Preparing for the worst...

LIKE many folk, I have friends who lost their jobs last week.

These friends have been extremely kind and generous to me over the years and I wish them all the very best.

They are also extremely hardworking, conscientious and clever people and I know that even after what must have been a terrible shock, they won't let it affect them for long. That's why they've got as good as they are.

It just shows that you never know what's around the corner.

We can rattle our newspapers and slump in front of our TVs and read about and watch people losing their life savings and say to the journalist and newscaster: 'That don't affect me, m'lov, I ain't got no savings.'

What we don't think about is the knock-on effect.

I don't think I'm alone in admitting that I've been a bit complacent over the past decade or so. Taking certain things for granted. Overspending a tad. Having my gache and eating it.

But maybe the time has come to embrace a metaphor for not spending as much in future. Something to do with belt-tightening or purse string-drawing.

Here are a few things I'm going to try. It can't hurt.

Make more of free food

A bit late this year, but why isn't my freezer full of blackberries and chestnuts? Complacency again. Blackberries needn't be placed in expensive pastry casing to make pies and served with lashings of custard. Just a bowl of milk and a slight sprinkling of sugar was the favoured dessert when I was a miniature.

Not long ago, come autumn time, the girls and their old man would be rooting around under chestnut trees in Saumarez Park like pigs searching for truffles. It may be laborious, but shelled, washed and scrubbed chestnuts make a better snack than those expensive crisps you get in thick plastic bags. And moreover, they're free.

Also, the whole family, with friends, wouldn't be averse to scouring L'Ancresse Common for mushrooms, either. A couple of those big fellas with a bit of cheese on top and they're better than a steak. And again, they're free.

Memo to self for next year: must try harder. Perhaps I'll even go to church on a Sunday. Not for spiritual enlightenment, but I hear some of them serve water biscuits and Cabernet Sauvignon in the interval. Worth checking out.

Save energy

Make sure all house lights are turned off when not being used. This is especially true of our bedroom lamps. I'm always the last to bed and there are many times I go in and the Gaffer's asleep with an open book and the lamps on.

Then again, this can be a good thing because it means I can see the upturned high heels that she leaves around the bed like mantraps. Nothing hurts quite as much as standing on an upturned heel in the dark – apart from the Gaffer shouting: 'What the beeping beep have you woken me up for, you beep?' when it was all her fault in the first place.

Holidays

Guernsey, Herm, Sark and Alderney (OK, even Jersey) all have hotels and campsites, so a local holiday saves on all those extortionate airport taxes, luggage supplements and travel insurance.

Looking out over the jetty in Herm in summer, framed by palm trees, and you could be in the Bahamas, yet only a short boat ride away from a bag of chips.

Even better, swap houses for a week with friends. They live in Torteval, you live in Castel – both families will have been on holiday where they've never been before. Magic.

Clothes

Why get the latest all-singing, all-dancing, completely washable, non-iron, probably self-hanging-in-your-wardrobe suit from the high street when a couple of doors down, at the charity shop, you can get an all-wool, 1978 John Collier original three-piece at a fraction of the cost.

It might have a collar the size of the Corbet Field and be maroon, but you got more for your money in those days and the world was more colourful.

You can't get away from the fact that second-hand clothing rocks. It's been worn in for you. It's been pre-enjoyed. It tells a story.

Admittedly, my work have still got to get to grips with me coming in dressed in bright-blue-and-yellow Tricorn Building Merchants' overalls, but they will.

Likewise, bedclothes can also be spun out. When I was a bachelor, one set of bedclothes could last a month.

One side of the pillow one week. Turn it over, another week. Turn the pillowcase inside out and repeat the process.

Apply the same process to the continental quilt cover.

It might get a bit itchy but it saves on electricity and washing powder.

Also, as in the house swap, why not operate a clothes swap with friends? This won't work if you're Snow White.

P.S. Don't be tempted to wash your dishes in your bathwater (dishes first, bath afterwards) unless you want to smell – weirdly, even if you've not eaten any – like corn on the cob.

Vices

Forget the pubs and offies, I'm going to start brewing my own ale again. I used to do it 20-odd years ago. It was the type that you bottled up and left for ages.

I found that the lager tasted of nothing, the bitter tasted of lager, the brown ale tasted of bitter and the stout tasted of brown ale.

I did it down in a cellar, but an attic or garden shed would be just as good.

I think a couple of the bottles were left down there when I moved house. I wonder what homebrewed bottled stout from 1986 would taste like now?

By the same token, if you still insist on smoking, use dried dockleaves for tobacco and to save on fag papers, those blank pages at the back of pocket dictionaries and Gideon's bibles work wonders. Use envelope glue to stick them.

Leisure time

I've always said it. We've a beautiful island and I want to go out and discover it more. Why hang around home watching DVDs of beautiful countryside and historical buildings and burning all that heat and electricity when I could be outside seeing it all for real?

Also, as someone discovered this autumn (or was it summer?), busking isn't illegal in Guernsey so I'm going to join the throngs of people who will be out there at the weekends with their ukuleles, banjos and kazoos and their hats out on the pavements.

Apart from getting books, which are better than films, the library also has a CD library you can join (they also have films). So there's your home entertainment. And if you actually want to learn something about our island, why not apply to join the Priaulx Library?

Here are just a few of my daft ideas on an obviously serious subject.

It's another Saturday here on this side of the Earth. Good luck everybody.