On Monday morning, I hauled myself out of bed at the slightly undesirable time of 6:30 so I could grab a shower, get dressed, and make my way into the City Centre to meet at Carly at 8. After having a rather scrumptious McDonalds breakfast, we jumped on the train down to London Marylebone. This was a big deal… because Carly has only ever been on a few trains. Seriously, you can count her train journeys on one hand. As there are cat people and dog people1, there are train people and bus people. Carly is most definitely a bus person, and I have to admit that buses make me nervous if I don’t know the area I’m headed to. How are you supposed to know where to get off?! Trains are simple; labelled stations.
Anyway, after a serious crossword and starburst session, we arrived at Marylebone station and the time had come… for Carly’s first ever tube journey. Let me tell you, feeling like the expert on a trip to London was novel – I’ve only been a handful of times myself! I explained the basic ‘rules’ of the underground to Carly, including the very important ‘you must stand on the right if you are merely riding the escalators, as opposed to charging up and down them on the left hand side as if the extra 10 seconds that gives you is vitally important’. Of course, she forgot this several times, and throughout the day there were a few instances of people huffing or ‘excuse’ing their way past us!
So, after successfully traversing the tube system and making our way from Marylebone to the London Bridge station, we headed to Potter’s Fields for the Mind ‘Reclaim your lunch break’ picnic that I blogged about last week.
Like I said before, the cause that Mind work for is really important to me, and so being able to attend the picnic with Carly and help to raise awareness about mental health problems was really great. Although the balloons fought a losing battle with the wind for the entirety of the picnic, the sun came out and the jackets came off. The guys at Mind were great; they spread out a load of blankets, with baskets of information about Mind and the campaign… and put out trays of cakes – yum! We met a load of great people & enjoyed our ‘lunch break’ a lot, although I did manage to get pastry in my hair (note to self: eating flaky pastry whilst having your photo taken is not a good idea)!
In addition to promoting their campaign, I was able to talk honestly to the people there about my experiences with stress and depression, both recent and current. It was very refreshing to talk to people without getting a negative reaction; so many people there understood what I have been though in the past. I think talking to people helped me to realise how many problems I’m having with my mental health at the moment as well - yesterday when I got home from work I felt really overwhelmed and ended up soaking James’s shirt when he got home & found me in bed, hurting and upset. Poor husband, I hate to worry him, but I think admitting that I’m struggling again is a good step… and one that getting involved with Mind has helped me make.
After the picnic, Carly & I dawdled back to the tube station, having a little look around the area. We decided not to stay in London much longer because we were both really tired – Carly had been having a busy week with media interviews, and I hadn’t slept well the night before. So, we headed back to the station and completed another giant crossword on the way home.
For more information you can read the news article about the campaign at Mind’s website. Please take a few minutes to watch this video about putting on a happy face at work:
Put on a happy face from Mind Charity on Vimeo.
Carly was interviewed about her experiences on the You & Yours show on Radio 4; you can listen to that here:
You and Yours – Mind Feature by zoecorkhill
Duncan Bannytane is supporting the ‘Taking Care of Business’ campaign; listen to him being interviewed about mental health at work:
Full interview by Mind Charity
- what can I say, I’m the exception to the rule on that one. I’m a small furry animal person. [↩]
Tags: friends, mental health
