I’m busy writing a story. It’s about a boy, Tom, and the strange events that unfurl when he and his mate Eden encounter a spirit entity that resides at the bottom of a long disused well, in the grounds of a derelict asylum.
It’s all fiction, all that is apart from the asylum itself, High Royds in West Yorkshire, which allegedly still echoes to the sounds of the long departed patients. Victorian mental hospitals were, and still are, very daunting places. They were built in an age where there was little, if any, understanding of the illnesses the poor souls who were incarcerated within their walls.
Today, there is still much we can learn about mental illness, although treatments are now far more humane than they were in our fore-fathers day. But there is still a stigma attached to diseases of the mind and many people are still locked away to protect them, and us, from the damaging effects the diseases can cause.
The story is the outpouring of my thoughts about possible supernatural events that are the result of the history of the hospital, but writing down these thoughts has made me aware of my own feelings towards these poor people.
Mental illness is a terrible thing, for those affected and those around them. With the cases of depression and stress related illness rising as a result of economic pressures, we must be even more aware of our own feelings. We must show compassion towards the victims, they do not chose to be affected and fully deserve our sympathy and help. Who knows, one day it may be us who need that compassion.
When those around you are unable to help, be it due to fatigue, misfortune or other pressing matters, it is beholding to us to stand tall and shoulder the challenges for them. The office was pretty sparsely populated for a number of reasons, so it was down to the troops on the ground, to deal with the issues the day delivered.
Overindulgence, in whatever form, often leads to a period of recuperation, and so it was today. The evenings jollifications with Phil and Nick yesterday led to Bumble being laid low for most of the day. Not that she went bonkers, or anything like, but it appears that her constitution was compromised and she spent the day recovering.
As with all things in the universe, the normal order is that of chaos, and so it was that our Friday night plans to go over to friends for dinner were turned upside down and inside out. Not that the evening wasn’t a real pleasure, it was, but nothing like that which had been envisaged.
Hip hip hoorah, it’s Friday, and we all know what that means! The weekend is upon us once more and the social secretary has been hard at work organising another busy weekend.
Sometimes, problems, or as we like to call them, challenges, seem to just keep on coming, one after another after another. With two deaths, as well as other problems associated with dementia in the family happening in the past few weeks, it’s been all too easy for us to start to wonder ‘What on earth have we done to deserve all this?’
I was dismayed, earlier today, when I stumbled across the 
Bumble called me tonight on my way home to tell me that she had just visited her Auntie Pat in hospital.
We all have a mental view of where we are going in life, what we would like our future to look like, a set of challenges that we must conquer if we are to find our utopia. Each day, maybe even each second of each day, that view changes, usually just a little, sometimes quite a lot.
The Search For Enlightenment 
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