Cheery's buttling diary: tea in one hand, plant pot in the other, running shoes on

Karmacat

:hello: Good luck again with that list, Cheery

Cheery_Daff wrote: »

Day 2 was more sedate - flat as a pancake and quite dull in comparison :rotfl: :rotfl: Lots of old railway lines, lots of industrial history but I didn't do any detours, and it was quite cold so after being completely sunburned in a t shirt the day before, I ended up with three tops and a pair of gloves on. Met a friend in Liverpool for a cuppa (contemplated bailing on the train again ), then cycled along the seafront into what felt like gale force winds (but was really just a stiff breeze, right in my face of course). Got the ferry across the Mersey, then another 10 miles round the coast (into the wind) to visit my sister :j

:j Hurray! Yes, it gets windy there! The Irish Sea an' all that :j

£3 ferry across the Mersey

Brilliant! Its very different now, because of the container port at Seaforth, but when I was *very* little, there were so many boats and ships on the Mersey that when we used the ferry, we only counted those that crossed the ferry wake, otherwise there were too many (the wake-crossing ships would amount to maybe a dozen). Containerisation has killed all that, but the ride is still lovely :beer:

Total roughly £125, which for 4 nights/5 days away (including all travel/transport/food/treats) isn't too bad at all :j

Brilliant!

Reckon we can come in under £100 for food/treats while we're there, so that'll be a total of £575 for the week, making £700 for both weeks. Spendy spendy, but we've not been away for more than a weekend for two years! :eek: And we are both VERY ready for a break

Cheery, honestly, I don't think thats spendy at all, I think its very frugal. Have a lovely, lovely time

Cheery_Daff

Finally back :j Had a lovely relaxing time :j Basically just pottered about and sat in the house all week

Not sure how frugal mind you, not added up properly yet but YNAB app is shouting at me :rotfl:

Started alarmingly with a flat tyre on the A1M :eek: fortunately we fitted the spare, and next day went to Kwik Fit where we discovered a wildly out of kilter front wheel thing (tehnical term) meaning the other tyre was down to the metal too :eek: Two new tyres plus recalibration took us to £156 :eek:

Stupid car played up all week - had to jump start several days by pushing down the farm track, and lots of lights flashing on and off all week. Took to garage yesterday, they've replaced the fuel filter (£35) but lights still flashing so it"ll have to go back.

Other than car repairs... we had breakfast and tea at home every day, and mostly ate in cafes for lunch and cake One £4 each entry to a local museum, but no other entry fees. Spent some in charity shops (mostly books) but not much else.

Home now aiming for a pottery day - been for a run, now going to potter near a new house we've got our eye on, and then stuff like washing, unpacking, batch cooking

Karmacat

:wave: Hiya!

Have a belated birthday cake :bdaycake:

Glad you had such a lovey time, wheels notwithstanding!

Cheery_Daff

Well thank you for the cake KC, you know I always appreciate a cake But it's not my birthday til next Thursday

I'll still eat the cake though :rotfl:

To add to our list of woes, the shower has no broken. So now there are three of us in the house, and no means of having anything other than a cold wash as the central heating/hot water was on the blink and the only saving grace was the electric shower, which won"t turn on :eek: wish i'd discovered thay before I went for a run! :eek:

Plumber is ringing me tomorrow apparently, car will have to go back this week, got someone fittig more carpet on Thursday amd I'm waiting to hear back from both joiner and plasterer. Aarrrghh!

EssexHebridean

:rotfl::rotfl: Thought I'd lost a few days there for a moment! :rotfl::rotfl:

Fingers crossed that the car requires nothing more than tweaks, the plumber gives the boiler an effective final warning" and the shower takes pity on you and starts dishing out hot water again. If none of the above proves to happen, then welcome to my "haemorrhaging money from every angle" current world! :eek::p

Cheery_Daff

Shower working thanks to Mr Cheery :j Plumber coming this morning (he's old and reliable and knows our old unreliable boiler well so fingers crossed), car going in again tomorrow now :rotfl:

Some good MSE bargains lately. Yesterday we got some fruit bread for 9p in T@sco, and the other day a friend came round for tea and brought a gift of a 19p bag of potatoes and a 5p bag of parsnips :j Excellent gifts

On the way to catch train to another city for work - work will cover travel but I'm going out for lunch with a friend, we'll likely just grab a quick sandwich though, nowt fancy.

Still not sorted YNAB since second half of holidays :eek: purse stuffed full of receipts :eek: might grit my teeth and sort that tonight - was payday while I was away so shouldnt be tooooo bad

Have a cheery day folks

Cheery_Daff

Right - STILL not done YNAB but I have now emptied all my receipts out of my purse so I WILL get on with it RIGHT NOW and report back

Stair carpet man should be here around 10 :j Can't decide whether this is an exciting or boring thing to happen on my birthday but it's made me work at home rather than go into the office so all good :rotfl: and we've NEVER had a new stair carpet, and Mr Cheery has been here nearly 30 years :rotfl:

Meant to have a plasterer to quote this morning but he's cried off because of jet lag :rotfl: :rotfl:

Right - YNAB and I'll report back :eek:

Karmacat

:bdaycake: Happy Birthday Again! Have another cake


Pleased to hear about stair carpet! But I have to tell you, Cheery, *nobody* gets excited about staircarpet :rotfl: contentment, luxuriousness, "ooh, carpet" if toes could talk, that sort of thing. But not excitement, I don't think

Good luck on YNAB!

Cheery_Daff

:rotfl: Yes those are my thoughts - at least once 'aarrgghh, how much hammering?!' and 'whose fault it is that there may not be quite enough to do the top landing??' thoughts have passed :rotfl: :rotfl:

Anyway, YNAB FINALLY done :eek: Not done since between my two weeks away :eek: so it was a right old mess - had £90 less cash than it said, and £30 more in the bank :rotfl: Have filed it all under 'budget fiddling', and allocated wages to next month, and added £700 to the House Fund :j :j

Suppose I could technically stop adding to that at some point :rotfl: I split it into Martin's suggested categories for house moving, and have filled all of them except the stamp duty, which has nearly £6k in now - another £1.5k and we'll have (I think) hit the ceiling for stamp duty on the most expensive house we'd be able to afford (which we might not go with anyway) so should have enough for all eventualities, and can start putting into a general 'savings' fund again :j

Should probably think about moving ISAs at some point I suppose - mine is something like 0.75% interest and I don't have one at all for this year. But not today!

EssexHebridean

Happy cakeday Cheery!

I can totally identify with getting mildly excited about things like stair carpet! You should have SEEN my little face when our new front door was fitted - and that surely must be less exciting than something that you use ALL the time like stair carpet? Permission to :j:j granted in full! :rotfl: