Grandad

Maybe the new pensioners bonds due out next month will absorb some of the pensioners savings (including mine) leaving less to fund the buy to let bubble. Decent interest rate and safe too.

I enjoyed the program too, but I thought it was an expensive way to solve the problem. I noted that they do a similar thing sucessfully in Holland but not in a sealed tank. I think that they may have a real problem if the river overtops the rim of the tank and silt gets trapped under the float, it'll take some cleaning out.

Re: I live on HPCI The last time I sold out was 5 Dec 2007. Same reason I suppose, things looking too good to be true. I bought myself a VW Motor Caravan.

As I sold nearly all my shares on 26th Sept, I have just calculated that I would have lost 3.358% of my investment if I had not been spooked by some intuition of an impending calamity. As I made a tidy profit, I am now busily moving the funds somewhere safer, some going into a Virgin fixed rate ISA. Still keeping my very small shareholding as I enjoy logging on every morning to see how things are going, gives me a bit of interest without the worry.

Strange, I sold most of my shares yesterday.

Have a look at todays Matt cartoon in the Telegraph. I had to smile. (I tried but failed to post the image)

Just saw this on Yahoo Finance: TSB banking group (TSB.L) -LSE : 285.00p, Up 282.40p (10861.54%) Did someone get his/her sums wrong?

I'm feeling pleased with myself. I thought that the sale was deliberately kept low key and lots of negative comments spouted, so I jumped in by pre-ordering shares. I managed to get 2845 shares @ 260p total £7,397. Sold the lot @ 296.325p ea. for £8,429.81 so just over £1,000 in 20 mins of trading. Be nice if I could do it more often.

The bees have taken over this property in my garden.

Now this is serious, I found this frogspawn on the lawn this afternoon during the storm. It seems to have been blown out of the pond (There is more in there). Any ideas? Yes, I scraped it up and put it into the pond.

Me and Grandma rented a holiday home in France with a similar setup but with only a waist high dividing wall. Luckily there was a normal family bathroom as well. At bed time we would see how many jokes about it we could conjure up.

Grandma sold her shares for a nice profit and a big smile. I bought quite a few more when the price dipped for a couple of days. At the moment I am showing an overall gain of 17% on my total investment. I am now, of course, wishing I had bought more. Where can I rent a time machine?

Rather than turning on the heating when I am down my den for a short while, I put on an electric Silver Crest Neck & Back Heating Pad I bought cheaply from Lidle's. It keeps me toasty warm. It's also useful when I have backache, nice and soothing.

Just had an email from Hargreaves Lansdown. So it's 227shares costing £749.10 for me and for Grandma. Glad that we weren't too greedy. A small celebration is in order, Now, do we buy some more? "When can you start dealing in Royal Mail shares? Conditional dealing in Royal Mail shares will start at 8am tomorrow (11 October). You will be able to buy and sell Royal Mail shares from this point ."

Now Grandma has gone and applied for some! She has listened to me so I will be due a clip around the ear if things go wrong.

I have decided to take a chance as the possibility of getting a good income looks promising to me. The dividend yield is expected to be in the range is 6.1pc to 7.7pc. More info: The offer closes 8 October. The Royal Mail Share Offer is expected to close at on 8 October, so if you are interested in applying, please act now. Please note that you can only apply for certain specified amounts: £750, £1,000, £1,500, £2,000, £2,500, £3,000, £4,000, £5,000, £6,000, £7,000, £8,000, £9,000, £10,000, £15,000, £20,000, £25,000, £30,000, £35,000, £40,000, £45,000, £50,000 and then £50,000 or above in £10,000 increments.

No one seems to have mentioned that, to the grower, how much better home grown food tastes. As a pre war lad I have an ingrained attitude that I help my family to have cheaply produced fruit and vegetables. An amazing variety and quantity can be grown on a small vegetable plot with a greenhouse. For example last year, even though it was a bit wet, we had: Early potatoes, Hispy and Savoy cabbage, carrots, shallots, onions, beetroot, lettuce, radish, tomatoes, cucumbers, blueberries, apples, pears, indoor and outdoor grapes, lemons, satsumas, limes, and mint. I tried cauliflower but they decided to be bonsai plants, I can't seem to get them to grow to a reasonable size. We had a large surplus crop of tomatoes and cucumbers which were well received by friends and neighbours. So, what I am saying is, if you can access a bit of land, have a go at gardening. It's a very interesting and rewarding hobby.

Wind turbine collapses in high wind. A controversial 80ft wind turbine has collapsed after being hit by heavy winds. Details. A 35-metre turbine has collapsed near Holsworthy leaving the tower lying on the ground. The turbine at East Ash Farm in Bradworthy was erected in 2010 by Dulas Ltd. Dulas confirmed this morning that an "incident" had occurred with the turbine and said the situation is currently being investigated. Strange, not mentioned on BBC National or local tv news.

Well, I hope that whoever did this in Devon gets caught and pays for the cleanup.

Torrington is OK. Tarka trail foot/cycle path runs nearby: http://www.barum.co.uk/tarkatrail.htm The annual bonfires on the common are spectacular: http://figure-w.co.uk/devon/torrington-events/ Good walks on the common and by the river too. RHS gardens worth visiting as is the Torrington Glass factory: http://www.dartington.co.uk/ Nearby: Bideford (nice by the riverside), Barnstaple (a pleasant expanding larger town), Appledore (has a thriving shipyard), Instow (beach and sailing club) Dartmoor and Exmoor not too far away and don't forget to visit Clovelly before you get too old to climb the steep street.

There could be a few discussions about dividing the spoils tonight, Burns night, or should that be 'Burning the Past' night.

If I was selling a house at that price, I would get a decent photographer to take the interior photographs. They appear to have been taken by a tall person holding the camera at eye level giving a poor vertical perspective (walls leaning outwards). If he or she lowered the camera and looked at the sides of the viewfinder whilst doing so, the walls could be seen to look closer to the vertical. (Sitting on a chair could work.) An alternative would be to use Paint Shop Pro or something similar to correct the perspective but then some of the image at the sides would be lost. It seems to be a common, easily corrected fault, with estate agents images.

Adam Shaw on Radio 4 today program intimated that lower house prices might not be a bad thing.

I have a suspicion that MATT is on our side.

Ah, and there was me thinking that I was the only one affected so didn't want to mention the fact. I have found that I need to change to my Mozilla Firefox browser to stop topic messages overlapping and to upload .jpg files. Edit: I should have said that I normally use IE7.