Renewed focus: the (less-than?) five-year plan to move

themadvix

Morning all,

Made it to the gym yesterday (and broke the back of my work project), and am feeling it today. So down to £26/visit… Won't be going again until Sunday now, although I hope to have a swim as well as gym then, so financially it might count as two visits? (And will obviously be taking advantage of a 'free' shower then too to save our water and leccy bill.)

Plans are coming together for our little French jaunt - preferred sauce requested for our sausage baps in the morning 😂 and we're packing plates and cutlery to enable excellent hypermarket/market picnics! Forecast isn't great for tomorrow, so these might be car picnics, but never mind. Forecast for Saturday is nice though, so we'll enjoy our food al fresco then.

Expect to get work up to date before I go - it's going pretty well this morning, so should hopefully have time for allotment later and the sun is out here, so that's a bonus. Definitely chillier though - had to pop over the road for some milk (sadly no Coop discount voucher for that this week, but did pick up some reduced prawns which are now in the freezer) and regretted not taking a coat. It's chillier inside too (we still have a window open and B&W Cat insisted on garden time first thing, so back door was open). No heating on yet though (and certainly won't be on before we get back from France) - will have to see how much longer we can go though, if it remains cooler (which it should, it is October!).

In frustrating news, the specialist vet doesn't think we should reduce B&W Cat's chemo tabs until end November/beginning December. This is about a month later than I was hoping and three weeks later than the longer estimate from our local vet. I am going to book an appointment for mid-November. I'd like to know the justification for that really - especially as over the summer when he was spitting them out we were only getting every other one in him and he was fine. They cost £5/tablet plus the anti-sickness tablets (which I'm hoping we'd be able to reduce alongside the reduced chemo), so I'm not willing to keep him on them for the sake of it. Plus, we actually don't know if he needs to be on them as idiot specialist vet (lovely man, but this decision has really annoyed me in hindsight) didn't get us to change his diet initially before he put him on them! Hmm… I may discuss this next week when I'm in with Ginger Cat, although I'm not sure I'll see B&W Cat's vet.

Energy stuff:

* We are finally properly switched to 🐙agile export for our solar - and are using software to dump battery power when we won't need it at peak times (and therefore when we get paid more), so yesterday's net power cost was about 15p.
* At long last we are expecting a payment from Ripple for our wind energy. Since they went into administration through mismanagement we have not had a payment, but they have been carefully keeping track of how much we are owed (the wind farm itself was taken over by a CIC (I think) governed by other investors like us (Mr MV considered joining the board) and they have finally got everything sorted and into a position to pay). We should be getting £223 (for 18-months' generation) and I think will be getting paid on a 6-monthly basis going forward (this is Mr MV's investment and I just get dribs and drabs of info!) 🥳. We think this works out to a slightly higher amount for the period than we were getting before Ripple went under.
* Eon are sending our last payment from them for export of £263. This is the most we've earnt and likely because we've been using the software mentioned above to optimise exports.

Normally we top up our 🐙 account with the Eon export earnings to see us through the winter, but there's already £184 in there, so I think we'll hold onto that and only top up as needed - especially as the export money will now be added to our account monthly by 🐙

MS things:
* Mr MV took lunch to work today - 3/3 days this week (he was here yesterday); I've got rolls out of freezer for my lunch as we finished the loaf yesterday
* Smokey butter beans and kale for dinner tonight - will use up passata, beans were in stock (and next time will be hg) and kale will be freshly picked
* VB poll

Gratitudes:
* Sunshine here today, with a nip in the air
* Happy that B&W Cat will be fine while we're away
* Deleted my 'work' gmail account yesterday (having switched it to Proton a year ago) - it was getting all sorts of spammy stuff, so it's very liberating not to have to worry about it any more! (And has eliminated one of the remaining Google influences in my life - just my personal gmail account to go, which could probably also go now.)

Have a good day all!

TallGirl

I would want to know as well not just the extra cost but the stress it is causing B&W cat. Your French trip sounds lovely taking a picnic is our favorite too! Saves so much money.

edinburgher

I did not realise Ripple went bust, what a shame

themadvix

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82162777#Comment_82162777

It was down to some serious mismanagement by the management company. But all the existing projects were ‘rescued’ and are now being run as CICs or similar, so the good of it lives on.

themadvix

Can confirm the smoked butter bean and kale stew was very nice!

Greying_Pilgrim

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82162911#Comment_82162911

Nice for one meal or nice and will be put into the (autumnal) rotation?

Greying X

themadvix

Nice as in will definitely be eaten again - especially as I have kale on tap (perennial), love smoked paprika and rarely have a basil plant, so gigantes plaki falls a bit flat. We had it with pasta rather than rolls, but could work with rice or cous cous too (I’d probably have opted for cous cous but for the fact Mr MV had it for lunch). Thanks for sharing!

beanielou

Enjoy your French trip 🇫🇷

themadvix

Morning all,

Thanks @beanielou! We had a lovely time! The weather was a bit grey and damp on Friday but gorgeous sunshine on Saturday, albeit both days were very blowy! Annoyingly we were an hour delayed on the train out - a combination of utterly ridiculous queues at border control (because despite having 8 possible lanes, there are never more than 2-3 open 😡) and a problem with the door not closing. I will be complaining about this because in the last year or so they've changed the T&Cs so if you are a minute late for check-in you forfeit your tickets (which given most people have to travel via the M25 is often very tricky) - but they don't uphold their end of the bargain. We were there in plenty of time and proceeded as soon as we were told to, so they need to get their act together (even if they don't have control over border control, they could allow us through to it sooner). It's less of a problem if you're off on a week's holiday, but if you're on a day or weekend trip, that eats into your time considerably. That aside, we had a lovely time with friends, ate a lot of cheese and enjoyed exploring Le Touquet, which was very nice indeed. Will definitely return there, although mention of Bruges was made for our next trip. Still working out final costs, but these will be met from holiday fund; hypermarket bits will come from grocery fund - we didn't spend that much and some will be reimbursed (I hope) from people requesting things. We also started our Christmas shopping!

In excellent cat news, there was a bit of a misunderstanding about the change to B&W Cat's drugs - we can reduce them at the beginning of November, but 'our' vet (who seems to have a rapport with B&W Cat) will be on holiday, so we won't be able to catch up with her until later in the month. So all is good there and I'm counting the days until the chemo every other day winds down (to every 4 days) - both for the cost saving and the general 'eurgh-ness' of having to deal with it/it being in his system. Ginger was meant to be going in today for his investigations but they've shifted it to next week as the cardiologist is off sick. He's not been sick since the 20th September, so that's good.

Yesterday (we were away Fri/Sat) was spent doing some decluttering/tidying around the house, watching the GP and then we went to the gym and spent a couple of hours there - including a good swim and a sauna session. It was lovely - and it really hit me for the first time that we can use it as much as we like (clearly the pool is more appealing to me than the gym!). I came away feeling energised but relaxed and ready for the week ahead.

MS things:
* Awaiting collection of an item from FBMP - that will be £5 in. I hadn't expected it to sell and had put it in a donation bag yesterday! Hopefully someone also coming Tuesday for a whole lot of the boys' old tinned food, but replies have been slow, so we'll see.
* PA survey
* 3rd payment of pension money into pension from last year's tax savings
* VB poll
* Dinner last night included hg french beans (I should probably think about tonight's dinner…)

Gratitudes:
* Lovely time spent with old friends
* A paddle in the sea - think that might be my record - I paddled at the end of April when we were away for Dad's birthday (it was cold) and then on 10 October (not so cold, but lots of big blue jellyfish washed up - I hadn't seen these when I plunged into the water!)
* Stuff identified for leaving the house
* A lovely session at the gym/pool

Have a good day all!

beanielou

Good news for B&W cat & for you.