Episode Details

One year, seventy episodes … wow

I’m not sure I can quite believe it. This podcast - my podcast! - has just passed its first anniversary. My friend Georgy, whose professional experience in what’s now apparently the audio industry means she Knows A Lot About Podcasts, says this is good going, as most pods fizzle out quite soon after launch. Like Victorian families having loads of children to increase the chance of one or two surviving, many, many podcasts are begun but few make it to the one-year mark. So allow me a moment of quiet satisfaction?

Thank you, too, because without you and the Hello You family, I might not have reached the first anniversary. Your encouragement, enthusiasm, support and kind words, in public and private, have helped more than I can tell you. And when you put all this together, it’s perhaps no surprise that my mental health - which was the prompt for the very first episode - is way better now than it was a year ago. I have you, and meds, and Hello You to thank for that. I explain more in this episode.

So, to celebrate, I took the entire production and presentation team of Hello You out for coffee and cake.

One coffee and one cake, because the team is … me. And my little recorder, and as of this week, my latest hi-tech visual aid: an A4 whiteboard.

Sophisticated, huh?

Incidentally, if you want to travel back in time twelve months and listen to how - and more importantly, why - I started Hello You, this one-minute clip will give you a taste:

… or you can listen to all of Hello You 1 - it’s only twelve minutes - here.

On a bench at Shirehall

Before we go on, can I just say that I’m proud of this episode for a number of reasons. For one, it’s Properly Local. Apologies if you’re one of the ten percent of listeners who are outside the UK, let alone Shropshire - it’s very exciting to have you listening, and I’m thrilled you’re part of the Hello You family, but you might need to Google some of the local places, streets and buildings mentioned in this episode.

Another reason is, this episode bears out my belief that everybody has a story to tell.

You’ll hear stories about:

* purple-lidded bin wars

* trying a café outside your ‘cluster’ (great idea, going to try some new places)

* surviving a brain aneurysm - ‘I felt this ‘pop’ inside my head’

* zombies in the Riverside

* becoming an ‘is what it is’ person

* beans on toast

* and this very wise observation, which is one of the ideas that drives how I make Hello You: If you give someone time, you can find out what they’re about, rather than just presuming

So, why was I sitting on a bench outside Shropshire Council’s Shirehall, on Shrewsbury’s Abbey Foregate? Because as of today, the few remaining people who’ve been working there will henceforth be working from other council locations, or from home. Listen to the episode to find out why.

Now I’ve got a sign …

… I need some other places to take it.

The ‘bench’ is a very simple device. I sit on a bench, or at a table, somewhere, and record random conversations which whoever joins me.

Where else should I go to do this?

If you can think of somewhere in Shrewsbury or Shropshire there’ll be some people around who might stop to chat, let me know where it is? I’ll put it in the Hello You production diary, I’ll stroll along and we’ll see what happens.

Bench ideas, comments on this or other episodes, anniversary congratulations, suggestions for topics to talk about or people I should