Cheery's buttling diary: tea in one hand, plant pot in the other, running shoes on

Ha, meant to say :rotfl: :rotfl: at you losing your Christmas pud down the back of the cupboard KC A great way to save it! :j

More spending declarations today - I told you I was no good at NSDs! :rotfl:

First up I was early this morning so popped to the 99p shop - always fatal...

£4.95 (a million (well, 60) hair bobbles, hair clip, gel pens, batteries, and one of those giant fleecy mittens with an ice scraper on it )

£1.25 small chocolatey treat for us and some entirely unnecessary chocolates to take with me tomorrow (if they last that long)

Had a very shameful moment when the ice scraper was confiscated by security Never occurred to me it could be used as a weapon!! But apparently 'you could put it on and inflict a nasty slash down someone's face with that, love'

Got it back now fortunately Just need a car to go with it... :rotfl: :rotfl:

In other news - I've been saving £2 coins and last year I opened a credit union savings account to keep them separate from other money Saved £400 last year, half went to charity, and a couple of weeks ago I spent £150 :eek: on a fancy pants GPS running watch thing :eek: FINALLY got round to transferring the money from the credit union to bank so I think I might add £100 of it to the long term savings fund since I'd forgotten about it and budgeted the month with out it :j :j

(sadly the other £50 never actually made it into the credit union in the first place so I've already spent that :rotfl: )

£50 left in credit union, and I'll be adding to it all year too whenever my £2 coin stash gets to £100 :j :j

Ooh, exciting things! :j :j

KC, Bigger races are indeed expensive... I'm doing both of these with someone else though so it's all arranged this time And while I'm so slow I feel safer in a large group (and I do like to get a medal!) I don't do tooooo many so don't mind tooooo much. It's partly because you get a lot of support and goodies (drinks stations, medals, t shirts etc), and also because they close the roads to the public for several hours, which is expensive. Triathlons they obviously need to pay for the pool etc too, which costs even more!

Hi lionheartedgirl :hello: Applecross sounds fun (especially if the two are running and biking - I never was a fan of the swimming! ) Will investigate. Although my marathon is first week of October so don't want to hamper that too much!

:hello: bad weather I do do my local parkrun most weekends, very jolly indeed (although the first three don't get a prize, they get a larger number of points, and I think at the end of the year the people with the most points get prizes - just as likely to be the slower ones who go every week as the fast ones who only go once or twice!). I love the parkruns

:hello: TDQ, lovely to see you! :j Have you found my blog again now? (can't remember if it's in my profile on here, must check!)

More spends to declare today (although at least none of them got confiscated...)

£2 bin bags
97p new washing up bowl :rotfl:

Also I'm just at the end of 2 weeks of jury service, and they give you a £5.71 allowance for the canteen each day. Whatever you don't spend, you get back at the end, so I've taken leftovers with me every day and built up a profit of £34.93 :money: :j :j which will be spent on a couple of nice lunches or evenings out :j

Will have to pop out again for milk later (and feeling a need to have a few hyacinths on the windowsill) - one day I'll actually get organised!! :rotfl:

It was sometimes fascinating, and sometimes dull, and occasionally quite distressing, so a mix! LOTS of sitting around waiting to be called, and occasionally being sent home all together quite early on. Really interesting to get a vague idea of how the courts work. I hadn't realise how many people wait til they get all the way to court, THEN decide to plead guilty (meaning they no longer need a jury) - happened at least 6 times at least in the fortnight I was there.

I had 3 cases - first one very distressing all round, and even more so when it was called off after the defendent attempted (and very nearly succeeded) suicide on the first night Quite awful. Second one someone said something they shouldn't in the courtroom (not us!) and they had to start all over again with another jury. Third one actually got all the way to the end, so we had to be shut in a deliberation room and everything.

Judges were lovely, really nice, recognising that none of us knew what was going on, and taking time to explain everything - 'the prosecution counsel is objecting here, and he is right to because...' etc. Really helpful. Court staff were all lovely and we were really well looked after.

Some bits are like you see on the tv - prosecution saying 'I put it to you that you saw this!' and witness saying 'no I didn't!' Other bits very much not so.

I didn't know about the lunch money either til I started They encourage you to spend it in their canteen, of course, but on the first day my baked potato was only half cooked, and the other options seemed to be mostly cheese toasties, cheese sandwiches and cheese paninis (spot the theme?), or chips, so I took my own lunch - only sensible thing to do! :money:

Nothing else to declare today - popped out for milk but Mr Cheery paid for that from the food budget Just made myself a really not-very-interesting tea so might have to either start again or resort to porridge :rotfl: