Congrats to Denise Van Outen

Our most famous Essex girl, from Basildon has got engaged to that Southend bloke who sings in Joseph – Lee Mead.

That’s terrific news, and I wish the two of them lots of love and joy, and prays she makes it to the alter this time Lets hope she doesn’t do a ‘Jodie’ on us and get married in a night club (but you have to admit Jodie Marsh did have a nice dress and looked stunning) Picture c/o OK Magazine.

Lee apparently propsoed on a Carribean holiday. He seems very romantic.

They now live in Kent, well you cannot have your cake and eat it as they say, . Never mind.  I think they will move back when they see Billericay is good enough for Cameron Diaz…

Sarah

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The big event in Essex – did you miss it?

Well, here are some of the pics. Of course, you can always sign up to the next Business Scene events (opens in a new window).

96 attendees from across Essex came to attend the event sponsored by Arrow Light Haulage, BT Tradespace and hosted by the superb Regus meeting rooms in Brentwood.  Over £200 was raised for Ingatestone based charity, Hope and Aid Direct. Charles Storer, is an inspiration. He regularly packs up his 7.5 tonne lorry and drives donated goods and aid to children in the Balkans.

Anyway, the pics…

Me, Robert Brett, and Charles Storer

Charles in the middle with the fabulous Regus ladies who sold the tickets and helped organise this superb event.

The packed out seminar room – standing room only to listen to networking expert Andy Lopata.

Exhibitor, UK vending. Chris Henton made me a cup of steaming hot raspberry flavoured tea. It was delicious and healthy too. I was pleasantly surprised that vending had progressed from powdered cups to fruity teas, coffees and other ‘designer’ drinks.

The event feedback has been overwhelmingly positive.  The biggest cheer of the night came for Amy Cutbill from Bt Tradespace. BT Tradespace sponsored the drinks and when this was mentioned a cheer erupted in the room, well done Amy, they way to an Essex Networkers heart is through their glass

I was great to meet so many fellow Tradespacers and I look forward to meeting more at our next event in Stansted. If you are interested in Sponsoring one of our events, then please send me an email.

Warm regards

Sarah

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Late Breaking Essex girl news…

We are to welcome Cameron Diaz into our fold… cannot believe that i have been so immersed in my up coming event, that I missed this….

Cameron Diaz is said to be ready to ditch Beverly Hills in favour of, er.. Billericay.

Image by ivva via Flickr

Rumours have been flying around for a while now that the 36-year-old Hollywood actress and her Essex boyfriend, Paul Sculfor, are eyeing up a £2.2million mansion in the area.

Upminster man Mr Sculfor – a 37-year-old former bricklayer-turned-model – is said to have fallen in love with the home when he was a child.  Source: Metro

Thankfully her bloke is a ex brick layer come model, I may have luck with getting a normal husband for my ‘wag’ yet

Sarah

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Essex girls – get paid to give up smoking

Yes, I know I would have to take it up before I could give it up… but they will pay you a £100 to give up if you are pregnant.

Seriously, could they  spend the money on something better like cute little jackets for pooches…. preferably pink….  Everyone knows having a pet is good for your health but know, they want to get all stupid. The thing is, we may live in Essex but we are not stupid, we know babies are harmed by smoking. I know many mums to be who give up for 9 months and then smoke outside all the time their kids are growing up.

I wish I could put my hand on the scientific piece that said babies were more damaged by a smoking father than a smoking mother at the time of conception…

Any way, the bit from channel 4 news….

North East Essex NHS Trust said it hoped to tempt expectant mothers to kick the habit by offering shopping vouchers in return.

Women will receive £20 after stopping smoking for a week, a further £40 after quitting for a month and another £40 if they give up for year.

The pilot scheme, which offers vouchers which can be used at east of England Co-op stores, is targeted at women in the Harwich and Colchester areas.

Douglas Carswell, Conservative MP for Harwich, said: “There’s not a mum or dad in the country who doesn’t know smoking is very bad for unborn children. The question is, why are we committing to a scheme that provides pocket money for bad behaviour? People shouldn’t be smoking in the first place.”

source; Channel 4 news

Perhaps someone could ask Mr Carswell to signpost us the bit of legislation that say smoking is illegal. At the time of posting it most certainly wasn’t.

I wish they would all bloody well live in the real world -  how are you going to fund the NHS if we all gave up drinking and smoking?

Sarah

PS I do not smoke, but respect the rights of others to do so. I rarely drink but respect the rights of others to do so…

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Holocaust Day – remembering the past

I have read a review of a book called ‘A  lucky child: A memoir of surviving Auschwitz as a young boy’  The boy in question, Thomas Buergenthal, is a real inspiration. He is honest, he says there was a time when he dreamed of gunning down Germans, of taking revenge. He rose above this when he lived among the German people and is now a judge in the Hague. He has had his human rights violated, he wasn’t a criminal when this happened, he was a boy. He now presides over human rights cases.  Thomas Buergenthal is truly inspirational, not everyone can be like him, but they can aspire to be like him. Not to forget the other Oscar Schindler.  It should be made curriculum that teens watch Schindlers List, and research what happened to him after the war.

I read another book review this time about Josef Mengele, and how in Brazil he was supposedly responsible for the high birth rate of twins in the area. I must confess not to finishing the article, it sounded too much like ‘The boys from Brazil‘ where it was not enought to clone Hitler, but also enact the landmarks of his childhood. Hard to believe that film is 30 years old, but it is.

Image by Rickydavid via Flickr

As the WWII vets are dying, who is left to remind us of what went wrong?

I shall light a candle this evening for all those that didn’t survive, that don’t have relatives to remember them, for those that were Jewish, Jehovahs Witnesses, opposition of the political regime,  Gypsies and anything else the Nazis found abhorrent.

I will remember all the other loss of life in the Armenian Holocaust and the one that came under Stalin. I shall pray that one day human beings will lose the will to inflict such misery on another, in the mean time I shall not forget, neither shall my children regardless of what is taught at school, I will teach them to stand up for what is right and remember when people didn’t.

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How to cop out of any responsiblity

Become a politician for the Labour Party, better still become the Prime Minister.

Gordon Brown

I must be the only person who wants him to resign and call an election.

He wanted the top job but doesn’t want the responsibility that comes with it, all the accolades but none of the ‘rewards’ for failure. Well wake up sunshine, you only get rewarded for success.

He courted the greedy people, he encouraged them with further de-regulation and now his washing his hands of the mess. How does that work? seriously if this was real life he would have been fired, oh yes, this is real life – new Labour’s real life.

Image via Wikipedia

Gordon has told us that the years that we did well was down to his financial prudence, the fact the he raided pensions and put them in the toilet as soon as he got into office has been glossed over.

The banks have to be bailed out BUT he cannot force them to lend as they are private institutions…. again not his fault. His peers offer to change the law – not his fault, lets not be hasty lets look at the evidence before we jump to conclusions…. Damien Green was arrested without his knowledge, I can well believe it, after all the last 6 months of recession have happened without him noticing. If this was the CEO of Virgin, he would have been fired.

Did they not stop and think after Northern Rock? no, they were too busy trying to cover up their expenses and protect their John Lewis lists.

Business and enterprise? where is the funding for business to grow? where is the funding for businesses to become greener? Has anyone else noticed the subtle re-branding of Global Warming to Climate Change? Just in case he has got it wrong again…

The man is incompetent, has passed numerous laws eroding what it is to be British, to have privacy and has put an unaffordable price on knowledge in  England, but you can have free uni education in Scotland.

He has to go.

It may not be his fault (it certainly is my opinion, you want the top job – you carry the can if it goes down) but he sure as hell isn’t making it any better, his entire government is founded on spin, hot air and lies – blaming journalists for reporting what he is blindly ignoring is about on par for him.

Gordon you have to fall on your sword, you no longer have the confidence of the country you are selling us down the river to a EU bailout. Which I suspect was the ONLY way you were going to get us in the EU.

Sarah

PS no doubt I will shortly be thrown in prison on trumped up charges and then shot as the prison are overflowing with criminals doing 3-6 months for murder… tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime

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Fibreglass Nail Tips and other tales

Yesterday I have to get my nails done again and it reminded me of the first time I took big J to get hers done. It was a week before my wedding and she was desperate to have her nails done as she wanted her hands to look ‘nice’.

So I took her to the Nail shop in Stanford Le Hope and introduced (like any good Essex girl mother would) to the beginners guide to having your nails done. I explained to her what the options were – Acrylic (thick and ugly looking but cheap, see pic), gel (thinner mid priced and durable) and fibre glass, very thin not suitable for driving in (they always snap on the gear knob). I explained she could have the Essex de rigour white tip sprayed on, or have an American polish  – I felt the American Polish was much better looking. Her eyes glazed over.

Or  she could have the easy maintainable permanent white tips. So big J, always able to make a decision easily said  “I’ll have the same as you mum”. The easy maintainable part sold her I think. So, she had fibre glass nails with permanent white tips.

An hour later she was grinning from ear to ear. She pulls out her phone to text her girl groupies and lo and behold she can’t do it. I will admit to smirking, she had to turn her predictive text off and text in a letter at the time. How many times had she laughed at me for not being able to use this, did I rub it in?…. no… I sat back and grinned from ear to ear.  I was truly appalled at her inability to spell but she did point out to me that when she marries a footballer (over my dead and buried body) she will have no need to spell.

That night she was on My Space telling all her friends and over the next week her cronies all had their nails done too and they all oohed and aaahed over what

Image by Chelsea Alexis. via Flickr

ones to have done next time. The trouble was Big J found them too much of a hindrance and after ten days she chewed them off. Not being able to text or type without making heaps of typos meant more than looking pretty for future footy husband!

I think I may stop her being a wag yet, and it was modern technology that defeated her ambitions

Yay! score one for the Essex mum….

Sarah

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Twitter for Essex girls (and guys too, if they insist)

Heard all about Twitter? Joined up but couldn’t see the point? Hard not to miss it, isn’t it? I took me 6 months to realise power of it.

Image via CrunchBase

The purpose of this blog post is to help you get to grips with twitter and make it work for you. I didn’t learn it all by myself, I was given advice and asked questions and now I have 3,600 tweets under my belt! It really is easy and rather enjoyable too

Twitter is the internet ‘microblogging’ tool (Microblogging, blogging but with much less effort) that you can use your mobile phone  and the  internet to tweet from. It’s been mentioned in The Times and in The Guardian, and even my gran has heard of it even if she doesn’t have a clue what it is or does.

This guide is tailored to us Essex girls and how we may use twitter for our own ends and aims, and yes it plays up to the stereotype (we work it for our own rewards )

What’s the point? is a frequent question asked, you could ask the same of Hair extensions, fake bake and fibre glass nails. My answer is targeted marketing just like the hair extensions, nails and tan get us a suitable bloke Twitter enables us to reach a group of people with similar things in common. Where else can I talk to customers, potential customers and our companies drivers with out leaving my desk? I can tweet a traffic update to our drivers within seconds and it costs us nothing, but they are completely up to date and can avoid potential jams and accident hotspots.

The trouble with Twitter is some people get it and some don’t. Some people instantly see the potential and others need some help.  I would like to take you through some steps which will help you get more from twitter. I am by no means a twitter expert, just someone who has used it and found it beneficial (and yes, I have had customers from it – in fact I turn down more work than I accept!).

So to start, open your twitter account at www.twitter.com, give yourself a name and add a password and email address and you are done. The registration process is fast and easy – 2 minutes max.  I am Essex_courier – what else could I be? You can follow me if you like and use me to practise on while you are finding your feet.

The next step is to find people to follow. To start I suggest you go and find 50 people to follow. Following them is simply clicking the ‘follow’ button on  their profile. There tweets will now appear in your timeline when you hit the home tab.

Back to finding people to follow…You can find them through twitter itself or use a tool such as Tweet Local or Tweet Scan.

Twitter Local will allow you to find and follow people who are local to your location. Type in Essex and see who comes up. Type in your local town and see who from there is tweeting.

Tweet Scan will allow you to search for people with similar interests, same industry or any other reason that you may choose to follow someone.  Go and try ‘Fake tan’ ‘Hair Extensions’ or ‘Nail Bars’ and see what comes up.

When you have found 50 people to follow, look at their conversations and reply to some by hitting the arrow key in their response box.  The @ symbol and their name will appear in the top box, you can type your reply and click update, and you have tweeted! it’s that easy. Some people reply, some don’t so don’t be put off, spend a few more minutes following conversations and then post up what you are doing.

To find your replies, look on the left hand side of the twitter bar and you will see one tab marked ‘@ replies‘ here the listing will be sorted so that only your replies show.

So try this for a week and see how you go.…

You can share with us here if you like, just add a comment.

You will start to find after a while that using the website page to tweet is a bit inconvenient and awkward as you tab between web pages. So I use Twitter Bar and Twitterfox, two applications that become part of Firefox (the browser that I use, I suggest you use it too – it makes life much less hassle). Using these means I can tweet as I work, as I go along.

A lot of people highly recommend the use of TweetDeck, I have not tried it yet but it’s on my ‘to do’ list. It makes the twitter stream more easily managed which is no bad thing, at times it does seem overwhelming!

As you go along, you can tweet pages from the web that interest you (Twit That is a handy tool to do this), your thoughts on a news story or a problem that you are looking to resolve and see what comes back. Conversations will start to flow and you will be tweeting like a professional!

Good luck

Sarah

PS at some point you will want to make things easier for yourself and automatically tweet your articles from here, your blog and other places of interest. Twitterfeed will help you do that, but how to use that? that’s a whole new article in itself

Articles you may want to read – By Nikki Pilkington, the internet marketing expert.

• Twitter is easier with TweetDeck
• 10 ways to make your twitter life better

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Pounding the streets again…

I have been very busy the last few days with organising things for my business networking event in Brentwood.

I have finally chosen a charity for the event, it’s Hope and Aid direct, they are based in Ingatestone and send blankets etc to the Balkans. Hmm, you may be thinking, it’s not benefiting local people… that is not strictly true, a few businesses support Hope and Aid Direct and they do a valuable job in providing resources to people who may be forgotten. In Essex we like the under dog So, if you have blankets that you no longer need or use (kids moved from home or in my case, kids grew out of their baby blankets) then Hope and Aid direct can help save lives in the Balkans, and help keep children warm in the bitter european winters.

I now need to organise the raffle for the charity and that has got me planning on pounding the pavements of Brentwood tomorrow afternoon.

I cheated a bit I suppose, I told Kev he had to donate a bottle of Champagne as a prize and Regus, our venue hosts have donated a gold card worth £200. It seems that pounding the streets and asking local businesses to support a locally based charity is my next option I shall let you know how I get on.

Sarah

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An Honorary Essex Girl!

When I was planning my wedding I got some invaluable advice from the author Suzan St Maur, and her book ‘How to get married in Green’. It was a great book, full of superb advice and the wedding was as green as could be aside from the dress… even the bridesmaids were green.

Well, Suze should become an honorary Essex girl, after reading her very funny blog The Suze Report where she doesn’t mince her words, and shares her advice for future Somali pirates…

How to be a successful pirate Part 964

Readers of this item on the BBC News website will be alarmed to see how the normally strident Somalian pirates are letting the standards slip.

For their information I am including some rules which should help them avoid such unfortunate outcomes in future, i.e.:

1. When seizing a supertanker, ensure that your inbound vessel is somewhat more substantial than a rowing boat with an outboard engine so that a) it won’t be trashed by the larger vessel’s wake and b) it won’t sink when your stash of Monopoly money weighs it down.

2. When collecting the ransom from your punters, try to ensure you arrange it when weather conditions are not too blowy. Should wind be an issue at this time it can cause helicopters to dump the mazuma irretrievably far from your sad little boat and ensure it ends up feeding the plankton. Even worse, should the cash be ineffectively packed, the wind could carry it far away and that would certainly make it uneconomic to retrieve.

You can read the full article on  her blog here.

Feel free to leave her a comment or two and Suze, welcome to Essex… your guide to being an Essex girl will be emailed to you

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