Curiously Charis

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 ...

All Hull City Council employees got an email a couple of weeks ago asking if they wanted to be an election assistant, and I'd always wanted to do a count so I jumped at the chance! I had expected a chunk of expenses to come through this month, but they will be coming in in January instead, so I am a bit short on Christmas cash - and at £15 an hour I thought the election was a good money making opportunity for me! I've always been really interested in politics and wanted to be part of the action. I wasn't really sure what to expect at all or how the night would go. Sugar to get me through the night! Here's what I learnt! - You arrive at 9.15pm and the count starts with postal votes at 10pm, then at 10.15pm our polling booth votes came in. You count all the voting slips to ensure they match the numbers given by the polling station, checked by the person next to you, then after they've all been verified you start to count the individual parties. This didn...

When you live with other people, there's always someone around who knows whether you're eating and sleeping or how you're doing after a tough day. But when you're living by yourself I think it's easy to fall into bad habits. If you're new to living alone it's normal at first to really live out that independence and eat when you want, sleep when you want - have cake for breakfast or nap at 3pm... drink until 2am on a weeknight... Kind of like being a fresher at uni! But it's probably not great to do that in the long term... nor when you're 32. It's still nice to have your independence and to make choices that other people don't need to agree with, but sometimes those choices can become a bit too unhealthy for your own standards of wellbeing. See more at @lauraheartlines I feel like I've been socialising a lot and drinking far too much lately, and I know I need to cut it down. It's great to be sociable and I've b...

Holidaying with another person or another group of people is not without its pitfalls. You don't always agree on when or even where to go, budgets aren't always equal and not all accommodation is to everyone's tastes. Then when you get there, you all have to agree on your itinerary, where you want to eat, what time to get out/go to bed and when to nap (you all know you like a holiday nap!) and it's sometimes a bit frustrating having to compromise all the time. It's always good fun though and I've only had a very few holidays I haven't really enjoyed for various different reasons... but I have always wondered what it might like to go solo, and have a trip entirely on your own terms. I've written previously about how I'm giving relationships a rest and enjoying some time to myself. But I don't want to miss out on travelling just because I'm not currently with anyone. I have wanted to visit Iceland for a few years now but h...

Soooo you guys all know by now that I swam 22 miles last month to raise money for a special little lady called Amelia - you can donate to her fund here ! Amelia developed quadriplegic cerebral palsy after a traumatic labour despite her parents Chloe and Chris experiencing a really straightforward pregnancy. It means she has limited mobility and can't do things other children her age can do - something her parents are supporting her with through specialist physiotherapy and services not available on the NHS - and of course all this comes at a cost. They've been fundraising themselves non-stop and I wanted to do something to help them out. I had wanted to do a swim challenge for a while as my legs haven't been up to much running for a few years now (chronic compartment syndrome) but wasn't sure what.. it's too cold for outside and I'm a bit far from any lakes! As long as you don't count East Park... The challenge coincided with a move into Hull a...

Those people who have known me a long time know that I've been in relationships since I was 16 years old. My 32nd birthday was my first birthday as a singleton since I celebrated my sweet 16... and even when I was 15 I'd had a boyfriend up until a few days before, but I felt too guilty about not being that keen on him and him buying me a birthday present... so I dumped him so he didn't have to! Not only have I not been really, truly, properly, purposefully single the whole of my adult life, but I've also never lived alone, always living with family or housemates or a partner. I've now been living by myself for over a month, and for all the worries my needy co-dependent self had about single life before I embarked upon it, it really hasn't been bad at all. That doesn't mean I'm not sad about the end of my relationship - because of course I am - but just that having to stand on my own two feet hasn't been anywhere near as hard as I thought ...

I think a lot of people are like me in this way. You go into a shop and you look on the rails, but you can't find your size anywhere. I normally wear a 14, but sometimes in large running dresses I wear a 12, and in small running trousers or jeans I wear a 16. It's a lottery. I've pretty much always been between these sizes. When I've lost weight I've never been below a 12, when I've put on weight I've never been above a 16 - apart from once - but when my size 16s stopped fitting I decided to start dieting. It's strange to be this kind of in-between size, even though there are a lot of us who are here. If like me you're overweight and look a bit too chubby for your frame, then generally you're not accepted in the 'attractive by society's standards' category. But by the same token, if you're not obese or plus-sized, then you don't really fit into the plus-sized community either. It seems like there aren'...

I've wanted to go to Kefalonia for such a long time! While I was in sixth form, our English Lit class got the choice whether we wanted to study Captain Corelli's Mandolin, and ever since seeing what the island (where the book is set) looks like, I've always wanted to visit. Picking somewhere for a summer holiday, we chose Kefalonia as it had lots of nice scenery and stunning beaches, as well as some cheaper accommodation options, but most importantly, it is one of the Greek islands that (allegedly!) stays cooler in the summer. However, despite averages being around 25 degrees for June/July, it was actually 31/32 degrees all week! Killer! To be honest, we'd have seen a lot more while we were there except for the fact that it was so warm - I'm not great in the heat, so walking round castle ruins etc with no shade in the midday sun? Nah! Not for me! But that only means if we want to visit again we'll have plenty more to see! Here's a guide to so...