5 OS pleasures in your day today - part 3

House_Elf_2

Good Morning Luverlies,

I have had a little lurk......

Recent Pleasures....
1. DS2 home for Christmas. Hours before his area went into Tier 4. 😅
2. Some Olio and Too Good To Go Successes.....Lolas cup cakes and Pret sandwiches.
3. Tidied the shed and found an EBay item.
4. Used the band saw I bought in the summer. (I wanted it for making trellis, but didn't need to use it 🙄). I have made 2 shelves, to repair a cupboard in the bathroom. I am very pleased with them, but now need to use the saw to make something else. Otherwise, they will be the most expensive shelves ever! 
5. Some exciting money saving shopping trips in Mr T and the Coop and Lidl.......My socially distanced social Life 🤣
6. Still being DD's professional Passenger, so she can practice for her driving test. I like being driven around, but, she sings along to every song on the radio........🤪

I hope your festive preparations are going well. Have a lovely day 🙂

villagelife

1. Cheerful delivery driver. 
2. Saw DS2 house and put together a flat pack cupboard. I had checked the rules and it is allowed. House looks good and they have been busy painting.
3. DH did more painting at home.
4. Text conversations with my sister.
5. Watching White Christmas.

LaineyT

Wishing all my fellow 5Ospers a very merry Yule, if you have clear skies at 5pm tonight for check out the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn.
For yesterday,

Rubbish night so up early, so dark but popped on twinkly lights and enjoyed small dog cuddles.

We had quite a bit of sunshine and it was good to be outside.

Bringing in the green, Holly, Ivy and conifer branches, decorated the hearth and windowsills inside and outside I hung a wreath on the old well.

Something different for lunch, a nut roast which was very tasty.

Watched the final episode of His Dark Materials, having never read the books it’s all a surprise to me.

MandM90

Hello all, long time no see!
My pleasures
1. Leftovers for lunch -  thai green curry for husband, spaghetti for me. Followed by a mince pie. Yum
2. Food again. Don't need to cook tonight as have leftover roast and cake. Yum x2.
3. Cloth nappies squeaky clean and drying. So satisfying.
4. Sent some beautiful flowers for christmas today.
5. Have a new book to start for book club. Something I'd never have chosen, they're always the best.
6. Wheels in motion for house purchase. It has woodland, and a stream. I'm so excited I could cry.

ampersand

Various on/off calls from Addenbrookes. Sadly, PS surgeon cannot travel from his tier, so all off tmrw, including rearranged occ.th appt. Spent more time trying to comfort them re: making these calls, than concerned for self. & remains very, very grateful. 

1. Clear fenny skies for Jupiter and Saturn tonight not remotely likely, as Lainey will corroborate. Low, scudding grey rainy cumulus all day.  Complete opposite of glittering return last night from carpark carols.  Stopped en route, got out, walked and star-gazed up into deep dark rural night - fantastic Plough.

2. Still loving remembering last night :-) and, checking vicar's ref to a story unknown to me(how on Earth has & missed this? No idea), actually heard author Charlie Mackesy reading it, absolute perfection, on r4x this morning.  Do listen:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000r630

3. Have been pastry-ing. All use-ups, h-g's, rtcs - chicken+ham pie, plus 21 mince pies and a don't waste last pastry turnover (about to be sitdown avec café test driven. Edit: test passed) Haven't stopped all day.


4. Loved R4x's Maigret, on all this week and the Little Women readings, ditto, which accompanied the baking work. All scrubbed and away now. Remembering last Boxing Day - went to the film. Loved it.
Derek Jacobi/Maigret here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0001qhm
And fabulous Little Women here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b088dpzt

5. Soggy towels and laundry can stay out there and flap. No hurry. I see them from inside, safety, warmth, out kitchen window.  Tier 2, rural, luckier than many. When & can next escape white cliffs wreckage of a land, who knows?  Msg chat with Spain again this morning.  11C, sunny, new lockdown expected, but as protection from UK.  Quite right. 
#
Thinking of those, ospers and others known to &, for whom this Christmas heightens a difficult, or first, absence. 
Please, everyone - keep taking care.  Stay very safe.  
M&M - that sounds wonderful, all the more so in this time.

CRANKY40

Good evening all, pleasures for yesterday....

I gave myself a day off from everything apart from making meals
I also had a pyjama day. I did have a bath after dinner and I changed into clean pjs
A roast dinner. I wasn't going to bother as it's so close to Christmas day but the HT fancied a roast
I made gingerbread biscuits - Christmas tree shaped so they are season appropriate
A couple of hours online gaming with best friend. It's good to talk

& I bought the book of that story for my friend for her birthday a couple of months ago. Friend is a consultant in a children's hospital and collects childrens books. She was very pleased to receive it. 

Take care all of you

Happycas

& - That book was our gift to DGD in the summer before she went to 'big' school.  It is lovely.

House elf - glad DS got home before the borders closed!

MandM - new house sounds wonderful

Not much to say because not a lot happening.
DS came yesterday to bring DGS Christmas present ( a bike) to hide in our garage until Christmas eve. It was good to see him even though it was cold outside so it was a brief visit.

Some shuffling about and our Christmas arrangement can still be managed.  It's always low key anyway, without a lot of visiting, so it should be do-able. I do feel for those who have ended up in a different area from those they want to see.   And for tier four folk, of course.   It is so frustrating.

Bit of last minute shopping today.   Prescription medication collected from the chemist.   Meat to collect from market butcher tomorrow, then I think that's about it.

Happy shortest day everyone

mhagster

Hello. Hot shower and jammies time again. Oooft a day that went on forever! Another early start and oooft another tomorrow. Full day at work & very busy . However excellent tips today! All in the jars which are filling nicely. Last day with one of my colleagues who I will miss very much. 

Two phone calls from mums hospital so the issue is sorted. They are very short staffed at the moment. ( only one specialist nurse instead of usual three ) 

we have a lovely customer who is 83 and who I’d invited to come and watch our Santa thing on Saturday night. She didn’t quite get the whole ‘zoom’ thing...am I the first to arrive? But said today she thoroughly enjoyed it and what a marvellous reader I was! 

A bit of peace and quiet as girls were round at the granny’s! Then got noisy again and sprawled over my bed , so a do you mind I need a shower! 

Receiving a lovely little felt gingerbread man decoration from DD1 that she posted 3 weeks ago.

The welcome home from my doggy, we had a rather blustery walk first thing. And the bird song I couldn’t identify the other morning ( as it was too dark) is a mistle thrush. 

DundeeDoll

and yuletide greetings to you too LT
Alas very cloudy and wet here in Dundee too, but did see jupiter and saturn had got very close last night. tomorrow promises to be clear (and cold!)
A mistle-thrush, how lovely mhags
1) the boiler man cometh. With his assistant. The left manifold is in need of replacing hence the leak. do we want it isolated till replaced or are we happy to empty the bucket every day? what difference does it make? isolating will mean no hot water. will not isolating damage anything? no. emptying the bucket it is then!
2) although not officially working, did do about 4 hours, ho hum, but it was good to get some things sorted, and have ignored the majority of stuff
3) hm carrot and ginger soup for lunch with french bread. Very yummy. Keep calm and carry on making soup.
4) walked into town with dd2 and ds - we did some shopping and had tea and a bun at our fave wholefood shop
5) and now sitting listening to Christmas music while a chilli bubbles away. Then Vicar of Dibley, Upstart Crow and bed. 

Frith

Good evening, everyone, on the shortest and rainiest day...
Here are the the most important or interesting bits recently. In no chronological order.

1) Avian flu is miserable and there are now 4 hens in a converted greenhouse. They are very cross. There is no end date to their lockdown at the moment.

2) We were/are in tier 2 and can look out to the land of milk and honey, just 3 short miles away (Herefordshire, tier 1).

3) We travelled to another tier 2 and had 3 days in York. This went OK as we drove part way so we did not have to change trains in Birmingham (tier 3). We had a train carriage to ourselves, then an Indian restaurant to ourselves, then Jorvik to ourselves. We did have to share the National Railway Museum with two other families, but they were in the distance. 

4) All the rivers have the flood defences up and other places are flooded. Again. 

5) I was enjoying Nigel Slater's Christmas Chronicles Podcast very much (he went to my high school so I recognise the places he is talking about). Then I realised what his rather earnest delivery reminded me of - Adrian Mole! 

6) We had a very tense evening when bigger son's friend messaged to say he was going to kill himself. For some reason, I became a sort of police go between, relaying any messages received by bigger son or his friends. It was quite ghastly, particularly half an hour in to the first phone call where I had to detail how he had tried to commit suicide before (he was in hospital for a year). In one of the later calls from the local police, there was a silence when she remembered him from the last time. Bigger son and I walked as far as we could, over 4 hours (all in the dark). I don't know why, but I didn't really expect the police to do much, as we could only tell them a wide area where 3 nature reserves all join together. But we were told (by another friend) that 3 police cars were outside his house. I got a phone call that they were sending the helicopter out and it tracked backwards and forwards overhead while we searched in the dark. We looked in the places that the helicopter couldn't see, including caves where we both wanted to find him and hoped that we wouldn't. After 4 hours, we walked back to my car and bigger son was really starting to panic that we were leaving him in the dark. As I put my hand on the car door, the police phoned to say they had found him. He recovered in hospital. 

7) Smaller son started at college (mid November). At first, it was not great and he averaged 2 days a week. Their usual plan is not to have any sort of a timetable but you ask to do lessons when you are ready. This caused outrage here that he was "wasting his time" and I think he has been the first pupil to have a timetable set in stone! They also tried sending nice lads in to talk to him (he can't reply) so that made him extremely tense. They've stopped any sort of chatting or joining in with other students now. He plays badminton every day, they've had a walk to the railway station with him and he's ploughing through GCSE work again. He quite likes the teachers, the food and the therapy dogs. They also make him cups of tea. He's taught 1 to 1 and no one has had coronavirus yet as there are no classes. He does one junction on the motorway to get there and freezes half to death as they have to keep the car windows open! (and all the school windows). 

8) Bigger son had an interview for an apprenticeship, same sort of thing as his last outdoor instructor job. He was successful in that but then phoned again to say another candidate had coronavirus! So we've spent a long 10 days at home, with no symptoms at all. We've had a lovely day today (first day allowed out) buying a Christmas present for his new lady friend. 

Various other things and problems not really going to plan but we have shopping in and all the Christmas food and presents organised.
Hope everyone is doing OK.