Anyway the wind blows…

I should be so lucky – Kylie Minogue

I would like to start this by saying this blog is my personal feeling and opinions and experiences. I was raised as a catholic if I am 100% honest about it as a child it brought me a comfort. The thought that I had someone always looking after me. I even enjoyed going to church sometimes at first. We would go every single week even when we where abroad on holiday’s, My mum would find a little church. This I would dread because no doubt the mass would be in Latin (very boring).

When I was not at Church I would sometimes go over to my friend house. Singing along to Kylie Minogue (yes with a hairbrush microphone to). Mostly though I would sing alone in my room or be outside again mostly alone. You see I have always been intensely antisocial even as a child. As a child I never really gave my religion much thought and I certainly never thought to question it.

I want to break FREE – Queen

The older I got the more I dreaded going to church but I was still very naive. When it came to sex I was not totally in the dark I did biology at school I understood where babies come from but we never talked about sex or sexuality anywhere. We had a nurse that come into school to teach us all about our bodies. We discussed menstrual cycles, that there is no sex until marriage and that was that. No mention about sexuality, emotions , feelings anything like that. I was left very ignorant to things.


I will always remember going into school the day Freddie Mercury passed away. I found my friend Nikki all hunched up on the school steps cradling a Queen pillow in her arms with tears running down her cheeks. I remember asking her why she was crying she told me Freddie was dead. I knew who Queen where I had heard my Uncle and other adults play there music and I remembered being at my Uncle Johns house and the man in the yellow jacket being on stage on his television, I enjoyed what I had heard but that was it. Of course being a curious kid I asked how he had died and she told me that he had died from Aids. At that time I had no idea what so ever what that was but to save face and look cool I just said “no way “ what a shame then I walked away. I went on with my school day and that was that.


A few years had passed , I was struggling more and more “fitting in”. I had stared to experiment with music. I loved top of the pops and taping the charts and while that was all well and good I was left uninspired. A few days after my birthday I took my birthday money and went to the record store( yes a store that sold music records along with loads of other neat stuff).I decided to look for some inspiration ,I did not have clue where to start then as I looked around I seen a tape in the sale basket Queens live Live at Wembley ’86, I bought it and I put it straight into my Sony Walkman and bang I was suddenly very inspired.


I spent the next few weeks listening to the tape over and over I bought more of Queens music along with other stuff. Then I started to wonder what happened to Freddie, what is Aids? Well who to ask, So I did what I always did I went to my very catholic Gran and I asked her. She told me it was a bad illness but not to worry because I did not know anyone who could catch it (just take her word for that) and if I had been a few years younger I may have taken this for the truth. However this was also the women that had recently told me that dinosaur’s did not exist and that the bones where all fakes and had been planted by movie makers (hey she was also really naive a family trait). So I knew better than to take everything she said as fact. In those days there was no just google it so I dropped it.


A few weeks had passed and I never really got much further with my quest. Around this period I spent lots of time during lunch in the music department. My music teacher Mr C would often be around and me and my friends would chat and play instruments with him. One day we got onto the subject of Queen He was just in the middle of telling me about one of there concerts he had been too when I blurted out “what is Aids”? There was a long pause and Mr C gave out a sigh I suddenly thought I had made a terrible mistake and I was going to the rectors office but Mr C started to smile and said lets start at the very beginning it’s a very good place to start( yes he quoted the sound of music). That day I learnt what Aids was and HIV and homosexuality. Mr C went into lots of detail he also talked about his own journey and being ” in the closet” for many years and how the school had told him he must hide his sexuality as it was a catholic school. I asked him question after question and after a few lunchtimes questioning him I felt like my head was going to explode.

Forgiven- Alanis Morrissette- We all had our reason’s to be there


In the weeks that followed I would have regular chats with him at lunchtime we discussed lots of things and listen to lots of different music. I understood what he was saying, I think that this was really the first time that I did not see my religion as a positive. A few months passed and Mr C told us that he was leaving the school to one where he would be able to be himself. I was happy for him but I felt a sense of loss and sadness. After that I told my mum that I did not want to go to church anymore. My mum never asked for specific’s but I could see she was a little disappointed but she respected my decision. For me something had changed and I could not go back. My mum was also battling cancer and I really had just had enough.

After chats with Mr C I started to question my own sexuality. How do you know ? what if I like girls ? what if I like boys ? what if I like both ?. I was overwhelmed by it all. Confused and scared. If though my friend had nice breasts did that mean I was gay but I also thought my friends brother had a nice ass so that means ? The more I thought about it all the more I would worry until I stared to feel a sickly feeling in the pit of my stomach I could feel it rising up , It was like I had swallowed a thousand needles. That was the first but not the last time that I would feel what I refer to as “my catholic guilt “.The first time I kissed a boy I was young and I thought I would go to hell, After I had sex for the first time I lay in my bed for three days feeling sick to my stomach.. Despite how happy I felt every time the sick feeling would come. I felt judged but I was my worse critic. Even though I would hide my feelings so deep inside I felt like people must know. I felt having feeling for other girls was wrong and I thought if I kiss more boys maybe they would go away. I could not understand if I was a lesbian then why did I fancy men too. I believed at that time I was doing something wrong that I was a bad person. I allowed it to unfortunately overwhelm me at times and taint what should have been great memories. All acts of intimacy left me feeling guilty or that I needed to be punished. I was so hard on myself and I was letting it eat me up inside. Most importantly it was affecting my relationship’s. I would push people away I did not want to be intimate with them.

I guess at the time I did not realise how much it was effecting me. I would like to say I woke up one day and all the feeling’s just evaporated but in truth it took years. I had to learn to give myself a break. I educated myself more about love , sexuality , emotions , intimacy and identity. I talked to people a lot of people , I shared my experiences. The first time I kissed a girl I never felt anything but ecstasy there was no guilt at all. It took 35 years to get to that point. I don’t want anyone to think that there was no positives from being brought up catholic in my life. I like to think it has had positive influences on my life but for me personally it has had massive negative connotations on it too. Until recently it was very hard for me to admit that without feeling I was being disrespectful to My mum and gran who both had such a strong catholic faith. They have both passed away and ironically a church is one of the places where I feel most connected to both of them. I don’t practice any faith in particular now but I like to think I took the positive parts of my catholic teaching. I keep striving to be less ignorant and continue to learn and educated myself and others around me. STAND UP when it counts.

So things have changed alot …

So we made a really big decision. We decided that after building a little nest in Scotland we would make a change and move to Norway. So we packed up our life and moved it to the land of the vikings.

Things started well then like everywhere else in the world Coronavirus came. As a nurse who worked with elderly people before leaving Scotland I felt helpless. I chatted to my friends and family who where all key workers. They are all basically super hero’s. Some even having to stay apart from there own children.

Everyone has had different impacts on there life because of this pandemic. For me I was very fortunate. I lived in a country where cases are lower. We had to adapt a little but not much at all. Meanwhile in Scotland the people who I cared for and nursed where fighting for there life’s in the extraordinary care of the care staff .

If ever I forgot I had guardian angel’s looking after me. This gave me a good kick up the bum to remind me. The pandemic is far from over but things are returning to the new normal (what ever that is). I just remember one thing that a friend said to me during thus time that really got me thinking. She said she had really struggled in lock down being so isolated however her partner had not in fact he said to her that he had enjoyed it and she said to him that he was wrong to feel that way that it made her sad to know he preferred to be isolated. I thought about myself and I laughed a little. I have always struggled socially and have often felt extremely isolated in a room of people. Alone not so much as i always have my imagination to keep me company.

So we have started a new chapter. The first few pages have turned out somewhat different from I imagined however I have learned some stuff and also watched a lot of Netflix 😀

Bonfire Night

So for anyone living in the UK they will understand this term for anyone else the may not have even heard of it. Without giving you a seven page storie to read I will explain as simply as I can. Our government building in London is called the house of parliament.

Houses of Parlement

In 1605 a dude called Guy Flawkes attempted to blow up the houses of parliament. He failed the King at the time James the made it a public day of Thanksgiving. People around London would lite bonfires. Modern day bonfire nights consist of fireworks, bonfires and the emergency services getting fireworks thrown at them.

For me as a child I hated it. We lived in my multi (tower block) and fireworks would look like the would almost fly throw the window. They where loud, there was massive crowds of people and there was fire. However as an adult I became less afraid of the bangs and fire and as long as I was on the edges of the big crowds I could handle that too. For me however this is not a celebration of a plan being stopped or tresion. This is a celebration of something very Brithish standing around no matter how rubbish the weather is and having fun with your loved ones. Also means that we are well and truly on the count down to Christmas and there is nothing wrong with that.

A little bit about me- the early years

I was born in April 1981 a month before the fairytale wedding of Princess Diana and Prince Charles.

Princess Diana and Prince Charles



You might ask why that’s important at all but to me it was very significant to the time I was born and the kinda world I was entering. I was born into a time where as soon as I was old enough like many girls I started to love the idea of being a princess and wearing a big dress and one day a handsome prince was going to save me. I don’t hate that this was the case but it would be something that would make me struggle to identify who I was as a person and my own sexuality.

I spent the first five years of my life in a tower block (Multi) building on the 8th floor. Now for many people all over the world the idea of high rise living is great. The thought of beautiful views sounds amazing but trust me there is a bit difference from a stunning penthouse high rise apartment in Los Angeles and a flat in a multi in the UK.

The beautiful high rise apartments of Los Angeles
Glasgow’s red road multi storys

Living in a grey concrete block with very high winds and lots of rain is certainly not my idea of fun. My only memory’s of that time really are of the night terrors I would have of things crawling along the walls coming to steal me away. I was four years old and I remember going to see the Doctor who advised my mum I simply had an overactive imagination and that I would simply grow out of them. I did the exact day I moved out of the multi and into a house they stopped. They where replaced for the most part much happier dreams. Still to this day whenever I am in one of these multi blocks I feel a little afraid which I know is crazy but it’s there none the less so as a rule I don’t really spend any time in them. Thankfully most of them have been demolished now thank goodness for progress.

Living in a house and having a garden was something I loved. I would play for hours and hours outside most often alone. I has two sisters and some of my school friends lived near by. I was not short of having people to play with but more often than not I choose to simply to be by myself. I would spend hours in worlds I created in my mind with lots and lots of imaginary friends. The great thing about playing in your imagination is that it’s a safe place to be that you control it and maybe that was why I was more comfortable there but I really just loved it so spent most of my time there. If I knew and even understood what at introvert was at this point in my life it would have explained so much to me but as I had not heard of it or even understood it I had personally labelled myself as odd and a little strange. I always felt okay with it for the most part especially as I was encouraged so much by my Mum and especially by my Gran to just be myself. In fact my Gran would fuel these garden adventures often proving me with old clothes and most importantly ideas from the books she would read to me and the movies we would watch together. I would spend hours at her house playing in her garden.

My dream Garden

Being outdoors was not my only joy I found I also found it in books , TV , movies and later computer games. First though there was books. My Granny was an avid reader and my Mum too , So fortunately for me and my sisters we where surrounded by books and always encouraged to read books and write our own stories.

Like most children my books consisted of the fairytales but my favourite books where the Wizard of Oz and the BFG.

I read four of the OZ books before I ever seen the movie. I dont know what it was about these books that I enjoyed over the others but I did. They where not about prince and princess living happily ever after, there where about cowardly lions and tick tok men,witches,lions and patchwork girls.

To be continued…….. 🦄