From Frugal Foundations to Fortified Family Future

EssexHebridean

Hope you had a lovely trip Greying. As far as childhood holidays go, I don't remember going on hols with my parents at all - although I did, but only when I was very young, after that the funds simply weren't there. My Great Aunt & Uncle came to the rescue though with several weeks away in various bits of the UK which were great fun and I remember with real fondness. As a teenager the money was found for me to go several times on residential horse riding weeks which was a huge treat, and in spite of returning from one with a badly broken arm, I had a wonderful time! Aside from the odd day trip to France with the school though, "abroad" wasn't a thing - did I hanker after it as other kids were heading off on package holidays to Spain - probably. Looking back now, do I really think they had as good a time as was painted? Absolutely not! 

As for getting things organised for trips - yes, lists (MrEH suddenly said a few days ago that as we are shortly heading for a weekend camping, he hoped I still have the camping list somewhere - he got a withering look and "of course I have!" in response!) and just generally not stressing about things too much as these days there really is very little that would be a complete disaster if it were to be forgotten. We're strict about buying food at our destination as it makes such a difference to the local economy, and after all, we'd be eating at home otherwise anyway, so self catering is usually lunch out somewhere, and then tea cooked at the cottage. All we take are things where it genuinely isn't worth buying a full pack of whatever it is, plus anything we know we can't get easily where we are going.  For the camping in a couple of weekend's time we'll take tea bags, coffee etc, and then buy bits to cook at the site for breakfast and tea - lunch will be eaten at the food festival we are there to visit. 

Greying_Pilgrim

Good Afternoon MFW'rs,

Thank you for all your kind wishes for our hols.  

All in all, we managed a pretty spiffy time 😁  The weather was a mixed bag, but a) it wasn't as bad as forecast b) didn't prevent us doing anything and c) we were lucky that the worst rain was all when we were 'home' for the day, and/or overnight.

I did wonder if we were going to have to cut things short, as on Sunday LG started getting wobbly, and whilst other reasons were mentioned, actually, the root was 'backtoschool-itis' ☹️ Luckily, we had a pretty good day planned yesterday, and LG was willing to stick around for it - and ended up having the best time 🥰  

We ended up spending quite a bit of money.  I took £200 "spending" money - and I will have to double check, but I think I've only brought £35 of it back - however.......  that £200 had to cover everything that wasn't the accommodation or fuel for the car (luckily we didn't need to add any extra petrol whilst we were there). The first night's shop made a mess of £30 - but then, for example, I hadn't got a small bottle of cooking oil, so ended up buying a bottle of olive oil in MrL.  Not cheap, but I knew that I would use it on holiday, and could bring it home, and it will be used, so a big hit initially, but useful in the long-term.  My plans to have Sunday night tea 'out' were thwarted by the chippy that I was thinking of using, now apparently being slated on the review sites, for; small portions, large prices, low quality, and chippy (not in a good way), staff ☹️So we ended up going to the supermercado - we found a h3r0n f00ds (YAY!), and we had fish fingers, scampi bites and chunky oven chips for £5.50 and I had already brought tin of mushy peas from home, so for less than £2 a head, we had a 'sort of' chippy tea 😁 I even let LG have a can of fizzy pop - which at 55p was still less than you'd pay in a chippy.  

We did make use of our last NT voucher, and we did use my public sector card (Staffordia - have you seen another company is offering a similar scheme to public sector workers?  I don't know how it compares, I've not boundless energy to investigate 😉), and went to some EH places.  We did also make the decision to go to some underground caverns (not the music venue unfortunately), as LG had been taken with watching Prof Alice doing cave exploring of a disused...... colbalt(?) mine and had expressed an interest in exploring subterranean areas.  Now given LG is scared of the dark, and small spaces, and anything remotely out of the ordinary, I thought we would see if we could sustain the interest.  So we went to some caves, and paid £32.50 to go in.  Thankfully LG loved it, and wasn't at all scared.  The punt paid off (I was sure we'd get 3 steps into the gloom and get a shriek!, a no-likey, and have to turn on our tail! ), and having been once, LG has now asked if we can go to other underground attractions.  Just as long as they don't ever want to go on a pot-holing experience, that is one thing that gives me the hee-bee-jeebies 😱

As well as going 'down-below', LG and DH (who are both equally scared of heights) have scaled historic towers, and been out on the rooftops of historic houses, over 20m in the air.  I can't say that DH was 'at home' up there 🤣 but I have the photographic evidence, and thanks also to a very nice American visitor, we have a photo to prove that we were all up there together 😁

We did have to pay for parking yesterday, which was £7 (gulp) but having said that, we were in the town for well over 6 hrs, and chose the 10hr fee, so's not to have to rush back to the car.  We looked at everything we wanted to see at our leisure, and specifically chose a long-stay car park.  And to be fair, it was still on the edge of town, and only a short walk from where all the action was. Not only were the short-stay car parks much more expensive, but we would have had to compromise on our visits to come back in under 4 hrs, which I didn't want to restrict us to.   In addition, we all had an ice-cream yesterday.  Funnily, LG suggested we go to MrL to buy some ice creams to eat, back at the cottage.  When I said, 'but I was thinking of having an ice-cream from here', they said they didn't want a shop bought ice-cream, and it would be cheaper to get a supermercado icecream 🥰  Anyway, I said that was fine - and they were right, but as daddy had missed out on at least 2 nice ice-creams already this holiday, I was going to buy one for him, and we turned to go to the shop.  Strangely enough, LG relented and allowed us to buy them an ice-cream....... 🤣  3 'homemade' locally produced icecreams cost very nearly £15 😱 although I think that LG was given (and charged) for 2 scoops in their cone.  I'm not sure if that was policy, or whether the assistant was just not listening.  However, the icecream was very nice, and although we spent £22 in total # on treats and parking yesterday, we 'saved' on visitor attraction costs.  On Sunday, we'd paid for the attraction, but found free parking, an additional free event and it wasn't the weather for icecream - but we spent money on ingredients for a chipper-style tea, so swings and roundabouts.......

I dropped lucky this morning and the MrL store that was closest to the accommodation, had some £1.50 boxes.  So I got one, plus we were given permission to fill a bag with apples for cooking and eating from the garden before we left.  So we've quite a bit of produce, for not a lot of £ 😁

Back to school-itis is really kicking in now we are home tho ☹️

Ironically, it hasn't (in some ways) helped that LG has had such a 'reasonable' summer hols, as I suspect the chasm between home-life and school, has widened ☹️  Mind, LG is also apt to worry the wingnut off a wot-not, so stuff rarely turns out as bad as they fear - but even with experience, that doesn't mitigate their worries.  

Anyhoo, I've unloaded most of the things, I've just the clothing to pop in the laundry basket and the unused clean clothes to pop away, and that's everything done.  

We ended up eating our picnic 'lunch' for elevenses, as I'd planned for us to stop off somewhere on the way home, only to find that the venue is closed on a Tuesday 🙄

I've no idea what's for tea.  But will keep it cheap and cheerful - the September economy drive starts here......

Greying X

teapot2

Glad you had a good time away and some treats.  Is it this week the schools go back down your way or do you have to endure backtoschoolitis for another week?

Greying_Pilgrim

teapot2 said:

Glad you had a good time away and some treats.  Is it this week the schools go back down your way or do you have to endure backtoschoolitis for another week?

No, school's back in tomorrow.  I don't know if LG is overly worried about getting a new teacher - they will have taught some of the class before, but LG hasn't had them before.  I suspect that the teacher is a little different to what LG has experienced before - and whilst part of me thinks that LG could confidently get on with this teacher, I'm not sure LG believes that they have the confidence to.  

There is also a bit of a worry about 'previous grief' from some kids who are (unfortunately) in LG's class again this year.  There is also the fact that LG's school is pretty boring.  We've seen some wonderful things this holiday, which touched on certain historical time-periods that LG is supposed to have covered at school.  None of what we have seen in the past 6 weeks made it into LG's writings or thoughts in the previous 3 terms 🙄

Greying X

themadvix

It sounds like you had a lovely and very good value trip Greying! And big growth moments for LG with going underground and above ground (and Mr GP too?!).

Greying_Pilgrim

themadvix said:

It sounds like you had a lovely and very good value trip Greying! And big growth moments for LG with going underground and above ground (and Mr GP too?!).

🤣  tmv - should I get some 'gold stars' for effort and perserverance, do you think? 🤣  But it's right - LG has learn from example, and if DH didn't do these things, then LG would quickly say they didn't have to do it, 'coz dad never......'  DH is a good sport , but did balk at several opportunities to 'look down', to see just how far off the ground we were.... 😉

Greying X

Greying_Pilgrim

I have decided to alter my siggie slightly for September.  

I'm going to try to stick to £200 for groceries - I have already spent £1.95 today - on baps (eaten at elevenses/lunchtime), and the £1.50 box.  

I am going to keep non-food at £50, simply because if haircuts are thrown into the mix, along with soaps, shampoos and various basic medicines, then 'pouf' 50 quid is gone.....

I am going to report 'bulk buys' as 'annual' going forward.  I've found that I've spent nothing for months and then for 2 months on the trot, I've 'bust' the budget.  As I allocated £10 each month, I think it's probably better to show bulk buys as a part of the overall annual £120.  I twill tot up bulk spends over the year - if I'm significantly busting the £120 budget, or hoarding food and not eating it, or bulk buying the wrong things, then I need to address, either upping the budget, or thinking much, much more carefully as to what to actually buy, in terms of what we will use.  It's a nuisance I've left it until now to record it like that, but the £40 represents the 4 months left of this year.  From 2026, I shall show expenditure as part of the £120 whole.  

I've trimmed off the wilty bits of the basil plant from the MrL box and put it to soak for a while. Hopefully I will get some use from it.  It looked fit to toss this morning.  

There was a nice mix of fruit in the box, mango, pineapple, grapes, nectarines, plus veg - a yellow pepper, potatoes, beetroot, a red cabbage.  Plus apples, and the basil. The boxes were pretty uniform today, in terms of contents, although I went for the one with the smaller red cabbage, but the punnet of grapes.  But the other guy who bought a box went for the one containing a huge red cabbage, so something for everyone.  

Greying X

EssexHebridean

MrEH is also very uncomfortable with heights Greying - and I too always try to be really supportive when he does push himself to go to places that he'd possibly rather not...! 

rtandon27

@Greying_Pilgrim - Lovely to hear about your holibob adventures!

My OH is also not a fan of heights, but back in the day when he was still trying to impress me, he did come to the top of the CNTower and stand on the glass floor (but did not look down) - I too have the pictures to prove it! 

I don't mind heights in the slightest and am a fish in water, but there is no chance on gawds green earth I'd go underground in tight spaces!

themadvix

I can do heights (but not so keen on looking through a glass floor), but I will definitely not do tight spaces - although I'm not as bad as my mum who felt claustrophobic when she had a plaster cast on her arm!