The last week has been in the high 30s (high 90s F) and the weather forecast was for a cool change and rain on Christmas Day. Although the idea of a rainy Christmas Day sounded fantastic, somehow I didn’t really believe it would happen. Casting my mind back over the decades of Christmases I’ve had before, I struggle to remember a wet one. It is, after all, the middle of summer. At midnight on Christmas Eve, we were still sweating in...

We all want those we deal with to be honest and truthful with us ‘? in fact, we expect it. Even the most deceitful crook expects his friends and associates to be honest with him. It is this expectation of honesty that makes the use of testimonials in advertisements a very effective advertising tool – be they testimonials from celebrities or a testimonial from a complete unknown; subconsciously, we trust what they say. There is a...

Over the last 4 to 5 weeks my life has revolved around shifting all of our belongings and painting most of the rooms in the house. Yesterday was hot, and with nothing to drink but tap water I wandered down to the supermarket to get an icy cold drink. So why is it that bottles of filtered water are more than double the cost of bottles of Coke, Lemon Squash and Ginger Beer? Surely as these all contain filtered water PLUS other ingredients, such...

A month a go we decided to do a massive Spring-clean and over the past four weeks we have emptied every single room and shifted everything in the yard. We literally ‘downed tools’, unplugged the computers and got stuck into it (that’s why you haven’t seen a post from me in the last month). We have cleaned and painted two bathrooms and the laundry, painted five rooms and the stairwell and completely cleaned up the yard by...