Hi Dan,
I hope.you didn't take my last post as a glib comment, I was probably a bit rushed for time. It seems to generally take around 100 shaves to get reasonably good at the skills required, so 1 month is about 1/3 of the way there. Once you have a good grasp of what you are doing it may be easier to narrow down what is going not so well.
I spent about 3 months getting to grips with what I needed to do, then PM'd a mentor to narrow down my issues.
I don't know many UK members but it might be worth trying to contact celticcrusader (Jamie) who is based in Wales and having a chat to him about what you are looking for.