A couple of months ago, my housemate Sophie and I were heading down to our local Morrison’s (this isn’t part of the story, but I just want to say that Morrison’s is a pretty great supermarket) and it was fairly late in the day. It was the end of summer, so it still stayed light pretty late, but it was already dark.

As we approached the entrance, a gang of young teenagers started yelling nonsense at the pair of us. To be honest, I didn’t really even register that the shouts were directed at us – I just thought they were making mindless youthful noises, but as it turns out, they were shouting ‘shorty’ at Sophie who, depending on what you classify as tall and what you classify as short, could possibly be described as short.

After picking up some delicious items of food for sale, it was time to head home. Our antagonists for the evening were still circling around on their bikes and the ringleader in the anti-social circus started shouting ‘shorty’ once again.

“You’re about twelve,” said Sophie. “I don’t care what you say.”

“I’m not twelve,” he protested.

“Yes, Sophie,” I interjected, “he’s obviously not twelve. You can tell he’s only seven.”

And we kept on our way. However, for some reason, this young child continue to shout words at us.

“If you have a problem with me,” said Sophie, “come and say it to my face – don’t just shout from a distance.”

I admired her resilience. As we came around the corner, so did the teenager – evidently he had decided to take up Sophie’s offer to come and say his nonsense to her face.

He rolled up on his bike and Sophie grabbed hold of the handle. “Do you have a problem with me?” she asked.

Now that the space between them was very limited and she had laid hands on his bike, his confident demeanor left him instantly

“You can’t hit me,” he kept repeating. “Don’t touch me. I’m just a kid.”

He stammered incoherently for a while, so I thought that it would be a good idea to play the good cop to Sophie’s bad.

“As an impartial passer-by,” I said, “might I interject? Nobody’s going to get hit today.”

He looked up at me with vacant, uncomprehending eyes.

“I don’t think it was very nice of you to shout things at my friend,” I said. “Also, have you considered that what you said was very ironic? You called her ‘shorty’ while you yourself are the very same height.”

“Nah, nah, nah,” he said. “I’m just a kid. You can’t touch me.”

Clearly, Sophie’s assertive response to him and rendered him completely senseless. A few moments later he was speeding away in the opposite direction on his bike.

I’m sure he thought twice before the next time he shouted abuse at a random stranger. Our work was done. We made a good vigilante team of good cop, bad coppers and I look forward to conforming many more villains and delinquents in the future.

Who knows? Maybe the next person he would have called ‘shorty’ (if not for us) would have been a drug baron who then riddled his small body with bullets from his tommy gun. A tragedy. We may have saved his life. I am sure once he receives his PhD in pediatrics in fifteen years time, he’ll wait outside Morrison’s to give us his thanks.

I was watching The Waltons the other day and I came to the classic episode “The First Day” which is about John-Boy’s first day at Boatwright University. I always enjoy watching it, because it always reminds me of my own first days of university and so I felt inspired to write about the start of my time at Bath Spa University.

I would write about my first day specifically, but the truth is, I can’t really remember it. I can remember my first time on the campus (that was during Freshers’ Week), which was pretty nice. I went along with my (then new, now old) friend Tulin and they had turned the Student’s Union into a kind of night club. I remember speaking to a couple of people and I remember somebody telling the pair of us that we should be making more effort to interact with other people (because obviously, they said, the two of us had known each other for ages).

But I’m not sure that really counts as the first real day. I can vaguely remember the car ride in – an old schoolmate drove me, as she lived in the same town and was going there too. It was a sunny day and I was quite excited. I didn’t really know what to expect, but I felt that it was the beginning of a new era of life and anything could happen.

I can remember, on one of the first days, sitting to have lunch with a table of people I didn’t know – one of them I’d been talking to and had invited me. None of us knew each other and I didn’t feel that comfortable. I thought to myself that I wasn’t likely to form any meaningful connections with them if I just sit among them all at a table and don’t get a chance to interact with them individually. Turns out I was right, because I never saw any of them again and I can’t picture any of them.

The campus, during those first few days, seemed like this far away, unknown location. An unfamiliar environment as I branched off to new horizons. It’s funny because, less than a year later, I felt it to be a comfortable and familiar environment and now I think of it as a sentimental and nostalgic environment.

I remember the end of my first day quite clearly too. I was tired. Very tired and I wondered how I was going to do that every day. Especially as I had to get the buses back and that meant two of them. But as it turned out, it was never a problem. For all the uncertainty of my first days, university turned out to be one of the loveliest times of my life. Not at all taxing or tiring.

On Monday, I’ll have another first day. The first day on a new job. Although I am sure it will seem different and maybe imposing, I can’t wait for the inevitable feeling of comfort and familiarity once I am settled.

I recently returned to a call centre that I’d worked at a couple of years previously. It was interesting to see how much the workplace had changed in that time, both in terms of their policies, but also in terms of the people there. Only two of the old colleagues I’d befriended were still there and I was largely working alongside new faces.

Indeed, I was part of a whole team of new people who were working on a specific client. One who left a particularly good impression on me was a young woman who had a very positive an optimistic disposition. I admired that, but unfortunately, most of the people there didn’t take it too seriously. They often joked that she was naive, or that she didn’t know how the world worked, or that her perspectives would all change after a couple of years in the real world.

This quite resonated with me, because these are all things that have been said to me in the past and which (in some instances) are still said today. What I also found quite interesting is that while I shared many of her viewpoints and expressed this fairly regularly, I wasn’t branded as naive like she was. Perhaps her age was the factor in them dismissing her.

At one point, she was talking about how she doesn’t swear – something regular readers of this blog will know that I never do either. Everyone was telling her that she wouldn’t be able to keep it up and that it was unrealistic to think she could do that. It had come up once before and I pointed out that I never swear either. This time, she said “Well, Adam doesn’t swear either, why don’t you say the same to him?” and one person said “It’s just because he’s a nice chap.” But why couldn’t the same be said of her? Is she not a nice chap as well? (or ‘chapette’ I suppose I should say, but I hate that word).

I was only there for a short while (one month overall) and on my last day she said it had been a pleasure to know me, even if only for a small amount of time. I thanked her and wished her good luck as the only optimist left in the office.

She said to me that meeting me had given her hope. Made her realise that her optimism isn’t a naive flower growing out of her youthfulness, but a legitimate way to see the world. If I, quite a few years older than her, held all the same views, then she could hold them for just as long as I could and wouldn’t change and become cynical like they all said.

“Yes,” I said. “Don’t let anybody tell you you’re wrong to be optimistic or that you haven’t realised how bad the world is. Really, the world needs more optimism.”

“I worry,” she said, “that I might one day become really sad and lose my positivity and everyone will be right.”

“No,” I said “Everyone will be wrong. Even positive people are sad sometimes. You don’t have to act happy when you’re suffering. Even the most positive person in the world is sad sometimes. If you become sad, you’re still a positive person. At your core, you’re positive, but external factors may dampen it. But you have a positive soul and that’s all that matters.”

And shortly after, we said our final goodbyes. Though we didn’t exactly become close friends, I still feel that this brief encounter was a significant relationship – I am touched that I was able to give her hope and, honestly, her optimism gives me hope too. I hope that she will continue to be a positive influence on people’s lives for years to come – and I’m sure she will!