Me Versus Me

Exercise and I have never been close bedfellows. I spent most of my P.E. lessons at school sneaking off with to loiter on benches in the woods during cross country, making fart noises from the sidelines as the other girls scissored over the high jump bar, or – on one occasion – getting sent home for sort-of-inadvertently throwing a javelin in the general direction of our Mrs. Trunchbull-esque, obese, teacher, after she failed to respond to my requests to demonstrate a suitable overarm technique.

And things didn't really improve from there. I think it's safe to say that sport at my school wasn't a particular priority; we were allowed to spend our GCSE year either doing sport or getting changed into jeans (a true thrill for a 16 year old girl trying to get attention from the local acne-covered talent) and heading to the bowling alley up the road to fling the balls down as quick as we could before congregating at the local McDonalds. Ah, the heady days before Jamie Oliver lisped himself into a frenzy, when it was perfectly acceptable that our school canteen stopped selling home cooked meals and turned swiftly into a (undoubtedly horsemeat-laden) burger bar.

At the time, I really didn't care that sport was such an inconvenience; something that had never interested me; a time to muck about or to try every excuse in the book to get out of wearing our lampshade-esque P.E. skirt. You know the ones – 22 inch waist standard that cut you in half as you struggled with crippling puppy-fat issues, royal blue pleat, with matching sports knickers that would give you thrush if you so much as looked at them.

But as a grown up (supposedly), I look back wistfully and wish that sport was something I'd really been able to get my teeth into, or just that I'd recognised that sport has a valuable part to play in your development and your physical and mental wellbeing. My adult relationship with sport has been one which in human terms would be a disaster; sport needs consistency, regular attention, and commitment. I'm flaky, unavailable, and a total commitmentphobe.

 

I tend to exercise when I hit the point of despair. When I've put on half a stone and decide to undertake a – usually short-lived and suitably pointless – diet. I get the old exercise DVDs out, or maybe go for a couple of runs. When I don't see instant results, I get bored and give up, convincing myself that my 20s are supposed to be a time for debauchery, and reminding myself of the endless quotes I've read from actresses in magazines who are 'just so much more confident' in their own skin their 30s.

It would be easy at this point to just give up on exercise. 'It's not you, it's me.' I could say, shrugging my shoulders and deciding to come to terms with a life of struggling up flights of stairs and bemoaning my muffin tops and bingo wings in the tone of someone who has already been defeated in the body battle. But balls to that.

I was thinking long and hard about exercise recently, and my own attitude to it. As with most uncomfortable topics, when people talk to me about exercise, I give a self-depricating, jokey response. I talk about how I make all these plans to get fit then sack them off for tri-weekly pub visits because I'm 'hopeless'. But then I realised that getting out there and doing something active isn't about your attitude to exercise; it's about your attitude – full stop.

In the other parts of my life, I'm determined, ambitious, strong, resourceful, and organised. I set myself professional goals that I know will be a stretch because – as I always say in job interviews – I relish a challenge. I generally work consistently hard to achieve – and ideally overachieve – because I want to prove that I can grow into my role, to gain gravitas, to constantly learn from my experiences and to use these lessons to reach my goals. I evaluate my progress, I think about new ways I can develop myself, I welcome constructive feedback, and I deal with the mistakes and the blows with maturity – because any other way is futile.

 

So I got to thinking; why would I let there be a discrepency between my atttitude to life and my attitude to being active? Setting out to get fit or achieve a fitness goal is no different to setting out to reach a career goal, and it uses all of the same skills – ones I incite regularly during office hours. And I decided, enough is enough. I have the great fortune of working with some of the most successful women in the country on a daily basis, and I'm damn well willing to bet that they didn't get to where they are today by giving up at the first hurdle – pun fully intended – but by pushing on through the uncomfortable parts, dusting themselves off after a fall and getting straight back out there for round two. Even when the doubts creep in.

So here I am; a big ball of determination and plain stubbornness, refusing to be defeated by my own self-doubt, shunning my commitment phobia, and giving laziness the finger. I have a place in the Royal Parks Half Marathon in October and a pretty big fundraising target for the incredible charity I have the great privilege of working for (insert cheeky Just Giving page plug here).

I also had the great pleasure of cheerleading at the London Marathon today; 6 hours of whooping, cheering, screaming, and blowing a whistle to help tens of thousands of people achieve the goal they'd spent a year of long, cold, nights and sweaty Saturday mornings training for. Giving up hundreds of hours in the process, and raising hundreds of thousands of pounds between them.

As I watched the raw emotion on the faces of those at mile 21, some crying in pain, some grinning as we called their name, others relieved as they spotted a loved one and stopped for a much-needed sweaty hug, I felt truly thrilled. Thrilled to be a part of something so special and awe-inspiring, but thrilled because I knew that if all of these ordinary people could achieve something amazing, I could too.

So in the words of Monica Gellar; 'Stay out of it; this is between me….and ME'.

BRING. IT. ON.

PS – all inspiration welcome; whether books, blogs, personal anecdotes or training tips. What gets (and keeps) you moving?!

 

Posted with Blogsy

That’s me in the corner, losing my connection

I find myself infuriatingly attached to my smartphone. I pay it more attention than I pay my health, spend longer looking at it every week than I probably do looking at a book (shameful I know), and enter a state of sheer panic in those few horrifying moments when I think it's somehow escaped my line of sight or grasp long enough to be stolen – only for it to turn up moments later in the depths of my permanently overloaded handbag.

————

I started writing this post just over a week ago. Ironically, the next night I managed to lose my iPhone somewhere in the gutter at Tottenham Court Road while juggling a McDonalds, playing the responsible adult for a somewhat wobbly colleague, and trying to navigate my way on to a night bus at 2am.

 

The next morning I woke up with not only a stinking headache, but a very expensive hangover.

 

And then the realisation struck that in losing this little black box, I'd entered the Bermuda Triangle of communication. My instant, all-knowing, city guide, navigator, workstation, timepiece and magical music box was no more. My initial feeling was a sort of multi-layered despair; despair at having been silly enough to lose it, despair at having to head out to work with no way of checking my day ahead or letting anyone know I was late, but, more than that, despair that I felt so useless without it in my hand.

 

It got me thinking even more about the unerring reliance on technology – and in particular, smart phones – that I and so many people in my life have. About how much the way we communicate has changed, and how I feel about it, my own frustrations at the way I've adapted to the change, and its impact on my relationships.

As I sit in a restaurant with friends, I look at a carefully laid table; plate, fork, knife, side plate, wine glass, iPhone. I find myself thinking about how rude it is to check facebook at the dinner table. And yet, as I await my starter, I scroll through titbits of life shared by people I care little about, barely know, or think of with disdain – titbits much less interesting than those being shared by those I'm sitting with; those I care about. Is the constipated baby of a girl I barely knew (or liked) at school more interesting than the career struggles of the friend I've been close to for six years?

 

At the pub, my colleagues and I wind down after a hard week, intermittently nudging and caressing our little black boxes to see what our online world has been getting up to while we've been indulging in actual facetime.

I sit on a bus and stare at a group of heavily-made up, noisy teenage girls. Their inane chatter irritates me at first, then I remember that my friends and I were exactly the same – though probably louder and decidedly more northern – and smile. Then I think about how glad I am that our chatter wasn't punctuated every three minutes by a domino-style drop of heads, swipe of fingers, lolling open of mouths, and instant dissection of a facebook status, tweet, or profile picture. I also think about how fortunate we were that our teenage lives weren't broadcast across the web; that our social standing, emotional welfare, or delicate hormonal balance couldn't be trashed at the nudge of a touch screen, the sharing of a photo, or an ill-timed tweet.

I started thinking even more about my online world as we were reunited after a week with a phone capable of little more than calls and texts. As I fell comfortably back into my routine of grasping for it at any moment of calm, boredom, or the few minutes between bus stops; expectant, hopeful, curious, or seeking an answer to a mundane question.

It turns out that losing my phone has made me realise what it was I really miss sometimes; unfiltered, unphotographed, undisturbed life. Proper, undiluted eye contact. The feeling of giving – and having – unwavering attention. Real focus and concentration on a task – any task. Learning and absorbing information in chunks that aren't bite-sized and backlit.

I can't remember the last time I made a meal or cake that looked remotely interesting or colourful that wasn't immediately instagrammed and shared with a bunch of people whose interest in my life spans all of 6 seconds. I can't remember the last time I saw something funny, had an interesting thought, or came up with a daft one-liner without thinking about how it would fit into 140 characters with maximum impact, to be shared with 600 people who will probably never read it as they flick mundanely through the last 200 tweets in their timeline.

Undoubtedly, my online world has brought me a wealth of good things. This blog has been an outlet for creativity and a saviour at times of frustration. Twitter has opened my eyes to what's happening in the wider world, what I can do to make an impact, and shown me the kindness of strangers on many occasions. Blogs and news pages are a source of new knowledge and inspiration. And online dating has, well, provided me with endless comic material. (see here for further reference).

 

But it strikes me that sometimes my little black box is stifling. That I climb into it to avoid doing things that take real effort, time or concentration. I find myself frustrated at feeling like there aren't enough hours in the day to do things I want to do; exercise, writing, cooking proper meals, or reading some of the dozens of books that are piled expectantly around my bedroom, corners tucked under after giving up a third of the way through. Yet I find the time to wander aimlessly around my little black box, sometimes for hours, most of the time wondering what on earth I'm doing there (much the same feeling as that of being in McDonalds at 2am on a Thursday night).

 

As I approach the celebration of a quarter of a century since I came kicking and and screaming into the world, I find myself thinking more about making each day count, and wondering about the person I'd be if I didn't waste so much time and energy. About the fact that I want to look back on each year and feel like I've achieved something important, done something good, reached a goal, helped someone, created memories that will endure. And it strikes me that if you continue to do the same thing, you will get the same results.

 

So I hope to use this jaded ramble as a springboard to action. As a kid, I once had a pet guinea pig that we kept temporarily in a large cardboard box. I thought he looked sad in such a dreary box, and that he must miss being able to see outside. So I decided to take action and cut him some lovely windows and doors (see diagram below). Needless to say, my architectural adjustments got me into a somewhat sticky situation – and resulted in lots of frustration for my poor mother as she tried to coax him out from behind our sideboard. But I don't doubt he had a lovely time enjoying his new found freedom and the fresh air.

So I'm doing the same for myself. My little black box feels in distinct need of some airholes; windows, even. To let in some fresh air and light; to give me a bit of clarity and focus. I hope to use it to make my twenty-fifth year one I will look back upon fondly through vivid memories, books read, fitness improved, prose written, and knowledge gained – rather than through my Facebook timeline.

 

Posted with Blogsy

Back to baking: sweet potato chocolate cake

It’s been quite some time since I last posted here, and indeed, quite some time since I last baked. The past few months have been a bit of a blur; my relationship of almost six years came to an end, I moved house, and seem to have spent most of my spare time since organising my new flat and toasting to the next chapter of my life with my wonderful friends.

At times of stress or trauma, it seems natural to retreat to self-preservation mode, living day-to-day and focusing on the basics of feeding yourself, general life-admin (mainly consisting of desperate attempts to get through the bottomless pit of laundry without the aid of a tumble dryer and phonecalls to utility companies), and work.

But living like this does little to inspire creativity, happiness, or wellbeing. I’ve found myself craving a return to the more well-rounded me, and a big part of that is tied up with baking and writing; the great satisfaction of creating something from scratch. Whether a piece of prose, or a slice of cake – to create, share, and enjoy, I’ve realised, is fundamental to my happiness.

Today brings the birthday of a wonderful friend, Esther, who has helped to make the last few months a time of fun, friendship and endless wine-fuelled laughter. So, last night, I dusted off my apron, turned my music up to 11, and spent an hour or two singing away at full-volume (apologies to my new neighbours) and baking up a storm with a smile on my face. ‘I’m back’, I thought to myself.

Esther isn’t a fan of citrus cakes, which are almost a go to for me, so I went back to the failsafe choice of chocolate – with a twist. I’ve posted before about my love of Harry Eastwood’s Red Velvet Chocolate cake, which features imaginative and decadent cakes made with vegetables in place of fat, and this recipe is adapted from one of hers.

I will admit to having something of a love-affair with sweet potato; its versatility, ability to hold its own against even the strongest of flavours, and quiet and assuming starring role in even the most decadent of cakes make it a staple in my shopping bag. It makes the texture of this cake quite unique; moist, but not heavy, sweet, and yet earthy. Like gravity, you never really notice it’s there, but it holds everything together. Ok, maybe that’s a little gushy, but it’s a damn good cake!

Besides that, it’s almost virtuous; the lack of butter in the cake surely compensates for the calorific content of the chocolate buttercream, and its vegetable content is a surefire way to convince yourself that seconds (and thirds) aren’t much worse than eating that dicey-looking apple in your desk drawer.  

Sweet potato chocolate cake

Ingredients

• 200g sweet potato, finely grated. Squeeze most of the moisture out by wrapping it in a muslin cloth or kitchen roll.
• 230g plain flour (use rice flour to make this gluten free)
• 160g caster sugar
• 3 large eggs
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 3 tbsp cocoa powder
• 80g ground almonds
• 125ml buttermilk (I used natural yoghurt with a dash of milk instead)

For the chocolate frosting

• 200g icing sugar
• 65g unsalted butter
• 25g cocoa powder
• 25-30 ml milk
• Small bar of milk or dark chocolate to decorate (optional)

Method

1. Grate your sweet potato into a bowl on your scales – it won’t weigh the same at the end as in the beginning as you’ll have lost moisture, so factor this in when buying.
2. Preheat your oven to 180 degrees / gas mark 4 and grease and line two circular baking tins
3. Whisk the eggs and sugar together for a good 4 minutes until very pale and fluffy
4. Add in your sweet potato and whisk again until combined.
5. Add the dry ingredients – flour, baking power, bicarb, cocoa powder, ground almonds, and mix again.
6. Finally, add in your buttermilk or yoghurt and beat until well combined.
7. Bake in the centre of the oven for 30 minutes. The cake should be moist, but firm enough to the touch that you know it will hold.

For the frosting

1. While the cake is cooking, start on your frosting. Beat together the butter, sugar and cocoa powder with an electric whisk or in a mixer until combined to a dusty texture.
2. Slow down the beaters, then gradually add the milk until the frosting combines into a smooth texture.
3. Et voila! Wait until the cake is completely cooled, before spreading in between the two layers and on the top with a spatula or pallet knife. (Feel free to like the whisk beaters while you’re waiting for the cake to cool down – in fact, I highly recommend it).
4. Decorate the top with grated chocolate and/or chocolate shavings. To make chocolate shavings, use the edge of a sharp knife with the tip pointed out to the side. Pull the knife down the length of the chocolate bar (carefully) and you’ll be left with long, delicate shards of chocolate.

Don’t forget to share; it’d be criminal to keep this little number to yourself. Besides, the look on people’s faces when you tell them it’s a sweet potato cake is usually fairly entertaining…

Triple-layer Trilogy: Part one – Drizzled Lemon Curd Cake

This post showcases the first of three tantalising triple-layer cakes I’ve baked recently. Why have I baked so many of them, you ask? Especially when most people are on a new year, clean-eating-boot-camping-green-tea-swigging-booze-craving de-tox.

Well, there are two reasons; one, I prefer dirty eating – particularly in January and February, generally the coldest, most depressing months of the year.  Secondly, when it comes to cake, I feel there are few things more satisfying than watching a cake slice gently glide through three decadent, fluffy layers of sponge, and lifting up a resplendent, towering triangle to endless ‘ooh’s and ‘aah’s.

A triple layer cake should be a perfect symphony of lusciously light layers, moist-making filling, and an irresistible topping that come together to woo anyone within a 2-mile radius. Cheeky.

The first in this series is something of a classic, created by a classic – Delia Smith. It’s a zesty, light, and simply sublime lemon drizzle cake, sandwiched with homemade lemon curd.

The only thing I’d change would be to make it bigger (with good reason, honest) by upping the quantities – Delia actually cooks this in two tins before slicing them both in two, but I found that I didn’t get as much rise as I’d like to get four good layers. And – obviously – bigger is always better when it comes to cake!

I’d probably also change the fact that I made it after getting around 3 hours’ sleep due to being stranded after a night-out when London’s transport system decided it didn’t want anyone in north London to get home. But that’s another story!

Triple-layer Drizzled Lemon Curd Cake

Serves 10-12 generously

For the cake

• 1 lemon, zest only, grated
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• 175g/6oz self-raising flour sifted
• 1 level tsp baking powder
• 175g/6oz butter at room temperature
• 175g/6oz caster sugar
• 3 eggs

For the lemon curd

• 1 large juicy lemon, grated zest and juice only
• 75g/3oz caster sugar
• 2 eggs
• 50g/2oz unsalted butter

For the icing

• 1 large lemon- zest only
• 50g/2oz sifted icing sugar
• 2-3 tsp lemon juice

Preparation method

1. Preheat the oven to 170C/325F/Gas 3.
2. Measure all the cake ingredients into a mixing bowl and beat – ideally with an electric hand whisk – until you have a smooth, creamy consistency.
3. Divide the mixture evenly between the two tins and bake them on the centre shelf of the oven for about 35 minutes or until the centres feel springy when lightly touched with a little finger.
4. While the cakes are cooking, make the lemon curd.
5. Pop  the sugar and grated lemon zest in a bowl, whisk the lemon juice together with the eggs, then pour this over the sugar. Then add the butter cut into little pieces, and place the bowl over a pan of barely simmering water.
6. Stir frequently with a whisk until thickened – about 20 minutes.
7. Remove the cakes from the oven and after about 30 seconds turn them out on to a wire rack. When they are absolutely cold – and not before – carefully cut each one horizontally into two using a sharp serrated knife.
8. Spread the curd thickly to sandwich the sponges together.
9. For the icing, begin by removing the zest from the lemon – it’s best to use a zester to get long, curly strips. Then sift the icing sugar into a bowl and gradually stir in the lemon juice until you have a soft, runny consistency.
10. Allow the icing to stand for 5 minutes before spreading it on top of the cake with a knife, almost to the edges, and don’t worry if it runs a little down the sides of the cake. Then scatter the lemon zest over the top and leave it for half an hour for the icing to firm up before serving.

 

A fond farewell to beautiful Bristol

I remember the day I fell in love with Bristol.

I was 17 and my dad and I had flown down for the day to scope out the city and the University. We found ourselves wandering aimlessly around this brand new place;  swallowed up by beautiful architecture, meandering around bustling streets filled with friendly-faced people, gazing at up at the blue sky punctuated by momuments and towers, and admiring the green, open spaces lined with students and families dining al-fresco and lapping up the sunshine.

It truly was love at first sight.

I vividly remember driving into Bristol with my dad’s tiny car packed to the rafters with everything a wide-eyed student needed (and more). With 300 miles under our belt, we drove along the Portway, underneath the beautiful Clifton Suspension Bridge, the sun casting a glorious, other-worldly light on our path. Sitting on the back seat with a big smile on my face, I shed a few tears – not from nerves or fear, but because I knew that this moment marked the start of a new chapter that would play a huge part in my life; the first blank page in a sketchbook just waiting to be lovingly filled. And what a chapter it was.

I can confidently say that moving to Bristol made me the person that I am today. I relished the freedom that came with a new city, new friends, new ideas, new opportunities, and new places to explore.I treasured studying the subject I loved in such inspiring surroundings; discussing morality with like-minded people, and debating late into the night across pub tables with those not so like-minded (ah, the beauty of philosophy).

I happily fell into the career I now cherish,and found wonderful, kind and generous friends, mentors and role-models along the way. You know who you are, but I hope you also know how grateful I am to you for helping me get to where I am today – and for making it so much fun.

It truly was an honour to grow, learn, laugh and frolic in such a vibrant place. From admiring how the other half live in picturesque Clifton village, to throwing myself into the delightfully urban and unorthodox Stokes Croft. From summer walks and fabulous foodie festivals at the harbourside, to hazy nights of overconsumption and getting to know the owners of local takeaways – it’s a place I know I’m going to miss dearly.

But, after almost 6 wonderful, life-changing years, my love affair with Bristol is going long-distance as I start a new year, new job, and new chapter of my life in London. I take with me – along with two van-loads of stuff – a wealth of happy memories, a strong sense of self, and my boyfriend and best friend, Alex.

As I write this from my lovely new flat, surrounded by unpacked boxes and a city I haven’t even begun to explore, I find myself smiling that same smile as the day I drove under the Suspension Bridge.  Though this time I’m a little more nervous, I know at the heart of it that smile springs from a renewed optimism and excitement at the adventures to come with friends old and new. Oh, and some of the best cake in the UK, of course!

I can’t wait.

The Kindness of Strangers

Today, I was going to write about my lazy Sunday baking adventures- custard tart adventures, to be precise. A custard tart is all well and good; comforting, made with love, and unapologetically and wonderfully old-fashioned.

But the tart will have to wait until tomorrow. A chain of events happened yesterday that made me feel happier than a whole custard tart – eaten with my best friends and washed down with buckets of tea – ever could.

Yesterday I was blown away by the kindness of strangers.

My Sunday was supposed to be pretty laid back. I  lolled around in bed until about 11.30, then decided to try out my new running shoes. It was a great run, and I really enjoyed it – even setting a new PB for a 5k.I got home, showered, and changed, put my key back on my keyring in the lounge, then started planning my baking for the day.

Then a lovely surprise happened; Alex got off work early and snuck in four hours early! Hurrah! We decided to drive to Tesco together before it closed to buy baking ingredients and bake up some Sunday night treats, so stepped out of the door, slammed it shut, and then….

Me: ‘I haven’t got a key.’

Alex: ‘I haven’t got a key either.’

Me: ‘Oh SHIT!’ ‘Oh, it’s ok, I’ll just phone the….oh SHIT! I’ve left my phone in the house!’

Cue pale-faced panic and endless expletives. We checked if any windows were open. They weren’t – for security reasons(!) We called the estate agent. No answer. Obviously – it was Sunday. We called Alex’s sister 300 miles away and asked her to check our estate agent’s website to see if there was an emergency number. That would have been far too easy. She logged into My iCloud account (thank you, Apple!), and got the number I had stored in my phone for the locksmith. He wanted £80 to let us back in. £80.  We could have stayed in a B&B for half the price.

I told him we’d call him back.

We drove to the lovely @nataliedoodles‘ house to use the internet to see if I had any e-mails with out-of-hours information in there. Then I had a thought; Twitter.

Could it work? ‘But it’s such a tricky problem…’ I thought. I figured we would just have to pay the £80 and suck it up as a life lesson. Then, with nothing to lose, I posted the following tweet:

Within about 10 minutes, this tweet had been retweeted by 9 different people. And within 15, I received the following reply from @annifrangipani – someone I’d tweeted several times before but never met:

To say Alex and I were shocked is something of an understatement. We sat in awe of the power of twitter for a moment, before hastily taking up the incredibly generous offer.

Anna woke up her partner, Rob, and they dropped everything. They drove from the other side of Bristol on a Sunday evening to help us – two people they’d never so much as clapped eyes on – get out of the completely-our-own-stupid-fault pickle we were in.

Isn’t that absolutely amazing?!

Rob – who studies the intricacies of locks as a hobby (and nothing more – a very upstanding member of society!) had never picked anything as advanced as our front door lock. But he got straight to work with his set of picks, with liquid refreshment provided by one of the beers Alex had bought in the interim at the supermarket, anticipating a long night ahead.

Five minutes of picking and poking with various implements later, and I almost burst into Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus as the door popped open. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so much gratitude.

I was left in shocked admiration, humbled and amazed that two complete strangers would go to so much trouble to help us. The experience reminded me of a very important fact:

People are good

It’s a fact that’s easy to forget. Good people rarely make the headlines – unless they’ve been unjustly imprisoned or murdered. Good deeds don’t sell newspapers, and smiley faces don’t have the same car-crash-esque impact peering back at you from a news stand. If we’re lucky, we stumble across a last-breath local news item about someone running a marathon for a cause they’re passionate about, or a page 46 snippet on a young man retrieving an old lady’s handbag. Twice a year we get whole evenings on tv devoted to sharing the wonderful stories of people up and down the country who’ve been raising money for a good cause.

But it’s the everyday kindness most of us are missing – the little things that catch you off guard, disarm your ‘get-out-of-my-way’ or ‘I’m-having-a-bad-day’ face. I’ve had a lot of these come my way recently. Im continually humbled by the kindness and helpfulness of tweeters, most of whom I’ve never met, and probably never will.  When my Grandad had took a sudden turn for the worse and my mam and I knew nothing about the care system, several of my lovely followers sent well wishes and very helpful advice that I found really touching. But it’s not just the twitterverse that’s buzzing with kindness.

From the woman beside me on a train that I’d spoken to for just 20 minutes sincerely wishing me all the best for my move to London, to getting a free ticket to the Vagina Monologues this weekend via a freecycle-type site.  From the offer of a free all-day parking ticket from someone who was heading home the other week, to the lovely family who offered me a place to stay when I was 17 and on the train journey from hell that almost left me stranded in Ely, 150 miles from home, after a traumatising  university interview.

We’re so used to hearing about stabbings, protests, government cuts, financial crises, ‘feral’ youth, unemployment and injustice, it’s easy to forget that kindness permeates all of these situations and many more. The passer-by who holds the hand of the victim, the well-wishers who bring tea and cake to sit-ins, the young people who volunteer to help the elderly or spend their lives caring for a parent,  those who spend their free-time campaigning for justice, or who give up their sleep to provide a compassionate voice at the end of a helpline. And those – like Anna and Rob – who go out of their way to help strangers like me just because they can.

I, for one, won’t forget this good deed in a long time. I hope it can play a part in helping  me remember that at, wherever and whenever I find myself downhearted, grumpy, stressed out, furious, or frustrated at the way things are going – whether in my life, society, or the world – I’m never more than a few meters away from kindness.

You can read more heartwarming acts of kindness here. Be warned; there may be blubbing.

Worrying and weakness of the will

I’m at the top of a steep staircase holding a suitcase, and my feet are bigger than each of the steps. I visualise myself tumbling down, screaming uncontrollably, and landing at the bottom with splayed limbs and blood seeping from my head.

Scenarios like this are commonplace in my life. Why? Because – like a lot of people – I’m a worrier. It’s a characteristic I always poked fun of in my mother growing up, as she chewed the skin around her fingers until it bled while contemplating next month’s gas bill. Nowadays, it’s a characteristic that unfortunately unites us – our bi-weekly phone calls frequently peppered with the phrase ‘I don’t know what you worry for’ (that’s northern speak for ‘I don’t know why you’re worrying about that’).

A wealth of worries

And you know what? Neither do I. You name it, I worry about it. My weight and whether I’ve eaten too many Weight Watchers points today; that this top looks stupid; that I’m no good at my job; that I don’t read enough books and my once well-honed brain is turning to mush; that I’ll never be good at baking; that I haven’t hoovered in a week.

Top of the worry pile is money, despite having a decent salary and no debt (excluding my colossal £20k student ‘loan’). I worry if I spend £40 in a weekend on a night out and a few nice bits of food, and that I’m still not out of my graduate overdraft.

What’s bizarre is that I worry like this despite being pretty damn money savvy. I’ve been my mother’s financial adviser since I was about 15 and got my first savings account after investigating the best interest rates online. I take surveys, mystery shop, and enter competitions in my spare time, and get cashback on pretty much everything I buy online. I sell unwanted stuff on eBay and Amazon, and haven’t paid full price in a restaurant for quite some time.

Where’s the logic?

Unsurprisingly, then, I struggle to reconcile these illogical thought patterns with my own knowledge that they’re a little bit bonkers, and not at all constructive.

Studies have shown that 85% of the things we worry about never happen. I don’t know if that’s because we worry about things that are statisically unlikely to happen, or because we take decisive action to prevent them from doing so, but I’m willing to bet it leans more towards the former.

As I got to thinking about worrying this evening, after a day full of it, I was transported back to my studies of philosophy – more precisely of the concept of weakness of the will.

A weak-willed agent is one who decides that a certain course of action, A, is better, all things considered, than another course of action, A, and, despite believing himself free to do either A or B, does B.

Taking the cake

I frequently, for example, find myself in a situation where I’m presented with the opportunity to eat baked goods. Usually, I know that the best thing to do, all things considered, is not to indulge, as I’d like to lose weight and cake – remarkably enough – usually has a high calorific content. And yet, despite being free to turn the cake down, I scoff it (and usually go back for seconds, but that’s by the by).

Many philosophers believe that genuinely acting against what we really, truly, deep-deep-deep-down, honestly believe is the best thing to do is impossible. They believe that there exists a necessary connection between the judgement that – all things considered – I shouldn’t eat the cake, and the action of not eating the cake. They therefore think that whenever I eat the cake, I don’t really believe that not eating it is the best thing to do.You with me?

Now, it would be terribly convenient to posit that when I scoff the cake, I’m having some kind of uncontrollable, out-of-body experience. I’m pretty sure my Weight Watchers leader hasn’t heard that one before.  But if we truly weren’t in control of translating our judgements into action, it seems that we could not be truly said to have free will. And that’s a whole ‘nother juicy can of worms that I aint going to open.

Wanting not to want to

So how does this all relate to worrying? Well, take the worrying about my weight that’s an almost inevitable consequence of eating a slice of cake, or the worrying about money that comes after buying new clothes.

By this logic, if I was really, seriously committed to reducing my weight or my overdraft, I wouldn’t eat the cake or ransack H&M like a a contestant on Supermarket Sweep.

I can conclusively prove, therefore, that the majority my worrying is absolutely and utterly pointless – and I bet most of yours is too.

So the lesson I’ve learned from this little philosophical jaunt is this:

If you don’t care enough, are too scared, too lazy, too busy, not strong enough, or just too stupid to do what you know you should do, then you’ve either got to buck your bloody ideas up and get your priorities right, or else save yourself the time, anguish, and general illogical mental douchebaggery of damn well worrying about it.

As for the creepy visualisations of falling down stairs or getting mown down at zebra crossings? Well, I guess I’ve just got to be thankful I have an active imagination…