Adrian Garside

photo credit: zadeus

Following my release from the all consuming and soul destroying mental prison that is ‘dealing with Abbey’ I grabbed a book. I’ve not had time to buy a new book for ages, so I am re reading a book that I last read 7 or 8 years ago and at that time it was fascinating,  influential and enjoyable – I have recommended it many times to people, but I know of no one who has taken up the recommendation! Anyway I seem to be enjoying it even more this time around.

Shantaram is a story, but based on the true experiences and events in the life of the author.

He escaped from Prison, in Australia, made his way to Bombay and lived there, becoming integrated in Bombay life and culture.

Indian culture is different to English, so way different that many people struggle to understand and accept certain aspects of it – this book goes tells the story of the authors assimilation into Bombay life and the culture shocks he had along the way – he wrote his notes for the book as he went so his story is vivid and detailed. For instance I have just read about a conversation he had with one of the characters he met,  where they discussed what bribes were OK, and it’s all to do with honesty. The reasoning went that every country has the ‘dishonest bribe’,  but only India has the ‘honest bribe” -  where everyone accepts bribes and offers  bribes and everyone knows the going rate of a bribe, so there is very little underhandedness about the system.

Interestingly, in the book, they call bribes ‘baksheesh’  – I first came across this word in Egypt and there it means “gratuity or tip” – it has a slightly different emphasis that is less perjorative than ‘bribe’.  So, in India, or at least, in the author’s experience, the police pay baksheesh to get assigned to the best police station…the best police station being the one that gets the most baksheesh…

There are plenty of other aspects to Bombay that he has mental tussles with – so far and I’m only 100 pages in, but they include the slums, the back street slave shop and the quite  extreme consequences of a car crash – not the crash itself mind, the consequences.

I love this book, and recommend it!

My job isn’t very hard, yes, there is alot of burocracy, and yes some of the rules are a bit silly, but it’s not often stressful. Most of the providers try their best to provide a good service and most do, and correct issues as they arise.

You’ll have noticed no posts for roughly a fortnight…and scarcely any for a while before then.

That’s known in my industry as the ‘Abbey effect’.

Abbey are the sole cause of significant, blood boiling, head banging frustration in my world, and I have been dealing with them for the past 5 weeks and that means the last 5 weeks have been horrible.

They have the most hideous, illogical systems ever. The application of common sense is void. I thought they may have improved since the utter lunacy of January to March this year,(I have boycotted them since) but they haven’t and this week has seen my dealing with the Abbey reach a point when they asked for information that, while I could provide it, would commit a client to a mortgage that he wouldn’t want, unless the Abbey approved his mortgage.  But, the Abbey refused to commit to approving his mortgage until they had the document. I was able to provide an identical printout, accurate to within £1 over 25 years, using my mortgage sourcing software, but Abbey wanted it printed off the other lenders website. Ahh, you are thinking, a simple problrm to overcome with a small greasing of wheels with some common sense.

But no, Abbey wouldn’t budge, the other lender had no facility to create a document without 100% commitment from the client.

Happily, yesterday a solution came to hand.

I sacked the Abbey, and transferred the clients to Halifax. In 1 day, Halifax approved the mortgage and instructed the surveyor…something Abbey couldn’t do in 5 weeks.

In other news, another client has come to me and I’ve been helping him negotiate his way through an incredible gzumping situation on a lovely house in Winchester. We won, using every tactic in the book – including me ‘knowing people’ and his other half charming the next door neighbour. I had his mortgage agreed with Abbey… warning claxons are going off in a big way… we switched to Halifax this afternoon!

I’m now making my way through a well deserved South African white from the lovely people at Virgin Wine club. this is the 1st time in 5 weeks that I have not had Abbey induced stress on intruding into my thoughts from the moment I have woken to the moment of going to bed.

I have been talking to a client about Kayaking – barring my tennis elbow, it is a recreation I fancy and you can fish from a kayak too, which would be fun.

Anyway, he has just e-mailed me two links to websites I didn’t know about previously:

http://www.bramblemet.co.uk/(S(kmpz402cvpnvpcfc2qoxpej1))/default.aspx – which links to real times wind and tide charts

and the more exciting and complex looking

http://www.windfinder.com/weatherforecast/solent_mrsc

I love this kind of thing, I always have, even at school.

At school during a Geology A’level lesson my teacher called out – I’m just putting entrants in for exams, does anyone fancy doing Meteorology O’level?

I raised my hand immediately – I like the stars… then thought “oops, it’s weather, not stars” but my hand stayed up. Since I was the only one, Mr Merritt said he’d sort out some lessons for me. As the exam approached we discussed lessons more frequently, but never actually had one. On the Monday before the exam, he told me that he had no free time before the exam on Thursday afternoon, but I should show up in his classroom at 9am on the Thursday and he’d give me an intense meteorology lesson and hope it was enough.

I was in his classroom at 9am, he bustled in at 10 past saying “Adrian, I’ve made a mistake, the exam starts at 9.30, come on, quickly, you’ll miss it!”

So, I sat Meteorology O’level with no lessons or revision other than what I knew. I knew a little, my father was a navigator in the RAF and weather is/was his thing – if you were in the car with him he’d often say things like “ooh, look at that fantastic Cumulo Nimbus” in much the same way as normal dad’s would say “oooh look at that shiney lorry”.  It was enough for me to know a few cloud types, I could read a weather map (not like on the BBC, a proper one) and that was about it.

I passed with a C. I thought that was alright!

photo credit: Mostly Dans

When I stopped being employed and became self employed I had to leave the company pension scheme.

The old scheme was based on my final salary – 1/60 of my salary will be paid as pension for every year that I was a member of the scheme – yes, it was was of the old fashioned schemes, I was very lucky.

Last year, out of curiosity I asked the scheme how much they’d give me to transfer out of the scheme – essentially I am a liability as they are obliged to give me alot of money when I am 65.  Many schemes are quite generous when it comes to letting members go, but my scheme offered quite a paltry amount that I felt undervalued my pension.

If I’d taken their offer, I’d have had to invest it,  achieving growth of 11.9% just to match the amount they would be contractually obliged to give me when I am 65.  Now, that seemed daunting, even to me – in some years maybe, but not every year. So, I left it with them.

This weekend they have written to me asking if I’d transfer away from them if they gave me some cash.

1. Ethically, I wonder if is it right to encourage me to transfer by offering me cash – the amount intimated was £3000. I know what I’m doing and will judge the final offer on it’s overall merit.  Many will not, and may make a bad decision purely based on a handy windfall.

2. I’m in the odd, possibly unique position of knowing the ‘old figure’. It will be interesting to see how the new figure compares – will it be £3k lower than my original figure, but with £3k as cash?

3. They have appointed an IFA for people who don’t have one. Clearly that isn’t me, but presumably they wouldn’t be recommending transfers if people need to get absurdly high growth rates to just break even, so maybe the old employers have ‘seen the light’ and will be offering proper valuations.

I am concerned about this offer. While I would welcome the cash as much as anyone, I can’t help but feel that a ‘sweetener’ is being offered to offset the bitter pill of transferring the good, guaranteed pension into a potentially less good one.  Or, putting it a different way, they wouldn’t need to offer me cash if they were offering a good deal on the pension.

So, while I hope the deal is good, I don’t expect it to be. And, if it is poor, I really hope that people don’t take up the offer. But I expect they will.

photo credit: LOLren

I was glancing over the movements of the FTSE 100 share index today. It’s been going up recently, at the time of writing it is at 5760.

On 12th August (around the time the coalition was announced) it was at 5269 and looking back through the press at the time, there were warnings that it could be well down by the end of the year.

Well, it still might, it only takes a moment, but so far so good, it seems to be happy with the way of things at the moment.

Soon – this week I think,  George Osbourne’s ‘Spending review’ will be unveiled – where we get to find out what will be cut and by how much. Actually, I can already answer the ‘What’ part of that – pretty much everything.

So, it’s just the ‘how much’ that needs answering.

But, even with this pretty momentous announcement to come shortly, the FTSE is trending upwards…

At times I worry, just like the rest of us, but the ‘Money Men’ seem to like the way the coalition is going about things.

Fingers crossed!

I had a load of spare blackberries and didn’t want to make any more jam so  for inspiration I thought I’d look for a recipe. In the old days I’d have scanned through a few recipe books, these days I sit at the kitchen table on my laptop looking for recipes on the internet. Usually I’ll find a few options and create a recipe that includes the best parts of each of them.

Anyway, I found this Blackberry and Apple Crumble Cake recipe on the BBC Good Food website. Actually, this is the first time I have referred back to it…I’m suddenly pleased with my photo!

Anyway, the recipe calls for you to make the crumble topping at the 1st stage – well, I know the ingredients for crumble, I just needed the quantities. The trouble with a wide screen laptop is that you get a very ‘short’ page, so I looked at the recipe and saw  175g butter…150g sugar, 200 g plain flour and although I was thinking ‘that’s alot of crumble’ I made it anyway. Then I noticed that the crumble section of the recipe was further down the page – 50g of butter and sugar and 75g flour. Doh!

Ah, so, at this stage, I had options, but I didn’t consider any of them – I read the recipe and decided that my Crumble cake was going to be a pretty crumbley crumble cake.

So, I followed the rest of the recipe with a degree more accuracy (except for forgetting to peel the apples) and the result was a very tasty cake. It wasn’t the lightest cake you’ve ever eaten, more of a dessert cake than a cake to be eaten with tea, but delicious nevertheless.

Made Piccalilli this weekend…initial taste tests are very good!

Piccalilli Recipe:

This pickle was made from vegetables that are likely to be in surplus at this time of year – I used Cauliflower, french beans, radishes, spring onions and a chopped onion. You need around 2kg veg for this recipe.

Chop the vegetables into smallish parts – radishes into halves or quarters, cauliflower into small florets etc.

Put into a colander, sprinkle with salt and leave over night in a place where the water run off won’t cause a mess!

The next day quickly rinse the salt off the veg and sterilize your jars.

In a bowl add:

60 g or so, Cornflour, 2 tablespoons each of Turmeric (This is a powerful dye, take care what utensils you use), Ground Ginger, Ground Cumin and Mustard Powder. 1 tablespoon whole mustard seed. Add water and mix into a paste.

In a large stainless steel pan, add 2 litres of cider vinegar, 300g sugar and 3 tablespoons runny honey and bring to the boil.

Add the paste and the veg and simmer for a minute.

Put in jars and save for a couple of months before you eat.

2 tablespoons

I have recieved a few comments from people saying they’d like to go mushrooming, but don’t know what to pick.

I used to have this same problem – there are something like 3000 species of mushroom and some of them are poisonous. It’s too big a subject to learn and the stakes sound high. There is a trick to it though – you don’t need to learn 3000 species, you need to learn at least one, but no more than, say 10.

So, here’s what I have done. I am a beginner, about 3 or 4 years in so take what I say with caution for a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.  But, I have set myself some simple rules, that have worked so far.

Firstly, get at least one book to identify mushrooms. I think you need a pocket guide to take out with you, and a more in depth book for reference later. You also need a pen knife and and preferably open basket/tin to collect them in, a plastic bag can spoil your finds.

I have some easy rules on what to pick.

1. Does it look like something that you want to put in your mouth – obviously this counts out some edible mushrooms, but it as you learn more species, you will overcome the weakness in this theory.

2. Does it smell alright?

3. I don’t pick anything with white gills. (Death Cap’s have white gills and they scare me…)

4. Slice a bit off – does it change colour or ‘leak’ liquid?

5. If it has spots on top it is bad – fly agaric or panther cap.

6. Cut it open before eating – it is wild food, it may be bad inside.

7. Finally, your book will talk about spore prints – to get a spore print, just place the mushroom on a piece of paper – an hour or so later, there will be dust on the paper and you can check the colour. Parasol mushrooms have two varieties, one american and one european – the american one will make you ill. One has a green spore print and one white. I got 2 bits of paper, one green, one white and put a mushroom on each – an hour later, I knew I had edible european ones.

8. Don’t eat anything that you haven’t 100% identified.

OK, those rules will have you leaving plenty of edible mushrooms behind…but they work for me as a starting point.

Now, you need to look at the easiest mushrooms to identify. My suggestions are:

Field Mushroom – I reckon : Pink Gills, Looks like a shop mushroom and you can peel the skin. Brown gills on older ones are OK.

Horse Mushroom – looks like a chunky mushroom – really fat stalk, pink gills. Doesn’t stain yellow when scratched.

Parasol Mushroom – looks like an umbrella – really tall stem – up to 30cm. The cap can be as big as a dinner plate, although it starts off as a ball. As the cap spreads out it leaves a ring around the stem that you can move up and down.

Giant Puffball – you’ll know if you find one of these. Cut it open, if it looks like marshmallow, it’s good. If it looks like anything else it’s not.

Next:

See what you are finding lots of in your local area – take photo’s or take examples home with you. You can find ceps around here, so I have learnt how to identify them, but there’s no point if they are rare round your way. Your field guide will go a long way in this process.

It won’t take long for you to have this sorted.

photo credit: anemoneprojectors

photo credit: Chi King

Just had an e-mail about some fixed rates being released next week, and they look fantastic.

They are available for people moving house and remortgaging and there are options for 2 years, 4 years, 5 years and 7 years.

These days most fixed rates with good interest rates have hideous fees, however these new rates have standard fees so that’s OK.

We are looking at rates from 3.05% for 2 years, 3.75% for 4 years, 5 years from 3.99% and 7 years at 4.8%

All of these will be amongst the market leaders, if not the actual market leader.