Isn’t it amazing when you see an old ‘thing’ that has completely lost its usefulness becoming really useful again but in a completely different way? Like – do you remember phone boxes? The ones you had to go to to make a call because you didn’t have a phone at home? Long before the age of the mobile phone? They have almost completely disappeared from out streets.

Last night, in this super-cool all open-plan collaborative Dogwatch place in super-cool CHQ in Ireland’s wonderful IFSC, I saw a couple of phone boxes being used again – only that they didn’t have any phones in them. They were a little like padded cells, given you the privacy you might be looking for when making a phone call.

I’m slowly finding back to myself and a bit of a routine following our stay in Germany first and then the epic cycle up the cost of California-a. It also means that I’m managing much better again to work with Pádraig on his exercises and the Tobii Dynavox. At the moment, we are using it once or twice a day, when, in reality, the device should be available to him all the time and he should be able to use it any time he wants to – not when I (or someone else) make it available to him. It’ll require a lot more additional work, but the day will come, I have no doubt whatsoever, that the Tobii Dynavox will be Pádraig’s voice.

Though, and of course, Pádraig is regaining his voice at the same time. Very, very slowly and not really controlled yet, but much more and better than before!

Finally, my (Spanish) friend who had told me about her friend’s daughter’s accident in Canada on the school exchange reminded me of something I had completely forgotten about. My friend had attended a lecture on the magic of books and how words reflect and describe our feelings; at one point the speaker noted that, quite remarkably, we have the words huérfano/a, viudo/a, but no specific word to refer to a parent who has lost a child – maybe because such a tragedy belongs to the unspeakable. Something that words cannot describe. Something that is never ‘supposed’ to happen. Life deals unspeakable tragedies and challenges us to get through this unspeakable pain. The amazing thing is that we can With our love and the love of others.