Pension, holiday, sickness benefits don’t come free.

The agency worker forgoes the above in return for more £££.

Not strictly true. I’m just about to move back into a public sector job and because of the way the recruitment process is working (or not working) I’m going to have to spend at least a month as an agency worker before being taken on permanently and these days the agencies have to offer sick leave, holiday entitlement and a pension.

Frequently it’s not about having the ideal tool for the job, but having a tool for the job

I was called out to a site I’ve not been to before on Saturday and only found out once I was there that I needed a square block shaped key to get through a small access hatch. Thankfully the bottle opener/ flat screwdriver on my pen knife was a good fit. It would’ve been a wasted 80 mile round trip without it.

I always carry a pen knife, they just come in handy.

Stretching when you have back pain typically makes muscle spasms worse (which is basically what back pain tends to be all about or a follow effect from something damaged). Either way, stretching is not really good. You’re only pissing off already angry muscles. Releasing muscles through trigger points can be done but sometimes that should wait until angriness wrt muscles has lessened.

Different things work for different folks and I’ve always found gentle stretching exercises help massively. Of course the OP could try consulting with a doctor to determine the cause and the right way to deal with it if it is really that painful.

Somebody in my town owns a new one in black. It looks very nice in the flesh and nowhere near as big and unwieldy as I expected it to.

Lots of gentle stretching exercises on the floor seem to help me when mine flares up. I’ve also found that accepting that my lower back now has limits as to what I can expect it to do helps.

I’m with direct line and its actually cheaper to insure my van through them than my car. However, I do have a car on a Direct Line policy as well which helped keep my costs down.

Over a £1000 to insure a van? What are you doing with it, transporting nuclear waste? Mine is full of all manner of toxic chemicals and it costs less than a quarter of that to insure it.

Many many years ago when I was straight out of university and looking for a job I managed to get through to the second interview stage for a sales job. The person who had interviewed me at the preliminary stage seemed a decent enough sort and the company seemed a good place to work. In the second interview I was interviewed by the guy who would have been my line manager. He was clearly a pillock and impressed by his own opinions. When he found out I went to university in Cambridge he said “Oh yeah, Cambridge, full of tossers on bikes. So tell me what sort of sports are you into?”

My response was simply “I’m a keen cyclist”. The look on his face was priceless and I may as well have called the interview to a close at that point. So glad I didn’t get the job. Many interviewers forget it is a two way process and quite often we’re sussing them out as well.

Cbike, the hole that the sink drains out of is pretty small. -check out the rate that the sink drains at, not very quick.
An airliner is by no means airtight, and there are valves which control the outflow to maintain some circulation; as long as the amount of air coming in isn’t less than that going out there’s no problem.

All of the waste water on an airliner is stored in a tank which is emptied out by a bowser lorry when it lands. Nothing should be getting vented whilst the plane is on the tarmac on in the air. I know this because I once cleaned plans at Stansted Airport for a summer job.

After cleaning planes for a summer job I can tell you that people peeing in the sinks is the least of the disgusting behaviour that goes on in a commercial airliner.

I know some people who choose to be self employed because of their depression, as it is very difficult to deal with in a full time, office based job, unless you have a really understanding employer. Being self employed (in some areas at least) people can take the time off to recover without HR breathing down their necks.

I think the problem I have is that I now can’t get away from bloody work since I’ve gone self employed. I don’t seem to have any down time anymore and I’ve come to realise that being able to get away from everything in the evenings and weekends and being able to step away from all work responsibility is one thing that keeps me sane. I enjoy many aspects of what I do but my work life balance is now too work orientated and because what I do is very labour intensive things are unlikely to change any time soon. I suspect being a lone worker also has a part to play, trundling round in a van all day can be very isolating.

I’ve suffered from bouts of depression over the last 10 or so years. A lot of things in that article really hit home.

Being self employed means that depression can really screw up my motivation which then has a significant affect on my productivity and earnings and this only makes the situation worse. Periods of depression completely knacker my ability to be a productive and focused person. I’m actually considering going back to working for an employer in order to bring some stability back into some areas of my life. I think stability is key for me when it comes to dealing with the black dog.

My lunch was a bag of crisps eaten at the wheel of my van whilst stuck in traffic between appointments :(
(Morrisons own brand salt and vinegar if you were wondering)

Didn’t even have any water to wash them down with as I had to use the last of it to mix a small amount of quick setting cement to fill a rat hole.

Yep, I’m living the dream.

Dead rat. Its a smell that shows that I’m doing my job properly.

As a pest controller I would say it is too early in the year to be wasps and is most likely a honey bee colony getting ready for the coming summer.

It is always best to leave bees alone if possible but they aren’t a protected species and can be dealt with if you think they will end up posing a problem. Do you for example want a large colony producing honey within the structure of your home? Personally I wouldn’t but if they are out of the way and you are happy to live with them that is the best policy.

Like many of the other posters redundancy was a key factor in me starting up my own business.

I did a fair bit of planning and financial planning but once a business goes ‘live’ the main focus becomes keeping it alive.

It isn’t always easy; I ride my bike less than I would like and haven’t had any proper time off since 2014 but working to standards I set gives my customers, and me, a great deal of satisfaction in a job well done.

If you are going to work for yourself be prepared to work stupidly long hours as there is no safety net and you have to take on responsibility for everything. It isn’t unusual for me to work a 14 hr day and then have to spend several hours in the evening sorting out paperwork.

Tangling any electrical flex I touch into an impossible to undo mess of knots. Even when I take time to carefully store them or wrap them around a spindle they end up the same. I could could win medals if it was a sport in the Olympics.

My wallet is devoid of cash which is par for the course since I went self employed. A lot of my customers tend to pay by cheque or by direct bank transfer so I very rarely see any cash these days.

About £3.25 in change in my pockets.

All species of bird are legally protected in the UK. However, certain generic licenses apply which allow you to trap and dispatch, or shoot particular species such as crows is certain conditions apply. I think you need to prove that they are causing damage to crops, forestry plantations or are posing a direct threat to human health.

Crows are cool. Leave them alone. Shoot Pigeons, they’re nothing but pests with wings.

I share a driveway with two other houses; its a narrow lane that then branches off into separate parking spots outside each house. Never really have any problems these days but when one of the houses had a lot of lodgers living there I’d occasionally come back to find that apparently fit surfer dude types couldn’t be bothered to park down the road and walk 20m to their mates house but instead had to park right outside. This would stop me from getting to my own driveway (and my neighbours would also be affected). I just used to park behind them and go indoors. Cue a sheepish knock on the door when they wanted to leave which I would always ignore for at least 10 minutes before answering. They soon learned not to do it.

I’ll be voting for out, mainly because I feel the EU has mutated into something very different from the institution that the UK voted to join all those years ago. Plus any organisation that is so resistant to change or the renegotiation of terms as the EU appears to be is one that is not worth being a part of.

Besides, change isn’t always a bad thing and I don’t see why unshackling ourselves from a declining economic arena would be a bad thing. Western Europe is no longer the economic and industrial powerhouse it used to be, neither is America for that matter. We should be exploring more innovative ways to make money with partners in India, South America and Asia.

My employer can fire me for wearing odd colored socks.

I regularly stagger about the place in odd socks. Thankfully I am my employer and couldn’t give a toss. Don’t think I’d get on well working in the USA though.

I reckon he hasn’t kids like you, different world.

One of my customers said that it must be great working for myself as I can choose when I work. I could only reply that yes it was, if I was happy choosing when I could afford to eat and pay the bills.

I was forced into escaping the rat race a couple of years ago due to redundancy although by the time the axe fell I was pretty sick of it all anyway. Being my own boss is satisfying and it is nice to step off the treadmill of career advancement; it allows you to focus on doing a good job and trying to get real satisfaction from your work, not just trying to hit somebody elses targets all the time.

Living a simpler life quite often means earning less money(although not always). If you are happy to do so and just get by then go for it. However,the grass is always greener and all that…

I’ve been finding long walks more satisfying than cycling in the last few weeks. I work outside a lot and the thought of covering my bike and myself in filth on a long cold ride after a week working out of a muddy van doesn’t exactly fill me with happy thoughts. I felt like I was acting out some form of penance on Saturday when I went out for a ride. I wouldn’t consider myself a fair weather rider by any means but after weeks of soggy, claggy weather I’m more in the mood for a decent walk. Plus I don’t have to spend hours in a cold draughty garage cleaning my bike afterwards.

Can’t comment on the disc brakes but I’ve not owned a ‘proper’ road bike for a few years now. I find my Surly Cross Check and faithful old Uncle John are both fast and robust enough to handle the sort of road riding I do. I run them both on 28mm road tyres and don’t find that it affects the level of performance, plus on the rougher sections of road its easier to keep the speed up.

Having said all that the newer generation of disc equipped road bikes are being designed with wider tyres and rims in mind.

My advice is to go to an auction and buy a lower mileage van. A £2k van on a dealers forecourt probably only have cost them half that at auction and it won’t be in any better condition than a van bought at auction. I worked out of the back of my car for the first six months after going self employed. £1650 at auction was enough for a 2008 Peugeot Partner with 102,000 miles on the clock once I had the money. I would have had to pay at least twice that for a similar vehicle from a dealer.

If you work with £2300 as your maximum spend (including VAT and auction fees) you could end up with something quite smart. I know someone who picked up a 2006 connect with 65k on the clock for about £2500 at auction about a year and a half ago.

Ultimately a van is a tool for a small business and going to an auction should let you get the best return for your investment.

I think the basic problem is that we are just not meant to work in offices. for many years I worked in offices for other people and I was never happy. Admittedly redundancy forced my hand a couple of years ago but going self employed has reduced my stress levels enormously. True, I can barely afford to scratch my own backside these days but the fact that every day is different and I’m in charge (sort of) has helped massively. Sounds like the OP needs to make a few decisions about what sort of thing will make them happy. Being in a well paid job but working yourself into a breakdown is not a good place to be.

I’ve got a 12 1/2 year old Blue Roan and as many have said above they generally have a great temperament and mine is very sociable; he has been known to walk up to total strangers and just stand there quietly expecting them to fuss over him in a strangely passive aggressive manner. It always seems to work :-)

If you are going for a pedigree it is wise to read up on some of the potential health problems that cockers can suffer from. Mine has sadly had a number of the major things like dry eye and two different sorts of cancer.

We’ve always had spaniels and have found them to be fun and inquisitive dogs although they can be incredibly stubborn. Mine has occasionally feigned a limp when he has had enough of going for a walk. Thankfully he isn’t bright enough to realise he has to keep limping with the same leg for it to be convincing.

The only thing played on my vans stereo today was Motorhead. Not sure what my customers thought of it but in the spirit of the great man; ‘***k em’.

Sweeping down a familiar valley road in the dark with the headlights on full and Bomber blaring out at speaker smashing volume was epic at the end of a long day but also slightly sad knowing that Lemmy will grind out those riffs no more.

My dad has decided to give the dog a hide boot full of brightly coloured dog chews for Christmas. I’m expecting something similar to the OPs picture on Boxing Day except multicoloured and coming out the other end…

I’m busy with appointments up until about 2pm on Wednesday at the moment but that could all change. Its a normal busy week for me until Friday but being self employed I’m rather pleased about that. I’m not the most Christmassy of people so I’d rather be busy in the lead up to the big day and may well work on Boxing day if I get a call out.

Its amazing how fast dogs recover from surgery. Losing an eye isn’t such a big deal as it would be for a human.

My dog lost a toe to melanoma a couple of years ago, in fact he has endured cancer twice, has arthritis, dry eye and knackered teeth. At 12 1/2 years old I’m well aware that time is not on his side yet this morning he was chasing around on the beach after a puppy and playing with any dog that came near him. As long as a dog is happy and loved I reckon they can cope with most things.

Considering what he has suffered the bloke they were helping seemed quite a remarkable person to have achieved so much in his recovery. Quite amazing.

A hammer.

Works on rats so I reckon it will work on most other stuff. Guns are for lightweights.

Moderately nefarious which is a bit of a surprise given that I kill things for a living. I must be acting too nicely towards my customers…

A house, sort of.

Pfft. Try changing the passenger side headlamp bulb on a Peugeot Partner van. Some numpty has put the damn fuse box in the way and I now have no skin on my knuckles. Plus my neighbours have discovered just how much I’m prepared to swear when angry.

As said above, two sets of pliers should sort it.

I find a dead rat in a bag in full view of the windows at the back of my van is a great deterrent for people wanting to get in and nick stuff. You do have to get used to the smell however, and work in pest control, for this tactic to work.

For balance, I’m a sparky and I’m almost OCD like in my timekeeping and attendance!
Poor timekeeping from anyone in any job above the age of 16 is just rude and ignorant!

^ This. I’m self employed and if I can’t be bothered to turn up on time it doesn’t say much about my attitude towards my career. If I’m going to be late I always phone ahead and let my customers know.

I just charge everybody the same no matter who they are.

^ And this. I treat all of my customers with the same level of respect and don’t try to rip off the ones who clearly have a few quid. I find the wealthier customers who think I’m good for value money always end up either making referrals or asking me back for more work. In fact most of my recent work has come from referrals.

The way I see it is I’m self employed because I genuinely enjoy what I do so I’m more than happy to put in the effort for my customers.

Of course things don’t always go to plan; I ended up with a scratched eye at a customers this evening (managed to get some grit in it) whilst carrying out a survey and then had to spend a very painful hour completing the survey, setting out traps and bait points and dispensing advice. I couldn’t see straight, had tears streaming down one cheek and was in total agony. The customer was either impressed by my commitment or thought I was total nutter!

Wow, this is the 6th story of mice (including us!) i’ve heard in the last week or so!! Ours are cunning little things and have managed to swerve traps and poisons so far…better get the big guns out….>Environmental Health!

Big Dave, any tips??

Sorry Ferris Bueller, been busy dealing with, well rats and mice mostly in the last couple of days.

I would advise persevering with the traps and maybe changing what you are baiting them with; peanut butter, chocolate spread, butterscotch. Try anything rich in energy and slightly oily. There are some special mouse attractants available as well.

One thing to consider is that mice are foragers and tend to eat from multiple food sources on one run. You need to use multiple bait points/ traps spaced no more than 2 metres apart to exploit their way of feeding. Also buy decent quality traps. Victor Traps[/url] are very good and I’d recommend their Power Kill model. I use similar traps and they work every time.

Its also important to try finding where they are getting in. If it isn’t immediately obvious (it often isn’t with mice) try sprinkling something like powdered paint (or any other coloured powder that they are unlikely to want to eat) on the surfaces where you are finding droppings. As a professional pest controller I can get hold of specialist fluorescent tracking powder but the paint is probably your next best option. A UV black light torch may also help to highlight their trail of urine splashes.

What sort of poison are you using? Mice are particularly fond of canary seed based bait if you can find any. If you get really stuck you could always contact a pro if your council won’t provide a service (not all do these days). Try and use somebody local to you and ask to see their BASIS PROMPT card. It isn’t essential to have one (yet) but will show that they take their job seriously. For a local pest controller I would reckon that you shouldn’t pay more than £80 – £100 for a decent multiple visit service. You may also get some simple proofing work included with the price. A pro will have all the necessary toys to deal with the situation.

Humane mouse trap baited with bacon/peanut butter (triptrap?) and then drown them

No, no and no again. Its inhumane and actually illegal to drown rodents as a means of dispatching them. Yes I may kill things for a living but I try to pay them some respect. I have sometimes come across a few customers who have tried using their own live capture humane traps and have forgotten to check them on a daily basis which rather makes the whole process less than humane as the mice starve and dehydrate to death. Yes I do tell these people off.

Had one since 2010. I keep meaning to break it up and use the parts to build another bike but for some reason never quite get around to it. Its heavy, tough as old boots and rather low tech (mine is the old model that could still take V brakes). Its also not the prettiest of bikes but it does the job I ask of it well and just keeps on rolling. Its currently built up as a sort of heavy duty hybrid, gravel riding ugly as sin winter road bike (yes really).

When I do finally get around to stripping it down I know that I’ll only rebuild the damn thing as something else; its just one of those frames.

Sounds like the OP needs to get a professional pest controller in from what you has been said about the extent and severity of the infestation. Flea collars, aerosol sprays and fogging bombs will only help with early stage infestations. If you get a pro in they will be able to treat all of the affected areas with a residual insecticide (one that keeps killing fleas for at least a couple of weeks). It sounds like the fleas have been able to become well established and you need a long lasting treatment to break the life cycle.

In some places fleas have become resistant to frontline.

The active ingredient in Frontline has started to lose favour in the pest control world against fleas and the concentration levels in over the counter stuff is also very low.

My advice is ring around until you find a local pest controller who is willing to carry out a surface spray treatment backed up with a fogging (or better still a ULV) treatment. I’ve found that use of an aggressive residual insecticide concentrate backed up with a fogging machine being used in all of the affected rooms usually sorts out the problem with one treatment. It may not work out to be cheap but you could be flea free in a couple of days. I use this approach and very very rarely get call backs. Any treatment you have carried out will need to be for the whole house.