Blogs

My sister has always had a tendency to faint at the slightest thing - blood, manual labour, needles... but her worst weakness is heat.

Exeter has had amazing weather this summer, and I always appreciate the city more in the sun.

However, being stuck on a train for 3 hours, without air conditioning, is a downside.

My sister found herself on a delayed, and therefore highly congested, train from London to Exeter. People were standing up the aisles, sweating with a proximity far too close for comfort. Just as she was about to exit the train, she found herself fainting...

Bottled water epitomises the destructive, extravagant and wasteful nature of our modern society. In comparative terms it is very expensive, not necessary for good health and its packaging and distribution have enormous negative effects on the environment.

Bottled water can be 500 times more expensive than tap water. For example when I checked today (15 Aug 13) a 500ml bottle of Buxton from a nearby motorway services cost £2.29. That’s £4.58 a litre, three times the price of petrol at the same location! I couldn’t find the local price per litre of tap water however I do have a...

Well it appears Exeter is full of good people. My second feel-good story takes place in an unlikely location... a takeaway.

I walked in at around midnight to order some food and was shortly followed by two other gentlemen. I’d been waiting for 5 minutes when another man stumbled in and slouched down in a chair looking the worse for wear. Concerned, the two men approached him and asked if he was ok. Unable to get much sense from him they ordered him some chips and sat with him. After a few minutes, they managed to ascertain in which direction the inebriated man was heading. Taking...

About a week ago I saw a man kneeling down at the side of the road near to my house. Wondering what he could be doing I got closer and realised there was some litter on the road, which the gentleman was picking up piece by piece and putting into a bin bag. At the time I walked on by humming along to my music and didn’t think any more about it.

Later on in the evening, though, I started thinking about what I had seen earlier that day. I thought about the area I was from in Birmingham and whether someone would do this there. The short answer is probably not.

I get a real...