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You had me at first click – Part Two

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From that sunny July afternoon onwards Johnny and Jenny were the best of friends. Despite her pretty frocks and delicate-as-porcelain demeanour Johnny was delighted to find Jenny was, in fact, a tomboy at heart. When her mother was out of sight she liked nothing more than kicking off her patent shoes, yanking the bow from her hair and rolling up her sleeves so she could get stuck into climbing trees, making dens or whatever other pursuits their limitless imaginations could conjure up.

People joked that they were joined at the hip, a phrase Johnny found particularly distasteful in light of Auntie Pauline’s hip replacement operation, which had seen her incarcerated in the hospital for several weeks not long after the street party where they had first met (and which he fully disputed having played any part in instigating despite compelling evidence to suggest he’d laid a number of Tonka toy cars in her path when she had come to visit).

Some people even suggested Johnny and Jenny would marry, but as every eight year old boy finds such talk abhorrent Johnny would scrunch up his face, pinch his fingers over his nose and exclaim loudly to everyone within earshot that he couldn’t think of anything worse than marrying a “smelly girl.” Jenny would agree that such a proposal was nothing short of preposterous (though not in quite so eloquent a turn of phrase – she was only eight after all), and the two would skip off down the road holding hands as whichever unfortunate soul who had dared to suggest their eventual marital union was left shaking their head and thinking, “shame.”

To be continued…

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Writing this story reminded me of these boys who I came across whilst walking in Bali. They were having so much fun flying their kite, it was really heart warming to watch.

You had me at first click

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There are more ways for a man to meet his demise than one might think. The first time Johnny Barker picked up a camera he couldn’t have known he was setting in motion a chain of events that would ultimately lead to his.

July 1981. Great British Summertime is in full swing, and eight year old Johnny is sitting on the wall outside his terraced house in his grey flannel shorts, watching as his mother, sister and a cacophony of other female relatives and neighbours prepare for the annual street party.

“Come on Johnny,” his sister Sally scolds as she simultaneously pulls a string of brightly coloured bunting out of the front door and sets off down the road. Johnny watches open-mouthed as the bunting keeps on coming out of the front door as if by magic, until Auntie Pauline appears at the other end of it and delivers a well-aimed kick to Johnny’s behind as she passes by.

“Oh good Lord, Pauline!” Johnny’s mother exclaims, running back into the house with the enthusiasm of an athlete. “I’ve clean forgot about the trifle!”

Johnny slides off his perch and scuffs his shoe against the wall, loosening some pebbles which tumble in a mini avalanche onto the Tarmac beneath. He shoves his hands into his pockets and sighs.

“What’s wrong with you boy?” Auntie Pauline asks with a less than playful cuff around Johnny’s ear. Not a slight woman, the body weight behind the gesture almost sends him flying, and an expression somewhere between shock and satisfaction briefly registers on the old woman’s pinched face.

“Nowt,” Johnny says with a shrug, “besides being having ‘owt to do.” He dodges yet another swipe and half skips, half runs down the road to his friend Terry’s house.

Two hours later and the street party’s in full swing, with crackly music blaring from Tom Warner’s old wireless radio. The scotch eggs, sausages and cucumber sandwiches have all but been devoured and the small children are tucking into the jelly and ice cream.

Distracted by the sight of an unfamiliar man in their midst, Johnny pushes his plate to one side. The man sidles up beside him and gives him a wink. He is wearing a long cream mac that is completely at odds with the warmth of the day, and in his hand he holds the biggest camera Johnny has ever seen.

“You like this?” asks the man, his mouth widening into a crooked grin. Johnny nods, and the man holds the camera out in front of him like a prize. “Why don’t you have a go at taking a picture with it?”

Johnny gulps and looks down at the camera. He takes it from the man and gingerly removes the lens cap. Holding it to his face he squints and looks through the viewfinder, pointing the camera into the crowd of people.

And then he sees her. She is sitting at the far end of the table, her hair in blonde pigtails tied with red ribbon. She is wearing a blue gingham dress with a lace collar, and a smudge of her mother’s red lipstick stains her lips pink.

As I said at the beginning of this story, there are more ways for a man to meet his demise than one might think. And that day when he set eyes on Jenny Warner, somewhere deep down in his subconscious, Johnny knew he had met his.

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I couldn’t think of a better shot than this to accompany this post. It’s one of my favourite pictures from my travels, taken of me and my boyfriend (before he was my boyfriend!) on the beach in Borneo. Looking at it makes me very happy.

The warped perceptions of time

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In a moment of distraction from the task at hand (aka job searching) I watched this video from my expedition in Borneo at the start of 2011, all the while scarcely able to believe that it was two years ago, and all the while wishing (with every fibre of my being) I was back there.

In times of uncertainty and stress it’s only natural to look back at past experiences and wish we could re-live what we remember as being a joyful and uncomplicated existence. Back then, we tell ourselves, we are able to be fully present in the moment. We had no concerns about what lay ahead of us. Why can’t life be like that now?

But it’s all too easy to look back with rose-tinted glasses at times your brain perceives as ‘happier’ than the time you are currently experiencing. If you take a moment to fully re-live the past experience in question – rather than just skimming your memory for the highlights – you will often take a more ‘warts and all’ approach, acknowledging that there were difficulties then in just the same way as there are difficulties now.

The positive take out from this is that you overcame those previous difficulties and now reflect on them as minor – almost completely insignificant – blips in your life path. Surely this would, therefore, suggest that the difficulties you are facing now will be viewed by your future self in much the same way?

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I love this picture from Borneo, taken during my ten days in the Taliwas region with a group of venturers. We had to get two of these barrels up an enormous hill on physical strength (or lack thereof!) alone. A challenge to say the least! It was such a beautiful place and we lived in a camp beside the river, cooking over fires and sitting out at night under the stars. It was a really magical experience and one I’ll never forget.

Rave face

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Stumbling wildly through the crowd, he searches without seeing for a familiar face. His heart is pounding in his chest due to a combination of the drugs he has ingested and the heavy bass line of the music booming out of the vastly oversized but nonetheless inadequate speakers.

Acutely aware of the sweat pouring down his face he pushes past girls with pink hair and dark eyeliner, boys in high tops and damp motif tee shirts. All of them are smiling, beaming even, almost unnaturally so. Fleetingly he catches himself thinking the world’s problems could be solved if everyone just popped an ecstasy pill once in a while.

His mouth is dry. This needs addressing instantly. He stops in his tracks and fishes deep inside his pocket, from which he retrieves a soggy packet of chewing gum. As soon as the gum hits his tongue his taste buds come alive, like a thousand nerve endings hooked up to ten thousand volts. Satisfied with this sensation he continues on his path across the dance floor, heading for the exit that will take him to fresh air.

Once outside he bums a cigarette from a sweaty wide-eyed boy in a wife beater vest with a whistle around his neck and neon paint daubed on his cheeks. He takes two drags, inhaling deeply each time, then coughs and throws the cigarette to the ground. It wasn’t what he wanted. And now the sweat is cooling on his skin and he is cold. Maybe he doesn’t want to be outside after all. But inside was so hectic, what should he do?

Then suddenly, she is there; real and solid and perfect in every way. His mouth hurts for smiling; such is his relief at finally having been found. This is what he wants, he’s never been more sure of anything as he is in this very moment.

She takes his hand.

And he is free.

Writing this made me think conversely of the best experience I’ve ever had at a club, and it hands down has to go to this night in Pacha, Ibiza, in 2009 – I’ve no idea what was happening with the beams of light and the dancer’s dress, but it created the most incredible effect for the pic! A great memento of a fabulous night 🙂

Chasing dreams

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Lottie was born different to most little girls. She knew this not because people regularly told her so (although they did), but rather because she could see with her own eyes. Not that she could ever understand why it mattered – apart from identical twins like Janey and Suki at nursery nobody looked exactly the same. And anyway, wasn’t there a famous phrase about variety being the spice of life?

As she grew up Lottie’s parents tried to manage her expectations of what she could achieve in life. She would never, they told her, be an athlete. But Lottie took exception to this. Why couldn’t she be an athlete? If she didn’t see her disability as insurmountable then why should anybody else?

For a while, during her early teens, Lottie towed the line. She concentrated on her grades at school and had a couple of boyfriends, pretending to have given up her wild ambition to be a sporting legend.

But behind the scenes she was as determined as ever. She found an academy and worked hard to win a scholarship. The day the letter came through her mother found her jumping for joy in the kitchen. Her jaw nearly hit the floor when Lottie explained what it meant.

“Running?” she’d said, a look of total incomprehension on her face.

“Yes Mum,” Lottie had replied. “Running.”

“But you don’t have….”

“Lower legs. No Mum, I don’t. But I do have these.” She pointed to her blades.

Her mother sighed and shook her head, and in that moment Lottie knew they’d crossed a boundary in their relationship that could never be uncrossed.

They couldn’t understand why she did it, given how hard she had to work at it, how much it took out of her.

But Lottie knew exactly why she did it.

She ran to chase her dreams.

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I’m ashamed to admit I can’t remember the name of this beautiful boy, who I met whilst volunteering at an orphanage in Tanzania in 2007. He was wheelchair-bound and required daily physio in the form of his fellow orphans and myself and my fellow volunteers following a set routine of arm and leg bending exercises. I never felt he was getting anywhere near the level of treatment he required, and he often looked as if he were in pain, but he never complained and always had a wide smile on his face. I felt so sad remembering him just now that I cried. I pray he’s somewhere happy and safe, receiving the care he so desperately needs.

Redundancy and Yodaisms

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It’s a very odd feeling being told your role is being made redundant. In many respects it’s like a break up; first comes sadness, then panic, then anger, then the horrible phase in which you perform a Gestapo-style interrogation on yourself to try and work out what you did wrong. Once you come to the conclusion that it wasn’t your fault you can begin to build your sense of self-worth back up again, but it takes time to get your confidence back and dip your toe into another relationship again.

The problem is, when the relationship in question is your job, you don’t have time to wait for the broken heart to mend before putting yourself out there again. You have to throw yourself straight into the job search, even though you’re still feeling raw and vulnerable. Then come the rejections – you know they’re an inevitable part of the process and that you’re unlikely to be the best candidate for every single role you apply for but, given that you’re not exactly at your most positive, it further erodes your confidence to be knocked back.

Then, sure enough, that one elusive role comes along which you deem perfect for you, and a new love affair begins. In most cases the honeymoon period will wear off and you’ll be forced to move on again, but for the lucky few they’ll find a job they can mate with for life.

And that is what I cling to as I embark on my next search.

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Just stumbled across this and feel it’s particularly relevant to my current situation. No further explanation required.

Doris

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As the days go by he finds he mourns the passing of the time more than her. For this he bears such crushing guilt he is tormented through his every waking moment, sometimes even in his dreams. She was not, he recognises, an easy or a pleasant woman. Many a time he’d heard her referred to as formidable, cantankerous, nasty and mean.

But for all her numerous faults, she had been his mother; dark-skinned, curly-haired, thick-ankled Doris. No nonsense, take-dat-spoon-on-da-back-of-yar-legs-and-dat-be-a-lesson-to-ya Doris. He’d lived his life in a combination of fear and awe; fear of her anger at the world, which all too often manifested itself as anger towards him, and awe at her ability to cope after all she had been through.

It’s what she’d been through that made it hard for him to turn away. The people who gossiped in the street didn’t know, they took her at face value and never bothered to look beneath the surface. But he knew everything. Not that she knew he knew. He was only a small boy when he’d crawled under her bed, found the box with the photographs – and the letters.

In her native Jamaica, at the age of seventeen, Doris had been gang raped and beaten so badly that she miscarried her firstborn – his brother. Two years later, when she was heavily pregnant, her husband was murdered by the very same gang. It was all there in the letters, the heavy black scrawl of the condemned asking – no, begging – Doris for forgiveness. He never could bring himself to ask if she had granted her rapist – also her husband’s killer – the absolution he so desired.

He had simply allowed her to exert her grief on him.

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Thinking about a mother’s love for her son reminded me of my time living in a remote orphanage in Kisii, Kenya, in 2007. It was run by this lovely lady, Rebecca, and her husband Amos. They were the most wonderful hosts for the six weeks I spent there, and despite them speaking limited English we struck up a very warm relationship. Even though I sometimes found it so hard being there, I look back fondly on their family and the hospitality they showed me.

Onwards and upwards

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In the spirit of positivity to which I have become accustomed so far this year, I am refusing to let anything – and I do mean anything – get me down. As long as my friends and family are healthy and happy nothing else matters. Because, when you break it down, everything else in life is just transient. What’s important is the support network you have around you, the people with whom you can be your true self – warts and all. They’re the ones who’ve been beside you through the good times and carried you through the hard times, and they’re the ones who’ll be there for years to come.

I truly believe everything happens for a reason, and that if you’re a fundamentally good and honest person then good things will come your way. Only this afternoon when I’d left my wallet at home and had the sum total of 50p in my pocket to buy lunch, I put my hand into my coat pocket and found a five pound note. That may not seem strange to you, but I’m not the kind of person who leaves money in their pockets. I’ve really no idea how that five pound note got there and I’m sure there’s a very rational explanation, but, whether fate or serendipity in that moment I felt reassured that everything was going to be okay. When I left the shop with a sandwich in my bag I gave the 50p I’d started with to a man who was begging outside. It felt somehow cathartic.

Onwards and upwards is the best mantra to adopt in any negative situation – always believe good things are just on the horizon. What harm can it do?

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I took this photo from the balcony of my 5* hotel in Borneo, at the end of my three month volunteer placement with Raleigh International in 2011. It was the end of an amazing journey, which this sunset seemed to perfectly sum up. Now another journey’s drawing to a close and there are exciting times ahead, of that I’m certain.

Moment in time

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It is half past eleven on the London underground; Oxford Circus, Victoria Line southbound.

A girl stands on the platform, her head swaying in unselfconscious appreciation of the rock music being delivered into her ears by her oversized headphones. She stoops to tie a lace in her steel toe-capped boots, pulls her multi-coloured knee socks up, yawns and wipes a heavily charcoaled eye with the back of a fingerless glove-clad hand, oblivious to those around her.

The train pulls into the platform. Unusually there’s no scrum as the doors open, most of the seats being already taken by tipsy revellers reluctant to miss the last easy way home. The girl walks down the carriage and stops in the middle. She grasps the hand rail and blows a bubble with her gum, thinking of her thesis and wondering if smoking a joint when she gets home will make tomorrow a literal write off.

To the girl’s right are a couple so deeply entrenched in one another’s oral cavities it’s hard to see where one ends and the other begins. When they finally come up for air they entwine fingers and stare at one another with the intense longing of first love. The man mouths the three words his partner is aching to hear. She flushes scarlet and smiles a smile so dazzling her soul seems to shine right out of her cherubic face. She lays her blonde head on the man’s shoulder and they stare contentedly into the middle distance.

Beside the couple a boy is slumped in his seat, his head lolling forward in a comical fashion. He is wearing a baseball cap with NYC emblazoned across it, and his baggy jeans are so low slung the crotch almost drags on the floor. In his hand he clasps a takeaway box, the prize at the end of a long night. Though some are eyeing him with suspicion, no doubt mistaking him for a drunk, he’s just come off a double shift at work and is exhausted.

The doors beep and start to close, but not before the dreadlocked man who has been busking in the station for the past three hours manages to leap through them, guitar case in hand, prompting a mixture of tuts and nods of appreciation from his fellow passengers. He props the guitar case against the rail and starts to hum a melody, not for money but for his own unbridled pleasure.

Further along the carriage an elderly man is engaged in conversation with two bespectacled students, imparting his worldliness over the course of three tube stops. They watch him intently, rapt in his presence as their own worlds pale into insignificance in the shadow of the one he has seen. There is not, they all know, enough time to hear it all.

Opposite the students sits a girl, pale and drawn with tell-tale streaks of mascara running in rivulets down her cheeks. She knows she is a cliché, the archetypal jilted lover, but her heart feels close to breaking and she doesn’t care who sees the emotion etched across her face.

By the door in the middle of the carriage a drunk, middle-aged couple giggle like school children. The woman flicks her chestnut curls and pivots around the rail, prompting the man to grab her by the waist and prevent her from toppling over. She laughs, at once both wild and tamed.

At length the train pulls into the platform at Victoria. The girl with the headphones leaves first, confident now that she will smoke a joint when she reaches home. She is closely followed by the kissing couple, still smiling as if, in each other, they’ve discovered Utopia. Next the busker lifts his guitar case and exits the carriage with an easy hop. The students sigh and bid goodbye to their mentor who is, he tells them, will be staying to the end of the line. The jilted girl drifts through the doors ahead of the laughing couple, who stumble down the platform arm in arm, singing something unintelligible. As the doors begin to beep the boy with the takeaway box awakes. He leaps up and hurls himself through the closing gap in the nick of time, his takeaway box left behind like a casualty of war.

Off they go, into the night. Never will they meet again, but will forever be indelibly joined by that one moment in time.

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This is possibly my favourite picture from my travels. I took it from the rooftop of a hotel in Jaipur, India, and didn’t for a single moment think it would come out as well as it did. I think it perfectly signifies the frenetic rush of city living and, as such, is a suitable accompaniment to this post.

The bag like any other

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Before Christmas I went shopping for a new handbag. Not being a materialistic person I had waited until my previous handbag was, in wardrobe years, the equivalent of an incontinent 90 year human before accepting it was time to move on, so the task at hand was pressing to say the least.

So there I was in the handbag department of Debenhams, surrounded by row upon row of leather, pleather, patent, snakeskin, dogtooth – the list goes on – searching for the one bag that would accompany me home.

I said I wasn’t materialistic and that is true, but it’s not to say that on the rare occasions I do treat myself to a pair of shoes or handbag I don’t want them/it to be special. Not expensive, but a bit different – original.

But on this day, try as I might I just couldn’t find what I was looking for. This put me in a considerable dilemma, for my current bag was on the verge of popping off to handbag heaven, and waiting for a future shopping excursion may well mean risking an embarrassing wardrobe malfunction (which, let’s face it, would almost certainly happen on a packed commuter train to or from work).

After quite some time deliberating, and with extreme reluctance, I chose a small black tote bag made of shiny rain mac material, with light brown leather handles and bottom, and a silver buckle clasp. It was, I knew with depressing certainty, a bag like any other bag – the kind you see ten a penny of every single day on the underground. Worse, it was the style of bag often touted by posh girls from Chelsea with names like Tallulah and Cheska (only without the designer label and obscene price tag theirs would obviously have).

Feeling glum, I trudged towards the counter with my selection. I stopped half way to take one last glance around the room, hoping by some miracle the perfect bag which had up to this point evaded me would somehow make itself known, before it was too late. And there it was. On a low hanging branch of a display unit, the last of its kind – tasteful dark brown leopard print material with a dark two tone leather flap and silver buckle. In that moment – and many moments since – I truly thought it was the most beautiful bag I had ever seen.

I stooped to pluck it from its perch, checked the price tag and, delighted to find it more than affordable, beat a hasty path to the counter to complete the purchase. Needless to say, the bag like any other was returned to its original location for some unsuspecting soul with lower aspirations than me to pick up and buy.

You will probably be wondering by now why on earth I’ve written five hundred words about buying a handbag. Well, it’s because last night, as I waited for my tube train to arrive, it occurred to me the bag like any other wasn’t just a story, it was an analogy for life. So many people pick a job like any other, a partner like any other – they take the path of least resistance, the one that will provide a decent return but won’t excite or challenge them.

We only get one shot at life, so why do so many of us settle for less than the best for ourselves? Why don’t we take risks, pick partners that excite us, occupations that challenge us? Why do we let ourselves drift and then feel surprise when we wake up one day wondering where our lives went?

I’m so glad I didn’t settle for less than I wanted that day, and I’m determined never to settle for less than I want – and deserve – in life.

After all, who wants a bag – or a life – like any other when, if you search a bit harder, you can find one that’s unique?

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This bag signifies so much more than just a handbag – it signifies the importance of waiting for the right opportunities in life to present themselves, rather than reacting to the most obvious ones. It’s also very pretty, right?