Cheery's country living adventure

ElmoR

Your chicken updates are the most heart warming news in the UK right now:)

Cheery_Daff

Aw, bless you both :kisses3:

Well today has been both good and bad on the MSE front...

Remember I took the car to the garage on Tuesday to get a new tyre? Can't remember if I said, but they fixed it instead and only charged me a tenner :money:

Except they didn't fix it properly and it was flat again the next morning :mad:

Took it to the garage near home instead and got that tyre & the one opposite replaced with all weather tyres, so that was £120 :eek:

Got the one that wasn't broke to bring home though so that'll save us buying a new one if one of the others goes.

Turns out other garage had put the two front tyres on back to front too. They're lovely, but rather slapdash sometimes :eek:

In better news... I added the little car onto the big car insurance policy :j Last year's insurance for both was £900, original quote for multicar this year was £528, for some reason they charged me less adding it now (it's only 2 weeks later) so total cost is £450 :money: half the price of last year! :j :j

Also breakdown for small car runs out in a couple of days - not renewing as I discovered (having clearly not read the original docs properly) that when you rang up you had to choose between them attempting to fix OR recovery :eek: call me old fashioned, but on the whole I prefer them to attempt to fix it, and if they can't, then take me to a garage, not just leave me sat there :rotfl:

Anyway, have gone with the MSE top pick of AutoAid, which is bizarrely cheap but has excellent reviews -£48 for both me & Mr Cheery driving any car, including home start, recovery and onward travel. Can't see a catch (except possibly if I break down less than a mile away from home they won't take me to the garage - so I'd have to walk home, get the other car, and tow the broken one either home or more than a mile away :rotfl: )

Anyway, between insurance & breakdown cover I've saved us £100 tonight so I'm off for a celebratory bath :j :j :j

Downshifterella

Fab updates Cheery!
Ouch on the car expense but lovely to hear how your first 'rural' year has gone.
Here's to a good weekend!
Ella x

themadvix

We had Autoaid for several years and were very happy with it (and did have to use it a couple of times).

Cheery_Daff

Good to know themadvix - thank you! :j

I actually found a Groupon deal for AutoAid so got a year for £44 rather than £48 :money: Very pleased. Of course I didn't apply it straight away, so cover won't start til midnight tonight - had to remember to drive the bigger car today as I don't want to be out without breakdown cover and the cover on the big one still runs til May.

Anyway, hopefully we won't need any of them!

Not much to report money wise. Joined the Dry Stone Walling Association which I've been meaning to do for a while so that was £35 for the year, and gets me access to monthly practice sessions pretty local to here so that's good :j I suppose there's always the opportunity of offering our own walls as practice too :rotfl: But that might be a bit cheeky - we'll see.

Went out for a cuppa this morning, so that was £5.90 between us. While we were out we noticed the little S@insbury's had many, many boxes of strawberries reduced from £2.10 to 29p :eek: Bought four - I don't think they'll last past tomorrow, they don't freeze well, and Mr Cheery doesn't eat them, and there are only so many strawberries I can fit in in a day :rotfl: Although I could have pureed and frozen of course, or made into jam...

Ah well, I'm not doing another 16 mile round trip just to rescue some strawberries. It's early in the day so hopefully other people will find them too :j

I did give a couple to the chickens

Speaking of which... I didn't put it on here but Bessie wasn't very well yesterday Brought her inside, gave her a bath and a massage (!) and kept her without food, and eventually her swollen crop went down (still doesn't feel quite right to me but I have so little experience I might be talking rubbish). She laid a massive jelly egg this morning too so that won't have been helping :eek:

Anyway, she perked up considerably after that, so she's back out with the other ladies now :j I'll keep an eye on her throughout the day but she seems ok so far.

I THINK I have a small break in financial admin for the new few months... About time too - had house insurance, both car insurances and both breakdown covers in the last few weeks, as well as all that messing with bank accounts, and I'm fed up of it! :eek:

According to my records I don't think there's anything due til the car tax for the big car in June, and the next thing after that will be the mortgage fix running out in September :eek:

Working at home today so I've got the fire lit - it's been sunny this morning but has started raining now so I'm glad to be inside (although will have to pop out and check the beaky pals have figured out how to shelter - the new ladies got a bit bedraggled yesterday

Karmacat

You're doing wonders, Cheery, carrying on such a responsible job and learning to look after chickens, *and* a big chunk of annual financial admin recently.



I love reading about the chickens! But given my current state of lying about on my nephew's sofa, I was right not to get any cats of my own animals may always need a great deal of care at the drop of a hat, and I just don't have any guarantees I'll be able to give it though I'm doing okay with these two at the moment

Cheery_Daff

Catsitting sounds like a nice balance I keep seeing adverts round here wanting people to walk dogs for The Cinnamon Trust (who help out when people are too poorly to walk their own dogs I think) - I'd love a dog of our own and we often talk about it but the bulk of the day to day care would have to fall to Mr Cheery...

Normal daily chicken tasks aren't too onerous, but as you say, when something unusual happens, things get a bit more unwieldy. I'm very grateful our recent incidents have happened when I've been working at home. Poor Mr Cheery would have been abandoned to it if it had all happened before Christmas. He would have managed of course, but it was me who wanted chickens after all so it does make me wary for what might happen when I'm not working at home so much.

Fortunately the new ladies are out free ranging with the old ladies (well, in the general vicinity anyway - they're not exactly hanging around in a proper gang yet :rotfl: ) so I'm staying inside and ignoring them all

gallygirl

Cheery_Daff wrote: »

Speaking of which... I didn't put it on here but Bessie wasn't very well yesterday Brought her inside, gave her a bath and a massage (!) and kept her without food, and eventually her swollen crop went down (still doesn't feel quite right to me but I have so little experience I might be talking rubbish). She laid a massive jelly egg this morning too so that won't have been helping :eek:

Anyway, she perked up considerably after that, so she's back out with the other ladies now :j I'll keep an eye on her throughout the day but she seems ok so far.

Glad she's feeling better . Can you hurry up and get experience please as I'm in solo charge of my grand-chicks for a few days in June :eek:.

Cheery_Daff

:eek: gallygirl! :eek: Do pop over to the hens and ducks thread (in greenfingered MSE I think) if you need advice - there's folks far more knowledgeable than me!

New ladies are coming along nicely - they have all taken themselves to bed on their own the last two nights running! :j Sadly I spoiled it both nights by arriving just as they were heading into the hen house - two of them spotted me and came back out again :rotfl: Will have to wait til it goes properly dark tomorrow. The original ladies are clearly early-to=bed as they're often in the run a good half hour before it goes dark.

Anyway, nowt much to report - thought I should probably check YNAB etc but now it comes to it I'm proper tired and it's quite likely I'd do something stupid (and also I can't be bothered :rotfl: )

Not spent much today. about £3 on some firelighters in the local shop, and £5 in the cafe with Mr Cheery. And I sent a tenner to the lovely lady who made my wedding ring who offered to resize it for free (I think I was a bit over-zealous in my measuring originally and it was quite big...). Anyway, couldn't let her do it for nowt, and it fits perfectly now (I posted it Saturday and got it back this morning - how's that for service?!)

Right, I'm going to sleep. Someone remind me I MUST take a photo of the marriage certificate and send it to the breakdown people tomorrow! :eek: (They cover your spouse for free, but you have to send proof either that you're married or that you live in the same house within 7 days and I'm rapidly running out of days :rotfl: )

Cheery_Daff

Evening chums :hello:

Just been doing a bit of sorting through YNAB (and I was about to report that all was sorted but I've just realised I only checked the bank, not my purse :eek: So I'll finish that in a minute - that's where the 'budget fiddling' category usually comes in :rotfl: )

Couple of notable things...

I bought a train ticket for work - but I've realised (or rather remembered, as I did know before ) that the expenses policy has changed and they won't refund anything I've bought myself - I have to order it through work's travel office thing :mad: Most vexing. Fortunately in this case it was only £7.80... but still - annoying.

Managed to squirrel away £46 from what I'd saved for car insurance and £100 of what I'd saved for breakdown cover as both those things were less expensive than anticipated :money:

Sadly most of that went into the car maintenance fund as the little car had 2 new tyres this month so that was £116 :rotfl: I've put the rest in there too as something else is bound to go wrong :eek: :rotfl:

Need to have a proper think about magazine subscriptions I've cancelled the gardening one - cheery when it was 5 issues for £5 but not worth the bother otherwise (although they do send lots of seeds! But I HAVE far too many seeds already :rotfl: )

There's a special interest one that I'll keep getting.

I've been caught out by a DD AGAIN for Country Smallholder So need to decide whether to cancel that (and do it now). I enjoy it, but do I enjoy £32 a year of it? Same with Country Living - completely impractical but I do so love the pretty pictures

We'll see

Not much else to report. Had friends round today - fed them home made bread and home made lentil soup :money:

Yesterday... Oh! Slimming World (which I'd paid upfront for), paid £3 for parking at the reservoir on the way home so I could run round it Most enjoyable (won't be paying for parking every week but it was nice to have a relatively flat run for once )

This coming week... working at home Monday and Tuesday so NSDs unless we pop to a cafe (which we likely will one of the days, so that'll be about £5).

Wednesday, Thursday and Friday I'm in the city :eek: Need to get my act together to sort out lunches else I'll end up grabbing a sandwich or something while I'm there (or just raiding the cake shop ) Not got much in the way of veg in at the minute so might need a quick supermarket trip. Hmm...

MUST remember my library books... I stupidly didn't renew them til about 4 days after they were due and yesterday thought 'I don't need to go to the library, I've not had a pre-overdue notice so they must be due back next weekend' - except of course I've had a notice now because they're due back on THURSDAY which is no use at all, as I'm not going anywhere near the library til Saturday! Most annoying as I could have taken them back yesterday and didn't realise :mad:

Oh! And the cheap breakdown! I bought the Groupon voucher, used it to buy AutoAid breakdown, and remembered I needed to send off the marriage certificate. Tried to find the email where it said - can I find any proof that I actually bought the breakdown cover?! No! Nothing in my emails at all!! So I tried again, in case I'd not pressed a final button, but it said my Groupon voucher had expired (presumably because I did actually already use it).

Still, at least in the process I found the email address to send the certificate to - so I've done that and await a response with some kind of policy number and phone number to ring in event of breakdown.

Best drive the other car til it's sorted (the old cover is still valid on the big car til May :rotfl: ) Good job it's only breakdown not actual insurance - I've been driving it round all week thinking I was covered! :eek: