Another year older but no further in debt

Happy new year folks

It almost makes me smile to think about those who will be struggling with their new years resolution to either give up smoking or cut down on drinking. I'm almost a full year ahead on both.

Have I smoked? Yes, there have been slip ups but I'm almost through the first year. My weakness has been the occasional, irrational cigar. Even one makes me dizzy enough to fall over but, every so often I have caved. The good news is that I have also been able to return to the world of non smoking without pain or cravings. As for the drink....

Lack of hard cash has meant that drinking has been reduced to one or two bottles of wine over a weekend. It's been a forced abstinence rather than voluntary and I did love the brief respite of Christmas when I drunk almost like the old days but, by and large, drink has been an area of my life where I've been able to save a fair bit and felt a lot better for it. If money ever returns to normal I think I'll still go without during the week.

Without smoking or drinking to torment me you may be worried that the blog will go all iPhone on you. Not so. I've fallen completely out of love with that device. It basically looked great and had a myriad of functions that should have made it the greatest phone on earth. The problem was that it didn't perform any single function well and sometimes didn't perform at all. I reset it to its factory settings back in November. It works as a phone and does some things well but is nowhere near the phone that it claims to be and from my point of view never will be.

Nope, this years blog will be about saving or earning money. I intend to share my fight to maintain a quality of life despite this painful recession. I'm considering renaming the blog to 'Make dough and mend'. What do you think?

I've already managed to earn £80 by changing my electricity supplier whilst the new supplier gave me a bonus of £100 for switching and promises savings of around £200 over the course of the next year. It has to be said that I haven't seen this money yet but I live in hope. As well as this I have saved on car tyres managing to replace two tyres for less than the cost of having one fitted by the dealer.

This month has been no different and I have a couple of ideas to share to help the savings mount. Back about September/October our dishwasher kicked the bucket. God she was sorely missed. My wife is a great cook and I'm lucky to eat fantastic food but..She likes to use every dish and pot in the kitchen to do so. For months I have been fighting a mountain of dishes that just doesn't seem to ever go down. She's accused me of having OCD because I go into a deep depression when I can't keep on top of the never ending pile of washing. Anyway Yahoo have site that is simply fantastic for such an emergency. Freecycle. Google it and you will be amazed. Based on your postcode or zip code you will find a freecycle community in your neighbourhood. The idea is simple. Got stuff you don't want? Give it away to someone that does. The person taking said goods doesn't pay anything but has to arrange collection and removal at their own expense. In the past we have given away items as diverse as gym equipment and feather cushions. I know of one woman who wanted the stone chips removed from her drive so she could re-surface it. She offered the chips to anyone who could remove them on a set date. The drive was cleared free of charge.

Anyway, once you have donated stuff to freecycle you can then ask for stuff. So we asked for a dishwasher. A guy about three miles away had just had a new kitchen fitted and wanted the old appliances taken away. We took the dishwasher. If it hadn't worked we could just have binned it but, no, it was a working dishwasher. I am delighted. The dishwasher is installed and working and it cost precisely nothing. It doesn't get better than that.

So how do I calculate the saving on this one? Well a new dishwasher would be £200+ but it's not a new dishwasher so it wouldn't be realistic to count that as a saving. A second hand dishwasher I imagine would be about £50 so that's what I'm adding this in as.

Total Saving on Dishwasher £50
Time delay: N/A

The next saving exposed a flaw in a previous saving that I thought I was making. My bank account comes with free breakdown cover amongst other things. It's not unusual now for banks to offer these types of benefit as there seems precious little else to recommend them. I've always seen breakdown cover as being essential as my first car was a banger and needed recovered more than once and my wife has a classic old car that really shouldn't still be roadworthy but is. So, despite hating the bank, one of the reasons I stuck with them was that I perceived this breakdown cover to be worth about £60 per year. I drive a newish car however and don't expect to break down.

Expect the unexpected. Between Christmas and new year we suddenly lost power and found ourselves stranded in quite a dangerous position at the side of a very busy country road. We phoned our breakdown cover. It turns out that all we had cover for was if we could get fixed at the roadside. Had the car needed towed it would have been taken to the nearest garage and we would have had to look out for ourselves over 100 miles from home. Fortunately it was started at the roadside and we got home without incident. My first thought however was to arrange a recovery service. Should this ever happen again I want the security of knowing that I will get towed home if needs be or to my forward destination.

I did a load of price comparisons and found someone at less than half the price of the big guys. I checked all their literature and read some reviews on them as there is no point them being cheep if they can't do the job. It's all good. They basically have links with loads of local recovery firms so will organise recovery with someone local to your breakdown. They will recover me home as well. If you are in the UK try Rescuemycar.com

Despite this I wanted a little more. You see no-one has been able to figure out why I broke down in the first place. The in car computer shows no faults, the battery is working and the engine has run like a dream before and since. This is good but is also a form of torture because I can't guarantee that the problem won't reoccur. For this reason I also wanted home start. This means that they will also come to your home and try to get you going, or tow you to garage if there is a problem. There are two main motoring organisations in the UK and both want over £100 to offer, repair, recovery and home start. I now have the lot plus piece of mind for £32. What's more I purchased this option via quidco so will get about £6 cash back. All in the a cost of £26 against £100. Cool or what?

Vehicle recovery. Total saving £80 approx
Time saving N/a

So I'm already doing pretty well with the savings. Tyres, plumbing, dishwasher, recovery it all adds up. The other angle of this site however also has to include making money. There will be caravan fees this year at approx £1200 and I have no clue as to where these will come from. We're both hard workers and will meet some of this cost through our wage rises however these are likely to be a lot lower than in previous years. I can feel some sort of part time work coming on. Watch this space....

T

8 hours is not enough

Hi folks from snowy Scotland

Computer
It was a sad day last Sunday when I finally had to admit that, in its present condition my faithful old desktop has had to retire. The fact is that the glitches that it's reporting such as missing registry files and blue stop screens are just symptoms of a hardware problem that I just can't get past.

I spent about two and a half hours on Sunday trying to fix it and then had to admit defeat. As any good geek will testify, a computer is a conglomeration of many parts so all is not lost. The graphics card and sound card will probably make it on to a new 'basic spec' machine when I can afford one. The good news is that the hard drive is intact and runs using an external USB caddy so I shouldn't be too down. What I miss most is the graphics though and its not just me being fussy.

We probably watch more TV online over the net than what we get through the box. I have a 32" flat screen that has served as my pc monitor and display for online on demand television for about three or four years. The thing is I managed to purchase the only flat screen ever made that didn't have a VGA input for the PC. With my trusty desktop the graphics card had a HDMI output which was fine but the laptop only has SVID which is OKish for TV but dreadfully blurry for text like my blog. I did have to treat myself to a USB keyboard however as the laptop one just doesn't cut the mustard for any kind of typing. So for the moment the laptop will have to step up as the main PC because there are no funds for a new desktop, just now or, any time soon.

Credit Crunch
That brings me to the tale behind the title of my blog. 2010 has just been too tough and I'll not weep to see its passing. Although I don't want to wish my life away. I shouldn't complain as I have been able to pay my bills (most of them at least) and I have a decent job but it's the complete lack of even a spare penny as a contingency that's getting me down. I took my car to the dealer for new wheels. Yep I'm still screwing the dealer for every penny after my failed MOT earlier this year. Anyway they couldn't do two of the wheels because I need new tyres. That meant shopping around for tyres and yet more money. Then there will be next years caravan fees before you know it. I already can't afford Christmas so god knows what will happen if something unexpected crops up. So I am going to commit now to earning more in 2011. I don't do new years resolutions, it's not that, but I'm not spending another year of all work and no play. So here's the plan...

Between now and January I'm going to research ways of earning more and spending less. The blog has lacked focus since I gave up smoking but, from January I'm going to start monitoring what ways I come up with to earn Money. I'll also try to measure what I can manage to save by either using less or by learning to do things myself. Yep, this blog is going to be about thrift. I'm going to share whatever advice I come up with on beating the recession and living life. Any tips you guys have will also be included.

Iphone
This weekend saw new iPhone software released on the world iOS4.2. So why hasn't there been a blog about how to jailbreak? Well I haven't even upgraded yet. I'm waiting. I'm actually considering upgrading but then not jailbreaking. To any jailbreaker that must sound strange. Well the truth is that I want to see if I can improve the performance of the phone. I have already gone back to my HTC for satnav because the iphone is so poor. But it seems to be poor at everything so I'm wondering if it might perform better without the customisation. Watch this space for results.

Smoking

This weekend my wife was away with relatives. As I wasn't there I decided to have a wee weekend to myself. I bought a 24 pack of beer and settled in for some serious guy time. I even looked out some old vinyl 45rpm singles. Anyone out there remember the Stranglers, the Clash, The damned? What about some 80s stuff like the cure or the fall. I've even got older stuff inherited gradually from relatives so have some great stuff from the stones and Rod Stewart. What does this have to do with smoking? Well there's been a cigar kicking about my office since long before I quit. I've mentioned it more than once in the blog. I always enjoyed a cigar back when I smoked but this one survived intact. Until now. Yep, late on Friday night I nipped down to the cellar and smoked it outside the back door. Now anyone who follows the blog will know that there have been the occasional cigs.(The last one was back in July) To be honest the cigs haven't done anything for me and they are just one of those things where you try one once in a while to see if your missing something and then realise that you aren't. The cigar however was different. I loved it. So much so that I can't have another one because I would quickly become a smoker again. Maybe on Christmas day or boxing day I might have another but otherwise it's a no no. I've been quit since February and I aint going through that again.

Car

Finally. It's snowing heavily here. Yep winter isn't just around the corner, it's here. This could last till February. I've just spent two hours clearing the path. This means that the wife and I will have to share the car. To all those who scoffed at my 4x4, who's laughing now? Can't wait till after Wednesday when the new tyres get fitted but to be honest I'd rather be in my car with bald tyres in this weather than most of the other cars I see sliding around the road. Last year mine had a hiccup on black ice but apart from that it's the only way to handle this weather.

Hope everyone is well. Enjoy the snow. Give me ideas to make or save money or to do things myself without paying. I'll update again next week.

Cheers

T

Money for Christmas

Seasons Greetings

First things first: We need to have that Christmas conversation. You know the one. You have it every year and you know you do. It replaces the weather conversation. Got it figured yet? I am of course talking about the conversation we all have every year at this time of year when we haven't even had Halloween (trick or treat or whatever you call it) but the shops are full of Christmas and the TV starts getting in to the perfume ads. It's been gathering pace since the last weeks of September and it will only get worse. Between now and the first week in December our favorite topic of conversation will be... 'I can't believe that Christmas is starting so early this year'. 'Can't they just let us get October out?' Then in December we can start our next favourite topic which goes 'doesn't really feel like Christmas this year does it?'.

Back to Black

I seriously need to find some way to make some money. The wife and I both have hard working decent paying jobs and I swear we've not had two pennies to rub together all year. Every time I look at the money something else comes up to steal it from me. It's the car tax, it's insurance, the caravan, the dishwasher (that ain't even fixed yet), it's endless that's what it is. I've been reading Poets blog about her attempts to work from home and, whilst she's finding it a bit up and down, I'm wondering if I could get a second income from it. I'm even considering getting a couple of back shifts in a shop or something just to have that feeling of having spending money again instead of just paying bills. People say 'at least you still have your health' but actually it's mentally and physically draining constantly trying to figure out what can and can't be paid or trying to learn to do things yourself because you can't get a tradesman to do it. Actually sometimes that bit can be quite rewarding when it works but, it' got to work.

Yep I've got to figure out a way to make some money. Realistically I wouldn't be able to maintain a second job for any length of time unless it was something I could do at home. What I need to do is find a way to market my existing skills and use what I have. I can knock out professional presentations in minutes, on more than one occasion my user guides have been chosen in preference to the official version from the software vendor. I can put together courses on telephone skills, sales, debt collection, complaints, train the trainer, all that kind of stuff and more. God almighty a bunch of Canadians even managed to teach me to train reliability engineering to engineers. There are some problems however:

First everybody thinks that they can do great presentations. (Trust me they can't. It's like the start of xfactor when you get the ones whose friends think they are a great singer.)

Second companies need to deal with a registered business. They can't just pay cash to some guy touting for business.

Third I'm at work during the day and these things need scoped out. There need to be meetings etc.

Forth I don't even have any idea how you go about tendering for that sort of thing or even how much to charge.

So that's what my brain is working at just now. How can I turn my skills in to cash. Please put any suggestions you may have on the back of a cheque made payable to.... Only joking but any ideas gratefully received.

Meta Tags

Last week I talked about a new geeky bloggy thing that I had learned called HTML code and I mentioned using meta tags to ensure that google et al would find my site and list it highly on any searches. Well I've been monitoring the site as always with google analytics and I'm pleased to say that meta tags have made absolutely no difference what so ever to the uptake of my site. Visitor numbers have neither increased nor decreased. The most popular way to find my little corner of the web seems to be to google quitzits or any sentence that includes smoking and spots.

QuitZits

Since they bring people to the site I think it's only polite to update you all on them. When I first read about them there seemed to be some agreement that they were a short term (about three months) side effect of giving up. Utter Bull I'm afraid. I gave up in February and I still get them (as bad as ever) now.

How can you tell that they are quitzits? They may look like any other zit but they are actually a bread apart. They can come on from nowhere pretty quick and you'll feel them like a solid lump under the surface of your skin. The problem is that they sit deeper than a normal pluke so can get quite red and angry but be way too thick skinned to burst. Try not to burst them anyway. Not sure about this one but stick with me. If you do squeeze them they don't empty and go away like a normal spot. They stay there looking just as angry but with the added joy of a scab on top. Burst or not they go down by themselves. The problem is that within seven to fourteen days they come back. They come back in exactly the same spot but the second visit is usually the last. They do have a habit of leaving a red area of skin for a while afterwards but at least they are gone.

So there you have the quitzit. Painful, unsightly and abnormal. But bearable and nowhere near as bad as smoking. Since I smoked for thirty years it's hardly surprising that my skin has some withdrawal symptoms. Smoking drys and eventually ages the skin so maybe I shouldn't be complaining about looking like an adolescent.

Until next week...

T

When a Horse is this Sick. They should Shoot it

Lloyd's reports 1.6bn profits.

Would that be Lloyd's that was bailed out to the tune of 17bn in 2008? The bank that has only managed to repay something like 3bn? Yet they are arrogant enough to be basking in a glow of this so called success despite ripping all of it's customers off in every way possible.

It charges it's customers £1 per day for every single day that they are into their AGREED overdraft and something ridiculous like £5 per day if you go outside the agreed overdraft (this can happen when your agreed overdraft charges take you above your agreed overdraft.)

It forced customers onto fixed rate mortgages around 7% when the interest rate was only 0.5% yet offered savers something paltry like 1%.

I recently asked them to turn a credit card balance into a loan. (Always a difficult one for the banks because they have already given you the money so effectively can't say that you don't warrant the credit.) They offered me a loan at 27% interest.

So basically whether your a saver, investor or borrower you are being ripped off. Who says you can't fool all of the people all of the time?

Remember this bank is only in business because the taxpayer (it's customers) bailed it out and still effectively own 41% of it. What I would like to see is some sort of hardship imposed on it the way it imposes hardship on us. It should be paying every taxpayer £1 per day for every single day that it continues to survive on our money. It should be paying 27% interest to the government. Prior to the banking crisis had a bank behaved this way the government would have stepped in to stop its operations all together. There are people actually in jail in this country for a crime called Money Lending. Some of them have not behaved as badly as this bank has. Someone worked out that there was the potential to pay 3650% interest on a ten pound overdraft.

The government is turning a blind eye because they have no answers to this. If the bank went bust then the liquidator would seize all of it's assets to recover money. That would mean millions loosing their houses, their cars etc so that doesn't work. In their current state they aren't turning a worthwhile profit when compared with their debt so no-one in their right mind wants to own them. So they sit there, free to turn the screw because nobody can quite figure out what to do. Protecting the jobs, allowing those who can just about make the repayments to be screwed whilst trying not to mention the ones who cant and lose everything seems the safest way.

To grudgingly give the bastards, (oops meant banks) some credit: Citizens Advice a UK Consumer Group and a number of MPs recently went to parliament to raise this matter. As a result Lloyd's have said that they will be reducing this overdraft rate for all of their customers come December. Why December? Why not now?

We'll wait and see if it happens. I'm sceptical because I remember when this money was being dolled out to the banks and the government were urging the banks to 'boost' the economy by helping businesses and encouraging the housing market. They claimed they were doing this however what they were doing was offering loans and mortgages at a shocking rate. Lloyd's is the parent company but it owns several brand names, Bank of Scotland, TSB, Halifax, etc. When they say they will cut charges to all Lloyd's customers do they mean everyone who has a bank card that says Lloyd's on the front or do they mean all the customers of all the brands of bank that they own?

Watch this space....

T

Car, Music, Money

To the UK, US, Ireland, Australia and Saudi I want to say thanks for sticking with me and taking time to read the site. This month has seen visits from 15 countries in all but some don't seem to hang about much. You guys rock. Would love to know who you are so leave a comment sometime.

On Friday I go on holiday for two weeks and it's unlikely, although not impossible, that I'll update so I thought I'd better put something down tonight.

To tie up some loose ends before I go:

The car seems to be running fine. I amn't pursuing the wheel with the finance company but am going to put a strong complaint in to the dealership. I'm thinking something along the lines of:

I love your vehicles but have had such poor service from your service dept that I wont be purchasing anything from you again. The loss of this one customer probably wont damage your business too much but will cost you considerably more than replacing the wheel would have. If I only discourage one other person from using your dealership then I'll have done enough damage to pay for more than three years servicing. Given that people are impressed with my car and take an interest in what it's like to own I think I have a fair opportunity of discouraging at least one potential customer.

Who knows...maybe I might still get the garage to fit that wheel at get to watch the service manager squirm. Even if they do sort things out to my satisfaction they have completely lost me as a customer.

Talking of customers...One somehow managed to phone through to the training department today and got me. Now since a big part of our job is teaching people how to deliver customer service you would think we'd be at the top of our game. Don't want to give too much away but it took three of us to decide what was best to do. In fairness the end result was way better than it would have been with the call centre guys. My boss walked in toward the end and was extremely worried though. The last time he heard me being that polite was at interview. I think he thought I was talking to the police or the press. Nice one.

The music thing with the iPhone... Well I'm loving the app and it is introducing me to lots of potential music that I like but, it's a bit of an effort to keep it up daily. I think it will be one of those things where I'll try it every time I'm bored. I've blogged about it so can keep track of the date started and can then look back in a years time and see how many tracks it spawned. At the minute I've gone from one track to fourteen so it's not bad going. Try this site for downloading the individual tunes. I'd stick with torrent sites for albums but this is good for tunes: www.4shared.com

On the subject of music...Bob Geldoff (The Boomtown Rats) swore at me 25 years ago today. Well me and several million others when he was telling us to 'give us your fucking money' live on TV on Band Aid. Yep I work with people who weren't born then and lots more who were too young to remember. There's a music festival every week from about March to September nowadays but nothing comes close to live aid. I was 17 in a shared flat and a whole crowd of us gathered to watch and drink and smoke etc. Back then we were changing the world..Now 'We are the world , we are the people...' . God I hated that but Live aid was good. Give it another generation and I'm sure something will best it the way it bested woodstock.

Money..Still aint got none. I actually got one of those pre-approved credit card things through the other day. Just sign and return and you'll get a credit card. Given that I'm skint I could be tempted. Thing is they actually weren't even trying to hide the fact that they wanted 39% interest. The UK is usually quite good at catching that sort of scam and stopping it dead (we do do free enterprise but normally in a more civilised way). When does the interest charged become criminal? It seems that world leaders are scared to criticise banks just now because they are so insecure but someone needs to protect the vulnerable. 39% interest should be criminal.

Also on the money front...My wife lost her purse at the weekend. Had to stop all the cards etc and were planning to get new driving licenses and stuff when....Someone phones and says they found it. She got it back cash and all. As far as I can tell no one has stolen her identity (still looks like the same girl to me). So the world can't be all bad. Maybe it's even better than we think but we just concentrate on the bad.

Anyhow that's me for the moment. If you're really dedicated and can't wait till I get back from hols then go back and read some old posts (there's more than 80 now). If not I'll speak to you when I get back.

Did I mention that I still don't smoke?

Next time...

T

This isn't new (mostly) so why the big surprise?

I'm not that old you know.

Just twenty years ago I was 21. At 21 I was doing OK but most of the folk around me weren't and they didn't really know why. They had just carried on doing what they had always done and relying on unions etc to look after them and, suddenly, they found themselves out of work with few, if any transferable skills. The unions had let them down and the government weren't prepared to step in to protect them. For some that left school 30 or even 50 years earlier it was devastating. Their savings, their pensions, to some extent their lives were all gone and they were powerless to do anything about it. When you saw them queue for money (us Brits like a queue) they looked a bit in shock about it all.

Others of course adapted. There was a living to made out of doing nothing. It was a full time job. Claiming rent for addresses you had never lived at, proving to a doctor that you were psychologically unfit to work, claiming clothing allowances for fictitious interviews and making sure that you didn't get caught as you snuck out the back door into a van to work on the roads without the benefit spies catching you. Much of the new infrastructure in the UK in the late 80s and early 90s came from a 'grey' workforce that couldn't be found on any electoral register but, strangely, could always be found in the welfare queue. (Sorry about the doom and gloom build up but I've been watching a TV program about the looming recession).


People were actually shocked by the fact that, for the first time, the government didn't support them when they went on strike and that businesses would actually cease trading in the UK if that's what it took to get their way. Once upon a time a business would not consider alienating a UK market but that had changed. Timex could make watches cheaper elsewhere and the British workforce wouldn't tow the line. It was cheaper to buy coal in bulk from Australia and ship it across the world to the UK than pay the UK work force to mine it on site. The answer from the government? 'Get on your bike'. Yep go and find work elsewhere because there was no help coming your way.

Horrible times for a boy just out of school. Of course I survived because I didn't know any better. I was young, prepared to work hard for little money and totally driven. I couldn't understand why people were so surprised that businesses closed when unions crippled them with unreasonable demands. I was part of a new 'do or die' generation. So many people got on the bandwagon quickly. Even the ones that disapproved were saving to buy up housing stock from the councils and taking up shares in telephones and trains whilst criticising the government for selling off these very industries. If you could just forget the recession for a moment there were riches to be gained. Quickly.

Twenty years down the line and it looks set to happen again in a big way. This time it was the banks that crumbled rather than nationalised industry. It wasn't the unions holding them to ransom but their own highest achievers and their bonus systems. The banks had made horrendous financial investments and now realised that there was no return. A significant percentage of the population live in properties that they will never own as they have interest only mortgages and no wherewithal to pay when they come to an end. Credit cards had offered credit limits that far exceeded bank loans but were now smarting as more people than ever before went bankrupt and paid back nothing. The one thing that had been stable throughout history was now in danger of collapse. Money itself.


International governments acted quickly to shore up the banks but did nothing to protect the very people who were paying for this bailout, us, from what would happen. Challenged by government to repay their bailout loans the banks turned on the very people who bailed them out. Their customers. To use actual figures as an example. The Bank of Scotland (I joined before I left school) increased their mortgage rate to 7% when the actual interest rate was 0.5%. It's risen again since. They increased overdraft charges (despite a whole separate scandal over unjust charges) from roughly £11 per year to £1 per day. Credit card interest rates rose from 19% just three years ago to 29%. I applied to turn one credit card into a loan and was offered a rate of 27%. I have another loan with that same bank taken two years ago at 9%.

Yep. I'm in every bit as much in shock as the folk of my age were back in the eighties when the unions failed them. Back then the only people who could really help you if the worst happened was your bank. If you dig deep into my finances, between mortgage, loans and credit cards I'm sure that I pay more money in interest than I do in anything else. It's disgusting.

Will the government protect me or take steps to ease this burden? Nope. The government are increasing taxes. Fuel duty which will impact every consumable is due to rise and a thing we have in the UK called VAT will increase the price of every product by 1.5%. Lets not kid ourselves. The mortgage rate is low at the moment but it must go up soon.

For some (cash rich or credit free) there's money to be made and good luck to them. For the rest of us the crunch is returning big time. For what it's worth I don't believe any government sets out to be unpopular or leave folk behind. If they make harsh policies it's because harsh times demand it. Back then though..When the unions failed the work force.. there was an expectation that the government might sort things out. They didn't. As I watch the banks rob me blind. I wonder why the government doesn't do something about it. They won't.

Someone asked me what I do with the money I no longer spend on smoking? I pay my bank interest.

I promise something more uplifting later this week.

T

Credit Crunchies.

In a few days time it will be June. In Scotland there has been fresh snow on top of the already compacted stuff in the cairngorms meaning that they are having one of their best seasons ever.

At the same time we're being told that this will be a barbecue summer. They've been making that prediction for the last few years but, based on recent events, this time it may be true. For a massive amount of reasons I distinctly remember 2003 as being a barbecue summer and, so far, this year isn't close but it is better than the last few.

Now that the car's fixed and the weather has picked up I should be making a b-line for the caravan and, possibly for the first year in a few, the boat for some fishing. Instead I'm at home for the holiday weekend. Why? Well 2010 is fast turning out to be the toughest time I've had in nearly 20 years. Every time I think that, once that's paid I'll be fine, something else comes up. 2010 is fast becoming reminisce of 1994 when I set up home with the , then to be, wife. Thing is 1994 is a year I look back on as being one of the best years in my life. We really did have nothing and yet we really were happy.

2010 so far involves:

- Being skint (British term that means that you have no money)
- Giving up: Smokes and cutting seriously down on alcohol
- Realising it's not all yours: Lot's of folk on the outside think we've got it all. We have but it takes a hell of a lot of work to keep it.

Something tells me that 2010 is going to be a key year when I look back but it feels pretty tough when I look forward.

Is this common? Who knows? The people that follow this site have gradually disappeared but have told a variety of stories. I'm sure others will do the same. Poet has had a tough time but is getting ready for the future whilst K is preparing for exams. Zoe is also doing the exam route. It's weird but 2010 might end up being the year everyone hated and yet the year that changed everyones life.



On a different theme: The Ipad arrived on these shores today. Fools queued outside overnight to be the first to own. Now I'm not a professional reviewer but I do have an opinion:

Apple are saying 'the price is right'. An 8gb pc is un-sellable under normal circumstances but that's what your £400 gets you. A big Ipod touch and nothing more. The top spec 3g 64 gb macine is nearly £700. For an Iphone with a big screen that loses the camera and phone capabilities and still has additional costs for the net???????

Get a net book. Get a good net book. It won't have apps as such but it will do everything an iPad can do and so much more. Can you watch streaming tv on a netbook? Yes. Can you have a massive music library? Yes. Dictionary, email, encyclopedia etc? Yes.

The ipad looks great and I'm fast becoming an iphone convert but, come on, this is an idea that should have gone so much further. I'm flummoxed why there isn't a use able pc in my car. Why it doesn't connect to a mobile device that I take with me and connect to my pc?

A tablet that, when connected to my PC collects all my music, photos, movie files etc, when docked to the car provides navigation, records the journey via web cam, offers the passengers music and DVD, and, also via web cam, provides reverse parking assistance. When I park the car I lift the 8-10 inch removable screen part and take it with me like an iphone or PDA. Nothing I'm asking for there requires any sort of new tech. You just got to do it guys.... Back in the 90s pc makers made so much of multimedia. My first multimedia PC was 2.3 gb with intel inside. It actually did everything a pc could do back then. Manufactures now need to really work at making multimedia work for us now. The same multimedia in the home, the garden, the car and the workplace. No new inventions, just a better use of the tech we have.

Rave over.

Stay hooked

T