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suzy bevan / Blog

So it is that time of year again...

#NewYearsEve So here we are again, bloated beasts after all the Christmas gorging and shopping. We now come to the part of the Year where we vow to be healthy beasts in the months to come. Ironically we mark the occasion of these vows by going out and getting blind drunk in the company of friends and strangers. Of course, once the right amount of Guinness has been consumed, there are no strangers in the room and clothes have gotten looser. Is it just you or is it hot in here? I would like to make a prediction right now. I see a major surge in trips to the Std clinic in the next two weeks and a massive demand for the morning after pill tomorrow. Panadol will be getting bought in bulk in the morning. Vast numbers of people will be viewing the stranger in the bed beside them and be wondering how the babe/hunk they went home with just does not look as good as they remember. They will shake their head ruefully and crawl into the kitchen in search of coffee and then try to work out a way to get the lump in the bed to vacate the premises. All in all, New Years Eve will be the major piss-up it has always been. Happy New Year to you!

Being a teenager and discovering David Bowie one cold night .

#DavidBowie I was 14. I used to have trouble sleeping so I would bring the radio to bed some nights and would nod off listening to late night music. Then, one night, I was just nodding off when I heard the opening screech of Ziggy Stardust and was instantly stunned. I leapt out of the bed and stared dumbfounded at the radio. My Mother heard me leaping out of the bed and came up to see what the fuss was so I pointed at the radio and said 'That!'. She stopped for a listen and then told me it was David Bowie. I went back into the bed and she went downstairs. I hoped the Dj would play more Bowie but he did not. The next day I could not get into the city centre fast enough. I went into Golden Discs record shop and found his records. I had no idea he had been around as long as he had and could not believe I had not heard of him up to then. It was 1981 when I discovered him. I headed on home and bumped into my friend John on the way. I asked him if he had heard of Bowie and he told me he had all his albums. He lent them to me but just for the weekend. They were too precious to him to be let out of his sight for longer than this and I understood that. I had a bowie binge that weekend and got to discover so many classics- Starman, life on Mars, The Jean Genie, Young Americans. I was in Heaven and vowed to save up the money so I could have my own Bowie collection. I handed him back his albums with a heavy heart but me and John had bonded over this. We were the two Bowie fans in the neighbourhood while everyone else seemed to be into Spandau ballet and Duran Duran and Soft Cell. We knew better. Bowie had inspired them all.

Up the bridal path

#bridal I used to work in a charity bridal shop. One day this woman came in with four of her friends. They sat down and waited while she was in trying on her first dress. She came out and stood on the podium. They barely looked up from their phones. You could see she was annoyed by this but she said nothing. They did this for the first three dresses and this time I could stand it no more. I told them they were being mean to their friend and would they switch off their phones or get out. One of the girls got up on the spot and went to the bride and apologised. Three of the girls switched off their phones. The bride came out of the dressing room with her fourth dress on. She stood on the podium and observed the girl who had not switched off her phone. She told her she was to switch it off. 'Ah I will in just a minute' replied the girl who had no intention of switching off her phone. The bride stared at her. The bride had no more patience left. She told the girl to get out and to not come to the wedding. The girl looked up from her phone in shock. She finally took in the looks on everyones faces and got up and ran out of the room. The appointment continued and the bride eventually selected a dress which was lovely on her. The next day the girl who was now barred from the wedding came into the shop with her Mother. The girl was blaming me for her exclusion. I told the Mother what had happened and the Mother asked the daughter for her phone. The daughter refused to hand it over. The Mother asked a second time. The daughter refused again. The Mother walked past the daughter and out of the shop without a word. The daughter glared at me and left. She got herself excluded. It was nothing to do with me.

On getting a vintage Tom Cruise dvd out of the dvd library.

#TomCruise I got 'Days of Thunder' out of the dvd library the other night. Its amazing what you can spot when you revisit a film. Tom had only gotten together with Nicole Kidman at the time and the spark between them shone off the screen. The film itself is a noisy potboiler based around racing at Daytona but for me it was more interesting to look back at how much has now changed. Since then Mr Cruise has become a better actor. He is not as knockout handsome as he was back then but that is life and who of us is? Himself and Miss Kidman went on to divorce and he has since remarried and divorced. Miss Kidman is now happily married to Keith Urban and life has moved on for everybody. After they made this film they came to Ireland to do 'Far and Away' and they impressed everyone with how nice they were. It was just so interesting to see the two of them in such younger incarnations of themselves. I like Tom Cruise films even if I do not think he is a sex symbol in any form. He is too pure looking in my opinion. Still, the guy knows his audience and he does give good action hero which is all you want from the blockbuster type of film that he makes.

Why you need to tell your children they are amazing.

#Selfesteem It is so important to tell your children that you are literally delighted to be their parent. Sending a child out into the big bad world without selfesteem should be a criminal offence. It is not enough to give them clothing and food. If they do not get their selfesteem from you, they will go looking for it in some downright bad places. Teach them to believe in themselves and encourage them to aim to be the best version of themself that they can be. Low selfesteem is not a good thing to be dealing with and the child who is not loved turns into the self-hating adult. Do not be the parent who one day wakes up and realises that the children they neglected to cherish are now neglecting them. Children with low self-esteem are a danger to themselves because they might seek validation down the wrong avenue. Is that what you want?

So this is how my Sunday began

#SundayThoughts So this is not going to be one of those religious homilies in case you were wondering. I woke up this morning to find two junkies chatting away outside my door. I could not avoid speaking to them as I had to pass them to get out of the house. I asked them to take their items with them when they left and they actually tried to assure me that the tablets on the ground were not theirs. I told them they were using drugs outside a childrens nursery which I share a hall with but they were still there as I left. I cannot even begin to imagine the choices in life that led to them becoming the women who would bang up on the door of a nursery. I understand that they have to do it somewhere but this strikes me as literally the most inappropriate place in which they could do it. I wonder if they will be on the doorstep tonight. They woke me at 10am this morning. The area in which I live has been going to the dogs since a hostel which caters for junkies opened in the area 3 months ago. I am exhausted due to noises in the night. There have been times I have had to move out as I felt so afraid. I have been promised a transfer in December but this transfer is at least six weeks away. I am at my wits end as to what to do. I am stressed as hell. So, how was your week?

We need to look out for ourselves especially with who we think loves us

#ThursdayThoughts I was raised in a rotten environment. It was a loveless home and I just thought it was normal. It was not until I was in my teens that I really noticed how different other parents were. I guess I was afraid to observe too much too closely for fear I would know only too well what I was missing. I thought verbal abuse and neglect and punches were everyday things. Any parent who does not prepare their children for the life they should lead should not be a parent. Because I thought abuse was normal, I tended to not have the mental weapons needed when abusive men sought me out. I swear I felt as if I was giving out a vibe that just attracted bad men. Of course I did. I had no other vibe to give out because I had only been taught how to dislike myself on a massive scale which made me a target for bullies. Now I would not say I was 100% helpless. When you are raised by wolves you learn how to bite. I am told I use overkill nowadays when I fight back. Well, overkill is better than being a doormat. I think it is so important to instill self-esteem in your children. I have spent a lifetime correcting the mistakes of my clearly defective parents. I cannot forgive them for what they did. It cost me too much in the long run. If you want your children to love you, love them first. It is such a simple concept and yet so many get it wrong. It is so important to praise a child even if it is for the tiniest thing. They need the validation so much. Tell them they are awesome at least once a day. They deserve it. We all deserve to hear something great once a day but it is especially important to children. If you dont, you might regret it.

Reading can bring you to so many interesting places in your head.

#BookshopDay Reading is vital to everybody. I can remember times when I felt mindbendingly lonely and lost myself in books. Maybe there were times I read too much and needed to get out more but I did what was right for me. I remember the books that made an impression on me when I was a young girl. I was fascinated by Black Beauty which was a story told from the point of view of the horse. I thought this was the cleverest thing in the world ever. I recall reading 'Anne of Green Gables' and being fascinated by the chapter where Anne goes shopping for a green dress. I absolutely adored reading the Famous Five and Secret Seven books. I think they are from a much simpler time now but back then I just presumed all young English people lived in middle class homes and went around solving crimes. I so badly wanted to be them. They seemed like nice people. I recall getting a bit older and reading 1984 which never fails to resonate. George Orwell was an awesome writer. I also recall reading Persuasion by Jane Austen and noting that not a lot had changed in society and peer pressure was still a relevant thing today, even more so with the onset of the internet. If you want to do something for someone you love, then give them the gift of reading. Get them a gift voucher for a bookshop and maybe, with that step, you will have created a future reader and maybe even a writer.

We should really watch what we say in front of the Children

#Children I have a friend who would best be described as somewhat damaged. It was not a damage she inflicted on herself. She had the most horrendous of parents. She was nine the first time she heard the words 'mental illness' used to describe her Mother. She did not know what it meant then but she did not expect the punch in the face she got when she told her Mother what had been said. It was not her fault that her Mother was ill but she used to blame her daughter all the time. 'Anyone with a daughter like you would be mad' she would roar. The daughter was bewildered by all this. Their was no point in turning to her siblings because as long as she was the one being roared at, they were left in peace. She was the designated victim in the household. She would not take this the way they wanted however. Then came the moment when she knew she was leaving home and it was only a matter of time. Her Mother told her that she had tried to kill her in the womb three times by throwing herself down the stairs. Lo and behold, the towering link of pain was broken. She had tried to kill her and failed. She knew know that she was not meant to be a human doormat.She had a purpose and the purpose was to break free. She was 14 and still penniless now. Four years later she did a typing course and received a grant. She told her sister she was moving out and told her not to say anything. Her sister had the spine of a jellyfish and rang her mother to tell her.Her mother hit the daughter with such force that she broke four fingernails off her neck as she was throttling her. She then left her alone. The daughter fled that night. The family kept harassing her to come home. In her loneliness she tried twice but they had not changed. In the end, she had to get the Guards involved to get them to leave her alone. She still feels like a damaged thing after all these years. People should mind what they say in the presence of children. I am glad she survived.

And so we face our 2nd storm of the Year.

#StormAli This is the second big storm of the year and I was just wondering if the Irish are going to go out and panic buy carbs in bulk. I recall when the Beast from the East was here and you would think that the supermarkets were never going to open again the way people were carrying on. I was meant to be going down to get paid and I had not heard the announcement that payments were being made a day early. So I had to then ask my daughter for money. I piled on the clothes and headed down to her. A journey that normally takes 30 minutes on foot took me an hour and a half in the snow. I did not care, because I needed the money. It was on this journey that I spotted a man with three loaves of bread balanced on his shoulder. This was my first inkling of the hoarding aspects of people in a storm. I wondered did he have a horde of people waiting for him back home, salivating at the thought that their carbs hero was going to come through the door any minutes with a mound of Mother's Pride? I actually thought that the Irish would be more inclined to hoard Barry's Tea and some spuds but I guess that tastes can vary and sure you cant beat a spot of bread now can you? I was waiting on a bus this morning and it took an hour to get to me despite the real time hoarding telling me for that entire hour that it was only 14 minutes away. I genuinely thought time had stood still in the storm. I also lost one of my pink pearl drop earrings which was blown out of my ear at some point. I imagine it is halfway up the Dublin mountains by now. Anyway look after yourselves out there.