Last week was a journey of mixed emotions.
I really hadn't enjoyed seeing Newcastle miss so many opportunities to score recently and then lose to West Ham at the start of the week. But I was looking forward to a trip to Liverpool to attend the National Children and Adult Social Care Conference.
While the growing Medequip Clinical Team presented and exhibited at the OT Show in Birmingham, I thought I needed to attend the showcase event for Directors of Adults' and Children's social care and elected Councillors.
This year, in addition to Melanie Williams, President of ADASS, 's opening speech, I was looking forward to hearing from Stephen Kinnock, Minister of State for Care, on Government plans for health and, as importantly, social care.
As you can imagine, the government's response to the wide range of VCSE and private sector organisations that provide services to local authorities and the NHS has alerted the government to the massive impact of the changes to NI thresholds and rates.
What can I say? It's just like Newcastle. Opportunities missed.
On the direction for social care, the Minister seemed to get a bit stuck on the "vehicle" that was going to review it. On the funding issue, he relied on the now-old headlines about the extra £600m for social care and a 3.2% increase for Local Authorities.
None of these really hit the spot with the conference audience or me.
On the other hand, I did take the opportunity to have great conversations with people from areas we work with and areas who were interested in hearing about Medequip, attend several workshops led by Social Care Future, Think Personal Act Local and the National Co-production Advisory Group, and, alongside 100 other people, have a very enjoyable Tapas meal hosted by Social Care Future.
Returning home via a BHTA event in Birmingham and experiencing another underwhelming display from Newcastle this weekend makes it tempting to focus on missed opportunities.
But we're a resilient and optimistic bunch at Medequip.
We're talking to our partners about how we can manage the finances together.
We'll continue our plans to grow and offer a wider range of services.
And we'll continue to focus on opportunities.
The work we do…………. it's too important not to.