Settling in for the long haul

Sun_Addict

@Rhyddid2026 the stud got itself embedded inside her earlobe and the hole healed around it so it was literally inside her earlobe 🤢 They had to cut her earlobe, remove the stud then stitch it up. The funny thing was the surgeon who performed the procedure was the same one who performed an episiotomy on me when DS got stuck while I was giving birth. He was called Dr Popper so a very memorable name. His skill was obviously removing stuck objects 🤣

Dakota_Rose

What?! 😂 You are making that up! 🤣

Sun_Addict

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82081116#Comment_82081116

Seriously no 🤣🤣

ohdearhowdidthathappen

That is an unfortunate name for a doctor 😂

Ick to the embedded earring 🤢

Dakota_Rose

That has really made me chuckle @Sun_Addict.

I spent a long time last night preparing our itinerary, budget and meal plans for our upcoming holiday. We will be travelling to a few different locations and staying a couple of days in each. It’s a really special one for us, the locations are just beautiful (all UK) and it’ll be our 5th wedding anniversary while away. When we married after many years together, we said we’d like to be away for our anniversary each year rather than buy cards or gifts. The plan being that every 5 years we have a more special holiday. Food is likely to cost us more than the activities we’ve planned overall, as much is just exploring new areas on foot, but we’ll still have to be careful with the pennies so that we can do all that we wanted.

We have planned to take a stock of breakfast and snack items with us - we shan’t be paying extortionate hotel breakfast prices - and have planned one nice meal a day, mostly out somewhere for lunch. I’ve even planned our rest stops for driving days to get the best out of them. There may be more than one farm shop cafe with outdoor play area!

Mr D has a few fishing days booked. It’s his absolute passion but he never really goes due to homelife being so busy. He looks forward to a day fishing somewhere new each summer and he should really love fishing for salmon in Scotland. I just hope he catches something 😂.

I plan to take my books and watercolours with me. Although, from my itinerary planning, I think I may have overcompensated for my very sedate first draft and filled it with something to do every day. It was intended to be a proper switch off and recharge holiday so I may need to rethink one or two of the days as we go.

I plan to pack and do a pre-shop this week. We’ll be packing for every weather but I need to remind myself that only one of our stops is remote, and everywhere else there will be shops within reach.

Dakota_Rose

Popping back in after being blown to bits on this evening’s dog walk. A low spend day for us as just a milk needed to tide us over for another day.

I’ve spent most of the afternoon nose deep in my next library book. It’s an Angela Marsons DI Kim Stone book I haven’t yet read (the first one actually!) which was a nice find at the library. I thought I’d read the first 12 but clearly I hadn’t actually started on book 1 as this is new to me. I’m really enjoying it as I have with all her others.

Tomorrow will be a spendier day as we head off to our nearest city for a bit of pre-holiday shopping.

Hope others have had a nice weekend.

Dakota_Rose

Book review time… A quick turnaround for my book 15 - First Blood by Angela Marsons - as I thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s part of a series I’ve read many books of and have been hooked by. They follow a very similar ‘recipe’ and peak at the same stage of the novel each time (almost to exactly the same page) but always have me hooked from the off. They are gripping, often gory, detective novels in my opinion. 

I thought this was the first novel I’d somehow missed but actually reading the author notes at the end, can see she went back to write the prequel which makes a lot of sense as to how I’d never come across it when I was reading them before. 

I’d rate it 10/10 - would be unfair to give it less when I’ve read it in one weekend. 

26 books for 2026

1.You Are Here (easy read) 9/10

2. The Seven Murders of Evelyn Hardcastle (time-travelling murder mystery) 9.5/10

3. Love Untold (ending made a middling read worthwhile) 8/10

4. Way Back (engaging easy read with a farm theme and a few typos) 8.5/10

5. The Cuckoo’s Calling (first of the Strike detective novels) 8.5/10

6. Yellowface (‘too awful to look away’ page-turner) 10/10

7. A Thousand Splendid Suns (emotive, heavy but worthwhile read) 10/10

8. Before the coffee gets cold (Japanese coffee-shop time-travelling scenarios) 8/10

9. Us Three (screenplay-style friendship story) 9/10

10. The Twyford Code (a puzzle within a puzzle) 9/10

11. The Shock of the Fall (first person narrative with flashbacks - includes childhood trauma told sensitively and with humour woven throughout) 8/10

12. Guilty (lots of shock factor details, but predictable storyline) 7.5/10

13. The Falls (Scottish detective novel) 8.5/10

14. The Examiner (murder mystery told through emails and messages) 8.5/10

15. First Blood (prequel to a favourite detective series 10/10)

Dakota_Rose

Forgive me MSErs for I have sinned. Spent far too much money yesterday on new holiday clothes. Yes I’ve been looking at them for a long time, yes they’ll last me years, yes I came home after trying them on to order as cheaply as possible, no I shouldn’t have bought them as I didn’t NEED them!

Okay, so today I’ll be staying home, cleaning the house and listing items for sale in repentance 🙈.

ellenvan

You're forgiven.

If a sale bargain crops up meanwhile you can always send them back.

Sun_Addict

You're only human, I think a lot of us buy new clothes for holidays regardless of whether we actually need them. I have loads of holiday clothes but still get tempted.

I'm enjoying from reading your mini book reviews. A couple of them are on my TBR shelves. Thanks for mentioning the Kim Stone books as I hadn't heard of them before and they sound right up my street.