Preparedness for when

Hard_Up_Hester

We keep trying to find someone Blue bag, but no luck so far.

GreyQueen

gayle1 wrote: »

just wondering if u have a wee bit of scottish in u xxx

It's a habit of speech picked up when I lived in Scotland (for most of the 1980s). I also have several lovely Scottish colleagues and friends from Scotland, which helps keep the habit fresh.

I'm English, born and bred in southern England, but if you give my family tree a good shake, a Scottish ancestor will come thudding out and one of the family names (not my personal surname, we're talking generations back) begins with Mc.......

They were apparently notorious cattle thieves and brawlers, back in the day. Everyone should have some colourful ancestors, don't you think? Makes family history so much fun. One of the English ones was deported to Australia for poaching - came back later. Bad move, in retrospect.:rotfl:

With pasty-pale skin, red (albeit greying) hair and green eyes, I blend in well north of the Border, as long as I keep my mouth shut. I do love Scotland, but it's a heck of a haul to get up there from here, so it's not somewhere I've even visited since 2005.

My locale seems to be sitting under a severe weather warning but nothing to see outside on the carpark. It's still pitchy dark, however, and we're well enclosed by other buildings and snugged down in the city centre. I'm working til close of biz on Christmas Eve so will be walking to and fro work and having a couple of last-minute visitoids with various friends then it's across the region for a family Christmas.

Hope everyone is well-provisioned for the festives. Am I the only one who looks at the scrummages in the sales or the pre-Crimble grocery rush and has the cold chills thinking what would happen if there was a serious crisis which disrupted the food supply? :eek:

*************

Elaine, I like the sound of your family Christmas, and I couldn't agree more with your observations about the counter-intuitive behaviours of some people already in the financial mire when it comes to this season.

I've seen a lot of this in both my personal and working life. Wasn't it Martin Lewis, in one of his books who said that people go about Christmas the wrong way, that they work out what they want to do and then try to pay for it, rather than working out what they can afford to spend, and tailoring their expectations to fit their budget?

I haven't totalled Christmas yet, although I am up-to-date on the annual accounting. Early in the New Year, I'll bung the figures onto a spreadsheet from where they live in the back of my diary. And then, if I can remember how, I shall make a pie chart. Because I like to see a visual of where the money went.:o

I buy Christmas gifts throughout the year, ditto birthdays, something I've done since childhood as we have several family birthdays fall in the two months each end of the year and it can be an expensive time. I've also taken two small gifts from the stash to give to friends whom I exchange a little something with each year, under the mutual understanding that it is only a very little something.

Cards are from the stash and I'm still good for wrapping paper, and will be for another 1-2 years. If not, I'd stock up in January.

I just treat Christmas as if it was a long weekend with family. We have our various traditions, such as Nan watching the Queen's Speech and Dad and I go walking in the woods at the same time, as royalty is bad for my blood pressure. We might get the Scrabble board out and laugh in memory of M, a cat we used to have years ago, who was very sociable.

M's reaction to several of her people clustered around a small area was to put her lovely self right in the middle of the Scrabble board, for maximum attention. Bless her, she couldn't understand why this wasn't a winning tactic with her humans.:p Everyone knows how to play Scrabble one-handed with a large black cat under their arm, don't they?

thriftwizard

We had a games-playing puss too, but she preferred Trivial Pursuit. She'd sit there patiently beside the board, then one elegant paw would snake out & deftly shove a piece down a square or two. Fine if we saw her do it, but I lost count of the games with a disputed result "because Amber pushed my piece back!"

Driving cross-country this evening… not mega-happy about it but (very much) wanting DS1 gathered into the fold for the festivities. I shall go very carefully.

pineapple

I think the worst of the weather is forecast for the South and Wales? Reporters are already lining themselves up for the customary wall to wall wet and windy coverage - ie for what we in the Pennines, further North and in Scotland experience regularly.
With the last bad weather front, there was a reporter trying to do a dramatic piece by the sea - while all the while there were kids playing noisily behind him and making faces at the camera
That said this weather is a worry. I would rather we had the more seasonal snowmaggedon than all these storms.

mardatha

Worst weather is for NW Scotland pineapple. Sustained winds of 78mph for the western isles.

alfsmum

Raining sideways here in the south. Local BBC Radio were going to broadcast from the car park of the Waitrose in our poshest town but couldn't get into the car park at 8 this morning because of the queues of shoppers:eek: like GQ I wonder what would happen if the food supply was disrupted or - heaven forbid - there was some kind of SHTF incident in one of these crowded stores. It was just lovely in the village greengrocer on Saturday afternoon - just me, OH and the lovely staff. That's the way to shop. My mind is already turning to what we can grow on the allotment next year.

I am so relieved that we have everything we need and haven't gone overboard with extra 'stuff'. We have a stay at home buffet planned for Christmas Eve, just DH, myself and DDs so would still like to get some fresh fruit to dip in the chocolate fountain (when I've unearthed it) but if all else fails we'll just have to dip squares of chocolate in the chocolate :rotfl:

Take care out there everyone, it's not nice.

Itismehonest

Spare a thought for our brave lifeboatmen. Some our out on a shout right now off the SW.

mardatha

Oh yes IMH - heroes all of them.

parsonswife8

Itismehonest wrote: »

Spare a thought for our brave lifeboatmen. Some our out on a shout right now off the SW.

May God bless them and keep them all safe.

alfsmum

May they come home safe. Their's is a special kind of courage.