Travelling On

badmemory

Many years ago I got used to being the poor relation. My retirement income is now higher than my earnings were for the last few years. I have no intention of letting them know that because I do not want to get back in the eternal spiral of my spend is higher than yours. I've kept myself & my son for the last 30 years & hope to do it for another 30, which will make me a few months older than Kirk Douglas is now. Yes I know fat chance but one has to have an aim!

Karmacat

apple_muncher wrote: »

I remember that I used to dip into your diary yonks ago(?) and then you received your inheritance. And - if I recall rightly - it was a huge help and has enabled things like the kitchen to be done just as you wanted it, not to fit to a v tight fixed budget? I enjoy hearing about your out-and-abouting, your fights with the brambles + laurel + weeds in general, your walks, your ancestor-hunting, U3A, eco stuff...

Aw, thanks apple! That's really nice

And when you finally do get your SP, does that mean you'll get 8k more p.a.? If so, you'll be rolling in it :rotfl:!!

Nooooo :rotfl: it means a lesser amount of savings will be withdrawn :rotfl: norty Apple!


There's some Zimbabwean silver we still need to sell, actually - little nick-nacks that were bought or gifted over the years, which none of us want. Meant to do it over each of the past two summers, but never got round to it.

badmemory wrote: »

Many years ago I got used to being the poor relation. My retirement income is now higher than my earnings were for the last few years. I have no intention of letting them know that because I do not want to get back in the eternal spiral of my spend is higher than yours. I've kept myself & my son for the last 30 years & hope to do it for another 30, which will make me a few months older than Kirk Douglas is now. Yes I know fat chance but one has to have an aim!

Thats amazing that your income is now slightly higher, bad memory! And absolutely agree that that needs to be kept private from whoever. We're all very open about savings, but income, not quite so much. I refer you to my misinterpretation of Finally Solvent's post :eek:

Karmacat

Such a lovely day out nursing a cup of coffee with a friend, and then a walk along the beach, its a long time since I've seen that amount of white water. Slightly difficult few minutes walking down the road that led away from the beach - a wind tunnel effect with that amount of wind was incredibly dangerous, I genuinely nearly lost control a few times - and one of them, I'd have been blown straight into the path of a taxi. As it was, I clawed my way back from that corner and went a different way. Very happy to get back to all the shops! Loved the trip, actually: I lived there for a long time, and its nice to go somewhere so big and so lively :beer:

Two purchases: 2 x 500g organic soya beans, £1.39 each. Its incredibly difficult to find soya beans - HandB does them, but I won't touch them unless they're the *only* people. I discovered my online supplier does them, but its a while until I order again. So this does nicely, and its a very good price, especially organic.

Popped into a shop thats a mix between utility/ hotel ware/ camping (they sell Kelley kettles!) and eventually bought some very long, very stylish torches, that run off 2 x AAA batteries - nice for my nephew and his wife, one each Friend and I agreed not to do presents any more, and I need to consult with my brother about my SiL (though I haven't collected the ones I bought on Sunday, oops).

[Deleted User]

I'm glad you enjoyed your day out and catching up with your friend. The wind sounds horrendous though:eek:. Good to know you reached home safe and sound:beer:


Well done on finding the torches:T. I just love torches, I have a set of 5 small ones which were really cheap (a 'sale' buy last year). I wasn't expecting much from them given their size but the beam is extremely bright :j. I keep one in my bag, one in the car, another in the drawer of my bedside table all for emergencies/power cuts etc.


By the way, what's a Kelley Kettle please? Also, I know you're vegetarian and although we aren't I'm trying to incorporate more veggie meals into our diet. What do you do with the soya beans and what's the problem with the H&B ones if you only buy them when no others are available?

Karmacat

Finally_Solvent wrote: »

I'm glad you enjoyed your day out and catching up with your friend. The wind sounds horrendous though:eek:. Good to know you reached home safe and sound:beer:

Thanks FS - the day was really lovely, but the wind was a bit scary for a very little while. Glad to be home! I'm very tired today after all that physical effort, as well as socialising, so I'm having a stay at home day.

Well done on finding the torches:T. I just love torches, I have a set of 5 small ones which were really cheap (a 'sale' buy last year). I wasn't expecting much from them given their size but the beam is extremely bright :j. I keep one in my bag, one in the car, another in the drawer of my bedside table all for emergencies/power cuts etc.

Thats exactly what I do, £3 a go, I had quite a few power cuts when I first moved here. The ones I bought as pressies yesterday are a bit more, as they're very styled, but it is Christmas, after all

By the way, what's a Kelley Kettle please?

It took me a while to suss them out, a few years ago. They're beloved of the bushcraft community - they look sort of like a chimney, and at the bottom you burn a few twigs and in the body of the chimney is a litre or so of water (depending on size) you can also buy a little piece of kit to help you balance a saucepan on the top https://www.kellykettle.com/kelly-camping-kettles/stainless-steel
They were always a bit expensive for me, which is why I got into home made rocket stoves https://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-make-a-Rocket-Stove-from-a-10-Can-and-4-So/ and I made one, though I added fireproof cement to hold in the insulation of the walls, which was fun, truly :rotfl:

Also, I know you're vegetarian and although we aren't I'm trying to incorporate more veggie meals into our diet. What do you do with the soya beans and what's the problem with the H&B ones if you only buy them when no others are available?

Soya beans, any beans really, are soaked overnight, then boiled for 10 minutes in fresh water, then I cook them in a slow cooker for however long it says on the bag. Lentils don't need the overnight soaking, and don't need to be cooked as long. I'm not a good recipe person I'm really, really not so I'd say go to the bbc good food website, and do an ingredients search. Nuts and seeds are a wonderful vegetarian source of protein - again, the BBC website is your friend. For a frugal (very political!) version, go to Jack Monroe's website https://cookingonabootstrap.com/
Red kidney beans keep a great texture. If you're not allergic to wheat, gluten etc, seitan, a Japanese protein, is fantastic if you can find it: the texture is like steak, when I was in my 20s I loved it. Can't touch the stuff now! Too many allergies!

HTH

Karmacat

I was hunting soya beans in particular because of something a nutrient coach on the Russian cruise said: walnuts, soya beans and rapeseed oil are great for ... omega 3? I think so but supermarkets don't stock them any more.

Suffolk_lass

I thought I read some years ago that the GM corruption of soya beans had removed any ability to ensure they were organic and not modified. It was the "Roundup-Ready Monsanto ones that everyone was concerned about). Maybe sufficient time has passed that organic certification is once again possible.

A quick check on the EC Europa website (for EU Food Standards) suggests different testing but I am not up to date as I just don't eat them any more. Link here.

It goes some way to explaining why they are not commonly available any more, with all the fears surrounding glyphosate

Karmacat

Thanks for that, SL - I remember some aggro about it now, but not the details. These are packaged under the label of Infinity Foods, the famous food co-op in Brighton https://www.infinityfoodswholesale.coop/about_us/ and the product https://www.infinityfoodswholesale.coop/all_products/beans_peas_and_pulses/infinity_prepacked_organic_beans_peas_and_pulses/soya_beans/ I downloaded the pdf info sheet too, as I got curious.

The only thing I could find was this: "The product meets EU Organic Standards 834/2007 and 889/2008 and meets the Soil Association Organic Standards. General Requirements Pesticide Residue levels shall not exceed the limits set for EU Organic Products."

That link you provided is interesting! I can't "translate" the whole of it but I can see the phrase "herbicide tolerant crop", which to my lay person's ears means that it's been dosed with a big wallop of glyphosate etc and bred so that it doesn't kill the plant, just the pests. Is that right? Hmmm.

So Infinity aren't lying when they say the beans are organically certified, but that certification allows for a glyphosate residue, and glyphosate is *heavily* implicated in causing cancer, is that right? Hmmm. How disappointing but how important to know.

Karmacat

Oh, FS, H and B, which is Holland and Barrett: their health ranges are as okay as anything else, but I started having objections to the amount of ordinary sweets and unnecessary over-produced items I considered they were selling. And then I fell foul of their pricing policies - I think they deliberately make their pricing as opaque as possible to increase their profits. Which, yes, all companies need profits, but its the opacity and confusion they use, I dislike it.

Karmacat

Argh ... I've taken it slow today, but I felt like doing a few minor things online, like paying a cc ... but for the past few days, my phone screen has been flickering, and now its just black, no reaction at all. The sound of the OTC arriving from the bank was perfectly clear :rotfl: if frustrating!


So, I need to take it in to be repaired? I'll have to research if it can be. And then I can probably go to the bank to pay at the ATM inside anyway. Sigh ... my big list is on my phone! And I can't see it I know what I need to do really, its just the continuous faffing that never stops. But I know too - only have problems like this because I have this stuff.