"I was working as a bartender for a long time and I wasn’t enjoying it. I also thought that I’d got to that age where I should be thinking about what else I should be doing, not that there’s anything wrong with being a bartender for the rest of your life, but I was sick of working nights and every weekend, the unsociable hours were making me miserable to be honest and I wanted a bit more of a regular routine.
"It was during the first lockdown that I started looking into college courses and I applied for lots of different subjects, but floristry is one that stood out to me and I thought it sounded up my street, so I started a course in that in September. We were allowed to be on campus for a while because of the practical elements involved in the coursework, but the course has had to move completely online for now because of lockdown.
"I’m working as a barista just now as well as studying. What I picture at the end of getting my qualifications is having a wee space that’s maybe a combination of a coffee shop, plant, flower and gift shop.
"My family are all artistic, my mum decided to go back and study ceramics at art school when I was about 5, my sister is an artist too and my dad has owned a ceramic painting cafe for 15 years that I also worked in, so I grew up around ceramics and I’ve always been really interested in them. I might even follow in my mum’s footsteps and go to art school and study ceramics, but for now I have access to kilns through my family’s work and I’ve recently been designing and making my own plant pots. I’m really lucky to have access to the equipment that I need to do it. I found the first lockdown to be awful but to be honest it gave me a kick up the a**e to think about and realise what I want to do with my life, which is a really nice feeling for me, because I’ve never known it before."
