Nigella and Charles - you couldn't make it up!

I don’t know about you, but the public sparring match which is Nigella Lawson and Charles Saatchi is riveting me.

It’s a tabloid editor’s wet dream, of course, with all the salacious ingredients almost guaranteed to sell newspapers. Gorgeous curvaceous TV cook, millionaire art dealer several years older than her, publicly threatening behaviour, drugs, foreign servants, huge spending on fripperies and allegations of fraud by aforesaid foreigners. What could be better?

Apparently the tide of public opinion is supporting Nigella but that is hardly surprising. She is beautiful, talented, rich through her own endeavours and constantly on our TV screens. He is old, ugly, secretive and reclusive and not just rich but obscenely rich through the talent of others and plain old good luck in investment (you might argue he had foresight and exercised shrewd judgement, but that’s much less fun).

It seems that each new day brings further lurid allegations of wrong doing, law breaking or lack of morals. If it isn’t the fact (bandied across the front of various tabloids this morning) that they spent £25,000 on flowers in one year it’s their multi million pound collection of silverware stored in a special room and which costs £9,000 to clean (who cares? They can spend their money however they like). If it isn’t the coke sniffing, it’s the special fat free noodles which Nigella has allegedly been eating to attain her new, slim line figure. All grist to the mill!

I bought some of those noodles the other day in Holland and Barratt because say what you like about the rest of it, Nigella has lost a staggering amount of weight and surely it can’t all be due to stress? As you’ll know I’ve tried various diets over the years and not really had much success with any of them, or if so only short term. Whilst Christmas shopping at the weekend, I tried to find a new dress for Christmas Day, and failed because sadly, without putting too fine a point on it, I have an enormous overfed belly! So come post panto (about the third week of January) I plan to have another assault on the lard and therefore bought the noodles in anticipation (you may like to know that in an ironic twist, I am eating a homemade mince pie as I type this!).

To say fat free noodles look and feel weird is understating it. In appearance they look like nothing more than thin white worms, not noodle like at all. They have the feel of wet slimy string, all oozing about and slippery in the packet. I can’t honestly say they appear appetising in the slightest. They weren’t particularly expensive, but they certainly weren’t cheap and the packets are very small. I’m going to give them a try; but I don’t see them being a long term thing, although perhaps if you can afford to spend money on stuff to sniff up your nose and on costly flowers all year you don’t really care about that.

All the nasty allegations about one of my favourite TV chefs are rather disappointing (by the way she is also The Hubby’s favourite due to the food porn nature of her programmes. She’s lovely to look at, has curves in the right places and she can cook – what’s not to like?). No one is a saint, but she does seem to have had a rather colourful life over the last few years which, despite her earlier heartaches, can’t really be excused or justified. Mind you, Mr Saatchi certainly isn’t a saint either, so it would be completely wrong to apportion blame for the marriage break up to one or the other (allegedly he used to go round the house looking for dirt and make her grab the Marigolds and clean it up then and there – good job he never comes round to mine, then!).

No doubt this saga will run and run. There will be more scandalous allegations, and the press will have a field day. Nigella will bounce through it and after a short break will come back into the public consciousness more popular than ever (much like happened to Kate Moss when she was caught snorting coke on camera) and make loads more cash to fritter away on flowers. Charles Saatchi will disappear into his reclusive hole to be forgotten about by most and see his wealth increase further.

And no doubt some other public panto will come along with a couple more celebrities to entertain us. All depressingly familiar, and just showing what a shallow society we have become.

So lots of you agree with me, then?

Clearly my blog of yesterday struck a chord with quite a lot of you, and judging by the number of comments on the blog itself, on Facebook and by e-mail lots of you feel the same. And it’s always reassuring to know that you are not alone; even talking to people about a (at the moment) very vague feeling of wanting to jack it all in and start again with something more fulfilling, refreshing and less stressful gets comments of “I know, I’ve felt exactly the same recently”.

So what has changed about the world that so many of us feel like this? I don’t ever recall my parents having these sorts of conversations or coming home from their work (which was manual and working class and therefore had its significant downsides including the fact that it was very poorly paid) feeling that it just isn’t worth it and wanting a new start.

Is it that we have had our horizons widened, that we have become more ambitious, more materialistic or simply that much more is expected of us now?

I suspect it’s a combination of the lot and the sad fact is that we are paying the price not only for the previous generation that is living in comfortable retirement now, but also for better health care that means we all live longer and so can’t possibly expect the state to keep us for an extra decade or so and for the lack of planning and foresight on the part of companies, banks and government who should have seen this coming. And it seems unfair that one or two generations should have to pay for the sins of the previous ten and of the few big, hideously wealthy corporations that brought it all to a head.

It would seem that for most of us life is, quite simply, too cluttered and busy. The chase for material possessions which in the wider scale of things might be relatively modest is urged upon us all the time by the irresponsible advertising and finance industries, and our children expect more and more to keep up with their friends. As an example, between us, The Hubby and I now have five children who drive. They all have their own vehicle with the costs that incurs and although we don’t pay for all of them, that is a constant financial pressure. The insurance companies penalise young people regardless of background or education knowing it is the parents that pay. The same parents who are hard pressed in every other way.

Anyone who has had a major change thrust upon them will tell you that after the initial shock, it enabled them to see much more clearly what was important and have the courage to take big decisions and make major changes that otherwise they wouldn’t have been brave enough to do.

So, I come back to a personal note. We need to de-clutter, both mentally and physically. Physically, we have too much stuff (although obviously not too many shoes or, according to The Hubby, power tools). We should have done it ages ago, had a good chuck out and made a few quid at a car boot sale. Just recently, I sold a load of stuff on e-bay and to my surprise made £170. Obviously one man’s junk is another man’s treasure. So that’s something that we can carry on with over the winter with a view to getting rid of a load of it in the spring.

Mentally, it’s more difficult and this is where the life changing decisions come in. If I have to work, I’d very much like to work for myself again, having previously spent eight years self employed and loving every minute although not, at that time, being dependent upon it for my living. But I’m good at that stuff! I’m focused, organised and can, I’m told, be very ruthless. And we now have a window of opportunity which I can’t help but feel we ought to take advantage of. It would mean selling the house and living somewhere cheap to rent (and which takes puppies and cats), but it would give us freedom. In addition over the past two weeks due to changed circumstances I’ve seen loads more of The Hubby, and I like it! We’ve worked together before, maybe we could do it again?

Of course I haven’t discussed any of this with him (in fact he’ll probably find out about it through this blog – oops!) and it would be an enormous risk – our window of opportunity has come about a year or two too soon. But I am beginning to wonder whether we oughtn’t to take it anyway!

Isn’t it hard not to spend money?

Due to the general economic situation (ie no pay rise for three years and continually increasing bills) we are trying to have an economy drive. With varying degrees of success for a whole variety of reasons.

The Hubby is struggling due to the simple fact that he has two teenage boys both of whom have cars and that is expensive. Not only contributing towards the cost of the vehicle itself and its upkeep, but the insurance for teenage boys is astronomic. Even the most competitive quote for the youngest, who is just about to take his test, was just over £2,000 for a year and that was for an 04 reg Renault Clio and under the condition he has a special box of electronic tricks fitted to his engine to monitor his driving. Many of his friends are paying much more.

Like everyone, we are also paying more into our pensions to try and ensure a decent standard of living in our old age. They say that more and more people are opting out of pension schemes as they become more costly and the returns less attractive, which is surely just storing up problems for the future.

But by and large, it’s just the general household bills which are racking up at an alarming rate. I went supermarket shopping the other day and admittedly bought for a dinner party (which therefore included wine and various items which wouldn’t usually be in my trolley) as well as the usual weekly shop, and it was one of those weeks where toiletries and detergents etc had all run out at once, but the bill came to almost £200. I nearly fell over at the checkout! I have long given up being surprised at the cost of filling up the car, and as for going out anywhere – well it has to be strictly limited and even then it’s a Wetherspoon’s curry instead of the nice Italian restaurant just down the road.

And we are both in employment and relatively well paid (yes, you do have outgoings to match your salary and between us three divorces and several house moves haven’t helped, but you know what I mean). God knows how those on low incomes or out of work are managing (although a lot of them are still in Wetherspoon’s, I notice, either drinking all evening or fagging it outside).

We are busy people, and we try to do something each weekend where we can spend some time together that isn’t doing chores. Often that is going to Café Nero for coffee, or sometimes a walk round a National Trust property, a trip to Brighton or a Craft Fair. But everything, yes everything, is so expensive. A couple of coffees and cakes in Nero’s can cost over a tenner, tea at a NT café can be £5 or £6, parking alone in Brighton costs about £12 for the day and entrance fees to a craft fair are about £5 each even without a spot of lunch or a drink.  It’s no wonder people are staying at home, but I believe that if you work hard you cannot totally do without any social relaxation or you will go mad.

One side benefit of doing a totally catered for diet is that I am no longer spending any money during the week. I now avoid buying take-out coffee as on the shop counter are the temptations of bacon butties, brownies or croissants. When in WH Smith I walk straight past the crisps and chocolate (oh, how I am missing chocolate) to buy my magazine or Radio Times. I don’t need to go into the supermarket for sandwiches or salads and in so doing pick up Greek yoghurt or cake. I don’t impulse buy my dinner on the way home just because I don’t fancy what is in the fridge or freezer. So hopefully not only am I losing copious amounts of weight through this abstinence, but I am saving my money too.

I am determined that by the time I am 55, I will be debt free (apart from my mortgage) and be able to take up the option to stop work. It’ll be hard, and I won’t enjoy it. And the more the bills go up the harder it will be. The pipe dreams of the lottery or becoming a well paid author are just that, pipe dreams, so I’ll have to knuckle down and get on with it. Regardless of the economy. For my sanity, I must!

What a bunch of crooks!

I had a row with the gas board yesterday. Mainly because they are greedy, money grabbing, profiteering, obfuscating, unfriendly bunch of gits who deserve every ounce of their poor reputation.

I have paid my gas bill by direct debit for several years. I also used to work for a bank and spent a considerable amount of my time handling customers’ direct debits and standing orders, so I am very familiar with the banking Direct Debit Code of Practice. And every year, just after the winter when the heating has been on and we have used more than the usual amount of gas, they try it on and hike up the direct debit by an extortionate amount.

I only found this out because I submitted my own meter reading and then a couple of days later went onto the web to look at my latest bill. When I printed it off, on the back was a small paragraph with a pronouncement that as from my next instalment, my payment would be going up from £50 a month to £77. That is an eye watering 64.9% increase, which is frankly taking the piss.

There was no customer service offered at all. No e-mail saying “Mrs White, you owe us this much, would you like to pay us and leave your direct debit alone?”, or something similar. Just a peremptory paragraph on the back of a bill which I might not have seen until I had started forking out the new amount, gone overdrawn and in a panic investigated why I was £27 worse off this month! They have done the bare minimum that legislation dictates, and nothing more. And there was no transparency whatsoever, nothing on the bill to say which tariff I was paying and whether it was the best one they could offer me or anything.

It is only lack of time which stops me scanning the web and using price comparison web sites to regularly change suppliers and get the best possible deal. I know that large savings can be had if you are prepared to invest a little time and effort in doing this, as with everything else such as insurance and travel costs, but at the moment life is too short. So I will have to put up with the gas board for now and just accept that each year I will have to have the same argument with them. And each year I will get more and more bad tempered until in a fit of pique, I will leave them for a year until I can come back and probably negotiate something considerably cheaper than I have at the moment.

Eventually I paid them the outstanding amount on a credit card, negotiated a revised direct debit increase to £58 and swapped my supply onto a different tariff which is 4% cheaper (whoopee!) but only because I threatened to take the account off direct debit and change suppliers. I shouldn’t have to do that, it’s appalling that organisations like British Gas treat loyal customers in that way when they are making such huge profits and could afford to invest a little more in customer care. Of course I know it’s not the fault of the drone I harangued on the phone, but he had an obnoxious manner as well, righteous little sod.

I better not meet him in the street, or his bosses!

Back to work

Christmas is well and truly over. Glittery decs put away, cards in the recycling, house tidied and ironing done. It's back to the grindstone tomorrow.

I love Christmas, with all its sparkle and cheesiness. Which makes the new year return to work seem even greyer and less attractive. I'm conscious I'm always whinging about work and that in reality there are lots of other people with much worse jobs than me (or even no jobs) but I honestly feel I didn't sign up for this much hassle on a daily basis.

My parents would not have recognised the modern workplace. The pressures to perform, tight finances and the knowledge that you are only one step away from the dole queue. In their day, the public sector really was the tea drinking pen pushing environment of comedy (at least in some departments) and the private sector was where hard work was rewarded with high salaries. In some ways, some of that is still true but I do think the boundaries between the two sides have blurred.

Nor would they have suffered from the motives that push us on - mortgages, rampant consumerism (not all of you reading this will suffer from all of these, and nor do I, but many do) and keeping up with the Jones's (whoever they are), plus the availability of credit cards and loans causes many of us to fall into an enormous financial black hole without even noticing. Whilst they were poorer, they were certainly less stressed and happier.

However we are where we are. A domestic council of war in the new year about money (already had two years of no pay rise, and only 1% due this year despite inflation running at 5% ish for the last three years means we're VERY skint), plus resolutions (already propounded on this blog) will keep me busy. I am resolved to go forward in a spirit of optimism no matter what is thrown at me. I wonder how long it'll last?

I've just made a major mistake! I have been checking my money (or rather lack of it) as part of my 'not working and catching up at home' admin day.

Christ it's depressing how much things cost isn't it? I'd really decided to make an effort and not overspend this Christmas. We've cut out the stockings for everyone (cue outraged cries of "What? No stockings? But we ALWAYS have stockings on Christmas morning. Where am I going to get all my deoderant / moisturiser / sweets / make-up / pens / plastic crap for January from now? I'll have to go and buy it!"), not overbought on the yummy but fattening snacky food from M&S (Christmas is the only time I buy food for the family from M&S because it's so frigging expensive) and not bought myself any (well, not many) seasonal treats. But the credit cards still seem to have taken a hammering!

I suppose it's my own fault. I like treating people, probably too generously. And I like to be organised so I thought it was a good idea to get everything straight before the weekend then I wouldn't be worrying about it. As it is I'll still be worrying, but differently.

Anyway, there's nothing else to buy now, and we could probably survive a seige for a month by using up all the food and drink in the cupboards and the freezer. Meals would get interesting to say the least, but we wouldn't be hungry. And if all else fails I have three full 1 litre bottles of Bombay Sapphire out the back (they were on offer, it seemed silly not to) with which I could drink myself senseless and forget about it all. But that does seem rather extreme, and hopefully won't be necessary. After all, we have paid Thames Water their extortionate bill for the year, so at least we'll still have water coming out of the taps!

Unless the pipes burst in the cold, which seems to happen every year to someone. Nothing like that has happened to us for a few years, so it must be our turn!