Ding! Ding! All change, please... (now replaced with new diary on MFW)

Suffolk_lass

Good nudge re PBs. I also won (two x £50) - most welcome after March's humungous outlays

EssexHebridean

Hello lovely visitors - thanks for popping in!

Agreed about the atrocious customer service - and it just gets worse! I got in this morning to find an email telling me that they had asked FedEx to contact me directly - this in spite of me specifically asking them not to do this, and telling them that they were not authorised to use my personal details in this way. I went back reminding them again of GDPR (Although they are in Hong Kong, they market directly to the UK so are bound by GDPR) and stating that they should contact FedEx urgently to explain to them that they had made an error in asking them to contact me, and that my permission to use my details in this way had now been withdrawn. Received a reply not long after doubling down on their insistence that they were getting FedEx to contact me...honestly! Anyway, I have now had a live chat with a very helpful person at the ICO who assures me that it is indeed a breach, as I suspected, and confirming that it should be reported as such - so that's a job for later on. 

Bike was OK last night and this morning - still skipping gears here and there, and so will still need to go back, but the chain stayed put at least. Didn't get as much extra distance done last night as I really wanted as it was raining when I left the office - and as a result I didn't even end up doing my fourth form of movement for the day as I just sat in the car when I got back there. Did a whisker under 5 miles on the bike this morning though which felt OK. Still amazes me how fast cycling fitness gets lost though! (Hopefully it will rebuild just as fast!) 

Banks checked this morning and all good - New financial year starts today of course so I'll start keeping an eye out for new ISA options - it's one of the things we need to discuss over the weekend in fact - we'll keep our existing Sant-And-Er fixes, and open new ones for this year so need to find what rates and options are available to us. I won't need mine until at least May when my Atom 6 month fix ends though - and to be honest I might just be better renewing that to a new fix and swallowing the tax. (Currently 6 month fix is offering 3.85%, 9 month is 4.05% - my current 6 is giving me 3.55%) It might be that we will simply use both for joint funds this year, in fact. Lots to ponder there. 

I've ordered a second pair of wellies from Amazon to see if they are a better fit for me than the pair I bought before - one or other will need to get returned but I can at least try comparing the two now.  Realised too late that I should have gone with the try before you buy option but I'm sure I can shuffle the money about one way or another to make it work. 

It's always a bit of a funny week this one because of course for most people it's "Yay - 4 day week!" where for me it's just a normal week (But on the flip side next week I get to say "Yay - 3 day week!") - I know Cheery will identify with this one! At least the extra bank Holiday for the Coronation has been put on a Monday mind you - I was most put out being robbed of a bank holiday with some previous ones being added on on Fridays! 

Cheery_Daff

Yep, definitely identify with that one! We very often get the Tuesday after a bank holiday too, so theoretically next week would be 2 days, but I'm at a conference which includes Friday, so it's back up to 3 😂

milann

My Dh was put out with those  Friday bank holidays too….not a happy bunny at the time 🐰😂🐰

savingholmes

I am so grateful for the run of bank holidays over the next couple of months. I'd love a permanent 4 day week - not there financially yet. 

Good luck with getting your bike fixed. Well done for sorting the camera warranty.

Drawingaline

As someone who is self employed all the shuffling around and extra bank Holidays we have had in the past year have annoyed me 😆

jwil

Friday Bank Holiday annoyed me too   At least the extra Monday ones coming up help!

Suffolk_lass

Where I worked, if you were a part time 4 day person, you got 80% of all the bank holidays. If you were a compressed hours full-timer you got time off in lieu (TOIL) - seemed fairer to me

rtandon27

Happy Easter! 🐣 🐰 

EssexHebridean

Afternoon lovely MSE'ers - I hope we all had a lovely relaxing long weekend?!

Ours was a suitable mix of productive and fun. Started out on Friday heading off up to a new-to-us RSPB reserve in South-east Essex - glorious day for it too as the sun shone all day. A really nice walk - if slightly longer than my feet appreciated bearing in mind the boots I was wearing - and it's one we would definitely head back to at some stage, not least as much to our astonishment we saw Corn Buntings there! They're birds that usually we pretty much only see when we're in the Hebrides - but as soon as one started calling we instantly knew what we were hearing and MrEH promptly picked it out sitting on a bush a short distance away! While watching that one we also saw a Yellow Wagtail - not at all a common bird for us, so imagine our astonishment when we then realised there was a little group of about 12 of them all together! we saw another pair of Corn Buntings a bit further round too - lovely! 

Saturday was our planned jaunt into London - up to the end of the Piccadilly line and then a walk back along the line. Stopped for lunch in a handy JDW pub, during which time my Garmin decided to dump all its power. I need to have a look at trying a hard reset on it I think as it's the second time it's done that lately. Fortunately I had just enough power left in my power bank to get some charge back into it to track the second half of the walk. More glorious weather too - I took my coat off and shoved it into my bag when we got to the station in the morning and didn't put it back on again until the evening! Ended up just going as far as Bounds Green as time was running short ahead of our other plans which was to head back to Walthamstow to visit some brewery tap rooms near where I grew up and meet up with some pals. Ended up having a lovely evening chatting and wandering from one taproom to another - although disappointingly one that was very much being looked forward to was closed for a private event - boo! 

Sunday and Monday were based at home as we wanted to slap a coat of paint on the walls in a couple of rooms just to freshen things up a bit more - we'd called in to get the paint on Friday before we went anywhere else so we definitely had it! Sunday we concentrated on the bedroom - just two main walls and a little bit to do in there as one wall got done a few months back when we hung the thermal paper and one is almost entirely wardrobes - so that helped. Annoyingly it was yet another glorious sunny day - so we did nip out part way through the day for a bit of a walk, and were able to sit out on the balcony to eat lunch which was rather nice, first time this year! Then yesterday we were able to get round a good bit of the front room with the paint too - it's quite frustrating in some ways as we've literally gone straight over with the original colour ("Natural Calico" for anyone who knows their Du1ux creams!) so it's the very devil to see where you've got to is the first thing, and then even once you've finished it doesn't really look any different! Just one area still to do in there which will now have to be next week, but we've "feathered" in the last bit we painted yesterday so unless anyone looks fairly hard they won't spot that there's a join! (And we think viewings are unlikely in the next week anyway for reasons I will explain shortly). Aside from that, we did a fair bit of work on our voluntary role for the beer festival and reached the end of our "phase 1" which feels very positive - still an awful lot of work to do, mind you!

We're also in the process of changing Estate Agents for the sale of the flat. We were very upfront and honest with the agent we were with, and explained to them that it didn't feel that we were on the same page with the way we wanted to go about things, and also that their seeming reluctance to put anything in writing was making us uncomfortable, and also just not working for us as neither of us are available to take phone calls during the day. We'd said from the start that we needed to deal almost entirely by email and although they originally said that was fine, they were still constantly trying to phone us which was annoying. The next thing now is for MrEH to get hold of the agent we are switching to and get them round to take new photos (I'll be scrutinising the old ones to make sure I correct anything I didn't like in those!) and then it will be listed with them 24 hours after our contract expires with the others. And then we see if they are any better at selling flats than the first lot are!  

Other than that, I managed to get the piece of ham I'd bought cooked overnight Thursday > Friday, and then having bought a leg of lamb on one of the Supermarket half price deals that was roasted on Sunday. I also cooked off a big pot of yellow split peas. The ham has done us several meals over the weekend, made a large pot of pea and ham soup and there are 4 tubs of slices in the freezer. The soup will do us a meal later in the week (tomorrow probably) and there are three portions in the freezer, and I've also frozen 4 tubs of split peas in 200g per tub as well - those will be available to make daal or whatever when needed. I still need to slice the rest of the lamb too and freeze that, but it must be said freezer space is a bit at a premium right now!