Helen Grant - Ghostwriter

I found a new corner of cyberspace today. News Daily and it’s sister website Science Daily are two of the best sites I’ve stumbled across in a long time.

If you’re a knowledge junkie like me, you won’t be disappointed. Both sites have reams of info, dozens of intriguing sections, rotating 24 hour breaking global and universal news, and an endless supply of knowledge.

I spent hours this evening trawling through the science and world news sections. The science section alone has 23 categories, including astronomy, natural disasters, health and medicine, and space and time. There’s also entertainment, politics, business and sport sections, all with at least 20 sub-categories. 

The global emphasis makes you feel part of a united world, not a speck in a distant country, which is how local, regional and national news websites can make you feel. I kind of felt part of a united universe too. Something tells me I’ve found a new home. Click here and here if you want to join me.

Kindness. Love. Forgiveness. When a person is genuinely caring, kind and loves with all her heart, her beauty will radiate from her eyes. Her skin will glow. Her hair will shine. She will lead from the heart. There is no truer statement than beauty is in the eye of the beholder. So many people (and scarily, so many teenagers) think the secret to beauty is working from the outside in. Here’s an example.

Breast enlargements, liposuction, teeth bleaching, face jobs and so on are okay in rare circumstances; when a person has so little confidence that her mental wellbeing would be at risk without surgery. But there’s nothing sexy about having surgery for the sole purpose of attracting attention, being the fittest girl in the room, averting attention from other women, etc.

There are plenty of ways to look and feel good without resorting to surgery. Decent skin and hair products, nice clothes and pretty lingerie, good hygeine, a healthy diet and a decent hair cut are essential, but the ultimate beauty secret is within. It’s free and everyone has access to it. Look into a person’s eyes and you’ll know instantly what type of person they are and whether they have mastered the secret. The eyes really are the windows to the soul.

Video Jug looks and feels like the new You Tube. It has hundreds of videos and films explaining how to do everything you can think of, from making a film to baking California Rolls, reducing cellulite to finding your soulmate. A how to website with a twist, Video Jug is life explained on film. Click here to jump on the bandwagon.

I’ve watched the events of recent months with a heavy heart. Knife killings, drunken violence, random shootings, slaughter in American colleges, terrorism, street wars, and the increasing unruliness in schools. A few nights ago, I watched a documentary about British nightlife with a mixture of shock and disbelief. Have we really progressed that much since the days of William the Conquerer?

Walk down any street in the heart of British clubland on a Saturday night, or the neigbourhood of a sink estate or ghetto, and you’d be forgiven for thinking you’d travelled back a thousand years. Uncivilised is an understatement. But is it a surprise when nine times out of ten those involved have been dragged up in a chaotic environment by undisciplined parents?

A child who is not taught (by example) the importance of manners, courtesy, restraint and kindness, will grow into a person who lacks the ability to think beyond himself. There are exceptions, but habits and attitudes passed down through generations are hard to break. Children raised by unmoral parents are frequently devoid of compassion towards others, and have no self esteem or dignity.

We can delude ourselves by blaming societies problems on governments, and to a certain degree they are responsible - by failing to tackle the obvious cause. Everyone has a right to give birth, but not everyone is cut out for parenting. As long as there are people with a ‘do as I say not as I do’ mentality, and well-raised kids continue to be schooled alongside the influence of deliquents, the world’s mental wellbeing will continue to decline.

But having said all that, anyone can break the mould, and people do. That is something that must be encouraged. Some of the most successful people in the world came from hard backgrounds. Good family or not, we are not our parents. Every one of us is individual and human, and has the power to be what we want to be. We are born via our parents, not for them.

Just as there is a reason for everything, there is a solution too. Often it is right under our nose, something so obvious we fail to see it. In tough times, if we pray hard enough there will always be light after dark. We can start by acknowledging our own failings, and banding together to pray for an answer.

I spent the afternoon feeding baby lambs on a farm today, eating ice cream and cheesy potatoes, which was nice, but at least half my day was spent battling traffic and cursing inconsiderate drivers.

I really don’t want to become one of those drivers who uses the F word more than my rear view mirror, so when I relocate, I will use my feet for what God intended.

Not that I’ve ever had a problem in small towns. With so much congestion and rising fuel prices, driving in a city is enough to make anyone stressorexic. I’ve had more problems on four wheels in the last 10 months than a pathological liar trying to tell the truth.

I swear if I run out of fuel, get another parking ticket, break down on the motorway, have a burst tyre, get flashed by a wierdo, or have a body part seize up (like it did Thursday night - long story) one more time, I will quit driving for good. Okay, forever is a bit unrealistic, but a break from wheels didn’t do anyone any harm.

I was in Bath and the sun was shining. Arms elbow deep in washing up suds, Ollie purring at my ankles, I looked out of the kitchen window to the garden below.

The music from the radio reminded me of happy times, candy striped stalls at the fairground and hazy nights. I pulled my hands out of the basin, wet and dripping, and dried them with a towel. The music faded to a halt and I was about to leave the room when I noticed something at the end of the garden.

A face. In my garage. Pressed against the glass window of the garage door, it’s features contorted. The face looked unmoved and stared blankly up at the kitchen window.

My heart raced. “He’s in my garage!” I yelled down the phone to a friend. She was equally as unmoved. “Ignore him and he’ll go away.”

Like a helpless sap a long way from home, I went into a calm panic, if there is such a thing. I locked the kitchen door, and every door and window in the house, and took refuge in the living room. Clutching my hands together, I tried to be logical about what to do next. Call the police, yes. Ignore him, definitely. He’d never been violent but his behaviour had been menacing for months, since I told him we were finished.

Of course, the garage episode was expected. I’d been exposed to his mind games before. The psychological abuse and manipulation, twisting everything into a game. He’d been calling dozens of times a day for weeks. Text messages every few minutes. Standing outside the house, watching. Sleeping in his car outside. Pushing scribbled messages through the door, threatening suicide.

Most mornings when I left the house to take Louise to school, my car wouldn’t start despite having a full tank of petrol. So we’d walk, with the cat limping behind, and the car would mysteriously start again at 3pm each day when it was time to collect Louise. It got to the point where I expected the car not to start in the morning so I didn’t bother trying. Then I caught him fiddling with the wires under the bonnet. He had a key, goodness knows how.

Our time in Bath was a happy time but he did his best to spoil it. “Why don’t you move back to Plymouth?” he said in a text one day. So we did just that. I’d been thinking about doing it for weeks anyway. But before we did, there was the house to pack and loose ends to tie up. In the meantime, we went to Plymouth for weekends, and it was on one of those weekends that he followed me. I was staying with a friend and her fiance and we were looking forward to a rocking night out. But same old story, he kept calling my mobile and my friend’s landline. “Turn the phone off,” I said to her, and I did the same with mine.

Anyway, friend’s fiance left the club early and went home ahead of us. When we followed an hour or so later, he looked bewildered. “Someone keeps ringing the doorbell and when I answer there’s nobody there,” he said.

“How many times?” I asked.

“At least six”. He paused and then: “Go upstairs and stay upstairs. I’m going for a walk”. He grabbed a baseball bat and headed for the door. When friend and I looked out of an upstairs window a few minutes later, she pointed out a figure running up the road, closely followed by the shadow of a man with a bat. Sorted - for the night at least.

The following morning, a Sunday, I drove to a local shop to get some papers, and when I glanced in my rear view mirror, there he was; hat down over his brows, dark sunglasses, collars up. I’d been relaxing with the windows open but they were the first to go up, quickly followed by sick rushing up my throat.

He trailed me all over Plymouth. The sound of my heart was louder than the music on the radio. “My God, he’s following me!” I hissed into my phone, my panicked brain thinking he’d hear me if I shouted. This friend was more sympathetic. “I’m on my way. Stop at the Co-op on the hill”.

I had no choice because he wasn’t going anywhere apart from where I was going. The minute I stopped, his hands were all over the windows of my car. “Get out!” he thundered, “I want to talk to you!” As if I’d do a daft thing like that. I sat stony-faced, staring straight ahead, pretending he wasn’t there. “I said get out!”. No response. Then my friend pulled up behind and ordered him to get the hell away - permanently.

“Why would I do that?” he smirked, “She loves me.”

“Em, she wants nothing to do with you - EVER - so go home,” said friend. She’d said no different to what I’d been saying for weeks, months even. But for some strange reason, her words got through more than mine. He drove away and I never heard from him again.

This news item appeared in the Sunday Independent in August 1998. I was asked for my opinion as I was campaigning for single parents.

Westcountry children living with just one parent are more likely to be sexually or physically abused, according to a shock new Government report.

Children living with a mum and her boyfriend were 33 times more at risk than those in two parent households, says the report on behalf of the Lords and Commons Family and Child Protection Group.

The findings come just a week after the Sunday Independent reported the case of Philip Martin, the four year old beaten to death by his mother’s boyfriend.

But Helen Grant (Mackie back then), of Plymouth Gingerbread, a support group for single parent families, said the Government was often too quick to focus on the negative side of lone parents and step-families.

“The Government seems to want to promote the idea of the ‘normal’ family with 2.4 children, but there is no such thing as a normal these days”.

She said every case needed to be judged indvidually and there were no reasons why a child could not be happy living with one parent.

“A child can sometimes be a lot happier with a step family than with natural parents. Two parents arguing all the time is very distressing for a child.”

But one former child abuse victim, Roy Blackmore, 66, of Taunton, agreed with the findings and called for more to be done to protect youngsters. He said: “I am sure there are many who say they have taken to their step-child and love them as their own, but it appears the large majority of children are at risk”.