What I want to be when I grow up.

I had an idea a few years ago that I would like to see a TV show where someone would spend a year doing a different job every day. Obviously the person wouldn't be able to fill the role of a fully trained employee in each role, for example the presenter of the show would not be expected to perform heart surgery or solve a crime, but if they spent a year following people around in a new job every day it would give us a bit of perspective on what pressures and pleasures can be experienced in different careers. The person could follow an A and E doctor one day, a fireman the next, a waitress the next, a chambermaid the next - I thought that it would be a great way to see the experiences of so many different people in different roles. Perhaps it wouldn't be a new job every day, perhaps one job a week? I must admit that I didn't fine tune the details of the show and I have no idea if a show like this has ever been shown but if they did show this on tv I would definitely watch it.

Perhaps they could roll it out to schools and everyone could spend 6 months or a year sampling different roles to see in which they would best fit. It would have been fantastic to have a scheme like that when I was at school as I didn't have the faintest idea what I wanted to be when I grew up. I remember sitting with the careers officer at school and she asked me what I wanted to do when I left school and I remember just staring blankly at her for what seemed like an eternity before saying 'I want to be a fashion designer'. Now, this was funny for several reasons, one of which is that I have had pretty much the same hairstyle give or take a fringe/occasional perm/one hair colour change since I was about 14 and I often insist on wearing colours that clash alarmingly. One of my friends described one of my outfits as looking like I had 'just stepped out of a bondage catalogue' and another as 'the last time I saw a pair of trousers like that they were being worn by members of the band The Sweet on Top Of The Pops in the 70's'. Secondly, this was funny as I eventually ended up working in a pet shop for my work experience at school due to the school having no connections in the fashion industry. Don't get me wrong, I love animals but I am also scared of vast amounts of them after being pecked by birds, bitten by dogs and bitten by a particularly ungrateful hamster when I was a child (the hamster was climbing up some raised wallpaper and I tried to help it get down before it fell and the frightened animal bit me as I gently reached for him). Therefore, being sent for work experience in a pet shop, while I am sure was very worthwhile was also not something to which I what I wanted to dedicate my life.

I'm not sure that I really wanted to be a fashion designer either, I loved art and wasn't too shabby at drawing (however, I couldn't paint to save myself and every painting I ever produced looked like a three year old had painted it and I'm not sure that even my parents would have displayed them on their fridge). I loved designing clothes at home in the comfort of my bedroom but looking at the fashion trends between now and then - I wouldn't have stood a chance in the fashion industry, my designs would have been either too pedestrian or would have been so outlandish they would have made Lady Ga Ga seem positively prudish, I've never managed to find an appropriate balance when it comes to clothes.

I really didn't know what I wanted to do when I grew up, it took me until I was around 23 to really truly decide what career I wanted to pursue and that was after doing a hairdressing course, various A levels and a Computing degree. There were several careers that I wanted to pursue but never really believed that I would ever get close to achieving success in them.

I have always wanted to be a writer, I don't want the fame/celebrity part, I just always wanted to write. I have always loved writing, whether it be a novel or documentation at work, even as a child I always had a pen in my hand. I wrote so many short stories, novels and poems when I was a child - I'm not sure if any of them were in any way decent, I just loved writing. I would dream about storylines for novels and would often carry a notepad around to jot down ideas whenever they came to me. Even my blog posts are an extension of this desire to write. When I was around 14 years old, I started writing a murder mystery novel. Not having access to a computer at that time, yes I really am that old, I hand wrote every word, every line. I wrote and rewrote sections, changing the storyline where I thought it would be appropriate or more effective. I spoke to a policewoman to get her perspective on how it would be to be a female detective in the police force, I researched it and prepared so much for the novel. I hand wrote page after page after page in my neatest handwriting in double line spacing as I had read somewhere that that was the professional way to do it. It took four years give or take to finish the novel and even though I wasn't sure if it was any good, I was proud that I had achieved it.

While at university, I still had this novel and I was still just as proud that I managed to produce it and one of my friends suggested that he could give it to his sister to read as she was very skilled in creative writing and she would be able to give me her views on it. I was a bit reluctant to let it out of my sight to be honest as it was the only copy I had but eventually I agreed that he could take it to her. You can sort of see where this is going and you can probably tell dear reader that, as my novel remains unpublished and I am not a proud author giving you a link as to where to find my work, that this story does not end well.

I gave it to my friend, many loose leaf pages in a binder and he took it to his sister. She read it and happily gave me her thoughts, some good, some critical and I was pleased that she had read it as it gave me food for thought and a lot of directions in which I could take the story to make it better. Then my friend asked if he could read it too and I agreed, they lived in the same house so it wasn't too much of a risk...

Unfortunately, while tidying his room, his mum inadvertantly threw it away. That was that. No copy, handwritten, no way of getting it back, it was gone. Just like that. I can't begin to tell you how devastated I was to lose that novel - I can sort of imagine how Edmund Blackadder felt on finding that his 'magnificent optopus' Edmund: A Butlers Tale had been burnt by Baldrick...well, my novel wasn't 'crammed with sizzling gypsies' but it was still very dear to me - I felt bereft. It wasn't my friends fault or his mum's fault, she didn't realise what it was and he didn't realise that she would throw it away. I'm not bitter and I forgave him when he apologised but it did somewhat crush my writing spirit. This was approximately 12 years ago and even though I have several novels that I am writing at the moment and a few for which I have ideas - I don't think that I will ever achieve the dream that I have always had to see some of my work in print in a book.

I've been thinking a lot about my career recently as I have been ill these past few years and have spent quite a lot of that time unemployed. Sadly, as is the current job market, I have been made redundant from work three times in as many years as I'm sure that a lot of people have and during this time there have been very few jobs for me to apply for even if I had been completely healthy. My greatest desire at the moment, aside from calming down my OCD is to be working again. I love working, I enjoy the banter between my colleagues and the feeling of being a team. Software Testing has been my passion for almost ten years and while, probably not considered glamorous, I adore the challenges that every piece of software brings. Without working I feel lost and so I have spent a lot of time these past few months writing. I am fairly sure that I will never earn a living writing but I would love the opportunity.

When I hear children resolutely stating what they want to do when they grow up, I'm always so proud and simulataneously sad that it took me so long to work out what I wanted to do with my life. While attending an appointment with my psychiatrist recently I was watching 'Junior Masterchef' on the TV in the waiting room - the children in the show were creating meals that I could only dream about. I can barely make an omelette yet these children were creating family meals with panache. I couldn't believe it. The children were stating how much they wanted to be top chefs and I could feel tears of admiration welling up in my eyes that they had so much curiousity and ambition at such an early age, I would have loved to have had that level of drive when I was a kid. I'm not saying that I regret being a software tester, just that I would have done so much more to achieve my dream of being a writer too.

On a lighter note, and back to my tv show idea, I was wondering the other day what would happen if TV actors had to do the jobs that they portray on TV. For example, would David Jason be a good detective after working on 'A Touch Of Frost' for so long? Would Zach Braff or Hugh Laurie be able to diagnose a patient as they have in 'Scrubs' and 'House' respectively? Could Shane Richie really run a bar?

Perhaps I should forget about pitching TV ideas and just stick to being a software tester :)

Miscalculation of Risk

I am a massive coward. The thing is, I don't think that I was always like this...well...at least I don't think I have been an enormous coward all my life, maybe a partial coward. OCD does bring with it a large amount of anxiety but I have really struggled to fully understand why I have been unable to perform even the simplest tasks over the past few years due to disabling fear of ab-so-lute-ly everything.

Several years ago I had the bravery (or sheer insanity I suppose depending on your point of view - I had torn ligaments in my ankle and was on crutches) to abseil down the Forth Rail Bridge - oh yes, there's pictures of it and everything somewhere - without having too much of a nervous breakdown. I remember being fairly worried but the fear was not debilitating and I did it with relative ease. In retrospect I am perhaps romanticising my descent, I believe that I yelled and screamed with fear most, if not all, of the way from the top to the bottom as one of my friends can definitely confirm as he shouted at me as he dangled above me on the other side of the bridge.

The point is that I did it, I faced my fears and won...well...for one day on one thing that is. I did chain smoke furiously pretty much the moment my feet touched the sand and I further embarrassed myself in a bar shortly afterwards asking for a Rum and Lemonade (Which is very nice, it doesn't have to go with Cola) at around 10am. The bemused barman pointed out the time, I had gotten up at about 5am to get psyched up for the abseil so to me it was afternoon.

When you compare this to the past few years where I haven't been able to do so much as put toothpaste on my toothbrush without having a panic attack and it does seem very confusing to me. There was no specific trigger for my OCD that overwhelmed me this time - I have been successfully, to a point, managing my OCD since I was around 8 years old so it does feel heartbreaking for me that it has managed to completely envelop me to such a degree that I have only actually socialised around about 5 times in the past year and only went out alone about once every two months on average.

When my OCD started to get worse it was at a point where I finally had a great life - a husband with whom I am very much in love, a great job that I thoroughly enjoyed, finally getting on top of my debts and being financially sensible for once in my life, great friends and all the gadgets I could listen/watch/play with.

Oddly, there is a possibility that this could have been the trigger for my anxiety - suddenly I had pretty much everything I had ever really wanted and, terrifyingly, so much to lose if I made the wrong decisions or did/said something wrong. I don't think I ever really considered it consciously but the fear of losing everything, being rejected, losing my friends, losing my job that I adored became so overwhelming that my anxiety was phenomenal and with this anxiety followed my old enemy OCD.

It's all about risk and my overestimation of danger is often completely off the scale - when it comes to everything. For example, the risk of being killed by a meteorite is tiny - I haven't exactly researched it but rationally as I have never heard or read of anyone being killed by a falling meteorite I can only assume that it happens extremely rarely. You see that's the thing, rationally I know that it is unlikely but there is a section of my brain that tells me that it is unlikely but still possible and so everytime I am outside I can 100% guarantee you that at some point I will look up at the sky and worry that a meteorite will fall and kill me. I also worry that it will happen to members of my friends and family so not only do I worry about my own well being regarding this, I worry about everyone elses too.

You see, for me the probability of anything bad occuring is 1. There is a completely rational part of my brain that tells me how silly I am being as the risks are low but there is conversely another part of my mind, another voice in a way, that says 'They say that the probability of winning large amounts of money on the lottery is mind-blowingly large but you still know people who have won large amounts on the lottery'. My mind is a constant battleground for the rational and the irrational.

I've tried to win the battle with my irrationality, I really have, I tell myself forcibly that it is ok to go outside and that nothing bad will happen but then I go outside and see someone almost get their bag snatched and I am right back to cowering in my bed. The odd thing is that when it comes to making a journey anywhere, if the bus is late or the train is cancelled I just shrug it off and I'm generally quite sanguine. Some things I can cope with completely, generally if there is a massive crisis I am usually brave enough to deal with it but when it comes to preparation for disaster I become so terrified that I can barely function as a human being.

When I am struggling to believe that a cup I have in my hand is the same cup I have been drinking from for half an hour and I ask someone, they look at me as if I am completely mad. The thing is that, I worry when I am drinking or eating anything that I will pick up the wrong thing and drink or eat something that will be dangerous to me (the risk) so I check the thing that I have in my hand - a cup for example. The more I check the cup is there, the more I start to think that maybe I am not seeing the cup correctly and that perhaps my eyes and mind are deceiving me and that what I actually have in my hand is something different. At that point, even though I am telling myself (sometimes loudly and often in public) that the item in my hand is a cup from which it is safe to drink there is an insidious part of me that is telling me that my brain and eyes are confused and that what I have in my hand will endanger my life. Sometimes it goes one step further than that and tells me that if I proceed and drink the liquid, if it is dangerous and I kiss my husband that he may get ill as well and it will be all my fault. These thoughts are often so pervasive that I can do nothing else but put the cup down on the table and not drink from it - the compulsion to give in to the irrational thoughts is so strong. It's so difficult to explain to people that when I am looking at something, even though I can see it and it looks real - the nagging thoughts at the back of my brain are telling me other things. It is extraordinarily difficult to explain it to people that haven't experienced it as telling someone that you are not sure what you have in your hand does tend to raise a few eyebrows. I usually end up in philosophical discussions about the nature of perception.

It's difficult to function when you think about all the risks of everything and what could happen. For absolutely everything and anything at any given time I can list a huge amount of possibilities of bad things happening. People say, if you never take a chance you will never do anything and unfortunately over the past year or so I have literally done pretty much nothing for fear of failure. My life has been very unrisky but ultimately my not being able to do anything for fear has led to me becoming obsese which in turn leaves me vulnerable for many more health risks. My anxiety has also caused me to lose touch with a lot of my friends and this has left me feeling often lonely and useless which in turn makes me more scared. My lack of activity seems to have also made me unfit and my joints are incredibly sore. The sheer amount of anxiety has caused lots of health problems for me and I have even found that my brain seems to be misinterpreting messages and sensations in my body that should generally be normal are misinterpreted by my brain as pain or discomfort.

What I am trying to say is that my fear of taking risks has led to me being at risk for a great many more problems. It's not something that I can fix immediately, even though I know what the problem is, but I am working on it. Taking little risks at first, edging forward until I will be back to my old self. I have been existing but not really living and I want to change that. As the great Kylie Minogue says in her new song "What's the point in living if you don't take a chance?", she also says "What's the point in living if you don't wanna dance" and so with that in mind I will be attempting to follow both bits of advice and as well as continuing with my Cognitive Behavioural Therapy I'm going to be using the XBox Kinect to dance myself back into shape :)

Wish me luck :)

Seriously...

I don't know what it is but I have a complete and total inability to take anything seriously. Perhaps it is nervousness or my medication but I always seem to laugh when it is completely inappropriate to do so.

I just can’t seem to help myself; the slightest little thing seems to be incredibly funny to me. I think it is just the general level of discomfort I feel in pretty much every situation that seems to spark this up.

For example, I find serious meetings very hard to take seriously, once during a small meeting my boss said ‘Maybe it’s because...’ and in the pause between words I suddenly sang ‘...I’m a Londoner!’ – I have no idea what possessed me to say that out loud, he’s not even a Londoner :) It just seemed so funny and the sentence seemed to need finishing.

A similar situation occurred when my team lead said ‘Because...because...’ and I replied with ‘Because, because of the wonderful things he does!’ with a flourish. At which point he looked at me like I had lost the plot and I had to swiftly apologise and ask him to continue.

Libraries are a constant source of amusement for me, there is something about the request to be quiet that just makes me worse. I usually end up thinking about something ridiculously stupidly pant-wettingly funny and I usually have to leave before I completely embarrass myself.

People singing to me or expressing great emotion towards me, particularly in a public place seems to make me double over with laughter – I’m really glad that my husband proposed to me in private or I may have seriously offended him.

To be fair, I am not actually laughing at the event itself, it is simply how uncomfortable I feel in that situation that my brain suddenly recalls something I saw on Robot Chicken or something that someone has said to me that made me laugh. Once that has occurred I get into the inevitable situation where I try desperately not to laugh but the fact that I am suppressing my laughter seems to make it funnier and so I attempt to suppress that until that just becomes so hilarious that I find myself laughing hysterically and I have very little explanation for my behaviour. This is neatly described by Jeff in the TV comedy ‘Coupling’ as ‘The Giggle Loop’.

I often feel uncomfortable in posh restaurants, I generally drop food all over myself or knock things over or swear by accident – I just can’t be trusted in serious situations.

During my graduation ceremony I found that I was going to be the last person on the stage to collect my degree and to be honest, once I found that out I almost couldn’t climb the stairs to the stage as I was too busily mentally restraining my laughter. This wasn’t helped by the lady at the front of the stage who said ‘It’s ever so brave of you going last’ and I turned to see that there was no one left in the queue. I suddenly felt stupendously silly and this just made it harder to stop laughing.

I must seem mad, suddenly bursting into laughter on the bus or my mouth twitching desperately in interviews but anyone who has ever felt this way will completely understand where I am coming from on this.

I particularly like comedy shows as at least there your laughter blends in with everyone else’s but serious plays have me fleeing to the loo at the interval to laugh myself senseless.

Recently I went to a few art exhibitions and while walking around in the silence and the contemplation, my husband kept saying to me things like ‘I really like the use of light in this painting’ which just kept making me laugh as it all just seemed so silly. I pointed out to my husband that I appreciate art in my head very much but I find it difficult to share my thoughts with anyone else for fear that they think I am being somehow pretentious.

I am much better at expressing myself in written form rather than verbally, this is mainly due to my desperate inability to string words together in a sentence when I am nervous but also because if I am writing things down I can laugh as much as I want. I’m laughing now, but you can’t see it so I feel more comfortable knowing that I am laughing at something ridiculous I saw on the internet the other day and as I am in an empty flat, no one can see me.

What I do know is, generally the more serious the situation, the more likely my brain is to find it amusing.

Nevermind, you know what they say, laughter is the best medicine.

Don’t send in the clowns...

This may surprise a few people but I have suffered from severe depression for many years. I know, weird isn’t it?

“But you seem so cheerful!” people say to me “You can’t be depressed!”

Anyone who says things like this to me has clearly never seen me in private when I have reached the extreme low points.

Now, you may be thinking ‘Oh, well this is going to be a miserable blog post!’ and I would say ‘Aah, well that is where you’re wrong!’ so there!

On the contrary, this blog post may delve into misery at points but I assure you that it has a happy outcome. With that in mind, I shall continue.

As I was saying before I so rudely interrupted myself, I have suffered from severe depression for many, many years. Whether this is due to my OCD is unknown – it’s difficult to know which came first. All I know is that I was a miserable child, a miserable teenager and a miserable adult.

Several people have said to me in the past that depression doesn’t exist and that it is all in my head – so to speak. I always find this completely insulting and it really doesn’t help when I am feeling so low. Anyone who has suffered through depression will tell you that it is a terrible illness and one which can have an enormous impact on your life and the lives of your loved ones.

In my case, there was nothing particularly bad in my life that caused my recent terrible spell of depression. I have a job that I love, a husband whom I love, I’m now debt free after a lot of effort, I have everything I could want – yet several weeks ago I felt like I couldn’t go on and apart from my OCD there was no reason for this to occur.

It didn’t help that I was recovering from viral meningitis and felt physically terrible but that wasn’t the cause of it. For about a year I have spent most of my time feeling dreadful, feeling unworthy, fat, ugly, useless and a disappointment. My husband tells me I’m wonderful on an almost daily basis but to no avail. Nothing seemed to lift the darkness, I found myself having some terrible thoughts – not specifically about harming myself but I just didn’t want to have to go on feeling the way I did.

There was no obvious reason for it, a time when I should be the happiest in my life and all I could think about was how miserable I was. The worst thing was that I knew that my misery was making my husband sad and it was hurting him to see me that way – but that just made me feel worse.

So, I sat in my psychiatrist’s office around two weeks ago in a sorry state. I was at as low ebb as I could have reached to be honest. I’ve tried everything over the past year to improve my mood but nothing seemed to work. I have had Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for my OCD and have taken various anti-depressants but I just didn’t feel any better.

This time my psychiatrist advised me to take new medication, I was offered the same medication last year and I refused it as I didn’t want to take any more medication than I was already on. However, this time I was so miserable and so desperate to feel better I accepted the medication at as low a dose as possible. Now, everyone is different and I am in no way suggesting that what helps me will help anyone else and I would strongly advise anyone with depression to seek help from their GP as different therapies benefit different people.

I took the low dose of the medication and I have to admit that I felt like a zombie for around 2 or 3 days, I kept drifting into sleep at odd times. The first day I couldn’t keep my eyes open, I was so sleepy. The side effects were not nice but after a few days I started to feel quite cheerful.

For the first time in a long time I actually felt quite happy, sort of content. I didn’t feel drugged up or hazy – just a feeling that everything was going to be ok. The OCD voice in my brain that generally told me that I hadn’t done things properly seemed to quieten down considerably and for the first time in a year I found myself looking forward to things.

The oddest thing is, I’ve spent so much of my life feeling miserable inside that I actually have no idea how to cope with not feeling that way. Isn’t that weird? I’m so used to feeling miserable and worried and desolate that now I don’t feel it I sort of miss it – I was so used to it, that living without the constant misery is actually very peculiar. I commented to my husband recently that I am so used to living with depression that I don’t really know how to act without it.

I don’t feel euphoric or high, I just feel like everything is ok. Who knows how long it will last, I am only to be on this medication for a few months so we’ll just have to see what happens over the next few months but even a break from the depression is very welcome, regardless of how long it lasts.

It at least gives me hope that perhaps I won’t feel as bad as I did forever, there is hope.

OCD

With all the misery in the world at the moment, I'll try not to add to that with this blogpost but things have been so desolate that it may dip into the morose at times - sorry.

I have been through a mammoth struggle in the past year and I really just want to get my thoughts out and to hopefully raise awareness of a disorder that can be utterly debilitating and left untreated can lead to all manner of problems functioning in life. It may seem a little selfish to talk about myself so much in this blog post but I really need to explain what has been happening.

As you may know, I have obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). I have had OCD since I was about 8 years old but it was only really diagnosed formally a few years ago. I've spent my entire life knowing that there was something that wasn't 'right' with me mentally but I didn't know exactly what it was.

Many people seem to have an inaccurate view of what OCD is, people regularly say to me - 'If you have OCD then at least your house must be immaculate!' which is just not true, I have a fear or chemicals that trumps my fear of contamination so I tend not to scrub things meticulously. My flat has 'safe' areas that I feel are clean and 'unsafe' areas that I feel uncomfortable in and are untouched for long periods of time. I also do not feel completely compelled to gain symmetry in everything as is often portrayed on the TV, some OCD sufferers do but others don't. Everyone with OCD has different obsessions and compulsions and it is important to understand this.

My first real memory of OCD behaviour was when I was a child. I remember being told that if you didn't drink enough that you would become dehydrated, I became extremely anxious about this, not knowing how much I was supposed to drink to keep hydrated. One night I drank as much water as I could before I went to bed, assuming that this would keep me hydrated. However, when I got into bed I became more and more anxious and got up several times to drink more water. As you can imagine, this lead to needing the toilet rather a lot but every time I went to the loo I became utterly terrified that as I had gotten rid of some water that I needed to drink more - so the cycle of going to the loo then drinking water from the tap continued throughout the night. I remember my parents getting cross with me, not understanding what was wrong, and telling me to go back to bed but every time I did I needed the loo, then I felt utterly compelled to drink more water.

In isolation this may just seem like the episode of an anxious child who perhaps got the wrong end of the stick when given some advice but some of my other behaviour highlighted that this was not just an isolated incident.

In my early years at secondary school I developed a series of tics that I couldn't control and for which I was generally mocked. I would clear my throat every few seconds, the compulsion to do so was overwhelming even when I didn't feel necessarily that my throat needed clearing. I developed a nervous cough and the more people mocked it, the worse it got. Surpressing it just made it worse, surpressing it led me to start sniffing every few seconds instead so then I was mocked for that. I found that in later life, surpressing my OCD behaviour would result in me feeling compelled to blink a certain number of times every few minutes.

I was a complete nervous wreck as a child for little reason, I worried about everything. If a disease was mentioned I would become completely consumed with worry that I would get that disease - I thought that every dog would give me rabies, that everything I touched would make me ill or poison me, that even walking under certain trees would cause me harm. I became terrified of death, every time I thought about the death of people around me or my own I would become almost hysterical.

My main problem was that, despite being absolutely terrified of pretty much everything, I was too scared to tell anyone about my thoughts. I was worried that I would be taken to a psychiatric hospital and locked away or that people wouldn't believe me. Every time I tried to explain to people what I was worried about and get reassurance people would look at me as if I were mad. My main phrase in life as a child seemed to be 'will I be alright if I do (insert anything here)?'. I must have driven my parents bananas with my constant asking for reassurance. Because no one actually knew what the problem was, no one could really help me. I felt so ashamed, asking for reassurance so often and so I developed ways to cope. Unfortunately these coping mechanisms were to make my anxiety and my life a whole lot worse.

I would check things copiously and often unnecessarily. The worst part of OCD is that, there is a part of your brain that says 'I know that I have locked my door' or 'I know that I have switched the tap off' but there is another more insidious part of the brain that continuously questions and doubts whether you do know that things have been done.

Looking back, my OCD has affected large parts of my life - I almost missed an exam at college as I had to go back home and check that my hair tongs were off, despite the more rational part of my brain knowing that I had unplugged them before I left the house. I have often missed out on going places because of anxiety about food, available toilets, fear of contamination, fear of not locking the door of my house properly. In one of my jobs in my life I was the only girl in the office and was completely terrified that the tap would be left on in the female toilets and that I would be blamed even if it wasn't me so after leaving work I would often have to go back and check the taps several times - no matter how close to home I got. I would touch things with tissues in my own home if I felt they were 'contaminated'.

A lot of my life has revolved around my OCD and it has prevented me from doing so many things. At several points in my life my hands have been cracked, sore and bleeding due to the sheer amount of handwashing I have done to ease my anxiety about contamination. I kept quiet about it, tried to hide my coping behaviours from people but that has always made them worse and I have suffered clinical depression for most of my adult life because of my OCD. Whenever I tell people that I have suffered from depression they usually say 'but you seem so cheerful!' - sadly I have tried to cover my misery most of my life that I tend to think that everyone wants to see me cheerful and have done so. OCD can be such a destructive disorder.

Over the past year I have had the biggest flare up of my OCD that I have ever experienced and I have had to finally face up to the rather grim reality that, although OCD can wax and wane, there is no absolute cure. I think that this was the biggest cause of my depression, I had to face up to the fact that my OCD is a disability which I will probably fight against for the rest of my life.

I haven't been very communicative over the past year or so, my OCD overwhelmed me. I have isolated myself and been too afraid to see people. For the past year or so I have not been able to function in any capacity. There was no one single event that caused this relapse, just a slow decline into the worst period of mental illness in my life.

About a year or so ago I was coping with my OCD symptoms. I would check things but not obsessively, wash my hands but not to excess. I was able to get buses, travel places, go to supermarkets - all the usual things that most people do on a daily basis. Slowly I started to notice that I was checking the floor more often, worrying that I was standing on sharp things like knifes or needles, this fear started to escalate until I could barely go anywhere without worrying that I had cut my foot open and that I would bleed to death. I have always had checking and washing behaviour but I was unprepared for the horrors of my OCD that were to come.

While sitting on a bus one morning there was a girl sat behind me talking on her mobile phone, I was fiddling with my MP3 player and not paying much attention. The bus came to my stop and I started to get up and walk down the bus when I suddenly thought 'What if I have hurt that girl in some way?'. Now, you need to understand that while people have intrusive thoughts all the time, most people dismiss them - consider the last odd thought that crossed your mind, you probably dismissed it right? With me and a lot of other OCD sufferers, we tend to attach more meaning to those thoughts than they really require. I thought 'I wouldn't hurt anyone physically, ever! I didn't hurt the girl' but my brain wouldn't let it go. I then thought 'Aah, but you were worried that you had hurt her so maybe you did'. I searched my memory and in my heart of hearts I knew that I hadn't hurt her in any way or even gone near her - but my brain kept doubting my memories. I turned back to look at the girl and she looked fine, chattering away on her phone, but my brain told me that maybe I was confused and perhaps I had hurt her but was seeing her as fine because I wanted to. I started to feel anxious and as I got off the bus I continuously checked that the girl was ok, she was fine but I couldn't convince myself of that. As the bus drove away I could see the girl and knew she was fine so why was I worrying that I may have hurt her??? I couldn't breathe properly, my breathing was coming fast and my heart was beating so quickly I thought that it was going to beat out of my chest. I started to feel light headed and my fingers tingled, I felt like I was going to pass out or have a heart attack. To say it was awful is an understatement. I don't want to hurt anyone, I never would hurt anyone deliberately so why would I worry that I had hurt a complete stranger? I have since found that the anxiety is due to the disparity between what you think and your general ideas on things - I never want to hurt anyone and even the thought that perhaps I had hurt someone caused massive anxiety.

During the course of that day there were several instances of the same thing, I started worrying that I had punched people or shouted at them in the street. I started to worry about what I was saying and doing and this hyper vigilance just served to make things worse because the more I tried to remember what I had said or done, the more my brain would say 'Well, if you thought it then you must have done it'. The absence of the memory of shouting things, doing things etc just made me think that perhaps I had done those things but couldn't remember. I had so many panic attacks that day that I had to go home and when I went home I simply went to bed as the mental exhaustion was horrendous. I worried that my thoughts made me a bad person, that I was somehow evil deep down and that was why I was having these thoughts. I worried that I was being possessed, I felt so confused and scared all the time with no reason whatsoever.

Now, I just want to reitterate that I am in no way dangerous, I know that, my psychiatrist knows that and you need to know that. Apparently the fact that I have these anxieties is supposedly a good sign as it means that I have no desire to do any of the things I worry about and wont carry out any of these things.

I genuinely started to think that I was losing my mind and due to the sheer volume of panic attacks I had started to have on buses, in the street etc. I became utterly terrified to even go outside. This led to my agoraphobia. Every time I tried to leave the house I ended up having a panic attack, even the mention of having to attend any appointment gave me panic attacks.

Just because I didn't go outside didn't mean that the problems ended. I became scared to touch things in my flat, things that I had been able to touch perfectly fine before I now considered contaminated. I couldn't even use the phone or the computer at one point, fearing that they were somehow dirty and contaminated. I could barely eat anything as I worried that my food would be contaminated. It would take so long to go to bed as I had to check everything was off first, door locked etc. I couldn't read anything as I couldn't concentrate and slowly but surely my decline continued until I couldn't even leave my bed for several weeks. I couldn't make food for myself or wash my clothes, I became convinced that even my clean clothes were dirty. I would be totally unconvinced that the taps were off in the flat and would spend hours checking taps and that doors were locked.

The cruel thing about OCD is that even though you doubt everything that you do, there is still a part of your brain that is hyper aware of what you have done and haven't done so the confusion worsens as it is almost like having two conflicting people inside your brain. What's even more frustrating is that I knew that it was my own brain doing this to me but I was powerless to stop it, when I had a compulsion to check something for example I absolutely had to do it or the anxiety within me would rise to unbearable levels. Often it was easier to check whatever it was then walk away but then I wouldn't believe myself and would have to check again and again and again...

The anxiety was crippling, I felt nauseous pretty much most of the time and my stomach churned every time I even thought about doing anything that would involve me touching things. I stopped showering as the panic attacks made a shower last 2 hours and I would almost pass out. I stopped brushing my teeth, putting on make up and even brushing my hair. I had to do things over and over again until I felt right. Life became unbearable for both me and my poor long-suffering husband.

I really went to bits, the OCD was crushing me and my world seemed to get smaller and smaller with regards to where I felt I could go or what I could do. Due to the sheer helplessness I felt at not being able to control my thoughts and anxieties I became immensely depressed. I can't put into words exactly how low things got for me, I just felt that I was never going to get any better and that the rest of my life would be like that.

I am lucky enough to have a loving husband who did everything he could to help me. He urged me to see the doctor and he re-referred me back to my psychiatrist and they referred me to a mental health team. My husband went to every therapy session with me, held me when I was hysterical, shaking and sobbing, he supported me through everything. He even read as much about OCD as he could to see how he could help. The important thing is that he listened to me and never judged me and that made all the difference. In my life, whenever anyone noticed my OCD behaviour in the past they would often look at me with scorn, pity or bemusement and this just made me feel more ashamed. That's no ones fault, OCD is difficult to understand if you are not going through it.

I've been receiving therapy for several months now and I'm feeling a bit brighter. I accept that everyone has intrusive thoughts and that I am not a freak, but I have had to accept that I do have a mental illness for which there is unlikely to be no cure. I am learning new coping methods and trying my best to recognise my obsessive thoughts and apply what I have learned to get through them.

Without my husband I wouldn't be making such a good recovery today, his endless patience and support has kept me going through times that I just couldn't have borne alone. I have a long way to go and my recovery is slow but steady. I still find it incredibly difficult to get out of the house and walk around the streets without having anxiety attacks but I am getting better. I still worry that I have punched people or shouted at people on buses or in the street but it's getting easier to convince the doubting part of my brain that I haven't.

I am not looking for sympathy, pity or attention - the point of me writing this is to raise awareness of OCD, it can be an utterly debilitating condition. I may look funny when I am continuously checking things or if it takes me a long time to do something but it truly isn't amusing in any way. I would urge anyone with the same thing to seek help from their doctor as it may not improve on it's own. It is a distressing condition and one which can affect not only the person suffering from it but people closest to them. There are several treatments and although CBT may seem scary, believe me nothing is more scary than having to continue life the way I have been this past year.

I'm improving a little every day and with the help of my husband I know that, while I may not live a 'normal' life, things will get better.

TV Guided

I love television. In fact, I would go as far as to say that I really don’t know what I would do without it. I mean, don’t get me wrong; I enjoy a good book, I find computer games entertaining and I adore baking (when my OCD permits me) but to me there is no better hobby than the television.

My enjoyment of TV seems to have started in my early childhood when I used to avidly watch the adverts. I seem to remember my mam once telling me that I only used to stop crying when the adverts came on. I’ve always had a fascination with adverts, perhaps it’s that I want to understand how they work, how do you encourage someone to buy your product with a 30 second idea?

It wasn’t just the adverts, I loved it all, the sitcoms, documentaries, magazine shows and I have spent the majority of my life basking in the glow of that fantastic invention.

When I was about 15 my Dad lent me his ‘media station’ – in this day and age those words mean something totally different but this media station comprised of a tape deck, a radio and alarm and a black and white TV that was about 4x5 inches. It was about the size of a small car engine and was notoriously difficult to tune in (It was a dial, not a series of channel numbered buttons). My Dad then procured me a betamax video recorder to go with it. Now, at that stage Betamax video recorders were pretty much obsolete and getting hold of the accompanying betamax tapes became an epic obsession for me. Many years of scouring car boot sales until I had a healthy collection of about 50 tapes which I crammed with episodes of ‘Cracker’, ‘A Touch of Frost’, old films like ‘The Big Sleep’ and little gems such as the ‘Ghosts’ season of mini dramas from the BBC. I adored that Betamax, even if it chewed up some of my tapes and sometimes the picture rolled as I had lovingly watched each tape so many times. I remember many nights and days, holed up in my room, obsessively watching my tapes – I’m genuinely astonished that I actually did go out and socialise with people at that time, I was so obsessed with TV.

My love affair with television has been a tempestuous one; I jumped for joy when Craig won the first Big Brother (the only Big Brother I really watched) and pledged his prize to charity, I sobbed uncontrollably at David Tennant’s final performance as the Doctor, I shouted angrily and stamped my feet whenever there was a cliff-hanger ending on Eastenders and I would have to wait a mere 2 days to find out what actually happens. I have marvelled in awe at the wildlife of our world and have seen so many unusual creatures. I have watched startling discoveries and science experiments. I have been appalled at some TV shows, hugely offended. I have watched the nation choose people with little talent on talent shows and have marvelled that people with great talent have been dismissed. I’ve spent many hours getting questions wrong on University Challenge and wondering how I ever got through university if I’m so intellectually inept. I have sat through programmes about Fishing and Barges (for which I entirely blame my husband) and have apologised profusely after becoming fascinated by the most banal shows and putting my husband through the pain of having to watch them.

Television is like a drug to me – it’s not always good for my health (mental or physical), it sometimes makes me elated and other times depressed and I couldn’t stop it even if I tried.

I once asked my husband if he would ever ask me to give up television and thankfully he said no. You see, the thing is that if he asked me to give it up – I’m really not sure that I could or would want to. I have given up smoking, alcohol (sporadically and when necessary), chocolate (on various occasions but I’ve currently fallen off the wagon) and caffeine – but ask me to give up television and I would become pretty hostile. If I did give up Television for my husband I daresay you would find me staring wistfully into the windows of Electrical shops or gazing greedily at mute TVs in pubs.

Several months ago we visited my in-laws and, as there is no TV in the bedroom, we usually bring a miniature handheld TV which I got very cheaply a few years ago – I have raging insomnia and I tend to watch TV if I can’t sleep. On this occasion my husband seemed to be under the impression that I had brought it although I’m not sure why as he has always been in charge of it in the past, he had helpfully brought the charger though. Anyway, after the initial ‘I thought you brought it...’ exchange I found myself feeling like a petulant child having their toys taken away. I think I even cultivated a pet lip I was so upset. It wasn’t my husband’s fault, it was an accident that it hadn’t been brought along but I was so upset and angry that I wouldn’t get to watch TV as I tried to sleep. I think that this definitely counts as addiction.

I have found recently that television is my way of actually experiencing various different emotions without having to go through the scenario in real life. I’ve had enough drama in my life and my mental health doesn’t really stretch to allowing me to get involved in stressful situations at the moment. So I use TV as way of letting my emotions out without actually offending anyone...well...unless they are in the room at the time and are offended at sobbing women.

For example, when the Doctor and Rose were separated in Series Two of Doctor Who and she was cast to a parallel universe I was heartbroken. The scene where he says goodbye to her has me in tears whether I watch it, hear the music or even think about it. The fact that they will apparently never see each other again (although we all know where that ended) and they care about each other so much pulls on my heart strings. It’s right up there on the sobometer with ‘Casablanca’ for me.

I won’t spoil the following film for anyone but my friend Ewen will tell you that anyone mentioning the film ‘The Iron Giant’ and the word “Superman!” is guaranteed to make me fill with emotion – seriously, even writing this at the moment I have tears in my eyes. I cried for about two hours after that film and each time Ewen cried “Superman!” it just set me off again.

I cried on awaiting Allie’s decision between Gavin and Finn in ‘Cutting It’ at the end of the first series. I clasped my hands to my chest and only moved to wipe the tears from my eyes so that I could see the screen. Don’t worry, I know that it is not real, but if the actors are skilled enough, watching their emotion is thrilling.

Don’t get me wrong, there have been happy times too...

I obsessively consumed ‘Red Dwarf’, ‘Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe’, ‘Fawlty Towers’, ‘dinnerladies’, ‘Blackadder’, ‘The Mighty Boosh’, ‘Life on Mars’. I have laughed myself silly at ‘Mock The Week’, ‘QI’, ‘Not Going Out’, ‘Rab C. Nesbitt’, ‘A Bit of Fry and Laurie’ etc.

In some ways I miss the old days of watching a TV show bit by bit, now I can go out and buy a DVD and watch it in the space of a day and once spent I feel sadly dissatisfied. I’ve been watching ‘30 Rock’ week by week and in some ways it has been like constantly teasing me which has just made it all the more alluring. I watched ‘The Thick of It’ series 3 week by week and thoroughly enjoyed it. The only problem with this is that I saw the third series of ‘The Thick of It’ before the first two series so now I will definitely watch the previous series, which I have already bought on DVD in anticipation, within a short space of time because I can’t help myself, which somewhat spoils the excitement.

Such is the nature of my addiction that I can quite happily sit through most shows, I’m not a big fan of reality TV and talent shows and I do find that the news, while fascinating, is ultimately quite depressing - doesn't stop me watching them all on and off though. I find some soap operas a bit boring but it still doesn’t stop me from switching them on from time to time and getting sucked in again.

I often wonder if I really should curb my television habit, if I’m spending too much time doing something that may be considered so amazingly pointlessly time wasting by some people. My agoraphobia affects me in such a way that I only really feel comfortable going outside with my husband and with him at work full time I find it very difficult to go out on my own so most of my day at the moment is spent inside. In the flat the TV is a constant feature of my life and I do tend to find that if I watch too much TV I find my worldview is often skewed, depending on what I watch. I often have the TV on while I am doing other things, don't worry, I don't spend all of the day watching TV.

I’ve started listening to the radio more lately and watching shows on the internet but I still see that huge comforting box sitting in the corner of the room, dolefully willing me to switch it on, to see what it has to offer and I can’t help but run my fingers over it’s well worn remote buttons and wonder what delights I am missing. Perhaps I won’t give Television up just yet...

Attack of the clothes and the killer heels...

This may sound a bit bizarre but I think my clothes have got it in for me. Hmm, on reading that back I may want to think about altering it, given my fragile mental state at the moment. You just know that if I went doolally in a sweet shop and started hurling around Curly Wurlys that my psychiatrist will read this and say ‘aaah, paranoid delusions eh?’ and I’ll have sealed my own fate.

I should really explain, I don’t think it is just my clothes but my footwear as well...that sounds even more bizarre! How can I really elucidate on my material fear? I have never found a comfortable outfit that hasn’t been a pair of pyjamas (and even they seem to ride up in the middle of the night to show my chest!). Don’t get me wrong, I am not suggesting that we should all wander around completely unfettered (Scotland is far too cold for that!), I just think that it would be nice to own an item of clothing that doesn’t feel the need to start a career in comedy or assault.

You see, I don’t think I own a single item of clothing that hasn’t betrayed me in some way – blouses that have burst their buttons disgorging my breasts, skirts that have ripped open at the slightest provocation, cardigans that have entangled me in various inanimate objects, tights that roll down my body so that the gusset ends up at my knees and worst of all the footwear that has torn the skin from my heels, broken in two or simply caused me agonising pain regardless of insoles and other various gel based solutions.

I think that it may have started in my childhood. When I was about 13 or so at school I was running to a class when my knickers’ elastic emitted an enormous twanging sound and they fell down. Now, I don’t think I have to explain the logistical problem in running with an underwear malfunction but I think you get the picture. I was so embarrassed, not only at that but at the fact that I had to corner my P.E. teacher to explain the problem and seek a safety pin. The women could barely contain her amusement as I desperately attempted to pin the now massively oversized under crackers. I still to this day remember the shame that must have radiated all over my face as the teacher said ‘hmm, that is a problem isn’t it?’ smirking and holding out the safety pin.

Apparently, so I am told, when I was a child I used to take my clothes off all the time and run around the garden and house. I sincerely hope that I consigned my nudity to just the house and garden as I am not sure at what age I stopped this odd behaviour as I can remember very little before my eighth birthday but according to my parents I had this sort of obsession with running around nude...oh yeah, I used to wear wellington boots too...along with the nude thing. Like I said, I sincerely hope that my nudity and rubber fetish are far behind me now but I think that this perhaps goes some way to helping me understand my problem with clothes.

I always hated clothes shopping, even now I sort of decide what I want in my head and go searching for that rather than run through the whole selection in each store. If I don’t see what I am looking for I don’t tend to buy anything. I think my hatred of clothes shopping comes from my deep rooted memories of desperately wanting a pair of ‘Clarks Magic Steps’ (I believe that’s what they were called) shoes with a key in the heel but my parents wouldn’t buy me them and I remember being really miserable about that – I was about 5! I also think that clothes shopping with my Dad was always a truly awful experience due to the fact that it generally ended in an argument. I love my Dad to bits but he never quite grasped the fact that I am a girl and should be wearing girls clothing. You see, when my parents divorced when I was fourteen I stayed with my Dad and with him being a man with no real experience of what it is like to be a fourteen year old girl he tended to treat me like a boy as he had experience of being a boy. For example, when I had to go shoe shopping with my Dad he would pick up a pair of shoes and say ‘These are lovely, we could get you these?’ and they would be hideous, male shoes in sizes far greater than my tiny feet. I would say that I didn’t like them and immediately he would break into the ‘you never like anything that I pick out as you’re just trying to be awkward’ argument so generally any pre-school year clothes shopping trip would be sullied with my Dad being confused as to what to buy me and me wanting some sort of totally inappropriate shoes that would hurt my feet and fall to bits as soon as it rained. I developed a sort of pavlovian reaction where if my Dad said ‘Those shoes are falling off your feet, time to get some new ones’ or ‘Your jumper has a hole in it, we’d better get you some new clothes’ I instantly felt stressed and anticipated a row so the shopping experience was forever ruined.

I envy men on the clothes front; no matter what men wear they always look ok. You never see a man having to hoist up a boob tube every five minutes (mind you, in Edinburgh anything is possible), I have never seen a man have to take his shoes off because although they looked great in the shop they are agony to wear, if a man has his flies down he isn’t so mortified that he has to hide in the toilets for the rest of the evening. For example, a friend of mine wandered outside a pub for a cigarette and I happened to notice his flies were down and I asked him if he had been to the loo and he said ‘Aye, why?’. When I tried to discreetly indicated that he was showing his bits to an Edinburgh street he smiled cheekily and said ‘Och well, you know what they say – it pays to advertise’ and with that he deftly drew up his fly and continued to smoke happily! He wasn’t even drunk! I once fell out of a dress I was wearing and I cried for about an hour!

A dear friend of mine once told me that most mornings he gets out of bed, runs his fingers through his hair, gets dressed and sets off to work without even having to look in the mirror. He also said that even if he does look in the mirror he generally thinks ‘yeah, I look ok’ and it’s true, he’s a handsome chap. I did a quick poll of a few of my male friends and they said pretty much the same. They also said that they didn’t have any sort of problem with any of their clothes, except for bowties – bowties are of course evil, for anyone who has ever attempted to tie one if you have managed it then well done as they are a complete pain.

Anyway, if I run through a few examples of my wardrobe malfunctions it should give you a better picture as to why I generally think that my clothes are plotting to injure or embarrass me...

Several years ago, I battled anorexia and became very thin, too thin, and once I had gotten through some of the mental issues I had with losing weight and started to gain a little weight I actually started to feel a little better about myself. I bought lots of new clothes as all my clothes were baggy and shapeless and my new clothes helped to heighten my confidence. I bought a beautiful skirt that had a zip right up the middle that could be unfastened both from the top and the bottom. The skirt was great until the zip started to play up. One morning, wearing the aforementioned skirt and tottering happily to work in heels that were clearly dangerous to someone as seemingly accident prone as I am a builder caught my eye as I walked past. He grinned and said ‘morning darlin’! ‘and I smiled in a way that I thought would perhaps be coquettish and said ‘Good morning to you too’. As I walked to work, several men eyed me up and down and I was sort of surprised but was enjoying the attention. Anyway, I got halfway to work before I thought ‘hang on, I’m not all that, why are so many people being so nice to me today?’. I looked down and to my horror I found that the zip had leapt its way to the top of the skirt and it was barely clinging to me at all! As I mentioned before I have a morbid fear of tights and the whole creeping down the body palaver so I always wore stockings and on this day they were fishnet stockings and I was also wearing very tight black lacy panties. I think there was initial shock then the hurried zipping up of the skirt while blushing profusely as I mentally worked out exactly how many people must have thought that I was some kind of exhibitionist. It wouldn’t have been so bad but I worked out my terrible wardrobe error at the train station in front of a crowd of bemused looking commuters!

The previous situation wouldn’t have been half as bad if it hadn’t been followed a few days subsequent to this by another skirt wrapping itself around my ears as the wind blew it up like Marilyn Monroe without the glamour. So yet again, Haymarket station got a good view of another item of my underwear drawer.

Then there was the bra that would spring itself open if one of my friends touched my shoulder! It was always one particular friend, I used to think that perhaps he had a magnet up his sleeve and was somehow performing a trick worthy of an escapologist – sort of a proxy escapologist as it was my chest that seemed to want to do the escaping!

There was the crocheted cardigan that managed to entangle itself around the lock on my bathroom door and rendered me incapable of movement for half an hour.

I had a beautiful satin blouse that seemed to think that my bra was attractive enough for everyone to view and without my knowledge would pop open button by button until I had to ask a platonic friend to monitor the situation and alert me should it reach critical.

Those are just the embarrassing items of clothing, I haven’t even begun to unfold the tales of the violence of the slacks, the terrible tale of the of the tumble down Arthurs Seat or the cowboy boots that forced me to meet my friends’ parents in a state of shock and filth.

Every pair of trousers, jeans etc that I have ever owned seem to magically grow and shrink as I wear them. Thus meaning that I feel that I don’t need a belt at the start of the day and later they end up hacking the inside of my thighs to bits as they sink lower and lower until I am hoisting them up every five minutes.

It was suggested to me that I should try a thong; I was told that as underwear goes they are sexy and comfy...I’m afraid that I found them as sexy as being sawn in half and they were by far and away the most uncomfortable things I have ever worn – and that’s saying something! On the two occasions I wore a thong I ended up going home and resorting to the comfy pants within an hour of trying them. Maybe they are comfy for women whose bottoms are tiny and peachy but with my voluptuous buttocks I’ll stick to the safe option.

As for the tumble down Arthurs Seat; I was taking a walk with a friend of mine in Edinburgh about ten years ago and he suggested climbing Arthurs Seat. Now, to say that I unsuitably attired for what he had in mind would be an understatement, I was wearing a long dress with stockings underneath and a pair of boots with ridiculous heels but he assured me that it wasn’t too bad a walk. Although he had lived in Edinburgh most of his life this experience didn’t seem to extend to walking up the huge hill as he took me the wrong way and we almost ended up rock climbing – and as you can imagine, in heels that’s not an easy feat! Anyway, halfway up we found the easier way to get up and we finally made it to the top. It was amazing! It was cold and incredibly windy, but amazing. We took in the scenery then decided to go down the easier way. It was still quite a trek and my friend gleefully ran down the sloping grassy hill shrieking with delight as he did so. Not wishing to be outdone I followed suit. Running in heels is not easy as any women will tell you but for some reason the boots hurled me forwards a lot quicker than I anticipated and I ended up almost cartwheeling down the hill! My dress went over my head on the first rotation and all of the shocked hikers around the hill were treated to the sight of my underwear again! The worst thing was that I tumbled for quite a distance so I wasn’t able to even regain my dignity until I had collapsed at the bottom laughing – well, let’s face it, when you have publicly humiliated yourself what else can you do?

Then there were the cowboy boots that wanted to ensure that meeting my friend’s parents would be memorable to them for all the wrong reasons. It was my friend’s birthday and he had invited me to a wonderful little cafe that served the sort of food that I had never experienced (I had to ask what a guinea fowl was). I wasn’t really sure what to wear, smart or casual? In the end I plumped for a glitzy top with a pair of jeans and my new cowboy boots. Pleased as punch with my outfit I strutted down to the city centre. Unfortunately as I got down to Princes Street it had been raining a little and the cowboy boots I was wearing didn’t have anything in the way of grip and as I stepped onto the curb after crossing the road and I lost my footing. I hit the wet paving with quite a thud, scuffing the skin from my elbows and palms as well as muddying my jeans and grazing both my knees. A lady picked me up and I tried to sort myself out but I was shaking and bleeding and very muddy. When I met up with my friend my exact words were ‘I’ve had a bit of an accident...’ and he smiled as he is used to me being generally accident prone and he led me in the direction of the cafe. So, on meeting his parents I had to decline the handshaking and shakily explain that I had to go and clean myself up. I remember standing in the toilets dabbing ineffectually at my bleeding knees with wet tissue paper and thinking ‘great, now they’re going to think I’m a complete idiot!’. Hopefully they didn’t but I certainly thought twice about wearing those boots again.

With a similar pair of boots I managed to go over on my ankle and hurtle down the stone steps at Edinburgh zoo leaving me bruised and laughing at the bottom – my friend who was with me couldn’t pick me up for laughing!

On Valentine’s day many years ago I was happily walking to university when the sandals I was wearing broke in half on one side and, as I was halfway between home and university and there was no bus service between the two I had to hop about 2 miles home at which point I realised that I had forgotten my keys and I had to ring the doorbell desperately hoping that my landlord or landlady were in so I didn’t have to sit outside with one sandal on. Thankfully they opened the door and I started my journey again with sensible if ill matched footwear.

So you see, I think my clothes and shoes are on a mission to thoroughly disgrace me. As I write this I am happily wearing a pair of pyjamas having thrown off my clothes as soon as I came in this afternoon and I have still felt the need to cover the web cam on my netbook to ensure that it doesn’t magically switch on with a sensor in the monkeys face on the pyjama top and reveal my chest to all the people on my account! The next time you see a girl who has tucked her skirt in her pants or has lost the ‘beauty tape’ on her revealing dress, please tell her immediately and have a heart – it’s the attack of the clothes! :)