024 - Sliding Doors Stories - Part 1

Sliding Doors Moments: From Chocolate to Celebrancy and Safari Dreams 🎙️

Welcome to our first special bonus episode, where we celebrate the incredible "sliding doors" moments from our guests - those life-defining events that remind us why stepping out of the classroom can lead to extraordinary experiences.

This week, we revisit the heartfelt stories of:

• 🍫 Vicky Thurkettle, who shares how her leap from teaching to chocolatier gave her the gift of witnessing her daughter’s miraculous first steps.
• 🏆 James Terry, whose journey to becoming a celebrant has already earned him a national award and a newfound sense of purpose.
• 🐘 Helen Taylor, who swapped the classroom for cabin crew and found herself on a dream safari, witnessing a breathtaking sunrise surrounded by elephants.

Every week, we will bring you more past 'sliding doors' inspiring moments and let them remind you of the magic waiting just beyond the classroom door.

🎧 Subscribe now and don’t miss the next episode!

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Thanks for listening 🙏

Edited with finesse by our Podcast Super Producer, Mike Roberts of Making Digital Real

Transcript

Hello, fellow pit ponies, and welcome to our special bonus episodes that we've put together for your pleasure, which capture those beautiful moments at the end of our episodes, in which our guests share with you the magical experiences they've enjoyed since leaving the classroom. We refer to them affectionately as the sliding door stories. The stories are different, unique and incredibly powerful and serve as an inspiration to us all. 

So on behalf of myself and Sarah, enjoy a Vicky Thurkettle from the classroom to a chocolatier sliding door story. My sliding doors moment was winter 2021. My son had started walking when he was about 13 months old. 

My daughter, obviously with cerebral palsy, we were told originally she would never walk, but we were persistent and she is a determined little monkey, and we were walking around our cul-de-sac, me holding her under the armpits and my back killing me because she was tiny and I was bending over. My son was running ahead and suddenly she broke free from me and took some steps. And it was something that would not possibly have happened if I hadn't been there to work with her on a daily basis, making her muscles work, making her move around all the time. 

And yeah, and also if I had been at work, I may have missed it. Even if she had done it, I might have missed those few steps. James Terry from the classroom to a celebrant sliding door story.

It's difficult to put one, but perhaps the main one happened just last weekend when I was runner up in a national award at the Association of Independent Celebrants and I was runner up in Outstanding Female Celebrant category. Now I had in all fairness put my name out there on social media and stuff to gain some nominations because if you didn't, nobody would know it was happening. But I thought I'd get a few nice words and then I ended up as a finalist, top five, and I thought, wow, that's way beyond what you've ever dreamt of. 

I mean, for one, it gave me a nice little logo I could put on my emails and stuff like that. But wow, five finalists, you know, and I sat there and I sat in this awards dinner and there was representatives from different organizations and professional bodies, particularly from the funeral industry, like funeral directors and professional bodies and things like that, with their chains, the presidents with their chains around their necks and things like that. And first off, we'd had, there's a media company that run all the music and things in crematoriums called Obertus, and they did a little draw where you had to write down an idea for a new theme to be projected on the slides and things in crematoriums. 

And you won a 50 pound Amazon voucher. Well, first off, I put motorsport, well, I got pulled out. So I won the 50 pound Amazon voucher.

So I'm sat there thinking, well, okay, that's enough for tonight. And then they did a raffle and my name pulled out and I got a bottle of whiskey. I thought, oh God, this is like, I don't even play the lottery here. 

I don't know what's happening. And then of course, we went through and they'd gone to the awards and they went through, first off, was there was three categories. One was for wedding and family celebrant. 

Then it was the outstanding funeral celebrant. And eventually it was one about contribution to celebrancy, which is like an overall, I suppose that's like the pinnacle one. There's no way I was in that category because I've not been doing it long enough. 

So they did the wedding one, runner up, well-deserved, winner, well-deserved. Then we got into the outstanding one and they what they were doing for each one was reading a quote of something somebody had said as a nomination and they read that one. Of course, I'm thinking, well, it could be anybody really that's doing this, that cares and is good at it. 

And then they said, runner up in the outstanding funeral category, outstanding funeral celebrant, James Terry. Well, there I was up for a third time, but this one, I couldn't believe it because I never in a million years thought I'd win, let alone be a finalist, let alone win. So actually to become runner up second place and to an amazing woman called Kate Moran, who runs her own chapel and does amazing work with children's hospices. 

I was absolutely flabbergasted. So that was a sense of, it was a mixture really of, in that moment and the way I worded it to my family and friends. And I think on a Facebook post on my personal and professional page, it was like a mixture of pride, achievement and imposter syndrome all in one moment. 

Because how was this me? Yes, okay. It was all within our own circle. It's not like a nationally recognised, not everyone's going to know what that meant. 

But for me, I was like, I can simply say I'm the second runner up in an outstanding funeral celebrant award. And two and a half years in, here I am. And I thought I'll take that any day of the week. 

Helen Taylor, from the classroom to cabin crew, Sliding Doors story. That has to be when I went to Johannesburg. I was able, I'd been working with British Airways for six months at that point. 

And after six months, you can take someone on board, like they call it a cling on. So if you're working a trip, you can take somebody with you and they cling on. They don't know if they're going to get a seat or not, hence the way, because they're standby. 

So they could be in business class, in first class, or they could be down, even be sat on a jump seat. Or they may not even get on a plane. Sometimes that happens as well. 

And so it was my first time in Johannesburg. It's since childhood my dream to do a safari. But it's so cost prohibitive, we've never been able to do one. 

And so I was just like, okay, South Africa, let's do this. And so we booked a safari. We had a tent. 

And you go to these different destinations. And in a lot of places, they do special for cabin crew. So we went to this one place, it was a tented safari. 

And on the first morning of the safari, it was an early morning safari, had to get up at 5am for it. And we were on the truck and we were coming out the place where all the animals are. They have this like private runway and they had, we were just getting in, she was like, oh, we've heard elephants are around, let's go.

And so we got in the back and me, my husband, Gary, we just sat there and we turned a corner and she turned the engines off, the driver turned and she's like, you've got to be really, really quiet. So we sat there, the sun was rising and the sun set and the sun rises. So Hakra is just beautiful, just stunning. 

So I mean, it was just beautiful as it was. And then suddenly out of the bush, you could hear them coming. And oh my God, there were these elephants like literally so close to the vehicle just walked across. 

And this little baby came out as well. It was just like this little baby elephant was trotting along. Literally, I mean, obviously I was crying. 

My husband even said, he doesn't cry, he said he was really choked up. And I just thought, I'm sat here watching this, which has been a dream of mine since childhood. And I'm still getting paid by the way, I still get an hourly rate when I'm down route.

I'm being paid to sit here with my husband and watching these wild animals, literally these wild animals walk across on safari. And I just thought I wouldn't be doing this. And this was midweek term time. 

So I was thinking I would be sat in the classroom in front of 30 teenagers right now. But no, I'm sat here with my husband watching these elephants as the sun rises. It's like literally something out of a romantic novel. 

You couldn't write it if it, you know, it was a real pinch me moment. And literally even now I get emotional thinking about it because it was just like, we were only there for two days, but it was just amazing. It was absolutely amazing. 

I just thought I would never be doing this right now if I hadn't have had the courage to leave teaching when I did. Well, we hope you enjoyed the sliding door stories of our guests. And please remember to subscribe to our channels and follow along for the magical pit pony moments that you will find at the end of our episodes every week. 

On behalf of myself and Sarah, see you on the other side.