Woody Wonders

Tomorrow sees the start of 'Mental Health Awareness Week' (9-15 May) with this year's theme being loneliness. Throughout my blog, I'm going to use the terms 'mind health' , 'mindfulness' and such words.  Personally, I don't like the term 'mental health' .  When my grandad was alive, he went through a period of depression and back in those days, 'mental health' had very negative connotations around it.  Of course, we have come a very long way since then but it's still a term I'm not fully comfortable with. I'm not going going to talk about loneliness per se but I am going to touch on how important it is to feel part of something. In my role as a PA, you belong everywhere yet nowhere, you feel on the periphery yet central, you're part of everything yet nothing.  When you have a very different role to everyone else, it's easy to fall into the trap of feeling like you are not part of the team.  You couldn't be m...

Tonight, England take on Italy in the final of the Euros!  I have to admit that, along with the rest of the country right now, I'm a little bit in love with Gareth Southgate.  Win or lose (hopefully win!!), you know that first and foremost he'll be ensuring his players and the team around him are ok.  Throughout the whole competition, in fact, from the moment he took on this mammoth role, he's acted with honesty, integrity and professionalism.  But what I admire most of all, is that he's had the conviction to follow his own path. When it was announced that Gareth (yes, I'm on first name terms now) was going to be the new England manager, some people criticised the decision and said he was too weak, not exciting enough, too nice etc etc.  I think we've all seen him prove people wrong over the last few years and he's shown b***s of steel to follow his own path. He hasn't always chosen the team that the public, and the media, wanted to see, he's gone fo...