EH - Keeping on track. (AKA focus Woman! FOCUS!)

EssexHebridean

:hello: I'm still here! I haven't fallen off the edge of the planet!! MASSES going on over the past few weeks, and I apologise for my tardiness in not telling you all about it...

I did indeed see the Red Arrows practise the day after I last posted - and the reason for the subtle "subtext" in the message I got confirming that they were definitely going to be up became apparent when I realised that they were doing their first practise with all 9 planes in the air together, too. Bit of a result, and suffice to say that some of my photos of this occasion got an AWFUL lot of re-tweets on Twitter. Since then I've been back up to Lincolnshire three times more - twice to Scampton and once to another base where they were doing a practise - and had an awful lot of fun doing it!

In the course of these trips I have also "acquired" that Canon 7D I was lusting after - my friend who was considering selling has loaned me that one for the time being, she's not using it currently and will be upgrading shortly anyway, so she says I may as well use it for the time being. :T We've still got to agree a final price, but I can't see us being too far apart on ideas for that, so all good. Been using it almost constantly since, too, and absolutely LOVING it - a really impressive bit of kit.

Small money saving things: Again, more about "making" than "saving" currently...and several photo related, too. I sold a Hebrides pic, for use in a magazine advert, and I have an enquiry in for a hi-res image of a Red Arrows one, too, which would be nice, if scary - the person wants something to print to 2m x 1m size! :eek: Finally I did the paperwork in the office for a small job that the partner concerned gets cash for this morning, and as I'd done the work he gave me the fee - £5 will be heading to my saving tin tonight. I've also been working extra hours where I can - which is adding up a bit too.

Spendiness to declare....well, rather a lot of diesel going up and down the A1 :whistle:, a weekend in Norfolk with some lovely pals who were up there on holiday and invited us to join them, several meals out (entirely unnecessary but VERY nice) and some travel booked. We invested in one of the new "Two Together" railcards - £30 for the year - and that has already saved us more than we paid for it so that was worth doing. I saved an astonishing amount by looking a bit harder for options for our return travel from Orkney in a few weeks (PIPPI! A few Weeks!:j) when the flights got too expensive to comfortably justify, and also saved about £60 by booking camping for my accommodation for the Fairford Airshow in July. I'm quite happy to camp, and as the site is within walking distance from the base, it means I don't have the hassle and stress of driving, AND I can have a beer. I call that a win-win situation! :T On the definitely NOT saving front, MrEH's car had to be replaced - after 180k miles on the clock the emissions on her MoT the other week meant that we realised the end was nigh, and rather than waiting for her to die completely, we went for the "Get shot, quick" approach. Got £390 trade-in for the old girl, and parted with £2000 for the replacement - a rather gorgeous metallic red version of the same (Citroen C3) which actually starts first time in the morning - a bit of a novelty for him!

Other stuff - I have finally got around to setting up a Facebook page for my photography - if anyone wants to be nosy then a search for Photozone72 Photography on there will find it. Decided that even if I don't want to actively go out and market my photos, I may as well have something out there firmly stating that they are for sale...so we'll see!

starnac

Yay! I wondered where you were. I seem to have dropped off the face of twitter so I don't *see* you much anymore.

Sounds like you have been having a whale of a time. I loved your photos of the arrows on your blog. They are fantastic. Well done for selling some too. All helps towards the mortgage pot

youareallhelpingme

Brilliant news on the photo's, glad you are getting to see lots over this way.


This last week or two there has been a large amount of night flying, it usually only happens when they are about to be sent off to get involved in another war.

Pippilongstocking

Dances for lots of reasons.

EssexHebridean

*waves* thanks all for comments - ME, I know they were night flying at Coningsby the other week, and the BBMF planes were up into the early evening last Friday too I think - hoping to get up there again around the end of the this month sometime.

Well another busy week - but thankfully life does seem to be calming down a little. Planning a night of pottering about getting stuff done tonight I think - lots of random cleaning/clearing/tidying jobs needing done.

Small Money Saving Things: British Gas upset me. That is, they failed to tell us our tariff was ending, then raised a bill which had the wrong amounts on us (unit price change 1 month out and standing charge applied in November rather than February when they'd informed us the tariff would change). I got a slightly odd "statement" thing first, telling us the tariff had changed - so rang and complained about the lack of notification, and wangled a £10 goodwill credit. Then the bill arrived a few days later so I called them about that, refused to accept that the intially given £10 credit had anything to do with....well, anything, really, and told them I wanted it corrected - so another £17 credit against that. Also immediately started looking for a new supplier - and had applied to change within half an hour of the original phone call. New supplier should cost about half what BG did too, so all good.

Electricity also needs some thinking about - we're currently on a standard tariff and considering options. Scottish Power (current supplier) have a very high Standing Charge, but quite low unit prices - and particularly a low night rate - which is at least 60% of our power use. Tempted to go through the place again working out where savings can be made to be honest - might switch electrical things about to see if we can kill the power totally on PC, printer etc rather than just turning them off at the individual items. This time of year our use drops anyway as we need to run the dehumidifier less, and showers tend to be on cheap rate in the mornings.

Still stashing odd "sweepings" from accounts into our Virtual Sealed Pot, that's being used this year to make our planned extra Hebrides trip "cash neutral".

Spendiness: Odds and ends really - £50 on Orkney return ferry tickets - we're doing the overnight crossing back to Aberdeen this time. The train back from Aberdeen was booked a while ago - £22 each - meaning our travel for the Orkney trip has come in rather bargainously! Got some airshow tickets to book - Wings and wheels for both of us in August, and Biggin Hill just for me in June - but will do those once the new credit-card month starts. Also eyeing up a music festival in Hampshire in August - just a one-day thing, and would tie in nicely with other things we're doing around the same time.

Lots of lovely cheeriness coming up too - day out in London with a pal on Friday, gig Friday night, rugby match on Saturday (MrEH's team are in a cup final) Then middle of the following week sees us heading off to Orkney for the long weekend. :T

Will attempt to actually catch up on everyone elses goings on at some stage now life has evened out a bit!

Pippilongstocking

Best get the duster out.

starnac

Pippilongstocking wrote: »

Best get the duster out.

She's not *inspecting* is she?? If she pops in to my diary wearing white gloves I know I'm in trouble.

*goes off to bake cakes to distract EH from the dust*

EssexHebridean

Ooh - cake! :T

Pippi - put your duster away you daft woman, I promise not to write in any dust I see, OK?! :rotfl:

Not a lot to report. MrEH's "new to him" car has sprung a leak - the same problem with the cooling system we had with the previous one, we suspect. We also suspect that the person who sold it to the dealer we bought it from knew about it. :mad: No way of proving it though, so we'll just have to get on with it. It's pottering on at the moment anyway - we just have to go everywhere armed with a litre bottle of water to top things up before we drive off. Mine is getting plenty of action instead which won't do it any harm.

Small Money saving Thing: Treated my car to a full tank of fuel last night and remembered to use my Tesco Fuel save points - a whole £1.17 off the tank. I should clearly have headed this "Very Small Money Making thing" shouldn't I?! :rotfl:

Heading off on the very exciting sleeper-train tomorrow night - very looking forward to that (and must pop over to Caz's diary to see if tea & cakey-type meetings on Thursday afternoon are still a possibility). Then it's a less exciting regular train, and bit of a walk, a ferry, and then a whole weekend with my lovely chum! :T

We've got spending money set aside from our Tesco account for the weekend - some of the money we've saved by being ultra-frugal with grocery type stuff. Amazing how it mounts up.

starnac

Is it tomorrow you go?. Woohoo!, have a fab holibob!!! Say hi to Pippi for me x

EssexHebridean

I have SO many hugs and hellos to deliver it will be a miracle if she's not utterly smothered!

Yep, head up tomorrow night - sleeper departs at 9.15pm from Euston, and we step off the ferry at Stromness 23 hours and 15 minutes later, all being well. :j Hoping for nice weather for the journey too - it's a fab trip when the sun's shining!