And now we go again...

Sunshine_girl2

Good to hear you back on the internet again.

Your garage rent could it be free weeks that you have paid for . Most Housing Associations have 4 rent free weeks a year in theory . 

Are you planning on having a big veggie plot or just a few preferred things. 

Love the seat you are having for the hall , the Elizabeth Line is looking good. Most apt for your new home. 

My SMET 1 meters work perfectly and I have changed suppliers. 

Enjoy a lovely weekend in your new home . 

PennysIntoPounds

Great work, especially in this heat, and what a nice surprise £140! Do you know what you'll allocate it to yet?

That is dreadful @badmemory have any of them been able to at least suggest what might be causing it? 

badmemory

PennysIntoPounds said:

Great work, especially in this heat, and what a nice surprise £140! Do you know what you'll allocate it to yet?

That is dreadful @badmemory have any of them been able to at least suggest what might be causing it? 

Not so far.  The last one (openreach) moved where the phone line came into the house & I'm on my 3rd new hub.  The interestin thing is that each one that does something the cutoff rate goes down to 1 in 4 then gradually climbs back up to almost every one.  I am trying to summon up the energy to start the process again because it is just a tad annoying especially with ther service I pay for.  Right talking about it on here has made me put it on the list for Monday.  Boot up the backside time.  Don't worry I'll play nice.

doingitanyway

Congratulations. Wishing you every happiness in your new home 

PennysIntoPounds

Well don't play nice for longer than needed @badmemory If a company isn't able to provide the service you're paying for they either need to make it work or give you money back!

I'll just leave this g**gle search quote on a UN report here, might give the provider enough stress to sort it out 😁

• The Internet has become ‘a key means’ by which individuals can exercise their right to freedom of opinion and expression, as stated in Art. 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

Sorry for hijacking your diary @EssexHebridean it just makes me so cross when we're all forced to live in a tech world and the tech doesn't work!

badmemory

Whoops sorry about that EH.  I do tend to get a bit "focused".

EssexHebridean

Morning all - I suspect it’s going to be another scorching one too, I didn’t sleep too badly for much of the night but then woke up a bit after 5am and couldn’t muster anything beyond an uneasy doze after that so got up at 6. This means that I have already got the dishwasher running (it’s far quieter than our old one I spite of basically being a bigger version of the same thing!) and done a few life admin-y bits
- checked our water account is set up OK (it appears to be) and established that they are setting the DD at £34 a month to start with. I can live with that although I hope it won’t be that much long term, we’ll see. 

- got the Bright app set up to give added options for energy tracking - the number on the IHD tallied with what they were wanting so dead easy set-up and I’m now just waiting for it to pull the information. 

- we put together a meal plan last night and will shop this morning I think.

In answer to your questions SG2 & PiP - I’ve never been told about any free weeks - and it *is* still council rather than having been adopted by a HA so I don’t reckon it can be that. I think they made a clerical error fairly early in as I’d seen credit there before on the annual statements but just assumed it was an odd accounting practice rather than actual money. I half expect that they will decide that actually they don’t owe us it after all but if it does arrive then we’ll send it to the mortgage. After all the dish we’ve paid the council for things in the past it’s only right to get them to contribute here if possible! 

The garden isn’t huge, so we will still be quite limited on what we can grow. Current plan is to allocate a couple of the existing beds to *something* and then use a combination of pots/grow bags on the patio on the other side probably for tomatoes, courgettes, maybe a few mild chillis. We might also use hessian type bags for potatoes over there too, that could work. Very much in the early days of planning - and we’ll be digging out our old allotment book at some stage to remind ourselves what we really enjoyed growing before. Oh - herbs though - we brought the rosemary with us, and a mint, both in pots. I’m going to try one sneaky extra sowing of basil and see if I can get a bit of a crop of that I think. Next year ai’ll want parsley and coriander for definite though. I’ll probably add a sage too - in a pot again.

Ooh - and I can’t believe I forgot to tell you! Made our first OP to the mortgage on Thursday evening! I’d got the letter from them with all the details so we decided we’d set up the payment stream for the OP’s and also pop a test payment across to it to make sure it worked - so that’s our first £10 cleared off it! 😁
There will be a chunkier overpayment for this month going across to it as well as we had been assuming that our first contractual payment would be the day we moved rather than a month later - we will take the advantage of using some of that amount to offset some moving costs that would otherwise be taken from long term savings, but will also be paying a chunk straight to the demon debt as well. I may do a bit of budget wrangling this afternoon I think - then will see where we are at.

Jobs for today:
- get the empty boxes round to the front and label up that they are being collected by the Freecycle lady. Bubble wrap too. 

- food shopping
- pop to Mum’s to collect at least the big chair, and maybe the lounger too. She’s keen to create the space, and having the items will be useful to us! We’ll pop back tomorrow for more anyway I think. 
- maybe a couple of garden bits - although possibly mostly just rearranging pots and making decisions about what we are planting where - I have another pulmonaria, and a couple of clumps of aquilegia to find a home for. 

- I’ll do a proper clean of the downstairs loo sink later, and continue attacking the limescale on the toilet bowl. It is gradually shifting, but I’ll give the white vinegar on toilet paper a go later I think, and may pop to see if I can get citric acid tomorrow. I’m gradually getting round the house with cleaning type bits - I jaws’d the stairs and landings yesterday, and also the bit of the spare room carpet that’s not covered in boxes! Also ran round everywhere again with the steam mop - and shifted the sticky marks off the 3rd bedroom floor - looked like they’d maybe used that rug tape in there at some stage, it came up easily with the Cumbrian watery shop’s excellent “sticky stuff remover” anyway! 

MrEH is now up and has made me my second cuppa of the morning, so it’s probably time for some toast and a bit of time with my book before cracking on with the day I think! Happy Saturday all! 

jwil

Congrats on the first overpayment!

Enjoy your day.

lucielle

All sounding wonderful. You might’ve inspired me to see if my ‘jaws’ is working but that would mean getting up….
L

starnac

Congratulations on your first OP. I'm excited by your garden plans. Before we moved here we had a concrete yard and grew everything in pots. This year is the first year I've grown things in the ground. We did pretty well growing in pots and got a small, but decent harvest every year