As my regular readers will testify, I don’t often write about serious subjects.  That’s because, in the sage words of Alan Davies in the Abbey National adverts, ‘life’s complicated enough’.

However, I need to talk about something.  The observant amongst you will probably have figured out that I live somewhere in Northamptonshire.

Indeed, I’ve always lived in Northants except for a brief sojourn when I headed over the border to University.  My home, and my heart, belong firmly in the Rose of the Shires.

That’s why it saddens me to have to tell you about the latest plan to destroy our little corner of England.

There is a hare-brained scheme – I mean planning application – for a ‘resource recovery park’ off Gretton Brook Road.  A resource recovery park is another name for a waste plant – and, ironically enough, we already have something similar within a mile from this proposed site.

The stench from the existing plant is, at times, unbearable.  I’m a regular caller to the Environment Agency helpline to complain, so much so I feel we’re on first name terms and close to inclusion on Christmas card lists!

‘Can you describe the smell?’ is one of the questions I get asked.  ‘Well, it’s like a mixture between Marmite and nail varnish remover.  I can even smell it in the house and it makes me feel sick’ is my reply. 

Then there are the flies – I know in the summer you expect the odd house fly to invade your home, but the plagues we have to cope with are ridiculous.  My mother purchased me one of those tennis racquet fly squats with the electric current running through it from a well-known discount store (Poundland) and I’m getting so adept I could well train for the ladies’ Davis cup team.

However, the biggest irony is that in order to create this so-called new ‘green’ resource recovery park they’re going to destroy acres of woodland – trees that have been there for many years and that are home to a variety of wildlife.  I’m no Bill Oddie, but there are significant numbers of deer, red kite, and other birds which call this area home.

When there are literally hundreds of brownfield sites lying empty, why are they planning to put this here and destroy these trees?  It simply doesn’t make any sense to me or the other 600 people (approx) who’ve signed an online petition about it.

For more information, or to sign the petition, please visit the following link.  Thank you.

http://www.change.org/petitions/corby-borough-council-say-no-to-brookfield-resource-recovery-park-2

I read Michelle Morgan’s column in this Thursday’s Telegraph (10^th January) with a wry smile... I too had noticed that this year people had left their Christmas decorations up long after Twelfth Night.

Just on my street my opposite neighbour only removed their wreath yesterday, and next door still have an array of twinkling lights in a Christmas tree growing in the back garden!

Now, I’m not normally superstitious, but I’m pretty sure I’ve been told somewhere that it’s considered bad luck to have such things on display after the festive season has ended.

In fact, one year I had a small snowman hanging in the hallway which we’d forgotten to take down by 6^th January – I then wouldn’t let my husband remove it until the following year because I thought it could be unlucky.  To be fair, it was very small, tasteful and unobtrusive so nobody probably even noticed it!

This topic got me thinking then about superstitions.  Not walking under ladders seems obvious to me – you don’t want something to drop on your head from the work being carried out above.

However, others seem less sensible, like saluting magpies.  Does anyone else do this or know from where it originated?! 

I ‘acquired’ this habit from a lady I once worked with at RS Components – we were travelling together to Peterborough on a computer course and every so often she’d wave her hand.  When I asked her why, she replied, very matter of factly, ‘I’m saluting magpies!  It’s bad luck not to.’  I’d never heard of this before, but I did remember the Magpie TV show from the 70s and its theme tune of ‘One for sorrow, two for joy’, so I thought that maybe there was something to it.  I’m almost ashamed to admit that I too have saluted the little black and white birds ever since, which makes driving down Gretton Brook Road an absolute ‘joy’ as they’re everywhere!!

I’m not a huge fan of daytime TV.  I prefer the radio when I’m at home as I find it less intrusive – I just have it on in the background while I’m working and tune in and out at will.

But, I did have the television on today whilst eating my lunch and I have to report that the adverts they show at lunchtime are DIRE.  This is a selection of what’s shown – payday loans, PPI claims, a couple of holiday ones (because it’s January and we’re all depressed), diets (ditto), have you been injured ambulance chaser types, lots and lots of bingo and gambling sites, and lottery ads.

Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but there was a time when phrases such as ‘The Health Lottery’ and the ‘Postcode Lottery’ were bad things, and referred to your chances of getting treatment on the NHS for various complaints depending on where you lived.

But now their meaning has been skewed to be positive, and we have a jolly Welshman shouting about the joys of the Postcode Lottery and various winners of the Health Lottery boasting about what they’ve bought with their winnings – ‘I bought my Mum a mobility scooter’ being my current favourite.

I don’t often buy a lottery ticket – occasionally when it’s a huge rollover I’ve given into temptation – because I know the odds of winning are miniscule.  I’m no mathematician (or Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory) but even I know I’m more likely to be struck by lightning than win a jackpot.  So why, oh why, do we carry on buying into this idea that we could win?  What is it about the human psyche that encourages us to waste at least a pound a week on something that we probably know we have very little chance of winning?

It’s perhaps because we all know people who have won something – even locally there was the team of bus drivers in Corby who won the EuroMillions jackpot for example.  And that’s the reason I think people carry on doing it.  If you’re in a syndicate at work, you don’t want to be the only one left if your colleagues win big.  Or at least, that’s the reason I’ve paid in to work groups in the past!  Can you imagine how awful you’d feel if your workmates won millions and they’re driving Aston Martins and sipping Champagne (not at the same time, obviously, as that would be illegal and dangerous) while you’re still sitting there doing the same job, and possibly theirs as well!!

A friend:     So, I read your blog.  It’s quite good I suppose.

Me:             Thanks (I think).

A friend:     But I don’t get the name.  That’s not your real name.

Me:             No, I write under a pseudonym.

A friend:     Yeah, but why Helen Bach?

Me:             Well, it’s a joke isn’t it?

A friend:     But it’s not very funny.

Me:             It’s like those names they do on Ken Bruce’s show on Radio

Two, you know, for example Eileen Dover, Elaine Closed or Annette Curtain.

A friend:     So what’s Helen Bach?

Me:             I took it from the Wham song.

A friend:     What, ‘Last Christmas’?

Me:             No, ‘Freedom’.  It goes (singing) ‘you could drag me to

Helen Bach just as long as we’re together...’

A friend:     So you’ve given yourself a ‘comedy’ name from a Wham song.  Is that really the sort of level you’re pitching at?

Me:             Um, yes, it is actually.  It amused me anyway.

So that’s how I got my blogger name, in case you were interested, which you probably weren’t.  I’m off to listen to Wham’s greatest hits.  Back soon (sorry George)!

I have to report I’m suffering from NWS.  It started about mid-December and I’m hoping it will end about mid-January.  How do I know this?  Because NWS stands for ‘Neighbours Withdrawal Symptoms’.

Yes, it may be a bit sad to admit it, but I still watch the Aussie soap every day and I’m suffering now it’s on its month long Christmas break.  I started watching it in the late 80s, and save a brief hiatus when I didn’t have a video recorder (remember those?!) and wasn’t home from work in time, I’ve pretty much watched it ever since.

Even now when I spot Alan Dale in a US drama (e.g. The OC, Ugly Betty or NCIS) I still exclaim ‘Ooh look it’s Jim Robinson!’  I laughed out loud when Kevin Bacon name-checked Helen Daniels in his recent EE advert and talked about her keeping breaking her hip (although I was laughing with her rather than at her as hip fractures in the elderly are, of course, no laughing matter).

I happily remember the days of Des and Daphne – him the bank manager, her the reformed stripper turned coffee shop manager with a penchant for parrot earrings – the Ramsay family, gossipy Mrs Mangel, Scott and Charlene’s wedding, and the Madge, Harold and Lewis Carpenter love triangle. 

Then of course there’s Karl and Susan, the stalwarts of the show, who keep getting married and divorced again.  Why can’t they make it work?!  We all know they’re meant to be together – and now I’ve read on Digitalspy that they’re bringing back Sarah Beaumont (remember her?  Karl had an affair with her and split up with Susan) as another fly in the Kennedy relationship ointment.

Not only that but Steph’s due to come home from prison, and Mark Brennan’s coming back from the dead – it’s getting a bit ‘Bobby from Dallas’ for my liking!

But I still loyally watch it, with Paul Robinson being the character I love to hate.  He’s so deliciously-evil, he must be a joy for Stefan Dennis to play – and is it just me, or does he look like an older version of Robbie Williams?!  Discuss.

I think there must be something wrong with me.  Am I the only woman on the planet who hates shopping?  I mean clothes shopping or shoe shopping – I’m not averse to the grocery shop as that is an essential part of life. 

I loathe the little changing rooms – you know the ones I mean, they’re so small that you can’t manoeuvre out of the clothes you arrived in let alone try on new ones.  Then you’ve got the great big plastic anti-theft device that whacks you in the face as you’re struggling to get into the outfit that you’re now wishing you never bothered to try on.

Don’t get me started on the ones with mirrors on four sides.  I really don’t want to see myself magnified from four unflattering angles, under a light so harsh it drains all colour from your face and makes you age by at least 50 years.

So, it’s not often I go clothes shopping.  But I made an exception in the New Year and I went to Market Harborough.  I don’t know what it is about Harborough, but every time I go I think to myself ‘Why don’t I come here more often?’  It really is a lovely, pleasant place to lose a morning or afternoon, and my fellow shoppers seemed a lot more chilled than in other towns I could mention, but won’t.

I ventured into Doyle’s.  I’d not been there before but had read about it somewhere and thought I’d give it a try.  I have to say, if I had plenty of money I would make the pilgrimage more often.  The assistant – who could easily have been a model – was lovely, and very polite and helpful.  So much so, I even tried on a jacket.  Not just any jacket, no, a half-price in the January sale jacket.  It was beautiful.  A black Barbour called ‘Cookstown’, with military detailing, an asymmetric zip, belted and in a biker-style (oh, get me, I’m even learning the lingo!) 

So, dear reader, did I buy it?  Alas, no.  Even though it was half-price it was still £150 and I couldn’t justify the purchase as I already have a collection of perfectly serviceable coats for all occasions (as my husband was very quick to point out).  But it was truly beautiful and I hope who ever does snap it up enjoys it as much as I would have done.  Sigh.

I have been listening to Radio 2’s run down of the Nation’s Favourite Number Two singles (which I heard earlier today Ultravox’s ‘Vienna’ won somewhat spoiling the surprise); I’d voted for a-ha’s ‘Take On Me’ out of loyalty to my favourite boy band of the 80s, but I know I should really have voted for ‘Wonderwall’ by Oasis.

I love music, but I’m not in the least bit musical myself – however I did once play in a band, but I only got that gig because it was my brother’s band and he needed me to drive him to it.

People actually paid to see us perform too.  It was at the Cornmarket Hall in Kettering.  We did a three song set consisting of ‘Sweet Jane’ by Velvet Underground, ‘Desire’ by U2 and I think ‘Mannish Boy’ by Muddy Waters – I seem to remember the last two were chosen because of their harmonica interludes, an instrument my brother had recently added to his repertoire.

The concert was called the ‘Red Cross Rave’ – how very 90s! – and it was a charity event.  The band was called The Boston Tea Party, named after a Typhoo tea towel which my Mother owned detailing major events in tea’s history (who’d have thought that was possible?!)  As I had also bought her a ‘Pig Breeds of the UK’ tea towel from a holiday in Norfolk we could well have been called Gloucestershire Oldspot, so let’s be thankful for small mercies.

The instrument I played?  The tambourine of course.  The adult musical equivalent of the triangle you played at primary school.  I just remember having to tap it in time with the music.  I seem to also remember that I decided it would look ‘cooler’ to whack it against my leg and I had bruises where I’d obviously done this too enthusiastically!

But at least I had a go.  That was the only time I ever performed in a band which is a relief for all I’m sure.  When I recently told my daughter about this she seemed reasonably impressed that her old Mum once played in a real band, at a real concert that people paid to attend.  I may have even become ‘cool’ in her eyes for a nanosecond until I revealed the full details!