Five things that were different five years ago...

The other day I was greeted by yet another of those questionable Facebook memory posts sitting proudly at the top of my homepage. Mainly they’re horrifying and slightly depressing but this one gave me an idea for a blog post.

My reaction for these is normally ‘How was this X years ago, it feels like yesterday.’ But this time, I had the opposite. I was greeted by a photo from five years ago that really felt like 25. Strictly, the photo was taken seven years ago. But five years ago to this day, I made it my cover photo. Which sort of still counts – because I must have felt it still represented me.

The photo in question was taken by my boyfriend at the time and shows me skipping through a field of flowers swinging a woven basket as if I’m Maria Von Trap wearing knee socks and a floral tea dress. It's one I'm fond of, and also one my work colleagues like to dredge up and tease me mercilessly about. And rightly so! Pray tell, what was I doing? And that’s precisely it, nothing. Oh to be young and purposeless again. 

So. In the spirit of progress, here are the five of the biggest things that have changed in my life in the last five years...

Let's start with the important stuff. I started dying my hair at uni, taking sudden and violent offence to my natural mousy brown. Over the next 5 years I would continue to do so with varying degrees of success – a low including an accidental ‘at home’ black dye job (I cried) and a high including a semi-successful spell with a fringe which looked pleasingly dramatic with the dark colour. For the past three years or so I’ve been dabbling at the opposite end of the spectrum – blonde balyage. Which I’m pretty confident suits me (but who knows what I’ll be saying in 5 years!?) and although there have been lows (a particularly unforgiving Facebook album documenting my yellow phase still haunts me) and highs (good hair days are more common than they used to be) I’m generally more stable as far as my follicles are concerned. And extending this out to my make up, I feel like I know what suits me now more than ever. Which is good.

That leather jacket I’m wearing is the first real leather jacket I ever bought with my first ever pay cheque from my first ever job in London back in 2010. I treated myself to it in Bershka and it cost £80 which felt like an absolute fortune. And it's probably the piece I’ve worn most in my entire life, even to this day. Of course I still have it – and it marked the beginning of a love affair with leather jackets. My current classic is All Saints (and if I thought £80 was a fortune, I would have had a heart attack at this price tag) but I still wear my original now and then. I guess my attitude to clothes hasn't changed that much – I don’t splash out very often on expensive stuff and if I do, I wear it to death. One thing I would like to turn the clock back on though is a few more of those quirky pieces I used to love. I think I’ve lost those a bit over the years what with work and time restraints of a morning. But this makes me remember how I used to put so much thought into putting a look together (although I do think I’m now officially too old for knee socks; I’d probably be arrested).

I tend not to spend my leisure time skipping in fields with woven baskets anymore. For me, an ideal afternoon is now cosied up with a book under a throw with a candle burning. I barely knew what a candle was 5-7 years ago, and I would definitely not have been allowed to light one in my Camelot Property Guardian abode – although being non-flammable, the high asbestos levels in that place would actually have helped me out for once. Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoy a casual walk with my husband (husband – now there’s a change!) but it’s more of a daydreaming, walking off the week’s worries sort of walk, more than a skip. And I tend to carry my possessions in an actual bag as opposed to a woven hamper.








I added this one in spontaneously as I suddenly realized it’s entirely possible that this photo may have been taken in the early hours of the morning – who knows? And that is precisely my point. If I was in a field at 6am having not slept these days, I would know about it. And I’d certainly remember. But all-nighters were such a common occurrence at this point that I don't even remember. It’s quite possible. And despite my youth, I used to feel awful for it. For days. I like to think I know what my body needs now. It needs sleep (in fact it’s very good at sleep), it needs food at regular times and it needs relaxation. And 5-7 years ago, it was getting none of those things. But that’s what your early twenties are for, I suppose? Enjoying yourself. Your thirties are to learn the lessons and your forties are to pay for the drinks (thanks Carrie Bradshaw, infinitely wise).

By this, I mean I only really thought about myself. I didn’t know at all where my career was going, I didn’t know where I was going to be living next week let alone next year. I had just moved to London and I often felt really quite lonely. I was in a relationship that was loving and fun but one in which we very much acted as separate entities and I wasn’t at all sure what my future looked like. Fast forward 5-7 years and although my best friends are scattered around from New York to Glasgow, they’re always there for me. And I’m married! My husband and I are partners in life and we make decisions together. And that feels really nice. We're getting to that stage where we voluntarily want to look after something other than myself – in other words, we want to buy a dog. I didn't know what that feeling felt like 5-7 years ago. And black hair and woven baskets aside, that’s the biggest change by far.

I quite like this Facebook memory inspired writing exercise, maybe I’ll do another!?