Towards A Better Tomorrow, Salford Uni Teaching April 24th 2015

Apr, 28 2015

The day began at 9.45am when my dear friend and colleague Russell Hogarth picked me up to take me to the Preston train station. We arrived about 9.55am,thankfully our train wasn’t till 10.10am so we had a little time to breathe and gain our strength. The momentum kicked in when Russell played a snippet of ‘Eye of the Tiger ‘ by Survivor in his car, which was loosely the main theme of our day together.

So, all was going relatively well. We’d got on the train and begun planning our teaching session. Something, however, was afoot. When we stopped at the Bolton platform there was an announcement that there had been an incident on the line. This was further confirmed as suicide much to the panic of everyone in what played out to be a surreal moment from an action movie or even a psychological thriller.

We tried to get on a bus to take us to Salford crescent there were no buses. We tried to get on the next train it had just gone. We were rapidly running out of ideas. We found a taxi and took a 20 minute drive to Salford uni which cost £20.

We arrived at Salford Uni. Linda the main lecturer met us and was very apologetic with what we had to go through. Despite the whole irony of the situation we got in class at 11.45am and began teaching.

Russell began with his excellent rapport with the student which created a few laughs and made them feel relaxed and at ease with us. So Russell unpacked his life and did the standard, ‘Can you guess how old I am ?’ Which left many thinking….

By the time Russell showed the slide on Whittingham Hospital it was my time to come in. I gave an accurate and articulate delivery about my life and where I’m at now. There were several jokes but I think the students didn’t feel right laughing with me in fear they would ridicule me, which would not have been the case. 

Linda then came in and read ‘The Letter’ to the students which revealed my illness at the time, May 2000 and the worry my parents were going through.

Russell then revealed more about his life which included his sister, his daughter and his own mental health decline due to everything that had happened to him previously.
I explained a little about the CCG and the benefits it gives individuals then we rapped it up with a showing of the Brian Charnely video ‘A Series of Dreams’ , a schizophrenic who sadly took his  own life. The video showed his artwork backed by the title track by Bob Dylan.

We asked the students if they had any questions. One student asked me ‘How did I learn to drive when I had the M.E.?’ I explained that I was determined to fight for my independence and strive to retrieve the teenage years that I had lost. Linda defended me and said ‘Alex is a fighter’. How true her words were.

After we had finished a student approached me and said my story was inspiring. He then went on to tell me how he wants to be pro-active in helping people who have mental health problems by preventing them from starting to begin with. I actually felt quite inspired myself after I talked to him.

We had a concluding lunch then it was off home. Russell had an impromptu conversation with one of the train staff on the Salford platform. He referred to the suicide drama we went through at the beginning of our day as a ‘jumper’ . It kind of reveals the stigma and prejudice that surrounds mental health as well as the ignorance and the poor reports of it via the media that paint a negative picture of it which everyone then assumes mental health sufferers are all murderers.

Home by 3.30pm. Took me a while to recover from all that but it was another resounding success for our teaching project and once again heading, ‘Towards a better tomorrow’.