Whenever I visit my parents in Southport I always envisage a relaxing few days of seeing friends and doing family activities, with plenty of time to spare for penning a few blogs in advance and catching up with Google Reader.
You’d think by now I’d know better. Within my first twenty-four hours I had been shopping (for clothes), shopping again (this time for food), out for dinner with one friend and out to the pub with another. I crawled in at 2am after discovering I can now stomach snakebite and black …

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 …

This year is my first ‘wedding season’. I have had friends get married in previous summers, but this is the first year of close friends tying the knot.
My friends that are getting married today met because they had me in common. This was back when we were still just about teenagers. The bride is my oldest friend (i.e. the first little person I met after I was born) and I first met the groom when we were about ten.
Then in September I’ll be off down to Oxford for the wedding …

Sunday before last (I know I’m a little late with the blog!) I celebrated my twenty-sixth birthday and there are usually a few things you can guarantee on or around the date of the 24th May.
The first is sunshine. Every year without fail it has been sunny for whatever birthday celebration or event is planned. When I was little it stayed dry for obsticle courses and treasure hunts. On my 16th I sat in the backgarden revising for a GCSEs. On my 18th we took a break from revision …

Geek is cool! This is not a new revelation. From experience I know that owning a pair of Louboutin’s and a Mulberry bag is not mutually exclusive with getting excited about the latest developments in technology or science.
I have always been proud of my completely geeky and random interest in the most abstract of things. Even when the thirst for knowledge strikes me in the middle of the night (I once got up at 3am because I HAD to know whether Bournemouth got it name because it was the mouth …

You may have spotted my absence over the past week or so. Sincere apologies. Easter in the Thornber household is always slightly chaotic and finding a quiet corner to pen my blog is near impossible, especially with one niece or another requesting use of my Mac. Even the two year old was in on the act requesting (demanding) “Pat-A-Cake” to be played over and over again on the cbeebies website.

Family Easters are fantastic yet exhausting. We’re not exactly the quietest bunch, and we have an opinion or few between us …

The worst thing about a holiday is the returning to work bit. I coped with the three nights of having unsettling dreams about work (probably the whole anxiety/stress from working to hard thing!) so decided that for the remainder of the week I would be proactive in avoiding anything to do with work. It is in fact impossible for me to avoid EVERYTHING to do with work because it would involve becoming a hermit and not going near my front door for the entire week as I work in an …