There was a time when the response to "don't you think it's about time you had a bath or a shower? to a nameless teenage boy was "But I only had one less than a week ago". This morning he's already been in there over half an hour.
What do they do in there?!
Actually, don't answer that, I don't think I really want to know.
Well, there goes (went) the last of the roofing felt from the shed - there are nasty bits scattered all over the garden among the leaves that I keep raking up.
I am getting really fed up with this weather - it's boring! Wind, rain, a little bit of sunshine, then a storm... and the cycle continues...
I never seem to get the right balance beteen being cautious and just going for it!
My brother lives in Stockholm and Ryanair have been offering £2.00 flights inclusive of all taxes and fees for January, i.e. £8.00 for me and my O.H. I thought, should I just go ahead, at that price it doesn't matter if we have to cancel, or should I check the timings with my brother when he returns from his present trip. Caution got the better of me, so I texted him last night and was awaiting a reply. I checked the flights this morning and they have quadrupled in price since last night! It's still a good deal so I have booked it anyway, but now I'll probably get the text saying those dates are not convenient...
The small ads in the local paper are such fodder for a nitpicker like me... The same ones keep coming up: "chaise lounge" for "chaise longue", "dinning table" for "dining table", "stall" for "stool", "slimish" for "slimmish" , "swede" for "suede" ... and how many different ways can there be to spell "mahogany"?!
There! Told you I'd find something else!
Why don't I ever learn? It's really not worth buying "fresh" veg from Morrisons unless you can eat it all in a couple of days. Surely you should be able to keep carrots for a week! No, they have gone black and grown fur already. I remember...(adopt quavering old lady voice)... when we didn't have "sell-by", "use-by" or "best before" dates and food used to last longer - and I only remember getting food-poisoning once, and that was from dodgy king prawns at Kuala Lumpur airport.
I so hate waste! And it winds me up that all the "bargains" are "buy one get one free" rather than half price, which is essentially the same thing but you don't have to be a family of four to benefit from it. Surely the supermarkets would still gain, as they would get more customers buying less rather than fewer customers buying more...?
O.K. rant over, I'll find another one soon!
I'm actually quite getting into this sorting out your train tickets on line business. It's like one of those challenges. From originally punching in my mother's train journey from Lincoln to here and it coming up with £53 odd as the cheapest, very restricted return fare, I've managed to get not only hers but two of us to go up to meet her in London on the day she arrives and to accompany her there when she goes back for around £48. Result!
Southern have got some bargains at the moment if you book in advance and buy on line - you can get to London and back for £3 each way. You can also get a Daysave ticket for £10 which lets you travel anywhere on Southern for a day off-peak. (Don't believe the website when it says you can only buy it on line 7 days in advance - you can get them at the Tourist Info centre in town the day before.)
Had a generally rewarding weekend: picked up a carpet for my front room for £25, along with the free underlay I was given from a decorating job that I did earlier in the year, so managed to fit that, and in having to remove all the furniture also managed to have a bit of a clear out.
Got rid of the old carpet really quickly (I love Freecycle) and also acquired a breadmaker. (I love Freecycle...) If only it had instructions. Still, how hard can it be...?
Well, the train ticket couldn't be simple, could it? All was going well,working out a complicated, money-saving strategy, only when I clicked "check fares" it told me that service was unavailable! Got it sorted around midnight last night ...
God, I hate this wind!
A couple of years ago in this sort of weather half of our apple tree just disappeared! However, it gamely struggles on, producing masses of fruit each year.
Mind you, it's not a patch on the 1987 "hurricane" - and I was out in that!
I was going to put a photo here but I can't work out how to upload them!!
Well, how about that?
I managed to park within the college grounds, the shop was open, they actually had what I wanted and the student-card-printing-machine was working. Now I can get my student discount. Whoopee!
There was even a parking space right outside the house when I got home and my teenage son had vacuumed as asked. What more could I want out of life? (Other than some work and my other half to return home from overseas).
Now to try and organise my mother's train ticket for Christmas ...
I'm sure I'll soon find something to moan about!
Another moan:
I get really p****d off about this rubbish/recycling business when I find that 99.9% of what goes in my bin is non-recycleable, unnecessary packaging that I never wanted in the first place!
1: Why can't the government come down harder on the manufacturers instead of the end user? Fine them for using non-recycleable or unnecessary packaging.
2: Why can't they implement a country-wide recycling policy? My mother in Lincolnshire can put just about anything in her recycling bin; here we can't put any plastics with a number higher than 3, and then only bottles, nothing else.
I belong to a Community Farm. We are growing organic fruit and veg and a lot of people have put a lot of voluntary work into it.Now they want to put a road through it. So much for trying to reduce our carbon footprint.The Public Inquiry starts today.
My son commented this morning that all attempts at trying to reduce CO2 output from vehicles are still centred around modifying the internal combustion engine, but shouldn't we be spending more resources looking at an alternative to that? I have to agree.
How do you get funding for that sort of research?
The one that gets me most is "aitch" (H) being pronounced "haitch". Look it up in the dictionary! Then there's "pacific" instead of "specific", and of course "pronounciation" instead of "pronunciation". Feel free to criticise and/or add...
Yeah, I'm just a nitpicking, grumpy ...
But hey, the sun was shining today. The sky was blue, the sea was sparkling, I got a parking space, my bin was emptied, I picked up some useful underbed storage boxes (free) and was early for my art class!
So far so good! The reason for going in so early was to catch the college shop, which closes at 4, so we got there at 3.30 ... and it was closed. Also the machine that prints our student cards is still broken.
We were "doing research" for our projects on the Macs. I gave up trying to work out how to copy, paste and print (no right click?!) and spent quite a lot of time listening to Hendrix on Youtube. My teenage son rang to ask what time I'd be home, and I suddenly thought - have we reversed roles here?!
