And now we go again...

EssexHebridean

Staffordia said:

Can I pick your brains about airshows.  We're going to Duxford for the D Day event. Is there a bag search on the way in, I want to allow time for the inevitable queuing.

There will be - but as a rule they are pretty quick in doing it, and they don't search absolutely everyone either. I tend to get searched because large camera bags stand out, but just a regular sized backpack type bag might well not. I think in theory it's entirely random though! Also bear in mind that there are three possibilities for parking. For airshow days they tend to use the main car park for disabled only, then large one over the road (a bit of a walk back) for everyone else...if that gets full, then the other option is the car park behind the American Museum which is back on the main site again, and is often a far better bet as not only are you closer to the car, it can be easier to get out at the end, too! If they know they are going to be busy, they do sometimes open that one up from the start as well - so it can be worth heading that way first to see. 

How lovely to see what a lot of visitors - thanks all, and for the nice comments about the photo, as well! I was delighted to see this Spitfire fly finally as it rather felt like everyone else had already! If anyone wants to see more then my pics can be found on Flickr - I'm on there as Photozone72. 

We're still honestly SO delighted with the garden and the house as a whole. It absolutely feels like in spite of all the stresses over actually selling the flat, it really was well worth it to have found somewhere that suits us so well! It's lovely now the evenings are lighter too being able to potter about out in the garden for a few minutes when we get in from work, as well! 

MSE Stuff:
- Phone contract transferred over as planned at the start of the week - so I need to remember that will be costing me fractionally more each month. That's fine though as I'm back to actually having decent service again! As far as I can see the fee for that should go at the beginning of each month, anyway. 
- last night's tea used up the rest of the ham from the weekend, and all bar 2 eggs, plus the remaining mushrooms from this week's punnet, the last of the salad tomatoes and the remains of a bag of salad, too, plus some salad leaves from the garden as well. I've got a tub of ragu out defrosting in the fridge ready for this evening - it will likely get turned in to chilli I think. 
- Might bake with the remaining two eggs - we'll see how I feel about that tomorrow!
- Washing spent yesterday outside and dried beautifully, and the machine is set to run later on with another load which will hopefully go onto the line tomorrow - we're not forecast much sun, but it should be warm enough. That should be us for the week then!
- I'll shop tomorrow as usual - but need to go through the freezer thoroughly in the meantime to see what I can add in to the meal plan. Tomorrow evening will be curry I think - it will mean two nights on the trot of rice, but never mind, and we have curry in the freezer for sure! 
- Should get the first month's interest on this year's ISA tomorrow -  which is sadly quite exciting! 

One job I want to get sorted tonight/tomorrow is to get all my backing up of photos up to date, get the drive on the laptop cleared down, and get the cards cleared back so I have a ready supply to choose from when I'm heading off to an airshow! I need to track down a spare cable for my second backup drive so I can use both at the same time, ideally, as that makes backups far easier. Once I've done the show at Shuttleworth on Sunday I will be able to get camera kit sorted for taking on holiday, too. 

Seasidegal58

Ah - photos.... (pause). Thank you for reminding me about mine which need a good digital declutter and file. I also have tons of family photos and a beautiful empty photo album that I've had since I don't know when and which is a job that needs looking at.....

foxgloves

Great photo, @EssexHebridean! And nice to sit & have a catch up with how your garden is progressing too. Still time for sowing beans. I only put ours in when we got back from Suffolk, ditto courgettes & tuscan kale. I am really going to be 'on it' with succession sowing this year for the saladdy stuff, pak-choi, spring onions, etc, as it is such a money saver. I get so annoyed with myself in the summer if I have to spend actual money on a lettuce!
Mr F hoping we might get a bit of a spitfire/hurricane fly-over tomorrow as they are doing a display at the county show which is just on the other side of town. We have seen them over our garden before, plus the old Lancaster, so have a decent chance, I think. If anything interesting flew over while Mum & Dad happened to be visiting, Dad would race out into the garden to see what it was - it was his RAF background, I guess. Funnily enough, Mr F (no RAF background) is the same. There is an old photo of him sitting in a red arrow aged about 6, so maybe that was what started him off, lol.
F x

EssexHebridean

Well Foxgloves if you end up with the spitfire flying over (it will be the clipped wing one, as none of the others are flying yet) it will be my friend flying it! He’s also down this way tomorrow as well, I’m hoping to see him not too far from home which will be a nice change! 

Our beans are in - MrEH sowed them last weekend but no sign of germination as yet. I seem to recall that the runners at least will suddenly make an appearance and start growing like the clappers!  The tatties we planted first in the main bed are now peeping through too which is good, radishes are going crazy and the second sowing is already up. And yes - we have pak choi too - one of my jobs for tomorrow is to get it transplanted into the main bed I think - and liberally sprinkled with the wool pellets in the hope that whatever noshed one of our sunflowers off straight across the stem doesn’t have a go at it! Also did another sowing

SSG how lovely to have a photo album to put together. I rarely print things these days, but still do from time to time although usually in the form of a photo book rather than prints for an album. I’m delighted to say that I did indeed get my backups done last night, and now also have a cleared set of memory cards to,play with too. I really must make this the year that I deal with things like that as I go along - it’s far easier that way! 

Well today has been glorious down here - wall to wall sunshine and delightfully warm too. We walked first thing and even at that point I regretted wearing my hoody and carried it most of the way! 

MSE stuff:
- Washing was got out on the line first thing and didn’t take long to dry - I was almost annoyed there wasn’t another load to go through! 

- one from earlier in the week - the thermostat is now turned right down as we decided there was no need to have it kicking in for a short while each morning as the house was warming up naturally really fast anyway. 

- rolls made ready for lunches this morning, and I made a batch of muffins while the oven was on anyway to use the last two eggs, 
- the run off while waiting for hot water to run through for washing up was, as usual, drawn off into a watering can for garden use. 

- main shop done at Lil’s - and free bakery item collected. £30.85 spent there.
- meal plan done for the next week
- tonight’s tea was the planned curry (from the freezer) and I cooked up a batch of the mushroom Bhaji recipe I made a few weeks ago to accompany it. I had planned that we would eat half and freeze half, but frankly it was so nice we ate the lot!

Plans for tomorrow are generally a bit more garden pottering I think - we need to make a decision about anything more we think we can get down ahead of going away (probably another pot of basil, but not much else), get that Pak Choi transplanted, and decide whether the chard is ready to go in yet. Plus of course nipping out to hopefully get some pics of Andy in the Spitfire, and Inwant to get my bag sorted ready for Sunday’s airshow as well. 

beanielou

I felt like that about the washing too! 

lucielle

It was a bit too windy to put washing out yesterday but it’s definitely going out today!
L

Seasidegal58

Another here waiting for the washing to finish so I can peg it out on this glorious day!

Have you any immediate plans for decorating or doing up the house EH?

milann

Just having a catch up. Love the photo. You’ve been busy as usual 👍

EssexHebridean

Seasidegal58 said:

Another here waiting for the washing to finish so I can peg it out on this glorious day!

Have you any immediate plans for decorating or doing up the house EH?

We’ve painted one wall which when we moved in was a sort of mustard yellow colour - that’s now dark blue and because it’s in our fabulously light living room that works really well! We do want to get the dressing room and the spare room painted at some stage but neither are desperately in need of it so we’re not feeling too much of a rush to do it to be honest - it will probably wait until the winter.  Our bedroom is beautifully done (think walls in either aqua or light teal, with a feature wall in the most gorgeous wallpaper with silver birds and teal accents, plus the most beautifully coved ceiling!) the rest of the living room is fine, and while we will probably do the front room at some stage that certainly doesn’t need it yet. I have to confess that one of the biggest draws of the house was how beautifully done it was! 

I’m pleased it’s not only me who feels a bit a vague resentment when it’s cracking drying weather and there’s not much to go through the machine! 😂

Work’s hectic again at the moment - hence being quiet here. Not helped by the fact that the high workload makes Madam Boss incredibly stressed - and that in turn has the effect of creating a pretty stressful atmosphere in general at times. For perspective, she’s one of those characters who thrives on stress, but only when it’s the sort of stress that involves her telling anyone who will listen “how busy she is, and doesn’t have time to do everything”, as though this is some sort of virtue… this time though it is a genuinely higher than usual (and frankly, higher than sustainable in the long term, too!) workload, and she just doesn’t have a clue how to cope with it, which of course means she takes it out on anyone within earshot - and to much of the time, I’m the “anyone!” I’ve been mostly keeping my head down and trying desperately not to rise to the grief!  I’d say “oh well, it will pass” but actually I don’t know that it will. At some stage I may well have to take the decision to find something else, but I’m holding out for the time being. No advice needed here - I just wanted to actually set it down in black and white for my own sanity, really! anyway, as I now have only three and a half working days until the Hebrides beckon, I can cope with that! 

MSE stuff this week feels a bit minimal:
- got my cleaning cloths, tea towels and hand towels through the wash and out on the line for a couple of hours on Monday evening. They didn’t completely dry, but they were close enough that the same time again on the airer saw them dry.
- more salad from the garden eaten, which helps to stretch out the food budget of course!
- MrEH went out to get bamboo canes last night (we had used all of our stash, and needed more for the Broad beans) and came across some pots of peas in the orange DIY place clearance section - 43p! He got the healthiest looking pot, and they are now residing in our garden where hopefully they will start climbing up the bean frame shortly. We’d decided against peas this year, but frankly when you can get them for that price…!
- free food! Some bits which were otherwise going to be thrown out at work. A tin of soup (oxtail - MrEH will scoff that) a packet of batter mix (“just add egg and water” which by my reckoning pretty much makes it a bag of flour!) and a tub (unopened) of chocolate milkshake powder (also going MrEH’s way!) 
- need to get the CC money shuffle sorted in the next few days. I want to get it up to date at zero before we go away, then I know that everything on it while we are away comes straight from the holiday pot. I let MrEH know what his contribution is today so he will be transferring that to me, and then I can sort the rest. 

- I have a mental note to get my personal EF out of Sant-and-Er before the rate on the account falls. I think it’s going into Mark-us for the time being while I decide what else I might do with it. 

- sort of the opposite of money saving is that having put my waterproof jacket through the wash, it’s emerged with the taped seams on the pocket edges adrift. I’m going to have a go and see if I can glue it, but if not then it’s going to need an emergency dash to the Warehouse of Mountains outlet place at the weekend to find a replacement. Really bad timing though! (Not least as it had best part of third of a bottle of re-proofer spray on it after its wash!) I’m hoping gluing works as I’d really like to get this trip out of it! 

Plans for the weekend are mainly around getting stuff ready ahead of the holiday - the aim is to get most clothes sorted and ready for packing, to get the car checked over, and to get the hamper we use for the various random stuff we take (kitchen bits, oddments of foodstuff, maps and that sort of thing)  packed. I also want to make sure we meal plan to use anything that needs using up from the fridge (of course!) and fruit and veg baskets. Then of course there is whatever needs sorting in the garden - including getting the beans planted out whether they seem to have germinated or not! 

On the subject of the garden  - the potatoes are going great guns, and the second lot that MrEH planted in the growing sack are now showing too. We got the chard and the Pak Choi planted out yesterday evening - surrounded with wool pellets to hopefully deter the sludgy and snaily beasties. 

beanielou

Dident realise that you were off so soon.  Give me a wave on the way past  Have the best time