As The Workhouse Approaches....How To Do Everything To Avoid It, the Old Style Way

Softstuff

Charis wrote: »

Where I live they have shut the main ambulance headquarters (money saving exercise) and relocated to a city where the operators are unfamiliar with our area, being 45 miles or more away. While they attempt to find rural properties in the dark on unfamiliar territory, they send out 'trained' community first responders, one of whom was quoted recently in the local paper as being really keen and eager but 'terrified of her first call out'. That hardly instils confidence when you realise she is in control of a defibrillator.:eek:

You can relax a bit about the defibrillator. I just completed a senior first aid course with resuscitation and it included the defibrillator part. Basically the ones they supply these trained first responders (and have in some shopping centres and hotels now) are quite a bit different than those that paramedics use. They do a lot of the work for you (judging if it's appropriate to shock by reading the vital signs of the patient), so although you have to be trained, in the very scary event of having to use one it does give you a fair bit of assistance.

As for why I took the course, it was a spare place offered to me for free by someone who knows how my life tends to go and thought given my luck I'd be the person most likely to find it useful :rotfl:

sammy_kaye18

Morning all

Really must go and catch up on this new shiny thread (I thought I'd lost you for a bit!) as when I scrolled down to press reply the last comment I read was

fake semen, can you put it through a sieve?

:eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek:

Anyway am landed to be debt free now, am off out today to enjoy myself with my girlfriends who I haven't seen in too long a while. So depending on weather we are either having a picnic at the beach or going bowling. Either way it should be a good day - so no I am not staying in to watch the wedding.

Also am leaving Owen in charge of kids for the entire day - should be interesting. Hes not had a full day home by himself with Holly ever and shes now almost 10 months old ~ that'll teach him to complain I do nothing all day.

plus her new buggy arrived yesterday - its rather pink. and I still got asked what HIS name was :mad:

Also can anyone praying or offering up prayers or good luck vibes pppppuuuurrrllllleeeeaaaaasssseeee keep me and my little brood in their thougts as in our bidding book there is 3 x 3 bedrromed houses and it would be the icin gon the cake to get one as they are fab (1 slightly questionable but I can work with it still) but two are absolutely perfect. So please ~ Im asking for some GL vibes..............

Right got to go need to find out bus/train timetables etc

Enjoy the wedding all!

silvermaid

Lots of Good Luck vibes for the house Sammy, fingers crossed x

littlecal

Keeping my fingers (and toes) crossed Sammy,vibes winging their way to you :D

Kitchenbunny

Good luck, Sammy! Am thinking of you, and well done on becoming debt-free. Well, today I'm going to go through my old books again and see if there are any I could sell on Amazon or suchlike site - I've been meaning to have a bit of a clear out anyway. We've had a little rain overnight, so if that holds off today I will get back out into the garden and do a bit more. I have a feeling though that with that teeny bit of rain the grass is going to grow like mad and will need cutting again soon. Anyone have any good but basic tried and tested suggestions for a compost heap? DH is a bit worried about the insects it would attract..

I'm also going to have a look at a few other things today - local seed exchanges, the RHS site, and cheap, cheap recipes. That's pretty much my day.

KB xx

ceridwen

Must plant up a few more seeds today - got in mind sorrel/perpetual spinach/rocket....

But....meanwhile springcleaning and decluttering call. When I come back from a day at work I dont want to have to do more than the basics - ie cooking (which I like) and washing the dishes afterwards (which counts as housework:() and weekends have more interesting things/etc to do so I just do a minimal amount of weekly housework. So - Bank Holidays are a good thing in my book - as an extra day not needed specifically for "rest and recreation"/"interesting things"/weekly housework - so bookmarked by me as "Days for Springcleaning".

Hopes for rain to fill up my waterbutt...and hies me hence to get on with it...

lostinrates

Charis wrote: »

Where I live they have shut the main ambulance headquarters (money saving exercise) and relocated to a city where the operators are unfamiliar with our area, being 45 miles or more away. While they attempt to find rural properties in the dark on unfamiliar territory, they send out 'trained' community first responders, one of whom was quoted recently in the local paper as being really keen and eager but 'terrified of her first call out'. That hardly instils confidence when you realise she is in control of a defibrillator.:eek:



I still don't agree that when things go wrong it's our problem. It's a social problem with which we may or may not be able to help, according to our individual situation and finances. Anyone who pays taxes is already giving. If you count VAT too, that's nearly everyone. We can only do what we can do and no one should be made to feel guilty for the government's lack of provision. You only have to look at how they provide for the relatives who become full time carers to see how much they really value the 'Big Society'.

Rather than take this thread OT why not post a thread on the Debate board, where this is more appropriate and less risky to a beloved chain of threads? I'd very much like to talk more about this, because I think its interesting to discuss when views are so different.

FWIW one is often ''terrified'' when tackling ''crises'' and even some other situations for the first time whether being paid or not!

GreyQueen

Ahhh, a 4 day weekend with no commitments other than gardening until Monday evening...bliss. Am lounging around in my jammies drinking tea by the pint and easing into the day.

Charis thanks for the tip about mothballs into mole runs. I did know it but won't be using it as the active ingredient in them is a known nerve poison for humans and animals called, from memory, paradicholorobenzine. I wouldn't touch it with tongs. If Mr Mole continues to be too much of a nuisance he'll have brambles in his runs, hit them snoot-first, and hopefully find somewhere else to forage. A lottie neighbour told me that because I improved the soil so much with manure etc, I get more earthworms, and hence more moles!

Today I shall transplant out the first batch of loo-roll-tube sown peas from the wee plastic h.m. greenhouse. If I sow them in open ground the thieving mice get 90% of them. These were sown on 03/4 and I'll start another batch today. Last year I sowed 4 batches at 2 weekly intervals, with the idea that I'd have a longer season but they somehow all caught up with each other and all came at once. Will try a wider interval and see if I can keep them coming. I really need to work on sucessional planting as there's a limit to what I can eat at once and I really want to feed myself as much as possible off the lottie to eliminate some expenditures. Things are getting scary in the grocery stores, don't you find?

I'm being a bit whimsical this year and going for yellow; Jemmer courgettes and yellow french beans. I've had purple french beans before and they look very pretty until I steam them and then they basically revert to green. The other good thing about coloured pods is that you can find them more easily among the leaves.

jackieglasgow re your customer with 2 rads down out of his system, my LA will only send emergency engineers for full loss of heating, although we do exercise discretion with the elderly, the disabled, infants & young children in household etc. He'd've got a flea in his ear from our out-of-hours service for wasting their time and tying up a phone line which would be needed for a real emergency. If I was cold at 11 pm I'd just go to bed.......:rotfl:

Companion planting I've read a lot of books on this over the years but when I saw recommendations on how to keep gophers and Mexican bean beetles out of your garden, I realised not everything printed in English travels well. Their condensed wisdom is that you can never have too many marigolds. I have English "pot" marigolds, those daisy-type ones which I let self-seed because I like them and so do the bees. Plus a little scrubby marigold with lots of small flowers on, forms wee bushes about 6 inches tall and flowers the whole summer. It's very pungent, even the leaves. It's name excapes me at the moment but if anyone particualrly wants to know, I can find out. There's a 6 foot tall marigold called tagetes minuta
(so-named for minute flowers) whose roots exude chemicals which repel seriosly nasty insects and weeds.

I grow a heritage variety of naturtiums (freebie seeds years ago) and had some alongside my broad beans in 2009 to be sacrificial crops for the blackfly. Walked up the plot one day and thought to myself.. .those nasturtium leaves look a bit peculiar.....closer examination revealed that they'd been eaten to lace and were heaving with the caterpillars of cabbage whites (both sizes). Sometimes, you just can't win, eh?

taplady

only just realised we have a nice new thread - thanks Jackie!:T
it usually moves too fast for me to keep up with but I'll try.

Sammy_Kaye - good luck with the house bids ! x

we lost a few bean plants in the frost yesterday but got some more to plant out. Spuds look to be doing well.
I got a lot of the free seeds from the Daily Mail(we have it at work so didn't have to buy it) and nobody else wanted the seeds:T
We also buy some small veg plants from carboots very cheaply - good for those with no greenhouse.

mardatha

I wish you'd all STOP TALKING for ten mins so I can catch up !! My god ladies - I am PAGES behind here !:rotfl:
Re the title, I don't think in the old days it got any worse than the workhouse so its very apt for these hard times. Was not helped by reading this morning that, while the royal wedding goes on, the cleaners in Buck palace are on £6.45 an hour :mad: Bet they can't afford to get married at all, poor sods .
Had a weird day today. The son went into hospital at 8am for the long-awaited op on his feet (waited a year for a proper diagnosis) - the RV took him in, and his girlfriend was to come to us for the day and go back to see him tonight. Soooo, as she is very houseproud, I got up at half 6...:eek: ... cleaned scrubbed dusted hoovered until I collapsed. Used Zoflora hyacinth in the bog and Zoflora lavender in the kitchen, & the house is so smelly I had to go outside to breathe. And she has just phoned to say she's not coming, she's staying with Kevin until after his op. But my house is clean !! :rotfl: