Curiously Charis

In November I wrote about learning how to balance my new independent lifestyle, where I made the most of living alone, with my need for some more consistency and healthy habits. Back in November I had a complete different set of problems to now though! I remember going out, having too many drinks and spending too much time hungover and not always being safe with getting home etc and realising I needed to slow things down and care for myself. Now, even with all the bars and pubs shut and a whole new quiet lifestyle, it's even more important to care for yourself. If living away from your friends and family made if difficult for people to know how you're really doing before, having a quarantine and travel ban and strict rules about where you can go and who you can see makes it so much harder. In November I wrote : "I think people tend to think that if you're not telling them you're struggling with something then you are fine, so maybe don't always wa...

Those of you who have been stuck in lockdown and traipsing round every corner of the Avenues like me, will no doubt have come across St Ninians Walk. Running between Ella Street and Victoria Avenue, down the side of the railway line, next to the old Jewish cemetery, they are a group of individually designed houses that stick out like a sore thumb in comparison to the Victorian and Edwardian redbricks in the surrounding area. I let my bored lockdown imagination run away with me about the potential occupants of these ultra-modern houses, and wondered whether Hull might have its own community of vampires. Enjoy! St Ninians Walk  It had been a bit of a task trying to get the council to approve the planning permission. They kept asking all kinds of questions, like, ‘Why do you want your houses built next to a cemetery?’ And ‘Why do the metal fences need to be so high and the windows blacked out?’ But this was the perfect location. We didn’t want to live anywhere accessi...

I've been pretty upfront about my complete lack of dating experience. Relationship experience - tonnes of it. Dating experience - almost zero. I think when I was in sixth form I went on a kind of date. In the spur of the moment a guy took me for pizza after classes and then we played pool at the pub. Back in the days when a 17 year old didn't need ID to get served! But that was 15 years ago. It didn't really feel like the dates I'd seen on TV on like Friends or Sex and the City. They'd get dressed up and go to a fancy restaurant, the guy might bring flowers. I've still not been on anything like one of those dates as a singleton! Having been happily single for a few months, I've felt a bit more open to try dating recently, but then the lockdown came. (Don't even ask me about how I'm feeling about definitely being single until a vaccine comes along because I will actually cry....) I haven't fancied bothering with virtual dating since ...

Hull. The word itself is a mix of 'hell' and 'dull'. It doesn't have a great reputation does it?! When I made the choice to move to Hull, it was kind of with a gun to my head. My boyfriend had decided his future was in Hull, so I'd decided to take on a job here and we'd moved to Beverley a year or so previously. When we broke up last August, I was kind of stuck. My job was in Hull, I didn't really want to move back to boring Goole, I didn't want to commute, and I didn't like any of the homes in Beverley that were in my price range. Moving to Hull was the pragmatic option - I would be close to work, wouldn't have to commute, could afford a place of my own on my single wage. On September 9th I took on a six-month contract and decided that by the time it rolled around to March 9th I could hand in my notice and move absolutely anywhere I wanted in the world. Well. Obviously as it turned out March 9th was NOT the time I could star...

I didn't set any new year's resolutions this year (or the last few years to be honest!) But I wanted January to get off to a healthy start both mentally and physically. I find exercise helps my mental health and so I can understand why the charity MIND advocates RED January - which stands for Run Every Day - as a great fundraiser for them. Instead of running every day I made a commitment to exercise every day, but at the end of the month I'm sad to say I didn't achieve it! Sadly I missed two days - sorry! (One for a massage (day 10), one because I was at work until 8pm (day 21)). My completed calendar! Some days I did just do Youtube yoga, walking or weights at home though - I didn't do hardcore cardio every day! I was too sore for that! January is always a rubbish month for me - partly because I like having something to look forward to and Christmas is a great distraction. When January came around with not a lot to look forward to and a whole year ...

Like a lot of things in my life, I did Veganuary just for the experience. I wondered what it was like to be a vegan and what kind of sacrifices you might have to make to live a cruelty-free lifestyle for a month - turns out it's actually pretty easy! It has been a learning curve though.  I knew vegans didn't eat meat, fish, eggs or diary, but I didn't realise all the things vegans couldn't eat - for example honey. I slipped up and accidentally ate some sweets with bees wax in before realising my mistake. I did vegetarian January last year and found that ok. I was vegetarian for eight years previously though. Crazily enough I actually found Veganuary a lot easier for several reasons! There has been a huge explosion in vegan foods available in supermarkets and in cafes, fast food outlets and restaurants - I haven't really wanted for much! The difference just between the choices this year and last year is unbelievable. Vegan KFC - FTW! I'...

Birds sing high up in the green branches, which sway slightly in the breeze. A blanket of delicate white flowers covers the ground, as the warm spring sun shines down. It’s hard to believe this was the site where over one million jews were put to their deaths in gas chambers, through starvation, from disease or exhaustion. This was what I learnt when I headed on a trip to Auschwitz organised by the Holocaust Educational Trust , for a feature with pupils from the Selby area while I was working as a reporter for the Goole and Selby Times. The start of the experience was a seminar at the Queen’s Hotel in Leeds, where around 200 students and teachers gathered to find out more about the roots of the Holocaust and explore difficult issues surrounding it. We were asked to remember one important fact: the Holocaust was 6 million seperate murders of individual people who were Jewish. At the seminar, we heard the testimony of Steven Frank , a Holocaust survivor originally from ...