Looking at our table of laughing, joking, gesticulating you wouldn’t have seen anything out of the ordinary, just a group of fun, happy, well balanced people. And so they were but also SO very much more. They are people whose spirit not only has triumphed against adversity but people who work hard daily to ensure that EVERY DAY they continue to triumph.

They are inspirational by virtue of no more than who they are. Their triumphs daily inspire my own and they themselves are such lovely people that they inspire help and support from the rest of us whenever they are in need of it.

They are the sorts of people who walk into a room full of strangers and SHINE. They can’t help it. They believe in life taking it by the horns and giving it a smacking kiss on the forehead. They make the world a brighter and more interesting place just by being in it.

While many of us get stuck in our ways: they are an education. They make a lifestyle out of constantly growing, changing, learning and consciously evolving. As their perspectives change, they challenge my beliefs and perspectives and I grow with them.

I know plenty of people who try too hard to be exceptional or extraordinary and by trying so hard, they miss the focus they were aiming for. Extraordinary comes when you know the ordinary intimately. Exceptional comes once you’ve embraced and appreciated the mundane. It comes when you stop trying to be who and what you’re not and be who you ARE to the best of your ability. It comes from having experienced both pain and hardship so that you can truly offer compassion.

They find joy in the smallest things and find wonder in everyday spaces. They know who they are and they know where they come from. They might not know where they’re headed but they make the journey a hell of a lot more interesting.

When everyone left last weekend, after heaving a sigh of relief that everything was all in one piece and I could flop on the sofa and recover from the weekend, I felt a bit of a wrench at seeing all these people I loved leaving, and found that it was a bit more of a wrench than I was expecting, which I can only attribute to my sister.

Many of my friends often view families and siblings in particular as a test of their patience, and as something visited upon you by fate that by and large you just have to tolerate for most of your life. I suppose that in that respect I am exceedingly lucky. My sister and I grew up very close, and seemed to have grown more so over the years. We seem to have weathered many of the worst bumps that life can throw at you and know each other inside out.

If ever I receive news of any description, the first person I ring will be my sister, knowing that she will instinctively understand my reaction and will talk me down from whatever state of madness I have found myself in, encourage me or give me the boot in the backside I (quite often) richly deserve.

She’s the one person from whom I will unconditionally accept criticism, because she knows me so well that there’s little point to pretending that I had or would react in any other way than the one she expects. She knows how to draw me out of dark moods and when to be silly and remind me of the small things that can make me laugh until the tears run down my face and my ribs ache from laughing so hard. She cringes madly when I sing along to tunes in the car and yet I know if I sneak a sideways peek, she’ll be mouthing the words too.

She reminds me of all th incalculably stupid things I have done during my life and when I feel down about them also reminds me that in the short time I’ve been alive that I achieved some absolutely AMAZING things too. She reminds me that it’s okay to be the person I am and the person I want to be, and that it’s okay not to want to be ordinary but to strive for the impossible. She helps me to believe that I can make the impossible happen every single day.

She drags me out of my comfortable shoes and into shoes I wear once a year so that we can look pretty when we go out. She doesn’t insist on hanging off my arm to prove that she loves me. She understands the value in knowing when to shut the hell up and give someone space and when to stick her oar in.

She’s generous, intelligent, educated, articulate and hilariously funny. She doesn’t take herself too seriously and she doesn’t take me too seriously either. She’s ridiculously beautiful and never realises how much.She’s my best friend who I could rely on to be there for me if I was dangling off the side of a cliff in Outer Mongolia. I cannot imagine that I have ever done anything in my life to deserve having a sister tso wonderful that thinking about her makes me teary because I miss her so much. You’re my rock. This is just to say – Lu, I love you.  Merry Christmas. xx

Dating as your approach your thirties is a hazardous experience. Let’s be honest, dating as a fresh-faced, dewy-eyed youngster was no bundle of joy either – akin to swimming with ravenous sharks wih a sign around your neck saying ‘My heart’s fair game’. As you get that bit older, you find that suddenly, while you were out of the dating game, the universe subtly altered the rules and forgot to tell you. (Can you see God sitting up there having a right old laugh at your expense? Can you??)

Life as a single woman – well Bridget Jones has that well and truly wrapped up. Almost every one of my friends and family is in a long term relationship and you up for one of the twice yearly visits and conversation invariably turns, if not to your appearance and career, to your relationship status (just a quick aside: WHEN did it become acceptable to pry into somebody’s very personal life like this?) …

“So, have you found the right chap yet?”
“Still single eh, old girl? Not to worry, he’ll turn up” (and variations of)
“Well my dear, looking like that it’s little surprise you haven’t hooked yourself a fella.”
and the universal favourite, “tick, tock eh? Mustn’t forget the old biological clock”

All infused with eau-de-smug. You can almost see it oozing out of their pores, that air of I-have-a-lovely-fella-look-how-perfect-my-life-is-I-feel-so-sorry-for-you-being-unwanted. The ever-so-subtle hints that if you are still single as the big 30 approches you are either an emotionally stunted freak or so unlucky in life and love that you might as well weigh your coat down with stones and hurl yourself into the river.

Personally, I like being single. I find it easier to know myself and, to be unashamedly selfish, I enjoy being able to indulge my own tastes without constantly taking into account the likes and dislikes of another person. I find that my actions and choices are my own. I have grown to appreciate my views, choices and tastes and I enjoy the lack of compromise. I find relationships a LOT of work, the compromise, the understanding, the working to try and maintaince your independence and individuality and not just become X&Y. Perhaps that is a little selfish, but I don’t see it as something to apologise for. If we don’t understand, love and appreciate ourselves and be true to that, how can anyone else?

Those of us who have escaped the shackles of spectacularly unsuccessful relationships, or if you’d rather, suffered the indignity of spectacularly successful breakups as an adult in our late twenties and early thirties perhaps begin to contemplate dipping a toe into the water. Just to see if it’s anything like we remember.

Naturally, it’s not.

If we thought dating in our rose tinted youth was a hair raising experience, doing it as an adult is a whole new ball game. The youthful idealism and hopeful looks to the future that seemed to make much of the conversation when we were younger seem to be replaced by more cynical observations on life, we seem slightly more defeated, slightly less willing to hold up our lofty ideals and say ‘to hell with reality, this is what I want’. There is less of a sense of the moment and the air seems more dense with unasked questions about previous loves, children and emotional baggage. People seem more desperate, to grab hold of anyone just to avoid being left on the cart. Personally, I don’t get it. Entering your thirties (I have a few months yet) it seems to me that you’re finally hitting your stride (or so it seems to me). You know yourself, you know what you want out of life and are in a perfect place to make it happen. Hang loose, let it happen.

Guys you would have crossed the road to avoid are now the men that you find yourself being sent on blind dates with. Oh yes.

I found myself on one such blind date a few months ago. He wasn’t much of a talker, but I’m counting that as a point in his favour, because when he decided to have a go, it made me want to stick forks in my ears to try and perforate my eardrums. An example of a funny story he told me, was how one of his colleagues taunted a Muslim colleague with food during Ramadan and then pranced round the office saying ‘nar-ne-nar-ne-nar-nar you can’t have any, you’re fasting’ and he thought this was FUNNY??!! It was tempting to castrate him then and there and save the gene pool yet another idiot, but being the class act that I am, I shot him a withering look, gathered my things and left before things could take a grimmer turn.

There was the landscape gardner who threw me in the sea fully clothed for a laugh and then left me to walk 5 miles home at 12.30 in the morning on my own, because apparently asking for a lift made me high maintenance and not the sort of girl he could date.

There was the serial boyfriend, who was morbidly phobic about being single and charted the ratio of time he had spent being single vs being in a relationship since he was 18. The results weren’t good.

There was the Moroccan tour guide who recited poetry to me all the way up a mountain and when I resisted his advances and suggestion that we live up the mountain, have a million kids and a few goats, abandoned me at the top of the mountain to find my own way down. What a lucky escape THAT was.

There are definitely worse things in life and love than being single. I’m cool with that.