Flaming Nora

My book Deirdre: A Life on Coronation Street is featured today on the WHSmith website.  You might like to take a look and if so, it's here . The book is also today featured in Inside Soap magazine 's Christmas gift guide for soap fans.  I could not be more thrilled. Deirdre: A Life on Coronation Street - official ITV tribute to a soap icon. Available here. I'm on twitter @flaming_nora

On my #2minutebeachclean today I found the usual plastic bottles, plastic bottle tops, plastic containers, plastic boxes... you get the picture.  It's a lot of plastic and it makes the most wonderful noise as it rattles into the recycling bin once I get home. But I also found this stone. Just an ordinary stone that someone had written the word Happy on. It'd been washed up on the shore. I brought it home and I'll keep it for a while, it's in the garden where I can see it from the kitchen window. What a lovely stone. What a lovely thought. I might reciprocate and write my own word on a stone and leave it on the shore for someone to find. A word like Broccoli or Nemesis or Artificial . Oh, and I also found that golf ball in amongst today's beach walk and clean. Deirdre: A Life on Coronation Street - official ITV tribute to a soap icon. Available here. I'm on twitter @flaming_nora

I've been writing Coronation Street weekly updates since 1995 and this week's Coronation Street update has just gone live here . This week on Corrie, there was a mucky splashback. Deirdre: A Life on Coronation Street - official ITV tribute to a soap icon. Available here. I'm on twitter @flaming_nora

Deirdre: A  Life on Coronation Street has been hailed as a "must-have stocking filler for fans" and as a Christmas bestseller too. It is now in the WHSmith top Christmas picks of biographies and autobiographies . Deirdre, pictured above from the WHSmith website, is in splendid company with Paul O'Grady and Bruce Forsyth And the book has been featured on Love Reading UK where they say it's "A story told with love, laughter and drama". Deirdre: A Life on Coronation Street is available in all good book shops and online . If you would like to listen to the BBC Radio Newcastle interview. I start speaking at 8mins and 20 seconds in on the Anna Foster show . It aired on Tuesday 27 October 2015 and is available for 30 days. Deirdre: A Life on Coronation Street - official ITV tribute to a soap icon. Available here. I'm on twitter @flaming_nora

I've been picking up plastic from the pristine sands of Sunderland.  I also adore alliteration but that's a separate story. And in my two minute beach cleans - of which you can read more HERE and HERE - I'm afraid I'm turning into something of a Womble.  I think, on the whole, I'd like to be Madame Cholet only because she had someone to do the washing up for her. Deirdre: A Life on Coronation Street - official ITV tribute to a soap icon. Available here. I'm on twitter @flaming_nora

Since my first two minute beach clean (or to give it its proper hashtag twitter thing #2minutebeachclean) I've been doing more, and more, and more. The joy of the noise when the plastic, glass and tins hit the inside of the recycling bin makes it all worthwhile. And I might, just might, be making a difference. The top five items that are turning up time and time again in my walks on the beach are as follows: 1. Lighters. 2. Babies dummies. This distresses me greatly. Are there babies swimming around in the sea crying? 3. Rubber glove. Singular. Always blue. Always just one of. 4. Plastic balls. Chewed.  Usually yellow. 5. Small, short lengths of rounded blue plastic, approx 4" long like a hard straw without a hole. Deirdre: A Life on Coronation Street - official ITV tribute to a soap icon. Available here. I'm on twitter @flaming_nora

It's been an eventful week in which I learned new things. I like learning new things. Here are the top five things I've learned this week.   1. To a public talk given by Stephen Whitelaw who is a Technology, Digital Marketing Consultant. The talk was organised by the Royal Television Society (North East and the Border ) and it blew my mind. Really, it did. My brain is still broken.  If you get a chance to hear this man speak about the future of the web, go and listen to him. And then change all your internet passwords.  At the talk I learned a new word: Nomophobia.   What does it mean? Go on, Google it. On your phone. 2. For the last few months I've been regularly volunteering with Sunderland Museum and Winter Gardens. I love this museum, it's been a part of my life since before I can remember. Volunteering there is one of the most satisfying and rewarding things I have ever done in my life.  This week I was given a project to undertake, the star...