When you go home for a weekend and realise your life is awesome

I might not identify with any specific religious tendencies, but I’m pretty happy to use Easter as an excuse to have a break, and in my case after a two month holiday from uni, a break from a long break. So, finding myself in a protracted state of breaking I figured it was a good time to go home for the weekend to visit the fam and also drop in on a certain best friend’s 21^st birthday. But after booking my tickets I was really reluctant to go back to Norwich as I don’t really have much time and I’ve got work to be doing and the idea of a 15 hour bus journey wasn’t really doing it for me. So after intentionally missing my bus home I decided to stay in Bonn. Until the next day when I booked myself onto the first Eurostar back to England. Queue second impulsive decision of the week (first being skipping my bus).

I’m usually the most awful impulsive decision maker ever – taking the fringe as a prime example – and at first this trip was literally turning out to be a nightmare; I sat at 7am and booked myself on a 10am Eurostar after convincing myself that it was okay to spend so much on a train and that I could make it to the station in three hours. I was feeling as if I had made a good call. Until I realised that my 10am train actually left from Brussels, not Cologne. And there is no way of getting to Brussels from Bonn in three hours. Especially when you haven’t packed. And my ticket was non-amendable. It was literally one of those moments where I couldn’t believe how incompetent at life I am; the train journey was meant to be two hours, and I even thought to myself whilst booking that it must be a pretty quick train to get there that fast all the way from Cologne, but somehow the obvious impossibility of this surpassed me. So after realising I got this wrong, I rang Eurostar to amend said non-amendable ticket. Which to my surprise was in fact possible (the man on the phone that morning is one of the most beautiful people EVER). Really regret not asking his name actually and writing to his boss to tell him/her what an absolute babe he was.

But anyway, digressing aside, I ended up having a train ticket that I could make in time for that evening. After almost missing my train to Brussels (which I didn’t thanks to a convenient delay) I figured everything was cool and I’d be home in a few hours. That was until Eurostar was monumentally delayed and 14 trains were cancelled and I was stuck in Brussels for ages. I did eventually get onto a train and ended up in London. Later than the last train to Norwich. Eurostar were pretty good about it and offered to pay for all stuck passengers to get a hotel (and apparently there were 10,000 of them). Considering I was only coming home for two days this was really annoying as it meant I would get to Norwich a day later. But there was nothing to be done about the situation, so I was just like yeah okay and asked the manager to book a hotel for me. And then I randomly bumped into a group of people from Sprowston. The world is so small, and at this point in time it was the most fortunate coincidence ever. So since there were five of us from Norwich, we convinced Eurostar it would be cheaper to get us a taxi to Norwich than pay for us all to stay in hotels, which they agreed to. The taxi was literally £500, but it wasn’t out of my pocket and it got me home by around 4am so I didn’t lose out on half a day to more travelling. I genuinely have never been so happy to get into bed in my life.

Getting to the actual point of this blog post, when I finallllly got home, I realised that my life is genuinely amazing and the people in it are the best. I had always had the sneaking suspicion that this might be the case, but this weekend really confirmed it. And as I get older I start to like Norwich more and more actually. And here’s why…

So when I first got home I went to the beach with the whole family (which actually sounds less impressive when there are only six of us), but it was the first time in ages that we have all gone out together. Pretty sure it has literally been years. While my initial plan of dragging everyone to the beach seemed like a total fail as the tide was right up to the sea wall (so no beach to walk on), further down the coast was alright so we went for an amble along the beach. And it was really cute and genuinely lovely to see everyone hang out together. There are a number of things that mean that my family aren’t perhaps as tight as others, but I think this is becoming increasingly untrue, and it’s so nice. And I love the beach too, it’s like the feeling of knowing your home and safe and comfortable, whilst at the same time you know there is a whole world out there and you’re just on the edge of a tiny part of it. Even if it’s cold and raining it is still amazing, and if you ever see a storm at the sea side you realise how uncontrollable and unpredictable the natural world is. Literally have so much time for the beach (excluding Sherringham, pebbles are pants). I plan to spend approximately 80% of my summer at the beach this year given my current state of being unemployed for the first summer in so many years. While this is totally plausible for me (spending my summer at the beach), I realised that there are people who never go to the beach. And I feel like they are sorely deprived individuals. Even if they say they don’t really like beaches, I don’t believe them. They just tell themselves that to cope with the tragic reality of their situation. It is one thing I have missed since going to Germany; the Rhine is lovely, but it’s got nothing on Cart Gap. Or Happisburgh – the geographer in me loves looking at how the houses are falling off the cliffs, which is admittedly tragic for the people that live there, but still an awesome show of coastal erosion. Queue nerd-out. So essentially, home is awesome because the family are here and Norfolk is genuinely beautiful. I feel like it gets a bad reputation – which I have probably promoted at times – but there is something so awesome about it. I maintain that when I’m older I am going to live near a coastline somewhere, though maybe not in England.

And that was just where the weekend started. Saturday was designated as Abee’s birthday (though it’s actually Monday).  She didn’t know I was going to be there and it was AWESOME. Was so nice to see her and literally all the best people in Norfolk came out for it (plus a few extras from various places in England). It takes coming back after being away to realise who is important and who is worth making an effort with, which is actually a really big thing on a year abroad because it’s too hard to hold onto everyone. But everyone I saw on Saturday, including the new faces, were genuinely lovely. I genuinely am convinced that people are fundamentally good. Or maybe I just pick friends because I see this in them. Either way, I couldn’t have asked for a better set of people to have spent an evening with.

Initially it started as a ‘I’ll just stay for predrinks as my bus leaves at 4am’ kind of night, and turned into a ‘impulsive decision three night’ where I decided to miss my bus (again) and go out with to the waterfront instead and go back to Bonn a day later. I don’t think I have ever really made such a good call. It was just a perfect evening and everyone was so happy and I fricking LOVE the Waterfront. It is like the grimiest place ever and they play rock music and all the emo/punk-rock tunes from our teenage years and there are like a billion bearded men there – it is basically heaven on earth. And nobody is grope-y and girls aren’t objectified due to their possession of a vagina. It’s great. It is also the kind of place where you see like a billion people you know, which is sometimes awkward, but more often than not amazing. I keep a token bottle of Hooch in my room to remind of the good times when I’m away from Norwich (Hooch being my drink of choice in the WF). And it is also a place where awful dancing goes, so I am definitely in my area of expertise (as I told my friends today, what I lack in skill I make up for with enthusiasm). Definitely danced off the calories I drank in alcohol.

So really what I realised this Easter is that my life is just filled with really, really lovely people and awesome places and it is perhaps as close to perfect as it could be. And I am so lucky to be able to do things like pop home for a weekend just to go out with friends and take a trip to the beach with my family. And live in Bonn too. And plan trips to Budapest. And just being able to fill my life with different and amazing things all the time. For a long time I don’t think I realised this was the case. But now I definitely have, and I plan on making the most of it. Starting tomorrow, because right now I really, seriously need to sleep off my hangover. And I am feeling a bit squishy on the inside, which is not an emotion I am accustomed to so I feel the need to stop writing. Sorry if that was a bit boring, as it doesn't really engage with any wider ideas or questions, but I'm just in a happy place and feel like it's always good to share the love a bit. 

True to form, here’s some music (perhaps not of the waterfront variety though): 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NPxqXMZq7o

You can thank my friend David for that one. 

I worry about my children (even though I haven’t had any yet)

Being one of the most broody people in the world, I spend a lot of time thinking about the billion children I’m going to have and what it might be like for them when they are growing up and how I am going to love them so hard they won’t walk straight. And yes, I do think a lot about how cool it would be to have a baby bump and be a grumpy pregnant lady, which I personally think I am going to nail. I really feel sorry for boys not getting to experience this; I reckon it’s worth all of the periods. Whilst this first requires me to meet a man with keen swimmers (hence why I like beards, sign of some good testosterone right there), I genuinely believe that people are what life is all about which makes having kids the most logical and important life ambition, to me at least. And plus kids are just ridiculously cool. They are cute and excitable and curious and not half as scared of the world as I am (hopefully). 

Cute photo of my granddad and sister, painfully cute. Little kid hands are so small...

But that’s a total aside; this post is about reasons why I worry for my children (ignoring how I have not in fact been impregnated as of yet). I know that are an infinite number of reasons why people worry about having children, which are often to do with financial stability, readiness – whatever that is – and fear of screwing kids up. And while I don’t deny that I really want to give my children everything they want in life (whilst simultaneously not spoiling them), that’s really one of my last concerns when I really think about it. You can be poor and happy, even if it’s not the most preferable circumstance to be in. What I worry about is, given the world that we live in, how my children can grow up happy and good and not hurt themselves and other people because of things they are told are right or wrong. I know that this sounds kind of vague, but just keep reading to see what I mean. It might sound kind of hypocritical because some of the things that worry me I am totally complicit in, but maybe that’s why I am actually aware of them.

So I was pre-ing (vortrinken) last night and found it amusing to play with a cardboard biscuit box (it’s a good life being as easily pleased as I am) and it got me to thinking about how when I was little I would sit in the plastic laundry basket once my mum had hung the washing out and how she would drag me around the garden in it which I found absolutely hilarious. Apparently box-shaped items are my thing. I used to have so much fun playing with essentially nothing, just running around and picking stuff up in the garden or making dens. I really was one of the most well-tanned children ever. But I think it’s kind of sad that often children now don’t do this. Every time I see a mum give her kid an iPhone to play with whilst on a bus a little piece of me dies on the inside. While I know it’s personal choice about how to bring children up, and while I am not trying to generalise how all parents behave and the morality of this, I can’t help but worry that when I don’t bring my kids up to sit in front of the TV for hours and play on an X-Box that this will set them apart from other kids. I have recently realised how important being healthy is, and I want to teach my kids that early on and make them be active. But not in a cruel-forced-exercise kind of way, but in a showing-them-the-fun-side-of-playing-outdoors kind of way. But at the same time I don’t want to deny them what other children have and mark them as the weird backwards kids who are stuck living in a different generation. But at the same time I do really want them to be wild kids and be stuck in a different time. I want them to know it’s okay to do what they want, but then make them do what I want too. It seems unlikely that in all cases these will be the same things, which might be problematic.

I also really worry about how I don’t think that people are taught that they are beautiful anymore, or how to appreciate that others are either. I have a ridiculously wide spectrum of what I find attractive, where by wide spectrum I essentially mean all-encompassing. I think this is probably because my mum is the loveliest women ever and thinks the world of pretty much everyone (until given a reason not to) and I adopted this from her. And whilst this means that I am often very naïve to situations in which people treat me badly, or perhaps that I am more accepting of being treated this way, I wouldn’t want to change this. I try not to be judgemental and to stay open to how other people might behave, as I feel this is the only real way to be ethical. It’s really important to me that people stop being evaluated on how they look, or for people to not feel defined by how good other people think they look. In my opinion it’s actually someone’s personality that makes them ugly, not how fat or thin they are for example. And I want my kids to know this, but given the photo shopped world we live in I can’t help but imagine they will get to a stage where they don’t think they look good enough, or that others look good enough, and that this will be really damaging. I know so many people that feel like this and I just want to shake them so hard until they stop being so ridiculous. But I know it’s not easy to get a thought out of someone’s that’s been so deeply ingrained. I somehow feel like capitalism is also a lot to blame for this in trying to sell us the life that we are told we should want – a bit on Benjamin wouldn’t go amiss here – but I feel like if I start talking about this I won’t actually stop. So I’ll just leave it as I worry my children won’t know be made to feel they are good enough and won’t appreciate the beauty of other people. This goes for many different levels.

‘Manly’ and ‘feminine’ behaviour also gets to me. I really can’t stand the way that children are taught that they should or shouldn’t do things on the basis of their gender. This by the way is a bullshit concept. While a man’s body is physically different from a woman’s, there is no such thing as ‘manly’ or otherwise. I really worry that my children will not be aware of the constraints of such concepts, and that they might let them dictate how they behave. One of the biggest issues I have with this is the way that boys are often taught to objectify women and be insensitive. To put these two things into context, I’ll take the examples of cat-calling and crying. As a girl I am distinctly aware that when I walk past builders, I am in some way going to be objectified for having a vagina. I literally cringe in this situation and I don’t really see why some men think it is okay to do this. I would never walk up to a guy and be like ‘mate, nice penis’ whilst staring at his crotch. It’s not okay for anyone to be on the receiving end of this. If I have a son and he cat-calls, there will definitely be an incidence of at least verbal castration. It isn’t okay. And on the other side of this, I think that men get stick for being too sensitive if they show any level of emotion like crying for example. Apparently it’s too ‘feminine’ to actually show that you care about something. And I hate this. I want to live in a world where it’s okay for boys to cry or to say what they are feeling and not feel ridiculed for it. And again, I know that in teaching my children the values I think are right, they might get stick for it. And I don’t want that either. Just in general I want my children to know that it’s okay to not always be okay, or to say what you really think, because I never knew this. And in trying to hide what you feel you get a bit twisted on the inside. And it’s like when you knot something up, doing it is really easy. Untying it is a bitch. And I want my kids to just be themselves and not constrained by stereotypes of what they should be.

Essentially, I don’t want my children to ever suffer because of the choices I make on their behalf, or because of what other people tell them they should be. But at the same time I want them to adopt the morals that I feel are right. It’s difficult to simultaneously have to live in a system and disagree with it, which for my children means I worry that I can’t resolve the problem of them living the life I want and simultaneously letting them be autonomous in their life choices and not be excluded from their peers as a result of my parenting. And this is not even to mention how I know that the world they come into is likely to not be that nice because of social, political and environmental problems that are ever-worsening (which again I could talk about at length). But despite all this, I still seriously can’t wait to have kids. A lot of people find this kind of scary, especially a lot of guys I know. But just as an FYI type thing, broody guys/men who are good with kids are so attractive. Though coming from me that probably doesn’t mean much!

True to form, here’s a link to a little piece of happiness… 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMKZIaIN7O4&list=RDYMKZIaIN7O4