Category Archives: Reviews

On SW Broadband

LearnerBlogger, Reviews, , ,

So…crap week all round really. But something nice did happen – one of my favourite bloggers, Premmeditations tagged me in a Liebster – right after being tagged the week before by Trawlergirl. As well as being a real compliment,  it was also a much needed kick up the backside to stop moping and do something a little bit productive, so once the kids were in bed I reclaimed the laptop from whichever sticky fingered midget had been private messaging Mr Bloom or whatever they do on the CBeebies site, and logged into my trusty wordpress dashboard.

Except I didn’t, because my WP dashboard wasn’t working, and as it turned out, nor was my site. Again. Gah. I have to say this has been a pretty frequent experience since going self hosted, made all the more annoying because I chose Bluehost purely on the basis that it was recommended by WordPress. Anyway, I tried again an hour later, then 2 hours later, and then 24 hours later…still kaput.  Tech support at Bluehost (who have always been willing and helpful) didn’t seem to be able to get to the bottom of the problem, which was compounded by the fact that they could see my site fine in America – in fact it took a twitter shout out to convince them that actually, it wasn’t just me being a muppet (thank you if you responded to my slightly panicked request to back me up!)

I also received a couple of recommendations for new hosting services – one of them being South West broadband, based in Cornwall. SW Broadband followed this up with a tweet to ask how they could help – they may have regretted this as they immediately received a stream of ever more panicked messages, the main gist of which was ‘I don’t understand anything, I am a muppet, please help me before I lose the plot COMPLETELY’.

By this time it was Friday, my site was still down, nobody at Bluehost could tell me why, and I was torturing myself with all the times I had MEANT to learn about backing up WordPress, but hadn’t actually managed to pull my finger out and do it. I might have cried, a little bit. It’s weird how the blogging thing has become such a part of my life – at the end of the day it’s just mitherings and blatherings, but it’s MY mitherings and blatherings, and I wanted them back!

Ryan at SW Broadband seemed singularly unfazed by all this, and also not at all bothered by the fact that I didn’t know what I was talking about, promising to transfer my blog as soon as he could. However, Friday evening was approaching, so I mentally resigned myself to getting my blog back on Monday or Tuesday. I might have cried a bit more (like I said, it’s been a crap week, OK?)

Not so much of the resignation needed, as it turns out! Ryan was on the case with Bluehost on Friday evening and Saturday morning, doing some magic whiteboarding shizzle, which I TOTALLY understand, though come to think of it it might have been whitelisting, or possibly whitelabelling….Whatever. In the meantime I was trying desperately to download a backup of my blog from Bluehost and failing at every turn – I may have downloaded SOMETHING as there seems to be a large lump of stuff clogging up my hard drive, but how to turn this zip-a-licious little icon into my actual blog was beyond me….in the end though it turned out to be irrelevant, as I received this lovely message:

Michelle
We’ve got a backup of your account downloading to our office here, we’ll restore to our hosting and update your domain as quickly as we can.
Thank you for your patience.* 
Warmest regards,
Ryan Devonshire
South West Broadband
t: 01872 672 050
w: http://www.swbroadband.co.uk

The next message I received was to tell my my blog would be all working and marvellous again by 3pm….and guess what? IT WAS! And here I am! Whoop!

I have to say, I have been blown away by the help I received from Ryan and the team at SW Broadband. If you are looking for a hosting service, and especially for someone to migrate your blog with no fuss, I cannot recommend them highly enough, based on my experience so far. The basic package is £2.49 a month, which seems really good value (it’s certainly cheaper than what I was paying before) but it’s not just about price, it’s about service and so far, the service has been OUTSTANDING.

Thank you, Ryan and friends! 🙂

*He did actually say this, though I think what he meant was ‘Thank god I’m a patient man or this woman would be DOING MY HEAD IN’

Disclaimer – this review was not requested or recompensed.

 

On Walkers Mighty Lights – Review

Reviews, , ,

Let me put my cards on the table here. I avoid buying low salt, low sugar food like the plague, which it might as well be, if you ask me. And don’t get me started on low alcohol beer – I mean, really, what’s THAT all about? I like food (and beer) to taste like it’s meant to, not like some diluted version of itself, and I’d rather go without completely* than bother with allegedly ‘better for you’ options, which never taste as good as the real thing.

However when it comes to my kids, well, it’s my job to be more careful about what they eat, so I do tend to keep my eye out for snacks that they think are treats but which aren’t really, because they are good for them. That way the kids think I’m marvellous, I get to feel smug about the fact that they think I am marvellous as well as polishing my halo because they’re eating something that’s not actually bad for them, oh and I get to scoff my highly salted full fat snacks in peace – what’s not to like!

So there was great excitement all round when these arrived at our house…

IMG_2744IMG_2752

Yay! Mighty Lights galore for us to taste and test! There was some disappointment when I told the kids that no, they could not have three packets each immediately, especially since they hadn’t had breakfast. When we got over that massive act of cruelty, (not without threats to report me to the Crisp People, because they want us to try ALL OF THEM Mummy, and THEY are the boss of the crisps, NOT YOU), we agreed that they could try some a bit later in the day. Whereupon I sat them down for breakfast and snuck upstairs to check them out myself. What? WHAT? No, I was not eating crisps before breakfast – what kind of slummy mummy do you think I am?  I never actually have breakfast, so technically this crisp eating was taking place before lunch. And definitely not in bed. OK? And, yes I know I said above that I don’t do healthy versions of unhealthy food, but that probably should have read ‘unless they appear in front of me with no effort on my part in which case I could be persuaded’. Fickle? Me?

Well, the news hot off the press is that they are not too bad at all, for dastardly diet food. I might even start taking them to work in my packed lunch. I usually don’t pack crisps, because I always think that today’s the day that I might manage to eat my sandwich without them. But then I open my sandwich and it just looks so lonely and naked that I end up nipping to Spar anyway for an emergency pack of Ready Salted. So I could just cut out the kidding myself bit and throw in a pack of Mighty Lights and be done with it…What’s that there? The kids? You want to know what THEY think of them? For goodness sake, you think this blog is all about THEM? It’s called LearnerMOTHER for a reason you know….

But since you insist – the news is good there too. The youngest wanted to know how I had put the zig-zags into the crisps – it’s kind of cute the way he still assumes I am responsible for all the awesome stuff…poor wee dab, he’ll learn the truth soon enough. The middle one turned her nose up at the Chicken and Cheese & Onion flavours, but proclaimed the Ready Salted to be ‘quite nice actually’ (girl after my own heart there) while the eldest said that Cheese and Onion was his favourite but he would probably need another pack just to be sure….and then sulked when one wasn’t forthcoming. Well, I do have my packed lunches their health to take into consideration, after all.

So – the serious bit – are they healthy and good for your kids? Of course not. Are they better than a regular crisps? Yes, a bit. Would I give them to my kids every day? No. Would I worry about them having a pack as a treat? Also no. So there you have it. Hopefully my witterings on the Mighty Lights have been useful – but if not you can find out the proper useful stuff at www.walkersmightylights.co.uk or you can call round my house to try them for yourself.**

As always, thank you for reading!

 

*a small lie. I will eat anything if a) I am hungry enough and/or b) it is in front of me.

**a big lie. I’ve got my packed lunches to think about, you know.

 

 

DISCLOSURE – The Walkers Mighty Lights were sent to me free of charge; Walkers have paid me for this post (though they didn’t tell me what to write).

On Aspire Fitness

Cardiff Stuff, Reviews, , , ,

Gyms. Ugh. Sport, fitness, exercise, even more ugh.

Me and physical activity got off to a bad start – slow, short, weedy and always the last to be picked for any team,  I used to dread ‘all out’ which was the name for the period between the end of lessons and the evening meal at my (boarding) school. I presume it was called ‘all out’, because it was meant to imply that every single one of us got some fresh air and physical activity, every day…well, as far as I was concerned there was plenty of fresh air in the copses and dens where I smoked my badly rolled cigarettes, and the occasional sprint from a schoolmaster on the prowl more than counted towards my physical activity quota.

I stopped doing any kind of sport (except the mid-fag sprinting) the minute it became non-compulsory, which I suppose was probably 16 or so. I did have a brief flirtation with swimming in my final year at uni, because I got a bit embarrassed confessing that I couldn’t swim more than 10 metres – and then only on my back. So I went to the pool regularly enough that after six months, I had managed the super achievement of being able to swim, uh, twenty metres. On my FRONT! Get me!

After university, I did occasionally have a panic about my unhealthiness, leading me to sign up with various gyms promising the earth, but I never stuck with them. I felt like such a muppet not knowing how anything worked, and I hated the latest-kit-and-fake-tans crew that seemed to lurk around with not much else to do but gossip and stare pityingly at muppets like me. Also beyond a standard induction and perhaps a photocopied exercise program, there was no support and encouragement. Until I phoned to cancel my membership of course, and then the support and encouragement practically oozed down the phone line, slowly calcifying into arsiness as it became clear, that no, I really, really did not want to continue having the lifeblood sucked out of my bank account in exchange for feeling useless and self conscious  in public three times a week. I can do that perfectly well enough on my own, and FOR FREE, thank you very much.

Given my track record with gyms, I don’t know what made me join Aspire Fitness when they opened in Canton back in 2008. Except that I had a six month old and a two and a half year old, and I was desperate for something – anything – that I could do to give me some time to myself for half an hour a couple of times a week. Also, just after I’d had the flyer through to say a new gym was opening,  I had spied three people in their Aspire hoodies, having a coffee in Chapter. I figured they must be the owners and suspiciously inspected them from afar for signs of latest-kit-and-fake-tans-ness but there were none. Even better, one of them was definitely eating CAKE!

So I signed up for the gym, and because it seemed like a good deal, I also signed up for personal training, and then, feeling all proud of myself, I went and signed up for a bloody half marathon with my three sisters who’d all been running for ages. Of course I spent the next week bricking it about how many new and wonderful opportunities I would now have to look, act and feel like a muppet, and how long it would be before I could decently cancel my membership, and whether there might be cake available in the gym, and whether if I fed my sisters enough wine they might forget that I’d promised to run 13.1 stupid miles with them.

So I rocked up on my first session, at 6.30am, which went a little like this..

Joe:’So, why do you want to train?’

Me: ‘What?? I don’t WANT to train at all, you  muppet. Why would I? What I WANT is to lose weight, get a bit healthier, and replace my pelvic door with a pelvic floor. Preferably painlessly and while eating cake’.

Well, that was what the voice in my head said. I have no idea what I actually did say. I probably mumbled something about losing the baby weight, I honestly have no idea. Whatever it was, I ended up really enjoying the training despite myself, and not only did I turn up to my next session and the ones after that, but I started going to the gym in between times as well – and, weirdly, liking it!

Going to Aspire was such a massively different experience than going to any of the gyms I’d been to previously. For a start, all the staff looked genuinely pleased to see me whenever I arrived. I’m sure they were equally pleased to see everyone who walked through the doors of course but when you’re a bit scared and a lot post natal, a friendly smile makes a huge difference. And Joe, who had (and still has) the misfortune to be my trainer, was always remarkably unfazed by my unco-ordinatedness, and had this knack of getting me to do stuff I never dreamed I’d be able to do, without me even realising I was doing it. Last but not least, the other members were not scary and certainly not pos-ey at all, and, like the staff, really friendly…I was encouraged to join the gym’s running club by a couple of them and I never, NOT IN A MILLION YEARS, imagined that I’d have the confidence to go running with people I didn’t know.

I did my half marathon – in fact I did three. Three! Me! And not only that, but I found I was enjoying myself so much that I decided to work towards becoming a personal trainer, and managed, with loads of help from the Aspire team, to actually pass the gym instructor’s exam. I haven’t managed to do anything with it yet – I had my youngest shortly after that and the next couple of years were a bit of a blur, but still – I did it, and I will at some point, when life is a bit less crazy, pick it up again. In the meantime I’m training for a 26 mile walk in September, raising money for Hope for Justice (with friends I met through the gym), I’m running the Cardiff Half Marathon in October, and I’m learning to deadlift. AND I CAN’T EVEN BELIEVE I AM WRITING THAT.

So there you have it. I really cannot recommend Aspire highly enough. If you are thinking of joining a gym but nervous about it, or you want to train for anything at all, you should definitely call them – they really do know – and care – what they are talking about, they’re lovely people, and they also do shedloads more fun stuff than I’ve written about here, from rock climbing to triathlon training. You can book a free trial in the Canton gym on 02920 23 55 23, or in the Nantgarw gym on 01685 887544 – or drop them an email on info@aspirefitness.co.uk. Get on it!

 

ps Aspire didn’t ask me to write this post, and I’m not getting paid for it. Though I hope when they read it they will feed me cake.