Sometimes in my day to day life, i grumble and I sigh and mutter under my breath questions as to why things are the way they are. It’s as though there is a long winding road I walk down upon and I can never arrive at my destination. I find myself taking a Uturn, a left turn , a wrong turn that leads to a dead end, so I’m taking the long route. The slower route. But i believe , I so believe every choice you make in life, the decisions you face and the effort you put in to your everyday schedule is part of the whole journey, however long it takes. A journey one cannot escape from but live with the heart to embrace whatever they encounter in the adventure of life’s unexpected surprises.

Where there is peace in yourself, you can walk gracefully into a new day knowing everything will be okay.

Recently, I had a little panic moment, where a big mesh of emotions surfaced to the point I didn’t know how to articulate everything, and I felt burnt out from over thinking things, questioning things and constantly going round in circles, only to realise I harshly criticised everything , jump to crazy conclusions and put myself down. Do you experience these moments?

In the end, the air was clear through talking and hearing out someone who can understand. Afterwards, I felt better and by default I evaluate myself and how I can look beyond a negative cloud blinding my vision to what is true to me. I’m shifting my focus upon the good I have in life. What brings meaning to my life and how others have contributed to my day to day life in ways I cannot forget. Memories layered upon layers of memories threaded on a golden string creates a tapestry of colour and beauty, that is life.

When I walk into London to work, as I dodge my way past vast amounts of humans, each stride I take comes with a positive thought, driven by my will to seize the day and make it a day, as though a gift from Him upstairs, to feel open to obstacles that may be encountered, but above all immerse myself into bringing happiness into fruition, carrying the attitude all will be okay..all will be okay.

So all in all.. try to imagine you have a golden thread in your hand, and you take it wherever you go , each and every day this golden thread will trail behind you, at the end of this day you think of all the good things that have happened , however few or many, and attach them together by writing them down, sew them together with your imaginary golden thread and think how much beauty has come out of it all. You deserve to be happy. It just takes a lil bit of effort to spread a lil happiness, and it will come back to you. That is the beauty of life.

The time of year has come, for a load of fun as we share this precious month with our nearest and dearest. Spoil ourselves with the festive spirit showered across the world. We snuggle up to hot chocolate with marshmallows and devour bites into unlimited amounts of mince pies, warm and juicy, in the confines of our cosy front room watching Christmas movies, or tra la la la la laling to carol singers at our doorstep. However one chooses to spend their Christmas, it’s value is enhanced by the sentiment behind each and every generous act of kindness passed down from generation to generation throughout history.

When you see fairly lights all around you, your heart glows with happiness and that sparkle in your eye stays with you for the entire day. It’s warm lit bulbs, strung together lights up the city, and brightens up the atmosphere. It brings the little magic of Christmas so effortlessly, the endless sparkle of lights keeps you twinkling on your toes with excitement.

When you see shops, decorated with trees and Christmas decor, a little bit of my heart melts as my jaw drops at the sincere effort put into display for all to see and marvel at the sight of pure creativity. It makes the experience of shopping , however mad it may seem, worth it, for the surroundings are exquisite, and ever so magical, I pull out my camera and snappy happy.

If your a bit financially strained at Christmas time, do not fret, because I can guarantee you can still have a lovely experience marvelling at the interior of shops, and walk with a friend through the lovely alleyways of London. I find myself discovering places I’ve never been to and amazed by how lovely the area is. Going to a perfume shop and walking out smelling like flowers is the best feeling in the world, I highly recommend it to all! I can’t seem to stop sniffing at my wrists, I still smell like the peony perfume I sprayed on!

I love hot chocolate. And something about hot chocolate at Christmas time, makes that Christmas feeling inside grow bigger. A tasty hot chocolate I like to make is : If you happen to have ‘Options’ Belgian instant hot chocolate , put about 4 teaspoons in and mix with a lil hot water into a smooth paste and place a peppermint teabag inside, pour boiling hot water up to the rim of your cup, mix and leave the peppermint tea bag in for a few mins..then remove. Add marshmallows (if you like ) and enjoy. And omydays.. it is AMAZING. There’s something special about putting a fresh peppermint teabag in hot chocolate. Adds more depth of flavour … I like to think so anyways hehe… you can be the judge of that I guess 😉 Looking forward to posting to you all during this final month of 2019. Keep your sparkly eyes open.

Big love, Miranda x

I am not one to talk on politics, dare I say be the one to even know what is actually going on behind the walls of the Government. I think it is easy to blend in the background and go with the flow of things yet I do have moments whereby I question myself by asking ‘why can’t I use my voice for the prosperity of my own nation, for change, for the greater good of humanity?’. I wish I was taught political literacy in my school days. Moreover, I tend to shy away from vocalising my opinion in fear of being judged, or perhaps simply intimidated by the confidence apparent among the masses today. As I reflect on my own life, it has been heavily shaped by the environments I’ve been brought up in and I tend to be rather ignorant of Politics being a major umbrella over my education, jobs, healthcare, living situation and all the practical things we all need in life to sustain ourselves. But it doesn’t have power over my own voice. And when I came across Matt Bergamini of ‘Shout Out UK’, he is not hesitant to show the ropes on how to use your voice in this crazy world we live in today. He gave a really good talk at a UPF event I attended in London and he gave me permission to record what he said surrounding trust and it’s necessity in politics. Firstly here is a bit about Shout Out UK below, taken from their website (you can access here for more information) :

http://www.shoutoutuk.org

A little outline…

‘Shout Out UK (SOUK) are a multi-award winning education brand providing world class training and programmes on Media & Political literacy and a platform to voice opinion and incite positive change.’

Our mission..

‘Political Literacy (like being literate in a language) ensures that everyone, who can vote has a basic understanding of the political system they live under, as well as the tools to critically engage with the media (media literacy).

Currently, Political Education is still not being taught in any, but the top end private schools. This instigates a class divide, as it ensures that those able to pay know how to influence the system and are Politically Literate, while the rest are not. We aim to change this.

We are on a mission to help schools implement Political Literacy in the easiest and most cost-effective way possible, whilst providing young people with a platform to share information, debate and discuss issues they are passionate about.’

Founder and CEO of Shout Out UK

‘Matteo Bergamini is the Founder and CEO of the youth network Shout Out UK, a company he set up at 22. The network has grown rapidly, securing a variety of projects, from the high-profile Channel 4 Youth Leaders’ Debate to the creation of a Political and Media Literacy Course for schools across the UK. A dedicated promoter of Political Literacy amongst young people, Matteo has won a number of awards for his entrepreneurship and work in political education. He has a BA in Politics & History, as well as a Graduate Diploma in Law.’

Here, I will write down what Matteo mentioned at the event I attended,( I started recording about a few mins in..):

‘..Because what we are seeing is now, rather than going towards an element of trust, and trying to connect and collaborate with each other, regardless whatever age demographic, ethnicity or anything you come from, we are actually entrenching ourselves in further. Look at, for example, the way politicians are now , where the political parties, the garbage they are putting out at the moment is so inflammatory. Every single political party is guilty there and you see them put out fake statistics,misinformed facts because they are essentially appealing to people’s fears, people’s dislikes to another group they’ve never met. They are appealing to fears, there are just no basis of reality in those fears, for they know that emotions when ruffled up are more important than facts. I remember hearing one academic once say ‘we’re living in a post factual society where facts don’t really matter, it’s not about what’s real, it’s when some one makes you believe it’s real ’, and that for me is so ridiculously true. It’s true in 2016, its true now. And the way we move forward from that, I think, all of us are responsible and the way we move forward from that is making sure we communicate with different groups that we don’t normally communicate with . We as an organisation, we try and strive to ensure that young people communicate with older people because one of the biggest issues now is there is a complete generational disconnect. You’ve got the (…) generation that constantly hear about young people being soft or snowflakes and all this kind of rubbish..it’s so easy because you got a phone. And the young people on the other hand say, well, you can get by so easy because you could buy a house for 9 grand where as now I can buy a cardboard box for that amount.But it’s different generations and different problems for different privileges from when they were born and when they were at. It’s not a problem for that communication is not there . The only information you constantly get is from the media and frankly the media have a hell of a lot to answer for because they soak that fear, and as soon as you remove the media from those conversations, like what we did when we brought a bunch of young people together, suddenly, we are talking about human beings. Because the media will only ever talk about a politician when he’s fiddling expenses, or gets caught with prostitutes and cocaine in hotels for example, which, don’t get me wrong , they should be exposed to those kind of issues but when you are consistently fed that kind of narrative , is it really that shocking that young people don’t engage in politics ? Is it really that shocking that our voting turn out is about 60%. And up until the youth quake in 2017, youth turn out in politics was about 30%, and since the youth quake has gone up 50%. We’ve got a massive crisis with our democracy, whereby we have completely destroyed and eroded the trust of an entire generation in our political structure, and healing that is how you start to build trust. And anchoring trust is how you start to build peace. Because without trust, without communication, without intergenerational dialogue, about dialogue between different parties, ideals, you’re never gonna have peace.And that’s why organisations, political parties of all these kind of groups, fresh groups need to come together and be like, hold on, let’s have an actual conversation. Let’s not consistently focus on the negative, let’s not go down to the lowest common denotative and focus on emotions and feelings and focus on things that will trigger someone just because they don’t like a certain group or for whatever reason. Let’s try and bring people together from different groups because we actually do have a lot more in common than we actually think or do and that, building that trust and bridge of communication is imperative in the first step to building peace. And for me, one of the biggest steps to building trust within, not specifically our political system alone, i think it’s got a lot of issues but building trust in that we are in a country, we are in a place where you can change society for the better, if you want to , have a lot of freedom since then. That’s part of education, that for me political literacy being the answer to a lot of things. If you bring political literacy to schools, we will empower people to have a voice, have a say on how society works. You teach them how to engage ,but you teach how they can be elected if they wanted to, how to vote, how to have a voice, how to campaign. You suddenly empower people to change society for the better rather than this feeling of complete helplessness and hatred towards this system we live on. Thank you very much.’

I really commend Matteo’s efforts in providing political literacy in schools and world class training and programmes on Media and political literacy. I feel hopeful when we have people like Matteo running such organisations as Shout Out UK, whereby one can be offered the platform to stand up for their what they believe is right to them, and right for our society in a peaceful manner, developing trust between those running our country.

The soldier

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England’s, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

Rupert Brooke, 1914

‘The poem “The Soldier” is one of English poet Rupert Brooke’s (1887–1915) most evocative and poignant poems—and an example of the dangers of romanticizing World War I, comforting the survivors but downplaying the grim reality. Written in 1914, the lines are still used in military memorials today.’(https://www.thoughtco.com/the-soldier-by-rupert-brooke-1221215)