Oh dear.

It’s Monday tomorrow.

When talking of stock markets, Mondays in the mid/end of October haven’t been good, historically speaking.

Monday October 28th, 1929, saw the second largest percentage drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. -12.82%

The largest ever percentage drop in the Dow, -22.61% was Monday October 19th, 1987. And our FTSE’s largest ever percentage followed. The FTSE dropped 12.2% in one day.

Okay so over the last week’s trading we had a 23% drop in the value of FTSE, closing the week down at 3932 points.

If tomorrow is going to be another Black Monday, and our biggest, we just need to drop say 13% in one trading day.

Opening at 3932 points, dropping a staggering 511 points, and finishing down at 3421.

Oh dear. That could so easily happen.

The money needed by the four big banks (Royal Bank of Scotland, HBOS, Lloyds TSB and Barclays) to ’shore up it’s defences’ is going up by the hour (what are we now 50 billion? 60?) and us taxpayers are paying for it. A statement before the markets open tomorrow will probably have no effect in restoring confidence.

Oh, and the LloydsTSB takeover of HBOS will collapse as LloydsTSB attempts to renegotiate (ie: negotiate it’s way out!)

We’re going down.

Black Monday then.

Oh dear.

PS: Of course, I’m rather hoping I’m wrong.

My mate Jon and I went out for a roast dinner on Sunday night…

Customer Services
Wetherspoon House
Reeds Crescent
Central Park
Watford
WD24 4QL

7th October, 2008.

Dear JDWetherspoon,

I have been a happy customer of yours for a number of years now.

Whenever I go anywhere for a day out with family or friends I always check your website to find the nearest Wetherspoon’s or Lloyds No1 Bar, so we can make a point of going there and having a good meal.

Whether it be a Sunday Club roast in Chichester with the in-laws, or a Curry Night in Southampton with the mates, I know I’ll always be greeted by friendly well trained professional staff only too happy to please.

I know I’ll be in a relaxed welcoming atmosphere, and know I can take advantage of the free wi-fi access and receive truly excellent value for money when purchasing both food and drink.

In fact, I have never hesitated to recommend JDWetherspoon - until now.

I honestly can’t believe I’m having to write this letter. Something somewhere has gone drastically wrong.

May I refer to your pub ‘The Regent’ in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey. (Pub No: 103)

I often go, generally once every couple of weeks with a mate and generally for a meal. Generally early or mid-week, and generally when it isn’t too busy.

Sadly, I’ve noticed a steady decline over the last few visits, and Sunday for me was just plain awful. Needless to say, we won’t be returning.

And to be honest, after the experience I had this weekend, I doubt very much if I’ll be using your website to find the nearest Wetherspoon’s again.

We visited last week; a drink, something to eat. Bloody freezing, mind. Heating broken or something. I don’t know.

Deciding we’d have a coffee and muffin to finish off with, we were disappointed when told that the machine was broken (again). Cold, and somewhat fed up of being forced to be party to the knowledge of the social lives of various staff members, we left earlier than usual.

We returned, forgetful, on Sunday, both having had a busy day, and very hungry.

At about 7pm we ordered our drinks and our Sunday Roast. I knew exactly what to expect; I have had many a good roast chicken at a variety of Wetherspoon’s across the country.

As well as a few drinkers, there were a couple of other diners already eating and we were told our food would arrive in 10-15 minutes.

We waited.

And waited.

My mate had ordered an extra serving of mashed potato with his beef but when our roasts arrived 35 minutes after the order was taken, the mashed potato was with my chicken.

We questioned the delay, since there were only two other people eating at the time, and complained the order was wrong.

The member of staff sort of apologised, but was also explaining that something which was supposed to have been served as part of our roast wasn’t, since it had been left out and gone bad or something. (Sage and onion stuffing balls - having now looked at the menu again.)

To be frank, we have no recollection of what she was saying since we were both horrified to be watching her scrape the mashed potato, off one plate on to the other right in front of us.

We ate; or rather, we tried.

The food was, quite frankly, disgusting - Admittedly made worse by the already very poor quality of service.

Dried up carrots and brocolli that had been sat under the hot plate for hours; roast potatoes that had appeared to have been ‘deep fried’ for so long the potato had reduced to mash on the inside and so hot in the centre it burnt your mouth; luke warm dried up chicken; cold peas - of two different colours; maris piper creamy mashed potato that was anything but; I could go on…

We gave up eating. We were hungry, very hungry. Neither of us had eaten since an early breakfast; but we weren’t hungry enough to eat that shit.

The staff member eventually came to clear our plates. She had obviously said the stock phrase: “Did you enjoy your meal?”, without actually thinking why she was saying it since she was already saying “I’ll get your desserts.” before we could make it quite clear that we had in no way “enjoyed” our meals.

Oh, yes - We were talking to her, but she wasn’t listening to us, since she was already heading towards the kitchen with our half empty plates.

At least by: “I’ll get your desserts”, we knew she’d come straight back with them. But shortly (in both senses) she popped her head out and shouted across to us: “Which one had the ice-cream?”

They both did; surely that was on the ticket in the kitchen - it was on our copy.

We waited.

And waited.

For yet another half an hour.

30 or so long minutes in which we were forced to endure various activities of the staff: shouting at each other across the building; screaming at the chef, both outside and inside the kitchen; constantly checking texts/taking calls on mobiles glued into their hands; flirting with drinkers and sharing mobile phone pictures on the customer side of the bar at one end, while customers were waiting to be served at the other end; and again, I could go on…

Though I must mention, we were even privileged to have the young manager plonk himself down with his roast dinner on the table in front of us. He sat their leisurely eating and reading the paper whilst his staff did their very best not do anything in particular, including serving our desserts.

Oh and whilst waiting, we were slowly freezing since there was still no heating to speak off - the staff were wearing their coats, so it was quite plain that we weren’t the only people shivering.

Finally the manager got up and disappeared with his plate into the kitchen, leaving his paper on the table. Maybe now he’d organise our desserts - we’d been making various subtle hints by this stage, discussing quite openly our experience since he was easily sat within earshot of us and it waswell beyond a joke by this stage in the evening.

Perhaps he was too engrossed in his paper to care about his increasingly extremely dissatisfied customers. We never saw him again. We were told he was “out the back having a fag”.

When asked if maybe somebody, anybody, could get our desserts before we froze to death we were told they’d be out shortly.

We waited.

And waited.

And counted the customers to see if it really was so busy that an extended delay was justified. (A couple of dozen at the very most - including drinkers, and thus no justification whatsoever.)

Finally a member of staff went in and returned complaining that she’d had to do them herself.

We asked for the reason for the significant amount of time needed to cut a piece of chocolate fudge cake and scoop some ice-cream, but was told in an very obvious ‘tough shit, what do you expect me to do about it’ attitude that the chef was far too busy cooking meals for the “other customers” - who presumably had been waiting just as long as we had.

Sadly, that was it for us.

Not exctly bowled over by the quality and taste of our desserts, we waited a little while longer hoping someone, maybe even the manager would pop out of the kitchen so we could at least complain about the significant lack of the understanding of the words: “quality food” and “customer service”, as experienced by ourselves and - from various rather loud conversations of the staff with customers - other diners too.

But no.

Having decided that we wouldn’t have a coffee, though we were told the machine was now at least working, we got up, left, and vowed never to step inside the building again.

May I take this opportunity to strongly suggest that someone from JDWetherspoon pay an unannounced visit to pub number 103 in the not to distant future: It would be good for them to experience for themselves the extremely poor standards, in customer focused service, staff management, food quality, and general building/equipment maintenance.

JDWetherspoon’s is only as good as it’s worst pub, and I sincerely hope that the ‘Regent’ in Walton-on-Thames is your worst pub, else you really do have some serious problems with your business model.

Sorry to have had to write this letter and publish it on my blog, but I seriously do think that my friends and colleagues from the local area really do need to know it really isn’t worth paying good money for an experience like that.

I’ll go as far to say this horse has had better service than we did. Even if he now has to stay tethered outside!

Yours sincerely,

Paul Foster.

Well Jon, said I’d be writing, didn’t I.

How about we try the Slug and Lettuce in Weybridge next week? - You know, the one we drove past every time we went to the Regent. More money, yeah, but can’t be any worse than Sunday, can it?

“How would you like your not so creamy maris piper mashed potato, sir? Hot, cold or scraped off someone else’s plate?” Lol!

So, Bradford & Bingley?

What a surprise, not.

Richard has (or is that had?) shares; freebees from when the B&B changed into a bank eight years ago.

We’ve been watching the steady decline of the share value from a high of over £5, to 309 pence just a year ago, and right down to a delisting 20p last friday.

In my opinion, B&B jumped on the buy-to-let bandwagon way to late! They started throwing cash at anyone who could lie about their income on a self-cert form and any amateur landlord who could spot the bandwagon, even after the wheels had started falling off!

Amateur landlords who hadn’t even visited the towns in which they bought their property off-plan; amateur landlords who are now really feeling the pinch as they find their “2 bed 2 bath executive flats” are exactly the same as the other hundred or so “2 bed 2 bath executive flats” bought by the other amateur landlords, also off-plan, in the same (over-developed) development.

Naturally, the tenants out there are having a field day naming their price in terms of rent - plenty of empty very similar flats to choose from. Take your pick!

In fact, throw a stone anywhere in Manchester, Leeds or Cardiff city centres and you’re very likely to hit one!

Now, professional landlords will have done the maths ages ago and will ride out the storm.

But, amateur landlords, on the other hand, will now be having big, big problems:

1. The rental money coming in will already be less than the interest payments on their buy-to-debt (sorry, buy-to-let) mortgage - assuming they even have a tenant.
2. The value of the flat will be less than the mortgage secured on it - too many flats built for, marketed to, and sold to amateur landlords, resulting in over-development in city centres.
3. Their two year fixed rate interest deals will end, and there won’t be any more, and subsequently their interest rates will rocket as banks try to recoup some money whilst actively hoping the landlord will remortgage the property with somebody else: but which banks will want the risk?
4. The rates on the mortgages secured on their own homes will be going up, and probably just as quickly as petrol, food, gas and electricty.

If you were an amateur landlord and you could only make the payment on one mortgage this month, it ain’t gonna be the buy-to-let mortgage is it?

It won’t be long before we start to see loads of these “2 bed 2 bath executive flats” on the market - forcing down their value, and indeed other property, even more.

They won’t sell though, since few people can get a mortgage, and then they’ll be repossessed.

In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if most amateur landlords wouldn’t simply consider letting the banks just repossess anyway. Why go through all the hasle and expense of selling a flat no-one wants to buy at the moment when you can just say ‘fuck it’ and hand the keys back to the bank. Let them worry about it!

Yes, they’ll be sold, but at auction, to canny professional landlords who bought up loads of investment property during the last slump a decade ago and have been happily collecting the rents whilst sat around waiting for the next property crash.

And they won’t be paying much for them either. The banks won’t get back all the money they lent on the property. They’ll make a loss.

Toxic or what? And you thought it was just about sub-prime mortgages in the States.

Right, big question here. And to be honest, I don’t know the answer. But if I was still in the buy to let market, I’d definately be wanting to find out.

If I had jumped on the bandwagon with the busted wheel and had bought a buy-to-debt (sorry-let) flat, lets just say I stopped paying the mortgage and let the bank (or in B&B’s case, us, as the public owners) repossess the flat and attempt to get the money back.

If the bank does manage to sell (auction off) my buy-to-debt flat and they get back some, but not ALL, of the money they lent me as a mortgage secured on the property (’cause they were stupid enough to lend me 95% or even 100% and were happy for me to lie about my income) then do I technically still owe them the difference? I mean, the loan was secured on that property wasn’t it? Am I liable for the devaluation in the buy-to-let property, or is the bank?

If I was still in the buy-to-let market, I’d be shitting myself right now.

Actually, as an aside, I have to be a little smug here - well, it’s my blog isn’t it.

Rich and I got out of the buy-to-let market and sold both our rental properties six years ago - just when thousands of others amateur landlords spotted the bandwagon and started piling in.

Oh, and after a quick search on rightmove I’ve found a property exactly the same as both of ours in the same road, one of just two on the market out of at least a hundred similar ones in the town!

Me thinks something is very, very wrong in the property market!

When you are desperate to sell your property, you put it on the market with two estate agents in the hope they will compete with each other to find a buyer quickly and get their fee.

Well this property, a one bed house for £139,950 - we sold ours for £115,000 six years ago this month, having bought it for £57,000 two years earlier! - is on the market with four, count them, FOUR, separate estate agents!

Desperate or what?

So, anyway where was I?

Oh, yeah - Anyone want a cheap flat? I mean real cheap? You’ll need the cash, mind - you won’t get a mortgage.

Now’s the time to start planning on making some money.

Start saving as much as you can now and in a couple of years, when the property market has fallen off the proverbial cliff, you can the pick up a few bargain-basement (lol!) flats at auction, rent them out cheaply (since you won’t have the mortgage to cover each month) and sit back rubbing your hands together as you wait for their value to go back up again.

Boom and bust.

….and boom again.

Those property values were way to high in the first place. Still are. The average house price is still far too out of step with the average wage.

There is a big correction to be made.

Downwards.

Proof?

Then how’s this?

August 2007 - £7,150 million.

July 2008 - £2,860 million.

A drop of 60% in 11 months.

So what am I talking about?

Yep, nett money lent by our banks in the UK for mortgages.

Ah, but wait…

August 2008?

£143 million.

Shit. That’s a drop of 98% in one year.

Oh, and a massive drop of 95% in JUST ONE MONTH.

Credit Crunch? or Credit Crisis?

How about a Credit Crash!

Hold on; gonna be a rough ride, and we’ve hardly even started!

Bye-bye B&B…

I wonder who’s next?

I’m in the middle of writing a large post. So large that it is in the process of being split into a number of smaller ones, which I will post in due course.

However, with news today that the “UK Economy Comes To A Standstill” to quote the BBC Business News website’s headline, I find myself editing my post yet again.

You see, with all this doom and gloom on the economy, and in my mind we should be reading between the lines anyway, these ‘official figures’ from the Government are becoming a bit of a farce.

A few weeks ago, when I first started writing my forthcoming post (working-titled ‘2012′) it was announced that the UK was the only European country to record a positive growth in the last quarter; Apr, May, Jun. A meager 0.2% admittedly, but a positive growth none-the-less, and thus shunning the economists who reckon we are already beginning our decline into an inevitable recession.

Funny then, that that figure was just an estimate, and today the Office of National Statistics admitted “the economy stalled, showing no growth from the first quarter of 2008″ ending “a run of more than 15 years of consecutive growth in the UK.”

Yep. The growth in our economy was, allegedly, exactly 0%. Zero. Nothing. We did exactly the same amount of business in the first quarter as we did in the second. We didn’t grow by a tiny, weeny, little bit of a percentage point and nor did we shrink by a tiny, weeny, little bit of a percentage point. Nothing. No change whatsoever.

Doesn’t that strike you as a little odd that over a period of three months nothing can change at all in our economy. No change at all, either up or down?

Does me. Very odd. How can the movement of billions of pounds in our economy result in exactly the same as in the last quarter. When was the last time the economy didn’t change at all from one quarter to the next?

Here’s my take; here’s my “reading between the lines”.

The widely regarded and often used technical definition of a recession is two quarters of negative growth in a country’s economy.

Of course, our Government does not in any way shape or form wish to alarm the population of this country by mentioning the dreaded word ‘recession’ and so they do a very clever thing to buy themselves some time.

Assuming we have a very small positive growth in the second quarter (as in the reported 0.2% a few weeks ago) and a widely predicted, all the signs are there, negative growth in the third quarter, hopefully then, the government can sort things out during the forth quarter and everything will be hunk-dory because we never actually had two months of negative growth thus no defined economic recession. Yes? You following?

Ah, but what if we did have a very minor negative growth in the second quarter (even -0.05%) followed by a widely predicted, all the signs are there, negative growth in the third?

Whoops! Two consecutive quarters of negative growth and bang, a recession, as technically defined. The media will have a field day. Not good.

So what does our esteemed Government do? Yep, release a figure of 0% growth. Easy really when you think about. It’s not negative is it? It’s not positive either, but that’s beside the point.

Nuff said. I’m not an economist, but I know there’s a problem. House prices couldn’t keep rising with wages not keeping up in anyway shape or form. How long could the average house price possibly maintain a multiple of nine times the average salary? Didn’t add up, still doesn’t.

Where I live, a ‘villiage’ just outside of Woking, two estate agents have recently closed.

The main agency still there, Mann, owned by the country’s largest estate agency group, Countrywide, has six windows in which to display its property for sale. Only one of those windows has property in it. The rest are now filled with adverts for mortgages, house insurance, and the like.

The property insert inside our local freebee paper (an actual publication in itself) has shrunk considerably recently. The agents have much less property to advetise, and I suspect that most can’t afford to advertise what they have got.

We are going into a recession. And wether it is technically defined as happening at the end of this quarter, 30 Sept, or the end of the next 31st Dec, we are definitely going into one.

Probably better to prepare now isn’t it? Rather than waiting for the Government to admit it sometime in mid February when the growth figures for the last quarter of 2008 are announced?

Mind you, what are the odds of us having that magic 0% growth this quarter as well, huh?

Now that would be funny.

Goodnight.

Well that’s a good start - not.

I’m in bed typing away on my MacBook at 6.30am after a night mostly devoid again of something called sleep, and I’m already pissed off ’cause my so called wireless broadband is only wireless horizontally and not, it appears, vertically.

I had intended to update my facebook status before I started writing.

Something like;

- Paul knows the answer definitely isn’t 42, but kind of wishes it was.

Oh well.

Here I am, as I’ve said, typing in bed, with my laptop, funnily enough, in my lap. Apparently, or so I learnt the other day, it’s not very good for us men.

Fries the balls and lowers the sperm count.

No problem there then. Not as if my sperm’s going to fulfill it’s potential is it? Lol!

Mind you, there are times, like for some odd reason today, that I really wish it could.

You’ve probably grasped that being gay means having children is little harder when you can’t use conventional methods.

My problem is, the older I get, the more I want them, and the more I have to accept I will never have them. And that’s just the most plain fucking annoying thing there is.

When I was younger, like eleven or twelve, way before I knew I was actually gay, or even what gay was for that matter, I used to think I would grow up, acquire a wife (blonde hair, blue eyes) and have kids.

A wife, not incidentally, that would die very young and leave me quite contented to bring up the children on my own.

I knew way back then that I wanted kids, but it was very clear somehow that a woman just wasn’t part of the mental picture, other than the act of actually producing them. Weird, but that was how my brain was working at the time. Obviously, I know why now, but I certainly didn’t then.

So there you go, in my state of depression, yes I’m down again, I’ve finally admitted to the electronic ether we call the world wide web that I really, really, really want children, but will never have them.

I want to help a baby become a toddler; a toddler become a young child who goes to school; a young child become a teenager who loves me and hates me at the same time; a teenager become an adult who leaves home and starts the process all over again.

I want to help a life go on to achieve everything in this increasingly stupid world that they want to be able to, knowing full well I will always support them in whatever they choose to do.

I always have. Always.

I have worked with young people ever since I was one myself.

I helped out in playgroups when I was at school as part of my community service (my excuse for getting out of games during O’levels). Loved it.

Helped to teach kids to swim while I was at college.

Even worked as a nanny when I left home during my A’Levels. (They call them manny’s now!) Was even offered a place at a teacher training college in the Lake District. Just needed two D’s to get the grant, but only managed an E in Maths on the second attempt. (Though at the risk of seriously pissing off some of my younger readers I’m reliably informed that E is the equivalent of a B these days!)

When I left college I worked in a secondary school as a non-teaching assistant looking after a handicapped boy (rip Stephen, I still think about you) then I spent many years as a part-time youth worker in Surrey and Hampshire, and I now volunteer at a Youth Theatre every Sunday.

I adore spending time with my best friend’s 10 year old son. I pick him up from school sometimes, take him out to the cinema in Staines, go shopping for Doctor Who stuff in Toys’R'Us in Woking, even take him on day trips to London during the holidays - I love it when he asks if I can take him out. He’s great fun!

I have two neices, 7 and 9, and a nephew, 13 and I even have what I consider to be close friends who are young enough to be my children.

But I want to be a father. A real father. I’m happy to be a substitute, but it’s not the same. It’s not the same at all.

I’m crying now.

We all have to make sacrifices in this world. We can’t have everything we want.

I know, I can hear you; Being gay doesn’t stop a man from being a father. And yes, you’re quite right.

But Richard is the most important person in my life and he will simply never have children. For him they are fine if they are somebody else’s, and they behave, and they are at a distance. Generally, spending time with them (and never alone) is only done when we are at some sort of family function; one that we haven’t been able to get out of.

We have a wonderful home. Those of you who have seen it will know that Richard has always taken great care and pride in his surroundings. His interior and exterior design skills are second to none, and you can actually see him having some sort of internal mental fit if a child is in, or for that fact anywhere near the house. (Our neighbours have young children who are always playing nearby.) He puts up with it, just, but I know how much he hates it. And I respect that.

I love Richard dearly. We have been together now for nearly thirteen years. And both know full well that we always will be. I’d be long dead now if it wasn’t for his love and support.

There is nothing in my life that I would change, even if I could.

Yes, there are times I wish I wasn’t gay, like when I have the unfortunate displeasure of being in earshot of the complete and utter ignorance and intolerance of the other human beings in this world who have the stupid fucked up assumption that I have either ‘chosen’ to be gay or that I’m some kind of biological mistake that should be eradicated in case I corrupt innocent children or infect the rest of the human race with some incurable disease. Who the fuck would ‘choose’ to be gay with people like that around anyway?

And yes, there are times I wish I wasn’t bipolar, though at least my downs aren’t quite so bad now since I’ve been on this medication. My ups/downs are far less frequent and not as severe so my 100mg tablet of Lamotrigine every day is doing the trick. I still get a little depressed at times, like today and yesterday, but it’s bearable. Just messes the sleep up and leaves me lost.

So overall, I am happy. I wouldn’t change anything even if I could, except that I’d definitely be even happier if I had children. Even one would be sufficient. I’m not greedy.

And it’s not the passing on of the genes that really matters to me either. I’d happily foster if I could, (ironic since that’s my surname), even adopt. Thought about it loads of times. All this bollocks about a child having to have two parents of opposite sex is just that, bollocks.

No, it’s the passing on of the wisdom, the understanding of the world, the being there, the helping, the nuturing, the supporting, the loving, the caring, the hugging, being a shoulder to cry on when it all goes wrong, or the taxi when it’s all going right, being the ‘father figure’ that they can look up to, be proud of, be thankful for, and the knowing that I did the best I could to give this human race another human being who could make a difference in this world.

Yes, I’m thankful, very thankful that I can do this for other people’s children in some degree or other, and on a very part-time basis, it’s just that there is a deep, very deep biological instinct thing which I can never fulfill and the older I get the more it hurts. How’s that for a mid-life crisis? Most men want a Harley. I want a child!

Though I guess if you are in the lucky position of having the option of having children, if indeed you want them, then you’d probably have no idea what the fuck I’m feeling or how deep that pain really is and how much it is screwing with my mind.

I’m crying again.

Never really appreciated how much this meant to me. Must be this I’m nearly fucking forty thing.

Oh well, ho hum.

–

Mid afternoon.

Still feeling fucking shit about all this.

Given up on the ironing, Jon.

Listening to Erasure now.

Blues Away is on repeat.

can you see this predilection
rushing through my head
was a morning full of circumstance
i was seeing red
put my blues away

navigation gone astray
went any way i could
havent got the time of day
cannot see why i should
put my blues away

always had my reservations
who am i to blame
walked into the ring of fire
heart in a wall of flames
put my blues away

my emotions running riot
through the neighbourhood
screaming in the dead of night
i wish to be understood
put my blues away

Thanks Andy. Couldn’t have said it better myself.

Well here I am, bloging for real!

I’m sat in the Goldsworth Park Surgery as Rich visits his GP. There is a little three year old boy sat next to me reading his Richard Scarry book and I’m typing away in my WordPressDash Widget.

I should be working since I was in the middle of my Nuffield homework, but as soon as I sat down here and woke up my Mac it asked if I wanted to join a local wireless network called SpeedtouchC68C80.

Assuming it would ask for a password, I clicked ‘join’ just for the fun of it. And now I’m online wirelessly in my Doctors Surgery. No password needed!

So there you go. My MacBook’s first outing and my first blog post from the Doctor’s!

Oh well, back to the homework!

Just a quicky!

I’m off to Silverstone for theBritish Grand Prix.

Well, practice and qualifying anyway. Cant see the race as I need to be back for the Riverside Youth Theatre AGM!

Bye for now…

Having just spent the last hour and a half shredding my 00/01 and 01/02 annual business and personal accounts and checking every reciept for my credit card number (printed, I might add, in full on the vast majority of them), I’ve discovered a surprisingly interesting fact…

In January 2001 I was paying about 80 pence per litre for unleaded petrol.

Checking back over my reciepts for the last tax year 07/08, I see I was paying back in the beginning of January this year about 100 pence per litre . Yes, less than six months ago.

And now, with oil prices reaching record highs and our fuel going up almost weekly, I’m paying here in Woking, Surrey, very nearly 120 pence per litre.

So, (and this is in no way a scientific study, just my personal observations) it took about seven years (Jan 01 - Jan 08) for unleaded petrol at the forecourt to rise in cost by 20 pence and then less than six months to rise by another 20 pence!

Okay, a bit of calculation on my part here: Using the figures quoted, a bit of prediction, and extrapolating from them using percentages, the price of unleaded petrol at my pump has been rising by 25% in 8.4% of the time span.

Here’s the maths:

• 80p (01 Jan 01) to 100p (01 Jan 08) is a 25% increase in 7 years. (2556 days)
• 100p (01 Jan 08) to 125p (01 Aug 08 - by extrapolating the increases so far this year) is a 25% increase in just 7 months. (214 days)
• ie: the same percentage increase (25%) occurs in 8.4% of the time. (214/2556)*100 = 8.4%

Therefore my petrol increased by the same percentage (25%) in 8.4% of the previous time span.

So here’s the scary bit…

If this is, in any way, some sort of perverse exponential trend and the maths can hold true for a third time, ie: unleaded petrol rises by another 25% in another 8.4% of the previous time span, then assuming 125p on August 1st (it has been rising at an average rate of 0.117 pence per day since 1st Jan 08), following the model I’ve explained above, unleaded petrol will have risen in price again by 25% in 8.4% of 7 months (ie: 214 days), which will be just 18 days after August 1st.

So, using what I will now christen the “Paul’s Law” of Petrol Prices ie a 25% increase in 8.4% of the previous measured time span, here’s my wacky prediction…

I predict that on Tuesday 19th August, 2008 the price of unleaded petrol at the BP service station in Goldsworth Park (Woking) will be at or above 155.9 pence per litre.

A bit of a laugh, I know, (and boy, I’ll be famous if my prediction does come true!) but there is mention of prices reaching £1.50 per litre by September, so I’m not that far off really if those predictions are anything to go by!

And if I’m anywhere near right, and “Paul’s Law” does hold true for 3 times in succession, you’d better hope and pray it fails on the fourth!

It will of course have to fail, else it would mean a 25% rise to 195p in 8.4% of the time span of 18 days; ie: about one and half days later!

Silly, yes, but maybe now you can see the stupidity of exponentials; you simply can not keep increasing your rate of increase.

Sooner or later, and in terms of house prices, oil prices, food prices, petrol prices, in fact production of anything, hell, the whole bloody world economy for that matter, something somewhere has to give, and give in a big way, ie: crash!

- Houston, we have a problem.

I’m on holiday!

Actually Rich and I are staying in a little two bed cottage at the end of the M4 - my dad’s place. We’re at the end of a long farm track on the side of a hill in the middle of nowhere.

Lovely views (start welsh accent) down in the valleys (end welsh accent) and if the weather stays as nice as it was today then I’ll be very pleased. (Usually rains as soon as I get across the bridge!)

I’m sat wirelessly in the garden looking at the cows and Rich and my dad are exchanging DIY/Interior Design tips in the kitchen.

I hope your day has been just as relaxing and enjoyable as mine!

June 1st, and officially the first birthday of my blog.

Mind you, if you go back far enough you’ll see that the first post (titled Four) was actually posted on 19th July 2007.

The whole month of June 2007 was spent going up and down on pretty much a four or five day cycle. My ups were very hypomanic, my downs pretty bad too.

The reason for setting up the blog was (during a very hypo up) to write about my exploits of raising £4,000,000 for charity in 18 months so I could give it all away on my 40th birthday at some massive event at the Palladium with a whole host of celebrities handing out the cheques. (You can laugh, and I do now, but I was deadly serious at the time.)

Of course it was flawed, although I did have some brilliant ideas and I still have the notebook with all of them written in. I wrote a variety of posts about how I was doing and did get some way down the road setting up various projects - including writing to Channel 4 suggesting they make a documentary about me!

After a spell in the ACU at the beginning of July due to a ‘mixed episode’ (up and down at the same time - not nice) and being totally worn out physically and very ‘ill’ mentally, I spent a few weeks recuperating then changed all of Junes’ posts to ‘Private’ so the rest of the world couldn’t read them.

I decided I would continue with the blog, but just use it as a record of my life, and I am pleased I have. It’s been an education for me. Hope you’re enjoying it too.

So there you have it. Happy 1st Birthday Blog. May there be many more to come!