What’s the best advice you’d give to someone younger than you?
Don’t worry if, in your twenties, you don’t know where you’re going.
Honestly.
Most of us are making it up as we go along.
There seems to be this unwritten expectation that by a certain age you’re supposed to have everything worked out. A career. A five-year plan. A purpose. A clear idea of who you are and where you’re heading.
Life rarely works like that.
When we’re young, we somehow expect ourselves to have all the answers despite the fact we’ve barely had time to collect the questions.
It’s your first time being alive.
Be kind to yourself.
I didn’t know who I truly was, or what I wanted my life to look like, until I was nearly forty. Looking back, I spent far too much time worrying that I was behind everyone else.
The truth?
Nobody knows what they’re doing quite as much as they pretend to.
And that’s okay.
Because life isn’t really about the final destination anyway.
It’s about the journey.
It’s about the people you meet along the way.
The late-night conversations.
The road trips.
The laughter that leaves your face aching.
The memories you make with friends and family.
Years later, you won’t remember every deadline, every promotion, or everything you thought was a disaster at the time.
You’ll remember the people.
You’ll remember how they made you feel.
You’ll remember the moments.
Another thing I’d tell my younger self is this:
Learn to love yourself.
Not in an arrogant way.
Not in a “look at me” sort of way.
Just learn to be comfortable in your own skin.
Because once you stop trying to be who you think everyone else wants you to be, and start accepting who you actually are, something wonderful happens.
You can breathe.
You stop fighting yourself.
And that feeling is worth more than you can imagine.
I’d also tell you to let go of grudges.
They’re heavy things to carry.
The person who upset you years ago is probably not sitting at home replaying the argument.
Meanwhile, you’re giving them space in your head they haven’t earned.
They don’t deserve to live rent free in there.
Forgiveness isn’t always about them.
Sometimes it’s about freeing yourself.
So be patient.
Be kinder to yourself than you think you need to be.
Take photographs.
Make memories.
Tell people you love them.
Don’t panic if the map isn’t clear.
Most of us are finding the path one step at a time.
And sometimes the scenic route turns out to be the best one.
Today was one of those mornings where work didn’t really feel like work.
I headed into town to have a wander around and look at potential locations for an upcoming photography gig for Totnes Pride.
There’s something about photographing an event that makes you look at familiar places slightly differently. Suddenly you’re not just seeing streets, buildings and corners of town, you’re looking for light, angles, backgrounds and those little spots where a photograph might just come together.
Of course, I took the camera with me.
Because apparently I’m incapable of going anywhere without looking at things through a lens these days.
Once the location scouting was done, it was time for the important stuff.
Coffee.
A slow, relaxing coffee morning in the market, with some good friends, and friends I’d just met, absolutely no rushing about and nowhere particularly urgent to be.
And then, as if The Universe hadn’t already delivered enough, a calico cat wandered down the stairs.
Obviously, I had to say hello.
The cat seemed perfectly happy to accept some fuss, so who was I to argue?
Photography locations sorted.
Coffee enjoyed.
Cat fussed.
All in all, not a bad morning.
Sometimes the best days are the ones where you manage to get a little bit of work done…
…and still find time to stop and enjoy the small stuff.
The sit in your pyjamas with a bowl of cereal while your parents repeatedly tell you to do something useful Transformers.
You see, I’m an old man.
Well…
Gen X.
Which is basically what happens when you leave a child from the 1980s unattended for long enough.
I remember the original series.
Optimus Prime.
Megatron.
Bumblebee.
Starscream.
Soundwave.
The Dinobots.
And that glorious moment when a robot transformed into something completely ridiculous and somehow nobody questioned the physics of it.
Because why would they?
It was a cartoon.
And it was brilliant.
The original series arrived in 1984, alongside the Hasbro and Takara toy lines, and for a generation of kids it became much more than something to watch on a Saturday morning.
It became part of childhood.
There were the toys.
The comics.
The stickers.
And yes…
I had the toys.
I had the stickers.
I probably spent far too much of my pocket money trying to get the ones I was missing.
There was even the Panini sticker album.
256 stickers.
Which sounds perfectly reasonable.
Until you’re a kid and you’re staring at your album with three bloody stickers left to find.
Then the maths changes.
Suddenly 256 seems like an unnecessarily cruel number.
You’d go through your pile.
“Got.”
“Got.”
“Got.”
“Need.”
And then you’d swap with your mates.
Or try to.
Because there was always that one kid who somehow had about fourteen of the sticker you needed.
And absolutely no intention of giving you one.
If you know, you know.
And then there was the VHS.
Google it.
I’ll wait.
For younger readers, VHS was basically YouTube, Netflix and Disney+ rolled into one.
Except you had to physically rewind it.
And if someone forgot?
Well…
You’d find out pretty quickly when you put it in and the bloody thing started halfway through an episode.
And I still have all of mine.
Which probably says something about my inability to throw anything away.
But that’s the thing about Transformers.
When I think about them now, I don’t just remember robots fighting robots.
I remember being a kid.
I remember Saturday mornings.
I remember cereal.
I remember sitting far too close to the television.
I remember that feeling when the theme tune started and you knew you were about to disappear into another world.
For twenty minutes, the rest of the world didn’t matter.
Back then, we didn’t have endless streaming services.
There wasn’t a catalogue containing practically every television programme ever made sitting in your pocket.
If you missed something…
You missed it.
Unless you were lucky enough to have recorded it.
And if you had?
You guarded that VHS tape like it contained the nuclear launch codes.
There was something wonderfully simple about it all.
Good guys.
Bad guys.
Robots.
Cars.
Spaceships.
Dinosaurs.
And a giant transforming robot called Optimus Prime who somehow managed to be incredibly cool while also being strangely reassuring.
Looking back, though, I don’t think Transformers was ever really just about the characters.
It was about what they represented.
Childhood.
Freedom.
Imagination.
That little bit of magic we seem to lose somewhere between being a kid and becoming an adult.
Because that’s the funny thing about growing older.
The toys get packed away.
The sticker albums disappear into cupboards.
The VHS tapes gather dust.
And life carries on.
Work.
Bills.
Responsibilities.
Emails.
Appointments.
All that grown-up nonsense.
Then, completely unexpectedly, you hear a piece of music.
Or see an old toy.
Or find something buried in a box.
And suddenly…
You’re eight years old again.
Sitting on the carpet.
Bowl of cereal beside you.
Pyjamas on.
No responsibilities.
No bills.
No emails.
No bloody grown-up nonsense.
Just Saturday morning.
And for twenty minutes, everything is alright.
I suppose that’s why nostalgia can be such a powerful thing.
We’re not necessarily missing the cartoon.
We’re missing the person we were when we watched it.
The version of ourselves who could be completely absorbed by something as simple as a cartoon about alien robots.
Before life became complicated.
Before we learned that sometimes people leave.
Before we discovered that adults don’t actually have all the answers.
Before we started worrying about mortgages, pensions, politics and whether we’ve remembered to put the bloody bins out.
Back then, Optimus Prime had the answers.
Well…
Most of the time.
So, who is my favourite cartoon character?
Transformers.
Not because they were the greatest cartoons ever made.
Not because the animation was perfect.
And certainly not because every storyline made sense.
It didn’t.
Not even remotely.
But because they were part of my childhood.
And sometimes that’s more important.
Because when something can survive forty-odd years of technological progress, adulthood, responsibilities and everything else life throws at you…
And still make you smile?
That’s more than just a cartoon.
That’s a memory.
And perhaps that’s what was really hiding underneath all those robots, cars and explosions.
Our first trip to the beach in a couple of months.
Two months.
That’s quite a long time when you live close enough to the sea that going to the beach should probably be considered a basic human right.
So, naturally, we did what any sensible couple would do.
We took coffee.
And apples.
The coffee was for us.
The apples were for the crows.
Priorities.
There’s something about getting back to the beach that I find difficult to explain.
It’s not just the sea.
Although, obviously, the sea helps.
It’s the whole thing.
The sound of the waves.
The wind.
The smell of salt in the air.
The gulls screaming at each other as though one of them has just insulted the other’s mother.
And, of course, the crows waiting patiently for their breakfast.
Or at least pretending to wait patiently.
They’re not daft.
They know exactly who brings the apples.
There was another little milestone for me today, though.
For the first time this year, I actually got my feet wet.
And by my feet, I mean my feet.
Including the bottoms of my shorts.
Which probably sounds like a ridiculously small thing to celebrate.
But sometimes the ridiculously small things are the ones worth celebrating.
I stood there with the water washing over my feet and realised just how long it had been since I’d done something so simple.
No great adventure.
No grand achievement.
Just standing in the sea.
Feeling the cold water.
Listening to the waves.
Being there.
And perhaps that was exactly what I needed.
Because life has a habit of becoming noisy.
Not necessarily physically noisy.
Although, let’s be honest, the modern world seems determined to shout at us from every possible direction.
Phones (left it behind).
News.
Social media.
Emails.
Other people’s opinions.
Our own thoughts.
Sometimes especially our own thoughts.
We spend so much time thinking about what happened yesterday and what might happen tomorrow that we forget there’s a rather important bit of time sitting between the two.
Today.
Standing in the sea this morning, I didn’t need to solve anything.
I didn’t need to work anything out.
I didn’t need to have all the answers.
I just needed to stand there.
Breathe.
Listen.
Feel the ground beneath my feet and the water moving around them.
There’s a tiny bit of Buddhism in that thought, although I promise I’m not about to start sitting cross-legged on the beach chanting at the seagulls.
It was simply about being present.
For a few minutes, I wasn’t worrying about next week.
I wasn’t replaying last week.
I was just there.
Me.
Mrs Bob.
The sea.
A couple of coffees.
And some very happy crows.
And somehow, that was enough.
By the time we headed home, I felt a little more grounded.
A little calmer.
A little more ready for whatever the week decides to throw at me.
Sometimes we imagine that looking after ourselves requires some huge lifestyle change.
A retreat.
A holiday.
A complicated morning routine involving seventeen different types of herbal tea and an alarm clock that sounds like Tibetan monks.
Maybe sometimes it’s much simpler than that.
Maybe it’s a walk.
A coffee.
A conversation with someone you love.
Feeding the crows.
Or just standing in the sea with wet shorts and remembering that, for all the chaos going on around us, you’re still here.
What’s the kindest thing someone has ever done for you?
That’s actually a surprisingly difficult question.
There are plenty of answers I could give.
Someone making me laugh when I desperately needed it.
Someone listening when I needed to talk.
Someone offering a helping hand when I was struggling.
Someone simply being there.
But if I’m being completely honest, there’s really only one answer that feels right.
Mrs Bob.
The kindest thing anyone has ever done for me was choosing to love me.
Not the polished version.
Not the version who has his life together.
Not the bloke who can string a few words together and occasionally convince people he knows what he’s talking about.
Me.
The complicated version.
The version who has spent far too much of his life fighting battles inside his own head.
The version who, at times, couldn’t see any light at the end of the tunnel.
There have been periods in my life when I simply couldn’t fight for myself.
My mental health was so bad that survival could feel like a full-time job. There were times when I couldn’t see my own worth, let alone believe anyone else could.
And then there was this woman.
She didn’t magically fix me.
She didn’t wave a wand and make everything better.
She did something much more important.
She stayed.
She loved me when I wasn’t particularly easy to love.
She believed in me when I couldn’t believe in myself.
And, perhaps most importantly, she fought for me when I couldn’t fight for myself.
That means more to me than I could ever properly put into words.
Because love isn’t just the grand gestures.
It isn’t always flowers, chocolates, romantic meals or expensive presents.
Sometimes love is sitting beside someone in the darkness and saying, in whatever way you can:
I’m still here.
Sometimes it’s reminding someone who they are when they’ve forgotten.
Sometimes it’s holding the line until they have enough strength to hold it themselves.
And sometimes it’s simply refusing to give up on someone who has already given up on themselves.
Mrs Bob has done all of those things.
And I don’t think I’ll ever be able to repay her for that.
Although, knowing her, she’d probably tell me that’s not how love works anyway.
Looking back now, I can see just how much of my life has been shaped by the people who showed me kindness at precisely the moments I needed it most. A book handed to me at the right time changed the direction of my thinking. Writing eventually gave me a way of processing the things I couldn’t say out loud. And the people around me helped me discover that asking for help isn’t weakness.
But Mrs Bob?
She was there for the whole bloody adventure.
The good bits.
The bad bits.
The messy bits.
And all the bits in between.
She didn’t fall in love with some finished product.
She loved the work in progress.
And maybe that’s one of the greatest acts of kindness one human being can give another.
To look at someone and say:
“I see you.”
“I know you’re struggling.”
“I know you don’t believe in yourself right now.”
“But I do.”
So, what’s the kindest thing anyone has ever done for me?
It’s not something someone bought me.
It’s not somewhere someone took me.
It’s not even something someone said.
It’s this:
Mrs Bob chose to love me, and she fought for me when I couldn’t fight for myself.
And every day I get to wake up beside her is a reminder that sometimes the greatest kindness in the world is simply refusing to walk away.
If the salary was the same, what job would you be doing right now and why?
This one didn’t take me long to answer.
I’d probably be working with animals.
There was a brief moment where I considered saying giraffes, because I absolutely love giraffes.
There’s something wonderfully ridiculous about them.
They’re basically proof that nature occasionally just makes things up as it goes along.
But then I thought about it properly.
And there was really only one answer.
Cats.
Definitely cats.
More specifically, I think I’d like to run a foster home for elderly and terminally ill cats that are currently in rescue centres.
Because there’s something about the idea that really gets me.
Imagine being an older cat.
You’ve already spent much of your life being someone’s companion. Maybe you’ve known a warm home, a comfortable sofa and someone who loved you.
Then, for whatever reason, you find yourself in a rescue centre.
Surrounded by unfamiliar smells.
Strange noises.
Other cats.
People coming and going.
And perhaps, because you’re old or poorly, nobody chooses you.
Everyone wants the kitten.
The young cat.
The one with years of life ahead of them.
And I understand that.
I really do.
But those older cats still have something to give.
They still have love.
They still have personalities.
They still deserve a warm lap, a comfortable bed and someone to tell them that they are a very good cat approximately seventeen times a day.
So, if money wasn’t the deciding factor, I think that’s where I’d want to be.
I’d have a house full of elderly and terminally ill cats.
There’d probably be blankets everywhere.
Cosy beds in every room.
Furniture specifically chosen according to feline requirements, obviously.
And enough scratching posts to make the place look like a particularly eccentric furniture shop.
And cats.
Lots and lots of cats.
The giraffes might have to wait.
Because what I’d really want to give those cats is something that every living creature deserves.
Comfort.
Not necessarily more time.
Sometimes we simply can’t give them that.
But we can make the time they have left better.
If a cat has only weeks or months left, I’d rather those weeks or months were spent somewhere warm and safe, surrounded by affection, than sitting in a cage because nobody wanted an old or poorly cat.
And perhaps that’s what appeals to me most about the idea.
You wouldn’t be saving every cat.
You couldn’t.
Nobody can.
But you could make a difference to this one.
And then the next one.
And the next.
Sometimes we get so caught up worrying about whether we can change the whole world that we forget we can make one tiny corner of it better.
For one person.
And if I could spend my working day doing that?
Honestly, I think I’d consider myself incredibly lucky.
There’s that saying:
“Find a job you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.”
I’m not sure that’s entirely true.
I suspect cleaning litter trays for twelve elderly cats would occasionally feel very much like work.
But if the reward was knowing that, for however long they had left, those cats were warm, comfortable, loved and safe…
I think I’d cope with the litter trays.
After all, what better way could there be to spend a life than making another life a little bit better?
Even if that life happens to shed fur on absolutely everything.
Share a hobby you’ve picked up recently — what got you into it?
Photography.
Now, before anyone gets excited, I should probably clarify something.
I’ve described myself as a poet for quite a few years now.
And, increasingly, I’ve started describing myself as a photographer too.
But photography?
Until relatively recently, it was just something I did with my phone.
That’s it.
No fancy camera.
No collection of lenses.
No camera bag weighing more than the average toddler.
Just me, my phone, and the occasional, “Ooh, that looks nice.”
I’d be on holiday and see the photographers wandering around with all their kit.
Camera hanging around their neck.
Bag over their shoulder.
Various lenses.
Tripods.
Enough equipment to suggest they were either photographing the Grand Canyon or preparing for a small military operation.
Meanwhile, I’d pull my phone out of my pocket.
Click.
Done.
And, to be fair, I was happy enough with that.
I’ve always enjoyed taking photographs. Nature, birds, beaches, random things that catch my eye.
People had occasionally told me I had “an eye” for photography.
I never really knew what that meant.
I still don’t completely.
I’ve never studied photography properly. I don’t pretend to know all the technical terminology, and there was a time when things like focal lengths, apertures and shutter speeds might as well have been written in ancient Greek.
Then I turned 50.
And decided that apparently I was going to buy myself a proper camera.
Enter the Pentax K-x.
A camera that, even when I bought it, was hardly the latest bit of technology.
12.4 megapixels.
Which, compared with today’s cameras, sounds positively prehistoric.
But I loved it.
Suddenly, photography wasn’t just about pointing my phone at something and pressing the button.
There were settings.
There were choices.
There was experimentation.
And, perhaps most importantly, there were lenses.
Oh my word.
The lenses.
You start with one and think, That’s enough.
Then you discover another lens.
Then another.
Then you convince yourself that this particular lens is absolutely essential because apparently you cannot photograph a bird properly without it.
Before you know it, you’ve gone from:
“I take pictures with my phone.”
to:
“Hang on, which lens am I taking today?”
And somewhere along the way, something changed.
Photography stopped being something I occasionally did.
It became something I wanted to learn.
Something I wanted to get better at.
Something I looked forward to.
I started noticing things differently.
The light.
The weather.
Birds sitting in places they probably shouldn’t be.
The way the sea changes from one day to the next.
A moment that might only last a second.
And that’s probably the biggest difference.
When you’ve got a camera with you, you start looking.
Really looking.
I’ve found myself standing somewhere I’d walked past a hundred times and suddenly seeing something I’d never properly noticed before.
That fascinates me.
Because perhaps photography isn’t really about the camera.
Perhaps it’s about paying attention.
The camera is just the excuse.
These days, I’m still learning.
I still take photographs that make me think, Well, that didn’t quite work.
And occasionally I take one that makes me stop and think, Bloody hell, I actually did that.
Those are the moments that keep me coming back.
Photography has become another creative outlet alongside my poetry.
With poetry, I use words to capture a thought, a feeling, a moment.
With photography, I use an image.
Different tools.
Same basic idea.
Tell a story.
Capture something.
Make someone stop for a second and look.
So yes, I suppose I’ve picked up a new hobby.
Although, knowing me, calling it a hobby is probably underselling it now.
It’s become a passion.
Another string to my bow.
And somewhere along the way, the bloke who used to watch photographers carrying all that expensive-looking kit around while happily using his phone has become one of the people carrying the bloody kit.
What’s the weirdest coincidence you’ve ever experienced?
That’s actually a surprisingly difficult question.
I mean, I’ve had plenty of weird coincidences over the years. Some are the sort of thing you mention in passing and everyone says, “Blimey, that’s strange.”
Then there are the ones that make you stop and wonder whether the universe has got a slightly twisted sense of humour.
For me, it has to be the story of how I met Mrs Bob.
Let’s rewind a bit.
I was twenty years old and had absolutely no idea who my future wife was.
I joined the Army.
Nothing particularly unusual about that.
Except that I signed up on Mrs Bob’s birthday.
At the time, I obviously didn’t know that.
She was just some girl somewhere in the world, living her life, while I was about to start mine on a completely different path.
Then came my second posting.
Ten miles from her home.
Again, I didn’t know her, and we lived around 250 miles from each other.
Didn’t know she existed… Didn’t know that somewhere just down the road was the woman I’d eventually marry.
Life carried on.
Years passed.
And eventually, somehow, our paths finally crossed on Twitter. I followed someone who happened to follow Mrs Bob, and th next day, I saw a post from her.
And here’s where it gets properly weird.
She posted that she was reading a book about string theory and multiverses.
Yes. String theory. Multiverses.
The stuff involving tiny vibrating strings, extra dimensions and the possibility that there might be countless versions of reality existing alongside our own.
Because apparently a normal conversation about the weather wasn’t enough.
There I was, having spent years unknowingly being stationed within ten miles of the woman who would become my wife, and eventually we actually started talking because of a book about the fundamental nature of the universe.
You couldn’t make it up.
And that’s the bit I find fascinating.
At twenty, I was making decisions that I thought were simply about my own future.
I had no idea that one of those decisions would put me within ten miles of the person I’d eventually, many years later, spend the rest of my life with.
And she had absolutely no idea either.
And at the time we first spoke on Twitter, neither of us was looking for someone to love.
There wasn’t some grand romantic plan. No cosmic dating algorithm. No mysterious voice from the heavens saying, “Bob, this is your future wife.”
We were just two people getting on with their lives.
I’ve always liked the idea of parallel universes.
Somewhere, perhaps, there’s another version of me who didn’t join the Army. Another who got posted somewhere completely different. There’s another Mrs Bob who never picked up that particular book, and I never spoke to her.
Is our meeting a strange coincidence? Almost certainly.
Fate? Who knows.
Some days I think it’s simply a wonderful collection of random events that happened to line up perfectly.
Other days, when I look back at the sheer number of things that had to happen for us to eventually meet, I can’t help but wonder.
Maybe the universe really does have a sense of humour.
And if there are infinite universes out there, I’d like to think that somewhere there’s another Bob and another Mrs Bob sitting down with a cup of tea, discussing exactly the same thing.
Although knowing my luck, that version of me probably also hasn’t figured out how to use the washing machine.
The Ramblings of Bob Christian 