It’s that time again, it’s Monday morning and what is important to remember is that Mondays can be harder on some than others!

Sometimes what you say as a jokecan gurt other people, especially when they are a little more ‘tetchy’ than normal on a Monday mornings, but the same goes for you – consider what others are saying before you take a comment personally, they may be being nice but in your grumpy bad mood you take it the wrong way!

While sat at the Brewers Fayre another table have been seated near me and they are quite a loud family so I am able to easily over-hear the conversation.

The daughter, who looks about 8 years old, asked what Gammon was, her mum replied “It’s like hot ham and beef mixed together, it comes from the cows leg”

This was then followed by her loudly burping, saying excuse me and then saying “Core, that’s better!”

Oh Dear – just Oh Dear!

I cannot stress how much I love Reeses Pieces, they are like M and Ms but filled with peanut butter – these things are incredible and when in America you can get them for the equivalent of £1 for a huge bag, but then in the UK you can purchase a tiny bag for 87p.

Because of this reason I am unable to get as many Reeses Pieces as I would like so I write this as a request, if you are going to America please, please, please can you get me some Reeses Pieces, yum yum yum!

My handbag is always stupidly heavy and I often wonder why, yet when I look in my handbag I can see why – my handbag has so much in it its truly ridiculous!

I usually have at least ten pens in my handbag – I’m not sure what I will need them for but they are there, I suppose if I ever need to get a petition signed I have plenty of pens available for everyone to sign their names.

I also have an air freshener for my car, I love it when someone gets in my car and they say it smells nice, so I always have a spare air freshener just in case. (A friend’s daughter counted 36 air fresheners in my old car).

I have a hair brush, as always required for that windy day or a bad hair day  and this hair brush always has 3-4 bunches on the handle (just in case I decide to put my hair in four pony tails?!?!?!).

Most girls have make-up in their handbags, but I don’t tend to wear make-up very often so this is not something you will find.

However, as I often run from one job to the next I always have some body spray in my car to quickly freshen up on the run. When I say ‘some’ body spray, I actually have twelve body sprays in my hand bag. I think I keep buying some to make sure I have some in my bag.

The same can be said for lip balms, of which I currently have sixteen in my hand bag, some are tins, some are sticks and some are plastic pots – yet I always seem to pick out the same one or two every time I get some out of my handbag. On top of this I have two lip balms on my desk at work. My lips aren’t even dry!

I also have, and I think this is the most impressive thing in my handbag – I have a small box with 12 cards in it, these include blank cards, birthday cards, get well soon cards and more.

There will often be a time when someone has some bad news at work, I have forgotten someone’s birthday or someone has been off sick and they are struggling back at work – I root around in my bag and choose a card and chose from one of the 30+ pens I have in my bag and there we have a happy work colleague or friend. I cannot even count on one hand the amount of times that I have been saved by these cards!

As well as this, I have eyebrow tweezers (more for splinters than eyebrows but the boys at work borrowed them to get something out of a computer the other day), 3 spare plastic bags (not sure if I will ever need to use these but they are there just in case), LOTS of receipts from times gone by and (randomly) a pack of balloons and sticky tape. Once again this is in case I forget someone’s birthday so I can stick these to their desk or car.

What do you have in your handbag – is it as ridiculously full as mine?

More importantly – do you think I am missing anything from my handbag?

I am often surprised when I speak to people or I start a new job and they tell me that I am so polite, this surprises me as I really do not think I am.

Sometimes I think I can say Thank-You too often, and I will always be that person that says Sorry even when someone has walked into me – but is that really a bad thing?

My sisters daughter is so polite it is wonderful to see and I hope her ‘etiquette’ will never leave her, my sister always ensures that she says please and thank you, she always says sorry and will always say excuse me.

My Grandparents have always been very eloquent and they have always been a major park of mine and my sister’s lives and I think this is why we are both so polite.

Every time someone says I am ‘soo polite’ I take this as personal praise and I thank my Grandparents for helping me to be the polite and eloquent person that I am today.

When I went to watch this film I was looking for an easy watching film with a happy ending that would leave me with a ‘feel good’ feeling and as much as this film had a happy ending, it wasn’t as easy to watch as I hoped.

The film was in a foreign language with English subtitles through most of it (this was not stated in the film description I saw). Basically, a man (Peirce Brosnans’ son) who is English meets a girl from another country (still not sure which country) and this is where the English Subtitles come in to the film.

The families go over to Italy to watch the lovebirds marry but before they go the Mother of the Bride goes home after her last chemo session for breast cancer to find her husband having sex on the sofa with a young blonde.

They decide they have not split up and confirm they will meet it Italy in a few days time with the mother going there first, when her husband arrives he is with the young blonde. The grooms mother died a few years back and her sister is in love with the grooms father.

Sex, Affairs, Men Kissing, Alcohol and some very dodgy dancing result in the Happy Ending you wanted, but not quite as expected!

On Tuesday morning I was driving to work, I was excited to get there as I was in a great mood and had loads planned for the day ahead – plus I needed to pop to Halfords before work as my oil light had come on in the car.

I was driving along the A1M and I heard a loud rattle, I wound down my window in case it was a sound on the radio and I found it was my car. I quickly pulled over to the lay-by / hard shoulder and stopped the car, just as I was putting the brakes on the car went bang and I am told that my engine exploded!

I am a bit of a drama queen and when something goes wrong I go into panic overdrive and cry – a lot. So I called my bank (who I have breakdown cover with) and they put me through to AA. The lady I spoke to was so lovely as I balled down the phone she did her best to understand me. She had to give me the instructions of what I should and shouldn’t do and I cried the whole way through.

The AA Man and Van arrived within 20 minutes (apparently being a female, in a car on your own and on  a major road are three things that guarantee quick service), he turned up and I cried some more. On looking at my car he informed me that the engine had blown up and he would have to tow the car to my garage, however my cover only allowed me towing of 10miles and my garage was 27 miles away so I would have to upgrade my cover.

Pay day was on Thursday and I had NO money in my account, especially not the £110 the man required, I called my Grampy (in tears) to see if I could borrow some money until pay day and the man called his office. By the time I was off the phone the AA Man had called his office and arranged for his charge to be waived so I only had to pay for the upgrade which was around £60.00 – I could not have been more grateful and I don’t think I have ever said Thank You more times than I did in the 30mins I was with the AA Man.

This AA Man AA Staff No. 78870 and I can honestly say he was my knight in shining armour (just a shame he was married or I would have kept him forever!!!)

For what was a very stressful time for me I just want to say a HUGE Thanks to all the staff at AA that helped me, I am very grateful and will not hesitate to recommend you.

Sometimes it is hard to find the ‘silver lining’ to the grey clouds, especaially on Monday when you are wishing it was still the weekend! So try a little harder, if something goes wrong finf the brightness in it – if these old suddy-duddies can find a silver lining in a dead husband you can sure as hell find something good in a Monday!

Working for an SEO Company I am constantly telling customers to get references, reviews, testimonials and feedback from customers, they then send these to me and I post them on all the social media sites they have and I turn them into blog posts too.

But what do I do with mine?

When I get positive feedback on a blog post I thank the writer, when I get a tweet that says well done I thank them writer, re-tweet and favourite the kind words and when I get a review on LinkedIn I add it on to my portfolio on my blog but what about after that?

Lots of businesses choose to have a testimonial page, this is a brilliant idea as it is a page that allows your customers to see the excellent work you do and that you have made customers happy. It shows you are a good company.

The best thing you can do when you get a reference is shout it from the roof top – stick it anywhere and everywhere and remember to thank the writer for the reference.

For ‘Update Your References Week’ why don’t you make sure you have told everyone in the world about the excellent references you have received.

In this article I discuss how your Google Analytics can help you decide what blog posts / topics to write about.

When I am writing for businesses I will often go onto their Google Analytics and I can see the search terms that they are found for, sometimes they will have numerous searches for things like “Where can I go for a drink in Peterborough” – this is something the company may have had 25 searches for but they don’t have anything that talks about it on their site, so then I would write a blog post with this title and talk about this place as a brilliant place to get a drink in Peterborough – as I currently work at The Beehive, that will be the place that I recommend.

However you may find that 64 people have asked where they can get gluten free food (for example) from in Peterborough. Out of these 64 people 63 have bounced straight back off of your site as they cannot see that you offer gluten free food so you can either dedicate a page to this, or just write a blog post that explains you are able to change the meals you have to meet dietary requirements – make sure you use the words Gluten-free food in your post and add this as a keyword and a tag.

Overtime Google will direct people asking that question to your blog post and hopefully the 63 people that originally bounced straight off will see that you help with their dietary requirements and then they will all come to you for their meal.

It is highly recommended that you look at the search terms you are found for and see how you can make these into blog posts.

It is often the case that you are unable to find the time to look through this information and find time to write the articles as well so why not give me a call and I can write the articles for you. I can even look at your search terms too if you want? We can go through them together if you find them confusing.