I no longer drink alcohol. After a long period of altogether excessive drinking (which really wasn't as Gatsby as you might imagine) I decided not to do it any more. It's great, the not drinking, but according to conventional wisdom it should also come with a side-order of name-calling.
Hi, my name's Fay, and I'm not an alcoholic.
Read MoreOver recent months, a song has has rolled through my mind repeatedly. I've gone to sleep with it playing on my internal FM, and I've woken up other times to find it running loose in there like a cheeky streaker on an 80s football pitch. In a funny way it's been quite comforting; a wry inward smile at the good I know lies ahead, but that simply hasn't materialised so far. Let's talk about cell turnover...
Read MoreUnless you can read sheet music or tablature, you'll probably begin your musical journey playing songs from songsheets, or songbooks. They're created with good intentions, but kind of make me want to scream sometimes. Okay, okay. Most of the time. And this is where I sign myself up for loads of work with very little reward...
Read MoreUkulele is purported to be cheap and easy to start with, and in my experience that's true enough – but due to the weird orthodoxy around ukulele (and musical instruments in general) newcomers like myself have to figure a lot of stuff out ourselves, which someone could just have written down. Here's some of that useful stuff I figured out, written down.
Read MoreI play the ukulele. I know, you're probably thinking, "Oh, you're one of those hipster pricks." While I like fairy lights and Mason jars about as much as the next man, I didn't choose ukulele so that I could fit with the great sockless, box-drumming masses. The whys of my choice lie at the intersection of biology, spontaneity, history and happenstance.
Read MoreLet's talk about invisible disability. I have Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome Type 3 (EDS3), now known as Hypermobility EDS, or hEDS. It's a disability that I'm very lucky to have: if I had the next grade of it, I could be living a far less able life, or be dead by now.
Read MorePicture the scene: you've decided that drinking alcohol isn't for you any more... Well done, you brave, clever, magnificent human being. You might be wondering though, 'Will life just be kind of crap from now on?' Well, that all depends on you – and whose lies you're willing to swallow this time.
Read MoreWhile I have my faculties in place, and the choice is mine to make, I choose to stay. I don't want to go. I don't want to die. I don't want to drink myself to death, or lose myself forever. I choose, instead, to stay.
Read MoreAfter a recovery playlist that isn't about wallowing in addiction? Me too. But all I could find were depressing lists full of songs about drinking or taking drugs – which isn't what I want to be focusing on when utilising music to strengthen my resolve. So I made my own.
Read MoreThe really important stuff is always the hardest to write. It'll come soon enough, just not yet. For now, let's take it as read that I have some complex, thoroughly biased ideas about jargon, and that using the term 'recovery' doesn't mean I'm good with the other phrases that usually go alongside it. Recovery, however, is undoubtedly a good thing.
Read MoreSince you're in my safe space, let me start by saying that my metaphorical heart will be on my sleeve, splattered on your shirt, and all over the floor. Repeatedly. You've been warned. Now that's out of the way, let's get down to the business of subjects.
Read MoreOver the coming weeks and months I'll be cataloguing my mistakes here. Not all of them – after all, some things are sacred – but rest assured that these pages will soon house a fine selection of things that popular opinion will say I probably just shouldn't have done.
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