So a couple of weeks ago I wrote a post about my good friend Brian and how it was inspired by some poetry my darling Melanie wrote.  Brians dream was Scottish Games week and man did he work hard to make it happen it did and was a roaring success. I saw the similarity I guess with someone having a vision and making it come true and yes before anyone says they are 2 different scales of things but I’m not comparing impact merely that if you have a dream you follow it and make it happen.

I only found these poems a couple of weeks ago I’ve been slowly taking my time but had a wee search on her laptop and found them – still feel I’m invading her privacy and its just so hard to break that but harder knowing she’ll not give me into trouble for looking either.

Melanies poems are about Jim Cronin MBE who set up Monkey World in Dorset in 1987 along with Jeremy Keeling. Melanie admired they work they did when she got to know about them around 2011 and we then became big fans of the show Monkey Life. In 2012 she won a competition which was a pass to the park (Dorset’s not really round the corner now) However in 2013 I made the trip with my girls and we had the best time getting to be there seeing all those amazing primates that had been rescued in one way or another either home or abroad.  It really made her mind up in wanting to work with animals in one way or another when she left school as well as Jim his wonderful wife Alison was a big inspiration to Melanie and she also totally adored Jeremy just for his quiet get the work done and care for the primates never mind anything else attitude. This got her to study Science at college and then move to Zoology at Uni sadly she passed away through her 3^rd year at Glasgow Uni and never got to realise her own dream of one day going to work at Monkey World.

I have sent these to Alison and Jeremy just to share my daughters thoughts of their best friend and hope they love it as much as I’ve done reading.

Monkey World do amazing things to support these awesome primates but as with everything could always do with some help https://monkeyworld.org/ they are well worth supporting for sure I use my Amazon Smile to support the Jim Cronin Foundation and its not much but every little helps for them.

For me my change and dream will be in what I do through games education and thats why I’ve started up the Scottish Games Education Network as we all have to start somewhere. I’m passionate about my work and want us to get to a stage where we all can work together for the good of our students.