Win £50 worth of B&Q vouchers with The Cottage Smallholder and Direct Line Grand Draw
For those of you who missed out on the metal bedstead competition: we’ve got another great prize to offer you! This time we’re teaming up with Direct Line home insurance to give you the chance to win one of two B&Q vouchers worth £50! Like most people these days, I review all of our insurance policies annually. Looking at all the options can be time consuming but definitely worth doing as it can save a lot of money. I use the comparison sites first to get the general lay of the land and then I look at the companies that are not...
read moreNew layout for CSH – testers wanted please
Danny here, everybody. 14% of our visitors use mobile devices, such as tablets, iPad, smart mobiles and so on. Interestingly, 85% of those are Apple. So it makes sense to adjust the presentation to improve readability for this growing segment while ensuring that users of normal computers and laptops remain unaffected. The site looks very different since we made the switch at 07:30 this morning but the content remains the same. We would very much welcome comments here on this article from mobile device users and “normal” computer...
read moreIt’s the little things that make the difference
I don’t often write much about the little things that give me pleasure. They initially seem too insignificant to merit a blog post but these small, precious moments buoy me up. I return to the experience during the day and often for many days afterwards. A couple of days ago I saw a Mistle Thrush pair resting on a pile of timber in the front garden. The husband calling voraciously, chest puffed out – a real swell of a male. His wife was demure, slimmer and looking much gentler. Watching her mate. They suddenly flew up to their nest above...
read moreSTOP PRESS! We have a winner for our Argos bedstead competition but she has gone AWOL!
It’s now a week since we announced the winner of our latest competition. Beki was the winner (comment 19). But like so many that are asked to leave an email address, she clearly didn’t leave her primary email address – rather a hotmail account. This is fine if you don’t win the prize and rarely check the account but for a prize winner it could spell disaster. I’m going to give Beki 30 days to claim her prize from the date that it was drawn (which was April 24th 2012). Please note that we don’t have ‘an email list’ on this...
read moreWin a stylish metal bedstead in our new Cottage Smallholder Grand Draw
Argos has teamed up with Cottage Smallholder for our latest Grand Draw. There’s just one prize but it’s a great one. If you win you could be spending a third of your life curled up in a beautiful, cottagey metal bedstead! This prize has been supplied on behalf of Argos, your first choice for beds and washing machines. As you know all the beds in our cottage were all inherited from my aunt. And she inherited a lot of these beds from my grandparents. I’ve always fancied a metal bedstead myself but we are replete on the bed front and anyway...
read moreThe Lonely Goldfish
Years ago I bought a plastic heron for our pond. It’s pretty hideous and didn’t seem to keep the real herons at bay. Suddenly, this afternoon, I discovered how to use it properly when I went to buy some new goldfish. “Do those plastic herons actually do any good?” “Yes they do but there’s a trick to it. You have to keep on moving them around the pond. A heron is an intelligent bird,” the girl that is in charge of fish responded. “We have a problem here with all these tanks of fish. One evening we saw a heron arrive near closing...
read moreThe bumble bee that wanted to sleep with me
I know that bumble bee numbers are down in the UK but we have plenty of them here in the cottage garden. In fact over the years their numbers have been increasing gradually as there are more spring flowering bulbs and shrubs for them to enjoy. A week or so we found that a very large bee – possibly a queen – kept on coming into the cottage. So was clearly searching for a place to make a nest. I always worry when bees come into the cottage as they are not the brightest of sparks and it’s hard for them to find their way out. There is also...
read moreThe Man Who Never Buys Drinks
It’s the last day of March and it feels chilly and blustery in this corner of East Anglia. The Min Pins and I have lit the stove in the kitchen. I would like to share a story with you. So pull up a chair, pour yourself a cup of tea (if you’d like something a bit stronger be my guest) and I will begin. When I worked in London’s Wardour Street in the Soho area, pubs (bars) were an important part of daily working life. That’s not to say that we were in pubs for eight hours a day – although a few desperados took advantage of the...
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