Adrian Garside

Normally I get over excited at this time of year and go on futile foraging expeditions for mushrooms…my normal companion Dean is very patient is doesn’t bother accompanying me this early in the year.

Anyway, today I had to drive through the New Forest, so I took the opportunity to have a quick scout around a new location I’d heard about.

I wasn’t hopeful until I found a couple of stems where someone or something has taken just the cap (odd that, you normally take the stem to help identify the fungus…) Then, after walking hopefully, several times, towards what turned out to be chalky rocks, I strolled over to another rock, only to find that it was a large Horse Mushroom, with another, smaller one nearby.

And then, with my eye now ‘in’ I found a dozen small field mushrooms. Not a bad haul for 20 minutes searching, and plenty for me and Di to have with a couple of fresh Sea Bass I’d picked up.

photo credit: quinn.anya

For mortgage customers these are interesting times and it is very difficult to predict the future of interest rates. I have just the minutes of the Bank of England Monetary Policy commitee meeting for this month – I like to perform a heroic feat every day before 7am.

The minutes were pretty vague this month and didn’t really suggest anything new. The vote to keep interest rates at 0.5% was still 8:1.

So, what has happened in ‘real life’?

Well, this past month fixed rate mortgages have become cheaper. 2 year fixed rates are available below 3% and 4 year fixed rates are available below 4% with 5 years just above 4%.

I’ve seen and spoken to alot of existing customers over the past few weeks and while these rates are fantastic  for those paying below 2% as an interest rate now,  it is still too difficult to make the decision. I understand that difficulty and if you are on a ‘super low’ interest rate I suspect you just have to stay on it and deal with any consequences later.

However, there are some for whom a switch to a fixed rate would be well worth considering.

There are quite a few people paying the “standard rate” on their mortgage. We have some people lucky enough to be paying, well, I saw a guy last night paying 0.79% on his mortgage, but others will be paying a standard rate of 4%.

If you are paying 4% anyway, the option to fixed for 4 or 5 years at a similar rate isn’t such a hard choice.

If that’s you, give me a call.

Disclaimer : A long term fix isn’t for everyone, so this article isn’t ‘advice’. Advice is tailored to suit each individual.

I’ve just been out for a run… jog? It was more like a ‘hurry’, I’m not up to much in the way of running at the moment, but my knees are better, I think, so I started gently.

Consequently I had plenty of time to look around and as the sky was clear I could see a very bright planet in the sky.

Now, normally, if you see a bright planet you can be pretty sure it’s Venus. There are only three things that can cast a shadow in the sky – the Sun, the Moon and Venus (on a very good day, with no light polution and pretty much no moon).

But, Venus is always close to the sun, in fact it’s never further away than 3 hours 19 minutes – it can be either side – so Venus can sometime be seen early in the morning about where the sun is about to rise, or in the evening, it will be following the sun over the horizon as it sets. As the sun travels at 15 degrees an hour, you are looking at Venus being in the last 45 degrees of sky, or, if you use the ‘clock’ method, where straight above you is 12 o’clock and the horizon is 3 o’clock, Venus will be at 1.30 onwards as the sun sets.

We can quite often see Jupiter with the naked eye, but Jupiter looks tiny and bright – this planet was looking pretty big.

Well, unusually, it is Mars. Even though it isn’t red like you are told, Mars is closer at the moment than at any time in the last 300 years and that is it, shining brightly in the sky.

Have a look, it may be the last time you get a chance to see it so easily. It’s the 1st time I can recall seeing it without help.

photo credit: davedehetre

I’ve had a little bit of a learning curve this last couple of days about circus animals.

On TV last night, or maybe the night before there was an article about a baboon that I thought had been ‘rescued’ from the circus and was getting to live it’s remaining days in a rescue centre in the UK.  Di and I had a discussion about whether that was actually more cruel or not, it having had 15 years of life in a cage and I suppose wearing a Tommy Cooper hat. I think we decided it was a good thing.

Then I had a moment of understanding when a friend ( credit – Julie Nicholas)  posted a message on facebook commenting about circus animals.

Anyway, it turns out that it hadn’t been rescued from the circus, as such – last year Bolivia banned all circus animals, so this baboon was facing an uncertain future of homelessness.

I know, I know – you are thinking – Bolivia has at last banned animals from circuses, about time they caught up with the rest of us.

But you’d be wrong – Bolivia is ahead of the curve.

We haven’t banned animals in circuses yet.

This surprised me.

It’s quite reassuring sometimes when I look at the search terms people use that result in them looking at my blog – recent searches are:

ifa southampton

uk financial advice blogs

table of critical illness payouts

company pension leaving uk take cash to

All very well, I hope those people found something useful here and the top one shows that my meagre SEO skills have some effect.

But who can explain why people would search for:

aj demontjoie – the name of my ex sister in law.

And most bizarrely – adrian garside divorce

Who could possibly be interested in that? Even I’m not interested in that!

Oooh – I’ve just found the results for “all time”,  not just today, this may be interesting…

hmm,  not as exciting as I’d hoped, mostly work related.  “where is anne reed the solicitor based” – seems quite specific – I’ve never heard of her, I expect they’ll have been disappointed by their visit.

Recruitment for volunteers in the London 2012 Olympic Games starts next Wednesday. This is the opportunity of a lifetime (for those with at least 2 weeks of annual leave to spare) so you can be sure there will be plenty of volunteers. To check that you are eligible look here.

Anyone can volunteer to be a ‘Games Maker’ as they will be called although you won’t be able to choose your event – we all want the mens 100m final and maybe not the womens shot put…although who am I to judge, each to their own.

If you have sports related skills or medical training you may be able volunteer for one of the 5000 ‘specialist volunteer‘ roles, which may enable you to choose your event.

The application form for volunteering, as well as loads of other useful infromation is here.

photo credit: Paul Foot

Everytime I visit the allotment, I find someone has tipped a large sack of soil over the fence onto my plot.

I don’t know who does it, or why.

The plot thickens.

We all know that Bohemian Rhapsody was the 1st music video…or at least it’s credited with that status…sometimes…well, by me anyway, just in case I am inaccurate.

I recall in the 1980′s Ah ha released Take on me and it was regarded as a breakthrough in video production…

I see Arcade Fire have released The Wilderness Downtown with a ‘video’ that is pretty firmly of the ‘breakthrough’ variety. It’s only available on google’s ‘chrome‘ browser – just type this web address into google chrome and watch…and take part…www.thewildernessdowntown.com

This is a 24 hour observation of all of the large aircraft flights in the world, condensed down to 1:11. From space we look like a bee hive
of activity. What you will see, is a video showing air traffic around the world for 24 hours, taken from a satellite.

The yellow dots are airplanes in the sky during a 24 hour period.

Stay with the picture. You will see the light of the day moving from the east to the west, as the Earth spins on it’s axis. Also you will see the
aircraft flow of traffic leaving the North American continent and traveling at night to arrive in the UK in the morning. Then you will see the flow
changing, leaving the UK in the morning and flying to the American continent in daylight.

You can tell it was spring time in the north by the sun’s foot print over the planet. You could see that it didn’t set for long in the extreme north and it didn’t quite rise in the extreme south. > We are taught about the earth’s tilt and how it causes summer and winter and how we had to imagine just what is going on. With this 24 hour observation of aircraft travel on the earth’s surface we get to see the daylight pattern move as well. Remember watch the day to night….. Day is over in Australia when it starts.