Categories
Observations

How I live for lazy Sunday’s

Some people live for the weekend, some live for the next holiday, some live for their daily ice cold beer but sometimes, if I am honest, I live for a simple lazy Sunday.

Working flat out all week as many of us do there’s nothing like that feeling you experience waking up on a Sunday morning and having time to do things. You have time to have a shower without constantly fighting the clock and eventually leaving the house with damp hair, a scenario that’s on repeat all week.

You have time do things purely for leisure such as reading another chapter of your book or listening to some music. Nothing that contributes to your financial situation nor the cleanliness of the house but things that help you to relax and things that Sundays provide the time to do.

As I sat to begin this blog post earlier in the week during my break I was trying to juggle the tasks that I needed to complete and thought just where does the time go? Week on week I feel it’s getting faster and Friday nights in the pub garden come around quicker than ever. It’s something that we say each year but it’s the end of June already and only yesterday felt like New Year’s Day. It’s something which is quite scary but something which cannot be changed.

This is why I am currently sat in my sunny garden, laptop open and working but I am sat with my feet in a bowl of warm soapy water, soaking them while I work. We forget to pamper ourselves and never find the time to do so, so I thought that during the working week I’ll mix pamper and work wherever I can.

Yesterday I changed my working scenery and plonked myself and my laptop outside in my friends peaceful garden. I attempted to mix work with The Affair, a series that I am currently addicted to but soon realised I had to separate the two as my addiction didn’t allow for my concentration to be shared. Nevertheless, I felt totally relaxed while I worked in my break so it was like mixing pamper and work again.

My mum recalled to me on Sunday how she couldn’t possibly finish the day having only finished her book and that is all. I replied that it was totally acceptable and sometimes we forget how to fully relax.

Some days if all you may have done is read a book then you should be grateful to have relaxed. If the ironing doesn’t get completed, the wash load never gets put on and the weekly food shop is not attempted then so be it. Some days we need to take a break and indulge in the doing of sod all.

There’s something about a Sunday afternoon that allows this to happen. There’s no point going shopping because shops shut at 4. Emails can wait and work can be discussed on Monday. Everywhere becomes calm and the majority of people aren’t working which creates a perfect scenario to go to friends BBQs or chill in your own garden with your book.

The thing to remember here is never to feel guilty because ultimately, in my opinion, that’s what Sunday’s were made for.

Categories
Observations

The power of writing

And he said: ‘All the good things you do in the world for other people are rewarded. Perhaps you don’t recognise the rewards because they don’t come in material benefits, it might be a good feeling or the experience of just having a day when everything is going your way.’

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I turn to these words often and they are the final words in a book that my Grandad wrote before he died. I feel so much truth in these lines because so often do we do things for others, reach the point of despair when we feel that nothing is being done for us in return and get highly stressed out in the process. However, if you think of your kindness and generosity being rewarded with a good day, a spot of sunshine or a constant nice feeling then your efforts seem more worthwhile and you don’t necessarily have to hear that you’re appreciated.

My granddad’s writing and my leaning on his words for advice and comfort made me think about the power that the written word has. It’s used to sell things, to explain and inform, to declare feelings and emotions – the list is endless.

Words are so important, they can linger throughout your life. How often do you hear people recalling somebody’s words in relation to that moment? ‘My Dad always says,’ or ‘Nan used to say’. They are important to us all.

We read books to be entertained and certain words stick with us. I often find myself taking a picture of a selection of words within a book during a relaxed reading session so that I remember them in the future. The other day my friend showed me some lovely words in a book she was reading about how a smile is the most attractive thing you can wear. By her pointing that out to me, I knew she finds something special about capturing words too.

Words are full of emotion. They can make you cry, they can make you laugh, they can make you smile and they can make you angry. Some people find therapy in writing things down in a daily diary or explosive episodes to organise what seems a mess while stuck in your mind. I’m currently sat at my desk writing for peace and sanity which is one of the most powerful things I find about writing.

Words can change moods in an instant. A text worded in a certain way can make your day or ruin it. An email can change your world. A letter can be kept forever and looked upon occasionally, filling your heart up with warmth when you read it.

In fact, it’s extraordinary how powerful a page of black and white can be and as a writer I am continually amazed at the strength that it has. I find that I write best when I’m highly emotional or feel strongly about something which I realise sounds obvious but hear me out.

On hearing the sad news of my Grandad’s passing the first thing I did was write the speech I wanted to speak at his funeral. I mean at the time this wasn’t necessarily what it was going to be used for but through the process of writing I wrote something that I now love to read and something that didn’t require a series of drafts and edits because it was from deep within my heart.

I write blog posts about various things but the ones that seem to resonate most with my readers are those that I wrote out of an extreme emotion. The ones about university, the beauty of travel and not rushing through life have not only had the highest hits but they are the ones I read back and am most proud of.

What I am trying to say is that words need sentiment to be written and words need sentiment to be read. Next time you’re reading something try to take in every single word. I live my life through writing and am constantly thinking up the next topic to write about next. In every day scenarios I often think ‘how could I write this’ and laugh when my brain goes straight to a list of book titles. On top of the practise of writing though, I make absolute sure that I take time to read others words which are just as if not more important than my own. It’s a good job I’ve chosen writing for a living.

All in all, never underestimate the importance of the written word, it can help you in so many ways and you never know when you might need some simple words to lift you up.

Categories
Observations

A 5K walk, a sea of pink t-shirts and a brilliant cause

On Sunday myself and a group of girls who I work with took part in Cancer Research’s Race For Life. I had just sponsored a friend of mine who was running for some members of her family when we decided to get a group together and have a go ourselves.

It doesn’t take many conversations before you realise the amount of people that are affected every day by this awful disease, so we thought what better way to raise money for this cause.

We did know working in the hub of a very giving village with generous surroundings that we could raise a large sum which was the main priority, admitting that 5K was a manageable distance. However, we didn’t quite understand how charitable our family, friends and customers would be.

We had opened a Just Giving page about a month before the event and had a solid sum raised on there of about three hundred pounds. We then put a bucket in the shop during the week leading up to the event and began counting on Saturday while closing up the shop.

Upon opening the bucket I was truly gobsmacked with the amount of paper money I saw piled up and twenty pound notes at that. ‘There really are some good people in this world’, I thought to myself while reaching a total of £345 in notes alone. A thought that I need to remember when dealing with the more stressful aspects of daily life!

Next came the coins which amazed me further with most of them being shiny gold one and two pounds. The total in the bucket was £430.71 and our running total is £855.71. Truly amazing. Now for the race itself.

Having done no practice aside from training our livers to cope with another bottle of wine when celebrating after, we headed off. We had printed t-shirts from a gentleman who initially wanted to charge a small fortune but once we’d established that it was a charity event and put our foot down, we haggled and we won. Smugly we loaded into the cars and off we went to Nowton Park to run, jog or walk for life.

The build up, though dragging as with all of these types of events, was lovely. All organisers made a huge effort to boost our spirits and create a brilliant atmosphere for the event.

The sadness came when the commentator asked a girl who was stood in front of me to place her hand in the air. I read her sign on her back which said ‘thank you for my treatment’. A tear trickled down my face and she was sobbing.

Another lady stood up on stage in front of the 1,600 participants and declared her love for her sister, a fighter who was battling cancer and running the race that day too. These stories really brought home why we were all there, how real cancer is and how much it is affecting people around us daily. Whether a loved one has been diagnosed or you’re battling it yourself, it affects us all at some point.

While walking around the course and gossiping to my friend, catching up with the others and running breathlessly past them pretending we’d ran the entire way, I thought the whole time. I thought how amazing each and every one of those participants were to do that extra bit and go out of their way to raise cash. I thought how amazing the age range was from tiny tots singing The Greatest Showman soundtrack throughout to elderly ladies making an effort. I thought how brave those were who were battling cancer as they raced, yet they still got out and fought some more.

It’s times like these when not only do you think about the obvious. About cancer, about loved ones and about helping. But it’s times like this that you think how much good is in our world when sometimes all we feel we can see is the stressful, the annoying, the bad.

 

Categories
Adulthood

How much we’d get done if hangovers weren’t a thing

I was struggling to think of a topic last Friday when I sat down to write that week’s post due to many things but one of which was my poor state from the night before. I felt the pressure to get a post out to you all for want of keeping up my weekly blog record and the fact that my intense organisation didn’t allow for things to remain not ticked on my list. Believe me, I annoy myself..

It had been a busy week with the beginning of a new project and many hours at my other work which had left me feeling pretty exhausted and not getting much else done. Hence the desperate flee to my keyboard on a Friday morning in attempt to produce some content for you all. No ideas were springing up and I was feeling much like Bridget Jones pictured above. I had been working on my secret project for the past hour mind so I wasn’t feeling a total failure.

I resorted to going back to bed, laying flat on my back and plugging in my headphones to see if my new found love for two other Ed Sheeran songs would get my creative juices flowing. I then laughed at myself for the current circumstance I was in. Hungover, flat out and thoughtless.

This was when I thought how much more we’d get completed if hangovers never happened. If you could go hard the night before, drink copious amounts of gin, add wine into the mix and maybe a few Sambucca shots to end it all but feel fabulous and hangover free the following morning. Wouldn’t it be wonderful?

I’m not saying I am a total drunk and live in a sea of hungover days followed by messy nights, but they do crop up in my life fairly frequently and often when I need to get things done.

It’s fine at work, I can fight it. Working in place that sells the means to a cure helps a lot. A bottle of coke, something else that’s full of sugar and a sausage sarny usually does the trick, but while sitting at my laptop trying to write or staring at my ‘floordrobe’ covering my rug, the work ethic disappears.

I sat there with a line up of beverages to soothe my pounding head beside me. A strong coffee, a pint of water, a bottle of orange juice and a tub of gum to change the taste of last nights consumption, but still my head felt empty and my brain loose as if it was spinning round and round the masses of space it found surrounding it.

It’s OK if you have the average daily tasks to complete when hungover because the dishwasher can still be emptied, though a few glasses and plates may get broken in the process. The washing machine can be turned on as long as you take extra care when shutting the door for fear it’ll make your head pound more. You may even manage a shower and after this you could potentially face hoovering though not for long because that sure will add to the banging head.

I also find that some days my body surprises me with a hangover free wake up call despite the amount I drank the previous night. I’ll drink two bottles of wine, a few beers and how ever many shorts, then feel fine the following day. Yet I can share half a bottle of wine with a friend and wake up with a raging headache. Work that out? I’ll never know.

One day maybe someone will find a genuine cure. One day maybe I won’t drink so much or will be able to go for just the one. For now though, I’m happy to laugh off my sorry states and hey, it’s produced a good read though maybe a slight cop out on my part.

Yours,

Drunken Fool

x

Categories
Adulthood

One year on…

When I sat at my desk today ready to write this week’s blog post, I felt exhausted. I had an idea of the topic but having just got in from a busy six hour shift and a mad dash to town after in the beautiful heat of the day, my brain’s creativity was elsewhere. I took a sip of strong coffee and stared at the calendar to my left, trying to think up something exciting – anything at all.

It was at this point that I noticed that this time last year I had just finished university. This time last year I wrote the post ‘University, I’ll be forever grateful’. This time last year I was packing my suitcase and jetting off to Bali. Oh to be reliving this time last year right now!

Reflection is always a good thing to do in my view. Whether it’s as soon as you hear John Lennon’s ‘Happy Christmas (War is over)’ during the festive season each year, on new years eve or at another significant point within the year, its always good to look at what you’ve done, particularly if you’re panicking that you haven’t done much.

Life speeds by more rapidly as the years come, each week in your diary seems to come around quicker than the one before and when you’re young and unsettled, it’s not necessarily a bad thing but can sometimes seem scary.

People constantly quiz you about your plans and seem to unknowingly put pressure on you to compete with the rest. I’ve never been somebody to compete and the older I get, the harder I find it, yet opinions of others do affect me. In fact, the one thing that ever makes me question my decisions is what others will think and I hate it. I’ll be very happy with decisions I make and really excited about the future, yet it takes one person to negatively speak their mind, usually people who mean nothing to me, and I go straight back to the drawing board. With the significance that this week holds in relevance to last year, I felt I’d write a piece a year on from officially finishing uni and beginning a new chapter.

I returned home from three years studying in York this week last year and masked the sadness of it being over by jetting off to Bali for two weeks with one of my great friends. My post uni plans weren’t set in terms of employment, but I had a plan until the end of the year at least.

I would return to my home until August and work at the village shop and post office until then. I’d then take on the world travelling for just over three months around Europe, America, New Zealand and Australia before returning and going on a week’s work placement completely out of my comfort zone at the Guardian Media Group in London. I knew the Christmas period would be manic at the shop, trust me it may be little but its HUGELY busy, so I kept my loyalty to my bosses and worked near on fifty hour weeks over the busy period, we all did.

This is when my plans got vague. My experience of the graduate job search so far had been that most of the people I knew hadn’t had much success as of yet and were doing much the same as me, working and searching. So, I tried. I tried to juggle my full time hours with the graduate job hunt while pursuing my passion of becoming a writer. I’d work all day, write in my three hour break and attempt to squeeze in job hunting in that time too.

Now people can talk excessively about the various options that young people can take after school, and in hindsight I’d potentially have seeked another route in. However, scrolling through numerous pages on ‘Indeed’ and other sites proves that there are still copious amounts of jobs out there requiring a degree, especially in journalism and media, the area I wish to pursue.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing, as is having a closed minded opinion at the age of seventy when you haven’t a clue about how enriching university is in so many ways and how competitive and demeaning the graduate job search can be as well. It’s often near on impossible because you must have the experience as well as a first class degree and be able to balance a ten meter pole on your head while running down a hill. I realise I am slightly over exaggerating but often it feels this way and certainly requires a great deal of your time focusing on this one thing. Trying to fit in a life, a job and your passion as well just doesn’t work.

This is why I soon came to realise that I had to choose. I had to choose a focus for now and do it properly. I either must go wholeheartedly for the job hunt and put the writing to the side for the time being. Or stick to the writing and pick up the job search when it’s more a priority and I have a clearer idea of what I’m hunting for.

My passion is writing. If any of you reading this are regular viewers of my blog, you’ll know this by now and I write every day without fail. I write blog posts and I write freelance for companies. I write for my village magazine, for my sisters photography projects and I’m frequently asked by friends to check emails and job applications, CV’s and letters to assess the wording. I’m not heightening myself I’m just saying this is what I love.

When I’m stressed I turn to writing. Tired? I can still find room to write. Happy? I write it down. It’s something I turn to in the majority of situations. Being just twenty three years old aspiring for a career in an industry which usually requires you to stick at your day job until years of hard work to establish yourself as a writer on the side brings you the success you desire, I thought what better circumstance could I be in to start now.

This is why my decision was to pursue my passion and go for goal to become a writer. It won’t be forever and when it’s essential and I don’t have so much freedom, I will put it aside if I’ve got nowhere and continue the slog of job hunting. However, right now I am young and I don’t have any financial pressure which I am very lucky and grateful for which gives me the freedom to experiment. A career in writing is just that, an experiment.

Everybody who judges you is subjective. JK Rowling got rejected numerous times and look at where she has ended up. I’m not saying I’m the next J. K but I just feel that in this competitive day and age sometimes its refreshing and needed to think outside of the box. Outside of London and attending interviews, filling in application after application for jobs that your heart isn’t fully in and to go for something, perhaps less conventional, that fills your heart with passion.

It may not work out at all, I may completely land on my feet, but all I know is that right now I am happy with my decision. People can look at me all day long asking what I’m doing with my life and roll their eyes when I claim that I’m working on a book, contacting agents and sending masses of daring emails, but that’s me and it’s how I roll.

My advice to anybody in this situation would be to go for it. Don’t look to your peers always for a comparison. Be happy for their success but be true to your dreams and goals. Try to ignore the constant judgement from people who don’t necessarily know. You will be successful, you will achieve, your degree was worth it.

I’m still working on the above and people’s judgments continue to hugely affect me but hopefully when I can prove how hard I’ve been working behind the scenes then they may believe that convention isn’t always the way. For now I am embracing my youth, the freedom it brings and the ability I have to experiment with various projects. That’s me, one year on.

I realise I’ve gone off on a personal tangent here and the key message within this post is about reflection. No matter what stage you are in in this wonderful life, if ever you feel things have got a little mundane and nothing seems to be happening, take time to look back. Take a period of time such as a month, a year, or even just a day and write down all the good things within that. You will surprise yourself because so much can happen in such a little amount of time, things that seem to pass unnoticed but count, of course they do.

 

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Review

Fearne Cotton: Happy Place, a review

Over the past few weeks I have spent a lot of my free time listening to Fearne Cotton’s podcast series called ‘Happy Place’. The series is made up of a selection of episodes where Fearne interviews a variety of people from big names to the unknown, but all special in their own right.

They discuss very openly with relevance to these individuals lives ambition, coping with stress and living, but ultimately it’s about how these people build their happy places. I only discovered this series after spotting Fearne’s Instagram post about the surprise extra but final episode – oops – and I’m very glad I found it in time.

From Dawn French describing how she skims through life grasping every bit of it that she can and talking about the beauty of writing in the countryside. To Paloma Faith expressing her amazing ability to focus on her own success and not look left or right to compare with others and admitting that she never really learnt to sing until she got famous. To Stephen Fry talking openly about mental health and the great work that the charity ‘Mind’ do daily. To Fearne’s Yoga instructor come brilliant friend, Zephyr Wildman, discussing losing somebody extremely close and how you overcome this so that you can carry on living.

All of the conversations had throughout the series are so interesting in different ways and Fearne directs the interviews with a confidence to pause a moment at the more poignant messages so that you’re constantly gripped and just want to continue listening to the next episode, and the next.

However, it wasn’t only the engrossment that I had to these chats that kept me hooked, it was also the act of actively unwinding and relaxing while listening. I realise that I’ve touched on this before but there’s something about being aware of stopping and listening that truly relaxes you.

One night last week I was feeling a bit stressed, a feeling that seems to crop up fairly frequently in the bustle of life, and I took myself upstairs to my room to chill out. Having discovered the podcast series that morning when I listened to most of Emma Willis’ interview, I chose another lady who I love and admire and decided to press play on Fearne’s interview with Dawn French.

While I lay on my bed getting comfortable and ready to listen to the entire show, I thought why not go down stairs and join my Mum who was fairly ill at this point and just laying, dozing on the sofa so I knew she wouldn’t mind my suggestion of turning off the television and just listening a while.

Admittedly, about five minutes in we were both snoring away at opposite corners of our comfy sofa and that is certainly no reflection on the series but rather how shattered we both were. But each time I woke up and listened to a bit more, I thought to myself how lovely that moment was. How lovely it was in this day and age to have the black box in the corner of the living room switched off. How lovely it was to feel that chilled out and just be listening. How lovely it was to be sharing this moment with my Mum. How very real but very moving each bit of the conversation I could hear was.

Granted I had to go back and listen to the episode in full realising that I’d in fact slept through most of it, but I did this in the middle of the day on one of my days off so sleep wasn’t as desperately needed as it was on the first day I heard it.

I’ve not yet listened to all episodes but the ones I have heard have been thoroughly enjoyable and I’d happily replay them all over again, picking up on things said that I’d not noticed previously.

There is a lot about loss and life being temporary. There is a lot about success, ambition and what drives these individuals. There is a lot about appreciation or letting go, not worrying too much about things that stress you out. All in all it’s a deeply insightful glimpse into life and it really makes you think.

If you’ve not already done so, go and listen. I just know you won’t regret it.

Categories
Review

The calming influence of lavender

When life gets a little overwhelming, which it can do for us all, we have a variety of tricks up our sleeve to help us cope. Whether it’s taking a short break, having a large glass or seeking out a good friend, or all three and more, there are ways we seem to manage situations.

I wouldn’t say that I’ve mastered my coping mechanisms yet but I wouldn’t expect to have done at the ripe age of twenty three. However, I find I’m learning new methods all the time, avoiding those that don’t help and using the ones that do.

One day recently I felt particularly stressed. I had lots going on in my head, lots of writing to do from home, a busy shift at work and I didn’t know how I could fit everything in. A good friend of mine picked up on this a slotted a small care package in my handbag which I noticed upon arrival at the hospital to visit my Grandad that evening before a big operation – perfect timing I’d say. This put a smile on my face and gave me strength to keep that smile for my Grandad, not knowing what the next few days would hold.

Now, my friend is a firm believer of the healing, cooling and calming influence that lavender has and it’s many uses. We always joke and shout “put some lavender on it” no matter how dire the situation may be and how ridiculous the suggestion of lavender to solve it may seem. I’d be the first to make this joke and laugh while sat looking at my open wound on my knee waiting for her to find the trusty cure and dab copious amounts of lavender on it.

So, of course, inside my care package was a roll on lavender tube, a spray and eye drops to make a dig at how often my eyes look still drunk from the amount of alcohol I consumed the night before. I wouldn’t say that I’m fully converted, but I am beginning to turn to lavender for more reasons and more frequently.

Aside from the supposed healing affect it has, I find lavender so calming. The spray my friend gave me is one which should be sprayed on pillows and bed linen before you go to sleep to help relax you into a deep rest. Nature Love is the make, Aromatherapy Pillow Mist is the product, T K Max – go and hunt it down. It also states on the bottle that it can change the mood of the room if you spray it at any time of day. You can trust me on this, especially as a previous non-believer, because it really works.

The other night I lay restless and agitated and couldn’t figure out why. All evening I’d not been able to keep my eyes open so I knew how tired I was. It then came to me that I hadn’t sprayed my special spray and instantly after applying it, I felt calm and soon drifted off into a deep sleep.

Some of you will be on the side of my friend and where I’m headed, always having known the calming affect that lavender has. Others will be wondering how I put up with the strong smell at night. This spray however produces such a pleasant smell as it’s mixed with vanilla too and it’s so subtle but so effective that you hardly notice the impact until it’s not there.

I find I’m reaching to lavender in stressful situations more and it instantly chills me out. When travelling I’d often dab a bit on my pillow when I felt anxious. During new work environments and scary London offices I put a bit on my wrists to sniff when I felt like I didn’t belong. When I lay at night thinking I’m not good enough or stressing about my future and things I can’t change I dab an extra amount to get that whiff of calm. Whenever I feel stressed I have my roll on bottle to hand in my bag and I grab it, dab it and feel the soothing effect.

You may still be a non-believer, but trust me and give it a go. Try for yourself to see the calming influence that lavender has.

Categories
Observations

Overheard in a hospital ward

I love the NHS. I really do and I would never complain about the fantastic job that all the staff continuously perform daily. I think it’s a wonderful service that everybody in the UK should be extremely proud of. This appreciation for such a beautiful British asset has made me discover that I find hospitals rather leveling places.

I’m grounded in the sense that you see doctors and high level nurses working alongside cleaners in harmony. The institution brings the notion of death to the surface, yet the atmosphere remains surprisingly upbeat in among a sea of very ill people. Hospitals make you think a lot and the other day I honed in on the variety conversations that you hear on a ward.

No visitor to a hospital ward wants to be there. No matter how great I think the NHS are, hospitals aren’t the friendliest or most welcome of places so any time spent in one is usually not out of choice. People are either visiting someone who’s incredibly sick making the whole event very sad, or their relative or friend has been waiting upon an operation or discharge for ages so the entire visit becomes a little tedious.

I’ve spent quite a lot of my free time in a hospital ward recently and it came to my attention how varied the conversations are. I livened my visits up by listening in on these and realising how interesting it can be when you take a load of people from all areas within society and place them on the same cardio ward. Catagorising them for their condition rather than wealth, interests or political views.

It becomes very obvious early on when you realise how forced some of the conversations can be. You have a select amount of time allocated to visiting in most circumstances and a lot of people will be coming most days so the conversation starters can become scarce. Also, people are trying hard to fill the amount of the time with conversation, no silences. Yes, you rarely see visitors and patients sitting in silence and just enjoying one anthers company as you’d find in normal social scenarios.

Unlike if you’d invited them round for a cuppa for example, where there would be peaceful silences, may a bit of watching TV or listening to the radio and a natural flow of conversation. Not in hospital, the art of conversation becomes clinical like the surroundings you are in. A lot of um’s and ah’s between visitors and patients when figuring where to take the chat next. Perhaps pretending not to be extremely worried about the medical verdict or seeming as though the hospital is the only place that the visitor needs to be that day. That they don’t have millions of tasks on their mind that need to be completed before the day is out. It’s totally unnatural.

The other thing I noticed was the variety of conversations which instantly made me realise how different the people on the ward are. You’ve got one man discussing America and gun crime, whether Trump is OK and world politics. Another man expressing his appreciation of the NHS and all their staff. Another crying because he’s obviously been told some devastating news, whether it’s to do with his health or not. While the man on bed 2 is raving about his grand national winnings and bed 4 declaring his love for cottage pie.

Aside from making the staff’s shifts a little more exciting, overhearing this diversity of discussion within such a small space made me think about quite a large concept. That no matter where we come from, we’ll all leave this world in exactly the same way. Sometimes forgetting our status and place in society, putting religious and political values to one side along with other things that define us and simply being human, can remind us that there’s not a lot of difference between us.

 

 

Categories
Stories

The dramas we face when getting from A to B

I’m writing this now because I am filled with adrenaline and feel in shock about what just happened. I am writing this now because for me writing is my sanity. I may not post it, I may do. But right now I need to get this story down, a story about my journey home from visiting my Grandad.

It was a beautiful sunny day. Unexpected as rain had been forecast but a bonus on all accounts. I’d been outside a lot throughout the day, though the morning was spent sat at my desk so I didn’t feel so bad for soaking up some rays from 1pm onward. I’d been on a gorgeous dog walk with my friend, sat in another friends garden peacefully catching up and then headed to Bury St Edmunds, a twenty minute drive down the road. “Simples,” as Sergei the Meerkat would say.

We’d received a text from Mum saying ‘be careful, the roads may be slippery’ and with the hospital blinds being shut for the duration of our visit, we thought she must have gone mad. Instead, she’d preempted the fact that we’d been enclosed by West Suffolk Hospital and so were totally unaware about the storm approaching.

We soon realised how very right our Mum was as we peeped through a gap to see the black clouds quickly replacing the blue skies and I got a text from a friend in our village twenty minutes away saying that the storm had already arrived. Dressed as we were as if holidaying in Spain, my sister and I rushed to the car in attempt to avoid getting soaked.

This we achieved and thought we’d beaten the storm until we approached the dual carriageway to a wall of white. I honestly thought that was it, we’d never make it home. I couldn’t see the car in front, I couldn’t even see the road. At this point my sister decided to introduce me to the concept of aquaplaning which I found highly inappropriate as the panic strengthened and my legs felt weak.

Bearing in mind we were travelling on the inside lane, I saw lights among the mist to the left of us so gathered people were pulling into a lay-by. I guessed right, luckily, and proceeded to join the queue of traffic neatly (somehow) and patiently (who knows how) awaiting the storm to end.

We followed the leader and pulled back onto the carriageway when the rain had lightened. As we continued driving on discussing what had just happened and trying to calm down, I looked into my wing mirror to see a black piece of my car hanging at right angles off the side and flapping aggressively in the wind.

Panic continued and we hazarded our way off to another lay-by to ring the person anybody would ring in this situation, Mum. She hadn’t a clue other than to take the next exit and go home via country lanes. Great plan. Solid effort Mum. Genuinely.

This was great until we realised most country lanes aren’t level meaning most would be flooded. We weren’t wrong which we discovered on the first road we drove down. We came across practically a river in the middle of the road which the 4X4 could happily go through but our tiny Ford Fiesta could not.

We demonstrated a level of listening in our driving tests, did the first three-point turn since passing and swiftly backtracked in search of a different route. As we drove along and I got progressively more uneasy about this black bit of car flapping about, we pulled over at which point it fell off. Sorted.

Onward and upwards, and hopefully a new car soon! Filled with adrenaline, we made it home and I sat in the car a while after we’d parked trying to bring myself back down to earth. As scary as it was, it could have been far worse. We managed to remain calm and nobody got hurt.

Moral of the story is never to rush. Always be careful when driving, no matter how desperate you are to get somewhere. The road can be a very dangerous place and it’s times like these when that becomes evermore apparent.

Categories
Observations

From Dappy to Adele – the perks of a random playlist

When asked who their favorite singer is or, more generally, what sort of music they like to listen to, people often claim to have a random taste. However, I struggle to find people out there with a taste as arbitrary as mine.

Mostly people sway towards a particular style of music. Garage, for example, R&B, Ska, Country – the list goes on. Of course there’s likely to be variations and odd songs that you love which don’t fit the stereotype of your choice, but the majority of the music listened to by an individual usually creates a pattern.

I also find that if people claim to like country music, then every country song that plays, they know. Every country singer around, they’ve heard of and likewise for other genres.

Personally, I find myself to be a tip of the iceberg fan. I’d say I like country. I really do and it reminds me of being in Florida last year where my friends introduced me to a wider selection than ‘The Shires’. Being in America, and the south at that, I attended my first proper country dance night at a place call Dallas Bull. As sober as I was, exhausted from the week long party I’d been having pretending to still be in college, it was great watching all the avid country fans get up on the dance floor to perform the routines that they knew off by heart.

I’d also say I’m a fan of rock, some rock anyway. I thoroughly enjoy live bands and the two I’ve seen the most of, perform mostly rock covers. From this a cluster of rock artists have seeped into my playlists as well. It’s not often, but I’ve been known to dance around my room to Muse after a drunken night at the pub or pretend that I’m an eighties rock chick and head bang to a bit of Def Leppard from time to time.

I like the old stuff, seventies, eighties, sometimes even sixties. My parents brought us up listening to things that they like. I know this because it features in all of our childhood videos, in which there’s always some music playing in the background. Occasionally also a less familiar Beatles track will come on the radio and I find that I know all the words, and that I give to my childhood.

I’m a huge fan of musicals. In fact this is one of my less random playlists because it’s titled ‘Musicals’ and contains exactly that. From Oliver to Miss Saigon and more recently Matilda, I love it all. I laugh when I’m walking to and from work, usually with my headphones in and builders will be looking at me. They probably think I’ve got the latest tunes blasting into my eardrums or, even worse, some ghastly rap when actually it’s Andrew Lloyd Webber’s ‘Jellicle Songs For Jellicle Cats’! I even throw in a bit of classical if I’m feeling extremely whimsical.

For me it largely depends on my mood, but even then I shift between genres like a puppy would rush around a woodland full of new smells. My choices through mood make no sense either and if I’m sad I’ll search for songs that I know will make me cry, yet when I’m happy I want to lift my spirits by picking cheerful tunes. Work that out. Surely it should be the other way around if anything, shouldn’t it?

I’m guessing through reading you’re now fully aware of quite how bizarre my music taste is and when I say it’s random, that’s exactly what I mean. I like music that reminds me of places, of people and of good times. My Spotify is full of a wide selection of choices and I’d say seventy five per cent of these songs have been selected through memories. Now when I listen to them, I’m instantly taken back. It’s lovely.

The other morning I woke up and put on songs which I must have frequently listened to about ten years ago. The likes of Jay Sean and Dappy of all people. I never listen to these, I’d forgotten they were ever big. Sometimes you need to be reminded of being really young with no responsibilities whatsoever and music has that wonderful ability to take you there. At least that’s the excuse I’m using for my extremely out of character decision that day and one I shall never admit, despite doing so now on the world wide web.

Music features in my life daily without fail and I am not ashamed of how incredibly non-specific my taste is because I enjoy it all the same.