Cookie Taylor

By Mrs M. Harding

When I was 11 years old my brother drowned in a lake.

Even now, writing those words at the age of 51, they still feel difficult to comprehend.

One ordinary summer’s day he was here and then he wasn’t and I watched it all happen in slow motion.

The adults around me were devastated, as you would expect. My parents were consumed by grief. Everyone tried their best to carry on but our family was never quite the same again. Neither was I.

As a child, I didn’t understand trauma; I only understood fear. The world no longer felt safe. Water no longer felt safe. Anything unknown didn’t feel safe and although nobody realised it at the time, that fear followed me into adulthood.

For years I avoided situations that made me uncomfortable. I never learned to swim properly. I hated boats. The thought of being surrounded by water made my stomach tighten. I never took baths because it reminded me of the lake.

Ironically I became more terrified of aeroplanes than water, even though I’d never been on one. I think it was a fear of not being in control rather than the fear of a plane falling out of the sky. I didn’t like the idea of being trapped in a seat while someone else took control.

So I never went abroad. To be honest I was never interested in seeing anything outside of Britain because I convinced myself nothing was worth seeing that meant going on a boat or plane. As the years passed, it became part of my identity and everyone around me just accepted it.

Then, shortly before my 50th birthday, my nephew asked me a simple question.

“What would you do if you weren’t afraid of everything?”

I laughed at first but then he asked again and told me to think about the answer seriously because he was genuinely interested. 

“I’d go abroad,” I said.

“Why don’t you just go then?” my nephew frowned. “Nothing’s stopping you.”

“Nah, I can’t,” I smiled. “I’m too scared to fly.”

“Then don’t be,” he said, walking away with all the bravery of a man in his 20’s.

I stared after him for a while.

‘Hmm … why don’t I?’ I thought, feeling embarrassed and sad for a moment.

The saddest part wasn’t that I hadn’t travelled. The saddest part was realising how much of my life had been shaped by fear. Fear had become my decision-maker. Fear had chosen what I did and what I avoided. Fear had stolen experiences before I’d even given them a chance.

I had spent nearly forty years hiding behind a tragic accident, making it my excuse and using it as a shield against anything remotely uncomfortable.

That week I booked a holiday for myself and a friend (with her help – I had no idea how to book a holiday!). 

A holiday.

Me.

Abroad.

Going on an aeroplane.

At 50 years old.

The months leading up to the trip were filled with tension and an urge to back out. There were many time I nearly cancelled the whole thing but couldn’t because we’d booked it under my friend’s name (that was clever of her!). 

The hours before I left, I felt as though I was going to throw up. I was irritable and tense and horrible to my friend when she came to pick me up to go to the airport. When we got to the airport I refused to get out of the car and felt nauseous just hearing the sound of the planes and their engines taking off.

Check-in.

Security.

Departure gate.

Boarding.

Take-off.

I screamed when the plane left the ground and the people around me giggled. They had no idea how terrified I was. The air hostess was really nice and put me at ease but I spent a couple of hours with my eyes closed, feeling every motion, bump and sound go through me.

The strange thing is that after a few hours, something shifted inside me. I looked out of the window and was mesmerised by the beauty of the clouds. Everyone around me was calm and excited about their holiday and in the cold light of day nothing bad was happening in that moment.

For the first time in many decades, I felt freed from the trauma that had been devouring my courage every moment of every day.

Landing was terrifying but walking out of the airport in Cyprus was  one of the most fantastic feelings I’ve ever had. I felt like a child discovering the world for the first time. Everything fascinated me – the language, the food, the smells, the architecture, the people, the animals, the weather. But what fascinated me the most was that I’d denied myself so much for so long because nobody had really helped me to deal with what I’d seen at 11 years old – probably because they couldn’t face dealing with it themselves. It’s such a shame, the whole thing.

My brother’s death will always be part of my story. I still miss him and think about him and I suspect there will always be moments when fear grabs me unexpectedly because of what happened to him. But I no longer want to let that fear run my life.

Having said that, since that trip I’ve not been abroad again. Once was enough on a plane for me and I’m proud I did it. I may at some point book a trip on a ferry to France but I don’t really feel the need to. I took a journey that at one point was impossible for me. And maybe, that’s all I needed to do.

By Emily

I cried on my 40th birthday. Not because I was turning 40 but because I was convinced my life was never going to get any better. That sounds dramatic now but at the time it felt absolutely real to me.

I was single. Very single. I’d never had a serious relationship and couldn’t get a boyfriend, let alone keep one, even online. Once they saw my face, they weren’t interested. I’m not what you call an oil painting and men don’t take to me.

At the grand age of 40 I was living alone in a one-bedroomed flat in a busy high street, feeling uglier than ever and convinced I was better off staying indoors than doing anything different. I worked from home, had no friends and was bored out of my mind but happier staying in. I was probably bordering on agoraphobic, thinking back.

I wasn’t unhappy all the time. I had an okay job. Good health. Family who care about me. But I just felt my life was dragging on and I felt that feeling of having missed the plane everyone else had managed to catch to an exotic location.

Around that time I was in a supermarket car park and a van pulled in near my car and a lady got out of it. She smiled at me and we walked towards the shop together. She seemed so nice that I found myself wanting to talk to her and asked if she was on holiday. She told me no, she lived in her van and was on the road full time. I was absolutely amazed because I thought people who live in vans were basically depressed homeless tramps but here she was, all done up nice, smelling nice with a big smile. 

She asked if I wanted to get a drink in the supermarket cafe and have a chat because she could see I was a bit low. So I said yes I could use the company and before I knew it I was spilling my heart out and telling her how jealous I was of her life and that I’d love a van although I would hate to actually live in a van. She laughed and said, ‘Well, you could always travel round the UK with a burger van and make your fortune at festivals.’

She lit a fire under me in about 20 minutes. What she seemed to believe, and what I desperately needed to hear, was that we are allowed to create a future that doesn’t look anything like the future we’d planned or that we’d ever have thought we wanted. But one day it just might seem right. 

She honestly changed everything that day. She wrote me her email address and took mine and that night an email came in with a list of festivals to try. She told me to let her know how I go and has messaged me a few times since to see how I’m getting on. She was like my angel looking out for me.

Most people would probably have forgotten about it five minutes later but that idea stayed with me. It took a few months but one afternoon I was supposed to be working and I found myself searching online for food trucks and burger vans. They were way too expensive so I emailed Cookie to ask what she thought.

She told me her and her husband had bought normal vans and converted them on their own and that I could do the same to save money, so I started going round asking local burger vans advice.

It took another year but I didn’t feel ready and so worked part time for a burger van to get experience and then actually got to go to a festival to work. I learned about what licenses you need and qualifications and the kinds of foods people want.

At 40 years old, while everyone else seemed to be climbing corporate ladders or planning retirement funds, I was sitting in my little flat imagining myself serving burgers from a food truck at music festivals.

The more I thought about it, the more excited I became. I imagined travelling to festivals around the country and meeting lots of people and not just looking at four walls.

Cookie told me in the supermarket cafe that we often focus on what we don’t have instead of what we do have and that it can hold us back because we think we’re failures if we haven’t got it all sorted. I don’t have a burger van yet but I do have a savings account called Burger Van Fund. It’s not huge but it’s growing. Every time I transfer money into it, I feel excited and I look at vans every week. I know I’ll get there but I need to work on some fixed timelines.

I haven’t bought the van yet, I haven’t handed in my notice and I haven’t served a single burger yet. But I have something I didn’t have on my fortieth birthday. Hope.

I don’t really care about not having had a proper boyfriend at 40 years old. I’ve got something to work towards now. There are still times when I compare myself to married women and wonder what might have been. But maybe it wasn’t ever going to be for me. Maybe I’ll meet a nice man at a festival one day instead, you never know.

At 40, I thought my life was a closed book. Now I think that book might finally be opening.