Maybe.........you're gonna be the one that saves me!

We met, in a crowded pub in Bath almost twenty one years ago. I was carving out my first career in catering and running a busy pub, I had a sparky young team who always wanted to get the pub closed as quickly as possible to get to the clubs . They were heady days when my team of young cooks, bar staff and waiters would often work a twelve hours non-stop shift and be ready to hit the clubs for a night out when we finished work at midnight! Our average age was 23 and I never knew that one of those friends would introduce me to the love of my life.

I seem to have lost ten years of my life somewhere or maybe I've chosen to forget a lot of it but meeting Dearly Beloved truly brought me back to life.





I attribute all of my happiness, my resilience, my positivity to him. I am what I am because he has encouraged me to be all I can be. This is my forty fifth year on this planet and I've never been happier, more loved and desired and more able to face every challenge that comes my way. It's May tomorrow and we got together in May in 1996 (Remember Euro '96? We do, it's etched in our psyche) which makes this a whole month to celebrate just being us. Enjoy what must be the SOUND of '96

The day before payday!

We all know how this feels. The lodger's money went in. I bought car and house insurance and the lodger's money went out. Balance? £10.11! However I have saved myself £443.48 simply by judiciously checking every price comparison website. We've shopped around in the past but never as ruthlessly as I have this time. The renewal quote on the home insurance was £410.33 and the cover I bought, giving me exactly the same cover as I previously received was £143.85. My car insurance renewal quote was £344.64 and again the cover I bought, giving me exactly the same level of protection is £167. I have bought both policies through my Quidco account and have earned a further £78 in cash back. So in fact my total saving is £521.48. I might only have a tenner left to my name at the end of the month but I am feeling flush with my money saving abilities!

I also came home to the evening sun illuminating the beech tree at the end of my garden, which in turn made me feel positively loaded. The rain has made everything look emerald and luscious .

Everything has burst into life; especially the potatoes. They are incredibly easy to grow. All in all, even though I have £10.11 left to my name until I get paid; I actually feel extremely rich. I am always well stocked and there's plenty of food in the freezer and the cupboards. I've been careful with money by finding good insurance deals, I've been careful all month so we're not short of anything and my garden and my surroundings make me feel so lucky to be here.

In one hand and out the other!

Off to the bank tomorrow; the rent has been paid! Whenever I hear someone say 'money's not important'; I usually remind them that it's pretty difficult without it. I need to bank this pronto as I have a mass of bills to pay, the car insurance and the home insurance! Oh and another bogglin' thing............the upstairs loo broke today and it's been running water all day! So back to the DIY store for a new flush device! Thank the Lord for Dearly Beloved as I certainly can't afford a plumber! I'm now off to search QUIDCO to get the best deals with the best cash back!

The sum of all our days!

I hope to live until I am 90 and if I do I will have lived for 32,850 days! I have been alive for approximately 16, 180 days and I have 245 days until I will have lived half my life. After that; I will have less time left than I've already had. I have looked back over my blog and taken a look at the sum of my days. I have catalogued almost every day this year and strangely enough, even though I have set myself rigorous guidelines to live by; it has been the best year of my life.

Throughout my school holiday last year; I cleaned holiday caravans and people left soap, shower gel, unopened toothpaste and cleaning products and I recently finished the last of the shower gel. At the end of the summer, I took the money I had made and bought myself some new work clothes and they were the last new clothes I bought. At Christmas we made the bold decision to only buy presents for our own kids and mothers; no one minded. Throughout the Autumn term I started extra tutoring and was paid at the end of March and paid off half of one credit card balance. In the Easter holiday, we made some money from ebay and bought bits and pieces for our garden (including a water butt) and I have a patio full of sprouting and emerging veggies.

As I look back over my blog; I can't notice anything I went without and when I count up the sum of my days I can look truly positively at the days I've had, which in turn gives incredible optimism for the days ahead. It can be claustrophobic but it has also given me time to think, reflect, read, just sit, drink coffee on my garden step and have a sleep in my sun warmed shed on a cold spring afternoon. It's a long journey and I have to have days like this when I sit and reflect on how far I've come and just look at the view and enjoy that mountain moment when I can see the 'promised land'.

To pee or not to pee?

I hate South West Water! There...I've go that off my chest. I have no option but to buy water off them and they force the price up by us having to pay for the crud of tourists, (no offence to anyone who holidays in the South West but we pay for you to have clean beaches) so big businesses make money and the tourists cost the ordinary folk!!! (I think they should bag it and take it home with them!!!!)

I can do what I can to save money but there is nothing I can do to save water. I think I'll get Dearly Beloved to rig up some Heath Robinson type affair to collect water as we're using too much. We had our water meter fitted on the 17/02/2010 and had the meter read on the 19/04/2010 and have used 27 cubic metres of water! At £1.69 per cubic metre to buy it and £2.76 per cubic meter to dispose of it! So my bill for two months is £126.96!!!! It comes to something when you have to cut back washing to save money! I am though saving money as my bill for un-metered water was £1224.13 last year! and a direct debit of £122.40 for ten months of payments!

Well that's it then! I'll be nipping into the sports centre for a two or three showers a week, piddling in my compost heap and 'airing' clothes instead of always washing them! It comes to something when an ordinary person has to cut back on groceries and lighting to pay to have a poo! GGGGGGGGGRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!! It's time to get a few of these and save my own rain water!

Non paying lodger is about as good as no lodger at all!

I've just signed up with a couple of rent a room websites. There are people looking for somewhere short term to rent in my area and I may get some one who wants my spare room. I discovered the tax loophole, which allows the income from renting a room to be untaxed!!

I've got a lodger at the moment but his rent has built up and I've not been paid. I've been direct....texted, emailed and asked and I know he's short of money but aren't we all? So if he doesn't pay me this pay day then I'm going to ask him to leave as I'm sure I can rent the room out. He is the ideal lodger as he complains when the heating is ON! and all he wants from us is the wireless broadband! So in many ways he's perfect and he'll let the dogs out but he's no use if he doesn't pay his rent. (He only stays for 3 nights in the week and pays - or doesn't! £10 a night and now owes £300!) Bless him, he even had the nerve to go on holiday in the school break when he owed me money! Anyway, I'm either going to be better off or better educated by pay day!!! In future, I want the rent in advance!!!

Here's the quote from the HM website! so it's official! "Under the Government's Rent a Room scheme, you can rent out one or several rooms in your home, to one or more tenants. The rooms must be furnished, but you cannot modify your home to make the rented area self-contained with its own front door.

Rent a Room allows you to receive up to £4,250 a year tax-free. If you get more than that, you must nominate to pay tax on either the overall profit after utility bills and wearand-tear costs are taken into account, or on the rental income above £4,250."

Beautiful day!

Cornwall has lots of 'feast days'. Each town has one. There are games, sometimes a carnival, an evening concert and in the midst of it all there is a 'tea'. A huge spread. Massive aluminium teapots, plates piled high with sandwiches, cakes and pasties. The children all sit at tables whilst the adults mill around. There's a fancy dress parade, prizes and usually a disco in the evening. They have them in the villages surrounding Liskeard, which instead has a grander affair of a 'carnival week'. Today is our own feast day. My daughter and her boyfriend are here for the weekend and they have amused themselves with books and films, they've been for a wander and it's been lovely having visitors in the house.
I've cooked for them and fussed over them all weekend. Still stuck to the usual budgets. Today I cooked pork steaks, with roast potatoes, stuffing and veggies with gravy and followed with tarte tatin and custard. They are now lolling in the summer house, unable to move after eating so much! Even though the rain is set to return, it's been a glorious weekend.

hard cheese

I'm going to need to steel my resolve, to find my Blitz spirit and polish up my cliches to get through this month. It's truly wonderful that Dearly Beloved is 100% eye candy as he's going to be all I'll see this coming month! I have had to work out a very tough budget for May and we will have to grit our teeth to get through it!

Every month we sit down (well, we do now that we've come to our senses..........if only we'de done this yaars ago!) and write out our budget for the month. We leave nothing to chance and make sure we're putting money aside for car tax, water rates (now that we're metered), clothes, birthdays and Christmas, car tyres, and eventualities. We then know what we have to spend on food. This month we have a big food budget of £64.82; we don't need that much and will be able to direct more money towards debt payments. It's going to be a very very tough month though as we have to renew the house/contents insurance and the car insurance. We hoped we would have a few days camping in August, but it is not looking likely. We should see a reduction in our utilities now that we have cheaper tariffs and we're being very stingy with gas and electricity.
Here on my spreadsheet I can see every penny coming in and out, what we have to put by for bills we don't pay monthly and what we have left to go shopping with. There is nothing for going out and there are two bank holiday weekend, so I hope the weather will be kind to us and allow us time on the moors with a picnic.

Let's celebrate!

Happy St.George's Day. When I stop to think of my identity; I remember. I am no less Cornish because I am English, I am no less English because I'm British, I'm no less British because I'm European and I am no less European because I am a Global Citizen. As the sun beats down on this colourful and diverse little island of ours, I would love you to pour your cuppa, to grab yourself a garibaldi.......have a good dunk and then raise your Royal Doulton to this fair land of ours and to St. George. Here are all the things I am going to celebrate today.
School dinners and the brilliant staff who cook them to make sure English children eat a healthy well balanced and delicious lunch every day. I applaud you!
To strawberries and the first signs of summer when they arrive and the delirium around making jam to be able to spoon out red sunshine no matter what time of year it is. to strawberries covered in a dusting of sugar and a heart attack inducing dollop of clotted cream. To the strawberry I say; you make my summer complete!
To cream teas, the Women's Institute and the National Trust. Long may you reign, feed us and allow us to wander dreamily around country piles. To all of you I say......thank you.

To British weather! I love the way you give us so much of it! To the snow that trapped us in our homes for the first time in almost thirty years, I say.........don't wait so long to come back; you were fun and made the place so pretty! To our rain! You fill our lakes and river and make this island lush and green and give us cause to run around with brollies! You give us our 'mustn't grumble' attitude and we live with such changing climatic conditions that we cope with grey so admirably and rush out to have fun in the sunshine whenever we get any! To our weather I would not know what to say........as we never know what we're going to get!
To castles......of any sort.....be you humble or palatial. Much that you symbolise is protective and I feel loved and protected by this country. The land that educated me (for free) who takes care of my health (for free) and shaped me.........I again say thank you.
To rugby. This is what makes British men stand out! Nothing wimpy or new man about this lot! To all of you and your odd shaped balls; I would like to thank you for the heart stopping moments where I have stood pitch side watching Bath play Wasps, have been transfixed and truly unable to breath until a mass of thundering man and ball landed on that touch line. To you all I say...........cheers!
To Marks and Sparks! You literally support me!!! You lift me up and make me a better woman! You stop my arse from sliding down my thighs and hold my tummy in so much better than I can do it myself! You have provided us all with a sturdy gusset for many a year and kept many an ample British bosom from sliding south. We honestly couldn't do without you!

To HP sauce and the full English. Bacon, egg, black pudding, fried bread and sizzling bangers! A pot of tea and a transport cafe on the side of the A38! You have soothed many a hangover and sent so many of us to work so well fed that we don't need to eat again until dinner time! Get on!
English Villages! I grew up in a small community and I want to say thanks to the stalwarts who keep our communities alive! The local pubs, play groups, brownies, boy scouts, PTA, rotary clubs, Churches, village fete committees. I am in awe of you people! You stand up and say "I'll do that" and help where ever you can. I salute you all.

Bucket and spade holidays! Those endless days of summer that made our childhoods so perfect. Warm orange squash, sandwiches, pasties. Mum slathering you in sun cream, queuing for ice creams and the traffic jams on the way home. This might be a small island but it's home to millions of us and millions more would come and join us if they could just get a visa!!! I'll raise my cup of tea to St. George, to England and the wonderful people who make this place home for me. Bless you all xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Watch the pennies....

........and the pounds will watch themselves. I was just thinking of Ilona's blog and how the little things add up to costs and you have to watch every penny. I even take food out of the freezer in the morning to save the cost of the microwave.

I'm getting tired of faggots, but I'm soldiering on as I have a freezer full, but tonight I choppped up the meat in its gravy and topped it with some mashed potato (also from a tub out of the freezer, when I cooked extra in the past). I never use my full sized oven unless I am batch cooking and I can fill it up. I often look up the cost of running an appliance and check how much it's costing me. It can take one unit of electricity to cook your dinner and it will cost you considerably less to run one of these.

I also looked at the remnants of March's salary and have just under £150 to last the month, so I've paid some extra off my credit cards £27.32 to Santander and £35.48 to Halifax. I got the PAD idea from "One life, three kids and counting" who has a fantastic blog, keeping on top of the bills and making sure she clears her debts, by taking any extra money she earns or makes and pays a debt. So today was a PAD day for me!

It's been another long and tiring day with extra private tuition at the end of the day earning me some more money and helping another student get his grades. A good day in all.

Happiness is.....

A lap full of fluffy bichons! It's been a really tiring week and I'm so glad we have meals in the freezer. Repeat this evening of last night's meal with the second half of the steak and kidney pie, just with some carrots and peas. I worked all day, ran a revision class and then went off to do some private tutoring.

There is nothing more relaxing than just to sit with Dearly Beloved and the dogs. They don't often move off our laps if we sit still and they are deliciously warm and cuddly.

Pure joy!

I've truly found paradise. I opened my back door and there it was. I came home this evening to waggy tails and a garden full of evening sunshine. The fruit bushes are getting bushier. The courgettes and butternut squash have shown signs of life. The window sills are ranged with tomato seedlings looking lively and healthy.
The pot of herbs is beautifully green and capable of being cut and used whenever we want. I'll make stuffing at some time with fresh sage and onions from my garden. I loved just sitting on the patio steps with a mug of tea and a dog at either side and surveying all I could see and thinking, I planted that, I grew that and I felt so amazingly peaceful, even after a busy day at work.
Best of all are the £1 Poundland windmills that wizz in the spring breeze and glint in the last of the evening sunshine. They make me smile and feel true pure joy at such a silly sight!

Keeping myself off the streets!

Busy writing reports tonight...........in that secret code that none of you understand. Here's an example "Laura must learn to voice her disagreements courteously" which means if your daughter says 'what ever' to me one more time; she'll be in detention until the day she leaves. Or, "Laura has made some progress this year, especially in creative writing" which means that your daughter is excellent at texting and I've had to confiscate her phone on a daily basis. So I'm off to spend the night writing about my students, but it keeps me off the streets!

Washing clothes by hand.

For years on end we went on camping holidays in Carnac in Southern Brittany, where washing clothes by hand is still popular. How do I know this? Because every supermarket has plenty of soap for handwashing clothes, usually beautifully scented and in every variety. There really is no need to use a washing machine for all of your laundry and delicate underwear always needs to be hand washed. I use very little laundry soap or water when I hand wash and after I have rinsed them I just use my washing machine to spin them. Take a look at your own washing machine....I'm sure it will have a spin cycle. There is always a percentage of my washing that is hand washed, saving me lots of money and giving my arms a good work out!


My washing is always hung outside as I have no dryer and they come indoors onto a 'clothes horse' if I have days of rain and really need clean clothes.
But I do have the most incredible ironing machine! He's called Dearly Beloved who loves to do nothing more than watch the Grand Prix or a film and iron; he always puts the clothes away too!

Keeping up appearances?

Today was the day to shed the winter layers and actually put a frock on! I went to Plymouth again today to see my daughter, to catch up for a chat and a cuppa and it was, as ever, a delight to see her.

Dearly beloved and I had paid for the car park ticket so we took the opportunity to browse around the shops as I needed some lighter clothes for work. I can get away with a reasonably smart dress on a average day when I don't meet any parents as our classroom have huge southfacing windows and even with the blinds closed; can be incredibly hot and will often be in the mid thirties as the days get even warmer.

I perused the shops and looked at the monochrome prints that are dressed up with vivid greens and pinks and looked at how I could do that on my budget. The dress above is from Monsoon and £45, which is way out of my league but I like the style and looked for something in that shape. I found a couple of high waisted dresses in the hospice shop and I have some chunky pink and some chunky green necklaces, I also have dark dress shoes and tights to wear with them if it's cooler..............oh and the price £2.99 each! So there's the summer work wardrobe all sorted! I also remembered to get the bean poles in so they will have something to climb!
Oh...........I think it's important to keep up appearances! Who knows what the beans might think of me if I wore any old dress!

Frugal Tarte tatin

Take one kilo of apples that were 40p (half price!) Cut in half and remove cores and then peel.
Take 75g of butter 7p (I didn't have any, just generic utterly butterly! ) and the cheap sugar. 12p. At this stage preheat the oven to 190 degrees.
Then make pastry - you should really use puff pastry, but I can't be bothered so I made the usual shortcrust, as I would for any apple pie. 120g/60z of plain flour and 60g/3oz- of butterish stuff. Make pastry in the usual way. Roll out and cool, on a plate in the fridge, it stops it shrinking when you bake it. Cost around 8p.
Add the butter and sugar to a pan and allow to melt. Add the apples, round side down into the pan. Cook for ages, until the sauce caramelises. It's like having apples in a toffee sauce. Carefully cook without burning and then place them in a pie tin, or casserole dish or anything you have.....I used a cake tin. Make sure the remaining sauce is poured over the apples. Place the pastry on top ensuring there are no gaps. Bake for around 30 minutes.
Here is the end result. The cost is approximately 70p and would serve 4, even better if I had some cream, but we'll have ours later with some custard (7p instant packet from Morrisons and makes enough for 4 and has a delicious vanillary taste, almost like confectioners creme pattiserie). I checked out the prices at Waitrose or Marks and Spencers and these sell for around £5 each!!!! It had the most delcious buttery, yet apply toffeeness about it and the crispiness of the pastry was just wonderful. I've never made one before and the only place I've ever eaten one is in Brittany. Lunch today was the most frugal and simple pasta with pesto and some green salad with homemade vinaigrette.

Mr Bean, Lemon chicken and pickles.

I had to go to Plymouth today to take the dogs to the groomers for their annual clip. I stopped off at Mutley Plain, which has seven charity shops. I didn't find anything, but I had a good nose. Some of them now sell furniture too and I saw a lovely coffee table for £12 but was already sold. Whilst walking along, I couldn't resist taking a photo of Goodbody's which is a jazz bar. I love the minis on the roof and always think that if Mr Bean saw it and would think that's where he's supposed to park his mini......well the decor cheers me every time I see it.
Supper was again courtesy of Lidl. Every week something is reduced. Sometimes 'selected fruit and veg' are half price. When I last shopped 'selected fresh meat' was half price. So four chicken breasts were £1.98 instead of £3.99. I always split the pack as we only need one chicken breast each per meal. The English purple sprouting broccoli was 79p per pack, the rice was three packs for £1. I also bought 6 unwaxed lemons for 49p.
Dinner was lemon chicken which is the easiest thing to make.
1. Cut up the chicken breasts into strips. Grate the zest of a lemon.
2. Heat some butter (I use generic utterly butterly - 50p for 500g) and fry the chicken in the butter, when almost cooked add the lemon zest.
3.When cooked through, squeeze the lemon and combine with the chicken and butteryness!
4.Serve with cooked tomatoes, veggies of choice on a big spoonful of rice!
Price per person rice 16p, chicken 50p, lemon 4p, broccoli 40p, tomatoes 10p - total £1.20............although that's more than usual; I didn't get any lunch today...so I can afford the 20p!
I met Dearly Beloved in his lunch break as I was mooching around Plymouth, killing time before collecting the dogs. I went to Poundland. I bought two black currant bushes and some preserving jars (I usually just use old jam jars over and over and over!) but these two preserving jars were just one pound. The plan is to use the jars for jam or pickles/chutney for gifts. It's amazing how people like homemade preserves when they only usually have shop bought.