The hidden symptoms that reveal whether YOU are one of the millions of adults with undiagnosed dyslexia - and the next steps you must take
Sue Kershaw, as one of 11 children, said that education in her family was never much of a priority. So when she found herself struggling to spell words and understand dense textbooks while at school in the 1960s, she was left to 'figure it out' alone.
The now 73-year-old says: 'I smiled and winged it – but underneath I was frustrated and lacked confidence.'
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DEAR JANE: I asked my wife to quit her job and have a baby. Her response has led me to a dreadful thought
Dear Jane, My wife and I have been together for five years and have been married for almost a year.
BBC News
3 hours ago
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The artist who swept Glasgow's streets for 30 years
When Allan Richardson was 17 he wanted to go to art school, but one day he returned home from school to find his dad had secured him an interview for a job with the council."All I wanted to do was my art," said Allan. "But my dad said to me, 'you can do your art but you have to have something to keep you'."Allan went to the interview and the following Monday he started work as a "litter boy", going round the streets and emptying the took a back seat over the next decade as he worked in various council jobs before settling on sweeping the streets of Glasgow's west end. For 30 years, until his recent retirement, Allan kept the city's Byres Road and its surrounding streets clean but he also made sure he had his paint palette and sketchbook in his pocket. Drawing and painting almost every day during his lunch break, and often with his handmade sketchbook balanced on the bar of his cart, Allan quickly became accustomed to searching for the west end's hidden gems."People walk by going to work or university, or they're on a phone and they're just walking ahead thinking about where they need to be, but there is so much all around them."That was the good thing about my job, I would see all of that and think 'that's an interesting feature on that building, I might come back and draw that'." Allan, who is now 60, said the area had changed a lot over the three decades he cleaned and painted said Byres Road has always been a centre for students, but the butchers and jewellery stores of the past have now been swapped for chain takeaways and coffee a plan in his head as he swept the streets, Allan has painted hundreds of buildings in the west end from the cobbled backstreets and popular student hangouts to the Kibble Palace in the Botanic Gardens and the iconic tower of Glasgow University's Gilbert Scott Building."There's a lot of good architecture in the west end and there's a lot of history, which I really like," he said. Part of Glasgow west end's story Allan said one of the reasons he stayed in his job so long was the people he met and spoke to each day."For some of the older people in the area, chatting to me would make their day as they maybe wouldn't speak to anyone for a couple of days," he of the people Allan spoke to and became a close friend of was renowned Scottish writer and artist Alasdair Gray."I used to sweep his street," said said he had no idea who Gray was but the paintbrushes in his window had caught his attention as he passed by, so the next time Allan saw him, he asked if he was an artist."He invited me in to have a look around at his work but he never introduced himself," Allan said."It wasn't until later I discovered who he was, and I would chat to him like with any of the other locals."One day Gray asked Allan if he could draw him."I went to his flat and he sketched me," he said."A few years later, I discovered I was going to be on the new mural at Hillhead subway station after its refurbishment, which was fantastic."I can now go to the underground and see myself standing there with my brush as part of the story of the west end." Gray, who is best-known for his first novel Lanark, died in 2019. His Hillhead subway mural shows a panoramic and detailed sweep of the west end, from Byres Road looking east towards the centre of shows many of the streets Allan swept and drew for 30 years. Now retired, Allan said it's time to move on and learn something new as he hopes to do more art classes and explore new places in the city with his Glasgow Urban Sketchers group.
The Guardian
4 hours ago
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Notes from a nursing home: ‘We don't speak of sadness here'
I sit in my room in this nursing home near Sydney, a box of four walls that holds all I now call my own. Two suitcases could carry it: a few clothes, some worn books, a scattering of trinkets. The thought strikes me as both stark and oddly freeing. Not long ago my world was vast, a house with rooms I rarely entered, a garden that sprawled beyond need, two cars idling in the driveway, one barely driven. Now it's gone. The house, the cars, the cartons overflowing in the garage, all sold, given away or abandoned. A heart attack and dwindling funds brought me here two and a half years ago. Family ties, thin as they are, keep me from moving anywhere away from here. I don't resent it. I've seen the world, jungles, deserts, cities that glittered under foreign skies. That hunger is sated. This is a different journey, one of stillness, of finding meaning in what remains. The nursing home is no idyll, no glossy promise of golden years. It's a place of routine, of quiet necessity. Mornings begin with carers, gentle, hurried women who tidy my bed, adjust pillows, offer a smile before moving on. Tea and toast settle as I sit by the window. The air carries the clean sting of antiseptic, mingling with the chatter of birds outside. There's peace in these moments, before the home stirs fully awake. The staff do their work well, though they're stretched thin. They check on us, ask after our aches, offer kind words that linger like a faint warmth. Activities fill the day, card games, a singalong. I join when I feel like it, which is less often than I might. The choice is mine, and that's enough. The front doors creak as relatives arrive, their faces a mix of cheer and strain. Some hide tears, we all pretend not to see. We don't speak of sadness here. It's a silent agreement, a way to keep the days bearable. Sign up for a weekly email featuring our best reads The residents are a varied lot. Some are old, their bodies bent by years. Others are younger, broken by minds that betray them. A woman down the hall clutches a photograph, her son a rare visitor, his life too crowded for her. She speaks of him with no anger, only a flat resignation. A man, his eyes dim with addiction's toll, mutters of a sister who never calls. I listen, nod, share a story of my own. We understand each other here, bound by the shared weight of being left behind. This place is a mirror, reflecting a truth we'd rather not face. Families, once close, find it easier to place their own in these clean, quiet rooms. It's not cruelty, not always. Caring for the old, the broken, the lost-it, demands time, patience, a surrender most cannot afford. So they sign papers, appoint guardians and let the system take over. The nursing home becomes a vault, sealing away what disrupts the orderly march of life. Out of sight, out of mind. Yet I wonder if, in the quiet of their nights, those families feel the shadow of what they've set aside. I walk the corridors, dim and smelling of antiseptic and something less tangible – forgotten promises perhaps. Residents sit, staring at walls or televisions that drone with voices no one heeds. Many wrestle with dementia, their thoughts scattering like ash. Others bear scars of choices or chance, their lives eroded to this point. A few, changed by illness or time, became strangers to those who loved them. To care for such people is hard, unglamorous work. Easier to let them fade into these walls. Sign up to Five Great Reads Each week our editors select five of the most interesting, entertaining and thoughtful reads published by Guardian Australia and our international colleagues. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Saturday morning after newsletter promotion Yet there's life here too. I find it in small things: a book that holds my attention, sunlight warming my room, a laugh shared over a memory. The community binds us. We talk of old days, of children grown distant, of the world beyond these walls. There's comfort in that, a kind of strength. The local shops are my horizon now, but I don't mind. I've seen enough of the world to know its pleasures are fleeting. Here I have my memories, these people, this quiet. The day stretches before me, simple and unhurried, the sun climbing higher, the air still fresh. There's no need to rush, no call to chase what's gone. This is my life now, pared to its bones, and it's enough. The light shifts on the wall, and I breathe it in. It's a good day. Better than most. Andrew McKean is a writer and a resident of an aged care facility in New South Wales, Australia.
