The Year of Doing Scary Things

How I Ended Up in Manchester on a Saturday Night

This is my year of doing scary things.

That wasn’t the plan, exactly. But somewhere along the line - maybe when I started saying yes to things that made me instinctively recoil, or when I realised I was getting a bit too comfortable saying “nah, maybe next time” - it became the theme.

Not huge things, necessarily. Not skydiving or scaling Everest. Just the kind of stuff that pokes at your soft spots. The kind that feels manageable in theory, but gets your stomach doing flip-flops the moment it becomes real.

This week’s scary thing? Driving from London to Manchester on my own.

Photo by Surya Prasad on Unsplash

Now, for anyone outside the UK or inside a car regularly, this will not sound like a feat even worth mentioning. I know that. Except that I used to drive all the time in South Africa. Long distances. On my own. Between towns. In the dark. Through places where you really didn’t want to break down.

But after we moved to the UK, we didn’t have a car for the first four years - partly by choice, partly by budget, mostly because the idea of parallel parking in London made me want to eat gravel. Since then, I’ve mostly driven locally. Inner city stuff. Groceries, gym, errands. The idea of motorway driving - especially solo - became this weird, low-level source of dread. Not because I can’t drive. I can. I’m very good at it (ignore my husband’s muttering in the passenger seat). But because I hadn’t done it here. And that meant it became a thing.

So yesterday morning, I packed my little car at 6am, full of nerves, clutching my coffee like a rosary. The plan was simple: drive to Keele University for the Byline Festival, stay overnight in Newcastle-under-Lyme, and then carry on to Manchester today for work tomorrow. A scenic, sensible little weekend loop.

The festival itself was lovely - genuinely compelling and extremely well put together by Peter and the team. It was one of those events that actually delivers on its promise: thoughtful panels, engaged audiences, the kind of conversations that make you remember why you care about journalism and facts in the first place. A great day, really. But by the end, after hours of talks and networking and standing around in the heat, I was properly looking forward to collapsing into an air-conditioned hotel room.

Except, when I arrived at the hotel in Newcastle… disaster.

The air conditioning had shat the bed.

Not just flickering or fussy - fully gone. Dead. In the middle of a heatwave. The whole point of the hotel was to avoid being a sweaty husk of a human, and the idea of marinating in 29-degree heat all night was absolutely not on my list of things I looked forward to doing. So, I politely cancelled, got back in the car, and made the final stretch to Manchester.

Which I was due to do today anyway. I just did it a bit earlier, fuelled by 2000s pop-rock ballads, strong iced coffee, and the vague hope that I hadn’t misjudged the M6 exit. (Reader, I had not. A miracle.)

And you know what? it was fine. More than fine. It was actually kind of nice.

Don’t get me wrong - the M1 and M6 remain strong contenders for “most boring stretch of grey in the UK,” and I remain deeply unimpressed by service stations that advertise five food options and deliver one Pret and a broken Costa machine. But once I got going, once I realised the car wasn’t going to spontaneously combust and I wasn’t going to forget which pedal did what, I felt… okay. Even good.

I think the exact moment things shifted was somewhere past Birmingham, Fall Out Boy blasting through the speakers, when I caught sight of those distinctive towers rising from the skyline. Instead of the anxious mental chatter that had been my passenger for the first hour - am I in the right lane, is that my exit, why is everyone driving so fast - I found myself thinking, "Ooh, I should do Birmingham next." Not as a terrifying logistical challenge, but as a possibility. An adventure, even. That's when I knew something had clicked.

And this is all such a silly thing, really.

I'm nearly 40 years old, and yet I'd somehow built up this anxious wall around the idea of driving between cities. I used to barrel down highways with nothing but a Diet Coke and an Alanis Morissette CD. Now I triple-check my parking sensors and get sweaty-palmed at the sight of a roundabout near Milton Keynes. What happened?

I don't think it's just about driving. I think it's age. Or anxiety. Or maybe just the gradual tightening that happens when you get older and things start to matter more. When you're younger, you don't think about consequences the same way. You don't mentally calculate every possible disaster scenario or worry about how one wrong turn might cascade into chaos. You just... go.

But somewhere along the line, you start cataloguing all the things that could go wrong. The car could break down. You could get lost. There could be an accident. Your phone could die. What if you can't find petrol? What if you're late and people are waiting? What if you take the wrong exit and end up in Scotland? What if you forget how to parallel park and have to live in a Tesco car park forever? What if the satnav develops a personal vendetta against you and starts giving directions exclusively in Welsh? (Welcome to how my mind works, it's a weird place)

Your body. Your job. Your partner. Your cat. The risks don't feel exhilarating anymore - they feel like interruptions to the fragile ecosystem you've spent a decade building. Everything feels more precious because you're suddenly aware of how easily it could all be disrupted.

Which brings me to Manchester.

I’ve been here many times now - mostly in on a Sunday and out on a Monday, for work. But last night was my first time arriving on a Saturday. And I don’t know how to explain this without sounding twee, but… it’s just such a bloody lovely city.

Where London is relentless and wired, Manchester is warm. Not just in climate (though, yes, the heat still was intense), but in temperament. Don't get me wrong - I love London. I love its energy, its opportunities, its sheer bloody-minded determination to keep going no matter what. But Manchester? Manchester has something different. Something that hits you sideways when you're not expecting it.

People actually talk to you. They welcome you. Strangers will strike up conversations at bus stops, bartenders will genuinely ask you how you’re doing, and there's this sense that you're not just another anonymous face in the crowd. For an introvert, that's confusing and occasionally terrifying. But it's also wonderful. It's a city with character and humour and a kind of rough-edged kindness that sneaks up on you. The architecture tells stories. The music scene thrums with life. There's pride here, but not the performative kind - the real, earned sort that comes from building something lasting.

I walked through the Northern Quarter to Canal Street last night, where the lights twinkled along the water and towering drag queens strutted past in heels that would make JD Vance hide behind a sofa. Young people laughed and spilled out of bars, gay people being beautiful and unapologetically themselves, the whole street alive with Saturday night energy but never threatening. I had a quiet drink, wandered back through it all, and just felt… alright. Like I could breathe a bit. Like the city had made space for me without me having to fight for it.

And for someone who spent much of yesterday worrying they’d stall on the M6 and burst into tears near Coventry, that’s no small thing.

What all this semi-coherent rambling boils down to is that this has been the year of doing scary things. Starting new projects. Saying yes when I want to say “maybe later.” Driving to new places. Admitting when I’m scared. Putting my voice, my thoughts, my feelings on this newsletter.

And you know what? It’s working. Bearly Politics is slowly becoming the kind of community I’d always hoped for. A bit slower, a little kinder and a bit weirder. Less algorithmic nonsense, more actual connection. And I’m feeling more… calm. A bit more well rounded.

I’ll be sharing this week’s recipe below as part of the “Bobotie and Other Crimes” project - Sundays are now for food, fear, and figuring things out.

Thanks for reading. And if you’re sitting with a silly little fear of your own? I get it. Truly. But maybe give it a go. Do the scary thing.

You might find yourself in Manchester. On a Saturday. And it might just be a little bit magic.