Another lengthy absence...

Blogging is a tricky thing to fit into life. Well, it is for me. Mostly because I'm quite lazy. It's also very hard to motivate yourself to write, or even sit in front of a computer screen, when you've spent your entire day doing both of those things. Despite my best efforts, I have yet to persuade any managers in my office that writing my personal blog makes a significant contribution to the production of a weekly newspaper, but I live in hope.

But all those things are pathetic excuses for someone who repeatedly states her biggest passion in life is writing. The man sitting next to me has a very black-and-white view of my ambitions in this field - he is frequently heard to mutter, "Just get on with it" whenever I complain about the fact I am not yet a best-selling author. If I examine my feelings about it too closely I fear the main reason for the lack of progress will probably be fear of failure; if you don't start, you can't get it wrong. So I put it off eternally.

But this evening I made real progress: I wrote three sentences. Now, this may not sound much, but I have spent months (in fact it's probably years now) coming up with ideas for books, writing them down, planning out the characters, the plot lines, the significant incidents... and never actually writing a book. Never even starting. So three sentences is real progress for me.

My helpful other half has found me a way of saving my work via the internet, allowing me to work on it from other computers, such as at work (during lunch breaks, naturally) and when we're visiting boring relatives. I've got a notepad filled with plans for my current book which will be fairly essential to the plot and character development, but even if I don't have it with me, the main thing is to get into the habit of writing, right? To stop planning, reading articles about writing, reading other books for 'research', making cups of tea, staring out of the window - and actually write.

It takes a lot for me to discuss my ambitions to be a novelist - up until quite recently I didn't share them with anyone, worrying I might sound completely ridiculous. But some people do get to write books for a living - and some of them are manifestly awful at it - so why shouldn't I give it a go?

I'll keep you updated with the progress - I'm even confident enough to think there will be progress now! - and hopefully might inspire you to persevere with something you've been putting off. It's time to stop procrastinating and start making things happen.

Wish me luck!

A ghost keeps switching channels on my TV...

Let me start this post by saying I'm not afraid of ghosts, because I don't believe in them.

Logically they don't make any sense, much like alien abductions, the Bermuda triangle, love at first sight and the moon landings.

But that doesn't stop me getting scared when I think there is one in my house at night - particularly when I'm in on my own.

I've always been fairly interested in odd happenings, which I think stems from a childhood enjoyment of ghost stories. The Yorkshire Evening Post recently did a series of visits to famous landmarks around Leeds, which was very interesting until it turned to its own offices in Wellington Street which I occasionally have to spend time in. I stopped watching.

So when strange things started happening in my own home, my irrational fear overcame the voice in my head telling me there must be a reasonable explanation. It all began when I was home alone last Wednesday night. I was wandering around the bedroom with the BBC 10pm news on in the background. Suddenly, the channel changed. I was confused, but put it down to the cats standing on the remote control on the bed, and put the news back on without thinking about it too much.

A few minutes later, the channel changed again, going up several stations. The remote was sitting in front of me, well away from any interfering cats. "That's very odd," I thought, and put it back on the news again. Almost immediately, the main menu came up and it started scrolling through the channels, settling on Sky Three.

The way our television is set up in the bedroom is that it can be controlled via the Sky+ box from either upstairs or downstairs. You have to watch the same thing in both the living room and bedroom, but you can change the channel in either location. So, when it started appearing to behave independently, my first thought was that my other half might have come home without me hearing him. I looked out of the window - sadly, the car was not there, so he must have still been out.

When the channel continued to change, I went downstairs - perhaps the remote had a book or something else resting against it and pressing one of the buttons. But on entering the living room I saw it there, plain as day, sitting untouched on its own on the arm of the sofa. I went back upstairs carefully, checking around each corner for ghosts on my way.

Luckily, my other half did return home not long after. Unluckily, he was out the following night when it did it again. It happened a few times over the following days, but never when he was in the room - so naturally, he pretended to believe me while subtly trying to ascertain how the buttons had been accidentally pressed without me realising. Twitter was similarly helpful, with various friends either accusing me of sitting on the remote or making unnerving jokes about ghosts having a penchant for Sky Three.

Finally, after days of very nervous television watching on my part and sceptical, tolerant sighing on my husband's, it did it in front of him on Monday evening. The channels changed, the menu came up, it scrolled through and suddenly we were listening to an Irish radio station. Success. He finally believed me - and was equally baffled.
After a couple of days, we decided the reason behind it was probably some sort of interference from our neighbours' television with our digital sender, which allows us to change the channel from upstairs as well as directly in front of the Sky+ box. All cleared up and not a ghost to be seen.

Still, if it happens when I'm on my own for the night in a few weeks' time, I'm decamping to my parents' house. One hundred miles away.

My name is Vicky and I'm a bonnetaholic...

Regular readers of this blog might be forgiven for thinking I'm a cynical, miserable soul, filled with hatred for everything and everyone.

I'm not; I think it's just the way I write. Or the fact I tend to blog when something has irritated me to such an extent that only the written word is a sufficient outlet for my fury.

But this time I've decided to write about something lovely: Lark Rise to Candleford. I love it. I can't get enough of it. It's very, very sad that, as a young woman, I look forward to a nice evening in watching LR2C (as it is known by... well, me), preferably under a duvet and with some chocolate.

I know nothing ever happens and quite often the episode is filled with the kind of sugary, sentimental fare that, while being sweet at the time, leaves you ultimately unsatisfied and having an energy crash an hour later. But I can't help it. I think it's an actual addiction - when the current series comes to an end, there will be support groups set up all over the country for those experiencing bonnet withdrawal.

It's hard to pinpoint exactly what is so appealing about the programme. Olivia Hallinan is charming as Post Office assistant Laura Timmins, while Julia Sawalha makes a fascinating Dorcas Lane (she may only ever purse her lips and raise an eyebrow, but wouldn't you have wanted her as a guardian when you were young?). A brilliant supporting cast, including Claudie Blakey and Brendan Coyle as Laura's parents who are forever arguing and making up (if I ever get to Lark Rise the break-up may be a little more permanent...), makes for a heart-warming, community feel to the programme.

But I think my favourite element of the show is little Minne, the housekeeper, whose misunderstandings and confusions lead to some of the funniest moments in the programme. Recent observations include: "Your hair don't suit your face" and "They say he eats his own hair" (much funnier when said by her).

If you're not already addicted, I would certainly recommend giving it a try - if nothing else, it's a good way of reminding yourself of the lighter things in life on a Sunday evening before subjecting yourself to another week of work.

At the risk of sounding rather more like Terry Wogan than can ever be advisable,is it me?

I've noticed a growing trend in recent weeks that whenever I spend any time in the company of females, the talk turns to diets. To put this in context, none of the women in question is above a size 12 and certainly none of them could be classed as over-weight.

In fact, the woman I know who is the most obsessed with what she does or does not consume on a daily basis is probably the skinniest of them all. She recently lost half a stone and I can't even imagine where it came from - her clothes already hung off her as it was.

Aside from the debate about the ideal image of women projected by the media, fashion industry etc, I think this kind of obsession raises and important point: nobody cares.

It might just be me, but I'm just not interested in hearing the ins and outs of other people's dietary habits. I find it boring and, in the worst cases, far too graphic.

Don't get me wrong - I'm all for a healthy lifestyle and when people I know are getting in shape by eating carefully, I'll encourage them as much as I can. But I am getting so bored with the daily office discussions about exactly how many cups of tea or coffee we should each be drinking, how much water we consume, how many pieces of chocolate can be allowed each week and whether bread should ever be included in anyone's diet. Perhaps it's something unique to working exclusively with women - there are three of us in my office and the topic comes up at least once every day.

But when we work from our head office, where there are plenty of men around, the conversation always seems to come back to food at some point. So perhaps it's not women generally - just some of the ones I work with. One of them is so bad, she once confessed to feeling light-headed as we left the office for the day and then revealed she had had nothing but a salad since breakfast. Was she really surprised?

For most people. food is just a normal part of every day life. But for the women I work with, it is an obsession. They think about everything that passes their lips and the impact it might have on the rest of their body in the most ridiculous detail. Surely it takes all the pleasure out of life?

The ironic thing is, if they spent less time thinking about food, they would probably find they ate less and enjoyed their food more. But, since it would mean another conversation about diets, there's absolutely no way I'm going to point that out.

A lesson in dealing with the press

As a journalist, I'm used to dealing with my fair share of disagreement and confrontation. I don't like it, but I take it as part of my job. Receiving complaints about your own work serves to make you a better journalist - only if you know you have done the best possible job, been thorough and accurate, and your work is important to the local community, can you confidently defend yourself against complaints.

Unfortunately, sometimes it does not matter how well you write, nor how good your intentions are. Some people are simply determined to find fault; to see you in the same way they see a ruthless, uncaring hack from a national tabloid. Despite the fact that local papers are clearly different in their approach, their tone and their coverage, there is sometimes nothing you can do to change people's fear of - and even anger at - journalists.

This week provided a prime example in our office. There are just two of us working on a weekly paper covering a very large area. In recent months, we have been covering a story about changes to the way one of our local high schools is run. This week, my colleague had arranged to go up to the school and speak to the headteacher for an update on the progress, so we could keep the community informed.

When she got there, the headteacher had called in her deputy head, the chairman of governors and the guy in charge of the school's business contacts. My colleague sat down ready to hear about the school's progress - and was immediately subjected to what can only be described as a tirade of abuse.

The staff accused the newspaper of having grudge against their school. They said we worked actively to try to discredit the school and to promote the three others in our district instead. My colleague - who has run the office for the past two years - pointed out that, due to the restrictions on resources now facing all newspapers, the schools which are best at promoting themselves will be the ones which are most frequently featured in any publication. It's a shame, but journalists simply don't have the time any more to be able to call or visit every school every week and ask if they have anything interesting happening. We rely on the schools keeping us informed - by telling us of individual stories, or even just sending us their newsletters or magazines so we can pick out anything of interest.

However, this was, in the view of this particular high school, simply a cover-up. The real reason was clearly that we had set out to ruin them - and they had proof. They claimed someone "close to the school" had been in our office and overheard a conversation about where in the newspaper we would put a particular article about the school's success - ending with us saying we would bury it as close to the back as possible.

There are two problems with the school's story here. Firstly, it's absolutely not true. That conversation never took place because we would never say that about any school, and if we were ever to have such a discussion about anything we would certainly wait until there was nobody else in the office. Secondly - and most ridiculously - the article in question appeared on the front page. When my colleague pointed out this inconsistency, she was shouted down with more cries of bias and agenda.

At one stage, my colleague said she was not prepared to be bullied when she had set out in the hope of writing a positive, informative story, and she intended to leave. The headteacher's response? "Now, that wouldn't be very productive, would it?" I wonder how productive she thought the meeting had been so far.

Through the whole discussion, the newspaper was accused of bias, of having an agenda against the school, of only ever printing negative stories about the school while printing positive stories about all its competitors (aside - since when did schools turn into businesses?). At one stage, the deputy head said: "I find your newspaper very woolly, actually. I'm an English teacher and it's very badly written."

The meeting lasted an hour and a half, most of which involved my colleague trying desperately to defend the newspaper against a barrage of hatred while also hoping they might listen to her advice about promoting themselves more effectively. Eventually, she escaped and almost ran back to the office.

The whole thing completely baffles me. We wanted to do a good story in consultation with the school and the headteacher therefore invited us to come up for a chat. We were greeted by abuse, criticism and completely irrational allegations. What on earth did they think it would achieve?

The most ridiculous part about it is this was the second time they had done it to us. Last time, we had run a story about the school potentially being merged with another school nearby. The story was based on a press release from the local authority which said in plain English the merger was a possibility and we had confirmation from a local councillor, who was also a governor at the school. It had been run by several other newspapers nearby before we went to print and, naturally, we included comments from the school - which were so vague as to be absolutely useless.

Following publication, my colleague was summoned to the headteacher's office where she was met by the head and about six other members of staff and governors. She was told exactly how wrong the story was, despite her attempts to explain the laws of journalism in relation to printing information from local authorities. Having invited her up initially on the pretext of trying to improve links between the school and the newspaper, they kept her there to endure their anger for four hours.

The upshot of these two meetings? We will continue doing exactly what we have been doing up to now - with one major difference. We will print whatever we have, about any school, based on its news value. We will continue to publish stories which are important to the community and act responsibly in our positions.

We will not, however, be visiting Unnamed High School again. Ever. Congratulations, Ms B.

Apologies for absence

Due to circumstances beyond my control, I have been unable to upload anything to the blog for a while.

However, things appear to be back on track now and I hope to resume normal service as soon as possible.

Please keep reading!