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 …

I am a bitch. This comes as a bit of a revelation to me. Generally in day to day work I keep my cool. I explain to people why they need to do something and the benefits to them. If they don’t get it quite right I’m nice, constructive and help them improve. I am usually the good cop. In my current job I’ve only had one full on strop (I blame PMT). But when it comes to design it turns out that I can tell it like is.

In terms …

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, …

This seemed to fit in with the theme I was going for and as I seem to have missed out a day in my planning my ‘Five…‘ I decided to steal this idea from a Facebook post going around at the moment and add my own twist at the end!
Top 5 Books of 2009
My literary highlight of the year was meeting David Nicholls and Nick Hornby during the Durham Book Festival and telling David that he’d made me cry!
1. One Day by David Nicholls
2. Goodnight Beautiful by Dorothy Koomson
3. Against …

I have just been watching Panorama’s report on Royal Mail. It’s now over a year since I left the company, but it seems it will take a lot longer for me to leave it completely behind. People still stop me to tell me about their bad experiences. I also get asked questions on postal services (and am very aware that soon any advice I may give will be completely outdated!). And I continue to be interested in what’s going on.
Though I know some of the many problems and how frustrating it …

Either the German company Smartbook are very stupid. Or very clever. Or very stupid.
Until today I would have probably never used the word ‘Smartbook‘ in my blog or it’s lowercase neighbour. Let me explain. In the recent past people have been referring to devices that are somewhere between smartphones and netbooks as ’smartbooks’. First Smartbook defended their trademarked name by preventing other companies they compete with using it as a generic term. Resonable and understandable. But now they have decided to go after bloggers and the press too.
Stupid? If they …

Today as I sat enjoying my cup of tea at morning break I felt lucky. My ex-colleagues and friends will be sorting letters and packets, and tomorrow delivering mail. During the national strikes in 2007 I was doing the same. Two years on I had hoped both sides would be closer to a resolution, but I’m not surprised they aren’t. Whilst everyone is on strike a managers days are long, but when strikes are over is when the real work begins.
In 2007 as the strikes came to the close I …

For the second time this week I find myself aware of the tripe that is contained in The Daily Mail without ever picking it up, let alone wanting to read it.
In this case it was what had been written, I don’t dare call it journalism, by Jan Moir about the untimely death of Stephen Gately. The article was originally called ‘Why there was nothing ‘natural’ about Stephen Gately’s death’. The later change in title doesn’t mask the shoddy lack of any talent or integrity in the writing. After stating “All …

I have recently discovered that all is not well in the land of Waterstone’s and this upsets me for all sorts of reasons. As book lover. A customer. A future author (fingers crossed, touching wood and looking out for a lucky number of magpies… oh and writing copious amounts on a daily basis!)
Back in the late 80s my big sister would have loved a job at Waterstone’s. A decade ago when my friends and I started to look for part time jobs, Waterstone’s was the best of the best. Where …

Room 101, penned by Orwell in Nineteen Eighty-Four, is the place where you are subjected to the worst things in the world. It seemed that Blog 101 might be an appropriate place to store all the things that I find unpleasant in this world. Unfortunately the BBC wouldn’t lend me Paul Merton, but in the style of Room 101 hopefully I can keep you entertained for the next couple of minutes with the things that I despise…
Parsnips

There are a few food items I can’t abide, including Marmite, but nothing offends …

As much as I love writing I am a huge fan of reading too. My big sister who was obsessed with reading took me to the library as a toddler and introduced me to the world of Miffy and much more. Throughout my childhood and teen years I was a regular library goer, I worked out last night that at my peak I must have been reading about two books a week during my summer holidays. The library was also about community and was one of the first places you …

Then I will begin…
In The Writers Tale I mentioned (or rather I used Russell T Davies to illustrate) that there isn’t a particular way to write. In fact, despite me obsessing about having the right ‘voice’ for my stories, the story is the most important part.
Particularly Project No.2 I know I have a very strong story, and though no story is original, through research I’m fairly sure my story is different enough. And good enough to eventually be a popular piece of literature (for a couple of months at least).
Story …

I used to watch lots of TV. I’ve watched all the soaps at some point or another. I must have spent well over a decade watching Saturday morning, and then Sunday morning, television. I remember the days of Going Live with @Schofe, and then Live & Kicking with @xxandip (The two wikipedia pages just brought back floods of memories… John Barrowman presenting ‘Electric Circus’!). T4 saw me through my hangover years. I’m not quite sure how many times I’ve seen each single episode of Friends.

But nowadays my viewing is much …

Normally the most I venture into Radio is listening to Chris Moyles for an hour on a weekday morning. My parents however are avid Radio 4 listeners with speakers in the lounge, front room and dining room all hooked up to the stereo. Whenever I’m home I can’t help noticing the radio, but am also very practised in tuning out, especially when I hear the first bars of The Archers theme tune.
So it surprised me this evening when I found myself, in my tuned out state, tuning back in. I …