Things you shouldn’t post on Facebook according to ME!

After reading this post from Jeff Bullas ‘Things you should not share on social media’

I’ve come up with some of my own in particular…

Things you shouldn’t post on Facebook according to ME!

ANY copy and paste statuses

Most are pointless, some are sickly, some are just a front for racism.

If you have something to say, say it in your own way. They’re like a modern version of a chain letter  trying to guilt trip you into posting it on.

Copy and paste this if you love your child/mother/father/brother/sister/nan/dog/cat etc etc.

Obviously if you don’t copy and paste it you are a cold heartless b*st*rd with no feelings. Erm… actually no. I love my family and friends very much. They know this because I am there for them and I also tell them.

Copy and paste this if you know anyone who has been affected by cancer/depression/the common cold etc.

I don’t want to sound unfeeling on this but if people truly give a sh*t about an issue then why not post up a  link to a site with information or ways you can donate to the charity? Why not write a note or blog to say why this issue is important to you and why you are raising awareness of it? I care rather too deeply for the plights of people in worse situations than myself. In no way do I think that copying and pasting something into my status will help anyone. Instead I work, share and promote the causes that are important to me.

Copy and paste this if, like me you’re a racist who can’t articulate your own words.

You know the ones. They usually involves some ridiculously inaccurate Daily Mail statistics about immigrants or how our NHS  is failing because of Polish people blah blah blah. If you have a valid agrument and have checked your sources fair enough but really, try harder or just don’t post anything at all. Failing that just change your profile picture to Hitler and be done with it.

Copy and paste this if you have no ability to think for yourselves. . . You get my gist.

Over-lol-ing

Now I like to laugh out loud in real life. The occasional typed lol is fine (although I am a haha-er myself) but WHY WHY WHY do people insist on using it as a punctuation? Rather than a full stop people type lol at the end of statuses or comments even when it does’t make ANY sense to whatsoever. LOL.

Just had gammon and chips for tea. LOL!

Took my car for an MOT. LOL.

Broke my leg today. LOL.

NOOOOOOO! Not LOL.

Minute details of pregnancy, childbirth, babies’ toilet habits….

I love babies, I love that some of my Facebook friends are happy to be pregnant. However, I do not need to hear about every symptom they experience from conception to birth. Even more so I don’t want to hear about placentas, the state of their child’s nappies when they do arrive, potty training fiascos or similar. The odd scan picture and a few pics after the birth for us to aaahhh at is cool. One of my Facebook friends would post a weekly picture of her little (VERY cute) baby boy and it was nice to see because you could see how he changed and it didn’t become boring as it was not complete timeline bombardment. Had she posted an update every time he had a poo that would be different!

Relationship issues

People who feel the need to live their whole relationship good and bad via Facebook. Warts and all (in fact I wouldn’t be at all surprised if people did post pics of their warts an’ all!). Now occasionally I may post a comment on my beloved’s Facebook and he on mine. Occasionally. If we want to tell each other we love each other we can do that at home. If we want a row we can use our voices to adequately convey our feelings. We do not feel the need for everyone on our friend’s list to know about it. OK so we do occasionally poke each other for fun too but that is also private!

Racism

A sure fire way to get unfriended. No more explanation needed.

Countdowns

42 days until I go on holiday – Repeated every day until said holiday.

Only 196 days until Christmas! I’m starting my shopping today.*smug face*  -  SAD! 

Wishing your life away

Urggh, Monday morning, roll on Friday.

Is it the weekend yet?

It nice to have things to look forward to but Facebook seems to be full of miserable people who just constantly wish their lives away. Live for the now. Yes Mondays can be rubbish but life’s what you make it. If EVERY week you just moan that it’s not the weekend then you need to be reviewing what you’re doing with your life. Get something mid week to look forward to, change your job, sort out your relationship, whatever. Embrace every day. Life’s too bleedin’ short. And if you’re having a bad day deal with it, get help from those you love but please, don’t bring us all down too!

Hangovers *yawn*and Booze Bores

It usually goes something like this…

Can’t wait to get wasted on Friday.

Having a few before we get to the pub.

Incohererent status full of typos.

Oohh why do I  feel so terrible.  I’m never drinking again.

REPEAT. Every week. Get a life or get some help.

So that’s my rant done for now. LOL. ; )

Stace x

 

Christmas 2011 and New Year

A round up of Christmas and New Year, mainly just to get me back in the blogging zone….

Christmas Food

I made cupcakes, peppermint creams and ginger biscuits. This year it was my family’s turn to have us but we cooked Christmas din dins this year to give my Mom and Stepdad a break. It was great. I prepared a lot of the veg the day before. We made turkey with lemon and sage butter with streaky bacon and Topside of Beef. I made Delia Smith’s bread sauce which turned out well. For pud we bought a Sainsbury’s Taste The Difference Christmas pud and Ban made a chocolate and raspberry ganache tart inspired by the one Michel Roux Jr did on Masterchef.

Presents

We had some very helpful monetary donations from various family members which we have put towards a new fridge freezer and wallpaper for our living room. Not usually one for branded products I seem to have developed a longing for all things Joseph Joseph. We now have the indexed chopping boards , Preparation  bowls set and Fold flat grater. I love the bright colours.

My River Cottage Everyday cookbook will keep us in new recipes for a while and there’s enough Thornton’s Continental left in the house to delay Slimming World for another week. Still on a kitchen theme my brother bought us a pestle and mortar which we’ve been after for a while and I’ve had an addition to my collection of Letraset Promarkers.

People

Ban’s brother Richard lives in Chicago and he came over for a week over the Christmas period. We spent Christmas Day and evening with my family (see Games below) and Boxing Day with his Mom and Dad, brothers and two nephews Sam and Tom who had a crazy amount of presents as always. My favourite was the Harry Potter night bus. I REALLY want some Harry Potter LEGO.

Games

Christmas wouldn’t be the same without games. On Christmas Day we played Rapidough and had a good singalong to traditional songs like Tenacious D  Tribute, haha! On Boxing Day we played Top Gear board game with our nephews and then the more grown up Cranium which is quite hard. On New Year’s Eve my little cousin Becky bought her new games Pass The Bomb and LOGO’s to play. At our friends new year party we played Dance Central. I’m more of a head banger than a dancer but it was a laugh. Just imagine me trying to dance to MC Hammer and Britney Spears. Thankfully it’s not on YouTube yet.

Oh and before I forget….Skyrim! I bought it for Ban hoping he’d like it but I’ve been sucked into it too. Awesome.

TV

Doctor Who

A nice heartwarming episode and for a change I didn’t have to hide behind a cushion.

Eastenders

Pat’s dead! David Wicks came back though. Bonus.

Sherlock

Clever and brilliant. Best thing on TV.

Erm.. anyway that’s about it for now. I’ve written something at least.

Happy New Year everybody!

Stace x

Metal gigs weekend December 2011

After months of waiting, these two gigs were finally upon us.

Trivium at Wolves Civic – Friday 2nd December

On arrival I looked on with my confused face at Ghost whose lead singer seemed to be dressed as a scary Pope. Never one to judge a band by it’s cover (see also The Defiled) and coming from a huge Slipknot fan it would be silly to do so. They’re music was quite good but I didn’t catch enough to  fully get them. I need to take time to listen to them but due to their name it’s a bit difficult to track them down. Googling Ghost wasn’t very helpful!

In Flames were ace and just what I needed to get going. I’ll be checking out their latest album for sure.

Trivium kicked off with In Waaaaaaaaaaaaves, the title song of their recent album.

They played Departure from Ascendency which was a first I think. Matt Heafy still looks too young to be that good but he still is. Gutted I missed out on Corey’s pick which landed right next to  me but was quickly snapped up by someone younger and more sprightly than me.

Full Trivium setlist

Machine head – Sunday 4th December – Birmingham NIA

A big group of me and my mates got together to go to this.

Where's Wally (Stace)?

Some of my boys. (Bro Ricky 2nd left, my man Ban far right).

After catching half of the mighty Devildriver we retreated to the bar whilst Bring Me The Horizon were on. To be fair their music was good, the screamo vocals were not our thing at all though. I fail to see the point in people who watch the supports just to moan about them. Seems people try too hard to be cool not to be cool. You could see the older metalheads jeering or putting ther fingers in their ears. A bit unnecessary I thought. They obviously have a big following and as I often say I would rather our ‘youth’ get into (versions of) metal like this than be at a some charty shit pop band.

Anyway, onto Machine head. We’ve seen them loads of times, maybe into double figures now and they are always awesome. A good mixture of songs old and new. Stand outs from the new album were of course Locust, I Am Hell and Be Still and Know was good for a singalong. I always get very excited at The blood, the sweat, the tears live.

Full Machine head setlist

You can see some photos from the gig here courtesy of Danny’s Concerts Captured.

The best thing was despite messing my neck up at Trivium moshing all night to Machine head seemed to stretch my neck back into place and I was fine in the morning. Bargain.

So on my to do list include trying to find some Ghost to judge them properly and getting the In Flames album.

Cheers for reading.

Stace x

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Veggie week seven day challenge

After being inspired by Hugh on his River Cottage Veg programme we decided to try and go veggie for a whole week. We often eat meat free meals anyway but we set ourselves the challenge to see if we could do it. (We had to overdose on fillet steak on Saturday night before we commenced though!)

These are the meals we had.

Sunday – Butternut and sage risotto

Monday – Roast vegetable couscous with feta cheese

A Stacey throw together special. Roast peppers, onions and tomatoes, make cous cous with a nice stock (I use Knorr veg stockpot), mix it all together, crumble feta on the top (in my case 4 syns worth). Job done.

Tuesday – Sweet potato and spinach dhal

Wednesday – Veggie sausage casserole

I cooked leeks, carrots, butterbeans, a squirt of tomato puree, smoke paprika and veg stock on the hob while the Cauldron Lincolnshire sausage were in the oven. When they were done I cut them into bite size pieces and mixed it all together before serving. I quite enjoyed the Cauldron sausages, peppery and herby and I didn’t really feel pork deprived. *Insert your own joke here!!*

Thursday – Spinach & Mushroom Lasagne

Just my usual recipe, I used fresh spinach, dried wholewheat lasagne and made a mushroom sauce with some Light Philadelphia. Virtuously resisted having garlic bread with it too.

Friday - Hot-crumbed baby mozzarella, beetroot and potato salad recipe

This was niiiice. I’m not much of a salad muncher preferring hot food but you can’t go wrong with hot melty cheese.  As usual I got a bit excited with the chilli flakes but it did great for my winter sniffs.

Saturday – Veggie burgers

These were much tastier that I imagined they would be, I could’ve eaten the mix on its own. Next time I won’t use honey though as I prefer a more savoury taste. So filling I ate them on their own with no buns.
All in all we did well. A couple of bacon cravings but it’s definitely made me realise we could eat even more meals without meat.  Let me know of your own favourite veggie recipes.

Happy eating.

Stace

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Johnny’s Story – 8 months & counting

Thinking back to the panel on Stigma and Discrimination at the National Drug Conference in Dublin this month it was highlighted that we never read good stories in the papers. Bad news sells. Users get all the bad press but rarely do we hear of the success stories. Maybe we can’t change the newspapers or society’s hunger for bad news but the more positive messages we can get out there the better. Twitter gives me an opportunity to engage with some interesting people and this is the story of one of my Twitter friends. I thought it would be nice for Johnny to get his experiences heard.

Stacey

Johnny Collins and his dog Marley

 

When Johnny was 16 his grandfather passed way and soon after his grandmother. He had little understanding of how to deal with grief and death and began drinking a lot. One night he tried Heroin for the first time.

“It was my miracle answer; it took all the pain I was feeling away”.

He admits his understanding of addiction back then was that it was all in the head, a choice people made that could be controlled. His use increased to every Friday, then every Friday and Saturday and it wasn’t long before he was using every day.  In the early stages off his addiction when he worked he remembers particularly bad times. One of these was when he was talking to a guy at work and found out one of his friend’s had died from an overdose. Again grief affected his use.

“I was convinced something would happen and the penny would drop but then I accepted that I was going to die an addict. I wrote a suicide note explaining to my friends and family how they would be better off if I was dead.”

Luckily before it got too far an unlikely source helped him…

 “It was a policeman who came to tell me I was being watched on the town’s CCTV. He noticed my low mood and asked what’s up? I’d wanted someone to listen so I showed him the suicide note explaining how life would be better with me dead!!”

That was how Johnny was first directed to help and got into rehab which began a cycle.

 “Every time I got into rehab I always seemed to have it in my head that I would still have to use again.”

He eventually began a relationship with his lifelong friend and it was made clear that drugs couldn’t be a part of it. Although he initially struggled with this, with her love and support he got his life back. Johnny also has high praise for Methadone.

“The reality is that Methadone allowed me to have stability, a fiancé and a life. I think it’s more addictive than Heroin but it gave me a chance to see there’s a light at the end of the tunnel”.

When I asked Johnny what he thinks would’ve helped him more along the way he simply said.

“Reassurance. No one had ever said to me how you are feeling is OK, normal, part of the process. You can do it Johnny”.

Johnny who used Heroin and other drugs for over 15 years is now 31, 8 months Heroin free and engaged to Hazel. They live in Ballymena, Northern Ireland with their ‘son’, their dog Marley. He is looking forward to getting married and getting back into work. He would also like to be able to help others recovering from dependency like him. He would like to say big thank you  to all the people that helped him along the way especially Hazel and his big mate Jim.

Johnny and his supportive friend Jim

This is a poem Johnny wrote for Hazel….

                                                   Acceptance

  While I was looking for a perfect verse, so happy I was fit to burst

Acceptance, just 1 word. Cos u accepted me as I was, a junkie chasing a buzz

This is pure n simple truth, u welcomed me under your roof

At 25 you got ur own place, while i was still gettin off my face

When I was a teen I wanted to sell drugs, cos then id be one of the cool thugs.

How could I be such a fool, for flip sake I was still at school

I love you with all my heart and life would be bad if we were apart

There’s just one dream id like to come true, no more gear-just me, marley n you

I hate it when you cry cos youre my love and thats what gets me by

So, no more tears except for joy, me, you n our doggy boy!

No more madness cos thats the reason for ur sadness

To Hazel

from Johnny.

I love u forever. xoxox

Johnny Collins

Ballymena, Northern Ireland

You can follow Johnny on Twitter @wjc80

National Drugs Conference Ireland 2011

I was lucky enough to be invited back to Dublin again to help at this year’s National Drugs Conference. I flew with Nigel Brunsdon Injecting Advice and now HIT  Community Manager and we met Kevin Cundy of Frontier Medical Group at the airport.

It was held as previously at the Radisson hotel (great showers!). Tim Bingham of the INEF again pulled off the organisation of this big event and didn’t seem to stand still for three days but his efforts are very much appreciated. The conference consisted of plenary speaker sessions and break off workshops for delegates to attend.

The full programme of speakers can be seen on the INEF website.

On the Thursday morning we had a manic time registering everyone and it was good to see some familiar faces both from the real world and Twitter.

As always I tend to go to the sessions of my friends or people I know. Roweena Russell who was a big help with the recent tender I wrote delivered a session on how the website Hiwecanhelp has developed and can benefit organisations all across the UK. Check out their funky new homepage.

I also went to see  the seriously inspirational Annemarie Ward who really got the delegates engaged. You can read all about the work of the UKRF and their principles are well worth checking out. They (Annemarie and Alistair Sinclair) are doing great work changing the face of recovery to bring everyone together to encourage choices in treatment  and developing supportive recovery networks across the UK.  See my previous post on the UKRF conference here.

It was good to see the HIT O’ Hare’s again and I’m looking forward to the fundraiser in Liverpool later this month. I also met Stephen Malloy (Scottish Drug Forum) and Julia Elspeth who were formerly just little thumbnails on my Twitter screen.

Of particular interest was a panel discussion on Drugs, Stigma and the Media. The panel consisted of:

Erin O’Mara, editor of Black Poppy, a UK-based health and lifestyle magazine produced by and for people who use drugs.

We were carrrying around this idea that we were wastes, wastes of spaces. . . when you go and seek treatment and you know they are treating you badly you think well I’m a junkie….it gets ingrained and it drives a big wedge and silences people.

Rick Lines, Harm Reduction International

Maureen Brosnahan, a veteran national reporter with the Canadian Broadcasting Company.

We need to be conscious of the language we use,  junkie versus user, hooker versus sex worker, addiction versus dependency…

Kitty Holland, The Irish Times
Keelin Shanley, RTE

You can see the video of it below.

National Drugs Conference Panel Discussion – Drugs, Stigma and the Media

Good news is unfortunately not news. We are more likely to hear the stories of stereotypical users committing crime than the  positive stories of people in recovery who have managed to get through difficult times. People who are stuck in their Daily Mail regurgitating views want the stories that perpetuate what they prefer to believe. They rarely look for what the real story is, the reasons why people may use problematically, attempt to understand dependency, happily keep the ‘us and them’ mentality while quaffing their own drug of choice, usually Alcohol and not recognising the irony or their hypocrisy. Ooh sorry, nearly a rant there.

Anyway, it was a brilliant couple of days and thanks to all involved both during the conference and socialising in the evenings too.

Thanks for reading.

Stacey

Inspire Health and Mind

@InspireHandM @StaceInspire

 

Hello November

My new idea to get me blogging more frequently is to blog about any random trending topic on Twitter.

Resisting the urge to blog about the eloquently hashtagged #10twitterpeopleIwouldbang which is currently trending I decided on…

#HelloNovember

So today is the 1st November. I got a bit excited earlier whilst I was on the phone to my Mom as it was 11.11 on the 1/11/11. I shouted…

Happy 111111111!

which she repeated to her office.

I have an interesting November coming up, I’m off to Dublin tomorrow to the National Drug Conference of Ireland and will get to see a lot of my real and Twittery what I call ‘drug friends’. You can follow my tweets from it @StaceInspire and @InspireHandM if you are so inclined and the conference hashtag is #NDCI11.

I’m also looking forward to going to The Cavern in Liverpool on the 17th for the HIT Fundraiser in aid of  The Roy Castle Foundation and Release. As I’ve got to get a hotel anyway to make the most of it I’m taking my man Ban with me too. If you want to come too (the fundraiser, not our hotel room!) then click on the ticket above.

At the end of November it’s my Mom’s birthday which means we can do nice faaaaamily things like eat and play games. We’re also going to go on a makeover day at some point in November. Neither of us are particularly girlie but I thought it might be a nice thing to do and we’ll look ace of course.

Hello November!

Bring it on.

I will only mention the ‘C’ word in December.

Stace x

My October Recipes

Here are some of the recipes we cooked in October. Click on the links for the recipes if you fancy trying them too. : )

Sticky Toffee Apple cake 

This was on the cover of the Good Food Magazine which I subscribe to. I ended up having to cook it for a lot longer than was specified but it turned out OK in the end. The toffee sauce was naughty. More naughty because the supermarket didn’t have any small bags of toffees so I ended up having to buy a £5.00 tub of assorted Thornton’s toffee and fudge. What a shame that was! : ) I can’t find a link at the moment so I’ve linked to a baking blog I found called Cakes from Kim which helpfully has the recipe for you.

Ginger Stars 

This was just a quickie. I used stem ginger as well as ground ginger and made double. They still didn’t last long!  I had some dark chocolate in the cupboard so I dipped some of them in that and let it set for a while in the fridge.

Soul Soothing Chicken Soup

Last weekend I wasn’t feeling too good with a bad shoulder so I made some stock from the chicken we had the night before and made this nice soup.

Butternut Squash Pie

A pie, with no meat! Butternut loves a good roasting and afterwards we put a nice blanket of pastry around it before scoffing it down with some peas.

Risotto with Roasted Tomato and Mozzarella

Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall’s current River Cottage is all about Veg. Even though we’re not veggie I do like to try vegetarian recipes and it’s good to get more veg towards 5 a day. There have been quite a few great recipes  in the episodes of the series already so far. I cooked this as I am a bit of a risotto queen. I used my Stepdad Tom’s lovely homegrown tomatoes and the mozarella was a nice change from parmesan.

Honey Roast Ribs with Star Anise

Another Nigel Slater recipe. I had to make do with smaller supermarket ribs but even so these were sticky and rather lovely.

Aubergine and Green Bean Curry

This was one from River Cottage Veg on Sunday night. It required making a paste from scratch which always makes for a better curry. As always I didn’t really pay much attention to quantities and amended the recipe as it was only for the two of us. I’ve been a bit off aubergine lately so this restored my faith. I prob won’t use quite as much passata next time as it made it a little sweet but with a nan bread it was dunky and delicious.

Nom nom.

Happy scoffing readers.

Stace x

Follow me @StaceInspire

Quick review of the books I read on holiday

We’ve just spent 10 days in Corralejo, Fuerteventura. As planned we just wanted to chill out and as such we went to the beach most days. This meant loads of time for reading. Hoorah. I ended up reading the following 16 books. Yes 16! A beachy reading holiday. I read 11 on my Kindle and 5 real life wooden ones although the links I’ve provided are all to the Kindle versions. I haven’t the time to review them all properly but anything above 7/10 is worth a read I would say.

I’m into thrillers mainly especially if they’re not too predictable, I love a good murder. I also like funny books and the less serious self help books too.

Deffo give Dawn French a go, I didn’t expect it to be as good as it was and my new hero is Terry Ravenscroft. He is a comedy writer and I’ve previously read two of his other books Dear Coca Cola and Dear Air 2000. His humour really appeals to me.

A Tiny Bit Marvellous – Dawn French 9/10

James Blond – Stockport Is Too Much – Terry Ravenscroft 7/10

The Resurrectionist – James Bradley 3/10

How to Do Everything and Be Happy – Peter Jones 7/10

Dusk – Maureen Lee 8/10

Lethal Legacy – Linda Fairstein 5/10

Someone to Save You – Paul Pilkington 8/10

The Facebook Killer Part One  – M.L Stewart 8/10

The Facebook Killer Part  Two – M.L Stewart   8/10

The Outcast – Sadie Jones 9/10

Touch – Mark Sennen 8/10

Deadly Sanctuary – Sylvia Nobel and Christy Moeller 7/10

The Penal Colony – Richard Herley 9/10

Bullies, Bitches and Bastards -Eileen Condon & Amanda Edwards – 8/10

Stairlift to Heaven – Terry Ravenscroft 9/10

Broadmoor Revealed: Victorian Crime and the Lunatic Asylum 7/10

So there you go. If you were thinking about what to read next, give some of these a go.

Stace x

UK Recovery Summit 2011 Cardiff

Friday 9th September saw the 2011 UK Recovery Federation summit which brought together providers, supporters and people in recovery from all over the UK.

It was held at the All Nations Conference Centre, Cardiff. I arrived on Thursday afternoon and met with UKRF Directors Alistair Sinclair and AnneMarie Ward who organised the conference as well as other speakers for dinner. It was slightly daunting in some ways as there were a lot of prominent people from the field at the table but  they are all really interesting and passionate people and I appreciate the opportunity to meet people who I can learn so much from. Always nice to see my Twitter friends Nigel Brunsdon, Tim Bingham and Melody Treasure too.

We were lucky enough to have a stand there to promote training and EFT for Recovery. There was an immediate interest in EFT and it restored my faith that I should continue spreading the word. There’s an obvious need for people to have access to emotional support at all stages of recovery and EFT can help with that so I’ll keep right on and see what areas of the UK it takes me to. It was an opportunity to connect and it was great to meet so many inspirational people and hear their stories.

Speakers included:

Keith Humphreys Professor of Psychiatry at Stamford University

John Strang National Addictions Centre, Kings College London

Neil Hunt University of Kent and UK Harm Reduction Association

Carol McDaid Faces and Voices of Recovery, Virginia, U.S

Colin Wilkie-Jones Chief Executive, eATA

Bryan Morgan West Sussex DAAT and EXACT

AnneMarie Ward  & Alistair Sinclair UKRF Directors

There were two people in particular who made my trip to Cardiff even more worthwhile. Francis and Rie. I met them both separately and then found out they were husband and wife. Amazing people. Here is Rie’s Wired In blog.

http://wiredintorecovery.org/member/blog/2733/entry/11662/a-personal-story2/

http://wiredintorecovery.org/member/blog/2733/entry/11665/a-personal-story.-two/

Next up the Recovery Walk.

Stacey