Me, Myself and I.

As a child I loved speaking. Won best speaker in the school once too. Received a trophy and a voucher for Exclusive Books, with which I purchased some really random “A-Z Encyclopaedia of Animals” – I am guessing this selection was probably not my own, lol – which would most likely explain why I have opened it perhaps a handful of times since receive, yet it still sits on my bookshelf. I also used to love running. Athletics was probably the ONLY sport that EVER appealed to me. Every time trials would arrive, I would promise myself that I would make sure I didn’t come in the top three, but that gun would go off and any thought I had used to convince myself with prior would vanish quicker than a thief in the night.

Piano, my long lost LOVE… I sat in lessons, year after year – never really “enjoying” them because I found the reading of music boring – yet, if I could listen to it… I could play it – well, if I wanted to. My best friend and I both did piano at the time, she was a grade or two ahead of me, but we learned a duet together. We were SO good that not only the school, but the local paper featured our performance at the concert that night. I can remember the fear like it was yesterday. My fingers were so wet with perspiration that they literally SLID off the keys. I was so scared that I was going to hit a wrong note… but I didn’t.

My passion for the piano never left me. It was my saving grace during my drug induced college years. I would come home and sit for two to three hours a day making up tunes and simply “rambling” but with notes instead of words. It was the escape from my escape. It took me back to a place where I could feel the roots extend from my feet into the earth below me, reconnecting my “real self” to at least one thing that truly mattered. I said goodbye to that escape when I bought my first property at the age of 20 - Life lessons and all that. Something had to pay the transfer fees and my piano was “it”. I WILL get another piano one day and it will be a White Grand and it will ALWAYS have a MASSIVE vase of flowers on it as a tribute to my mom – ROSES to be specific.

I look at the above three paragraphs and I think shit fnck!! So much potential, so many opportunities lost, squandered or forgotten… and that is just a simple fraction from tween years… it is almost overwhelming to think of how much else I have fncked up over the years. A recent example of which was the cookware range I was asked to represent a couple of years ago. I did the representation, yes – cooked stuff and shared it whilst simultaneously promoting their brand (which IS awesome) – then I was asked if I would be interested in doing a cookbook with that brand behind it. My insecurity said no and a few months later, one of South Africa’s most well renowned chefs was on the cover of that book… but you know what, I still would have said no… because I often don’t have ANY self-belief… just like you.