Put away your purse & become debt-averse

foxgloves

It did, however, arrive with another letter enclosed which said there is a problem with HMRC, which will inevitably delay the final closure of Mum's estate. That is outside our control & pretty much outside our solicitor's control too, so it is still a waiting game for closure. The interim payment will mean we are able to implement some important changes though, so my poor little free trade union calculator will probably melt under the strain over the next few months.
Bad flooding up here. We are dry but Mr F's workplace is underwater. Our village is on flood alert. I think I'll have a little walk down to the old end of the village tomorrow to see where exactly the river is. Probably ducks & swans swimming on the pub car park again.
Temperatures set to freeze tonight too, so I've turned up precisely ONE storage heater by precisely ONE notch...... but will be digging out my ancient Peruvian cardi, which I'm convinced has been knitted from carpet, it's so warm!
Stay warm, diary readers.....& thanks for your good wishes re my solicitor success.
F xx

crazy_cat_lady

Congrats on finally getting some of the money owed to you Foxgloves - I really hope that the HMRC business is sorted soon.
I had wondered how your neck of the woods was faring with the rain - the town seemed just about to capacity with water when I was there and that was before the deluge. It looks awful on the news.

HairyHandofDartmoor

That's great news about the solicitors letter. At least it's a step in the right direction .

I hope hope the floods stay away from your house.

foxgloves

Thanks, both of you. It does feel like we've turned a corner, at last. We went into our local branch of the building society today to enquire about the procedure for paying off our mortgage. It suddenly occurred to me I had no idea how this actually happens! It won't happen quite yet because we're not quite ready but they were very helpful.
Re the floods - I meant to have a little walk down to the area of our village which is invariably affected by flooding but didn't get around to it. I may go tomorrow. The official flood warning for our village is that the river will peak overnight & into tomorrow & will enter properties. Only one road, the pub, restaurant & marina usually get a mention but this time the next street to ours is on the list. I was worried about this so re-read it carefully & note that they are saying the 'area around' that road. I think they have included it because some of the gardens plus the primary school field back onto the marina so could well end up with floodwater in their back gardens. We've lived here 17 years & have never known water reach the actual street they are mentioning in that time, but back in 2002, we did see flooded gardens. I am thinking we are sufficiently far away not to be affected, but I feel for any who will be. And there's always a first time, especially as climate change brings greater extremes of weather.
I must have a walk down there tomorrow. Other places in town also on the same river (a major one) are also overtopping.
Anyway, I'd better get today's post on, hadn't I?
F x

foxgloves

Well, we considered a city centre trip today to get the solicitor's cheque paid in at the bank, but we decided to wait till next week as we felt that with a bit of judicious planning, we could probably get our Christmas shopping done at the same time. Parking is expensive - we don't save anything going by train - so it makes sense. Instead we went into our local town & finished buying the last couple of grocery shopping items, plus I bought Christmas stamps & a couple of new hot water bottles & some wrapping paper. I didn't think I needed any, but the large gift I knitted is going to take a sizeable wodge so I've topped up my supplies
I priced up my favourite foundation, as I'm getting low on my current bottle & it was on a 3 for 2 offer. And there's the old dilemma. It costs £8.99. This is an easily manageable sum to pay from my monthly Personal Spends. £17.98 isn't. That's quite a lot from my monthly allowance, so I probably won't make use of the offer. But it's annoying, because the free one is a good deal & mean that my supplies will last much longer before paying out again. I think this is a classic case of people working to a budget being less able to take up a special offer despite needing the economies of scale more. A bigger example, of course, is having to pay more overall for an insurance policy if paying monthly than paying it as a lump sum. The people with sufficient funds to pay out the much larger amount upfront are the ones who get the saving.
I will decide what I'm going to do about the foundation. It is a good offer. I may decide to spaff a bit of cash from my secret little tin, I'll see.
Well, Mr F is in the kitchen making one of his epic cauliflower cheeses & baking jacket potatoes, so I think I'll enjoy sitting by the fire with my book.
Stay warm & dry all.
F x

Onebrokelady

Re the mystery poo, are you sure it's not a badger, I have badgers in my garden and they pulled the tray off the bird feeder so they could eat the contents, the two days ago I forgot to shut the chicken run after dark,I came back from taking the dog out and remembered it was open,so I strolled up there to shut it and two badgers were in the run eating the chicken food
Thankfully the chickens were safe because the chicken house is up in the air and the ladder to get up there was knocked down,I'm presuming one of the badgers tried the ladder but it would take his weight

I shut the chickens in and put some mealworms on the garden and one of them came back later on ,we got some good photos of it

foxgloves

Hi OBL - nice to see you popping in. How amazing that you have badgers in your garden! I confess to having been out to do a quick recce on the mystery poo this morning. The rain has washed most of it away, but where it was, there are little piles of completely undigested bird food - the hard wheat grains. This is confirming my view that it is a mammal for which copious quantities of bird food is not an optimal diet. I think it's too small for badger poo. I'm thinking either a hedgehog who has given himself chronic IBS or another similar sized mammal. No more poo has appeared, but I've put some bird food on the ground feeder slab today, so we may have an overnight visit. We did have a frost overnight, so if it's a hedgehog, he should be thinking of hibernating by now, I hope.
Naughty badger trying to ascend the chicken ladder!
F x

1LuckyLady

So pleased to hear you've finally had some movement with the solicitors Foxgloves.

Onebrokelady

foxgloves wrote: »

Hi OBL - nice to see you popping in. How amazing that you have badgers in your garden! I confess to having been out to do a quick recce on the mystery poo this morning. The rain has washed most of it away, but where it was, there are little piles of completely undigested bird food - the hard wheat grains. This is confirming my view that it is a mammal for which copious quantities of bird food is not an optimal diet. I think it's too small for badger poo. I'm thinking either a hedgehog who has given himself chronic IBS or another similar sized mammal. No more poo has appeared, but I've put some bird food on the ground feeder slab today, so we may have an overnight visit. We did have a frost overnight, so if it's a hedgehog, he should be thinking of hibernating by now, I hope.
Naughty badger trying to ascend the chicken ladder!
F x

It is amazing and I love it when I get a very rare glimpse of one, they are so shy they run off if they hear anything at all,I'm not sure if they pose a threat to my fully grown hens but they would kill a chick for sure, luckily I haven't got any chicks and tonight I locked the hens up before dark, it brought it home to me how dangerous it can be to let the hens free range and I was so lucky it wasn't a fox which we also get in our garden, it always amazes me that I live right on the edge of my city between city and countryside and I get badgers ,foxes and tawny owls routinely visiting my garden

foxgloves

OBL - I expect it's because wildlife doesn't see boundaries in the same way as we do. We've had buzzards circling around overhead today. I think the flooded fields are probably attracting a range of wildlife as well as moving other species away to drier ground, so they're seeing if they can get an easy meal.
F