The Weather...and Edible Things....

 What changeable weather we are having at the moment.  We have been alternating between rain, wind and sunshine and no two days have been the same.  Today (Saturday) was forecast to be a 'heatwave' but it's a lovely, dry, comfortable day after a few hours of light rain during the night.  It's warm rather than hot which suits me fine.  This morning was the coffee morning get-together at the allotment at noon.  We met a lot of new plot holders, mostly young people ie 40 or younger! as the older members are slowly having to give up when the work involved becomes too much.  It's a bit of a struggle for us sometimes; my back is still tender, my knee gives way on a regular basis and Gray seems to be getting stiffer in the joints by the day.  Hey-ho we'll carry on as long as possible 😁

We picked more broad beans (which are coming to an end now), the first few sugar snap peas, some spring onions, delicious Elsanta strawberries, and some Sweetpeas for the table outside (there are too many insects in them for the house 😱).....

Although they are Autumn fruiting plants, I spotted our very first raspberries.  They were delicious! Too good to leave for the birds! 

I also had a little furtle around in the tub of potatoes and pulled out enough for tea tonight.  The tub will be emptied of the little Rocket potatoes next week, but we also have a second tub which we will leave for a while longer to get a bit bigger before we harvest them.

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I've still been feeling a little 'off' ' over the last couple of weeks, hence no blog posts...my apologies....as my back is delicate and my tongue still stinging each day, despite all my efforts to eat 'safe' food and avoid spice, alcohol, coffee etc   I'm due more blood tests at the end of the month to see if my cholesterol is down and vitamin levels are up.  Let's see how many hoops I have to jump through to get the tests done.  Gray has had a troublesome cough for months and requested an X-ray when the Advanced Nurse Practitioner suggested:

a) Thyroid problems (test says no)

b) hayfever / asthma (no)

c) didn't know what else it could be!

Gray asked for a GP and was told that the ANP was 'very good' and could do anything a GP can do 😦  With respect.....then why is she not a GP?

The x-ray was performed over 2 weeks ago and still no results.....

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The good news is that I have been able to sit and craft for short periods of time and we dropped another batch of cards off at the shop last Thursday.  The total this year is now 266 which makes me bang on target for 500 by the end of the year.  When I took them in there was just ONE left in the basket which makes me very, very happy to continue 😊

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It's Father's Day tomorrow and our Daughter has invited us to a BBQ at lunchtime.  I'm really looking forward to it.  And the forecast is for warm, dry weather.  Yippee! No cooking!  If our Grandson and his girlfriend are there we will play cards too...Chase The Ace...always great fun!

If you are in the UK are you celebrating Father's Day? 

Thanks for popping in.  Stay safe and well wherever you happen to be,

Angie 💗

Gobbledegook...what the....???

 

In the middle of May I moved our energy fix, which was coming to an end, to a new fixed tariff, still with the same company, British Gas.  Since then things have been... shall we say.... less than a smooth transition 😡 The App refuses to update on anything other than the increased Direct Debit and I've had no statement since 19th April.  Last Thursday I rang the customer care line, explained the situation and the lady checked it out.  She was unable to tell why I hadn't had a statement as one had been produced, as usual on 19th May.  A week later this is the reply I received today.......

Dear Angela,

Thank you for your patience.

I have been advised that the reason your bill is not currently available is due to a missing flow (the process of transferring physical energy between different technical or natural systems). This has occurred since you applied for your new tariff, PeakSave Super Sunday Jun27 v3.

Please don’t worry, as I have raised this with our internal team to investigate and resolve. As soon as I receive an update or once this has been fixed, I will let you know.

Thank you again for your understanding.

Kind regards,
Aimee
British Gas 

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Does anyone actually understand this?  Am I being thick? Or is this just British Gas blinding me with science? Does this simply mean my smart meter no longer works?

For goodness sake.......🙈

HELP!

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Thanks for popping in.  Do stay safe and well wherever you happen to be,

Angie 💗

First Fruit Harvest !

 Well...in all honesty it's hardly a harvest, just 6 strawberries from the garden 😁

which were delicious shared with a scoop of vanilla ice cream 😋

At the allotment we have 2 gooseberry bushes which were groaning with fruit last week, so Gray went to pick them yesterday.  This is the sum total of the 'harvest'.....

Yep....8....the flipping birds beat us to it again.  And, to add insult to injury, the 8 that we do have are not even ripe.  It's a good job we are not overly keen on gooseberries!

In the greenhouse, the tomato plants, cucumber and pepper plants are doing well, we are still picking lettuce leaves too.

I'm hoping for some broad beans from the allotment very soon as they are beginning to fatten out now and we will soon need the bed for sweetcorn.  I'll keep you in the loop!

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Today, Tuesday, we are giving the library a miss.  My books are still not in, and we have £2 Silvers cinema tickets to see Elvis in concert.  Our £2 ticket includes a coffee and biscuit, and we'll take sandwiches with us. My back is a little easier today so I'm looking forward to it 😊

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That's all for today.  Take care of yourselves,

Angie 💗

It's Too Darn Hot! Purple is the Colour....

 It's been so blooming hot over the last few days that we haven't felt like going out at all. Any temperature over about 23 C melts us 🫠 and, at times, it's been 28 C in the house despite having closed the windows and blinds,  and putting the fan on 😱

Sleeping has been problematic too with the heat lingering well into the night.  As we have a bungalow we can't leave windows open at night so, as soon as it's light, I throw the bedroom window wide open to let in the cool morning air.  Bliss !

Last night I was still awake at midnight and saw the flash of lightning but heard no thunder.  It gradually came closer, noisier and then the few drops of rain turned into a torrent.  I opened the window and let the cool air in whilst I stood watching the storm.  It was so refreshing and it's certainly refreshed the garden as well as us!

The weather is set to cool down next week and give us a little respite, thank goodness.

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I love ❤️ poppies so last year at the allotment I sprinkled the seeds from a couple of self sown poppies along the side of the shed.  When we went to water on Tuesday we saw these.....

They are absolutely massive and are a beautiful colour, I think.  And there are lots of them!!

Bloom where you are sown, I say 😉

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Each Tuesday we are still visiting the library in the morning before the heat builds up and researching the family tree.....

There's nothing exciting found so far but I do enjoy the change of scene, a comfy chair and a

 drink whilst Gray carries on at the computer........

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That's all for now folks.  My back is playing up again and I can't sit comfortably (nor walk for that matter 😕) until the pain eases off.  It came on suddenly yesterday (no idea what I had done to deserve it) and the pain was another reason I couldn't sleep last night.

Hey, ho....such is life...time for more painkillers.

Thanks for popping in and stay safe wherever you happen to be,

Angie 💗

Every Little Helps...More Economies Will Begin

 In my last post I mentioned that I had taken out a new fix for energy.  Prices are going up on June 1st by a predicted 13%.  Wow....that is going to adversely affect lots of people on a low income, isn't it.  We will need to make further economies in order to reduce the bills.  Our DD has increased from £97.53 to £108.03 from June 1st.  As we have an old TV (at least 12 years old) I'm guessing that it's not particularly energy efficient, so we have begun to turn it off after we have watched the 6pm news and putting it back on at 9pm for the dramas we like to watch.  It's never on during the day either.  We either go out, do the gardening or read instead.

Some time ago, I talked about the PeakSave scheme for British Gas.  We had half price electricity between 11am and 4pm on Sundays which I tried to make full use of.  Was it worth the effort? 

In around 18 months I have saved £55.98.  Not a fortune but better in my pocket than that of British Gas.  The new plan will allow me to make better use of the offer because of the longer time slot.  I can begin washing earlier in the day and do things like put on the breadmaker, slow cooker, fill the oven maybe.  I'll work it out.....

The washing machine insurance is also increasing in price from £7.99 to £8.99 per month from June.  We toyed with the idea of cancelling it but, after checking the cost of a replacement integrated machine, it will be safer to carry on paying.  I can't manage without a machine.

Although we have had a reasonable increase in our pensions this April, there's no getting away from the fact that we are on the old state pension which is less than the new rate, and so the increase is less too.  A huge chunk of it has gone on increased rent already.  We were also shocked by how little food we got in our recent delivery from Sainsburys,  just 2 tote boxes and they were nowhere near full.  It looked pathetic spread out on the worktop AND it cost £52.08 😒

I really need to evaluate what I'm spending on non-food items.....

Are you noticing a difference in outgoings too?

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Thanks for popping in.  Stay safe and well wherever you happen to be, 

Angie 💗

TV Changes Are Afoot, Food Waste etc......

 I read in my news feed on my phone yesterday that the government is planning a Green Paper on bringing forward plans to turn off free TV services, like Freeview, in favour of online streaming services only.  It could happen as early as 2030 which is a mere 4 years away.  Now... we watch TV via Freeview.  We don't have any 'paid for' services and have no intention of getting any.  We are happy to pay the licence fee to watch BBC as they often show a jolly good drama or two, but the likes of Sky and Netflix don't really attract us.  What on earth will we do?  What on earth will other people do, especially those who don't have reliable broadband, or even any broadband at all??  We know of people who pay ridiculous amounts for streaming services and sports channels, sometimes upwards of £80 per month. We simply can't afford that and I'm sure we are not the only ones 😕

Do you pay for a streaming service?  Is it expensive? Reliable?  Is there much worth watching? 

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This morning we found our new food waste caddies on the path outside the front door.  There is a big caddy for outside and a smaller one for the kitchen.  This is something else I will have to get used to doing 😕  As it is, I constantly have to stop Gray from putting things in the wrong bin.  Why did he think polystyrene was recyclable??  I'm happy to recycle veg peelings, eggshells, teabags etc but the disadvantage is that the caddy takes up a lot of room on the worktop near the sink.  This morning I have re-jigged everything and given the worktops a good clean before putting everything back (albeit in different places) The collections will be on a weekly basis beginning in June and, at least, they will provide the small caddy liners free of charge.  I'm just glad that we don't eat much meat as I wouldn't fancy having meat scraps in the bin with summer on the way.  Imagine the smells and flies in the heat?

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 Yesterday, I took another dozen handmade cards to the shop, this time they were music themed.  I had ordered some little books of images from Hunkydory a couple of weeks back when they were on offer and they are lovely.  They will keep me going for some time and, in addition, I received the free club member's gift which will make several cards, I would guess at least a  dozen more.  I'll share some of those with you later on.....

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Right....now....Graham is at the allotment.  It's a beautiful sunny morning and more heat is forecast for the holiday weekend.  Our daughter has invited us to a barbie tomorrow 😀 We will be celebrating son-in-law's new job so I might just allow myself a small glass of Prosecco then to toast his success.  Meanwhile, I'll now tackle the ironing and pop a load into the washing machine so that I can peg it out today.  

Our energy fix ends next month so I fixed again yesterday on a new plan in case there is no new fix available later on.  This particular one gives half price electricity between 9am and 5pm on a Sunday.  It will give me 3 extra hours of cheap electricity compared to the old plan but the monthly DD has gone from £97.53 to £108.03 😭

Economies will have to be made.....

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Thanks for popping in.  Stay safe and well wherever you happen to be and have a great weekend.

Angie 💗

Watch this! And another book read.....

 The weather has not been conducive to sitting (or walking) in the sunshine at all this last week, as it's been cold and it's now very wet too.  We even had hail on Sunday, but I've been trying to move more to increase my step count since I bought my bargain smartwatch.    I've discovered that I actually do around 5,000 steps in a day when I'm just doing housework 😀

 Don't worry about the step count shown in the photo though as I had taken the watch off to have a shower and forgot to put it back on until 9.30am!......

We're trying to eat a greater variety of food, especially low fat, non UPF foods but it can be a bit tricky at times as I still need to watch the food budget very carefully.  My tongue is still causing me problems but I'm carrying on with the D3 tablets in the hope that they will help replenish my lack of the vitamin. .....

My B12 levels are now fine but, on Doctor's orders, I'm still taking a multivitamin as well. In the 7 weeks I've been taking the D3, I've noticed that my energy levels have picked up.  I'm nowhere near as tired during the day,  I can walk steadily (rather than a bit wobbly) and my sleep patterns have improved tremendously.  I used to be lucky to get 5 hours a night and sometimes much less than that so the readings on my smartwatch were a pleasant surprise....

At least something is going right at last!

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I've been doing lots of reading to relax and I've discovered a new (to me) author via Vivi's U-Tube book reviews (What Vivi Did Next).

Rachel McLean's female detective is a Birmingham lass who has been sent to Dorset and thrown in the deep end with a murder.  It's written in a style I enjoy and is the first in a whole series of books.  I've just reserved the second book from the library 👍

Has anyone else tried this one?

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Right-o.... I'm off to make a quiche for tea using a tortilla wrap instead of pastry for the crust.  We have a home grown leek, some cheese and eggs😁 some home grown lettuce and supermarket cherry tomatoes to go with it.  Oh...and a leftover cooked jacket potato which I can cut into wedges and reheat in the airfryer.  No waste!

Thanks for popping in.  Do stay safe and well wherever you happen to be,

Angie 💗