The start of a new year brings renewed excitement and new challenges, opportunities to grasp the nettle or seize the moment - depending on your point of view.

Just days after starting a new calendar and the invitations begin to roll in: a factory visit here, a trade show there. It's time to begin a round of travel planning which coincides, thankfully, with some airline New Year fare offers. The poor credit card suffers a beating but now I'm all organised with trips planned up to August, and a little time to arrange the finances to pay for them. [Underwhelmed by a return from Toronto with ‘the world's favourite airline’, I'm set to sample one of the newer, Middle East carriers for the first time. Certainly their pricing is attractive and it appears, from reader reviews both in print and via YouTube, that they offer almost as many amenities in their Business Class as certain airlines bestow on their First customers. We shall see.]

In the midst of it all, a client calls wanting some refresher media training before a forthcoming radio phone-in, while another emails to see if I've time to generate a quick media release on the blizzard conditions forecast for the South. In the event, the training is conducted via FaceTime (you have to just love the advancements of the digital era as it means I can stay in Sussex in case that atrocious weather does hit, rather than fear being stranded in the wilds of Wiltshire).

Of course, we had but a few flakes of the white stuff one evening with all trace eradicated by the following lunch-time. Perhaps it wasn't necessary to cancel quite so many flights, although the weather scare meant that our press release was widely used.

A new year also means business planning and, despite some half-serious offers to remain in Toronto [a city where I have to admit I felt very 'at home' and certainly shall be visiting again], it's time to look ahead at career opportunities. Having taken a year out to spearhead a £60,000 restoration project at my local church (leading on both fundraising and communications), it's time to seek a new challenge.

Everyone's been so kind, recommending this vacancy and that situation they saw advertised. So far, what seems like the perfect opportunity has arisen only in some of the most inaccessible places, while roles in convenient locations haven't been quite right. With the state of our trains currently, I am loath to seek employment too far away for fear of commuting chaos, never mind the horrendous costs of season tickets these days.

My first commute, I recall so fondly, was the 08.14 daily to London Bridge followed by a quick hop over to Platform 5 and a commuter train to Charing Cross. I then strolled down The Strand, or along the Embankment, to Bush House where I would arrive at 09.30. That was when trains were enjoyable with their smoking compartments and Buffet Cars and even a Guard's Van, not to mention the rather soporific diddle-de-dum, diddle-de-dum as the wheels went over the joints in the tracks.

Now the prospect of a daily trek from Lewes to Brighton courtesy of our rail franchisee fills me with dread. Maybe it's time to buy a bicycle to regain travel independence?