Steel Kitten

"Everybody has the capacity to be excellent at something"

I've recently been listening a great deal to personal development guru Brian Tracy and his course "Success Mastery Academy", the first book I purchased when I joined www.audible.co.uk a couple of weeks ago. The quote above is his and he refers to excellence frequently during his long 12 hour course. Despite its length it's absolutely brilliant - almost every minute there's something to learn. I'm going through it once without making notes and then back over it again later to fill in the workbook which comes with it. There is so much information I'm going to need to listen several times before I can extract the full value from it and I can say for definite the advice on selling and negotiation is the best I've ever heard.

While listening I've realised two of my problems are the desire to be instantly brilliant at everything I try and to attempt completing 10 things at once. Hence I'm average at most things, excel at nothing and end up being knocked off course constantly because I'm trying to be perfect straight off the bat. So, I've decided to make some changes to the way I do things and strive for excellence in one area of my life over the next year. That gives me enough time to really crack into it, acquire a good depth of knowledge and transform that knowledge into experience through consistent practice.

Disorganisation - the biggest bane of my life

The house is upside down, my work is upside down, I can never find anything and I forget just about everything. My life is lived by scraps of paper - and most of those scraps disappear along the way. So for the next year, I'm going becoming excellent at organisation. I'm going to read every book I can find on organisation, join every group and forum that could help me, and pick the brains of those who are super organised for tips and tricks. If I fall down I won't give up in despair or rush around trying to catch up and cram the extra work into my schedule. I'll just start again the next day.

So far, I have bought a couple of the best organisation books on the market: Getting it Done by Dave Allen and Organising from the Inside Out by Julie Morgenstern; as well as joined Flylady.net, which was set up by Marla Cilley. I figure I might as well start by learning from three of the acknowledged masters in their respective fields of organisation.Dave Allen's system is primarily directed to business while Julie's and Marla's is directed towards the home.

I haven't started Julie's book yet, but I have Dave Allen's - it's a little hard going but I'm going to persevere because I can see the long term benefits. He brings up an interesting point that most of us are disorganised and feel out of control because we don't have a trusted place we can store important information so we store it IN OUR HEAD. This is the worst place and part of getting organised is getting it all out in one great FFLLUUMMPP and putting it into one central place to refer to and arrange. I can certainly relate to this. I frequently feel like my head is so stuffed full of information it's leaking out. I catch myself laughing sometimes about the episode of The Simpsons where Homer has to learn something new and an old bit of knowledge has to fall out to make space. The inside of my head is as disorganised as the outside space its body occupies.

The there's Flylady.net, which is as different in style to Dave Allen as you can get. It's is one of the oldest and best sites about personal and home organisation I think I've ever found. If you can get over the cloying sweetness, its central messages are very clear: a) set routines and b) you can do anything in 15 minutes. Flylady's big question for everyone when they first join is "Are you living in CHAOS" (Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome) and I hadn't realised just how much stress I felt when having to dash round like a lunatic cleaning before people came to visit.

Now I have to confess, I have been 'Flying' for the last week and it's working well so far. I have a routine in the morning and evening that I stick to, and every day I tackle a particular task in one 'zone' of the house. At the end of week one, my kitchen is spotless every evening, my bathroom is spotless every morning, my bed is made, my washing and ironing is up to date and all those little piles of stuf that build up - 'hotspots' - are cleaned off once a day.  I actually had people over at the weekend AND DIDN'T HAVE TO CLEAN UP BEFOREHAND!!! Woohoo!!!

There are also the odd mission emails that appears in my inbox that take a few minutes to complete. Silly stuff like take a rubish bag, run round the house and put in 27 things that need to be thrown away. Or do the same thing but find 27 things for the charity shop. Today's mission for example is in the living room - I have to go chair diving and find all the things that slip down in between the sofa cushions. As a result of extensive searching in creases and crevices (and finding an unacceptable level of crumbs which are now under my fingernails) I can confirm I have discovered the answer that age-old question of where odd socks go. The washing machine doesn't eat them. THE SOFA DOES!! I have also found £1.57 - no doubt slipped out of hubbie's trouser pockets - a great haul for about a minutes work and I shall be wandering down to the village shop in the morning to spend my haul on chocolate.

A fitting reward for all of my hard work last week I think!

A year without spending: update

A momentous decision has been made today. A decision relating to spending nothing for a whole year. My posts from a few weeks ago on this subject have been circulating my brain pretty much constantly since. Every time I see something in a shop I like a little voice in my head says "Do you need it?" then another little voice says "Ahhh, but you haven't decided to go a year without spending yet so you can have it." The first voice - which sounds uncannily like Felicity Kendall in her Barbara Good persona - then comes back with "So when are you going to make a decision on that?" only to find the reply "Soon."

To be quite frank, I feel guilty every time I pick something up and my head hurts with the constant exchanges between Felicity and Co (and the Co is starting to sound a bit like Richard Briars/Tom Good). This is ridiculous! As if I don't have enough to feel guilty about, I've decided to add one more thing to my shoulders in an orgy of martyrdom.

Well no more. For I have come to a decision. And the decision is:

No.

I will not be undertaking the challenge of not spending anything for a year. I spend little enough as it is without cross examining myself every time I pick up the smallest thing and beating myself around the head about it. I felt guilty for handing over 10p at the tip the other day for a fantastic book about Elizabeth I that I'd been trying to find for months - it has gone too far.

I've said before that I'm a very black and white person and treat myself very harshly at times and this is an excellent example of it in action. My brain can persecute me and if I went forward with a non spending plan, I'd spend the better part of a year deeply entrenched in layers of guilt and end up deeply unhappy.

Before I'm castigated for wanting to be be a spendthrift, I can actually tell you exactly what I have spent on myself in the last month just so you understand that I'm not making excuses and do keep a careful eye on the money I have. I have spent £42.10. That £42.10 netted me: an embroidered denim skirt, a sheer flower top (in fact the one in the last wind turbine post), two bikinis, 5 books, a bag of bon bons, a magazine and the most exquisite porcelain tea-for-one set with hand painted ladybugs. I felt bad about every single purchase, even though I know most people's mouths would drop open at how little this is compared to other people. God forbid what could have happened if I'd done something as rash as bought a new DVD or CD for myself. I might have exploded with guilt.

I already spend time and money helping those less fortunate than I am and give thanks for how lucky I am to live in a wealthy country and be able to support myself. So instead I'm going to spend the next year learning how to become a born organiser, a much more necessary and worthwhile endeavour and one that will help me both in my home life and my business. And that will be the subject of another post on another day.

Caught on the hop...

While I've been busy in here thinking I still had bags of time before most of the garden fruit and veg is ready, my garden has taken things into its own hands and started ripening everything early.

I went out to hang up the washing and noticed as I looked down the garden little purple globes on the plum tree. Two of my big plum trees are usually not ready to drop fruit until September time and the third small tree usually starts dropping ripe fruit in the middle of August.  I looked a couple of times, not really twigging what I was seeing, then walked up the garden to discover the small bloody tree was ripening a whole month early, the other two were beginning to turn colour and swell rapidly.

I picked 6lbs of the small tree this afternoon and my kitchen is the site of a plum jam-making production line. I've literally shelved all plans this afternoon to make as much jam as I possibly can and I know within a couple of days there's going to be roughly another 10lbs coming off to get working on. And then in under a month the fun will really begin. My two other plum trees will be ready and there are around four times the size of this one. That is a really scary thought. Oh and my rhubarb plants have recovered so well from their last stripping that they're the size of triffids again and I need to pull some stalks. I think I'm going to have to drag out the old chest freezer, clean it down and start freezing some of this fruit for desserts during the winter.

I've stripped my gooseberry bushes the other day and churned out as much crumble as I can shoehorn into Martin, the blackberries are also ripening early so I have a dish in the kitchen to turn into blackberry frangipane tart for tonight and somewhere along the line, the swiss chard, cabbages and courgettes are ready to go NOW.

Bloody weather.

The wind turbine genius

As far as the environment goes, I think the UK can be split into two factions: those that love wind turbines and those that don't. Those that hate wind turbines consider them a blot on the horizon, the purveyor of low house prices and responsible for gross levels of health-affecting environmental noise. Not that the majority of wind turbine haters have ever actually been to see a wind turbine or find out anything about them.....in fact, everyone I've spoke to who hates wind turbines has eventually admitted their views come from features and coments from newspaper journalists and the TV. Hmmmmm.....shall I go there? Shall I point out that newspapers and TV stations are run by political machines that broadcast their own agenda-reinforcing twaddle and that it's up to individual to find out the truth through rigorous questioning and fact finding? Nah...I won't bother. After all, political propaganda is only spread by our evil enemies abroad isn't it.....

Anyhoo, those that love wind turbines - and I am one of them - believe they are one of the best ways of reducing our dependence on fossil fuels and an excellent method of harnessing power from a free source. And my hubby knows I am a turbine lover. He knows that I hanker after a wind turbine in the back garden and have plans on the computer for building one. Which is why the pinnacle of his anniversary present was to take me to Swaffam on the way home on from Norfolk on Monday to see Ecotricity's EcoTech centre and climb its wind turbine! I have married a genius!Thank you, thank you, thank you Martin for giving me the opportunity to see it in all of its glory.

Having heard the arguments against wind turbines on the basis they are noisy I was keen to get out of the car and find out for myself the horrendous level of noise they made. Which was why I was so surprised that I had to stand DIRECTLY UNDERNEATH the wind turbine to hear the blades turning and only then it was a gently swishing sound! You CANNOT hear the blades turning even from the distance I took the above photograph. This is what happens when people form their opinions from reading newspapers and watching TV instead of getting off their arses to find out for themselves. Although to be fair, I'm sure some wind turbine technology is better than others and the older models may make more noise than newer. Which of course means we should replace them with newer ones, NOT build a skewed case for STOPPING building wind turbines altogether.

Anyway, we signed up for a tour inside the turbine, which is the only one in the world to have a viewing platform for the public to climb to and look out of. However, I must say I was really worried about the climb. After Florence cathedral, when I was exhausted, weak and shaking from the intense 40 degree heat and effort from climbing its 300 odd steps to the top, the thought of climbing these 300 steps and experiencing the same effect left me a bit nervous, especially as I didn't have an asthma inhaler with me if it sparked off an attack. But there was no way I was leaving without climbing it, so I duly took my place at the back of the tour so I could sit down on the steps and not hold anyone up. I also had a great vantage point to take photos:

The climb wasn't as bad as I feared - being at the back meant I could take my time and the turbine has been built to have two platforms inside to rest at, one just by the 'e' of Ecotricity and another at the end of the word by the 'y'.

The view at the top was fantastic and well worth the climb. You could see right to Ely Cathedral. That white thing in the background of the picture below is one of the blades as it had just passed.

I came down from the turbine believing whole-heartedly that my decision to switch my electricity supplier to Ecotricity many months ago was the right one. The profits Ecotricity make are put back into building more wind turbines, which I admire as I'd much prefer my money to be spent on infrastructure and new technology rather than Company Director's mansions in Barbados while the infrastructure is left to rot through lack of investment. Npower and your ilk take note.

And by the way Npower - stop calling. I will never switch back to you as my decision was made on ethical not financial considerations. Your insistence of helping me save £80 a year with fuel bonuses cuts no ice. It may not be money saving and frugal to pay a little more for something like electricity and gas, but it is important to put your principles first and stand up for what you believe in, rather than pocket a few quid and feel guilty about doing nothing. Your actions in Oxford involving the destruction of Radley Lakes to store your power station waste is shameful (especially in light that it can be recycled for use in road-building). Your treatment of the residents of Radley is shameful. In short, sirs you are shameful. Come near my property again to try and sell me your snake oil while I'm eating lunch and you will feel the sharp end of my tongue, not to mention the prongs of my fork.

Besides Dale Vince, Ecotricity's CEO, is sexier than yours.

Anyhoo.....if anyone reading this is considering switching to Ecotricity and would like a little incentive, go to the Ecologist website to sign up and you will get a free subscription to the magazine. Then your eyes really will be opened to the crap that some companies try and pull for profits.

Hubbie surpassed himself....

Martin and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary on Sunday 15th. It's been one year since we walked down the aisle. In fact, it's only 3 years and 3 months since I first met Martin so I guess we are sickeningly smug bastards who can claim "love at first sight" and "it was meant to be".

All I remember of that infamous aisle walk was my heels disappearing down the gratings that had been cunningly (and very stupidly) disguised with rugs and one of my bridesmaid treading on my veil half way down and yanking my head back (I had a very long, lace edged veil known as a mantilla - very popular with Italian brides and almost unheard of in this country). The rest of the wedding is a bit of a blur to be frank. Although I do recall the Groom and his friends lying all over the floor doing a splendid rendition of Oops Upside Yer Head while the Bride had her nose in a glass of vodka and lime.

Anyway, I digress.

At some point last week Martin started to display the symptoms of A Man With A Big Secret. You know what I mean girls; furtive phone calls with the living room door shut, frantic attempts at covering the computer screen whenever I walked in the room and subtle inquiries as to my whereabouts and workload on Monday. If it wasn't for the fact he's so honest that if he gets given too much change in a shop he returns it, I might have suspected he had a bit on the side or be indulging in porn. I realised by Friday he HAD booked us in somewhere for Sunday night and was duly instructed on Saturday to pack for an overnight stay and to make sure I had a pair of trainers.

Sunday rolled around and I was given a set of directions comprising of a list of road numbers and names. There was no information about the end point at all and no indication of which direction we would be going. I was forbidden to look at a map and I spent the entire 3 hour journey time with my eyes glued to signposts so I wouldn't miss a turning. I only twigged where we were heading when we were literally two minutes from our final destination and that was because there was a ruddy great sign pointing to it. I should tell you that ever since I decided to surprise Martin on his birthday two years ago by taking him to West Usk Lighthouse B&B near Newport (where he sprung his proposal and then had to rush me home to a doctors the next day as I was damn near on the floor with a bladder infection), we have tried to stay in as many different unusual places as possible for our holidays. So perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised when Cley Windmill in Holt, Norfolk hoved into view:

I have to say, it was one of the best B&Bs I've ever stayed at. The windmill had been renovated to a fantastically high standard and the owners had quite obviously paid a lot of attention to small details. We stayed in the River room, which is the right hand window in the picture, and everywhere you looked it had been carefully decorated. There were handmade windmill biscuits waiting for us on the bed along with a leather bound tome about the room, the windmill, the routine in the windmill and things to do in the area. It was all wonderfully clean, which sometimes doesn't happen when you stay somewhere very old. Occasionally owners of these places think it's quirky to never dust or leave bits of mold in the bathroom or attempt hackneyed bits of DIY renovating work which never achieves a good standard. But not the owners of the windmill. All professionally done with great care.

The highlight of the stay for me was dinner in the evening, which we decided to have at the windmill. It has a small dining room which it opens up as a general cafe in the afternoon for cream teas etc and then in evening it becomes a restaurant. The kitchen is just off the dining room and always has an open door so you can pop your head round and speak to chef if you want. You can also hear him preparing everything and humming along to his jazz tunes. Not only does he cook the meal but he also serves everyone in the restaurant by hand, including drinks. No waiters, just you and the chef.

The meal was absolutely wonderful. When you book for dinner, the chef will ask you if there is anything you particularly like and try and fit that into the evening meal. This is set on the night so everyone eats the same thing and you don't get to pick your own food. Therefore it's vitally important if you are allergic to anything or really don't like something you tell them. Martin was keen to tell them about my love of butternut squash, which was served for mains roasted with other Mediterranean veggies and a stunning piece of herbed salmon, but forgot to tell them of his pathologic hatred of tomatoes and cheese. So he was a bit shocked when the starter came out and it was beefsteak tomatoes with feta cheese and olives with a basil and olive oil dressing. We had to do a surreptitious swap when the chef wasn't looking - I took all the tomatoes and cheese, Martin took all the olives and herbed bread in the basket. We both loved the desert though - homemade warm fig frangipane tart with cream.

We staggered from the room - Martin wobbling slightly after a bottle of wine - to retire to bed and massage our bloated stomachs while watching some bizarre kung foo film on the TV starring that strange chaos-ridden, sexually-obsessed guy Stiffler from American Pie. Crap but strangely compelling.

And where did the trainers come into it?

I'll tell you that bit in a few days because this post has wittered on long enough. But I can reveal it involved a near vertical climb up 65 metres of steel and that my husband is forever in my good books.

I've decided to move....

...no, not house unfortunately, despite what number four said in my previous post. I have decided to move this blog. On the advice of Someone Who Knows A Great Deal About Blogs, in the the next few weeks I'll be moving this whole shebang to its own brand new spanking domain. I have lots of plans for the future and unfortunately your average blogging site won't let me achieve it all so a new site it has to be.

So, this afternoon I've been trawling the internet for some inspiration on layouts and designs for the new site. I decided the best way to approach this would be to sign up for Stumble Upon. For those of you who have never come across this before, Stumble upon is a web browser add-on that brings up a random selection of websites based on user ratings and recommendations. So for example, one of my topics might be Victory garden. Every time I hit the Stumble Upon button, a new random website based on this is brought up. Once I've had a look I either hit the thumbs up button to tell Stumble this is a good website and spot on topic or thumbs down to say I didn't like it or it wasn't relevant. So basically it peer/ social networking. It's a refreshing change from searching through the usual search engines which bring up pages of sites with lists of other sites or utterly irrelevant rubbish.

While I haven't found anything yet that grabs me by the short and curlies, I have found some amazing places that I have to share with you or burst.

Here are a few of my favourites so far:

Go Fug Yourself - inspired, cruel, knicker-wetting compulsive viewing. One woman's take on some of the disasters celebrities allow themselves to photographed in under the guise of trendy clothes.

Shift Happens - if you want a place that shakes you out of a state of complacency check this out. Also features background music from The Last of the Mohicans. Hearing this has just brought to mind a semi-naked Daniel Day Lewis dressed as an indian with long hair. Guess what I'm going to be watching while doing the ironing tomorrow.

The Eight Principles - watch this then go have some fun.

Post Secret - funny, heartbreaking and wonderful. A site where people post their innermost secrets to the blogger (around 150,000 so far) and he makes them up into truth postcards. There was a time when his archives were on here but they seem to have gone. I know he's written a book about Post Secret so maybe they're in there now.

Dooce - personal blog by Heather B. Armstrong of Salt Lake City, Utah. Brilliant, smart, vulgar. We need more people to be as sharp as her.

Eggs Bacon Chips and Beans - one man's quest for the perfect plateful. Sounds weird, but isn't when you get into it.

Tramp to Vamp - Image Consultant Nicky Hambleton Jones' site about personal styling and makeover site. The hand drawn graphics are superb.

By the way, while out today posting a letter, I decided to have a nosey round the village and gawp at people's front gardens. As I rounded a corner, one I'd walked hundreds of times before, for the first time I noticed the name of a pretty little stone cottage next to it's own patch of wood. The name? Tumbledown Cottage. See number 24 below in my previous post if you haven't yet read it. How great is synchronicity when the universe is riding the same waves as you.

A day for odd things....

It's a bitty day. I've no real concentration for anything or desire to get deeply engrossed in any project. I want to flit from one thing to the next. When I'm like this my mind wanders, dragging things out of deep crevices of my memory to examine, laugh at, congratulate and sometimes dust off something useful. This morning, everything below has come into my mind at some point and it makes scary reading. if you don't like train wrecks, look away now.

1. I don’t wear a watch anymore because I'm frightened at how fast time is passing and how old I'm looking. When I’m working I use the one on the computer to ensure I’m on track if I’m on a deadline, but the rest of the time I eat when I’m hungry and sleep when I’m tired and try and ignore the speed the days pass at
2. I’ve only just realised that visiting the tip makes me incredibly excited. Literally foot-hopping from side to side with impatience waiting for Martin to get ready to go.
3. Outy belly buttons on pregnant women make me feel a bit sick. I once saw a picture of a pregnant women’s tummy and there was clearly a foot sticking out making an imprint on her belly from the inside. I physically gagged. I'm not one of nature's mothers.
4. I’ve lived in this house for two years and I’m still pretending to like it. I fantasise about living in a hotel with blue walls, walnut furniture and cashmere blankets
5. Someone once told me I had chubby knees and I’ve never worn a knee length skirt since.
6. I have lots of hairs on my front of head that are about 2inches long because I wear my sunglasses as a hairband and end up ripping wads out when I take them off.
7. I like bread with buckets of cream cheese and jam.
8. When I read my journal entries from a few years ago I don’t recognise the person who wrote them and can’t remember feeling or doing some of things I described.
9. I judge everyone by a ‘black and white’ standard and myself the most harshly. I am my father's daughter in this respect and it upsets me.
10. There are only two photos of myself I like – the one at the top of this blog and this one.
11. I used to live with someone who was a foot fetish. Feet now freak me out and I can’t stand mine or anyone else’s.
12. I cry on average once a week because of the mess in the house and the constant cleaning and tidying up
13. I don’t understand why all fish tastes the same, even if I marinade it for hours and hours and hours. The marinade is lovely, the fish is still bland.
14. I once got caught up in a barbed wire fence and ripped a hole down my face from the inside of my left eye to my top lip. When I went home my parents shouted at me for being late and I held my hand over that part of my face feigning teenage boredom so they wouldn’t see what I had done and shout at me even more.
15. I adore butternut squash red Thai curry so much I could eat it every evening and still eat any leftovers for lunch the next day.
16. I made a horrible mistake with the lino in the downstairs bathroom. Colourwise - not bad, geometrically – hideous. I must have had PMT
17. I’m currently taking antibiotics that have turned my wee black.
18. I wasn’t nervous before my wedding. Everyone else ran around like headless chickens and I was the eye of the storm. I didn't get into my dress until 2:35pm and I was due at the church at 3.
19. I was once at the scene of a bad motorbike accident where a rider had become separated from his head. While everyone was shouting for ambulances to help him (? How? Sew it back on?) all I could think about was securing the bike, which still running on the ground with a split petrol tank, before a stray spark set it on fire. When I'm under pressure I go icy calm and think with pinpoint precision. I think I'd make a good ambulance driver or battlefield medic.
20. I buy my Italian coffee whenever I go to Italy. I can't find anything as creamy and smooth in this country. I have to go on holiday so I can fill my suitcases until bulging with Lavazza Famiglia packets.
21. My favourite place in England is Stonehenge and feel drawn to collecting objects made of stone
22. I'm fascinated by Wicca, Witchcraft and Paganism but have accepted that certain facets of it are not for me so don't practice
23. I sometimes wish I had faith in something bigger than myself. I have studied to a greater or lesser extent Protestantism, catholicism, Judaism, paganism and Scientology to name but a few and haven't found anything that calls to me. At the moment I'm enamoured by mysticism.
24. If I ever had past life regression I would hope I had been a medieval herbalist or hedge witch living alone in a wood in a tumbledown cottage surrounded by cats and bewitching anyone who crossed my path
25. Until I met Martin I didn't comprehend the true meaning of compromising because you love someone and want to make them happy.
26. The most crazy money saving, thightwad thing I've ever done was volunteering to work a bar every night for six weeks during the Christmas party season so I could bag the leftover food. I stashed four months worth of Christmas dinners, including veggies and gravy. It's why I'm so good at disguising some foods so well people can't guess the original ingredients.
27. When I was a student I has a budget of £15 a week for food, household items, toiletries. I even managed four £1 taxis fares (subsidized by my employers) to take me home at 3am from my part time job at a nightclub. One week I overspent and didn't have the money for one taxi ride, but I was too proud to borrow £1 and ended up walking 40 minutes home, in the dark through some very scary places. I put my headphones on and tried to look confident.
28. Whenever I meet someone who has a hidden core of nastiness, the hairs on the back of my neck and on my arms stand up and stay up until I get away from them. I can smell they mean me harm. An ancient, primitive cave woman reaction.
29. I have a secret fetish for Pucci. When Charles and Camilla married I was glue to the screen looking at Zara Phillips' dress and have secretly horded pictures of her in it on my computer.
30. I have a secret stash of textured vegetable protein that I sneak into meals with mince to try and eek out a pound of the meat between two meals.

If I were you, I'd run away now from this blog. The owner is quite obviously deranged.

The world is bright again thanks to magnets

Sorry I haven't been here for the last week. I've been in a real horrible depressed funk.

I took a step back healthwise and spent a week feeling the way I did when I was ill a few months ago - very tired, unfocused, achy and forgetful. There was a hundred things I could have blogged about over the last week:

• a fledging blackbird I lovely rescued from the cats 10 days ago and then took to a bird sanctuary just to get some peace from its incessant singing and diced worm-eating
• a stunning rhubarb sponge I perfected two weeks ago (that's clotted cream by the way, not ice cream. I say if you want cream really have it! No little portions for me...)

• the thrilling moment of paying off all of my overdraft
• discovering most fantastic diary book of a couple living the self-sufficiency dream in Australia and doing the "not-spending-a-penny-for-six-months" challenge (money not weeing!Perhaps I should have chosen a better phrase...)
• how my neighbour's dog has started mournfully howling in the front window when she leaves the house to take the kids to school or go shopping
• re-discovering the pleasures of hot, strong Italian expresso coffee in the morning
• finding a pine kitchen unit, 10 bamboo blinds and a 1940s barley-twist gate-leg table on Freecycle
• making a photobook to tell the story of how Martin and I met for our 1st wedding anniversary next Sunday
• planting an entire packet of beautiful trailing mixed colour petunias in March only to discover in July the factory packaged up plain white nicotiana seeds by mistake and now they're everywhere and look like 3ft Triffids
• Martin bagging a Victorian frosted stained glass door for our bathroom on eBay for pittance
• finally writing an ebook on environmental business to go on my website as a freebie

But I didn't.

All of my energy was directed at trying to carry on as normal and get work completed. And it's all because of losing my magnetic bracelet. Now before you all raise you eyes heavenwards, cynical scientist here actually believes they work. I was given a free one by a business colleague who sells them and for two months I've worn it on my wrist. It looked a bit like one of those unattractive 1980s black Seiko digital watches but I could put up with that in the name of science and I was prepared to test it out for a good while as I hate to dismiss things as bunkum until I've given them a fair trial. I assumed my gradually increasing good health was due to me getting better and the virus gradually getting out of my system. Now I think the magnet had something to do with it.

I think I lost it while out on a Sunday river trip for a family get together about 10 days ago, but I actually didn't twig it had gone until about three days afterwards. I remember going to take off the bracelet to get in the shower the day after and not seeing it on my wrist. Stupid me just thought I'd taken it off in the bedroom. It took till Wednesday to realise it was gone and to be honest I wasn't hugely upset. I hadn't had any sudden massive increases in energy etc so mistakenly believed the bracelet wasn't really necessary.

That was until the following Saturday dawned and I'd spent a week suffering from disturbed sleep, no concentration, crap writing and no energy to lift a finger to do anything in house. All my old aches and pains in my wrists and fingers came back, not to mention the shoulder and neck pain. Suddenly the bed was uncomfortable all the time, my pillows didn't seem to belong to me. I felt itchy and jumpy. I just crawled through the week.

By Sunday I'd had enough. I emailed my friend and asked for another one. This time I chose a very special-top-of-the-range, kick-arse magnetic bracelet that looks very pretty and has two massive magnets. I wanted double fire power and my friend was good enough to sell it to me for cost price, which is half of what they normally sell for so Robin I'm very grateful. Thank you.

I put it on last night and for the first time in over a week I had a decent night's sleep. I woke up this morning raring to go and here I am. Blogging happily away, Italian coffee in my hand.

Psycho-somatic? Quite probably. But I say if you believe something works, stick with it, even if you can't explain it or the weight of scientific evidence is against it.

Do you trust yourself with money?

It's 6:10am and instead of being in the land of nod I am wide awake and drinking tea. One of the cats fell off the bedroom windowsill this morning straight into a huge pile of papers and Cds I'd been storing in a box until the studio was finished. There was a strangled squawk as Georgie tried to cling on by his claw tips before thudding onto the box and finally running out of the room squeaking in embarrassed fear. Having been jolted out of a deep sleep the adrenaline was well and truly flowing and I knew I wouldn't be able to get back to sleep.

So, at a hideous early hour I decided to do some tapping and see if any other negative beliefs about money surfaced. I still feel there are deep-seated issues I haven't yet touched on. Sure enough, as I tapped away trying to get to the source of uneasiness about money I was feeling one popped out. It's a corker I didn't even consciously realise I had.

I don't believe I should be trusted with money. How about that then!!

My parents never allowed me money to go and buy my own stuff and I don't remember them giving me pocket money, although I feel sure they must have done at some point. They always said they would buy me what I wanted and would judge whether my purchase was necessary. I never had that feeling of being trusted with money and taught how to save it and spend it. I remember my mother opening a savings account for me at Midland to get me the free bag that came with it and telling me that she would put money in there for me if I wanted to. I don't remember going to the bank with her and I clearly remember thinking at the time "why would I want to do that? I don't have any." I genuinely didn't understand the purpose of a savings account or what I was supposed to do with it.

I still to a certain extent behave like a child around money. I pay the mortgage and the council tax and I feel it as a huge burden to me. I want Martin to pay it so I don't have to think about it and can just give him some cash every month. Every month it's a struggle for me to stay out of the overdraft and there's always that fear that I won't have the money to pay the mortgage, even though every month I do. It's like I'm drowning and and I'm hoping that someone is going to come along and rescue me. Now I know this is one of the sources of why I feel bad about money, I can feel it like a huge weight on my chest and it's blocking the back of my throat.

I'm going to spend some more time with the Money Beyond Belief course this afternoon and try and get rid of the feeling and clear the negativity before I start work.

I guess if no-one is going to rescue me I'm just going to have to stop drowning and start swimming.