Simple living in the country - back to basics

South_coast

greent said:

The joys of the hormones I get to take for the next 10 years mean I most likely get to experience menopause symptoms again for all  that time.... that's just unfair!! 🤣🤣

Ah yes, my Mum is taking those - 5 years in so far!

beanielou

Hope you had a good day with your maw 

Cheery_Daff

Thank you all so much for sharing your experiences, good or otherwise. Really interesting food for thought, all of them. I can definitely see why some folk would avoid coils like the plague, and others think they're great.

PMT type symptoms were the main thing I was concerned about with the hormonal one. We'll see how that manifests itself... 

Interestingly, it transpires that my mum went through a pretty early menopause as well as my grandma (who was 36). Why did I know about my grandma, but not my mum?! Mind you, she started with symptoms when about 36/37, and I would have been 15/16 so probably engaged in my own hormonal upheavals and not paying attention 🙄 Or I was probably told about hot flushes etc but didn't clock the implications.

Anyway, in family terms at least, I am apparently running late!

Anyway, nice day yesterday, if tiring. Got a big load of grass shifted with my mum, which was great. We got down to see the blackberries, but barely picked anyway for various reasons. There are still plenty left (it's an exposed east facing slope on a hilltop so we're later than most) but they will need picking today.

I went out in the evening, cuppa with a friend, a party for an hour or so, then collected Mr Cheery from another friend's and had a cuppa with them. Another late night though.

So a slow day today. Blackberries, band rehearsals start again late afternoon. Might get the final bedding washed, write a blog post etc, bit of light pottering. 

Busy week coming up so want to feel relatively rested going into it.

Cheery_Daff

Oh, and i forgot! The energy monitor arrived yesterday! Info gathered so far (mostly unsurprising) 

* kettle costs 5p to boil entirely full from cold, which I do several times a day for hot water bottle

* 200 LED fairy lights cost a third of the amount to run as 10 non-LED fairy lights (4p for 24 hours, as opposed to 12p) - all the important questions answered in the Cheery household!

* Freezer needs further investigation. Presumably it runs on a cycle as it initially looked like it was using loads, but I left it plugged in for an hour and it said it'd only drawn power for 5 mins. Should have left it plugged in overnight but I was exhausted when we got back and completely forgot (and there was a mouse in the trap in the loft so we had to go straight back out to release it in the Mouse Layby 😂 There were 3 campervans up there so goodness what they thought when we turned up at midnight for 5 minutes rummaging in the bushes 😂😂)

Karmacat

No blackberries picked here this year at all - there are loads, but between holiday prep, prep, and covid, nothing happened.  There's always next year  

The elec. info sounds very interesting - especially the kettle, which isn't nearly as much as I though it would be. 

Have a nice slow day  

badmemory

I left both my fridge & my freezer plugged into it for the full 24 hours.  Together over 3.5Kw per day.  I'll be able to do £ figures once they tell us how much the new charges will be.  But I suspect well over £400 pa.  As for the kettle = 4 mins & 2kw so 0.1333Kw a boil.  But then I do only boil a full kettle as the cooled water is cheaper than buying bottled water for DS & for my hot water bottle to keep my back moving.  Just waiting for the pain in the proverbial which is british gas to come up with some figures.  I won't be holding my breath.

Cheery_Daff

The new price cap figures are out badmemory - or are you referring to a different set of figures from British Gas? 

The overall ones (which I thought would now just be used by everyone, but I might be wrong) are here

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/utilities/what-are-the-price-cap-unit-rates-/#regional

There are differences between regions, and do check which region you come under- for us it wasn't what I was expecting! 

Weather is pretty vile here today so I may not get any blackberries myself this year KC. The few we picked yesterday are rapidly getting fed one at a time to the chickens 😂😂

Delighted to report I've finally finished the scraping stage of the kitchen ceiling! Going to get on and see if I can get it painted today too. Woo hoo!

badmemory

Thanks very much for that.  Serves me right for believing that BG would do as they said & let me know.  Off to redo my spreadsheet!  Who knew that energy prices would become a major dementia prevention tool.

Cheery_Daff

Happy spreadsheeting badmemory! I imagine you'd be waiting ages for the energy company to update - mine certainly haven't bothered. Thank goodness for Martin Lewis I say!! 

Gentle, much needed pottering day today. Mr Cheery let the chickens out so I had a bit of a lie in. Sorted out some photos, then we did a tip run with an old bed base and some plastic shelves - I'd been considering using them for the greenhouse but they're not much better than what's in there, and anyway he accidentally took the legs to the tip the other day not realising they were related. More space cleared.

Picked up a cast iron pan in a charity shop - good one for the hay box 😁

Then I finished scraping the bits off the ceiling! What a tiresome, dragged-out job that's been!! Got a first coat of paint on most of the bits that needed it - and then rather annoyingly, ran out of time 🙄 before band practice (but that was pretty cheerful this evening so all good)

Also mostly ran out of paint 🙄 I think with a slight amount of watering down there will be enough for the first coat on the final bits tomorrow, but certainly not enough for the second coat. Fortunately we bought a tub of the same stuff for Mr Cheery's dad a few weeks ago, so we'll rescue that later in the week (won't need any more for him i don't think) and then I can finish it off.

(Writing that, I'm now having doubts and wondering if I did, in fact, just use cheap paint on his ceiling rather than the crack free stuff I'm using for ours... I might have to fork out for a new tub if so - it'll look obvious if they're not matched).

No heating on here yet, but it's not got above 14 degrees in either the living room or kitchen today, and is now down to 13... Managing with my fleecy waistcoat thing and a hot water bottle, but there's a definite nip...

Energy monitor has been plugged into the freezer since 9am and reckons it's used 8p worth of electric. Now, that might be right, but it's definitely far less than I expected... Going to leave it for the full 24 hours and see. It's not drawing constant power, it's cycling as it should be, i just expected it to use more, especially as it's so old. 

Still, it's a pretty small under counter one, stuffed pretty full, and is out in the offshot by the back door which is easily the coldest bit of the house so is probably 11 or 12 degrees today so it's probably not having to work very hard 😂

South_coast

And think what having it full of batch-cooking or items which would otherwise have gone to waste saves you.... It's not just the headline cost, there are intangibles and future cost savings in there too!