Congratulations to my friend Chrissie Yates on the publication of her first book ‘When Evil Walks Amongst Us’. I know that Chrissie has long wanted to see her name on the front cover of a book and I can imagine the thrill. But if you know Chrissie who is petite and glamorous, you wouldn’t have thought she’d have it in her to write such a dark (but thrilling) book. I started it in the bath and had to get out to make sure I’d locked all the doors. Really enjoying it if you are reading, Mrs. But then again, my favourite all time writer is a woman called Mo Hayder who is sadly no longer with us. Beautiful, ethereal, fragile in person but my goodness her books are brutal – as you might guess if you’ve seen ‘Wolf’ recently on the box. What a murky mind she had – marvellous stuff.
As I’ve always said, you never know what’s inside you until you try and pull it out. We are all like Mary Poppins’s bag, full of things we never knew we could do and only by trying do we find out what we are capable of. Anyway, always happy to support talent – and a friend. Chrissie’s book is available online at Amazon.
The new NHS hub in the Glass Works is superb, I have to say. I’ve had occasion to use it twice this year and convenience-wise it is SO much better than having to go up to the hospital and find a parking space that isn’t there. This time it was for a routine breast screening. My last one was after covid and was running 8 months late. This one was early because they don’t want to have that backlog again and I thought to myself ‘Well that’s something nice to report about the NHS’.
They aren’t exactly a chosen day out, but girls you have to keep up to them and your smears, it is essential with a capital ‘e’. Anyway I’d done the right one and plopped the left one on the X Ray machine when the lovely radiographer said ‘I’m going to do this one in two halves’. I know that one side of your body is bigger than the other… but blimey! That might explain why I’ve been walking around like the leaning Tower of Pisa for years. Got to be done, ladies. Got to be done.
My other half is obviously a nicer person than I am, less suspicious, because he went in the newsagents in Poggy the other day and two men in a grey car parked outside called him over and asked what sort of dog he had, and was he a good guard dog and did we want to sell him. Now to me that’s a bit dodgy. It may be innocent ‘chat’ but I shuddered. Were these men waiting to see who tied up their dogs outside the shop to go inside? Anyway, heads up. Apologies if this is you and you’re reading it and thinking ‘It was only banter’… but in this day and age, I’m giving people the benefit of the doubt less and less, I’m afraid.
I knew someone who worked for the Barnsley Sexual Abuse and Rape Crisis services and she once told me some horrific stories of what goes on under our very noses, yes, here in this town, behind the curtains of ordinary houses not too far from the town centre, in this day and age. So I am delighted they are getting £400,000 in funding. They do a magnificent job. Just thought I’d say that.
