I’ve been busy with the seasonal cheer so thought I would jump in with a quick post to say hi to try and get back into the blogging spirit after being away for a while. I hope you’ve all had a great holiday and I’ll be posting my December Income Report within the next few days and also posting my aims for 2013.I had a great time in London celebrating the New Year and took the video below of the fireworks:

Speak soon

For the whole month of November I will be donating my top lip to charity and growing a moustache in aid of Movember, an event that raises funds and awareness for prostate cancer. All participants start clean-shaven at the beginning of the month and then nature takes it’s course.

It’s all a bit of fun, but it also raises awareness about men’s health, something which isn’t always talked about, especially by men, so if you see a more than usual quota of men with moustaches in November then you know what’s going on.

If you would care to donate any money to this then visit my page on the Movember site and give whatever you can. I’ll also be updating it with photos of my progess and you’ll be able to see how silly I look!

If you are a man…with a spare face, then why not register? Women can also register too!

So if you can spare a couple of quid then please donate to this worthy cause.

Well it looks like this break away from blogging is pretty permanent and I guess this is in part to doing lots of other things and not really feeling the need to share it all.

Whilst my blogging has suffered I have been tweeting a lot more and I guess micro-blogging suits me a lot more at this current time. I have taken extending breaks from this blog before but this one does seem a lot more permanent although I’ve not said ‘The End’ yet. The blog has just had its 6th Birthday which is fairly substantial but if you want to keep up with me then follow me on http://twitter.com/Adem.

I hope you’re all fine too and I’ll see you around.

I thought I’d give you a little update of what I’ve been up to this last week. I took some annual leave which combined well with the Easter Bank Holiday to make a nice long break. Don’t assume that this post is a return to blogging though. I’ve not given much thought about the blog over this time so I’m not really sure what the plan for the future is. The world has kept turning so we’ll see how it goes.

• 27th March – Had first BBQ of the year, and then went greyhound racing at Sittingbourne.
• 30th March – 1st April - Went to York. A very nice place indeed, although quite far away (274 miles). It shares a lot of features and history with Canterbury although it seems to have retained a lot more of its individuality. York Minster is pretty amazing and I went up to the top of the tower which gave great panoramic views of the City. I also did plenty of other sightseeing things too.
• 1st April – Went to Alton Towers. A nice day out although there was still plenty of queuing and the new ‘Thirteen’ ride was a great disappointment.
• 3rd April – Went to the Planet Thanet Easter Beer Festival. I had half pints of: Dark Mild, Old Legover, Celtica, Stud, Spinnaker, White  Dwarf Wheat Beer, Pompey Royal, Gadds No.5, Uberhop, King Alfred’s Gold, and Wold Gold.
• My car died – My Renault Megane of the last 7 years looks to have finally died. I’m not sure what to do really.

Obviously other things have happened too, but these are things that stood out. I hope you’ve had a good week too

So I’ve really not felt the need to blog of late, which must be disappointing to the thousands of readers I have

It was around this time two years back that I took an extended break from blogging (March-November 2008) and in the end I came back stronger and more committed.

I’m not sure what I really want to blog about. Do I write about myself? Do I write about the local area? I’ve really not got much of a focus so I’m going to wait it out and see what happens. I’m not giving up on this blog but you just need to know that I won’t be around that much (subject to change).

I have got a few more things planned that will help with my Targets for 2010 so maybe I’ll report back on those some time soon.

See you around.

I never actually recovered from my throat infection which I got the initial symptoms of on 11th February, so basically I’ve been ill since then.  It cleared up a bit but then I came down with something worse and on 22nd Feb I was diagnosed with tonsillitus and it’s taken me until Monday 1st March to recover from that.

I had some time off work and cocooned myself indoors, took my antibiotics, watched TV, and that has been my life for the past week. I fell ill due to not eating properly, not getting enough sleep, getting too stressed, and generally not looking after myself properly.

I am better now and thought I’d better post to the blog to let you know I’m still around. I’ve not actually missed blogging so we’ll see when I blog next (cue blogging loads).

I hope you are all well.

I only ever have pancakes once a year, which actually amazed Jenny (an American whom I’m sure has them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner), but yesterday I made some and it made me wonder why I don’t have them more? The fact is that it’s probably good I don’t have them that often as they are gorgeous and had 3 to myself yesterday (with lemon and sugar).

The throat is feeling a lot better now but I still have white spots on my tonsils so still some way to full recovery but lots of soluble aspirin, throat spray, and throat sweets are doing their job. I’ve not got much else to blog about yet so bear with me.

I thought I’d better make an appearance on the blog to let you know that I’m still alive (just) and am almost fully recovered from a throat infection I’ve had since Thursday. A couple of days off work, plenty of rest, and copious amounts of over-the-counter drugs seem to have done the trick.

Along with the throat infection, other symptoms were fatigue, aching joints, and also mouth ulcers, which seem to point to my body just getting a bit rundown. More rest and more healthy living is called for I think.

The other week I wrote about how I’d been cycling to work as part of my Targets for 2010 and I thought I’d give you an update.  Last week I didn’t cycle at all, but this week I have so far cycled in twice, which I think makes up for missing out on last week as my aim was to ‘Cycle to work at least once a week’.

Here are dates so far that I’ve cycled to work:

• 18th January 2010 (4.8 miles)
• 19th January 2010 (6.3 miles)
• 20th January 2010 (4.8 miles)
• 2nd February 2010 (6.3 miles)
• 3rd February 2010 (4.8 miles)

n.b. The days with 6.3 miles are when I cycle to 5-aside football after work which takes me on a detour.

Following on from Jane Wenham-Jones’ article about poor companany PR I thought it might be worth pointing you in the direction of “Twitter, shower gel and the art of terrible PR” where Duncan Bannatyne, Dragon’s Den star and owner of a chain of gyms shows us how not to conduct good PR when confronted by a gym customer, Matt Egan (also editor of PC Advisor), who was apparently ‘slagging him off’ on Twitter. Read the article to find out what he said. (We all know the trouble people can get into for quoted someone else. *Nod to ECR*)

For this he had Duncan Bannatyne calling his workplace to ask why he had been ‘slagging him off’ in public and mentioned the thinly veiled threat of what he thought of ‘UK libel laws and Twitter’. Was this really the best way to go? Surely it’s yet another example of heavy-handed businesses taking things personally when in fact they should be doing their utmost to please their customers and accept that not everything they do is 100% perfect and that there is always room for improvement.

The result of this encounter is a lot of negative PR and Matt finishes off his article with this:

As it is, an opportunity to generate some good PR has been wasted.

A suitable outcome would’ve been to get back a reply from Duncan Bannatyne saying that the situation was getting sorted and that Bannatyne’s Gyms were sorry for any inconvenience caused. That would’ve been a great bit of PR in actually getting a tweet from a multi-millionairre, who takes the time to listen to his customers, and does something about it.

If businesses want to succeed then they should take things less personally, be a little less trigger-happy in threatening lawsuits, and instead look at where the real problems lie, and improve their customer service.