Finally! Longtime readers will remember the grief I had this time last year when I tried to buy a car from a private seller. The guy sold me his car without the log book (I know, naivé on my part, I’d never bought a car privately before), told me after I had given him a deposit that the MOT had expired (he said he would do it before handing it over, but didn’t quite get the time, but was confident that it would pass no problem as it was a good little runner) and then asked if he could keep the car for another week, despite my giving him £100 deposit on the Friday with a view to picking it up on the Sunday. Not only that, when i took it for its MOT on the Monday it failed miserably, needing about £200 worth of work. When I contacted the seller and suggested that we split the cost, he threw a strop, accused me of not trusting his character (not occuring to him it was why I was in said pickle, because I trusted his word) and bought the car back off me and paid in full for the MOT. What a drama that was.

This time around it was a lot smoother sailing, being a little wiser about private car selling helped I’m sure. A couple of weeks ago I spotted a ’99 Nissan pulling into the car park of my local Sainsbury’s. I went over and introduced myself to the driver, a lady of around my age who wanted to sell it to get something smaller. I was very interested and it was well within my budget. All I need is a runabout, nothing too flash, so it was ideal. I wanted to buy it there and then, but I thought I should go home and have a think about it. My own car was due for its MOT the following week so I thought I’d see how that goes.

Well, it went badly. My old car has had it. After 21 years in existence and 11 years of ownership, it failed its MOT spectacularly. The garage called me back and said that it needed over £400 worth of work on it. They said it wasn’t worth it and I agreed, it’s ready for the knacker’s yard. I went to pick up my car and as soon as I got home I immediately called the lady with the Nissan and asked if it was still for sale. It was so I arranged to meet with her for a second look the following day. Long story short I now have a new old banger, but still a lot newer than my old H-reg – and things work!!

You could imagine the scenario when I took it for a test drive. Two women of a certain age, jumping into each other’s car, exchanging large sums of money in the car park of Sainsbury’s supermarket. I wonder what people must’ve been thinking. Well, at least this transaction went a lot more smoothly.

Here’s to many happy (hopefully) years.

I know it seems like I always talk a lot about cakes. The reason why I probably do this is because they’re treats, it’s not something I have on a daily basis, or indeed a weekly basis. They’re just that, treats, although admittedly I do try to find an excuse to indulge myself. For the most part, I try to eat properly. For breakfast 6 mornings a week, I eat fruit and nuts. That’s 3 pieces of fruit for the vitamins and a handful of monkey nuts for the protein. It’s especially good if I have a booking at lunchtime and I don’t get to eat and have to wait until around 3 or 4pm when I get home to have a quick snack before dinnner. It’s also very handy when on tour and I don’t need to buy much for breakfast. The nuts are cheap, full of protein as I said and a breakfast like that can keep me going for hours.

On the days when I’m home for lunch, I eat wholemeal bread. I switched from white bread a couple of years ago but I still treat (there’s that word again) myself on a Sunday when I have a bit of a fry-up. But most days of the week it’s brown bread.

Why am I rambling on about my dietary intake I hear you ask? Well, I have a bit of a beef with the food manufacturers and it’s ticking me off when a person like me is trying their best to eat properly on their shopping budget and they’re moving the goalposts. Ever since the recession, I’ve noticed some goods I’ve either bought in the past or buy regularly have gradually shrunken in size, but the price has stayed the same. I first noticed it with Shloer. The bottles are a lot smaller than they used to be, but the price hasn’t shifted. I had a quick moan to myself about it, but not too much as it’s only something I buy for the holidays when my progeny want to play at being grown-ups because it looks a bit like wine. But not just the Shloer. I also make a mean Thai Prawn Curry sometimes and I’ve noticed the Sharwoods Pad Thai noodles I use have somewhat shrunk in content, to the point that I’ve had to buy extra to feed the same mouths.

The last straw was when I was doing my bi-weekly shopping at Tesco’s last Thursday. I went to pick up a bag of monkey nuts and they’ve been reduced in size but not price. This is what they used to look like at 400g. They’ve now been reduced to 250g, but they’re still £1.50. I’m like, “what the hell?”

And I know it’s not me going crazy. I remember reading an article in the New York Times on the Kindle a few months ago, about manufacturers downsizing food and still charging the same…..aha! I’ve just had a look and found the article in question here. My question is, does nobody else notice this happening here in the UK? Whilst on one hand it’s great when we get BOGOFs (Buy One, Get One Free if you’re not in the UK) and other offers , but when it’s something you buy on a regular basis, it hardly compensates.

According to the article this is something that happens every recession, but nobody says anything. Why? Why is this allowed to happen? And when you read/hear reports that it’s actually more economically sound to buy processed and junk food as opposed to fresh and organic food, the ordinary family shopper doesn’t stand a chance to eat healthily, do they? I bought a punnet of peaches on Thursday, by Saturday they’d all gone off, all five in the punnet, and had to be binned.

In the meantime I’m hoping the same shrinking affliction doesn’t hit the monkey nuts sold in Sainsbury’s. Until it does it looks like I’ll be buying them from there. Thank goodness I’ve got a choice of the two supermarkets near me.

I don’t know if the long-time readers of my blog remember me having a moan about snowed in clients wanting me to come out to them the last time we had weather like this back in January/February.
Well, the phone’s been ringing again with such gents again. I got the impression in a couple of cases that they had decided to take the day off work after deciding not to go in because of the snow, so have decided that to relieve their boredom they’d like an escort to come visit them. I’ve had to gently remind them that if they’re snowed and can’t get to work because of lack of transportation, then how would they expect me to reach them? I’ve yet to hear an answer that doesn’t tail off in a mumble because of lack of a suitable response.

I’m unsure as to whether I’m supposed to possess some sort of superpower where I’m either able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, websling my way from building to building, or if I should just go the old-fashioned way and dust off my invisible jet and fly over to Essex (in one phone call) in that. With it being invisible I could hide it from client’s nosey neighbours and still remain discreet.
And as predicted I’ve also had a couple of calls this week asking if I’m in Jersey. Well, apart from the fact that you left it a tad bit late matey, Gatwick Airport has been closed for the past couple of days, with major disruptions at other airports. It would’ve had to have been a bit of a miracle to get there. Blimey, thinking about it, that worked out well didn’t it? I was supposed to have flown out yesterday.
No, I’ve had a good few days off studying, reading and watching mindless telly. I haven’t seen the point of not going anywhere unless I had to. I also got a couple of requests for incalls at Victoria. But again, I would still have to leave home to get there and did anybody see the chaos at Victoria Stn on Tuesday? Yeah, I don’t think so.

Since the nightmare of the school pick-up on Tuesday I’ve made one other trip out to go food shopping and I wouldn’t have done that if I didn’t have to. And even then I went to Sainsbury’s instead my usual Tesco’s because Tesco’s car park was underground, which meant going up and down a steep incline. I tried going up a steep incline on ice once before, it didn’t work. Sainsbury’s car park is outside on nice flat ground.

Since then I’ve been ensconsed in my house under my duvet and nothing else is getting me out from underneath it. Well, until tomorrow when I do have a booking at Victoria. Fingers crossed that comes to fruition. It’ll be a bit warmer then and things should start melting. At the moment it’s -5deg where I am. How’re you all coping?

Except it wasn’t the bag, it was the bloomin’ wallet. I had forgotten I’d bought the wallet at the same time I bought my bag, but because the wallet was inside the bag I didn’t think it could be that.

I was in my local shopping centre again this morning and sure enough, I was beeped as soon as I walked into Marks. I thought, okay, enough is enough, as much as I like the bag I’m not going through with this for the next how ever many years. I was finding myself actually tensing every time I walked into a shop.

When I got home I called Fossil, where I bought both the bag and the wallet and explained that I keep setting off the security scanners in shops. The kind lady explained that I may still have tags on them. It doesn’t have to be a big tag, she explained, it can be a small rectangular tag. I searched and searched. I couldn’t find anything on my bag, but hey presto, there was a small tag inside my wallet. I ripped it out and did a small jig of happiness.

No more bleeping wallets, no more bleeping bags…well, we’ll see on Thursday when I go to Tesco’s to do my weekly shopping.

Tell you what though. I didn’t bleep with every shop I went into, Sainsbury’s being one of them. Makes you think, doesn’t it?