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Inspiration

A Visit to Southport Botanic Gardens (Churchtown)

By Adventures, Friends & Family, Happiness & Joy, Inspiration, Life, NatureNo Comments

Yesterday my friend Simon and I visited Southport Botanic Gardens in Churchtown, Southport. It was perfect weather and we had a great time exploring a park bursting with a variety of trees and shrubs from across the world.

Southport Botanic Gardens features include a bowling green, a Cafe, an Aviary, a Victorian Fernery, a Victorian Garden, a children’s play park suitable for all ages and a lake. Here are some photos from our visit (click on any image for full-size):

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Southport Botanic Gardens (Churchtown) Sign.
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Southport Botanic Gardens entrance.
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A short stone tunnel.
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The Cafe & Aviary in the centre of the Botanic Gardens.
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The Aviary houses a variety of birds.
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Victorian Fernery notice board sign.
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Inside the Victorian Fernery is this beautiful fountain.
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Inside the Victorian Fernery is this small Wishing Well.
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Me inside the Victorian Fernery.
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The Victorian Garden (1).
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The Victorian Garden (2).
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The Victorian Garden (3).
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The lake is bigger than a pond, but not really big enough to justify the term lake.

Essential Info:

  • Admission Fee: Free.
  • Opening Times vary so check Visit Southport’s website.
  • Postcode for SatNavs or Google Maps is: PR9 7NB.
  • Free parking is available on the street outside of the Botanic Gardens.
  • Highly Recommended is the reasonably priced Cafe.
  • In the same building as the Cafe is a gift shop. It sells seeds for the birds in The Aviary There is also a gift shop, which sells seeds for birds at The The Aviary, toys & sweets and other seemingly random gifts.
  • Has Toilet facilities.

There were many trees that Simon and I admired, but weren’t able to identify. The only thing that could have been improved was more information about the trees and shrubs. A fun way this could be done is by means of a tree hunt. It would be great if visitors could pick up a leaflet from the Cafe, which directed visitors to trees and shrubs in the Botanic Garden. The leaflet could help visitors identify what species of tree or shrub that they have found and a give a bit of additional information.

Afterwards Simon and I headed home, stopping along the way for tea.

Blog soon,

Antony



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Saturday 27 August 2016

Ruth Cocker Burks: The altruistic woman who cared for gay men dying with AIDS in the 1980s in the USA

By Gigs & Shows, Health, Inspiration4 Comments

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Ruth Cocker Burks, image by Brian Chilson (from Out Magazine’s Website)

The photo above is of Ruth Cocker Burks.

Ruth is the altruistic woman who cared for gay men dying with AIDS in the 1980s in Little Rock, Arkansas, USA. It started when she was at University Hospital visiting a friend who had cancer. At the time she was 25 years old with a young family.

One day she saw a door to a patient’s room with a big red bag over it. Inside was a gay man dying of AIDS. Nobody came to visit him. He was asking for his mother. So Burks called his mother. His mother told Burks that being gay had brought shame on the family. His family didn’t want to know. Even the healthcare staff treated him as cursed. So Burks cared for him. She visited him in hospital and when he finally passed away she buried him.

Burks then went on to give this end-of-life care to hundreds of gay men and to bury at least three dozen herself. Luckily for Burks, her mother had bought 262 plots in a graveyard when she was younger due to a colossal family argument. This meant that Burks has plenty of space for the burials.

From the bottom of my heart and on behalf of those gay men, I just want to say: Thank you Ruth Cocker Burks. Nobody deserves to die alone, afraid and without care or love.

Burks believes that a higher power led her to her destiny of caring for these gay men dying with AIDS. I don’t know if that’s true or not. But what I do know is that Burks’ actions represents the very best aspects of humanity: care, compassion, kindness and love.

Burks is an inspirational woman and I wish we could all be more altruistic, meaning that we care for the well-being of others more.

The blog post above is a shortened paraphrase of Meet the Woman Who Cared for Hundreds of Abandoned Gay Men Dying of AIDS from Out Magazine’s online website.

Blog soon,

Antony

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Friday 22 July 2016

The Story of Neil Gaiman’s Cousin Helen

By Books & Authors, InspirationNo Comments
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Neil Gaiman, Image from The Byre Theatre.

 The Writer Neil Gaiman used to think that making up stories for a living was trivial. That was until he learned the story of his cousin Helen. Here is Neil Gaiman sharing the story of his cousin Helen:

“Helen is 96 and now lives in Florida. At the end of World War II, Helen and her two sisters wound up in a refugee camp in Southern Europe having fled Poland. Homeless and displaced, they finally ended up in America.

In Poland, Helen had been smuggled into the Warsaw Ghetto. There was a corpse run every morning, transferring the corpses out of the ghetto and she snuck back in on the returning transport. I think she snuck back out that way, amongst the corpses, too. Inside the ghetto, she started teaching the local girls arithmetic and grammar. At that point in time, books were illegal and there was a death sentence for anyone found possessing one. However, Helen had a Polish translation of Gone with the Wind and she kept it hidden behind a loose brick in the wall. She would stay up late every night reading so that when the girls came in the next day she could tell them what had happened in the chapters she had read the previous night and just for that hour these girls got out of the Warsaw Ghetto and they got to visit the American South.

Helen’s story – this story – made me realise that what I do is not trivial. If you make up stuff for a living, which is basically what I do, you can feel kind of trivial sometimes but this made me realise that fiction is not just escapism, it can actually be escape, and it’s worth dying for.” – Neil Gaiman

(From The UN Refugee Agency, Last accessed: Sunday 17th July 2016.)

People need stories, we always have. In ancient history, our ancestors sat around camp fires telling one another stories, illuminated by the glow of the fire. Then they began writing them down and having them printed and published in books. Today we still have printed books and ebooks are in their infancy.

In the future, people will still need stories. To understand why this statement is true, you need to understand why people read stories. We read stories to light up our imagination, for pleasure, for entertainment, to make us laugh, to make us cry, to be thrilled, to make us feel alive, to give us hope, to unwind, to escape and to learn.

Blog soon,

Antony



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Wednesday 20 July 2016

Photos from Astley Hall Park Today

By Friends & Family, Happiness & Joy, Inspiration, NatureNo Comments

Today my good friend Simon and I went to Astley Hall park. Here are some photos of the beautiful park, click on any photo for full size image:

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Astley Hall
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Astley Hall Park/Grounds (1)
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Astley Hall Park/Grounds (2)
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Astley Hall Park/Grounds (3)
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Trees that Simon and I nicknamed ‘Teardrop Trees’ (1)
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Tree that Simon and I nicknamed ‘Teardrop Trees’ (2)
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Art installation (1)
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Art installation – Close up (2)

Essential Info:

  • Free parking is available in a reasonably-sized carpark.
  • A super-expensive cafe is on site. Avoid due to costs and take your own food/drink.
  • Toilets on site.
  • A Chorley Remembers Experience, guided tour of Astley Hall, as well as various events are on throughout the year. For more details including Opening Times, Admission Prices, etc. See Astley Hall’s website here.
  • Has facilities for children such as play area/park.

Blog soon,

Antony



I aim for posts on this blog to be informative, educational and entertaining. If you have found this post useful or enjoyable, please consider making a contribution by Paypal:


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Sunday 17 July 2016
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