21 part 1: Holidays.

I'll write this one simply so's not to forget.

My 21st celebrations started on the 27th of December. My Birthday is on the 13th of January, and I still have plans which spill into February. YESSS.

The Birthday in Glossop was fantastic. The mates I have grown up with stood around me, screaming 'FUCK YOUUUUUU' at the top of their lungs. I wouldn't have had it any other way. Poor Jenny got landed with after-party, which the pictures prove was pretty surreal.

Almost immediately after that we piled into a megabus bound for Edinburgh, for a adventurous New Year. Even that long coach journey goes down in the memory books- so hot, so late, so funny - if you have never played the Buzzcock's intro game in the middle of a coach full of people, you must.

We then marched across Edinburgh, feeling like there were hundreds of us (I think in reality there was 15 of us, but we seemed many more), then descended upon Alison's flat like very lazy locusts.

I think I'll remember our stay in Edinburgh for as long as I live. Adults are often accused of losing the ability to have fun, but that's exactly what Edinburgh was, pure, concentrated, ecstatic fun. And sleeplessness.

We birthday-ed (Alison's 21st!) And then New Year-ed - New Year was brilliant, thousands of people doing incomprehensible scottish dancing and grinning at everyone in sight. Fireworks at midnight from every direction. Perfect.

On New Year's Day we walked up to Arthur's Seat and let off chinese lanterns. Which was beautiful, special and silly as well. The beauty side of it got slightly over-shadowed by a competition to make them fly 'the best' towards the end, a competition which we clearly won by making ours do a double somersault.

We all knew that after Edinburgh we would be obliged to return back to our separate corners of the world and so getting to spend time with each other in such high-spirits was completely invaluable.

Too soon though I was alone on a train, heading south, with the ultimate aim to be on a plane, heading much further south, seperated only by a night with my family to say goodbye.

Will end here and split this rambling tale into two parts for convenience's sake.

a precious cage.

I have spent my life
spooling behind me a silk thread,
tracing outlines
in a slow, spinning sway.

This thread has become an
infinitely intertwining web,
holding together everything
I have ever known,
or ever was,
or thought.

Some have become boughs which
hang above me,
laden with the weight
of repeated experience.
Others glint and sparkle,
still raw and newly formed.

I was proud,
to weave and thread
my time away,
safe in the faith
I was building something real.

Now I see
all I have created is a cocoon,
the delicate silk
a precious cage,
which holds me to my world.