Down the Rabbit Hole

My Grandma Children's Lit Fridays in S Block Hugging Lauren Hearing my dad call me "squirrel" Squishing in beside my mum in her designated spot on the sofa My brother's cups of tea Road trips in Kevin Mini golf with my dad and Godfather Michael Sleepovers with Piper Cuddles with Star Walking the hayfield with the dogs Homemade stew and dumplings (my attempt just wasn't the same) The smell of chestnuts and mulled wine at Bath Christmas Market My Bristol friends Spontaneous adventures with no destination in mind  Feeling able to respond to my favourite people  That one particular frozen yoghurt stand at the Lincolnshire Show Those final few miles down country roads that take me home The giant Christmas tree at the entrance to Cabot Circus Exploring Cardiff Three Brother's Burger The shop owner on St John Street who greets me with "hello dragon" every time I go to their shop Fetch with Finn and Holly Sessions with Sue Trips to Maccies with Jade Spice Ex...

 It seemed like just yesterday that I had arrived back home again after moving out of my third year house in Bristol, but here I was again, my car Kevin packed full to the brim, going back to university once more. Only, this time, it was a new university in a brand new city. A new city about to go into local lockdown as well. This is how my moving day went.  I slipped out of my front door in complete darkness at half five in the morning to drive the 226 mile trek down South. It was cold and dark and I was anxiously running through my list of things I absolutely could not forget in my head as I fought my way into my car, threatening to topple down the jenga pile of boxes and bags mum had stacked in the passenger seat. There were no last hugs goodbye or words of good luck, safe journey to see me off; it was just me, stealing out of my childhood home like a thief of the night who no longer belonged there anymore. I shoved my first CD in the player, my mind on autopilot as I set o...

We're over halfway through you now, and a phrase I keep on hearing is how much people wish they hadn't bothered staying up until midnight on New Year's Eve to welcome you here. I was one of many who did stay up, with two old school friends, and we'd watched the fireworks and raised our glasses and sang along to Auld Lang Syne terribly out of tune. I have an odd relationship with New Year's anyway, a clashing of sadness and happiness, at one year ending and a new one beginning. I've never liked endings, you see. But I cheered and wished good wishes with the rest of them, and I went to bed wishing for a good year, a good decade. But what's happened so far has been really rather different.  I should have written off this year in January. My best friend Lauren once wrote off a year just six days in (with very good reason) and looking back, I think I could have done the same. January brought me crippling anxiety and panic attacks as I prepared to sit my final uni...

There was a moment this week when I was driving back south to Bristol after a sudden emergency I had to rush home for, when the heavens opened and it started pouring with rain. The sky seemed endlessly grey overhead and spray from the car in front of me was splattering my windscreen, and I was incredibly thankful that I had listened to my dad that morning and stopped at Halfords in Lincoln to get my windscreen wiper replaced before I properly set off on my road trip back south. The rain started coming down really heavily, so loud that I had to turn the volume up even louder to be able to hear Stephen Fry's voice narrating to me Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. I was on what I see as the final home stretch, those last 45 or so miles down the M5 before I get back to my house in Bristol. And the rain was relentlessly heavy and every few miles or so I would drive under a bridge and everything stopped. For a few brief seconds everything went silent, (except Stephen Fry of course who...

I have a giant Cadbury's dairy milk Easter egg sitting on the floor of my bedroom, in front of my washing basket, nestled in between the side of my desk and a large stack of library books. Despite the fact that my friends and family know I love Easter chocolate quite a lot more than ordinary chocolate (chocolate shaped like an egg just tastes better to me) I haven't eaten this one. In fact, it goes out of date in 21 days. And since I have lived in gym leggings (despite not going to the gym in two years) and frequently raided both my stash of biscuits as well as my emergency chocolate drawer since Lockdown started, I should have eaten this Easter egg by now. There's a reason why I haven't eaten this Easter egg yet, why I've been putting it off for the past three weeks it's been sat in my room. That Easter egg is the last physical present that my late grandma gave me.  And it doesn't matter that she had died before I could travel home for her to giv...

My world changed on Friday 16th April 2020. My phone rang at 8.34am, and I thought it was my mum calling to make sure I was awake and up (I was still in bed) and editing my dissertation. I teased that I'd beaten her to it. Instead of laughing, she told me news that changed my world forever. My loving, wonderful, amazing grandma had died. Writing that sentence is difficult, because seeing the words there in black and white makes it real. And even a month later, I still don't want it to be real. How can someone be there one moment and then gone the next? So quickly, so quietly, without a goodbye?  I had seen and spoken with her on Skype five days before, on Easter Sunday. And suddenly she was gone.  I hardly left my room in the days that followed. I cried a lot, stared blankly into space as my brain repeated over and over that she was gone . I slept a lot, lived in my pjs, didn't eat.  I still had my dissertation to finish, as well as 4 more university assignments. I didn...