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

EssexHebridean

Photos - which I forgot last post! 

ohdearhowdidthathappen

Wow! You had a fab view

EssexHebridean

ohdearhowdidthathappen said:

Wow! You had a fab view

Well, my phone did, when held as high above my head as I could reach! 😂 I’m only a fraction over 5’ tall so can never see the stage well at gigs, thankfully with a great set with screens etc like there was last night it doesn’t matter much! 

savingholmes

Looks awesome. Glad you had a great time

milann

Looks as if you had an amazing time…..what a lovely memory from your great aunt 👍

EssexHebridean

Shopping has been done today - and we’re rather pleased with the bargains got! 

Farmf00ds first - we we’re hoping they might have the special offer on butter we saw a few weeks ago but no such luck, sadly. We did get MrEH’s preferred coffee at 2x 300g jars for £9, and packs of 6 tins of Pr1nces tuna were 2 for £8 so we took advantage of that offer as well. Also on 2 for £1 were N@polina passata, their red pesto too, and also some “seasonal flavour” biscuits for cheese. Not specifically on offer but looked nice were British cherry toms so I grabbed a couple of packs of those as well. £21.38 spent there. On to T’s for the proper weekly shop - and I had some storecupboard bits in mind for there as well. The YS shelf provided 2 pints of milk for 39p, Finest 2 Scotch eggs 84p, 4 mini pork pies at 36p, a pack of C@uldron Foods falafels 69p, and packs of sliced ham at 50p a pack, there were lots so we nabbed three. Storecupboard bits included some tins, red lentils, couscous, stores for the fridge were halloumi and soft cheese, topped up stocks of indigestion tablets and paracetamol, MrEH added some razor blades, and we also bought several packs of the cereal bars we take on holiday with us as they were on offer. Final thing was to grab a bottle of washing liquid to bring us to a spend threshold for using a voucher. Total paid was £45.65 - of which I’ll be allocating £36.45 to the grocery budget. That leaves me at £57.83 spent of my £200 budget which does feel a bit 😱 right at the start of my month! 

I picked half a lb of redcurrants from our little bush earlier on which I was rather impressed with. They’ve been gently cooked down with just a touch of sugar, and half of them have now been turned into ice cream - first time the ice cream machine has been out this year! The remainder of the mix is now stashed in the freezer ready for a future batch of ice cream. There is still masses of currants on the bush too so we’ll be thinking about what to do with those. We’ve ignored the gooseberries this week in favour of pf probably doing a big pick later in the week which can then be turned into jam, at a guess. There will definitely be another batch of ketchup at some point as well though. Also On the garden front, beans are coming along well and are already starting to flower while also climbing furiously. Tomatoes are looking sturdy. My second showing of land cress is now well and truly growing, and the first will be eaten over the next few weeks I’d think. My little pot of seed-grown basil is also flourishing - I should probably sow another pot in the next few weeks.

Right - time to get clothes and my bag sorted out ready for work tomorrow I think - plan is most definitely to head to the gym after work so I need to make sure I’ve got trainers and my water bottle too.

savingholmes

Glad your garden is producing fruit.

Suffolk_lass

I lost every single redcurrant and gooseberry in two beds to the birds. So will be building a fruit cage over two (already rabbit-proofed) raised beds so that this is the last time. I shall layer a couple of bushes and write off the old ones as I know they don't like being moved

EssexHebridean

Thanks SH - it's definitely doing that! And oh no SL - how flipping annoying? I have no idea how come we've NOT lost redcurrants to our feathery lodgers - allowing that the feeders sit just in front of the bush and indeed various birds frequently use the bush as a launch pad to get to said feeders - every year we expect them to find the currants and decimate them, and while we assume we lose some, it's certainly not any sort of appreciable amount! (yet!) 

Well, here we are at the start of another week, and I have already had to lose time to yet more correspondence with the bunch of incompetent shysters that are Utility Warehouse. They've now adopted a principle of just ignoring anything they don't want to read, or deal with it seems, and we are going round in circles. they have our money, they have acknowledged this, but refuse to apply it to the account because it wasn't paid by DD. We can either have it refunded, or can use it in lieu of the next DD - neither things we want to do. Sigh. It's tiresome - we've escalated to a formal complaint (there are a number of other things involved in this as well - all of which they are ignoring) and threatened them with the ombudsman. they have acknowledged the complaint, given us a reference, failed to deal adequately with any of the points in the complaint, and then marked it as resolved, as far as we can gather. In the long term I will be switching across to paying the whole bill each month by DD I think, but right now I just want a bill that shows the amount of credit we ACTUALLY have with them (£121& vat - not the £61 & vat they are telling us we have) before I even contemplate confusing things any further. 

In other and less tedious news, the CC is all squared off now for the latest bill, well, I say that but there is one payment to come across from MrEH, and another which I have sent but is not currently appearing, so those things need an eye kept on them. Aside from that though, all good. I've got some pending transactions from the weekend which will need clearing down once they show on the statement but that's fine. Banks aside from that checked, and good. M@rcus have given us a cheeky 0.25% bonus offer to uplift their interest rates so we have snaffled that in a heartbeat and applied it - anyone else with accounts with them do remember to check monthly for new offers and apply when they appear, won't you! 

I took a few minutes earlier to do some quick sums on our energy use and costs - with the likelihood of further steep increases in October and probably January next year to a degree also, I decided we ought to be properly "finger on the pulse" about where we stood.  Historically we've always used in the region of 5500 kWh per year, and I'd not fully revisited that figure for a while. We have been making solid efforts at ensuring we keep an eye on costs/usage over the last year, but I was delighted to see an annual figure of 4700kWh for the year from 10th June '21, with 77% of that being Night rate (I used to call it "cheap rate - but now, not so much!). One reason for looking into it was to update our "Cheap Energy Club" details - which is now done, but sadly there are no real viable deals for us to switch to. As much as I would like the security of a fix, I certainly don't want it for more than 1 year I don't think allowing for the future uncertainty, and also, allowing that our current night rate is around 10p a unit cheaper than ANY of the fixes, realistically we hope that even the increased rate won't lever it up higher than that in any event. I've gambled every step of the way that just staying put on the SVT is right for us, and in real terms (and allowing for hindsight being a marvellous thing) so far that gamble has proved to be the correct one - I'm under no illusion that this could well change though, hence wanting to keep an eye on it. Right now, the decision is to stay put once more, and cross our fingers... 

Meals are planned for the week:
- tonight is rather unseasonal perhaps, but a bit of a favourite in the shape of liver, onions and mash. 
- Tomorrow will be couscous with halloumi and assorted veggies
- Wednesday I can't remember offhand - the plan is at home and I'm not!
-Thursday is pizza pasta bake which will use half the ball of mozzarella I bought when we shopped - the remainder will be frozen - and the remaining pepperoni from the freezer. If I'm sufficiently organised I will make this tomorrow night and stick in the fridge - we'll see if that happens! 

milann

I haven’t had liver and onions for ages……must head to the butcher that sells it unsliced as I like to slice it very fine and flash fry.
What a mess with the Utilities…..bit of a nightmare for you.