And now we go again...

Cheery_Daff

13p/kwh is fantastic! We won't be achieving that - I've not seen it below 15p since we joined, and I don't think I've used it below 17p at all 😂 But like you I reckon a couple of pence per kwh cheaper is a bonus!

lucielle

Well done on the painting. I detest doing it and I’m at that time in life where I’m happy to get someone in to do it. 

L

milann

I’m intrigued by the Marilyn wallpaper 🥴😱
It'll look lovely once it’s finished. The colour sound great 👍

Makingabobor2

13p pkwh is fantastic. We are paying 22p on our fixed tariff with them. My nephew is on the Agile and says its great, but my worry is that it might go up too high sometimes . 

EssexHebridean

That was my concern initially too MaB - we have taken the view that as long as the average seems to be roughly right most of the time, we'd ride out any odd days when the rates were higher - today is going to be one of those, I suspect! (28p/kWh from 7pm - 7.30pm means cooking tea will cost more than it would have done on the fix!) We were fortunate in jumping on to it in time for a couple of really cracking days Cheery - we're not under the illusion that they will come along often but it's nice when they do! we were able to use electricity instead of gas for heating for essentially a full 24 hours which was a definite bonus. 

Milann - think a sort of collage of well known pictures of the Blonde Bombshell, it was quite *ahem* "striking"! There is still some of it down behind the wardrobes, but as it's only able to be seen when you peer down the side of one of them, I'm not letting it bother me!  

I'm not a massive fan of painting L - although it must be said going over the top of Marilyn was a piece of cake compared to trying to cover over the metallic silver paint which is on another section of wall in there - think two coats of white emulsion over the top and still horribly patchy! Bigger areas though and I'm happy to get a man in, and fiddly stuff like skirting boards are DEFINITELY getting done by a professional! 

Anyway Marilyn now seems to be covered over - a second coat of the "Soft Truffle" did the trick yesterday - although we haven't seen the results in god daylight yet so it may need to be touched up a bit yet. As above, the white emulsion over the silver is having less effect - as the silver seems to show through in streaks. I'm of a mind that I will get the cream colour that is going on out and get started on a coat of that and see how that does as my suspicion is that it will be thicker than the white. That will probably wait until the weekend though.

More garden stuff yesterday - as we had a discussion about the Jasmine in the corner nearest the house. It grows furiously, but flowers very little. It's not fragrant at all which is a shame, and all in all we've felt for a while that it wasn't really adding anything, so we set to with secateurs and hacked it down to ground level (filling the garden waste bin for the third consecutive month!) then MrEH got out as much of the root as he could. Looking down round the base of it, it's apparent that our sellers had previously done something similar, so clearly we aren't the first to reach the conclusion that it wasn't earning its keep! We will eventually get a couple of additional clematis in there I think, as we want to get something in there that will cover that first fence panel and give the birds some cover - our little flock of sparrows will no doubt be unimpressed when they discover the loss of the Jasmine! For now we are quite enjoying our existing Clematis having the chance to stretch its legs a bit, although we'll be quite surprised if we have seen the last of the Jasmine as we know there are still some roots left behind!

Absolute bargain in Al's yesterday morning as MrEH spotted that they had their small halloween squashes reduced down to 1p each! we scouted through the basket of those that were left and picked out the largest ones (obviously!) and came away with 7 of assorted sizes and shapes. I have a couple earmarked to be baked whole filled with bacon, cheese, mushroom and a splash of cream, and the balance will be made into the more the delicious soup I made at the weekend. (The remainder of which was eaten yesterday!) They did initially go through the till at the wrong price but the staff member came over and over-rode it - I did slightly wonder if the ones that were there were different ones, but there wasn't another label anywhere saying anything different, and she either thought it was right or decided she didn't care, so all good! I'll get those wrapped up and moved to the shed I think - they are all hard-skinned types, so should keep well until I'm ready to use them.

Also good on the MSE front is this month's progress on PA - I was already doing well even before I had an email a short while ago telling me I had been awarded £4.25 bonus from a recent survey. That now means I stand at £11.83 payable and £3.45 pending, so a very good start to the month! for some reason it seems as though I have been getting a good number of well paid ones of late - and very few of the sort that mean I think "I'm not doing a survey for THAT hourly rate". I don't mind spending a couple of minutes on something paying £5.xx P/hr - I'm not spending any longer at that level though. 

Food tonight will be the tomatoes I roasted when the rolls were baking on Friday, along with some soft cheese and some additional veg to make a tasty pasta sauce. Nice and quick for a Monday evening, and all the better for that allowing for the higher than ideal Agile price at just the time we would normally be cooking. 

Sunshine_girl2

EH it’s been interesting reading about your agile tariff .When my complaint is ever sorted I would like to take a look at it . However from reading yours it would seem the cheap electric is of course at night so would be useless for me living in a flat upstairs. Or have you seen cheaper times in the day that are more feasible ? 

Plus how much notice do you get of the expected daily rate . 

I went and got my tuna from FF and the tinned tomatoes so thanks for that reminder . 

My physio recommended yoga for my problem back muscle . Do you use you tube for yours , who do you follow ? Thanks . 

Cheery_Daff

Sunshine_girl2 said:

EH it’s been interesting reading about your agile tariff .When my complaint is ever sorted I would like to take a look at it . However from reading yours it would seem the cheap electric is of course at night so would be useless for me living in a flat upstairs. Or have you seen cheaper times in the day that are more feasible ? 

Plus how much notice do you get of the expected daily rate . 

I went and got my tuna from FF and the tinned tomatoes so thanks for that reminder . 

My physio recommended yoga for my problem back muscle . Do you use you tube for yours , who do you follow ? Thanks . 

I've just switched to agile too, more recently than EH. There's a definite peak 4-7pm, and cheapest is overnight, but since we've switched the morning/early afternoon and after 7.30pm has mostly been under the fixed rate cost. Today is more expensive - it's currently just over 21p/kwh, but at 2pm it goes up to over 26p (which is more expensive than the fix) and doesn't get cheaper than the fix until 8pm tonight.

They generally release prices around 3-4pm for the next day.

I used one of the free apps (Octopus Compare, I think), gave it access to my energy data, and looked at the daily comparison for the last month - for us, agile would have been overall cheaper anyway based on what and when we'd used, without any load shifting at all. 

I'm in a rather isolated detached house and I'm still not going to be running the washing machine in the middle of the night - I just put it on when I get up and hang it up in a tea break 😊

I'm sure EH will answer too, but I use Yoga with Adriene on YouTube, she has lots of different length practices, I find her calming, and she has a very charming dog who sometimes joins in 🥰

EssexHebridean

Hee hee - I think Cheery knows that I too will say Yoga with Adriene SG2! (And yes - Benji the dog!) I find her stuff excellent as once you get to know the way she works you can follow the prompts really easily - it's worth knowing that she has got better at clear prompts over the years too, so it would be worth starting with one of her more recent 28 day challenges (they generally come along in January) to get used to the prompts and her style. I've found that what I tend to when not actually working through one of the challenges is to just browse through her stuff on YouTube and pick one thing that appeals both on content and on length for that particular time.

As for Agile - we do run stuff in the night - terraced house with the WM removed enough from any walls it might transfer sound through that we get away with it - we never hear a peep from either side's WM's either so we can be fairly sure that even with our fairly noisy beast it's probably still fine! Having said that I could easily pick out times during the day when it would still be cheaper than the rate would have been on our fix as well. 

That said I have just looked at rates for tomorrow and EEK! I mean it's basically high all day - there will certainly be nothing more than bare essentials done, and I will make sure that the laptop gets turned on at the wall tonight to make sure it's fully charged for the day... Sigh. This is exactly the situation where we need to just hold our nerve though - and I will still be cooking tea when I get home (although will definitely be waiting until after 7pm to do it, but then I would have done that anyway). 

Cheery_Daff

I'm working at home tomorrow but it might be a day for having tea from the freezer,  let out to defrost and just warmed up in the microwave... 😱

themadvix

Where is the wind?! Or the sun! The renewables generation has been dire today - 65% gas mid-afternoon 😔Not sure what the longer-range forecast is, but let's hope it gets windy again soon.