EH - Essex > Hebrides...the next step of the adventure?

savingholmes

So glad you got through it. You deserve a medal!!

EssexHebridean

I agree with you there SH - I actually think I do! A big shiny blingy one!  Beanie - palaver is just the word!  Cheery - MiL absolutely totally appreciated it I think, even if she was a bit bewildered on Thursday evening how apparently I'd been keeping going at the same flat-out pace since my arrival at 3pm the previous day! 

Well the latest on the energy prices thing is that I see that Utility Point who of course we have JUST moved to with our gas supply have now gone, so we are now with EDF - one of the specific companies I was hoping to avoid. Once we get the tariff info through from them I'll see how they look and may just stick with their variable for the time being - key for us because our gas use is TEENY is the lowest standing charge we can get, the teeny gas use is also the reason why dual fuel deals are pretty much always useless for us although I will look again at that. Need to check whether the MSE Cheap Energy thing will automatically change our details to the ED stuff or not, though as it will be there I go for checking options. 

Cheery - on the Bulb thing just double check that they DID increase your DD for that reason - they tried to more than double ours a few months ago now and when I checked the amount they wanted would have left us overpaying them by literally hundreds each year - we've never used anything like that much even last year with the long winter and being at home so much! It was one of the reasons why we left them - and I know that plenty of others have been treated the same (and reacted the same - another reason they are now in trouble!) so worth double checking. Clearly they were trying to raise cash by "banking" money from customers now with a view to it bridging a gap. 

Desperately trying to come up with ways to use the vegetable glut that's lurking in our fridge before too much of it goes past it's best. Last night's dinner saw of an aubergine, some more courgette, and the last of a butternut squash. Tonight I'm fancying a change from courgettes though, so will do some form of other veg with the lamb chops which are waiting to be reheated and some tatties. Tomorrow is a pasta day I think - might nip to Al's for some salmon to go with it, and make the vegetables used spinach and courgette... (Yes - we're only getting the one day off!) as that would then use the last of the spinach. It can just have wild garlic butter as a sauce. There are runner beans a-plenty to pick too, but at a pinch those can be prepped, blanched and frozen so I'm fine with those keeping producing!  Also have two eggs to hard boil for sandwiches - and a mental note not to buy from the chap at the farmers market again too as they were definitely NOT the freshest! Oh - and MrEH is planning to pickle the beetroot this evening I think - he did some a few months ago and it's absolutely gorgeous so that will be a fab way of making it useable through the winter! 

Finally got my final Lido swim of the year last night - very lovely! it will be back to the indoor pool at the leisure centre for me next time I want to swim, then. Also made use of my gym pass yesterday so it's fair to say that my arms and shoulders are a bit grumpy at the moment! 

EssexHebridean

And in exciting MSE news - we have our first £300 of Premium Bonds! 

beanielou

Woohoo

savingholmes

Well done on the exercise and the premium bonds. 

Cheery_Daff

Excellent news on the premium bonds! 

You're probably right about them trying to bank dosh. I didn't think anything of it (other than being mildly annoyed) but it did double (£44 to £89) - but then we'd pretty much used up all credit balance and we are heading into winter... we'll see.

RosaBernicia

I'd check anything Bulb tell you very carefully.  I never got any sense out of them about my bills and at one point they were trying to charge me £11 a day.  I keep getting occasional fivers through to my account as all their errors are found out and they have to repay me years later! 

savingholmes

My supplier went bust today too

EssexHebridean

Yes - we had a good run with Bulb as we did get a good lump of referral credit from them, but their behaviour over the past 6 months has been disgraceful - in any other circumstances I'd say we're glad to be shot of them but it must be said right now I'm not convinced we've not gone from the frying pan into the fire - we'll see! 

Lovely weekend with a group of friends in St Albans. We visited the rather wonderful DeHavilland Aircraft Museum on saturday morning - it's not far from us and I'd been before but  it's a fantastic place to spend a few hours. Then on to St Albans and the rest of the day wandering from pub to pub on one of the trails as part of the St Albans beer and pub festival. Got back to the hotel slightly worse for wear at around midnight - and could REALLY have done without the fire alarm (which sounded nothing  LIKE a fire alarm - hence it taking us 5 minutes to decide that no it wasn't just our room, and we should probably evacuate!) going off at 3.30am. Half an hour outside before we were told everything was OK and we all staggered back inside... Appallingly managed by Travelodge too - we had literally NO interaction, information or direction from the two members of staff on duty - I actually felt quite sorry for them as clearly they'd had some training in what was meant to be done but absolutely no knowledge in how to do it. No roll call, no effort to find out if people were still inside (turned out that 4 members of our party still were) and had it been a real emergency things wouldn't have ended well. 

And now we have another week - two days in the office for me, the last week I will be doing the two day thing before returning to my usual 4. (Except I won't, immediately - I'm off next week, the week after I have the Monday off so will be in 3 days, and the one after that I plan to take the Thursday off so again keeping it to 3 days.) MrEH is in London the same two days this week I am - he's WFH the remaining 3.

I've currently done one teeny food shop for the week - literally just fruit really and some cereal - and that came in at just under £7 - there will be another (Probably Aldi) shop at some stage though, possibly tomorrow morning. I've also only got tonight's dinner planned at the moment - and I need to really focus on using up or at least cooking to freeze all the fresh produce we have currently in the fridge and larder. This evening will be baked sweet potatoes topped with a savoury mince mixture plus some additional veg. I've got some rather sad rocket to be used - that might form part of a pasta sauce for tomorrow I think, with a tin of tomatoes, a courgette and probably the last lump of chorizo. There will be one more sweet, plus a few ordinary potatoes to use up as well, an onion, the runner beans will probably need to be blanched and frozen. I've got an entire cucumber to use too and I can't for the life of me think of anything specific to do with that so it will need thought! Honestly - trying to be zero waste is a proper challenge sometimes isn't it! 

Other than that the only other specific thing planned for this week is to get a couple more uses of my gym pass before it finishes - annoyingly I waste a week of it but assuming I get there twice I'll still have got 8 uses out of it so that will do. The challenge will going to be working out how I can still get the use from it once I'm back in the office 4 days - there is a gym fairly locally to work that may do, that I can use on the same pass, but I'll need to try it and see. Should also be able to get back to cycling too as I FINALLY have the replacement folding bike - not though they ever did get round to calling me to confirm it was in, I had to go to the store to find out. 

savingholmes

Good luck with the return to commuting. I am going in one or two days per week. That feels like plenty and I live relatively close by. Getting good use out of the gym pass sounds like a good plan. I should use mine more. I intended to go a third time per week but I am trying to avoid over scheduling myself so sticking with two right now. Glad you got your bike back even if if it was poor customer service.

Ouch to the fire alarm. Did you manage to get a voucher or anything out of it?