Preparedness for when

JayneC

Glad people liked the blog. This is what I'm aiming for hopefully...

CTC - Thanks for the advice, however I have bought the dongle myself. e e are to credit my account with the cost. Its PAYG so won't be getting any unexpected charges. e e didn't even have any when I went!! so got it from Car phone warehouse...

Spent the afternoon at DGS birthday party, he has chicken pox so wasn't really in the mood and there were a few tears, bless him. His mum (DD2) had spent a small fortune and it was just in a local church hall but just the hall hire cost £45 and then there was the food, prizes for the party games, party bags, platters, disposable plates, a specially made cake - must've cost well over a hundred maybe nearer 2:eek:! Sometimes I feel like I'm in a parallel universe - where's the need? and they aren't well off... I try to gently point out its not necessary but ....
I can but hope she'll wake up eventually.

GreyQueen

Know what you mean. I was astonished a few years ago when I learned that some relations of mine had hired a professional children's entertainer for one kid's birthday party. And this was a hardworking s/e pair of grafters who struggled to pay the mortgage and keep the wolf from the door every month!

Gosh, when I was an under-10 (imagine the sepia-tinged image, prolly with dinosaurs nibbling tree-ferns behind the coal house) a kid's party was in their parent's living room or back yard, depending on the season. You had a cake your Mum or Nan made, jelly, sarnies and a few cakes, plus simple games like Pass the Parcel and Musical Chairs. No one had every kid in their class, it was usually no more than a dozen and everyone got hopped up on sugar and ran around like looney tunes for a couple of hours and no one had even heard of party bags, FGS.

We wuz so unsophisticated we thought balloons WITH FACES ON were pretty darned special.

[Deleted User]

GreyQueen wrote: »

I think they're kinda cute.

Cute :huh:

Do they come in other colours than olive drab?

As a matter of fact, they do.

You can get them in brown.



I think you might struggle a bit, to get them in girly colours, like pink or powder blue.

[Deleted User]

GreyQueen wrote: »

We wuz so unsophisticated we thought balloons WITH FACES ON were pretty darned special.

And you went crazy, if the jelly came in two colours.

(Copyright Victoria Wood)

Hard_Up_Hester

We were invited to a party for hubby's great niece's 1st birthday, it was held in the function room of a pub complete with entertainer, buffet, unicorn cake & a bar, why would you need a bar for a child's party? We didn't go, what with the cost of petrol, gift & the rest of hubby's family having deep pockets & short arms. We went to the child's christening & that cost us enough.
Hester

GreyQueen

:D:p Bob, I'm the best part if 6 feet tall and built like an outdoor sanitation facility. I do a lot of things but girly pink sure as hell ain't my style.:rotfl:

I was thinking of DPM.............and am now orf to read something interesting off-line.

Oh, and that story about care.data is now on the Daily Wail site. I shall see my GP surgery about this on Monday and report back on any issues about opting-out.

G'night, fight-fans.

greenbee

Bedsit_Bob wrote: »

Cute :huh:



As a matter of fact, they do.

You can get them in brown.



I think you might struggle a bit, to get them in girly colours, like pink or powder blue.

That's the one I've got.

You can paint them you know

I seem to remember that sophisticated childrens' birthday parties back in the old days involved hundreds and thousands on white bread :cool:

nuatha

GreyQueen wrote: »

I have my windup radio in a tin but realised belatedly that I need to insulate it from the metal. Would bubblewrap do the job? How about foam? Haven't got unlimited access to packaging materials but would like to get it right.

As long as its non conductive, bubble wrap would be fine, and would help cushion the contents from careless handling. Cardboard is fine.
If your windup radio has a plastic case, then it should be fine - I'm inclined towards the belt and braces approach.

[Deleted User]

GreyQueen wrote: »

I'm the best part if 6 feet tall and built like an outdoor sanitation facility.

Being 6'2" and 16 stone myself, you are my kind of woman. :cool:

BTW. It seems you can get them in red too.

greenbee

We've had our flood alert upgraded to a warning today. So I'm drinking wine and contemplating what I need to do to prepare.

First thing tomorrow I need to join the stampede for sandbags. My house is on the highest point on the plot, but the stream at the front of the house is almost flooding into the road, and there is now no clearance under the bridge my drive goes over. The stream to the side is mostly flooding into the scrubland next door. Just below where they converge they have flooded onto the road and the neighbour opposite this point is now sandbagged (mostly to deal with waves from idiots driving too fast through the flood). We're planning on going out and digging a trench into the watermeadows so the road can drain into them - the bridge under the road is constricting the flow and causing the flooding onto the road.

So I need to think about:

a. What from downstairs needs to go upstairs immediately. This is stuff that doesn't need to be in use downstairs, so I can avoid moving in a rush. Pictures, books, odd bits of furniture, food stocks.

b. What I need to do in the garage - sandbags round the boiler and against the doors. Raise the freezer off the ground (there's an old shelving unit I can turn on it's side) and move the log splitter off the ground. Give the place a good tidy up so that as much as possible is as high up as possible.

The garage is about a foot lower that the house (which is built on a concrete raft on the highest point on the plot, and has at 6" step up into it) so that is the immediate priority.

I've already sealed the only airbrick I could find (below the damp course and half hidden in a flowerbed - I only noticed it the other day and need to work out what it is for).

It's raining again, and blowing a gale, so I guess I will actually have to start preparing if we're getting another month of this.

However, I've spent rather more time researching generators, as I'm getting a generator switch fitted to both the house and the shared sewage system and really need to work out how much I need to save up