Z cars part deux

Well, the police car has gone. Where? Who knows? On Thursday afternoon another police car came down the road, turned opposite our house and sped off again. By yesterday afternoon, the abandoned one had gone.
Questions spring to mind:
Did the police in the car which turned opposite the house, do so because they wanted to check out who had made the phone call? ("Ve are votching you. Ve know vhere you live!")
Did they know that the car had been sitting there for three weeks before my phonecall?
Did they care?
Am I becoming one of those paranoid, nosey neighbour types with too much time on my hands?
And the biggest one:
WHY was an empty police car sitting in our road for three weeks???
Are they going to tell me? No!

Depression

There is an interesting post on Ellee Seymour's blog which I read this morning and replied to. Coming on top of a comment by a GP on Radio 4 earlier that he had lots of patients with mild depression whom he would like to refer for counselling but knows there is an eight or nine month waiting time 'for CBT counselling', I decided to add my own penn'orth to the debate.
I have had many clients suffering from mild to moderate depression who have been considerably helped by counselling. My counselling approach is integrative humanistic and I use Person Centred and Gestalt as appropriate to the individual client. The humanistic bit means that it is important to build up a good working relationship with the client and it annoys me that the NHS generally focuses only on CBT, in which the client/counsellor relationship is not seen as a priority as other counselling approaches can be equally and often more helpful.
CBT works well short-term as it gives the client a range of strategies to help them in specific areas of their life but does not usually address underlying issues. This means that, in the short term, the client is indeed helped but this does not necessarily last. However, the client finishes the allotted six sessions of therapy and is counted as a success - a tick in the box for the NHS and when the client comes back 18 months later, needing help again, he/she is counted as a new patient.
Humanistic counselling relies on a positive therapeutic relationship with the client, in which client and counsellor work together to help the client regain control of his life, which tends to have a long-term effect.
Although I don't know what the situation is nationwide, another cause for concern in my area is that GPs are now referring clients for counselling at Mind rather than providing a counselling service at their surgeries, which seems to me very much like counselling on the cheap. Strangely, it then no longer seems important that most of the counselling there is non-CBT, but of course, the GP is saving money.

Z cars

There is a police car further down our road. Nothing special, just an ordinary North Wales police patrol car with 'Heddlu' written on it. (That's welsh for police, Dale.) What is unusual is that it has been there, without turning a wheel for over three weeks now and Keith is beside himself to know why. He has even considered opening it up (he is a locksmith and car security person, you see), turning it to face in the opposite direction and then locking it up again - just to see if anyone would notice.
So, in an attempt to put him out of his misery, I rang North Wales Police the other day.
"I was just wondering," I said, "whether you know that we have an empty police car in our road which has been there for three weeks and doesn't seem to have moved in that time."
"Ah," said the voice at the other end of the phone, "Well, I don't personally know about it but I'm sure there is someone who does. It's bound to be there for a reason."
He didn't sound too sure, though.
"I'll look into it," he said. "Can I have your name, address and telephone number, please?"
Ooh, I thought, he's going to get back to me and tell me what's going on.
But he didn't.
The car is still there and now there is no way Keith can open it and turn it round as they have all our details.
They probably wouldn't think it was very funny anyway.

Cars, loos and decorating

A couple came to look at the Probe yesterday, with a view, one hoped, to buying it. She was very pleasant and chatty, he neither looked at me not spoke to me until he had inspected the car from end to end and then said, "No, not interested," before turning on his heel and walking back to his car.
"Is your husband rude and abrupt by nature?" I asked his wife, "or did he have to go to charm school to get so good at it?"

OK, no, I didn't say that, but I wanted to. Politeness costs nothing, but I hope he heard me as I took a leaf out of his book and muttered, "Idiot!" to myself as I locked up the car.

We sold it today to a very nice man who thought it was a bargain but it did occur to me that perhaps it would not be advisable for me to consider a career on the garage forecourt.

Meanwhile, I have finished decorating our new lavatory and it looks very smart if I do say so myself. The walls, while painted in a tasteful shade of cream, do look a little bare. I wondered whether some graffiti would jazz it up a bit - you know, the usual sort of lavatorial stuff, well, maybe not absolutely the usual - something innocuous, along the lines of
"Cloth Ears woz 'ere" or "No more cake for Keith!" and "Down with skool!" alongside a few cartoon drawings.
I ran the idea past Keith.
He wasn't keen. No artistic soul, that man!

Which character am I?

I came across an amusing quiz on Rosie's site
This was my character - Eleanor Dashwood.
Have a go yourself. Females only, YP!

Take the Quiz here!

More workmen

More workmen in today. (Will any of the neighbours begin to think that I am running a house of ill repute, I wonder?)
Today's task was to install a downstairs lavatory under the stairs. The reasons are two-fold:
It will be helpful to Keith during the day as it will save him having to go up and down the stairs so often
It is necessary for the delight and delectation of my counselling clients - always assuming that I am actually going to get more than one in a blue moon.
Keith was very pleased.
"Two loos, short trek!" he exclaimed happily as he did a quick road test.
(Well, you KNOW boys never grow up!)

Groundforce @ Jennyta

When we first moved to this house, over four years ago now, the garden had been neglected and little attempt had been made to whip it into shape since the house had been built. Though the soil is mostly clay and so very heavy and difficult to work with, I did devote some effort and money towards trying to get something to grow, as you can read here but, sadly, to no avail. I should really have pulled everything out, got some topsoil and a new lawn but I didn't.
So, over the last few years, I have primped and pruned, planted tubs, mowed the weed-filled 'lawn' and, generally wasted my time, but this week, I took the bull by the horns and introduced the services of two gentlemen of the soil who could claim to know what they were doing. Deciding to go for the easy option, I instructed them to rotivate, level the ground and lay a new lawn fence to fence, reuse the available slabs for a small patio and repair the side gate. Easy! So now all I will have to do in future is mow the lawn, tend a few tubs of flowers and lie back in the recliner and enjoy.
But first, I have to keep the dratted cats of the neighbourhood from digging up the newly laid turf!