I am writing this from an internet café… Just before Christmas I bought a brand new computer system… I spent several thousand pounds on it so that my business was in good hands… I bought from a reputable company and with the financial climate as it is I expected the best service…

3 weeks on… My new PC needs a new hard drive and I have been told that I have lost everything that was not backed up on it… I am mortified to say the least… I usually back up regularly, but have not done so for 3 weeks since getting the new PC and all the work I have done since then is lost…

Tomorrow we’ll be posting a video clip from the weekend I just spent on my diploma course… We were doing lots of work on altering perceptual positions in a variety of ways… Reframing and most importantly state altering…

This Christmas, the time my mother-in-law laughed the most… Was when she was told the story of me getting a flan ring stuck on my head as a small child… This made her laugh like crazy… Imagining me in this situation, knowing what she knows of me today… As a way of altering my own mood, I am going to share that story with you so that I can alter my own lowly state today and wait to get my computer system fixed some time this week…

In the very hot summer of 1976, my Mum was heavily pregnant with my younger brother and I was 3 years old.  This is the time when my naughtiness and mischievous nature was in its embryonic phases and you don’t really want to have to deal with a three year old terror when it is hot and you are heavily pregnant.

So my Mum is having a well-earned afternoon nap thinking that I am doing the same thing in my bedroom.

Now I was not one of those three year olds to laze around in bed napping when there was excitement and discovery to be had. Oh no, not on your nelly. In fact, you know what, I am even getting a little bit restless at having to play with my action man and toy soldiers right now. There is simply only one thing for it, I am out of this bedroom, oh yes, I am off downstairs where the far more interesting stuff can be found.

I come from a large family, a really big family and my life has been heavily punctuated with lots of family gatherings, weddings, christenings, birthdays anniversary’s, my Grandparents celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary last year, fabulous stuff. When I was there my uncle told me that at all those family gatherings, he has lingering memories of me as a child in church doing handstands on the pews or knee skidding through the aisle. Anyway…..

I have escaped the confines of my bedroom and meandered downstairs into what I consider to be the single most exciting place on the planet; The Kitchen! The only thing that makes the kitchen any more exciting is the contents of the cupboards in the kitchen.

“Oh look,” I thought, “I am going to use the kitchen stool to clamber my way up onto the work surface and see what treasures can be unearthed in the cupboards.”

So, I climb up and onto the work surface and open the cupboards “Aaahhhh!” My face lights up as I spot jars of stuff, packets of stuff, tuppaware containers of stuff, wrapped stuff that crackles I touch it, shiny stuff. Everywhere I look, there is interesting, curiosity inducing stuff and this stuff is not staying here in this cupboard, no way, it is coming with me down to the kitchen floor where I can play with it.

Packet upon packet came with me. “Now I have seen Mum doing the kind of things that are done here in the kitchen, I know what to do in a kitchen. However, in order to do official kitchen work with all this stuff I have found, I need a bowl!”

Underneath the cooker was the place that saucepans were kept, and cake rings and Yorkshire pudding baking trays and the likes and so I am thinking “Hey, in the absence of a big bowl, these things will do.”

Right now I am having fun, I am mixing stuff on the floor, I am painting, I am playing, exploring and yes, I am having fun. And who should come along and put an end to my fun. Mum enters the kitchen, takes one look at me and bursts into tears. “Oh my god, Adam… what have you done…..”

She looks at the kitchen floor. Raw pieces of jelly ripped up and stuck to cupboard units, coffee granules have created a kind of dark coloured beach effect to the floor and the empty jar is rolling around. There are patches of Jam and Lemon curd dolloped in certain areas and I am sitting pretty in the middle covered in it all with a flan ring around my neck, frowning at the prospect that my fun is likely to come to an end now.

She comes over to me and being pregnant, she leans rather awkwardly, panting heavily as she does, and tries to remove the flan ring from around my neck.

But It won’t budge.

“How did you get this over your head Adam, it won’t fit back over you head, how did you do this Adam….” My head is kind of red and hot in the commotion and has flan ring marks imprinted on it now. Mum steps out of the kitchen for a moment.

I can hear my hormonal Mum on the telephone. “Can I speak to my husband please…thank you…”  She starts sobbing now and sniffing intermittently,  “You need to come home and take care of your son….” “He has a flan ring stuck on his head and has created the biggest mess… I just can’t cope… I really can’t cope with him…..”

Now you have seen it on television, you have read about it in books, but I have experienced the experience of sitting in a hospital waiting room with a piece of kitchenware stuck to my head, so I can then have a doctor smear some kind of greasy stuff on it to ease it off.

Back in the modern day… My mood has lifted… Somewhat.