nightmare weekend with calls to 111, visits from paramedics, GPs and the Hospital at Home. None could find much physically wrong with her but the latter discovered she was very low on sodium.
The admitted her to a day ward at the hospital the following day and put her on an IV for the morning but when I went to see her in the afternoon, it had made no difference. She was fidgeting in a world of her own. Not only did mum need support going to the loo but she had to be told where to sit when she got there. She needed physical help with her clothes too.
The hospital said because her sodium is now topped up there is nothing physically wrong with your mum, we are going to send her back home.
I explained that wasn't practical as I can't physically help her in the loo and Mel had gone back to Cumbria where she lives.
They decided to keep her in and look to discharge her to a care home. Mum has always pleaded with me not to put her in a home so it was a pretty grim evening. Although she didn't have much idea where she was....
But the next day, everything changed. Mum had been moved to a general ward where they had scanned her bladder and found it was full. Looking back, that is why she wanted to go to the loo all the time.
They drained her bladder over the course of the next week or so and mum greatly improved. She regained her physical capabilities. She was able to feed and toilet herself but was still pretty confused.
So I was able to bring her home. While she was in hospital, I was visited at breakfast, lunch and tea times by carers. They continued to visit after mum came home to prepare all the meals for both of us as well as showering us in the mornings. Mum also has an overnight carer who sits in a chair at the bottom of her bed to soothe her when she wakes up confused. She has good nights and bad nights. The bad nights continue into the day when she is constantly on her feet. I need to give her 100% attention on those days as she doesn't really know what she is doing.
So my life has been put on hold really. Mum can't be left alone so I rarely go out other than for half an hour to local shops unless my relatives come and sit with her. But my mum dedicated her life to me, because of my disability she has had to do much more for me than most mothers do for their offspring, so this is the least I can do for her. I assume it is dementia - we wait for confirmation from the Memory Clinic - and mum has an enlarged heart. It's not a surprise as she is 91 so it's just about living in the moment and making the most of every day.
There has been lots of paperwork as well as supervising mum. I have had no time for poker or setting up the Quickfeet Cup. Not much time for anything really but I have made some progress with Saluto - The Speech Therapy Charity that I have been setting up over the past few years. I have a new very energetic trustee with links to an adoption charity. Many of their kids have communication issues due to the neglect they have suffered so we are working to put together a proposal to raise funds from various trusts for them to provide grants to fund a Therapist to help kids from deprived backgrounds.
So I am still around, but my mum is the priority at the moment.