Hi, friends.

I hope you are well. This week has been the first of my Masters in Professional Writing. Our opening project, which the tutors termed a ‘prolonged ice-breaker’, has been preparing a radio show for broadcast this Friday.

Further information about the project can be found at http://somethingtodeclareproject.wordpress.com

During this journey, we have been working with BBC radio writer and producer Paul Dodgson, who has taken us through a number of interesting warm up exercises.

I’m quite proud of the piece I wrote today, so I thought I’d share it here. We were tasked with writing about the shoes we were wearing.

I heard their siren call across the aisles of Sports Direct. No, they weren’t my usual choice, but like everyone at some point I fancied a change. I had long since decided that plain black was just too plain. In an ideal world I’d have gone for something vibrant and striking, the exact opposite of the socially awkward creature, adept at human camouflage I had somehow become.

There is no adage that pertains to one’s footwear, and one’s identity is less tightly bound to it. All the same, it reflects oneself and one’s place in the world. A scream of teal on a black background declares that I am, and finally, I am. 

Formal, fractured, finally whole and healed. I am more than my shoes, and finally more than my scars. Life experiences make us, shaping us into the people we are born to be.