Just keep following the heartlines on your hand

source: Pinterest

Today I'm going to tell you a little story about an encounter I had last week that I've been replaying in my mind ever since.

I was in the main entrance of the hospital for a scheduled tiffin meeting with my colleague and on my way back from the cash machine I wandered past a man with a charity bucket who looked absolutely thrilled to pieces at the sight of me walking towards him with a £10 note in my hand. This man is there day in, day out collecting money and I must admit I've never given him any money before (I'd like to feebly blame this on the fact that I'm usually tearing through the doors of the hospital in a mad rush and also the sorry emptiness of my purse 99% of the time). But this time I felt terrible when I walked straight past him to the end of the Costa queue just a few steps away from him. After putting the world of oncology Learning Mentors to rights, we ended up staring at the little old man with his bright green bucket until guilt got the better of us and we decided to empty the change out of our purses and donate it to the charity bucket. 

The man wasn't even looking at us when we threw our money into the collection, but all of a sudden he sprang to life and gave us the biggest beaming smile I think I've ever seen. That was thanks enough for our little good deed of the day, but he was so thrilled about our donations that he ended up asking us all about what we did and telling us what a great job we were doing. My friend then turned to him and exclaimed that really it was him that was doing the good job really as he's stood there day after day raising money for the Children's Hospital as it takes some serious commitment to volunteer so much time to the hospital.  

He then explained to us that he'd started volunteering when he was 81 just after his wife had died. He felt as though he needed something meaningful to fill his days with now that he had nobody to spend his time with and so decided that fundraising would be an ideal way to give something back to other people and to have an excuse to get out and about every day. Two years on and he's raised over £50,000 and he's determined to double that figure.

Its so incredibly rare to see that level of commitment from anybody, let alone from an 83 year old man who spends his days holding a bucket whilst tonnes of people pass him by without a second glance. He's just happy when those occasional kind-hearted passers by decide to pause for a moment and give him a few pence as he gets to have a bit of a chat and get that little bit closer to reaching his fundraising goal. He was adamant that he wasn't doing anything special or difficult by bucket shaking, he just saw it as a good way to spend his time and stop himself from feeling lonely.

Now that is what life is all about. Making the most out of any situation, turning a tragedy into a positive experience and making every moment of life count in whatever way we can. Its no wonder I've been thinking about this short encounter so much, the man was such a massive inspiration- he's already lived his whole life but still chose to dedicate the rest of his life to helping a good cause. I'm not saying we should all go out, give up our day jobs and bucket shake for the rest of our lives, but I think its a great reminder that life is for living and that we should do whatever we can to make our days as meaningful and valuable as we can.

Heartlines- Florence and The Machine

We visit a life we both left behind

Despite all that's happened in Great Britain this year to make it one that I'm sure won't be forgotten in a long time, personally 2012 has been one of those years that's just tootled along, there've been no major obstacles or momentous occasions to mark it out in my mind (I suppose the end of a big relationship technically does fall into this category but I'm not seeing that as a bad change now by any means).

2011 was a year with a lot of change in my life, finishing Uni, graduating, becoming a real life person with a real life job, moving away from Leeds, moving back to Leeds, moving into a new house. In comparison, 2012 has just been a bit stable. I make that sound like a bad thing, when in actual fact it really isn't. I took a little look back through my photos from the past year and I have to say, there have been a lot of highlights. Being my first full year of working life, the fun bits of the year have been even more savoured as time with friends has become more valuable, shifting from student life to real life means we no longer have the luxury of being able to wander into each other's rooms at all hours of the day or whiling away hours just sat at the kitchen table. Instead, it means that when we do all spend time together there's a definite air of excitement and a lot of effort goes into making it memorable. 

I've picked out a few snaps as a bit of a review of 2012 in the life of Kaz. It probably won't mean a lot to you guys reading but I had a whale of a time looking back at all my pictures of day trips, nights out and weekends away. 

1. Birthday celebrations- lots of my favourite people all in one room (and some spookily coordinated outfits) 2. A day out at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park with my Mum, Dad and new DSLR 3. Live at Leeds 2012 4. A sunburnt sunny day in Nottingham 5. Sailing round the Isle of Wight with the Ellen Macarthur Cancer Trust through work 6. City living 7&8 Olympic stuff- seeing Friendly Fires for free definitely made me warm to the occasion 9. 'rowing' in Stratford with one of my favourites 10. Monkeying around in Edinburgh 11. Leeds Festival- seeing Florence was a definite highlight of my year/life in general 12. We're a very distinguished little bunch. Especially when filled with wine.

Roll on 2013. Bring me some more good times like these please.

Reunion- The xx

We are the reckless, we are the wild youth

dress: Topshop

I realised when I uploaded these photos just how blurry they really are. I'd like to blame this on something that was no fault of my own but in actual fact I think the cause is just that I get too swishy and overexcited when I put this dress on because of the floaty material and voluminous sleeves. Not going to lie, this dress makes me prance around and pretend I'm Florence. Although as far as I'm concerned, that's never a bad thing.

I've had this dress since the start of my final year of Uni so its pretty old now (like me, sob sob) but it has remained my failsafe go to outfit for nights out, meals out and anything inbetween ever since. I'm sure everybody I know is pretty sick of it by now, but quite frankly I think I'll still be wearing it when I'm forty. Unless I keep consuming pop tarts at the alarming rate I currently am (I only discovered them quite recently so am making up for lost time...) in which case I'll have probably outgrown the dress by Christmas.