How to Survive the Zombie Mummies

Every morning I have the good fortune to drive along a road where there is a good school in an affluent area.

Lucky me.

And every morning I meet the mummies.

No, not exactly what I had in mind.

I mean the Zombie Mummies.

That's better.

It is only the school run, but these women, I'm sorry, but they are all women, I have yet to see a man at the wheel, have probably been up for hours primping and preening because they are primed to perfection.

They are mostly all driving large 4x4s which their husbands have bought for them to run around town in, no doubt.

And these women are all dead behind the eyes. There is little to no contact with the passengers and there is zero awareness of what is going on in the road around them.

This is a road where there are cars parked on either side, school buses drive up and down, and hundreds of school children are walking around.

What is the point of the Zombie Mummy?

The point of the zombie mummy is to get from point A to point B.

How does the Zombie Mummy fulfill its purpose?

The zombie mummy fulfills its purpose by getting from point A to point B.

How do You Survive a Zombie Mummy?

Stay out of the way. Stay well out of the way. The zombie mummy does not see you and it does not know that you are there. This is good.

Your aim is to keep it this way. If they are driving down this narrow road towards you, chances are, they have not registered that you are also driving towards them. If, by a hapless manoeuvre of your own, you have managed to become entangled in a face-off, it will sit there until there is no obstruction in its way. It does not matter that it only has to move back 1 foot and you have to reverse along half of the road. Just do it. It will sit there. I'm telling you, just do it.

Legend has it that if you stare too long into the face of a zombie mummy, ... no I can't it's just too horrible to even think about.

That wasn't too hard was it?

The zombie mummy will now drive past you and leer.

Decades of research have been conducted about this. Too many for me to summarise here. But to boil it down into two sentences: Some think that this leer is gratitude. I don't.

None of these researchers has even looked at a zombie mummy the way that I have, day after relentless day.

But I have lived. I am a survivor. Now I am here to share my experiences with you.

Two simple points:

• Try to stay out of the way
• Do NOT expect any gratitude

I have been trying my own little experiments. But I urge you, you must NOT try any of these for yourself:

I thank them. I suddenly give way when they least expect it. I show a cheery hand signal to try to reach that submerged fleck of humanity which must surely be deep down there somewhere. The animus which impels the beast.

Don't thank me, my little efforts are weak and puny in a world that is dominated by the SUV and the designer poodle. But I try.

OK, thank me a little.

Never be locked out!

If you have forgotten something and have to go back into the house for anything at all - whether it is to switch the lights off or go and get bus fare, or get one glove or your purse, or update your facebook status, ALWAYS, keep hold of the key.

It is so easy, when your thoughts are elsewhere, maybe already at your destination, to put your keys down absentmindedly. But, the second that the front door closes, you will immediately remember that your keys are still in the house.

Better than this, as long as you live in a safe area, if you have forgotten something, open the door and get into the habit of leaving the key in the lock. When this becomes a natural habit, then you will never have to be worried about being locked out again.

Email Attachments

Attach the attachment *before* you compose the email, this way you will never have to send that 'oops' second email.

4 More silly mistakes made by Spreadbetting DayTraders

Here are a few more silly mistakes made by new spreadbetting daytraders.

1. Trading just for the sake of it. Some new people think that if they are sitting in front of their screen, then they must be trading. But experiened traders sit and watch the market and plan their entry and exit points. So, if they have a winning trade, they know roughly when they are going to leave it and also if they have a losing trade.

2. Trying to trade the news. This happens a lot to early traders. Don't forget, by the time it has made it onto the news, it might have already been factored in to the share price. Also, for trading indices, there might be something devastating like a European country defaulting on their debt, but this might be offset by the US agricultural figures, which might stop you out within a few minutes before the markets settle.

3. Not having any stops. Trading without stop losses is like opening your purse or wallet and turning it upside down. Keep sufficient safeguards in place to stop yourself losing all your money. Many trading firms now automatically have a built-in stop loss. Find out if yours does and if it doesn't, then put your own in.

4. Trying to trade the overnight movement. Especially true for the indices, the Dow Jones and the FTSE etc., a lot of movement happens in the grey market. So it will open up 100 points and then do nothing all day. The news headlines are FTSE up 100 points, but you have made £5 all day. If you are lucky once in a while, you will catch this movement, which is very nice. But more often than not, you will hear some news and wake up in the middle of the night to place your trade so it is ready for the morning. But in the morning, the news is all ready factored in so it drops like a stone.

4 Reasons Why I am Suspicious of Tea Bags

I am very suspicious of tea bags.

1. Why does the tea brew straight away? With normal tea it takes at least a minute to make a weak tea. Why does the water immediately change colour when you use a tea bag?

2. Why can I re-use the same tea bag at least 4 times? Just how much tea is in one of those paper tea bags? Am I really wasting tea everytime I use a tea bag?

3. Why does using a tea bag stain everything so much? When making tea with loose tea leaves, nothing gets stained, but use a tea bag and the spoon, the pot, the cup, all end up stained brown. Do they fill each tea bag up with shoe polish or something?

4. Why is tea bag tea a different colour from loose leaf tea? Hmm? Why is it a different colour? Isn't it tea?

These are my four reasons why I am suspicious of tea bags.

They should be called tea bads.

Thank you.

Meeshoo's Stories Trailer

Self-Publishing

My regular readers will have noticed a trend for this blog to veer towards writing. For the past six months I have been writing and publishing a couple or three books via Amazon. It is unbelievable how easy it is. This is also a huge problem because the temptation to get the book published is strong and the many hours which are needed to sit and edit and proof read are very boring, once the book has been written. But, in doing this, a whole new world has opened up, new blogs, new people to follow on Twitter etc., etc., Also, it becomes very quickly apparent that there are two diametrically opposed camps. Those who love indie publishers (a cooler thing to say than self publishers, or vanity as it used to be called), and those who hate them. I mean *hate* them. A lot. I would like to blog about how to survive as an indie publisher for a whole and report back about how I get on and what my findings are.

FREE Download of Bruno Penny This weekend

FREE Download from Amazon

The Adventures of Bruno Penny is a children's book about Bruno Penny, who longs to be a detective just like his famous idol, Sherlock Holmes.

So, when the local museum is robbed by a mysterious gang, he gets his chance!

Will Bruno catch the criminals? Follow his amazing adventures for FREE this weekend.

FREE Download this weekend The Amazing Adventures of Bruno Penny

How to Survive a Gas Blast!

This amazing picture shows what happened when a gas blast caused the complete destruction of a house. The amazing blast blew out all the windows of all the houses in the street and could be heard half a mile away.

Incredibly no-one was hurt!

Passers-by escaped with their lives after walking just inches from the house only minutes before.

One young girl was thrown up in the air and landed on top of the debris.

And the elderly lady resident of the property was saved by a wardrobe, which fell on her and protected her from the house falling down around her!

81 year old Betty Hodgkiss lay buried under the wardrobe for an agonizing two hours while firemen struggled their way through to rescue her.

An amazing survivor!

5 Silly Things Which Prevent You Winning at Spreadbetting

5. Going for round numbers

You are making £99! Just one more point and it will be a round £100. Come on, just move one point! Come on! Go on! You sit and watch it. You don't breathe, you don't move, you don't blink. It moves!


You are making £98, just two more points! You wait! It's gone. You just had to go to the loo and it ate up all your gains in the 3 minutes, 28 seconds that you were not watching it.


4. Trying to get ALL the points

Yes, it would be wonderful to catch every single point in a move, but it is pointless to try and spot the exact peaks and troughs and changes of direction. Yes, I know you did it the last five times, but it will not always work and more often than not it will catch you out. Sometimes it helps to look at the bigger picture. If an index gains 100 points overall during the day, most people will trade that movement, but some will try to get every little blip. So instead of a 100 points worth of profit, you end up with lots of little losses!


3. Catching a falling knife

Or squashing a spouting geyser!

Both are as bad as each other.

2.Selling your profits and letting your losses run

There is something instinctive which makes us bank a profit early. A tiny profit which should have been huge. And the same is true of letting a loss run. If you time your trades, there will be a distinct difference in the length of time you hold a profitable or losing trade.

1. Over trading

Making hundreds of tiny desperate trades instead of a few cool, calm and calculated ones.

How to Survive: Sheer Unadulterated Terror

Terror comes from loss of control. Fear of the unknown, fear of something bigger, stronger, scarier, it all comes from having the thing there and not being able to do anything about it.

If you could only DO something, then the danger might still be there whatever you do, but with a little more control, the terror might diminish. And let you think properly and see a way out. If something in your life is causing you to suffer from pure, blind terror then there are several things you can do about it.

The first thing to do is to recognise and accept it for what it is.

It is large, it is looming, it is causing your bodily organs to turn to jelly and do strange things that bodily organs are not supposed to do - at least not in public!

Luckily or unluckily, we humans are designed to cope with a lot more than we realise. Maybe thousands of times more stress and pressure than we ever thought ourselves capable of. This is how we survive. Before the concrete jungle, maybe our ancestors were roaming around the real jungle with the threat of being killed and eaten around every corner.

Wait, there are no corners in the jungle!

... the threat of being killed and eaten around every tree-trunk and vine. We are built for survival, we have great resources at our disposal, both mental and physical.

What is this big thing? 

Unfortunately, the other major thing that we humans are very good at is avoidance. My blog post about procrastination STILL hasn't been written! Our brains are perfectly capable of shutting our eyes and wandering around as if there is nothing worrying us. We can do this for ages. If the big terrifying thing gets in our way, then we just do a quick side step shuffle and niftily bypass whatever it is.

But, luckily or unluckily, our bodies are not that great at this kind of avoidance. Even though we don't open our bank statements for months, or don't go into the boss's office, or go the long way home, or go to the doctor about our fears, this is all cerebral stuff - it is all in our heads. 

Physically, we are suffering from aches and pains, our hair quits, we feel unwell. The blood pressure rises, toothaches start, hundreds of other little niggles plague us. Our bodies let us know in no uncertain terms that there is a big scary terror following us around wherever we go. This is not good!

Now, this is not an airy fairy blog about making you feel good. - OK, sometimes it is. But today, this is a hard-talking take-no-prisoners blog about facing our fears. 

Take that fear firmly by the shoulders (not if it is the boss!) and look it squarely in the eye. Face it head-on!

The sooner you can do this, the better. You might find that the problem is much smaller than you thought, you might find that it is much bigger, truly gigantic proportions. But at least you have started to take back some control.

The next thing to do is nothing.

Got you! That's right, the next thing to do for a few days, now that you have seen it, is let it run around in your brain. The worst thing you can do is to get worked up and react straightaway. Do not cancel all your credit cards, or walk into your supervisor's office and pull the wig right off his head or go and punch the neighbours. Sit down calmly and think about the problem. Let's face it, you may have lived with it for weeks, so two days now are not going to make so much difference.

But, sometimes, when you do this bit, you realise that there is a great release of stress. Just knowing what your fear is and knowing that you are going to gain control of it, can go a long way towards letting you deal with it better. It can let you see ways to cut it down into smaller bits. It can let you see that you can share your fear with someone and face it together. 

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.
Mark Twain

Face your fear. Chop it down to size and send it packing, but don't let it stalk you! 

Just Decide to Drive Within the Law

It is really easy to just make a decision to drive within the law.
So, keep within the driving limit,
follow 'Give Way' and 'Stop' signs, and other street signs
Park where you are supposed to and don't park where you are not supposed to.
Don't use your mobile,
etc., etc., etc.

Just decide it and Just do it.

We are not city planners, sometimes we can't see why there is a low speed limit in an open area, but it may be that area has a history of accidents or a blind corner.

We all slip into bad habits when driving, so just to decide to keep within the law can be very difficult for some people. But just making that decision and then sticking to it can free up a certain part of your brain which becomes tense.
It is like you feel a tiny element of release when you are not constantly looking for ways to cut people up or inch in front of the person in front.

Just do it and feel free.

Warning by Jenny Jospeh

When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple
with a red hat that doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
and satin candles, and say we've no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I am tired
and gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
and run my stick along the public railings
and make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
and pick the flowers in other people's gardens
and learn to spit.



You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
and eat three pounds of sausages at a go
or only bread and pickles for a week
and hoard pens and pencils and beer nuts and things in boxes.



But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
and pay our rent and not swear in the street
and set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.
But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

Why is it Necessary to Budget? Download your FREE Spreadsheet.

Having a budget or living with a budget does not have to be as scary as it sounds. Neither does it mean taking the cheaper option, having to make do with lower quality things. It only means knowing how much money you have available to spend and this can only be a good thing.

A budget can be for a day if you are out for the day and have a certain amount of cash to spend. It can be for a week, or however long you want to make it.

The best thing about a long term budget is that you are not only in control of how much money you have now, but you are able to forecast how much money you will have in a year's time, or five year's time or longer, assuming that things stay the same.

The magic of this is that it allows you to see exactly what goes where. You can see where the little wormholes which suck up the cash for no reason and you can see work out your minimum monthly amount. That is what is the absolute minimum income you need to have to keep everything ticking along.

Then with the rest of the income, you are free to spend it however you like. You can pay off debts, you can save up to buy that special thing you have always wanted or go on that holiday of a lifetime.

Having a budget can actually free you to do more with your income.

And it is much better than living in the dark, not knowing how much money comes in, how much goes out.

I have put together an excel spreadsheet which can let someone manage their monthly budget over a year.
It is available as a FREE DOWNLOAD for anyone who wants to use it.

It can be downloaded from this page.

If you find it useful then please feel free to click one of the adverts on the right of this page.

There is a Microsoft Word document which explains how to use it.

To use it you will need to have Microsoft Excel.

Coaching service is Fully Booked

Please do not book any time slots for coaching. I am fully booked at the moment.

I will remove this post when more slots become available

Paypal Violin Update

As an update to the Violin destruction incident that was featured heavily in the blogosphere earlier this year, I felt that it was important to let the people over at Paypal have a chance to voice their side of what happened and give an explanation about why they ordered the destruction of an antique violin before determining whether it was genuine or not.

There was much debate online in many different forums: about paypal, musicians forums and also in general forums. Some people said that it was because it may be illegal to post a counterfeit item. This was reiterated in a statement by a paypal employee:

A spokesperson for PayPal said: "While we cannot talk about this particular case due to PayPal's privacy policy, we carefully review each case, and in general we may ask a buyer to destroy counterfeit goods if they supply signed evidence from a knowledgeable third party that the goods are indeed counterfeit. The reason why we reserve the option to ask the buyer to destroy the goods is that in many countries, including the US, it is a criminal offence to mail counterfeit goods back to a seller."

taken from the Guardian newspaper

But in reality this is nothing but a smokescreen by paypal. Before establishing the veracity of the claim, the violin is a bit of a Schrodinger's cat. Is it real? Is it counterfeit? Before they know, how can it be a problem to post it? Would the buyer post it to an expert for authentication? The seller had a certificate from a luthier to show that it was authentic but paypal chose to ignore this because all sellers are cheating, lying, underworld criminals trying to hoodwink the poor, helpless buyer at every turn!

But, I sent off an email to a contact at paypal customer services nevertheless to try and find out the result of the enquiries they had conducted.

Dear 'Customer Services',

Earlier this year, there was a story about a suposedly antique violin which had been ordered to be destroyed by Paypal. It was widely reported that you were conducting your own enquiries into the matter.

Since several months have now passed, I was wondering whether you had come to any conclusions regarding this matter.

 This is the reply I received several days ago and have not heard anything back since:

Thank you for contacting PayPal Customer Service.

In an effort to assist you as quickly and efficiently as possible,

please direct all customer service inquires through our website. Click

on the hyperlink below to go to the PayPal website. To ask a question

that is specific to your account, you must log in to your account. If

you indicate the type of question you have with as much detail as you

can, we will be able to provide you with the best customer service

possible.

If your email program is unable to open hyperlinks, please copy and

paste this URL into the address bar of your browser.

https://www.paypal.com/ewf/f=default

If you are contacting PayPal because you are unable to log into your

account, please use the contact form below.

https://www.paypal.com/ewf/f=default

Thank you for choosing PayPal!

This email is sent to you by the contracting entity to your User

Agreement, either PayPal Inc, PayPal Pte. Ltd or PayPal (Europe) S.à

r.l. & Cie, S.C.A. Société en Commandite par Actions, Registered Office:

5th Floor 22-24 Boulevard Royal L-2449, Luxembourg RCS Luxembourg B 118

349.

Baby Proof Your Home!!

If you have one of these for the first time then the chances are that you have not looked around your home from knee height in a while. If you have a particularly mobile one, then they can move at a surprisingly fast rate.

Once one of these starts to move around, then it is only a matter of days before they have mastered the shuffle, the super-crawl and the turbo-toddle.

Sometimes, some parents may have had quite a docile one already and so they have had a relatively easy time. But the next one which comes is a real surprise.

If you turn around even for a second, then they are off. The main objective is to have a taste of all those tempting objects which have only been observed until now from an infuriatingly safe distance!

If it can be picked up, it can be tasted.
If you can do it undisturbed, try to isolate your little explorer in one room and make that room as safe as possible.

Baby Proof!


The best way to do this is to install a baby gate before they start to crawl around and keep it closed.

• Examine the room at ankle height and cover up any exposed sockets with blank plugs so that wet fingers can not investigate them.
• Remove all fragile ornaments and all things with small parts.
• Look at things which might be head height when your little terranaut stands up. When the attention is diverted, it is always really easy to walk in to things.
• Look for low tables with table cloths which could be pulled off easily. Remove them completely if possible.
• Put baby covers on all furniture with sharp corners.
• Anything that can possibly be climbed will be climbed, given time. Remove all fragile ornaments from higher shelves, especially if these look particularly tasty!
• If possible get rid of all loose flexes or fasten them down in some way so that they can not be pulled out and tasted.

It only takes a few weeks for them to be sitting there, innocently gurgling at you to running rings around you. Don't be deceived. It might look like they are gurgling directly at you, but in reality, they are looking right past your left ear at a ceramic ornament on the shelf and wondering what it tastes like!

Be prepared

How to Survive Google's New Privacy Policy

From the 1st of March, Google will implement a new privacy policy across many of its products.
The aim is to give you a more personalised searching experience - whether you want one or not!

Every time you perform any search through Google's search engine, and click on any of the results, Google will keep a track of your search clicking activities and will tailor the results it gives you next time to suit your interests mores.

This is already annoying, if, for example you have bought a pair of trousers from M&S and then every single web site you go on for the next few days shows you nothing but adverts for trousers from M&S. But you already have bought trousers, so why would you want to see them everywhere you go?

The way to stop this is to log in to your Google account and go to 'Account Settings'.

Find 'Services' and you will see a link whick lets you 'Go to web history'.

From this page it is possible to click on 'Remove all web history'

You can also 'Pause' your web history on the same page. This stops it from gathering any more information about you.

This should stop any more information being kept about your internet activity.

How to Survive Being Ginger

Picture attribution Melbourne Weekly Eastern

There have been a number of news articles recently about people with ginger hair suffering because of their hair colour.

There has been someone teased so badly that his parents removed him from school and a poor woman who has had a childhood photograph circulated and has received actual hate messages on her facebook page.

At first I did not understand this at all. It is hair. In many cases, ginger people have thicker hair per cm than other hair colours, and it looks much shinier than normal. So, in essence, what we are talking about is a beautiful, thick shiny head of gorgeous colour hair.

But of course, people are ignorant and lazy and stupid and it is 'fun' to mock something which is different or strange or in the minority, so it is very easy to believe that some people are mercilessly taunted for nothing but their hair colour. Even reading that sentence back seems ridiculous, but it happens everyday, so it is something that many have to live with.

A search through Google is not very enlightening either. The first four pages of a search have websites which seem to do nothing but make fun of ginger locks. They are in this category : the ginger survival guide. This page amounts to nothing more than race hate and should, in my opinion, be removed from the internet. It is a treatise on how to 'cope' in the presence of Ginger kids and ends with a chapter on how to kill a ginger person. Reading this drivel made me realise that this is a serious problem.

What about in the past? How much did Boticelli love ginger hair? A lot. As did many of the Renaissance painters. Ginger angels, women, men and gods are perfectly common in hundreds of paintings. Why? Was ginger hair more valued perhaps, because it was rarer? Like gold? In fact, the ancient Greeks died their hair ginger to denote courage.

Muslims are not allowed to dye their hair back to its original colour, but are allowed to use Henna. So many older muslim men, especially in India have red hair and beards.

Many famous and influential people in the past have had red hair. Queen Elizabeth I, Winston Churchill, Boudicca of the Iceni, Vincent van Gough - there are many long lists on the internet.

Recently, Prince Harry, Nicole Kidman, Geri Halliwell, Lindsay Lohan, Rupert Grint, Emma Stone, Lily Cole and a host of other people have flaming red locks. Marilyn Monroe was a red-head!

And many people dye their hair in various shades of red every day.

So it is really difficult to know what to say to people who are undoubtedly suffering.

Some people find it easy to embrace their looks in general no matter whether they fit stereotypical, media-depicted versions of normalcy. Others struggle with their self image no matter what others tell them or however realistically they fit the mold of good looks.

So, How to Survive Being Ginger?


I do not think it is a good idea to hide from something as fundamental to your identity as your hair colour. It may be a solution for a few years, but surely not for the rest of your life. If people are teasing you, just imagine how much satisfaction they would derive to know that their teasing is working.

There is a story where two people with ginger hair who lived in a house together found out that their house was being called the Ginger Palace. Instead of being upset, or lashing out, or hiding from this, they decided to hold a party where only people with red hair were invited and this has become a major tradition for them.

The fact is that bullies and idiots will always pick on difference. But the important thing is to hold your head up high and be the person you are and show all the idiots that they are the losers.

But just learn to live with the nicknames about your hair and your skin and your freckles. You know that everyone you meet will have some comment to make about your hair so next time someone says 'Carrot top', just laugh. Carrots are green on top anyway!

How to Survive an English Yellow Box Road Junction

A yellow box road junction is there to ease the flow of traffic. A driver should not enter the space in the yellow box unless their exit is clear.

If the red car was going to go straight ahead, then they can go straight on without stopping, but if it was turning right, then it has to wait until the road is clear.

This is so that no car stops the flow of traffic by holding up the oncoming traffic.

Some councils police their yellow box by having cameras installed and issue fines for those people who break these rules.

Case Study One: Extremely Taken for Granted

My new consultancy service was launched last week and the first person has given permission for me to write up their case study here.

Simply book a time slot and briefly tell me the problem and I will call you for one hour to discuss whatever issue you may have.

Extremely Taken For Granted

I will call the first person 'Sam'. And this is Sam's story.
Sam owns three houses. The plan was to let them out and build up enough income and savings to buy more houses and to set up a property business buying and selling property. The problem is that Sam's family have been living in the houses instead! So there is little or no rent coming in and Sam is paying three mortgages as well as rent on the family home. This has been going on for over ten years which means that Sam has paid out hundreds of thousands of pounds, literally in mortgages with very little return.

To top it all, Sam has been unemployed for the past three years and has now built up a large credit card debt just to pay for everything. The family do not offer to help with anything and do not offer to pay their share of the money and do not even question how Sam pays thousands of pounds each month in property bills alone.

I asked what Sam has done to try to get the family to pay their share. Sam said: given deadlines for them to move out, threatened to stop paying the mortgages, given ultimatums but nothing ever happens.

I asked what happens when the deadlines come?

Sam said: Everything goes quiet for a bit and then it all carries on like before.

Is there a Solution To This Problem?
It is so difficult when family members take you for granted like this. At the beginning, Sam was wanting to show that Sam could cope with the extra payments. Trying not to reveal a vulnerable side, especially to family members has cost Sam greatly in financial terms.

Then, as the years roll by, and everyone settles in to the new way of life, the roles are reinforced by repetition. the dependants become more needy and it becomes harder and harder to find a way to get them to move. Now, they maybe do not even think about how much money it is costing because they just take it completely for granted that it will be taken care of.

Giving weak deadlines and not sticking to them or following through with the threats meant that all credibility was lost and everyone knows that they are empty threats. But also, how could Sam stop paying the mortgages on the property since that would be self-destructive and would result in all the property being lost as well.

I wondered how Sam would feel about now laying all the cards on the table and sitting down with the family members and showing them exactly how much money was going down the drain each month. they might be shocked into action. But once again, Sam said that it would be difficult to show a weakness like that.

We discussed whether Sam could stop paying an extra, expensive rent each month and start to live in one of the other houses as well. That sounded like a possibility which would save some money.

Or tell the family that one of the houses was being sold and actually follow through by registering with an estate agent. There is enough room in the remaining houses for everyone to have rooms. The sale could let Sam start fresh and pay off those debts.

It is clear where Sam stands legally, but family matters always prove a lot more delicate if harmony is to be maintained, but it is completely unfair if one person has to carry everyone else like that, especially if that person is not able to cope themselves.

Sam is going to try some of the suggestions we discussed and book another call next month. I sincerely wish Sam luck.

How to Survive on a Budget

The first step is to work out what your weekly or monthly budget is.
This could be your pocket money, or your monthly allowance or your income.

Many people these days use online banking. If you do, download the last statement for the last complete month and open it up as a spreadsheet. If you do not have online banking, and your bank sends you monthly statements, then enter it into a spreadsheet. For pocket money or allowances, enter the amount that you regularly receive.

Now sort the spreadsheet into types of transaction. This will separate your income from your regular outgoings and your extra expenditure. From this spreadsheet, it is now clearly easy to where the money goes every month.

As Mr. Micawber famously said

"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery"

From which you can see, if you spend more than you earn, then you will be miserable!
So, now you know how much of your income goes out on things that you can not avoid, like rent/mortgage, travel, utility bills, kids etc. And after this, whatever is left is your budget for the month. I hope there is something left.

Look carefully through the monthly expenses. Are there any items that can be easily reduced? Do you pay too much for insurance? Can you cut down on any other bills by switching to another company? The moneysavingexpert website is very good for searching for money saving deals.

If you have been following my budget food posts, then hopefully you can make some savings with the week's food budget to opt for cheaper alternatives, or to cut down on waste.

Once you have made as many savings as possible, then work out an amount of money which you can safely spend over the month.

For food expenses, to live within a budget the key is to plan. You can not plan every single meal or allow for emergencies and unexpected invitations, but in general, you know that you will have three meals a day and these can be planned in advance. This way you can decide how much you will spend on your food budget for the month.

A good way to live on a budget is to leave all debit and credit cards at home. Because we are survivors, we do not cut up our cards or anything so drastic, but we stay prepared for all emergencies. If we only carry the exact money in our bags or pockets that we need to spend, then it will be much harder to overspend. It really feels like spending if you have to hand over the actual money instead of just giving your card. For some reason, the card seems to be detached from you and your bank account. So even people with not very much money happily hand over cards to buy things they do not need. But if you really have to give someone £58 in cash, then you actually feel it!

So, cut down where you can.
Work out how much you can reasonably spend per week or day and carry that amount with you.
It is very easy to get out of the spending habit if you have to use cash.

Next Post: Why should we budget? Download your free spreadsheet

Budget Food: Scrambled Egg on Toast

Carrying on my budget food theme, a quick and easy breakfast to make is scrambled egg on toast.

For one person:

1 egg             13p            My eggs are free range because I refuse to support caged hens. So they are 13p an egg.
Splash of milk if you like.    5p
Seasoning.          1p
1 slice of toast      5p
Knob of butter for the toast and to cook the egg.         10p

Toast the toast.
Whisk up the egg in a bowl and add seasoning and a splash of milk. This makes it much lighter. Leave out the milk if you are a purist. Cook in a frying pan and turn out on to the buttered toast.

Total cost of the breakfast: 34p

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In fact, anything that you would like to discuss.

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There is no need to leave your real name or even to talk about specific things. sometimes it just helps to talk things through with someone else to get a clearer picture in your own mind of what to do.

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Budget Food: Tortilla - Spanish Omelette

Ingredients:
1       medium onion          6.5p
1       medium potatoes     10p
3       eggs                        39p
1       knob of butter           20p
seasoning to taste

Preparation:
Finely chop a medium onion and gently fry it in a frying pan. We want it to soften and not go brown.
Peel two small or one medium potato and slice it as thinly as possible. Add this to the onion in the pan and cook both of them gently until soft. Depending on the potato, this should take between 10-20 minutes. If the potato is not cooking, then add a splash of water and simmer with a cover until done.

In a bowl, break three eggs and beat together. Add seasoning to taste.

When the onions and potatoes are done, and slightly cool, transfer them to the egg and mix.

Wipe the pan and add some butter or oil. Add the whole egg, onion and potato mixture and cook gently for around 20 minutes. Turn the mixture over and cook on both sides until the egg is completely cooked.

Total cost 75.5p

Budget Food: Chewy Cookies

The first budget food recipe I have researched is those big fat chewy cookies which you can buy in supermarkets and from stalls. These can cost up to £1 each in some places, so I was wondering how much it costs to make them. The prices are from Aldi and are correct on the 10th of February 2012.


This is the recipe:
250g    self raising flour                     9p
125g    butter                                 59.5p
200g    sugar                                  47.5p
1         egg                                     13p

plus anything else you like such as chocolate chips, raisins, dried fruit, etc.

Preparation:
Preheat the oven to Gas mark 3/170 degrees C. Grease a baking sheet lightly.
Melt the butter and add the sugar. Stir until it is well mixed and begins to be a little lighter in colour. Wait until it is cool then add the egg and mix again until it is creamy and light. It does not look like cake mixture, just a little lighter. Then mix in all the flour until it is a smooth consistency.

Drop largeish amounts of the mixture onto the baking sheet with a tablespoon taking care to keep them around 5-6cm apart because they will spread out in the oven.

Bake for 15 minutes. The chewy, soft consistency comes from underbaking them slightly. They will be large, flat slightly sticky cookies when they come out, but when cool, they are fine.

Using this recipe, I made 17 medium sized cookies for £1.29.

That is 7.6p per cookie.
(Include energy costs if you can work them out for the length of time that the oven is switched on).

You know that these cost around 10p a cookie, after energy costs. So make up a batch and go out and sell them for 50p each. 

Budget Food

These times are very hard for a lot of people. Someone who is living on benefits must survive on around £60 a week. So, in this series on budget food, I have decided to see how to live on less.

All my prices are based on shopping at Aldi, which is the cheapest supermarket in this area. Once in a while I will also do a comparison with other supermarket prices.

The objective is to make more things at home, rather than buying things which have been ready made, like pre cooked meals, and just to see whether it is possible to have a happy variety of foods and how much they cost us to eat.

I don't plan to preach about healthy eating or what you should or should not be giving to children. There are a lot of other websites like that around. We all live in the real world and do the best we can. We all eat chocolate and cake and unhealthy snacks from time to time because we enjoy them. This is meant to be purely an exercise in the cost of the food.

Misheard Song Lyrics

Which songs are these lyrics from?

Suck a little green pea soup

This is the doggie moggie age of Aquarius

Which songs have you been singing which turn out to say something completely different?

Famous Failures

There is nothing to fear but fear itself

The world is full of famous failures:

James Dyson

He famously tried to develop his famous vacuum cleaner 5000 times. This means that he failed 4999 times. What would have happened to him if he had given up on the 4998th time? Failure just was not an option for him. He just kept going until the end result was the right one and he had the design which was right.

Even then, he failed to get anyone to accept his new design! No-one wanted it. They did not want to manufacture it, they did not want to distribute it.

It is only by going through this type of failure that we now have the Dyson Vacuum Cleaner.

No-one wanted it here, so he went to Japan, where it won an award. He has his own manufacturing company, he has a knighthood. He did not face the fear, and rejection and failure by hiding in his room, shivering under the duvet. Perhaps for him, it was not a failure, but just another step towards his goal.

The way we survive massive failures like this, is by having self belief. By not letting our reactions go overboard when we have failed.

Do not forget that the world and our view of the world is very much made up of how we ourselves perceive it.

If someone is walking along the street and something terrible happens to them. What happens? Let us say that they fall over, or they do a huge sneeze which causes all the snot to erupt from their noses. For the person, this might be a hugely humiliating experience because they are the superstars in their own world. But for other people around them, who are also the superstars in their own worlds, it is just something minor happening to someone walking past.

It could be a short anecdote when they get home and tell their friends, but that is all.

Re-examine your failure and see what you have learned. Is it just a question of trying again somewhere else? Do you have to adjust something? Re-write? re-design?

From our failures sometimes, come our best successes.

Poem about being taken for Granted

There is a bag on the floor.
It is staring at me with its zippered eyelashes surrounding its mono eye.
Winking at the only one it knows will PICK IT UP!

Will zip it up and hang it up upon the hook which was put there JUST FOR IT!

This hook which hangs upon a DAY of arguments and shields the fragile silence which befell after the BANGING of the hook up on the wall.

This hook is the result of FIFTEEN YEARS.
Of silently following the wake of possessions like a little tug boat.
Flotsam and jetsam on the living room floor...
And bathroom floor...
And bedroom floor...
And kitchen floor...

Fifteen whole years and just one day
Of 'OK! Stop nagging! I'll do it!'
One tension-filled day, and then...
One EMPTY hook.

Copyright Survival Jones 2012. You are welcome to reproduce any or all of this poem, but please include an attribution and a link back to this page.

Examine your blog as if you were the Hotel Inspector

I love the Hotel Inspector. She goes into failing, horrible hotels and businesses which are mostly run by, (how to put this tactfully?) fruitcases. And with her searing insight and years of undaunted experience, she is able to spot exactly what needs to be changed to completely turn the whole thing around and give it all a completely new lease of life.

This typically involves getting rid of the horrible colours that the owners think are cute. Destroying unnecessary decorations, in one case, a 'museum' of other people's unwanted junk! And covering everything in sight with such an air of freshness and newness that people can not resist staying there and being happy to do so.

She resolves family issues, and staffing problems and then at the end they have a brilliant re-launch party.

Tomorrow, take a step back from your blog. Sign out and visit it as if you were a casual visitor, just surfing on by on the look out for something useful or interesting to read.

1. What are your first impressions?
2. Is it clean and crisp?
3. Are your 'best bits' on display in prominent places, where they can be easily found?
4. Do the colours or the images clash on the page or in the brain?
5. Do you have a 'museum' of unwanted junk which needs to be removed?

So you know what needs to be fixed. Done that?

Good. As Alex Polizzi would say: "That's brilliant dahling".

6 Reasons Why People Do Not Write

1. Fear:
The main reason that people do not write is fear of one sort or another.

They have various thoughts running through their brains such as : will my writing be good enough? Will people want to read it? Will people laugh at me?

It is the fear of exposing the workings of their private mind to the world at large, to friends and family and to all comers old and new.
2. Work:Reward Ratio.
When people want to write, one of the first things they do is to start to google various questions. just like when you want to change careers, you ask your faithful computer/Internet some basic and fundamental questions:

How do people write?
How do writers earn their living?
How much money do writers make?

Etc. etc.

And the results of these searches are often page after page of writers explaining just how little they actually earn. Warning others off trying to do the same and saying that not everyone can be like J.K. Rowling. This is an immediate dis-incentive. Why would anyone want to put themselves through that anyway?

3. Not Having Any Ideas:
The thing is, that most people do not have any ideas if put on the spot, and the thing also is that, most people would be able to come up with some amazing ideas if they were given half an hour and asked to come up with the most outrageous thing they can think of. Admitedly, there are some people who, after half an hour of thinking would imagine that it is outrageous to put paper in the normal bin and not the recycling bin (oh the terror!) but they would be few and far between.

4. Having an important career and other life.
Is it always a shock to find out that a respected High Court judge writes fluffy romances, or the Police Metropolitan Commisionner writes children's stories? I don't know. But it is possibly enough of a put off for these people to think to embark on a second career as a writer.

5. Having a silly name:
There are many people in all walks of life whose names now trip off the tongue because of the different things they now stand for. Donald Trump, something which obviously means a greatly different thing in the UK than in the States, is a prime example. How about Audrey Niffeneger, or Arnold Schwarzenegger? And a writer is at an advantage from the start because they can take a nom de plume.

6. Just Realising How Much Sheer Hard Work is Involved.
Many writers or would-be writers baulk at the idea of producing a certain numbers of coherently flowing words. Then, having written them, the idea of sitting down to edit them is also a huge put off!

But it is like playing the lottery. Why do people play for that one in fourteen million chance of winning? Someone has to win. Someone has to be the Rowling, the Tolkein, the Fleming, the Cartland, The Clarke... This list is endless!

The question should not be 'why Do people not write', but what on earth is stopping them?

Invictus by William Ernest Henley (1849-1903)

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
                                       Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

                                      It matters not how strait the gate,
                                      How charged with punishments the scroll.
                                      I am the master of my fate:
                                      I am the captain of my soul.


                                                           William Ernest Henley (1844-1903)

A Quick Way to Get More Visitors Without Doing Anything!

From having this blog, I have noticed one thing about the way that visitors arrive here.

Now I will let you into the little secret that I have discovered:

Having interesting photos brings visitors to your blog too. A lot of people come to my blog after having looked for an alien picture. And that alien post is my most popular post and has had thousands of page views by itself.

• Relevant

Obviously, it would greatly help if the photo or image was completely relevant to the subject of the post. There is no use having a highly popular picture of a singer or something in a post about different styles of period lamp post. The visitor would come, find nothing to interest them and leave. Also, do not forget to name the photo with a good, relevant name so that it shows up in search results. If it is just called a number or something completely different, then it will not work.

• Positioning

It helps to place it in a good place where it is high enough up in your post

• Size

Not too big and not too small

And that is the whole tip. To get more visitors, choose an interesting, relevant, popular picture and that will lead people to your website as well, after that it is up to you to grab their attention and keep them there.

Cute kittens always help too!

What To Do If Someone Has A Heart Attack

New guidelines from the British Heart Foundation have simplified the instructions for what to do if someone's heart stops beating during a heart attack

Hands Only CPR
The main thing to do is to get their heart beating again. If you are a qualified first aider and are confident, then obviously do what you have been taught and what has worked for hundreds of years. But for all the rest of us, they advise, that we hum along to 'Staying Alive' by the Bee Gees and press down on the person's heart to that rhythm.

Administering CPR to someone who has had a heart attack more than doubles their chances of survival. Better still attend one of the training courses which are being run all over the country. You might help save someone's life!

How To Get More Traffic for Your Blog Through Linkreferral

Linkreferral is a great website for generating traffic to your blog, e-commerce website, or any other website that you may have.

 It is basically a links directory where you can add the link for your own website into one of the many categories that they have after registering for their service.

After that they require you to do your share of visiting people's websites which in turn makes people visit yours.

If you go to 30 websites from their directory, from any category, and review 5 sites, choosing one of them to be your favourite, and make one comment on the forum, then you have done your maximum daily amount.

Bad Points

• It takes ages to visit 30 websites. It is not possible to just click through quickly, linkreferral only registers your visit once the whole website home page has loaded.

• It also takes ages to leave 5 reviews on other people's sites which are helpful and meaningful.

• Because the forum comments are perfunctory, the forum is full of thousands of comments, but does not have the feeling of a proper community. A bit like a dance for shop dummies. They are dancing, but they don't know why they are there or whether they are having fun or not.

• From time to time, someone visits your site who just 'doesn't get' what you do and what you are all about. This person just leaves a low score or a poor review and this can knock your ego a bit.

• Another bad point is that sometimes you come across a website which is so interesting that you find yourself so absorbed with reading it and forget to visit the other 29 and one link leads to another and...

Good Points

Linkreferral leads you to discover hundreds of other websites. These are often other blogs, or money-making websites, or anything you can imagine. You can leave comments on their sites and so build up your backlinks and they in turn visit yours.

• You do not have to do every part of the requirements, just surfing a few of the sites lets you work your way up the list of sites in your category. The secret is little and often. Since people have to visit 30 sites, if you are on the first page, then the chance are higher that you will get a visit.

• You start getting visitors almost immediately you join. 

• People come to your site and leave a review. This means that they can spot something obvious that you may have missed, and it also gets tested out by lots of different browsers and computers who can comment on how fast your images load etc.

Link Building
A directory website like this is very useful for making contacts and link building because you are able to send direct emails to the website owners.

Referral Programme
Unfortunately, the actual referral programme is not that great. They ask $50 to join and pay $0.15 cents per referral, so you need to refer at least 334 people before you even get your $50 back.

But on the whole, it is a great way to generate a steady stream of traffic to your site, who are interested to see what your site is like and can review it for you.

No Shopping Left at the End of the Week

When things start to run out towards the end of the week, especially when the kids are on holiday, it is very tempting to go and do a big mid-week shop.

But in these hard times, if you have a budget for a week, then the last thing to do is to go out and do a whole weekly shop. One thing leads to another and you end up spending next week's budget too!

If it is something vital, like milk etc, then pop down to the local shop and just buy some milk nothing else!

But if it not a basic, but a luxury, then resist the urge the go shopping! Just do without it for a couple of days. This is a good time to raid the back of the cupboard and the back of the freezer to see what is lurking there and eat that. Sometimes it is surprising what we buy and forget about which then gets pushed further and further back as new stuff gets piled on top. Now don't you fancy a chick pea and sardine sandwich with custard :)