Okay, I’ll own up, I’m not usually a thrill-seeker. I get excited when I open a packet of biscuits and none of them are broken – and that’s about the limit of the level of excitement I can usually stomach!

Last year – SOMEHOW – a friend managed to convince me to sign up for a sponsored tandem skydive. This involved being strapped to a bloke who then leapt with you out of a plane. I’ve no idea why I agreed to do that (although I have my suspicions – I had rather too many empty wine bottles to take out to the recycling the following morning), but do it I did (and – ahem – raised just £700 for the local children’s hospice, although I don’t like to talk about it). I have to admit – those moments of thrill kind of resonated with me.

 

 

So, I’m a little less cautious these days. As a single mum, I used to doing stuff on my own (when my daughters are at school anyway), so here are three solo ways I like to get the adrenaline pumping.

Fight! Fight! Fight!

Don’t worry, I haven’t started racing into the town centre of an evening and yelling ‘come and ‘ave a go if you fink yer ‘ard enuff’ to the bemused public. I’m learning how to fight – well I’m learning self-defence, Tae Kwon Do, in fact. I’ve been doing it eight months and am already a green belt (which I assure you is quite good). It can be tiring but once you lose yourself in a … ahem … friendly sparring match, you can really hear the blood thumping in your ears. Plus if any fella gives me grief on a night out, he’ll soon be wondering why he’s suddenly on all fours wondering where his breath has gone.

Oh my, Omaha!

This will surprise you, but I gamble online. Before you sign me up for gamblers anonymous I can assure you I only play for play money or for pennies. If you look you’ll find that Full Tilt’s online card room offer loads of variants of the game of poker. I never knew there were so many varieties! My favourite is Omaha, because you get better hands and it’s more fun. All the serious players are off playing Texas Hold ’em, leaving me to chat and enjoy myself – and experience the odd adrenaline rush whenever I’ve got twenty pence riding on the turn of the next card.

Bang Bang You’re Dead!

Before me and hubby split, on one holiday in the US (in Orlando) we signed up for a session at a pistol shooting range. It’s a bit sad I know, but I really got a buzz from having a real live handgun in my fingers and tearing bullets through a helpless paper target. So, recently I was delighted to find a shooting range not twenty minutes from my front door. Hitting the target is a lot more difficult than those blokes in US cops show have you believe, but the more I do it, the better I do seem to get. Don’t worry, I’m not going to turn into Rambo – hand guns are banned in the UK (and rightly so) so I get to shoot air pistols, but popping a bullseye still gives me a bit of a buzz.

 

This article was contributed by Sophia Matthews