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 without getting hideously drunk or throwing up. That wasn’t the end of it, I woke just after 8am (surprisingly without a hangover!) to head out on a hike followed by lunch in what can only be described at the best pub I have ever been to.

The Bhurtpore Inn (Aston, Cheshire) does the most amazing home cooked pub food I think I have ever tasted. At one point I thought we might declare to the landlord that we wouldn’t be leaving until we’d tried everything on their menu. Despite being stuffed we managed to polish off desert too, well we didn’t want to live with the regret of “What if..?” It also seems to have every type of ale and cider. It is a CAMRA pub and a bloody brilliant one at that. It also has a beer festival that I can’t make this year, but will be pencilling in the diary for 2011.

But just to go back 24 hours and those hallowed first few steps into Southport. Durham may have the beauty, but Southport has the brains – well the amenities anyway. A couple of years ago I would have laughed if anyone had suggested that I would be hankering after Southport’s shops, not to mention the entertainment (the cinema, the pubs… perhaps not the bars and clubs though!) Spend eighteen months living in Durham and you will understand why. The shopping isn’t awful, but having been brought up on M&S I find myself struggling with the tiny offering that can be had on Silver Street. If I invested in a car I could just nip up the A1 to the Metro Centre or Newcastle, but public transport isn’t quite that easy. So within minutes of stepping back onto Merseyside turf (or as some people will still argue, Lancashire) I’m in M&S and enjoying every second. On this first visit I settled on a pair of Per Una jeans, and when asked by my mother “Would you like these as an early birthday present?” I found I couldn’t refuse.

Having eased myself into the M&S experience with the Southport store, a few days later in Liverpool I couldn’t resist heading into the full sized M&S to make the most of the lingerie department, which as most women know is the best place to find sensible, yet gorgeous, well fitting and very reasonably priced bits you can’t do without! Of course if Victoria Secret opened in the UK (oh go on…) they might have a fight for my loyalty on their hands. I left with a lighter purse, but not too much lighter, and a big smile on my face.
My trip over to the North West wasn’t all about M&S though. There was also the joy of purchasing my first pair of proper running trainers (a blog in itself!) And I did manage to cover quite a bit of ground in four days between Cheshire, Blackpool and Liverpool (that bit was in the car, I’m only just starting out with the marathon training!!!).

It all ended on Wednesday with the whole purpose of me being in the North West, to run a workshop on ‘Marketing for Everyone’ at a conference, which was a brilliant experience, and one I hope I’ll get to repeat in future. And now I’m back in the North East, enjoying the beautiful sunshine and hoping it lasts long enough to enjoy my birthday BBQ tomorrow!

This is not a case of unfair comparison. Yes I lived in London for three years, but as soon as I made the decision to move out of that mecca of public transport on demand I realised I could no longer complain about having to wait a whole five minutes for a bus. Or indeed a whole fifteen minutes at two o’clock in the morning. I understood I would have to significantly lower my expectations, and allow the word taxi to re-enter my vocabulary after a certain hour of the night.

I grew up in a place where the promised service was not that different from the one here in Durham. A bus every 10 minutes during peak hours. And in Southport that meant on most occasions one would turn up at fairly regular intervals. Except of course on the day of my very first job interview. A rare occasion when no buses turned up for half an hour so I had to call a taxi. That taxi driver was celebrating his birthday. He was meant to be retiring. He had just lost his entire pension. For my second interview I got the train.

County Durham buses are a law unto themselves. Arriva is the worst. But Go North East, although significantly more reliable, still has examples of spectacular failures. Back in December while recovering from a particularly lethal dose of the flu I decided I would still make it to my nieces Panto by hook or by crook. That is because hooks and crooks are probably more reliable than the buses. In fact I left home two and a half hours before needed to arrive at somewhere a mere 16 miles away. A 30 minute drive.

An Arriva bus did, although late, somehow turn up in just enough time to get us to the Go North East bus stop. The stupid mistake I’d made was trusting the Go North East timetable on their website, only to get to the bus stop and be told on that timetable the bus had gone 10 minutes earlier. Confused by a time on the electronic display that didn’t seem to correlate with either of the timetables I called up the Traveline number. I was told that the web timetable nor the bus stop timetable were correct. In fact we had missed the bus we needed by 5 minutes and they were only every half an hour. Had our Arriva bus arrived on time we would have made the Go North East bus, but I would have missed out on the delight of finding out that they have three different timetables for one bus from one bus stop. Obviously painting every bus a different colour is higher up on the list of priorities than making sure your timetables all say the same thing. Eventually I made it to the panto in desperate need of a cup of tea. Returning home five or six hours after I left I finally got that cup of tea.

Checking the timetables is a mistake I make over and over again. Like the leaflets about gritting routes in Durham, bus timetables are just create unrealistic expectations. I have learned that the only bus into Durham that will turn up almost on time every day is the 8.13 am (When I say every day, I only mean five days a week). To give Arriva their dues it seems that the last three buses out of Durham from 9.30 pm onwards do actually turn up on time as well. But should I want to travel to Durham after 8.13 am or home before 9.30 pm then I could be waiting any length of time. If I want to use the buses on Sunday I have to leave myself an hour and a half leeway on a 10 minute journey in to town. Four reliable buses a day. I should consider myself lucky, some places don’t even get four buses a day. However I did choose to live in a city, albeit a small one, under the impression that I could expect my basic public transport needs to be catered for.

This week there’s been a new development for Arriva. Early buses. Or possibly non-existent buses. Though you wouldn’t know either way as the little LED lights promising that a bus is “due” don’t actually seem to have a connection to a bus being at the bus stop at that time. Or any time afterwards. And Arriva will probably shortly claim they’ve reduced the number of late buses significantly. Of course this is by making them disappear into thin air. Or just making sure that now everyone has to get to the bus stop fifteen minutes before a bus that might be early, late or just not turn up at all.

I am sure there are those of you reading this thinking “Surely she exaggerates?” (incidentally a word it seems no matter how hard I try I cannot learn how to spell). But no I do not. My friends who have come to stay can vouch for the unreliable timetables and non-existent buses. Some have waited up to forty minutes for a shiny metal carriage into town, which when coming from London is a shock enough to hospitalize anyone and reconfirm their incorrect prejudices of the North. My Twitter followers must feel like they know far too much about the bad bus services as I tweet while I wait.

Unfortunately as we have come to accept of late for most public service ‘private’ is a code word for crap. I am yet to be convinced that all these wonderful privatised services are cheaper, more efficient and better for the customer than if the Government had kept them as their own. However I will not give in and get a car. Soon the days will be longer and hopefully not to wet and I can resume my walk to work making my rants about public transport a much rarer sighting. For a few months at least.

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 of my friend Anita. We bonded with in my previous job over a love of shoes, but soon became very good friends too.

Navigating the wedding guest etiquette is an interesting thing…

Invitations: When it’s your oldest friend getting married and you’ve chatted about the wedding on multiple occasions it’s a given that you will be attending. Yet in future I will make the effort to actually send the R.S.V.P. rather than just ringing up/texting and accepting not only my own invitation, but passing on the message for my sisters and their families. As the bride replied “Bloody Thornbers!”

Accomodation: Step two is finding accommodation. Easy enough for the first wedding, the parents are putting us all up (or rather putting up with all of us). The second though I needed to find a hotel near the village of the wedding. After a bit of research I phoned up to see if the hotel I’d found could facilitate early check in and was told that I “wouldn’t find a hotel in the world that guaranteed early check in”. I told him he was wrong and found another cheaper hotel less than a mile away that did. I’m sure in the years to come I will learn more about hotels as a wedding guest than I ever did travelling with business!

Outfit: Of course then there is the whole ‘what do I wear?’ dilemma. Cleverly avoided by my forward thinking. I found my dress when I was shopping in New York last year. Unfortunately having the dress in hand meant I became a bit complacent, and earlier this week realised I’d completely forgotten about accessories! Thank god for eBay and the Accessorize sale! Whilst I’m at it, what is with the cost of fascinators? Not impressed!

Present: The fun bit. Getting to have a nosey at what the couple would like. I refuse to buy anything boring so I was pleased to be able to get Rapidough Deluxe for the happy couple today. And for the next wedding, their wine list is with a local wine cellar, now that is something I definitely approve of!

Anyway I better be off… the wedding is in just under 4 hours and I need to make myself look beautiful!

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 to have a BBQ. The day of my 21st I spent on Bournemouth beach. Not once in the past 26 years has it rained. And this year was no exception.

Secondly you can always guarentee that everyone will know it’s my birthday. Some people hate birthdays and hate the attention they bring. I don’t. I enjoy it. I like getting cards, presents and cake. This year I even requested that my family sing “Cumpleaños Feliz” (Happy Birthday in Spanish) as my niece and I are now learning it together every Thursday. My dad’s response was “Get lost!” but even he surrendered and joined in!

The third thing you can guarantee on and around my birthday is an abundance of parties and celebrations. I like to celebrate with my family, my close friends, my wider group of friends and if none of these events fall on my actual birthday a pint in the pub with friends is likely to feature too. For example last year I managed a party with my friends in London, a night out with my friends in Southport and a chinese meal with my family.

The party with friends has often been a joint party with others who have the good luck to have been born in May, but this year we decided to give it a miss. In fact I also gave the celebration with close friends, and the pub a miss too. In the grand scheme of things this year has been my quietest ever (I must have had two celebrations on my 1st birthday!) I ditched the big night out and the copious drinking for a lovely day with my family and one of my best friends. We ate a lovely Sunday roast prepared by my sister and then made the most of the sunshine by going for a wander in the woods. I would say it was civilised but we are talking about Thornber’s and their descendants so there was still a fair amount of noise and chaos!

Next year I might consider returning to the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle of previous birthdays – on the other hand I am very tempted to spend the weekend at the Hay-on-Wye book fair… I’ll save the partying for when I turn 30!!!

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 of the River Bourne. It is.)

Yesterday when I discovered Wolfram Alpha I was far too excited, the excitement lasted longer than my rant about National Express seat charges, though won’t quite beat shopping at DVF in New York last year. Every time I have been on Wolfram Alpha in the past 24 hours (I have probably ramped up their visitor stats!) I have become more and more amazed at the kind of information I can find… things I never thought I needed to know are fascinating. I will never have to go without data and statistics again!

I’ve already discovered that I am 9492 days old today (who’s up for celebrating my 10000th day on Saturday 9th October 2010?) and that Southport has over twice the population of Durham.

Last week I was so annoyed with the over hyped Swine Flu issue I wanted to find out the deaths from Swine Flu vs. Malaria, to make a point about how ridiculous the ‘pandemic’ fear was, but even with the power of Google I couldn’t. Now thanks to Wolfram Alpha I know it’s 910707 per year… that’s 341827 deaths from malaria to date in 2009 compared to 69 deaths from Swine Flu.

I better curb the amount of time I spend on the site otherwise I’ll find myself ditching fiction to entertain people with numbers and facts instead!

Family Easters are fantastic yet exhausting. We’re not exactly the quietest bunch, and we have an opinion or few between us all. Add wine to the mix at dinner times and the noise level is probably equivalent to that of a large aircraft taking off. Ear plugs are recommended!

But we pull off our family events in style (our own style admittedly) and have a great time. The piece d’resistance has to be the annual Easter Egg hunt. It’s been going on a few years and each time new hiding places must be found and rhyming clues written. Thankfully this year I stopped my mum in her tracks as she seemed to be creating the hunt before I arrived. This is not a one woman show, it’s a joint effort – but as I missed one Easter two years ago I’ve had to fight to get back in the organisation of it all! After making a song and dance about being included, I then proceeded to be busy during my first 24 hours in Southport. I found myself trying to devise poems at almost midnight on Saturday as I struggled to keep my eyes open. Things got silly. The Easter Bunny became Sid, I decided he was from outer space and at one point he was threatened with death. My mum and sister vetoed all such suggestions and we ended up with more child friendly rhymes.

Despite this the Easter Egg Hunt went off without a hitch and the girls were made up with the copious amount of chocolate collected. We also went on a lovely family walk over the sand dunes to find the pond we used to go to when I was a kid. The pond is still there (once you’ve been battered and scratched by the overgrown path) but there weren’t any frogspawn or tadpoles in sight. Sad times.

The weekend was also filled with traditional Southport seaside amusement… Morning tea & toasted teacakes, the pier, the beach, sausage and chips from The Sandgrounder (best chippy in town!), a 99 icecream, the hall of mirrors etc… Oh I do like to be beside the seaside!

In fact I had a wonderful week, after the lovely weekend with my parents I headed to Newcastle where I spent a blissful four days at my sisters. I spent most of the time with my youngest niece (seven months) cuddling and playing and generally trying to make her smile and laugh all the time, which is not hard – the child only cried once during my entire stay (and that was just minutes before I left… what can I say?!). I avoided nappy duty and instead did my bit by feeding her and putting her down for naps… which I didn’t mind one bit. If I was honest I would also say I was verging on broodiness (there’s a first for everything!) – I work out that if I do end up deciding to have kids I’ve got a few years to work out how to have one that like my niece, lots of sleeping and smiling with hardly any tears at all!!! I also spent quite a bit of time with my other niece (5 yrs old) after school – playing boggle, learning Spanish… and even reading her Goldilocks in Welsh (at her request – I don’t speak the language so god knows what I was actually saying!). I also did the putting her to bed bit, not so complicated, just repeat to yourself “Story Teeth Toilet” and it all goes to plan!

After just about resisting the urge to kidnap the baby (my sister would have killed me!) I headed back down to London. One of my best friends, S, was down in London for an interview – and therefore borrowing half my bed for a couple of nights, but instead of being the party animals we usually are we spent Friday night with a Chinese takeaway, a bottle of wine and Comic Relief on TV (which was absolutely fantastic – yes I have donated some money!) and to be honest, although not the most exciting thing to be doing with a Friday night it was absolutely lovely to finish a week of relaxing with yet more relaxing (it is something I need practice at as until recently the notion of relaxing was one I was non to familiar with).

Yet more relaxing followed with a lazy Saturday with S once I had been to Spinning (this time my muscles didn’t kill afterwards, 20 minutes of stretching is the solution!!!) and then a wonderful evening with N (workmate of past and very good friend). And to top it off I continued the theme on Sunday by having a bit of a movie late afternoon/evening (When Harry Met Sally, Moulin Rouge) once T4 had finished…

So all in all I have spent a week being a boring sod, but a very relaxed boring sod who is very pleased with herself for allowing herself to be a boring sod long enough to relax!