A group of operators from the Craft Union Pub Company have raised £3,000 for two Down Syndrome charities by co-ordinating multiple climbs of Pen Y Fan – the largest peak in South Wales – over one day. In total, a group of six people successfully managed to scale and descend all 886m of Pen y Fan three times over one day. A second group of 12 people (and a dog) managed to navigate the challenging climb twice.   The money…

According to Jane Austen it is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife1. Equally memorable are the by now surely-apocryphal schoolboy excuses: ‘a big boy did it and ran away’ and ‘the dog ate my homework’. When families of kids with disabilities gather on social media, an equally common trope is ‘I blame the parents’. It vies with ‘I blame social services’ and ‘I blame the…

It was earlier this year and the Met. Office was debating what season it was. We’d had torrential rain more or less solidly from November through February. The leaves had fallen from their branches later than usual so there was a case for this being an extended Autumn. Or was it an early Spring? In his Canterbury Tales, Chaucer wrote “Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote, The droghte of March hath perced to the roote“(1). That may have been…

In an informative and clear article, one that I would commend to every reader of the Cardiff Times, the activist and mother of two kids with Down Syndrome, Renate Lindeman, writes “…while governments (rightly) ban gender selection, selective abortion continues to be encouraged for children with Down Syndrome. In the United States and abroad, screenings are a routine part of health-care programs, and the result is the near-elimination of these children“(1). I should declare an interest. The Boss and I…

The Girl, my ten year old daughter, has Down Syndrome (DS).My phone rang just as The Girl and I were walking into the clinic for her speech therapy appointment. It was the therapist calling. She had just returned to her car in Whitchurch and found that two of the windows had been smashed. She keeps no patient details unattended in the car but it had been ransacked. We cancelled the session so that the therapist could contact the police and…

This month, we focus on events that happened last month to The Girl, my daughter, who happens to have Down Syndrome (DS). We begin with how I lost her dog. Mid-morning. I’d let the dogs out the back to do what dogs do when put out the back. A few minutes pass and then I let them both back in, or thought I did. I try some of the physiotherapy exercises I’ve been given to ease the path of my…

You’ve been there haven’t you? In the checkout queue at your local supermarket. You will already have taken care to stack the items in the trolley in accordance with the Feng Shui Principles of Optimal Utilisation. Carefully, you remove your objects from the trolley and onto the conveyor belt. You have a pattern, an order, to guide you. Large, bulky items like detergents and washing powders, tissues and household cleaners, these are first on the belt. Then food stuffs that are…

Musings of a proud dad: beating Downs barriers My Cardiff Times column. Thursday 15 December 2016 I am at Beresford’s Opticians in Wellfield Road for new lenses and, out of the blue, two members of staff here have told me they look forward to reading my monthly Musings, said one:  “I enjoy your column and read it every month; you write well”. Then we had a nice chat. Made my day! Here is the link to December’s column: http://content.yudu.com/Library/A41n6y/CardiffTimesDecember/resources/index.htm?referrerUrl

To commemorate the 11th anniversary of World Down Syndrome Day, Wyn Evans, a column writer for Cardiff Times, and loving father to his Down Syndrome daughter , shared a moving status on his facebook page yesterday: ‘I’ve often wondered what I would say or do if someone dissed Angharad or her Down Syndrome in front of her and me. I hope I would respond politely but informatively. I hope I would respond at all. I’m lucky, cos I have the…