Just 17: The Revival

Well, Tom Cruise and Top Gun were on my mind when I first started this blog and he was right back there this morning with the release of  the next instalment of Mission Impossible.  He can keep it- after six months of reconfiguring my life completely, mission impossible are two words that I'm not planning on encouraging to stay together.  Couples counselling?  Forget it.  Split those two up, right away. I compromised, however, (or weakened, whichever way you prefer to look at it) and Amazoned a TC tribute trilogy, express delivery, of Vanilla Sky, Days of Thunder and Risky Business.  All of which are far more apt for someone who has been ravaged by the meltdown tempest,  done a lot of compensating ice-cream eating, and decided to found a new business.

 Thinking back to Tom Cruise, and sleepovers as a teenager watching Cocktail and fantasising about waterfall moments, was only a short mind hop away from the school locker rooms. We spent years of break times huddled on wooden benches in between kit bags, duffle coats and hockey sticks listening to Nirvana and talking about boys.  With the help of that infamous (now extinct) magazine and its agony aunt pages: Just 17.  They were years full of excitement and anticipation when 17 seemed so grown up.

17 is now rather a long time ago, but suddenly, after years of numb hamster-on-wheel monotony, the excitement and the anticipation are back.  Tumbling out of the wardrobe through the fur coats, dusted with fresh snowflakes and pockets full of rich Turkish Delight. And on looking back at where this excitement had suddenly appeared from, it was right there. All the way through. Hanging on the number 17.

17 February 2015 - Day 1 post-meltdown. The world was quiet and still like an eerie tundra waiting for something to happen next. The day that life changed course for me.

17 March 2015 - The start of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, having come through bouts of insomnia, uncontrollable crying and paranoia, and a visit to A&E. Learning to control my thoughts, embrace mindfulness and throw on a protective shield against the world.. The day the fear started to lift.

17 April 2015 - Yellow Brick Road day and puppy viewing in Cornwall.  Frustrated at not being able to run due to fatigue,  now had something to look forward to. The day that changed the way I live my life irreversibly.

17 May 2015 - Day 1 of life with Merlin, the wizard Rhodesian Ridgeback puppy.  Plagued by persistent fatigue and muscle pain, he gave me a routine and opened up my world exploring Bedford walks and meeting so many people. The day I became a mother, of sorts.

17 June 2015 - The day I spoke to Life Coach, Curly Martin, on the phone in person and decided to launch a new career for the future. The day life became full of possibility with fun along the way.

17 July 2015 - Founded 'I Am Strong' coaching and set logo, website and business cards in motion. I Am Strong. I am holding my life in my hands.  The day I took control and saw the future.

17 August 2015 - I suspect that I will be preparing to return to work in September, in a new, forward-looking role.  Concurrently, I will be launching my I Am Strong coaching practice, starting to look for a new house with a garden for Merlin and spare bedrooms for foster children, and moving closer to that Spanish villa for wintering in the sunshine in Javea. The day I look back and say thank you and look forward and smile.

It's not all been 17s though- there has been puppy training, masters essays, weekly psychologist sessions, chiropractic sessions, doctor's appointments, work meetings, 5 seasons of Breaking Bad and 4 of Game of Thrones, a couple of cheeky snogs and a lot of cups of tea, a trip to the Lake District, a few escapes to Cornwall and a blog.

I wake up early and walk the dog as the world starts up; I take 20 minutes to meditate, followed by gentle yoga; I read books on fostering; I listen to motivational podcasts; I love creating I Am Strong; I see my family regularly; and I'm no longer too afraid to write. I know who I am and more importantly, and for the first time ever, who I'm going to be.

I've given myself a break and it doesn't stop here even if this blog does.  Just 17 posts.

No Parking! You'll Get A Duck In The Desert

The most ridiculous No Parking sign I've ever seen was in the middle of the desert in Kuwait. It appeared just after the war in Iraq in 2003 and was a bigger, more incongruous invasion in itself than the convoys of armoured vehicles rolling up through Basra. (It was also quite possibly more effective, but as Tony Blair is now a follower of this blog and Cherie is a hot-shot lawyer I won't go any further) Now, Kuwait is one big desert with one big city and one big highway strung out like a dusty washing line pegged with pylons and jingly trucks and the odd camel tethered off it. It runs like a single dusty scar from Iraq in the North to Saudi in the South and you know you're approaching the Iraqi border only as soon as two giant skeletons of destroyed satellite dishes loom eerily into view.(I could swear they swung round to follow me everytime I passed). Anyway, the point is that there was nothing apart from sand - grey sand, yellow sand, orange sand, sandy sand- for miles and miles. But in the military's makeshift Camp Fox, there must have been an over-zealous Sergeant Major and some rear-echelon-post-war boredom setting in and there it was one day: the No Parking sign.  There wasn't even a road let alone a kerb or a yellow line, and with a convoy of 15 tonne lorries behind me steaming out of Iraq laden with returning ammunition, the sign was only going to raise an eyebrow under a helmet before it got firmly flattened under a back wheel. Of course, being a military camp, it wasn't long before someone with a sense of humour and solid set of balls replaced it with one saying  'Don't Feed The Ducks'. Quite.

The point I'm making is that signs should be clear, unambiguous and relevant. If not, then they will be misunderstood, misinterpreted or even mocked. There will be frustration, confusion and unexpected consequences spiralling their way out of control through a knock-on of lives. If I'm not allowed to find a parking space in the desert then I'm going to look for a duck to feed instead. Human nature. We know that yet we never see it coming. Duck.

I really struggled with mixed signals.  Often because I didn't realise that they were mixed.  Take the 'No Parking. Pick Up and Set Down only' restriction flaunted outside hospitals, airports and places where you really, really need to stop. So I can't park but I can stop? Mum says categorically no; Dad says oh go on then..... Yes? No? Can I? Can't I? Where are my boundaries so I can make my choices?

(Thinking about it, 'No Parking. Pick Up and Set Down Only' might have been a better metaphor for my calamitous love life....have often wondered whether I've been completely oblivious to the fact that I've got a post-it note with words to that effect slapped on my forehead...)

For me, close relationships would often say one thing but do another; work would feel like it was stabbing me in the back, climbing over my dead body and then lying about it afterwards; chancing no-hopers employed a psychopathy of passive-aggressive confusion techniques to wangle a second date; even my dog would walk past the door and then piss on the carpet.  No one was being straight with me.  There was no clear message, no clear cues, no safe ground. Just a row of pesky ducks that shouldn't even be there trying to paddle on shifting sand.

The problem was that by the time my subconscious had been for a stroll, had a think and come back to the room having smugly worked out what was actually going on in the face of a mixed message, the three amigos, Control, Delete and Run would be sat in the front room. If I couldn't work out what was going on then I was going to decide what was going on. Control was in the house.  If Control couldn't work out what was going on then Delete would take over- pushing threatening people, feelings and emotions right out of my phonebook, out of my mind and out of my life. If that failed, then Run would clean up.

But Run was tired. Run had instigated no less than 6 job changes and 7 house moves in 7 years. Run was done. There had to be a better, more stable way of not recognising and not over-reacting to receiving mixed messages, to knowing that my subconscious was alerting me to something that my conscious mind hadn't yet processed.

In the end it was simple. Mindful. I needed to acknowledge how I was feeling; send a clear message to my brain thanking it for signalling that feeling; and then knowing that the emotion would pass, make the choice to leave the confusion in its own secure space, and return to the present moment. Park the confusion, without stopping there myself.  Pick it up, set it down, leave the duck in the desert.

 

Stop The Rain! The Rainbow's All Wrong...

Rainbow was wrong on many levels. Geoffrey should never have been allowed to play with Bungle, Zippy and George. Let alone Rod, Jane and Freddy.  But that's not the Rainbow I'm referring to here. 

Now it seems to me that Rainbows are a colourful explosion of complete confusion. Streaking across the sky announcing to the whole world that Sun and Rain have got all mixed up. They need a few moments to untangle themselves and throw a colourful smoke screen of a rainbow as a serious distraction technique hoping that all of us below will get caught way up high in lullabies and pots of gold. We're none the wiser whether it is meant to be sunny or rainy.  We don't even register the confusion.  We just smile and point at the rainbow.

I had absolutely no idea that I was playing a dangerous game of emotional roulette with my very own rainbow until it was plucked out of the sky and dropped in my lap during a therapy session. There I was chatting away exploring some new mental avenue or other when I got zipped. Zipped shut by the psychologist.  She stopped me because what I was doing was recounting something quite traumatic as though I was telling a funny story to my mates in the pub. To anyone watching me with the sound off I was smiling and laughing and telling jokes.  To anyone listening without looking, this was serious stuff.
I was masking the deep-seated emotions and feelings with virtually the complete opposite outward cues.  My body language wasn't telling the truth.  Except how would anyone else ever know if I didn't even realise it myself?  I was completely out of kilter. It was like using a parasol to hide the rain, painting a unicorn to hide the stain.

This meant two things: firstly that for some reason on a subconscious level I believed that it wasn't safe to visibly show anything other than positive emotion; and secondly that I was regularly sending out the wrong message. No wonder I was having trouble feeling that I was being heard - I was all smiley faces and exclamation marks.  The question marks, capital letters and dot dot dots had all gone missing under a protective layer of body armour. I was actively asking people to misread and mishear me. I needed re-wiring, reconstituting, restoring- I needed a full-on factory reset! But first I wanted to explore this emotional infidelity in my life a little further.

The rainbow effect was different with my wardrobe which mainly seemed to be black and white with a hint of baby blue and pink thrown in for the softer days. Since I'd stopped working I was dressing according to how I felt each day- pyjamas mostly at the start, and then jeans and hoodies, and then prettier shirts and more expressive jewellery as I started to feel better.  But what I did notice was that I always put the same North Face body warmer and brown leather boots on to leave the house.  Keys and phone in the inside pocket. Zip. Left boot on. Zip. Right boot on Zip.  Zip, zip, zip.  Body armour on and ready to face the world. I felt strong, padded up and in control.  This got me thinking about how I used clothes over the years.  In the Army, uniform made me feel proud, smart (although generally under-ironed and hurriedly polished) and that I belonged; at school, uniform was the blissful protection from the pressure of having to keep up with the latest Naf Naf jacket or Nike Air trainers (although the brown knickers and straw hats left a lot to be desired); at work, I used clothes to put on the persona I needed for that day - dress and heels for difficult meetings, jeans for Fridays, jacket and big ring when interviewing.  I was using the rainbow of my wardrobe to empower myself.  On the outside.  The pattern was the same- I was giving an external message that did not match the inner one.  It denied and overrode it.  The shape-shifting, colour-changing rainbow was me.

And yet, if I think back to all the fancy dress parties I've ever been to - they have mostly been brilliant, the best.  A monumental display of people being more themselves than ever- using the adopted identity to exaggerate, explore and enjoy their own. Was this down to the simple fact that fancy dress was a conscious choice?  A conscious choice to have fun. No masking of inner emotion but actively tapping into it and exploding it outward instead. Ironically, I could learn a lot from fancy dress- it was exactly what it said on the tin, it sent clear messages to everyone around, and it was completely at one with its inhabitant having undiluted, unadulterated fun.  It also lived completely in the moment- I'd always end up leaving the key accessory of it behind that night never to be seen again. The hats, masks, wands they all walk (have you ever come home with your fancy dress outfit intact??)- they're not thinking about the next time, just this time.

So maybe I had got my rainbows all mixed up.  I needed to know when it was sunny and know when it was overcast, know when it was hammering it down with rain and when the fog was closing in, and keep them all separate.  I didn't need the roulette of a rainbow, I needed to feel and exude emotional clarity.  This was going to take work to identify my feelings accurately in the present moment and then have the courage to articulate them, to be me. To push the boundaries, and not be scared to leave parts of me behind.  Leave a mark. An echo.

Perhaps I could learn something from a clumsy brown bear, an incessant zip-faced chatterbox and a camp pink hippopotamus after all. They are exactly who they are, inside and out. And we seemed to love them. Up above the streets and houses...rainbow flying high.
Wrong?

When The Past Came Back Before Breakfast

The present must have slowed down considerably because the past suddenly came crashing into it one morning like a jumble of over-excited ghosts falling through the floorboards of the spirit world.  I woke up to find them scattered across my duvet arguing about what order they should be in-should they line up in chronological sequence or rank themselves by importance? March, April, May or benign, upsetting, disturbing, RRUUUU...N! I'm not sure it really mattered. I wished they'd hurry up so I could get my cup of tea, although it would make more sense to my logical mind if they did it chronologically. Once they'd jostled themselves into order I began to see exactly who they were.  They were 2006.  Arriving en masse and unannounced right that second, just as I woke up.

2006 was a long time ago- nearly ten years- but was clearly hauntingly significant and I was being forced to take a closer look. And before breakfast. This must be important. Just as I was starting to find my new voice, to feel the highs and lows of long-suppressed emotions, see the world in colour, hear the noises in the background and feel life flooding back, here came my unruly memory bubbling and effervescing to the surface like witch water summoned by divining rods. Something was freeing itself up inside my mind, there was suddenly more space, more acceptance and more room for the past to present itself to me, shake itself off, dust itself down and settle itself back to sleep.  My memories were picking themselves up off the floor where that messy filing cabinet had strewn them and were floating back up past me for a nod of acceptance before picking up a meaningful category, a label and a translucent folder on the way back down to their rightful place where they had like-minded friends, where they had context.

As I felt a little braver, I started to look a little closer at just who exactly had come to breakfast that morning. There was Random Nose Job, Iraq, Stonehenge and Social Chlaustrophobia all looking at me expectantly from the end of my bed.  There was nothing for it - I followed them into the kitchen, put the kettle on and once they were all sat comfortably round my big, wobbly, wooden table I took a deep breath and faced them all.

Random Nose Job had been a somewhat impulsive decision at the start of 2006 following the break-up of a reasonably significant yet limping 3-year relationship.  Most women would probably have settled for a hair cut and a makeover on reflection, but a nose job seemed to hit the spot for me.  So one quick Harley Street detour and credit card flash later, I had a less bumpy, slightly shorter schnoz and complete closure on my relationship. No regrets, still happy with the nose.  Drastic, but worthwhile.  Filed.

Iraq was an attention seeker.  He captivated me for six months in 2003 and then wanted me back again not for 6 but for 12 months in 2006.  A whole year.  Two back-to back tours.  Partly my fault as I volunteered for the first one, but still.  Long. The first six months was dominated by tense helicopter flights and travelling in the back of armoured vehicles while chaperoning the Press across both Basra and Baghdad.  Being on edge was normal, getting to the end of every journey lucky.  Six people I knew and worked with directly lost their lives that tour. But for the grace of God.  (Except now I don't much believe in Him). The second half of the year was mentally intense- running an Ops Room 24/7, executing the logistic drawdown of some of the most significant bases in Iraq, sleeping behind my desk on the floor, supporting convoys that had split and been attacked out on the ground, running a half-marathon in the desert with no training (because that was what we did). Brilliant, all of it.  No regrets but the intensity had fried my mind.  Filed. (With the caveat that I stop pushing myself to extremes and listen to the warning signs of Social Chlaustrophobia).

Stonehenge was one of the most ridiculous moments of my life and that must be saying something.  I was home on R&R for two weeks between Iraq tours and met up with some friends in London.  We were planning to head down to Stonehenge for the Summer Solstice.  Except, for some inexplicable reason, I suddenly needed to travel on my own, to drive myself- so I travelled all the way down there in the Audi A4 I never did like, on my own, driving behind the car with everyone else in.  I must have needed the separation. I drove into the carpark. And I panicked.  I couldn't do this.  I didn't stop.  I kept on driving, out the other side of the carpark, back onto the A303 and headed for the M3, M25 and Essex. Straight home. That was the first sign that something was wrong.  Except I chose not to acknowledge it, slept it off, and went back to Iraq the following week, got shot at on landing in Basra and slipped back into 'normality'. Only recently, a friend who was there told me that I had been completely paranoid in London that day- uneasy about being on a leafy Leytonestone suburbia street unarmed. Hmmmmm.  Filed in the warning-signs-not-to-ignore bucket for easy access in the future; remember to get a second  opinion on what I consider 'normal'.

Social Chlaustrophobia.  I can see now that it was having an intimate affair with Stonehenge and maybe even a threesome with Iraq as well but I just didn't quite recognise this at the time.  I met Social Chlaustrophobia  full-on at the end of 2006 when I returned from Iraq for good. Supermarkets were too much, too busy, too overwhelming and I would abandon my basket and leave.  Parties and gatherings were generally short-lived because I would either drink too much too fast and spend the night with the bathroom floor and the toilet bowl, or I would just decide to exit.  I would stop talking, put my glass down and just extract.  Walk out the door, on my own, self-sufficient, heading home.  Alone.  Even if I did manage to stay over at friends' houses, I couldn't make it past dawn.  I would wake early, get up and slip out of the house, leaving a note and an excuse of having to be somewhere else.  I couldn't be anywhere without Social Chlaustrophobia wanting more.
I know now that I have choices and I know now that I need boundaries, I also know that I need to feel safe at all times or I panic and run.  I know that I am more self-aware and more in control.  I can file Social Chlaustrophobia but knowing that he will always try it on. We can have coffee but nothing more.

I was expecting 2007 to come to lunch and then maybe 2008 to dinner. But just letting 2006 in for breakfast seemed to have been enough. My mind knew what it needed to do and just did it, because I let it.  Let the past in before breakfast and maybe, just maybe, it won't ruin your day, and will open up your future.

Please Stop Talking, I've Left The Room

Looking back, part of what had caused my discomfort at work was the feeling of having a voice but just 'not being heard'. And one of the most pronounced symptoms of oddness post-breakdown was that I struggled with conversations: being talked around, being talked to, being talked at.  I couldn't stand 'chat'.

I'd never been able to do small talk and unless there was wit, banter, scandal or outrage involved I found it hard to wake up enough to participate. Waking myself up by suddenly lobbing an inappropriate conversational grenade was often an automatic, if slightly suicidal, tactic of last resort. And boring, monotonous, self-important people who droned on and on and on in front of me until I noticed the hairs on their chin, the stain on their trousers or the lack of suntan mark under their wedding ring, would cause me to slip into a catatonic trance with the will to live draining so far out of me that I'd actually give up and faint. But that was me.  This time it felt different.

I couldn't cope with having to concentrate, with anything coming into my brain that I would have to process and respond to.  The effort of concentration would make my forehead ache with intensity and streak pain through my watering right eye.  If someone was talking to me one-on-one I'd start to lose focus after about ten minutes with my side of the conversation gradually scaling itself back from that of a literate being to inanimate object through a declining sequence of formed sentences, truncated yes/no participation, nods and grunts and finally the fixed smile. By which point, I'd mentally left the room.

Just the pressure of someone else expecting something as simple and natural as conversation was too much. I needed space and intermittent company.  But how was I going to get company without conversation? How could I just 'borrow' a warm physical presence without the social expectation?    I needed someone I'd been married to for twenty years who moved around in the same space without even realising I was still there!  As you know, I went one better and Merlin the wizard dog is here to stay.

I made the mistake of suffering silently behind talk instead of doing something about it.  How simple would it have been to just stand up and excuse myself, to actually tell the other person how I was feeling and articulate what I needed- to go and do something else, to watch TV, to go for a walk, to have some quiet time.  Instead, I was letting myself slip further and further back into myself away from the conversation, dissociating so far that I was only superficially engaging while my mind had taken itself off to a mohito and sunlounger somewhere else entirely.  Somewhere quiet.  Somewhere it could hear itself- there were important messages coming through it needed to make sense of.

So why didn't I just stand up and ask for what I needed?  Close the conversation and give my mind the peace it craved? So easy- once you realise you can, and it's ok, and you don't need to wait for anyone else to empower you to give yourself what you need.  I had a voice, I just wasn't using it.  No wonder I wasn't being heard.

I started to talk more openly about what I was going through, which helped me to then ask for what I needed.  The psychologist helped me to realise that if I 'briefed' my friends and family, I would make things easier for everyone; if I realised what I needed myself then it was unacceptable to submit to an uncomfortable situation or environment by mentally dissociating. I started to experiment with articulating the unexpected, articulating how I am feeling in the present moment. I started to speak with a new voice, an honest one coming from a good place within.  And there it was, my voice, being heard.

Mind, Meds, Muscles and Mastication - Sorting Myself Out

Before embarking on a mental breakdown there are several important factors that you should consider.  It is a complex, unpredictable, unfathomable process which can have far-reaching implications not just on your mind and body but on your bank balance too. You may feel that you are literally throwing money at your very own black hole but mental breakdowns take commitment.  Yes, commitment. Commitment to getting better, to finding solutions, to trial and error along the way, to giving yourself time, to embracing mindfulness, to having to ask for what you need not what you think others want you to need, and most importantly, commitment to yourself. Yes, You.

Having been a certified (certifiable?) commitment-phobe for the best part of 38 years, this was new ground for me and to be approached with a quite considerable degree of trepidation. I'd packed my car to the gunnels and fled the village within 24 hours when the last bloke asked me to move in with him, leaving behind my favourite raincoat and half-finished book. Inconvenient but not worth the risk to freedom of going back. (There was more to it, like having only known him a few weeks and his pathological fear of daylight, but you get the picture!)

But, this time I took the plunge.  I was going to start by committing to myself and getting better the full-on, headlong, long-term, never-going-through-this-again way.  It involved some stiff conversations with myself and reprogramming to remove the gnawing, self-effacing guilt voice telling me that I should be shelving my problems with a quick fix, rushing back to work, papering over the cracks with industrial polyfilla and dealing with it all when I was ready. When I was ready, when I had more time, when I had finished my Masters degree, when I had more support, when, when, when, when....  Whatever.

I am working with a private psychologist to sort out my mind.  I'm 14 sessions in and probably have the same number again left to go before I will feel ready to pedal through life on my own again.  Worth every penny but the commitment required not to be underestimated.  I committed to a session once a week for six months, to preparing before and reflecting after each session, to riding the wave in between sessions, to embracing a mindfulness programme, to telling the truth.  Even the bits I was most ashamed of . Commitment to absolute honesty (with myself).

Of course it's the doctor who controls the med stash and I'm taking the Sertraline 28 days at a time.  But it wasn't plain sailing having tried and rejected Citalopram  and Mirtazapine and finally finding a medication that worked.  For me.  Commitment to trial and error.

Inextricably linked with my struggling  mind, my body stopped me in my tracks.  And where in the past I had resorted to heavy physical exercise to quiet my  mind and elevate the endorphins, my body entertained me for a few weeks letting me run out in the April sun and then just closed me down.  I got 30 mins into a flat, riverside run and the silent pain was debilitating- consuming me through every fibre of every muscle.  I stopped twice and started again.  I stopped for good and walked back along the freshly-mown bank.  I've been seeing the same chiropractic since I had a riding injury aged 11 and booked straight in with him for a check-up.  I explained where my head was at and he understood instantly.  Through my back he released the pressure and allowed the surfeit of adrenalin to flood out of my saturated muscles.  Within half and hour I just wanted to put my head down and sleep as the recovery phase kicked in.  Within two days I felt taller, lighter, freer than ever before. Commitment to solutions from those who've helped you all your life.

Perhaps the most curious, and definitely the most bank-breaking one, was the dentist.  Over the course of the last year I had cracked two teeth, two big old masticators side by side, and spent 6 months, six sessions and a 4-figure sum on double root canal treatment.  I'd put it down to just one of those things but it wasn't characteristic of my teeth to let me down.  I told the dentist (again, someone who has treated me all my life) what I'd told the chiropractic about the last few months and he reacted in the same way.  Suddenly it all made sense to him as well.  The stress had been causing me to lock my jaw, grind my teeth at night and crack them.  Commitment to zero stress-related medical bills in the future!

Joking aside, what I had realised through the medical support I was receiving from all these brilliant, miracle-working people, who understood exactly what I needed, was not only how lucky I was to have them in my life at this crucial point, but also through the simple act of committing to myself how I may just have saved my life.  I hadn't realised the damage I had been doing to myself over a prolonged period of time. I have taken six months away from work  to rest, recuperate and reap the full benefits of therapy and self-re-discovery and I've learnt commitment.
Hello, Mr. Right, I'm almost ready!

Blue Rubber Gloves On The Yellow Brick Road

Starting the long drive that morning, I had no idea that it was the Yellow Brick Road I would be following stretching out all the way from Bedford to Cornwall like a magic lifeline reeling me in down a fast lane of motorways.  And no idea of the characters I was going to meet along the way- three of them having served in the Army, none of them knowing the other, and I was suddenly and unexpectedly to meet them all on the same day shortly prior to making one of the most significant spontaneous decisions of my life. An Officer, a Gentleman, a Locksmith and a Wizard. Turn off the sat nav, shed-squash the witch, get out the sparkly shoes, I was on the Yellow Brick Road!

The Officer. I pulled into what must have been almost the last Services on the M4 west and headed for the toilets, made it past Burger King but succumbed to a goody bag of promotional make-up waved under my nose by a salesman that made me smile in the foyer.  Normally I would have walked straight past but just stopping there for two minutes jolted me into a sliding doors moment and someone behind me suddenly shouted 'Sarah!'.  There were soldiers in uniform swarming ahead of me, probably having poured out of a hangover-steamed minibus with a standard issue lunch tray of untouched  still-frozen Ginster sausage rolls in brown paper bags under one of the back seats, in a desperate bid for fast-food freedom.  I didn't recognise any of them; they all seemed so young. Still made me smile nostalgically though. 'Sarah!'.  I turned, not really thinking that the shout was for me.  And there was the legend who had been my right hand man and troop Staff Sergeant in Iraq during the war in 2003 and who I hadn't seen for probably seven years.  I couldn't believe it.  He was on his way to Wales adventure training; I was on my way to Cornwall to view a puppy.  Sliding Doors.  It was a sign- I was on the right road with this puppy adventure.

The Gentleman.  The 'gentleman' swung in behind me in a carpark, tapped on my window, and informed me that once he'd seen my driving licence he'd need me to put on the rubber gloves.  Blue ones. The gloves worried me less than the driving licence- I couldn't remember quite how bad the photo on it was...
I'd made it to Cornwall and this was obviously what went on down there, hidden behind the innocent veneer of Eden Projects, Pasties and Polzeath Posh (ha!).
What was actually going on was that I was having a quick ID check to make sure I was who I said I was (who was that?)before being taken to see the litter of rather special Rhodesian Ridgeback pups which I would need rubber gloves to handle so that I didn't infect them with any Bedford bugs. What did you think I was talking about?
And then the next golden brick flashed in the sun- blue rubber gloves guy was ex-military too, had done Gulf War 1 and been out for a while, but nevertheless, what were the chances. What was going on today?  Was this puppy really meant to be!
I was there to view the tiny pup with the black collar and the 'pick me' eyes.  Having a laugh with another ex-military guy while both wearing blue rubber gloves was unexpected.  He was talking to me about hip dysplasia and dermoid sinus.  Had I done any research? What? No.  I had no idea what he was talking about, I just knew that it was a Rhodesian Ridgeback or nothing at all. Shame on me.  Something about his smile and his piss-taking was distracting me.  I paid the deposit without thinking, signed the contract in a fluster and wrote my post code wrong.  Shit.  Damn those rubber gloves.


The Locksmith.  I'd excitedly posted on Facebook that morning that I was heading to Cornwall.  The phone rang. Unbelieveable. It was another ex-military legend who had been my right hand man in Iraq 2006.  He lived in Cornwall now and was working as a locksmith.  Not just any locksmith- this was Sir Fix -A -Lock himself with his van called Guinevere and his little dog Camelot (Lottie) on the front seat.  He was only minutes away from where I was stood in a sea of puppies and latex- did I fancy a brew? Stonehenge had nothing on my yellow bricks today. Wow.

The Wizard. I fell in love with the pup with the little black collar and the white star on his chest pretty much instantly.  I couldn't stop looking at him.  I wanted him to feel the same way about me ( I think he does now - especially around feed time).  I cuddled him against me as he nibbled my collar, my jewellery, my hair.  I didn't want to let him go.  I didn't want to leave either.  An overwhelming sensation of doing something which might seem a little mad but which was actually, completely, one hundred percent spot on.  Something just for me.  He didn't know it, but he was going to change my life for the better and make me smile everyday.  A dusting of Cornish magic, a majestic hunter, a helicopter that flew me safe in Iraq every day.  Merlin.  My little wizard. In my blue rubber gloves, at the end of the Yellow Brick Road.