In recent weeks I have experienced some of the most wonderful days and what made them so was that they involved the winning formula of nature and good company.  Nothing flashy.  Nothing purchased.  No long-distance travel.  Just nature and friends.

Spring makes me fall in love with the countryside all over again.  When the sun is shining – or even if it’s not – there really are fewer places I’d rather be than in the great outdoors amidst the elements, blinded by the bright yellow hues of the rapeseed or feeling the soft breeze of the sea on my face.

It’s been five years since I moved to Kent and the landscape back in Hertfordshire just does not compare, sporadic bits of beauty sliced apart by the likes of the M25 or Watford (a wonderful place in many ways, and also home, but my gosh it’s ugly, and if you don’t believe me just Google Streetview the Rickmansworth Road!).  Five years is long enough to have visited most of the key areas of a county, as I have done, but there are still plenty of little villages and hamlets out there to experience, and I love discovering them.

I think we can learn an awful lot from nature and it’s no surprise that the likes of Thich Nhat Hanh use it as the basis for spiritual metaphors:

For me, nature distinguishes between what we need, and what we want.  These are two areas that are often blurred into one and consequently leave people feeling unaccomplished for no real reason.  We want many things and feel that we may struggle without those things… but we don’t actually need those things, and knowing the difference between the two is conducive to contentment.  Much like the natural landscape that surrounds us, the only thing we really need is life.  That’s it.  There are ways to deal and cope with the absence of everything else, once you look for them.  It may all sound obvious – because it is – and perhaps that’s why it’s so surprising that as humans we can all be horrendously guilty of getting overly concerned or frustrated by things that really don’t matter at all, because they’re not intrinsic to our ability to just be.

On those recent, enjoyable outings I referred to above, we didn’t need to pay a penny for the sun to shine on us, or for the sight of lambs bounding about in the fields.  We didn’t need to pay to look at the pretty yellow rapeseed, or to hear the sound of the birds in the trees.  We didn’t need to top-up a machine to ensure that the waves kept rippling in relentlessly whilst we were at the beach, or activate an app to tell us how to walk up a hill.

We didn’t need to do anything, because life – in this instance in it’s natural form – was all we needed.

I bloody love Spring, and Kent.

Song of the Day:  Public Service Broadcasting – Lit Up

Simply stunning; I love the concept behind music like this – combining historic samples with cutting edge musical technology.  Enjoy.  You will.  Especially the final minute and a half.

I’ve yet to meet anyone who wouldn’t admit to having a secret love of watching the long-running gameshow, Catchphrase.  In fact, I’m going to be a little bit unconventional with this post by throwing in a classic clip before I even start:

The bright colours, the amusing animations, multiple opportunities for humour upon the unveiling of each panel, and sound effects reminiscent of your ’80s toys… what’s not to enjoy?  Thus I conclude that most people, if not everyone, love a bit of Catchphrase every now and then.  If they don’t they wouldn’t enjoy visiting my house, where the Catchphrase card game lies in wait for unsuspecting guests.

The strength of the game lies in its simplicity.  Forget the over embellished, confusing formats of the more contemporary gameshows – which are often overtly complex for the sake of how much harder it is to be original now – Catchphrase’s objective is much more straightforward.  An hidden image is revealed one small panel at a time, and the sooner you can correctly identify the image as a whole, the more points you win.  You are simply not supposed to know straight away, otherwise the whole purpose of the game would be completely defeated.  With the revelation of each individual panel you will probably find yourself trashing some of your ideas as to the possible solution, and feeling even more convinced by others.

Not only do I think Catchphrase is a great thing to watch in accompaniment with a bowl of crisps and a fizzy drink on cold Winter weeknights, I actually think the concept of it demonstrates a key message…

How often in life do we reach ‘infallible’ conclusions when we can only see a small part of the picture?

An optical illusion has taken the Internet by storm in the past week.  A photo of a bald-headed man kissing a baby was taken from such an angle that upon the first glance of it, the viewer may have been running to the child protection authorities.  I won’t share it here but if you have yet to see it, head over to Google and type in ‘bald head kissing baby illusion’ and up it will pop.  It’s only when you view the image in full that you realise that what you instantly thought was the opening to somebody’s rectal passage is actually just a hairless chap’s ear as he leans down to kiss his baba.

In its reality it’s an image of warmth and love, but what kind of feelings would we have been left with had we not looked at it a little longer, or been able to access the full image to see this?  Rage? Disgust? Concern?

The point is that it’s very easy to make assumptions and formulate opinions based only upon the information which is immediately available to us.  Humans are naturally very reactive types driven by inner sensitivities and if we have a strong sense or feeling about something, it’s very hard not to allow it to develop into what we believe to be knowledge. Waiting to see the full picture requires the necessity to shelve those gut reactions that can envelope us in an instant, and whilst that’s not easy to do, in the long-run it’s critical to making better informed choices and decisions.

In the clip above, what were your initial thoughts about the solution?  You may well have found that these were of significant contrast to the actual answer.  Time and thought can make a huge difference to our beliefs, we just need to permit it to do so.

Song of the Day:  Animal Collective – Floridada

One of my favourite bands are BACK!  Never ones to shy from experimentation, the Maryland quartet return with more of their unique brand of music you won’t hear from many artists out there.  This is a classic.

As we rapidly reach the end of 2015, it makes sense to write about one of the year’s personal milestones, a topic I’ve yet to really write about here but which was quite a significant event of this year… I turned 30.

Uh-oh…

I’m pretty sure that in previous years, during all those countless discussions about the future and what it may hold for us, friends and I would reel off these stupidly excessive-sounding years which back then sounded so distant, and talk about what life may be like by then.  “We’re gonna be 18 in 2003, 21 in 2006, and 30 in 2015!” went the conversations that used to take place of a lunch-break as we sat in the classroom squeezing cartons of Capri Sun and bitching about Maths teachers.  We were just a bunch of naively ambitious thirteen year olds who believed we knew exactly what our futures would look like on the basis of what our parents had done, or how people lived in Albert Square.

Like most, I fell into that trap as well, although I was marginally more flexi-minded about the future than some of my friends.  Unlike them, I had no idea what I wanted to do for a career – and to be honest, I didn’t really care – all I wanted was to do like my siblings and go to University, and then get married and have a couple of children by the age of 25.  And own a Dyson hoover.

I’m quite sure that the thirteen year old me would probably have choked on her Capri-Sun straw had she been able to see the reality of what would be:  Thirty years old, still single (and beginning to think – after numerous soirees with Tinder – that I’m just too used to my own personal space and too afraid to give it up to be anything but) and still living with my parents, albeit purely for financial reasons.

It just doesn’t sound good, does it?  Thirteen year old me would’ve been most ashamed had they known this.  In fact I’m pretty sure I made several vows to enter lesbian matrimony with a few school-friends of the time should we mutually have arrived at this same conclusion in life.  It’s a pity I can’t remember which friends, or that we didn’t archive some official decree, written with a scented gel pen on a piece of recycled A4 (with margins).

It’s very easy to use the value of hindsight and sit back now labeling the above as naive close-mindedness borne from a lack of worldly wisdom and exposure to only the likes of Bliss magazine and Blue Peter, but as somebody who will forever preach the value of living a life that is true to yourself, and not baying into mainstream trajectories just for the sake of it, I’ll admit that even the more adult me had apprehensions about 2015, and turning 30.

Very early into my twenties I had decided that I wanted to use that decade to learn purely about myself and the world – and have my own story – rather than expend my energies into making a family of my own, and I like to think I did just that, but as 28… 29… rolled around I was finding myself feeling the doomed breath of 30 down the back of my neck once again.  I set some targets to achieve by October 2015 and suffice to say I didn’t achieve all of them because I’m still sat at home in my parents’ house with no idea how – as a single person who is determined not to rent a property- I’m going to afford any alternative.

But it’s okay.  I’ve reached the milestone I dreaded, and I’m not worried anymore.

Many people have told me that your 30’s are your best years.  It’s early days, of course, but from what I’ve seen so far, I think they might be right.

I loved my 20’s but only now can I see how much pressure I was putting on myself in those later years by setting 30 as a deadline for various things.  In small doses pressure can be powerful, and a useful catalyst for self-improvement, but if you’re not careful it can also be exceptionally detrimental to your well-being.

In February this year I saw the familiar face of one of my best friends all over the national press.  A coroner’s report had deduced that she had taken her own life on the basis that she was “about to reach 30 feeling as though she wasn’t where she should be in life”.  Those of us who knew her were enraged by this most simplistic of conclusions which was clearly written for mass impact rather than to reflect truth.  There was a great deal more to her circumstances than that, but at the same time, reading those articles and particularly the comments attached, written by anonymous internet users all over the world, was enough to demonstrate to me that this whole ‘fear of thirty’ is a real and genuine thing that many people experience, albeit quietly.

Reading those comments alerted me to the fact that those insecurities often attributed to our teenage years really do last until much later.  Many of the comments left had been written by people of a similar age, who expressed their empathy for my friend, and explained that they too felt as though they had “failed at life”. The comments all alluded to the idea that 30 is an age twinned with macro judgment, but having now been there and got the t-shirt, I can honestly say it’s not as bad as people may expect.

In truth I can think of a lot of things that have had a worse effect than turning 30: A much-loved Primarni pump dissolving in a puddle on the seventh straight day of rain in a row when I was a student, failing my 93rd driving test, the takeaway pizza I ate in Crewe… all of those prompted more disappointment and woe than the milestone birthday I had been dreading.

In fact, turning 30 has – so far –  proved to be nothing but a positive thing.  And why?

Purely because it was as though the needle on the ‘giveashit-o-meter’ reached zero without there being any kind of penalty.  It’s like with any kind of fear; the run-up and the trepidation that ensues can be the worst part.  When you’re finally faced with it, it’s a lot easier to confront, because then, you’re actively dealing with it.  You don’t have a choice, so can no longer float around fearfully in the circumspect.

The way to stop caring about being 30, is to actually turn 30 and be able to accept that this is the way things have turned out, and all that has happened has happened with reason.  Where there’s any dissatisfaction, rather than allow it to be the subject of disproportionate focus, it should be used to identify where any changes can be made, and if something can’t be changed, then it’s out of your control, so stop judging yourself for it.  Speaking of judgment – we all know how great other people can be at it too, and that’s bound to be another reason why many people fear turning 30 – but it’s important to remember the basic rules of Science here.  Unless two people have lived parallel lives and had exactly the same set of circumstances, it wouldn’t be a fair test to compare their current situations.  Anyone who fails to realise this, and continues to judge others, is probably not the kind of person whose approval you’d want, anyway.

Those who extolled the virtues of the 30’s in response to my expressions of fear were adamant that one of the best things about these years is the fact that you no longer have to worry about turning 30, silly though that may sound.  With that perceived deadline now just a part of history, the pressure dissipates and the freedom to do the things that we really want and are destined to do – whatever those may be – begins.  Decisions become bold because we take off the shackles of fear and allow them to be.

That’s the reality of thirty, and so far it’s been fun.

Song of the Day:  Weezer – Da Vinci

This band have been around for years and are still producing the tunes.  This one is particularly energising.

Life is one perpetual maze.

Between the start and the finish we never really know where we’re going to end up next.  We are regularly confronted by choice – to go left, or to go right?  There is often little to help us decide.  The tall hedges immediately surrounding us conceal the larger picture, and so invariably, the decisions we end up making are blind – hurried by the demands of time and without much in the way of substance.

All of us will take a number of ‘wrong turns’ in our lives.  It’s a key way of learning which routes to avoid the next time; we know that this particular left will take us to a dead-end, or that that particular right takes us back to the start again.  There’s a real benefit to trial and error – arguably you could say that that’s what life is all about – but it’s not the only way to make an insightful decision.  It’s not the only way to work out the solution to the maze.

Alternative perspectives are everything.  You could spend years trapped in that maze, struggling to get any closer to the centre as you frantically furrow along a million paths that all look the same…

Meanwhile, the sparrow flying in the skies above you is looking down at that same maze and seeing a more instant solution that is taking the human within it ages to find…

The maze is life.

The person getting lost for years inside it is the person who sees only that which immediately surrounds them and never questions anything beyond it.

The sparrow is the person who considers the alternative perspective to everything…

Be a sparrow – explore, ask questions, look from different observation points…

You’ll be a-mazed at what you might find out…

Song of the Day:  Oberhofer – Me 4 Me

This New York indie-pop band would be loved by all, if all knew of them! For now they’re one of the best-kept secrets of the music industry.  This track is from their 2nd album ‘Chronovision’ which was released earlier in the month.

And the reason for this is simple.

When we focus too much on looking out for particular things, we neglect that bit of head space that acts as a receptor to the idea of anything new, simply because we are too preoccupied with our search for that which we already know of.  This is fine every now and then, but sometimes it’s important to remind ourselves that the extent of what’s out there to see, do, think and feel transcends our existing knowledge – and quite significantly so.

I have very vague, non-descript memories of a day I spent walking around Toronto.  Why so unmemorable?  Because I had been so fixated on trying to find the CN Tower, that I hadn’t really taken in – or bothered to appreciate – anything else. Other buildings… monuments… museums… held no relevance to me that day, besides their proximity to the landmark I was trying so strenuously to find.

This is in contrast to those towns and cities for which I’ve held absolutely no prior knowledge before visiting, that have ultimately turned out to be the most fascinating to explore.  I wasn’t looking for anything in particular because I didn’t know what was there; so instead I was free to absorb every stimulus available to me.  The reflection of trees upon the river as the sun was about to set, an empty plastic bottle floating by, a lady with missing front teeth selling coconuts from a boat.  I can recall far more detail from just five minutes spent in places like this, than my entire day in Toronto.

And I think we can apply this same logic to most of the elements within our lives, but the first step is admitting that what we don’t know already far outweighs that which we do, and then having the courage to take our metaphorical spectacles once in a while – at the risk of losing focus – in order to be accessible to these new thoughts and experiences.

And personally, I think that’s the most thrilling way to live 🙂

P.S Oh and by the way, the CN Tower was a disappointment when I eventually found it…

Song of the Day:  Awesome New Republic – A Year of Solitude Pays Off

Songs like this make it much easier to understand why music is classed as a form of art.  Awesome New Republic are an indie two-piece from Miami and this song is pretty outstanding, maybe one of the best I’ve ever heard.  Listen from start to finish and you too will be blown away.

Sometimes we can work ourselves into a spiraling funk when we put our past and future life choices and decisions under the microscope.  The impending arrival of the big 3-0 has had a bit of an effect like that on me recently.

Am I doing enough with my life?
Should I have done more by now?
Am I making the right decisions?

I learned to stop comparing myself to other people years ago.  I think it’s one of the most dangerous things anybody can do to themselves, and is acutely responsible for the overwhelming lack of self esteem many people have within today’s society.

I learned to stop, but that doesn’t mean I don’t still fall for it occasionally.  Milestone birthdays can be terrible for causing disproportionate self-criticism within anyone, but the simple truth – which is often forgotten by society at large- is that we are all meant to live our lives in completely different ways.  We are each looking for different things, and there are small reminders of this all around us – restaurants have extensive menus, cars come in different colours, many people want to live in the city and many others want to live by the sea…

Whatever it is you want from your life, it doesn’t matter.

The only thing that does matter, is being true to yourself and doing what it is you really want to do.  It’s about being strong enough to acknowledge it if the vision you see for yourself diverts from what is often perceived as the mainstream, and not baying into any pressure – even from the most well intended of people – who think they can tell you how to ‘better’ your life… to ‘better’ your career… to ‘better’ your love-life.

Don’t get me wrong, there is value within any advice – but if it seems to lead you awry from the things your heart is telling you, there’s no shame in admitting so. Work towards only the things you believe in, and never look back.

It is far less painful to dance barefoot, than in shoes that do not fit.
To graze your toes on the occasional stone is a bother much easier to overcome than the ongoing ache caused by a pair of shoes that are much too small.
Comfort is liberating.
Dance the night away…

For many months, spanning a good year or two, I had been saying to my good friend – R – that I would be heading up North to see her as soon as I could find a convenient time. Each time, she had said how good it would be to see me and how much fun we could have – not that I needed her to tell me that.  I always had fun with R.  She was the kind of special friend with whom I could meet up with, even on those occasions when we were both feeling a little blue, and we could have each other howling with laughter within minutes.  She had a special way of making everybody who came into contact with her feel at complete ease, usually with her stellar sense of humour, and realism.  There was no pretense with R, she just was who she was, and I loved that about her.

In 2014, after all those threats to go up and visit, I finally got to see R again.  However, on this occasion, it was not in the way I would have expected.  Instead, it was as she was in a wicker casket being carried through a church, draped in pink roses surrounded by dozens of people shedding heartfelt tears.  There’s nothing quite as surreal as that; and the consequent struggle to comprehend how somebody with such a bright future ahead of her could suddenly be no longer here.  No longer could I expect any reply to my text messages.  No longer would I see her post updates of her life on Facebook. Most cuttingly, I would no longer have the option to meet up with her for one of those beautiful sessions where we would just drink wine together, contemplate life, and have a good old giggle.

In the immediate weeks following R’s sudden death, I struggled a lot.  All I wanted to do was be amongst other loved ones and give hugs, but even when I was in those environments, I was often unable to muster up the words I really wanted to say, as I felt they would seem so out of place in the context of whatever it was we would be doing.  There’s a certain apprehension associated to getting “deep”.  It’s not always welcome.  Everybody knows that life can be brutal, and often the last thing we want to do is think about it.  We just want to be frivolous and fun, and not have to talk about or even acknowledge life’s more serious side.  I agree with that completely, and there’s nothing I enjoy more than being spontaneous bouts of silliness and acting like anything but a 29 year old, but sometimes I think there’s a danger there, of important things being left unsaid because they don’t tie in with that fun and frivolous lifestyle we try to lead in the face of life’s struggles – like work, finances and of course, bereavement.

I do not regale these emotions for sympathy from whomever may end up reading this.  I have toyed with the idea of writing about this for a while; often giving in to the fear that it could be misconstrued as such.  In reality, this is an experience most people will go through at some point in their life, and I write this post only to highlight the lessons I have taken away from R’s unfortunate passing in the hope that it may encourage others to think.  And perhaps one of the main lessons has been to be open and honest about feelings.  Don’t be afraid to speak up, even if you feel that what it is you have to say may be considered out-of-place to your surroundings.  Hence, I am going to post this entry regardless of what others think of it.  I wasn’t to know that R was going to die.  If I had, I would have most certainly found the time to let her know how much of a positive impact she had had on my life, and how much I saw her a bit like an older cousin-like figure – not somebody I would see or speak to every day (in more recent years anyway), but somebody with whom there would always be a lifelong and unquestionable connection there.  Now, I just wish I’d said those things to her anyway, regardless of how strange they may have sounded.  They could have contributed to one more smile that she would have had in her life.

What I also learned from all of this, is the value of simplicity.  We – every single one of us – already have the only things in life we need.  Our problem is that we are often so consumed by everything else going on in our lives that when challenged by the inevitable we often feel as though we need something more.  All it takes is for our phones to break, or for us to step into one of those abyss-like of hidden puddles, and we become swallowed up in the intrinsically meaningless, cursing away at what is in reality nothing at all.  Strip away the luxurious waste and you’re exposed only to what’s important.  I used to think it was a shame if I didn’t have anything exciting planned for my free-time.  Now, I really quite appreciate those moments when I can just sit still and listen to music I enjoy and look at old photos of Canterbury on the internet.  Similarly, I used to be really keen on getting to meet lots of new people and forming numerous new acquaintances.  Now I’m far more interested in continuing to cultivate meaningful relationships and share good experiences with those already in my life, so that I can give them the time and energy which I never got round to giving R in those final few months.  Time is finite, but effort is not.

I also often think how much worse the whole situation would have been if I had – for any reason – been on bad terms with R when she left.  Nobody ever intends to fall out with people they care about, but sometimes it can happen – actions can be misinterpreted, or little things can frustrate, and it manifests in a needless distance between two people.  Even with somebody I liked as much as R, it would happen, and I can recall one particular incident that was over something as trivial as a bag of potatoes and 20p.  Again – just be honest and open with somebody you care about if that happens.  Too often, people consider ignorance to be the solution to something like this; it’s not.  All it does is keep an issue afloat that needn’t be there at all.  Discuss it, and just move on.  Or if you’re not comfortable discussing it – just re-calibrate your perspective and shrug it off.  Keep it simple.

R’s passing and the following weeks spent trying to come to terms with it all were very hard, but I have come away with a sense of appreciation which perhaps was not as paramount before – an appreciation for the smallest and simplest of things… because really, that’s all we need…and maybe we need to question the perceived indispensability of the things that get in the way of that… I just wish more people would realise this…

Song of the Day:  Wild Nothing – Chinatown

Every now and then, I stumble across an amazing piece of music…

I’m pretty sure that the title of this post may come as a surprise to many who know me, because those who do will be aware that I am well and truly single, and have been for several years.  I am neither looking for a relationship, nor against having one.  I am neither waiting, nor putting it off.  The plain truth is that it’s simply not happening for me at the moment, and that is something I accept.

Whilst many around me are getting engaged, married, or having children… it’s not unusual for my own relationship status to come up into conversation.  A few years ago it was perfectly acceptable to state that you were single, but at the heavy heights of 28, I’ve found people to be somewhat less understanding – some don’t understand why I’m not out there dating as many men as possible to try and find the best fit, whereas others have even been lovely enough to warn me that my years of being able to bare children are soon to peak (which, maybe they are, but is that really the only route in life that can satisfy? What if that option was barred from me due to factors beyond my control – would my life be any less fulfilling?)

I accept that perhaps, there could be more I could be doing to ‘find somebody‘ but the question is, why should I?

For a short period of time last year I belonged to a dating website.  I had a retrospectively terrible profile that tried to be ‘quirky’ and ‘honest’ and all those other buzzwords that are often suggested to make the most effective profiles.  I combined informative blocks of text with what I considered to be my ‘nicest’ photos:  a black and white one of me stood under an umbrella, one of me wearing what was in hindsight an ill-fitting dress in Bali whilst drinking a cocktail, and a couple of other images that conveniently concealed my buck-teeth and waistline.  The products of this profile were a few dates which typically ranged in their levels of success, involving a few free meals and trips to some lovely places (Ramsgate?!), and – in fairness – some interesting conversations.  There was little sustenance to any of these meetings, however, and I eventually deleted my profile (after about ten million pop-up messages from the site, asking me if I was really, positively, completely, wholly, sincerely, SURE!)

Online dating works very successfully for many, but it didn’t for me, and sometimes I come to the conclusion that I’m generally just terrible at this whole ‘dating’ thing.  In truth I think I lack the patience to see how things pan out with people.  People speak of, ‘love at first sight’ and I’m in no position to state whether or not I think it exists, but I know who I am myself, and I know that it’s probably not something I would let happen.  I’m much too nestled into my current habits to be comfortable with the idea of somebody – no matter how wonderful – suddenly blasting their way into my life like a hurricane and becoming an extension of myself overnight.  If I am to be in a successful relationship, then those mental reservations are the things that I know I need to change.  I need to give people a chance and take it as it comes…

… but what I don’t need to change, are things like the following, that was listed by self-proclaimed love-expert ‘Lisa Daily’ during a cringe-worthy YouTube video entitled, “Is Your Online Dating Profile Working Against You?” which came up during some search results for a music video I wanted to view.  Lisa, of ‘DatingExpert.tv’ kindly seeks to help us find love in cyberspace by citing what she believes to be the most damaging ‘mistakes’ we can make with our online canvas.  I could understand the point she made about how profiles without pictures attract fewer views, but then she said this…

–  “Wearing chartreuse in your photos is a mistake… most people look really terrible in that squished caterpillar yellow-green colour, and it’s actually been shown to repel the opposite sex.” – I actually had to Google ‘chartreuse’ as I hadn’t come across this word before, and I was pretty devastated by the result… I mean what the hell?! This is a ridiculous piece of advice, and I’m not just saying that because I happen to like ‘chartreuse’ (stupid bloody word).  Your clothes are an expression of who you are.  You should wear what you feel comfortable in.  If something as pathetic as the colour of your clothing is enough to put somebody off, it sounds like a bullet has well and truly been dodged anyway!

Intrigued and amused, I began to use my post-viral Saturday night to scour the internet to find other gems of relationship and dating advice.  The underlying theme was that in order to be successful in the dating world, you needed to ‘do’ a lot of things – I’ll mention just a few that I saw: – go to the gym,  read healthy living magazines, start a diet, get your image right, don’t overindulge at dinner, be appreciative, “always look your best!”, try and date an animal first (yes, really!  A lady was being very positive about her experiences dating a horse), along with various other ‘dos’ and ‘don’ts’ which to me all just came across as trying to strip any remnants of natural character and reaction away from the dating context.  Yes you are more likely to impress if you glam yourself up, but isn’t it more important that you’re yourself?  If you join a gym, shouldn’t it be because you want to feel better in yourself, rather than wanting to look more trim for others?  And what’s this about ‘always looking your best’?  This is England.  On an evening out it’s not unusual to go from ‘somewhat sophisticated’ to ‘drowned rat’ within a few minutes thanks to our friend the rain, and if your date is the kind to look at your heavily precipitated head and run, then – again, surely – you’re better off without?  And no matter for how long you keep yourself looking intact, it will definitely rain at some point…

The problem with dating tips is that they essentially try and put too much scientific equation into something which should really just be a natural wonder.  Dating tips try to increase your chances of romance by telling you all the various things you need to do, or change about yourself, when in reality if you really wanted to do those things you’d have already done them, right?

There’s only one dating tip I live by.  It wasn’t one I ever read anywhere, or was told – rather, it was something I learnt through my earlier experiences with dating and relationships – times when I essentially wasn’t what was required or desired of me.  From this I spent a lot of time being single, and here I am single still, but it doesn’t bother me like I used to think it maybe would, because the thing I’ve learned, is that the only thing I can offer anybody is me, whatever that means.  I could probably learn to give dates a bit more of a chance, but I refuse to try and be something I am not for the sake of a successful date or a relationship –  pretence is too hard an act to sustain, and defeats the purpose of true love.  Only by being me will I really find who is right for me.

And whilst I do hope that someday I will meet ‘the one’ and have a family, likewise I know that it may just as easily not happen, and I’m prepared for that outcome too.  My long-term life plan does not exist, it hasn’t for quite some time, and I like it that way…

Song of the Day:  Wakey! Wakey! – Through The Night

Catchy as the virus I’ve just had, but a lot cheerier.  Enjoy!