I want to learn to shoot…

I want to learn to shoot.

“Is there something you’re not telling me,” was the question my friend Lorraine asked me.

“I just want to learn to shoot, it’s a kind of urge.” I told her.

An unexpected one and a bit unusual for me – being a peace loving kind of girl, who enjoys nothing better than buying ‘fair-trade products,’ and gets a strong feeling of satisfaction from recycling her food waste in the council provided blue bin, even finding bliss in hand washing her family’s clothes, whilst sitting on a porch in the middle of Koh Lanta, Thailand.

Maybe it’s something to do with the fact that I’m now fast approaching my 47th birthday – number 50 is close to knocking on my door-or is it my love of American police shows stemming from a childhood filled with Kojak, The Streets of San Francisco, Starskey and Hutch and Charlie’s Angels. That little square box and the silver screen has provided many a role for me to re-enact in my back garden as a child.

Contemplating my son’s childhood – I decided not to provide him with guns to play with. Believing at the time that it was not something I would like to encourage.

Until the day he made one out of Lego bricks. I realised that if he wanted a gun, somehow, someway his imagination would create one.

And yet the urge is still within me.

Let me make this clear, I want to learn to shoot – I don’t want to learn to shoot PEOPLE.

The dictionary states that the definition of urging is: An impulse that prompts action or effort.

And I’ve thought of times before. When having, resisting or fulfilling an urge, how I’ve felt. And I wonder – how would it feel to hold a revolver in my hand, take aim, fire and feel the recoil.

So, maybe it’s just about finding a way to connect deeply with myself, by trying something completely new to me. One which gives me an excuse to extend my watching time of the yummy Ben Fogle, being taught to shoot in Terlingua, Texas in his channel 5 show New Lives in the Wild. A few miles from the border of Mexico.

So People, what activity would you like try?