After the oddity of this year's Easter being trapped within two school weeks, we started the official two weeks of school holiday.
Ross and I celebrated by heading out to Sainsbury's in Rice Lane to perform a bulk household shop.
Then there was quite a big family gathering for my clan which included Guys, Prescotts and Volks. Ross didn't attend. I don't blame him. I find these sort of large gatherings difficult enough: he has no connection other than through me to anyone around the table and so he was better off out of it.
When I go back to school, we'll be going into a topic based around rivers so I went out scouting for stopping off points for a field trip around that theme.
As well as the Antony Gormley statues on Crosby Beach and the wind-farm in Liverpool Bay, I noted down the new cranes from China at the mouth of River Mersey, the control tower for the Container Port, the wind turbines which are used to power dockside activity and the many containers waiting to be placed onto lorries and transported around the country.
I took as many opportunities as I could to engage with arts events so as to re-charge my batteries.
I have looked forward to witnessing Anthony Minghella's towering production of Madama Butterfly for the first time. It didn't look as though I was going to get the opportunity to see it with ENO at the Coliseum in London so I was more than happy with the next best option of a Metropolitan Opera cinecast at FACT in Liverpool.
It was quite fabulous and left not a dry seat in the house.
To be honest, I could have done without the spectacle of Roberto Alagna forcing his voice as Lieutenant Pinkerton but, overall, this is an evening when colour, design, reflection, puppetry, movement, music and vocalisation all come together as one. If you wanted a near-perfect example of an all-embracing work of art (Wagner's Gesamtkunstwerk), then this production would be a prime contender.
The following evening I tried out Adam's Giselle at the Odeon Cinema at Switch Island. I'd never seen the work before so I was quite prepared for a lot of naff prancing. As it happened, the Royal Ballet's production made a certain sense of all that.
Like Swan Lake, the first Act was all scene setting and character introduction and the establishing of a Great European Forest setting with a peasant class and a nobility existing in close proximity. The evening took off with the entrance of the Willis in Act Two just as the swans raise the temperature in Swan Lake.
Our main dancers, Vadim Muntagirov and Marianela Núñez, did what they did very well so far as I could tell.
Ross and I attended the Community Hub for an appointment using the Pedestrian Entrance. I was bemused. I couldn't help but wonder if there was not a more exciting entrance round the corner.
We met up with Eamon, Ross's temporary CPN whilst things are sorted out around us. I am currently being asked to take charge of Ross's meds so that he does not have access to a week's supply all at once. The weekly blister pack is overwhelming and so Eamonn was looking at ways of breaking things down and reorganising them to make life simpler for me with three lots of tablets to be dispensed per day rather than four. We'll see how all that works out.
Ross and I went to the Liverpool Playhouse to see a wonderfully silly adaptation of John Buchan's The Thirty-Nine Steps.
We are both very much in need of a good laugh at present.
Warm weather gave me a great opportunity to sit out in the back garden with a beer and a book and to soak up some rays.
I'm devouring Neil Gaiman's American Gods at present.
Ross and I went to the Walker Art Gallery to see the new Pre-Raphaelites show. It was an interesting take on how Liverpool's mid-19th century merchant art collectors were instrumental in supporting the work of this new and radical art movement through purchases and exhibitions.
It was, for me, a novel idea that my home city should play quite a significant role in pump-priming the Pre-Raphaelite movement. I'd not really considered how the mercantile wealth of the city made Liverpool the Victorian art capital of the north.
The Liverpool Academy and the city’s Autumn Exhibitions enabled the movement to flourish and brought works by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Ford Madox Brown, William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais to the attention of local people. There also appears to have been a lot of cross-pollination between the well known names and their Liverpool contemporaries and collectors.
I was quite fascinated.
I set off to do some more scouting more sites for the school rivers project and took myself down to the marina just south of Albert Dock.
There was lots of good material from yachts and barges through to river vessels going through a lock.
On the Thursday before the holiday ended, I was able to attend a review session between Ross and his psychologist, Dr Agawal. Ross's temporary CPN Simon Chadwick was also there. The main item on the agenda was to discuss Ross’s Care Plan for the immediate future.
Having discussed this with Ross in advance, we both felt that we needed to have some sort of official care path set out because we felt that time was just being allowed to drift away. Both Ross and Eamon set out the parlous state of Ross's current mental health and emphasised his continuing acts of self-harm through cutting the tops of his feet and his deep despair leading to strong thoughts of ending his own life.
I pressed Dr Agawal for some sort of indication as to when Ross would at least be seen by psychiatrists at Haigh Road for his initial assessment. We were told that that would arrive within six weeks and so I pressed for a further review meeting in six weeks so that we could take stock once that letter had arrived. We were assured that treatment would follow on shortly after the assessment has taken place.
I don't know how I felt after that meeting, in all honesty. I tried to be as positive as I felt I could be for Ross's sake but I am not at all convinced of how positive the next steps are going to be or how swiftly any remedial action will commence.
It just feels like a yawning limbo.