Cooking for one (Mark Three)

Brambling

Seems to have been a long week I ran out of steam about 3pm today I'm just hoping no ones asked me too much about the demo I attended this afternoon at least there's a PowerPoint presentation I can read and luckily it was more for info as the work relates to mine :cool:

Lunch was an Italian inspired salad with charred artichokes, mozzarella and Italian ham ate with a olive bread roll. I thought Waitrose was cutting back on plastics ie stopping their coffee cups so why have they started to put their bread rolls/cakes etc in large plastic bags instead of the usual paper one :mad: one roll in a bag big enough for a loaf, there was no point grumbling to the guy on the till but when I have more time and there's no long queue I'm going to ask at the customer services. I'll get off my box now

Due to my lack of steam this evening dinner is Cba so a couple of crumpets and if I'm hungry before bed some fruit.

Caronc hope you have a good weekend with your son

PasturesNew

Brambling wrote: »

Do you have batteries from something else you know works?

No. I have few modern gadget things... the telly, a freeview box and a clock are my lot.... and the telly remote takes smaller batteries than those other things.

It might be the battery, but I suspect it's the telly on the blink ... but until I buy new batteries that I know work I won't know - and, as I don't think that'll fix it, I've no intentions of going out just to buy batteries "to see" else I'll be doubly annoyed I wasted time/money/energy on a fruitless purchase.

Brambling wrote: »

At the risk of sounding like some IT guy telling you to Ctrl Alt Delete have you tried turning the tv off at the socket for a few minutes and back on again

Many times.... it's still not working. This is day two without a telly.

PasturesNew

It's raining here. Not checked the weather for the weekend as I'm not going anywhere.... so it doesn't matter.

It was sunny yesterday, but the house orientation isn't great at benefitting from that unless I physically go outside and sit... and that's just boring, sitting there doing nothing when everything I want/need is inside the house

It's increasingly rare to get a house with good orientation as these days house building is done on density/sq m and not about designing a house on a plot with room to think about that luxury stuff of "good orientation".

I'm lucky that my garden does get sun somewhere from sun up to about 6pm.... if you really want to go out there and specifically find the spot where it is "right now" and sit in it..... so many houses are little boxes, boxed in with 6' fences casting shadow over their 12'x30' little plot that they only get direct sunlight a few hours a day in one 2-3' strip of the garden.

moneyistooshorttomention

Just struck me that today's meals should include some champagne. This time not for a personal achievement - but for what is just about to be achieved when the poll results come in in Ireland and we can see that the 21st century has come (ie the poll results have gone as expected re whether women are allowed to make their own choices or no on abortion at last). Good on them to all the expats that went to all the expense of flying back to Ireland specially to bring their country into the 21st century by casting a "Yes" vote:T

First person that knows the results please tell us "It's a Yes - buy that champagne".

I've got the meal to go with it - rather expensive probably as ready meals go. I finally found a Wicked Kitchen range meal in local Tesco (mushroom bolognaise). So duly bought - after all that nagging I've had to do at them to get that range in....

Let's see what I make of it....as I very very rarely buy a ready meal these days....

[Deleted User]

yes money, it really got to me, all those men callers on LBC arguing for the no vote

money, I know you moved on your own and you too pastures, how on earth did you make sure that all the heavy stuff for upstairs went upstairs and to the right rooms? I don`t mean stuff in cardboard boxes, which can easily be labelled.

Started with simple soaked oats and just had a boiled egg and coffee. Got a burger out and will have that with various veg and frozen sweet potato chips. Has to be easy food, I was incredibly tired last night and carried on sorting this morning, finished now but need to have RnR. I have worked solid but it has been very worth while

orientation, PN I agree, most new houses are squashed in as little space as possible and the show house is filled with shiny bling and lights on to make them look light and to suck people in. I started by wanting south, like here but I have 2 verandas and am very protected from hot sun, so now I am fancying west to east with west facing on the garden side. Another two houses came up for sale yesterday but too big and too much work required and I am being very fussy as this will definitely need to be my last home, to cater for me as I get old

PasturesNew

kittie wrote: »

... how on earth did you make sure that all the heavy stuff for upstairs went upstairs and to the right rooms?

My life's not like that. I was moving from a 1-bed place where most of my stuff remained boxed up and in the bedroom and I dossed down in the living room - this was cheaper/more convenient than using self storage. When I moved I had no big things. I had a small sofa, a fridge and a washing machine

All the boxes... were just put in the living room and I sorted out what needed to go where.

In the main, I try to avoid furniture etc as I can't do anything with it. Upstairs I've got two chests of drawers, a bed and a 2-drawer filing cabinet. The bed was a flatpack, I unpacked it in the hall, then took each single piece upstairs; one chest of drawers I took the drawers up singly, then slowly "walked" the carcass upstairs. The other chest of drawers I managed the drawers, but then asked a neighbour to get the carcass upstairs for me (so it sat in the hall for 2-3 weeks waiting for me to dare ask). The filing cabinet, the same neighbour got that upstairs for me.

kittie wrote: »

PN I agree, most new houses are squashed in as little space as possible and the show house is filled with shiny bling and lights on to make them look light and to suck people in.

Most houses where I've lived haven't been developers with show homes. Most these days seem to be smaller developments where they just sell off plan and people move in the day the estate is signed off.

kittie wrote: »

I started by wanting south, like here but I have 2 verandas and am very protected from hot sun, so now I am fancying west to east with west facing on the garden side.

Those with larger budgets/houses, have more choice. Mine is a simple modern little 2-up-2-down house, but being end of terrace, I do get the side bit - it's due to having the side bit I can get sun all day long, which is on the south side... but by about 5-6pm it's gone behind the industrial units... so no sunsets.

By 3pm, in the living room, you might as well shut the curtains and settle in for the night as you can't tell it's a scorcher out there.

Light is important - but if you're buying at the cheaper end of the market you've really not much choice, just "this one or nothing".

When I sell this, I plan to "add about 10% to that amount" for the next house - but, so far, I've not seen anything better than this house.... some look "better" until I read the detail and realise that all the rooms are tinier etc. There's one 3-bed house that I kind of liked the look of - the two extra bedrooms are widths of 6'3" and 5'7"! They've "built a family house, aimed at families" no doubt, but it'd be difficult to find those two bedrooms of use or ornament. Bizarrely, the way it works in England, the house would have been better as a 2-bed...but that would reduce the price by £20-30k...so they squeeze three out of it and the price goes up. It's madness really.

PasturesNew

I have been put off buying new builds ... in my price bracket ... for two main reasons:

1/ You don't get a driveway/garage at all - just allocated parking.
2/ As an unmatured environment, you get all sorts moving in and a mix of cultures you didn't expect.

With 2nd hand you stand more chance of a driveway and you have a better eye for how it's turned out after it's settled in for 5-10 years and you can see what the "local culture" is like. e.g. are they all wonderfully maintained, what's the parking like in the road/approach, who is visibly doing what activities in the road ... and is there a house where the occupants appear to be "chaotic".

Although any new build comes with restrictions/covenants.... some people completely "take the law into their own hands" and do what the heck they like. Yesterday I saw a visitor arrive at one house here and park directly in front of the door of the person they were visiting - the spot is clearly numbered as somebody else's; the house they were visiting has two numbered parking spots, both of which were empty. If the owner of that space had come home they had no other options, their house comes with one spot, THAT spot - and there's no visitor parking.... and they'd not know whose car it was..... this disregard for rules and conformity drives me nuts.

Brambling

The exit polls are definitely looking good Money hopefully it will then be Northern Ireland's turn to change their laws

Kittie I moved on my own I will say if you can afford the extra ask the removal company to pack for you and they will label your boxes the way that suits them. It was some of the best money I spent nothing broken, nothing missing. I was lucky there are two highly recommended well established firms in town owned by different generations of the same family. When they unloaded I was able to say bedroom 1 boxes to front bedroom, bedroom 2 to back etc they also placed the furniture in the room order unless I told them otherwise ie all the main bedroom furniture into the same room here as the previous place. They should ask you if it's not obvious and of course you have to say where in the room you want it placed. I took pictures of the room and measurements of alcoves etc before the move, it was empty so no objections from anyone and then planned my furniture layout before moving day so less panicking on day. They obviously have to place boxes around your furniture. Kitchen boxes went in the dining room so more room to manoeuvre. I was upsizing from 2 bedroom flat to 3 bedroom house so there was more room.

And if you can get family support moving in day take as much as you can. :rotfl::rotfl:

moneyistooshorttomention

Re the referendum - I wasn't following all the debate - as to me "It's Obvious Innit" and I was just crossing my fingers about this and bargaining on the fact that more old-fashioned viewpoints are, in the main, enshrined in the elderly generation and a lot of them will have died since this came in. Quite often with issues it is down to what proportion of elderly people have died as to how things go. I can say this - though I'm now only a few years from the "elderly generation" myself - as my viewpoints often match those of younger generations. Fortunately, I've never needed an abortion myself - but wouldnt have hesitated for one second if I had been in that position.

Problems happen if the elderly generation have anticipated A Change and put a lot of measures in place to try and set THEIR viewpoint In Stone AND pass laws to try and preserve their viewpoint (you can probably guess what I'm thinking of there LOL).

***************

Kittie - At my first move (from rented unfurnished flat to my first house) - I basically stuck labels on everything as to where it was to go. I probably (ahem....almost certainly:cool:) wasnt very popular with my removal firm. Reason being - I had a label on the washing machine that said it was to go in the bathroom (which was upstairs). Ahem...

Moving from that house to current house - and it's a bungalow. So not the same "Is this on the right floor?" problems then - with being just one level. Not a lot of choice of rooms either - as it's so small - that there is one kitchen, one bathroom, one (through lounge size) sitting room, 2 bedrooms (with one of them obviously the main bedroom). So I guess it was pretty clear that obviously my cooker and fridge/freezer (of the time) went in the one kitchen and my huge bed went in the main bedroom, etc.

If I find myself in a position to move again (not anticipated...but we all hope for the Lottery win or the like....:cool:) then I'd have to take more care and stick/tie big labels on major items of furniture to indicate which room they went in (as it would be 3 or 4 bedrooms and probably a house, rather than bungalow). Some of the garden pots I've now got are huge (ie heavy) and so I'd have to put labels on them too - to indicate which part of the garden they went in (so they'd be labelled respectively "back garden", "front garden", "side garden" accordingly).

moneyistooshorttomention

Re PN's points about people in new-builds taking things into their own hands.

If anything - I think one needs to be more careful about "established" builds. I certainly found that there were a couple of neighbours that had decided how they personally wanted things and done their darndest to Set In Stone as they required.

One is a land-grabber and grabs any/every bit of land they want nearby or tries to and I had to kick them out of my garden. Both the neighbours concerned think they can do what they like in the road as a whole and have got away with blue murder - until I moved here - with my very logical/"how are things really?" way of thinking. Old-established neighbours may try and "lay down the law" for things to stay fossilised in a way that suits them personally - regardless of whether it's fair or logical.

Kittie - I'm guessing the area you live in is another one that would totally gobsmack me with how much the "elderly" expect to "lay down the law" and go by "history", rather than logic as to how things are. So watch out for anyone elderly and with a tendency to say "Things have been this way for decades - or even centuries...then YOU come along (grrr...) with your logical way of thinking":rotfl: