Last year I spent weeks working out the household budget and ways to save, especially on our utilities.
After all we’d just had a summer of drought. I’d watched some of my favourite plants shrivel up and die, been public spirited and cut back drastically on our water usage, but begrudged paying for something I hadn’t been using.
Consequently in April 2007 we had a water meter installed. Within a few weeks it began to rain. And it rained and rained. And it’s never really stopped.
But yes, as long as you carry on being careful with usage, you do save money.

Just when did February sneak up on me?
It was an advert for pancake mixture that jolted me into the present.
Mentally I’m still brushing Christmas glitter out of my hair because I’ve been living in the past updating my family tree.
I’ve had a total brain block when it comes to writing, haven’t felt up to making decisions about whether to splash out on a new kitchen and certainly didn’t want to waste precious time on housework.
No – computer orientated genealogy is an ideal winter past-time, so going through old notebooks and trawling the internet fitting more names on my family tree is the ideal way to coast through to spring.

This weekend though saw my tree as up to date as I can get it at present, so what to do now? The effort of trying to come up with new ideas for writing is literally making my brain hurt and I still don’t want to do housework - when do I ever - which leaves me with what to do about the kitchen.
It’s the expense that’s putting me off. At night I toss and turn asking myself if [a] I really need a dishwasher and [b] would an eye level oven save burns to my arms and wrists as I struggle to pull sizzling pans of comfort food from my posh, not very old, but with knee level oven cooker?
The answer to [a] is yes, yes, yes, I hate washing up. I want one and [b] my knees are knackered. Of course it would. Watch this space.