The most annoying thing is that in the last week I have realised that I am being severally underpaid for my job compared with the national average. I wouldn’t be that bothered, but I work exceptionally hard every day whilst my boss (on at least £8000 pa more than me), tries to do as little as he possibly can. 

The one saving grace of it all is that I really like the rest of the staff that I work with, the women that work the photocopiers treat me like a son and the office cleaners are absolutely lovely. When I do finally get out of this joint, I will really miss everyone, but I know it is not a good enough reason to stay.

In an ideal world I would open my own business, something that all the family could get involved in and not have to worry about having children that can’t find a job. I would love to own something like a shop of cafe, but being realistic I do realise that you have to be very lucky to make independent businesses work these days with the abundance of big chain stores around. I can see the appeal of walking into Starbucks or McDonald’s, being served in seconds with a generic product that tastes exactly the same in every single shop they own, but where is the adventure in  that?

I thought that tax credits would be an easy way to get some money.  Then we find out that if my wife was getting job seekers allowance we would get the full tax credits (which they said was £90 a week, a fantastic amount).  As she is not we got £4 a week paid straight into my current account,  cant say I actually noticed it.  It seems very unfair that people already getting benefits get extras while other get left out to dry with hardly anything.

I am sending her to see what some independent financial advisors have to say to see if they can help with getting some money and maybe the citizens advice bureau as well.  I do not like being in the position where it is all bad news about the country’s financial circumstances and we do not have much savings behind us.  I have sorted out all our banking and it is not too bad at the moment but I could be much better.

England games are something else entirely. The two that we have seen so far are two of the most stressful matches I have ever watched. The inability to score goals has been painful and the lack lustre of the England team is mind boggling. When your life if based around football, how can you be scared when you’re asked to play?

I know that I will not be able to watch the next game, since I will be working but I’m not actually that upset about that, what will be will be, as they say and just finding out the score seems like the pain free alternative to actually watching. Lots of schools are shutting early for the event, which as always has been criticised by some parents, but I personally wouldn’t want to be the teacher who has to control a tough class that really… really doesn’t want to be there.

I have to admit my favourite thing about the football this year has been the party spirit which we are encouraged to enjoy it with. The supermarkets have been flogging the mountains of beer and the snacks in anticipation for months now and there aren’t many people without a supporting flag. It’s great to make an event of it at home and it’s even better to find a good pub showing the game, there’s really nothing like that atmosphere.  England as a nation doesn’t stand together very often but when we do, we do it really well.

She would like a new car, something like a Hyundai, they have the cheapest new car on the market the moment and it seems like a good one. The man problem of course will be the cost of insurance on a new car for a now driver.  The fact that she is a girl will help with the cost a bit, but any new car is a powerful car and the insurance mirrors that. The reason for the price hike is due to all of the accident claims for compensation  that occur within this age bracket. More recently though claims over whiplash injuries have become a major problem.

My dad’s plan was to be the main driver on the insurance policy of my sis’s car, but he found out from a guy at work, (who found out the hard way) that this is now illegal. His friend was found guilty of doing this and had to find advice from the law society  on which legal service would deal with their case as many now refuse car insurance fronting work.

Whatever my sister ends up getting I hope she loves it as much as I loved my first car.

Spurred on by this success, I am building her a website to sell originals and prints and we are having a second BT phone line installed. We feel this would be a good move from a business point of view, as we would always know which calls we have to answer professionally. There are phone systems specially made for business which have call waiting and the like but we are such a small operation, I’m sure that wont be necessary.

 Now all we needed was the new phone. The range of telephones these days is astounding, there is so much choice but for ease of use we are going to go for digital DECT cordless phones, so that my wife can get about whilst she answers the phone, we all know how annoying it is to take an important call, have to jot something down and cannot reach a pen.

But for the meantime we are both super busy getting everything ready for the launch of the new site. She’s busy painting and getting all her supplies ready for any commission work and I am sharpening my web site making skills. Just when we get the house sorted and tidy the place is a tip again, hopefully if this venture goes well we can afford that extension we are after.  

The task is made even harder, since he has just retired for which his workplace brought him a barbeque and all the bits and pieces that go with it and he has just had a birthday where he got pretty much everything else he wanted this year.

As I said there are a number of website suggesting unusual gift ideas, but they only seem to sell very gimmicky and naff stock which really wouldn’t go down well with my dad. At the weekend my wife and I hit the high street for ideas but again the majority of shops have opted for cliche; and football themed gifts.

Although I have to leave time for delivery I am determined that online shopping is the way forward. So I started my search in the usual places;  amazon and play both have an extensive collection of gifts as long as you have some idea what you are looking for.

Through a suggestion from a friend I found the book people, this website as the name suggests only sells books but they have a reasonable collection at incredible prices. I have cracked it. When you send over £25 pounds on books, postage is free and the prices are so reasonable (many items work out to about £1 a book) that this really is a bargain website. Only trouble is I know I won’t be able to stop buying here now that I’ve found it.  

I have never used the account, I really dislike it.  It feels as though it’s for people that really like the idea of having a stalker, people seem to tell you everything they are doing.  I currently have about friend requests that I am ignoring as I can not be bothered to log and choose the ignore option.  Maybe its me just being anti social but I dislike all the social networking.

I mentioned before that I play a game called Tribal Wars on the UK server and I am part of a tribe on the game well they have decided that everyone should have a Skype account, like the IP office business phone system I use at work where I can talk to lots of people at once.  The idea is that everyone should be able to talk to each other when ever they are online.  It s a bit too much for me, I am quite happy using the mail system they have built into the game.  There are also people that make up the tribe council that take it much more seriously.  They have the whole internet, video, and audio conferencing system set up so they can have proper meetings where everyone can see everyone else.  This is something that I would never do.

I like the Internet but I just don’t think I am cut out for having 100’s of friends I don’t actually know or have never met and letting everyone else know what I am up to all of the time.

I can imagine I would not do much for the first month or two just do fun things that I want to do, I would love to own a quad bike and a big field and maybe a couple of paint ball guns.  I also think with that amount I would fly me and my wife to different cities around the world to go on shopping trips.  I have always fancied going to New York, Florida, and Washington so that would be high up on my priorities.

After the initial extravagance I would like to put the money into something productive that I could pass to my children.  Having done up my own house from a complete wreck, I would like to carrying on with other properties, buying cheap wrecks and doing them up to rent out.  I would like my own property empire.  I would do as much work as possible which would mean going back to college to learn new skills like plastering, plumbing and brick laying.  I could also expand outside the UK investing in companies that buy properties abroad for you to rent out.  I like this idea because as well as making you money you could go there cheaper.  Unless the UK property market improves dramatically, more money can be made by investing in property overseas like in Philippines real estate.  I have looked into it and it the Philippines looks like a fantastic place to visit.

The first box contained my cuddly toys that I had as a baby. My favourites will go back into storage (in our own loft this time) and the rest will go to charity. This is also the case for the mountains of clothes, bags and other nic nacs we have both gathered over the years.

It soon became clear that we needed 4 very large boxes. One for charity or ebay, one to keep, one as rubbish and one full of things we needed to dispose of carefully. The box got quite full with stuff like old medications, pairs of glasses and batteries as well as an amusing collection of six old mobile phones going from house brick size to tiny back up to a big size again to accommodate everything we have on them these days.

I wanted to sell the mobile phones and remembered that there are special exchange your mobile websites, which will give you a price. I have heard people saying that mobile phone xchange is a scam because you don’t always get the money they say you are going to get (the quote is a perfect condition price), but I don’t really care, I just want rid of them anyway.

Its amazing the stuff we choose to keep squirreled away, but going through your old stuff will probably save you money, not only can you sell some of the stuff and you may find something you need , but also it should stop you buying so much!

I used to play text based games like Kingdom of Heros and Carrion fields, where instead of a description the area you are in is described to you and you have to work out what to do by searching for secret entrances and hidden objects. I used to spend lots of time drawing maps and finding all the secrets with the idea that I would publish them online for other people to see. I got as far as drawing them on paint (the only drawing package I can use) but never learnt how to make a webpage.

I now play tribal wars a lot. It’s a web browser game where you have a small village to look after and grow. You are on a world with lots of other players and can attack each others villages and eventually take control of more villages. The good thing about it is it’s a long term game, to upgrade building can take up to 30 hours some times. I currently have a small group of 11 villages on one world and 1 village on another. It is the only game my wife has really gotten into ever!!! She logs on at least twice a day and has been playing it for about 3 months not.

The nice thing about tribal wars is that it is all based around people forming tribes (which anyone can do) and supporting each other by coordinating attacks and sending troops to defend villages.

Of course there are the smaller browser games like the ones you find on Miniclips which are good for wasting time but there life span is very limited.

I like these games because you do not need a fast internet connection. I used to play Alien verses predator online when I was younger and only had a 54K modem. It was ridiculously slow and the winner was who ever had the quickest connection at the time. Nowadays I have a 2mbps connection which is only just quick enough to get on Xbox live. There is also the fact the you have to pay a subscription to play which I really do not like.