cafe no8

I've never written a restaurant review before, but then part of the beauty of having a blog is that you can do whatever the hell you like!

If you don't like this place, my suggestion is to get yourself a 'check-up from the neck up', as a former colleague would say. For me, it represents everything that is good about eating and relaxing. It's also an any-time-of-day kind of place, so - once you know it's there - you just have to wait for that 'Cafe No.8 urge' to descend upon you (it will) and, provided you're in the vicinity, you can try your luck and see if they've got a table.

There aren't many of them, mind you (tables, that is). I'd say about seven inside and a similar number arrayed around the delightfully overgrown back garden which lies within spitting distance of York's medieval walls. (Not that you're likely to get spat on here, given the largely genteel nature of the city.)

What the place lacks in size it more than makes up for in quality and atmosphere. While the kitchen itself is hardly large enough to swing a Spanish chorizo, its staff work diligently within its cramped confines to turn out food of consistently mouthwatering quality. Whether you stop by for a quick Masham sausage doorstop sandwich while reading the morning paper, or indulge in a full-blown meal, you're unlikely to leave disappointed.

If more fortification is required from your breakfast (perhaps before tackling a circuit of the ancient walls or hitting York's uniquely varied shopping scene), then go for the Full English, complete with Doreen's black pudding and creamy scrambled eggs. If you've already seen the sights and marvelled at the breathtaking Minster (conveniently situated just around the corner), then this is the place to seek out for a spot of well-earned R'n'R (those time-worn flagstones and cobbles can be hard on the feet, after all!). The daytime menu is served throughout the afternoon and features a tempting array of sandwiches, salads, risottos, bruschette and home-made burgers, as well as a choice of meat or fish dishes - the cod fishcakes with roast cherry tomatoes and smoked red wine, chorizo & butter bean sauce looked particularly tempting.

Yesterday, I took advantage of the 'lunch deal' (any two courses for £11.95, Monday to Friday), taking the chance to relax in the peaceful surrounds of the garden while soaking up the unexpectedly warm springtime sunshine. This proved to be time extremely well spent. To start, the Cafe No.8 deli plate (char grilled artichokes; sun blush tomatoes; olives; fresh anchovies; goats cheese and tomato pate; creamy hummus and toasted bread) made my good mood even better. In spite of the warm weather, I talked myself out of the goats cheese salad, feeling unable to resist the char grilled rump steak with chunky chips, slow roast tomatoes and Madeira sauce. I didn't regret it. The steak was as succulent and as tasty as any I can remember (cooked just to the point of bloodiness - 'a point', as the French would describe it). The hand-cut chips, meanwhile, were a thick cut above anything you would get in the best of Parisian bistrots or brasseries. The Madeira sauce and tiny shallots just brought all the flavours together beautifully, as did my large glass of very acceptable Chilean Merlot.

And that, I'm afraid, was me done. The raspberry and white chocolate cheesecake was, on this occasion, surplus to requirements. As was the banoffee pie and the rhubarb & custard pavlova. A small tip: if you really want to enjoy the cakes here, then pop in during the late afternoon so as not to be distracted by the rest of the menu.

The only drawback this place has is one of its most charming features - its diminutive size. So if you want to bag one of those seven tables in the evening, be sure to call ahead. The service, as you would expect from such a place, is courteous, friendly and informal. They didn't bother bringing my bill out to me yesterday afternoon, leaving me to enjoy my book and the birdsong in the garden. Now that's the kind of civilised, European attitude that we should see more of in this country.

Cafe No.8 - 8 Gillygate, York. Telephone 01904 653074. www.cafeno8.co.uk

memories of poon hill

At 3,193 metres in altitude (around ten-and-a-half thousand feet), Poon Hill is - by my reckoning - more of a mountain than a hill. But then this is Nepal, where the slightest protuberance seems to reach for the sky and where the landscape is viewed on an entirely different scale.

At any rate, it is one of the most famous viewpoints in the world, taking in two of the highest mountains in the world - Annapurna (8,091m) and Dhaulagiri (8,167m) - as well as one of the most strikingly beautiful - Macchapuchare or 'Fish Tail'. Even more impressive to me, though, was the sheer number of dramatic peaks arrayed in front of me, set in a jagged, icy arc across my entire field of vision. Such is the monumental scale of the panorama here that, despite a colossal 5,000-metre difference in height between me and the highest summit, it still felt as though these sublime marvels were almost within touching distance.

And so it is, that during the murky pre-dawn hours of every morning throughout the trekking season, a barely distinguishable line of human forms snakes its way up the hill like a column of ants, torchlights swaying to the rhythm of the climb. These trekkers are on a kind of pilgrimage on which they aim to witness a classic Himalayan moment. As the sun rises slowly to the east, the mighty peaks begin their dawn parade, changing colours by the second as the marvellous views open up.


My own experience of this, during an eight-day trek from the tiny airstrip at Jomsom, was no less special. I was so full of anticipation the night before that it felt like Christmas Eve had done as a small child. I remember having a recurring nightmare that I had overslept and missed the sunrise for which I had been waiting all week. So I was overjoyed to be freezing cold and wide awake at 5am, ready to wrap myself up in whatever clothes I had, before venturing outside the Ghorepani 'tea house' to begin the painstaking climb in the pitch dark of night.

Once at the summit, I could feel the brooding presence of these cold, grey towers of rock all around me, like enormous skyscrapers in a dense city fog. It was a bitterly cold, interminable wait for the sun to appear but, when it did, it lit the mountains up, one by one and shade by shade - first a rosy pink on the very pinnacle, then a gathering orange, then a glittering gold. Finally, a dazzling, sparkling, brilliant white stood out, almost unreal against the clear blue sky. Not something I am ever likely to forget.

the art of letting go

My new mantra is to 'let go'. Not a very original thought, I grant you, and perhaps one with overtones of cliched Sixties hippydom, but I don't care. If it works, it's good enough for me. The thing is, letting go is what I've always been singularly bad at. I sometimes find it practically impossible. I have an elephantine ability to recall the past, I am the unofficial World Champion List-Maker, and I have been known to display an almost pathological desire to finish things off.

This noxious habit has been driven, I suspect, by the same internal force which compels me to 'try harder', 'work things out' and avoid failure at all costs. Its language is full of the same 'musts', 'oughts' and 'shoulds' which command a life of fear, ruled by an uncompromising gestapo officer inside my own head.

But enough is enough. Just as I have now cleared the clutter from our house, it is time to vanquish the lingering poison from within my own head. But where to start? Unhelpful expectations, perhaps? Self-mortifying guilt? Brooding blame? Useless, painful and despicable fear? Just as important as recognising the truths of our past is our ability to move on.

Letting go isn't about laziness or an inability to face our problems. It is about looking our demons squarely in the eye and knowing them by name. It is about seeing the true reality of things so as not to get lost in the despairing cycle of negative rumination. Moreover, it is - for someone like me - a courageous act which seems to go against our very nature. It is making peace with uncertainty, and relinquishing the illusion of control over our lives. So simple to say, yet so very hard to do.

I'd like to explain it better, but I'm letting go now and going to bed! Instead I'll point you towards an article I unearthed on t'internet called The Art of Letting Go - A Taoist Approach by Amy Suplee, a Master of Traditional Chinese Medicine from Aspen, Colorado. I think it repays a couple of close readings, and I agree with pretty much every word she says.

coming alive in the dales

Although I know the Yorkshire Dales pretty well, I always think of them as the gentler, prettier cousin to the moody and magnificent Lakes, and the wild, rugged Moors. However, yesterday's wonderful walk in perhaps the loveliest, picture-perfect dale of them all - Wharfedale - made me think again. Beyond Bolton Abbey's day-trippers, the tea shops of Grassington and the riverside picnics of Burnsall lies a tough landscape of spectacular grandeur.

There is a gloomy beauty to Upper Wharfedale, as you head further up the valley from the charming village of Kettlewell towards Hubberholme, Cray and Yockenthwaite. Here is a land of eroded gulleys, known as hags, and wind-battered limestone crags. The route I took was enchanting and challenging in equal measure. It was also split into two distinct halves. First there was a long, flat meander by the River Wharfe along the valley bottom, characterised by vivid green fields of new-born lambs, glorious riverside paths and short detours to an odd village pub or two. The second half began with a bugger of a climb from the doorstep of the last of these, The White Lion in Cray, to ascend the hulking mass of Buckden Pike.

The Pike itself looks fairly innocuous from its base but, like many rounded hills, it is a trickster and a charlatan to the unsuspecting walker. The slope soon steepens and you reach a large area of peat moorland with some distinctly boggy patches, even in dry weather. Each summit turns out to be a fake which only reveals the next climb as soon as you reach it. The real summit lies at 702m and, once you finally get there, feels suitably bleak and windswept. It does, however, offer the fine compensation of a full 360-degree panorama: the Lake District's Conistone Fells, Helvellyn and Scafell Pike to the west; the Peak District and North York Moors to the south and east respectively, and - in the middle distance - Yorkshire's Three Peaks, Pen-y-ghent, Ingleborough and Whernside.

Around a kilometre south of the summit stands a memorial to a Polish aircrew whose Wellington bomber crashed here during a fierce snowstorm in January 1942. The sole survivor, who broke his leg, crawled away from the wreckage and followed a fox track downhill to the White Lion, where I had begun my ascent. The memorial is a mournful but touching reminder of the five airmen who lost their lives, with remnants of the plane scattered around its base alongside a fox's head in bronze. The story of Joe Fusniak, the survivor of the tragedy, is an astonishing tale of wartime survival in a land, and in circumstances, so far removed from the battlefront.

From here, it was a long and superbly scenic high-level return across open moorland to Cam Head, with spectacular views down Cam Gill towards Starbotton. Once on the long and straight Top Mere Road, I feasted on yet more tremendous views during the gradual descent to Kettlewell. The village remained hidden from view until I was virtually on top of it, and the gathering gloom alerted me to the fact that it was now almost 8pm, around two hours later than I had expected to finish! There was just time to say hello to the locals in the King's Head, and let my dog Molly crash out on the flagstone floor next to the open fire, before it was time to head reluctantly out of the Dales once more.

allowing the change

‘You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame: how could you become new, if you had not first become ashes?’
NIETZCHE - THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA

'I must be willing to give up what I am in order to become what I will be.'

ALBERT EINSTEIN

This recovery phase really does take time - more than I care to remember. The temptation is to think that, once I’ve crossed the void and can see the worst of depression receding in my rear-view mirror, that I can accelerate away and leave it for dead. Of course, this is another illusion of the mind. It hangs around, tailgating me for a while, and giving me the occasional flash of the headlights. It doesn’t want me to speed off to ‘Normal’, wherever ‘Normal’ is - it is not a place I should ever return to.

This phase is where I’ve been for a while now (where I was for a good while last time I was ill, if I care to remember accurately). It’s about achieving steadiness and consistency and - more than that - cultivating a certain state of mind which can help me over the months and years to come.

This state of mind is about awareness, about kindness and compassion to myself and about balance. It is also about independence, freedom and trust. I need to trust the deep-down feelings and instincts which I worked so hard to uncover and tune into, so that I can gradually leave all the props of therapy behind, go back to work and resume my existence in the ‘real’ world. The real world doesn’t allow me the luxury of time and space, of course, so it is even more important to feel ready for it; to have a sense that my priorities are clear and in order (as far as possible); and to feel like the tools of awareness are there for me to use when I need them - even if this isn’t quite as regularly as I would like.

It’s not the thought of returning to work which is now scary. It’s the prospect of returning to a fixed routine, where the best hours of my waking day are accounted for by someone else, and the lack of freedom this entails. Time has been my most precious commodity and, suddenly, I’m going to have a lot less of it - at least to do the things I enjoy and would like to do. It’s not the work itself which I resent (in general, I rather like it). It’s what it represents in my life and what it prevents me from doing. This is why it gradually becomes stifling, leaving me feeling trapped, and in physical and mental pain.

So, despite the constraints of reality when it returns, I cannot continue on my old path. I need to forge a new one. This is exciting and positive, and yet it is also quite frightening. It is about taking a leap into the unknown, while somehow keeping my feet on the ground. It is about building bridges towards a new life while keeping the old one going as far as I need to. And it is about making a plan, and following it through with a good deal of determination and discipline. As I sit here now, I’m not sure how I’m going to do it, but I know that I can do it, if I take the right approach.

What this is about is the part of the therapy process which has been missing in the past for me - change. All the best books on depression and therapy talk of this concept, but always in an abstract way, for very good reason. Change - like the illness itself - is as individual as the person in question. The ‘lessons’ from depression are as many and varied as those that have come through it, whether it be changing the way we think, live, love or work - or whether it is simply a coming-to-terms with our own truths.

These lessons, though, must be recognised and acted upon, otherwise the illness will stay lurking in the shadows, and will deliver a sharp whack around the head when they are ignored entirely.

'If you can cope with the nuclear winter of depression and come through it without committing suicide - the disease's most serious side effect - then, in my experience, depression can be a great friend. It says: the way you've been living is unbearable, it's not for you. And it teaches you slowly how to live in a way that suits you infinitely better. If you don't listen, of course, it comes back and knocks you out even harder the next time, until you get the point.'

SUNBATHING IN THE RAIN - GWYNETH LEWIS

The opportunity to change - along with better self-knowledge, clarity and a new perspective - is our gift from depression. While the other three gifts can gradually fade over time, the gift of ‘change’ - should we choose to accept it - is what keeps the other three alive and fresh. By taking what we have learned and experienced in order to embark on a different path, we are living the lessons and consequences of our illness. We are accepting it and respecting it, rather than shutting it out, suppressing and ignoring it, as we did with so many unwanted feelings in the past.

Are you brave enough to re-make your life?'

DANS PARIS - Film directed by Christophe Honoré, 2007

And change - real change - takes time. We must create the right conditions for it to emerge, thus allowing the change rather than 'making' it. This question of time is, to me, the key one: I have always tried to fit as much as I possibly could into the time available, and yet depression has taught me - on several occasions - that there is a new way of being, even when we are ‘busy’. I have always used the scattergun approach, whether it be with work, friendships or plans.

Now I need to cut things out of my life and simplify, simplify, simplify. I need to do less, not more. I need to prioritise and be occasionally ruthless. I need to say ‘no’ more, and feel satisfied in doing it, even if I can’t always enjoy it. Getting the most out of life isn’t about doing more and trying harder. It’s about being aware, staying focused and going with the flow. This is probably the greatest lesson I have learned from depression.

the wonder of the wolds

I tend not to repeat walks in the countryside too often, even those I consider to be my personal favourites. However, there is one simple loop in the midst of the Yorkshire Wolds which has become a regular haunt. Perhaps this is because it's only half an hour's drive from home, or perhaps due to the fact that it has become a reliable source of 'mental space' for me, but - at any rate - I return to it (with or without the wife, but always with the dog) with a great degree of regularity.

It begins from the fairly ramshackle and none-too-memorable village of Thixendale, situated in a steep-sided valley (or 'dale') of the same name. This single-street village has little to recommend it, apart from its position among some gloriously undiscovered scenery and a suitably down-at-heel pub, the Cross Keys. Confidently advertising itself as 'The Best Pub in Thixendale' (it has, after all, not a single rival), it boasts a wary welcome from licensees Paddy and Mary, and a quintessentially Yorkshire ambience of 'no nonsense'. There's a log fire in winter, pheasant pie on the specials board if you're lucky, and a comfortably worn carpet underfoot. Don't expect any airs or graces here, but the beer is always grand and you might just force a smile from Paddy's lips by the time you leave.

The route itself - no longer than four miles and a comfortable hour-and-a-half's stroll - begins by ascending a steep track up Beamer Hill before leading you across a succession of partially hidden and seemingly 'secret' valleys, following sections of both the Centenary Way and Wolds Way, before returning to Thixendale along the beautiful expanse of Water Dale. The scenery is typical of the landscapes so vividly depicted by David Hockney in his 'Year in Yorkshire' paintings from 2005/06, all of which were painted in plein-air style on a series of huge canvases.

The Yorkshire Wolds represent the northern edge of a continuous band of chalk uplands which extend across the country from Dorset and Salisbury Plain to the Wash. They are classic chalk country at its finest, a landscape of rolling hills through which glaciers once cut a series of deep, steep-sided, flat-bottomed valleys. The unusual topography results in an 'upside-down' farming system whereby the livestock graze the valleys while the hills above are used for crops.

The landscape conveys an almost prairie-like vastness to me (especially when conditions are deliciously bleak), and is punctuated by small areas of woodland, farms and scattered villages. Sparsely populated, this area has more of a timeless feel to it than the 'honey pot' attractions of the Dales and the North York Moors. There are mercifully few 'second homers' here, although there's nowt so certain as change, as the thoroughly engaging recent novel by Richard Benson, The Farm, engagingly describes.

clearing out the clutter

Getting rid of the rubbish feels like an important part of the process I'm going through. Recently, I've had this - at times - overwhelming urge to just 'get rid'. To get rid of all the unnecessary 'stuff' that has been getting in the way of what's important. So while I'm now making plans to get shot of all the unnecessary junk that has accumulated in various corners of our house, I can sense that I'm also going through a similar process inside my own head.

This is about ‘getting out of my own way’. I have long been in the habit of placing unnecessary and harmful demands on myself - demands which really only help me to avoid doing what’s truly important. I’ve always tried to busy myself with lots of things - with pretty much everything, in fact. In my (largely successful) efforts to become an ‘all rounder’ - choosing a career in marketing is perhaps a case in point - I had to suppress my far more natural desire to focus and become absorbed in something I love.

So this critical time - this time which cannot be rushed, in depression - is enabling me to find out what I need to get rid of, and what I want to change or keep in my life. I realise I can’t just chuck everything out or stomp through everything in hobnailed boots, tempting though this may be in time of despair. I need to take the time to sift through the debris of my former life, understand why it was there in the first place, see what purpose it serves now (if any), and move on.

Above all, I should take this opportunity to remove the pressure that this gradual accumulation of detritus has brought about, and give myself some space. I need to simplify, simplify, simplify. Where there’s focus and single-mindedness, there’s room for the flowers to grow and flourish. Where there’s compromise, conflict and confusion, the path is overgrown with weeds. It’s all about making choices, really. But these choices can be hard and I might need to be very determined once they're made, so I need to make them at the right time, at a pace that feels comfortable.

Less truly is more, and where there’s concentrated energy, there’s strength and power.

arrival in india

Well, for me, this was far too long ago - and I need to go back soon - but I thought I'd share my recollections of my arrival on Indian soil. This is in honour of my good friend Libby who begins her own Indian adventure today in Delhi...

27 October 1999

My first step out of Bombay Airport found mayhem, even at 2am. The baggage carousel had been a final air-lock against the mad world of India outside: I could sense the heat and the chaos beyond, so I took my time retrieving my luggage, partly dying to find out what lay ahead, partly dreading it.

Immediately through customs all hell broke loose. It was the middle of the night, but people were everywhere: shouting, gesticulating, pleading. Somehow I managed to get a pre-paid taxi organised, and was surprisingly impressed how this system worked until, a couple of miles into the journey, my driver pulled over into a petrol station and asked me to pay for his fuel! My refusal cooled our friendship somewhat, and the final few kilometres into town were spent in an uncomfortable silence as the warm night air blasted through the open windows. My jaw began to drop as I gradually became aware of the after-dark world of the city pavement dwellers: at first the occasional wrapped lump by the side of the road (is it a corpse, I wondered?), soon becoming a dense population of street-sleepers huddled up against the night.

The Lawrence Hotel, a small and cheap one-star selected from Lonely Planet's tome to India, wasn’t immediately known to my driver, although he at least got me to the right area of town. The neighbourhood was eerily pitch-black with groups of shady-looking locals on every corner, and there was very little to distinguish one building from another. In the end, I located the gloomy open stairwell of the Lawrence Hotel, and hauled my heavy backpack (replete with a gap year’s supply of luggage) to the second floor, neither sensing nor daring to hope for any signs of life.

Unbelievably, the 'concierge' was present, albeit in the form of a grubby youth sleeping across the reception doorway. Even more unbelievably, he had, scrunched up into a tiny ball in his hand, a tatty scrap of paper with my name on it. He hauled himself to his feet, showed me along a short corridor into my room, turned on the light and left me to it. The four walls and ceiling reflected pure white back at me: there was absolutely nothing there, except a hospital-style bed-frame and mattress, circled from above by a rather murderous looking fan. “Welcome to India”, I mouthed quietly to myself. My adventure had begun.

spots of time

Wordsworth speaks of certain memories or 'spots of time' which are 'scattered everywhere'. They have a special place in the life of each of us, and it is our task to recover them: not as an act of simple nostalgia, but because they help to repair and renovate us if we find them. This is because they resonate with new meanings long after the events themselves have taken place.

Perhaps this is partly what I am doing in setting to work on this blog, and it is a search which goes hand-in-hand with the process of therapy itself. After all, these spots are, by their very nature, elusive. They can't be hunted down like an Easter egg or a petrified fox. We must push and prod and probe, until the priceless memory - and the feeling it evokes - is unlocked. What better way to do this than to write?

'There are in our existence spots

of time

That with a distinct pre-eminence

retain

A renovating virtue, when,

depressed

By false opinions and contentious

thought,

Or aught of heavier and more

deadly weight,

In trivial occupations, and the

round

Of ordinary intercourse, our minds

Are nourished and invisibly

repaired;

A virtue by which pleasure is

enhanced,

That penetrates, enables us to

mount,

When high, more high, and lifts us

up when fallen...'

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH - THE PRELUDE

just run

'The thoughts that occur to me while I'm running are like clouds in the sky. Clouds of all different sizes. They come and they go, while the sky remains the same sky as always. The clouds are mere guests in the sky that pass away and vanish, leaving behind the sky. The sky both exists and doesn't exist. It has substance and at the same time doesn't. And we merely accept that vast expanse and drink it in.'

HARUKI MURAKAMI - WHAT I TALK ABOUT WHEN I TALK ABOUT RUNNING

At the moment, I love my running. And though my long-distance running career is merely embryonic when compared to that of Mr Murakami, the celebrated Japanese writer, I feel much the same about it. I think about very little when I'm running, and maybe that's why I love it so much. It also lends me physical strength and creative energy. My thoughts come and go, like passing clouds in the sky, and I allow them to mix and mesh with each other, without following them too far or thinking too deeply.

For the most part, I'm living in the present moment when I'm running, paying attention to how my body is feeling and just gradually eating up my surroundings. I allow my breathing to set my rhythm, and feel my feet on the ground as I spring off from my big toe with every step. In this sense, the act of running is - for me - almost like a meditative state. It allows me to mindfully exist in the now, to take in my surroundings and to appreciate the subtleties of our lives - the different times of day, the changing seasons of the year, the body's dynamic sensations, my own fluctuating energy levels.

No two runs can ever be quite the same and, indeed, I'd like to vary them as much as possible, by running in every place I travel to. Today it was the surprisingly beautiful War Memorial Park in Coventry; once it was along the wondrous sea shore of Kaikoura on New Zealand's South Island; maybe one day it will be the 62-mile 'ultramarathon' at Lake Saroma in Hokkaido, Japan - just like Mr Murakami himself. Wherever I go, I'd like to keep running.

For me, it's an incentive to stay in shape and to look after myself; it represents a path to mental, as well as physical, well-being; and - perhaps most importantly - it keeps me in touch with the blue sky beyond the clouds.

look into my eyes...

Yesterday I had my first ever session of hypnotherapy. It was very interesting. I'm not 100% sure if it 'worked', but this could largely be due to my preconceptions about hypnosis in general, which - no matter how carefully the process of hypnotherapy is explained - are hard to shift. So there was no getting me to wag my tail and act like a fawning spaniel, or getting me up on stage to make a spectacle of myself. Instead, there was a brief introductory session of harmless hypnosis, sandwiched between a fascinating and wide-ranging discussion with Russell - an engaging, full-time hypnotherapist with silver-grey hair and a penchant for Borneo.

The discussion ranged from the issues I wished to address to the different types of therpay we had both experienced; from my feelings during childhood to our favourite corners of the world. Funnily enough, we had plenty in common, having grown up in the same corner of Coventry and having suffered a similar kind of depression in our lives.

I felt myself 'coming in and out' of the state of hypnosis - really a type of acute awareness rather then the drifting, sleepy anesthesia I had expected. Typically enough, I was probably 'trying too hard', or aiming to listen rather too intently to the messages Russell was giving me. However, the session lasted much longer than the 10-15 minutes I had imagined (more like 40 minutes, in fact), so there was obviously a fair amount of 'inner work' being done.

Quite apart from the hypnosis itself, this man had many interesting things to say, so I ended up getting a three-hour session instead of the expected two hours. Either he did a convincing impression of pretending to like me, or we got on very well indeed, so I'm very much looking forward to my second session in a few days' time... hopefully I'll be able to relax into the process more easily next time, and allow myself to go with the flow.