Our Hero

It's all go for our lovely daughter in law Josephine. She has developed two new programmes for 12 Yard Productions to be shown on ITV and E4. The first 'Holding Out For A Hero' hosted by Gethin Jones (below) is now being filmed at ITV Studios and her second 'Sorority Girls' is going into production in the very near future. Anyone in the TV world will tell you that's an amazing success. It comes from a huge amount of hard work and an inspired mind brimming with original ideas. We're a very proud mum and dad in law and are looking forward to two big celebration parties when the shows launch. 

If you used to read my old blog you will know that we spent six months on Tesco Diets last year. And very successful it was too with me losing well over two stone and Marion losing the best part of a stone (that she didn't really need to lose). I couldn't understand why, having finished the diet in October or November, I kept getting emails from Tesco asking me if I wanted to rejoin and making me special offers to do so. Did they have no confidence in their dieters? The answer became clear in a report in the weekend papers. It seems that just 10% of dieters on any diet actually manage to lose a significant amount of weight and, of those who do, almost all of them put it back on again. I'm happy to say that we are in the tiny minority who have both lost a good deal of weight and have managed to keep it off. Having said that, it isn't the easiest thing to stay at a steady weight. We're still counting calories over a year after we started the diet.

We could do with Penn and Teller with us tomorrow as we have somehow got to get this lot (plus suitcases) in the back of the Prius in order to get it to Scotland and start using the new caravan. I don't know if we'll manage to get it all in but we're putting it all in order of priority and we'll have to take anything that doesn't fit next time we go.

I completed all the information needed by the accountant for our tax return this morning. I managed to lose almost £600 on my antique dealing on eBay in the tax year. Paying the accountant to notify the tax man about this is not exactly money well spent. Fortunately I've stopped trading on eBay now so this will be my last year's accounts. Whilst on the subject of antiques I have to have a bit of a grumble at one of the major auction houses. I took a bronze statue in to one of their valuation days recently and they suggested that it would sell for around £300 and they would put an estimate of £200-£300 on it. It failed to sell and I was presented with a bill for £20 for their failure to sell it. Talk about money for old rope. They are in a no lose situation. Sell the lot and get commission from both buyer and seller, fail to sell it and charge the seller anyway. They were the ones who valued it so surely they should put their money where their mouth is.

I'll leave you today with a weird thing found in a pub.