…with the exception of Stewart Lee, who wrote brilliantly about the differences between German and British humour four years ago. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/may/23/germany.features11 It all comes down to language. And context. I have been living here for almost eight years, find all sorts of things very funny, consider myself as someone with a dry humour and I [...]
Jan
14
Please adopt a cat if you want to live with one..
Today I received a worrying press release from Cats Protection about the decline in cat adoptions due to the recession. According to the release 16 out of their 24 adoption centres have noticed a decline, which means a lot of furry friends are in desperate need of a loving home. The adoption centre in Wrexham [...]
Jan
07
What good are New Year’s resolutions?
..when you can’t fulfil them. Every New Year’s Eve the same thing – you think about the past year and resolutions for the coming year. Usually these are things like giving up smoking/drinking/chocolate etc. or things you want to learn/achieve or change. It’s mainly about self-improvement. You start with the best intentions and come March it [...]
Dec
30
A Catty Christmas
I’m back from home in Cologne, where I spent Christmas with my dad and my sister and Dusty the Norwegian Forest who was originally my mum’s cat. She’s is the most adorable pretty cat. And she’s very different from Bobby – Dusty is an excellent hunter. She brings in mice, much to my [...]
Aug
06
My gran’s tricycle
My trip to Cologne finished with a visit at my grandmother’s and that was a surprise for her as I didn’t ring her until I actually was in Cologne. My grandmother was always very sporty. She used to ride her bike a lot and swim long distances with her sister. Unfortunately she is not as [...]
Aug
06
Too old for disco?
My trip to Germany was a welcome break, especially as the weather wasn’t as crap as here and I enjoyed a few hot days. Now that my sister is older we do more stuff together which is nice. She actually took me to her favourite club in Leverkusen and the main requirement for me was [...]
Aug
06
Why I haven’t posted for a while
I haven’t posted in weeks, which is obviously bad for a blog that supposed to be updated regularly. What happened was that I first went to Germany for a week, thenwas ill and then we had computer problems, which still are not completely sorted, but at least I can connect to the internet properly again, [...]
Jun
10
Tropic Thunder
Yesterday we watched “Tropic Thunder” on DVD and it’s one of the funniest films I’ve seen this year. Robert Downey Jr. takes the piss out of Russell Crowe and Tom Cruise, who I didn’t recognise at first, must have had the time of his life playing the nasty, cold-hearted producer. He was really good in [...]
Jun
10
Book challenge
I was so busy with my book proposal and my course work that I haven’t really read much from my reading list. The book I dip into at bedtime these days is a book called “Fur Babies – why we love cats” by Liz Jones and is a collection of articles by celebrities like Ricky [...]
Jun
10
Dealing with rejections..
Is part and parcel of what it means to be a freelance journalist. I try to shrug them off, but sometimes you see a story you pitched commissioned to someone else and you begin to wander. Often it’s just silence or a no with no explanation whatsoever. This isn’t helpful at all. My last rejection [...]
Helen's Paws for Thought
- Bobby in a box September 6, 2010Our cat is incredibly nosey and likes small boxes – she even sleeps in them. I thought I share a few photos of her which we took a couple of weeks ago. […]helen
- New layout for my blog September 6, 2010I decided it’s time to change the blog’s theme and layout and I hope you like it. I always wanted to incorporate Bobby’s paw into my blog’s header and thanks to this new theme I found I was able to. I am still working on my new website -hence the lack of blog entries lately. […]helen
- Ukuleles August 2, 2010I am not normally a trendy person, but in March I ordered an Ohana Ukulele from Music Is Life http://www.musicislife.co.uk/ (also called the Southern Ukulele Store on Ebay) which finally arrived a few weeks ago. Ukuleles are very popular at the moment – even the Guardian has dedicated an article to a Ukulele teacher in […]helen