A Woman and Her Adventures

As my fourteen year old self sat on a busy train to Belfast, trying not to look anyone in the eye and praying to God that no one would sit beside me an old man got on the train. A very old man. And of course he sat down beside me. I smiled at him and he smiled back before I was absorbed back into my, super cool at the time, blackberry phone. A few minutes past when I could feel him looking over my shoulder. He asked “what is that?”, and for a moment my young brain could not comprehend the idea that anyone on the planet would not know what a mobile phone was. I smiled and explained that it was a phone and you could go on the internet, take photographs and send text messages to people. He expressed his wonder at this, but what perplexed him most seemed to be the small size of the phone. He began to tell me a story about his life during the war. He had worked with Morse code machines which, he explained, used to be the size of a desk. Then one day he came in to work and there was ...

One of my favourite past times, rain or shine, is to go a drive in the car. Though I don’t mind driving myself I much prefer it when someone else drives. And I could sit in the car forever. My family joke about whether there will ever come a time that I will get board in the car. I honestly believe the answer is no. You see when I’m in the car driving for no reason, on the road to nowhere in particular, I feel free, like the world outside has disappeared. Some people enjoy driving because of the things they see and the places they go, and I enjoy that too but really driving nowhere feels like running away, in the best possible way. This is why, to my sister’s dismay, my rule is if you’re going somewhere, to do something it doesn’t count as a drive. I sit beside whoever my companion that day is and we put the world to rights, reminisce dream, laugh, sing and sometimes even cry. And with each of the people who I go out in the car with I have a different type of experience. Most ...

Someone else's talent doesn’t diminish my own. There is such a thing as working too hard. Success doesn’t always come packaged the way they sold it to me at school. Truly not caring what other people think about me lifted a weight off my shoulders. It’s ok to dislike someone for apparently no reason. Some people don’t click.  It’s ok for someone to dislike me for apparently no reason. Disliking someone doesn’t mean you should treat them badly. Singing (no matter how badly) is good for the soul. If you leave tiny worries in your head too long your brain WILL catastrophize and it will get out of hand. Just spit it out! Someone can help you. If you put kindness out into the world it will come back to you. The phrase ‘you always think your right’ is stupid. Of course I think I’m right. If I didn’t I wouldn’t be saying it! But I’m always happy to be proven wrong.  Failure is a temporary state.  If you’re an adult who doesn’t like hot drinks people get suspicious....