My life

Nearly time to get back in the garden

With spring time just about to start I am getting ready for spring to start in the garden.  This will be the first year that I have really had a garden to make nice.  Last year we spent the whole time getting it ready, putting down a new lawn, getting rid of all the rubble/sand and building a few raised beds.  Now it is time to reap the rewards, we are planning to grow loads of different vegetables and fruit.

Not knowing much about gardening I have just discovered summer bulbs.  I thought bulbs were just for giving colour in the spring time with all the daffodils.  Now in the shops there are loads of different bulbs to give your garden colour in the summer.  I have been good so far and have only brought 4 packs of them, but I want to pack my garden full.  I am just waiting to plant them now, it seems to snow nearly every week at the moment so I don’t think its the right time yet.

We still have quite a big shopping list for the garden (30 metres of fencing, a shed and green house) and on a limited budget we are not going to get very far.  Hopefully we are going to get a small cheap green house from B&M.  It only costs £15 and stand just over waist height but should be good for tomatoes and chillies.

I think this year should be good, we learnt a lot from last year (you learn a lot from failure) so hopefully this year we will be able to have courgettes, peppers, pea, beans, carrots, pumpkins and even watermelons.  We will be using the book from Carol Klein from Gardeners world so hopefully everything will turn out OK.

Bankers bonuses

Everything in the banking world seems to annoy me at the moment.  With the news recently about the bonuses the banks are dishing out, I don’t know how they can get away with it.  What’s worse is the comment made by the chairman of RBS trying to justifying bonuses, apparently its ok to give bankers £1m bonuses because the majority of its employees earn less than a bus driver.  So obviously they only value a few of their employees, the rest aren’t worth anything to them.  If the government owns the majority of the bank surly that can overturn all these decisions, I always presumed that’s how shares work.

I used to have a number of different accounts with Lloyds TSB including a tax free cash ISA bank account, and a current account, but I was a victim of identity fraud which cleared my current account out completely. Rather than noticing this unusual activity my bank proceeded to charge me £35 every time a direct debit was refused.  Appalled at how they handled it I closed my accounts; the cherry on the awful cake was how rude they were about that.

When buying my house part of the money was funded by a  Nationwide Savings & Investments savings account.  The return on these was spectacular and I will defiantly be investing in some myself if or when I have children of my own.  The major benefit is that all returns on Children's Bonus Bonds are completely tax-free for both child and parent.

Clearing my grandmas house

Although Christmas was a cheerful time there was a sense of sadness over the proceedings as it was the first Christmas we have had to spend without my grandma. She died a few months before Christmas, but it was still very sad on the day. We remembered her and celebrated he life because it was a good, long and happy one and all our memories are good ones.  Clearing her house of her many possessions brought back so many.  Her house and all her things were left to her children (that’s my mum and my uncle), so they have spent a lot of time together going through her things.  Now there is just the question of what to do with the house, either they sell it, or one of them has to buy the other out.

My mum has decided she would quite like the property, because she is nearing retiring age and my grans house was a bungalow, which my granddad had built.  I think it is a great idea, as it is a low maintenance and well built. But my mum wants to keep both houses and that would mean getting into the world of mortgage lending again.  I’m not even sure if you can get a mortgage at retirement age, they should probably check out the mortgage forums to see what the best options are.

They have considered having a remortgage from nationwide their own bank, as another option. I personally think that their best bet would be to sell or rent out their current house and afford it that way.

Whatever they do I hope they don’t get sucked into the sell their property quickly for cash business that has been springing  up lately on many websites and adverts.  There are obvious reasons why someone would want to do that, for example if they are in real financial trouble, but I don’t think it’s a good idea unless absolutely necessary.

Before all that though, both houses need to be thoroughly cleared of all the excess clutter that has accumulated over the decades. It’s amazing how many old magazines and books two houses can hold, charity shops, car boot sales and EBay here we come!

Sun and snow

Snow, snow, snow, it’s unrelenting this year for sure. It keeps surprising me when I look out the window in the morning and it is freshly white... again.  Im sure it isn’t going to stop any time soon but im not really bothered.  At least with the weather getting a bit sunnier, it doesn’t last as long.  As I write the sun is blazing through the window, tempting me out, but it’s still a little cold.

Now im looking forward to full blown summer, it’s always been my favourite season, mainly because there is so much to do.  In winter many attractions and theme parks close down for the season, people are more likely to stay in; there are fewer parties (minus Christmas of course) and no weddings. 

In summer everything is bustling and alive.  There are festivals, town shows and fairs, lots of things to do in the garden (we are going to try and grow our own vegetables again this year), and sometimes it’s just great to laze about in the sun with a barbeque

As some people will know, my wife and I make a new year’s resolution to always try new things for the New Year.  This year we plan to buy the Merlin annual pass and try and go to every attraction on the list in a year. We will buy it at the start of summer so that we can enjoy the theme parks including Chessington, Legoland, Alton Towers and Thorpe Park during the summer and the other attractions; London eye, Dungeons, Warwick castle, Madame Tussauds and the sea life centres the rest of the year. 

When we lived in Milton Keynes, we did a similar thing and brought a zoo pass for Wobern safari park.  Not only could you get into Wobern for free but loads of other zoos too. It was a brilliant buy as we calculated the ticket paid for itself about 4 times over because we went so much. Sometimes we just went for an hour or two, to have a picnic, but it never got boring. 

Summer for the twentysomething as I am, also means weddings as our school friends settle down.  I have a couple of stag nights to look forward too, and the planning has started for these already.  We will be enjoying zorbing, quad biking and of course plenty of drinking.

Bring on the summer!

Friend getting repossesed

I am lucky enough to be able to leave work a little earlier than on a regular day on a Friday.  It’s only half an hour, but it feels very precious.  This week however my workplace scheduled a meeting for the end of the day and not only did I miss my half an hour but I ended up staying a whole extra hour after I would normally have been at home. This meant that I was leaving the centre on Nottingham, heading for the motorway during rush hour.  As you can imagine by the time I got to our local pub, where I meet some friends I was not only very late but also pretty annoyed. 

While I was ranting about me stupid job and my rubbish day, I realised my companions were looking a little uncomfortable and I guessed I had put my foot in it somewhere.  It transpired that one of my friends was drowning his sorrows after unexpectedly losing his job that very day. I have heard plenty on the news about companies closing and people losing their jobs but it luckily hadn’t effected me personally until that moment. 

Just over a year ago things were looking so good that he brought his own house, at that point property prices were falling, it was a buyer’s market and mortgages deals were relatively easy to obtain, now he is worried that he will not be able to keep up his repayments and could face repossession problems.  

It was not the most enjoyable night I have ever spent at the pub but the more beers we had the more inventive the ideas got as to how he could avoid repossession, simply sell his house before it happened,  starting his own business or invent something and go on the dragons den!

In the end he decided that it was time to get off the housing ladder with his head held high and ride out the economic crisis back with his parents.  According to repossession news this is a pretty common occurrence and it is likely to become an even more popular option since repossessions continue to be on the rise.  

Christmas debt

January is of course the month that contains the dreaded Blue Monday, the most depressing day of the year.  On that Monday the radio was full of how it was scientifically proven to be the most depressing day.  It sounds strange that scientists would want to prove something like that but then they always seems to be proving something strange. Well it turns out to be a load of rubbish made up by a PR company for a holiday company who paid a scientist to put his name to it.

It is understandable why people may be depressed, during Christmas there is a lot of pressure to spend a lot of money and many people use their credit card running up a lot of debt with no chance to clear it any time soon.  I can imagine debt advice companies being very popular at the moment.

With the state of the countries debt there is money advice everywhere.  I think we need it as well, we seem to live in a generation that does not know how to manage money as if we want something there is always a company that is willing to give out personal loans to anyone who asks.  In fact the companies actively look for customers, I used to get automated phone calls from a debt company who were very concerned about my debt problems and were going to give my another loan to solve them.

Living on a budget

Budgeting has become a big thing in my household.  We only have one small income coming in so living on the minimum has quickly become a skill of ours.  The biggest difference that we have made is not popping out to the shops when we find we need a couple of things.  Tescos can be a dangerous place to wander around if you are trying to save money, before you know it you can have a basket full of good deals the looked nice.

 think that the most important thing with keeping your money in check is planning your finances well.  Making sure you know how much your bills are going to come to every month.  I love my online banking for this, I pay all my bills by direct debit so by just logging on to my account I can see all my monthly outgoings in one simple list. From that I know how much I have to spend on other things like food and petrol.

The problem I have at the moment is that I am breaking even every month, giving me no extra to save for other expenses such as car insurance or paying more than the interest on the money I borrowed for the house.  I know it is an extra expense but I am considering some form of protection for my finances just in case the unforeseen happens.  I have looked at cover for critical illness and cover for mortgage life insurance but I haven’t decided yet.  I think it is important to make sure that you get the right cover, not just the right price, which is why I look at the latest reviews for things like home insurance.

When I do actually have to go shopping or I am looking for a new financial product I always look at the website Money Supermarket.  I get the email update and it is always packed full of good ideas and the latest offers.

Early spring cleaning

The snow has finally gone, it was a real surprise looking out of the window to see green on Saturday.  It feeling like ages since there has been any colour in the outside world.  We opened the curtains and were amazed it is like spring has arrived, out bulbs are already emerging and it is actually a nice temperature to be outside.

We have decided to do some spring cleaning early this year to get it done and out of the way.  We already have 3 big boxes of stuff to go to the charity shop, a big pile for Ebay and three big bin liners of rubbish.  There is something very nice about getting rid of all the junk to give us some space.  In our house we are both hoarders of things, we have never thrown much away so over the years we have accumulated an unbelievable about of junk.

We have found loads of  things we never knew we had, a case of unlabelled CD that were full of all our music all ordered in folders, something that we haven’t had since my old computer died.

Next weekend as long as the weather stays ok we are going to tackle the garden and get it all neat and tidy for when we start growing out veg.  Growing veg is our new thing for the year (we had a go last year, but I am ignoring that because of the major failure it was).  We still have leaves from last year in the beds and now everything has died down its our chance to clean behind the fence in our garden where people throw junk.

With all the fresh veg and living on a budget very heading towards the Good Life.

Hopefully snowed in

It’s that time of year again where it snows and causes havoc. I personally love snow and always have, but what I don’t enjoy is the slushy, icy aftermath of a lot of snow and the inevitable horror stories of people stranded and cold. 

I don’t know how many times people need to be told but there are always reports about people falling through thin ice.  A local school had to get all the emergency services out to two boys who had made it to an island in the centre of a nearby lake and couldn’t get back, this obviously put everyone who came to help in danger. 

I work in a school and there is always the possibility that the school will be closed to pupils.  This is usually followed by various complaints about ‘a little snow brings everything to a holt’ and how it has disrupted their parents work.  I understand that it must be hard to change plans etc, but the only reason that schools close is due to them being sued by parents for things like children breaking bones on ice in the playground. The schools really are just watching their backs, quite rightly.

The good things about the snow is it makes you feel like a kid again.  There is something about it that makes you want to have snow ball fights and go sledging.  The night before I was supposed to go back to work it snowed and we had at least 10cm of snow on the floor.  I should have gone to bed ready for the next day, instead we took a tray from the kitchen down to the local field and went sledging.

Unfortunately now the snow seems to be melting so the chances of having another day off work are decreasing.  I just hope it snows heavily over night.

Never ending property sale

In what feels like the longest house sale every my Brother in law still hasn’t brought his house.  He was told that he would be moved in by Christmas but we are part way though January and he is still not any where near moving in.  The last time we had an update on what was happening the solicitors had not even bothered to look at the papers involved and no money had been exchanged so in the mean time he is still paying rent.  I don’t know how solicitors get away with it; they get paid a fortune but never seem to get anything right.  When I brought my house they delayed us by a fortnight because it was a repossession and they messed up some important papers.

It seems now that there is even more delay as there is now a new for sale sign up in the garden with a new company so it could be that the owners have got fed up with waiting and put it back on the market.

I was surprised to read that in 2009 property prices actually went up 6% over the whole year.  After what seemed a terrible time for the economy one area is recovering.  What will happen to property prices in 2010 is anyone’s guess none of the experts seem to agree.  Some seem to think that we are going to see the improvement continue whiles others say we could see a decrease in house prices by 10%.

Skidding on ice

Last Christmas was good for my wife because of all the snow days that she had off school.  The roads were absolutely covered with ice and snow and driving anywhere was just too dangerous.  It was made even worse because the councils were short on the salt and grit to clear the roads.  You would have thought that this year they would be prepared for the snow, but as the AA reports they still rely on last minute deliveries instead of having a stock pile ready.

Last night the weather was quite bad and snow had covered every road.  Even the main road near my parents had been covered.  I had been to my parents to as my uncle had been to visit and it was the only change to see him over the holidays.  I set off home at half 11 and everything was ice, it was like driving on an ice skating rink.  I was very careful but obviously not careful enough as I managed to hit a car.  It was parked and I had skidded for about 20 meters before hitting it.  I just completely lost all control.  My brakes were on fully and I tried to turn but nothing happened I just went into a straight line.  I got off lightly as there was no damage to either car but I did tell the owners about what had happened.

At the time I wasn’t worried, but now thinking about it, will anything happen about it?  I know there was no damage, I only tapped the other car, but not everyone is honest.    I could end up having to pay my excess if they claim for anything which I will not be happy about.

It is sad that we live in a time where people are ready to claim for anything and if you are honest to admit to a slight knock you end up worried about people claiming against your car insurance.  A quick search on the internet and you can find companies that let you calculate how much you can claim for personal injury, without any assessment of injury.  Lawyers for personal injury claims are everywhere, its big business with many in the legal profession spe******ing in it.

At least there was no one in the car to claim for injury, my main worry is even though I have protected my no claims bonus, I know making a claim will cause the quote for my car insurance to go up next year.  It is likely that my quote will go up anyway with the news that because of injury claims insurers are losing money.

Christmas presents

It has been quite some time since I have posted anything for my blogs.  This is mainly due to the pressures of my job.  I thought being a technician would be easy, I didn’t realise that I would mean running around after teachers who are completely unorganised.  Well now my holidays are over I have time to relax again.

I say finished because we have made a few of the bits and pieces ourselves this year.  Big jars filled with sweets, chutneys and cakes.  It is a good way to save a bit of money (especially the sweets: all you need is a big jar, any clean food jar will be fine, then a bag of sweets, fill up with sweets, then cover the lid with a scrap of cloth and a label, so simple and check out the saving, you could spend up to £15. 

Buying Christmas presents for the kids is always a favourite, mainly because it gives you a perfect excuse to play in a toy shop for the afternoon.  This year we went to toys r us for all of the kids gifts, we could have brought toys online, but where’s the fun in that. 

When it comes to gifts for women, we visit the same store every year, Boots has a brilliant range of presents, so much choice and its not all makeup and bath stuff, every year they have a new range of national trust, foodie and home gifts too.  Its still buy 2 get one free as well which is perfect if you have a lot of gifts to buy.  When it comes to my wife, sister or mum I try to be a little more thoughtful and luckily there are websites that do that for me. 

I’m sure I’m not the only one who finds it hard to buy gifts for the men in my family.  I know I would be happy with most gadgets and electronic type gifts, but they can be very expensive. The same goes for experience days, there are many of the experience day activities I would love to do, but they don’t come cheep.  Since I seem to spend the majority of my life at work, I do quite like the distraction of some of the USB gadget gifts you can buy; I got brought a mini greenhouse and people are always commenting (beats chat about the weather). This year I have been buying the boys presents from Amazon, it’s pretty much a one stop shop for just about anything.

Chirstmas time

Christmas time, one of my favourite times of year.  It seems such a special time of years because everyone makes more effort.  Everyone decorates their houses, the shops have special displays and all the cities have their Christmas markets.  This year I have been to two Christmas markets, Lincoln and Birmingham.  I would say that Lincoln Christmas market was definitely the best.  Birmingham market could have been very good but it was not organised very well.  It is massive, running up the main street but unfortunately there was no guide for where people should go.  The streets were packed with people pushing and trying to squeeze through until it was grid locked and no one moved.  It took us over an hour to get from one side of the market to the other, and we didn’t get to see much of the stalls. Lincoln market on the other hand was more controlled.  Like normal they had the one way system in place to guide people through, it was packed but still ran smoothly.  Hey both had the mulled wine and Bratwurst on sale so I would go to both again.

Apart from the Christmas markets there is the songs that reappear every year, Fairy Talk of New York, Sleeps till Santa (from Trent FM) and Mince pies coming out of my ears song (I think this was made up by my primary school teacher but I still sing as much as I can remember every year.

Talking about Mince pies, they are fantastic.  So far I have had at least 1 a day, my boss has brought one in for me everyday so far.  I am going to make my own (well if you can call store brought pastry and mince meat making my own) when ever I get around to it.

Now I live in a little village it has become even more sweet.  We have had Santa coming around tonight to visit all the children.  It was the perfect day for it because it is the first day of real snow.

Altogether Christmas is a lovely time of year made for families and will always be my favourite time of the year.

Real life Big Brother

We may have incredibly high unemployment, our MPs are constantly ripping us off, and our banks are completely useless but at least there has been one piece of good news.  Next year will be the last Big Brother on channel 4.  That means only one more year of the talentless competition to make the next group of below Z list celebrities.

I think Big Brothers days were numbered anyway, why do we want to see a load of people living under constant surveillance when that is what everyday life is anyway.  I live in the 7^th most watched city, Nottingham, with over 3000 cameras in the city.

I see the cameras everywhere but CCTV doesnt bother me but if you delve a little bit deeper into surveillance of society then it gets a little bit more intrusive.  Manchester Airport has introduced a  naked scanner that allows them to see under you clothes.  This is supposed to be instead of the old patting down they used to do to people and I can see the point.  I would rather go though that than have someone pat me down, but some people are outraged.

GPS tracking systems for vehicles have always tempted me but it always seems a bit strange that you are always being monitored.  It is good because it will let you know where you are and tell you where to go, but I always thought it could be used the other way around, to track you.  It is a good idea for commercial companies to monitor their fleet, but could it be used to track individuals to see if they are speeding?

Worst of all I think is tracking called RFID something that is completely new to me.  It is a form of tracking that uses microchips to track packages.  Companies are now wanting to put them into products to allow them to see where they end up and who has brought them.  I think this is against common decency, I don’t not want a company to know if I have brought their produce.  All they will use it for is to bombard you with targeting junk mail.

Internet connections

Today I spent most of the day with my Brother in law.  We had never really spent much time alone with his without the supervision of my wife so I was slightly worried about what was going to happen.  I didn’t have to be worried though, we soon got on to the topic of technology.  He is living in a flat with out a phone line.  He is currently relying on a USB dongle internet connection with the 3 network so he spent a lot of time complaining about it.  Apparently the download speed can be as slow as 6kbps and it drops the connection all the time.

His main usage is to talk to friends in Japan, he lived there for a while with his wife and is still learning the language from his friends with a weekly lesson.  As he doesn’t have a LAN line he doesn’t have any fixed telephones in his apartment.  Using his mobile it would cost a fortune which is why he relies on the VOIP phone system to talk to them.  With the unreliable connection the voice quality he gets can be very low and often he has to reschedule to try another time.

I think it is amazing the way the Internet has advanced; why I was young no one I knew had DSL Internet now it is standard for most people.  What will be the next step up from DSL.  Apparently one of my brother in laws friend currently has a business Internet connection to his house, but with the current low availability of business sdsl connections it will be a few more years until connection like that become available wide spread.  I don’t doubt that it will happen though, with the ever increasing demand put on the Internet and the need for people to share experiences over the net ever increasing soon we will need a faster up load connection.

What will the future internet look like.  We from searching on the internet there are predictions  of virtual reality where we can set up ultra realistic environments to share with friends from all over the world.  I for one can not wait to see what is going to happen next.

Making a raised bed

I finally got around to starting to build my raised beds.    I had read up about raised beds and how treated wood can be bad for the plants but in the end I don’t care about organically grown veg in the super market so I am not bothered at home either.  So I decided to buy treated wood from B&Q.  I headed off with the measurements I wanted to go price it up.  In the end for what I wanted it would of cost over £150, which was too much.  I needed a new plan.

After a bit of searching I found a timber yard close buy which would give me all the timber I needed for only £80 which was mush better and it even included delivery.  So I had my wood sitting in the back garden waiting to be cut and put together.  My original plan was to hammer in my posts (I used arris board from B&Q cut to 40cm lengths and sharpened one end to a point) and then attach the boards to the posts.  It didn’t take to long to discover that it wasn’t going to work.  I couldn’t get the posts in perfectly vertical and in the exact place I wanted them.  So my wife came to the rescue with her plan to butt the planks up against each other in the correct place and screw them together.  After that attach the posts to each plank so everything is in the correct position.

I have made one this way so far and it looks really good.  They are 25cm high (2 X 12.5cm planks) and 1.5 meters long, 1 meters wide.  Now all I have to do is find a place to get some top soil from, it can be very expensive to buy it from gardening centres.

Less people with car insurance

I was hoping for some good news for the economy, some little green shoots to recovery to be seen but instead of the expected recovery we find that the recession has deepened to record levels instead.

I was hoping for something a bit more positive, something to us think that possibly there will be a lot more jobs being made for people soon instead we find that unemployment has increased again.  With things continuing to worsen we are to be hit again financially, but this time by our cars.  I have just renewed my road tax for my car and I was shocked when I got the letter.  I remembered last year being about £120 so expected something a little higher, maybe £125 to 130, but it was £150!!

Not only that but there are reports that car insurance premiums are expected to rise by 14% this year.  My car insurance premium is around £350 which I don’t think that is too bad but that is with shopping around a lot and I have 5 years no claims bonus.  Car insurance news is bad for the number of people driving on the road with no insurance, earlier on the year I talked about how there were more people on the road that were uninsured, it is only going to increase.

Why is our insurance increasing, I think it is probably due to the increase in the amount of insurance fraud going on.  With people getting more desperate for money there have people willing to crash peoples car for them for a one off payment so that they can make fake injury claims.  The problem with injury claims are that it is very easy to claim for whiplash when nothing is actually wrong as it is very difficult to medically prove.  I do not agree with it but I do know some people who have been in legitimate crashes but tried to get compensations for whiplash when nothing was wrong, but to pay someone to crash your car is a little bit extreme.

Brother in law looking for a house

The house quest is still on for my Brother in law and he has turned is attentions to the area where I live.  He has found a house that is just around the corner from where I live.  They have looked in lots of different places, most of them very dodgy.  At the moment they are about an hour away if we go visit after work, if they get the house they will be a 2 minute walk.

It will be nice to have them living so close, at the moment seeing them requires a lot of planning to fit around everyone’s work commitments.  The house they have been to seen looks hopeful as well, it needs a bit of doing up as it is very old fashioned, but it is no where as bad as the house I have just done up.  Every this is in good condition it is just as the advert for it put it’s “in need of modernisation”.  Also is has the advantage of a big back garden, perfect for the vegetable patch they want to start.

The problem they have come across so far is the lack of good quality housing meaning that anything they do like is very competitive to buy.   I thought that there would be a lot of house for sale at the moment with the reports of all the repossession happening.  I know a lot of people avoid repossession by going with those companies that advertise to sell my property to avoid repossession.  But once they have brought it from you they must have to sell it again, so surely they will have a lot of houses to start selling.

With the latest mortgage news I just hope they have their mortgage sorted out before the Financial Services Authority gets it new reforms out which could make it more difficult to get a mortgage.  You have to wonder will any reforms work, the banks seem determined to mess everything up and go against every bit of advice given to them, I was shocked to read the royal bank of scotland is giving out ridiculous bonuses to its bankers.  They seemed to have forgotten that they messed up and the tax payer had to bail them out, what are they getting the bonuses for? Being incompetent?

Broadband, phone lines and television

Its time for me to see if I can save a bit of money on my monthly payments.  My sky subscription is coming to an end so I can see if the comparison sites can find me a better deal.  There are so many companies offering phone and broadband that it would take hours to search through them all individually so the comparison sites are a blessing.

I have been caught out once by changing companies’ part way though the contract and BT charged my £145 for doing it.  I will not really consider BT as an option; their packages seem ridiculously expensive for not a lot.  Plus I found their customer services very rude when I rang up to see why they had charged me so much.  Though the home phone system from BT does look good with the home hub.  I think it looks very sleek and is supposed to have a very good signal range, I think it would be a good telephone system.

In this day and age you have to have a pretty good telecoms package with phone and broadband as the bare minimum.  I currently am on the 8mbps package from sky but the actual speed is around 2mbps.  I know that there are packages for up to 50mbps from virgin media if there is fibre optic cables installed in the area, but I know we don’t have that and it is very very expensive.  The most demanding thing I ask my internet connection to do it upgrade my Xbox 360 every so often, I don’t play games over the Internet as I don’t want to pay for a subscription to let me do it.  My 2mbps is fine for what I use it for, it’s not like I am a big business that needs something really fast like SDSL Internet to cope with the demands.

The one thing I would say after looking at all the options is it needs to be made simpler.  With each company offering a multitude of different packages with nothing really made clear about what you are getting.  I think thing seems to be set up to trick people into buying more expensive things or something that they don’t actually want.

Hedgehog house

I want to encourage wildlife in my garden and I have wanted a hedgehog house for some time to go under my elder tree.  I have had a look in pet shops like pets at home for a house but they cost around £40 and everyone I have seen has been damaged from sitting on the shelf.

With that in mind we decided that we would make one, because how hard can it be.  With a quick visit to B&Q we had a large sheet of plywood suitable for outside use than all we had to do was make it.  The Internet was very useful for plans there are loads of designs to make, including some that are designed to go underground.  In the end we went for an above ground one as hopefully it would last longer not being constantly damp.

We drew the design on the board before cutting it up.  The top of the front and back were sloped so water would run off the roof.  We made it 33/27cm high, which is a bit to big, I think around 20cm would of been fine.  One thing that everyone suggests is to put a partition in between the door and the sleeping compartment to stop predators getting to them.  With a 10x10cm door it works really well, our very inquisitive cat has tested it out for us, he could only get into the entrance.

To finish it off we stapled shed roofing to the roof and varnished the whole of the outside with exterior varnish to make it water proof.  It has been drying in our kitchen over night so it ready to go outside now all we have to do is staple lots of layers of newspaper to the inside for insulation then fill it full of hay to make it nice and cosy.  Then hopefully soon we will get some hedgehogs moving in.