Every time we say goodbye: the truth about doing long distance

 

I have a love/hate relationship with Heathrow Airport.

If I’m standing in Arrivals, it’s the greatest place in the world because I’m waiting for my fiancé. John lives in America (in Minnesota, if you know your states), so we only get to see each other every eight weeks or so.

I get there for the time that his flight lands and strategise and elbow my way to the front of the silver barriers, then spend the next 60 minutes anxiously scanning the faces of people pushing trolleys, dragging kids and shivering in shorts until I see him.

This also gives me the chance to watch other people’s reunions, which is the best way to pass time when you’re a nosy people-watcher in a good mood. Last time a family with Northern accents had brought along a scarecrow called Tommy, and I watched a tanned, slightly dazed-looking teenager run straight into his parents’ outstretched arms. You only get that in movies or episodes of Parenthood or at the airport.

There are all these mini heart-lurching moments while you wait, like when you think a man with a similar haircut could be him but isn’t, or that guy who has a red hoody is him but isn’t, and then suddenly John is there, walking towards me with a massive grin.

There’s nothing like that first hug after eight weeks apart.

Imagine holding your breath and ducking under water. Your heart is still pumping but your whole body starts prodding you to get oxygen. Your lungs burn and your brain struggles to focus on anything other than breathing.

When you resurface and take that first enormous gulp of air, you understand how completely brilliant and perfect being able to breathe is. Seriously, WOW. You feel alive, in the most basic but fantastic way. Of course, after the first couple of minutes it becomes less amazing and just regular, the way you’re supposed to live – until the next time someone throws you into the water.

After that first hug it’s like we’re continuing from the last day we saw each other. He’ll hold my hand while he tells me about the annoying guy on the plane; one of us buys coffee from Costa and the other gets a table; we get on the Tube to Central with the suitcases, and laugh at adverts.

We always have that invisible link that you carry around with everyone you love even when you’re on your own, like a notebook of names, photos and facts about them stored in your heart. Even if you’re just thinking about whether you remembered to buy grapes or what was the name of that actress in that thing, the notebook is still safe in you somewhere. It opens up when you get a message from them or you find a stupid t-shirt slogan you think they would laugh at, or see a weird-looking cat that you want to tell them about. Sometimes, when you miss them, you open it up yourself and flick through conversations, snapshots and memories.

Another way of thinking about our relationship when we’re not physically together is that it’s like a shared folder on Google Drive. It floats somewhere in this thing we know as the Cloud, and while the thing it is – the folder icon we see on our screens – is intangible, it does exist. It also has 3D components scattered around the world, in the form of server centres and wires, whose unique properties can be matched up to form that thing we know functions and operates and is completely real, even if we can’t poke it or pick it up.

The weeks in between go in phases. Often weekends are harder than days when you can force your brain to think about work for eight hours. Being busy is the aspirin to your headache. In week one you reluctantly relearn your solo routine, resenting something that seemed so normal just eight days ago. By week two that muscle memory has come back and you go into autopilot.

Weeks three to five you waver between anger, sadness and being OK. You find films to watch, meet up with friends and family, read, walk, run, see art and photography, and that stuff makes it better. Weeks six to seven you finally have a sizeable chunk to look back on and you realise you only have two more weeks to go and it's like waking up on the first sunny day.

Week eight feels like some arsehole hit the breaks so it takes forever, as you find yourself counting days and then hours.

When we are together we still have that notebook and that shared folder, but we also get to have a physical presence - to act and be seen as a team. We get to eat Ben & Jerry’s in Leicester Square or walk along the Mississippi or get excited about dinosaurs in museums or ride alarmingly shaky roller coasters. Being together is going from a Mini to a sports car. We are not the recording of a favourite song: we are the live version played on stage that electrifies every nerve.

The good thing about having to go over an ocean and some more land and stuff to see each other is that we’ve been able to travel to different cities and stay in lots of hotels. I love hotels. There’s something so luxurious about being able to walk from your bedroom into your bathroom without having to put clothes on, and the TV is right there and you only have one suitcase and someone else is cleaning your sheets.

But while those adventures have been great fun, what I miss the most are everyday things. Cooking pizza together is this big culinary project, as is going to the supermarket, driving for seven hours to Chicago while listening to morbid episodes of Serial, and just hanging around reading or watching Netflix with my feet warming up on his legs.

I can leave a room and come back thirty minutes later and he’ll still be there. I go to sleep and when I wake up I reach over and he’s warm and solid right next to me, not just a voice on a cold plastic phone connected by a dodgy WiFi signal.

Even seeing ourselves together in photos is this weirdly intriguing experience, like going back in time and showing a Roman what he looks like with a camera, because it’s this visual proof that we existed in the world in the same space at the same time. Plus, hey, there’s the Tower of London, that was fun, and damn, my hair actually looked so good that day.

And then suddenly, just as you get used to this solid, 3D life – to the oxygen you were missing – you’re back in an airport and this time it’s the Departures gate. You take one more deep breath – one more hug, one more kiss, one more moment to feel on your skin and hold onto – and then you say goodbye, turn to leave, and you take the plunge again.

How it felt to be proposed to

Dramatic re-enactment

Being proposed to is something that girls are supposed to think about. I know this because I have read magazines, watched more than one rom com and went to an all girls’ school. Once, in a year 10 geography lesson, I overheard one girl confidently telling another that she intended her intended to propose to her in a hot air balloon. Never mind that we were about 15 at the time, and as far as I know the proposer in this plan was nowhere on the scene.

I reckon that we first learn this narrative from fairy tales and their Disney rehashes. After a bit of angst you’re going to stumble across the prince, face minor peril along the lines of losing your voice/having a hit put out by your murderous stepmother/being put into coma, or some other routine Jerry Springer-type stuff, and then after a snog or two you get married.

This storyboard is further backed up by a swathe of bossy novels, which spend about 300 pages pretending that the dashing hero is never going to propose to the plucky heroine and then, bam, 83 hours of your life later that is exactly what happens. You nearly had me there Austen, you wily minx. When those have started to seem a bit samey, you move on to glossy rom coms starring beautiful, funny, successful grown women all pining over the question of getting to that moment. Oh do shut up, Bridget.

Obviously, the initial reasoning behind this obsession was based on what for most women in the Western world is now a thankfully defunct social order. Since women can now earn our own money and pay our own bills and live alone, we’re not relying on some guy to come along and provide a way out of the parental home, plus a bit of cash. We get to find other purposes in life, like a high flying career as a trapeze artist or travelling to every abandoned McDonalds in America, or learning how to do the scorpion pose.

And yet society is still so in love with love that there remains to this day sensible adult people who spend time fantasising about their ideal proposal. There are hundreds of thousands of videos on YouTube to give you ideas, like the guy who buttered his girlfriend up with a puppy first (cue hysterical tears) and put the ring around its neck (cue sounds only the puppy could hear). There’s the guy who ropes his family and friends into performing a choreographed parade to Bruno Mars’ Marry You. You will cry. And hate yourself for it. And then, of course, there are the ones that don’t go so well, generally at sports games, but before we start dying inside for these guys, remember that these are probably staged. Or that’s what they’ll claim.

I am not someone who planned out how I wanted a future mystical man to propose. This is partly because, as the child of divorced parents, I didn’t think I would ever be getting married. Maybe some time after 35. And more likely never.

I had fully planned to be an old lady with purple hair, living in a New York apartment crammed with books and mad artefacts from my global travels, eating granola all day and wearing ballgowns and Converse because there was no guy around to be confused about my eclectic fashion sense. And then I went to Berlin and met someone who switched the gear on that grand life plan. Insert long story involving a deployment to Iraq and lots of Skype and over a year waiting to see each other again. I was sitting alone in Phoenix Airport, waiting for my flight back to Heathrow, when I knew that I was going to marry him, in the same unquestioning and total way that I know where the Tube doors will stop and which is the squeaky stair in my childhood home and that it’s always 5 o’clock somewhere.

Four months and a trip to London and a trip to Vegas and more Skype and many discussions later, including a 6am inquiry about what ring I wanted (er, huh?), we’re walking back to my flat after watching Bridge of Spies. Because nothing says romance like Cold War dramas starring Tom Hanks.

It’s a bit damp but mercifully mild, and late enough on a Tuesday night before Christmas that the Southbank has mostly cleared of tourists. I’m full because I've had nearly an entire bag of slightly stale-tasting sweet cinema popcorn and a cheeseburger and chips. My hair is all over the place because of the drizzle. But I don’t really care because he’s actually here, in 3D, and he has warm hands, and I have a sneaky suspicion I know what’s coming.

I’m intuitive, OK.

We get to our favourite bridge, which has a view east of Waterloo Bridge, Southbank, St Paul’s and the Shard in the distance. He pulls me gently over to the silver railings. And he gets out this white box. And time stands still.

Turns out getting proposed to is a lot like deciding to have sex for the first time. Throughout your life you’ve heard that this is a pivotal moment that will mark a dividing line between the time before you knew what all the fuss was about, and the time when you’re in the know. But it’s actually the decision itself that is more important, more formative, than the exact moment.

Standing in front of this man, who is funny and kind and maddening and caring, I decided that despite years of being steadfastly against the idea of committing to one person forever, actually, I’m more than willing to give it everything for him.

And like sex, you’re still the same person after it. That moment doesn’t change you. It’s more that you're knowingly going from one stage of your life to the next. Like levelling up or birthdays in The Sims when they spin round, lights burst out and now they’re a spotty teenager.

Then a drunk guy will come up and congratulate you on being madly in love, and you will smile and nod until he leaves.

I still don’t think everyone should get married, because you know what works for you better than some tax man or priest or nosy relative or diamond salesman. And there's no point planning how to get proposed to, whatever gender you are, because you won't know how it feels until you're there. If the method of question-asking is the most important thing to you, you've kind of missed the long-term implications.

I remember looking across the water as we turned to walk the rest of the way home. The view was the same, we were the same, but while crossing from one end of the bridge to the other, my life had definitely changed in a way I wouldn't have predicted for myself, despite all that Disney. So instead of trying to guess where my steps would fall, I squeezed his warm hand with mine and kept walking.

This old thing?

Long to rain over us: why rain is sometimes pretty wonderful

Rain has a bad reputation. It is the ruiner of barbecues, outdoor weddings and once immaculate hairstyles. Many artists have turned it into a metaphor for horrible, soul-crushing sadness. It's hard to hold a candle in it in cold November. Don't leave cakes out in it. The 15 July, St Swithin's Day, is even dedicated to determining whether we're going to have to put up with 40 more days of it.

But really, everyone, most of the time it's not all that bad. Here's a short tribute to the stuff that got Gene Kelly singin'.

You get to wear wellies
While everyone else is doing the oh-shit-I'm-wearing-Uggs two step around all the puddles, you, the master of the weather, stride confidently through them, feeling like the genius you are. And some even have jelly bean designs.

It is the bringer of rainbows
The symbol of wonderful institutions such as peace and Pride and Skittles only exists because of rain.

It inspires human resourcefulness
Rain is nature's version of a surprise quiz, designed to see who on our streets can handle this bonus obstacle. Faced with a rainstorm, people are forced to get creative. Will you cover up with a free newspaper and be scrubbing ink off your hands for days? Will you sacrifice 5p to rig up a fetching plastic bag head scarf? Or are you going to just make a run for it, as if you can outpace the weather? Total Wipeout for the masses.

We suddenly have something to talk about
'Horrible weather isn't it?' 'Did you hear that storm last night?' 'It's a bit damp outside!' are considered riveting conversational openers in Britain.

Sometimes it understands you
I don't want to walk through brilliant sunshine, surrounded by singing birds and smug daffodils when I'm feeling enraged. I want moody rock video, mascara-smudging, hair-drenching, splashing-off-the-pavement rain. Call it pathetic fallacy if you will, but I'm not ashamed.

You finally get to use the umbrella you've been lugging around
They called you paranoid but who's laughing now? You can get three, maybe three and a half, uses out of this thing before it surrenders to the wind and snaps like an After Eight, so you're not missing an opportunity to get it out. Plus some even have jelly bean designs.

It's sexy
Books and movies and TV shows aren't just using rain to show us that their characters are deeply emotionally perturbed at how things turned out. How many times have writers sat around agonising over the missing quality to make that romantic climax scene really work and suddenly thought, 'I know - we'll add rain!' It makes sense: we know they've got to really want that snog if they're willing to get soaked to the skin for it.

No, it's not The Notebook. Yes, that is a cat.

Pavements look ridiculously good in rain
Not just because it washes the layer of crap off them, either. Street lamps glimmer and gleam like a light show beneath your feet. Here's the photographic version.

It clears the streets quicker than a tiger on the loose
Goodbye, pesky slow-moving tourists and families with five children spread across the pavement. Hello intrepid rain lovers, charging through the water with purpose. Just be sure to dodge the umbrellas.

There's that magical 'smell after the rain'
I vaguely remember the air smelling better after a good old rainstorm, but that was before I moved to London, where it always smells vaguely like the colour grey.

It's better than snow
Take all your issues with rain, freeze them, and let them linger around for a week before turning to brown mush. Feel like hugging a raindrop yet?

It makes being inside that much better
You won't appreciate the sheer joy of being dry and warm and drinking tea until you've got a storm to compare it against.

Knowing, loving and losing my grandparents, 14 years apart

Gramps and I, December 2008

Things I remember about my grandma’s death. She died 13 days before my eleventh birthday, in November 2001. She’d started having headaches in about September. I remember because it was around the time of 9/11, and the combination of events made it seem like there was this sombre shadow over the world.

She was in hospital from about October. I remember sitting in the waiting room in Watford General. There was a vending machine that served what I thought was the world’s greatest hot chocolate. It was the kind made with hot water, which formed these little lumps you could scoop out with your finger and bite into to release a burst of sugared chocolate powder. I would take this full-scale stuffed toy dog with me every time we went. It was a Yorkshire terrier (non-dog speakers’ translation: little, long hair, yippy).

I remember the smell. It must have been a certain brand of disinfectant that smelled forcibly clean. It wasn’t overpowering or heavy, but it seeped through the air and into your clothes and into my grandma, pushing out her usual scent of cardigans and walks in fields and cigarettes.

I was only 10 and no one I was so close to had died before. I believed she was going to get better with the same level of helpless faith that I had in God with a capital G and true love and my parents always being right. Every time the adults had one of their conversations in low, worried tones, peppered with medical terms and the phrase ‘brain tumour’, I maintained that simple expectation that she would be fine. Of course she would be fine. I knew they were all worried, but my belief never faltered.

I can tell you the exact place I was sitting when my mum told us that she was going to die. I was in the back right seat of her Ford Mondeo. My sister was in the passenger seat, my brother was next to me. We were going round a bend on the A404, at the point where you can take a right and go to this tiny village that is basically just a pub and some bored sheep. She said, ‘You do know that Grandma isn’t going to get better?’ None of us answered, but it felt like something I’d put high on a shelf fell off and shattered. I could hear Claire sobbing in the front.

So I only had 10 and a bit years with my grandma. I remember her short grey hair and her big round glasses, which she was always pushing up the bridge of her nose. I remember she made really good tents out of bedsheets and read us stories about teddy bears going to a haunted house and let us run through their tiny bungalow and jump on the bed like little maniacs. I remember her long floral skirts. I remember the taste of her ham sandwiches: airy white bread, olive spread, and ham sliced to this certain thickness, all cut into squares. I remember long walks and feeding ducks and the time this swan went for me (they are seriously vicious bastards) and she stepped right between us, put her finger up and said, ‘No.’ You bet that swan backed the hell off.

I sometimes wonder what our relationship would have been like if she’d known me through all my teenage years and as an adult. Those are the tough ones, after all, the ones where your generational differences start to show and you have to find the balance between needing them and loving them all the time, and reminding them that you are your own person, capable of surviving away from them and making your own life decisions.

Life changed for us all after Grandma Diz died. We all called her Dizzy, but her actually rather excellent name was Audrey Beryl May. I learned that the world isn’t fair, in the way that kids only really learn things when bad stuff happens to them. Meanwhile, in grown up world, my dad and aunt had lost their mother and my grandad was coping with losing the love of his life.

I won’t pretend that I remember what my grandparents’ marriage was like, because as I said before, I was under 11 the entire time, and mostly concerned with my Anastasia Barbie and the fate of the Spice Girls. But I remember my grandad on the day of the funeral. He looked lost. Like someone who’d been dropped in a desert and left to navigate his way out alone, with no compass or map to help.

Slowly and with lots of help from my aunt and Dad, he put together a life. At first, he would still pick my sister and I up from school on a Tuesday. I would make us both tea – his very strong, one Sweetex – and we’d have to sit and try to make conversation across this enormous gap of experience and age.

A lot of people, including both my parents, several employers and café customers, have bemoaned my tea-making skills. But never Gramps.

So I went through my awkward teenage years with my quiet, withdrawn grandad instead of my lively, fun-loving grandma. He wasn’t a great conversationalist, especially not with a 13 year old girl. I would avoid talking about her for fear of upsetting him. These conversations were tricky, but I did learn about his life.

He was in the army doing national service, and was stationed in Italy at one point. He was a crack shot and won a medal in a shooting competition, but he couldn’t afford to keep it up after leaving. He worked in a metal workshop – he was very good at shaping it into whatever he wanted. He needed a constant supply of Wine Gums. He was the kind of loyal Arsenal fan who wouldn’t shout at the TV but just stick out the rough and smooth with determined faith. When he was younger he enjoyed playing football, and he was still into golf and snooker, but those things gradually left him when the call of the armchair in the bungalow he had shared with Grandma became more appealing than a bustling snooker hall.

What was most welcoming was that Gramps was not one of those people fiercely clinging on to outdated values purely because they can’t accept the world has changed. He lived in a sort of bubble, with two TVs and the curtains drawn. He wasn’t interested enough in the world to judge people beyond whether they were hurting others or not. I never heard him say anything racist or homophobic. His motto was ‘Each to their own’, even if he couldn’t quite make sense of the ins and outs of things.

Yes, he could be difficult, and his waning interest in leaving the house and life beyond knowing the lottery numbers, Arsenal score and that we were all OK was frustrating, especially for people who did a lot for him with very little thanks. He was stubborn and tactless, often telling me that he didn’t have much to say and he did nothing all day. Not the greatest conversation starters. But that makes it all the more touching that he did push aside the fog of gloom that descended when Grandma died in order to call us just to say hello.

He’d had headaches and neck pains and emphysema for many years, which made breathing and moving difficult. He still got washed and dressed every day, even if it was just to lie on his bed. His hearing was good enough to listen to a conversation, and it was only in the last few months over Christmas that he became forgetful and confused to a worrying degree. I got to tell him that I’m getting married, which he was delighted about. In January we found out that he had an infection in his pacemaker, which could possibly be treated but would result in reduced mobility. Ultimately, it was the combination of this and an intense hip operation that finally wore him down, and he died at around 8pm on 20 January.

I had an idyllic child’s relationship with Grandma Diz that never had to overcome divided opinions or tension or the strain of miscommunication. And I also feel privileged to have got to know my grandad’s white haired self, as well as a snapshot of him in his prime, over the years when our age gaps made communicating that much harder. He might not have been perfect, but he was him, and that was enough. And I will miss him for being perfectly, imperfectly himself.

Love and sorry and old bananas: 25 things I've learned by 25

Let’s be clear: this list is not the sum total of my knowledge of the world. For starters, I have learned more than one thing a year, and there’s nothing from 16 years of academic education on here. But just for fun, here are some basic truths and not so simple lessons from 25 years as me.

1. Don’t apologise when you don’t need to

As a British woman I got served with a double dose of ‘Please let me apologise profusely for things that aren’t my fault.’ Apologetic words that enable this condition include the obvious ‘sorry,’ plus ‘just’ and ‘only’. Yes, you absolutely need to say sorry when you’ve screwed up, even if you’re terrified that the other person won’t forgive you. But don’t apologise for your existence or for doing your best. Treat these words like morphine: use sparingly so their impact is really felt when it’s needed.

2. Put Vaseline on your heels to stop your shoes rubbing

You’re welcome, poor little ankles. Also, if you’re too lazy to properly remove all your eye makeup before you go to sleep (bonus life lesson: always remove your eye makeup before you go to sleep) you can put just a little bit of Vaseline on your eyelashes and you’ll wake up without that ridiculous black gunk in your eyes.

3. Falling in love is like waking up with superpowers

Suddenly there’s a force within you that makes you want to do things that previously would seem impossible and mad (like scale tall buildings and shoot webs out your wrists and get married). It’s fun and scary and inspiring so make sure you use it to do something good.

4. Being in love requires effort

It’s answering their texts and being somewhere at the time you say you’ll be there, and calmly talking about how you feel when they’re pissing you off so you can work it out, and not holding a grudge. Which all sounds like a ridiculous amount of unpaid labour to the merrily single. The magic trick love performs is that you’re transformed into someone willing to do all that plus unload the dishwasher and overlook the fact they like Top Gear in exchange for the chance to have them around.

5. You can go against people you like

Peers, parents and friends will have expectations for your life, from what you wear to where you work to how often you go out and get hammered to your reproductive adventures. Understand that deciding to go against them might well cause fallout, but you don’t have to live out the narrative someone else has written for you.

6. There’s a right way to carry takeaway coffee cups

With the hole you drink out of facing away from you. It’s a law of nature that coffee is drawn to clothes, especially if you’re wearing something white, new and/or expensive. Which is why they never serve coffee in takeaway cups at weddings.

  

7. Courage doesn’t mean never being scared

To paraphrase Mufasa. It means being able to admit fear and go crashing on with it anyway. Go on that rollercoaster, get that tattoo, watch that movie that had the world’s toughest critic sleeping with the light on for three months. Take the job with the paycut because it’s your dream, ask out that person you’ve been gazing at longingly for two years, seven months, three days and about an hour and thirty minutes. Not everyone is a firefighter running into a burning building but we all have to be brave in tiny and massive ways.

8. Drink lemonade when you have a sore throat

Let it go flat and chug it straight from the bottle. No one will ever believe it works, but as long as you no longer sound like Darth Vader after he’s had a long night of karaoke and cigarettes, who cares?

9. Never brush curly hair

Ignore the books, movies and adverts that show someone brushing out spiralling ringlets. In reality, you will end up looking like Hermione circa The Philosopher’s Stone. It wasn’t magic that fixed her hair for the Yule Ball: it was realising that you should replace that toothy devil device with detangling fingers, good conditioner and a reliable finishing product.

10. Dare to say hi to new people

Yes, chatty strangers can be annoying when you’re tired and you just want to buy oranges without a lengthy discussion about someone’s cat. But sometimes it’s worth plunging into conversation with a total stranger. Sure, they could be dull or racist or creepy but you could also just have a fun one-time chat with an interesting person, or you could even make an awesome friend. Give people a chance and they might surprise you. Yes, that includes Chelsea fans.

11. You don’t have to understand art to enjoy it

You don’t have to know much or even anything about art, as long as you approach it with an open mind. The more you see, the more you’ll know what you like so you can hunt out relevant exhibitions and get stuck into the bits that really grab you. At the very least you’re getting the chance to see how someone else experiences the world, which is fascinating.

12. Always have a pen

At least one. If you think you already have one, pack another one. Just like London taxis, they have a tendency to disappear right when you need them.

13. Always have tampons

It may count as a luxury, but it’s one you don’t want to be caught without.

14. Be kind in love

You can’t love everyone who loves you, and not everyone you want will want you. But be gracious. Treat people’s hearts like fluffy little guinea pigs that need to be handled delicately, even when you know they can’t really belong to you. And not like footballs designed to be kicked off down the field and slammed into the mud without a second thought.

15. Sex is not like it is in the movies

The camera doesn’t cut slowly away to the window when you’ve removed enough clothes to upset the censors. Seductive music doesn’t start automatically playing in the background. And post-sex hair definitely doesn’t look so rakishly attractive in real life. Instead, it’s a lot of fumbling, sweating, grunting and unexpected noises. It’s less dignified, a lot messier and much more fun.

16. Women don’t have to wait for someone else to make a move

Disney and Jane Austen and movies set in high schools have got a lot of people thinking that in heterosexual relationships, the man is the one who initiates any romantic possibilities. He asks her out, he picks her up, he pays. Not having the patience for this nonsense doesn’t make you needy or bossy or unfeminine (which aren’t always bad things btw). You wouldn’t go to a restaurant and wait until someone brings you the food you want: the only way to make sure you get the dish that’s caught your eye is to go up, politely place your order and see if it’s available.

17. Frozen banana tastes like ice cream

Get an old banana. Mush it up. Freeze it. Take it out. Eat it with peanut butter and/or chocolate chips. Feel smug.

18. Embarrassing moments are just future funny stories

You can speed the process up by trying to see the comical side at the time. That said, it’s also perfectly acceptable to save the ones with no witnesses for yourself.

19. You don’t have to drink alcohol

Benefits include not knowing what a hangover is, always being able to remember where you put your phone and having more money for books, clothes and obscure kitchen gadgets. Unfortunately, you do have to realise that some people will have a problem with this, even though you couldn’t care less what they do with their bodies. This might mean that you miss out on some awesome friendships but that’s their fault, not yours. Those who matter don’t mind, those who mind should really reassess why it is they take issue with your life decisions.

20. If you microwave a marshmallow it grows huge

I learned this from Dawn in Buffy. It’s about the only scene from the show you can safely re-enact in your own kitchen.

21. Make sure you know how to be awesome on your own

You are the only person who is always with you so you should probably learn how to get along with that little voice in your head. That includes in your own home and in the world spreading out beyond that square of window. Enjoy the voice's creativity and sense of humour. Find out what it likes (rom coms, photography exhibitions and indie pop rock). Teach it to map read, tell it off when it’s being mean, read it books and teach it new things just for fun.

22. An oven thermometer will change your baking life

If your cakes usually end up as a flat mess that looks more like a pancake that’s been run over by a lorry than the photo in the book, you need one of these. Hang it inside your oven somewhere you can read the dial and you’ll know that whatever else you’ve screwed up, at least the temperature is spot on.

23. Carry an umbrella

London weather is created by a control panel in the sky that’s operated by a drunk guy randomly fiddling with dials, pressing buttons and spilling coffee (see life lesson 6, dude). To combat this madness, get a mini umbrella and put it in your bag, next to your keys, pens and tampons. Much better than a soggy copy of the Metro or a Tesco bag.

24. No one knows what they're doing all the time

A constant stream of holiday photos, statuses about amazing parties and excited job/relationship updates has convinced us all at some point that the world is at a big carnival we’re not invited to. However, it’s also true that the more ‘grown ups’ you meet, the more you realise that no one has every aspect of their life or personality totally sorted out. Some people are better at hiding the not-so-shiny bits than others (money really helps with this) but ultimately we’re all wondering if we’ve made the best life decisions and what’s coming up next and if we can handle it.

25. Always dance

Don't condemn yourself to the sidelines. Shake it while you've got it and regret nothing. Dignity is less important than feeling like Beyoncé on the dancefloor for a night.