Guest Blogs

When I turned 50, I started to keep account of the things that happened to me during that year. The list included great happiness and deep sadness.

I hosted a party. DJ Ron was requested to play all my favourite tracks and I was stuck to the dance floor only to leave for a quick visit to the pie van for a cheeky sausage roll.

Due to the encouragement of many, and determined hard work, my physical health improved. As a result I was able to tackle walking up hills with ease. On one of these hills lived some sheep and I bottle-fed one of the offspring – a first time encounter. The bottle was comfortingly warm and I had to keep a firm grip to avoid it being taken with force by the hungry lamb.

My brother accompanied me to some gigs as we are huge fans of live music. We saw the Happy Mondays ( a maraca was possibly featured) and Orbital at Dreamland in Margate. We still laugh about dancing all evening, chatting with friendly strangers and the downside of queueing for drinks and the toilet.

My sad times included the death of a neighbour. I loved her so much. She was a beautiful person – the children in the opposite house, sweetly named her ‘the garden lady’ as she spent much time tending her flowers. When the ‘love your garden’ TV team came to transform a well-deserved Gurkha’s garden in the street she took up home-made chocolate brownies for the film crew.

During the year my mum‘s physical health deteriorated greatly. I felt an overwhelming wash of melancholy for her as she had, in the past, played tennis and hockey for her home county of Essex.

Out of the many happy experiences included watching the whole of 2001 A Space Odyssey, celebrating 28 years of marriage, and supporting my amazing pupils in their music exams.

My 50th year was only 365 days out of a lifetime. A year, like any other year, of taking the rough with the smooth. Yet those days I can remember as my special yesterdays to treasure, like a gift, forever.

Personally, I don’t think adults know what it’s like to be a teenager anymore.

It’s a controversial statement, I know, but it’s just my opinion.

They may understand key terminology, such as peer pressure and bullying, but I don’t think they really understand what it’s like in this day and age. When I say that telling us “I was a teenager once too you know,” is one of the most aggravating sentences you can say – I mean it. We know you were our age once, but you aren’t our age now and there’s a huge difference between the two.

It’s almost impossible to find a group of friends where at least one of them doesn’t vape or has tried a vape at some point. Groups of girls and boys gather in single cubicles to vape with each other as if it’s a social activity. If you don’t vape, you’re left out of conversations and plans because you’re choosing to protect your body over your reputation.

The same goes with drinking. If you don’t drink, you don’t get invited to parties. If you don’t get invited to parties, you start to lose friends. If you lose friends, you become a social outcast. Of course, you can watch the parties online, and see what you miss out on, but then you just get fomo (fear of missing out). However, if you don’t watch the footage, you can’t join in on conversations at school which also gives you fomo. In the end, you’re left with the choice of going to the parties and forcing yourself to be in situations where you may make some stupid mistakes, or stay at home and be in a situation where you feel miserable and lonely.

For those of us that prefer to focus on our grades don’t have it easy either. Obviously, adults know what it’s like to feel the pressure of work and exams, but I don’t think they realise how much worse it has become. Failure is not an option to us unless we’ve got rich parents, and our schools remind us of that daily. We’re told constantly that our grades are terrible and we’re the worst classes our teachers have ever seen in their 17 years of teaching, making us feel useless and demotivated. We work our hardest, can spend hours studying and yet it’s still not good enough. They show us the grades of the past 8 years of students and tell us if we don’t get better grades than this, then we’re letting down the school, our parents and ourselves, as if we weren’t already drowning in the stress of work and exams.

We’re surrounded constantly by reminders of school through advertisements of revision websites on platforms such as TikTok. We surrounded by drugs, self-harm, eating disorders and sex. We see it online as well as at school. Where home once was a safe space, it’s now as much a prison as the four walls of a classroom. We can never escape the expectations of modern society, and if we don’t succumb to it then we’re considered ‘undesirable’ and are shunned by our peers.

I’m not saying adults were never teenagers themselves, I’m only saying that next time a teenager makes a mistake or does something dangerous, you don’t immediately get angry at them. You just listen to them and understand that many of us are struggling. Even if we can paint a smile on our faces, there’s always a small part of us that holds their breath every time they open their phone – worried about what they’re going to find.

The days are long. Everything is done happily, properly, with talking for hours and hours about the past and its people. This is interlaced with breakfast, washing up, then a cup of tea – Earl Grey or PG.

Take a walk, take in the warm air, the clouds seem whiter, the sky feels bluer. Listen. Maybe catching a woodpecker, a Skylark, if we’re lucky, as we smell the pure fields of Easter. We return for a simple lunch, brought to the table, covered in a white cloth, on a trolley with gold edges and legs.

She sits in her favourite chair, flowery, and soft, in the afternoon, in the conservatory, a cigarette burning to the end, as she talks, just talks. We listen, just listen.

Out of all the Favourites, she is our Favourite. She speaks elegantly only pausing at times to cough into a cotton handkerchief. Her mind for detail is exquisite, every word like a drip of silver. She picks up the telephone and requests, “a table for three, please. Yes, that’s correct. For Mrs Jenkins”.

We let the afternoon slide into the evening.

The evening is long, and everything is done properly.

This is not enough
Walking to the end, but not the end of the night
Air foggy as I stay in the gaze of sight
The same looks from the night before are thrown
As I stand so very much on my own
As I stand and wait for my fate
Another day where comfort comes late.

Counting coins, I hear a noise, assessing every shadow,
Fingers frozen feel the chill and the burn from old tobacco.

My day is finally done
The long awaited time has come.

As I hold it up to the light,
This won’t last me through the night.
This is not enough.

He loves me,
He loves me not.
Each petal I pray.
I pray for a shot.

A shot that he loves me,
When I know it’s not true,
Because if he loved me,
He wouldn’t be dating you.

Why he dates you at all,
 I’m not so sure.
You treat him like dirt,
Then say you’re just insecure.

I know you’re much prettier,
You live with a flare.
But when he wants something quieter,
I just hope he’ll see me waiting there.

I don’t know why I waste my time,
When he doesn’t know I exist.
I just dream of true love,
Something I’m willing to persist.

I know he doesn’t love me,
It’s just not something I can admit,
So, I pick off another petal,
Hoping it’ll say the opposite.

I think it should be a diagnosis, something I can tell people whenever they start judging me for hating on others, “sorry, I have chronic jealousy, I can’t really control my feelings.” It’s not like I want to be envious of others, not like I want to feel resentful every time I see a love-struck couple in a coffee shop, or watch as my friends give out presents and think mine is so much worse than everyone else’s. I just can’t be happy for other people and that makes me a terrible person.

I’m not a terrible person.

Jealousy doesn’t make me a bad person.

It’s healthy to be a little jealous. Okay, maybe not to the extent I used to be, but still. Jealousy is a part of life and it’s there tell to us something about ourselves, about our needs. It is widely considered a ‘toxic’ emotion. Something that causes rifts in friendships and the end of relationships which therefore causes us to start expressing our jealousy as hatred – to ourselves and/or to other.

The main mistake most people make with their jealousy is telling themselves that the feeling is “wrong” or “sinful”. The guilt of jealousy is what makes it a negative emotion. In reality, by accepting and listening to your jealousy, you can better understand what it is you really want and therefore work towards your goal. Jealousy stems from a place of anxiety: the more stressed and tired you are, the more jealous your likely to be. By realising the intensity of your jealousy, you can realise just how worn down your body is and take a break. It doesn’t have to be a long one, just enough to distract yourself before your thoughts become overwhelming. Try writing a gratitude list. It may sound kind of corny, but a little gratitude can go a long way as it reminds you that while your life may not be perfect, there’s still plenty of things in life that are going for you.

Jealousy is a difficult emotion to deal with. It’s painful and difficult to express, but it festers. You have to confront your jealousy or it will only cause more issues. Remember your worth and take time for yourself.

So I may be a jealous person, but I’m also a good person and I always try to be.

AI is becoming an increasingly bigger topic in recent years. Technology is constantly improving, doing things humans struggle with and helping in all aspects of life from school homework to manufacturing cars. It’s only a matter of time before AI has mastered even the most intricate tasks such as brain surgery. However, as technology improves, more concerns surface.

In the past few weeks, I’ve read my share of newspapers – for a school project –where in every single one there were countless articles about AI. Many were about the reliability of AI, talking about what the future will look like with AI. In each article, I found the same issue reoccurring: what will happen to humanity with the constant improving of AI? By this I mean that AI is being adapted to take over more and more jobs, leaving less and less for humans who are already struggling with a unemployment crisis. This could become a major issue for future generations, and perhaps even my own, when trying to make a life for themselves.

I agree with the wonders of AI, having seen countless art designs on social media and even having my own personal AI on Snapchat of whom I talk to from time to time when needing help with homework. However, it does make me worry that humans may become too dependable on artificial intelligence when there is still a large potential of it one day failing. I believe that there should perhaps be a point where humans should settle with the AI we already have and focus on different aspects of technology.

However, if we are to adapt our lifestyles to use new AI then it should be done so in all aspects of life. School currently is very old fashioned in my opinion, even frowning on the use of technology at home for homework. I think that schools should also adapt to modern technology and use it for learning – rather than consuming millions of trees through the use of workbooks. However, this may also enhance the class divide – similar to lockdown – as the rich can afford the best technology while lower classes struggle and tend to use school granted technology.

Furthermore, technology has not been fully researched yet and increasing health problems such as poor mental health are assumed to be side affects from spending too much time in front of screens. It’s also evident younger generations who’ve grown up with this kind of technology are more familiar with its programming which may cause issues if used in the school system such as increased and easier cheating.

All of this may be my opinion, but they are influenced by things I’ve seen and heard about. AI is a very scary concept, and while the future of it worries me, I understand adapting is the best course of action.

I’d  been here before; I knew I had. There were faint memories that glowed through the corridors, full of colour that seemed distant and otherworldly, like they belonged to a stranger. The placid halls would bubble with childish laughter which brought life to the dreary classrooms. Time would slip by without any notice, a creature awaiting in the shadows preparing to pounce. Now the silence was unbearable. Time was frozen.

Faces danced through my mind, taunts of a life I would never experience again, faces of youth and innocence. They were bright and alive but brought only the knowledge that they’d grow forever dimmer until one day they would fade into the pool of maturity – destined to bring only longing for a lost childhood.

This place was different. A carcass of the land I’d once known as home. How I’d wish  to leave, to be free of those imprisoning gates. Now I long to turn back the clock, ache for just a few more precious moments of carefree banter that had been robbed from me, for just a few reprieving moments from the looming  pressure of growing up.

Where’d all the time go?

I’d been here before, but now it was foreign. It was no longer the great iron gates keeping me prisoner, but the shackles of expectations that I’d been caught in. This time there would be no escape from my new jail cell.