What Will Happen To My Garden

I was just wondering what will happen to my garden when I am no longer here.

I dare say that, initially, no one will give two hoots. Life moves on, people are busy, and I’m not sure anyone will be rushing to read through years of my ramblings the moment I’m gone.

But as the years go by, I do wonder whether my children, or even my grandchildren, or great grand children, might become interested in some of the drivel I’ve written here. Not because it is especially important, or beautifully crafted, but because it is mine. It is a little record of how I thought, what I noticed, what made me laugh, what wound me up, and what mattered to me at different points in my life.

I’d hate for it all to simply disappear and never see the light of day again.

Speaking (or perhaps more accurately typing) out loud, I wonder if I could develop some sort of PANIC button that instantly converts all the posts to PDFs and saves them somewhere else. I’m sure there will be a more subtle solution than that, and I probably need to find it, but the thought has definitely lodged itself in my head.

All my normal social media stuff can rot, for all I care. Most of that is disposable by nature anyway. But this garden feels different. This is the bit I’d quite like to be around in some format, even if it is only tucked away somewhere for someone to stumble across years from now.

Nowt To Do With Me, Springs and Hinges

I said something to a work colleague today that took me straight back more than thirty years, and I thought I’d better get the story down before it disappears forever.

I started working for BT, or British Telecom, or British Telecommunications plc depending on how you remember it, back in the days before everything had been smoothed out by the internet. I was there until 1997, when I moved to GPT, (GEC Plessey Telecommunications). That’s a whole other story.

Back in the 80s and 90s, BT still had those old red telephone boxes dotted all over the place. They’re remembered now as lovely bits of British street furniture, very iconic back in the day, but anyone who actually used them will remember a slightly different reality.

They usually smelt of wee. You also felt like you might catch something just by standing in one for too long. And, if you did manage to survive the smell, you then had to battle your way back out through a door held shut by springs so strong you practically needed to be Geoff Capes to open it (anyone under 50 may need to look him up). It was just as difficult sometimes to open these things, and the silly little handles didn't really give you any purchase!

Every so often, our BT office in Leeds would get calls from customers complaining that people were struggling to open the phone box doors, and they wanted someone to do something about it.

One of the departments we had back then was Directories. They managed Directory Enquiries, where operators gave out telephone numbers, and Directory Production, which involved producing those enormous paper phone books that used to land on everyone’s doorstep. Pre-internet life must look almost prehistoric now.

Anyway, the chap who headed up the Directories team in Leeds used to get loads of these “phone box door” calls transferred through to him from the switchboard. I’ve no idea why, other than every phone box had a paper directory in it, so someone must have decided it was vaguely connected.

It wasn’t.

Every now and again, you’d hear him answer one of these calls with something along the lines of:

“Nowt to do with me. Springs and hinges.”

I may have paraphrased that slightly, but that was the gist of it.

The funny thing is, we actually had an engineering team that looked after the springs and hinges in phone boxes. That was a real thing. Somewhere inside BT, there were people whose job included making sure the doors on red telephone boxes opened and closed properly.

So now, every so often, when someone asks me something that has absolutely nothing to do with me, I still find myself saying, “Nowt to do with me. Springs and hinges.”, which I did this morning, and remembering this story brought a smile to my face.

No big reason for this story, really. But that’s what a digital garden is for, isn’t it? A little bit of history, a little bit of nonsense, and something small that made me chuckle today.

How I Learned to Love a Cheap Lidl Beer

When I first tried Steam Brew’s The Spark’s, I really didn’t like it.

The 7.8% ABV Imperial IPA had a harsh alcoholic edge that seemed to overpower everything else. I reviewed it in May 2025, scored it 6 out of 10 (and I think I may have overscored it a tad originally), and I expected that to be the end of it, and move on to the next beer.

But I found a week later I bought it again.

Part of that was the price. At around £1.49 for a 500ml can, it felt worth another try. It also helped that Lidl is our closest supermarket, so Lidl’s The Spark was always easy to pick up.

There were things I liked about it from the start. It had citrus, stone fruit, sweet malt and a gentle herbal bitterness. The problem was that the alcohol stood out too much.

Then, after a few more cans, something changed. The harshness didn’t bother me as much. The citrus seemed brighter, juicier, the sweetness made a little more sense, and the alcohol warmth started to feel like part of the beer rather than something fighting against it.

I don’t think the beer changed. More likely, my palate adjusted and I became more familiar with what it was trying to do.

My score eventually moved from 6 out of 10 to 7.5. It went from a beer I tolerated to one I regularly looked forward to drinking on a weekend.

There’s a wider lesson in all this for me. You shouldn’t force yourself to keep trying something you hate, but when there are a few positives hiding underneath that first reaction, it can be worth going back.

Tastes change. Palates adjust. Sometimes a beer you dislike at first can become one you genuinely enjoy; it's probably the same as things in life generally!

Representation Has Gone Too Far

I’m pissed off with the way TV programmes keep matching presenters and reporters to the subject they’re covering.

A story about disability apparently needs a disabled reporter. An interview with the Scottish football team at the 2026 World Cup apparently needs a Scottish presenter. It’s bloody ridiculous.

I’m not sure “positive discrimination” is quite the right term. It feels more like forced representation or identity matching. Either way, surely the best person for the job should be the person who gets it.

The Day I Built a Bomb

When I was about seven or eight years old, back in the mid-70s, kids had a lot more freedom than they do now. Most weekends involved disappearing for hours with your mates, getting filthy, climbing things you shouldn’t climb, and generally causing low-level chaos without adults knowing where you were.

I did once set light to somebody’s garden! But they had cut down their long grass and left it to dry out in Summer. What were they thinking! Looking back, it’s amazing any of us survived childhood intact. BTW, if you lived at 17 Crewe Avenue (Ferrybridge), in the 1970's, I apologise for my behaviour!

At the bottom of our road there was a row of old wooden garages, tucked between our school and the cemetery, with a field for horses on one side. One day we discovered that if you shifted some loose boarding around the back of one of them, you could squeeze inside. 

The garage looked abandoned to us ... honestly. There were car parts everywhere, old paint tins, bits of copper pipe, electrical cable, tools, and a couple of empty gas canisters. To a group of young lads, it looked like buried treasure.

So naturally, we decided to build a “bomb”.

Not a real one obviously. More the sort of ridiculous Heath Robinson contraption only children could invent. We threaded cables through car radiators, stuck pipes into paint tins, connected random bits of metal together, and made the whole thing look as dramatic as possible. 

We thought it was hilarious. None of us had the slightest idea how serious it might appear to somebody else, especially during a time when news about bombs and the troubles in Northern Ireland filled the television almost daily.

The next day, bomb disposal turned up.

I still remember the sinking feeling in my stomach when I saw them there. Even as a kid, I suddenly realised this wasn’t funny any more. We’d actually convinced grown adults that something dangerous had been hidden in that garage. 

Thankfully, after a few tense hours, they packed up and left without blowing anything sky high. Our masterpiece of wires, pipes, and scrap metal had been exactly what it really was ... a pile of junk arranged by bored children with too much imagination.

It still makes me laugh now, but there’s also a strange little lesson buried in it somewhere. Kids often don’t understand the world they’re growing up inside. We were pretending to build something from an adventure film, while the adults around us were seeing something entirely different.

The Building Blocks of Better SEO

A short, practical guide to the layers that help product pages rank better in Google.

I was recently asked to look at SEO for a couple of product ranges for our New Zealand business. Nothing unusual there. Product SEO is one of those jobs that sounds simple at first, then quickly turns into a pile of small, connected jobs.

You can’t just add a keyword to a title, write a quick paragraph, and expect Google to suddenly fall in love with the page. Sometimes that helps, but proper SEO is built in layers. Some layers have a bigger ranking impact than others, but they all support each other.

The image below is a simple way of thinking about it.

1. Helpful, high-quality content

This is usually the biggest piece. A product page needs to be useful to the person landing on it. That means clear product details, practical descriptions, specifications, FAQs, and anything that helps the buyer make a decision.

For construction and trade products, this might include sizes, materials, use cases, compatibility, pack quantities, safety information, installation notes, and the type of customer or job the product is best suited for.

Google’s own guidance talks about creating helpful, reliable, people-first content, rather than content written mainly to manipulate rankings. That’s a useful test for product pages. Would this page genuinely help a buyer, or is it just a thin page with a few search terms sprinkled in?

2. Authority and trust signals

Good content works better when the wider web gives Google reasons to trust the site. Relevant links, trade mentions, customer references, reviews, supplier relationships, and brand mentions can all help build confidence around a business.

For a B2B construction product range, this doesn’t have to mean chasing hundreds of random backlinks. A link or mention from a relevant merchant, trade customer, industry partner, buying group, case study, supplier page, or local business profile may be far more useful than a pile of weak directory links.

Google also says links help it discover pages and understand relevance, so internal and external linking still matter when they’re natural, crawlable, and useful. 

3. Site architecture and internal linking

Even strong product pages can struggle if they’re buried too deep or disconnected from the rest of the site.

A sensible structure helps both users and search engines understand what the business sells. Categories, subcategories, product ranges, and supporting guides should link together in a way that feels obvious.

For example, a temporary fencing page might naturally link to construction barriers, pedestrian barriers, road cones, safety signage, and relevant support articles. This isn’t just an SEO trick. It helps customers move around the site and find related products.

4. Keyword research and search intent

Keyword research isn’t about stuffing pages with phrases. It’s about understanding how customers search.

In the New Zealand market, people may use different language from UK customers. They may search by product name, use case, category, regulation, or problem. That matters. A page targeting “temporary fencing” may need different wording from one targeting “site fencing”, “construction fencing”, or “crowd control barriers”.

The aim is to map each page to the right search intent. Product pages should target buying or specification searches. Guides and FAQs can target research searches. Category pages can sit between the two.

5. Technical foundations

The technical side doesn’t always feel glamorous, but it can quietly hold everything else back.

Pages need to be crawlable, indexable, fast enough, mobile-friendly, secure, and easy for Google to understand. Titles, headings, meta descriptions, image alt text, clean URLs, canonical tags, redirects, and structured data all play their part.

Google’s Search Essentials highlight the need for crawlable links, indexable content, and words that people would use when searching for your content. In plain English: Google needs to access the page, understand the page, and see that it matches what people are looking for.

Supporting signals

There are also smaller supporting signals that can help strengthen the overall picture.

Social mentions probably won’t transform rankings on their own, but they can increase visibility and lead to trade mentions, customer links, and brand searches. Schema markup can help search engines understand page content. Image optimisation can bring traffic through image search and improve page performance. Analytics helps show what is working. Regular updates keep pages accurate and useful.

None of these should replace the bigger layers, but they’re worth doing properly.

A simple SEO process for product ranges

For a product range, I’d keep the process fairly straightforward:

1. Check whether the page can be crawled and indexed.
2. Review the current title, H1, headings, meta description, and URL.
3. Research how customers in that market actually search for the product.
4. Map one main keyword theme to each page.
5. Improve the product content so it answers real buyer questions.
6. Add useful internal links from related categories, products, and guides.
7. Look for genuine trade, supplier, customer, or partner mentions.
8. Add or improve images, alt text, FAQs, and schema where useful.
9. Track rankings, impressions, clicks, and enquiries over time.
10. Review and update the page when the product, market, or Google guidance changes.

The main point

SEO works best when all the layers are in place. A technically sound page with thin content won’t do much. A brilliant guide that nobody links to or can easily find may also struggle. A page packed with keywords but written for nobody in particular is unlikely to build trust.

For product SEO, the best starting point is still simple: make the page genuinely useful, make sure Google can understand it, and connect it properly to the rest of the site.

That won’t guarantee rankings overnight, but it gives the page a much better chance.

Healthy Dog Treats

We got fed up with only really having unhealthy treats in supermarkets to give Hela, our German Shepherd, so I went hunting for a healthy dog treat recipe that she’d actually enjoy.

And I think I found it.

These are really simple sweet potato dog biscuit recipe. They’re basically just two ingredients, with one optional extra if your pampered pooch fancies a bit more flavour (Hela did).

You’ll need:

• 240g wholemeal flour
• 225g sweet potato, cooked and pureed
• Optional extra: crispy bacon, blended into a powder

I cook the bacon until it’s nice and crispy, then blend it down into a powder before adding it to the mix. You don’t need loads, just enough to give the biscuits that little bacon smell dogs seem to detect from three rooms away. I suppose you could substitute for chicken, or perhaps even cheese or a little peanut butter (although you might have to add a little more flour).

Mix everything together. It’s easier while the sweet potato is still warm, as it helps bring the dough together, don't be afraid to get in with your hands to mix it.

Once mixed, let the dough rest for around 20 to 30 minutes. I’m not entirely sure what the resting actually does, but the biscuits do seem to come out better when the dough has had a bit of time to relax. Maybe biscuits need a breather too.

I then roll them into half golf ball size and squash down a little.

Preheat the oven to 180°C, then bake the biscuits for 20 to 25 minutes (fan oven).

Once they’re done, switch the oven off and leave the biscuits inside until they’ve cooled completely. You’re basically drying them out, which helps them store better and stops them going mouldy.

And that’s it. Simple, cheap, homemade dog treats that Hela absolutely adores, hope your pooch does too.

As with any homemade dog treat, feed in moderation and avoid adding salt, seasoning, onion, garlic, or anything else unsuitable for dogs.

From £5 to £1000: eBay Selling Experiment

Note: Only 15 days in and I've abandoned £5 to £1000 challenge for a more challenging experiment to make a million. Lets see how I do.

This is going to be a fun little big experiment.

I’ve spent many years working in marketing and ecommerce, and I’ve sold bits and pieces on eBay, Amazon, and Etsy before. Not recently though. It’s been a long, long time since I properly listed things, packed orders, watched prices, and tried to make a small margin.

I was recently asked by a mate, "how easy is it to make money from ebay?", from previous periods in my life when I have flirted with eBay sales, my answer was "Easy, and not easy".
You see it is easy to put stuff on there are selling, odds and sods can sell fairly easily, but doing it consistently isn't always easy.

So, an little experiemnt for myself, from today and from virtually a standing start, how easy would it be to make £1,000 on eBay, starting with as little as £5?

The idea is simple enough. I buy something cheaply, sell it for more, then reinvest the money back into the next purchase. No big stock buy. No pretending this is a business empire. Just a small rolling pot, a few sensible buys, and a bit of patience.

There is one extra wrinkle, though. I’m not doing this with a brand new eBay account, but I’m not exactly starting with a fully active seller account either.

The account I’ll be using has been dormant since October 2021, so eBay is treating it cautiously and at the moment, I’m restricted to 18 items and no more than £190 in sales each month. In practical terms, that means I’m pretty much starting from scratch.

I started by spending £5 in Tescos this morning on some hosepipe connectors. They feel like the sort of product that could work well on eBay: useful, small enough to post, not too fragile, and the kind of thing someone might search for when they need one rather than when they’re just browsing.

From previous experience, there are a few things worth remembering about eBay. It isn’t Amazon. The buyer mindset is different.

eBay buyers are often looking for value, something specific, something a bit unusual, or a replacement part they can’t easily find elsewhere. They’re also more aware of the individual seller. Feedback matters. Photos matter. A clear description matters. And I think interaction matters too. A quick, human reply can still make a difference.

Another key thing for me is postage. I’ll be offering free postage wherever possible because, rightly or wrongly, listings with free postage often feel simpler and more attractive to buyers.

Of course, free postage isn’t really free. It has to be built into the selling price, along with packaging, tape, envelopes, fees if they apply, and the original cost of the item.

That’s the part I want to track properly.

If I spend £6.50 and sell the items for £10, that doesn’t mean I’ve made £3.50. I need to take off postage, packing materials, and any selling costs. Only then do I know the real profit.

The challenge is to see whether I can grow a tiny starting pot into £1,000 by buying carefully, selling clearly, and reinvesting the profit rather than taking it out.

It might work. It might crawl along painfully slowly. I might discover that hosepipe connectors are the new Bitcoin, although probably not.

Either way, I’ll keep track of what I buy, what I sell, what I spend, and what the running pot looks like each month.

Before you start, please investigate your tax implications for a side hustle. 

How I’ll Track It

I don’t want this to become a vague “I think I made a bit of money” sort of challenge. If I’m going to do it, I might as well track it properly.

The important number isn’t sales. It’s the running value of stock and cash, which I'll report on at the end of each month and comment on what I bought and sold, simple as that ... now let’s see what happens.

Monthly Tally

Month End: June 2026

Stock and cash in hand

Current Value £41.64

Comments: The experiment has started way better than expected, just 3 weeks and made lots of sales on eBay, towards the end of the months some day I was getting 3-4 orders, so had to keep reinvesting the cash straight away. The account is still restricted because it has been dormant since October 2021, so the early aim is not just profit, but proving the account is active, reliable, and worth trusting again, it's like starting off from zero.

The current value is based on what eBay is showing, along with stock and cash in hand. I’ll keep tracking this each month to see whether the small starting pot is genuinely growing, or whether postage, packaging, and slow-moving stock quietly eat away at it.

The hosepipe connectors sold very well and gave me some cash to buy some products from the clearance aisle in my local Tescos (definitely an aisle worth checking out). I bought some Oral B brush heads that sold the same day and that allowed me to reinvest and get another pack the same day, that sold quickly again (both bought for £8 and sold for £13).

I had a few small odds and sods of drill bits and small cam buckle straps in the shed and not used, so I added them too, effectively cost me nothing, but worth adding for a tiny profit after postage to show eBay that its a trading account.  Spend just £4 on some small padded envelopes and this kind of plastic envelope, but I bought from Home Bargains!

Lessons Learnt

Small, light, useful, non-breakable, easy-to-post items feel like the best place to start.

I did do some promotions, and even at 2% (if a sale comes from a sponsored link in eBay, you only pay 2% of the sale price in a commission), by the and of the month I had 4 extra sales this way. 

Slightly overthink the Titles and fill them with keywords that potential buyers might use to find your product, so for example instead of "Easy-Fit Adjustable Garden Hose Adaptor for Round Mixer Taps", it should be written as "Universal Adjustable Garden Hose Tap Connector Mixer Adaptor 15-19mm No Thread".

Don't over think the eBay description, but have enough info on these that a potential buyer knows exactly what the are buying. I kept adding things like "Please check your tap size before ordering. This connector is suitable for taps from 15mm to 19mm in diameter." because I have had occasions in the past when buyers haven't checked the listing too well and ended up getting refunds because products didn't fit.

In eBay postage, exclude the following areas as they increase postage costs (Northern Ireland, Isle of Man, Scottish Highlands / North Scotland, Scottish Islands / West coast, Isle of Wight and the Isles of Scilly.

Don't think that products have to sell in a day or two and fiddle with the price, bringing it down until it sells, if have put it on eBay for a fair price that gives you the profit you want, leave it, it will eventually sell.