Apologies to readers who tried to visit the blog over the last couple of weeks and got:

Attacked

My blog was ‘attacked’ and the attacks pushed me up to the maximum CPU seconds quota I’m allowed on my website hosting plan. Once the quota is reached, the website is made unavailable until the following month.

Such an attack on my blog has happened before, only on that occasion, I was able to block the IP/country where the attacks were coming from, so I didn’t end up hitting the CPU limit. Unfortunately, this time, I was on holiday when I was getting numerous messages like “The Web Application Firewall has blocked 101 attacks over the last 10 minutes.”

I had just enough of my CPU quota left to post my belated July update and then that was it for the month.

Have to admit that over the years, I’ve neglected the back-end stuff of my blog, so I guess I should read up/work on whether there’s anything I can do to try to prevent such attacks in the future. Still, apart from the blog being made unavailable for a period of time, at least the firewall did its job and all seems ok.

Anyway, August was a mixed bag of a month – a great holiday followed by post holiday blues/jetlag, celebrating a friend’s 40th birthday with a cocktail-making session and then catching COVID, which, whilst symptoms weren’t as bad as last time, still had me below par for a week. At least no lingering cough this time.

May unexpectedly saw me embarking on another property purchase.

It can only be described as an impulsive buy as I really had not planned on buying but after viewing it online (I was not able to view it in person), I just had to go ahead with the purchase.

Madness? Probably Definitely. Did I mention impulsive?

It’s a detached, 3-bed, new build with no chain, and I didn’t have time to sort out conveyancing.

Given that high mortgage interest rates are showing no signs of dropping, I decided that this had to be a cash purchase.

No refurb or decorating will be required which suits me perfectly, only the odd fixtures and fittings perhaps. I just need to find tenants for it now, hoping for some viewings any time soon.

The yield on this property will be non-existent, with no chance of capital gains either.  However, I didn’t buy this property for financial gain, but to benefit the community.

Yes folks, I am now the owner of an insect hotel, or ‘Air-Bee-n-Bee’! 😀 😀

It’s been located at the other end of the garden, basically as far as it could go as I would rather not live too close to these neighbours, haha!

One of my friends has one and says she has bees (solitary bees) living in hers every year.  No idea if mine is actually attractive to insects, so might have to cope with some ‘void periods’ or resign myself to the fact that I’ve just spent a tenner on a garden ornament!

Yes, I know this seems to contradict last month’s post where I bought a plant to eat insects but I don’t mind insects in the garden, pollinating my plants, just don’t like/want them in my house!

Anyway, May was a pretty good month, with sunny days and lots of bank holidays to provide some much needed R&R as I’ve been providing cover for both my boss and another team member.

The good news at work is that they have rolled out Bupa medical cover, which is great as I know how expensive such cover costs if I had to buy it personally.

The bad news is that my boss has come back from holiday and handed in his notice. I’m sad he’s going as we get on and he leaves me to get on with my work, but I felt none of the devastation I felt when my previous boss announced she was leaving. Oh well, we’ll see what happens there.

In other news, I’ve just paid for my next trip to Hong Kong, the most I’ve ever paid (over £1.5k just for an economy class flight!), which had to all go onto the credit card so I’ll be on a tighter budget for the next month or so.