After a month blighted by homesickness it was with some relief that the melancholy began to lift and I was able to get back to feeling happy again. A week before Christmas I jumped on a plane to Brisbane and headed up the East coast to visit family in Noosa and Bundaberg. Back in the UK taking long trips in my car was always a guilty pleasure. I love the undisturbed thinking time and the freedom of flying along the open road. So after three months getting myself around on foot and via public transport it was brilliant to borrow...

When I booked my ticket to Australia back in June I didn’t envisage regretting it for one moment. Bypassing the English winter was a no-brainer and to be honest I was desperate to exorcise the procrastination I felt was engulfing me in London. Sitting on the plane with a whole new world ahead of me I felt energized and empowered. I arrived in Australia on such a high. A fully paid up member of the ‘Yes’ club, for the first month I found myself agreeing to go out with whoever, whenever, breezing from beach to bar, from...

With more than a month having passed since I arrived in Sydney it was high time I headed up the coast to Brisbane – a city I have visited many times in the past. My Australian father was one of 12 children meaning that I have a ridiculous amount of family in Queensland. Trying to remember the names of my cousins (I have at least 40) is like a brain training exercise. Unfortunately, despite their quantity, most of my family are at work during the week of my stay but I manage to catch my cousin’s girlfriend Katie on a rare...

When Cosmo UK called me up and asked if I could persuade a bevy of bachelors to allow me to take a peek behind their bedroom doors it was hardly going to be a tiresome task. Duly I put a call out on Facebook announcing that I was looking for ‘hot single men for a magazine article’ – and no one actually believed it was for work. Great. “The old ‘working on a feature’ line eh Charlotte?” my friends teased. “Of course you are…” So it was with some pleasure that I was able...

For as long as I can remember I’ve had a bit of a phobia of spiders. Although I don’t mind them generally, it’s the thought of one scuttling around my bedroom while I’m asleep that makes my skin crawl. For years I even suffered recurring nightmares where I’d wake with a jolt imagining a spider dangling from a thread above my head. As I inevitably tried to flee from the bed, arms and legs flailing, my long-suffering ex-boyfriend developed his own reflex action. His arms would spring up like a Venus flytrap to catch...

I’ve always considered myself to be a friendly person but there is something about London that can make you a little cold. I’m not saying that my beloved Londinium is a horrible place, far from it. I lived in the big smoke for seven joyous years BUT the fact is London can be a place where you become conditioned to see through people and not to speak to folks you don’t know. Whenever I returned to London after time away I’d find myself making a mental note to speed up my walking pace to avoid the tuts at perceived pavement...

THE BLOG WHERE IT ALL SOUNDS A BIT TRAGIC, BUT PLEASE READ ON!… In the last couple of years there have been some big changes in my life. When, 20 months ago, I broke up with a long-term boyfriend at the age of 31 it was a daunting realisation that some things in life you have no control over. You can work hard to be successful at your job, if things make you unhappy in life you can change them and you can invest time in your friendships and family with rewarding outcomes. But the one thing you can’t ‘make’ happen...

Can men and women really be friends? Perhaps Harry was right when he met Sally?… When the film No Strings Attached came out earlier this year I found myself scoffing. “Do you think they agree to be ‘friends with benefits’ only to develop feelings for each other and fall in love?” I suggested sarcastically to my flatmate, while secretly deciding I’d quite like to watch it anyway. Of course the concept of the film is nothing new. In When Harry Met Sally Billy Crystal famously tells Meg Ryan that he believes...