We have been talking about moving house for a long time and are finally starting to do something about it. Whilst I love our house, it is starting to get a little small for our needs and with four cats and running a business from home it’s definitely time to move on. We made the first step by getting an estate agent around to value our property the other day and were surprised to find it is worth quite a bit more than we expected. Over the next few weeks we will be moving all of our stuff into storage in a major effort to declutter the house. Then we plan to replace the carpets and do a bit of painting, before putting the house on the market. We will also be looking at other properties over the next few weeks and months to try and get an idea of the sort of house we are looking to move to. We have two houses to see at the weekend as well as a meeting with Lok’nStore where we plan to store the contents of our house whilst we are trying to sell it. It’s all very exciting and there are sure to be many property related post over the next few months. If it all goes to plan, hopefully we will soon be settled in a new home.

It’s interesting that the elephant population in South Africa has now got so large they will have to start culling the population. The elephant appears to have become a victim of its own success with numbers growing from just 8,000 to nearly 20,000 in just over ten years since culling was banned. An elephant herd at the Kruger National Park now has 12,500 elephants which according to park officials is 5,000 elephants too many. A new conservation plan will include killing the excess animals as well as other methods such as contraception and translocation. Culling the animals will only be allowed once the other options have been ruled out.

Supporters of culling say that the growing numbers of elephants are reducing forests to flatland and threatening the biodiversity of national parks. Conservationists on the other hand say that the environmental impact is less severe than claimed and that culling is deeply inhumane. To be able cull its elephants a national park or private reserves will need the approval of the authorities and an elephant management specialist. They must also show that they have first explored all the other options. With the elephant population still growing at a rate of 6% if no solution is found there could be 34,000 elephants by 2020, a number that wildlife officials say is unsustainable.

PC2Paper, the website that allows you to send real letters from the internet has just launched a new and easier way to use their service. It is called the PC2Paper Virtual Printer and basically allows you to print your letters as you would do to a normal desktop printer. The letters are then passed to PC2Paper who print and mail them for you. To use the service you need to have a PC2Paper account with credit in it. Then you simply download the PC2Paper printer from the website and install the driver. When you have a document that you want to mail, you just select the PC2Paper printer from the list of printers on your computer. Then just enter what sort of paper you require, what class of postage and what printing station you want it mailed from. You will then be asked for your PC2Paper user name and password. Once you input these, the letter is passed to the PC2Paper printing station and they take care of the rest for you. It has currently only been launched as a beta but it seems like a really good idea. There is more detail on how to use it on their blog.

Facebook saw its first drop in users during January prompting the question of whether it is starting to lose its appeal. Users fell by 5% to 8.9 million from 8.5 million according to data from Nielsen Online. All the indications show that the site is simply not as popular as it used to be. An internet analyst at Nielsen Online said that it was inevitable that growth rates could not be sustained and that numbers were likely to level out. Personally, whilst I used to log in to Facebook daily I  found that the amount of applications now available make it very distracting and time consuming. I now tend to spend just a few minutes a week on the site and ignore all new application requests.

Weather balloons could be used to provide mobile phone and broadband services to rural Britain. An American company called Space Data has already used small phone masts attached to balloons to provide wireless internet access to remote areas. The group has supplied military and commercial clients for four years but is now preparing to link with broadband companies to offer services to residential customers. Space Data has patented the service in 41 countries and is now considering the US as a potential market. The service uses a small transceiver attached to a balloon which then rises to an altitude of 30,500m after it has been released. The company says that one balloon can beam a signal to an area equivalent to 80 mobile phone towers. The service does have one drawback, the balloons only last for 24 hours before bursting which means a constant supply has to be released to maintain the connection and the radio equipment on the burst balloon has to be retrieved by a team using location devices.

A restaurant owner in Michigan has created what could be the world’s biggest hamburger. The burger weighs 60.9kg (134 pounds) and contains beef, bacon and cheese. It took around 12 hours to make and takes three men to flip it. If you want to order one it would cost $350 (£178) and the restaurant requires that you give them 24 hours notice. That’s a lot of meat.

Spurs beat Chelsea by 2 goals to 1 today to win the Carling Cup. As a long time Spurs supporter I must admit that my expectations were not really that high. Although I thought there might be a slim chance of winning I did think that Chelsea would prove to be the better team. This coupled with the fact that Spurs have not won a major trophy since 1999 made me think our chances were not that great. However, I am pleasantly surprised and although it has been a long time coming, it really is a good day for Spurs. And for all you Chelsea supporters out there, let me just say “TWO ONE”. He he.

It is likely that beer drinkers will soon see the price of a pint of beer hitting the £4 mark. The drinks industry is facing huge rises in production and distribution costs meaning it will soon have to pass these increases onto the customer. A pint of beer currently costs around £3.20 on average but some sources predict prices could rise as much as 60%. The price could be increased still further if there in an increase in beer duty in next months budget.

I found this article called learning to smoke. It’s about a forty six year old man called Tom Chiarella who decides to do a thirty day experiment on the effects of smoking. Having never smoked a cigarette before he started the experiment, the article makes interesting reading. It charts Tom's progress from non smoker to someone who smokes a pack of cigarettes a day. At the start of the experiment the cigarettes induced vomiting and coughing but by the end he finds he enjoys smoking and starts to crave his next cigarette. When he does finally quit at the end the experiment he experiences withdrawal symptoms being unable to think and suffering an endless headache.

I find the article interesting because as a former smoker myself and someone who regularly smoked more than a pack a day, I tried quitting the habit unsuccessfully for four years. Eventually I threw out any cigarettes I had left in the house and went cold turkey. Although that worked and I have now not been a smoker for about eight years, I still get that craving every now and again and have to admit to having had at least five cigarettes during this eight year period, in moments when I was rather drunk. That said, I could never go back to being a smoker, and find that now I cannot stand the smell of cigarettes. Whilst the article was very interesting, I can’t quite understand why someone would want to undergo an experiment like this when kicking the habit is so difficult.

Further to my article about the proposed changes at eBay it appears some sellers are planning a week long boycott of the auction site. Sellers are angry over higher fees and other policy changes which mean they can no longer leave negative feedback for a buyer. According to eBay sellers this means that they cannot keep track of scammers and untrustworthy buyers. The new policy changes went into effect on Wednesday.

I remember commenting on an article last year that criticised the amount of packaging on Easter eggs. The article pointed out that some Easter eggs contain as much as 52% packaging which is not only poor value for money but also bad for the environment. With Easter eggs once again filling the supermarket shelves I came across this article that suggests some companies are now trying to cut down on the packaging used. Cadbury in particular are trying hard to cut the amount of packaging it used in a bid to become more eco-friendly. They have launched a new range of eggs that come wrapped in foil without a cardboard box. This means that it uses 75% less plastic and 65% less cardboard. The move is part of the firm’s effort to reduce its environmental footprint and Cadbury’s claims it will save more than 2,000 trees as a result. I would certainly purchase the version with no box, all I’m really interested in is the chocolate inside.

I don’t eat chocolate very often but when I do I like to have something a little bit special. My husband came home the other day with a selection from Hotel Chocolat. It is called a Peepster Box and contains four of what they call their mini slabs. The mini slabs are as the name suggests small slabs of individually wrapped chocolate. The pack I had included one each of Belgium chocolate, milk chocolate, honey milk chocolate and dark chocolate. I have sampled all of them and still can’t quite decide whether my favourite is the milk chocolate or the honey milk chocolate. Mmm chocolate.

I read this article about a talking pet bowl. The idea behind it is that you can record a ten second message for your pet. The bowl will then detect when the pet is within six inches of it and trigger the message. According to the makers of the device which they call chatterbowl, once the animals become used to it they will deliberately set it off to hear their owner’s voice. They also say that “The message should encourage your pet to eat”. Encouraging my cats to eat has never been a problem, if I ever have to leave them with automated pet feeders the food is always gone by the time I get home.

I tried a bath bomb from lush the other day for the first time. It was one of their Fairy Jasmine bath bombs and contained Jasmine and Ylang Ylang. Whilst I liked the product and found that it left my skin very soft afterwards, I was not prepared for the major clean up operation that followed. The bath bomb contains glitter, glitter that not only takes days to wash off of your skin but also manages to cover the entire bathroom. Even now several days later and despite cleaning the bathroom, I am still finding glitter everywhere. Personally I would prefer this product minus the glitter.

My cat Oscar is quite fat and probably could do with eating a little less but he looks quite thin compared to this really overweight cat. Sooty weighs almost two stone and is three times the size of a normal cat. He has now been put on a diet after getting stuck in the cat flap. His owner says that although she feeds Sooty normal sized portions of food Sooty has also been getting extra snacks from well meaning neighbours. Sooty is now on a strict low calorie diet of biscuits and is not allowed any meat.

As Rory and I have been together for nine years now we tend not to make extravagant gestures on Valentines’ Day preferring instead to go out at other times such as anniversaries and birthdays. We did however have a nice meal of lobster, dressed crab and large prawns with a nice bottle of Bollinger. Rory also brought me a lovely gift of flowers in a nice vase which was a surprise.

After dinner Rory went back to his new project which is learning about bookkeeping.

Cheshire Council managed to spend £60,000 relocating four newts. Great Crested Newts are currently a protected species and by law have to be relocated if they are found on a proposed building site. When they are found on a proposed development site they are usually caught by specialists using pit traps and then relocated in safe areas. In this case the council had to create a new habitat for the newts which they say resulted in the huge cost to relocate them. I am all for saving wildlife but I do wonder how much money it costs to send someone out with a bucket to catch a few newts.

My phone comes with a GPS system but what I find slightly irritating is it is like most systems geared towards drivers. I have used it on several occasions to try and find my way when I have been walking somewhere and although it does usually get me there it doesn’t always chose the best route when you are on foot. I read with interest this article that Nokia are introducing a digital map system for its phones that gives real time walking directions. The system will be available on its Series 60 and Series 40 phones and according to Nokia is the first pedestrian navigation system on a mobile phone. It will be interesting to see how popular it proves to be and whether other companies will start providing a similar service.

The Scottish government has drafted a document that instructs people on how to care for their cats. The aim is that the document will provide basic information for people who are responsible for caring for cats. The document is 37 pages long and includes information such as what to feed cats and what sort of environment to keep them in. Much of the information contained in the document seems to me to be basic common sense. It does make me wonder how much time and money was spent preparing this welfare code and whether it could have been used more effectively elsewhere.

I found this recipe the other day for chicken with mozzarella. Basically all you do is open the chicken breasts out. Beat them until they are an even thickness. Then stuff them with a mix of parmesan cheese and mozzarella. Then you wrap a slice of ham around each. The recipe uses Parma ham but I used normal ham because that’s all I had in the fridge. Next you seal the chicken in a really hot pan. This makes sure that the ham sticks to the chicken. Then bake them in the oven for about 15 minutes. You can see the result below.

At the risk of blogging about nothing but chicken, I came across this story about how Tesco has now managed to produce a chicken that costs only £1.99. Previously their cheapest chicken which cost £3.30 had been criticised for the poor conditions in which the birds were reared. I wonder what corners have been cut to produce this cheaper £1.99 chicken. Although Tesco have also increased orders for free range birds by 30% they have been criticised for this latest cut in costs. A spokesman for the National Farmers Union has said that Tesco are “devaluing the product and doing it at a time when, overall, the market is strengthening and chicken prices are rising”. He also said that unless Tesco were going to subsidise the cheap chickens that it was not a sustainable price. Tesco say that the price cut does not mean that welfare standards have been lowered and that its birds are “raised in the highest welfare environment”. The £1.99 chicken fared worse in a recent taste test carried out by The Daily Mail.

The blue Smartie was dropped by Nestle about three years due to concerns about artificial ingredients. At the time Nestle were able to reformulate the other coloured Smarties to get rid of the artificial ingredients and colours. However, they could find no way of recreating the distinctive blue Smartie. It appeared that Smarties have now found the answer and can create the blue sweet using a colouring from seaweed.

We made pancakes last week. As always the first pancake was slightly disappointing but all the rest were perfect. Rory has even perfected the art of tossing the pancake without dropping it on the floor or on his foot as he has done in the past.

Chicken has been in the news a lot recently with Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall highlighting how battery hens are kept. This article details an experiment where five chickens of varying price were cooked in the same way and then served to a panel who rated them on taste. Not surprisingly the Tesco’s cheap £1.99/kg chicken fared worse scoring only 3 out of 10 and with the panel disliking both the taste and texture. Next came the basic butcher’s bird at £2.09/kg which fared slightly better with 3.5 out of 10. This was followed by the supermarket corn fed chicken which once again only scored 3.5 out of 10 but cost more at £4.49/kg. The supermarket organic free chicken did slightly better scoring 6 out of 10. The winner was Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall’s special chicken which costs £4.99/kg but scored 7.5 out of 10. The panel described it as “juicy with light fresh flavour”.

Looking back on some old posts I noticed that my blog is one year old today. I think I have done quite well in the past year as I have managed to write a post nearly every day. I wonder whether I will manage to post so frequently in the next year.

Monty is one lucky cat. After Monty fell asleep inside the rear bumper of a car, his owner drove off, not knowing Monty was there. The cat managed to cling on for 30 miles before eventually falling off when the car reached 60mph on the M60. Monty then ran across the lanes of traffic to the embankment where his owner later caught him. Despite his adventure Monty’s only injuries were a black eye, a few cuts and some missing teeth.

No unfortunately I am not a millionaire but I did manage to win £30 on the lottery this weekend. As someone who plays a line of numbers every week, I have so far had three wins, all of them rather small. The first was £10, then a rather more acceptable £80 and now £30. I think I am just saving up for a big win, it is sure to be the jackpot next time. At least my £30 will pay for my lottery ticket for the next few weeks.

A Malaysian burglar was caught after he took time out from robbing a house to help himself to some cookies. As we all know, after eating cookies you really need a good nap and that’s just what the burglar did next. Needless to say when the family who owned the house arrived home the burglar was quickly discovered and was arrested for trespassing.

I read this article that suggests British people are unable to distinguish between real historical figures and fictional characters. The article highlights a survey carried out by the British TV channel UKTV Gold. The results make interesting reading, people thought that Robin Hood, Biggles and Sherlock Holmes were real people but that Winston Churchill was a fictional character. Two thirds of people questioned thought that King Arthur was a real person with 58% saying that Sherlock Holmes was also real. 47% said that Richard the Lionheart was a myth and 23% thought Winston Churchill was not real. The TV channel said that the findings of the survey showed a fascinating insight into the role that fiction has had in this country over the last 50 years. Funny, I thought it was just a shocking example highlighting a lack of education.

Greg Mulholland, a Liberal Democrat MP has called for pubs to introduce smaller wine glasses. He says that many licensed premises have stopped selling wine in smaller 125ml glasses and now only serve it in 175ml and 250ml glasses. His view is that these larger glasses can lead to people drinking more than they want to and more than is safe if they are driving. He plans to introduce a sale of wine bill that will force all licensed premises to offer the standard 125ml measures alongside the bigger glasses. One of these large glasses contains twice as much wine as a small glass or around a third of a bottle.

Sometimes I come across something really strange and unexpected, like this surfing cat for example. Although the cat doesn’t look very happy it appears to be able to surf by grabbing onto the edge of the surfboard. I wonder whether any of my cats can surf.