Paris in the Spring of Life

"My childhood was a bit lonely at times; all my friends in Penkridge (where I grew up) lived on the other side of the busy A449, so I could never go and see them on my own. Still, I always had my little brother for company.

"The main difficulty at age 16 was trying to decide what you're going to do with your life. On Christmas Eve, 1997, having had an interview a few weeks earlier, I got an unconditional offer from the British Institute in Paris.

"I lived in Paris for a year and in a lot of ways it was the making of me. In exchange for a bedsit I worked as a translator and an English teacher for an art dealership.

"At the end of the year, I transferred to university in Bristol which is where I now live, work and study.

At 21, I still don't know what I will end up doing. I'm interested in training to be a teacher, or going back to France to teach English.

"I'd recommend living in a foreign country to anyone. It showed me what was wrong with England, but also what's good about it.

"Above all, by now I've learned that no-one is ever completely happy; there are always going to be problems, but there's always good times as well.

"I believe in fate and I think that everything happens for a reason. Some awful things have happened to me, but I don't think there are many events that I haven't managed to learn something from and turned to my advantage in some way or other."