The Adventures of Dysfunctional Dan

In which I reflect on a year of being veggie... It's now been a year since I decided to become a vegetarian. It still feels like something of a novelty but I suppose that can be put down to the strange sensation of time passing ever more quickly as you get older.  It all began in last year's searingly hot summer when I realised meat consumption was probably the biggest part of my carbon footprint and therefore cutting it out would be a step I could make against climate change. This year's summer couldn't be more different with the UK experiencing slightly lower average temperatures and much higher amounts of rainfall than normal. This has been down to relatively local climate conditions and the world as a whole has had by far the hottest year in human history. Much of the world has been struggling with temperatures around 40 degrees C and the dramatic events that come with them such as devastating wildfires and tropical storms and hurricanes. I may not have personally b...

In which I have some success... I've been meaning to write this post for about a month but haven't got around to it. I'm not sure why. I think there's a part of me that thinks I've fallen into some unrealistic fantasy and at any minute I will wake up.  On an ordinary Tuesday morning, I opened up my emails and received the news. I am now a qualified teacher. I'll be honest, I had to go and have a moment alone because I was somewhat overcome with emotion. There may have been a tear or two.  It feels like a big personal victory to me. I started university in 2010 to gain this qualification but things went wrong in the dying months of the course and I left uni in 2014 without a teaching qualification and a degree that was no use for anything else. I was traumatized by a bad experience and my already low self-esteem hit rock bottom. I basically spent the next six years trying to recover and rebuild without really any direction in my life.  Covid uprooted all our live...