Lots of people have asked me what the turning point was for me and I think I finally have an answer.

As part of my job I organise the collective worship for the school, including taking assemblies. This is one of my favourite parts of the job, and I never quite know what I’m going to do next! I was starting to think about the one I’ve got to do in a couple of weeks, when I suddenly remembered one that I did last year, I can’t remember the theme but I was introduced by the head at which point Tubthumping by Chumbawumba  started playing (this part was planned) what I didn’t realise I was going to do was walk on stage doing the ‘dance’!!!!!!! I then spent the rest of the day having pupils bending down down, waving their arms in my face and singing at me!!!!!!!

I’ve got no idea, yet, what I’m going to do in two weeks time, but I’m sure there will be some madness, but that song has been going round in my head since I started thinking about it! 

“I get knocked down but I get up again you’re never gonna keep me down”

I’ve been knocked down many times in my life, who hasn’t, but I’ve never been one to stay down. However I would say that the ‘recovery rate’ has definitely got quicker!

It was actually a knock that started off this whole process of life changing events, which I’ve only just realised. It was the first day of the Christmas Holidays, and I managed to break my big toe! I won’t go into details, but suffice to say it was the day after the last night of term!

So for the entirety of the Christmas holidays, and the first few weeks of term I was on crutches! As much as I claimed that I loved my husband waiting on me hand and foot, him having to cook the Christmas dinner, getting lifts everywhere, just sitting on the sofa watching the entire box set of Lewis…. I actually hated it, I hated the restriction it had put on my life, the reliance it had caused me to have on others, and not being able to just get up and do what I wanted.

But as I was sitting there one day lying on the sofa with my leg up, after a day at work, I had a bit of a revelation…. This may have been caused by a broken toe, but actually how much different was my life? The answer… Not very different at all! If I didn’t have a broken toe would I have been rushing round tidying, working, meeting up with people, walking – NO!

Revelation – I needed to make sure that once the toe was healed my life changed. So I started with the calorie counting, then once able to I started walking home from work, then the very slow running started, then walking to work and now… I’m over 4 stone lighter, 3 sizes smaller, I’m regularly running, going to the gym, and swimming. 

When I went for the check up on my toe the Dr told me I could put weight on it now but I probably shouldn’t be running for a while – I openly laughed in his face and said I don’t think there’s any worry of that happening! What did I know? Last night I ran 5k for the second time and I loved it!

I might get knocked down but I get back up again, and at the moment there definitely doesn’t seem to be anything that keeps me down – not even a box set!