Day 6. In which Clippy Mat celebrates her friend.

This is my friend Helen, taken way back when.

We call this picture, 'dancing queen, young and sweet only 17'.
A while back, when I first started blogging, I blogged about my f.o.t.h.s here
The friend of mine who I mentioned as having had a stroke is Helen.

Helen is exactly one day older than me, so i guess she has seniority.
I have to do what she tells me. :-))

She reads my blog regularly and always leaves a comment, which I love.
Helen and the rest of the f.o.t.h.s. Vee, Katie, Mary, Syd and yours truly email each other all of the time to keep up with our friendship of many years.
Before that we wrote letters.
By hand.
Imagine that!!

Helen cracks us up on a regular basis and always has something insightful and funny to say about the trials and tribulations of her recovery since her stroke.
The stroke was 4 years ago.
Before that Helen skied regularly and loved nothing more than to go flying in a microlight plane with her husband, John.

It's been a long road back and, she would tell you herself, she still has a long way to go.
But when her more able bodied friends, such as myself, cannot be bothered to get off their arses and do a bit of much needed exercise to stay healthy, where is Helen?
Why, she's at the gym, with her feet strapped to the exercise bike, or hooked up to the treadmill, and she's slogging her backside off trying to get back somewhere close to where she used to be.
She keeps on going and she's an inspiration to all of us.

Helen types with one hand now.
We met in secretarial college and we used to have fingers that flashed as they flew around the typewriter (before keyboards they had these things called typewriters)

We practiced to William Tell's Overture to increase our speed.
(I realize how much that dates me.)

It takes a lot of effort for her to write now but she does it.
Almost every day.
We love to hear about her antics in the gym and the people that she regularly works alongside.
Or the antics of her one of a kind mother.
I think Helen's writing is her lifeline.

I have said before that she should blog but she just feels like it would be a hassle for her right now, even tho' she would love to do it.
So I have become her Admin. Assistant and now Helen has her own blog.
http://tellinsfromhelen.blogspot.com/
I hope you will go and visit and leave her a message.

She will have lots of funny stories, some updates on her progress and some tales of her struggles.
I'll be posting for her but it's all her stuff.

Helen is in the UK by the way.
Just outside of Newcastle.
She'll be sending me regular emails and from those I'll be updating her blog until she feels confident enough to do it herself.
Whenever she is ready.

It will take her a while to get to know what to do, hey, I'm still learning, but I think she will get a lot out of blogging because she has so much of a story to tell.
I hope you will think so too.