Tax rebates, dog vests, ready peeled garlic and Ed Balls hair.

Still no competition wins. In sheer desperation and in a bid to break my duck I've resorted to entering competitions with really small and/or wildly inappropriate prizes. Yesterday I entered one for a Bat's Trust tea towel (a charity apparently, not a character trait) and earlier this week I entered a competition to win a breast pump, despite being happily sprogless and planning to stay that way.
If I win it I'm sure it will make a nice present for someone....Being Olympic year I could say it's a performance enhancing sports inhaler.

On the other hand it's been a good week for free stuff. I've received 4 pots of moisturiser, some facial serum, a pouch of kitten food, 16 tea bags and some disclosing tablets. All the free stuff was obtained either directly or indirectly from the Freebies (no spend required) section of the MoneySavingExpert website, which is well worth a look. In fact, it should be a legal requirement in this age of austerity.

It was all rounded off nicely yesterday by a tax rebate from 2005/2006.
Yep, 2005/2006.
So soon?
Back then I still had some of my own teeth.
In the halcyon days of 2005/2006 I could squat on my haunches to look at the bottom shelves in the library without first working out how to get back up. In fact I probably didn't have to squat. I could probably see the titles standing up.
Corned beef was less than £1 a tin and you were allowed to put egg boxes in the rubbish without the compost police breaking down your door at 4am and frogmarching you naked to your nearest recycling facility to work unpaid for a week washing out cat food tins in cold water.

I suppose that I should count myself lucky that I got it before I was dead....Hopefully this heralds a change in fortunes and the tea towels will start flooding in.

Like the rest of the country it's got really cold here over the last few days. We have central heating but don't set it to come on at certain times as we believe this to be wasteful. In the past we set it to come on automatically but some days it's just not that cold and it comes on anyway, binge drinking oil.
So now we just turn it on as required. It doesn't take long to start warming the house and half an hour of being in danger of developing hypothermia isn't such a hardship.

So sometimes the house is a tiny bit chilly and being soft, I worry that the dogs are cold. We have four but two are quite elderly and the eldest one is a bit senile too.
To keep them warm I have made them indoor vests and here's a picture of Lucifer (elderly, but not yet senile) modelling hers.

I buy tee shirts from charity shops and inexpertly alter them to vaguely fit whichever dog happens to need one. As well as wearing it in the house, Lucifer wears hers under her outdoor coat when going on a walk-a kind of thermal underwear for dogs. Are you listening Bannatyne? It may look ridiculous but it's another surefire money spinner.


We went to Fishguard yesterday and had a look in the Co-op. Interestingly Fishguard has parking charges too, which they suspend out of season. Cardigan should take a leaf out of their book.
Anyway, I had to smile as they were selling tiny pots of peeled garlic for £1. Just peeled, not chopped or anything.
Do people really find peeling their garlic such an odious task? They'll be selling ready-cracked eggs next.

I would happily sit and peel 7 cloves of garlic for £1. In fact, that's going to be my new career. Garlic Skinner. I can even do it in your own home, so make that Mobile Garlic Skinner.
Either that or Ed Balls hairdresser. I know nothing about hairdressing but whatever I did to him it's got to be an improvement because the poor man just looks ridiculous.
The 1950's chubby schoolboy look is so 2005/2006....