Last night I was with friends and they were all telling me that they read my blog and I should keep it up. One friend Clare Collins says “you could do with a happy one” I have racked my brains all night and day and I think I found a happy story.

At christmas 2013 things were pretty bad. The mortgage company had put payments back to full rate. We had no money. I had a lot of issues with certain members of the family not helping or assisting with Debbie or even just taking her out for the day. They had become violent when I had asked for their help. I was ready to give up on everything. For some weird reason I didn’t and thought I would cut off from those people and try and come up with my own great plan.

We had been using an “Care” agency call Abbey for about a year and they had caused us loads of problems. The main one was they kept sending in new members of staff all the time. These people wouldn’t have any understanding of Debs situation her diet or medication. Also they wouldn’t know alarm codes. I had said when we took them on that it wouldn’t be good for Debbie to wake up to someone new stood over her.

The final straw came when I was shooting a wedding one Saturday night and I got a call from ADT alarms that the alarm on the house had gone off. I knew Debbie was on her own so I called her to find out what had happened. There was no answer but because I knew the time was about right for a carer call I telephoned Abbey they told me it couldn’t be one of the carers as they had the number. I said but your always setting it off not everyone has the number. She argued but I had to set off home to sort.

After 20 mins Debbie called me back very stressed. The carer had gone into the house and set the Alarm off didn’t know the code and couldn’t get it. Debbie was asleep and the alarm was going in the dark, this big Polish girl was stood over Debbie and scared her to death. Debs screamed and I think scared them both. The carer then sorted the alarm. To add insult to injury when Debbie asked for an omelette she said “I don’t do English food” (to be said in your best polish Accent). Since when is an omelette English. I canceled Abbey that night, in response to the problem they were abusive and threatening.

Don’t worry Clare Collins it gets better.

In the following week a friend of mine called and though I don’t believe in the occult she had been telling me I had to go see a “white witch” in Yorkshire that was “amazing” and will tell your future.

I did go to see her and without getting into too much detail she did tell me a great deal about my current situation without me having to saying a word. She also brought up the care and said I needed to recruit “Mrs Doubtfire” from the 90s movie. I knew what she meant and I had this in mind when I created the plan.

Plan ran like this

1, Cut off from stupid family

2, Place advert for carer

3, Get Job and return to work.

Step 1 easy and done, step 2 I placed an advert in Gumtree for an au pair style live in carer to look after Debbie. We had a lot of responses including a Turkish girl that was going to leave her 3 year old child to come to UK, Nigerian girl who turned up 2 hours late for the interview and didn’t seem to understand care. The second time we ran the advert we had an response from a woman in London who’s mother was in Romania and looking for work in the UK. She had been a carer in Italy but was available now. We had a Skype interview with Debbie and Me on one laptop, Lucia in Romania and her Daughter in London. The minute I saw Lucia I knew it was right, she looked like Mrs Doubtfire, and after talking I knew her heart was in the right place. She started with us in Feb 2014 and was the only reason I could return to work. She has been kind and helpful with Debbie’s care. We have had all sorts of issues getting Lucia in place but she had been the single best reason for putting my plan in place in the first place. Long live Lucia