For me… it’s the train. Every time.

Not because it’s the fastest. It isn’t.
Not because it’s the fanciest. It rarely is.

But because it lets you breathe.

You see, I’ve spent enough time dealing with traffic, bad driving, and all the chaos that comes with it to know—it drains you before you’ve even arrived . Sitting behind a wheel, watching brake lights stretch into the horizon, isn’t a journey… it’s endurance.

A train is different.

You step on, find your seat, and that’s it. No stress about directions. No worrying about the bloke who can’t indicate properly. No sudden stops because someone’s decided the middle of the road is a parking space.

Just motion.

There’s something almost meditative about it. The steady rhythm of the tracks, the quiet hum, the world rolling by outside your window like a film you didn’t know you needed to watch.

Fields. Towns. People going about their lives.

You’re not fighting the journey—you’re part of it.

And maybe that’s the point.

We rush so much in life, always trying to get somewhere quicker, easier, sooner. But every now and then, it’s worth choosing the slower road… or in this case, the rails.

Sit back.
Watch the world pass by.
And just be in it for a while.

Stay safe,
BC

Confidence is a funny thing.

Most people think it looks like a loud voice, a firm handshake, or someone who never doubts themselves. The sort of person who walks into a room like they own it.

But in my experience, that’s not confidence. That’s theatre.

The most confident person I know was my grandfather, Walter S Christian. He wasn’t loud. He didn’t try to impress anyone. In fact, he was happiest pottering about in his shed or greenhouse, quietly working on something with his hands. 

What made him confident was something far rarer: certainty in who he was.

He believed in simple things — working hard, being honest, helping people regardless of their background or beliefs. He carried himself like a gentleman not because someone told him to, but because that’s the kind of man he chose to be. 

There’s a particular calm about people like that.
They don’t need applause.
They don’t need to win every argument.
And they certainly don’t need to tell you how confident they are.

They just get on with life.

If you ever met him, you’d understand. He was the sort of man who could teach you more in a quiet afternoon than most people manage in a lifetime. In fact, he influenced me so much that I even took part of his name for my own. 

So when people ask me who the most confident person I know is, I don’t think of celebrities or athletes.

I think of a retired firefighter, an artist, a gardener… and a man who simply knew what it meant to be decent.

Turns out, real confidence doesn’t shout.

It quietly gets on with being the kind of person worth remembering.

Stay safe

Bc

Negative feelings are a bit like British weather — they roll in whether you invited them or not. You can shout at the clouds all day, but it rarely stops the rain.

For me, the trick is learning to sit with it for a moment.

Meditation helps. Just a few quiet minutes, breathing, letting the noise in my head settle down a bit. Nothing fancy. Just stillness and a bit of space between me and whatever nonsense my brain is currently shouting about. It’s amazing how much calmer things look when you stop wrestling them.

And then there’s poetry.

Or what I prefer to call scribbles.

Sometimes I’ll grab a notebook and just dump the mess onto the page. No structure, no worrying about spelling or grammar — just thoughts escaping the pressure cooker. I started doing that years ago as a way to process what was going on in my head, and it turned out to be surprisingly good therapy. 

The funny thing is, once the feelings are written down, they stop rattling around inside quite so loudly.

So my strategy is fairly simple:

Sit. Breathe.

Then scribble until the storm passes.

Not glamorous.

But it works.

Stay Safe

Bc

There’s only a few activities that I can honestly say I lose myself in. Not the sort of “pass the time” hobbies, but the ones where you look up and realise hours have quietly slipped by without you noticing.

The first is poetry.

Poetry has been part of my life for over twenty years now. It started out as therapy, a way of processing the noise inside my head, but somewhere along the way it became much more than that. When I’m writing, the rest of the world tends to fade into the background and it’s just me and the page, trying to turn thoughts and emotions into something that resembles a poem. As I’ve said before, poetry became a place where my mind could finally exhale and where the chaos of anxiety and depression could exist without apology. 

Another thing that will happily steal a few hours of my life is comic books. There’s something wonderfully nostalgic about them. Sitting down with a good comic takes me straight back to being a kid again, when stories were larger than life and heroes always found a way to win in the end. It’s a simple pleasure, but sometimes those are the best ones.

And then there’s photography.

Photography is something I’ve drifted into in more recent years. I wouldn’t say I know what I’m doing most of the time, but I’ve been told I’ve got a decent eye for it. I enjoy grabbing the camera, experimenting with settings, and just seeing what happens. Sometimes you get nothing… and sometimes you capture something you’re really proud of. 

So yes, there’s only a few things I truly lose myself in:

• Writing poetry
• Reading comic books
• Taking photographs

Different hobbies, different moods… but each one gives me a little space away from the world for a while.

Stay safe
BC

Like many things in life, comfort viewing is a bit like comfort food. When the world has been particularly chaotic, sometimes the best remedy is putting something familiar on the telly, grabbing a coffee, and letting your brain switch off for a bit.

There are a few shows that fall firmly into that category for me.

First up would have to be The Big Bang Theory. More specifically, the character of Sheldon Cooper. There’s something oddly reassuring about Sheldon’s complete inability to bend to social norms. His routines, logic, and absolute certainty about how the universe should function are strangely comforting to watch. 

Next on the list is How I Met Your Mother. It’s one of those shows you can dip in and out of without much effort, and it manages to balance ridiculous humour with the occasional moment that actually tugs at the heartstrings. (Like Marshal’s father’s death) The characters feel like old friends at this point, which is probably why it keeps finding its way back onto my screen.

And finally, there’s Batman. Pretty much any of the films featuring the Dark Knight will do the trick. There’s just something timeless about the character and the world of Gotham.

That said, the one exception for me would be The 89 Batman film, while it was awesome as a kid to see this dark, action film, after growing up on the flamboyant (occasionally camp) 66 Batman with my hero Adam West. it’s clear Tim Burton had never read a comic book in his life.

So those are my repeat offenders when it comes to TV and film. Familiar stories, familiar characters, and just enough escapism to give the mind a bit of breathing room.

Stay safe,
BC

Short answer? Not really.
Longer answer? Well… it depends what you mean by superstitious.

I’m not the sort of person who panics because a black cat crossed the road or refuses to walk under a ladder.

Life has thrown enough genuinely unpredictable things at me that blaming it on a cat feels a bit unfair. The poor creature is probably just trying to get home for dinner.

That said, I do have a healthy respect for the strange corners of the universe.

Over the years I’ve read a fair number of religious and spiritual texts—from the Bible to Buddhist teachings—mostly out of curiosity about how different people try to make sense of this odd little existence we’ve all found ourselves in.

What I discovered is that most belief systems, superstition included, come from the same place: humans trying to understand a world that doesn’t always give neat explanations.

And to be fair, the universe is weird.

So while I’m not knocking on wood every five minutes or refusing to say certain words before a big event, I do keep an open mind. There’s a difference between blind superstition and simply acknowledging that life contains a few mysteries we haven’t quite untangled yet.

Besides, a little mystery keeps things interesting.

So no—I’m not superstitious.

But I do occasionally raise an eyebrow when the universe starts acting suspiciously well-timed.

Just in case.

Stay safe,
BC

If I had to compare myself to an animal, I’d probably say a crow.

Not because it’s the most glamorous creature in the animal kingdom, but because it’s misunderstood, curious, and quietly intelligent. Crows watch the world carefully. They’re observers first, participants second—and that’s always been very much my way of moving through life.

I spend a lot of time watching the world: people, nature, the small details others sometimes overlook. That’s where most of my poetry and photography comes from—standing back, noticing the odd, the beautiful, or the painful parts of life and trying to make sense of them through words or images. 

Writing started as a way for me to process my thoughts and emotions, especially living with dyslexia, being on the autism spectrum, and dealing with PTSD. Over time it simply became part of how I exist in the world. 

Crows are also resilient creatures. They survive in almost any environment, adapting to whatever life throws at them. That resonates with me too. Life has a habit of delivering its fair share of curveballs, but you learn to keep going, to adapt, and maybe even find a bit of wisdom in the process. As I’ve written before, life is fragile and unpredictable, and those experiences shape how you see the world. 

There’s another thing about crows I quite like: they’re curious. They investigate everything. That curiosity is probably why I’ve spent years reading different religious texts and exploring different beliefs—to understand people and the world a little better. 

So yes, if I had to pick an animal, it would be the crow.

Quietly watching.
Always curious.
Picking up little shiny thoughts from the ground and turning them into poems.
Stay safe.

Bc