ILLUSTRATION: JESSICA DURRANT/GETTY IMAGES
‘MOST MEN LEAD LIVES of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.’ That line by Henry David Thoreau always struck me. It was the impetus that sent me to a tattoo parlour to get the words ‘carpe diem’ tattooed on my hip at the age of 19. Not the most original notion but one that, even as a teenager, galvanised me. I swore I would never be one of those people who let their lives slip through their fingers like sand. It’s the defining nudge that leads me down untrodden paths: my thirst to try new things. It’s the jolt in the middle of the night – seize the day! –.that signs me up to another year of study, this time a herbal medicine foundation course.