Pick Me Up! 6-Apr-2023

Scratching my head as my daughter pored over long division and fractions, it was like looking at another language. ‘Can you help me with this one?’ Rebecca, now 13, asked me one evening in 2019, pointing to a question on division. ‘I don’t get it.’ ‘I wish I could sweetheart,’ I replied. ‘But I’m not sure myself, sorry.’ I felt helpless. My daughter was in Year 5 and living with her mum during the week, she’d often come to me on the weekends laden with homework. I felt ridiculous that I couldn’t help her – I was in my 60s and she was doing maths for 10 year olds! It felt like I was going back to school But if I was honest, the subject had never been my strong…

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Here is my gorgeous cat Desmo looking after me after my recent hysterectomy. He’s such a good boy and truly my little nurse! Kelly Pickard, Hull Here’s Peppa posing with her picture in the mag! She loved it and we couldn’t get it from under her nose all day. She’s now a famous name in town… Jenna Hydes, Bulith This is Casey at Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary in Brisbane, Australia. Aww what pouch potatoes! Debs Hunt, Nottingham Here’s my Barbie reading a miniature version of the mag I featured in! We’re both still living in a Barbie world… Clare Rawling, Blackpool One Sunday recently we were bored and decided to take a photo for the grandchildren. This is the result. The message read: ‘With Love From Naan’. We haven’t heard…

Putting clean glasses away, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a group of lads enter the bar. ‘Oh my God, hi!’ my friend squealed excitedly. We were working the high season in Magaluf back in June 2016, and her brother and a group of mates had come for a holiday. Chatting to the group, we arranged to meet them later after our shift. They were a nice group of lads, and we all got on well. One of them, Jordan, was especially funny. I could tell he liked to make people laugh, and he seemed like a genuinely nice bloke. We saw a lot of them during their week-long holiday and after they left, we all added each other on Facebook. I didn’t think much more if…

By the time of the trial at Nottingham Crown Court in July 2020, I was six months pregnant. It was traumatic to relive it but I was determined to get justice for Jordan. Kai was the one who had thrown the first punch, after he took offence to Jordan’s jokey reply to his comment about being ‘fat and ginger’. He’d punched Jordan in the face, and when Jordan, Ben and Adam decided to leave to avoid any further trouble, Kai and his mates followed them up the road. They shouted abuse and Jordan had tried to diffuse the situation. But Kai had punched Jordan again and then his mate Cameron punched him, too – sending him to the ground, where he’d smashed his head on the pavement, fracturing his skull.…

Hearing the rattle of food, the dogs started jumping up at the kennels. ‘Alright, I’m coming,’ I laughed, putting bowls down in front of them. As they got stuck into their dinner, I smiled. I was the welfare manager at Bath Cats and Dogs Home, and caring for animals really was my passion. I’d even adopted a few from the rescue centre myself! I wished I could take them all home, but I was content with showing them as much love and care as I could. Some of them had had rough starts in life, and I made it my mission to treat them with kindness. As I finished off my morning rounds back in January 2016, the phone rang. ‘We’re on our way in now with a dog,’ the…