Yoghurt pots are evil. I had held mine at arms length and opened it away from me, and still its contents found a home on my first choice tie. Actually, only choice tie, because I discovered when I turned the tv on in our hotel room that Charlie Stayt, one of my interviewers that morning on BBC Breakfast, was wearing one pretty much identical with my spare. So dabbing with a damp napkin it was. Hurrah for HD television.

I’ve never done television before, so both Bex and I were just up for enjoying the whole experience, which was very easy. The new BBC facility in Media City in Salford is just amazing, the staff gently and kindly efficient as they brought us in wide eyed and giggly, let us enjoy the legendary Green room – which actually isn’t green – took me through makeup (it seemed to take a lot of anti-glare gel on my forehead to satisfy the makeup girl) before the floor manager ushered me into the studio. Twenty minutes tops from street to red sofa. One minute I’m watching Susanna Reid and Charlie on the hospitality tv, the next I’m being introduced

to them. Anyone would find that a bit odd, it’s like inflating something flat into 3d. “This is Noah Stewart” said the floor manager…Hello, that’s even more odd…Susanna looked up and smiled, “No it’s not.” I’m glad she noticed, at that stage I was prepared to be anybody. The floor manager was hugely apologetic. “Don’t worry, I get mistaken for him all the time” I said, trying to help. Another smile from Susanna, “Do you really?” “Yes, it’s a curse, actually, because I can’t even sing” “That’s a shame,” she said, “he was discovered as an understudy”. It was a good start.

They both relaxed me so much I wasn’t even sure we’d started. All the cameras are remote controlled so I think we were the only three people actually present in the studio, and they didn’t even really look like cameras ( I was looking for Grandstand models circa 1970, I think), which made the whole atmosphere very calm. My spot was actually reduced because of the breaking story of the morning – which presented its own challenge; “Oscar Pretorious has been arrested for shooting his girlfriend. Now in the studio we have Trevor Silvester to talk about how to get on better in relationships”, but I loved the whole experience, although it was a lot of a blur during the actual chat, and it was great exposure for Lovebirds. I hope I get the chance to do it more.

An unexpected highlight was meeting a celebrity. My first sight of him was him being carried shoulder-high across the plaza of media city. I was a bit miffed actually, as I had to walk. Didn’t they know who I was?

Bob the cat appeared in the green room shortly afterwards with his ‘owner’ James Bowen, who let him skip down from his shoulder and did his manful best to dissuade him from a pan au chocolate. These celebrities. For those of you who don’t know, James was homeless, selling the big issue and busking as part of his fight to leave his addiction to heroin and methodone behind, when he met an injured Bob. They nursed each other back to health and have become inseparable. James openly contends that Bob was a bigger feature of his recovery than any treatment programme he’d ever been on. The love between them is both obvious and inhaleable, and you can’t be in their presence without being refreshed by it. Maybe that helped my unexpected calmness in front of camera, or maybe it was the reminder of what is really important in the world – people, nature, and what can emerge from the connection between them. Read his book, you’ll love it – and I don’t even like cats.

And I want to thank the unbelievable love and support from my friends both before and after the interview, they really enhanced the whole thing by the way they joined the excitement. Another unusual day. I wonder what will be the next?

Until this happened: A week after Bex and I were driving somewhere listening to the Steve Wright show on the eve of my new book being published, and I happened to say to her, “Wouldn’t it be great if I ended up on his show?” I was told by Leni, my lovely publicist at Hodder, that I was going to be. Now I can write that off to coincidence and happen-stance, but I’ve also said to Bex, on a number of occasions, how I’d love to be on a show with Stephen Fry, just because I like him so much.

Well, imagine my surprise when that happened too. Kind of. As you can see, I was on the same show as our national treasure, but only because of the wonders of pre-recording, we never actually met, and he’s probably completely unaware that we shared the billing.

So, just in case Bex has some weird cosmic ordering facility, I’ve resolved to be more specific when I present my wish list to her. I’ve told her I’d like to be on a show with Stephen Fry, where we’re both there at the same moment. I’d like to be on Oprah. I quite fancy my own tv and/or radio show, and I’d like my book to sell millions. I haven’t figured out how to get the idea of Jennifer Aniston on said shows past her yet, but I’m working on it.

So be careful what you wish for, you might not have given the universe enough detail.

And here’s me on the show itself.R2 Steve Wright

My ability to listen ebbed and flowed with my career, including seven great continuous years driving home from Hendon when I was an instructor there. I’ve laughed with him, met loads of people through his extended-question interviews, enjoyed the banter with Janey, Tim and Old woman, and marvelled at the knowledge of Ask Elvis. And sometimes he’s just been noise in the background as I struggled with some of my life’s turmoils and tears. So when I heard I was going to be on his show I found my hands shaking.

Steve pre-records many of his interviews, which I found comforting, because if I cocked up big time the whole thing could be quietly forgotten. On the day my lovely publicist from Hodder, Leni, accompanied Bex and I into an anonymous building behind the BBC in Portman square, up the smallest lift in the world, and into a waiting room we shared with Elton John’s piano and another guy who I think might have been one of the Smiths. Without much delay I was brought into the studio itself to be immediately met by a welcoming handshake from the man himself, followed quickly by greetings from Tim and Janey. Surreal.

I’d always imagined quite a spacious room to accommodate the fluctuating size of his gang and guests, but actually it’s quite bijou, with Janey, Tim and myself arranged around the outside of his desk. Very BBC cutbacks. The interview itself was a bit of a blur – but I hope the beginning doesn’t get cut, and if you’re a fan of him you’ll know why when you listen. I was aware, however, of his skill at shaping the interview and felt very safe throughout thanks to the quiet support of them all – and he generously gave fantastic coverage for Cognitive Hypnotherapy and Lovebirds, the latter of which was obviously the focus of our time together. Cognitive Hypnotherapy explained to an audience of 6 million people. It feels a bit of a milestone.

Since then I’ve been thinking about the importance of people we usually never meet. For my hands to shake in the way they did clearly indicates that meeting Steve felt hugely significant, but why? The best I can come up with is the way our brain finds comfort in certainty and habituation. If our life is a song there are certain people that accompany it, and in the modern world many are supplied by the media. I think part of the public response to the death of Diana was the sense of losing someone who was supposed to accompany our song through to the end. There are people we expect to get old with, and it’s a shock when that doesn’t happen because of the illusion of a certain future our brain tries to concoct – like a backing singer suddenly going silent, often you don’t realise their part in the song until the notes they sing disappear. Recently I mourned the loss of Terry Wogan’s retirement because he was such a part of Bex and I’s breakfast routine – I’m sure you can think of your own examples.

Steve Wright has been a quietly reassuring part of the background to my song, his voice one of many amongst the unwitting contributions of other people I’ve never met, and long may he continue in that role. I wonder if he has any sense of this importance as he goes about his everyday broadcasting routine? I hope so. Bringing him from the background to the foreground of my life made for an unlikely day, but a really enjoyable one, and I hope you have the chance to do the same some time, whoever that might be for you.

PS. My interview is going to be broadcast on February 5th, and Lovebirds is published on the 31st January.

The only resolution I’m committing to so far, after Bex bought me a fabulous book for Christmas, is to read a poem every day. It’s not that I’m abandoning the idea of achieving things – I know that by the end of this year I will have written another book, and have launched the new-style Diploma course. I may even have run a personal best at some distance or another, and I may lose a bit of weight. So I have no doubt that this year I will rack up some things I can tick off, but they’re not what I’m going to gauge my year by, they’ll just be actions I’ll have taken. What I want to focus more on is getting better at living, and in 2012 I’ve learned a lot about how to do this from some everyday extraordinary people.

Precisely a year ago a very special woman died. Her name was Oz, and she was one of the most radiant people I have ever known. You easily get a sense of her gift for life in her blog http://www.bubbleofhappiness.co.uk/

She died after fainting and hitting her head while in India at a Yoga retreat. As random and unlikely an event as you could imagine. The accident happened the day before the love of her life was going to propose, and a few weeks after she had quit her day job to commit fully to the life she wanted to live as a yoga teacher and cognitive hypnotherapist. We plan, the universe laughs.

The world lost all the possibility having a life like Oz on the planet could have brought, and so many people who knew her have carried that loss with them all year, Bex and I included. We know that energy cannot be destroyed, it can only be transformed, and I’ve witnessed that this year. The wonderful, open, loving, joyful, adventurous and beautiful energy that was Oz has been transformed by so many people who loved her – and some who didn’t even know her – into something else that has changed them positively, in large or small ways. With Bex and I, Oz has become a touchstone for remembering to savour the moment, to dare more, to plan less, to value just being and not to measure ourselves solely by tangible results. Giving Oz a voice in our choices is continually teaching us to savour life in the moment, and has kept her with us. I don’t think she’ll ever leave.

Through Facebook her fiancé Marcus shared his year, which he’s packed with travel, pilgrimages, and volunteering in a Kenyan medical centre. Using the word ‘inspirational’ to describe others tends to be overused these days, but no other fits. I have no idea how he has found within him what it’s taken to transform his love of Oz into the action he’s taken – and the benefit to the world he’s brought. He has cared, given and shared every step of the way – and now he has transformed that spirit into a travel blog http://www.marcustravels.net/ where you’ll learn even more about squeezing the most from life than you will about places, and most of it boils down to giving service to the world, in whatever capacity you’re able. For him to be able to teach us this while carrying the loss of Oz within him is a wonder, and I thank him for it from the bottom of my heart.

Finally, is someone else who, like Oz, began as a student of mine, became a friend and then a teacher to me.

Sue Carl is a busy mother, nurse and cognitive hypnotherapist http://www.thecroftonpractice.co.uk/ Within Quest she is universally known as Loopy (as a name, not a diagnosis) because of the energy she brings into any room. You always know when she’s arrived. Her spirit and ability to extract fun from every situation is utterly infectious. Her daughter Jess is a junior member of the GB judo team and a serious future Olympic prospect. Sue obviously has had to spend a lot of time taking her to events and, not content to just sit and watch, she now assists the team.

This year, rather than sit on the settee and watch the greatest show on earth, she volunteered as a Games maker. In a previous blog I mentioned how I’d swallowed the negative press about the Olympics and responded to the feeling that it had been taken from us by vested interests (especially after only being able to secure two tickets to the canoe sprint) by distancing myself from the whole thing. My attempt at being a curmudgeon dissolved in the first 30 minutes of the brilliant opening ceremony, but even if it hadn’t, Sue’s facebooking of her experiences at the games would have had the same effect.

Her example inspired us to drive from Norfolk to Slough to watch four minutes of canoeing – and if we’d had to walk it would still have been worth it. We saw a Team GB gold medal won, and added our voice to the soundtrack of the games and our flag to the pageant. Sue taught me the importance of participation – that you’ve got to be in it to live it – and I plan to do more of that this year too.

So my year begins goal light, but intention heavy: I intend to savour – especially the ones I love – as much and as often as I can, to serve, to join in, to find joy wherever I am, and to be open to learn from everyone who has something to teach me (whether they realise it or not).

I hope this New Year brings you what you’d most like to look back on in twelve months’ time.

On this first anniversary of our loss I want to share the poem I randomly opened the book to this morning because I found myself substituting Oz for the word Hope.

Hope
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune – without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I’ve heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

Emily Dickinson.

Books have always been a special,almost magical, thing to me. I spent a great deal of my childhood escaping into their pages for one reason or another. I remember meeting an author of children’s books on a school trip when I was about nine, and it felt like being in the presence of some kind of mystical royalty. When I was even younger – maybe five – we were often given paper and scissors to makes things with as an afternoon activity, and I’d cut the paper into pieces and then stitch them together into a book, into which I’d begin to write a story. My whole childhood was littered with books I began to write but then lost steam with, but looking back, becoming a writer now seems almost inevitable (although I still feel very self-conscious if I call myself an author).

Lovebirds is my fourth book, and I find the whole process of writing a strange addiction. By the time I’ve finished each one I’ve been glad to see the back of it, and yet within days I’ve usually started on the next. It can be laborious, tedious and intensely frustrating, and yet there is something about the way a book emerges from the words you write that I love.

So today I placed a copy of Lovebirds beside my computer and set back to work on my next book. It’s called Grow, and it’s about growing resilient children, and being in control of your own life. In a way it’s a distillation of everything I’ve learned from my time in the field of personal development. I’m about 10,000 words in and just starting to get warm. I thought that having Lovebirds with me would inspire me, and yet I found the opposite happened. I kept distracting myself, and felt strangely flat and reluctant to commit. It took me a while to realise why.

Something I say a lot in therapy is ‘you feed what you focus on’. By that I mean that our brain is choosing what to pay attention to every moment of the day out of the huge range of options around us. Over time most people will become habituated into certain preferences of attention – for example, optimists will focus more naturally on positive things, pessimists on negative. One will spot the pound on the pavement, the other will miss it because they’re looking out for cracks. So the more we focus on a particular thing, the more we’ll find ourselves doing so. Over time we live in a world we expect to live in, rather than the one we actually do. We’re feeding what we’re focusing on, and it grows as a consequence, while other things whither.

In my case I realised that the finished book could be used to feed me focusing on one of two things about the new one: the thrill of seeing the completed work, to motivate me in my writing, or the mountain I have to climb from 10,000 words to the finished product, which is a bit of a deflating prospect. Lovebirds is 120,000 words, so there’s a lot of empty paper to fill before I get to the pay-off. And that’s what my mind had been focusing on – the struggle ahead, rather than the feelings at the end. The more I fed my focus on the struggle, the bigger it became, and the less motivated I felt. So I closed my eyes and spent some time visualising the past moments when I’ve first seen my books completed. Each one is like a birth moment, intense and overwhelming with a host of positive emotions I find hard to articulate. I bathed in those for a while, and then I started to write…

So my question to you is, in your life, what are you focusing on – the things that are a struggle – like going to the gym, another day of a diet, another difficult day of work or the things that annoy you about your partner? Or are you focusing on the feeling of achievement you get after the gym, or when you step on the scales and see you’ve lost weight, or whatever is the moment of satisfaction you get from your job, or those moments of love and appreciation between you and your partner? How you balance your focus between these choices will define the day you have, and ultimately the life you live.

If we feed what we focus on, then it makes sense to take charge of that focus – a lot of what people take from Cognitive Hypnotherapy is the realisation that they’re not stuck being who they don’t enjoy, feeling out of control of their choices, or a slave to emotions that just seem to happen to them. Just learning to spend some time each day deliberately paying attention to what you have that you want more of, to the good feelings in the day that motivate you, and the states of mind that produce the best version of you can cause major changes in the amount of fun you have being you.

Not all of us will write books, but the one thing we can all be the author of is our own story – and this is one way to take a grip of the pen and choose how the plot is going to work out for you today.

It’s a great place to let the dogs run, and they differ in their response to freedom just as much as human siblings tend to. Fred will disappear for brief periods in pursuit of Betty, but return bursting with excitement at his daring, while Betty simply disappears – often for many long minutes, completely immune to our calling, whistling or promises of treats. She loves to follow scent trails, beyond anything else, and we reconciled ourselves long ago to the possibility that we might one day lose her to accident or angry stag in the pursuit of something she clearly needs to do. But it doesn’t stop us getting anxious when she goes beyond her average period of being ‘lost’ (and I appreciate the picture of them makes my description hard to believe. This was for a ‘butter wouldn’t melt’ commercial).

It occurred to me the other day, while holding my breath waiting for her to reappear, that the word lost simply doesn’t apply to her situation. With my limited senses Betty is lost to me once she is gone from sight in the tree-line or beyond the sound of her breathing. But I doubt that we are ever lost to her. With her amazing sense of smell and hearing I suspect she is always aware of our location, and the trees are a complete irrelevance. I realised that, if I imagined the trees gone, I’d probably always be able to see her, and that her path would be a series of wide arcs, with us as a point on that arc that she returns to periodically to check that we haven’t got lost.

My children have recently made me realise that maybe it hasn’t been so different with them. When they left home I worried about their ability to navigate life without my wisdom to guide them. Often, from my observation point, they seemed lost. I now realise they were just following an arc I couldn’t see – and like Betty, that arc is a search for what they’re looking for, not for what I want them to find. And they always knew where I was if they needed me, and, like Betty, periodically they’d return.

I realise now our children aren’t lost because they’re not following our path through the forest. They’re not lost because you can’t understand the choices they’re responding to. Often the trees I imagine them wandering in exist only in my head – to them life might appear a beach, or a wide-open space. What I’ve found is that, with my boys now 27 and 29, their arcs have led them to build their own lives, each quite different, yet both very much their own creation. And not only are they good lives, their journey has made them into men I’m more proud of than if they’d simply stuck to a path I might have chosen for them.

It’s not our place to choose our children’s arc, as much as our instincts yearn to, any more than we should keep Betty safe from our fears by keeping her on a lead. Our job is to equip our kids with the tools of travel, love them enough that we remain a point of return, and let them run. To paraphrase James Morrison, they’re not lost, just undiscovered – especially to themselves. And isn’t that act of self-discovery what life’s about? As much as a parent I’d like to shout “it’s over there!” it probably wouldn’t be for them. Show them the world, let them run, and remember to breathe. They’ll be fine, and they’ll bring home some wonderful things. Unlike Betty – last week it was a pigeon.

Only later into writing this did I realise that this metaphor applies to me as well. I thought I was sharing a learning I’d taken from my boys that might resonate with other parents, but now I realise it probably has a personal application to most of us. I spent a long time on a path marked through a forest subtly signposted by my parents (with my best interests at heart) and lit by my society, and as I look back now I was more lost on a well-defined route than I’ve ever been since I left it. When I finally abandoned it for my own arc, propelled by my own scent trail that I absolutely had to follow, I found happiness, fulfilment and like-minded people following their own trails. And my arc was opposed. I realise now that fellow-travellers on the forest path would have seen my swerve into the trees as a mistake in my orienteering – I remember to this day a colleague in a stab-proof vest asking me how I could abandon the security of the police with only 12 years left to my pension? I was about to include my parents in that lack of understanding when a memory suddenly came back to me: On the day I left the police I got a card from my mum wishing me luck and expressing her faith. She didn’t understand my detour, but she didn’t try to tug on my leash either. Annoying; both that she’s wiser than I ever give her credit for, and that at the ripe old age of 53 when I thought I’d finished learning about being a parent and was going to start on the grandparenting, I clearly haven’t.

When it comes to our own life I think it’s important to be aware of the choices we’re making and why. What others on the well-travelled path saw as a detour was actually the beginning of my real direction. My journey up until then had been a detour. Necessary in so many ways, and easily mistaken for the real thing, but a detour nonetheless. We find many students of Quest arrive at our door in response to that same realisation.

And you have to be ready for the fact that nobody else but you may understand your choice – until you meet others following their arc. To paraphrase Hugh Macleod, the more original your life choices, the less good advice people will be able to give you. So, if you have a scent in your nostrils that irresistibly stirs your blood, he says to ignore everybody. If you’re like Betty you won’t have to, yours ears won’t be listening anyway. That invisible scent your children are following could be to the life they’re here to live. That trail you feel drawn to could lead to the same thing. My advice is, take a deep breath…and run.

There’s going to be a lot of talk about legacy after this wonderful Olympics, and it’s not surprising. For over two weeks we’ve lived in a different Britain, one where the press had no choice but to stop finding fault with everything and join the party, one where we got our fill of drama from actual drama, and where we remembered striving, succeeding, and failing as core human experiences that connect us to our neighbours. Is it any wonder I feel down at the prospect of returning to live in broken Britain after I’ve seen what this country can really be about? The legacy debate could confine itself to creating an enduring sporting platform, but I hope it aims at a larger vision.

There was a moment during the closing ceremony when a choice was paraded in front of us. Through the crowds of assembled young men and women, who’ve spent years chasing a dream and putting themselves through tremendous struggle to hone their talent…strutted the models. The plastic walking through the fantastic. Have we found anything in the cult of celebrity, overnight-success talent shows or Eastender values that lifts the spirits like people striving to be the best they can be?

I saw Sharon’s return to Albert Square heavily advertised during the Game’s coverage. Any chance she’s come back to open a youth centre to inspire a generation? No I didn’t think so.

Could the Leveson enquiry lead to an outcome where the press balance their coverage by reporting on human successes, and redefine the difference between what is actually in the public interest to know, and what is simply feeding our baser curiosity? It could, but will it?

Could our school system coax excellence through competition to better equip our children for the realities of life? Can it support every child in any aspiration? Teach them the value and ethic of struggle rather than treating competition as a dirty word? Encourage them to treat failure as a way of learning how to succeed, and encourage respect for the potential of our body on a daily basis? Imagine that Britain for a moment…

And could politics be about people actually representing us and not their own vested interests? I was grumpy all the way up to the Olympics because it felt as if it had been snatched away from us by the corporates and big wigs. And then we snatched it back. If we would only do the same with our governance.

The Olympics has probably been the high point of my life as a citizen of Great Britain. A moment when pride in my country actually meant something beyond jingoism – and it wasn’t the medals that brought that feeling. It was watching the creative brilliance of the opening bring the richness of our Britishness into such eccentric focus. It was seeing the spirit of the Games Makers demonstrate that we already have a Big Society, and the ‘reserved British’ public provide the joy that transformed an athletics meeting into a party. For over two weeks it’s been the coolest thing to be a Brit.

There are several highlights that underscore what the legacy can mean to us. Watching tens of thousands of Britons waving the Union Jack in celebration at the victory of a mixed race woman from Sheffield, a refugee from Somalia, and a Ginger jumper on the same night, took the flag out of the hands of the BNP and their ilk and gave it back to us.

Seeing Oscar Pistorius run – such a fusion of science and spirit – was wonderful, but the moment when the eventual winner, Ugandan Kirani James, asked to exchange race numbers with him, and hail the South African Blade Runner as an inspiration, took it to another level all together.

To see Katherine Grainger finally win gold after three silvers was like watching someone channelling Churchill’s exhortation to ‘Never, never, never give up’.
To see Gemma Gibbons remembering her dead mother in the moments after her victory reminded us of the importance of love.
To see her beaten by Kayla Harrison who’d been sexually abused by her coach reminded us once again that we’re defined by what we make out of the things that happen to us, rather than the things themselves.

All are examples of what we’re capable of achieving, and what is truly worth celebrating about humanity. For me, the legacy is so much more than creating a platform for more sporting success. It’s about turning our country into a nursery for our children to grow into adults who strive – in every avenue of life. Who enjoy their success in whatever passion they have, who are encouraged to learn from their failures, who help their neighbours, who support their fellow strugglers. Who are taught kindness and giving as gold medal virtues. To always look on the bright side of life.

A legacy of spirit.

That’s the fire I hope the Olympic flame on our soil will light.

As an approach it’s very much a growing idea, and long may that continue, because what we at Quest are working to achieve through Cognitive Hypnotherapy is a permanent revolution in therapy, which puts the client at the centre of the process, and allows them access to anything that might work for them, from any approach. Most people need therapy, but most don’t need much, so we’d like to see it as a normal part of personal development, with some of its tools taught at a young age so children grow up knowing they aren’t stuck with a bad feeling, they can change it, and that they’re the authors of their own story, not a character in someone else’s, and for adults to recognise the same is true for them – at whatever age they come to us.

We think that’s a pretty big idea, so I was pleased to get the chance to share it with people for who ideas are clearly important. Here’s the interview.

On our Diploma course we teach an advanced technique very early in the syllabus. It’s called Time Line Reconsolidation and it enables clients to revisit negative events from their past which they feel have contributed to a present issue, and change their perceptions of them in such a way that they experience a lessening of their problem – often a dramatic lessening. It’s brief and doesn’t usually involve a lot of emotion. My thinking behind teaching something so powerful so early is that they then have the longest time possible to practice it under our guidance before they qualify. Teaching them just before they start seeing ‘live’ clients doesn’t make sense to me! But I don’t  expect everyone  will agree with me about this either.

On the day we teach it we ask graduates of the course to give up their afternoon to come and assist so we have a ratio of 1 assistant to every 3 students (we already have assistants who come every weekend to mentor the group, at a ratio of 1 to 6). Such is the spirit within Quest that we always have more volunteers than we have places, and as I look at them gather I am always tremendously proud of the expertise that has emerged over the years from the efforts they’ve made to become able to help people change. While I’m available to help, it’s very rare that I have to.

What made me smile on this occasion was that the past client of mine in question, Chloe Cook, was one of our assistants. As her group of three took it in turns to be client, therapist and observer, I noticed that the student who was the client had tapped into an event that was obviously upsetting. In common with the whole group she had been briefed that she, like any client of ours, was completely in charge of the session and could halt it at any time, but she was choosing to continue.

Chloe had stepped in and was guiding her through the process. I couldn’t hear a word of it because I find that stepping too close can be distracting for them, but I was able to observe the intterplay between everyone in the group. I was impressed by the complete attention the other students were paying to the exercise. I was impressed by the courage of the client. And I was almost overwhelmed with pride watching Chloe’s body language. She looked almost serene as she guided her client, intent and focused without a hint of tension in the face of her client’s tears, all the way to a successful resolution.

I met her as a confused and unhappy 17 year old. Ten years on she’s a mother of three, working as a Cognitive Hypnotherapist (specialising in eating disorders) who gives her time one weekend a month, unpaid, to help students on the course realise their own potential. And yet, apparently, I should still keep Chloe in a place I worked with her to escape from. I don’t think so. We’re all fellow strugglers, and often that struggle helps us find within ourselves something that can transform our life, and that of others. None of us are who we’re going to be yet, and we can choose to become more, or less. I think the relationship between therapist and client should reflect the growth of the client. It’s not about working without boundaries, it’s about the boundaries moving as they do.

I left the training room grateful for the people I’ve met thought Quest; their courage, their persistence and their spirit, represented by every single assistant. I wondered who in the room of students I would see one day  working as well as Chloe – it’s possible for all of them – and I wondered what further transformations I have to look forward to in other clients. I really have a great job.

This new connection opened our eyes to a situation that tends to be lost under the radar of public awareness: that there are six million people in this country who are unpaid carers; that the saving to the country through their efforts is equivalent to the budget of the NHS, and that three out of five people will be carers at some point in their lives. I guess it’s an easy thing to not notice until you become a carer, or are connected to one, as Bex and I are.

So through this connection to Suzie I was invited to St James Palace for a formal dinner hosted by Princess Anne and her husband. I don’t know how you spend your evenings, but that’s quite a distance from a normal experience for me. I confess I knew little about the palace beyond its location, now I know a lot more. Queen Elizabeth I spent the night there before the Armada, King Charles I before his execution, and Queen Mary’s heart and stomach are buried there (what I don’t know is why). And it’s beautiful. The minute you step through the door you’re transported into the grandeur of royalty that Britain does so well. I was resplendent in my penguin suit and a disobedient bow tie and spent a really pleasant evening meeting new and interesting people – and HRH. If only life was a video you could rewind and re-record, because it started off so well.

We were arranged in horseshoe groups in a lovely huge reception room and the plan was that the Princess and her husband would circulate independently and talk to all the groups in turn. Admiral Lawrence was fine, I saw him coming and had a nice chat. Then  I got talking to a nice guy from Ecclesiastical Insurance (they’re sponsoring the trust to celebrate their 125^th anniversary) about his membership of a skittles team – apparently that’s still going strong in Gloucestershire. I got so immersed in the conversation I forgot what we were there for until his eyes widened as he looked over my shoulder. I span around, and there was the Princess. For a very long second I had brain freeze. The last time we met was 20 years ago at the Royal Tournament when I was wearing a pointy hat and guarding her car. That’s not really meeting at all, is it? In that moment I completely forgot the contents of the protocol sheet we were sent (“the Princess is first to be addressed as Her Royal Highness, and subsequently Ma’am to rhyme with Pam”) and just said…”Oh, hello!” A reliable source says I looked both surprised and chuffed to bits that she could make it.

My faux pas came crashing down in my head and my internal voice went crazy: “Oh hello? What are you doing, channelling Kenneth Williams? What can I say next to get back on track?” I could only think of “Her Royal Majesty” as a title and I was pretty sure that was wrong, but I couldn’t say Ma’am because I hadn’t said the long title yet – whatever that was. Suddenly inspiration came to me…bow!! That was in the sheet. I bowed. From the waist, way too deeply, and I’m pretty sure I clicked my heels together. At least I didn’t say “Klop!” I managed a homage to ‘Carry on up the Palace’ and ‘Allo Allo’ in the space of ten seconds. It’s a talent.

I felt she was a mite startled but recovered like the true professional she is and engaged me in a polite exchange about Cognitive Hypnotherapy before moving on. That’s what I’m all about, representing Cog Hyp in an unforgettable, professional and positive manner.

Anyway, I come to the point of this blog beyond reminding the world I’m a numpty. After a very nice meal came the speeches. Up stepped Harry. He’s 13 and was present with his mother and sister Saskia. He waited patiently as someone put a step for him to reach the mike, and then he told us about his life. His younger sister has paraplegic cystic fibrosis and epilepsy, and his mother has damaged her back doing all the lifting that her care requires. Before her birth he and his mum used to go on holidays and take trips in the car. Now they can’t. Because of his mum’s injury Harry gets up every morning and helps Saskia out of bed and gets her breakfast. When he gets home he helps with the chores and her care. He didn’t mention love once but it was present in every sentence he uttered, the unspoken motivation for the life he lived. Utterly humbling and there were many dabs of hankies around me. Sadly Harry’s caring leaves hardly any time for hobbies or the kinds of things a 13 year old should be doing. When he does spend time round his friends’ houses he’s reminded of how different his childhood is compared to most. And that gets him down sometimes.

That’s what made Harry’s speech special; it wasn’t a resolute, singularly upbeat message, it was more honest than that. He admitted that he shouts at his mum and sister sometimes, and then feels guilty, that he resents his limitations sometimes, and then feels guilty. And that’s when I understood what the evening was really about, the setting was just gilding: how a young boy is made extraordinary by the efforts he makes within constraints that aren’t fair – and the help he gets from the Trust. Someone to talk to, respite care for his mum, and funding for music lessons for him so he can become, in his words, ‘a brilliant musician’. A bit of space to be a child and to dream of his future. There are many Harry’s out there, and adult carers with their stories too, all needing support, which highlighted the official purpose of the dinner; to announce the union of the Princess Trust with another body that has long supported carers,  Crossroads Care. From March this union will be called The Carers Trust, an eminently sensible pooling of resources in the current climate and a means of coordinating the available help to those carers who need it.

On the train home I had time to think.

I thought about how a boy like Harry has missed out on many aspects of childhood, and yet has probably become more characterful through rising to his challenges, and how the process of caring for someone else will lead to a resilience that will never leave him. The man he’ll be as a result of his journey is likely to be a good one I think.

I thought how easy it is to believe the press and see our youth as spoilt and lazy, when there are better examples they could be spotlighting – and how our view of our society would shift if they did.

I thought about the power of love and how it can contort lives into difficult shapes in its service, but still transform people for the better through that process.

I thought about the Carers Trust, and how Quest could do more to help the likes of Harry, and some of the other six million.

And I thought how, after tonight’s performance, I’ve got some real work to do to get back on track for a knighthood.