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.
You know the sort. You go to the opticians, sit in the chair while someone shines various bits of machinery into your eyes, reads out letters that get progressively smaller, and eventually tells you that your eyesight is apparently not quite as good as you thought it was.
Except…
Mine are a little bit different.
One lens is Plano.
In other words, completely plain. No prescription. Nothing.
The other one had a very, very small prescription in it.
And I mean tiny.
So tiny, in fact, that I’ve now outgrown the prescription altogether.
Technically, I don’t need the glasses anymore.
But I still wear them.
Why?
Because they are my Clarke Kent glasses.
Yes.
Really.
Those of you who know me will already know that I’m a massive comic book nerd, so perhaps this shouldn’t come as much of a surprise.
But there’s actually a bit more to it than that.
You see, glasses can create a little physical barrier between me and the world.
Not a huge one.
Nobody looking at me would think, “Blimey, that bloke has constructed a defensive perimeter around himself.”
But they do something.
Much like sunglasses do.
For years, I’ve found sunglasses useful in social situations because they make eye contact easier. They create that tiny bit of separation between me and the person I’m talking to.
I can still see them.
I can still listen.
I can still have the conversation.
But somehow, having something between their eyes and mine makes me feel a little less exposed.
A little less vulnerable.
And that can make a surprisingly big difference.
The problem with sunglasses, of course, is that they’re not exactly practical all the time.
At night?
Not really.
In a dark room?
Probably not.
When it’s raining and the sky looks like it’s personally offended by the existence of daylight?
Definitely not.
And wearing sunglasses indoors can occasionally result in people wondering whether I’m about to perform at a nightclub rather than attend a perfectly ordinary meeting.
So these glasses fill the gap.
They look like normal glasses.
Because, well, they are.
Nobody needs to know that one lens is doing absolutely nothing and the other one is basically on permanent holiday.
They give me that little barrier without making the world around me darker.
And when I’m nervous, particularly if I’m standing on a stage or speaking in front of people, they help.
Stage fright is an odd thing.
You can know exactly what you want to say.
You can have prepared.
You can know that the people in front of you aren’t actually waiting for you to fail.
And yet your brain can still decide:
“Excellent. This is the moment we panic.”
Having my glasses on gives me something.
A tiny bit of confidence.
A little shield.
Perhaps even a psychological costume.
Which brings me back to Clarke Kent.
Because Superman has always fascinated me.
Not simply because he can fly, lift cars and apparently survive being thrown through buildings.
It’s the idea of the alter ego.
Clark Kent puts on a pair of glasses and suddenly he’s just an ordinary bloke.
Nobody looks twice.
Nobody expects him to save the world.
And while I’m certainly not claiming that my glasses give me superpowers
They help me feel like I’m wearing my social armour.
They give me a little bit of distance.
A little bit of protection.
And sometimes, that’s all you need.
I think we all have things like that.
Little routines.
Objects.
Clothes.
Jewellery.
Music.
Something we carry with us that makes the difficult things feel slightly easier.
They might look completely insignificant to somebody else.
But they aren’t insignificant to us.
For me, apparently, it’s a pair of slightly ridiculous glasses with one lens that doesn’t need a prescription and another that doesn’t need one anymore.
To everyone else, they’re just glasses.
To me?
They’re my Clarke Kent glasses.
And sometimes, even when you don’t need a prescription, you still need the glasses.
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.
If you could go back and witness any historical event, which one would you pick?
This is one of those questions that sounds incredibly easy.
Until you actually try to answer it.
If I could go back and witness any moment in history, what would I choose?
There are, obviously, quite a few possibilities.
I could go back to the time of the dinosaurs.
Although, having thought about this for approximately three seconds, I suspect I’d spend most of my time hiding behind a tree while something enormous wandered past.
Not exactly the historical experience I had in mind.
I could witness the signing of some great historical document.
I could stand on the sidelines of a famous battle.
I could meet one of the great writers, scientists, artists or thinkers who changed the world.
Or I could go and see something completely ordinary that, at the time, nobody realised would become history.
But there’s one moment I keep coming back to.
Apollo 11.
20th July 1969.
The day human beings first stepped onto another world.
I’ve always had a bit of a thing about space.
Give me an old science-fiction programme, a ridiculously complicated spaceship and the vague possibility that one day humanity might wander around the universe and I’m interested.
I blame Red Dwarf.
Or Star Trek.
Possibly both.
But Apollo 11 feels different.
Because it actually happened.
On 16th July 1969, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins climbed aboard a Saturn V and left Earth.
Four days later, Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the Moon while Collins remained in orbit above them.
And then came that moment.
The ladder.
The lunar surface.
The first human footprint in the dust.
I’d want to be there.
Not watching the footage on an old television.
Not seeing it years later in a documentary.
Actually standing there.
Which does raise one or two minor logistical problems.
For starters, I’d need a time machine.
Then I’d have to explain to NASA why a bloke from the future had suddenly appeared at the launch site.
And I imagine that conversation would probably end with somebody asking me where I got the time machine.
At which point I’d have to admit that I hadn’t actually thought that far ahead.
Assuming I got past that part, I’d probably be told not to touch anything.
Which is probably sensible.
Because if you’ve spent years and an enormous amount of money building a machine capable of taking three people to the Moon, the last thing you need is some bloke from 2026 wandering around saying:
“What’s this button do?”
But imagine being there for the launch.
Standing somewhere nearby as that enormous Saturn V came to life.
The noise.
The vibration.
The sheer scale of it.
We sometimes forget just how ridiculous the whole thing was.
Human beings looked up at the Moon and decided they were going to go there.
So they built a machine.
A very, very big machine.
And somehow, it worked.
That alone would be worth seeing.
But I don’t think the bit that would affect me most would necessarily be Armstrong stepping onto the surface.
I think it might be looking back at Earth.
That tiny blue planet sitting in the blackness.
Because Apollo 11 wasn’t just about getting to the Moon.
It changed the way we could see ourselves.
From up there, the borders disappear.
You can’t see countries.
You can’t see political arguments.
You can’t see someone’s bank balance.
You can’t see the things we spend so much of our time arguing about.
You just see Earth.
One small blue world.
And on another world, three human beings.
That thought gets me every time.
And perhaps that’s why I’d choose Apollo 11.
It’s not really because I’m fascinated by rockets.
Although I am.
It’s not because I’d want to meet Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins.
Although, obviously, that would be rather brilliant.
And it’s not even because I’d want to take photographs.
Although knowing me, I’d probably spend half the event worrying about whether I’d brought enough film.
I’d want to be there because it was one of those incredibly rare moments when human beings did something that seemed almost impossible.
Simply because someone decided it was worth trying.
And I think that’s the part I like most.
History tends to remember the names at the front.
Armstrong.
Aldrin.
Collins.
And rightly so.
But Apollo 11 wasn’t built by three people.
It was built by thousands.
Engineers.
Scientists.
Technicians.
Mathematicians.
People checking calculations.
People testing equipment.
People finding problems.
People fixing those problems.
People staying late because something wasn’t quite right.
People doing jobs that, at the time, probably felt like ordinary work.
Until you put all those ordinary jobs together.
Then something extraordinary happens.
That’s probably one of the things I find most fascinating about history.
We like to turn it into stories about individuals.
One person had the idea.
One person made the decision.
One person took the risk.
One person changed the world.
But most of the time, that’s not really how it works.
History is usually thousands of people doing their little bit.
Most of them never becoming famous.
Most of their names never appearing in a school textbook.
But without them, the famous moment wouldn’t happen.
And I think there’s something rather lovely about that.
So yes.
If I could go back and witness any moment in history, I’d choose Apollo 11.
I’d find somewhere safe to stand.
I’d stay out of everyone’s way.
I’d probably take far too many photographs.
I’d try very hard not to touch anything.
And when Armstrong finally stepped down onto the Moon, I suspect I’d just stand there completely gobsmacked.
Because sometimes you don’t need to understand a moment.
You don’t need to be important.
You don’t need to be part of the story.
Sometimes it’s enough just to be there.
To watch something happen that nobody had ever done before.
And to realise, even for a few seconds, that you’re watching history being made.
That’s where I’d like to be.
Right there.
On the sidelines.
Probably with a camera.
And almost certainly wondering how the hell I’m going to get back home.
If you’d asked me this question twenty years ago, I’d probably have said no.
Chaos was something to be avoided. Something that interrupted plans, made life difficult, and generally arrived at exactly the wrong moment. Like seagulls at a picnic or printers five minutes before a deadline.
These days?
I think chaos gets a bit of an unfair reputation.
Don’t get me wrong—I wouldn’t recommend living in constant turmoil. None of us thrive under endless stress. We all need moments of calm, stability and routine. They allow us to recover, reflect and simply breathe.
But the opposite is equally true.
Too much order can become its own prison.
Nature understands this far better than we do. Every ecosystem exists because opposing forces work together. Growth and decay. Creation and destruction. Day and night. Even at the smallest level, the universe is a constant dance between order and randomness.
Without variation, nothing evolves.
Without disruption, nothing adapts.
Without a little chaos… life becomes remarkably stagnant.
As artists, I think we understand this instinctively.
The perfect photograph rarely happens because everything went exactly to plan. Sometimes it’s the unexpected shaft of light breaking through the clouds. The bird that lands exactly where you weren’t expecting it. The rain that forces you to see a familiar landscape from a completely different perspective.
Poetry works much the same way.
Some of my favourite lines have arrived uninvited, usually while my brain has wandered off somewhere else entirely. They weren’t carefully engineered. They simply appeared, carrying truths I hadn’t consciously realised I was thinking about.
Chaos has a habit of introducing ideas that routine never would.
Science even backs this up.
Complex systems often need a degree of randomness to remain healthy. Too much order leads to rigidity. Too much chaos leads to collapse. Somewhere in the middle lies resilience—the ability to bend without breaking.
Perhaps we’re not so different.
We need structure to keep us grounded.
We need unpredictability to keep us growing.
The trick isn’t eliminating chaos.
It’s learning not to fear it.
Some of the biggest changes in my own life arrived disguised as disruption. At the time they felt uncomfortable, even frightening. Looking back, many of them became turning points that led me somewhere better than I’d originally planned.
Life has an odd sense of humour like that.
It rarely asks permission before teaching us something important.
So yes, I think a little chaos is good for us.
Not because it’s pleasant.
Not because it’s easy.
But because it reminds us that we’re still capable of adapting, creating and discovering new versions of ourselves.
After all, if every painting were perfectly symmetrical, every poem followed exactly the same rhythm, and every photograph captured the obvious angle…
Art would become predictable.
And life would be rather dull.
Sometimes it’s the beautifully untidy bits that make the whole picture worth looking at.
The Ramblings of Bob Christian 