My Life in Five Objects

During our lives, we accumulate stuff. Every object we own tells a story and I think with just five well-selected objects we can tell the story of a life. Here is my life in five objects.

This is Mexico, a bear I have had for as long as I can remember. He is called Mexico apparently after Tom Jones song The Young New Mexican Puppeteer on the basis he is also a hand puppet- I think my parents can be blamed for the name. My grandparents bought him in Guernsey when they went on holiday and once he arrived in my hands he became something very special. Why Mexico became the special one over all other toys I do not know but he went pretty much everywhere with me. He was the bear that accompanied me when we did a teddy bear's picnic at school and the bear that my parents rushed around Southampton city centre trying to find when I lost him on a Christmas shopping trip. Indeed, I can distinctly remember being in a Boot's store and realised he was missing and eventually finding him under a table in McDonald's. 

Clearly Mexico is not in the greatest of conditions but that is because he shared a bed with me for about ten years so wear and tear was inevitable. His right arm is completely flattened. These days Mexico sits atop my wardrobe and is a reminder of my childhood. 

The next object is a book, specifically Chris Packham's Back Garden Nature Reserve. It's actually a decent book but it's the story behind it which means something to me. Aged eleven, I read about a competition being run by the local wildlife trust. You had to write a five hundred story about sustainability and I instantly knew what I was going to write. I wrote about loggers cutting down a tree in a rainforest and after researched an appropriate animal I wrote a genuinely decent little story entitled The Kinkajou. 

I won the story and was summoned to wildlife trust headquarters where I met TV presenter Chris Packham. It was an important moment for me, where I knew my love of nature and my love of writing would always continue in one form or another. I'm not sure I really knew who Chris Packham was aged eleven but I know I really got on with him and he advised me not to spend too much time focusing on one thing and keep moving on, which I think remains good advice.

We more forward in time significantly with the next object, my dissertation. It's a culmination of four years of hard study where I improved my academic writing and learnt huge amounts of educational theory. It's ten thousand words on a subject I found and still find hugely interesting. It's probably one of the things I'm most proud of even five years on because it's a genuinely good, classy piece of work. It's a reminder of what I can be capable of and also a reminder of my brilliant university life. Sure, at times things were rough but I had a great time socially and I liked studying and improving myself. 

This is a piece of tourist tat from the city of Riga, Latvia. I went there with a group of other students to present my dissertation to an international audience, a sentence that I still find hard to believe. It came after perhaps the worst three months of my life when I'd struggled through a challenging teaching placement and ending up failing it, my future now uncertain and choices to be made. My week in Riga was honestly one of the best of my life. It's a beautiful city, the weather was lovely and I had a great laugh with friends. 

I quite enjoyed the conference too but as I watched teaching students from across Europe present confidently I had a realisation. I was not like them, I had the educational knowledge and the desire to make a difference but I lacked the outgoing personality. I can distinctly remember sat in my hostel room deciding that I was going to give up on my teaching qualification after years of working towards it. It was heart-breaking but I still think it was the right thing to do. 

Finally, my work lanyard. I now work with children with autism which though can be exhausting and stressful can also be wonderful. There are few feelings better in the world than the moment a child makes progress and you know you were part of making that happen. The children I work with make me laugh every day and there's something special about being able to do something important and have such fun doing it. 

So there you have it, that's the story of my life so far told in five objects. I'll be back soon with more nonsense.