Donna M

My husband is looking at buying a bicycle shop, so I was just looking for ideas about what products people are interested in, as well as what services they'd like a cycle shop to provide?

We're really only at the 'thinking about it' stage at the moment, but any and all ideas and suggestions would be greatly appreciated :)

I have bipolar (2) disorder, and for the past several years it has basically been impossible for me to work. When I do work, I get sick. If I continue to work, I get sicker. If I still continue, I usually get so sick I end up in hospital. And by sick I don't mean mentally (although that's a part of it). My brain is very good at coming up with somatic symptoms with no real cause. I just get sicker and sicker and sicker until I have no choice but to stop working.

Even without this, I just can't tell from one day to the next what mental state I'm going to be in. I'm taking an anti-depressant (Pristiq), which has worked well for my depression since I started taking it about 18 months ago. I haven't had a hypomanic episode for about three years, I think. But, with my grandmother's illness and my husband's recent news that he won't have a job by the end of the year, my mood is understandably low. It's fairly unlikely my husband will find another job that pays anywhere near as well as the one he's had for the past twenty years, so he keeps hinting that I'll have to find a job as well.

I would love nothing more than to work - I'm so sick of being in this freaking house. But I just don't know what kind of job I can get. Who is going to employ someone as unreliable as me?

I've tried self-employment (domestic cleaning, on and off, for ten years), but again, that only lasts until I end up in hospital or suicidal.

I'm actually entitled to the disability pension here in Australia, but because of the payout my husband will be getting when his workplace closes down, we'll actually have too much money for me to be eligible.

Does anyone have any ideas of what I could do? I am not looking for any work-from-home internet scam rubbish. I want genuine ideas for genuine work.

Just got this laptop last week and it's been a long time since I set up a new computer. Is there a thing I have to download to view videos properly?

I was typing something a few minutes ago, and for some reason everything on the web page went really small. It's the same for all web pages now, and it's hard to read! Any ideas?

Our mouse is driving us mad at the moment. Sometimes you have to click on something ten times to make it register, and other times it counts a click without you even having done it, especially if you're clicking on a drop down menu or something - then it will click not only the thing on the menu that you choose, but whatever's under it at the time.

I've tried adjusting the speed of the click but that doesn't seem to make any difference. Any ideas??

I don't know how it happened, but the top and bottom margins in Word on my computer have somehow been changed so that there's not the usual 1 inch margin - now there's no space at all between the top of the page and the top line of writing, and the same with the bottom.

I've fiddled around with all the things in page setup as much as I dare but even when I change the margins to other settings it doesn't make any difference whatsoever.

Does anyone have any idea what has caused this and, more importantly, how to rectify it??

Many thanks :)

I own a small domestic cleaning agency, and contract work out to independent contractors. We recently had problems getting a couple of clients to pay (one was sick, the other was out of town looking after dying father, so I understood).

The lady who cleaned for them started harrassing them, called/texted one of them 18 times at least in one day. We told her to stop contacting them as she was freaking them out.

We then found out she was contacting clients and offering to take them on personally, thereby removing my business from the equation and keeping all the money for herself. The clients all called us to let us know what was happening.

We told her that under the circumstances we were not going to send her any more work. She has all money that was owed to her, I have refunded her the money she paid for her work shirt (don't want her wearing it and claiming affiliation with my business at all), and we've had to send the police to her house to get back a client's front door key (the client whose father is dying).

She refuses to answer her phone.

She is hanging on to the shirt at the moment as she claims I owe her about $400, which I have just spent an hour and a half researching and proving to be absolutely wrong. I owe her exactly $0.

She told the police officer who picked up the key that she's taking action against me to get the fictional $400 and is keeping the shirt as 'security'.

Have I done anything wrong, here? I can't think of anything, but I've never been through anything like this before and want to be sure. Myself and the other lady who helps run the business have kept every email and text message she has sent (and the ones we sent back), just in case, plus I have bank statements confirming every payment I've made.

I'm in Queensland, Australia. Any advice or info would be greatly appreciated! Ta.

Since I was 17 (I'm almost 35 now), I've been experiencing a strange pain. It only happens a few times a year. It starts in my back, somewhere between my shoulder blades. It feels like someone is shoving a one-inch pipe through my back. Then I can feel it in my chest, then my throat starts to hurt, a really sharp, cutting type pain. The pain also radiates out from between my shoulder blades, over to my right side near my armpit, and possibly up near my shoulder (can't remember, too much other pain!).

When I first started getting the pain it only lasted a minute or so, but these days it can take over an hour to go away. It gets bad enough to make me cry. Doctors always look at me like I'm crazy when I tell them about it, so I don't know who else to ask. Nobody I've spoken to has ever experienced anything like it.

I thought it may have been my gallbladder for a while, but I had that removed two years ago and I still get the pain, so I'm really at a loss for ideas now. Painkillers do not have any effect at all.

Any suggestions?

I'm thinking of getting someone in to help me keep the house clean. I've never done anything like this before, so I'm wondering what questions you would ask someone before you hired them?

I have here Volumes 1 & 2 of the Regimental History of Cromwell's Army, printed in 1940. I've been given them to sell on someone else's behalf and I'm having trouble putting a dollar value on them.

Does anyone know some websites or the names and/or contact details of somebody who can help me with this?

I have here Volumes 1 & 2 of the Regimental History of Cromwell's Army, printed in 1940. I've been given them to sell on someone else's behalf and I'm having trouble putting a dollar value on them.

Does anyone know some websites or the names and/or contact details of somebody who can help me with this?

Does anyone know when the next Sue Grafton book is due to be published? "T" for .................. My best friend has been sweating on this one for ages :)

I've never really understood what people mean when they say "The exception that proves the rule." Can anyone help?