A few sensationalist News Stories...

"Young need to save for 14 years for a home, says Shelter"

"How do you prepare for a lifetime of renting?"

Just two headlines from the BBC this week, two among hundreds in the press over the last couple of weeks as various surveys suggest it's getting near impossible for people to buy a house in the UK at the moment. I'm sorry, but have I missed something?

On the 3^rd of January this year Joni and I were evicted from our rented home. On the 19^th of April we moved into our first bought house. That’s saving period of 105 days. We didn't win the lottery, haven't had a penny of help from either set of parents and no ancient relative has dropped off this mortal coil and left us a small fortune.

Joni and I are a pretty normal pair of young people. We are quite lucky in that we both have full time work, paying the region of £18k each. But, we between us we have 4 over drafts, 2 credit cards and a loan on a car that is to this day higher than the cars value, so not exactly a bank mangers dream. When we were asked to leave our rented house we had considered buying a house 'some time later in the year', but we hadn't actually done anything about it. But renting had gotten too much. Too many estate agents had charges a fortune for contracts, landlords have taken money from us, or just decided one day they want their house back because their daughter has fallen out with her mother!

We looking into these 95% mortgages, and New Buy schemes run by the government, but they involved buying a brand new house and we just didn't think it was what we wanted. We wanted space and light and a garden, and there were no builds in our area that offered that.

So we knew we were going to need about £15K or so for the deposit and fees. Now, it's this next step that separates us from everyone else, and I don't think it’s a particularly revolutionary step. I don't think you need two BSc's and an MSc to reach this giant leap of imagination.

We needed some money.

So we went to the bank.

And we asked for some money.

Ta dah!

We sat down with a bank advisor and 3 separate occasions and we filled out forms and we showed her our budget and asked politely and we convinced her that we could handle it. And she believed us, so she gave us the money we needed. Joni and I aren’t particularly good with money, if we were we would have the debt we have in the first place, but we managed to convince our bank that we could pay them back.

Now, the loan we got it going to take 5 years to pay back, which actually matches quite nicely with what one of these reports says – based on our age and location apparently it would take us 4.8 years to save for a deposit.

But here, really is my point. There is nothing special about us. If we can but a house in 4 months then I think a lot of people can. And what's most amazing is in the 2 months since we bought our house it has already gone up in price.  I wonder if perhaps the media stopped telling people they can't buy a house and told more stories of people like us who are loving our new home then perhaps the housing market would recover quicker.

Ponderings on age...

Recently I have been thinking a lot about age and what it means to be 25. I have a number of reasons to believe I am getting old, not least the fact that one of my closest friends takes the chance to call me boring at least twice every time I see him. Also there is the purchasing of the house, the 'career' (as opposed to just having a job) and the fact I think staying up till 2am is an achievement.

But let me paint you a picture of what happened this afternoon as I was driving home from work. I am fully resigned to the fact I prefer radio 2 with breakfast. I'm OK with this - Chris Evans is funny and radio 1 replaced one obnoxious DJ with another. So, with my phone still at home in a bowl of rice I was forced to listen to the radio on the way home too. Radio 2 was still on from the morning, and it was Patrick Keilty. He introduced Daft Punk like this

"Here is what the kids are listening to these days, apparently. It's about playing poker - staying up all night to get lucky"

I laughed out loud alone in the car, and then I stopped mid-giggle. Oh hell, I am not supposed to find that funny. And yet it made me laugh. I often feel like the oldest person in the room (even older than the boss). I find I can't help myself doing the dished when friends are round because I hate a messy kitchen, and I'm ushering people out the door at 11 because I have to get up for work in the morning. And I can't decide how I feel about this.

On the one hand I am happy. I love my home, I enjoy my job and I'm fairly happy with my life. I have no major problems to worry about. And yet I can't help but dread what future Fiona will think of the choices I have made. When I am 40 will I be glad I chose to buy a house aged 25, and that I built a decent foundation and I took the sensible options? Or will I just regret I didn't party every night, live at home longer, go on big holidays and generally live it up when I could? Am I growing up too fast?

And does anyone ever know the answer to that question before they are 40?

1 month on.

So, it's been one month since we moved into our house and so much has happened.

The house warming was the best we have ever had. The weather was perfect and we had the first trial of Dionysus bars. This turned out to be a terrible idea. Thank you for coming if you were there, but I have forgotten. I have forgotten almost the whole night. I was looking at photos days later trying to figure out what we had been doing and, to be honest I'm still not sure.

The day after I wrote up with a start at half 6 when I realised Joni wasnt in the bed. I went on a search of the whole house and found him in a tent, in the garden, with Tim & Stee. No one can figure out why this seemed like a good idea, but they really regretted it when Charlotte and I started banging plans together by their heads! I was still drunk at that point. It didn't last.....

The Sunday that followed was the worst hangover day of all time. 4 people spent the entire day sitting in the dark, groaning slightly and failing to eat. Tim fell asleep on his knees, Joni had to be put to bed in the middle of the afternoon and Stee refused to leave the house when we finally worked our selves up to a walk and MacDs at 7pm. I think we are getting old.

The next day we discovered 11 cans of out of date beer, and being good people we decided to recycle the cans. After playing beer bowling with them. We also went to next doors BBQ party and meet all the neighbours. That was fun, I've never met neighbours before. Not heard from them since though, I was still fairly hungover......

Since that weekend we have had a couple of BBQs, had friends round and started gardening, so all petty business as usual. I have started decorating because I am having a little trouble settling into this house. It doesn't really feel like home yet, but I think that might just be because its so unreal. It's all happened so quickly, and also we realised we have mostly bought a house because people said we couldn't. That's a good reason, right?

After a 3 month break....

So tonight is the end of our 9 day holiday and it has been a crazy busy week. As everyone knows, it started with picking up the keys for our new home on Friday afternoon. So off Joni and I go to the estate agent, every bit of documentation we could think of in one hand, id in the other. We walk into the agents and say its Joni and Fiona to pick up the keys and..... they just hand them over. No questions, no form signing, just here is an envelope, have a nice day.

And then it was a very short drive around the corner to our new home. And no exaggeration, we just walked around the whole house, just looking and smiling, twice before we were capable of doing anything else. Eventually we got it together and bounced off to my parents to fetch the essentials (airbed, TV, champaign) and spent our first night eating fish & chips and sleeping on the living room floor. Can't say I slept very much.

The next day passed in a whirlwind of energy and enthusiasm as a whole load of people turned up once again to help us move. I promise this time it will be for more than a year! I suspect even a free MacDonalds wouldn't get them all to help again if we declare we are moving again before 2015! I am particularly grateful to the guys who stuck around after our first BBQ and found a final wave of energy to t tidy the living room at 10pm. I'm sure the beer had nothing to do with it!

Basically all we did for the next four days was unpack. We lost an entire day (and a few years off my life I suspect) to an IKEA wardrobe. Special mention must go to Tim who came round every day to drill holes, build furniture and generally be the man about the house. He left his tools which was definitely a big mistake. Today we managed toll makes a fair cockup of hanging a spice rack but it's fine. The last guy left us half a tin of kitchen paint.

On Thursday we spoke up early but we realised if we didn't get away for the diy soon we were both going to lose it, so we went to Chester zoo and it was amazing, if a little cold. We then went home and Joni got really really drunk in or house for the first time. It was a good day.

We spent the rest of the weekend making sure the house was ready for us to go back to work. We've reached a pretty good stage now. Nothing more really needs doing, just the odd little job it would be nice to fix. Strangely I'm really looking forward to going back to work tomorrow. Tomorrow marks the official start typo the return to normality for me and Joni, and I couldn't be more excited.

All for one....

Following the success of the 2011 Bond Marathon, I think I have decided to embark on a new mission in celluloid. And it starts with spotting a DVD case at Tim's house, and getting a free book with my Nexus. These 2 things lead me to fancying watching The Three Musketeers. So we searched it on LoveFilm and got the longest list of films I have ever seen. At least 15 three musketeers films, and that before you reach the barbie version!

So that is the mission, To watch as many versions of The Three Musketeers as possible in one year, to try and work out why it is the most over-done franchise ever, and if any of them are actually any good. I will also attempt to read the originals book to find out what the story actually is.

So, I started this mission with the 2011 version, staring Orlando Bloom, Matthew Macfadyen and a whole load of other fairly famous people. This was a fully American version and it was given the Steam Punk treatment (for anyone who doesn't know, Steam Punk is a style which is set in the 19th or 20th century but with some 'modern' technology. Think the Robert DJ Sherlock style). In true American style everything was over the top, and all the writing budget was spent on lavish sets and dresses with some seriously tight corsets. But the plot just about held together and the acting was only a little over the top. And it was pretty enjoyable to watch. The biggest mystery to me was probably what Mas Mickelson was doing in this film, and why they bothered to put so much effort into setting up for the sequel which clearly was not going to get funded.

So first up was a typical American action film, but one of the better ones. Next Maybe to go further back in time... 

Solicitor-cide - is it a crime?

So on Saturday I agreed to buy the house for like the 10th time, and I suggested the date of the 12th for moving. The seller, being the total arose he has shown himself to be over the last 53 days took the best part of 4 days to get back to us and said... No. He suggested the 26th. I have to confess at this point I somewhat lost it. Actually,I lost it quite a lot. In a corridor at work. People in the next office heard. Vicky from marketing came to ask who had pissed me off.

I told the estate agent in no uncertain terms that the 26th would not do, and if he couldn't do the 12th, I can do the 11th. This time it only took 3 hours to get back to me - would the 19th do? The 19th will do, thank you.

And there, I thought we finally had it. We even celebrated a little. There was pizza and pop. And then came morning. And that quick call to the solicitor to organise the signing....

Yeh.

That.

Only my solicitor has gone on holiday all week. Without telling us. And the person she has left in charge is a full scale idiot. She had no idea what was going on with our file and couldn't get proper access to our solicitors stuff until the secretary was around. Most annoyingly, despite me calling 3 more times she didn't return my calls so I still cant confirm when I am moving. So I can't book my time off work. So I still cant sort my work diary out and confirm with my boss what I will be up to in a fortnight.

Not. Impressed.

Another birthday

Writing this on my favourite new toy, my nexus 7 just like I wanted!

Overall its not quite been as low key a birthday as I was originally planning. I didn't plan on planning quite so much but it was great anyway. My big night out was a success despite the snow! I am very grateful to batman, little red riding hood, Alice, danny & sandy, the captain, his gay pirate and my penguin for making it an awesome night. I've always wondered who buys those stupid photos in clubs- turns out it's drunk Fiona! I still haven't gotten over dogma turning us away,  they are well known for being the.....  let's say lowest- class club in town.  How can they turn away fancy dress? Mental! Still,thank you all for trailing through the snow with me and helping me get really drunk.  For those who missed it I feel obliged to report that when I slipped in the snow outside the hotel Joni had to physically pick me up and put me back on my feet due to my being unable to stand. 

The next day I crawled out of bed early and went for a walk around town in the snow and the peace of Sunday morning. It wasn't as peaceful as I thought actually,  although it did clear my head.  With Charlotte & Sean still around we took them to see the sights of Nottingham. This mostly involved being silly in the castle (photos of this will follow). It was fantastic to see have Charlotte and Sean around for the weekend.

This big weekend was followed by a fairly standard week at work.  My actual birthday was on Tuesday and my office treated me to a nice embarrassing round of facts about me (including discussions on why I was in Nottingham at 5am dressed as a zombie once and how you get uninvited from a wedding 3 days before it happens) and an impromptu Quiz about Denmark (9 out of 10, cause I rock).

The birthday celebrations ended with a family afternoon, with a buffet complete with party rings and jammy dodgers! And I got my last birthday present, from Jenny & Ben. Tea flowers, they are amazing! Just put them in boiling water and they open up into beautiful flowers and they make lovely tea. It was great to see everyone and my cake was awesome!

Overall a lovely birthday. Not exactly what I pictured when I thought of my grand 25th, but wonderful anyway.

Next week, on to a new house??

50 days later...

Exactly 50 days ago I received the txt message from our landlord asking us to move out of what we had come to regard as our home. It was a silly mistake to get so attached to a rented property but now we are well on the way to getting the first house we can truly call our home. Eeeeep!!

For those who don't know much about buying a house a brief explanation is required, to explain the stress-related snappy-ness we have both been suffering (and why its not going away any time soon).

The first step to buying a house if find out if, in principle, you can get a mortgage. This was easy - Yes. Banks were tearing our hands off to say yes, subject to checks, they would love to give us a 90% mortgage. The next step for us was to then get the other 10% for the deposit. This we did the cheats way - i.e. we borrowed it from a different bank because we don't have the patients to save.

Third step is find the house and get the owner to accept an offer. This is a stupidly time-consuming task. I am writing this blog post on the first Saturday morning I have't had to get up to go view houses in 8 weeks. We saw a grand total of 27 houses, luckily one of those was 'the one'. And everyone was right - The moment I stepped through the front door I knew this one was different, and by the time I had been to the bottom of the garden and through all the rooms I knew. And that was that, I was having that house. Getting an offer accepted took a further 2 weeks of hell. Waiting for the phone to ring, chasing solicitors and mortgage brokers. Luckily for me my new boss is extremely understanding and she hasn't said a word about me answering my phone at work. Finally we got an offer accepted, about £2500 more than we really wanted but the house is worth it.

Forth step turned out to be the real bitch, and largely because we didn't see the problems coming. Remember all those banks, desperate to lend us money subject to checks? Well it turned out that these were more SUBJECT TO CHECKS and these checks declared Joni and my borrowing too high, wages too low and generally just bad people to lend 90% value of a house to. But they would do an 85% mortgage giving me a heart attack on the the phone, and both of us 1 afternoon to find £5000. Due to the brilliance that  is Joni's financial planning, we actually did it. We called the mortgage broker back and told her to go ahead with it. What followed was the tense-ist 18 hours of my life but at 10:30am on Friday the broker called to say it had all been approved. New home, here we come!

Now I don't want to put a dampener on things but there is still 6 weeks to wait, approximatly. During which any number of a huge list of things can go wrong - The mortgage people can still change their minds about lending us money. The banks valuer can decide the house isn't worth what we are paying, or find some major problem. The solicitors can find some major problem. The owner can change is mind and withdraw, someone else can come along and offer more money than us. BUT if all these things don't happen you are all invited to the house warming in spring!

As promised, here are some pictures of (hopefully) our new home:

The one thing I'm never aloud to say, said more eloquently than I could ever manage.

In the weekend section of the Guardian newspaper they have a shorts section each week called "What I'm Really Thinking". This week my mum gave this to me and suggested I read it. What it said spoke to me in such a profound way I felt I had to share with with all my fans. Reading this article it felt like someone had reached into my heart and pulled out all those things I'm too cynical, too sarcastic, too defensive to say. I genuinely think it will have changed the way I express myself and in some ways that makes me sad. Below I present what I'm really thinking, but could never find the words to say:

I wish I could meet this person, I think we would be friends. I'd like to think we could go to the gym together and get coffee (....cake) together and not feel like we have to justify each others life choices with every conversation. To not slowly descend into a characature of yourself because it doesn't sit right with people - no normal woman could have made this choice. 

More than anything else this article scares me, actually. To read and write in to the Guardian (not to mention have your own home gym) suggests the writer is a fair bit older than me. I dream of the day people stop asking when I will change my mind, raise their eyebrows when I say I don't want children. "I bet you will have more children than the rest of us" is the phrase I hear most in my life. I wonder if anyone has ever considered how degrading it is to constantly have one of your life's biggest choices belittled on an almost weekly basis? If I took up going to church and people laughed and asked when I would give that up time and time again, you would be labelled bigoted or racist. 

If this writers experience is anything to go by I might have more years of defending myself than I would like. 

The 2013 Consumer Power Adventure pt 1: Turning Bills Into Mills

Time for the first of my  NYR posts about how I am trying to change the world using my consumer power. For this one I am cheating slightly because its not something I actually did in January, but I am trying to se January to convince my parents to do it, so I think it counts.

So, quick introduction. Ecotricity are and energy supplier. They were the worlds first green energy supplier and remain one of the largest. When I first decided I wants a green energy supplier I spent a lot of time researching different options and I decided Ecotricity were my favourite, for a number of reasons.

Firstly because Ecotricity are run as an not-for-profit organisation. There are no shareholders so they put all their profits into further research into alternative and effective green energy sources. For me this is very important, if we are really going to use green energy properly we need to do more research into it. Secondly Ecotricity are one of the few companies which offer green gas. Currently they are aiming to be the first company to build a green gas plant in the UK, using food waste to produce energy which we can use. This is a brilliant idea and its brilliant ideas like that that are going to save us all when the giant spaghetti monster comes.

One thing that did totally surprise me was that it didn't cost any more. Ecotricitiy have 2 simple tariffs. The first uses a majority of their green energy supplemented with brown energy they buy in (check the website for full details of the mix). This tariff tracks the 'big 6' so doesn't cost any more than your current supplier. So you can be doing good without costing you any extra! The second is their full green energy - this is 100% green using a mixture of their green energy supplemented with bought in green energy. This costs a little more, so if you an't afford it you don't have to.  

But to be perfectly honest, beyond all the green energy and saving the planet messages I really love Ecotricity because they are nice. According to Ofgem's complaints reports Ecotricity had the least complaints per 1000 customers in 2012, and from my experience I can see why. Call them and you talk, not only to an English human being, but they will do their best efforts to make sure you always speak to the same human being. If you email your own personal advisor will call you back, the same one, every time. I wasn't sure if Economy 7 was really saving me any money so I emailed them and told them. Later the same day they called me back and told me that they had calculated that on a standard tarrif I would have saved £1.10 over the last 3 months. So they had swapped me over but because it was such a small difference and such a short space of time they would monitor it for the following year and let me know if I would be better switching back. Can you imagine nPower or British Gas doing that?!

Check out their website for all sorts of fun and interesting facts about what they are doing:

ecotricity - because they are awesome

and really do seriously consider what you could be doing to help save our planet.

P.S. We got 6 free bottles of wine when we switched through the £50 naked wines voucher they give you and if that doesn't incentivise you to action then nothing will!

2 weeks on and the questions remain...

So its been two weeks since I couldn't sleep and frankly my sleeping patterns are not much better. Getting quite good at surviving on Paracetamol and diet coke tho, so its fine. I'v only made one or two more cock-ups at work and only my boss and the sales manager have noticed so far, so alls fine!

In those two weeks some rather dramatic things have happened. Firstly I am writing this post from my parents spare bed. This is because all of mine & Joni's 3 bedroom house has been packed up and moved into their garage. Again. This is the third winter in 4 that we have moved into my parents house, they must be getting sick of us. We decided to vacate our rented house pretty sharpish when we realised there wasn't time to buy a house in the time we had left on the lease. So we are here, saving money again. woo. hoo.

On the positive, our meeting with the bank actually went rather well. In fact I have had about 5 good meeting with banks in the last 2 weeks. Turns out we have reached the point where people want to give us money, which is nice. So its all systems go for buying a house - we just need to find one we like!

Which is of course where it all falls down. The problem with 'a buyers market' is that we can have pretty much whatever we want. There are so many houses on the market we could literately have anything. So what do we want? Something ready-made? A project maybe? A big garden? A conservatory? Something pretty good that just needs a little modernising? Do we want something to live in for a while? Or a quick project and the chance to make a few quid?

Now I am indecisive at the best of times. Throw in a few thousand pounds and I am like a kid in a candy shop, I just want them all. Buying a house involves making some serious choices about what I want for my life for the next 5 years. And I'm not sure I am grown-up enough to make those choices....

Loosing sleep over big decisions - now that is grown up!

Tonight I can't sleep. Joni is happily sleeping next to me but I can't sleep. "How can this be so?" I hear you cry. Well, 2 days ago something rather dramatic happened and thus unrolled the following, highly stressful weekend....

"Sorry to do this to you but I need my house back. Can you move out by the 17th of Feb. Love your landlord"

This was the txt message I revived from my landlord at 2pm on Friday afternoon, or words to that effect. Needless to say my brain went into total meltdown and 'ahhhhhhhhhh' was all I thought for about 12 hours. Luckily Joni is much less of a drama queen than me and he walked me through what our options were, and what should happen next.

The options are pretty simple. A) rent somewhere else, B) buy a house. In truth buying a house has long been a goal of our for this year (ever since The Great Mortgage U-Turn of 2010) but it was really for in 6 months time. You see, we have no deposit. What we have is 2 creditcards, 1 loan & 4 overdrafts. And interestingly one visa will not cover a house deposit! We always planned on taking a loan for a deposit (i mean really, the only people who can afford to save £15k before they are 40 live with their parents and ask yourself, who is really doing the saving in that situation?) but we hadn't quite reached the point where we could apply for a big enough loan yet, which brings me onto the real point of this post (and my sleeplessness)....

Has anyone noticed how ridiculous the current credit system is in the country? I mean really, seriously ridiculous. See we had a meeting with a man from Lloyds yesterday. Very nice man, very helpful, would have lent us £131 thousand pounds for a house in a heartbeat, but £13k for the deposit?!? No way! And I know the mortgage is secured against the house bla bla bla but why not secure the loan against the house too? It's just insane. The idea that I can get one hundred and thirty thousand pounds (seriously, say it out loud like that, its a huge sum of money) but I might not be able to buy because instead of staying home and sponging off mummy & daddy I went out and got a life is just extraordinary.

And before someone spells it out to me, I know its incase the house looses value, to cover fees (not that the grands worth of mortgage fees wouldnt do that) and the banks covering their arse bla bla, we get it. What really annoys me, what really gets to me, is that it is all decided by a practically-arbitrary computer system.

In the last 6 years I have proven I can budget, I can handle money. You can practically watch in my bank statments how I improve with money over the past decade. I the last 18 months Joni & I shown how we know exactly how to live to a tight budget, and in the last 5 months we have paid back over £2000 of debt while living in a rented house. Will anyone take notice of this proven responsibly? Of course not! You can't quantify that and turn it into an algorithm for measuring candidates so it doesn't count. No one cares for your actual situation, they only care about the numbers written down.

Tomorrow we have a meeting with our bank in which we will basically find out if we can get a house. Turns out, thanks to credit scoring, it may all come down to wheather we have a landline or not.

We don't.

Welcoming in a New Year

Traditionally people welcome in the New Year with lots of alcohol and a resolution. The copious amounts of alcohol were consumed last night, to predictable effects (laughing, shouting, drinking cava on the park at 1am), and now its time to talk about resolutions. See, I never start resolutions on the 1st of January, they are bound to fail. So I start resolutions on the 2nd. Much higher chance of success!

Last year Joni and I realised that all New Years Resolutions fall into one of five categories:
1) Personal Interests e.g. I will learn a new language
2) Personal Well-being e.g. I will quit smoking, stop being fat and win a marathon
3) Lifestyle e.g. I will love my job/life/husband and never complain about my lot again.
4) Relationships e.g. I will start/end a relationship with another man/woman/goat
5) Altruistic e.g. I will give 50% of all my wealth to children with aids and volunteer 30 hours a week in an old peoples home.

Having set five categories, I decided to have one resolution for 2012 from each category. I wrote a list and in the following months preceded to loose said list and forget most of the resolutions. I know the Personal Interests one was about going to the Broadway Cinema once every calendar month, and I know this because it is officially the first ever resolution in the history of mankind to actually be achieved, hurray! A had a personal well-being one about getting skinny, lol, and a relationships one about my relationship with Joni "staying the same", a wishy-washy resolution if ever I heard one.

So on to this year. I figure if I blog about my resolutions then they might actually happen (and at the very least I will probably be able to find them next year).

P.S. Mostly because Joni is a total nerd the resolutions have to be SMART targets (thats Specific, Mensurable  Achievable, Relevant & Time-bound in-case you have never worked in a school/office/any target-driven environment)

Fiona's 2013 New Years Resolutions!

1) Personal Interests: I will Learn Danish
This is a little broad, so to make it smart I will aim to be able to hold a reasonable conversation in Danish with one of my relatives when I go to visit them later this year. I will let the relative decide what counts as a 'reasonable conversation'.

2) Personal Well-being: I will do 150 mins exercise each week.
Diet goals never work - I always cave and eat my own mass in chocolate but 150 mins is the governments recommended weekly exercise for an adult and it seems achievable.

3) Lifestyle: To reach the end of 2013 with less debt than I have now, without the year feeling like it has been overshadowed by debt-repayments.
Its no secret that Joni and I have lots of debt and we want rid of it. In the last 5 months of 2012 we cleared over £2000 worth but we broke our backs to do it. I want to keep going in the right direction without feeling every step is being governed by how it affects our credit ratings. I'm not sure its a particularly SMART goal, but it is a goal.

4) Relationships: To not be dumped by any friends via text or other social media outlets!
While this may seem funny I am ending 2012 minus two friends who, in January, I thought were rather good friends. I discovered (via text) they weren't. While I am reassured this isn't my fault I do feel that this year I would like to focus on loving the friends I have, and building some new ones too. So watch out blog-lovers, you will be hearing more from me soon!

5) Altruistic: To blog once a month about how I have used my consumer-power to improve things.
I'm not a fan of giving money to charity. Millions of people give millions of pounds to charity everyday and nothing much changes. Starving people are still reliant on western cultures, ice caps are still melting and once a year Terry Wogan is still given a quick shock to wake him from his slumber, wheeled out on stage and given a variety of young presenters to ogle. BUT I do believe in consumer power, the power of every person to change the way the world looks by what they buy. Which is why once a month I will be trying to do something to change my habits for the better, and I will write about it here to encourage others to do the same. I think this will be the hardest goal, but it could also be the most worthwhile.

So there you have it. 5 resolutions for 2013. All a little bit tricky but also all worthwhile. I'm quite looking forward to next year now. Not looking forward to the 6am start tomorrow....

2012 in Pictures

Below I present a summary of my 2012 in 23 photographs....

Start the year as you mean to go on, with a game of Cranium on Dads birthday. 

 This would become a pretty familier site as we played at just about every occasion for the year, in this case at our Anit-Valentines party at Joni's parent house. 

March brought yet another house move, but a very successful one, into a place that would become 'home' better than any of the previous places. 

March also brought a trip to London for Joni and I, to see a David Hockney exhibition, which neither of us were particularly impressed with and the Design of the Year awards 2012, which we were very impressed with. 

We got to break in our new home with a fantastic House-warming party with all our friends, and Tris brought fireworks, making him my new favourite (and pissing off the new neighbours within the first month!) 

The conservatory quickly played host to several birthday parties, including Fears...

...and Tims on the same night. 

In June Joni & I got to spend a morning playing at being Zombies in Nottingham. It was cold, wet, miserable and it took hours to get that syrup out my hair and my underwear  It was also the most fun I have ever had at 4am in the centre of town. 

Speaking of Town, June was also the month that the Olympic torch came to Nottingham, marking the start of Olympic-fever which would take over most of my summer. 

We did manage a few BBQ's which had a strange tendency to end... 

....with this man's bottom. 

The sun did manage to come out for about a week, and Joni & I caught it perfectly with our little holiday down south. 

In July Amy came to visit, so we marked the occasion with a game of cranium and lots of beer, of course! 

During full Olypic-fever season Stephen & I took a trip to London and joined in with a crowed of thousands celebrating as Mo Farah won the 5000m.

August is also the month to celebrate Chloe's birthday, an occasion summed up by this picture perfectly. If you don't find it hilarious don't worry, no one else did either! 

Chloe also got her first flat this year and the girls went round to celebrate in the only way we know how - with Pornstar Martinis!  

Stephen also had a birthday party this year, which he celebrated the only way he knows how. In a Onese. 

In October we said goodbye to my sisters unmarried life in true style...

...and welcomed Ben to the family in (slightly classier) style too.

We even managed a couple of good poker nights, especially when we started using chocolate coins instead of chips. 

Christmas brought the purchase of hundreds of lights and the joys of figuring out where to put them all. 

And ended with mountains of food which we will all be eating at New Years. 

 And so we say good bye to a long and changeable year. These photos actually miss out some of the most important things to happen this year, but they sum-up all the most fun things.

Christmas-Limbo

Stuck in that strange limbo between Christmas and New Year I thought it was the perfect time for a little run down of what I got up to for my festive celebrations.

It all kicked off with the First Annual Tennant-Norwood Christmas Party, which was a huge success. We managed to get the whole house decorated, including a Christmas tree which was far too big for a our living room (soooo cool). It was fantastic to see everyone, particularly old and far-flung friends who I don't get to see as often as I would like. People making that extra effort is one of the best things about Christmas.

Oversized tree squished into the corner

Speaking of extra effort, this years Christmas Jumper Competition winners were so good that next year we are actually going to have to come up with a different theme because I don't think anyone could beat them. My particular favourite was Ashley's stocking complete with sweets!

Joni's effort - sadly he couldn't keep it on due to the need to be plugged in!

Some very worthy winners

A few weeks after the Christmas party came my works Christmas do which was .... shall we say a laugh? This being the second 'works Christmas do' I'v been to in my time, and me being a highly ambitious person (and a terrible drunk) I decided I wouldn't drink too much surrounded by people who are much more important than me. Sadly I was then presented with a tale full of free wine. Ooops. I'm glad to report I was extremely well behaved at the party (I think) which is more than can be said for the next day at work. It was the last Friday before shut-down and sufficed to say I think there will be some very... odd looking work waiting for my on the 2nd of January. I would like to say I wasn't the worst - one guy went home at half 9. However I was probably not far behind him!

And so we made it to the Christmas shut-down without any major incedent, and I even managed to do all the Christmas food shopping on Friday night with Joni and a majoy hang-over. I slept for 11 hours that night but it was worth pushing on through to not have to go to Tescos the weekend before Christmas. Instead I spent the weekend visiting Joni's family for my first proper Christmas dinner.



As you may all have heard (through my endless bringing it up) this year was the first time I got to have Christmas day in my own home with Joni (and Tay). Because of this I had declared I was not stepping over the threshold of my house that day, and instead everyone would have to come to me. I was very excited about it and it was everything I had hoped for. I was quite surprised to wake up to a full stocking and loads of gifts from Joni. So we had lots of opening presents with croissants for breakfast before we had to get cracking with the cooking for Christmas dinner!

Tay guards my stocking!

We had been getting ready for this for months - including a dry-run the weekend before to practise the veg recipes and making a gravy in advance with 3L of chicken stock and a bottle of wine. Still., I'v never roasted a whole turkey before and we were pretty nervous that the whole thing could go horribly wrong. Luckily (and thanks to my epic and detailed action plan) all went to plan and dinner was delicious.

Turkey goes in the oven

So, all 8 people showed up and we squashed into the conservatory for dinner. Some time later the rest of the hoard showed up to pick over the left overs and so at one point we found 11 people squashed into our conservatory. And it was fantastic. I loved every moment of it, even the cooking. It was so fantastic to have Christmas in my own house. Of course the moment they all left I totally passed out, but it was worth it.

Roll on New Years Eve.....

Everyone squashed into one room! 

My Swiss Adventure Days 4 & 5 - Wednesday & Thursday

So day 4 and 5 together I think because I was too tired to blog yesterday morning.

The course on Wednesday started with a tour of the production line upstairs which was absolutely incredible. I have never seen anything like it. Each one of the products is made by hand. Hand blown glass by professional glass blowers, the most intricate glass work and precision measuring. It was just amazing. We all left saying we would never again question the price of such intricate and delicate products!

The rest of the day proceeded as normal. Lots more analytical talk. Im not sure how much of it was sinking in by then but I tried my best. More strange lunches from the school canteen and I progress the third type of odd looking tart for an afternoon snack. I think I managed some fruit too, just to make sure I wouldn’t get scurvy.  

Wednesday was the night they we’re taking us out for a real taste of Switzerland and apparently this means only one thing (and its not chocolate) – Cheese Fondue! So we were taken off on the train into Zurich city, and a tram up a very steep hill (mountain) In the snow to a tiny little restaurant that serve only cheese fondue.

And I have to admit I was pleasantly surprised. I think I would have preferred it with a little more vegetables and a little less… cheese but it was pretty good. Especially once you included the beer, the wine and the Kisch which is a Swiss drink. They ordered shots of it for you to dunk your bread in before you put it in the cheese. Needless to say at a similar %vol to schnapps, my attempt at this made me pull that face I pull and everyone else roar with laughter (they had had had lot of kisch by then!). But, with the snow falling outside and a little fire under the pot on the table it was very nice.

From there we wondered into town where the 2 guys from the office in Switzerland treated us to a few of their favourite bars before we went back to the hotel and a I sat up till they kicked us out chatting about the various differences between the UK, Germany and The Netherlands with the others from the course. Needless to say when I went to bed my head was spinning and when I woke up my stomach was spinning.

But power through we must, and (probably due to my nearer proximity to my student days) I looked a lot brighter than a few other people round the table on Thursday. Late nights aside, everyone was feeling pretty drained on Thursday, four days is a long time and it was a very heavy course so we took it easy, covering just a couple of last simple things and reviewing what we had covered. We finished at 3 so the others could get evening flights and I transferred to a very nice hotel much closer the airport for my super early flight.

During this week I had learnt that in western continental Europe they have a tradition of celebrating St Nicholas day which is when Sinterklass  brings presents to children. Apparently only the really rich kids actually get 2 Christmases, for the rest of people they just get some sweets and special lessons in school. What they do have is these special sweet-bread men they make. So once I was in my hotel I walked into the local town and found the local supermarket where I could buy some swiss chocolate and a Sinterklass man.

Sinterklass!

Beyond that I was far to tired to do anything, so I ate dinner in the hotel, listening to some incredibly American business men talking hunting and shooting and gun laws! And this morning it was up at 5am, another dull airport, another dull flight and back home again. And I am very glad to be back. 

My Swiss Adventure Day 3 - Tuesday

So day 2 was a much more peaceful day.... sort of. Lots more chemistry for the main part. Sadly the snow has all gone and its not stopped raining since Monday evening, but such is life. It couldn’t be a winter wonderland all the time

The course is still just plodding along. I’m quite enjoying it although its pretty heavy stuff. I hope I can remember at least half of it when I get back.

Kate helped me make progress in getting to know people. Its such big news that Kate & Wills were on the front page of Swiss newspapers and this gave everyone something to strike up conversation about, so I think you Kate! We eat lunch in the local school which is quite cool. Its pretty good food and apparently they have an arrangement with the company because its quicker and simpler than trying to eat in a restaurant. The school itself looks just like a school in the UK, big concrete building, lots of school work on the walls etc. It does have electronic opening doors which threw me on the first day!

It was too wet and miserable to go out adventuring last night and I think everyone felt the same, so we had dinner in the hotel restaurant which was a laugh. We spoke about work for about 2 hours but eventually (with the help of a fair amount of Bavarian beer) we drifted into talking about families, politics and eventually the smoking ban. I’m sure this is very sad, but I found it fascinating to chat about the EU from the other side. My companion from Germany pointing out that the Germans have never had a choice as the whether to join the EU or not, while a very vocal companion from Bavaria (hence the beer) points out that the Germans have made 60m Euros from the loans to Greece.  Really fascinating to hear the other side. And they found it hilarious to hear what the British (not that I am very representative) think of Europe.

Today’s challenge is to learn everyone’s names. I learnt over dinner yesterday that they are all much more important than me so good contacts to make. Also going on a tour of the factory today which should be great fun. 

My Swiss Adventure Day 2 - Monday

OOO blogging at breakfast. Its not a bad breakfast in this place, little too much meat for my stomach first thing but tis ok. I might try bacon and eggs tomorrow.

So yesterday was the first day of my training and it was quite good fun. Well, maybe fun isn’t the word, but very interesting. I have certainly learnt a lot about pH sensors. The people on the coarse all seem very nice. I nice mix of 6 middle aged men from various surrounding countries. Sadly they all speak German (or some derivation of German) as their first language so whenever they are just chatting they tend to slip into German, which makes it quite hard to chat  to them.  One of them chatted to me about England a bit, he used to live in Bedford, and one of them chatted to me about football (he remembers when Forest were good so I got to pull out the old “My dad took me once but we lost 4-0” story which went down well). Hopefully today I will get to talk to them more.

After we finished at about 5pm last night I decided to brave the snow and try and tackle the train system in the (slight) day time. And it turns out its very simple. Once you get your head around the fact they have trains, trams and busses all working on the same system it becomes quite easy. And not too expansive. I paid 12.80 CHF (about £8) to get into Zurich and back which is quite a lot for such a short distance but I wouldn’t mind paying it in England if they trains were as organised, spacious or punctual. Also no one came to check my ticket either way so I wonder how many people actually did pay.

A view of the city over the river 

Zurich is fantastic. You get off the train in this amazing city station which is just huge. I saw signs to platform 55, and I have no idea if the was for a bus, tram or train, but it was cool. Once you make it out of this epic train station / shopping center, you are right in the heart of the city. To one side you have the old town, where I whiled away a full hour and a half just walking down cobbled streets, looking in shop windows and admiring the Christmas decorations. I also found dinner in a little restaurant where I sat next to 2 Danes. Typical.

One of many Christmas trees

Decorations in the old city

On the other side you seem to have the newer part of town. I was pretty cold by this point and even the Christmas late-night shops were closing so I didn't explore so far but I did walk down a huge, wide road with all the big brand designer shops on it (Mango, Esprit etc) and 3 stories of Christmas lights strung across the whole street. It was pretty magical actually.

Christmas Lights 3 Story's high on the main street

And I made it back to the hotel easily, and soon warmed up back in my room. Now its about time I went to face the day. 

My Swiss Adventure Day 1 - Sunday

I thought I might write a daily (or possibly one at the beginning and one at the end, depending on how busy I am) update on my Swiss adventure.

So Yesterday was day one and the first thing I did was go to Birmingham far too early!! In my haste to have a relaxing day Joni and I ended up spending ages driving around the airport area in search of somewhere to waste a few hours because we had arrived at the airport 3 hours before check-in opened! Opps. Luckily we managed to find (after 2 bad pubs) a nice place to grab a good lunch/dinner. Fantastic, modern pub serving a Sunday roast with belly pork. Yum Yum. Not great apple crumble which always confuses me. Crumble is so easy, how do people get it wrong?

So eventually Joni left me at the airport. I checked in and passed through security with minimum fuss and queuing  And I whiled away a couple of hours looking round duty-free, watching bad TV on my laptop and generally trying to get over my fear of flying. 15 mins before my gate opened I remembered that plugs in Switzerland are different to plugs in England so I very hurriedly bought an adapter plug.

And then I was off. Up in the air and down again so quickly you could have missed it with a brief power-nap. I have to say it was nice to not be in a flying shop (aka ryanair). I was given a sandwich and offered a glass of wine (which I decided was a bad idea). The seat I had picked didn't actually have a window (too far back) so once everyone was seated they let me shift forward so I could be next to a window. It was all very pleasant. I can defiantly see the point of not flying budget.

Back on the ground things started to go a little badly. It was 10pm local time, and I had had a very long day. And there was lots of snow (which is awesome). I found the tram stop, but I could not figure out which tram I should get on, then i couldn't find the taxi's so I went back in and couldn't find the information desk. When I did finally find one, the woman their had no idea how to get to my hotel by tram so i decided to sod the cost and take a taxi (the information desk did know where I could get one of those). Sadly the taxi smelled seriously of piss and the driver had a terrible Indian accent (not very different from Birmingham then) but he got me to the hotel with minimum fuss and at the extortionate price of 87 CHF  (thats around £60).

But the night porter at the hotel was friendly and my room in lovely. Nice and modern and very warm. And I have an amazing feather dovet, its the warmest thing in the world and I am buying one the moment I get home.

My neat little room

 So I got the internet working, said goodnight to Joni and promptly passed out. Set the alarm for far too early (hence the blogging before work). I even had time after breakfast for tea in the worlds smallest tea cup. Im not joking, I can't even begin to describe how tiny this cup is and I'v stayed in Premier Inns. Imagine how small their tea cups would be, this one is smaller!

The worlds smallest (and thus most useless) tea cup. 

 The advent of daylight brought with it a fairly dull view of a street (with snow on it) and a car park (with snow). Also, there is snow. Lots of snow. It made for an amazing view as we landed, lots of pristine white fields (obviously there are no children in Zurich because you wouldn't get untouched fields of snow like that in the UK).

The view from my hotel 

Now its time for work...

Off on an adventure but first a TV review

This week I am off on my first Business Trip (oo doesn't that make me feel important! lol). I am being sent to Switzerland for some product training, so its time to dust off the old grey cells and try really hard not to do anything embarrassing in front of the important people. I am looking forward to the chance to stop feeling quite so lost in my job, and also to explore a new place. This also means I have to fly on my own for the first time, so I have spent the whole night convincing myself I really like flying, flying is cool....

But I promised you a TV review, and the show I am going to review in Borgen (pronounced bow-un with a bit of the weird Germanic-style fleming in the middle), a Danish political drama. Joni and I were brought to watching this after really enjoying The Killing, a crime series made by the same people, last year. We rented Borgen from Lovefilm and found it so gripping we have watched all 10 hours in one week (tripling our usual weekly viewing figures!).

To give you brief synopsis, it starts with the election of a new Prime minister in Denmark, and the series follows their first year in office from both the governments point of view, and also through the eyes of the number 1 news station in Denmark, TV1. It is a show about family life, careers, journalism (particularly topical atm) and politics. But above all of that its a story about characters and that is why I loved it so much.

I don't know how they do it, but Scandinavian writers just seem to have some ability to make realistic characters that no one else does. We saw it with The Killing, and with The Royal Affair (a film still a possible contender for best film in 2012) and Borgen is full of it too. Just the right number of characters for you to remember who they all are, every one of them with depth and dimensions enough to make you feel they could really exist.

For course that makes the show a little slow and meandering, because real life is quite slow and meandering. No one screams and shouts, throws highly breakable objects across rooms or starts sleeping with their secretary within 24 hours of hiring them, because no one does that it real life either. And that is the pure brilliance of this show. It doesn't matter if you don't care about politics or news reporting or if you don't understand the Danish political system (although I do thing all AV-haters should be forced to watch this show so they can finally understand how it is a much better system) because this is a show about people. And I can't wait for the next series!

Well, that was a bit serious for me wasn't it? Back to normal now because I bought a Christmas tree and its too big for the room! Hahahahaha!!!