Put away your purse & become debt-averse

foxgloves

What a grey overcast day after the sunshine of yesterday! I'd go upstairs & fetch some socks were it not for the floorboards on the landing being up. Having managed to get rhubarb stuck to the ceiling the other day, I dread to think what I could achieve wobbling my way over bare joists.....
Hello, I hope everyone's managing to stay well.... anyone who lives in Plymouth & has been sent for a test in Aberdeen, do give me a wave when you get halfway up the country. Honestly, what a shocking mess the Government has made of testing & tracing. It's so worrying because we desperately need it to work to get on top of the surge in cases.
My activities on the domestic front are now very curtailed. Slowly but surely, all the jobs I'd lined up to do while the builders are here are now inaccessible. Floorboards up upstairs, Foxgloves HQ inaccessible, conservatory inaccessible so no table, & I am trying not to traipse in & out all day because it is annoying for the builder sticking out of the pantry-to-be if he keeps having to move to let me pass when he's concentrating on skimming & getting the quarry tiles aligned. This isn't a moan, as I am excited about the work being finished & the builders are very well-behaved. Today I've baked bread, blanched & frozen another bag of beans, ditto some carrots I found in the fridge which won't get used this week. I've made a vegetable curry side dish to serve with the dhal I batch cooked & froze a while back, done a little more on my recipe edit, washed my hair, knitted about a dozen rows & cut back some overgrown shrubs around the bird feeders. I intend to scrub out the bird bath & refill the feeders (watch that squirrel appear at the speed of light!) & then I'm calling it a day for trying to do jobs. I think Mr F is working from home tomorrow so I think I might take advantage of having the car & pop into town.
Right, on with the rubber gloves (matron will be gentle!) & off to tackle that minging bird bath!
Cheers all, 
F x

Onebrokelady

My friend had to get her grandsons tested and they told her to go to Swansea,she lives here in Devon, anyway she got the QR code and drove down to the testing centre round the corner from her house and they did the tests there and then. I only waited a short while for my test and they sent someone out to my house to do mine because I would have had to go  on the bus. They are also prioritising healthcare workers and we got a message this week saying we have get a test even if we just have common cold symptoms 🙀 

foxgloves

Yes, OBL, people up here are booking a test in Scotland in order to get a QR code, then using it at the local city centre testing site. What an absolute mess. I think that very many people being tested will just have common cold symptoms. It's that time of year.The difficulty is that so many colds do end with a week or two or persistent coughs, don't they, & I think schools will err on the side of caution & insist children with cold symptoms get tested. If I develop a cough, with the high temperature & the loss of smell/taste, then I will try to book a test, but if I genuinely think that I just have a cold, then I won't. I don't think it is possible for an already busted system to be testing everyone with a sniffle - there are so many priority categories of people i.e NHS staff like yourself, care home staff & residents, etc. The key goal has to be to try & avoid catching the wretched thing at all costs - masks & hand washing really important, but keeping away from people is the big one, I think.
Stay safe, Missis!
F x

Paspatur

foxgloves said:

Hello, I hope everyone's managing to stay well.... anyone who lives in Plymouth & has been sent for a test in Aberdeen, do give me a wave when you get halfway up the country. 

Waves from Aberdeen xx

foxgloves

Hello Sunbeams, I'm chatting to you from my sunny pondside bench with a coffee & big glass of water by my side. I am having an extraordinarily unproductive day.....not through can't-be-ars*d-itis, but because everywhere is pretty much inaccessible at the moment. Building & heating installation both progressing really well. In terms of meaningful access, I can get in our bedroom, the bathroom & the garden. Mr F is working from home today so he set up camp in the lounge for all his zoom meetings. Even gardening felt like a no-go today, as the water is switched off, so getting muddy didn't seem like one of my brighter ideas. 
So I've been to the garden centre. And I went with a list, so that it didn't turn in to one of my pre-LBM 'How many plants can I fit in the boot of my car & oh look, there's some scented candles' sprees. I bought our autumn planting garlic, my annual narcissi bulbs for planting my spring containers, selected veggie seeds ready for next year & some beautiful miniature iris bulbs - a variety I didn't know, called 'Frozen planet'. I also bought my usual prepared hyacinth bulbs which are the ones for starting off in a dark cupboard now for flowering at Christmas. I also called at the farm shop for bacon & sausages as both are needed for next week's meal plans.
But that's it! I've had a chat about where I'd like the pantry shelves & I've asked for an accessible shelf deep enough for my biggest glass storage jars - oats, lentils, rice, pasta, etc, I've taken delivery of our new blind & apart from that, I've sat in the garden reading & being serenaded by our lovely robin.
After a cooler day yesterday, it's been sunny & bright today, enough for me to fetch the factor 30 back out! I'm not very good at sitting around during the day though, so if I can't get on with a few things tomorrow (there are jobs absolutely everywhere I look!), I think I shall start getting a bit ants-in-my-pants-y.
Have just heard that gas will be turned on soon (though no hot water till tomorrow) so that does mean we've dodged a take-away!
So I bet everyone has been way more productive than me today.
Love F x

ladyholly

Depends on how yyou define productive. I have been visiting my brother in law leaving home at 7.17 to get the 7.30 train and 2 changes later he picked me up from the station at 10.30. Stayed till about 2.30 and reached home about 5.30 after dh collecting me from the station and swinging by the chippy for a takeaway. Now feel shattered so dont think anything will get done other than dog walking before bed.

foxgloves

I don't blame you for that chippy visit, Ladyholly. That sounds like a busy day.
F

ladyholly

It was time consuming rather than busy. I do find sitting on trains for 3hours plus each way very tiring but since my sister died last year I try to go once a month as BiL has no family and most of his friends live a good distance away or abroad. Fortunately he is a bit of a loner anyway but I  think he likes to see me. He doesnt go out that much now due to covid but normally even at almost 88 he loves travel and the theatre which are things he is reluctant to do now. It usually takes a day or two for me to feel a bit more human after the travelling.

foxgloves

It's kind of you to go, then Ladyholly, especially with such a lot of travel palava. I think a lot of older people will be much more wary of doing the sort of social activities they used to enjoy, so I'm sure your BIL is glad to see you id he's not getting out much.
F

foxgloves

Hello m'dears,
Sunshine again here, but a lovely autumn tang to the air - my absolute definite favourite season. Had so many jobs planned for today but got off to a slow annoying start because of chapter 2 of the Evil Black Fluff Saga - The Revenge. Ignore this post if you were reduced to near narcolepsy last time. OK, it went like this. I put on my purple dress (which had been  in the wash when the EBF struck first time round, but I had already picked all the fluff off it). I ate my breakfast, did the dishes, made the builders a coffee & went upstairs to do some jobs. I was changing the bed linen & putting on new, when I noticed there were quite a few blobs of EBF appearing on the bedroom carpet. I picked them up. They kept on coming. I fetched the vacuum & hoovered the bedroom. By the time I got round to the duvet cover, they were appearing on that too. I took my dress off & bugg*r it, the inside was covered in the damn stuff.....I hadn't thought to extend my EBF fluff-removal activities to the inside. Chucked another dress on in case builder appeared & attempted to vacuum the inside of the dress with the brush attachment. Hopeless! EBF sticks like glue. Hung it up & picked off as much as I could & also used sticky tape wound round my hand. It took ages. Finally got it all off, but by the time I'd finished the bedding & tidied, I had vacuumed the room 4 times! I kept all the EBF pickings so as to compare them with everything in my wardrobe as I really do need to know where this stuff originated so that I don't have a washer full of it again. It matches nothing at all in my wardrobe. The nearest thing I have is an angora wrap, but that is mid-brown & the EBF is definitely a dark black. Anyway (I said this would be boring), I started the ironing basket, which was all fine as everything was washed later than the EBF incident, except for Mr F's white shirt - the one which had been slarmed in the stuff & I'd been trying to ignore. Bear in mind it had already had 3 washes, a blow out on the line, a good shake & the biggest blobs hand-picked off. It was still looking like a proper hairy mary, so I had to sticky-tape a section, then iron it, then repeat right the way around & it took ages. We still have no idea how this damned stuff came to be in our washing machine in the first place. I am wondering if one of us maybe even sat in a chair in a cafe or leaned on something covered in EBF while we were out, didn't notice, then flung garment in for washing as normal. It's wasted a lot of my time......& moaning about it on here has wasted even more!!
Other stuff: Booked electrician in next week for a quote on our list of jobs, replied to energy provider re changing our energy tariff, stepped up my request for a smart meter, paid the next instalment for the building work, did 2 surveys (Prolific over £40, so I think I will keep on at that total ready to cash out in December), entered a competition & changed plans for the weekend as builders need to work on our new heating system all tomorrow. All I really need to do now is go & see what needs picking. I'm thinking it will be tomatoes, beans, a couple of corn cobs & maybe a courgette. And it would make me happy if I finished knitting my big sock tonight. And that is all from Chez Foxgloves - I cannot tell you how much dust & gunk there is over everything. We are raring to go with a massive clean-up as soon as we can - the work does all seem to be progressing really well.
Peace & stuff,
F x