Turning 30...

A funny thing happens when you turn 30. Aside from suddenly being ineligible to be a new writer (according to many organisations whose business it is to find and develop new writers) you also start to deal with things you never even had to think about in your 20’s.
My 20’s passed by in a blur of DJ’s, destinations and daydreams and I wouldn’t change a second of it but in your 30’s you find you have to start making decisions, hard ones and sometimes irreversible ones and you can’t help but long for the carefree life you'd got used to living. Saying goodbye to your 20’s is hard but it's because, deep down, you know that from this point on things will only get harder.
You suddenly have to make choices about the kind of person you want to be and who you will spend your life with. About whether you get married, have children, change career, move to another city, buy a home etc etc etc In your 20’s you think these decisions will be made in beautiful moments of clarity, perhaps mid conversation with your closest friend or a moment alone watching a sunset over a beautiful vista.
As far as I can tell they’re not. You don’t get that movie-montage moment where you realise who you love and run to the airport to tell them or walk off into the distance to realise your dream. What you get is crap flying at you from all angles and the decisions you make are usually just ways to make sure the crap doesn’t completely drown you and result in you winding up on some internet list of humiliating ways to die. Hannah Rodger – deceased due to accidentally drowning in the crap that she didn’t want to deal with.

I recently coined a phrase for all this (sometimes I make up weird phrases for things so that they seem less scary) and that phrase is ‘crap attack’. It’s perhaps not the most mature use of the English language but it is one of the most honest. I was barely 6 months into my 30’s when my first crap attack started and this is the story of how it went...

Friday 11th March 2011 is, for many reasons, a date I will never forget. I had two things to do that day. I had to go for a routine medical test at the hospital which I was told would take about an hour or so and then I had to drop a script in at Soho Theatre. It looked like a relatively easy day ahead.
At the hospital they looked at my symptoms and my family history and they suggested I should have a more thorough test than the one I was scheduled to have. The registrar advised me that although I hadn’t had the 24 hours preparation or the sedation for this other test I should go ahead with it. I was in agreement. I mean, if you are going to get naked and have an embarrassing test done then you might as well go the whole hog. The last thing I wanted to do was to have to come back to the hospital...oh the irony.

So we went ahead and had the more thorough test (which was a colonoscopy). Though I’d really rather not, I feel I should explain what it was like. I was awake, lying on my side, looking at a TV screen which showed the images the fibre optic camera was seeing as it travelled along my colon. In the first part of it they found some abnormal tissue growths (about 8 polyps) and removed them. I wasn’t exactly happy to see them there but I was relieved. It made sense of the symptoms I had been having and they were easy to remove. Well, I say easy but I watched this doctor in awe. He would move the camera near the growth, open an electric loop, capture it then burn it off and extract it. Imagine the hardest computer game you’ve ever played, then imagine it taking place inside someone’s body, then imagine them watching you as you do it.
If we had been doing the test I was scheduled to have we would have stopped there and we all might have thought we’d got what we came for. But he kept going. At this point they kept telling me to pass wind, that it was natural due to the procedure and probably the only time anyone would be happy for me to lie there and repeatedly fart. I was still laughing at this when the doctor asked his colleague to go get a surgeon. Even though they were running over by half an hour and the visibility was getting poorer the further they went, they had found something else and needed the senior surgeon to take a look.
He came in and told me that I had a nasty tumour and would need surgery to remove it. I nodded at him desperately trying to pay attention to everything he was saying but actually wondering how on earth I could have a tumour.
They kept asking if I was in pain and although it wasn’t exactly comfortable it wasn’t painful and I somehow managed to joke that if they thought this was painful they’d obviously never had a bikini wax. Afterwards they took me straight up to get a CT scan. If it was cancerous they wanted to see if it had spread to other parts of my body. If. Such a small word, such a big meaning. The technician at the scan came out and told me I had to drink a jug of a sweet, pink contrast drink and that I could take all the time I needed to drink it. I sat there and made the 1st decision – not to let the crap overwhelm me. I pretended it was my mates laying down a drinking challenge and I drank it as quickly as I could. What else is a misspent northern youth learning how to down pints useful for if not things like this?
The scan itself was over rather quickly and easily and they said I could go home. I walked out the hospital across Westminster Bridge and even though I was stood in a massive crowd of people I felt incredibly alone. Sure there were people I could call - and my family and friends have been nothing short of amazing throughout all of this - but I wanted someone to make it all better and the truth is no one could.
So I made my 2nd decision. Having spent years as a Production Manager I was trained to think of the worst case scenarios for a shoot and come up with ways to cope if they happen. I decided that this was not going to be like that, that it was all still to play for and that I just wouldn’t worry till I had something to worry about. I walked over to Soho Theatre and handed my script in, then I went home, had a late lunch, told my family the news and got ready to go see a friend of mine in a play.

As I was getting ready to go to the theatre I got a phone call telling me I had been accepted on to the Old Vic New Voices TS Eliot US UK Exchange. I was extremely delighted but I’m sure I didn’t sound it to the lovely lady giving me the good news. I wanted to sound excited that I would be one of 7 writers selected to have a brand new short play on at a theatre in New York but I had no idea if I would even be well enough to go. Though I didn’t say anything to them at the time I was worried that I might end up letting them down and was taking the spot from someone perhaps more deserving of it simply because they were healthy. But I also felt like I had earned it and I experienced a very calm determination to take part in it, no matter what. In the morning I discovered the biggest battle I would ever face and in the afternoon the Old Vic New Voices gave me a reason to fight it.

A couple of weeks later I saw my surgeon to assess my condition and schedule the operation. At this point the biopsies and CT from that day had not shown any cancer but he told me in no uncertain terms that we couldn’t be sure that I didn’t have cancer and would not need chemo until they completely cut it out of me so they wanted to do it as soon as possible. He also told me a more conservative surgeon might also perform a colostomy so all in all I felt like I was in good hands. I asked him if we could at least schedule the surgery around my trip to New York. Luckily for me he only did this surgery on Mondays and due to Easter and the bank holiday weekend the first Monday after my trip to New York was also his first available slot. There was a bizarre divinity to the whole thing. Oh, how the universe likes to give with one hand but take away with two.

So I went to New York and I had an amazing, mind-blowing, life-altering time. Then the following week I went in to hospital and had about 15 inches of my colon removed with a laproscopic right hemicolectomy and appendectomy. The night before I went into hospital I joked that I would soon be as good as qualified to script my very own episode of Holby City or Greys Anatomy and I was rather blasé about the whole thing. I kept telling concerned friends that I would be fine, I was just going to spend a few days doped up on Morphine and then I’d have a few weeks of watching movies to recover. Oh, how I was wrong.

It was painful. It was hard. It was frustrating not to be able to do anything. It was humiliating to have to ask a nurse to help put your slippers on. It was horrific just going to the bathroom. Overall it was just terribly humbling.
In the first few hours after the operation the nurses would ask me to take a deep breath and assess how much pain I was in. They did it to make sure I was getting the right amount of pain relief. They would also remind me to do this when the pain was too much. Like the first time I got out of bed they said I had to keep breathing through it. I made my 3rd decision to never forget this and I still do it now. It’s a great way to be aware of what’s going on but not let it take over. To breathe in, be aware of the pain but to then breathe out and carry on regardless.

The funny thing about recovering from this type of operation is that there is very little movement you can achieve without moving the middle of your body. That’s why they call it the core. So to sit up and take a drink, to reach for something, to change position, to walk, laugh, cough, sneeze or cry it all involves using your core. Coughing was the worst. You spend so much time lying down that you have to cough to clear your chest but at one point it hurt so much to cough that I was in tears. And of course I couldn't give in to the tears because it hurt just as much to cry. So my 4th decision was that every time I wanted to move – no matter how little the movement was – I had to go for it. I realised that if you think about how much it might hurt you’ll spend ages trying to find a way to do it so that it doesn’t hurt and you just end up in a dull but more destructive kind of pain. So I went for it. Sat up, got up, coughed, went to the toilet, showered and went for a walk. Whatever they said I needed to be able to do before I could go home I did it, despite the pain. And the more I did it the more the pain started to go away. The metaphor of finding a way to live your life whilst the people around you save your life was not wasted on me.

After 4 days I was allowed to go home to recover but after a week at home I got an infection in my wound. Though it might sound strange this was the worst part of the whole thing. It was like going back to square one, like falling down the biggest snake on the board in snakes and ladders. I could barely move again, I was on 2 different types of antibiotics as well as 5 different types of painkillers and I was miserable. For the first time in a long time I felt like my body had betrayed me. I didn’t mind that it had grown a tumour without telling me and had done so about 30 years too early. I didn’t mind I had to go through a painful operation to get rid of it. But I badly wanted it to heal and it wouldn’t, at least not as quickly as I wanted it to. So my 5th and final decision of all of this was something I wish I had decided years ago. I decided that I would stop focusing on the outcome and instead look at the progress. I stopped asking myself if I was fully healed but if I was more healed than yesterday and consequently things got better every day. Instead of trying to be somewhere I couldn’t be I was perfectly happy about where I was instead. Eventually the infection went away and with it went the pointlessness of the anger and frustration that it had brought.

A few days ago I got my full test results. I don’t have cancer. I have a syndrome that creates these polyps and if left untouched can turn into cancer so I will be monitored by specialists and by geneticists for the rest of my life to make sure my body and my family stay healthy and risk free.
I had waited quite a while to hear this outcome and obviously I was really pleased with the results. But it’s a strange feeling. It’s like getting a gift that as soon as you get you want to give to other people too. I want to give the same gift to my family who are also at risk from this syndrome. I want to give it to the girl opposite me on the ward who had a similar operation as me but, even as I was leaving the hospital, had still not been able to get up out of bed due to the pain. I want to give it to the woman next to me on the recovery unit who was told that despite coming through a painful operation to remove a blockage in her bowels would still die in a few months because her cancer was so advanced. I am totally and utterly relieved that this painful episode of my life is almost behind me. But I am acutely aware that for many others it has only just begun.

In the last 3 months I have made 5 decisions that have helped keep this crap attack at bay. The 1st was to not let it overwhelm me. The 2nd was not to worry until I had something to worry about. The 3rd was to remember to breathe. The 4th was to commit wholeheartedly to whatever I was doing and the 5th was to focus on the progress, not just the outcome. They weren’t made in moments of clarity during beautiful sunsets (although the picture above, taken from my hospital bed, was not exactly a terrible vista) they were usually made in moments of sheer panic and if they were hard to make, they were even harder to stick to. But they got me through and they stopped me from drowning in the crap...in this case both metaphorically and literally.

So why am I writing all this embarrassing detail on a publicly visible blog? Because cancer is a silent, deadly disease, it invades and attacks, it is stealthy and scary and perhaps if we all talk about it a bit more, about our losses, our battles and our near-misses then we might just beat it at its own game.
Since this happened to me lots of friends and family have told me about similar experiences, symptoms, worries and I keep saying let’s not wait till things get like this for us to share. Let’s not hide, let’s not be embarrassed and maybe we can all be more aware of what’s going on in our own bodies and with each other.
I was lucky, really lucky with early detection and prevention. I was lucky because I recognised that the symptoms (often diagnosed as IBS) might be serious, I asked my GP for a referral, not once but twice, and I was treated by some of the best doctors and nurses in the country. Whilst I wouldn’t wish any of what I’ve been through on my worst enemy I hope that we all might be so lucky because the alternative doesn’t bear thinking about.
And if I start to go there in my head then I go back to those 5 decisions to help keep that crap attack at bay too.
The truth is I still have a lot of those hard, grown-up, life-defining decisions to make but you know what? I’m not as scared of them now as I used to be.
In a way nothing has changed yet everything has changed.
Maybe that’s what your 30’s are about. Yes, things get harder to deal with, but once you deal with them, really deal with them that is, then they get a hell of a lot easier to live with after that...

Hadrian's Wall

A few weeks ago I did a charity walk along Hadrian’s Wall with my Dad and his wife.
It was hard work going up and down the Northumberland hills for 8 to 10 hours a day sometimes in the rain, sometimes in the sun.
And then dinner in a marquee with plastic chairs and camping on cold, hard floors were not exactly the best way to get ready to go back for more. But me, my dad and his wife were always there for each other with a hug and mug of hot chocolate too!
And you know what it, it felt good to do something.
It felt good to be outside.
It felt good to be a tourist in my own country.
It felt good to share something other than phone calls with members of my immediate family.
It felt good to do more in 48 hours than I would normally do in weeks.
(You never know how much you can push yourself until you have to).
But most of all it felt good to – no matter how much it hurt – to just keep on putting one foot in front of the other.

When I got back a couple of friends – completely separately but simultaneously – mentioned that they might go live abroad. One to Canada, another to Mexico, another might move to Hong Kong for work and a couple might go to Australia.
It all sounded so amazing so like rats on a sinking ship I started to wonder if there was something wrong with living in London.
One of my mates said I should come with her and I said I didn't want to leave London. For a long time afterwards I wasn’t as convinced as I had sounded!
London is tough, polluted and expensive and it’s nowhere near the countryside or the coast. Other places might be cleaner, safer, warmer have better economies and be more picturesque too.
Why don't I want to leave if everyone else does?
Why don't I want a new adventure?
Where has my adventurous travelling mindset gone?
I said I would only live in London 5 years and that was 6 and half years ago maybe it is time to think about moving on?
I started thinking maybe it's about more than just the location...

When you are writing they say your location should be like another character.
So my play about the Burnley race riots is not just about Burnley it’s about a place that exists where tolerance and integration totally failed a whole community.
I’m also writing a short film set in a prison and it’s not just about being in a prison it’s about a place inside you where good and evil aren't as easily defined.
So if it’s not just geography but more like psychology I started to think about not just where home might be but what home means to me.

And I think home is living in your own skin and bones and feeling comfortable with that.
All of my mates who are totally comfortable in themselves have that reflected back by the place they live.
The ones who feel like a square peg in a round hole are always thinking about where to go next.
It's weird, I think you only feel comfortable in your own skin by growing up.
You only grow up by moving further along the road that you have put yourself on.
And I think it's only when you move along the road your on do you find the place you call home.

With some people I know it isn't where they live that is the problem it's the road to where they're going that is.
They don't know where that is so they are going all around the country or even the globe to find it. They are dating everyone and no-one at the same time, they are changing hobbies or jobs more often than sheets on their bed, they are essentially running away because they don't know where they want to go.
We seem to be a generation completely unafraid of globe-trotting but totally petrified to say where we really want to go.

If my friends do move away then I will completely support their decision to do so as long as it’s what they want in their heart of hearts.
Maybe home will be on the other side of the world for them; I'm not saying that it won't be or that they shouldn't go. I'm just saying sometimes the easiest way to find home is not to look outward across the horizon; it's to look inwards at your soul.
Look at who you are, what you want and what you are willing to do to make it happen.

Pick a road and start walking.
It might be the wrong road, but it’s not a life sentence.
It might go in the opposite direction to where you thought it might go but it’ll probably be better than standing still.
I don’t want to leave London because I can see where I am going.
I get annoyed when I don’t think I am going to get there, or am not getting there fast enough. But I am on my way somewhere. And that somewhere is right here.
It’s hard work, it takes sacrifices, dedication and discipline but, no matter how hard it gets, I just keep putting one foot in front of the other.
If I did it on those hills in Northumberland hills I am pretty sure I can do it here!

I would be nothing without my friends so if I could say anything to help them I’d say walk far, walk tall and walk to places you have never been to before or ever dreamed you would go to.
But if you do nothing else just keep walking...hopefully you will find you’ve walked all the way home. And wherever you end up I will try my very best to be there for you...with a big hug and mug of hot chocolate too!

My date with Me

Yesterday I did something I've never done before.
I took myself out.
I quite often tell friends when it's needed I will take myself out and have a word to calm myself down or shut myself up - or usually both - but this was different...
After yet another bad cold I had decided to clear a whole week in my diary to do nothing but rest, recuperate and relax.
But by Tuesday I was better and I was bored...
I stayed late at work and tried to find some friends to play with - thinking I could walk into town and into an adventure of some kind - but last minute availability is not always a strong point for many Londoners so by 7 o clock I turned off my work PC and gave up.
But by then something in me just didn't want to go home.
It's not that I don't like my home (I love my house and my housemates) but I realised I just didn't want to do the same thing twice in 2 nights.
Friends often ask me how I can spend 2, 3, 4 nights a week writing - doesn't It getvboring doing the same thing every night? But here's the thing, you never do the same thing when you are writing...in Thailand they say same same but different, maybe that's what I missed...

So, anyway, I took myself out.

I got some Thai food (which was amazing), I had a glass of Rose wine (which was lovely) and I bought myself the last seat for the next film screening at the cinema.
It was fun and I felt strangely empowered.
I didn't feel lonely, I didn't feel I had to pretend to be on the phone / waiting for someone.
I was taking myself out for a nice night and I didn't care who knew.
Today though I felt the need to reflect and I couldn't help but wonder if it was because my life was lacking spontaniety or independence and this had been an act of rebellion in some way.

More to the point would I feel inclined to do it again?
The truth? No.
I did enjoy it and I have no shame in admitting I did it but deep down it's just nicer to have someone to share things with, a loved one, a friend, a colleague even.
After years of not having time to hang out with the friends I love because of my writing I found myself in an evening with neither my writing nor my freinds so I treated myself. But I would rather have someone to treat, someone to take out, someone to have an adventure with than do it again on my own.
After nearly 3 years of rushing to class, rushing to the theatre and rushing home to work on projects with looming deadlines I had always looked longingly at restaurants, bars and cinemas and said one day I will have the time to just unexpectedly walk in to one of you places and enjoy myself.
Now I do.
And I think I had to prove that to myself.
I remember once seeing a doctor say in a movie (so it might not technically be true) that if someone is suffocating you need to give them air but if you give them too much it will kill them just as quickly.
I felt liberated last night but almost too much so.
And today I feel a bit like the movie protagonist who after getting what they have wanted the whole movie realises it's not what they want anymore.
Sometimes if you give yourself the very thing you have been longing for you remind yourself that what you already have is better.
Taking care of my health is important and taking as much time to relax as I do to rush around is important too.
But I don't want to have lots of free time I want to write.
And when I do have free time I don't want to spend it on my own I want to see my firends that I don't get to see when I'm writing.
And I guess I want a little bit of spontaniety every now and again too.
When I walk past a busy restaurant, bar and cinema I don't have a longing to go in. But I know I could if I wanted to.
And that...for now...suits me just fine.

Graduation

I graduated from my MA a fair few weeks ago and much like everything else in life the event itself wasn't nearly as much fun as the pre-event hype or the post-event celebrations - I took a few days off work and we all went to the pub, some of us went to the theatre and a couple of us even went to a castle.
All in all it was pretty momentous, the MA has taken over more than 2 years of my life, it is certainly the end of an era but the start of... well, I'm not sure what.
Was I pleased about what we'd all achieved? Sure.
Was I relieved to be out of the debt and stress of studying? Definately!
Do I feel like it's made a difference to my life? Sort of...
On one hand it has been amazing, I think differently about writing, about drama, about language and character, about life, love and everything in between.
I talk about it differently too, it's not a faraway dream or a dirty secret it's what I spend my time doing and inevitably talking about.
Friends and family are really supportive too - they ask about my work even when they don't understand anything about it and it means so much when they do; when they care about it for no other reason than simply because I do.
Yet on the other hand there's a nagging doubt that I am - much like when I graduated from my BA - overqualified and under experienced and it's getting harder to fight my way out from under this blanket of inexperience.
Much like the state of the current economy there are more of us under here struggling than there were before. And there are, as you get older, fewer opportunities to take risks, to be brave and to throw caution to the wind...
Yet I feel like that is exactly what I need to do.
Clearly I didn't miss the lecture on dramatic irony!
I explained my situation to a friend the other day and in a rather more rambling version than this I said that being a new writer is like trying to get into the hippest party in town.
I feel like this MA has given me the key that opens the back stage door to the party, but I can fling the key into the lock as much as I want - I still can't get access to the party till someone invites me in.
Maybe I will get in one day, maybe I won't.
But for now I have the key and that's good enough.
It might not be an open invitation to my future but it's sure as hell better than nothing. And that's certainly worth celebrating...
So...anyone for the pub?

Heading Home...

Day 10...The last day of the trip.
I was leaving early evening on an Easyjet flight so I spent the day just hanging out wih some of the group who were leaving the next day.
We went to the Medina and had ice cream then wandered round picking up a few last minute souvenirs. Then we had some gorgeous fresh squeezed orange juice before heading down to explore the Saadian Tombs.
They took us a while to find - the streets were very narrow and the Moroccans seemed to have an aversion to signposts - but they were worth it when we did.
They were really grand but really subtle and we all had fun taking some arty shots and wandering round the labyrinth of streets again afterwards.

Soon after that I headed back to the hotel and set off to the airport in a cab.
It felt weird going back past all the sights that I saw on the way into Marrakech. I took some shots on my camera to try and capture the famous Marrakech sight of Palm trees in the foreground and snow-capped mountains in the background. But it only seemed to capture how I was feeling in the black and white setting.

At the airport my bag was over the weight limit but they let me off (when does that ever happen?!?) and I got through airport security really quickly which left me plenty of time to get a drink and a snack and catch up on my journal.
After a quick lap of the waiting area I decided to treat myself to a sandwich and a beer when I realised I had used the last of my Moroccan Dirham on the cab.
I looked around for a cash point, I asked where the cash point was and there wasn't one. I went to pay with my card and they wouldn't accept cards so I had over an hour to sit and try to quench my thirst merely with mind over matter...
It didn't really work so as soon as the Easyjet drinks tolley was wheeled out I ordered enough for about 4 people and then nodded off.

Arriving back at my house felt really strange as I'd only lived in the house about 3 months so it was like coming home to a place that didn't quite feel like home.
I was glad to be back but - like always - I was gutted that it was the end of the holiday.
I honestly don't know when I'll be able to afford to go away next, especially not somewhere like that.
But then again two months ago I didn't know I would even be going on this trip.
As I tried to lug my ridiculously jam-packed bag into the house without waking my housemates I couldn't help but think that perhaps the purpose of the holiday was to remind me that you never know what's going to happen and that it's ok to not know.
I didn't know how things would turn out with my mum and I didn't know what the rest of 2010 would bring but that was ok.
And maybe, just maybe, if you want something badly enough you'll get it.
I certainly wanted a holiday this year and was lucky enough to win one.
And I won it from a company called Intrepid Travel, if 'Intrepid' means fearless and brave then I think the real bravery is just admitting what you want and having the balls to go after it.
Whether that's entering a holiday competition or going after your dream job or telling someone how you feel about them.
Saying it out loud is the first step but doing something about it after that are sort of the most important steps. Though I didn't know they would, my steps took me all the way to Morocco where I met brilliant people, saw amazing things and laughed and shared and discovered so much.
So, if you haven't already done so take the first step somewhere new right now...you just never know where you might end up.

Happy travels!

Back the way we came

Day 9...It seemed strange that it was our last day in Essaouira, our last day of being on the road and our last day together as a group.
We had seen and done so much together and had got to know each other really well it felt a bit like the we were ending just at the beginning.
That's not to say we didn't make the most of our time left.
The weather was nice so I decided to wear a dress that was summery but not revealing armed with that and my aviators I finally felt like I was on holiday.
We spent the morning shopping and we bought clothes and shoes and bags and jewellery and as well as drums and artwork and sooooo many scarves that I feared they might actually run out!

After lunch we went back to the Riad to collect our belongings and - typically - now that I had finally learned to navigate my way through the alleyways of Essaouira we were now walking down them for the last time to meet the coach to Marrakech.
The last leg of our trip was simply to head back to the place where it all started.
As I sat on the coach I wondered how often we do that in life.
This blog is named after the town I did most of my growing up in and I think that a lot of time I seek to understand myself not just by looking at the path ahead that I am trying to take in life but by looking back at the path I took to get here too.
It got me thinking about the play I am writing at the moment where one of the characters puts her future in jeopardy when someone from her past lands uninvited on her doorstep. It's my attempt at dramatising a crossroads - the path that lead you here and the one that will lead you away.
I didn't really think much more about it till we walked back through the Medina in Marrakech. Everyone seemed to hassle me more than I remembered, they were grabbing at my hands and bag. Plus after everything we'd seen the things that once seemed exotic to me now just seemed to be cheap rip offs of the real thing that undoubtedly originates from further afield.
My mum believes that you can never really go back anywhere but I think you can, but only if you have already let go of the past.
In terms of this holiday - Marrakech hadn't changed, but maybe I had.

That evening we went for our last meal together and sat outside even though it wasn't that warm (that might have been the fault of the Brits - 'oh it's not absolutely freezing course we can brave it outside...') and we went round the table saying what our best bit of the trip was. Unsurpisingly the desert was pretty high on everyone's lists and whilst the 4WD was my highlight a very close second was the second night when we slept in the Atlas mountains.
Sure the Gite we stayed in was freezing cold and the showers weren't hot but the scenery was stunning, the food was divine and we sat round the fire and chatted free from TV and news and in fact any agenda.
It was great and something I have made a conscious effort to do more of since I got back.

After dinner (my last tagine...) one of the Americans read out a story that she had written earlier that day about us all. It was set in 2020 and we were all meeting up in Paris. She had a little bit about everyone - what they were up to and how they had travelled to Paris. In it people had started their own company, adopted babies, travelled the world, won awards. She had remembered something that all of us had mentioned even if we didn't remember it.
It made me realise that you don't need to be a writer to tell a story and also the best skill you can acquire when you're dealing with people all the time is to listen to them. Really listen to them. And if you can identify with what they're saying then you might just be a better storyteller because of it perhaps.
I already thought she was an amazing person as she was a doctor and was really reassuring and helpful when I talked about my Mum. But this was really touching and a fun way to remember everyone and the fun we had together.
In case you're interested in the story we were meeting in Paris because a new play of mine was opening there and everyone was coming to the opening night (sounds good to me...) One of the Canadians had come to meet me as I - get this - arrived by swimming across the channel. When I got out the water I was asked how the temperature of the water was and I replied 'refreshing'.

Maybe Morocco hadn't been the perfect holiday, maybe it hadn't even been something I'd planned on doing but it had been amazing and I believe it was what I needed to do - to get outside of my comfort zone and experience something new - and sometimes, when you least expect it, you find yourself right in the middle of an experience that turns out an unexpectedly good story...

Keep your eyes open if you want to see where you're going...

Day 8...Our first day in Essaouira started with a walking tour of the town with a really amazing local guide.
After spending a week with a male guide who was lots of fun but not very informative about the country we were in our guide today was as refreshing as the sea breeze itself.
She spoke in great length about not just her town but her life as a single muslim woman. She spoke about her community, her faith and her friends as well as politics, geography and lifestyle.
It was fascinating and all too brief even though she stayed with us as long as she could on a public holiday (it was the Prophet's Birthday).
Of all the things I had seen and done in this country this short walking tour had been more enlightening about the people at the heart of this country than anything else.
The town itself is beautiful, a vehicle-free maze of tiny streets and alleyways bursting with different colours and cultures all leading down to the harbour.
Lots of whites and blues like the Greek Isles, lots of mosiac tiles, lots of different fabrics and textures; It's a photographers dream and I had a great time trying to understand the town and their people whilst capturing it through my camera lens.

Afterwards we went for lunch down at the harbour and had a feast of fresh fish - straight off the BBQ which was amazing.
Then as the rain started we headed indoors - most if us choosing to use this time to have a Hammam (a public scrub and steam bath experience).
We were washed clean, scrubbed of our dead skin, covered in a mud wrap, washed and massaged which was fabulous, to say my skin was baby soft would be a huge understatement.

We all met back up at our Riad and sat round listening to the rain on the roof while we had snacks and wine. When the rain eased off we went out for more food and more wine in a gorgeous little restaurant that - after some of the places we had eaten in and even though we were just sat at the bar - felt like a real treat and even though we were eating tapas style felt like a real Moroccan meal too.
After we polished off our plates and drained our glasses my roommate for the trip wanted to go and sample the crepes that we had spied almost as soon as we arrived so we headed towards the harbour in search of our sugarhigh.
At the crepe stall we met some French guys who were in Essaouira to do some Kite Surfing and we teamed up with them to go find a bar to have a drink.
Unfortunately none of the bars would serve alcohol to our guide who was a muslim so we spent more time walking along the beach than we did drinking and not suprisingly lost of our new French friends along the way.
We stopped at a random bar that agreed to serve all of us and had a drink before heading back to the Riad. However on the way back a Moroccan guy put his hand on one of the girls shoulders and what was probably not something with malicious intent blew out of proportion and ended up with a group of guys surrounding our guide who was trying to defend her honour.

Luckily the whole thing seemed to blow over and we were back in the Riad, chatting on the roof in no time...we had a lot to chat about it because it had been such an eye-opening day and it made me realise that there's a big difference to holidaying in a country and really seeing it.