Elite 11+ shopping and chat thread part 2½

silvercar

Virgin Red App have an offer of an nespresso machine for £1.......but you need to buy hundreds of pods in order to get that price. Just posting in case anyone thinks it's worth doing for resale etc.

mhoc

Westvleteren wrote: »

Funny how people differently view travelling times. I wouldn't blink at an hour to get somewhere (because of having lived a very rural location) yet some people baulk at a few miles!

Cheshire Oaks for us is an hour by road - its single track road, no bypass or dual carriage way, 40 mph speed limit and speed cameras all along the route - move than likley following a farm vehicle as well. Once you get to the outskirts of Chester there is a dual carriageway for the last 10 minutes.
By contrast Chester itself is 20 minites on the train so its never worth the drive unless we are also going further onto Wales later.
The other shopping choices for us are all by train - Liverpool 45 mins or Manchester about 55 mins or Birmingham an hour on the train. You can see why we rarely go to Cheshire oaks.

Its all to do with road conditions, time of day and direction of travel.

We have done drives up to York in just over 2 hours, motorway most of the way, setting off early and timing it to avoid rush hour traffic on the outskirts of Manchester. Then parked on one of Yorks park and ride car parks, had the day in York and then continued our journey later in the day.

By contrast if one of us had an appoinment in Stoke at say 8.30 in the morning there are a couple of routes but the most direct involves a dual carriageway which heads towads the M6 junction before going on to Stoke. Because traffic is funnelled onto this road from various directions and from the M6 junction, at peak times the journey time doubles, a normally 25 min trip can take an hour so for an 8.30 appointment you would be leaving the house about 7.15 to be on the safe side. Quite often its solid standing traffic with a lot of heavy goods vehicles all shuffling towards the m6 junction.

We have a particuarly bad section of the M6 running through - if there is an accident anywhere from Warrington in the north through Stoke and even onto Birmingham in the south it has a knock on effect. The Stoke junctions are particulary bad, if lanes are closed or even whole sections then the traffic diverts onto all of the side roads going across country to try and get back on again further north or further south and then we get gridlock.
If we are setting off for the weekend then it has to be an early Friday start, by lunchtime there will have been some sort of incident and getting out of Cheshire becomes problematic

We used to do a lot of long distant drives with the kids when they were little and now as adults they themselves think nothing of long drives. My OH now I think is a bit too old and knackered and I am a nervous passenger which does not help.

MKS

Anon wrote: »

I should know, but how are you getting APGS on giftcards please? Do you mean A giftcards or others? I know you can transfer the difference in a 342 2 for example (so the value of the multibuy discounts) but thought the till stopped you buying giftcards with apg?

Have I missed something? (I know, a bit late to find out now - only a few days left to generate the apgs!).

Many thanks

Anon

I just add an A one to the shop and pay with a apg. Hasn't been yet but if it was refused, I wouldn't have anymore cash on me.

michaels

So we judge driving trips by whether they are less than about 70 mile sround trip - as our car can only comfortably do mid 80s on a charge and we are too lazy/tight to faff about with public chargers (although tbh if we do need to go further we just take the other car). Living near London of course 35 miles can be 2 hours each way very easily.

Trying to eat up the freezer for FrOctober we pulled some sort of meringue raspberry concoction out of the freezer that someone had brought over for a new years day meal contribution - unfortunately it turned out to be New Years day 2017 and it had lost all its liquid whilst gaining a full set of freezer flavours so it had to go straight into the bin. I am all for this reduction of plastic in packaging but the trend to just use cardboard in frozen items is not without consequences...

mhoc

We have had a weird weekend. It started on Friday with OH being home as he was going in to work late.
When we got back from town (traffic at a standstill as something had happened in the M6 again!) we found the back key didnt work as the lock had finally gone. Fortunatley with a bit of wire and jiggling OH got the door to unlock and then we had to call a locksmith.
He came later on and fitted a new lock.
In the meantime OH rang from work to say the builder could come on Saturday. Great I thought, its a nice weekend so he can paint the 2 front stone window ledges and the front door.
So he came on Saturday and he said some of the wood door surrounds needed replacing as it had rotten bits at the bottom which was fine as we had suitable wood. Then he made a list of stuff to get so off he went to b&q (because he has trade discount and my pile of B&q gift cards) Then builder with OH as his glamorous assistant started working away at fixing the door, sanding it down, OH cleaned up the brasswork very nicely so that didnt need replacing. Sunday morning we went to get a new brass door number which was an OMG price. By Sunday afternoon I'd retreated and went to read in bed.
Now its Monday, the house is still freezing as the front door is off. I cant get into the study or dining room which are now full of hardware and carpentry kit and the vaccum is blocked off not there is much point in trying to clear the mess anyway. Ive now given up all hope of doing anything productive today.
On the plus side though door painting has started.

Anon

curl_girl wrote: »

No.
I still spend loads, I need space and use up ood stock. My freezer is in a terrible state, everything just thrown in.

I don't have that issue after accidentally unplugging the freezer and binning all the contents .

Fortunately two more freezers still have some stock .

Desperate for cheese though :eek:.

Anon

mhoc

In other news my sister - this is the middle one - has been in the wars again. This time she had another bad fall and managed to break her wrist. They strapped her up for the weekend and then she went back in a week ago to have a plate put in.
She reacts very badly to general anaesthetics so she was feeling very battered and bruised afterwards so they kept her overnight.
Just waiting for a text now to see how she has managed over the weekend
(this is the sister who had surgery and chemo for breast cancer in July 2017 and the previous year had a fall, broke her hip and had an emergency hip replacement)

mhoc

On the plus side though and as a direct result of the general chaos that has been going on I managed to get through the weekend without thinking about my Dad - its 4 years now since he passed and Ive tended to have a mini melt down at the end of September but this weekend the day passed and it was just another day.

I am wondering now though if Eldest child and Eldest son and OH have been plotting to keep me so fully distracted that I had no time to mull over. Eldest child has rung a few times last week to organise a visit in November. OH got the builder in for the weekend. Eldest son rang for a huge long facetime catch up with all of their news on Sunday morning - now I think about it, its too much of a coincidence. Not that I mind them plotting and it all worked like a charm - too miserable about the state of the house to be miserable about anything else

sarahskint

Well after popping in and out for the last couple of weeks that job has come to an end, shame as I loved it but hey ho that's what 2 weeks work does lol, although looking at my amended tax credits sheet this morning I wonder why I'd bothered. I'm going to join in with froctober or try lol, I've had to pay out for my car this morning to get it through the mot and the road tax. £355...……..but I'm not counting that as it was put aside at the weekend


going to print my last few apgs today and stock up on tins, I've been stocking up on the xmas essentials tins of fruit etc

Sarahdol75

Jeremiah_T_Stone wrote: »

Good morning shipmates :wave:
Hope everyone is well on this Sunny autumnal morning.

We have a new member of our crew - a puppy called Harriet :j

Good morning, we need pictures please :j:j

I am trying to persuade my OH to let us have another dog. I got there after all the pleading to have Harley :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl: