This weekend was comedy weekend. And it was brilliant. I’ve been looking forward to it for ages. Friday was John Bishop, followed by Dave Gorman last night. It’s been nine or ten months since I first saw John Bishop on Michael McIntyre’s Comedy Roadshow and I immediately decided I had to see him on tour. Then back in January I phoned the Theatre Royal in the off chance there might be some Dave Gorman seats left. Fate must have been smiling on me that day as I got returned seats …

I warn you this is a LONG blog so I won’t be offended if you decide not to read it. If you decide to give it a go can I suggest you get yourself a cuppa before you begin!

As I start to look at what I want to do in my career next there’s a few themes emerging…
I live to learn. Learning as much as I can about a lot of things in a short space of time. I absorb information at an alarming rate. For someone who talks a …

Nope I haven’t become a nun. Even though my decline in blogging frequency may lead you to believe I’m holed up in a convent without access to the internet.

I am getting in the habit of exercising. Something I’ve tried to do before, and was finally succeeding in before the flu to end all influenza. This time once I was fully fit it took merely a week to get me back in a workout schedule. In the past my pattern with exercise has tended to be four weeks on, four months …

Today I return from London again. It’s been a brilliant weekend. Apart from a slight concussion – I misjudged a low ceiling and have a bruised and painful head to prove it! 
The weekend has reinforced my thoughts about considering moving back to London eventually. Seeing so many friends has made me realise just how much I miss them. I also survived a weekend of more socialising than I’ve done in a long time without feeling shattered this morning. Though a weekend away from the gym has left me craving exercise …

If you’d told me 12 months ago I would be writing this blog I would have laughed in disbelief. But times change and it does heal too. Not to disregard all the hard work I’ve put into reversing the effects of being bullied and recovering from depression. The past few weeks I have really come into my own and the past fortnight I have not only felt like I’m back to being “Helen” but that I may even be finding confidence in some areas of my life I didn’t have …

Happy New Year to you all. Chinese New Year that is. This year it has the fortune of falling on a day normally overshadowed by red for other reasons.

Over the years I have found myself becoming oblivious to the Valentine’s charade. Having been single (apart from some short lived romantic entanglements) for over six years it’s not a day I bother with. Even before my epic singleness I seemed to finish relationships just before Valentine’s Day or start them in the weeks after. I even managed a well timed seven …

Apologies for the recent lack of blogging. It’s not like me to be this quiet! Life and technology has stood in my way the past few weeks.
It seemed quite a few of you enjoyed my BT blog and as I was rather angry (understatement) about the whole situation, I am pleased to say we got there in the end and it has been resolved. However I dare say this is the power of social networking. For those of you that aren’t aware, BT has a Twitter account @BTcare and it …

I’ve just had another episode of dealing with BT and have written a letter of complaint to post tomorrow that I’m sure will end up with a reply of “we’re sorry but there is nothing we can do.” I’m fed up of run ins with BT so I decided to pen the letter I wish I could send them instead…
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BT,
You screwed up again. After our hours on the phone, back in 2008, I thought I’d finished with you. It was messy and tiring. You couldn’t accept that you had faults …

While my faith in bus services may be at an all time low, today a little bit of faith was restored in our trains. Or at least Virgin Trains.
Returning from a work trip to Warwick University (whose campus is deceptively nearer Coventry than it’s namesake) we had seats booked on a specific train. I’m not a fan of advanced tickets, as soon as I purchase one I know the gods are plotting a well timed disruption to ensure I miss the one and only service it is valid on. Lo …

For the first time in a long time I find myself in a peculiar position. I don’t have a crush on someone. Anyone. Usually if there’s no one in the present I can dig something up from my past, stick the rose tinted glasses on and swoon away. Sometimes some kind of relationship however vague, complicated or seemingly normal develops from these crushes. Other times they remain a purely one sided thing.
But for the time being I am sans crush. Well except for in the land of celebrity men where, …

From the over enthusiastic loud honk by the bus driver on a Durham roundabout this evening I can only conclude I had a near death experience. His subsequent over enthusiasm in hitting the breaks in non-life-threatening situations can only suggest I was lucky to survive.Yet I am grateful at this time of year for any bus turning up within a 30 minute window. Once the ice is gone and the evenings get lighter I can walk to and from Durham (aside from the event of the odd torrential downpour). But …

Hello to you all on another snow covered day in Durham. However the great thaw has started. Today it’s a balmy 4 oC, rooftops and cars are starting to emerge. But before I bore you to death with another blog on snow I realise I haven’t yet written my blog post on the Kreativ Blogger Award which Katie McCullough nominated me for just before Christmas:

“I nominate Helen because I’ve never seen such an eclectic bunch of posts on one blog. You name it she’s got it; politics, writing, photography, lifestyle, …

I have to admit that I am quite disappointed with my attitude these past few days. I’ve been all doom and gloom about the snow and missed out on really appreciating it for the relatively short time it is here. I can pinpoint the time I got fed up to when I waited almost an hour and a half for a bus that never came. This was last Thursday, the coldest day of the year. It wasn’t even the fault of the snow. It was the temperature. But that was …

Unless the predictions are wildly off, this Thursday will see three weeks of snow in Durham. Although I’ve been away for half that time I have been assured (moaned at) by plenty of people that the snow hasn’t disappeared from the ground throughout this time. When I returned on New Years Eve it did look like it might be making an attempt to thaw, but I woke on Sunday morning to a new thick blanket of soft snow. And it is proper powdery snow. The small amounts of snow I’ve …

The decimal system has a lot to answer for. If we were based on a Octal system then I’m sure I wouldn’t have spent the past two days being quite as fed up. The first eight years of this decade were pretty great. There were lots of ups and downs, but the main thing was that I moved forward. Most significantly in terms of my mental health. Also with education and career. But the last two years of the decade haven’t been quite so fantastic thanks to one big bully. …