Simple living in the country - back to basics

badmemory

Cats can be the problem with automatic garage doors.  Once when I was in a hurry I drove out set the door in motion & was gone.  I was back luckily less than an hour later & also luckily always put the car away.  There in the garage was a very unhappy cat.  So now I sit & watch the door going down just to make sure.  A day later & it would have been stuck there for 3 days.

greenbee

redofromstart said:

We used to have a cork on a string that hit the windscreen when I needed to stop reversing in the garage. It worked really well. 

 

Probably shouldn't mention that the company car prior to that had bumps in 3 out of the 4 corners...

We had curtain rings on string... 

greenbee

redofromstart said:

I really like reversing beepy cameras, my cats like to appear out of nowhere behind the reversing car shouting MUMMY and waving whilst you nearly reverse over them. 'Mummy, you squished me!' Isn't a conversation I want to have/not have. 

My dad ended up making insurance claims on 2 cars when my mum was busy avoiding cats and reversed one car into the other... 

The new car I'm picking up on Monday has a reversing camera with three different views... normal, down at the ground for towbar users, and a weird fish-eye estate-agent view. 

beanielou

My car beeps when reversing but no camera sadly as it was an extra.

Cheery_Daff

Lol you lot! 😂 I've never had a reversing sensor or camera. Both cars are utterly filthy at the minute. I think I've only ever cleaned a car once before, but even I'm nearly at the point of getting a sponge out 😂 we've done a lot more motorway driving lately than usual which doesn't help (I do keep the numberplate clean though!)

Anyway, sadly I don't think dirt is the reason for the check engine light, although I suppose you never know! 🙄😂 on reflection I'm not sure it's the same light as last time. I did obviously look it up myself both times - last time I think it was the little spanner whereas this time is the check engine one 🙄 Mr Cheery's all for sticking a sticker over it and ignoring it 🙄😂

Weird day yesterday, got lots done but I was in a grumpy and unsatisfied mood, just tired,  I think. Had a bath and early night and I think I feel better, although I'm not out of bed yet so that will be the test 😂

Bluegreen,  yes, that first diary i did have a very low income - I think I was very pleased at my new job which paid £780 a month 😂 Mr Cheery had already given up his job at that point too. But neither of us are inherently spendy,  barely had any mortgage left on the old house. I'd live in a shared house before moving in with him so just paid for a room,  we only had one car, mostly walked everywhere etc. Life is very different now in lots of ways - obviously stupid house is the main cause of much of our current expense! 🙄

Cheery_Daff

Ooh, and we had the extra LPG payment yesterday, which came as a credit to the electricity account. I checked, and that meant we were £449 in credit, and they recommended reducing our DD to £1 😂

Not going to do that, as obviously things are going to get rather more expensive over the next few months. I've requested the £200 as a refund, which was actioned within an hour 😮 but I've left the rest in there. We're only paying £21 a month DD at the minute so of course that will increase soon, although hopefully not by too much if we're going into the spring with a good chunk of credit. 

Anyway, the refund can sit in the LPG pot. There's £1200 in there at the minute, £850 bill due shortly. Last year we had the tank filled in December and Feb. This year it was January, and maybe we'll get past March with it getting slowly warmer - hoping we'll make it til April  or even beyond, but we'll see. Could well do without another £850 bill that quickly! 

Cheery_Daff

Oh, and another thing I did yesterday - I was waiting for the Internet password from the new building society savings people. Turns out the sent it as an email rather than a letter, and I missed it (because it came in a flurry with all the other emails right when I first opened it, and I'd assumed they were repeats of the same thing 🙄).

Anyway, it's been longer than 35 days now so I now need to request a new password on the phone 🙄 A job for next week!

greenbee

I’m pretty sure the spanner is the ‘service me now’ light. Mr Cheery’s solution might work, but it might not. It depends whether you want to get stuck by the side of the road waiting for a recovery truck. 

I need to sort out insurance for my new car today so I can pick it up on Monday. The old car hasn’t been washed for at least 18 months, if that… the place I’m getting the next one tried to sell me paint treatment and a cosmetic maintenance package 😂

Cheery_Daff

Yep, spanner is service light - which is what the garage said, and then did. This one is definitely NOT the service light 🙄

Anyway, a minor achievement yesterday - we cleaned and organised the storecupboard, and I wrote a list of what it would take to restock, and then went on the supermarket website and checked prices. Mylist was going to cost about £100 😱 So many were much cheaper in @ldi of course, but we don't have vouchers for @ldi! Made a list to try vaguely to get best use of the vouchers (stuff that's similar price to @ldi, or that they don't sell etc).

Revised the list, then we went round the shop, got a couple of extra things, and found half price nice beer so stocked up on that too, same price as the stuff we usually buy from the other shop. 

Had to top up the vouchers with £1.54, which wasn't bad at all. 

Storecupboard looking good - we'll add bits and pieces as we do the normal shopping, but it feels good to have at least a few of most things we use regularly 😊

Just need to get on with batch cooking! And batch cooking bulgur wheat seems to be somewhat of a priority - apparently we've amassed 5 bags of it and rarely eat it at all 🙄 All out of date now too so can't pass it on, so will just need to find some recipes 😁

Suffolk_lass

Normally (when Russia doesn't invade Ukraine) the prices of fuel oil is the lowest in April. Unfortunately the village oil syndicate coordinator has no interest in moving from January and September here. Does LPG work the same way?

If the check engine light is amber and just on, you might be OK. If it is red and flashing, delaying getting it looked at could cause expensive damage