The afternoon that kept on giving

Sometimes all it takes is half an hour just to breathe. It’s something I rarely get and something I am having right now thanks to Tim at Caudwell Children. Caudwell Children is a charity run by Phones 4u billionaire John Caudwell. We could sit here and debate billionaires and money and charity, with some probable validity on all sides until we’re all blue in the face, or we could just accept that somewhere in the middle of all of that noise is a mum, with a business to run, who has Leukaemia and a disabled child. Sometimes you just need someone to cut through that noise, caring, sickness and a few sweary superlatives thrown in with a solution. John recognised that years ago when he set up his charity, and Tim did that on a smaller scale with me today. 

My daughter had gone off to her session this morning, but there were no other children at the event. Apparently, the three other children had all phoned in sick. Tim phoned me. “Hi Deb, would you be able to bring her to the Caudwell centre at Keele this afternoon? We have another event with children coming. She’d get more out of it and you’d get an extra break.”

Me and her in the car. Radio 6 on all the way. Dropped her off. Two hours of me mooching around the shops and half an hour of just sitting in my Mini writing my thoughts down later and I’m feeling relaxed and happy. You know something else that was brilliant during the session? With help, she made a pizza. It was meant to be roast dinner for tea and she loathes it. Massive thanks to Caudwell Children and their brilliant work today. Sometimes you just need an immediate help and they scooped me up and rescued me, all whilst giving a little girl some people to play with.  And she’d found a solution, created the solution and eaten the solution to her own roast dinner anxiety horror. She was delighted and so were we –  the afternoon that kept on giving.