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THE Prepping thread - a new beginning :)

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  • Karmacat
    Karmacat Posts: 39,460
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    mardatha wrote: »
    Not liking the sound of "colder" ... your cold is my intense cold up here. I need to start panic buying. I need to get the energy to panic first lol.
    My winter preps are going to include a hospital stay I think - another night of pain with gallstones, it finally eased at 5am. Maybe pack a hospital bag just in case.
    So sorry to hear that, mar, being kept awake by pain must be horrible. A hospital bag sounds like a very good prep.

    I read the same Daily Wail report, and like MaryB I remember "cooler" - it was noticeable in the Wail because they *weren't* headlining snowmageddon. But yours will still be cold :( you're so far north of us.

    I'm endlessly cutting back the overgrown cherry laurel at the bottom of my tiny garden, trying to avoid the charge of hundreds of pounds to get it cleared. And while I'm doing it, I'm thinking (partly) about the whole thing of, what if today was the day the electrical grid went bang, or The Big Meteorite landed and wiped out half the planet and sent the rest of it into the astronomical equivalent of a nuclear winter? It's just cause my brain is whirring, thats all, but it made me think - with being ill for ages, my "garden" is a complete mess, these laurel are over 25 feet high and could be dangerous if they get much higher. Lots of maintenance type jobs like that haven't been done for ages, because even researching and employing workmen has been beyond me.

    All I'm thinking of is that it really puts me on the back foot, if any sort of genuine emergency were to happen. Even if the emergency was about my mum, and I had to move to hers for a while for hospital visiting etc. The more I think of it, the more important it seems to be to keep more or less up to date with maintenance type things (don't you just love the detail in that statement?)...
    2023: the year I get to buy a car
  • Well it's already significantly cooler here - in single figures - and we've had a couple of days of ground frost, although too windy just now. I'm liking the sound of dryer though - it's constantly raining here and when the temperature drops and the wind picks up you really feel it!

    Mar we keep a hospital bag ready - clothes, something to eat, decent tea bags and something to do! A charged phone is useful, plus phone numbers, and writing paper/notecards and stamps are useful too. Hope you get it sorted out soon
  • GreyQueen
    GreyQueen Posts: 13,008
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    :( Sorry to hear about your gallbladder woes, mar, I've heard worse-than-childbirth as a description from women who've done both.

    Karmakat, one of the things which is brought home to me in the kind of work I do, is how complicated the built environment is. On any given week, we can have collapses in the highway, flooding, broken water mains, missing manhole covers and lots of things like trees or tree limbs down. That's just daily wear-and-tear.

    Keeping a built environment up to scratch, whether on a micro scale of a personal residence and garden, or a macro scale of a city, or a road network, requires constant vigilence. And being willing to monitor, and act asap to relieve problems.

    I will tell you a little story from RL which demonstrates how a bit of timely action could've saved a world of hurt.

    One upon a time, a seed came off a tree and landed on stony ground.

    Actually, less biblically, a wych elm seed landed in a raised flowerbed, just under a meter wide. This is a tree which can grow up to 40 meters tall. It was stuck in a flowerbed about 2 ft above street level, beside a large brick gate pillar belonging to a 3 story victorian town house.

    The tree grew. For the first several years, tugging it out of there would have been the work of seconds. The house was in the same ownership all those years, and it was right by the front door. But the owners didn't act.

    The wych elm got bigger. Unable to grow a proper root system due to its position in the raised flowerbed, it grew its roots down the flowerbed, parallel to the road. It started to push against the brick gate pillar. Its roots heaved up the path from the pavement to the steps into the house. It went through the low walls dividing the townhouse from the townhouses on either side. It broke their mortar bonds and screwed their bricks out of line. It caused the retaining wall between the flowerbed and the pavement to bulge outwards.

    It ended up taller than the three-story townhouse and had so distorted the drainage at the front of the property that rain ran backwards towards the house, flooding the basement. Eventually, it had to be cut down by two tree surgeons. The road had to be closed for most of the day to accomodate it (main road in a city) and the expense was eye-watering.

    The tree surgeon counted the rings and the wych elm was 33 years old when they felled it. They poisoned the stump. It didn't kill it and it and the roots are still there and still suckering.

    All for the want of a few seconds' timely action tugging out a seedling tree.
    Every increased possession loads us with a new weariness.
    John Ruskin
    Veni, vidi, eradici
    (I came, I saw, I kondo'd)
  • mardatha
    mardatha Posts: 15,612 Forumite
    It's not so much that I am a lot further north, WCS is far further north than me - but I'm on the edge of a moor at 1000ft. My garden is a month behind sea level at Edinburgh... it's the height. WCS you get raw damp cold and I get more intense dry cold. Either way it's bloody cauld lol.
    KC I'm sure you will get around to everything now that you are off, just take it bite by bite and keep on nibbling :)
  • Bigjenny
    Bigjenny Posts: 601
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    GreyQueen wrote: »
    :( Sorry to hear about your gallbladder woes, mar, I've heard worse-than-childbirth as a description from women who've done both.

    As someone who's done both, on a scale of 1 to 10, its a 15
    "When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us" Alexander Graham Bell
  • jk0
    jk0 Posts: 3,479
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    Sympathy for the gallstone pain Mardatha.

    Had you eaten anything to bring it on? Even cream in a soup sets me off nowadays.
  • mardatha
    mardatha Posts: 15,612 Forumite
    I didn't eat anything at all yesterday apart from home made veg soup jk0.
    If it happens again tonight then the RV is taking me right into hosp to get some morphine. Thank god for online shopping, it's made my life much easier.
    Watching BBC on Aberfan and remembering it as it happened. No way on earth you could prep for that, that's a good example of GQ's disaster waiting to happen, like the tree. Such strong brave people, your heart goes out to them eh.
  • Karmacat
    Karmacat Posts: 39,460
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    mardatha wrote: »
    It's not so much that I am a lot further north, WCS is far further north than me - but I'm on the edge of a moor at 1000ft. My garden is a month behind sea level at Edinburgh... it's the height. WCS you get raw damp cold and I get more intense dry cold. Either way it's bloody cauld lol.
    Bloody cauld is an accurate description, absolutely! :D And I keep forgetting about the height! I grew up on a hill immediately off the North Sea - only 300 feet high, that hill, but omigod, the wind. Sooooo cold! And no central heating in those days, as you know ;)
    KC I'm sure you will get around to everything now that you
    are off, just take it bite by bite and keep on nibbling :)
    I like nibbling in that context :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl: and you're dead right, Mar :beer:
    GreyQueen wrote: »
    Karmakat, one of the things which is brought home to me in the kind of work I do, is how complicated the built environment is. On any given week, we can have collapses in the highway, flooding, broken water mains, missing manhole covers and lots of things like trees or tree limbs down. That's just daily wear-and-tear.

    Keeping a built environment up to scratch, whether on a micro scale of a personal residence and garden, or a macro scale of a city, or a road network, requires constant vigilence. And being willing to monitor, and act asap to relieve problems....
    :eek: :eek: :eek:

    I've kept my eye on a few trees in my time, but these are far enough away from the house that they got away from me, so to speak. Maintenance of the built environment, as you so accurately call it, is impressed upon me all the time nowadays - mostly because I've ignored it whenever I can in the past :o. But if I'm going to stay here, I need to catch up with taking care of it.
    mardatha wrote: »
    If it happens again tonight then the RV is taking me right into hosp to get some morphine.
    :( Gentle hugs, Mar, for someone like you to be contemplating morphine means a lot.
    Watching BBC on Aberfan and remembering it as it happened. No way on earth you could prep for that, that's a good example of GQ's disaster waiting to happen, like the tree. Such strong brave people, your heart goes out to them eh.
    I remember it too - most of those kids were a year younger than me, I'd just gone to the local high school :( and they never got the chance :(
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    2023: the year I get to buy a car
  • Dreadful - I well recall it and was only 6 at the time, and living in a pit village in Yorkshire - such a tragedy. You really can't prep for something like that.
    Yes we're wet, cold and windy - in the gulf stream so not so much snow but flipping cold! I grew up in Yorkshire Mar on the moors, and well remember Dad having to climb out of the downstairs window to shovel the snow from the front door. I was disappointed when I moved to Scotland in '85 that the west coast was so mild - but happy for it now!!!!

    Really hope you have a better night, but yes hasten off with the RV if it isn't you cannot go on like this, and it may prompt some urgent action.
    ((hugs))) WCS
  • GreyQueen
    GreyQueen Posts: 13,008
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    :( Yeah, Aberfan. A guy my Dad worked with was one of the miners who dug the children out. He was heartbroken by it and quit mining and moved well away from Wales. There are some things you can't ever forget.
    Every increased possession loads us with a new weariness.
    John Ruskin
    Veni, vidi, eradici
    (I came, I saw, I kondo'd)
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