Start Living. Stop Stressing.

BLOG ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE SUSSEX LOCAL (NOVEMBER ISSUE) www.sussexlocal.net

When asked to do an article for November, the usual things pop into your head: bonfire night (yawn) or Christmas (not yet). Stress isn’t a topic that jumps to the forefront of one’s creative imagination. However, November is the month of National Stress Awareness Day, the theme of which is ‘Start Living – Stop Stressing’.

On first hearing that theme, I wondered if a Northerner had written it. Seriously. It’s got a touch of the ‘pull yourself togethers’ about it. I’m allowed to say that; I am Northern and in general, unless you can see something physically going wrong with someone, it’s considered easily fixable through bloody-minded determination. My mother’s favourite saying as I grew up was, “Pretend you’re a pair of bathroom curtains and pull yourself together.” She said that over the phone to me once when I was ill at school and I tried to listen, I really did, but the pneumonia that was growing in my lungs eventually won out. No matter how much Northern grit you try to muster, there are some things that you can’t just get over and stress is, interestingly, becoming one of those things.

It can be a difficult thing to talk about though for all sorts of reasons. I grew up in a small village in one of the most idyllic parts of the Yorkshire Dales and stress wasn’t something that was given much truck. The same went for depression and anxiety. It simply wasn’t considered real. You went to the doctors because your leg was falling off, or because all of a sudden your heart had stopped. You didn’t go to the doctors because you were feeling a bit stressed. If you did, you certainly didn’t talk about it. And if you did talk about it, you’d be the butt of everyone’s drunken joke in the local pub for about eighteen months until the next exciting thing happened.

Thankfully though, mindsets are changing but it’s taking some time. A lot of people still don’t understand that stress is a recognized medical condition and in fact it has been for seventy years. The term ‘stress’ was first coined in a biological/psychological context way back in the 1930s. Even then it was defined as, “the failure to respond appropriately to an emotional or physical threat, whether real or imagined,” and I think it’s the idea that the ‘threat’ can legitimately be something that someone else can’t see or can’t see any logic in, that’s important. We have to be more open-minded about the reality of this condition. Just because we can’t see it, or touch it doesn’t mean it’s not horribly real for someone and that’s exactly the point of National Stress Awareness Day this year on November 3rd.

So, what is stress? When I started researching this article that was the first question I asked myself and found that it was quite hard to answer. So, I turned to any writer’s trusted research tool: Facebook. I posted a status requesting help. I asked them a) what stress is b) what makes them stressed and c) how they de-stress. It didn’t take long for a common theme to emerge: “Stress is when my actions towards a situation don’t have the desired effect” or “Stress is feeling out of control,” or “Stress is not being understood”.

Stress, it seems, according to my very sophisticated survey (sarcasm noted), seems for many to be caused by a feeling of powerlessness. We all know how that feels. No matter how organized or obsessive you are about planning time, or workloads, or kid’s schedules, or whatever it is, there is always the knowledge at the back of your mind that something, out there in the ether of inevitability, can and might always get in your way and mess it all up. Most times, it doesn’t; a lot of times it does. We have no control over this and therein lies the truth of what they discovered in the 1930s: whether it happens or not (i.e. whether the threat is real or imagined), it is there and when we consider the nature of our lifestyles today it’s no wonder we are in a constant psychological battle with those things beyond our control.

Because, we are the ‘have it all’ generation. And we do. Thanks to the iPhone, email, Facebook and lots of caffeine from Starbucks, we can manage marriages, kids, careers, social lives, holidays, kid’s clubs, yoga classes and we can find time to watch films, read books, even indulge in hobbies such as knitting (it’s uber cool now to knit by the way) or aromatherapy and run marathons for charity. It is no wonder that, when our lives are packed to the privileged-brim, there’s simply no room for things beyond our control to get in the way. If they do, our whole Noughties lifestyle comes crashing down around our shabby-chic interiors.

The reality is that stress is becoming more and more common. In 2008-2009 over 400,000 people were experiencing work-related stress in this country, and that’s only the people that went to their GPs. Worringly, if ignored, stress can easily morph into much more long-term diseases such as depression and anxiety. Reassuringly though, stress can be easily tackled once you admit defeat and drop all those balls your juggling. Whether you walk away from a stressful situation for an hour, a day, a weekend, a week or a year it will help. Invariably, the world is not going to fall apart if you simply stop and take a step back but your psychological world might if you don’t. And this is where I apologise to those lovely people at National Stress Awareness Day. I was, I admit, initially dismissive of your theme. But, at the end of the day, they’re right. Stress, thank goodness, isn’t depression or anxiety, and it is possible to ‘stop’ it before it turns into that ball of anxiety that’ll sneak in when you’re least expecting it and take up squatter’s rights in your chest. Walk away from it. Laugh in the face of it. Turn your back on it, indulge in some knitting but for goodness sake don’t let it overwhelm you.

Start living. Stop stressing.

Naughtie Spoonerisms

With all the hoohah in the press this week regarding James Naughtie’s slip of the tongue, it got me thinking about how what we say can get us into trouble. Not that I think Naughtie should be harangued for his mistake. It was only ever a matter of time before someone slipped up on that potential spoonerism. In fact, it’s possible they only made Jeremy Hunt the Cultural Secretary to see how long it would be before somebody did the inevitable.

As an aside, I remember an ICT lesson at school one day where the teacher had us use a programme that switched the first letter of your first name with the first letter of your surname. Most were fine. My double-barrelled name confused the programme somewhat before it settled on Fat Kitton. Faye Tucker was in more serious trouble.

Of course Andrew Marr, who looks like the kind of naughty schoolboy that keeps half eaten gob-stoppers in his blazer pocket even though he’s 51 (ish), relished the opportunity to repeat the word on air at which point he reminded me a little of a teacher. We always got a small sense of satisfaction at being able to swear at a kid under the pretence of repeating back to them what they’d said e.g. “What was that you just said under your breath? Did you just call me a f***ing b**ch? Straight to the headmaster’s office.”

Amazingly, Naughtie’s not the only one. Home Office Minister Nick Herbet was also at it: “I don’t accept that these are cuts,” he did not say. I wonder if there’s actually a bet going on amongst the old boys. Who can say the C-word and get away with it. Well, as far as the BBC are concerned, nobody. Andrew Marr and James Naughtie have had to issue public apologies and I can only imagine that a lot of people in the BBC Complaints department are racking up a lot of overtime just in time for Christmas…all happily funded by the TV license fee.

But, long introduction aside, how often do our loose lips get us into trouble? From the wayward wife who calls out the wrong name at key moments, or the harassed teacher that calls a child by the wrong name on parent’s evening or the Labour minister who refers to a colleague as a ‘ginger rodent’, the potential for disaster is huge (at least one of those should know better). We never know when our feeble, mortal brains are going to let us down, turn their backs on us and sit back and watch while we stand there humiliated and embarrassed. When you think about it like that, it’s amazing any of us speak before we think…let alone the ones whose job it is to speak out loud.

But before I go…here are some other spoonerisms that James Naughtie could have said...although I still think his is the best.
• The acrobats displayed some cunning stunts.

• Sir, you are certainly a shining wit.

• He fills her soul with hope.

• It's the Tale of Two Cities.

• Have you brought your sleeping bag?

• She is sure pretty.

• Have you seen her sick duck?

• Oh, the suffering of purgery on my soul!

• He's not a pheasant plucker.

• She showed me her tool kits.

• He's a smart fella.

• A hot pie would make me happy.

• Fire truck.

Turning up in life...

As I sit on a train to Paris, having just left Amsterdam, I’m struck by how funny the world is. If I were to personify the weird and wonderful workings of the world, I would make the world an old man, in a Disney kind of way. I would give him benevolent eyes, a hearty laugh and a twinkle in his eye. He would always have Werther’s Originals in his pocket and he would slip a pound coin into your sweaty palm when your parents weren’t looking. It appears I’ve turned the world in Santa Claus. Well, I suppose that’s not a bad thing.

But I digress.

The fact is, is that we try so desperately to control everything. We try to control where we live and where we work and who our friends are and what clothes we wear and how thin we are and what the colour of our hair is, or what the colour of our walls is but the reality is that we are so busy trying to control the small things that we absent mindedly forget about the big things. And it’s those big things that my imaginary, Santa-Claus type man bends to his own will.

I live by two principles:
1. Listen to the universe.
2. Turn up in life.

I think the reason I’m writing this now is because, for a long time, I forgot to do those two things. But, as I sit in first class on a train zipping between fabulous cities as part of my new career I realize how lucky it was that, after 5 years of succumbing to what was easy, I suddenly decided to listen to the universe and turn up in life. If I’d not done those two things then I wouldn’t be here. I’d still be stuck in a classroom, getting Repetetive Strain Injury from marking the same grammatical errors (always apostrophes and semi colons) and saying the same things (tuck your shirt in, throw your gum in the bin etc) wondering what it was like to work with grown ups.

It’s funny that we believe that we have control over our destiny. We don’t. We work with what we’re given but don’t ever doubt for a second that we are ‘given’ things. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t work hard, or try to do the best we possibly can to make things happen but in the end we have to believe that whatever happens, whether it’s good or bad, if we learn to adapt the best possible outcome will always emerge. I fully believe that.

So my message is short and sweet but honest. Even the worst moments are there to allow us to shine. Believe in the overall power of goodness. Never let the worst moments drag you down. Measure yourself by your ability to keep going and keep making good decisions even when it seems like your walking backwards through mud. And always, always turn up in life.

Tzuke Tour Blog...London

If you’ve never been to a gig at Union Chapel in Highbury & Islington then I can only urge you to do so. Like staying out all night or dancing in the rain, seeing a gig at Union Chapel is one of those things you must do before you die. OK, it may be a little quieter than you’d expect but you know what? When you’re in a church that beautiful, you don’t mind. The light in that place is nothing short of magical and just when you really start to believe that the shadows are alive, invariably the end of the gig arrives. And what a sad moment that is.

It’s sad at the most regular of gigs, but when the gig ends with a song like Judie Tzuke’s ‘If’, the house lights drag you back to reality kicking, screaming and as in my case, more than a little tearful. And I wasn’t the only one. Every man in the room was welling up and if they weren’t then they were dead inside. Based on Rudyard Kipling’s famous poem of the same name, the song is heart-wrenchingly, achingly beautiful and worthy way to finish what is fast becoming a very special tour.

What’s great about these shows is that everyone on stage can’t stop smiling. There’s a genuine understanding that they are creating something special. Every musician on stage gets their moment of wonderful glory and frankly, Judie just looks chuffed to bits to be there. And the audience are certainly happy that she’s there. Standing ovations aplenty, the audience shouts out requests and conversations ensue. It’s as if we’re all holed up in Judie’s garden having the best time of our lives. And I can’t be certain, but I’m pretty sure that Judie was dancing.

Tzuke Tour Blog...Bristol

I’m a lucky girl. I mean really. Don’t think for a second that I take things for granted. Like tonight for instance…after several failed attempts, I finally was able to get myself to one of Judie Tzuke’s shows on her Moon on a Mirrorball tour. That, in itself is exciting but to find not just one Tzuke but three Tzukes on the bill (the lovely Bailey supports and, along with her sister Talulah, they both do incredible backing vocals on their mum’s set…more on that later), plus the delectable David Saw as support was almost a Christmas, birthday and a bank holiday rolled into one.

When Bailey approached me about maybe coming to some shows and perhaps writing some blogs about the tour (it was a very relaxed agreement!) I was initially hoping to come to them all. Alas, real life intervenes and work builds up and lives come crashing down around your ears, and suddenly the best laid plans and all that…but it turns out that, for a blogger, this was probably the best day I could have decided to rock up, armed with a laptop and a tray of twelve doughnuts.

Indeed, they almost didn’t make it to Bristol at all. Between a dangerous high-speed blowout on the motorway, flying spanners and mystery illnesses, it was nothing short of miraculous that a note was even played. Now, I’ve never had a blowout but it is one of those weird anomalies that does haunt me at moments when I look down and realize either my speedometer is broken or I’m breaking a lot of rules (ok, laws). The simple possibility of it is enough to scare me witless, and I can’t imagine what it would be like to manage in a splitter van.

But Neil, the man with magic in his driving hands pulled super life-saving skills out of the top drawer and pulled them to safety. I wasn’t there at this point, but I’m assured that what followed was some spinning spanners heading straight for the leading lady and a lot of boys trying to loosen and lot of nuts for a long time. Finally, it was the strength of guitar man Graham that won the wheel over, followed by a lot of murmurs something along the lines of, “Yeah well, I loosened it.”

But against all the odds they arrived safely in Bristol where I met them happily esconced in a little dressing room waiting for Wagamamas (other Japanese food stores are available) and what a happy bunch they all are. Now, you may think it’s all glamour on tour but it’s actually just good fun. Both Bailey and Judie are washing their hair in the sinks, the dressing rooms are too small to swing the proverbial cat, the boys are doing each other’s hair (I won’t name names) and even this blogger is happily dragged in to help out with ironing. Because that’s what this lot is all about. It’s about touring around singing great songs with your mates…and for at least four of them, your family.

As far as tours go, I can’t think of one I’d rather be on. Maybe it was the near-death experience that brought them all to such high spirits, but I don’t think so. I have a sneaky feeling that this is just a great tour to be a part of. Or perhaps, it’s the fact that they get to play some of the most wickedly vibey and lovingly crafted songs written this side of the sixties.

Because, when you look back over Judie’s back catalogue there are some quietly unbelievable tracks. Songs such as Sportscar, Sukarita, Joan of Arc and Vivien are nothing short of outstanding and tonight were outstanding enough to get the whole venue on it’s feet applauding what was nothing short of a bloody brilliant show. Now, us Northerners aren’t supposed to cry; it’s part of the contract you sign but at least three songs put my eye make-up at risk. She’s simply a bit legendic (forgive the neologism…I couldn’t think of a better word) and every flaming well bit as good as she was back ‘then’…if not better.

And the crowd definitely thought so – especially the girl dancing her socks off in the back row. But this isn’t a review, it’s a blog and it’s nearly over. It’s just hard not to write about how wonderful it was because, it was.

Now though, they head back to London for a well-deserved day off before hitting Union Chapel in Highbury & Islington for the all-important ‘London show’ on Thursday night. If you’re around on Thursday and you haven’t got any plans then that’s the place you need to be. In fact, even if you have got plans and even if there was a tube strike, and your house was burning down and your cat had just died…it’d still be worth getting there. I can’t wait to get back.

Remember September?

The month of September means different things for different people.

If you’re under the age of sixteen, it’s usually a month of mourning. Those long hot summer days of bike riding, beach fun and extended curfews suddenly come to a painful end as a new school year wraps its tentacles around your wrists and ankles. Gone are the long summer evenings spent in the park and the lazy extended lie-ins where every day is a Sunday.

If you’re a parent, your reaction is the ying to your child’s yang. While they sulk and moan, you’re jubilant. Finally, no more stressful child-care negotiations! No more careful sidestepping of parental politics as little Johnny’s mother takes great pains to keep track of how many times she’s looked after your child compared to the number of times you’ve taken little Johnny off her hands! The world can finally return to normal. Peace reigns.

However, before the calm must come the storm. By mid July Tescos are advertising their Back to School range. John Lewis has run out of school shoes and the only pencil case in WHSmith is ‘so not cool.’ You naively thought it was only a pencil case. In fact it’s a ticket straight to the bottom of the playground’s social hierarchy if you get it wrong.

If you’re anything like my mum was, it’s not until the penultimate day of the school holidays when you finally feel you have the strength to do the ‘back to school’ shop, and that’s only because you know you can’t put it off any longer. When I was a child, my mother would carefully scrutinise all of last year’s equipment deciding what would need replacing and what could survive another September. I was obviously of the understanding that everything needed replacing. How could I, in all seriousness, turn up to school with the same backpack as last year? And my favourite line? “Mum, everyone else will have a new one.” My mum wasn’t a big fan of this friend called Everyone Else.

Eventually we would leave to brace the town centre. The penultimate day of any holiday is a Saturday, which is scientifically proven to be the worst day for school shopping. Dad would have retreated long before we left the house to the safety of ‘anywhere else but here’ and it would be mum and I setting out together with our very own clear, and very different agendas regarding what we were going to come home with. We would both return exhausted; some battles she would have won, some she would have lost but I would finally be ready for the first day back, and usually with a new back-pack as a trade off for the shoes with a heel that I couldn’t have.

School shopping is the Roman equivalent of the coliseum for parents and children. As you traipse from shoe shop to bag shop to stationers to sports shop, there are fallen parents all around. You carefully step over them, realising with impending doom that your fight is still to come. You start to save strength, become defensive and soon enough, usually around the school shoe area, the fight erupts. Other parents and children stop to watch your fallout – school shopping is most certainly a spectator’s sport - and before you know it, it’s a gladiatorial bloodbath.

The children stop and stare, silently rooting for the little girl who’s desperate for the school shoes that are actually trainers. Every parent has the same, valid argument: “But the school letter said very clearly that you weren’t allowed to wear trainers.” Every child responds in the same way: “Mum, they just write that. No one ever tells you off and anyway, Everyone Else wears these exact ones.” It’s funny how Everyone Else seems to be every child’s best friend. You quickly realise that this is not the time to try and start lecturing your child on the benefits of being an individual. Individual is a very dirty word at that age.

And perhaps this is where the heart of the school shopping tension lies. Perhaps, as adults, we underestimate the impact that these things can have. I am by no means condoning giving in to every child’s back-to-school whims and demands, but maybe they’re trying to tell us something, something that even they don’t fully understand and could probably not articulate. As people for whom school is a long-distant memory, are we occasionally a little dismissive of the importance of these things at that age?

Children can be cruel. Fact. I used to be a teacher and I have witnessed this cruelty first-hand. In their microcosmic environments, they fall into a social hierarchy, which appears worryingly natural. In reality, this hierarchy often has little to do with what shoes they are wearing or what bag they are carrying, but given half a chance a child will pick on anything if they want to hurt…and comments about appearances can sting at that age.

The battles children fight with us then, on the back-to-school shop, are less about how much they actually like what they want you to buy but more about how much other people will like what you buy for them to wear around. Perhaps this is their way of defending themselves in what is basically the educational equivalent of a dog-eat-dog world. And as long, as parents, we are sure we have armed them with the substance and personality to be a good person as well, is there anything actually wrong with being a teenager and wanting to fit in?

We do the same thing. If we want to look the part and have people take us seriously in a big meeting at work, what do we do? We dress for it. We put on our sharpest suit that we know we look great in. Add the perfect shoes that we spent ages trying to find and finish it off with the perfect bag/tie (delete as appropriate). Appearance in this sense isn’t superficial; it’s essential.

This is only what kids are doing they just don’t know it. They want to walk into the first day back at school feeling confident and looking the part. The only difference is, they have to get through us to do it. And, in the eyes of parents, a great suit seems more valid than choosing a great pair of Kickers, but in their world it’s the same thing.

And it is a different world. Trying to relate their experience to our own is useless. Not only do we look back on our school days with tinted glasses, schools are a different ball game. School is exhausting. The demands are enormous and the social rules endless. Kids can never fully escape school with the explosion of Facebook and Bebo. If you get anything wrong at school, you can be sure it’s all over the internet before tea-time. They walk a fine line of social acceptance that’s extremely hard to navigate. I’m not saying it’s right or fair, but it’s reality.

So perhaps the irony is that school shopping could turn out to be one of those silent gifts to parents. Children will never tell you honestly about what happens at school, but if they’re unhappy or nervous or insecure, you’ll probably be able to tell when you go school shopping. Bearing this in mind, maybe giving in on the cool bag, or the cool shoes isn’t the end of the world.

This article originally appeared in Sussex Local magazine http://www.sussexlocal.net/

Cage fighting Swedish Style

There are certain experiences in life that change us. This change can be temporary or permanent. Travelling the world alone at eighteen, for example, induces a permanent change, often for the better. There are, however, certain situations that we find ourselves, in which it is necessary to adapt our outlook on a more temporary basis in order to survive. Taking the bus home at rush hour in the rain, sitting in traffic jams with family, listening to political speeches: these all require an element of adaptation without which we would simply lose our minds.

If any of you have ever taken a trip to IKEA, you’ll know what I’m talking about. In fact, if IKEA had been around when Dante was writing Inferno, he would have renamed the Seventh Circle of Hell the Market Place. Everyone one of us needs to work ourselves up for a trip to IKEA. It takes training – mostly mental and emotional – and by god, does it take stamina.

As soon as a trip to IKEA is booked into your schedule, the necessary transformation begins immediately. Everybody knows the secret to success is preparation so you start The List. IKEA forces even the most chaotic amongst us to be organised and The List is often divided into separate rooms under which items such as ‘overhead light shade’, ‘small rug’ and ‘organisational unit for corner of bathroom’ (there’s no name for that, but you know IKEA will make one and call it something like MKALTOBOOBS) go. It goes without saying that you must have space at the side of every item to clearly list the aisle and location numbers as you want around the Swedish merry-go-round of masochism. You don’t want to get those locations mixed up otherwise, by the time you get to the self-help area and your sense of humour is half way home and your patience got up and left somewhere near the soft furnishing area, you’re liable to cry publicly and loudly if you can’t find your new lifestyle accessories. So you construct The List. You might even copy it out neatly before you go.

Then there’s transport. You certainly can’t get the bus to IKEA, or the train, or any mode of public transport unless it comes with a boot the size of Luxemburg. I don’t care if you’re only going for a garlic crusher, you’ll need a boot the size of Luxemburg. No one, in the history of IKEA, has ever, I repeat ever left IKEA with the one thing that they went for. Nor has anyone left for less than £100. If you have, don’t bother writing about it at the bottom of this blog, unless you scan in your receipt to prove it because I simply won’t believe you.

Once you’ve figured out how to get there, you’ve got to decide when to go. Unless you’re into self-harm, you rule out Saturday and Sunday straight off, followed by any Bank Holiday if there’s one looming. Ideally, you want to be able to go early in the morning on a weekday but that requires taking a day off work. “That’s a bit over the top,” you might say. Well, it depends on whether you think wearing a seatbelt is over the top, or not leaving matches with your toddler; it’s basic health and safety. If, however, a day off from work is not feasible, then an evening will have to do. Usually 7pm onwards is the best option but it only leaves you three hours so you’ve got to be prepared to be focused, fast and unflappable. Oh, and get a good night’s sleep, don’t go with your boyfriend/girlfriend and, whatever you do, don’t go on an empty stomach.

So you’re there. You park (easier written than done). Your heartbeat is a little faster than usual, there may a sweaty palm or two on the horizon but the adrenaline is kicking in and as soon as you walk through those sliding doors you know what needs to be done. You’ve already been cut off by a family carrying thirteen boxes that are six feet long and you watched an old man moved unfeasibly quickly to get the last trolley which he technically snatched from your grasp. In fact, you realize that all your manners must go out of the Swedish-designed window.

Shopping at IKEA is a little like cage fighting: there are no rules and you do what you need to do to survive. No more Mr. Nice-Guy. You make no concessions for children; they are simply planted there by ambitious parents to slow you down. By the time you get to the market place, you’re elbowing people out of the way to get the last set of IKEA Maaaaaaasbrogen glasses. A couple is fighting in the corner and a sadistic smile spreads across your face. Who’d be stupid enough to go to IKEA with a partner? Ha! Rookie error.

Once you’ve established your territory, a trip around IKEA may start off well, until of course they run out of the one set of curtains that you want. They tell you they’ll have more in tomorrow. “But my IKEA trip is today! It’s impossible for me to come back tomorrow!” you wail. The thought of having to return is already bringing you out in a rash. You move on. The trolley starts filling up. It gets harder and harder to navigate. You scrawl your aisle and location numbers down. You start to sweat. You can’t keep track of what you’ve got and what you haven’t got. You add in an egg-slicer because who doesn’t need one of those? You try to focus but aren’t those fairy lights pretty? Oooh, and those candlesticks would look great on the mantelpiece. By this time, it doesn’t matter that those things are not on the list. You’re like a child in a sweetshop. You’re in a blue and yellow coloured frenzy. You’re overdosing on lifestyle choices that weird Swedish boffins have created for you in a warehouse somewhere in the land of meatballs.

You emerge into the somewhat ironically named self-help area totally spent. You take a few moments to regroup before you head off into the maze of fifty feet high shelves. You balance a number of heavy boxes precariously on top of two trolleys. You’re on the home straight. You can feel it. You’re stronger than you’ve ever been. You’re lifting boxes from location 71 as if they’re no heavier than a box of cornflakes. You’re lumping them on the trolley and speeding off to the next aisle. It’s 9.30pm. You’ve got time to spare. The queues aren’t too bad. You don’t even care about the astronomical bill; you’re just pleased to be out of there. All the stress and pain that you felt somewhere in the middle is obliterated now by the excitement of taking it all home and transforming your life into an oasis of style and harmony (that will look like everyone else’s oasis but you silence this thought). It doesn’t matter than it’ll be 11pm before you’re home and you’ve got work tomorrow. You’re going to go home and make it all nice. Sigh. Of. Relief.

Beware. I urge you to enjoy this moment while it lasts. This moment is very shortlived.

Seconds after the high, the downer sets in. You get the car but you can’t park it in the loading area. Bad. You can get everything in except the oversized mirror so you have to queue to get it delivered. Bad. You get home and remember that you’ve got to put all the bloody stuff together yourself. Bad. You realize you only got one box of two instead of two boxes of two and you without half of your chest of drawers. Bad. You only realize this when you’ve exploded all the screws, pieces and instructions all over the floor. Bad. You’ve got to go back to IKEA all over again to get the other box. Really bad.

Basically, this is not a nice experience. No one enjoys a trip to IKEA. You might think you do but, like deciding to have a second child, you only do it because you can’t remember the pain. It’s exhausting, stressful, and costs you a fortune, and potentially a relationship. So why do so many of us do it? Well, I’ll tell you why I do it…because the meatballs are so damn good.

The Day of Rest

So the fear has set in. I’ve got two pay-checks left until I am unemployed. The confidence and yeehah attitude that seemed so freeing and empowering back in March is suddenly coming apart at the seams. I still think I did the right thing. I still have no regrets but I can’t deny that the reality, no scratch that, the ENORMITY of what I have done is hammering home. Like a brain worm, the thoughts of doubt are slowly burrowing deeper and deeper into my grey matter, and I woke up this morning and it hit me: well, if I’m going to make this work, I had better get started.

But where to start? It’s a huge task to wake up one morning and decide that you must use the day to sort out your life. Admittedly, there are some bits in place already…some pretty great bits, but it all needs funding somehow and how on earth am I going to make that happen?

Well, obviously, this was a task too big for me to manage in one sitting and especially first thing in the morning before I had even properly woken up, so I decided to finish my book first. I only had 15 pages or so left, so it wasn’t exactly procrastination, but looking back now, it was certainly a delaying tactic. Oh, ok, it was procrastination.

After finishing the book, and reading the acknowledgements that the author writes, and then reading about her, and then feeling unsatisfied with the miniscule paragraph of information regarding her I went to the internet and did a bit more scouring. When that was done, I found the first two chapters of the next book and thought it would be remiss of me not to read those as well. And then…dammit, that was another hour that had slipped through my greasy fingers and I’ve still got my life to sort out.

Feeling a little more motivated now, I was determined to get on with this task of all proportions…but I didn’t want to do it dirty! This was an important task, one that required respect and cleanliness and I needed a bath. That wasn’t procrastination, surely? Wasn’t that just good personal hygiene? I may have been the only one in the house all day today with no plans to leave but that was no excuse for slovenly living habits. And, while I was at it, I may as well put a bit of bubble bath in and bring in the laptop to catch up on a bit of 24. I mean, really, it’s been so long since I’ve had the time or opportunity to indulge in a bath that, you know, I deserve it.

An hour later, I was starting to feel ready to tackle my life free-fall. After I’d dried my hair of course. And plucked my eyebrows. And done my nails. And fake tanned a bit. By now it’s 3pm and I’m starting to think that maybe Sunday isn’t the best day for this task after all. I mean, who works on a Sunday? Even the big man himself takes that day off…he used Monday to Saturday to create his world and by God, if it’s good enough for him, then it’s good enough for me too. In fact, by this time, I’ve convinced myself it would be nothing short of blasphemy for me to continue on my “selfish” life-managing mission on a Sunday. What had I been thinking?

I managed to hush the screaming voice of conscience that lives in my chest (you know in that really tight, twisted bit?) by drowning them out with a bit more 24. And isn’t it funny how quickly you can lose 4 hours to that? If I hear the sentence “Jack’s gone dark” one more time today, I may actually have to do something constructive with my life. Oh, wait, wasn’t that the problem in the beginning?

And now it’s 9.10pm and I’m still no further to figuring it out. Instead of writing letters and updating CVs and all that jazz, I’m indulging in the ultimate irony. I’m wasting more time avoiding what I should be doing, by writing this blog telling you what I’m doing to waste time avoiding doing what I should be doing. My life is officially in freefall. Erm, can anyone tell me where the eject button is please?

Switzerland...I'm home!

There are some places in the world that instantly feel like home. Without any rhyme or reason, there are some airports you land in and it’s as if you’ve been struggling to breathe until the moment you touched down, but you didn’t realise it. Switzerland is like that for me. I have spent a lot of time in Switzerland and maybe that’s the only reason. Perhaps, it’s just the familiarity of it but then again, I’ve spent a lot of time in California and that never did, nor will, feel like home. So what is it about these surrogate countries that make us feel as if we belong there?

I had a boyfriend when I was about 16. He was the love of my life…at least he was in the way that only a 16 year old can believe. If I’m honest, it was all a bit Dawson’s Creek. We lived in the middle of nowhere in a small village in the Yorkshire Dales and, pretty much, we were the only people of the same age in the village. For that reason, it was probably lucky that we didn’t find each other repulsive. In fact, we ended up going out together for about three years and those three years in that small village without him would have been hell on earth. He was my world and he was my first infatuation (see previous blog!) but he had another infatuation…Canada.

I didn’t understand it at the time. He came back from a school exchange in Vancouver and from that moment on, he felt out of place back home in Yorkshire. Vancouver, and all things Canadian, were where his heart now belonged. I’d done some travelling but I’d never been bowled over by a country; a country had never stolen my heart; I’d never cheated on a boyfriend with a country. And honestly, that’s how I felt. I felt like he’d left me for another woman, decided to come home and make the best of it, and realised that he was stuck in a loveless relationship for the sake of trying to do the right thing! Dramatic much? Possibly, but isn’t every 16 year old in love for the first time dramatic?

Come the age of 18, we weren’t together anymore and I was embarking on my own life. I was finishing at school and suddenly the big, bad world was opening up to me. In a typical teenage fashion, this big bad world seemed far too big and bad for me to contemplate and I found myself in June 1999 with my exams behind me and nothing organised for the summer. I’d got a place at university in September but what was I going to do with myself until then? I was pretty sure that the olds weren’t going to stand for me ‘relaxing’ at home. If I mentioned it, all they heard was, “I thought I’d spend the summer sleeping and freeloading at your house if that’s ok?” Not surprisingly, it wasn’t so I needed to find something to keep me occupied and quickly.

At the very last minute, my headmaster came through for me. He used to a work in a boarding school in the Swiss Alps, he said. They run a summer school, he said and they will take you on as a member of staff but they can’t pay you, he said. Well, apart from the Alps bit, the rest of it sounded pretty rubbish to a girl surrounded by others jetting off to Thailand, Asia, Vietnam and placements in London. But, there was no other choice. My parents had locked the door at the family home and they seemed to hide behind the sofas in the dark whenever I turned up, hoping that I’d go away and find something worthwhile to do. So, I packed a rucksack stuffed full with clothes, hope, nerves and a lot of trepidation and off I popped to the easyjet check-in desk (you see, it was all glamour from the start).
I remember the exact point when I fell in love with Switzerland. I was on a easyjet plane (it gets better, I promise). I was just waking up. I looked out of the window and it was then. Right at that moment. The plane was suspended between mountains that made me feel small and insignificant in the most beautiful way. It was the last day in July and the sun was bouncing off snow-capped peaks. As we came into land in Geneva, Lac Leman spread itself out underneath the plane like a shimmering Swiss version of the red carpet and I remember hoping at that moment that this would not be the last time I ever landed in Switzerland.

Despite this, I was still nervous. I had basic instructions on how to get to the school via train from the airport. I was just 18, I spoke barely any French, I was on my own, and I had no idea how to buy a ticket, which train to get on or where to get off. Five minutes into the train journey that didn’t matter. I must have looked like the freshest, most wet-behind-the-ears tourist the Swiss had ever laid eyes on. My face was practically stuck to the train window as the train went along the shore of Lac Leman through towns such as Lausanne, Vevey, Montreux until it finally rested in Aigle. Hands down, it beat any train journey I had ever been on. It still does.

And that’s where my love affair with Switzerland began. It might not be perfect; it can be infuriatingly pragmatic sometimes to the detriment of anything fun or spontaneous but it’s like a beautiful, innocent pedigree dog who’s been trained impeccably but every now and again it’ll chew up a pair of socks with a cheeky grin on its face. Since then, I’ve spent a total of nine summers, four New Year’s Eves and various trips to visit friends. I have fallen in and out of love in Switzerland. I’ve skied, snowboarded, fallen down and picked myself up again. I’ve jumped in lakes off highboards in the summer and bellyflopped a few times too. I’ve trekked up mountains in the summer only to have the breath knocked out of me by the view at the top (if you ever get a chance visit Lac Tanay). I’ve camped, stayed in fabulous hotels, been to festivals, danced by the lakeside at the Jazz festival and stayed to watch the sun come up over Lac Leman. I’ve made some of the best friends in Switzerland and captured some of my best memories there too.

And that’s why we fall in love with countries. They may not be where we come from but sometimes, while you’re there, you figure out where you want to go in life. In my experience this is most likely to happen when you pick yourself up out of your life at home and you take yourself off. It’s often a journey that you do by yourself and when I did it, I was young, naïve, a little bit lost and Switzerland took care of me. It opened it’s big, beautiful arms and said, “Come on in. Enjoy it…and have you tried this before? No? Well, here, hold my hand. I’ll show you how.”

Married to Music

“Son, someday you will make a girl very happy, for a short period of time. Then she’ll leave you and be with new men who are ten times better than you could ever hope to be. These men are called musicians.”

There are men that call themselves musicians. There are even men that actually are musicians and there are certainly girls who leave perfectly nice boys for musicians in the hope, I’m sure, that they will lead a rock-fuelled life of glamour and gigs. I live with a musician. I wouldn’t change it for the world. But, if you’re out there thinking how glamorous it must be and how exciting it must be, or even more importantly, if you’re thinking of becoming one of those girls that leave someone to, ‘be with new men…called musicians,’ think long and hard. It’s not all backstage parties, free tickets and tour buses.

Of course, you do get all those free tickets to gigs, backstage passes, after-show party tickets and you do get to meet lots and lots of cool people but honestly, and I really mean this, that’s the least important perk of the relationship. Any girl that’s with a musician for the freebies will get bored pretty quickly because the flip side of this particular musical coin is not nearly as glamorous.

Being with a musician is like having a pedigree pet. They’re often beautiful looking. They are often adored by friends and family. They have particular traits that appear to have bypassed the more ‘regular’ breeds and, on occasion you can even take them to a show and watch while they are admired by crowds of people and finally they walk away with a rosette of some kind (OK, musicians don’t get rosettes, but the analogy remains). But just like the pedigree pets, they undoubtedly require more maintenance and upkeep.

From her point of view, it’s the ‘living’ with a musician that is not all it’s cracked up to be. As he reads this, I can imagine my boyfriend (who is a musician incidentally) starting to huff and puff with indignation and well he might, because you know what? It’s not easy for him either. It’s bloody hard for both parties involved. They manage by building tremendously strong and necessary coping mechanisms which, when you both end up back in the same house, can clash enormously.

While he’s away for weeks at a time, he’s in a different hotel room every night, a different city everyday and a different airport every other day. He’s told exactly where to be, what to wear and what to eat. He gets used to not having to think for himself, or indeed, for anyone else. He inevitably becomes somewhat nocturnal. Gigs finish late, after-show parties finish later. He’s got to get sleep to be on form for the show. He may have a few hours on a day off to go out and explore the city he’s in or he may not. He may only have the chance to compare hotel lobbies. Despite the sleep he may get, he is continuously exhausted and struggles to deal with anything beyond the realms of the tour bubble. Living out of a suitcase and sleeping in a different bed each night takes its toll. Adding to this, he sleeps, eats, plays, travels with exactly the same people day in and day out. Now, generally, they’re all good people but they could be Mother freakin’ Teresa and eventually after four weeks in their pockets you get bored with the view. And, of course, there’s the usual politics that go with any job – musical or not – that have to be managed. Unfortunately, while us normal people get to go home to our own sanctuaries at night, he has to crawl into a bunk on a tour bus no more than two feet away from everyone he works with. There is no escape!

As for her at home, it’s no easier. While he jets around from one fabulous city to another, she gets up every day at the same time and heads to work in the same (often rainy and cold) city. It doesn’t really make a difference when he tells her that he doesn’t even know what fabulous city he’s in at the moment. Even though she knows it’s true. It’s particularly bad when she finds herself at the fourth family dinner, or wedding, or birthday party by herself. Weddings are a particular nightmare for her. Firstly, most of them happen at weekends over the summer, which coincidentally is festival season and therefore normally an immediate write-off for him. Secondly, there’s not many people that go to weddings by themselves which makes her an awkward guest to fit into the seating plan and brides just love telling her that in a loud voice when everyone appears to have gone quiet. The children’s table, or the grandparents table is often where she will find herself deposited/squashed. Thirdly, dancing at a wedding on your own is always a bit weird. It’s fine while New York, New York is playing, but when the DJ brings the lights down and throws on the ‘slow number’ she has to beat a hasty retreat to the bar/loo/smoking circle (delete as appropriate).

And relationship wise it’s a minefield. When she’s available to chat on Skype, he’s working and vice versa. Mobile phone companies start invoicing him for his kidneys because cash simply doesn’t cover the costs anymore. She doesn’t want to say how rubbish home without him is because she wants to be supportive and not add to any pressures and guilt he’s feeling about being away all the time. He’s constantly under pressure to try and make time to call/email, which is nigh on impossible most days. She understands this most of the time, but spends a lot of time drinking wine with girlfriends and talking about how she wishes they could talk ‘properly’. Most of their relationship is conducted under the ever-present scrutiny of Twitter or Facebook and the only time she really gets to ‘see’ him is on the YouTube footage of gigs and TV performances that fabulously faithful fans post (Thank you MFC!) And don’t even get them started on what life for them would be like without an iPhone each.

Weirdly though, and very unexpectedly, the being away part is often the easiest bit. As I mentioned before, they construct these impenetrable coping mechanisms that make it ok. She tells herself it’s nice getting up for work without having to get dressed in the dark for fear of waking him. He tells himself that he gets to travel the world and fulfil his wildest dreams. They both become very selfish and they both construct routines that work perfectly for her when she’s at home and when he’s away. Yes, being away is the easy bit. After five weeks away, they’ve got it figured out. They can function perfectly and maintain a healthy relationship despite all the odds. Well done them.

But before that can pat themselves on the back, he’s home again and it should all be great. So why isn’t it? After five weeks of coping, they’ve both forgotten what it’s like to actually be together. In the same room. Sharing the same life.

It’s at this point that things get complicated. You’ve both got your routines. Complacently, they thought that being back together in the same post-code would be all that was necessary. It doesn’t work like that. He walks through the door; she wants his every moment. He’s all she’s been waiting for; she’s the first person he wants to see…but the first of many. There’s always a million friends and family waiting in the wings and it’s hard for her to share him with them, especially if he’s only back for 4 days. He walks through the door, he wants to sit and stop and not talk to anyone and sleep in the same bed more than twice. He wants to get his laundry done, his accounts done, his car serviced and this must all be done in the five days that he’s home. She quite fancies going away for a couple of days; the last thing he wants to do is go to another hotel. She wants to go out for dinner; the last thing he wants to do is eat in another restaurant.

The reality is that these things take getting used to. The rules as far as she can figure it out are:

1. Give him time to get home, unpack, get stuff done, relax, sleep, sleep and sleep a little bit more.
2. Be up front about what you want to do and what you’ve organised. Ask him to do the same.
3. Remember that you lead two lives – both of which have their advantages. Be thankful for that and relish the time you do have together.

The thing is, you all know what the good bits about being with a musician are. You all know about the gigs and the freebies and the parties and the travelling and the wonderful hotels that you sometimes get to go and stay in, in the colour-filled and life-drenched cities of the world. And those are not just good…those bits are great. But there are parts of living with a musician that suck the big one so, when the father tells the son that, “she’ll leave you and be with new men who are ten times better than you could ever hope to be” he’s right in only one way. Women will continue to leave men for musicians. But those musicians won’t be ten times better than other men. They’ll be normal people who do a job and no matter how glamorous people think that job is, or how exciting it is, if you do it for long enough, it’s still just a job and you’ve still got to manage life and love as well and it’s still not easy. It’s just that you’ve got a nice hotel room in which to try and work it out.

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Kensal Green Tube Station

Former Infatuation Junkie

I remember being 17 and heartbroken. It was the end of my world as I knew it. I wasn’t just sad and moody for a few days; I was totally shaken from the darkest corners of my inner core all the way out to the tiny hang nail on my little finger.

I remember taking refuge in my bedroom – the teenage sanctuary. I remember closing the door and simply sliding down it, unable to move for hours. I remember my mum telling me that I was only 17. I remember hearing, “There are plenty more fish in the sea” and “You’re young. You’ve got no idea what love is.” I remember wanting to punch them all in the face because I might have only been 17, but I knew what love was. Damn it I did! I had never been more certain of anything in my life.

The one and only thing that gave me comfort at the time was something my sister said. (This has since been a running theme in my life; my sister always seems to know what the right thing to say is often, in more recent years, washed down by a kick-ass vodka tonic). While I wallowed in my treacle-like misery and got increasingly angry at those people who pitifully looked down on my first experience of tortuous love with a patronising glance and a knowing look, my sister simply turned to me and said, “There is nothing I can say to you to make you feel any better right now. All I can promise you is that it will get better. You won’t feel like this forever.”

There are some things that stay with you and her words resonated in me for a long time to come. In fact, they still do. I’ve said those same words myself. When girls (and boys) that I teach get themselves trapped in the unforgiving web of teenage love and playgrounds, those are the only words I feel worthy of saying. Anything else diminishes their feelings. All you want when you feel like that is for someone to say, “It’s OK. Those feelings are real.”

And, my god, they are real. I don’t think we feel anything in the same way we felt that first heartbreak. When it happens for the first time, there’s no perspective or comparison. The newness of those feelings and the power of them, knock you off your feet. And, when they’ve done that, they kick you in the shins, jump on your chest to squeeze all the air out and take up residence in your every waking moment and sleepless dream.

But is it love?

Sometimes, yes it is. But my argument here today is that actually those patronising pillars of superiority that hounded me when I was 17 were more than likely right. I was 17. I really had no idea what love was and I think it’s taken me until I was 28 to fully realise that and to fully understand it. I’m not saying that my early relationships were any less valid, or real. I’m just saying that, like everything else, you learn how to love. Babies don’t get up and start sprinting one day. Young children don’t run straight to the bookshelf and pick up Henry James and we don’t run into our first relationship and get true love right first time. Or at least, most of us don’t…

I need to explain an important belief I hold to be true. Firstly, there is love and then there is infatuation. Again, my sister rears her oh so beautiful head here because this is another life lesson that she passed on to me. In fact, I wish she were here with her wallet and the article that she carries around in it to make sure I get this right, but I will try my best.

Distinguishing between love and infatuation is particularly tricky because, in my view, they both inevitably start in a similar way. There’s the breathless excitement and the pulsing feeling that happens in all the right places. There’s the overwhelming addiction to thinking about that person. There’s the warm feeling that envelops your whole soul when you hear their voice, when you get an email or when you catch them looking at you. All of that whirlwind chemistry that your body magically produces and throws around your insides at random, while sprinkling a little in your brain for good measure, is that feeling you get when you meet someone that excites you. At this point the path is yet to fork. At this point, you’re still on a one-way road to instant gratification and year round sunshine and rainbows.

And then, I think, there comes a point where your feelings come up for air. After drifting on a metaphorical cloud of honey-coloured kisses, your feelings begin to settle and it is at this point where you stand at the fork in the road. Do you wander down Up and Down Highway, through Insecurity Alley and end up in Infatuation City? Or, do you drift off along the street of Pure Contentment, take a right down Sense of Calm Avenue and end up in Love’s Corner?

Because, in my opinion, that’s the difference. Infatuation will inevitably be exciting but it will also be painful and those two things often come in equal measure. Infatuation will be made up of a healthy balance of ‘Ok this is fine’ (generally when you’re with the other person) and ravaging insecurity (often when you’re not with that person). Infatuation is exhausting. Infatuation will feel overwhelmingly powerful, it may even feel like love, but there’s too many negatives for this to be good enough to call love.

I have been infatuated. My sister told me it was infatuation at the time. I didn’t listen to her and I didn’t like hearing her say it…probably because I knew it was true. Those who are infatuated are often defined by their brilliant skills of defence. The amount of times I’ve heard girlfriends say, “Yes, but you don’t know him…” or “No, he’s really not that type of guy…” or “But the things he says to me when we’re on our own…” I’ve said them all. More than once. About more than one guy. Infatuation was my speciality and it’s landed me in more than enough heart-related trouble.

So, if that’s infatuation, what’s love? In one word and in my opinion only? Calm. Love is the excitement, but it’s also the quiet, inalienable faith that fills a gap in your soul that you didn’t even know was there. It’s more than ‘This is fine’; it’s ‘I can’t believe I lived without this.’ It’s the secret and unshakeable knowledge that, even when you’re not with that person, you’re still ever-present in their mind consciously or not. It’s the freedom that comes with being able to get on with your own life, in your own way and know that this relationship can handle that. It doesn’t force you to fundamentally change or constantly check if you’re doing everything right. You are right and it is right. It’s all the fun and warm feelings without any of those deep, underlying, often ignored itches and scratches of the soul. It’s being able to say no, or to say you’re not happy about this or that, without worrying whether he or she will walk out the door and not look back. It’s security. It’s warmth. It’s simply calm.

And the only time it’s not calm? When you think for some uncontrollable or inconceivable reason that you might lose them. When I asked my sister what she would do if she lost her husband she replied, “Oh god. It would be like the air had been taken away. Don’t even ask me to think about it.”

OK, I won’t.

The Day I Dropped my Basket

The blues. Grey days. Being under the weather. Not quite yourself. There are a worrying amount of euphemisms for depression. Why is that? Is it because we can’t face the D-word ourselves? Or is it because we can’t face the way people look at you when mention it? Either way, the result is the same. As a society, we tend to turn away from the issue, brush it under the psychological carpet and hope that the people that suffer from it keep it to themselves.

Well, I’m not one of those people. I’ve ‘dropped my basket’ (my own personal euphemism) twice now. The first time was three years ago and what a terrifying time that was. I wrote about it at the time. I remember feeling the need to do it. While most people spoke to me about my depression in hushed whispers I started to feel the need to shout about it from the rooftops. So, I sat down with my MySpace account and posted a blog and you know what? It was the easiest blog to write. Maybe it was a necessary and cathartic process for me but maybe, just maybe, I wanted to people to sit up and think, “Hang on a minute. Cat’s depressed? Really? I’d never would have seen that coming!”

You and me both. I think if you’d have asked my childhood/teenage/university friends who would be most likely to suffer from depression, I honestly would have been way down on that list. I am the quintessential ‘glass-half-full’ girl. I’m a believer in positive thinking. I hunt down silver linings as if my life depends on it but three years ago, for some reason that quality within me withered and died.

It’s a very weird feeling when you wake up in the middle of the night and you don’t recognise yourself. One of the symptoms of depression is sleeplessness. When you’re lying in bed at 3.30am overwhelmed by weighty feelings and thoughts that feel entirely alien to you it doesn’t take long before you realise that it’s the loneliest place in the world. Of course, the more sleep you lose, the more tired you become, the more unable you are to handle the stuff that life throws at you.

All the things I loved to do – run, read, write, go out, watch TV – I couldn’t bring myself to get excited about any of it. More than that, I couldn’t concentrate on any of it. Not only could I not watch an episode of Eastenders all the way through without losing my mojo to these newly discovered dark depths, I couldn’t even concentrate on managing my life. Trying to write a to-do list was the hardest thing I could attempt. If, by some miracle, I managed to compile a list of things that needed doing the chances of me being able to finish a job were slim to none (there was more chance of me poking white hot needles into my eyes and cooking them for dinner). I couldn’t hold my own in a conversation. All my confidence and humour was magically sapped from me. As for making a decision? It would have been easier to try and fit the proverbial camel through the eye of a needle.

Just as I started to wonder who the girl in the mirror was staring back at me, I began recognising the same confused looks on the faces of my friends and family. I knew I loved my family and friends but for the life of me I couldn’t feel it. I would spend time mentally searching through the emotional caverns of my psyche and nothing would buzz. I’d feel nothing. I think that was the scariest thing. It wasn’t always that I felt overwhelmingly sad (although doubtless, that was often the case). It was more that I felt nothing; I was joyless. It was as if the real me had been put to sleep and no matter what I did to try and wake it from its slumber it remained numb, unfeeling, deadened. Sooner rather than later, I gave up trying to rouse it.

And so I spent a long time feeling isolated, lonely, tired and very scared. I had no idea what was happening. I was from the north. Depression didn’t happen up there. If you felt blue in Yorkshire you pretended you were a pair of bathroom curtains and pulled yourself together. You called up mates, had a couple of drinks and got over it. If you mention therapy up north they need a dictionary to figure out what you mean and once they know, they’ll think it is American. And Prozac? Well that’s what they use in Hollywood isn’t it?

My parents observed this change in me for some time. Just like me, they were unsure about this usurper. Who was this girl? Is this invasion of the body-snatchers...for real? It wasn’t until my mum found me on the doorstop, just before Christmas, not just dropping my metaphorical basket but turning it upside down, emptying it out and throwing it repeatedly against a wall. I was inconsolable. The depression had won. I had lost. The tiniest hope I’d had of ever feeling normal again had disappeared.

A trip to the doctors was all it took.

It wasn’t long before I fully understood what had happened. Yes, it was probably exacerbated by stress and maybe the time of year. Yes, it was a chemical in-balance that caused my brain to malfunction temporarily and yes, I let it go on for a lot longer than I should have done. I simply didn’t know that there was anything wrong. I honestly believed I just needed to get over it. The relief I felt when the doctor explained the reality of what was happening to me was indescribable. This wasn’t my fault! It could be easily fixed!

It took a little prejudicial adjustment on my part to come to terms with being on medication. I had to separate ‘mental illness’ from ‘crazy’. I had to embrace the fact that depression wasn’t a far-away illness that happened to other people and for me that meant writing about it and talking about it. I recovered and began to feel my old enthusiasm rising up through the cracks. The ball of anxiety that had taken up squatter’s rights in my chest began to melt away and day by day, I remembered what it was like to wake up in my own life again.

I think the biggest surprise was the realisation that depression had ‘happened’ to more people than I realised. Without warning, the most unsuspecting of people would listen to my story and reply, “I went through a similar thing...” I began to realise that this was happening to more people that I could ever have imagined.

Worryingly, some of those people still live in fear of the social backlash, the prejudice and the downright ignorance that still surround this issue and resist ever getting the support and help that they deserve. Imagine you wake up one morning and your back has gone. You can’t move. You’re in pain and there’s nothing you can do to make it go away except perhaps take some medication, get some treatment and wait it out. No one would question your illness. No one would question your temporary inability to lead a normal, happy existence. ‘Dropping your basket’ is exactly the same thing. The only difference is, people can understand a bad back. People aren’t uncomfortable with bad backs.

To ski or not to ski?

So, I stand at a crossroads. Well, actually, I’m not quite there yet but as I check my metaphorical life map I can see this fork looming in the road up ahead and frankly, it’s a little terrifying.

We’ve all had to make life-changing, or life-forming, decisions but the irony is that these tend to fall naturally towards the beginning of our time in the big bad world. Just like a small child learning how to ski, there’s little that will stop them from heading head-first down the steep, avalanche-likely slope.

At the tender age of 14 or 15 we are asked to narrow our options. So, blindly and with little thought, we select some GCSEs to keep us busy. Then, after two years, depending on how those GCSEs turned out, we may select A Levels. Or we may not. The point is, that we are always blithely unaware of how defining those choices are. When we are barely exploring our teenage years and at a time when nature makes us our most indecisive, fickle and uncertain we are asked to look down the lifelong corridor of open doors and decide which ones we are going to lock up forever.

Of course, the reality is that when we are making those decisions, there are teachers and parents and universities who have developed finely tuned PR skills to make us think that doors are actually opening; more than that, we are actually discovering new doors. What a clever ploy they have going on there and how perfect that we are at our least able to realise how deftly they are manipulating us.

But please don’t misunderstand me. I don’t believe this is a negative thing. It’s a necessary thing; just like puberty in all its horrible glory, and your first break-up, all these things are necessary to get us to define what we want, who we want to be and where we want to end up. Our ignorance is the anaesthetic that makes all these gut-wrenchingly difficult choices manageable. And believe me, they are gut-wrenching because for every child who fearlessly learns to ski without a worry in the world, there is always an anxious and much more wobbly adult hankering nervously behind somewhere.

While the child simply revels in the excitement of the experience, the adult with their oh so important perspective and hindsight suddenly realise the enormity of what they are doing. Does no one else realise that this is a crazy idea? I’ve just attached two pieces of fibreglass (or whatever skis are made from these days) to my feet and planted myself at the top of an unusually steep hill and now I’m supposed to enjoy the ride down while the very real possibilities of serious breakage, or even death, loom over me? Er, I think I’ll sit this one out.

And that’s the cross roads that I find myself at now. Do I sit it out or do I throw myself headlong into something that could be potentially very risky? Is it very risky, or has my anaesthetic simply worn off? Am I skiing with the wind in my hair or am I in the bar drinking vin chaud, warm and comfortable but, frankly, a little bored?

A career change is doubtless a terrifying concept to imagine. For someone who’s nearly thirty, earning decent money and living a comfortable life in London the prospect of giving that up seems crazy and yet, as a 22 year old in the same situation it didn’t bother me at all.

Immediately after graduating from university, I fled to London Town in search of a career. I honestly had no idea what I wanted to do, but there was a boy who lived down there and that was a good enough reason. What other factors were there? I landed myself a Buyer’s Admin Assistant job at a prestigious fashion company in the West End. What a coup! But after a year of office work and scrimping and saving in London, I abandoned it.

Without much more than a second thought I jacked in a job that a million fashion graduates would have chewed their own Vivienne Westwood boots up for. I left. I flitted around for a bit. I did a TEFL qualification. I worked for a ski season in Courchevel. I did some work in a florist. I turned down a job offer at Ralph Lauren (despite the anaesthetic, that does still hurt a little) and I didn’t care. I seemed to have this unflappable belief that it would all work out in the end. Finally, I moved back up North and applied to do my teaching qualification at the University of Leeds and here I am…five years later teaching English in an inner-city London school.

So, what changed? After five years of teaching there’s something in me that’s asking, “Is this all I can do?” It’s not that I hate teaching. I hate elements of it for sure, but all in all, teaching is a pretty decent gig. Yes the workload is excessive. The hours are long. The holidays are great but there’s always work to be done and after what feels like a very long five years, there has not been a lie-in, a Christmas day, a long-hot bath or a run in the park, where I’ve been able to relax, stop thinking about work and say to myself, “I’ve got this under control.” Teaching is a ‘live to work’ profession and I think, I’m looking for a work-to-live job at least for now. At least until I’ve had a rest.

What I did at 22 seems so alien to me now. Can I justify jacking in a job that allows me to live the life I want to live? Can I justify walking away from such a noble profession to be, let’s face it, more selfish? Do I dare to do these things? There’s no doubt about it; I am the shaking, nervous adult standing behind the ballsy child ready to hit the nearest snow park and land some gnarly rides having barely removed his snow equivalent to stabilisers. But what’s the worse that can happen? I’m sure there’ll be wobbles and maybe even the odd fall, there may even be a metaphorical leg-break but it’s unlikely that it will kill me. And, what if it doesn’t work out as smoothly as I hope? Well there’s always the bar and the vin chaud waiting for me.