work Archives - Neil Turner's Blog

Unblogged July

July 31, 2026 by Neil Turner

Time for another round-up of things that I’ve been up to this month that I didn’t blog about. As with June’s update, it’s back to being a little longer than May as I’ve been able to do more things as I gradually recover.

Back from Wales

Our holiday in Wales was once again just a week, and so we got back last Saturday – all of this week’s blog posts were written before we left. Blog posts about what we did whilst we were away will start appearing next week, once I’ve had chance to write them.

We’ve decided collectively (our household plus my parents) that we won’t be making it a third year in Wales, having been there last year as well. So there will probably be a ‘what we didn’t do in Wales’ post, like 2024’s Northumberland post, coming later next month.

Returning to the office

Another update on my recovery is that I’m back to working full-time hours, and back to hybrid working. This means I’ve successfully managed the commute by train to Bradford and back a few times now, and made it through a work day in the office.

I realise that I’ve touched on this in my review of my OneLife ID wristband but it’s been nice to get out of the house and see my colleagues again. Working all the time at home was okay when we were all doing it (because we had to during lockdown), but when only some of us are at home, it can be a bit isolating.

At present, I’m (mostly) just working two days a week in the office, but this will go up to three days a week from September, as part of a wider policy change at work. To be fair, I’ve often gone into the office on extra days before, so it’s not a huge change for me, and I’m glad that we get to retain our hybrid working privileges.

This week also marked the first time I’ve taken my backpack into work. Since the fall, I’d previously not been able to get the straps onto both shoulders, and so I’ve just had a smaller shoulder bag in the meantime. However, my mobility has improved so that I can finally wear my backpack properly, albeit by putting it on in a rather inelegant way. Still, it’s progress.

Octopus Electroverse Plunge Pricing

On the way back from Wales, we got to take advantage of Octopus Electroverse Plunge Pricing for the first time. When electricity supply is exceeding demand, then public car charging providers who partner with Octopus Electroverse offer a discount when you charge your electric car (or plug-in hybrid). For us, this was 30% – we saved £2 on a quick 15 minute top-up – but can be anything from 20% to as high as 50%.

Generally this happens when it’s particularly sunny and/or windy, and so the electricity being generated by solar panels and wind turbines is higher than the demand. Whilst wind turbines are usually commercially owned and can be turned off (despite this being a massive waste of green energy), energy companies will still pay out for exported electricity from domestic solar installations (like ours). So, offering lower prices for electric vehicle charging gives electric car owners an incentive to charge their cars at a time when supply needs taking out of the grid.

It’s still not as cheap as charging at home, but being able to save a little money is always welcome.

New glasses

I’ll blog about them in more detail when they arrive, but earlier this week I had a routine eye test and found my prescription has changed slightly, again, so I’ll be getting new glasses next month. I’ve been wearing glasses for five years now, and these will be my third pair. My current (second) pair will then become my backup glasses, and I’ll be donating my first pair (current backup pair) to charity.

Giving an honorary degree to Rosie Jones

July 17, 2026July 17, 2026 by Neil Turner

A photo of (from left to right) me, Dr Jo Buckberry, Dr Emma Brown and Rosie Jones

I don’t often talk about my day job on here, but one of the things universities like to do is award honorary degrees to various celebrities, sportspeople and community champions, alongside our regular graduates. And on Wednesday this week, I had the honour of being a VIP guest at one of our graduation ceremonies where we awarded Rosie Jones with an Honorary Doctorate of the University (HonDUniv).

The photo above, taken after the ceremony, is of me, my colleagues Dr Jo Buckberry and Dr Emma Brown, and Rosie. I’m one of the co-chairs of the LGBTQ+ staff network at work, whilst Jo co-chairs the Disabled staff network and Emma co-chairs the Neurodivergent staff network. We all co-signed Rosie’s nomination for an honorary degree, alongside the chair of the Women’s staff network, way back in 2024, so it’s taken a while to become a reality. But I also think it speaks volumes that four staff networks all jointly nominated Rosie for the award.

A photo of Rosie Jones receiving her honorary degree from Anita Rani at the University of Bradford.

Polymath

Rosie is something of a polymath. She’s probably best known as a stand-up comedian, and appeared on Series 18 of Taskmaster, but she’s also a writer, podcaster, actress, and more recently started The Rosie Jones Foundation, which supports people who, like Rosie, have cerebral palsy. It’s a testament to Rosie’s strength and resilience that she has achieved so much, and I feel she’s a great role model for people with visible disabilities like cerebral palsy.

Her speech at the graduation ceremony was great; I often volunteer at the ceremonies and I don’t think we’ve had an honorary graduate drop an f-bomb like she did. To be fair, for those used to Rosie’s comedy, I would have been disappointed if she hadn’t swore. Also, we did give an honorary degree to Brian Blessed, but this was in the years before our ceremonies were recorded so I don’t know if he swore.

Her degree was conferred by our chancellor, Anita Rani, who is also known for several things including presenting Countryfile and Woman’s Hour, and as a former Strictly Come Dancing contestant. Her books are both great if you get a chance to read them. On the same day, we also conferred an Honorary Doctor of Health degree to former footballer and pundit Chris Kamara.

It was also great to chat to Rosie’s parents; Rosie hails from Bridlington, where my paternal grandparents lived for many years. I used to visit there a lot when I was younger. Rosie herself is absolutely lovely.

They say to never meet your heroes, but Rosie is one of mine and she’s fab. We need more disabled, queer, northern women in public life and Rosie is a trailblazer in this regard.

Back at work

December 29, 2024February 8, 2016 by Neil Turner

Last Monday marked my return to work, following five and a half weeks of customary holidays and then paternity leave. I was expecting it to be hellish, as our baby hasn’t been the most consistent sleeper – which is to be expected for someone that age. A week on, and I’m actually coping okay – I’m getting just about enough sleep most nights, albeit in chunks rather than a contiguous block. My performance at work hasn’t been quite as good this week as normal, but I put that down to another major factor which I will talk about soon. Don’t worry, it’s good news.

The week I spent working abroad last year was probably worse than last week in terms of tiredness. Back then, I had several nights with minimal sleep – or none at all in some cases – and very long working days. At least we’re getting some sleep, and I have had regular work days without any late nights or especially early starts. I did have to work for part of the day on Saturday though.

Going back to work has meant that I’ve needed to step back a little from my parenting responsibilities. So that I can get enough sleep for work, I’m not doing any overnight nappy changes. We’ve also stopped doing top-up feeds with formula (which was mainly my responsibility), so our baby is now almost exclusively breast-fed. This was our intention from the start; top-up feeds were only really a stop-gap because our baby wasn’t putting weight on initially. Now, Christine’s able to produce enough milk.

I’m glad that I was able to take off more than the minimum amount of time for paternity leave. Going back after two weeks would have been painful, and would have put more pressure on Christine. Those few extra weeks have made a positive difference and – most of the time – Christine has been coping well whilst I’ve been at work. Unfortunately, I only have a couple of weeks’ holiday allowance left, to last me until the end of July, so apart from some accumulated time of in lieu of overtime, I’m not going to be able to spend much more time at home during the week before Christine returns to work in the summer.

Disconnecting from work email

December 23, 2024April 11, 2014 by Neil Turner

When I first got my iPhone in 2010, I very quickly set up my three most-used email accounts on it – my personal account at this domain, my Gmail account, and my work email account. Soon, every time I got an email on any of those accounts, no matter what time of day it was, my phone would duly ping me.

At weekends, when going through the unified inbox overview of all three, I’d duly delete the ‘calls for papers’ that various conferences send me (because they assume that anyone who works at a university is an academic) and carefully flagged up the emails that needed action for when I got back in the office on Monday. I thought I was being more productive this way, but actually, all I was doing was spreading what would be a five minute task at work throughout my weekend, when I should be relaxing.

More to the point, it was making it harder to switch off from work, and making checking my personal accounts more difficult as I had to wade through work emails to get to them.

It took until the start of 2012 before I finally decided that this was a silly way to do things. I was off work for two weeks – I’m lucky enough to work for an employer that gives everyone time off between Christmas and New Year, and I had some annual leave in early January. I was getting notifications of work emails, but it would be more than a week until I would be back in the office in order to actually do anything about them. So, I deleted my work email account off my phone.

In the time since, I have kind-of added it back. I use the now abandoned Sparrow client to access my work email on a purely ad-hoc basis, if required, but it’s kept separate from my personal email accounts (in the stock Mail app on my iPhone) and I don’t get notifications for it. So it’s there if I do need to access it – usually if I’m at work but away from the office – but I can’t be disturbed by work emails when I’m not at work.

I’m therefore pleased that, in France, there’s a new labour agreement to stop employees looking at work email after 6pm. France already has a mandatory 35 hour working week, meaning that French employees work shorter hours to improve their work-life balance. This goes further, and helps to prevent employees from doing work-related activities outside work hours.

If you are regularly checking work email when you’re not at work, I would recommend you to stop. It’ll help you disconnect from work and enjoy your free time more. And it often doesn’t save you much time at work either.