You may recall from an earlier post, that I mentioned that my niece, who is in her second year at university, had asked me if I could give her any advice on how to write university essays. I was able to point her in the direction of a coursework info site which I had found on the internet and I am pleased to say that she got a tremendous amount of help from the site. However, little did I know that her younger brother Sam would also ask me to help him with his GCSE coursework that he was having difficulty with.

Rather than point him to the site that had been so helpful to his sister, I decided to have a look at the site myself and was agreeably surprised at the sheer number of gcse essays and tutorial examples that were available. The site allowed students like Sam to feel secure and in control, a sure way to lessen the stress of taking gcse exams. The resource is fully teacher approved and importantly backed by anti-plagiarism experts. I feel sure that Sam will get invaluable understanding of what is expected for his gcse coursework, importantly help him with the structure and what required for getting the highest possible marks. I shall follow his progress with interest and look forward to seeing him follow in the footsteps of his sister.

Greece is a country that I have not visited too much, but I did enjoy visiting the islands on a cruise and I flew out to Cephalonia once which was tranquil and very relaxing.  Reading about the current problems that are being suffered by the Greek people makes me very sad and without going into the reasons why they find themselves in this position, it is the people who are suffering.

The headline figures today suggest that in November alone 126,000 Greeks lost their jobs in a country of 11 million,  equating that to say America, means that it is equivalent to three and a half million Americans losing their jobs in just a single month! The unemployment rate is running at 20.9% and can you imagine how we would feel here if that was in the UK?

Should Greece decide to return to the drachma it would mean that they could devalue their currency, something which it cannot do now as effectively it is tied in to the Euro and Germany and France. However, even if the Germans wish them to declare bankruptcy and leave an internal poll showed that 70% of the Greek population want to remain in the Eurozone, as pragmatists, Greece wanting to leave the €uro would be like the logic of a turkey voting for Christmas. Now many believe that nothing can save Greece but the Greeks. Let’s hope somehow they can turn the corner.

I ask this question because something happened when I left home for an appointment and it was only when I was about 30 minutes into my journey that I realised that I had left my mobile ‘phone on the hall table and I suddenly felt as though I had forgotten to put on my shirt or trousers or something, to put it mildly I was in a sheer panic. What do I do, should I drive back the 30 minutes and start all over again and be late for my appointment, absolutely not!

I and I know that I am not alone in this, regard the Smartphone as an extension to me, to be without it is causes understandably anxiety. For me and many that I know including colleagues at work, our ‘phones are our source of emails, Google, a very useful 3G and Wi Fi tool, plus of course in my case an acceptable 3.2 megapixel camera without the need to carry my SLR.

When you think that it was only a few years ago that a mobile ‘phone was just that, you made and received telephone calls on it, now the camera industry, games companies and even the PC providers, are battling with this one device, the mobile is doing it all brilliantly. The down side to this of course is that emails come through to me at home and I am never away from work, I could switch it off when I get home, but I just can’t!

 So it seems that our addiction to our phones is here to stay and will understandably continue to rise, as the mobile manufacturers continue to improve what they have to offer and the mobile embraces even more than now.

I love all the latest mobile ‘phones, but as yet I am not in a position to have more than one decent one and I don’t suppose that I ever will be. However my old mobile is lacking in a lot of modern technical features and so I thought that it was about time that I started to look around and see what is on the mobile ‘phone market and get myself an upgrade.

You can be sure that just wandering around the shops and looking through windows will not really get you very far so I thought it best to use a comparison site and decided to look at Recombu which is the one we use at work. I was not disappointed as the site offered me a host of reviews, as well as ‘phone plans from all the major providers.

I’ve had LG mobile ‘phones before and one that caught my eye was the LG Prada 3.0 review which is stunning with a touch screen display. It’s Prada-branded and one of the best looking phones currently available. It also features an array of gadgets including a camera, music player and a built-in FM radio, all the things that I want in fact.  Normally when a phone looks this good, I have found that the other functions tend to let it down, not so with the Prada, it doesn’t just look nice, it does all the tech stuff too. It has a 2 megapixel camera with flash, which is not the best ever, but good enough for taking the odd photograph; I have a decent camera for high tech stuff. There is a music player; FM radio; email with support for MS Office attachments; microSD memory card which is expandable to 1 Gybte; Bluetooth & USB connectivity; EDGE data transfer, in fact just what I’m looking for.

Now all I have to do is see what deals Recombu are offering today.

They say that a dog is man’s best friend and like most other people that I know I‘m quite fond of dogs, but there is a limit, especially when you are putting your own life in danger to help a dog. The recent really cold weather has brought the usual spate of frozen ponds and lakes and tragically it has also seen the death of a man, that it was believed was trying to rescue a dog from a frozen pond, at a golf club in Surrey.  The person concerned was a classic car enthusiast called Tim Waddingham who restored and serviced classic Jaguar cars and also raced them.
 
I have a particular fondness for Jaguar cars through a friend of mine who restored and ran a Jaguar XK120. My friend was a member of the Jaguar Enthusiasts Club as was Tim Waddingham and I attended many meetings. I never met Tim but I watched his friend Terry Dye with whom Tim raced and he recalled how Tim had stopped racing after a few years but still used to come to the circuits. Mr Dye described him as “a quiet man with a very subtle sense of humour” and added “he restored the car that he raced and it was beautifully prepared.”

Someone who also rescued a dog but was lucky to survive the act was a man who stripped down to his underwear and crawled across a frozen river to rescue his trapped dog and in my opinion has rightly been condemned by fire-fighters. According to an eyewitness, the man fell into the River Stour, in Dedham, Essex, on Sunday but managed to climb out with the animal. Ice often appears to be strong but in reality it can be very thin and anyone who falls through into the water below could get trapped under the ice and would only be able to survive for minutes in the freezing water. So is it worth risking your life to try to follow a dog onto the ice, normally they will make it back to safety anyway, the same cannot be said for people.

I’m sure that this is going to start a hot debate in some circles, but it appears that the people living in the North of England are happier on the whole than their counterparts living in the South of the country. I have to agree with them having tasted both regions, but it is not just me that thinks so.

A study was recently carried out by Right Move the property website in which they asked over 25,000 people across the UK to give an insight into how happy at home we are as a nation and which factors provide us with the most contentment. In this they found that people in Carlisle, Cumbria, are the happiest in England, while those living in east London are the least content with their surroundings.

Of course Carlisle is a very nice place indeed and if you add to that the fact that it is only a few miles from one of the most beautiful parts of the UK, the Lake District, it does not come as much of a surprise to me. The weather can be a bit “iffy” at times in the Lakes but the surroundings and the great “hostelries” more than make up for it and it does not rain as much as people may imagine.

Following on from Carlisle, York was the second placed with Harrogate fourth. Now who would argue with these two beautiful places? York has fab shops and is packed with history, not to mention one of the finest pieces of architecture to be found anywhere in the world, the Cathedral! Harrogate of course simply oozes the charm of yesteryear and graceful Georgian houses and living.

By contrast, nine of the ten lowest scoring towns and cities were in the south. All the east London districts were classed with the lowest scores, followed by Ilford, south east London, Luton and Romford. Oldham was the only northern town in the bottom ten of the site’s Happy At Home survey. I’m really pleased that I live in the beautiful and happy North of England.

Chat with any of my friends and they will tell you that I just love to play at the online casino tables. When I go away on a business trip or for holidays, I always take my lap top with me and sitting in my hotel room at night, I find having a casino at my fingertips so I can play slots or any other casino game that takes my fancy better than propping up the bar or watching a film on television.

I came across a top online casino site through a colleague when we were at a presentation together and he told me about the casino site that he used, MansionCasino.com. I have an ‘app’ on my laptop for another site but I thought that I would try Mansion to see what was on offer and I have to say that I was not disappointed. There are around a 100 games from which you can choose. These include some of my all time favourites such as blackjack and roulette. There are fourteen video poker games alone, craps and live dealer games if these take your fancy. I still like slots and at Mansion online casino I have a great choice of more than 60 from which I can while away my evenings.

However, what I really like is online poker and the online casino offers me the chance to play online Casino Hold’em. This is played in a real casino by a live dealer, I really mean a real live person that you see at the table, much better than animation in my book. I think that I might just add another app to my laptop. Happy online casino gaming folks!

If you are one of the many that is confused by the best before dates on food packaging, you will not be on your own. There has been a multitude of opinion regarding these and most people would agree that they are a good thing. However one has got to ask, how realistic are they? The best before date on a tin or package is not to be confused with a use by date, which should always be strictly adhered to and usually relates to fresh dairy products.

The advice that I have been given concerning beast before dates is that they are advisory only and if used within a realistic period beyond the date should be perfectly ok, as with any product the quality may deteriorate. Tinned food for example will keep for years, which is what it was designed to do. One prime example, and by the way I am not advocating that you should follow suit here or eat anything that has gone way beyond the date, came to light in an article I was reading today.

A German pensioner who received a tin of American lard 64 years ago in an aid package has only just tasted it, after discovering that it is still edible. Food safety experts in Rostock, his home town on Germany’s Baltic coast, said the pig fat was still safe to eat. Mr Feldmeier was a student in 1948 when the US was running a huge aid programme to rebuild war-ravaged Germany. He kept the tin of lard for emergencies. A food expert, Frerk Feldhusen, said the lard was rather gritty and tasteless and hard to dissolve, though quite edible. Mr Feldmeier provided some black bread to go with it. Mr Feldhusen said the test result might make some consumers think twice before discarding food immediately after the expiry date.

I’ll just go and check a few dates in my cupboard I think!

We seem to complain about our friendly sun when we don’t see it and when we do, and it was a problem that I had been having in our breakfast room in the mornings when we sat down to have our breakfast. This is more apparent at the weekends because we have our bacon and egg treat a little later than during the week. The room is east facing and as you can guess, in the winter in particular when the sun is a little lower in the sky it does cause a bit of a problem.

Now I’m never one for complaining about seeing the sun, I don’t see enough of it but I felt that I could not squint at my breakfast any longer and would have to do something about it. Whilst searching around the internet I came across accompany called Tuiss Blinds and frankly I was agreeable surprised at the fantastic range of window blinds that they offer. These included white roller blinds, silver blinds, venetian blinds, in fact a full range of window blinds that can be bought online. In the end we settled on a white roller blind, although we could have picked from a truly stunning range of colours, from whites and naturals through to modern funky green and red. The blinds are made to measure and the online buying process was simplicity itself. So now I can enjoy my weekend breakfast treat and see what I am eating!

We were at a friend’s house recently and they have just had a swish new bathroom installed, which set me, or should I say my partner thinking about the one that we have at home. I must admit that it is looking a little bit tired and I wondered how I could improve the looks of it without going to the expense of a complete new bathroom suite.

You could be forgiven for thinking that there are no choices of colour available for bathrooms as it seems to be that you can have any colour you want, as long as it’s white! Mine happens to be white, but there is so much that you can do with a white bathroom suite, a coloured one does restrict your choice for the remaining decor. Of course it is very easy to add colour via bathroom decoration rather than through the components themselves. Our bathroom is not huge and this means that it needs to be decorated in light colours to make the room feel as light and airy as possible. However as we have decided to have new ceramic tiles on the walls, we can add some stronger colours with these.

The one area which we have decided to spend some money on is the shower. I have decided on a new shower cubicle which I hope will turn the corner of my bathroom into an elegant shower area. With a new thermostatic mixer valve and easy clean glass protection to the panels and doors, I am quite looking forward to my first shower and of course the smile on my partner’s face when the bathroom is completed!