On 1st January 2023 The Bloke and I sat on an enormous couch in a suite in a nice hotel. We were surrounded by our favourite snacks and were watching a film while talking about our hopes and expectations for the coming year.
“It’s going to be amazing, I can feel it,” I remember saying, and at the time, I believed it. After the world shut down in 2020 things had plummeted, and 2021 had been tough, so had 2022. Surely 2023 couldn’t get any worse, could it?
As it turns out, yes it could.
It’s taken me over a month to write this. I’ve been back and forth with myself, repeatedly drafting and deleting, hoping that the urge to write would fade… but it hasn’t. So today I decided to bite the proverbial bullet and post – albeit a much more concise, less angry version of my initial ramblings – but at least I’ve transferred my thoughts and sent it out into the universe. I may decide to delete it later, but we’ll see.
My father passed away at the beginning of July.
Ever had one of those enormously frustrating days where absolutely nothing goes as it should?
After waiting for nearly six weeks, I attended a very disappointing appointment yesterday. I had been almost looking forward to it in the hope that it would bring a resolution to an ongoing medical issue that I’ve been having, only to be called ‘darling,’ talked at for five minutes and then be told that what I needed should have been done by the person who referred me six weeks ago, which she hasn’t been able to do because of the condition that has warranted the referral in the first place. Continue reading
There’s nothing more inspiring than a positive person who has a goal and works relentlessly hard to achieve it. More recently I have been turning to American muscle gods for inspiration – anyone who has the ability to get up at 4am and train to that level when I can’t even manage breakfast and a coherent sentence before 10.30am deserves my upmost respect.
Today’s admiration is for Terry Crews. Not only is he a talented actor and fitness expert, but he seems to be one of the most genuinely positive and uplifting people around. I discovered a video that he uploaded a year ago on his YouTube channel, and it was some of the most profound thoughts I’d heard in a while. Continue reading
I never know how appropriate it is to write about these sorts of things, but as this space is my own to be able to record my thoughts and feelings, I wanted to be able to acknowledge someone very special to us.
The death of a loved one is never easy for anybody, but when it’s sudden and completely unexpected it comes as a devastating blow to everyone who knew them.
We attended the funeral of our friend this morning – a wonderful woman who had joined us at our wedding celebrations just a week before she passed away. The Bloke and I were her colleagues at my former school – she had worked as an English teacher before retiring a few years ago – and the number of friends, colleagues, staff and former students that attended (to the point where it was standing room only) was a sheer testament to how much she was loved. The amount of messages I’ve seen across social media from ex-students (many of whom had particularly difficult circumstances) demonstrates the impact that she left on them all these years later. Continue reading
I happened to be on Twitter in the early hours of Wednesday morning and saw reports coming in of a massive fire in a tower block in London. At the time, it was on one side of the building, spreading quickly and it was possible to see people flashing their lights from their rooms to let the fire services know that they were still in there. By the morning, the fire was still raging and had consumed almost the entire building.
The feeling of utter helplessness watching those images was overwhelming. Stories surfaced of truly awful things that people had had to experience to try and save themselves, and there are already confirmed deaths and a large number of people still missing.
In any tragedy of this magnitude I always try and seek anything positive, and was hugely uplifted by the endless reports of the local Londoners and then the nation who immediately opened their homes and started donations of money, food and clothing to the survivors who have lost everything that they owned. I cannot possibly imagine what the survivors must be going through, and I’m so proud of the way that everyone has pulled together in their support. This is what we do best.
As always, my thoughts are also with the brave firefighters who risked their lives to tackle the blaze and try and save those inside. I know from conversations that I’ve had with my fireman friend over the years that what they experience every day are stay with them for the rest of their lives, and we as a society are forever indebted to them for what they do…
My love and thoughts are with everyone affected…
It’s been a busy few weeks. With a mixture of supply, invigilating GCSE examinations, freelance music, social media management and time spent with family and friends, every day has been different. I went to visit Squidge a little while ago, who is now nearly five months old and stayed with each family member so I had a chance to catch up with everyone, continued with my wedding planning, I have met up with friends for lunch and at the weekend I crashed an 18 year old’s birthday party, which at 35 years old felt a little silly, but it turned out to be a fantastic night. Continue reading
It’s back-to-work for many after the Easter holidays today and, as always, I have an enormous sense of relief that I didn’t have to drag myself out of bed.
The Bloke took a few weeks off work to coincide with the holidays, so I took a break away from the blog. I still maintained my Pinterest and Twitter social media management and my Facebook group, but decided not to write any posts until I actually had something to say. Continue reading
Yesterday I received a Facebook message from a friend that I haven’t spoken to in a while. We met through a project – the school that I worked at did an annual concert with an orchestra and he was the composer for the music that we performed.
He now works for my former University that is currently moving to a new building. When he was cleaning out some of the cupboards, he found this:
Every so often, something on the internet really takes off, and as per usual, I am one of the last ones to hear about it.
Over the last few days, I have been following the saga surrounding Cracker Barrel in the US, a man named Brad and his wife.
Brad was incensed after his wife was allegedly fired from her job at a branch of Cracker Barrel after being told that she ‘wasn’t working out,’ despite the fact that she had worked there for eleven years. He took to his own Facebook page at the end of February after contacting the company for an explanation and received no response, which quickly went viral when he posted a similar thing on Cracker Barrel’s Facebook page. Continue reading
Suzie Speaks 
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