ME - the horrible, hidden disease

I have friends who suffer from ME. Most of them, I haven't met, even those who live nearby, because it's so bad that some of them have to live most of their lives cloistered in darkened, soundproofed rooms.

People don't know about this disease, or if they do, they only know a little about it. Until recent years, my own perception was that it was characterised by an overwhelming sense of exhaustion, making it impossible to do very much, and the more you did, the more exhausted you felt. And yes, there is that. But there is so much more, that I knew nothing about.

I've asked some sufferers to describe their own experience of living with ME, in their own words, and I'm going to reproduce what they've said on some new pages on this blog. Please read at least some of this, especially if, like me, you weren't aware of some of the symptoms.

I'm a musician, and I have a lot of friends who are also musicians. Last Christmas we did a fundraiser in our local village hall for those who'd been affected by the Cumbrian floods. It was a great success, and the audience thoroughly enjoyed themselves, telling me they'd be happy to come to more events of the same sort. I've been meaning to do another one ever since. Well, now I have a charity that desperately needs funds - ME Research.

Please have a look at their website and consider donating to research for this poorly-funded, and little-understood disease. You can read the official explanation  here: WHAT IS ME?

I haven't set the date for the fundraiser yet, but the first one should be at the end of September if things go to plan. I'll print out our sufferers' statements and plaster them round the walls, and make sure everyone who comes along knows exactly what we're fundraising for.

In the meantime, please read. I'll copy and paste patients' statements as I get them.
You'll find links to these pages on the right --->

Thank you.

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A new Christmas song

I'd like to introduce you to a brand new Christmas song, composed and performed by two very good friends who live in Norway: Edith Nilsberg and Orlando Ortiz.

Edith, a Cumbrian, and a gifted singer throughout her life, has composed the song, and after a couple of years during which her singing has taken a back seat, her voice is very much back on form with this new number.

The superbly talented Mr Ortiz does everything else: all the instruments, all the technical studio work. His easy ability on guitar is particularly noticeable here.

Together, they have produced a happy little song which should bring a smile to everyone's face.

I'm sorry it wasn't ready to upload until after Christmas, but it will still be here for you next year!

Click here to listen to Merry Christmas by Edith and Orlando

Laser cats

Picked up a laser level thingy in a sale for £1.87 - cheap fun for the cats! I've had them chasing it up and down for hours. It projects a line, rather than a point, so they don't know which end of it to catch. Great fun. And better still, it uses ordinary AAA batteries rather than those expensive coin-shaped ones that usually go into laser pointers, so it's cheap to run. I like it.

BODY PARTS PROBE!

Seen outside Tesco today
As my Aussie friend ObLiterated observed: "I bet the Coal Workers'll have something to say about having their body parts probed :)))"

FLOOD WARNINGS
Many people in this area are waiting nervously tonight for high tide, to see whether their local river will burst its banks (again) and flood their houses (again). It's the same places, too, that were inundated last time - the Warwick area of Carlisle, parts of Keswick near the River Greta, parts of Cockermouth near the River Derwent, and so on. The council knows what can happen, and yet not enough has been done, and people will once again lose property and have their lives disrupted. Of course it doesn't help that new houses continue to be built on flood plains.

This is what happened last time:

Above - Waterloo Street, Cockermouth, during the January 2005 floods.