Oh dear. Just totted up what I've actually spent in the last seven days as opposed to what I think I spend, and am genuinely appalled. How have I got through £260 without anything decadent to show for it? The only things I bought for myself were an intray to sort out my overflowing pile of invoices (tax deductible, maybe?) and a mint plant from the garden centre.
OK, it was a bad week for presents: wedding anniversary, niece's birthday, housewarming for a friend. The silliest thing on it is £35 for a couple of months' supply of the dog's stupidly expensive diet food, as instructed by vet. I could hire it a macrobiotic chef for less.
Nonetheless. The efficiency savings hitherto announced are coverdue. Inspired by David Laws's first decision at the Treasury - cancelling the office potplant budget - it's time to get cracking, or my downshifted career will last approximately as long as, well, David Laws's.
So far have identified the following grievous wastes of money in this house:
1. Leaving the immersion heater switched on for, like, ever (that would be me).
2. Leaving every single electrical appliance in the house on standby constantly (my husband)
3. Buying aubergines. I don't really like aubergines, but buy them for the odd recipe in which I don't mind them, and then never do anything with the inevitable leftover half. I have wasted literally POUNDS on inefficient aubergine use over the years.
4. Parking fines, congestion charge fines (him again), library fines and extra charges for overnight delivery because I never order birthday presents in time (me).
When the Treasury made £6 billion efficiency savings, they axed advertising budgets and management consultants. We are what you might call between management consultants right now, but a flick through the bank statements reveals I still pay a £4.99 a month subscription to lovefilm, despite giving up on them after a couple of scratched DVDs. Ha! No longer. There is also a subscription I forgot to cancel for a childcare website through which we didn't find a childminder months ago (top tip: directgov.uk's list is free). Zap goes another £12.99 a quarter. This is quite fun.
Then I turn the thermostat down a degree (even though the heating's not on) and turn off everything electrical that is blinking: washing machine, laptop left plugged in and half-on, microwave. I turn off all the lights in rooms we aren't using, feeling virtuous.
My son, who is playing in the kitchen, complains that if the lights aren't on in the livingroom simultaneously 'I'm worried little people will come from under the sofa and bite me.'While demonstrating the lack of snarling little people under the sofa, I find some missing Lego. I bet George Osborne is having similar experiences all over Whitehall.
Next step: the axeman cometh for the supermarket shop. Aubergines are just the beginning.
Wednesday, 2 June 2010
Tuesday, 1 June 2010
home economics
IT's one of the oldest tricks in politics: ooh, don't mind me, I'm just a housewife. Margaret Thatcher told us in 1980 that spending cuts were essential because 'every housewife has to' stop shopping when there's nothing in the purse. During the election, David Cameron suggested that shaving squillons off public spending was just the sort of scrimping on pennies that households do all the time. No doubt we'll hear it all again during this month's Budget.
Which is timely, as a bit of frugality is long overdue in this downshifted household. So to cheer myself up during the grim process of spending less money, I'm conducting a little experiment. Where possible, I'll be channelling current Treasury thinking when I take the scalpel - or possibly, given my last bank statement, a whopping big axe - to the Hinsliff finances. Who knows what we might learn about the real economy from this not-even-remotely-scientific model, eh?
So here are the ground rules:
1. I won't cut back on frontline services. After careful thought, am defining these as: things that genuinely make three-year-olds happy; gin and tonic; occasionally getting out of the house.
2. I will act in the true spirit of coalition, ie I haven't really told my husband what I'm doing. I am by nature stingy, fretful and given to hoarding bits of string in case they come in handy: he cheerfully blows money on what I regard as total rubbish. This, I feel, may give me a useful insight into the relationship between the Tories and the LibDems.
3. I shall consider the merits of salami slicing all budgets vs boldly axing big programmes, or what I call The Highlights Question: viz, I could save a fair bit of money by no longer being blonde. Or I could keep going to the hairdresser and cut back a bit everywhere else. Hmm.
4. I will devolve spending locally. Which means: first for the chop is money spent via corporate giants with rude call centres. Last to go is anything bought from shops you can walk to, where they hold the door open for pushchairs.
So for the next month, we shall be Delivering More With Less Money on this blog. And Making Things Better Without Just Spending Money. And, of course, being Brutally Honest About The Results (that last is the only one that is not an authentic Cameron slogan, by the way) on here. If you're doing the same, please join in and share your ideas.
Tomorrow: the efficiency savings begin....
Which is timely, as a bit of frugality is long overdue in this downshifted household. So to cheer myself up during the grim process of spending less money, I'm conducting a little experiment. Where possible, I'll be channelling current Treasury thinking when I take the scalpel - or possibly, given my last bank statement, a whopping big axe - to the Hinsliff finances. Who knows what we might learn about the real economy from this not-even-remotely-scientific model, eh?
So here are the ground rules:
1. I won't cut back on frontline services. After careful thought, am defining these as: things that genuinely make three-year-olds happy; gin and tonic; occasionally getting out of the house.
2. I will act in the true spirit of coalition, ie I haven't really told my husband what I'm doing. I am by nature stingy, fretful and given to hoarding bits of string in case they come in handy: he cheerfully blows money on what I regard as total rubbish. This, I feel, may give me a useful insight into the relationship between the Tories and the LibDems.
3. I shall consider the merits of salami slicing all budgets vs boldly axing big programmes, or what I call The Highlights Question: viz, I could save a fair bit of money by no longer being blonde. Or I could keep going to the hairdresser and cut back a bit everywhere else. Hmm.
4. I will devolve spending locally. Which means: first for the chop is money spent via corporate giants with rude call centres. Last to go is anything bought from shops you can walk to, where they hold the door open for pushchairs.
So for the next month, we shall be Delivering More With Less Money on this blog. And Making Things Better Without Just Spending Money. And, of course, being Brutally Honest About The Results (that last is the only one that is not an authentic Cameron slogan, by the way) on here. If you're doing the same, please join in and share your ideas.
Tomorrow: the efficiency savings begin....
Monday, 31 May 2010
lessons from the vegetable patch
Time to face the truth: I'm not nearly ruthless enough to grow salad. Reading this has given me the courage to confess my own similar dilemma with the vegetable patch - like its author, I just can't bring myself to do thinning out.
I know you have to pull out the weedy/surplus seedlings so the rest have space to grow. But a combination of stinginess - I hate throwing away perfectly good (embryonic) rocket - and soppiness makes me wimp out every time.
Surely if the spindly, yellowing ones were lavished with a few weeks of top quality fertiliser/sunshine/twice-daily watering/private education, they too could grow up to be spinach! All that potential gone to waste is so sad. Even if it was only ever destined to be lettuce.
This deep feebleness has, of course, resulted in a salad jungle: vast thickets of red mustard, great tangles of rocket - none of which will mature properly because they don't actually have any room.
My fellow garden wimp, Douglas Carswell, saw his veg patch as a metaphor for coalition government: weak policies have to be weeded out to let other ideas flourish. Hmm. My overcrowded, stunted lettuces are reminding me more of the first law of working parenthood: you can't do everything, and failure to prioritise only means nothing gets done well.
I know you have to pull out the weedy/surplus seedlings so the rest have space to grow. But a combination of stinginess - I hate throwing away perfectly good (embryonic) rocket - and soppiness makes me wimp out every time.
Surely if the spindly, yellowing ones were lavished with a few weeks of top quality fertiliser/sunshine/twice-daily watering/private education, they too could grow up to be spinach! All that potential gone to waste is so sad. Even if it was only ever destined to be lettuce.
This deep feebleness has, of course, resulted in a salad jungle: vast thickets of red mustard, great tangles of rocket - none of which will mature properly because they don't actually have any room.
My fellow garden wimp, Douglas Carswell, saw his veg patch as a metaphor for coalition government: weak policies have to be weeded out to let other ideas flourish. Hmm. My overcrowded, stunted lettuces are reminding me more of the first law of working parenthood: you can't do everything, and failure to prioritise only means nothing gets done well.
Wednesday, 26 May 2010
how to tell you're a grown up
My son turned three recently, which has prompted several conversations about what being grownup means. He seems confident he's more or less there now, but does concede there are a handful of desirable things that only grownups can do. After much debate, he has boiled these down to:
1. Cut with sharp scissors
2. Shave
3. Change a lightbulb when it's blown
4. Drive a cement mixer
5. Swim in your pyjamas (I think this relates to some older kids he saw doing lifesaving practice at the local swimming pool)
The more I look at this list, the more I think it roughly covers it. As for the moment I finally gave up on the illusion that I am in any way still young, it was probably last week, walking through some water meadows nearby which are popular with tourists.
I didn't just tut at the rubbish left behind by last weekend's picnickers: I actually picked it up and took it home.
Which means I have finally become my mother.
1. Cut with sharp scissors
2. Shave
3. Change a lightbulb when it's blown
4. Drive a cement mixer
5. Swim in your pyjamas (I think this relates to some older kids he saw doing lifesaving practice at the local swimming pool)
The more I look at this list, the more I think it roughly covers it. As for the moment I finally gave up on the illusion that I am in any way still young, it was probably last week, walking through some water meadows nearby which are popular with tourists.
I didn't just tut at the rubbish left behind by last weekend's picnickers: I actually picked it up and took it home.
Which means I have finally become my mother.
Thursday, 13 May 2010
back to the kitchen cabinet
There is a line, in the Winnie the Pooh book with which my son is currently obssessed, about Kanga suddenly feeling 'motherly, and wanting to count things', like vests for Roo and clean spots on Tigger's feeder. It must have been on my mind, because this week - when I was planning to do absolutely nothing, after a month working flat out - I've found myself mostly wanting to count things instead.
Or not so much count as sort. There is a great, underrated pleasure in sorting: ruthlessly chucking out old paperwork, tangles of chargers whose phones are long gone, laddered pairs of tights. It's an almost physical relief.
And the great bonus of being mostly slatternly is that on the rare occasions you do spring clean, there are so many surprises. Who knew there was sunlight outside, once the windows were washed? Or that I'll never actually need to buy another biro in this lifetime, given how many were lying around the house?
There is a secret, retro pleasure in this bringing (if briefly) of domestic order to chaos. The urge doesn't strike me very often but it tends to come after an intense period of work: I think there's an element of wresting back control, reasserting yourself in the domestic world you've become disconnected from.
And this time, maybe some displacement activity too. A new government has formed, and for the first time in four elections I don't have a ringside seat next to it.
Perhaps what I'm really doing is confronting the fact that, after a month embroiled in my old world during the election, it's time to move on. It's Cabinet reshuffles for them, and reshuffling kitchen cupboards for me.
Oh well. I still don't quite know what the future holds: but at least now I've chucked all the jars long past their sell-by dates, it's less likely to hold salmonella.
Or not so much count as sort. There is a great, underrated pleasure in sorting: ruthlessly chucking out old paperwork, tangles of chargers whose phones are long gone, laddered pairs of tights. It's an almost physical relief.
And the great bonus of being mostly slatternly is that on the rare occasions you do spring clean, there are so many surprises. Who knew there was sunlight outside, once the windows were washed? Or that I'll never actually need to buy another biro in this lifetime, given how many were lying around the house?
There is a secret, retro pleasure in this bringing (if briefly) of domestic order to chaos. The urge doesn't strike me very often but it tends to come after an intense period of work: I think there's an element of wresting back control, reasserting yourself in the domestic world you've become disconnected from.
And this time, maybe some displacement activity too. A new government has formed, and for the first time in four elections I don't have a ringside seat next to it.
Perhaps what I'm really doing is confronting the fact that, after a month embroiled in my old world during the election, it's time to move on. It's Cabinet reshuffles for them, and reshuffling kitchen cupboards for me.
Oh well. I still don't quite know what the future holds: but at least now I've chucked all the jars long past their sell-by dates, it's less likely to hold salmonella.
Tuesday, 4 May 2010
why this hasn't been a Mumsnet election
A few days ago, a woman about my age came up to me on the street while I was out with my son. She apologised for bothering us but said she was desperately looking for some part-time childcare for her daughter, who's recently started school.
She worked at a local hospital, which often meant late evening shifts: but she couldn't find a local nursery or childminder open much past 6pm, while afterschool clubs aren't open that late either (and even if they were that's a terribly long day in school for a four-year-old.) I guess a nanny was too expensive on an NHS salary, and there were no grandparents nearby.
If she couldn't find someone, she would no longer be able to do her job: and she was getting desperate, which was why she was stopping complete strangers like me, hoping that the local mummy grapevine could somehow magically produce a solution.
And as we chatted I thought: during almost four weeks of this so-called 'Mumsnet election', with politicians supposedly targeting middle class mothers in marginal seats, I have heard nobody even come close to offering practical help with problems like this.
We live in a 24/7 economy, with supermarkets open round the clock and millions of people in the public sector working night and weekend shifts, yet childcare is still too often organised around an 8am-6pm working day. How do you hire and hold onto parents in those circumstances?
But nobody wants to talk about complicated things like that. What we get is photo opportunities amid the fingerpaints to promote tax breaks for married mothers or toddler tax credits (worth £3 a week and just under £4 a week respectively: hardly enough to compensate for having to give up one's job) and gushing talk from the leaders' wives about what great dads their husbands are.
As a bunch of eminent (and clearly cross) women make clear in this letter to the Times today, too many of the really big questions for women haven't even been touched. If this was the Mumsnet election, god help us when politics reverts to normal.
She worked at a local hospital, which often meant late evening shifts: but she couldn't find a local nursery or childminder open much past 6pm, while afterschool clubs aren't open that late either (and even if they were that's a terribly long day in school for a four-year-old.) I guess a nanny was too expensive on an NHS salary, and there were no grandparents nearby.
If she couldn't find someone, she would no longer be able to do her job: and she was getting desperate, which was why she was stopping complete strangers like me, hoping that the local mummy grapevine could somehow magically produce a solution.
And as we chatted I thought: during almost four weeks of this so-called 'Mumsnet election', with politicians supposedly targeting middle class mothers in marginal seats, I have heard nobody even come close to offering practical help with problems like this.
We live in a 24/7 economy, with supermarkets open round the clock and millions of people in the public sector working night and weekend shifts, yet childcare is still too often organised around an 8am-6pm working day. How do you hire and hold onto parents in those circumstances?
But nobody wants to talk about complicated things like that. What we get is photo opportunities amid the fingerpaints to promote tax breaks for married mothers or toddler tax credits (worth £3 a week and just under £4 a week respectively: hardly enough to compensate for having to give up one's job) and gushing talk from the leaders' wives about what great dads their husbands are.
As a bunch of eminent (and clearly cross) women make clear in this letter to the Times today, too many of the really big questions for women haven't even been touched. If this was the Mumsnet election, god help us when politics reverts to normal.
Saturday, 1 May 2010
oh yes, the camera does lie
For as long as I can remember, I've hated being photographed. My best friend couldn't claim I'm photogenic (my passport was once returned to me at Customs with the words 'I'd change that, it's doing you no favours'): let's just say there's a reason this blog is illustrated by a picture of a road.
So when Grazia magazine said they wanted to shoot me for an article I'd written about what it was like giving up my Proper Job, I just hoped it would all be over quickly. What follows, folks, is the truth about what it takes to turn a haggard old crone into the Grazia-fied stranger in this week's edition. And no, the lovely mac is not really mine. Sob.
That one oh-so-natural picture took a team of five (photographer, photographer's assistant, stylist, makeup artist, shoot stylist) half a day to create. They arrived, trailing two rails of clothes and a high street's worth of shoes, just as the builders were fitting a new door to replace the one wrecked in the burglary. I think it's fair to say ruralshire builders are not used to the fashion world.
Nor, I'm fairly certain, were the sensible matrons out walking their dogs nearby who rounded a corner to find me poncing across the river meadows in (borrowed) designer labels trailed by the full Grazia entourage, with the makeup artist dashing forward every five seconds to top up my lipgloss, while I tried vainly to look as if I was just out for a stroll.
Freddie was a little confused ('Why are we going for a walk but not walking anywhere?'). The dog let itself down by licking the camera. And the lovely Paul & Joe dress didn't quite zip up my non-model back: thank God for that mac, really.
Still, the end result is about the only photograph I've ever seen of me that I quite sort of like. The bad news is that left to my own devices, I look absolutely nothing like it.
Oh, and my son keeps asking loudly in public places when 'the makeup lady is coming to do you again'....
So when Grazia magazine said they wanted to shoot me for an article I'd written about what it was like giving up my Proper Job, I just hoped it would all be over quickly. What follows, folks, is the truth about what it takes to turn a haggard old crone into the Grazia-fied stranger in this week's edition. And no, the lovely mac is not really mine. Sob.
That one oh-so-natural picture took a team of five (photographer, photographer's assistant, stylist, makeup artist, shoot stylist) half a day to create. They arrived, trailing two rails of clothes and a high street's worth of shoes, just as the builders were fitting a new door to replace the one wrecked in the burglary. I think it's fair to say ruralshire builders are not used to the fashion world.
Nor, I'm fairly certain, were the sensible matrons out walking their dogs nearby who rounded a corner to find me poncing across the river meadows in (borrowed) designer labels trailed by the full Grazia entourage, with the makeup artist dashing forward every five seconds to top up my lipgloss, while I tried vainly to look as if I was just out for a stroll.
Freddie was a little confused ('Why are we going for a walk but not walking anywhere?'). The dog let itself down by licking the camera. And the lovely Paul & Joe dress didn't quite zip up my non-model back: thank God for that mac, really.
Still, the end result is about the only photograph I've ever seen of me that I quite sort of like. The bad news is that left to my own devices, I look absolutely nothing like it.
Oh, and my son keeps asking loudly in public places when 'the makeup lady is coming to do you again'....
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