I recently asked a member of my ZOOM group if they knew someone who could help me with social media publicity for my sites. I duly made contact with them and we engaged in a correspondence about who would do what and when. however, I finally decided not to do business with this person because that was just no chemistry between us. She had made certain recommendations about how we could move forward and I offered to make a contribution for what she had done and how we could move forward. Unfortunately the water was muddy and we did not discuss money.

It was perhaps a mistake to promise that because in any event I didn’t use any of her recommendations so strictly speaking I don’t owe her anything because when you pitch for a job you make a few suggestions to help the client or possible client. However in spite of that my feeling is that I should give a contribution by way of goodwill but I’m just thinking about the implications of this.

Thanks to the new and even more stupid lockdown rules, pubs will be absolutely thrashed at this the most important time of year for them .Its a tragedy as this will be the final straw for many and they will be forced to close.

A part of me does not mind being on my own but as they say ‘variety is the spice of life’ and we have to discipline ourselves to go out regularly even for simple occasions like the allotment. I would not like to be living on my own.

On the good side, we had an unexpected Christmas gift of Polish food products.  I often feel we should do more to look out for cooking styles apart from our own home grown British variety.