I’m Paula. I live at Glencally Avenue with Julie and Sandra. We get on fantastically. It’s a lovely place to live, I enjoy spending time in the Summer House during the good weather and spending time with my housemates as well. More recently, I’ve been spending a lot of my time doing homework for my college course at West College Scotland in Paisley.

I’ve been going to West College Scotland for a few years now and have done several different courses. At the moment I’m doing a course online over Zoom. I’ve got a laptop, phone, and iPad as well as my own printer so I’ve got everything I need to be able to work away on my own. The courses I’m doing are a newsletter and an art course. I like to keep up to date with what’s happening in the world, especially with what’s been happening with the pandemic over the past few years. I watch some bits of the news and take notes which helps me write things to submit to the newsletter. The newsletter gets sent to our house so it’s nice to get to share it with everyone here.

I get a lot of homework for the art courses and love doing that at home. I like painting and drawing and have done pictures of animals, flowers and even clowns! I enjoy colouring in on my iPad and could spend hours doing it, I sit with a cup of tea and find it really calming. I can make things too, I made a lovely Easter bonnet for a competition a wee while ago.

It’s great to have a routine, I put together a daily schedule with Lorraine (one of our managers) and it helps me stay focused and know what I’m doing with my day. I’m really proud of a lot of the writing I’ve done for my courses. I get on well with all my lecturers and they are really helpful. Although my lecturers help, I feel I’ve been really independent in my studies and it’s helped me grow as a person. My courses last a year all in all and I’ll be picking a new one in the Summer. I’m probably going to start studying Science next which I’m really looking forward to.

Apart from my college course, I like exercising in the house and have a few exercise videos I watch. I love a walk around the cul-de-sac as well, I used to have a FitBit that I could use to keep track of my steps as well. I also spend a lot of time reading, my favourites at the moment are David Walliam’s books.

On my birthday in June, I’m going to be 51 and will be celebrating with a glass of prosecco! I got to celebrate my 50th last year with a garden party which was fantastic.

I will be going on a trip to Largs soon and staying at the Brisbane House Hotel. I can’t wait to have a nice dinner and cocktail there. I’m excited to continue my learning afterwards, although the cocktails will be replaced with coffee for that!