I've never taken part in the listography side of blogging before so when I saw Kate Takes 5's post on 'My Life in Books' I thought I'd grasp the moment and link into her discussion of all things literary. If you're wondering what the link is between books and frugal living - the theme of this blog and one I like to adhere to fairly strictly - it's simply that there are few pleasures in life as cheap and satisfying as losing yourself in a book for an hour or two. Everything is (usually) fine in the world with me when I have my nose stuck in a novel and a cup of tea close to hand.
As prompted by Kate Takes 5's theme, here are the 5 books that have played a defining role in my life so far...
1. Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great by Judy Blume
My introduction to the world of the great Judy Blume. Her era-defining books tend to be remembered in the context of tackling 'difficult' subjects like sex and periods. But what I loved most about them was their 'American-ness', which growing up in dreary '80s Britain seemed so modern and exciting. Judy Blume had a way of vocalising anxieties about becoming a teenager with empathy and humour and I went on to devour all of her books after reading this novel.
2. The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
This book was a first foray for me into the very dark places literature can take you. I read it alongside Susan Hill's equally unnerving novel 'I'm the King of the Castle' for English GCSE and was completely consumed by an unfolding drama that sees good children turn bad against the benign backdrop of a tropical island. Its terrifying examination of the dark side of human nature had a big effect on me.
3. The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende
My first experience of literally not being able to put a book down. This book reminds me of my mid teens, and staying up way beyond lights out to eek out just one more chapter. I didn't know what 'magic realism' was at the time of reading but looking back I can see how this stylistic device, coupled with Isabel Allende's natural gift for storytelling, ensured this book held a special place in my teenage self's heart.
4. The Prince by Niccolo Macchiavelli
It might seem a bit pretentious to include a treatise on good governance from a 16th century political theorist in this list but when I think of my university years I always come back to this book, studied during my Italian degree at London University. It sparked an enduring fascination with the Italian Renaissance and influenced my choice to spend the third year of my course in Florence, a city that I ended up falling madly in love with and which I've returned to many times since. Surprisingly, The Prince isn't at all boring and explains political concepts (concepts that remain hugely relevant today) in simple terms - a real political education for me.
5. Captain Corelli's Mandolin
Just a lovely, lovely book, which I read, appropriately, on my first trip to Greece. Few books have made me cry actual tears, but this one did. I was lying on the beach at the time, the sea was lapping at my feet and the combination of a beautiful setting and lyrical, heart-rending prose got the better of me. The famous 'Love is a temporary madness...' passage might have become rather over quoted, popping up as it does at weddings up and down the land these days, but the sentiment within those few lines is so heart-felt we couldn't resist choosing it as a reading on our special day.
I've also got suggestions for books to read with boys on the blog here.
What are your life-defining books?
I've been a home-worker for seven whole years, I realised with a shock the other day. It only seems yesterday I was waving goodbye to office life, a secure pay packet and actually leaving the house in the mornings. Seven years on, I would still say there's a lot to be said for working from home but there are some things I was perhaps a little unprepared for when I decided to go freelance. It was meant to be the solution to the eternal problem of finding some "work-life balance" but of course the reality has been not quite as cut and dried as that...
There are days when it's great; other days where it drives you to the edge of reason and has you wondering why the hell you ever complained about working in an office. It won't necessarily offer the answer to your childcare/stress/money problems but as a method for paying the mortgage, there are worse things you can do.
Here are some things I've discovered about the reality of home working over the years - the good, the bad and the ugly...
1. Your home office won't look like the home offices in magazines
It will be a permanent mess of paper, tax documents, invoices and dirty coffee cups. It won't look anything like those sleek home offices you see in the magazines. Even though I've got a nice little space and a wall adorned with cool-looking postcards and prints, applied with fashionable washi tape, it still looks like a crap-hole most of the time. Don't expect your office to be a child-free zone either. Your kids will leave grubby smears of unidentifiable origin all over your key board and discarded apple cores in your desk drawer - and that's a best-case scenario.
2. There is no help desk at home
One of the most painful realisations about working from home. Getting a weird message every time you boot your laptop up? Could be nothing to worry about or it could mean your hard-drive is about to explode. And of course you won't have done a back-up for ages. The trouble is, there's no one around to ask, and you're not 'technical'. My advice would be to cross your fingers and back up ASAP.
3. Your time management skills may need some refining
It's amazing how much time you can waste when working from home. You might have an urgent deadline with a newly acquired client but managing a sudden, overwhelming desire to clear out the junk drawer or descale the kettle can be a challenge. Jobs you never knew needed doing suddenly become impossible to resist, even though there's a nagging voice in your head telling you you really should get on with that 5-hour website audit. You can waste hours on random activities - examining your pores under a microscopic mirror or colour-coding your wardrobe, for example - when you know you should be getting your head down. That said, if you fancy putting your feet up in front of Breaking Bad at 11am - just because you can - treat yourself. There aren't many proper 'tangible' perks of working from home, but daytime TV viewing is one of them, so enjoy it from time to time.
4. Multitasking isn't as easy as you thought it would be
Now that you can load the washing machine in between working and nip out to the shops to pick up dinner, your home life should be super organised and stress-free. But somehow it doesn't seem to be. You will still find that come Monday your child's school uniform is languishing at the bottom of the laundry basket and your husband doesn't have any clean socks. That's not to say you should be responsible for all household chores but the expectation will somehow fall on your shoulders because you're the one 'at home'. Multitasking becomes a byword for taking a client call while on the toilet.
5. You will experience moments of crushing loneliness
In all seriousness, this is something you should definitely take on board if you're considering going it alone. There might be days where you literally don't speak to any one all day and even if you're not the most gregarious of people (I'm not) the lack of social outlet can be soul-destroying at times. As you'll be taking in parcels for everyone on the street now you're a home worker you may find that exchanging a few pleasantries with the postman or courier is the highlight of social exchange during your day. But even if you have the nicest postman, it's not quite the same as having a gossip with a colleague over a coffee in the canteen.
6. On a positive note, your health may improve
It can go either way when working from home. Now you don't have a walk to work and you can eat as and when you like you may find that a few extra pounds creep up on you. There's something about working from home that makes me ravenous so the key is to strip the house of biscuits and chocolate. Being able to take an exercise class during the day is a real perk of working from home but even if you can't do this, it's important to integrate some sort of exercise into your routine to get you out of the house. If you're prone to flatulence, no worries - your home, your rules. Feel free to blow off at will and enjoy the sensation of not arriving home each night crippled with trapped wind.
7. You will be permanently freezing
Working from home makes you frugal. Whereas company budgets stretch to luxuries like round-the-clock heating and air con in the summer, when it's coming out of your budget (whether you claim it on your tax return or not) things can get a bit puritanical. My self-imposed 'no heating until 4' rule means I'm usually to be found sitting at my desk clothed in a dressing-gown over my clothes, sometimes with a hot water bottle in my lap and a blanket over my legs.
8. But on the whole it works
And the flexibility and freedom makes up for the not so good things. If you're self-employed you will probably find yourself working much harder than you ever did before and it can be just as exhausting as office-based work. There are frequent irritations to deal with - invoice chasing and filling out tax forms - that perhaps you didn't have to worry about in your previous life. All this stuff takes time and will frequently spill over into your home life. But as a way to mix some semblance of a career with looking after children - particularly when they're at school and long summer holidays become a childcare nightmare - you could do a lot worse...
If you're a home-worker I'd love to hear your experiences - add a comment below...
As usual, we forgot about World Book Day. Held each year in March, if your child is at school, chances are they'll be expected to participate in this event. Unfortunately, this will require a costume of some sort. I'm not against the idea at all, but with everything else going on within the spheres of school, work and home life, it can be an additional stress to add to the ever-growing list of things to tick off the to do list. For some parents dressing up can mean an costly excursion to the local costume hire shop - we've seen some pretty impressive outfits rock up school over the years for the various other dressing-up occasions (ancient Egypt day, Roman day, Victorian day...you get the picture) that crop up with amazing frequency during the school year, but to me that kind of defeats the object. Not only does this set you back a few quid each time, but surely the idea is for the child to participate in some way, perhaps by making a head-dress or customising an old t-shirt? Isn't that part of the fun and learning experience?
On the other end of the scale are those parents who manage to create the most fabulous home-crafted costumes - the kind of costumes that look as if they involved several trips to Hobbycraft and a weekend labouring over a sewing machine. I take my hat off to them for their dedication to the cause, but my excuse is I don't have a sewing machine...
So, with precisely two hours at our disposal to get something sorted for World Book Day, here's what we did this year:
Tin Tin
Our five-year-old is a big fan of this classic book character. Luckily his look is a really easy one to replicate and cost me precisely £2.50 to put together. If you have a son in Beavers, the Beaver jumper is the exact shade of blue of Tin Tin's jumper. If it's covered in badges, simply turn it inside out and pop one your child's white school polo necks underneath, with the collar showing. We used some tan coloured trousers we already had, turned up to expose a pair of white knee-length socks. School shoes will be fine to finish things off. Toy Snowy (which we already had) optional - we bought ours in John Lewis a couple of years back. You may also need to buy some hair gel to create Tin Tin's trademark quiff.
Roderick from Diary of a Wimpy Kid
This is a good one for older children who are perhaps a little less willing to dress up because it's 'not cool'. Our son is in year 5 and becoming increasingly image conscious so choosing a cool character to emulate is becoming more of a requirement. I can't take full credit for this one, but a friend suggested choosing a character from Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Our kids love this fantastic series of books and we took our inspiration from the film, choosing Greg Heffley's older brother Roderick as our model. With his 'Emo'-style clothes and involvement in a rock band (the brilliantly named 'Loded Diper' (sic)) he ticks the boxes for irreverence and ease.
We bought a pack of white t-shirts and some black permanent marker from Asda - total cost about £4. I then customised the t-shirt with the Loaded Diper logo, creating a t-shirt not dissimilar to the one worn by Roderick in the Wimpy Kid films. Worn with jeans and some skater-style high-tops (both of which we had already) we were almost there, save for a quick application of hair gel and some black eye liner (a Roderick trademark) from my make-up bag.
Other ideas
Last year our youngest went to school as the Very Hungry Catperillar for World Book Day. This was pretty easy and cost-effective too, as we put him in a pair of green trousers and long-sleeved green t-shirt, and added a green puffa gilet to give his top half a suitably caterpillar-y look. All of these items were foraged from our son's wardrobe. He wouldn't let us daub his face in green face paint which would have added to the effect, but he was happy to wear some antennae which we made from cardboard and covered in green paint. We also cut out some big cardboard lollipops like the candy featured in the book.
Where's Wally is another super-easy idea which will set you back just a few quid. We bought a red stripy long-sleeved t-shirt in Primark, worn with blue jeans. We picked up some round pretend glasses in the local joke shop for a couple of pounds (which can be used another time for a Harry Potter costume) and picked up an old walking stick that had been gathering dust in my mum's garage. You might also be able to find a white or red bobble hat to finish the look off.
It's been a crazy couple of weeks so this week's post is a quick round-up of what's been going on in my world recently. We've had a two week break from normal proceedings due to half term and then an extra week off from school so ongoing building work can be completed. But at least the weather has (kind of) improved. In between dodging showers, trying to fit in the odd bit of freelance work and keeping the kids entertained, here's what else been happening chez Bristol Bargainista.
1. Having a nose around Old Trafford
Got a Man U supporter in your household? Then I wholeheartedly recommend an official tour of Old Trafford. They might not be doing so well right now, but steadfast, loyal fans will love the opportunity to get close to the hallowed grounds of the 'Theatre of Dreams'. We bought our eldest son a ticket for his 10th birthday and decided to make a family day out of it. I have to say, I did actually enjoy it; our two boys LOVED it. You're escorted by a friendly, informative guide and you get to see the pitch, the stands, the press room, VIP areas, players lounges and - the highlight for our two - the changing rooms, complete with players shirts. You can also take a look at the museum and trophy room, stacked with memorabilia young footy fans will be fascinated by.
A family ticket for the tour and museum costs a relatively reasonable £54, a justifiable expense for a special birthday and the opportunity to park your bum on the very same seats as the likes of Becks and Giggs (a highlight for me!)You can find out more here.
2. Discovering new free museums
We tagged an extra day on to our visit to Old Trafford to visit family and took the boys to Manchester's excellent Museum of Science & Industry (MOSI), located in the centre of town in the Castlefield area. It's free to visit and there's loads to do for all ages, including a hands-on science area where kids can get to grips with basic scientific principles through fun experiments and activities. Over the road is a more traditional exhibition hall stuffed with the aeroplanes, fighter jets, vintage cars and other retro vehicles including a Sinclair C5. There's also a steam hall filled with pistons, trains and engines. For those of you who live in Bristol it's like At-Bristol. But bigger(perhaps better), and free.
Find out more about MOSI here
3. Loving Twitter competitions
Before I discovered Twitter I had won precisely two things in my life - a Swatch Watch when I was about 10 and a Philadelphia Cheese cookbook. While the watch was pretty cool at the time, and I have actually used the cookbook quite a lot (who knew you could do so much with cream cheese?) I have entered quite a few competitions over the years and never won a thing. Then, within a few weeks, and thanks to Twitter, I have won a posh afternoon tea for two and a gorgeous necklace. Free nice stuff is just so lovely! Here's a pic of the gorgeous initial necklace I won courtesy of blogger Anneli Willis of What I Bought Today.
4. Enjoying the great outdoors in Devon
I picked up an unbelievably cheap deal on Secret Escapes a few weeks back so we made the most of our extended half-term holiday with a long weekend at the Woodford Bridge Country Club in Holsworthy, Devon. I'll be blogging in more detail about our trip soon, but if you're not familiar with Secret Escapes it's well worth a look. While most offers have couples rather than families in mind, there are frequent deals for family-friendly breaks, both in the UK and abroad. You might find a cottage in the Cotswolds, for example, or a holiday apartment in Cornwall, or if you're travelling without little ones in tow there are some amazing deals on luxury country houses and stylish city hotels. I stayed at the Apex Hotel on Fleet Street a couple of years back through Secret Escapes, enjoying a taste of 5-star luxury for the fraction of the normal room rate. Our trip to Woodford Bridge, where we stayed in a very nice self-catering apartment, cost just £68 for four for two nights.
You need to register with Secret Escapes to access the full website - take a look here.
5. Continuing on the health kick
By making cakes with sugar substitute Xylitol, a 100% natural sugar substitute made from birch wood. It can be used in exactly the same way as sugar but has 40% less calories than sugar and is low GI. It's not prohibitively expensive and is available from Holland & Barrett. I've also converted the whole family to chia seeds and am liberally sprinkling them on all sorts of things, from pancakes to yoghurt. The kids are (surprisingly) happy to eat them and they deliver a good dose of Omega 3 and fibre.
6. Swapping heavy winter boots for something a little more spring like
I feel like I've been wearing my Gap biker boots forever. While they were an amazing buy - I bought them in the sale last year and they've seen me through two harsh winters - they've seen better days and I'm just a bit bored of them. I was in the market for a 'transitional' shoe to see me through the last dregs of winter and into Spring when I stumbled on these beauties from New Look. Made from what feels like good quality suede, they feel and look a lot more expensive than they are. And I'm enjoying stepping away from black into something that feels just a bit more spring like and not the sort of thing I'd usually wear. These boots are currently in the sale for just £30 - bargain.
You can buy these boots online here.
There's something about working from home that renders me ravenous come 1pm each day but as I'm trying to follow a low sugar diet at the moment, mid-morning sweet treats are out. To make up for the absence of elevenses, lunch has been elevated to a focal point in my day and a cheese sandwich simply won't cut it. Thanks also to an ongoing attempt to resist turning the heating on until at least 4pm, lunchtime usually finds me shivering at my desk, swathed in a dressing gown over my clothes and in desperate need of something warming to fill my tummy. Something like soup...
Soup is hardly a revolutionary concept but it ticks the boxes in some many ways - it's cheap, warming and nice and light on the old carb front, helping to avoid the mid-afternoon slump to which I always succumb if I've been overdoing it on the wheat. But now that I'm cutting down on sugar and scanning food packaging more carefully I've been shocked by the amount of added sugar lurking in most shop-bought soups. It really is scary. Take, for example, Tesco's Tomato and Basil soup. Sound's healthy, doesn't it, until you realise it packs 12g of sugar in just half a carton. Many manufactured soups also include excessive amounts of salt, too.
So I've been trying out some soup recipes at home which are cheap, healthy, contain no added sugar and are pretty nifty to rustle up. The pea soup in particular takes around 20 minutes to make from scratch, so it's really not a labour-intensive, time-consuming process at all. Here are my two favourites...
Pea, Pancetta & Mint Soup
I discovered this beauty in one of my children's cookbooks, DK's Star Cooks, a compendium of celebrity chef recipes which kids can make themselves. This soup is a recipe by Jean-Christophe Novelli and takes just 5 minutes prep time and 10 minutes' cooking time. It's absolutely delicious and packed with goodness.
Serves 4
Ingredients:
15g butter
1 small onion
6 slices of pancetta or dry cured smoky bacon, chopped
450g frozen peas
1 garlic clove
800ml chicken stock
Handful of fresh mint
Salt and pepper to season
Heat the butter in a large pan and gently fry the onion till soft. In another frying pan quickly fry the pancetta until crisp and then add to the big pan with the peas and garlic. Cook for a few moments. Pour in the stock and bring to a simmer. Cook for around 10 minutes or until the peas are soft. Add some mint and seasoning. Whizz in a blender until smooth.
Roast Butternut Squash Soup
I have this recipe on a torn and tattered scrap of paper that I ripped out from a magazine years ago, made a lot in the past and then forgot about. I rediscovered it recently and remembered just how easy and delicious it is. It's a bit more time consuming but so worth the effort. It's a rich, warming soup, with the added creaminess of a dollop of creme fraiche. It also freezes well.
Serves 8
Ingredients:
1 large butternut squash, cut into 1 inch chunks
25g butter, melted
1 large onion, chopped
1 tsp smoked paprika
2 garlic cloves, mashed
1 tsp salt flakes
1.2 litres chicken stock
200ml creme fraiche
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C. Place the squash in a glass or ceramic baking dish and add the melted butter, onion, paprika, garlic and salt. Mix together with your hands, cover the dish with foil and bake in the oven for around 1 hour or until the squash is tender.
When the squash is cooked, puree it down in a blender alongside some of the chicken stock, working in batches. Once all of the squash mix has been pureed, add to a large pan with the rest of the stock and heat over a medium heat, bringing to the boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for around 10 minutes. Stir in the creme fraiche and season.
Finally coming out of the post-Christmas fug of over-spending and feeling ready to get your finances in better shape during 2014? I certainly am, not least because I have just booked a summer holiday, wiping out around £2000 from our savings pot, plus we are about to embark on some home improvement work which will deplete the funds even further. It's certainly a ideal time for me to get our household budget whipped into shape - and pronto - which is why I'll be taking part in The Great British Budget challenge, which runs throughout February.
The idea behind the initiative is simple: to help people of all ages and of all incomes squeeze every last penny out of their precious earnings, helping them to take control of their finances and save money towards those goals - big or small - that we all have. I'll be aiming to cut down on my credit card debt while also putting some money aside to pay off that aforementioned holiday balance. I'm already doing well on bringing down our food shopping bills by buying basics at Lidl, but my eyes still water when those utility bills drop through the letterbox. And as impending middle age has started to make me feel acutely aware of my rather non-existent pension pot, I'm hoping that the campaign will help me gain some additional budgeting know-how and free up a few pounds to put into a long-term savings plan.
Once you've signed up to the campaign you'll receive daily budgeting tips, campaign updates and stories from fellow budgeters via email. Couldn't be easier. It's a well-known fact that budgeting can be a bit of a bore, but the Great British Budget Challenge aims to inject a bit of fun into proceedings and keep you motivated, helping even the most hard-core splurger become a dedicated saver by the time the month's up. There's also the chance to win £50 in high street vouchers by taking part in the daily Twitter photo challenge.
Why not get involved too? Find out more and join in by visiting The Great British Budget Challenge here.
Inspired by a friend who has pretty much wiped out sugar from her diet, I've decided to make 2014 the year I finally try and crack my sugar habit. While not the worst offender when it comes to the sweet stuff, I probably consume more sugar than I should, and have a niggling suspicion that although I consider myself healthy, if you added up my sugar consumption in any given day it would be way more than I think I'm eating. Furthermore, having been ill from some weird, viral-type illness that wiped me out for the best part of three months last year, I've been looking for ways to feel a little better and more energised for some time now. Armed with some basic insider know-how from my knowledgeable friend, I've started the year off making small, but significant steps to reducing my sugar intake and so far, so good.
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| Sugar-free food heroes |
No doubt you'll have read the flurry of newspaper articles or watched TV documentaries about how excessive sugar consumption is responsible for a whole host of health conditions and will contribute to a crisis that could see 60% of men, 50% of women and 25% of children becoming obese by 2050. Scary stuff. However, initial forays to my local health food shop made me uncomfortably aware of just how much more expensive some sugar-free alternatives can be so I've had to adapt expectations to meet with my personal budget.
The key thing to remember is that the sugar you are looking to cut out is refined sugar. There are some natural sugars you can eat. But refined sugar equals empty calories that have no nutritional benefit at all. Unfortunately it is these types of sugars that are most commonly used in mass-produced foods. Other baddies that fall into the 'do not eat' category include corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, sucrose, dextrose, fructose and all artificial sweeteners.
Unfortunately swapping to natural alternatives will cost you more. A commonly available healthy sugar substitute - Xylitol(which you can buy at most bigger supermarkets these days)- will set you back around £2.70 for a 225g bag. Other sugar alternatives which you'll find in specialist health food shops or online (but perhaps not at your local supermarket) include Jaggery, Valdivia and Rapadura. All cost significantly more than standard sugars, but if you'll be cooking with less sugar anyway, the cost should balance out in the end.
Given the expense involved in buying these healthier products I'm taking a more realistic approach to cutting down on sugar, and even by making quite small changes I'm noticing significant improvements to mine and the kids' health. We've swapped lunchbox cereal bars for Nakd bars which, although more costly, count towards one of their five-a-day and are cold-pressed with no added sugar or syrup. I've stopped adding sugar to my coffee and my taste-buds are finally starting to adjust to the change. It's more time consuming but I'm making more in the way of after-school snacks rather than filling the house with shop-bought biscuits and cakes. I'm making low-sugar treats like banana bread and blueberry muffins which get most of their sweetness from the fruit - I like Mary Berry's recipe which has just 3oz of sugar in a recipe that makes 12 muffins, or try Paul Hollywood's version with even less sugar here. Shop-bought soups have been replaced by easy home-made versions - I'll be sharing two particular favourites which are easy and cheap to make on the blog soon.
I'm not quite ready to completely eliminate sugar yet but I figure that by making as much stuff myself I'm going some way to cutting out unnecessary sugars and it's good to see exactly what's going into your food as you make it. We've said goodbye to fruit juice in our house and for our Sunday morning pancake breakfast ritual we've swapped sugar and maple syrup for Agave nectar, a low GI natural sweetener that is delicious and which is readily available at the supermarket, including low-cost shops such as Lidl. Jam is out, nut butter is in - almond butter is one of my favourites and I have it on crackers or Ryvita as a healthy mid-morning snack.
What's proving much more tricky in my quest to lower our sugar intake is analysing food labels as I do my weekly shop, and trying to pick the lowest sugar option wherever possible. This can be a dispiriting experience as even the most benign looking foods - things like soups, breads and table sauces - can be packed with added sugar. The NHS guidelines say that anything more than 22.5g of total sugars per 100g is high, while anything of 5g of total sugars or less per 100g is low. Then you have to bear in mind the various guises sugar may hiding behind in the labelling - a good rule of thumb to remember is that anything ending in 'ose' is a sugar. It's a labourious job drilling down into the small print but when you actually stop and really look at how much sugar is added to manufactured foods, it really is quite a wake-up call.
My next step in the process is to take my friend's advice and start experimenting with sugar-free recipes. She makes her own Nutella by mixing raw cocoa with coconut oil and agave, for example, and recommends making cake icing by mixing cream cheese or quark with agave and raw cocoa. Other sweet treats she recommends for those moments when cravings get the better of you include raw truffles, using a mix of ground almonds, raw cacao, agave and dessicated coconut. I'm going to spend some time looking through her recommended recipe websites for inspiration to seek out some low-cost, healthy ideas for cakes and other treats. The website Natural Sweet Recipes looks particularly inspiring.
I'll be updating you on my quest to go sugar-free on a budget with recipes or tips I come across along the way, but in the meantime I recommend checking out the good sense, easy to understand advice from David Gillespie, author of Sweet Poison: Why Sugar Makes Us Fat, which makes a good starting point, plus checking out his website here.
