Hannah Lynes

For autumn half term 2021, we’ve planned an adventure and I’m blogging the trip here. Our starting point is to visit the UK city with the most highly rated escape rooms, which happens to be Nottingham. After that, we’ll spin our TripRandomiser. Day 1: Beckenham to Nottingham The first leg of our train journey took us…

During our family holiday, we like to compete with each other to get the most-viewed picture on Google Maps. Did you know you can add pictures from your phone to Google maps? From the Google Maps app you click on “contribute” and then “add a photo”. Enter the place your picture depicts. Once it’s uploaded,…

So, how do your holidays go? Do you start with lots of ideas about going on outings to museums and organising art and craft activities around the kitchen table? And then you get to the end and you realise your children have spent most of the time lounging in their pyjamas in the darkest room…

OK, I’m finally getting around to the 2nd instalment of my blog series – how can I get my children off their screens? You may have read part 1 in which I talk you through the holiday spidergram. In this – part 2 – I’m adding an element of jeopardy to the picture with another…

Since April, I’ve been an Olio Food Waste Hero. This means I collect surplus food (in my case from Tesco). I can keep 10% for my family and I list the rest on the Olio app. People can then request the food from me and I try to share it out fairly. The aim is…

I’ve started researching the history of 49 Kelsey Lane, Beckenham. At the moment I’ve just started collecting relevant documents and links. I’m using Notion to keep track of what I find and you can see my Notion database here. If you have any information that could be relevant please let me know. If you can…

This is an update to my original post on school uniform and road safety. After hearing from a parent in another part of the country who had found my page useful and is complaining to her local school, I’ve decided that it’s time to restart my campaign which I had begun before COVID. I am…

Are you applying for a policy-related job? Feeling anxious about whether you’ll have the right answers to the interview questions? Worried your mind will go blank at a crucial moment? In my pre-motherhood years, I attended lots of interviews for policy roles. I always worried that I wouldn’t be able to think of the right…

This is an update to my original article about my plants database. Since I first created a database of the plants in my garden and house, I’ve been experimenting with different ways of using it and have added some new features. As my database template is available for others to use, I’m providing this update…

On checking a small plant that had started growing amongst some gravel in our garden, I discovered that it is cotoneaster horizontalis. I also discovered that we have an overgrown horizontalis in front of our kitchen window. Reading up on this plant let me to realise that it’s considered to be a non-native invasive species…