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Gill Oliver

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fiction from life

Making Headway

March 21, 2021 by Gill

A big preoccupation right now is introducing Joe Faber to as many people as possible. So it’s really thrilling to see the Headway interview with Terry and myself online. 

Headway is the brain injury charity which offers support through a network of local centres and its own rather lovely website. We were already fans of this organisation because of the help they continue to give an old friend who suffered a cerebral aneurysm.

 Many months ago now, before the paperback was out, I was contacted by a reader, Sue, who’s a therapist working for the charity. At that point she hadn’t even finished the book, but she was enjoying it, and could see its usefulness to clients and their families – alongside all the excellent non-fiction which is available. I can’t express how much that meant to me: it was exactly what I’d hoped. Sue has been a tremendous champion, pointing me to the right contact, and the upshot is this beautifully produced article. Read Headway interview

A big aspect of the Headway website is its ‘share your story’ invitation. In an area where both the effects of injury and experiences of care are very varied, it’s always been important to share stories.  It has never been more so than during the Covid crisis, when hospital visiting is not allowed. This puts huge pressure on already overstretched nurses, and it’s truly awful for the patients themselves as they start to recover and the realities sink in. But also, bluntly, brain injured patients are being discharged to bewildered families and caregivers who simply haven’t had the opportunity to learn at the bedside from medical staff. They haven’t even had the opportunity to come to terms with the changes in their loved ones. They’re shocked by what they find. They haven’t seen progress – which may come by minute increments – first hand, so they can’t see that the trajectory is a positive one. They may lack hope. If you’ve connected with, say, a facebook stroke supporters group, your will know what I mean – they have so many heartbreaking questions, and it’s not officially anybody’s job to check they’ve been answered. And that’s before you even start trying to understand things like discharge procedures and the social care system. Add to that the stress of managing care alongside home working and home schooling, and people are in despair. 

I will never forget how simultaneously thrilled and terrified I was when my husband came home. And I was well prepared! I’d picked up so much along the way, and benefitted from multiple short but meaningful interactions with the nursing staff, who had a conceptual framework for all this which I lacked. They were able to say, this is normal, this is a good sign, this is what we do. Before discharge I was able to get them to show me how to make Terry comfortable in bed, and physios taught him how to get in and out of a car.  Admittedly, he hadn’t mastered the Zimmer at that stage, and I hadn’t grasped the basics of manoeuvring a wheelchair beyond the smooth flooring of a hospital. This is nothing compared with what people are facing up to now. There is so much to adapt to, and it all takes time to sink in. The awful thing is that every jar and every little hurt or scare can resonate for hours, even days, in the lived experience of a seriously weakened person. Essentially you’re bringing home a newborn – because yes, this person has literally been born into their second life – but a newborn who has an adult identity to protect, and who doesn’t fit in a cot.

Headway, Stroke Association, Carers UK – all deserve our support.

Hark at them…

May 22, 2022 No Comments

Another year, another Stroke Awareness month… I’m thrilled that Somerset libraries have  taken the opportunity to join in, with this month’s podcast. Jeremy Thompson-Smith made

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Yevtushenko on untruth… a verse translation

May 20, 2022 No Comments

https://youtu.be/d-fQFMO7654 Back in March, as the war in Ukraine gathered pace, I became obsessed with the memory of a poem I’d studied as a sixth-former,

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On getting stuck in a shed

July 3, 2021 No Comments

Music to my ears from David Mitchell  at this year’s Sidmouth Literary Festival Knowing neurosis from the inside ought to be really useful for a

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Book tour, March 2021

April 15, 2021 No Comments

Thank you Kelly at www.lovebookstours.com for organising this virtual book tour! And to all the lovely book bloggers who participated.

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Making Headway

March 21, 2021 No Comments

A big preoccupation right now is introducing Joe Faber to as many people as possible. So it’s really thrilling to see the Headway interview with Terry and myself online!

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You really shouldn’t do that…

January 28, 2021 No Comments

This article first appeared in My Weekly online, 26 January 2021. “So,” asked my interviewer, “what are you working on now?” She smiled approvingly when

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Filed Under: Stroke Support Tagged With: fiction from life, Headway, stroke recovery, stroke rehab

Launching in lockdown

December 3, 2020 by Gill

2020 will go down as a bad year for Napoleonic plans, but a great year for taking up qigong, and in particular, learning to shift your weight without falling over.

 Anything which involved putting a date in a calendar, or contacting public and private bodies, or  even putting physical objects in physical places, has been doomed and we’ve been thwarted time and again in our plans for the publication and launch of Joe Faber and the Optimists.

We finally gave up waiting for the time to be right for that cosy book launch at Winstone’s bookshop, Sherborne, with friends, fizz and a few posh nibbles.   A couple of months ago, we launched the paperback version of Joe Faber and the Optimists via Zoom.  Yes, I know, yawn… it’s not the same is it?

Extract from book launch interview, September 2020

How did this novel come about?

Including a few words from my husband Terry. Interviewer Susan Elderkin.  Event organised by Liz Gordon from Brilliant Fish 

HOWEVER it did present some opportunities we wouldn’t otherwise have had. It made it possible for friends and family from far and near to come together. My Shetland family for a start; my naughty little sister was the inspiration for Nell in the book, so it was great that she could be there.  Two wonderful writers,  members of my reading panel whose editorial comments were invaluable, were involved – that’s Juliette Adair in Uplyme and William Davidson in York – as well as writing colleagues from here and now. The lynchpin, responsible for introducing us all in the first place, was   Susan Elderkin, who conducted the interview with such poise and insight. It was wonderful to see friends from Wales and Herefordshire in the same ‘room’ as the Dorset / Somerset gang.  So it made for quite a celebration.

Zoom also allowed the event to be recorded. Armed with the conviction that iMovie is designed to be used by children, I’ve started editing some short  extracts, which I’ll be posting here.

2020 has blocked our route more times than I care to remember but it’s also led us down some unexpected paths. 

Let’s hear it for optimism!

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: fiction from life, resilience, stroke

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07769 117424

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Media Pack

Video – About writing Joe Faber and the Optimists, with a reading

Joe Faber Digital Media Pack

Joe Faber  Media Pack 1-page PDF

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