The little-bit-merrier widow wearing big girl pants.

Before I begin on my ramblings, I feel the need to explain that I have experienced periods of mental illness. I have been prescribed medication and talking therapy. Members of my close family have suffered clinical depression and schizophrenia, stress, anxiety and a whole host of otherness of the mind.

I have worked professionally with and alongside adults, children and their families who are affected by mental illness. No two people are the same and no two people will have the same experiences.

This is my story.

This is what I found.

I am a serial explainer

I suppose this is what made me a great teacher (or a bad teacher depending on which rule book you are singing from).

I’m in the ‘old school’ of thought, that everything needs an explanation and context for it to make sense.

I’ve always found it impossible to grasp and understand things unless I have context. I want someone to explain and show me how something works and not just tell me ‘it is so’.

Explanations don’t always fit into neat tidy boxes.

They are more like the contents of a laundry basket,

 with an odd sock lying next to it and the lid that never quite goes back on straight.

So here, again, is context of me, myself, and I.

I am not a rock, I am not an island, I am a journey in progress.

I was 14 when I got my first pair of big girl pants.

The joy of writing everything down is that you get to say what you want to say,

and you don’t have to witness the glazed look of boredom washing over your audience.

If you do choose to read on, you’ll get to see I’m a little bit fixated on what other people think of me.

I know I’m not alone in this, but like most of us I try very hard to bury the neurosis.

Neurosis is a first-world issue, it’s a scourge, an epidemic.

Filters – Which psychopath gave us filters on our phone cameras?!

We’d only just managed, as society, to realise that most of the media images thrust into our retina(s) for our brains to unravel, are unreal, airbrushed, and really just a bit of a lie.

We preach ‘be kind to yourself, accept that who you are, and what you look like is good enough, it’s the best, it’s beautiful’.

Then we post filtered images of ourselves because the reality isn’t good enough to publish.

I am guilty.

I’ve swished out my split ends into an artistic swirl for my profile picture.

I also airbrushed the bra strap that was showing, and of course I removed the creases from my backdrop so that nobody would know I was too lazy to iron it.

It’s a less than perfect image but it is more perfect than the reality.

 OOOH! I’m getting a bit too preachy here!

There’s enough of that stuff out there already. I’d cut it out because it’s really just a bit boring; but it’s also a great illustration of the worst type of ‘journalism’. ‘Mine is the only right way’; Ihate that.

Do what the fluck you want to do to be honest. Just don’t hurt anyone and remember that people may be influenced by what you say, do and project.

Here endeth today’s sermon!

Travel Writers

Why do all travel writers seem to be self-confident, thin and tanned? Maybe another airbrush jobby?

They’re definitely not anything like me that’s for sure!

No legs in a whiter shade of purple, hair always has that just perfect touch of adventure blowing in the breeze (only on the head that is, everywhere else is fuzz free), no tan lines, no fruit-salad-chew chest, no shin bruises… how do you get half way up Kilimanjaro without a shin bruise?

 Anyway, they might be just like me, on the inside, but I wasn’t convinced they were, so I couldn’t relate to any of their experiences.

How I got my pants.

 Although I couldn’t see the world anymore, the world started to see me.

I stopped wearing my glasses.

Bizarre, yes. When I was 12, I was told by a friend that a boy liked me, and he would have asked me to be his girlfriend… if I didn’t wear glasses. Well, this was attention central for me!

So, this was the key to social acceptance that I had been given at 12.

Silly 12 year old me! I didn’t realise the gaolers had a whole bunch of keys!

A life of ‘hunt the key’!

If I’m thin I’ll be accepted, if I’m not thin I’ll be accepted, if I don’t wear glasses I’ll be accepted, if I’m clever I’ll be accepted, if I’m clever I won’t be accepted. Then the latest, that I have zero control over, if I’m young I’ll be accepted.

At 12, having the potentil of a bit of attention was terrifying and thrilling all in one hormone infested bundle.

Miss Polite and Miss Careful were constant companions fussing in my ear, cautioning me… to be cautious.

When Miss Polite and Miss Careful became teenagers, they were joined by a whole host of other characters jostling for my attention: Miss You’re-not-as-clever-as-everyone-else, Miss Nobody-is-interested-in-what-you-have-to-say, Miss Every-part-of-your-body-is-a-mess.

I was absolutely convinced that other people were really bothered by who I was, what I said, and how I looked. How vain is that?!!!

The non-bespectacled me continued to blunder through the minefield of early teens, slowly but surely finding Miss Little-bit-more-self-confident.

Then I met someone that was truly interested in me.

 It was like a moment from the sloppiest romance novel. All the eyes meeting, stars twinkling, birds singing sort of stuff. He stuck faithfully to his job of constantly bolstering and counselling me, nursed my meltdowns and generally making me feel good about myself.

My losing him led to this rambling tale.

 I am still absolutely convinced that people take one look at me and think about me – much more than they actually do.

 I’m just less bothered these days, I’m happy with me on the inside, mostly, the outside is a work in progress.

***

So now you know how messed up and normal I am,

you’ll have a better idea of what a challenge this was, to find a holiday, in the right place and actually get there without a meltdown.

Where do I even start?

Once I’ve challenged myself, I find it as good as impossible to back out.

I can be impulsive, not a fault in my opinion, I can also be overly cautious; remove ‘the overly’ and that isn’t a fault either.

Have you ever done something just for the devilment of it, to challenge your nerves, to stick two fingers up at the voice of self-doubt? A little voice in your head argues with those cautionary, doubting voices, and dares you sometimes to do something way out of my comfort zone.

I hadn’t had one of those since the first school theme park trip where ‘Miss’ had to look brave and encourage the timider kids to have a go on the big rides!

The adrenaline kicked in.

I started rushing through things before I lost my nerve.

Search engines are a nightmare.

They never give me what I want and I’m too impatient to go past page 3 of results. I know page 4 and 5 might be the best place to look because pages 1 and 2 are all paid-to-the top results. **I’ll come back to this in a bit. It’s relevant to the outcome of my loopiness!

I have never flown,

I have never crossed a sea or an ocean, not even a little bit of sea where I couldn’t touch the bottom, so this was going to be a bit of a challenge with not a single experience to go on.

Many years ago, we got as far as paying a deposit for a holiday in Corsica. This was back in the day when you chose holidays on the strength of a Judith Chalmers endorsement and a postage stamp sized picture in a glossy brochure.

Good grief! this makes me sound old. I usually have a policy of not being too nostalgic or saying ‘back in the day’.

People can be so ageist! Like, people make judgements about others based on how many years it has been since they were born.

Hmmm, I may have just been about to get preachy again. I don’t want to do that but sometimes, as you might have gathered, I just go off on one.

Back to the task in hand.

Finding a holiday.

Search engines and social media are a blessing and a curse all rolled into one.

Obviously, my first search was for ‘solo holidays’.

Well dearie dearie me what an experience that was!

There seemed to be a limited few categories that Google decided I wanted to see.

 They had obviously ruled me out of Club 18-30 or anything similar.

I got not a single glimpse of a beach party, club strip, bikini cocktail cruise or any other such fun filled frolic!

I did get shimmeringly tanned, tone muscled, arctic smiling 40+ trekkers; taking a break from triathlon training and skydiving to relax in the Himalayas or some other unreachable destination.

I also got ‘single supplement’ prices.

‘Your holiday will only cost £££ per person!’

 Wow! What a bargain!...

‘’’Book Now!!!’’’

CLICK

‘’’….Total holiday cost is £££££££££££’’’

HOW DARE YOU TRY TO TRAVEL ON YOUR ONES AND THINK YOU CAN JUST PAY FOR ONE PERSON!!!!

PAY UP OR LEAVE THIS WEBSITE IMMEDIATELY. SHAME ON YOU.

So shamefaced (not really) I left.

Theeen there was the Pearl and Diamante cruises.

I didn’t seriously click on those, I curiously clicked.

Never have I EVER wanted to be stuck on a ship for days with the same people.

My impulsivity was really kicking in and the frustration of not having something right in front of me in exactly the right place at exactly the right price was really getting to me.

This is my first piece of advice!

Apologies that I have got here in an around the world in 80 day manner but as I said, context is important, to me.

Before you search for something different to the norm on Google or any other popular search engine. Clear out your computer’s cache of cookies, or any other edible snacks that might be lurking there.

Search engines, your computer and the websites you visit are the modern world equivalent of the nosey neighbourhood gossip.

They get into every bit of your business, they know everything about you, but they don’t always want to share what they know, only what they think you want to know.

They work this out from everything you look at, search for, post about on social media etc.

I may have got the technical terms wrong, or they change in the hours between writing this and publishing it, but this is the basics of how search engines work.

If you don’t believe me, try a little experiment.

Do a search for something you’ve never searched for before, a product is good to prove this point.

A suggestion could be a car part for a vehicle you’ve never owned, a cosmetic procedure you would never dream of having, recipe for food you know you will never eat; something totally unrelated to anything you would normally do.

Now watch your social media ads.

Let me know how you get on.

The trouble with never having been anywhere is that you have limited reference points to work from. So, with Wales on my mind, I consulted a group in the Book of Faces.

This hefty tome of profiles is awash with groups of like-minded people all ready to give out their valuable advice.

It is also littered with completely witless individuals with the knowledge bank of a flea who dither about with other itchy insects spouting rubbish to one another, but they are mildly amusing.

I did not consult the latter.

I ummed and ahed about what and how to ask. Although Google failed to show me Party Ibiza, I did not want it to be suggested.

Then I was struck by ‘one of those moments’

You know the sort of thing.

You’re quietly trimming your toe nails, or making the bed or some other such mundane pursuit and a thought smacks you between the eyes!

Tossing the clippers aside, I dived, actually staggered, the knees not being what they used to be, to my desk.

My thought was not a unique one, I know that for a fact, but it was a long buried one. It had popped up on odd occasions over the numerous decades since my days as a year 9 pupil, 3rd year comp’ in old money.

Have you ever read a book that has never left you?

A book that has shaped your thoughts and experiences and left it’s mark on you.

These books are special. They may not be great literary works but they have magic!

This thought came from certain moments and situations in one of those books.

Much of the book had been forgotten. This isn’t surprising when I tell you it was a ‘class read’. I don’t remember reading it on my own, but I do remember the poor teacher that read it to us. She was very young, and very nervous and had obviously never watched Jackanory. Add to this that the rest of the book was read aloud by stuttering, gibbering teenagers (including myself) and it’s a miracle I remembered any of it.

But remember I did.

I am going to sound so ‘typical’ here. That is so unlike me and ordinarily I would run in the complete opposite direction of typical but the pull was too strong.

My Family and Other Animals.

It was ‘adapted’ into a TV series. I watched a small part of one episode and left it there. The characters were all wrong, the voices were all wrong, it was just wrong.

I don’t know why this happens. Surely, there must be a vision board in the offices of TV Land or Movie land where people share what they think a character must look like or sound like from the authors description…surely?

I’ll never forget my disappointment when they showed the first screenshots of the first Harry Potter movie.

Where was the sad, bullied, scruffy neglected Harry from the book? Here we were presented with a scrubbed, healthy boy with neat floppy hair; you don’t get a glossy sheen like that after being banished to a cupboard under the stairs!

Rose beetle man.

What an image had been painted in my impressionable little head. Indelibly real, there in my imagination; the lanes, the heat, the sounds and scents surrounding him. Just so bloody colourful.

I had the first idea of where I wanted to go.

I went back to good old google with this one and wasn’t disappointed.

I also went back to the knowledgeable group of like-minded people and asked there.

This was where I got really excited.

I got answers. I got suggestions.

My shoulders were aching, my mouth was dry with anticipation.

I only wanted a couple of confirmations that I may have found ‘the place’.

I got lots, I also got lots of encouragement to ‘go for it’.

Nothing can describe the rush of adrenaline. I was shaking, I was arguing with myself, but I wanted to do it and I wanted to do it NOW.

I wanted to click ‘confirm booking’, I laughed at the ‘single room supplement, then I swore at it.

 Was it safe, do I know anything about this place really?

I really knew nothing, and I didn’t care at this point. I was going to find out when I got there, and isn’t that part of the adventure anyway?

This was late at night, like midnight type late.

I thought ‘package holidays’ with well-known agents were supposed to be the simple way to travel?!!

So many silly boxes to tick…then I had to wait for an email that didn’t come.

I was drained, physically and mentally. There is only so much glitchy tech that a person can handle at gone midnight.

I rolled into bed, an easy task as my bed is about a metre from my desk and slept.

Next morning, I was up bright and early and so was everyone else in the house.

I made tea and attempted joining in with a conversation, whilst simultaneously tapping away at links and buttons on my phone.

I don’t do this well. Ask the kids. I nod and smile and look as if I’m listening but really, I cannot do phone/talk/think when I’m in a heightened state of excitement.

Eventually…

After several fraught minutes…

I had done it.

Waving my phone frantically in the air I announced to the annoyed assembled audience

‘I’m going to Corfu!!’

 ***

Let me take you back a little way.

Do you remember when I said we had an agreement to poke each other with something sharp if we looked like we were going insane?

Eyes.

Eyes can be very sharp, also facial expressions, and silences, they can be sharp too.

Not painful sharp in this instance, just…sharp and pokey and worried and caring and totally bemused.

If you’re still with me, thank you. The next part will hopefully be a little more experiential advice. I can’t promise because I don’t know, when I sit down to write, what will happen.

***

 Things do change.

This is not a bad thing.