Hello again!

Well that was fun!!! 1 week later still coughing but so much better now the temperature is down. Thank you for all the get well wishes!

I have learned a lesson the hard way though and that is "Be Prepared" crikey I was a girl guide for long enough! Anyway I can at least advise you all to stock up on your favourite cold cures, tissues, cough sweets and some ready meals (home made ones if you can) as the last thing we wanted to do was to cook from scratch. Hopefully you won't all go down with this (I hope not) it's not nice at all.

On the positive side I did get to read a really great simple living book "Driving over Lemons" by Chris Stewart, it just provided blissful escapism, you really feel you are in the Andalucia region of Spain and you can almost smell the sun ripened lemons, oranges, figs and olives that grow so profusely around that area.

Over the weekend our daughter moved back in with 3 carloads of belongings! Our washing machine is working it's little heart out, thank goodness we have had good drying weather. I suspect her move back home is the first of many for other youngsters her age, like many others she has a high amount of student debt and a graduate loan to pay down and it seemed to be the only answer, she is a sensible lass, has no credit cards, thank goodness and has realised that in the present climate things can only get worse if she stays in the city. She now has to work out a new budget that will allow her to snowball her debts and get clear, ready to begin again. The book that helped her to "see the light" was my tatty well thumbed copy of "Your Money or your Life" by Alvin Hall. This book was the one that did it for our son as well and he cleared over £20,000 of debt (student debt, grad loan etc) by using the snowball method. I am needless to say very proud of my grown up children!