“What’s the outcome that you want?” my best friend cautions whenever I think about making a complaint about anything, “And do you stand any chance of getting it?”

Virgin Media really annoyed me recently. I won’t bore my readers with the ins and outs of it, but our broadband stopped working and Virgin’s technical department offered us a whole variety of possible explanations but no solution. Engineers were scheduled to turn up but never materialized. We had the distinct impression that they were lying to us or at the very least fobbing us off. We cancelled our service and moved elsewhere, losing around £100 in total – paying for new business cards to be printed with our new phone number on and paying for both BT and Virgin for a month during the notice period.

I’d love to see Virgin Media go out of business. Just google Virgin Media complaints and you’ll see I’m not the only one who’s had problems – I don’t think companies with such a poor record of customer service deserve to continue making money. But they do and there’s probably very little one small person like me can do about that. I’ve written my moaning letter to Ofcom but looking back, that was a total waste of time. What outcome did I really expect? A letter back agreeing they would fine Virgin Media so much money for failing to fix my broadband that the company would be forced to go under. It was never going to happen.

Perhaps it’s a lesson in doing the things I can do that will make a difference – my Help100 project for example or signing a petition about local parking service – and let go of my angst about the things that I’m powerless to change.

But then, I can’t help wondering, wouldn’t the world be an even worse place if we all felt powerless to change things…?

In my last post, I talked about Laura Vanderkam’s book All the money in the world and the need to be a little more conscious of how we spend our money. Mark’s comment about the living room made me think that I should also be a little more mindful about how I spend my time and not just my time when I’m in the living room. Wherever I am – in the car on the way to work, in the shower in the morning, in bed at night – the moments I spend are moments that I’ll never get back.

I remember a poem by the Spanish poet Antonio Machado that I studied at university. I can’t remember the actual words but the sentiment was that the moments of our life are a bit like water drops flowing from a bucket: the drops of water fall on the ground and seep away and are gone. We can’t get them back any more than we can get every moment of lost time back.

Which brings me back to mindfulness: a concept I’ve blogged about before. I’ve been on a mindfulness retreat and read books on mindfulness. But that’s not enough. Every day I need to ask myself, “Am I really living mindfully?” Every moment I need to ask myself, “Is this really how I want to spend this moment?” And every time I sit on the sofa in the living room, I need to remind myself, “Am I really living the way I want to live?”

Weddings – especially budget ones – are close to my heart. With the exception of the rings and my dress, I made pretty much everything for my wedding and I even did the catering. This wasn’t really out of a need to save money – it was simply more fun. But it did save us quite a lot of money and I even wrote a book called Easy Wedding Planner about the whole experience. Unfortunately we didn’t do as Laura suggested: we didn’t put the money we’d saved on our wedding into good use keeping our relationship alive – hence the divorce several years later.

Laura suggests that the average amount spent on a lavish reception venue could pay for a house-cleaning service twice a month for the entire five years that most two-children families spent in the “sticky” stage, when children spill a lot of things. And the money spent on flowers at a wedding could instead buy nearly 200 bouquets – a “once-a-month gesture of love for a solid 16.5 years.”

Laura isn’t suggesting that people give up their big weddings and have a cheap wedding instead – simply that people are a bit more conscious of how they spend their money and whether there might be a better way of spending it. Getting a regular date night with your husband and flowers once a month is far more likely to make the relationship last than having a big diamond on your finger and an impressive bunch of lilies in your hand as you walk up the aisle.

I think it’s unlikely I’ll ever plan another wedding but I found the whole chapter fascinating (actually, I found the whole book fascinating but more of that in another post!)

What if I applied Laura’s logic to other areas of my life?

Spending several hundreds on a big holiday? Will that give me as much pleasure as making several short trips to visit friends I hardly ever see in different parts of the country?

Spending a small fortune on a new item of clothing? Would spending the same amount on books off my Amazon wish list not bring me more happiness?

Spending loads at Christmas on big presents for my friends and family? Would buying smaller surprise gifts at other times of the year not be a more effective way of spreading joy?

Spending £15 buying Laura’s book was, at any rate, money well spent.

One of the objects in my life is currently sitting on our lounge floor, having been recently recovered after over two decades in my parents’ neighbour’s loft: my old violin. A beautiful 19^th century German violin which I failed to do justice to in my Grade 3 violin exam and subsequently gave up playing.

Other musical instruments were important to me too and should my life ever be exposed in a museum (unlikely as I have no desire to be famous), I’d expect that my flute and piccolo would be in a prime position. I loved them both. It was such a treat when my parents bought me a flute with a solid silver head and I somehow passed my Grade 8.

I’d like to think that I’m not particularly materialistic but there are objects that mean a lot to me and that make my life more meaningful: my journal which I try to write daily and my favourite ink gel pens which I always use; the Macbook Pro which I use to edit video and my video camera and digital SLR; and my books. I love my books. I couldn’t pick a favourite.

There are other objects that make life more comfortable: my favourites would be my enormous mug which is more like a bucket and is great for early morning cuppas and my electric blanket, essential for enjoying bedtime as a single woman living in Yorkshire – it gets cold! My big sofa too – discovered in the John Lewis sale in 1999 reduced from £2700 to just £800! I love it. And my leather bed – essential as it makes sitting up in bed to read so comfy without the need for 18 pillows.

I love my phone too. I love getting texts, tweets and emails and thereby feeling a sense of  connection to other people. I love my Maeve Binchy audiobooks which make driving long distances on my own really enjoyable and I love my quirky little French car with its removable roof, its amazingly good fuel consumption and its funny little idiosyncrasies.

If 100 objects could tell the story of your life, what would they be?

This woman and her family are going through an unimaginable hell. As a Christian, I want to pray for them. Pray for the woman to recover. Pray for her family to have strength in this difficult time. But, as I prayed for them, I realised that I should also be praying for the attacker.

I have little sympathy for someone who has done something so awful. He (I’m assuming it’s a man) hasn’t just hurt an old woman. He hasn’t just devastated her family. No doubt thousands of older people, living alone, watched the news that night and didn’t sleep so soundly in their beds. They went to bed scared. No doubt thousands of grown-up children became frightened for their own elderly parents and wondered how to protect them. So many people affected, afraid in the face of such senseless violence.

I would advocate tougher sentences for people who commit such atrocities, yet I know I also should be praying for the attacker. No-one with a happy, contented and purpose-filled life would go out and do something like this. What emptiness or anger leads someone to commit this kind of act?

Someone might say that those who commit such violence are victims too. Victims of their genes, their upbringing, their education – or lack of it. However, I think that we are all responsible for our own actions, for choosing the way we behave. We should all behave responsibly and compassionately no matter what life throws our way. But then it’s very easy for me to say that because life threw a very lovely upbringing and a fantastic education in my direction.

Whilst I’d never condone violent behaviour under any circumstances, unless we try to understand why these things happen, I believe they always will. So that’s why, hard though it may be, I’ll be praying for that old lady in her hospital bed and the person whose violent actions put her there.

“You make things,” he said, “Tangible things that people use and enjoy.”

“You save lives,” I pointed out. This was ironic. My decision not to study medicine at university after doing the A levels for it is one of the biggest regrets of my life.

“I put off the inevitable,” he said. “I make people live a bit longer, but inevitably we’re all going to die!”

A rather gloomy thought. But whilst I am still alive, I am going to make the most of being alive and one of the things that undoubtedly brings me most pleasure is making things. I love making things. And I love making things in all sorts of different ways.

I’ve recently returned to the BBC to make three more programmes and I am feverishly excited about them. But work isn’t the only way in which I make things.

This blog is one of my creations. There’s my books, Easy Wedding Planner, Freedom from Loneliness and the now out of print Music!. Books going out of print isn’t the only reason my creations don’t last too long. I love making loaves of bread and decorated cupcakes but they disappear very quickly from our cupboards.

Recently my creations have involved Vistaprint: T-shirts with the Help100 logo on them for a friend and me to wear when we’re running a 10K in the summer; postcards advertising my Freedom from Loneliness book; fridge magnets– one with an inspirational Bible verse on as a gift for friends and another with the Inspired! logo on; and a mug with Inspired! on with its little owls that I am too frightened to use as I don’t want to break it.

Not all my creations have involved Vistaprint though. I made a big picture of puffins on a cliff done with inkgel pens over several months. I created a film for Youtube advertising Freedom from Loneliness.

Some of my creations have been small and simple. A birthday card for a friend that is more personal than a bought one because the picture will remind her of a conversation with had recently. Even a meal made from scratch rather than out of a packet or an entry in my diary is an act of creation and brings me pleasure. There’s nothing quite like that feeling of saying, “I made that!”

Doing the catering for your own wedding is, as I discovered, stressful. But it was also a lot of fun. I cheated for some things, ordering in from Waitrose. Friends helped. My friend Elaine poached and dressed three whole salmon. And as for those vegetarian quiches: I was up making those myself at 4 a.m. on the morning of the wedding!

Honestly, even with the 4 a.m. start, it was good fun. Though I’m not sure I’ll be up for doing my own catering if I ever make it to wedding no. 2!

From doing things myself – well, having a go at any rate – I’ve learnt loads of new skills. I designed my own website when I set up a business rather than hiring in a professional. I’ve learnt to put up wallpaper. I can lay laminate flooring. I’ve constructed bookshelves (though admittedly they were a bit wonky!) and I’ve plumbed in a kitchen sink and no, it didn’t leak. I’ve tiled bathrooms. Dug gardens. Designed publicity materials. Created a book cover. Made a bridesmaid’s dress. And moved house twice without the aid of removal men.

I wish I’d kept a record of how much all this DIY had saved me over the years. But at the end of the day, it isn’t about the money. In the words of John-Paul Flintoff, it’s about “the powerful feeling of responsibility and capability that I’d never have felt if I got in the experts.” And it’s also a lot of fun!

How I Lived a Year on Just a Pound a Day is the story of how Kath Kelly spent a year with just £1 as her disposable income. It doesn’t include the cost of rent, gas bills or council tax, but it does include her food, clothes, transport and entertainment. She even manages to have a holiday on her tiny budget.

In The Moneyless Man, Mark Boyle goes one step further and lives without any money at all! He moves to a caravan, grows his own food and forages, cycles everywhere and even manages to help other people. It’s inspiring! I especially love his description at the beginning of how money came into existance in the first place!

In For Tibet, with Love: A Beginner’s Guide to Changing the World author Isabel Losada sets off to explore whether it’s possible for an ordinary person to change the world. It’s a lovely story and she even gets to meet the Dalai Lama. I also liked her book Men! about her quest to find a man. That one felt very familiar!

Through the Eye of a Needle is my latest discovery. John-Paul Flintoff’s quest to find a purpose in life leads him to making his own clothes. He visits upmarket tailors and sweat shops along the way. It’s funny and well-written but also very informative. I’ve not quite been inspired enough to get the sewing machine out but I did have a sneaky look at some dress patterns in John Lewis!

In The Happiness Project, author Gretchen Rubin spends a year trying to make her life (which sounded pretty nice at the start, it has to be said!) even happier. Again, it’s very informative as she has done loads of research into happiness, but it’s also an entertaining read. So entertaining, in fact, that the day it arrived from Amazon, I started reading it in the morning, and read it from cover to cover, doing nothing else all day till I’d finished it that night.

The 100 Thing Challenge: How I Got Rid of Almost Everything, Remade My Life, and Regained My Soul tells the story of Dave Bruno’s quest to take minimalism to the extreme: he cut his possessions down to just 100 things.

Having been on 3 silent retreats, I loved A Book of Silence. Author Sara Maitland tells of her experiments with silence: Zen meditation, a flotation tank, a week in the Sinai Desert and her six-week retreat on the Isle of Skye. She then relates the story of her subsequent move to live alone in silence on a more permanent basis, first on the Durham Moors and then in south-west Scotland.

As someone who still hasn’t found the right man at the ripe old age of 43, I loved Lonely Planet writer Jennifer Cox’s story of traveling Around the World in 80 Dates. Her dates sound a lot more interesting than most of mine have been and she tells her story with humour and honesty. And yes, it does have a happy ending. Well worth reading.

When I was setting up my business and needed inspiration, I found it in Anyone Can Do it: Building Coffee Republic from Our Kitchen Table by Sahar Hashemi and Bobby Hashemi. Anyone Can Do It is also the title of Dragon’s Den entrepreneur Duncan Bannantyne, another book that gave me encouragement in those early days of running my own business.

Danny Wallace has written three books about his real-life exploits and adventures: Yes Man in which he simply says yes to everything and Join Me: The True Story of a Man who started a Cult by Accident in which he – and his followers – perform random acts of kindness on Fridays.

The Year of Living Biblically is described as “One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible”.  In a quest to discover the relevance of faith in our modern world, Author AJ Jacobsdecides to attempt to obey the hundreds of rules in the Bible, including the obscure ones. This book manages to be funny but profound at the same time.

I also loved The Exmoor Files: How I Lost A Husband And Nearly Found Rural Bliss – Liz Jones’ story of moving from Islington to the middle of the countryside; Mennonite in a Little Black Dress: A Memoir of Going Home by Rhoda Janzen; Andrew Krivak’s story of becoming a Jesuit monk, A Long Retreat; and finally Swahili For The Broken-Hearted, Peter Moore story of his overland journey from Cape to Cairo, which appropriately enough, I read whilst in Africa.

Till the very end. None of the gym companies had liked the 80s style workout video as the basis of an exercise class for adults, but one company spotted its potential as a class for children and was willing to pay a hefty sum for the privilege of running the classes. As a result, the team that had made the 80s porn-style fitness video won. The team that had produced a much better video and concept (in my humble opinion) and who’d worked much better as a team lost. It seemed unfair but then….

LIFE IS NOT A MERITOCRACY.

At school, I worked hard and was successful as a result. If I worked hard, I got praised by the teachers, I got good school reports and good exam results.

But, I discovered when I entered the workplace, the outside world doesn’t function in quite the same way. It isn’t always the people who work the hardest or produce the best results who get the extended contracts or the promotions. It isn’t always the best qualified person or the most experienced who is successful in the job interview. Sometimes it’s who you know, who you’ve buttered up or simply the ability to “talk the talk” and sound like you know what you are doing.

I’m not criticizing this. If I were a boss, I would want to surround myself with a team of people who could not only do the job but were lovely to work alongside. When recruiting staff, there are more factors to take into account than simply ability to perform the job.

I just wish that I’d understood this sooner. That, as a young adult entering the workplace, I’d realised that life is not always fair, it’s not always a meritocracy and I couldn’t expect to simply work hard and get on. I wish I’d realised that developing my skills and broadening my knowledge were not the only things I needed to do: learning to talk with confidence but also to keep quiet even when I know I am right are vitally important. And I wish I’d understood that I could do the job to the best of my ability, be a good team-player and butter the boss up spectacularly but that was still no guarantee of success. Life’s not a meritocracy and that’s just something I need to accept. It makes the disappointments much easier to swallow and the successes much easier to enjoy with humility.

I cheated on accommodation costs by staying with a friend. However, in the past, when that option hasn’t been available, I’ve stayed in the Travelodge, booking well in advance when the rooms were on sale. I’ve paid as little as £9 a night. I usually stay at either the Travelodges in Kew Bridge on the brand new one in Ealing, because I like being in West London (it’s where I used to live) and I find the public transport links from both stations to be pretty good.

Transport was easy – I just used an Oyster card. As long as I start my journeys after 9.30 a.m., the maximum amount I pay in one day should be the cost of a daily Travelcard. I check my Oyster usage carefully online though to make sure: I was once charged over double the amount of the Travelcard and had to request a refund.

When I’m alone, I often restrict my meals to fast food outlets: I like the anonymity. I feel a bit silly in a proper restaurant on my own. But there’s a couple of places where I’m growing increasingly comfortable on my own: the Crypt underneath the Church of St Martin-in-the-Fields serves lovely food, both hot and cold, and is reasonably price, and Friends House, the headquarters of the Quakers and directly opposite Euston Station, has a restaurant serving hot meals at lunchtime and a coffee shop serving drinks and snacks throughout the day.

As for entertainment, I found some bargains. Through the Moneysavingexpert website, I got free tickets for the Ideal Home Exhibition. I went to a couple of other exhitions that were free anyway: the Warhorse exhibition at the National Army Museum, the home exhibition at the Royal Institute of British Architects and a general mooch round the National Gallery. My favourite though was the Gilbert and George exhibition at the White Cube Gallery, near London Bridge station. Finally, I met up with a friend who’s a member of the Tate and she took me to an amazing exhibition by a Japanese artist. Alongside those, I browsed bookshops including the excellent Oxfam bookstore in Bloomsbury, and walked along the Thames.

I even saved money on cloakrooms and ladies toilets. You can leave your luggage for a donation at both the Tate Modern– you don’t have to donate if you don’t want to. The same goes for the V&A, but venture next door to the Natural History Museum, and you pay up to £6 to leave a bag. It’s £1 just to leave an umbrella.

Finally, as I headed for King’s Cross Station to catch the train home. There was just time for one final act of money-saving. Rather than using the loo at King’s Cross, I walked next door to St Pancras and saved 30p. And the toilets at St Pancras are much nicer too!