Katie Butcher

After receiving a letter a few weeks ago asking me to consider giving blood, I decided I couldn’t think of a reason why not to sign-up with the National Blood Service. I filled out the enclosed form and added Nigel’s name too. A couple of weeks later we received our donor numbers and details of local sessions in the post, and we decided we’d go down to the Blood Centre in Bradford city centre yesterday evening after work.

It was quite quiet at the blood centre, but the receptionist seemed pleased that we’d already been registered as donors as it meant we didn’t have to spend time getting our details onto the system. We were given a ‘Welcome Folder’ to read and a donor health check form to fill in. Afterwards, a nurse took us individually to smaller rooms where she went through our forms and asked us if we had any questions.

You need to have your haemoglobin levels checked before you give blood, to make sure that you’re not (or won’t become) anaemic. To do this, the nurse pricks your middle finger and takes a drop of blood and drops it into a test tube containing copper sulphate. It didn’t hurt. The nurse did this and then told me I was fine to donate blood.

A friendly ‘donor carer’ showed me to a bed and chatted to me and asked me to make myself comfortable whilst she set up all the equipment and labelled the tubes and bags. A thick strap (like when they check your blood pressure) was put around my arm and inflated. This makes your veins easier to find. The nurse commented that I had good veins for giving blood (I think they must have been easy to find). I decided it would be best to look away while the needle was inserted and the flow started. You don’t really feel much, a slight sting and then that’s it. First the nurse filled up some tubes with samples for testing, then finally she attached a bag for the donation. She told me the flow was good so should only take about 6 minutes.

Unfortunately, about half-way through filling the donation bag I did start feeling light-headed. I think I could have persevered through and completed my donation, but the nurse stopped my donation straight away when I admitted that I did feel slightly dizzy. I was really disappointed I hadn’t managed a complete donation, but the nurses were very nice and said it wasn’t at all uncommon, particularly for first-timers. To give blood you have to weigh at least 50kg / 7 st 12 and yesterday morning our bathroom scales told me I weighed 50.1kg, so I’m actually only just heavy enough to be eligible to donate anyway. They take the same amount of blood whatever size you are, so they have a minimum weight requirement as small people are more likely to feel faint due to losing relatively more of their blood volume than larger people.

Whether it was my body not liking losing blood, psychological (it’s not unknown for me to feel faint) or a combination of both I’m not sure. Fortunately Nigel completed his donation successfully, which was good, and he will be able to go back again in 16 weeks to donate again. The nurse said my samples would be tested but that they would not use my partial donation. She suggested I go back and try again in a few weeks now I knew what to expect, making sure I ate and drank plenty beforehand. I do think I will go back after Christmas (maybe I’ll put some weight on over the festive season) and try again.

Afterwards, we both were told to have a drink and biscuit and rest for a few minutes. I was advised that it probably wouldn’t be wise for me to have any alcohol that evening.

There was nothing at all bad about the experience (except my disappointment of not completing a donation), but I would definitely encourage others to take an hour out and visit a local donor session when they can. There’s lots more information to be found on the National Blood Service website.

I highly recommend www.carbuyingguide.org.uk to anyone who’s planning on buying a car. We travelled a long way yesterday to buy a car and found that guide absolutely invaluable.

Nigel had seen a car that was exactly what he wanted but unfortunately it was £1000 over our budget and 170 miles away in Hitchin. After doing a fair bit of research we decided that it was probably worth the risk of the trip in that if we handled things correctly we would be able to get the dealer to sell us that car for a price within our budget. We were reasonably sure before we got to the dealership that we would buy the car if we could get the deal but equally, accepted we would cut our losses and definitely not buy the car if we couldn’t.

So we made the trip. We spent a long time at the dealership; we took the car for a long test drive, listened to the sales patter, stood around drinking coffee and pontificating (like you do), and after about two hours we finally managed to get the conversation around to money. We got the salesman down a little bit on the screen price but he said there was absolutely no way he could sell the car for as low a price as we were asking. We said ‘okay, well thanks very much, we’ll have to keep looking then’ and after being there a good few hours we walked out in a disappointed mannner and got in our car ready to leave. After reading the car buying guide we were fairly certain that wouldn’t be the end of it, so our plan was to go find a pub down the road and sit and wait for a phone call. However, we didn’t actually make it that far as just as when we were about to drive off, low and behold, the sales guy came running out and says ‘come back in as, actually, he might be able to do something’. So in the end, we did get the car within our budget with the proviso we settle the invoice before this month ends, which was fine for us.

Whether or not we could have got more discount if we’d have pushed harder or played things a bit differently I guess we’ll never know. Unfortunately we don’t buy cars as often as these salesmen sell them, and the guy that dealt with us was very experienced. So it was a pretty exhausting day; a long drive, high pressure sales, and large amounts of money, but I think the outcome was fairly good all round since Nigel got the car he wanted, I was happy as we didn’t go over budget, and the salesman sold a car and obviously made some money in doing so.

The moral of the story is had we started off looking at a car that was already within our budget we never have pushed so hard for a discount and therefore, in theory, not got as good a car for our money. It was only because of reading the car buying guide that we knew we could consider pushing it that far.

So next weekend we can go collect our handsome Audi A4 2.0 TDI (140 PS) S-line Avant. It’s just a bit of a shame that it’s quite a long way to go again.

So after a few weeks of shopping at Aldi, I would definitely say I’m a convert. Every week I get to Aldi just after 8:30am (when it it opens) and get as much off my shopping list as I can - that’s usually most of the basics - toilet roll, bottled water, onions, apples, clementine oranges, crisps and so on. It’s always been pretty quiet at that time so I whizz round and am usually loading the car up within about 20-25 minutes. Then it’s off up to Morrisons to get the rest of my list. I actually find the Morrisons shop the worst part of my shopping outing. Morrisons is always so busy even shortly after 9am. What really mystifies me (and winds me up) is that at least 50% of the customers in Morrisons on Saturday morning are senior citizens with at least half of whom seem to have mobility difficulties. Without wishing to be unkind, when I find myself unable to move and squashed against the potatoes due to being surrounded by mobility scooters and people with sticks I have to really fight the urge to ask one of them ‘just why are you here?’ Surely most of these people could go to Morrisons any day of the week, so why do they insist of going on a Saturday? If I could pick any day to go shopping, the day I would definitely *not* choose is a Saturday (or Sunday). I simply wouldn’t go to Morrisons at all on a weekend if I didn’t have to. The reason why I go early is that it’s about the only time of the day that I can (just about) tolerate it. I would much rather go on a weekday morning, but when you work full time that just isn’t possible.

A few weeks ago I tried Tesco, which is only across the road from Aldi. Although it was quieter that Morrisons, the Bradford Tesco it too big, and I hate the layout. I ended up forgetting things (including milk!) because I wasn’t used to where things were. I’m sure I’d get used to it if I went more often, but I’m also more inclined to shop at Morrisons out of principle (even though I think it’s more expensive) as it’s a Bradford company.

My Aldi recommendations are:

• Most of their fruit and veg, notably mushrooms, sweet potatoes, onions, tomatoes, clementines (although they’re out of season now so it’s mineolas instead). A few weeks ago they had strawberries which I think tasted better than Tesco’s Finest strawberries but were half the price. Grapes are 69p for 1/2 a kilo at the mo and they’re delicious
• I also recommend their cheese (particularly mature cheddar and white Cheshire), Scottish smoked salmon, smoked streaky bacon, premium gammon steaks, German ham
• Also their Italian Stoned Baked Romagna frozen pizza and tubs of steam fresh frozen veg (they’re 69p and as good as Birdseye steam fresh veg)
• Premium French lager

I spent all of last week on a ‘Introductory Bookkeeping and Basic Accounting’ course at Kaplan Financial’s training centre in Leeds. I quite enjoyed it, but it felt strange being back in a college type learning environment after 5 years. It was just like being back at school, especially since I was one of the oldest people on the course - most of the attendees appeared to be school leavers who were commencing finance apprenticeships. It was a good course and I learnt a lot, but my main criticism was that there were too many on it - the first two days there were over 40 people. I thinks that’s too much for one tutor, especially when there are exercises to do as the trainer can’t really get round everyone. It’s a bit more difficult to ask questions or request help when there are 39 other people in the room. However, a lot of people were only attending the first 2 days, so from Wednesday the numbers shrunk down to about 25 which was better.

So… now I know all about double-entry bookkeeping, extracting trial balances and profit-and-loss accounts, VAT, amongst many other exciting things. And I now also know what loads of financey words mean that, to be honest, I’d heard about but couldn’t have clearly defined before - things like ‘fixed assets’, ‘liabilities’, and ‘nominal ledgers’.

We had a different tutor almost every day. They all seemed very nice. The lady on Thursday was lovely but had the oddest Yorkshire accent (I think she was from Hull) and pronounced ‘o’ like ‘ur’ (so nur rather than no, murst rather than most). On Thursday morning I spent about the first 5-10 minutes wondering why she kept talking about turtles. I couldn’t understand why it’d got to Thursday and this was the first time I’d heard about turtles in a financial situation - ‘Gather together your turtles?’ What on earth does that mean? It was only when she wrote on the board that I realised the ‘turtles’ were actually ‘totals’.

There are some pictures of the new deck Nigel put up at the back of our house which can be found here.

We’ve purchased a table and chairs from Tesco Direct, so I hope we’ll have some nice enough weather in August and September to be able to sit out.

The next project is the garden.

Naturally, I used the free Jet2 flight that I won earlier this year to fly to Alicante so I could visit mum and dad. My sister Claire coordinated a break at the same time. I’ve stuck a few pics up here. They’re mainly snaps taken during geocaching trips in the area around the town that my parents live.

The first first few chapters of this book made it seemed very promising, and I really enjoyed them. They set an intriguing scene of a spooky mansion deep in the wilds of Yorkshire. But as I got more into this book it became more and more peculiar. I found just about all the characters unpleasant and irritating, and most of them were plain nutters. I started longing for there to be somebody normal in the story. Okay yes, this book is different to a lot of the other books around at the moment but if it’s trying to be ranked amongst gothic classics such as ‘Woman in White’ and ‘Wuthering Heights’ it doesn’t cut it at all, I’m afraid. To be honest, I finished this book 2 months ago, and it obviously didn’t strike that much of a chord with me because I can’t actually really remember how it ended. If you don’t mind reading stories about crazy weirdos then you might like this, otherwise, I wouldn’t bother.

I’ve been getting increasingly annoyed by the rising prices in Morrisons, and so, somewhat inspired by Martin Lewis’ discussion with Jeremy Vine on Radio 2 about cutting your shopping bill, I decided that this weekend I’d try and food shop at Aldi. I didn’t expect to be able to get everything I wanted from there, but on Saturday lunchtime along I went with my shopping list, to see how much of it I could cross off. Normally I avoid supermarket shopping at that time on a weekend (I always try and get to Morrisons soon after it opens as whenever I’ve been unfortunate enough to be there later on a Saturday it’s been murder) but Aldi was not too busy at all. I was quite impressed. I managed to get about half of my list and I worked out that I saved around 25-30% on what I would if I’d bought equivalent items in Morrisons. On Sunday morning I zoomed around Morrisons with a mini trolley and picked up the remainder of my list.

I think I’ll try and do a similar thing as often as possible. Although it’s a little bit more hassle going to two shops, it didn’t actually take up that much more time up in total, and I think the savings make it worth it. And there hasn’t been anything I bought from Aldi that I’ve not been happy with or I’d say is particularly worse quality than Morrisons. Part of how Aldi keep their prices down is by: not accepting credit cards (only debit); not offering baskets, only trolleys; not having so many staff in stores; charging for plastic carriers; mainly stocking ‘own label’ products; ‘no frills’ display of produce in stores. None of that bothers me - I rather just pay for the food anyway.

Some of the best Aldi buys were: 10 little bottles of not-at-all-bad Premium French lager for £3.29, 350g of mushrooms and 250g of cherry tomatoes both 59p (and nice too!).

I think I’ll go down to Lidl next time and see what they have.

The ‘Good Food’ website is brilliant, and one reason for that is because it means I no longer have to keep old editions or cut-outs of the magazine, as I can get all favourite recipes from the website.
A few weeks ago I made ‘Boiled Bacon with Cabbage and Carrots’. It was very tasty and I was left with a rather nice smelling stock which I froze hoping that I might find something I could do with it. I came across a recipe on Delia’s website for a pea soup called London Particular which required bacon stock. Nigel made the soup this afternoon. By coincidence, I had just the perfect amount of stock and it made a really delicious soup. I’d never had pea soup before - never really fancied it - but this absolutely converted me. Yum. There’s nothing quite like home made soup.

I couldn’t ever do my weekly shop without a shopping list. How on earth can you know what to buy without one? I could never just wander around the supermarket picking up random items hoping I might be able to cobble something together out of them. Before I go shopping I always spend some time planning what I’ll be cooking for most of the following week and writing up a list. It’s a bit annoying and takes a bit of effort, but it’s definitely worth it. It means I can get my shopping done quickly, and I don’t have to think what we’re going to have for tea every day, I just make a plan once a week.

Planning my list tonight for my shop tomorrow morning, I thought I might buy a whole chicken to roast on Sunday, and then use left-over chicken for dinner on Monday or in packed lunches. Looking on the web for ideas for using up left-over chicken I came across ‘Love Food Hate Waste‘ website. I’ll admit it’s not the first time I’d seen this site, but last time I looked (I’d seen it advertised in ‘Good Food’ magazine a few months ago), it didn’t have so much on it. Now it’s building up in to quite an informative and handy website.

On Monday, to use up the chicken, I’m going to make a risotto.