Flicking to the Irish cottage channel, she watched with new eyes as the Irish vlogger, Siobhan, pottered about her restored kitchen, explaining how she'd learned to make soda bread from her neighbour's grandmother's recipe. It was hardly brain surgery; Siobhan was just chatting to the camera. Speaking to her viewers like old friends dropping by for tea, sharing triumphs and disasters of cottage life. Siobhan, on the outside at least, was natural, authentic, made mistakes and showed them. Darby wrote in her notebook that Siobhan was doing a very good job of making her viewers feel like friends.
With her eyes drifting around one of the peach roses, Darby deliberated. If she documented her progress in the house, maybe that alone would give her the oomph to actually get the place sorted. Even if she filmed herself and put the channel on private, it could be a secret log of turning her life and the place she lived in around. Clicking on another channel, Coastal Cornish Living with Lucy, Darby continued to not just watch but observe. Lucy had started her channel after a divorce, movingfrom the city to a run-down house that was all she could afford after the settlement. There was something in Lucy's voice when she talked about the early days that Darby recognised. A horrid, brittle yet relatable sort of cheerfulness hiding someone determined not to let the world see how scared they were.
As she got lost in it all and flicked between channels, Darby continued to make a few notes. The more she clicked, watched and noted, the more something struck her. Each woman had carved out a little niche all about them and not in a look-at-me, oh-hey way, more a just life way. None of it was particularly exciting or special; rather, they were just doing their own thing. They'd found their own voice, their own corner of the internet where they belonged and they owned it all the way to the bank. Rather than shrinking away, they’d taken hold of their life by the neck, given it a good old shake up and got the devil on with it.
Darby sat upright as the penny that had arrived the night before dropped a bit more. Of course. Documenting a glow-up of her life would help her get her out of her head. Provide her with some focus, stick a rod up her backside and make her get on with things. Give her back her life.
Turning another page, Darby pondered what in the name of goodness she could actually offer if, and it was a big if, she started her own channel. Staring at the blank space on a new page, then the large peach roses on the wall, she mused. A swirl of life, highs, lows, ups, downs, experiences good and bad, jostled for space in her head. Three failed relationships, the challenge of starting over in a new town, and an attempt at building a life from scratch when most people were settled into comfortable routines. The very particular and what felt like unique loneliness of being on her own, when friends were busy with their own lives.
Real talk about starting over in your forties,she wrote, then crossed it out. Stuff that for a game of soldiers. Way toodepressing, plus boring, too. She tried again:Authentic living when you’re not a twenty-something - the bits other people don't show.Nah.
Watching another video showing Siobhan’s garden, she thought about her own garden, the patch of overgrown land behind the cottage that she'd been meaning to tackle for five years. She'd grown up helping her mum in their suburban allotment and fiddled with her own gardens before Pretty Beach. The move and the plan had been to garden more. It hadn’t materialised further than keeping on top of it all, mowing the weeds and tidying the pots.
More and more ideas began to take shape as Darby contemplated. She could document her own journey of getting rid of the blasted peach roses, the agonising over paint colours, ripping out the pine kitchen and the reality of living in a building site when doing everything yourself on a tight budget.
Thinking about the other aspects of her life that might translate to video content, she pondered her large and growing collection of cookery books. All of which was testament to the fact once upon a time she’d loved nothing better than to cook. Living alone, though, had somehow translated to not bothering. As Darby skimmed down the lists in her book, whether she liked it or not, she had to admit she’d become lazy about many things in her life. Cooking, a case in point; too often, toast for dinner or heating up any old thing had been her game plan. That needed to change.
As she noted and mused, her lists went from ideas about making proper meals for one to maintaining some semblance of put-togetherness when your face was showing every year of your age and your budget didn't stretch to expensive treatments. A very strange thing happened as Darby noted and wrote: she realised firstly that she might be onto something and secondly that actually her life wasn’t quite as boring as she’d assumed.The notebook had the potential to get quite fat. Who would have thought? Her mind loved the creativity as it flicked this way and that between her lists of potential.
The stuff nobody talks about. Empty nest, being lonely, dating over forty, making friends as an adult, starting again when everyone else seems settled.
As she flicked over the pages, she shook her head and wondered. Really, it was probably all a pipe dream, but even that was okay. She’d started. A tide had turned. Whether she acted on the lists or the channel or not, the notation and thinking had flicked a switch. Allowed a small voice to speak up. One that told her that Darby was on the way back.
5
The next morning, with a mug of tea in her hand, Darby stood looking out at the small patch of garden at the front of her house. As little sparkles of frost caught the light, the Pretty Beach ferry horn honked in the distance and she further pondered the channel thing. Wondering if she would actually be able to muster up the courage to broadcast herself, she shook her head. Probably not. She wasn’t sure she could be vulnerable, exposed and honest for all the world to see. Could she talk to a camera about the nights when loneliness had strangled her? Would she be taken away in a van if she admitted to the world that sometimes she actually had a back-and-forth conversation with the kitchen wall?
Sipping her tea and thinking about the looming fresh new year, she thought about the practical aspects of a channel. She'd watched thousands of hours of content but had never considered the mechanics behind it for a second. Why would she ever have needed to? Making a face, she realised she hadn’t the foggiest about filming, editing, uploading, or the mysterious algorithms she’d heard about over the years. Heck, she could just about take a video on her phone; she certainly had no idea what algorithms did or didn’t do. Inhaling and then sighing out a long exhale, shepursed her lips in determination. Stuff it, she was going to have a go. She’d worry about the technical parts later. How hard could it be?
Wrapped tightly in her dressing gown over thick flannelette pyjamas and with her feet in sheepskin-lined slippers, she shuffled over to the corner of the courtyard. The small area sparkled in frost and she decided that as soon as a nice day came along, she would get to work on it. Baby steps and all that. Just as she was peering at an old iron table and chairs and wondering if she could paint them, two white vans with sign-writing on the side and a large navy-blue Mercedes 4x4 pulled up in the road opposite the Victorian villas on the other side. Fairly embarrassed that she was in her dressing gown, but not reallythatbothered, she watched as three men walked along the road and approached the side lane to the left of her house, which led to a large detached old farmhouse.
‘Morning.’
Darby swallowed.Hello, very handsome man in canvas trousers with patch pockets. How do you do?‘Morning.’
The man pointed in the direction of the end of the lane. ‘We’re scoping a job down this way.’
‘Oh, yes, right. I wondered what you were doing.’
‘New year, new job. We’ve a long contract up at the farmhouse that starts soon.’ The man didn’t really smile. He didn’t need to. He dazzled, anyway.
Darby about picked herself up from the floor. The swooning was off the scales. She wouldn’t mind seeing him arrive for work every day. ‘Ahh, okay, makes sense.’
‘We’re just checking access and suchlike for the vans.’
‘Okay.’
The man carried on walking. ‘Have a good day.’
My day has vastly improved.‘Same to you.’
After watching the three men stride down the lane, Darby finished her tea and went inside. Making herself a round of toast, she then started to unload the dishwasher and all thoughts moved from men in lanes to a conversation she'd had with her daughter, Molly, just before Christmas. Molly, ever her savvy one, had picked up on Darby’s cues swiftly. Probing about all sorts and clearly worried about her mum’s isolation, Molly had questioned lots of things. Darby had glossed over everything, pretending that she did loads with the women at work and that she was loving her life in Pretty Beach. Molly had asked if she was happy and Darby had had to stop herself from guffawing. Happy? Pah! What had happened to that? That word and emotion had slowly but surely removed themselves from her life.
Darby had laughed and reassured, soothed and patted. She was fine. Of course, she was fine. More than fine. So very fine. Molly's expression had suggested she wasn't entirely convinced. She’d said that Darby had seemed a bit stuck, as if she was waiting for something to happen instead of making it happen. Chuckling, Darby had dismissed the concern as inside the words had stung with a big old slap of truth.
Oh yes, she was stuck and had been waiting for five years. For the right moment to start decorating, for someone else to help, for inspiration to strike, for life to feel less overwhelming, to not bother with getting on with herself. The right moment had remained elusive and she’d remained in limbo. Waiting in some sort of weird suspended animation, watching other people live on the screen of her laptop as her own existence had shrivelled away into a shell.
Looking at her notebook, there were now pages filled with ideas and possibilities about a channel. Darby raised her eyebrows. Molly was right. It was time to stop waiting. No one was going to be riding in on a white horse or any colour horse to save her. Darby Lovell was going to take action. Shewould start making things happen. Chuckling as she pushed the chairs under the kitchen table and put away a cake tin, she thought about what she might be like in six months if she acted on her notes. Who would she be if she actually followed through on the mad channel idea? The more she thought, the more she concluded that perhaps she would find her voice. Continuing with her thoughts and her cleaning, Darby realised that something had shifted. It had started on the night under three layers of blankets in a very chilly house deep in the Old Town of Pretty Beach. She still didn't know if she'd actually have the courage to point a camera at herself and press record or if anyone would watch, or care. Yet, something somewhere or someone was telling her to perhaps give it a go.
