Missing Link.

Reading through your old blog posts is odd, around the time I stopped blogging a few major things happened in my life. I feel that looking through old ramblings and photo's leaves this whole chapter of 2015/2016 unturned, for that I apologise. 

Firstly we flew the coop, moved out into our own flat attempting to be true adults. It's still fun, however being grown up is so dull, laundry, council tax and having to buy your own food isn't as awesome as I once thought. Summer this year was really fun, we went to Download Festival and also Liquicity Festival in Amsterdam. Total opposite ends of the music spectrum, however such wonderful memories and experiences took place. Download was almost a write off this year, flooding and knee deep mud dampened the fun despite our best efforts to beat it. As always we still had a great time. I still blame Babymetal and their awful "rain dance" on the first day. Liquicity was insane, thousands of dutch partying to liquid drum and bass by a lake. It was as fascinating as it sounds, beautifully laid out for a festival and really fun despite not being my usual "go to" music. It's really hard to sum up what's happened within the last year, for myself and my family it's been difficult to say the least. My mum was diagnosed with breast cancer, which was one of the scariest things to ever hear. She fought through stronger than we could have ever imagined. Doing so well and keeping us all positive during all of her operations and treatments. I could write a lot more about the subject, however it's still quite hard to publicly speak about. So we will leave that one there.. Mum's diagnosis was shortly after the news of a close friend passing. A shock I will never forget, once of the worst goodbyes. It's heartbreaking, knowing someone so special, insanely funny with so much mischief and knowing you can't give them another huge bear hug. 2015/2016 have sucked, basically. Always the good times follow the bad, but for me the balance was off by a long shot. I can't complain really, the good times always come back. With this thought, I bought a rabbit. A typical Beckie thing to do in hard situations is to make them weirder. She is named Leia, after Princess Leia of course. A little fluffball with a ton of sass. I ran my first 5k to raise money for Cancer Research, also lost some chub in the process. Also I got really good at Crochet, and totally addicted to Vampire Diaries (it sounds awful but it's so good.) I felt like I actually lost a lot of friends this last year and a half, however made some new friends in the process.

Anyway, before I chat on for another year there it is, my year in a paragraph. Followed by some happy photos.

The Dutch.

It's very easy to fall in love with the architecture, flower decor and canals of Amsterdam. The thing i have learnt the most about my time here is that these people are very calm. There isn't an endless rush, people take their time. Calm and complexed most of the time wearing a smile. The english expectations mean nothing here. Amsterdam is the total opposite of London. You rarely get sad faces wondering around the big smoke, just happiness spread everywhere riding bicycles taking their time and most of all not living to work. They enjoy their food, cycling around with such elegance. The supermarkets are full of fresh foods, delicious big salads, fruit boxes and so many olives / picky bits that you can easily realise why they look so much thinner than the British. The fact they have half a shelf for crisps and a whole isle for nuts. The daily exercise cycling everywhere, to the timekeeping and calm aura. I haven't seen anyone so far visually depressed with their heads down and miserable. Everyone is slow, pacing and surrounded by such a calm nature it's mesmerising. It's made me think a lot about my own life back home in the UK. What I can do to adapt and become better, happier and introduce some of the dutch ways into my own life. Firstly, being here i've realised I honestly eat too much junk. It's easier to walk into Tesco with £5 and buy some processed ready meal and some snacks than buy individual ingredients. I love fresh food, however it's just plain laziness and convenience. My life fly's by so fast sometimes that I forget to take it slow and just enjoy my time. Do things that make you smile, appreciate what you have and forget the worries.

- Note: I wrote this in back in July whilst lay on the green of Vondelpark.