If you live in the UK, at some point you’re going to use an NHS service. I mean…how could you not? Doctors; dentists; GPs; hospitals; surgeries; counselling—even if you can afford to go private it’s likely you went to a GP for a jab when you were a baby, or you have ever gone to Accident and Emergency for something with lots of blood that looked very frightening.

The NHS is one of the biggest employers in the world. As an outpatient, whenever I step into the hospital, the frequent hum of activity surprises me. You’ve got the café, the patients inside or the relatives, cleaners, volunteers by the entrance to help you know where you’ve got to go. There are receptionists, staff in the hospital shop full of teddy bears and chocolates...

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I was talking to a family friend several years back. She is an older woman, in her early 60s, married for almost 40 years and has two adult children. Recently, she told me I needed a boyfriend. She then said with a questionable tone, "or girlfriend?" When I told her I wasn't a lesbian, she seemed flustered. She's always asking two questions to me, "Do you have a boyfriend?" And, "When are you going to get a boyfriend?" I just politely say I haven't seen anyone who's caught my eye. What I really want to say is, "I'll find one when I feel like it and not before!" Seeing as though she's old enough to be my mother I just keep the rage within and moved on.Read On...

Yesterday I did the unthinkable. I left a project. I was part of a good bunch of people with a vision. Together the writer, artist, colourist and letterer (that's me) created a comic. No one else has seen it yet, but soon it will be sent to a comic publisher for consideration. And I feel I was slowing the team down. I had to re-do things three times, I couldn't get the information I needed, and I made the mistake of trying to learn too much on the job. Sometimes things are too big for a beginner to handle. The following article is my advice to anyone in creative or business fields. Especially if you don't want to tear your hair out.Read On...

Mungo Nation is a sixteen-year0old Blackburn-based music producer, making headway in the tumultuous and fickle world of music. Working predominantly with dubstep and French house, incorporating widespread elements of Skrillex and Daft Punk, Mungo Nation has been featured on BBC Radio Lancashire, This is Lancashire and in The Lancashire Telegraph and The Blackburn Citizen. Not only has he worked with local talents but also with people from as far afield as Canada and America.Read On...

Writing is good for the soul. It really is. If you have ever been in a situation that requires some soul searching, one of the first things you may do is to pick up a pen and write a ‘for and against’ list. The immediacy of that act, of adding clarity and perspective to the thoughts whirling around in your head is soothing. More than that, it is therapeutic.

Writing allows for self-expression in a positive way. No permission is needed to vent anger and rage, misery or loss. There is room for negative emotions on a blank page, and what comes from this negativity can be uplifting and, ultimately, positive.

The damage we do to ourselves by not allowing to forgive is devastating. Instead of hurting those who have caused hurt, we end up hurting only ourselves.

 

A friend of mine, after e...

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We all get that dreaded panic feeling when we temporarily lose our phone, withdrawal symptoms when we can’t check our Facebook account every hour and regularly log in to our emails, but what would happen if we couldn’t rely so much on technology and can it be a negative thing? Most of us get our first mobile phone at a relatively young age and then continue to get the newest upgrades year after year. We can use the internet for the obvious such as communicating/socialising (if you can call it that) but also job searches, to get fast accurate information about any topic under the sun, online shopping, games, directions just to name a few functions!Read On...

The traditional image of a lady conjures the image of an elegant woman sipping tea, probably indulging in light needlework, or a good, moral novel. A lady of course could not read anything that was remotely scandalous and her education was based on preparing her for marriage and running a household. This image has not changed much over the nineteenth and early twentieth century, until the after the Second World War. With a world that was forced to accept women in factories and physical jobs, the breed of the lady was a fast dying one. Traditionally a young woman of refined means and background was presented before the queen, and this tradition was last performed in the early 1950s.Read On...

Say what you want about things like Fifty Shades of Grey, Twilight, Harry Potter and A Song of Ice and Fire, but they all have something in common. The writers have all achieved something in these series, and that’s that they’ve created very vivid, very real worlds. You not only feel for the characters, but you feel the love that they were written with, and they feel as real to you as the last person you spoke to.Read On...

Mary Wesley was an amazing woman and a wonderful writer. She was born on the 24th June 1912 and died 30 December 2002. Although she’d been a writer for most of her life she wasn’t published until she was 70 years old. And that only happened because a friend persuaded her that her writing was good. She had no confidence in her writing abilities. The book was called, Jumping the Queue, it became a best seller. I feel she has some valuable life lesson to share with us.Read On...

Angelina hit headlines a few days ago but for a rather different reason than what we usually hear about celebrities.  The mum of six and long-term partner of Brad Pitt decided to tell the world that she had a double mastectomy, after tests showed that she was a carrier of the BRCA1 gene, therefore giving her an 87 percent chance of getting breast and 50 percent chance of ovarian cancer.

Naturally, any story about Angelina is bound to spark debate, appear on front pages of papers and continue to be a talking point for weeks on end, and this is particularly true for a topic as sensitive as this.

Surprisingly the megastar had the operation three months ago but somehow managed to hide it from the press, obviously preferring to have some privacy through the difficult time...

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