Put away your purse & become debt-averse

Dottles1

Thanks Foxgloves.  I agree, it could be anything so I'm just doing what I'd usually do and at least if I stay at home I'm not taking the choice of avoiding me away from anyone else.  College wouldn't let me in anyway for obvious reasons.  Tilly and I are snuggled up and keeping warm.

foxgloves

I think that's really sensible, Dottles. Whatever it is, you are better off taking it easy, & if it is CV, then nobody can say you haven't taken the official advice & removed yourself from circulation. Sounds like Tilly is providing sterling service on then care front!
F x

foxgloves

Greetings Daffodils,
Busy but unexciting day, so goodness knows what I shall find to tell you about. Town first thing for the market (fruit & veg - lovely quality, a huge bag for life for £12, which included blueberries, garlic, lemons too, for hopefully giving our immune systems a bit of a boost) Then off to B**ts to buy a thermometer. There were two left!! We listened to the CV update on the news last night & nodded sagely through the bit about self-isolating for any cold/fluey type symptoms &a high temperature.....when it occurred to me that we wouldn't know if our temperatures were worryingly high as neither of us have ever owned a thermometer! If I needed to ring 111 & they asked what my temperature was, I'd have no idea. So I added 'thermometer' to our shopping list for this morning & obviously everyone else had, had the same idea. I think perhaps people with or who have had children are more likely to own thermometers. 
Anyway....for someone with not much to say, I seem to be going on, don't I? Off to do our grocery shop at the C**p. Not our usual supermarket but I had £50 of vouchers. Did a pretty good shop. No bread flour, loo rolls, paracetamol, hand sanitiser & low on tuna & of all things.....fishfingers! (Not that we buy those, but an elderly woman asked if we could help her find some & Mr F secured her the very last box). W*itrose was pretty much the same re gaps, with no painkillers at all, but they did have more soap in stock than last time & there was a reasonable amount of loo roll. This afternoon, we've cleaned the house - my usual Friday Big Clean & it's nice to see everywhere looking a bit fresher. I noticed how grubby the bathroom scales were looking - absolutely COVERED in dust......my instant thought was 'Hey, that could be making me half a pound heavier!!' which was sufficient to get me down on my knees with the St*rdrops spray scrubbing them to within an inch of their life! I expect to be rewarded with a bloody good weigh-in next time I get on the damn things!
And that is pretty much my day. Nice to have tedious tasks out of the way for the weekend. Hoping to visit a lovely NT property over in the next county tomorrow for a bit of history, a walk & some fresh air.
Take care all. We are living through strange times. Our ancestors would have experienced far more of this kind of thing that we have. My Grandma who was born in 1905 could remember the 1918 flu pandemic. Her Mum helped nurse a widowed neighbour & his children, then of course brought the flu back into her own home. Gran's 3 sisters also got it & as she was the only one who didn't succumb, she nursed them through it aged 12 or 13 & said the worst thing was that they were all too poorly to get to the outside toilet so she had to deal with 'the bucket on the landing'..........And there's us worrying about not having enough loo paper! (Though it is now rationed in our house to half of what we would have used before per function, lol!)
F xx

foxgloves

Oh & I'll just tell you this.....
I needed to withdraw £20 cash this morning & was a bit bothered by the potential germy state of the cashpoint machine. So I found a couple of tissues in my bag, folded them up & fashioned them into a handy 'index finger wrap' for using the keyboard. I thought I might be going a bit OTT, but was reassured when the chap at the cashpoint next to the one I was using suddenly sneezed all over it. No tissue, no using his own sleeve to sneeze into as per advice, just a germy cashpoint keyboard for the next person. Ewww.... so glad it wasn't me! It did however, provide a classic lesson both in how germs are spread & that there will inevitably be people who ignore the hygiene advice. 
F x

HairyHandofDartmoor

foxgloves said:

Oh & I'll just tell you this.....
I needed to withdraw £20 cash this morning & was a bit bothered by the potential germy state of the cashpoint machine. So I found a couple of tissues in my bag, folded them up & fashioned them into a handy 'index finger wrap' for using the keyboard. I thought I might be going a bit OTT, but was reassured when the chap at the cashpoint next to the one I was using suddenly sneezed all over it. No tissue, no using his own sleeve to sneeze into as per advice, just a germy cashpoint keyboard for the next person. Ewww.... so glad it wasn't me! It did however, provide a classic lesson both in how germs are spread & that there will inevitably be people who ignore the hygiene advice. 
F x

Yukk how revolting 😱. That's the type of situation where hand gel would come in useful if only we could all get hold of some 🤣 .

I wonder what items I'll be unable to buy tomorrow when I go to the supermarket... 🤔

foxgloves

It WAS revolting, HHoD, & really did underline for me how easy it is for viruses to spread when people have scummy habits.
On a similar topic, I couldn't believe the disgusting state somebody had left one of the loos in, at one of our favourite NT places this morning. Not only the bits of loo roll strewn over the floor & packaging from ladies' sanitary items just thrown on the floor but clearly zero attempt to clean up after what I can only describe as an exploding bum. I doubled back out of that cubicle at speed, I can tell you! Why would anyone think it's OK to leave that for someone else to clean up? And again.... amidst a huge global focus on hygiene, clearly a minority of people prefer to be minging!
I do hope nobody read this while they were eating their dinner. Promise tomorrow's post won't involve other people's bodily excressences. 
F x

Blackcats

Yuk to the toilet.  I have a bit of an aversion to public loos and like you cannot understand how people leave them in such a disgusting state.  I think at the moment there are still people who have no comprehension about hygiene and happily cough and sneeze whenever and wherever they want.  

foxgloves

Yes, Blackcats, I think there are probably quite a lot of people who think this virus is flu, so no need to worry. Flu used to kill many more people than it does these days, because older & vulnerable people can be vaccinated. Indeed we can all be vaccinated annually against flu for a modest fee. The difference with this virus is that nobody has immunity, so all those elderly & vulnerable people could get as ill as they used to do with flu. It takes so little effort to wash our hands more frequently & thoroughly, & the advice about not coughing & sneezing over people & surfaces is just basic hygiene, but yes, you're right, there will doubtless be people who don't see why the advice applies to them, or for whom unsanitary habits are too long ingrained to break.
A depressingly grey wet day here today, so no chance of any gardening. I think I will have a day of leisure activities & aim for tomorrow & Tuesday to be days of achievement & action.
Oh.... & I was well rewarded this morning for cleaning those bathroom scales...... 4lbs off. Yay!
F x

HairyHandofDartmoor

Well done on the weight loss . Leisurely actvities sound good.

I think a lot of people seem a bit complacent about this virus at the moment and don't seem to realise the potential consequences of it. The majority of the population would recover well of course, but the elderly and those with underlying conditions (it's surprising how many people fall into those categories) may not recover at all. 

foxgloves

Hello Diary Readers,
Well, with all the scenes of supermarket gannetry going on, I've found myself thinking a fair bit about the whole issue of panic buying. I do think this has been encouraged by the media - on one hand we are being told not to do it because there's no need, but on the other, we are told we need to self-isolate for 7 days if we have symptoms, which may of course become longer if we 'overlap' with other family members. Of COURSE people are going to want to stock up with extra supplies. It is the sensible thing to do. What ISN'T sensible is stripping the shelves of everything in sight with no planning. Poor old Mr F has had to listen to me pontificating (aka 'going off on one!') about this over lunchtime. My thoughts are this: If people are sensibly going to buy in an extra couple of weeks of groceries to see them through a period of self-isolation - actually, as we carry a good stock cupboard anyway because of cooking everything from scratch, I reckon we could manage 3 weeks - then once a list (doesn't have to be a full meal plan) has been put together of what extras to buy, then that should pretty much be it. The only reason to keep returning to the supermarket week on week to purchase another emergency supply would be if the original emergency supplies had been eaten/used. For an emergency supply to be of any use, it has to be used for the purpose it was bought - i.e the pending emergency. So our emergency supplies have been put away in the pantry/freezer where they will stay until they're needed. (In fact, it would be great if they weren't needed, but we prefer to be realistic, as with all plans) .
So having risk assessed the situation & sorted out emergency supplies, we are now meal planning each week as normal & writing our shopping list from the meal plan. What we're not doing is eating into our emergency supplies. I wonder if this is something that's driving some of the panic buying. I know I talk about meal planning with all the zeal of the convert, but it really does come into its own when trying to work out how much emergency food is realistically required. I was thinking that if people don't meal plan or shop to a list, then the emergency supplies become more of a panic buy, with food & household goods heaped into the trolley, & if they just start going into general use straight away, then the urge to keep topping them up might continue. 
So our planned 'self isolation' supplies (if we need to) will remain there for that purpose & our weekly shopping will pretty much continue as normal. 
I'm glad to see that some supermarkets have started limiting quantities of items. People on small budgets - & the UK is quite a low-wage economy, of course, with many of the people reliant on food banks actually being in work - often won't be in a position to buy multiples of grocery items because of having a tight weekly budget, & they risk having no tins of tuna or beans because somebody else bought ten. It's very clear that the media has worsened this situation though. I think people are buying extras now, as much for potential poorliness planning as because they are worried about all the shortages. 
Well, m'dears, I think I shall go & put the kettle on in a bit. I want to look at the next stage of the complicated jumper I'm knitting. I also want to cast on some socks with yarn from my stash so that I also have a little easy project to be getting on with when I'm watching TV on an evening. I also need to synchronise my diary with Mr F's to make sure there are no odd shifts I don't know about & I also want to move some big books which are too heavy for one of our book cases onto a different one & find a nice ornamental something-or-other to go in their place, & to set the washing machine for a cheapo overnight tariff wash. First I shall give my desk/work station a good tidy so that it's all ready for tomorrow's mid-month budget check-in. I've planned quite a productive day on the domestic front for tomorrow. If I can crack through it, I'm hoping to progress garden jobs on Tuesday.
Take care all,
F xx