Investing update....

It's a slack day on the work front today, and so here's a bit of an update on the investment 'strategy'.

Following on from my post in February, it's been a decent enough ride for the shares and funds that I held onto after my selling spree at the turn of the year.

As I write, I'm still sitting on around 60% cash in both the ISA and the SIPP pots, having resisted the temptation to jump back in at valuation levels I thought to be too high.  

The steady rise that marked the first half of the year wasn't one with too many opportunities for me, since the games I tend to play depend on much more market volatility.  OK, so I may have lost something to inflation by not being fully invested, but I'm more comfortable with that than simply taking hopeful punts in a rising market, and all the while I'm keeping my powder dry for any chances that come along in the future.  

Why's that pink duck only got one leg ?

What's happened to television advertising these days ?

Maybe it's just me, but ads seemed much more witty and sophisticated in the eighties and nineties than they are now.

I don't watch much television at all these days but whenever I do the frequency of advert breaks, and both the repetition and subject matters of the ads, can be really off-putting.

To continue the rant, most modern cinema features and television programmes are filmed and cut into endless numbers of takes of just a few seconds each - watch a modern music video and the number of screen changes and jumps between camera angles makes your head spin. 

The producers and directors seem to think that their target audience has the attention span of a goldfish, and that the punters won't watch the screen for more than two seconds at a time if they're not constantly bombarded with fresh images.

Perhaps they're right...

Converting a 2.3 kW Generator Alternator to Belt Drive.....

As part of my mini CHP project - more on that in a future post when it's a little further advanced - I bought an old petrol-driven generator set on eBay for £51.

It was only the alternator and panel etc I really wanted, but the old genset had a few other things I could use, such as the frame and fuel tank.  Everything seemed to be working fine before I started taking it apart.

However, when I stripped the generator off the engine, I discovered that there's no front bearing assembly within the generator.  In its original configuration, it plugged directly onto the engine shaft and therefore simply used the crank main bearings for its front support.



the re-assembled 4.5 hp petrol engine after stripping off the genny - the
engine's going up for sale on eBay shortly

the generator....

Mole encounter....

My wife called to me from the garden earlier today - from the kitchen window, she'd seen a magpie pecking at the grass out the back.  Nothing unusual about that, but it had suddenly jumped back and then turned and flown away, so she'd been out to investigate.

When I went outside, I could see the ground heaving slightly in the middle of our back lawn, so I grabbed the camera and a stool and sat close to it.  After around five minutes, the earth broke but the mole didn't seem to emerge.

the very small molehill

Beating inflation at a local level...

How much do macro-economic statistics actually matter to you ?

Take, for instance, the oft-quoted official rates of inflation.  They're maybe important if you've pension income or other similar indexed returns dependent upon them, but are these rates of price increase in any way rooted in the reality of your own particular existence ?

At the time of writing, the official rate of UK inflation is around 3.0%.  However, most of the money we spend on a regular basis goes on food items, for which the annual inflation rate on the items we buy is always many times higher than any 'official' rate.  We can see this just by pushing a supermarket trolley around – we don't need bodies of self-professed 'economists' to tell us.

DIY landscaping of the extended garden....

The latest major project has been to clean up the garden, particularly the extension to the land we bought last November.   We decided to have a big push over the last few weeks to get this landscaping work finished quite quickly, so afterwards we can just relax and enjoy the garden for the rest of the summer (or start further projects, which is more likely...).

at the start of the works - digger levelling and clearing....

work in progress at the south end

Although I titled this post 'DIY', there was a lot of digging works to be done and I'm not getting any younger, so there was just a little too much spadework initially.   Therefore, we hired a guy with a mini-digger to first clear the south end - he also removed the five tree stumps that we'd cut down to ground level last year.  When he'd finished at this end, we lifted the old metal shed off its flagstone base and relocated the flags next to the other shed at the south, and then re-erected the shed in its new position.  This opened up the whole garden back to the house wall.

Planting Grapevines in the Greenhouse...

A month or so ago we bought two young grapevines from our local nursery.  They were quite expensive at £15 each, but hopefully we'll be able to harvest fruit from them for many years to come.

One vine is a Chardonnay, which needs no introduction, and the other a Perlan which apparently is another name for the Chasselas variety, very commonly grown throughout Europe.

We decided to use the 'rod' method of training, allowing just a single branch to grow the full length of the greenhouse.

The plants already had some fresh growth when we bought them, and we selected a good shoot on each and then snipped off all the other greenery (note that it's not advisable to cut any old wood at all during the growing season, since the plants have a tendency to 'bleed').  At this stage, we just left the plants in their pots standing inside the greenhouse.