Antics and ramblings of a twenty something

23 rd March 2018 If you’re reading this and you have a chronic illness, firstly I want to say, you’re really strong. This is not only through the sheer symptoms that having an illness can encapsulate, but also the unnecessary evil of the ignorance that surrounds it. I want to say that this won’t always be the case, no matter how fed up you are of being misunderstood. For me for example, my Nana has my chronic illness and my Mum also has an autoimmune condition, yet I am the only female to be properly treated for Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome – how scary is that in 2019? Still, it shows the best thing it can. Progress. What I also want to say is this. Everything you may feel as a result of what you’ve been through doesn’t mean you’re a bad person, providing you don’t channel those feelings into negativity towards others. The nature of having a condition that perhaps has taken a long time to diagnose, and along the way perhaps has been misdiagnosed, is that some...

In a world where “Indie” bands are getting more and more popular, where working class heroes are gracing our stages with relatable lyrics like never before, is there such a thing as too much indie? On a trip with a friend who has always had similar tastes in music to myself, we were discussing this. It’d been a long time since we had last caught up and one of the first questions I asked when getting into the car was “So, what you listening to?”. Having shared love of sixties icons like the Beatles, seventies legends like Cream and obviously adoration for the affect the Gallagher’s had on the noughties, I was intrigued to know if any new bands had fallen off my radar. Yet my friend’s reply threw me. “Blossoms”. This band, originating from Manchester, formed in 2013 and according to Wikipedia* started playing their first major festivals in 2014. Their music is extremely popular, with songs like “Honey Sweet” and “Charlemagne” gaining huge commercial success. For some reason thoug...

Hello, I hope, as always, this post finds you really well and happy. I feel inspired to write today as, whilst reading Fearne Cotton's amazing book "Happy", a book that's about "finding the joy in everyday and letting go of 'perfect'", I want to say thank you to my body. Now, that may seem quite strange, but in the book, Fearne talks about the importance of loving, nurturing and respecting this living and breathing matter that enables you to do everything you love. Without which it'd be very hard to be you! :D. She actually writes a passage within the book as a kind of thank you letter to her body, apologising for times when she feels she could have treated it better or with more kindness and then listing all the things she's thankful for. This letter resonated with me so much that I cried - because my relationship with my body started as a loving one, but then became fraught and stretched with the onset of having a chronic illness at...