Sarah Allen environmental campaigner

Are you like me, obsessively watching your smart meter and despairing at how quickly the cost of electricity and gas goes up throughout the day?

If it hadn’t been for my mission to reduce my use of plastic, particularly no longer using plastic mesh wash scrunchies, it might have been very different. For this life-changing moment was whilst hurriedly washing before taking the kids to school, using a bar of soap and my hand I detected a breast lump. If you’ve been reading this column for a while, you’ll know that this led to a cancer diagnosis, hospital treatment and all is now good, it seems.

It’s Monday morning and I step outside my house, pausing for a moment to breath in the fresh air.

We've recently had our family holiday, 75 miles away in Longleat Forest staying in a Woodland Lodge at Centre Parcs.

I have a birth announcement! Four tiny new lives. Quads in fact. Named Spike, Henrietta, Wanda and Herbie.

Why is it that some flowers are seen as beautiful yet others a pest? One that seems to offend people the most is our native wildflower, the dandelion. A beautiful, sunny flower, much hated by gardeners even in patches where the similarly looking marigold is loved.

If you read the Exmouth Journal a couple of weeks ago, you couldn’t help but notice much rejoicing over the £15.7m that Exmouth will receive from the government. This will be used to extend Dinan Way and link it to the A376. Now, as someone who has previously commuted to Exeter, I understand the problems associated with traffic leaving Exmouth. However, we are in a climate crisis and shouldn't be building more roads. We need to stop this 'business as usual' attitude and look for different solutions. Ploughing millions of pounds into a new road when we desperately need to reduce carbon emissions isn't just crazy it's threatening our planet’s web of life, which very much includes humans.

January is not the time for change. We're still in midwinter.