I’ve read and re-read that last blog post a few times now and I’m really gutted. I don’t think I’ve even come close to expressing the warmth, the friendship, the safe harbour it was for us. Long before we knew we’d always really need a harbour from all the hard stuff ahead.

It was during Joff’s time at Ladybird he was diagnosed with Lowe Syndrome. It was during Joff’s time at Ladybird where his playmate, getting a dirty pad changed, used to eye point and smile when Joff’s name was mentioned in a list of asking “who made that terrible smell?” and everybody in on that wee joke. The wee pasta bow-shape medal Joff won in the dad’s coal carry race ( still got ) The group, in a circle, singing “Sandy Boy”. The times we had our group photo taken for the local press when some firm had made a generous donation that would keep the minibus going and pay the women’s wages for another few months. The icy cold winter night when we went out, teachers and mums alike, shaking charity cans and buckets round the pubs and hotels celebrating impending Christmas, dressed up as the most motley crew of ladybirds and Mrs Santas, totally freezing our tits off, getting a free snack of poppadums and spicy onions from the Indian restaurant along with a generous cash donation, and coming back to count the mounds of spare change, finding we had amassed a few hundred pounds. YAY!

How we petitioned the council when they decided to sell off the old folks’ home and lose use of our annexe, such as it was. Applications for grants, letters asking for donations of raffle prizes, getting a silk Versace tie decorated with ladybirds from the BBC that Edmonds wore on Noel’s House Party and then Mr Effie being given that as a gift when we left the group as a thanks for our support. Ha! - our support! The lock-in in the pub one evening after our annual fun day in the grounds outside, the police in the bar talking to the landlord while we all sat in the dark in the function hall, a tad squiffy let’s say, giggling at the naughtiness, all shushing each other and making far more noise than if we’d just shut up, totally crapping it when the landlady’s dog had snuck in and started to lick my leg unexpectedly. Manning a decorator's table outside the Co-op selling raffle tickets, where one of the mums and I doing our two hour slot made up our list of top ten excuses for not donating, along with the other mum’s pithy comeback to one particularly rude refusal by a lassie she’d been at school with and there was no love lost for her anyway - “ I hope your next shite’s a HEDGEHOG!". The time when the minibus came back from group half an hour late because they discovered that Joff liked speedhumps and went driving round the caravan site again and again to make him laugh.

So many many happy memories.

I still haven’t come close :(