Wednesday 29 April 2015

Modelling, whelks and mountain goats.

First an apology relating to last weeks post. I was not brought up to believe that stealing was OK, even if it is the theft of veg from my mums veg patch. If I wanted veg I should simply have asked. Or in the words of Jud from Poldark "t'aint right, t'aint fair, t'aint fit, t'ain't proper". In my defence it is partly Mum's fault for growing such good veg (and I didn't know that my mum was reading this blog).

Secondly I just wanted to thank my sister for forwarding the link for the blog to mum. I'm sure that she did it with the best of intentions! My sister and I are close but hugely competitive and she was probably trying to steal my position as favourite daughter.

Well it comes to something when your dog has more work than you do! Billy, my Westie has now twice been asked to be a model. The first time was  a few weeks ago and he was enjoying his morning walk doing what dogs do best (chasing seagulls, peeing, sniffing, rolling in muck, cocking his leg, greeting other dogs, weeing, chasing his ball and cocking his leg yet again (how can such a small animal generate so much urine?). It was a cool, fresh early morning and the sea mist was just lifting and we were walking on the green infront of the beach. Out of the mist appeared a chap with a huge camera round his neck. He explained that he was a student at the local art college doing a project on a day in life in Cornwall, and as dog walking is a popular activity, could he take a picture of Billy (not me mind, just the dog). Billy posed beautifully.

The second time was last week when one of my former colleagues who is now working for a holiday cottage company wanted a picture of him for their brochure (in the brochure they had blurb about their employees and she said that she enjoyed walking friends dogs, so needed a picture of said dog). No payment for either of these pieces of work but as everyone knows job search is often about networking and getting your face known. So maybe I won't have to get a job but can send the dog out to earn his keep, its about time he did something useful.

We had a good weekend away further up the coast despite doing the steepest piece of coast path ever. It's the section between Lansallos and Polperro, and in places it felt practically vertical. We did a 6 and a half mile round walk, so not too far, but it felt like we had run the marathon up Ben Nevis wearing concrete boots by the time we got back to our caravan. There's something good about being physically tired though and it certainly helps to sharpen the appetite and achieve a good nights sleep. We  did a bit of foraging on the walk and picked some wild garlic which we mixed with tomato and onion to go with our curry that night.

Whilst away we visited my Aunt who is in a care home nearby. She is suffering from dementia but seems happy bossing everyone around in the home. However some of the other residents didn't seem quite so happy, one old dear constantly wanted to go and make us a cup of tea in spite of not being able to walk, an old guy wanted a phone to call his son and another elderly resident wanted us to take her home with us. I hope that if I get to that stage in my life I end up more like my Aunt than some of the other residents, happily telling my visitors that I have made them whelks for tea and am going to get a St Bernard dog.

So another good week despite being workless. A week where I learnt that it's wrong to steal but OK to forage (go figure!), that I am not cut out to be a mountain goat and that whatever your age sisters will be sisters. Finally should anyone need a professional (well nearly) dog model just let me know, his rates are very reasonable however my agents fees are quite steep.

Wednesday 22 April 2015

Petrol, shopping and sprouting broccoli

I think I said in an earlier post that I find money quite boring, however it is a necessary evil as without it I would not be able to go on holiday, pay the mortgage or buy yoghurt and dog food. So this post will be about the changes I've made to cope with the changes in my income since being made redundant. Or in election speak it lays out my fiscal policy and shows how I plan to balance the books in these times of recession.

First thing I did when it looked like redundancy was on the cards was to cancel my organic veg box delivery. I have been having a fortnightly box delivered for years and really enjoyed getting it but thought that it was an unnecessary expense. Instead of this I have been pinching veg from my Mums garden with the result that  I am beginning to look like a hybrid of kale and sprouting broccoli as that is all that is ready for picking at the moment. She has just planted beans and carrots so I'm looking forward to some more variety soon.

Next thing was to cancel some of  the email updates that I subscribe to companies such as Radley Handbags, Groupon, Fat Face, holiday sites etc. I figured that I could do without temptation of getting emails of new styles of handbags, clothes, gadgets and details of holidays that I can't really afford at the moment and definitely don't need.

Whilst in work I spent a lot each month on petrol as I needed to fill the car each week where as now I haven't had to fill the tank once since leaving my job. I have also decided that it makes financial sense not to just use the car for a journey with a single purpose and will only drive it if I have at least 2 errands that necessitate driving.  So I won't take the car to just drive to the shops but will also get my hair done and visit a friend too. That's why this weekend when planning to go and visit my aunt who lives about an hour and a half drive from me I decided to get double value out of my petrol money and so have booked to stay at a holiday park near where she lives for 3 nights. Critics of this plan may say that going shopping and having my haircut costs more than just going shopping but they haven't factored in the petrol saving, ditto visiting my Aunt and having a weekend away. It's all in the manifesto, the figures don't lie (much).

I am also saving money on my food bills. As I tend to be at home more at lunchtime I am making my own lunch rather than buying something out which is of course cheaper (and healthier). I've always been a rubbish shopper and will buy things just because they are on special offer. Sometimes I've even bought things I don't really like just because they are a bargain. This is why my cupboards are full of food that I never really eat. So I've decided to save money by using up this food. When I looked through the cupboards I found packets and packets of different pasta, bags of rice, jars of curry sauce and 3 tins of corned beef (which I am not even keen on). So rather than waste it I thought back to my student days when I lived with a girl from Liverpool who made really good corned beef hash, I googled the recipe and made it yesterday and it wasn't half bad. The hardest thing was deciding what wine to serve it with. I tried Champagne but it wasn't right somehow...only kidding I had Chateauneuf du Pape. So as you can see I am being quite sensible about money. You've probably heard today that one of the major supermarkets has made huge losses recently, well I don't think that it can be a coincidence that its at he same time that I have cut back on my food shopping.

However there is one thing that I am spending more money on and that is toilet rolls. When I was working many of my bathroom visits were during work hours so I used the toilet paper at the office. Now because I suppose I am in a lot more and drinking more at home then an increased use of toilet paper is the obvious result! Luckily though toilet rolls are cheaper than petrol so I'm still quid's in. I would just say that if you do have money to invest in shares it might be worth thinking about selling any shares you have in Tescos and buying some in Andrex instead.

I am also focusing more on the free pleasures that there are around which we often overlook. The other evening I took Billy, my dog, for walk on the cliff path near where we live. It is quite steep in places so Billy and I stopped, pretending to admire the view whereas really we were getting our breath back. There was a grassy bank overlooking the beach and sea so I sat down to admire the vista (it was really, really steep!). Billy sat down next to me, just like a proper dog, and we both took in the scene. The sun was shining, there was a gentle breeze, the guls were wheeling and the surfers were, well, surfing. It was a perfect spring evening. I'd remembered both my sunglasses and my keys so didn't have to squint and wouldn't have to break in when we got home. I could smell the gorse and wild garlic flowers, this should have smelt bad but actually the coconut scent of the gorse mingled with the smell of garlic and reminded me of  a Thai curry. Billy and I sat for maybe 10 minutes admiring the view (it was really, really, really steep!) It was just one of those perfect moments, they don't come along that often but when they do they fill you with contentment and wellbeing. Maybe if I had still been working I wouldn't have taken time to enjoy the moment and may even have wasted more money on petrol and unnecessary food by going out to buy a Thai curry instead of eating my corned beef hash and sprouting broccoli.

So this post sums up my pre-election budget, not exactly austerity measures but in my mind it all makes good financial sense. Buy less, drive less, enjoy more free stuff and steal veg.

Wednesday 15 April 2015

Callouses, cows and Elizabethan ladies.

I have currently been unemployed for 2 weeks and a day. Up until now it has felt like a holiday but it's gradually starting to feel more real.

This week I have done a lot of sewing which I really enjoy. I haven't picked up a needle in a year now so it's been good to get back into it, although since last sewing I now find that I have to take my glasses off to thread a needle - what's that about? The last thing that I made was a patchwork quilt for my nieces wedding. My Mum and I made it together and it took over 2 years to complete. My niece has just celebrated her first anniversary and I hope that she likes the quilt as much as we enjoyed making it for her. When we were making it I developed a callous on the pad of my middle finger of my right hand from pushing the needle through the fabric and I can feel this starting to form again. It may sound odd but I am quite proud of it as it shows that at least one little part of me is gainfully employed. Surely having a callous shows hard labour? Wouldn't you normally expect to see callouses on the hands of fishermen, farmers, lumberjacks, miners or others doing physical work, not the unemployed?

I love sewing and crafts, creating lovely unique things from bits of wool, fabric and paper. In some ways I would have made a good Elizabethan lady. I can almost picture me sitting in the drawing room, getting out my sewing frame and placing teeny tiny little stitches in an elaborately embroidered wall-hanging. I  have some of the necessary skills already: I am fairly good at fainting, tapestry and watercolour painting. I like the idea of carrying a fan and learning to ride side saddle and to play the pianoforte. On the down side I'd have to wear stays, wouldn't have had much of an education, would have been subservient to men and couldn't have voted, so perhaps I'm better off living in Elizabeth IIs' era after all.

When not sewing I have been out walking with my dog and enjoying the lovely spring weather. We've had some good walks, with the exception of yesterdays that is. I am unlucky enough to have a dog who is terrified of cows. I'm not quite sure how it started but think that it was when he was a pup and  a cow behind a hedge mooed unexpectedly and startled him. Ever since then he has been nervous and tries to pull away whenever we walk near cows.

His fear was made even worse a couple of years ago when we spent a week walking Hadrians Wall. One day whilst walking we managed to get between a herd of cows and their calves and the cows charged at us. When this happens the advice is to let the dog off the lead, the cows then chase the dog but will not catch it so that you can get away safely. I stupidly decided not to follow this advice and instead picked him up. There was a low crumbling piece of wall a few yards from us so I crouched down behind it on the side away from the cows, with my dog Billy held tight in my arms. As the noise of their hooves got nearer I  felt a warmth spreading down my front and I realised that in his fear Billy had peed all down me. Then before he had even finished weeing the cows had thundered past us, in true cowboy and western fashion, and were heading up to the top end of the field to join their calves.

Feeling relieved and a little bit smug at outsmarting the cows I stood up still clutching Billy to me and came face to face with the bull. He was standing about 10 yards away and glared at us with his red rimmed rheumy eyes. He was a huge beast, grey and stocky with the neck and shoulders of a rugby player. He still stared at us, his nostrils flared and then he pawed menacingly at the ground with one hoof and lowered his head so that we could have a better view of his horns. It was then that Billy lost control of his bowels and diarrhoea joined the urine down my front. I think that this was when the bull took pity on us and decided to amble up the field to join the cows and calves, his pendulous balls swinging as he walked. Leaving Billy and I to resume our walk both of us liberally smeared in excrement.

So since then Billy has been even more terrified of cows than ever. Where we live in Cornwall there are a lot of cows around so Billy's fear of them does affect the walks we can do. For this reason every week we do what I call the cow walk which is an hour long loop that leads us past a couple of cow fields, in the hope that one day Billy will get over his fear. He hates it, I hate it, not really sure what the cows think about it, but my plan definitely isn't working. But I don't like to be beaten so Billy and I will continue with the cow walk each week and hopefully he will realise eventually that not all cows are going to charge at us, especially when there is a fence or gate between us.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is that we should all count our blessings. In the general run of things it would normally be considered a bad day to get peed on by a dog, and an even worse day to be covered in dog poo. However when the alternative to this is being trampled by cattle even this can be seen as a good day. I should be worried about being out of work but am enjoying having the time for myself and to do some things I like, especially if this means for a few hours a day I get to pretend to be an Elizabethan lady.

Wednesday 8 April 2015

Redundancy, chocolate and wigs for dogs.

So it's the start of week two and I'm still redundant, I feel vaguely surprised about this as if deep inside I thought that it might just go away of it's own accord. Maybe I thought it would just have cleared up like this head cold I am suffering from. But no, still unemployed.

Its four thirty in the morning and I can't sleep which to be honest is more to do with my cold than stressing about loosing my job. I hate this time of the morning. I always feel like I am the only person in the world who is awake which is nonsense when you consider different time zones, night workers, fellow insomniacs, later night revellers etc. In fact when you think about it the 4:30 am-ers aren't a very select bunch at all. Somehow though it does seem a lonely time of day and I envy those in the land of nod who are dreaming of being chased by bison whilst driving a Harley Davison and then helping serial killers to dispose of dead bodies in New York in exchange for ice-creams, which incidentally were all dreams my family had the day before yesterday. Maybe it's more restful to be awake than to experience dreams like these.

So what have I achieved in my first week of being unemployed and am I any closer to  getting a job? Well I've made granola (yum), started giving my dog a hair cut , so far I've trimmed his ears and tail, (thought that I'd start with his extremities and then work towards the middle). I've been for lots of walks with my family who were down in Cornwall for Easter, eaten my body weight in chocolate and I've thought a lot about business ideas and how to generate money, such as making and selling granola. It can become a bit obsessive though as when I looked at the pile of fur I'd cut off the dog I was thinking surely there's something I could do with this. I know that there is a market for human hair for wig making as a friend of mine ran out of money whilst travelling and sold her hair. I wonder if there is a similar need in the canine world. Surely there must be a demand for dog toupees for some poor bald, mangy mutt.

I've chosen all the walks we've done this weekend which have included Frenchmans Creek, Coverack to Beagle point via the Terence Coventry sculpture garden and Lizard to Cadgwith via Grade Church. All the walks went well and we didn't get lost (although Mum was not happy about getting her new boots muddy - walking boots mind not Oscar de la Renta so don't know what she was stressing about). This got me thinking about leading walks and tours for people as a business idea, I could plan a walk depending on peoples level of fitness and interests and tell them interesting  stuff  on the way about the areas we visit, some of it might even be true. I once spent 2 weeks travelling around New Zealand South Island with a friend and her half Maori boyfriend and he told us lots about Maori legends and tradition which were fascinating. It was only at the end of the second week that he admitted that he had made most of it up. Well I think that I could enjoy that, maybe telling visitors that saffron buns were originally used as a dowry payments when maidens were wed, that clotted cream was used to treat sunburn and that the legend of the Cornish Piskie was based on a now extinct population of tiny people who built and lived in the hedgerows.

I've also spent time thinking up names for my fictitious business'. My granola company would be Yumola Granola, dog wig firm would be Wendy's Waggy Wigs! And my walking tours Forget Poldark and Walk With Wendy. I've thought about catering opportunities such as Pound-lunch, where you can get lunch for a quid, Souper bowl, a sort of american themed soup kitchen and a dog grooming parlour called Give the Dog a Comb.

But most of my time this week has been spent being ill and eating chocolate. I'm sure that I read somewhere that 80% of the human body is made up of water, well I reckon that mine is 97% snot. I also wonder whether my trouble sleeping and my families weird and wonderful dreams have anything to do with the number of easter eggs we've consumed? Or is it just as the old Cornish folklore tells that during this time of year when the gorse is in full bloom then the scent of the flowers can have a hallucinatory affect. Yes I expect that that is it.

So a good week despite having a cold but no not really any nearer to finding work.

Wednesday 1 April 2015

Week 1 of worklessness

I have always loved books, reading and words (some of my favourite words being burble, gurgle and Egypt) and some people have been kind enough to tell me that I have a way with written communication. Following a redundancy situation myself and several of my esteemed colleagues have found ourselves redundant. At our joint works leaving do the other day it was suggested that I use my time to write a novel, this seemed a hugely daunting task so I said that I would instead write a blog about coping with redundancy. Now I admit that wine had been taken that evening but the idea has grown as the hangover has receded, so here goes.

The first thing I need to get my head around is that I am not being made redundant but my job role is no longer viable or needed. If I as a person was redundant then that suggests that my reason for being had ended but all that has ended is the job that I was carrying out. By my previous job being made redundant I now have the opportunity to try out new jobs. There are many different exciting and interesting careers out there where I can use my skills. Jobs areas that I am thinking about at the moment include running my own business, doing something creative, dog grooming or maybe even being Prime Minster (think that I may have left it a bit late to organise this before the next election). If I had stayed in my previous job I would not have had the opportunity to try out any of these things so I am glad of the opportunity to give some of them a go, and if I could count on your vote I'd be grateful!

A lot of the sadness that I felt about leaving my job was leaving my colleagues but I'm sure that we can have even more fun socialising together than we did working together. Some people I am sure I will keep in touch with and others will drift apart from, but that is what happens in life. If I tried to keep in contact with everyone I had met in my 48 years I would have no time to work, meet new people or learn the violin (which admittedly I haven't dome yet but may decide to take up any day now).

Another main concern about redundancy is of course money. When I looked at my bank balance this morning I felt rich as my redundancy payment has gone in. I started imagining what I could do with that money. A world cruise, new car, 16 puppies or 20 pairs of Jimmy Choos' all sound tempting. But I need to hang onto the cash as I don't know when I will be getting my next pay packet. I find money really boring but I do have to careful and sensible with it until I secure another source of income.

I don't think that it can be a coincidence that our redundancy has started on April Fools Day but feel that the joke is on the company for letting us go.  Its nearly lunchtime on my first  day of being unemployed and so far I have to say I quite like it. I have now crossed three things off my to do list (I don't think whilst in work that I ever achieved 3 things by lunchtime). Although getting dressed isn't one of my achievements yet and yes this does mean that I took the dog out for a walk in my pyjamas, how liberating!

On these blogs I hope to post a factual yet humorous look at how redundancy has affected me from a professional, social and financial point of view. I'd love for you to share your thoughts and this exciting time in my life with me. Now I'd better get showered and dressed as item number 4 on the list is to buy some Easter eggs and I'm not sure that my pyjamas would look appropriate out shopping on a future Prime Minister.