2021 Fashion On The Ration Challenge

TwibbleDee

Yay for cozy socks!  Our thick socks got quite a workout the last few days - the camper floor was always rather chilly.

PipneyJane

@TwibbleDee, the Toy was a Seat Arosa (otherwise known as the cheap version of a VW Lupo).  He got the name because when the dealership delivered him to me at work, I greeted the dealer with “Hello.  I’m ..[real name].. I hear you’ve brought me my new toy to play with”.  My colleagues, who’d followed me down to reception, promptly dubbed the car “P..’s Toy”.

The current car, “Lucky”, is a Skoda Fabia, so slightly longer with a bigger boot and 5 doors instead of 3.  Lucky is 12 and has reached the age of personality that cars get before they become unreliable.  (He’s “Lucky” thanks to his registration number, and was named because, having had a car with a name, everyone kept asking me “what is this one called?”.)

PollyWollyDoodle said:

I live on a not-very-steep hill. A couple of years ago when we had some quite heavy snow I watched from my bedroom window as cars struggled to get up the hill, and several were eventually abandoned until their owners, including some quite high-performance cars.  Then a fairly old car came chugging slowly up, overtaking them all - it’s definitely not what you drive, but how you drive it. Exactly as you’ve said, Laura, second gear and never touch the brake, and if you feel the car starting to skid, steer into it not against it.  That last one is very hard to do because instinctively you want to wrestle the car away from it. Having said all that, I’d prefer not to drive in snow if possible!  

That’s exactly the advice my old boss gave,@Laura_Elsewhere and @PollyWollyDoodle.  The other thing he suggested was to carry a bag of kitty-litter or grit, so that if you do end up caught in the position where your tyres are polishing ice instead of driving across it, you can scatter it behind your driving wheels to give them grip.  (He also said to reverse out of that predicament.)

Laura, it’s sweet of you to make socks for your friend.  I call them “sock hugs”, since they’ll hug her feet every time she wears them and remind her that she is loved.

- Pip

Laura_Elsewhere

Better and cheaper than cat-litter - and far less mess afterwards - dishwasher-salt granules! 

It's cheaper per kilo than any other form of salt or grit, and it has a huge double-action advantage over either - when you scatter it, it immediately acts as grit to help straightaway, but then the salt as it dissolves helps prevent re-freezing. 
In 2010, Edinburgh had snow every day for six weeks, from late Nov to early Feb, needing the Army to be called in eventually to help clear the pavements, which by Feb were 8-10 inches deep in compacted snow which needed pickaxes to break it up.... people tested pretty well every possibly thing for helping with snow, ice and slipping, and dishwasher-salt granules were the absolute best across the board, nothing else even came close. 
Make sure it's the granules, not just salt, though! We carry a bag in the car year-round, so it's always there. 

The Post Office are obviously helping my friend too - I posted the socks yesterday lunchtime and they just arrived... she's delighted, a perfect fit and very cosy, she says. I am pleased. 

I'm also thinking again about clothes and my trousseau and what to get rid of - yesterday I wore a couple of the very thin long-sleeved tops, after a winter in cotton shirts under wool jumpers, and after a day in their cotton-mix-with-synthetic I was markedly more in need of a bath... I am pondering this, and considering maybe it would make sense to go through them all, pick out just a few whose colours I particularly love, and then give the others a really good wash to bring up the colours, and put them in the car to donate when charity shops re-open.... I had been just keeping all of them to wear to destruction and not replace, but now I'm wondering about donating most of them while they're still good enough for a CS to take... 

My friend is the sort who's quite bad at accepting a present, so I wasn't surprised when she - entirely coincidentally! - sent a message yesterday afternoon to say she's come across 3m of cotton suitable for blouses in one of her cupboards and would I like it...  

dolly84

PipneyJane - my old car was called John Jollop, I was very fond of him and he was quite distinctive and everyone who knows me recognised the car and waved so I looked very popular, athough that wouldn't have been good if I had decided to rob a Post Office, I have a newer car now and whilst reliable I feel no personal connection with it and it is plain so no-one waves.

MrsCD

One of my parents' old cars was called Brucie, because the registration number was N......TCU!

Rah

Hello fellow rationers, gosh there is a lot going on since I last caught up with you all!
I know it's a few pages ago now, but back to the subject of microplastics, my understanding is landfill is probably the best place for them, back in the ground where they came from, if you like. Most modern landfill sites, at least in the UK, are fully lined and capped, and any leachate (contaminated water from the site) is collected and treated. 
The reason landfills are so bad is because of organic waste decomposing and releasing methane. Inert materials are fine to be buried! 

CapricornLass

I sympathise, Rah - I haven't been on for about a week or so, and there's 10 pages to read!  Sorry I haven't been around, but my mother had a minor op which has caused problems, leading to a rather fraught 10 days, including 111 and two trips to A&E, and I have to go and take her for another scan on Monday.   Unfortunately my father has dementia and and can't really be relied upon (although he does his muddled best).  My sister and I have been taking it in turns to go and sort them out every day.   However, Mum seemed to be finally getting a bit more like herself yesterday and was definitely a lot perkier.

I'm not really doing anything very much wardrobe wise.  I'm debating whether to make another jumper for myself as some of the ones that I have are starting to look a bit bobbly.  I've also found some lenghts of fabric that I've had for a very long time, but I think I will give them to a charity shop as I'm not really much of a sewer.  On the plus side I've acquired some black velvet trousers from my mother which she was getting rid of, and which I will hang onto for the moment, in case we ever get back to going out on a more formal basis in the evenings!

PipneyJane

@MrsCD, Brucie is the perfect name for a car with a number plate of N...TCU.  

@Dolly84, John Jollop sounds like a cool car.

@CapricornLass, sorry to hear about your mum.  Hopefully, she’s over the worst and well on the mend.

@Rah.  Yes, that makes sense re landfill in the UK.  What is annoying and morally wrong is when councils ship rubbish overseas, instead of processing it here.  A lot of British rubbish has turned up on foreign rubbish dumps, including stuff that was supposed to be recycled.  (Wasn’t there a scandal a couple of years ago, when British plastic “recycling” was found in landfill in Turkey?)

In other news, I am still waiting for a returns number for the trainers.  I can’t remember if I told you but, somehow, I managed to give them entirely the wrong email address when I placed my order, so never received an order confirmation or receipt.  (When the shoes turned up on Monday, I was surprised.). Anyway, I emailed their customer service, gave all the details that I could, including the order number quoted on the delivery label.  They replied, asking for more details, so I sent them photos of the shoes, the box and the label.  They responded with an email saying that they’d sent a returns slip to my “email address”, having totally ignored the part of my original email stating that I’d screwed up my email address.  I’ve replied, pointing that out and asked them to post me the label.  We’ll see what their next reply says.  I may end up wasting half a day phoning them on Tuesday or Wednesday.

- Pip

Cherryfudge

@CapricornLass, I'm sorry your Mum's had a rough time. I hope she continues to improve steadily and you can pop in here and chat more often.

I have a ball of yarn to declare - another net bag in the making. Another 2 coupons gone I really must update my signature as it still says '26.5 coupons spent out of 66' form some time last year.

Liverpool_Anne

Rah, landfill sites, well new ones, are lined with either clay or strong plastic. Both of these have a "shelf life" and at some point in the future will fail. The leachate is pumped out and then disposed of. In some cases to licenced sites who do what with it, sometimes bury it, sometimes just store it and sometimes put it in the foul drains when it goes through the sewage treatment plants. They are all governed by the relevant environmental legislation but as there is no legislation covering micro plastics they are not even checked for unfortunately, so I am not convinced about landfill being the place to put micro plastics. And this only applies to new landfill sites, old ones that are still in use don't have liners and although they are monitored in that surrounding rivers are monitoring for pollutants again micro plastics are not checked for.  Until we get some serious research and legislation around this, and the proper recycling of plastics I am afraid it will remain a major problem for a long time. A few years ago an application was made to build a recycling plant at a small dock near my house in Liverpool. Of course the reason they wanted it near the dock was because they were going to recycle it into containers and ship it off to some other part of the world.