Put away your purse & become debt-averse

foxgloves

I hope so too, BaileysBabe, but I'm not holding my breath. The current incumbents could just as easily announce further draconian cuts, as there will surely be a sharp recession following the pandemic. Strange times. Like you I hope that everyone will have been shocked out of complacency into realising the truly valuable groups of workers in our society, many of whom are on minimum wage. The worst thing would be to come out of this desperately sad & awful situation having collectively learned nothing. Am feeling very serious this morning. I must go & start on the cleaning.
Take care BB, 
F x

Onebrokelady

Hi Foxgloves,I'm so glad you found your £200,I hate not knowing where a sum of money has gone,our payday was yesterday so I need to sit down and work out my budget today 
I was naughty last week and ordered Super Socks ( Winwick Mum) I know she does free tutorials but I learn better by reading as well as watching, it arrived today so I'm hoping to produce at least one pair of socks while all this is going on,I have had an real urge to do some knitting this week so will give it a go and see what happens 

Also thankyou for your concern re the lack of PPE for the NHS, we have limited supplies and I can only hope they are rationing it so we have lots when we hit the peak of the infection, there was a notice on our desk yesterday telling us how to order it from the store,it told us how to do it then said "hopefully you will get what you have requested " so that just about says it al really 😟

foxgloves

Hi OBL,
I'm sure you will be able to sort out some sock knitting. I have usually a pair on the go using yarn from my stash, as well as my main project, as I find I can knit socks from memory while watching TV. Socks are a nice portable little project too.....not that we're going anywhere nice to sit & knit at the moment & rightly so.
I'm glad you have at least some supplies of protective equipment. It has been making me so angry. I saw pictures on TV the other day of nurses wearing what looked like the same flimsy pinnies which we were given to put on when we were visiting my Mum when she was in hospital. The two weeks advantage (in time) which the UK had over Italy just seems to have been wasted at governmental level when heaven & earth ought to have been moved to ensure NHS & care staff had the basics and could also get tested for the virus themselves. 
Ah well, the reckoning will come afterwards. 
Take care now.....& get those knitting needles clacking for a bit of relaxation,
F x

foxgloves

Hello Blossoms, I seem to have been trapped in a strange time-warp today. Taking into account changing the clocks, it was 2.20 a.m when I stopped reading & turned out the light last night & 8.10 when I awoke. Mr F was a sweet-pea & brought me coffee & bagel/scrambled egg in bed & by the time I'd got up, had a bath, washed my hair, skyped my sister, slurped more coffee, that was the morning completely gone. This afternoon, I've made some apple sauce, baked the sourdough loaf I mixed up last night, tidied, sorted out a problem shoe order.....I never buy clothes or shoes online for this exact reason, but there was obviously no alternative at the moment.......anyway, the issue is sorted out, but in a different way to what I was expecting. A few more little jobs & that's this afternoon gone! 
Yesterday was a little better - I think that when Mr F is at home, I get out of my routines & I need to adhere to them as much as possible because I need some 'shape' to my day. Yesterday, we both decided to tackle Annoying Jobs - as in those things which we all walk past 100 times a day, tut at the fact that the task hasn't been done.....then continue to leave it. So Mr F fitted some lightbulbs, mended some bits & bobs, dealt with a big stack of books, took a load of gubbins down to the shed, etc, as well as cleaning most of the house. I decided to do Annoying Kitchen Jobs & cleared quite a few of them. It's crazy, isn't it? Every time I've been opening my herbs & spices cupboard, I've had to put my hand in to stop some new boxes of spices falling out. All this job required was a) Find the relevant spice jar
 b) Open new box c) Tip new spice into jar d) Return to cupboard. I mean.....WHAT in that almost dizzyingly simple process has been preventing me from doing it sooner? I have no idea! I also took the opportunity to re-fill my big empty rosemary & oregano jars by crumbling the leaves from the home-grown bunches I hung up to dry last year. Shopped from home, Oh yes! I was on a roll by then. Weeks ago, I ran out of dried chilli flakes. These appear in quite a few recipes. I didn't want to buy any because I have plenty of whole red chillies which I grew last year & dried in long strings in the greenhouse, so I de-stalked a couple of big handfuls of those, blitzed them in the food processor & refilled my chilli flakes jar for free. Oh my giddy aunt, my eyes when I took the lid off the blender! It was like opening Pandora's box!
Mr F has to go into work tomorrow - not all day - just a visit to check buildings for safety/security. He is not at all sure this is absolutely necessary, but has been told to do it so if he is stopped & questioned, he will just have to say he is following senior management's orders. As for me, I think I need to get a bit more structure into my days....although to be fair to myself, it has been the weekend, so I'm usually a bit more relaxed then.
I'm not having an issue with staying home, as I know it is vital at the moment. I just wish so much that there had been clearer advice in that dithery two weeks where even though we could all see how Italy was struggling, the UK position flipped & flopped around when it could have been an extra fortnight of absolute 'all hands to the pump' preparation. Ah well, nobody can re-set time. 
I must just pop out to my greenhouse to cover some seedlings, then it will be reading and knitting for me.
Stay as safe as you possible can, m'dears,
F xx

foxgloves

Hello Diary Readers,
All that lovely sunshine last week spoiled us, I think, as I am really feeling the cold today. It's soooo chilly here. There was a good wind on this morning, so I pegged out my first load of laundry.....then burned a few calories racing out to fetch it in precisely half an hour later when the showers began, & a few naughty icy bits in them too. Glad of the heated airer today. 
Quite pleased with my rubber pork efforts today (sounds like something you'd find on a niche website.....) as in addition to yesterday's Sunday roast, there is sufficient for spicy pitta breads tonight, which I intend to serve with a large helping of use-it-up salad and Chinese-style fried rice tomorrow. There was also some to add to the ominous box in the freezer which Mr F is curating in readiness for concocting his next Epic Man Stew. 
Today's Annoying Job was tackling the build-up of crud on my laptop - I must have deleted heaps of no-longer-required emails. I've had some leisure time this afternoon working on a research project & only really stopped when Mr F got home from work & made me a coffee. 
I am going to have a moan now. Last night, were were watching the news & there was a short item about refuse collectors & how they are being affected by the Covid19 measures. Apparently, they are noticing a significant increase in food waste, which can only really be put down to all the panic buying. There was a shot of a wheelie bin somewhere in our region which was full & piled up beside it was a load of food still in its packaging. I suppose it didn't get eaten as so much stuff was bought without any proper planning, that it went out of date. There were 2 unopened packs of what looked like fishcakes or chicken burgers - it was difficult to tell - on top of other food and what really wound me up was a perfectly good bunch of bananas. Now I'm the first to admit that I don't like the texture or taste of over-ripe brown bananas but these were not like that. They looked perfect. I couldn't even GET any bananas on our last weekly shop. There weren't any. I'd have loved some. And some wasteful herbert had just binned a whole bunch off because they probably have no room even to sit down in their house full of panic-bought food. With food banks struggling, it just really annoyed me. I am evangelical about leftovers & it is one area of life where I am prepared to be quite judgemental because there is just no need for it. It's not just the food going to landfill, it's all the plastic packaging too! Some people will have gone into the supermarket & been greeted with empty shelves because other people who got there before them paid for food to throw away uneaten. Thoughtless (or clueless......quite probably both) on so many counts.
I haven't had a walk today.....that's 3 days in a row. I really intended to have a walk before my morning coffee but it was so showery & I noticed when I was outside in my alluring plastic gloves disinfecting the wheelie bin handle before bringing it back up the drive, that the few people who were out on walks all had their hoods up, gloves on & looked as though they were absolutely nithering, so I didn't bother. I will do my best to go tomorrow, though.
I hope you are all managing to stay well. We have to do the best we can with the lockdown because the alternative is too awful to contemplate, so I will keep trying to be relatively productive & will keep posting on my diary so we can share how we're getting on.
Be safe,
F x 

Toni'sfriend

Absolutely agree about the waste of food. Our freezers are always full because we don't throw anything away. I was gifted a huge amount of vegetables from a neighbour and I'm using all that up first. If we have to live on soup than so be it. I did it as a child in the fifties when there was still rationing. And I'll share what I got with anybody who needs/wants it. I saw that article as well and it was criminal. Food banks/homeless people/lunch clubs who are delivering could have used that. Off my soapbox now!

HairyHandofDartmoor

That's so awful of people to throw away perfectly good food Foxgloves. More money than sense and very selfish 😡. The only food that gets thrown away in our house is uneaten bits on plates. I always freeze things that are approaching their use by date.

It's cold in Devon too today and despite the heating being on my hands feel frozen. I think I must have got cold in the playground for an hour and a half (although I did play a game of footie which gave me a stitch in my side 🤣). I'm looking forward to a hot shower to warm me up.

I hate deleting all those emails but it needs to be done. I try and do it every day so it doesn't built up into a mammoth and tediously dull task.

Tescodealqueen

My husband said this a fortnight ago when we first saw bare shelves. That will find its way to the bins he said. I am going to get him to predict next week's lottery numbers now

foxgloves

TonisFriend HHoD, Tescodealqueen, 
I'm glad you agree & it's not just me getting it out of proportion. It just seems wrong & so wasteful. Perhaps I wouldn't have been quite as wound up had that perfect bunch of bananas not been sitting there with the rubbish when I couldn't get any. I can't bear food waste, but I reckon banana envy made me even madder!
F x

Baileys_Babe

Like the rest of you, we try not to waste food. Today we had soup for lunch to use up some bread crusts, it was either that or whizz them up and add them to the box of bread crumbs in the freezer, the children love a crumb topping on a pasta bake. We also add the crumbs from the board when slicing the bread.

I'll be honest we are not perfect with this occasionally something slips under the radar, rarely and it frustrates me, but there seem to be occasions where you turn your back and a piece of fruit or vegetable has grown fur or gone slimy. 

Wherever possible we try to avoid waste, it might be putting it in the fridge or freezer or cooking it.

@foxgloves I failed to go out for a walk too, the weather was quite unappealing.