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Generally speaking I'd walk a million miles rather than eat a marrow. Besides it being the source of considerable social embarrassment* (and marital discord) some 30 years ago, I've always been of the opinion that there is no experience in the world that involves eating a marrow that couldn't be improved upon simply by not eating it. There is one exception, however, one recipe which is incredibly tasty and has no sense of the marrow to it at all - and here it is.




Half Medium Marrow           3TbTamari
1sliced Onion                        BlackPepper
4oz Grated Cheese

Peel the marrow, cut it into one inch slices, discard the seeds then cut it into one inch cubes. Place the cubes in the bottom of a baking dish. Cover with the sliced onion, then the grated cheese. Sprinkle with ground black pepper – as much as a teaspoon full, and then pour the Tamari over the mix. (You can take Tamari to be the equivalent of Soya or Shoyu sauce, just use whatever you have to hand.) Cover and bake at Gas 5 for 60mins, then remove lid and cook until all the cubes are soft and brown and the moisture absorbed. If it starts to dry up add water – though I try to add a bottle of beer if I’ve got one handy. It can take as long as two hours to reach the right stage, with no sense of greenness, no easily identifiable cubes.  It’ll be quicker if you don’t cover it, but you’ll need to add more liquid to stop it drying out. Great with jacket potatoes.  Serves two

*the social embarrassment? Visiting new friends (or potential new friends) for the first time for an evening meal. Sitting in their living room drinking home made wine and discussing self sufficiency (as we did in those days). I give the opinion that the major problem with people growing their own food is that they feel compelled to grow marrows and then impose said marrows on their friends. I've had enough of the home made wine to be quite tickled by this idea and elaborate on it considerably, explaining just what's so very terrible about the marrow, why it should be banned from all kitchens, why a restraining order should be imposed on anyone even thinking about growing them, and so on. I imagine that I'm being really witty, despite the rather stony faces that surround me - this belief encourages me to continue. At length. You can guess what they served us for supper..........

Something well worth marking in your diaries is  the first Newport Counselling Research Conference "Developing counselling and psychotherapy practice: what research has to offer"

It's always made sense for anyone seriously involved in the counselling world to think about BACP accreditation but, for some reason, what doing this actually involves seems to be a regular source of confusion. Why this should be is a bit of a mystery, because BACP make the requirements crystal clear, but we regularly hear from students and ex students who have been told by someone who's been told by someone else (you get the idea) something that's quite untrue.

My concern here is simply the training requirements for accreditiation (there are other requirements) because we are a training organisation. BACP asks that you provide evidence of your training as follows - either proof that you have completed an accredited course, or proof that you have completed 450 hours of counselling training, part or all of which might have been on unaccredited courses. If you take the former route (known as "Criterion 4.1") then you simply identify the course you've completed (and give evidence that you've completed it) and the BACP will know that you've met the training requirements for accreditation. If you take the latter route ("Criteria 4.2") then you need to give a good deal more information about the training you've done simply because BACP is not familiar with every course in the UK.

Let's put this into practice. Our current accredited course is the Diploma in Theraeutic Counselling. If you complete that you take the 4.1 route and that's that. But go back a few years and our accredited course was our whole counselling programme right through to Masters. Lots of students completed our Certificate and Diploma but left at that point because they felt they'd had the training they required for practice, or because they didn't want to take our CBT taught Masters (that's what our MA was at that time). They would have knocked up about 360 hours of training at that point but would need another 90 hours to meet the training requirements for accreditation. This might be any other counselling course which made sense in their development as a counsellor. Drug counselling, working with couples, whatever. Those 90 hours couldn't be made up of a patchwork of short workshops though - that's PPD (Personal & Professional Development). These counsellors would take the 4.2 route.

There is one other option, however, and that's Criterion 4.3 (these are great titles, aren't they?) which is a useful option for the counsellor who has a lot of counselling experience but maybe hasn't done so much training. In this the counsellor is able to present a portfolio made up of "training units" and "practice units". Each unit consists of 75 hours and represent one years work, and you'd need to have done a minimum of 2 training units and 3 practice units. That makes a total of  375 hours - how you make up the rest - with either training or practice units - would be up to you. Please note, though, that these practice units represent hours on top of the normal practice requirement for accreditation. In other words you really do need to have a fair few counselling hours under your belt.

I hope this makes things clearer. Someone at BACP has checked that there are no errors in all this (thanks Allie) so you can be sure that it's factually accurate. I'm also enclosing a very comprehensive FAQ document from the BACP which should help you. However, none of the above is a subsitute for reading the criteria on the BACP's web site - you'll find a link to their site amongst the "counselling links" on this blog - and you're strongly recommended to visit it before taking any significant steps towards accreditation. So, be sure you understand which route would be appropriate for you to take, make sure you've meet the requirements of that route, and go for it!

Well, the weather in North Wales was not good. Though I did manage to get onto the beach - and into the sea - on one occasion, mostly there was just rain and still more rain. As a consequence I spent a great deal of time indoors staring at a computer screen, working on a new project.

Some nine years ago I created a CDRom called "Reflections in Counselling" - you can find out more about that at http://hss.newport.ac.uk/sas/counselling.htm - and, as an alternative to staring at the sky and wondering if that patch of blue was coming towards me or going away,  I started working on a major update of the programme, taking advantage of  the advances in technology that have taken place since I made the original version.

I reckon I'll need another month or so to complete it but, before it's released, I want to make absolutely sure that it works, that it makes sense, and that there are no major glitches in it. To that end I'm looking for three or four people to act as "beta testers" - to take away copies of the programme to play with and then give me feedback. What's in it for you? Besides having a free copy of the final programme when it's completed (by which time you'll be sick to death of the thing) you can also choose one of the other videos or DVDs we sell as a thank you present. The new programme will run on both Windows or a Mac, so I'd be looking for at least one Mac (OSX) user. Fairly obviously, you'll need to be a counsellor or counselling student too! If you're interested drop me an email.