My parents are going down to London to visit my brother in September and they have asked me to have a look at how much it would cost. I started by looking on thetrainline.com as I guessed that a train journey would be the cheapest option. My parents live in Glasgow so I typed in the from and to information as well as the date. It took a couple of seconds to show me the price and I was shocked, £116 each and it took 5 and a half hours!

I decided that I would try a domestic flight instead and went to the BMI website as I have flown with them before and they were cheap. I typed in the information again and pushed the Get Flights button and waited a few seconds. The outbound flight cost £32.50 and the return flight cost £37.50, meaning a grand total of £70 each; that’s a saving of £46 each and it only takes 1 hour and 20 minutes.

I don’t know where the train companies get their pricing from, but if you want to travel from Glasgow to London then a cheap flight will save you not just money but time as well.

My wife has been playing bingo at 888Ladies for a couple of months now and really enjoys it. Her friends have also joined so they chat and have a laugh online while playing their bingo games.

After initially winning a couple of £10’s in her first week, she had had nothing for a month or so till last night when I heard a loud scream from the computer room, followed by “I’ve won, I’ve won”. I had to see what all the commotion was so went upstairs and found my wife giggling in the computer chair.

She had won £180 pound and was really happy, at least this will keep her occupied for the next couple of weeks as she can carry on playing bingo games without having to put her own money in and buy herself something nice too!

So it was my cousin’s birthday the other day and she is now 17, she lives in Jesmond with her mum, so I decided to get her 3 lessons with a driving school in Newcastle.

It reminded me of when I took driving lessons – I did it with BSM and I spent a lot of money learning to drive.  Sadly I failed my test many times before passing, I remember the second to last test, I had gone round with only 2 minors – I was exstatic, until he said I had one major and had failed.  It turned out the major penalty was me coming out of the test centre on the right hand side of the driveway.

I was gutted.

Anyways, I finally passed on the 3rd go and then didn’t drive again for 6 months!!!

All sorted now though

My nephew is being christened at the end of August and it gives our family the chance to go down to London for the weekend! Having grown up near London during my childhood I have been to London quite a few times, but my wife has only been once and the kids have never been, so a bit of sightseeing is in order.

The christening starts at midday on the Sunday so I plan to get down to London on the Friday night and then do some sightseeing on the Saturday. I’ve had a quick look for hotels in London, and because the christening is in Clapham it should be easy enough to get to the centre of London with kids in tow.

London hotels aren’t as expensive as you think either, starting from around £75 per night for a family room and should be ideal for what we need it for. It should be pretty interesting for the kids too and will give them something to talk about with their friends when they get back.

My sister called me last night and asked if we would like to join her family when they go skiing in the winter. Being an avid skier myself when I was younger I haven’t been on a ski holiday since before the kids were born, and now that they are old enough (9 and 11) it’s a great reason to go.

Me and my wife have been skiing before, but the kids will need to take lessons, luckily there is an indoor ski slope near to where we live that has dedicated lessons for kids and beginners alike. The kids are pretty excited and I have booked their lessons for the end of this month.

It will also give me and my wife the chance to practice skiing as I feel that I might be a bit rusty.

I can’t wait to book our skiing holiday, hopefully we will be able to book into a decent resort for cheap and fingers crossed that the weather is good for skiing.

Well I’ve just had a quick read of the sun and it says that UK airports will open again tomorrow so that means that UK Airspace is good to go.

This has all been brought about because of the Volcano erupting over in Iceland. Over 24,000 flights have been cancelled. It’s claimed that disruptions could continue for months as eruptions could happen on and off for a while to come.
I can see it erupting again before the end of the month, which means more delays so I best get a holiday booked soon lol.

I can’t believe that all the UK airports have been closed for days but they are due to open on Tuesday, it’s said that only a skeleton service will run and a see how it goes scheme is underway.

It’s unlikely that I’ll get any of my flights to London booked as I need to go and visit some family ASAP, as I haven’t seen them for a few years and I hate driving that far. arghhh

My dad is a big fan of Hookah pipes and tends to spend a lot of his spare time smoking them back home. I’ve been looking at getting him a vaporizer to try, so ideally need something small light and portable due to postage prices.

I’ve found him an iolite vaporizer which retails at around £150 but its small lightweight and portable and it comes in a range of four colours Black, Blue, Green and White.

Hopefully it won’t cost me more than £15 to send the Iolite vaporizer over to him and it should only take a few days, i might send him a few packets or herbal smokes if I can fit them into the box.

The F1 was an interesting race in the face that Redbull have a fancy new Exhaust which exits at the rear of the car and not at the sides. Adrian Newy has designed the car so i expect he knows what he’s doing as he’s built championship winning cars before but it just seems like an odd step to me.