Update

Hello all,
I keep on apologising for lack of posting but I'm going to stop that. I am posting what I can when I can but things have been a bit hectic of late, which is probably a good thing.
I am finally breaking even financially which shows that slowly but surely my new career path is beginning to work. No spare cash but now my savings are not really being touched which is good news except for the untoward. I have 9 students now when they all come which is good, taken 5 months but it is slowly starting to happen and word is getting about that I exist at least. The best bit is that I am really really enjoying it, especially when I think that in my old life I would now be battling up to London weekly  and misssing all the joys of my garden at home. No regrets and completely my own boss.
I have had a productive weekend and have opened new bank accounts, changed my gas and elctricity provider to Ovo and am exploring changing my internet service provider to Sky, all in a bid to make monthly cash stretch a bit further.
So I continue to shop carefully, and am becoming a dab hand at stretching a single chicken out to 4 or 5 meals making it super good value even for a greedy man like me.

Enough about all that.

Meanwhile every day brings fresh joy in the garden. My pride at the moment is for my lupins and my alliums.

There are 17 healthy looking flower heads accross just 3 plants, which, for me, makes a lupin record. These majestic flowers are among my very favourites.

And 30 alliums in the big bed make a very happy view. I had hoped the astilbe would be out by now and that the alliums would be surrounded by clouds of pink frothy flowers, but the best laid plans and all that.

Also my gladioli and dahlias are all growing away happily, as are the delphiniums.

Dahlia patch wants weeding I think. 3 varieties, Bishop of Landalff and ....er.....two more.

A usual my veg plot is poor at the moment (one day I will get good at veg), although the tomatoes in the greenhouse are doing very well this year, far better than the precious two years.

The veg bed is looking a higgledy piggledy mess and that is because after a poor beginning I have planted crops in no particular order as my original ones all died (my green fingers turned very grey on that day). I've decided to call it a cottage garden bed and to pretend that it was supposed to be random by design. I have 2 courgettes, some runner beans, French beans, peas, broad beans and a cucumber. I think I will plant some complementary flowers to make it look better. Given time it might look ok, here's hoping there will be some crop at least.

Finally a photo of lovely iris hidden away in the whale bed.

 Blue is never captured very well on my camera, but they look lovely in the flesh.

Monday Morning at 9.14 and my high horse.

It's Monday and, yes, it's raining again. I was determined to get out in the garden and take some photos of all the emerging Spring flowers but there's no way I'm putting my wellies on today so that will have to wait.

Had a good and interesting weekend as I was the adjudicator at a music festival. So Saturday morning at 9 am saw me with the pleasure of listening to 4 hours of piano players all playing their party pieces while Saturday afternoon I judged the singers (mostly from Wales it seems). It was very very heartening to hear the huge amount of talent from these pianists, it is easy to become cynical in these times when lots of young people want instant gratification and praise from very little effort, but to get to hear youngsters who have clearly put hours and hours and hours of practice in was a complete joy. Luckily, as is so often the case, there was a very clear winner in every class, the first of which was a boy of about 15 who played the piano with such poise and dedication and understanding of the instrument that I was literally bowled over by him, it was also lovely to find him unassuming and modest of his talents. There were also 2 brothers who must have only been about 11 and 13 respectively who both played some of the hardest pieces in the repertoire, almost note perfectly to a standard that any adult professional pianist would be hard pressed to reproduce. Practice time must be divided incredibly in their household as, to play a piece this well would take about 3 hours practice daily, that is true dedication in a youngster. Is it any surprise that I have no time at all for crap TV talent shows which often show someone weeping because they didn't get through, whilst wailing soppy remarks such as 'I just want it so badly, this is my big chance'. No it's not, it takes huge amounts of effort, work and dedication to be a master of your craft and in the end only you are responsible for the work you do with any talent you may have rather than looking for that person who will give you a career on a plate. Most of them have to get real, it comes through hard work and determination and hours and hours of work, every single day.
So it was with pure joy that I heard kids with this grit and determination play and it restored my faith somewhat.
The afternoon was a different story, not that it was any less enjoyable, but the average ages of the singers in all the classes were between 50 and 80 probably. This says a lot about how we are losing our tradition of classical singing in this country and I wonder if in 40 years anyone much will even do it any more. Maybe most people don't give a flying fig that much of this wonderful music will be lost with the next generation, but I do.

So I will leave you today with a youtube video of Renee Flemming singing Gretchan Am Spinnrade (Gretchan at the Spinning Wheel) by Schubert, purely for the example of someone who has mastered the technique and craft of singing but more importantly for the outpouring of emotion that comes from that old favourite of feelings - LOVE - when put in the hands of a master. We all know and understand the feelings expressed, but Schubert has managed to find that desperation and put it into music. It's well worth the effort of 3 minutes listening and if it touches just one person then it was worth it.

The translation is below the video.

My peace is gone,
My heart is heavy,
I will find it never
and never more.

Where I do not have him,
That is the grave,
The whole world
Is bitter to me.

My poor head
Is crazy to me,
My poor mind
Is torn apart.

For him only, I look
Out the window
Only for him do I go
Out of the house.

His tall walk,
His noble figure,
His mouth's smile,
His eyes' power,

And his mouth's
Magic flow,
His handclasp,
and ah! his kiss!

My peace is gone,
My heart is heavy,
I will find it never
and never more.

My bosom urges itself
toward him.
Ah, might I grasp
And hold him!

And kiss him,
As I would wish,
At his kisses
I should die!

New year. New look.

For three years my blog has looked the same, so I have decided to experiment with a few updates and a slightly new look. I've added a new 'about me' tab as things in my life have hugely changed since I started blogging. I've also added a 'my garden' tab with some photos. I am sure there will be a few more changes as I experiment more, but for now a change is doing me good.

Also I suppose my goals are slightly different now as it is 3 years since I started the blog. I increasingly am posting about gardening and cooking. I no longer really have any house renovations to do as, for the most part they are finished now after 2 years of living here so there will be less of that.

My goals and ideals are still just as they have always been and everything I do will be done on a budget. I don't know how the blog content may evolve over the coming year, but it will be fun to find out and I hope you come along with any changes.

Happy New Year to you all.

Dan

Round up of the year

I have never gone in for New Year in the least. It is my mothers birthday today and, as a family, we always celebrated that rather than the date change. It is many years, I have to admit, since I have even stayed up until midnight, much more likely to be found tucked up in bed like a chaste old maid. So no doubt this year will be no different.
I also don't tend to go in for things like new resolutions. I have always believed that if you want to change something you just start immediately, there is no point in imbuing the date with a significance that it is going to help. Whatever works for you I suppose. I changed my life by simply making a decision and sticking to it, which had nothing to do with a new year.

Much more interesting to me is spending just a few moments reflecting on the year that has been, the highs and lows, the changes, the achievements. There have been changes in my attitude towards where I live. The first year I was here was about making my new house habitable. This year has been about making it my home. There have been disasters, a foot through my bath meant I was without a bath for over 6 months, but with a (hell of a lot of) effort, I have now a completed bathroom that I am proud of as well as new skills learnt in doing this myself. As I showed in my last post my garden has really come to something lovely this year too. That aside, I have not really done any more work on the house and I feel it is just about finished (or as finished as it can be on my budget). So I have used the time to fully settle in here and put down roots. Long, permanent roots.

Of course putting down roots has meant that there have been struggles in other ways. Leaving for months at a time for work has become a strain this year and I realised something very important: that although I had changed my life and moved to the other side of the country I had not committed fully to the change and had left my working life in the South. Well, of course it was slightly more complicated than that but I found the drag of packing a suitcase for 8 weeks at a time away from home in a place I didn't want to be, hours of driving and a whole summer away from home, is not the way I want to be so this year has brought a massive attitude change with all of that. Now I have fully committed to a life here I have no regrets, no doubts, nothing negative. Well that has to be worth plenty.

There have been ups and downs, new friends made, others lost. I have blogged (all be it sporadically at times) and lots of you have followed the journey. Some of you have gone beyond that and made the effort to check that I am alright at times of silence (you know who you are) and every one of my followers is appreciated.

Oh, and I turned 40 :-)

I think it is worth spending a few minutes reflecting on the year and looking forward to what the next will bring and I wish you all joy and luck over the next 12 months.

Picking myself up.

As you may have noticed from my recent posts (or lack of) I'm struggling a bit at the moment and just going through the motions, I suppose it is inevitable at times for all of us and I'm not really used to feeling like this because most of the time I am quite self contained and content but I am a tad lonely right now and wondering quite what I am doing.
So I am trying to pick myself up and today I am going to soak some dried fruit to make a Christmas cake as successful as the one I made last year, hopefully. On top of that I am looking out at the garden and contemplating another large bed, the largest one. The problem I have is getting rid of the turf, it is heavy and annoying and I don't really know what to do with it. I have a big pile of it from the last beds that I did, dumped under the decking and it is a bit of a pain so adding to it doesn't sound like a great idea as, ultimately, I will still have to do something with it. I read once that if left long enough it does made good compost, but how long is long enough? Once the bed is made I would like some taller things in it so suggestions welcome, nothing too exotic as the whole feel of the garden is country traditional, but maybe a small conifer would be nice, one that goes up instead of out and doesn't get massive. A lot of my garden dies off in winter so it would be nice to have a few permanent things in there that look good all year. I like box too, but wish it wasn't so expensive as a small box hedge around the bed would be my ideal. Planning and more planning is my approach, as always.

Bulk cooking and a haircut.

Yesterday was cold and blustery and not much of a day for going out. However, I was beginning to resemble caveman and gave myself a scare when I looked in the mirror.

So I took myself off to the Barbers. Poor woman, there have been roadworks outside her shop for 3 months and she is hugely losing business, there is nowhere to park so she says she has lost lots of her pensioners and is now having to dip into her savings. It really isn't fair, particularly as when I left, the men were all either having a cuppa or picking their nose.

Anyway, one severe haircut later and I am back to my former beauty and feel ready to go out again:

Last night I had a bulk cooking session. I was inspired by Froogs in her post here, just how far she makes her minced beef stretch. I thought, if she can do it, so can I.

I had slightly more beef to play with as I had bought a 645gm pack while it was reduced in ASDA the other day. Can't remember what I paid but I think it was just over £2 I decided to use half to make a bolognaise and half to make a meat and potato pie.

Got them both started on the stove but then once the bolognaise was all browned and bubbling I transfered it to my slow cooker.

I got 6 good sized portions out of this, 5 of which are now in the freezer and one in the fridge to be eaten over the next few days. When my brother was over this weekend he had brought with him a bottle of red wine, so I used what was left in the sauce to make it rich, tastes good.

The second half was used to make a meat and potato pie, from my granny's old recipe, always a favourite with me.

I am seriously not the best pastry maker. This is not too bad for me, but my rolling out leaves a lot to be desired. The final result is that the pastry tore in the oven slightly and it looks a real sight. But who cares, it tasted very good and I am slowly improving at it.

I hadn't judged the pastry quantity very well and had some left over. Rolled it out to see how much and found it would fit this case:

So I decided on a quick quiche as the oven would be on for the pie anyway. Used lots of store cupboard bits and bobs, a tin of tuna and some olives, some cheese, 3 eggs and some milk (didn't have cream) and some onions which I cooked slowly until they were a caramel colour.

This will do a lunch or 3 (depending on my greed)

I love baking something off the cuff with some leftovers like this. I had no intention of making a quiche when I started cooking, but for very little money I have a few lunches sorted.

Bulk cooking is definitely the way to make things stretch. In the past I would probably have used all the mince for one thing and not stretched it out with veg and other things quite so much, but instead I have 9 meals out of one pack of mince and 3 meals out of some leftover pastry. I don't know the cost, because I am rubbish at adding up the cost of all the different bits and pieces, but as I didn't need to go out and buy one single thing for all of this, it was all storecupboard ingredients, I know it was a very cheap set of 12 meals.

Hello again

Hello everyone, I am sorry about the lack of posts this week, when I went back to London for my final week I didn't bother to take the laptop as I knew that I would have enough luggage to bring back on the train this weekend without it, so now I have to catch up a lot on all your blogs.

Its so good to be home. Having said that, I am going to Paris tomorrow for a performance and won't be back until Thursday or Friday, but from now on I am always coming home straight away.
The weather is terrible, raining and I actually put the heating on for a bit this morning because it was so cold and the house could do with a bit of heat to cheer it up.

My dad is coming over later, he is not very well any more but he gets so excited about plans for my garden that he loves coming over to talk about it and hash out ideas. He likes to quietly sit outside on a chair with a sketch pad drawing ideas and because he can't walk very much any more he is content to do that for hours when the sun is out. He has had a few heart attacks and a stroke and bad arthritis but never complains about anything, in fact I have never heard him complain in 39 years. I think that my garden 'project' has given him a new lease of life. His plans range from doable to completely out of my price range, but I will meet him somewhere in the middle. Decking has never been my favourite thing but I actually think that he has hit upon a good idea by building out a small deck over the slope at the house end, this will make a good use of an area that is difficult to work with, without actually losing any of the garden space that I could use for planting, also would solve the privacy issue in one fell swoop. I think I will lay some plans, price it up and get saving.
Everything is growing beautifully, the potatoes have put on another 5 inches just in the last week and will get one more covering with soil now. Peas look happy, tomatoes are mostly planted up outside now and I just a few more to do. The climbing rose is absolutely wonderful, as are the lupins and apple tree.

Someone sent me a BBC news report about a stabbing in South London, in which 5 people were attacked and stabbed in the middle of the day. Where this happened is just a 5 minute walk from where I used to live in London and really helps make me grateful for the new life that I am carving out here. The last 8 weeks has been difficult, I won't lie to you, but you know what, it has all been worth the effort for what I have in my home life now, yes, it would have been easier if I had been living near to where I was working, yes, the commuting was horrible and I was quite stressed and miserable at times, but coming home is what makes it all worth while. The mentality of people who have such enormous disregard for human life, that they think stabbing someone is ok just confuses and saddens me and I know that these things happen everywhere, but the fact that it happened right in my old stomping ground really affected me somehow. Life is so precious.

Opening night - 2nd attempt

Yesterday I was rehearsing (yeah, on a Sunday, it is a bit annoying) because it is my opening night at the London South Bank tonight. I had to share the advertisement with you, because that is a photo of me on the posters!

I am half bird, half man in this opera which explains the feathers and beak by the way. Yeah, I am the comic element, as usual - seem to have become typecast.

So today will be a lazy one until I wander up to the rehearsal call at 4 o'clock.

Wish my luck!

Today......

Is my 39th birthday. I have a lot to be grateful for and my life is very good. Can you ask for more for your birthday? I am a happy man and that is the best birthday present that there is and all that I need.

Commuting and rehearsing.

I've been thinking an awful lot about lifestyles and the differences between the people I have got used to at home and the people I am now seeing every day on my commute. The difference must be money, surely? You would not put yourself through the commute unless you were getting rewarded for it financially, would you? Well, that seems logical to me anyway, however, what I am actually seeing is people in fairly ordinary jobs who are having to put themselves through one hell of a commute every day, I can't believe that the financial rewards are always worth it.

I am staying with friends in a small hamlet near Dartford and the train journey into London is 50 minutes (to London Charing Cross) and costs pence under £70 a week. It's basically taking me 2 hours in each direction (including walking, tubes and changes). If I were doing this every day it would cost me £3600 a year in travel and 1000 hours commute a year. So are the financial rewards still worth it? The friends I am staying with are a lovely couple, one of whom, for 16 years, had done this commute and he will hand on heart say that it is not worth it. He has recently given up his job in central London and is working down the road, short term, for less than half the salary he was on. Long term, they have wonderful plans - they have bought a 3/4 acre plot of land in France and are starting to build an eco house there later this year and will move over with very little money but embracing what life is really about, it doesn't include 1000 hours a year commuting funnily enough.

I am thrilled to hear of anyone who is changing their lifestyles and suddenly I am surrounded by people who are living differently in certain ways. During the rehearsals for the opera I am doing at the moment there is often hanging around to do and people fill the time in different ways. What is interesting this time around is that one girl is currently spending this time crocheting and has shown me photos of the huge blanket she is doing out of granny squares (I was proud to know the term having read your blogs). Another girl, who is singing the very famous part of the Queen of the Night, is sitting in the corner wearing a home knitted jumper and a knitted hat and is currently knitting something else (another hat I reckon), She looks like she would be more at home on a farm than in a rehearsal room really. As do I. Why do I have so few clothes that don't have holes in or paint splattered somewhere on them (sigh)? The girl who is the wardrobe mistress recently moved, with her husband, to a little cottage in Norfolk where they have access to a field, besides growing veggies, she is currently owner of 4 chickens and 2 pigs. being wardrobe mistress has massive advantages because she can basically make anything! I have known her for 10 years and have so enjoyed watching the transformation of her happiness since she moved there. Her long term plan is self sufficiency.

So are we at the edge of a frugal living revolution? are more and more people getting it? I hope so, although I doubt it when I look at the miserable faces on the commute. But every single person who gets it a bit, is a step in the right direction and I am certainly seeing much more of it than I was before.

A year ago today........

I started my blog a year ago today, so it is as good an opportunity as any to look back on the last 12 months.

To say that the last 12 months have been a significant turning point for me is an understatement, so much has happened and so much has changed in my life.

I started a blog, like most people do, as a sort of online diary, for my own benefit. It is a good way to order thoughts and keep a record of things I have done or things I have liked. I just looked up my very first entry from 10th April 2011, which you can find here. It is hard to imagine that I wrote this while I was still living in London, still with this house I now own just a dream and when I was making my first tentative steps towards a new life style and goal. One year on and it is all different, but I am happy to say, that I have achieved a lot of what I set out to achieve and that is something I can be proud of.

I was inspired to start writing myself after being an observer on many other frugal living blogs, there are so many wonderful ones out there. When I got my first few comments I was delighted, at least what I was doing meant something to someone besides myself, enough for them to read it and write a comment. What I have discovered, of course, is that I am not alone in the way I feel about modern living, my desires and dreams for the future, something I had always felt a little isolated and alone about, suddenly there were others who understood these things and how lovely that was for me.

My life has changed for the better and every day at home I appreciate what I have done, what I have got and the joy that it brings me.

So it is with some irony that today, 1 year on, is the first day of a  2 month job back in London for me, leaving my dream cottage alone for some weeks. The city that I learned to dislike so much will once again become my home for a brief while.

However, lots has changed. Being here as a 'guest' is different from being here as a resident. If I have a hard, horrible day, with all the ghastly crowds on the public transport, and just by closing my eyes I can be back in my home. Knowing that it is all still there, waiting for me makes a very big difference to my attitude. 8 weeks will, hopefully, fly by and it will be an opportunity to catch up with those friends that I left behind here, all those that thought that I was mad and tried to talk me out of moving. Well, thank goodness I didn't listen, because I was right and they were wrong!

It seems fitting that on the event of my blogging aniversary I should perhaps set out some more things that I want to achieve in the coming year 'til April 10th 2013:

This last year, I got the house and got it largely sorted out. So, the next year will be a lot about the garden. I have good plans for it, because, although I want it to be a place I can utilise to grow food, it is also to be a place I love to be in. I have a plan and plenty of inspiration. Some if it costs money I haven't got yet, but plenty of it just involves hard work and imagination - I can do all of that.

My working life, well, I have posted a little about this before, I need to get some sort of balance between what I do, what I want to do and what direction I am taking. Not necessarily any massive decisions, but I would like to have some clue about what I want in the future. Perhaps that will all become self explanatory when I have lived and settled in Lancashire even more.

More practically, I would like to have the opportunity to live, with equal financial freedom, but able to put aside a little for savings. Not everyone cares about this, but it is a long time since I was at financial rock bottom - of course that was bound to happen this year, when I threw everything I had at this house. Now It is time to give myself that little bit of security that I like. I would like to start overpaying on the mortgage that I owe, so that I can achieve that financial goal of clearing it within the next decade and develop a small emergency fund.

One thing I would really like to do, is to learn more about foraging natures larder. I have used the elderflowers, elderberries, nettles, wild plums, blackberries and wild garlic and I feel confident with all of those delicious ingredients, but I want to know more. Sadly, being away in London will make my explorations of the country through Spring, few and far between, so I will miss a certain amount of the ingredients this year, but I am sure there is more through late summer and autumn, just waiting to be discovered.

So there it is. One year on and I have loved the journey so far. It has also been lovely sharing it with like minded people on here, so thank you for being followers, thank you for your much appreciated comments - sorry if I have ever missed replying to some, I try my best, but some fall through the cracks when I am busy. I promise, I enjoy reading every single one. And thank you for all your encouraging words and advice when I have needed it. Also thank you to those whose blogs I enjoy reading so much. Catching up on them all is a lovely part of my early morning.

Here's to another year of frugality, country living and happiness.

My story, part 2..

Thank you for reading yesterday and for all your nice comments.

I bought my first home with my, then, partner and it was an ex council house that I picked up for a song (£77,000 in the South East with was a real bargain at the time) and was in need of an awful lot of work. I love to get my hands dirty, so I did 100% of the work myself and sold it after 2 years for £110,000. I tried everything and learnt any new skill that I needed by reading books and just giving it a go with patience. Making some money was just a lucky circumstance. Unfortunately we had got into debt because we had had to take a loan out to make up the deposit and our relationship just couldn’t stand the stress, so all in all, I came out of that experience £13,000 richer, but life poorer and more stressed than ever. Shortly after this I bought my flat in London and that was an expense I could, fortunately, at the time afford, although only just. I was comfortable but very discontent in a city I hated. The thing it allowed me to do was to sell up and move here with a small mortgage of only £46,000. Which makes me a very lucky man indeed.

As I have hinted, I had become increasingly sick of people wasting money and began to look back with shame at some of the ways in which I had wasted money in the past. It is so much easier to just do what everyone else does, but I think in this way it is easy to lose perspective on who you really are and what you really need.

I bought some pots and started planting my own veg and to be honest, I think my real journey began when those first green shoots appeared in my tomato plants. It was a revelation to me that I could grow something from a tiny seed that could eventually feed me. I bought a guide to self-sufficiency by Dick Strawbridge and devoured it, borrowed gardening books and read them from cover to cover and a plan took seed, just like those first green shoots of the tomato plants. I had become increasingly depressed and stopped going out much, not just because of the money but because of my hatred for where I lived. I saw that I had to make a long term plan. Being immobile was not an option.

Stage one of my plan happened about 3 years ago, when I started taking driving lessons, I knew that if I was going to live in the country, I had to be able to drive and until then, it had not been necessary. I did this, passed and bought a car.

Stage two was saving, saving and saving some more. I knew that I would have about £37,000 once I had sold my flat, so knew this would buy me nothing in the South East without a wopping mortgage and anyway, deep down I wanted the county I was born in. It was a slow realization. I was born in Lancashire and I am a Northerner at heart and was never meant to live in a Southen city. So lucky for me that house prices are very different in the North than in the South, I could have never done it the other way around. Having said that, I can honestly say that I would move anywhere to have improved my lot. 

And that would be my first piece of advice to anyone wanting to do something similar. Don’t be afraid of moving or trying something new if it could improve your life. Move to a modest home and look at your serious priorities. I think a garden was a top priority for me because it gives me the means to grow my own food, to get my hands in the earth and to build that connection up again with mother nature.There is nothing quite so calming as spending an afternoon working in the garden. My wish list had a sunny aspect garden at the top of the list – I felt it to be more important than the house actually – which made estate agents roll their eyes at me! Next I wanted a fixer upper, learn to do whatever can be done by yourself. Don’t pay someone if you can do something yourself, however busy you are, you can find time, think of all the time you save by not going shopping!

Anyway, back to the story. After passing my driving test, I gave myself 2 years more (was stuck in a fixed rate mortgage) and decided to make myself save another £10,000 in that time – no mean feat on a fairly low income with a mortgage to pay. I literally reduced my spending down to the bare minimum, I learnt how to cook everything from scratch and experimented with learning how to make just about any product that could be bought, from scratch. I tried making baked beans, tomato ketchup, shampoo, washing up liquid (not successful) etc etc, you get the picture. When you begin to break things down to the basics, you realise that most things can be done yourself, for a fraction of the cost – not always cheaper, but mostly.

So second piece of advice, learn to cook! Go to the library and get cookery books, or beg borrow and steal them. Buy a freezer and make large amounts of everything and get it frozen. Never throw a single piece of good food away and if it looks like it might go off, do something with it and freeze it! If you don't need it, don't buy it.

That is the end of part 2 and tomorrow I will post the final part of my short journal.

My story, part 1.,

One of my fairly new followers asked me recently if I had ever written a post about the journey which got me to this little cottage in the North. Of course the blog has been an online journal of that journey over the last 10 or so months, so there is no real individual post about it, so I thought that, despite the possibility of boring you all, I would say a little more about me and how I end up here. Sorry if it is a bit long and rambling, but I won’t be at all offended if you get bored and can’t be bothered to read on much! It is a long post, so I have decided to split it over a few days. First part is a little bit more about me and what I do.

As some of you may know if you’ve read enough of my comments, I have the rather unusual job of being an opera singer. I am, by no means, famous in this field of work, but I am moderately successful, which means basically that I have never had to do anything else to earn my money (except a brief stint as a personal shopper for Tesco when money was tight a few years ago) and that I have only had to accept decent solo parts rather than going into a chorus (which surprisingly pays better than solo work, but which gives less satisfaction). I come from a musical family (mother is a piano teacher, sister is an opera singer) and it was inevitable that I would do music in one form or another, so I got a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music when I was 18 (20 years ago) to study piano and soon swapped to first study singing because my voice was ok. When I graduated with a first, I got regular work singing small roles with opera companies and eventually moved onto bigger roles. It may surprise you to learn that an opera singer really doesn’t earn very much (unless you are Kiri te Kanawa). Our time is paid for by performance and the months of rehearsals are done for as little as £300. Yes, that is £300 a month working Monday to Saturday! We are supposed to make up for that when we start the performances. I say supposed to. I have never earned more than £17,000 gross in one year and that was a good year.

The thing about my job is, is that I come in contact with enormous amounts of serious wealth and enormous amounts of waste. At first it was exciting to be at after performance ‘do’s’ that had cost thousands, to be involved in enormously expensive productions. But soon reality takes over and you begin to realise that money should not be wasted like this. To give an example, a few years ago there was a production of an opera that had 2 fully automated animals in it (don’t ask). A big cow and a big horse. Each one had moving mouth, eyes, eyelids tails and feet. And each one cost in the region of £25,000. On the dress rehearsal, the director decided he didn’t like the horse and it was scrapped. Yes, I mean chucked out and never used in a single performance. In the bin. That sort of thing makes me sick (and goes towards the reason why opera tickets are so expensive). Anyway I digress (told you it may be rambling)

The wealth of people who don’t have a clue how ‘real’ people live became a bit sickening to me, although it was a long and slow waking up process. At first I was as guilty as the next person for wanting more, wanting to emulate the lifestyle and spending more than I had, getting myself in debts. But something was changing in my life and in my attitude towards money. Maybe I was growing up or maybe I was just becoming the person I was meant to be.

Will post part 2 tomorrow.