Postcard from lockdown

It’s been some 34 days since lockdown was announced.

My feelings haven’t changed much: I am still much more fearful of the economic fallout from this, than the virus itself. That said, seeing the large numbers of people queuing outside B&Q this weekend has given me some heart. As Merryn Somerset Webb tweeted earlier yesterday (25th April 2020): Reminder than economy has been in deep freeze not recession. Can bounce back…

…as people stood in line, waiting patiently to get into a DIY shop. Was this simply out of boredom? Was it the novelty of being able to go somewhere other than Aldi? I hope not. I hope that people will fall back into a fairly decent stride and go about their business as they had done before all this happened.

I’ve been spending my money on food and guitar accessories, although the food is bringing me more comfort. I’ve been trying out some recipes and generally eating well, an army marches on its stomach after all, and good food is vital for moral! The guitar side of things has been something I have been meaning to get back into for a few years, and this is the perfect opportunity, but having bought some new leads, music books, headphone extensions etc, I haven’t found the joy in it I’d hoped for, which is a bit of a shame. I used to absolutely love it when I was 15. I’ll keep plugging away.

Friday night Zoom drinks have been continuing which is enjoyable. It’s given me the means to catch up with people, some of whom I hadn’t been in touch with for years. I love the fact you can pick up where you left off when you were 18 years old – it’s like the last 20+ years never happened (apart from hairlines/colour, trouser size etc). Facetime with old folk and my nieces is welcome, but no substitute for the real thing, although I did have a good chat with my Dad while stood on his doorstep during the week. We were chatting about Not Another Cooking Show, on youtube. If you’re into cooking, check him out. I think he’s fantastic.

The Money Mountain has been ticking over with Chris doing his thing on ebay, Dave still bringing home the stamp-based bacon and I’ve been hitting the surveys. We’ve opened up a new one in the last couple of weeks with Prolific, which seems to hold some promise. I will report back properly after a month of use to see what kind of £ it can generate and how user-friendly it is. So far, so good though with revenue of about £20 for a couple of weeks work, so add that to my surveys from Opinium and we’re looking at around £60-65 fairly easy money from surveys per month. Nothing to write home about, but it all adds up, and with Chris hitting Prolific too, it should at least off-set some of the matched betting losses.

The fund I bought on behalf of TMM a couple of weeks ago has gone up by around 4.11%, so we’re sitting on a bit of a profit there of £22.60 so far, but next week it could all go the other way if Boris announces that measures will remain in place for the foreseeable future; that said, if B&Q, Pret and Burger King are starting to open up, it seems that business has decided enough’s enough regardless of what the government says.

Chris’ fund purchases should also be in the black, but again, more in the next monthly report on overall performance.

Today I also opened up a Football Index account to see what that’s all about. I am a little sceptical about it, but we’ve just chucked £50 (plus a £10 referal bonus from our buddy Weenie over at Quietly Saving) into the account and we’ll see what happens. The spreads are enormous, which can be the only way they make their money and pay out dividends; I cannot see where else it comes from. Right now we’re just seeing what happens, but I think to make any £ from it you have to be actively trading the players, which is somewhat against my normal approach to an index, where I prefer the ol’ “buy and hold” method…and probably more than I can be bothered with, but let’s see. It might be the beginning of a beautiful thing.

Sadly, yet understandably, Focus Force market research has died down quite a lot. I’ve applied for the few which were relevant to me, but haven’t had any bites, which is a shame as they pay good money and right now with them being via Zoom or some-such-like, they are even better value as you don’t have to worry about travel. Again here, I’ll keep plugging away and see if I have any luck – sometimes in life you have to kiss a few frogs…

I’ll be venturing out at some point towards the end of this week to get some more supplies as we’ve not been shopping-shopping for about 10 days now, just down to the local shop for a load of bread and that sort of thing. It may be time to get the BBQ out of the shed and fire her up, especially with the long weekend coming up followed by a weeks holiday for me. My company has asked us all to take at least one week off before the end of June so as to use up some of our allowance; I guess they are trying to avoid everyone taking all their allowance in the second half of the year if/when restrictions ease, but I don’t see it really making any difference. I have written this year off as far as holidays go. It will be spent sitting in the garden and walking the dogs; the dream of heading back to the Mercado San Miguel for a few days at some point this year is looking very unlikely as is the annual pilgrimage down to Cornwall.

The week I’ve got off is also my birthday week (41 for anyone who’s interested), so I’m hoping that by then Domino’s has gone the way of Pret etc and allows takeaway. As we live in the middle of nowhere, they don’t deliver to us, so fingers crossed they relax things a little in the next couple of weeks. I don’t ask for much in life…just a Domino’s Texas BBQ pizza, some Chicken Strippers (I’ll be giving the new Pop’n Chicken a go too)…that and independent wealth, but I’m sure we’ll speak again before then.

I’ll be doing a short article on Plum this week as a follow-up to my introduction to it a few months ago.

In the meantime, keep your collective peckers up.