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

Cheery_Daff

EssexHebridean said:

Cheery it really has been an excellent Friday - I hope yours has been every bit as lovely!  

Ha, sadly not - started well with a cafe breakfast, but I was anxious and fretty all morning then twanged my back trying to turn the compost and spent the rest of the day sulking on the sofa 🙄😂 No flapjacks for me sadly! Very glad you had a jolly day though, I'm going to try again tomorrow 😊

EssexHebridean

Oh no - poor you Cheery - if I was closer I’d deliver you some flapjacks!  Glad at least you got a cafe breakfast in there mind - and fingers crossed for today being a good (better!) one! 😘

Cheery_Daff

Ha, thank you! I'm mostly just annoyed cos I had a big list I wanted to get done this weekend - but in reality most of those things have been on the list for weeks anyway, so... 🙄😂

EssexHebridean

Right, a spendy morning but planned spendy. 

Farmers market was first - we always love a visit there, and especially on a lovely sunny day when everyone’s deeply cheerful! Some minced beef and sliced haslet from Catherine, plus two of her delicious beef and horseradish sausage rolls (not cheap but boy are they good!) which will now form the basis of tea tonight. Then from Peter some stewing lamb, the lamb shoulder I was after, and a pack each of liver and kidneys. I think the lamb shoulder is probably going to end up in the freezer as we’re definitely now out for the day tomorrow, but that’s fine, it’ll do a Sunday lunch another week! 

In answer to “can I keep the main food shop to under £25 - no, I couldn’t. However, it came in at £30.89 and :
£6.24 was storecupboard items
£1.79 was a pack of nice ham which will make rolls to take out with us to the Ideal Home Show tomorrow, this meaning we won’t succumb to the pull of “oh we’ll just buy something while we’re at the show”.
MrEH fancied blood oranges - which are more expensive than the usual, but also more tasty.
We also stocked up on other lunch fillings as we’re quite low on those. 

Other impulse buys were resisted, aside from a punnet of grapes which is the sort of healthy impulse buy I can go along with!

So I’m happy with that. 

We then popped to The large orange DIY place - stainblock is bought, as is a pack of what we hope are the right cable clips to get our cabling in the hallway under control so it can be plastered over. We’ve also had a look at paint colours and we *think* we might have an idea of colours for the hallway, too. This is a major leap forwards as we’ve really been struggling to get even the vaguest idea of what colour we might fancy. A very soft, buttery pale yellow is looking likely, subject to how it looks when we get hold of a tester pot to try. 

Final shop was H0me B@rgains - just at the other end of the same trading estate as the large orange DIY place - and there a tiny bit of impulse buying crept in…but not in a bad way. A tube of toothpaste each (I’ve got a slightly sensitive tooth and the Arm&Hammer one usually sorts it pretty quickly, and they do MrEH’s toothpaste of choice at a far cheaper price than it can be got elsewhere), the mixed dried fruit I couldn’t get in Al’s, and the pack of lightbulbs we went in for.  How angelic are we?! 

Since getting all that done, we’ve unpacked all the shopping, been for a wander to try to get MrEH’s newspaper (a fail - the two smaller newsagents haven’t had a delivery and the T’s petrol station kiosk are being tricky about accepting his subscription vouchers again - on the flipside though we did walk past our local pond on the way and discovered quite how full of frogs and frogspawn it is, currently!), changed the three lightbulbs in the power-thirsty hideous bedroom light fitting, and eaten lunch - HM soup and toasted pittas. Now in spite of the glorious sunshine still beaming down we’ve opted for the rugby on the TV, I’ll probably stick the kettle on shortly and then get on with some more of my crochet. A nice relaxing afternoon feels like just the thing! 

Cheery_Daff

Sounds like a perfect afternoon!

redofromstart

The farmers market sounds lovely, and my experience of the 'Ideal Home' type shows is that you are lucky if you can go under £5 a head for a minimalist hog roast or bacon roll.

EssexHebridean

From what we saw yesterday Redo you could add another couple of £'s onto that easily for anything that would constitute a "meal" rather than just a snack.

We took, ate and enjoyed our sandwiches and crisps at the show. Spent £13 in there on three nice cheeses - from a supplier we've bought from before at the Good Food show, and these were at a "standard" price that we're happy to pay. we also had a bottle of water with us so resisted the temptation to get a coffee or similar while there - and found a refill point to top up said bottle before we left the venue too! We didn't spend all that long there in the end - as I think I mentioned our primary driver for wanting to go was allowing MrEH to have a look around Olympia before our own event there later in the year, so on the ground floor we walked around the perimeter of the inside of the building. Upstairs we did explore a little more - particularly the foody area, and we hung about for long enough to be sure we could claim our "goody bags" too as another little free bonus. We had no interest in looking at expensive home furnishings, hot-tubs, decorative nick-nacks which even with a "show special" price were still expensive for what they were, or would simply have added to clutter. Incidentally the cheese price was an increase of £1 on this particular stand's "usual" show prices for such things

After leaving Olympia at around 2.30pm, we realised we were in absolutely the right area to continue with one of our "Underground/Overground" walks - we'd planned to get the tube back from Shepherds Bush anyway, and as we were walking along the road I remembered that was where we'd finished our previous section of that end of the Central line so we agreed we'd continue and do a few more stations. In fact we did to one of the ends of the line across to the West - Ealing Broadway.  Apart from the travel costs (on our Oyster cards - mine needed a £10 top-up which I did directly from the joint account) the only other spends each were a mid-walk treat of ice-creams, and a round of drinks each in the traditional end-of walk pub. I'm perfectly happy with that - it was a lovely day out, a chance for some much needed research, the cheese was at a price that was reasonable (and it will be enjoyed), we got a nice walk (and some effectively free exercise!)  and all for a low cost and no frittering! 

Plans for this week then - I managed a short additional distance to my cycle from the car this morning and aim to add to that through the week - this evening I'm going to go and track down the other possible gym for lunchtime visits so that should be a decent little extra chunk. I'm aiming for gym visits tomorrow evening and friday morning. Friday also sees the memorial service we're holding for my Gt Aunt and Gt Uncle, and the interment of D's ashes into B's grave which will be emotional, but also a nice way of closing things off, I think. I have a little speech to write (or at least - finish writing) for that too which I am absolutely BRICKING IT about - so not going to dwell on that at all! On Saturday we're back into London for another meeting related to our later-in-the-year event - that will be an all-day thing but there will be some pubs with great pals done during the evening. It WILL be spendy - we'll have lunch in the pub where the meeting is being held, at least a snack somewhere later, and there will be a few rounds of drinks. Plus train fares. We'll walk to the station in the morning but will almost certainly use a taxi back when we get back there at night. It's in the budget though - our personal spends will absorb the beers, and our "joint fun" account will cover food. Then on Sunday we're going to Mum & Dad's to help them with some garden stuff that needs doing. We also have quite a lot of stuff to do this week ahead of the meeting on Saturday so it's a busy one - I'll definitely be planning in some down-time where I can! 

EssexHebridean

Moooooorning! And another beautiful sunny one - warm too - I didn't even need my reflective jacket over my fleece for cycling this morning - lovely! 

Talking of cycling I did indeed investigate the gym nearer to work last night - an easy just-under-10-minutes there so that's good. I plan to try it out after work this evening, too, with a view that it might well work for lunchtimes going forwards - that would be great because it would enable me to either throw in an extra workout here and there, OR simply replace my local-to-home tuesday evening one. Having cycled there of course I also won't need a treadmill warm up so that saves me 10 minutes or so. We'll see how I find it - hopefully it'll be OK though. So tonight I'll leave work a little early, get my workout in and then hopefully arrive back at the car at a similar time to MrEH who is also working in London today. I reckon I should - all being well - be home around half an hour earlier than a Tuesday evening when I use the gym near home. 

Tea last night was delicious - the final box of Hebridean flaky smoked salmon came out of the freezer and 2/3rds of it was used with onion, pepper, peas and spinach in a creamy sauce and served with pasta. This means that the remaining third has made it with some cream cheese into our lunchtime rolls for today - delicious! A rare "posh lunch" for us - generally our rolls are something like haslet, chicken, turkey or pork - but the salmon is so tasty eaten like that and the boxes have enough in to easily allow for it. 

The meal plan tells me that this evening is couscous with roasted veg and halloumi - another reason why saving a bit of time this evening will be useful as it means I can shove the veg in the oven rather than pan-cooking it. I remembered to get pomegranate seeds out to defrost last night too - that little bag of frozen ones I bought a few weeks ago has proved to be a brilliant buy - this is the third portion from it and I reckon there are at least two more to come - IIRC it was £2.50 rather than the £1 a time I'd pay for a pot of fresh ones. 

Yesterday was an NSD - but the rest of the week might be rather more spendy as I absolutely HAVE to get round to sorting out some airshow stuff - tickets to book for Air Tattoo, not cheap but usually a great fun three days - and then accommodation for Eastbourne as well. Then I need to plan out where else I want to head for, and get some accommodation at least pencilled in for those, too. The money is sitting there in my "Airshows" account so all budgeted for - and after a couple of quieter years I think I may even consider it money well spent to treat myself to a "nice" hotel for Eastbourne too - I stayed at a lovely one a few years back so may have a look and see how much that is now. 

Surveys are trotting along quite decently all of a sudden - I had a little flurry on Prolific over the weekend too so:
Prolific: £6.69 paid/£1.88 pending
OnePoll: 1182 points
Ipsos: 598 points
YouGov has died a death though - nothing there for what feels like weeks! 

Right - time for me to do some work I think - else the enormous pile of files to my right might just lean over and swallow me! 

milann

A treat for your air shows sounds ideal. 👍🛩😁

savingholmes

Gym nearer work sounds good. Is it part of a chain?

Good luck with your speech.