Nice people thread part 4 - sugar and spice and all things

Doozergirl

tomterm8 wrote: »

gherkins are the same species as cucumbers, but are a different cultivar,,, rather like cherry tomatoes are different from 'normal' tomatoes.

Most people only experience them as that odd green slice of vegetable you get in a Big Mac.

I put seven of them into my food processor and directly into my HM burgers today. They came out of a jar from the Co-op though, not my garden.

misskool

i lurve pickled gherkins

silvercar

Inspected the garden today. While I've been away there have been some real downpours and some dry days. All the lobelia have flourished and the bizzy lizzies that were in between them have all lost their flowers and leaves and are just bare stems. Very bizarre. I put out slug repellent before I left. :puzzled:

fc123

Doozergirl wrote: »

carried on with our filing in the attempt to lose an item of furniture for the move - it's taken hours and hours so far but has been pretty successful and incredibly cathartic. I feel like a better woman!

?

A good clear out feels amazing...especially chucking out stuff into the bin. Makes you kind of glow afterwards.

We have a tall cupboard here waiting for spare rainy nothing day...full of files and paperwork that no-one has looked at for ages (so it's not def needed).

Davesnave wrote: »

It's been for sale since we began looking at ours in May 2009.

The main thing wrong is the location, as it's a corner house on a right angled junction with no front garden, or even a strip between the road and the door. It's also heavily shaded by someone else's trees, and half of the garden is detached, on the other side of the neighbour's garden!

So, a bit of a pig's ear, but a well-painted one.

...and would it be a 2007 price with an added 15% for good measure?:rotfl:

fc123

Doozergirl wrote: »

fc, there's nothing that will stop a girl dressing up nicely to seek a mate! Your price point must be pretty accessible for girls with that celeb edge attached to it, which the girls here must love. If I wore one of your creations, my backside would hang out the bottom I don't think that is supposed to happen intentionally!

?

We were taliking about it with someone today and it could be I am, inadvertantly, tuned in to the bust/debt loaded countries who are struggling (as I hang out here) and, creatively, my brain chugs about like a machine and then churns out 'happy' product that the young girls want to buy should they find themselves living in a bust country.
In Ireland, the Euro @ 1 to £1 makes a massive difference to 'value' too.
Iceland is fascinating place and has a small population but they love to rave apparently....a lot.

neverdespairgirl

silvercar wrote: »

I've never known an adult who hasn't had a single filling!

OH had his first last year (aged 32) and I'm a year older, with none. My sisters are 31 and 27, and don't have any fillings either. My brother, who is 25, has 3 - his own fault, he guzzles Pepsi Max.

LydiaJ

sss555s wrote: »

You could well be onto something.

They are sprouting up almost daily around here.

I do have one customer who has had them installed on his holiday camp for around 14 years and he said they had paid themselves after around 10 years, Just for hot water and another customer who has a factory had them installed 2 weeks ago.

Do you sell it all back or use what you need and sell the excess back?

You use what you need and sell the excess, but the pricing is not what you would expect.

When you are using more than it produces (eg having lights on after dark when the panels aren't working) you pay the normal price to whatever electricity company you like, just like anyone else.

When you use the electricity you generate yourself, you not only get to use your washing machine etc for free, but you also get paid 43.3p per kWh generation tariff, just for generating it and using it yourself. This does not come from government money but from the electricity companies.

When you generate more than you use, the excess goes to the grid. You still get your 43.3p per kWh generation tariff, and you get an additional 3.1p per kWh export tariff.

The export tariff is the same for all forms of renewable energy and all producers. The generation tariff varies a lot for different systems. Solar PV is the most generous by a long way.

You can get 43.3p/kWh if your system has been retrofitted (ie put on a pre-existing house) and is no bigger than 4kWp (kilowatts-peak - ie expected power output in strong sunshine). You get slightly less for a system put on a new build before it is first occupied, and the tariff drops in several stages for bigger and bigger systems, down to 8.5p/kWh if you have an industrial size system producing more than 250kWp. 4kWp is the sort of size that fits comfortably on the roof of a 4 bed detached house, and smaller houses may only be able to fit smaller systems.

You get best results from a south-facing roof, but east-west will do - you can have two smaller systems, one on each side but wired separately. They obviously produce most in direct sunlight, but any kind of daylight will do. Shading is actually a much bigger problem than not facing south, because one shaded panel increases the resistance of the whole array and brings production down significantly. There are things you can do - wiring each panel to a separate mini-inverter is the main one - but you definitely don't get as much as without the shade. Pitch matters about as much as direction - 30 degrees is best, but you still get plenty even if the roof is steeper or shallower than that.

There are full details about tariffs here. There are also lots of very informative threads, and incredibly knowledgeable people on the green and ethical board here on MSE.

Solar thermal (ie heating water rather than producing electricity) is not eligible for feed-in-tariffs but is part of the renewable heat incentive, which is very new and hasn't really got going yet. The RHI covers solar thermal for anybody, and other heating methods (air source, ground source and biomass boilers) for households not currently using gas heating. Some payments are available for systems installed from this month onwards - details here.

Hope that helps.

On a different subject, lir, your friend's riding pupil's mother is an idiot to think that there is any aspect of weeing that cannot be discussed with children, however small. When they are toddlers it is one of their main preoccupations, and when they are a bit older they still don't have a problem with talking about it, and unless they've already obtained some adult information from elsewhere, they would never think of relating "muscles you use to stop a wee" to anything else.

PasturesNew

fc123 wrote: »

........did the sibling cope OK and will he/she be coming back to help again?
It's a massive job for you to do solo now.

I think they're not leaving... it's too big a job all round for two of us, so we've an important update to get through and I think they're sticking around....

fc123 wrote: »

Coming home for the end, in theory, would be nice but it would depend on the physical care required and if you and frail old can cope with it. If you can't then pls be brutally honest with the hospital.

It's absolutely out of the question and we'll do everything in our power to disallow this. Even if we have to present ourselves as dangerous/incompetent fools ... which, for the needs/purpose would pretty much be true. The whole thing's much bigger than I've discussed here, but coming home cannot be allowed. It wouldn't be in the best interests of the old at all..... most unsatisfactory.

fc123 wrote: »

...I know they can work out the time scale based on body weight. This is what the nurses did for my grandmother at the very end.
We found it very helpful in her situation. Could you ask someone that question?

I'll ask that tomorrow

fc123 wrote: »

Thinking of you though......

Cheers

PasturesNew

Doozergirl wrote: »

Have any of the agencies involved picked up on helping with long term support for the other old?

No, this thing is morphing faster than any services can keep up .... initial contact was made last week, but there wasn't even time for one service to be performed on either of them before one was whisked away and everything's on hold/cancelled as we're too busy/visiting/etc to be able to sit around all day waiting for people/things to turn up.

There's more, but it's not for here... and once my head's straight, I need to PM viva specifically as her direct intervention directly lead to the old being whisked .... if that hadn't happened it'd have been very traumatic while I was away and the old would have probably passed on due to the trauma of not being in the system, but relying on random emergency midnight callouts and A&E trolleys as nobody knew what to do with the old.

Everything that's gone on is because nobody sat on Day 1 and did the right thing..... support/services/everything never caught up (still hasn't), but that one viva moment lead directly to a chain of events that meant finally the old was in the right place, getting the right attention ... allbeit about 2-3 months too late as everybody was busy doing their job and ticking boxes .... and nobody was actually doing what was needed.

but

It's a long story .... way too big for here. And I've still no idea what to expect. And everybody keeps asking/assuming "do you have care ..." and I say "No, well, maybe, but we've not had a thing yet ...." but it's coming.... just as soon as we stop fire-fighting we can get back to the well old's needs being dealt with (carer cancelled because we need the well old to be with the ill old and not sitting around for irrelevant stuff like being washed .... and fed)

neverdespairgirl

lostinrates wrote: »

I have extremely distraught friend on the phone.

Would the parents here deem this inappropriate adult content? (kids are between four and 8, but tbh, it wouldn't matter to me the age, they hve to learn this) Its a vitally important thing when riding correctly, and its a fairly important thing to learn to practise early!

Not at all, and the mother's an idiot.

I think your friend needs to let it wash over her.