Mid-week music at The Mermaid

Waiting for my son Hugo to get his film ready to show at the college open evening, I managed to fit in a sketch of the pub across the road from the college. This pub, in St Albans, according to my older kids has a very enjoyable live music evening every Wednesday and if you’re into real ale it's apparently great for that as well. Personally I’m not a great fan of beer but as St Albans is the home of CAMRA (Campaign for Real Ale) I feel any promotion of the stuff and local businesses is good karma for my business.

Oh and talking about good karma I've discovered a great new feel-good activity. At Sainsbury's (my supermarket of choice) they have a scheme at the checkout where they calculate if your shop would have been cheaper at any of the other major supermarkets and then give you a discount voucher for your next shop for the difference. Well do I ever remember to use the voucher? Hell no, it sits at the bottom of my bag with the fluff and stray bits of change and only gets noticed when it's past its use-by date. So now when I get one of these discount vouchers I always pass it on to the shopper behind me. It gets used and they're always pleased so a win-win all round.