Make do, Mend and Minimise in 2015

FairyPrincessk

Please do! And good luck--fresh mint all winter would be such luxury.

nursemaggie

Well you are a lot of busy bees! Sorry I have been MIA. I have been ill for nearly a month. Something went wrong with our water and the water company did not tell us for three days that we needed to boil the water. Of course because of my cancer treatment my immunity is down and it was too late.

They are having problems up in Preston so I'm sticking to bottled water for now. Boiled cooled water does not taste very nice. I was only drinking water. I have lost a lot of weight so am hoping I don't put too much back. If I am as hungry today as I was yesterday I will.

I asked DS last night if he noticed anything different and he said "The kitchen's bigger!"

I wish, but I did spend two hours yesterday putting everything back in the cupboards and giving the kitchen a good clean. I said "That's the difference between you looking after the kitchen and me."

I notice he had a ham sandwich after I went to bed. The breadboard was out, a jar of mustard, the bread, and the empty packet from the ham. At least he put the butter away. No doubt the plate is still in his room. Yes the kitchen is bigger when I am in charge of the kitchen.

I have just spent over an hour catching up on the thread as I have not had any posts for three days. I lost Firefox last week to an error page and Google seem to be blocking firefox from using MSE. I have written to all three but they don't bother to reply.

Well I had better go to town. Have not been since before I went to Malta and that was at the beginning of July. The fridge is almost empty must go to the market this afternoon. Will buy some nice sausages and we'll have chilli sausages for tea. Yum DS has not complained once we have not had sausages for over a month.

FairyPrincessk

NurseMaggie I'm glad to hear you're on the mend. I did wonder when I heard the story about the water on the evening news a few nights ago if your area was affected. I'm too far south--same water company but different distribution district, I guess. I don't think it was handled as swiftly as it should have been.

I've lived places that didn't have clean water on tap as a general rule and while we did mostly adjust (although a terrible period where even the bottled water seemed to make us all sick sticks in the mind) it was a difficult way to live. That experience is probably the key reason I'm not keen on off-grid living or camping. I came to realize too early just how much I enjoy modern conveniences.:D

I hope you and your son are able to come to an agreement about tidyness. I know he has had a difficult time getting on to his course (Did they get enough students?) but he is old enough to do his share of the household chores.

nursemaggie

Thanks for thinking of me FPK. It is a different issue we still don't know what happened here. It was just part of the area at one treatment works.

They said on the news last night they were emailing everyone who they had email addresses for well they have mine and I suspect many others but they only sent round printed cards delivered by hand three days later. It did not get in the local paper for three days either.

I must have got quite ill because my nurse from the Christie called every day and my GP. He was furious that they had taken so long to inform anyone. It is about a month ago now. I am not too pleased with them over my bills either they have over £200 in my account they should not have billed me this year. I shall get it sorted. Hope it does not take as long as it did to sort the gas.

DS and I are both untidy so I can't really complain it is mainly the kitchen I need to cure him of leaving everything out because it is only one of those tiny little sculleries on the back of a two up two down.

Well I better get off to town or I will not get to market and it is not open tomorrow. Thursday I have my regular CT scan which is about 6 weeks behind. We will run out of dinners long before Friday.

PS we have lived six weeks with no running water back in I think 2007. The treatment works at Tewksbury were flooded so we had bowsers and bottled water for a full six weeks. I really appreciate running water on tap. I learned to be very economical for cleaning and washing. At least only a small area of Gloucester was flooded unlike Tewksbury. A few years later they had it all again as DS came home from collage with an Evening Standard showing identical photos. WE were in West Sussex by then.

Oh Yes uni. He will be doing an OU course so he can't apply until a few weeks before it starts. As he is doing computer engineering there is more likely to be too many than too few.

Bubblesmum

Jackie

My mouth is watering I have been to the sister restaurant in Picadilly and the food is yummy. The one you went to was one of the professional restaurants used on celebrity masterchef.

[Deleted User]

Bubblesmum wrote: »

Jackie

My mouth is watering I have been to the sister restaurant in Picadilly and the food is yummy. The one you went to was one of the professional restaurants used on celebrity masterchef.

I did wonder as the restaurant was full of pictures of 'celebs' on the wall. I must say it was a great experience, but I am still happy to cook for myself and use ingredients from Lidl's or Aldi's.I can then spend my cash on the finer things in life, like my grandchildren:)

I think its lovely to have a taste of the high life ,but I couldn't be doing with it all the time.I kept thinking 'I could make this for a fraction of the price

Nargleblast

When you get the opportunity to dine out somewhere posh, you can always make notes (written or mental!) on the dishes, the flavours, the presentation etc. Then you can have fun trying to recreate the dishes at home to suit your budget.

GreyQueen

(((((nursemaggie)))))) sorry to hear about your additional illness and blood boiling that the water company were so appalling as not to tell people they had a problem until 3 days in. B*ggars. Hope you are soon on the mend.

I used Firefox with duckduckgo as my browser and have never had a problem accessing MSE. Something is amiss with the site this evening, however, which wasn't the case this morning; when I go to Submit Reply on a post I get a message that I have timed out.

I back page with arrow at the top left of my browser and then Submit again and it goes thru OK.

[Deleted User]

Been getting the timed out message most of the afternoon GQ, seems to be gone now though.

Floss

I'm in the affected water purity area, and we've been on "boil" since Thursday, and likely to be so until at least tomorrow. It's a nuisance, but at least we don't have kiddies, oldies or anyone sick. Its more troublesome at work, as we have several inpatient units (NHS) in the affected area.

Oh, well, at least its curbed me running the tap whilst brushing my teeth! Wish we were on a meter so we could save!