Get clickin'!

From time to time a person comes into your life that takes your breath away with their sheer courage and determination and makes you want to be a better human being.

For me that person is Jenny McCann.

I met Jenny through a mentoring programme I am involved in with an organisation here in Dublin, Enable Ireland. She used to come into my workplace one morning a week and we’d work together on news articles and how to put stories together and all of that.

Now however, we’re moving on to creative writing and so we’ve set up a blog (I’m spreading the word according to Blogger so I am) called Can you do the McCann can? (geddit?) and she’s going to use that to perfect her writing skills.

So far we’ve literally just put up a welcome post and some links (and a shiny pink clock shamelessly stolen from Dunner’s page) but we’re aiming to update it at least once a week.

The reason Jenny is so special to me is because she has Dystonia, a neurological movement disorder, which means she is a wheelchair user and has limited movement, but she never, ever lets it hold her back.

She goes to college, she has written a booklet about her life, she goes out on work experience, she loves magazines and fashion, she has competed in international sporting events winning countless medals, she’s been an extra in a film, she loves music and meeting with her friends, she even has a fiancée (lucky duck) and she’s always so upbeat, busy and cheerful that sometimes she scares me!

Me, I moan about being fat and having no fella.

So you can see the difference there! And you can also see how she inspires me and how working with her is a joy and a privilege.

What I’m asking now is that readers of this blog take the time to drop by her blog every so often to give her your support and encouragement. The link is http://www.mccanncan.blogspot.com/ (it’s in my sidebar too) and if you wanted to be even nicer you could link her to your blog or website too.

I’ve already taken the liberty of adding Red Mum, Dunner, Paige and JL Pagano on to Jenny’s page so she’d have more links than just mine. I hope that’s ok.

So drop by to say hi, you’re more than welcome! Get clickin'!

Pic: http://tekworks.ca/images/hand.jpg

The look, of love.......

Dear Jesus what have I done?

No, I haven’t murdered anyone (though if I’ve to sit through one more episode of Agatha Christie with Daddy Dunne, I will) it’s something much MUCH worse.

I’ve joined a new Irish dating website and agreed to write about it for my column.

So, not only do I have to admit to being a sad, desperate singleton in public, I also may have to meet some of these degenerates in order to gather some fodder for Said and Dunne.

This is not something I want to do, or in fact have any intention of doing, but everytime I mention the site people lean in closer, their eyes gleam and they say ‘oooh when are you going to meet one’ as if they’re special website men who should be kept in a glass box.

As if that wasn’t quite enough, it seems that even said special website men are rejecting me as the only messages I’ve had are from midgets, literally men 5ft 5 or under.

I joined about a week and a half ago and so far, I’ve had about 14 or 15 messages, at least five of which were from the site administration letting me know about various features etc.

The rest were from ‘real’ men, though certainly not Mr Right and Tall all of whom can’t seem to string two sentences together and say things like “my favourite pub is anywhere once it’s trendy”. Oh dear.

My favourite message however was from a man who was 55 and described himself as ‘good looking and in good shape’.

Intrigued I clicked on his photo (shudder, think a taxi driver merged with the manager of a greasy spoon café) and read on.

I knew I should have stopped when I got to the bit where it said that his favourite hobby was “naughty games in my secluded back garden” but like a car crash that you just can’t look away from, I kept reading to find out that his ideal woman wore “short skirts, high heels and no knickers”.

Classy!

If this is the calibre of men out there, I think I’m better off being single!

Pic: www.personal.psu.edu/.../ computerlove3.gif