Subscribe to this site's RSS feed.
I had my Avon order delivered at home last night. I don’t buy much or too often. Beauty products and me don’t go together. But I still bought from time to time to support the couple who were doing it, whom we got to talk to from time to time and were quite nice.
So I had my order delivered and was told that this was going to be the last time from them, because they have been told to keep off my road from another Avon lady who has just started doing it and happens to live in my street.
I thought it was quite mean.. “Keep off my road”, it sounds so menacing, like in the good old gangster films. I can imagine the new Avon lady approaching the old couple in a dark and mysterious way, cigarette in mouth, at dusk, and talking in whispers… “Keep off my road or you two will have it“…
Well, I don’t care much about Avon and the new lady can stick her catalogues through her back side, but I have decided that she has pissed me off by shooing the other ones away in that manner, and I’m never going to order again. Not that I was a loyal customer to start with, but I won’t be giving her my money full stop.
I’m blooming tired of the National Lottery sending me emails all the time asking me what I would do if I was to win the lottery.
I have been playing for more than two years and my biggest claim has been £75. What did I do with £75? Invest them in more lottery tickets, that’s what I did… Instead, I should have cashed them and spent them in something more useful.
Well, I keep playing every week though, and I don’t ask for much. If I could pay off my mortgage I would be the happiest person in this world.
So, what would I do?
Prize >£10,000
Get a new car.
Prize >£25,000
Get a new car, improve Jon’s car and go on holiday
Prize >£100,000
Get a new car, get Jon a new car, go on a nicer holiday and pay the remainder towards the mortgage.
Prize >£250,000
Pay off the mortgage and go on holiday (no cars??)
Prize >£500,000
Pay off the mortgage, get a new car, get Jon a new car, go on a fantastic long holiday, and invest the remainder. Some would go to our chosen charity too.
Prize >£1,000,000
All of the above, and maybe think of buying a holiday home abroad too, and perhaps moving away from Basingstoke. We would help out family and close friends with financial issues if they had any.
Prize +£2,500,000
All of the above and I would most definitely quit work and start out my own business (no idea what this would be, though!)
Prize +£10,000,000
That’s just crazy and a number that I can’t really understand 
I am pretty sure that some people will say that I would be better off by saving the money and putting in into a high interest bank account… but this is my only vice and it allows me to dream!
So what would YOU do??
Before my visit to Copenhagen I was in Motril for the weekend to meet my grand-niece Aroa. She’s a sweet little darling, too little still, but I can tell that she’s going to be extremely cute when she grows older.
It wasn’t the best of visits, to be honest. Jon and I had travelled for many hours, and later experienced a 2 and a half hour delay on our journey back (making my own journey to Copenhagen the following morning a bit hellish), just to see my brand new grand niece for less than 30 minutes.
Long story short, my sister in law got on a strop when my mum said that we weren’t going to go to a restaurant to eat fish, so they left. That evening there was a fight between my brother and sister in law with my niece and the father of the creature which made them leave for Granada, never to be seen again (that weekend).
But the weekend was alright in other aspects. I got to see Puri (my bridesmaid), Kika and Pepito the chihuahuas, drank lots of leche rizada and spent some good time with my other brother Juan.
I got to talk quite a bit to my brother and uncle during my visit, and we got talking about my recent promotion at work. I explained that I was quite excited about the new changes and that I was embracing them. It was awkward at times when I noticed that they looked at me in a funny way when I was talking about it.
Maybe it’s all in my mind, but I’ve got a feeling that some members of my family are a bit suspicious about the way that I am progressing in my career, and I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that maybe they even think that I have been sleeping with my boss in order to get the last couple promotions.
For them I studied English and trained to become a teacher and don’t understand how I could now be a Project Coordinator of a lighting controls company just like that. I’ve told them a million times that the system is different in the UK: they give you training and all kinds of support, and see beyond your qualifications and focus on your actual skills. That, I’m sorry to say, is an unknown concept in Spain, or at least where I come from, where “sleeping with your boss in order to get a promotion” is still something common, I dare say.
I was talking to my uncle about my grand-niece’s surnames. Is she going to take my niece’s surnames or will she be “recognised” by the father? And we got talking about the importance of surnames in my town. It doesn’t matter that you’re a complete chocolate tea pot and didn’t even finish school, let alone university; if your surnames are So and So, if you’re the child of Mr X and Mrs Y, then, you, my friend, needn’t worry – you will get a job regardless and will do well in life.
It is very sad for me to see that still so many people have this very old school way of thinking in Spain. Okay, maybe I can’t compare the big cities with a small town of the coast of Andalucia – I take it things are different over there. But I am hoping that things change soon, and as more and more young people go abroad to live new experiences, they realise that there’s a different way of doing things.
Yes, it’s official. Jon and I are on a diet.
Well, kind of. It’s not a proper diet, we have just decided to start eating less, less quantities and less times a day, checking on the calories each time too. And then go for a 30min walk around the block every night after dinner. Little exercise is way better than no exercise. If after a couple of weeks we see no apparent change, then we will look into a proper diet like weightwatchers or similar…
And although I know some people might say that we don’t need it (I doubt a GP would consider us obese), we really do. We have been looking at old pictures and we have been putting on weight constantly since we met. We both used to be slim and slender and now we both have beer bellies that are expanding towards other parts of the body. We can’t tolerate this.
It doesn’t help that both my younger brother and his wife have been on a diet since the last time we saw them over Christmas, and when we saw them again a couple of weeks ago they both looked so much better having lost the weight (my brother still needs to lose some more, as he was really fat!). It’s not nice being the fattest of your immediate family, when you used to be the fittest always…
We have both created accounts on www.livestrong.com, which is a project created by Lance Amstrong and has got lots of great tools to keep track of your caloric intake and burning as well.
So, yeah, our “operación bikini” has just started… Let’s see what the bikinis say on our next beach holiday! (still to be booked…)
Back in 2006, when we started dating….
We both used to be so thin!
The good ones:
- Seeing that the rabbits are back*
- Driving home and seeing the rays of light shining through the clouds into the greenest of green fields
- Being amazed everyday by the wonder of photosynthesis
- Arriving home and having Tommy waiting for me behind the door
The bad ones:
- When you hear a Taking Back Sunday song being used on a 90210 advert
- Seeing dead badgers, red kites and deer by the side of the road
- When your morning at work is screwed up by an admin girl who earns more than you but is completely useless
- Being hungry 
* There’s this field on my way to work that normally has got lots of rabbits on it. However, when last winter arrived the rabbits disappeared. They are back now with the spring! (which explains why the Easter bunny and all that…)
