Thursday 28 April 2016

Malevolent Thoughts

Well this week is seeming very long,  we have no income at all due to me not being paid , so its been a sort of holiday for me honest . No its been cook creative week  , its amazing what horrors i can construct from the little bags at the bottom of the freezer ..he he he
Ive been walking the munchkin to school each morning , not a problem but its a bit arctic with the wind off the fields   , a moaning munchkin and the ginger ninja as company . the cat decided to walk with us yesterday , he then sits  and howls in the farm gateway till i collect him on the way back, because he doesnt like the traffic at the school .
 I would like to thank the teacher who said they get a house point  if they walk to school, this i think was aimed at  those in the same village as the school , not those of us in the next village, but the munchkin doesnt get many  house points thanks to his behavior and he insists thats why he has no friends , so walk he must do .
No fuel means no work , there isnt much this week so hopefuly i will get away with it going in late due to the holidays.
Weirdest conversation......
Can  i have £10 for the electric
Ive got no money
You got paid last week
But i had to pay the deposit on  my holidays (plural)
So tomorrow youre off to  work looking like a gonk?
No of course not
Well youre hair straighteners wont be working , plus youre fish  tank will have a lot of floaters then theres the weeing in the dark . You do have a torch dont you ?

 Guess mother got £10 for the electric ...lol

Monday 25 April 2016

Lincolnshire Family History 2

Sometimes you have to chuckle, my mother is  up in arms after her heir  hunters episode , they contacted her regarding a cousin that shed killed  years ago, not literally she had just told everyone she was dead . It would seem that our family history is just as bad as the ones televised, I already knew we had jailbirds not it looks like we can add illegitimacy and bigamy to the family tree so she wont  be getting a big fat cheque..lol



So lets talk about the nicer side of the family my  dads Lincolnshire forbears  this is the wedding photo of  my grandparents, Ivy Clara Exley and (jack) John Andrew at Barrow On Humber in 1917 , my grandmother was in service at Barrow Hall , my  grandfather was going off to war . I know who some of the people in the picture are  but  not all  .  A couple of my uncles did a lot of family history research , but i had all the ephemera i managed to rescue as a child plus bits my Granny had told me , plus now i can look back and patch various family stories to make a whole .So lets put it together in modern terminology  They had 7  children , 6 made it to adulthood and a couple are still around as far as i know . Jack was a bit of a rum lad in his day and liked the ladies , he was a coal merchant and lorry owner so he got about a bit. Grandma had to many children  to quickly and the last couple were sickly to boot so her sister was dispatched to help , 10 years younger and single . The trouble  was Jack took a shine to her and back in about 1930 the inevitable happened and they had to run away leaving my grandma with 7 kids .
Now Lincolnshire in the 30s was a different dimension , it was viewed to be my grandmothers fault and she was threatened with the Workhouse if it hadnt been for Jacks family helping her find a tiny 2 bedroomed cottage that  was where she was going, nobody would rent to her because of the disgrace  , one daughter died of diptheria because they couldnt afford a doctor . My dad hated his father he had  just passed to go to Grammar school but was forced with his brother to go to work in his uncles flour mill , the eldest girl had to go into service. My dad would never allow any mention of his father even on his deathbed in the 50s he refused to see him . his dad had  built another family in Rugby there  was no divorce in those days .
It seems strange now but even in the 50s and 60s the family were shunned for what had happened , they all had to marry out , because they carried the stain of immorality , even as a child there were people warned not to play with me because of my family name .
But the saddest thing of all was that when my grandmother died she still had all his postcards sent during their courtship and from the trenches hidden away and  i have them still . There was never anyone else for her  but him .
These days  this story wouldnt warrant more than a bit of gossip , it wouldnt even make Jeremy Kyle but back then it was the scandal of the county .

Saturday 23 April 2016

Fed Up With Life

Just had a couple of really down in the dumps days , you guessed it the company ive done tons of work for didnt bother to pay me , this is becoming all to familiar . Theyre apparently having a reorganisation , polite management speak for having being asset striped by an American multinational , theres been tons of redundancies and we now have no office to contact about our missing payments ...joy
Also we will shortly have to provide an  experian credit  check  to even work at all in  the industry , my  nice manager pointed out that he will also be out of a job as he has a CCJ from 10 years ago during his divorce it doesnt matter that they are cleared it will still prevent you working . In  fact as he pointed out over 90% of the firm wont be able to work anymore . Well thought out legislation from the Office of Fair Trading methinks . Or if i was paranoid , I could just point out that American companies have bought out most of the firms in the debt  industry and shortly nobody will be able to do the job so they will have to import Americans or go to the American system of Debtors going to prison for trivialities, the same prisons that are being run by G4S another American Company ...mmmmm. No wonder Obama wants us to stay in the EU they have a big stake in the UK in many industries .

On the mother front ive had a very scary conversation with her on the coming EU referendum.

Well its not as if anyone under 40 is interested, they cant get out of bed so they wont bother to vote.

So mother only ranting Daily Mail readers and wrinklies will win the vote to leave ?

We will be leaving , we dont want to be giving in to the Germans ,  theyre just sending us more and more manky foreigners.  The French stink of garlic and  do weird sex things , the Italians  are bone idle cowards and  theres the Spaniards  all they produce is waiters .

So if we vote leave what happens if they dont let us?

By this stage im quite enjoying baiting her and shes building up a full head of steam , shes a bit down because she cant drink on the tablets shes taking , so a good rant really perked  her up . 81 and she loves the world .
Her parting shot after a good half hour rant ?

We will fight them on the  beaches!!!

Thursday 21 April 2016

Crafty Pursuits

My little 10p gem from the jumble sales this  week , courtesy of the scanner that wouldnt work since we had the compulsory change to Windows 10 earlier in the year ...Yey theres now a bugfix for its issues though its taken all morning to figure it out .


I think my teacher at school had this book its an absolute gem , packed with trace off full size patterns for animals xmas decorations and dolls. Though these days i dont think youre allowed wire frames inside toys or non EU classified embellishments or eyes , who cares I will make a few in felt for my own amusement.



Monday 18 April 2016

Short but Sweet

Why  does  everything I buy from a  real store turn  into a nightmare.   I got a  little Nikon  coolpix camera , they were  half price in  a sale. It now has a battery fault  so its unusable just days after the warranty ran out !! Looks it up online only to find this is a known fault , for which there is no cure its terminal . Nikons response is to post it back to them in Japan , which you cant do because it has a small internal battery that cant be removed . So theyve  sold thousands of these , the fault has been known for quite some time and  you can do nada about it . As it was pointed out online in one of the forums all  you can do is never buy Nikkon again!! .
So im pictureless at  the moment , i dont have a camera phone , just a cheapy Nokia for my endless calls , a smart phone is useless for someone who can be on the phone for hours at a time , they burn out . I need a camera for work so im trying my daughters ,which appears far to complicated for what i need ....Lifes such  fun

Saturday 16 April 2016

Its Been A Funny Old Week

Not a single thrift shop have I visited this week , I was very busy work wise , then i got my wage slip and realised i've been wasting my time on the new work stream that came in ..ho hum it would appear that once again the wage stream quoted bears no resemblance to the wage produced , way below minimum wage im afraid , after expenses it barely breaks even . Perfectly legal we are all classed as self employed on a zero hours contract . As i was told its not there concern that the work they provide  has travelling time of over 30 minutes between jobs, being rural the jobs can have well over an hour between , the jobs are supposed to take 10 minutes and its the 10 minutes they pay for , there is the chance to earn £12 an hour in commission at each job , the reality is you may earn £12 per week if your lucky ..lol they pay the 10 minutes at £1 a job , im good at my job and i can clear 20 jobs a day in town maybe 5 if the jobs are rural . Plus you spend at least £20 a day on fuel !
I rang complained and they promptly removed the work from my computer ..lol...
They're manager rang and asked what was going on , i told him my work had gone and not to bother sending anymore because it didnt pay . I then found out that all the office staff had been made redundant along with most of the management , so quite where i stand at the moment with the outstanding wages owed , I have no idea .
This is a porridge thought. If your poor how much can you grow to hate porridge? Im afraid ive reached porridge saturation levels over the winter , no amount of adding fruit , jam or syrups is making it any less revolting, ive reached the level of baulking while i eat it . Is there a cure?
Mr Bah Humbug is now officially morbidly obese but hes still not diabetic the nice lady doctor apologised to him because theres little that he can do about it , the drugs he takes on a daily basis cause an average weight gain of 20-30 pounds a year , he will need them for life . He also had a pain clinic appointment where they told him theres nothing more they can do . So hes very down .
Best laugh of the week he got till 3pm yesterday before he remembered it was his birthday . He always says not to bother , so we didnt . Really we had bothered, so now he keeps calling us names , his other thought was, we could stick a candle on a ryvita instead of birthday cake . Or perhaps dip it in Chinese 5 spice for old times sake .
His weight always gets him down, hes very self conscious that hes perceived as a fat idle benefit scrounger by those who see him .
Helpful comments about getting a free gym membership , or getting a gastric band arent helpful, there is so little he can do safely, once he gets to the stage where he is wheelchair bound he will be in a better situation , theres not many people can say that is there ?


Monday 11 April 2016

Thrifty Shopping

So who else would go to a jumble sale and pick up what i thought was a bit of net curtaining and then realise they had bought a vintage wedding veil 30ps worth of nice , not a clue what i will do with this its very 1950s 1960s . I thought the dressing up box could use it , but the munchkin has once again never shown an interest in anything but his Mike the Knight suit many moons ago . Maybe one of them will produce a grandaughter one day , but i think it will be waiting a very long while .


But my favourite find has to be some booklets of 1930s embroidery transfers , complete with my favourite Crinoline lady , they wont go far i can squirrel these away in my vast collection .I paid far to much £1.50, for them , you can buy an awful lot of out of date spuds with that amount..lol

   

Finally from the Bridge Community Venue , I got a whole carrier bag full of crocheted doilies , theres an awful lot of beautiful tatted ones , a myriad of colours and designs , miles of tatted trim , always useful a whole £1 the bagfull I just need a big dark velvet curtain and i can see a cushion project coming on . I will add it to the car boot hunting list . So thats my thrift budget for the week £2.80


Just need the weather to get that bit better and warmer and i will feel the urge to actually do a car boot myself, theres a winters worth of castoffs to dispose of , once i get motivated . But working seven days a week is a bit of a killer I'm afraid

Thursday 7 April 2016

The Weekly Winge Post

I'm home !!! My first day of being home at a reasonable time , I really am working all hours this week , I should really be getting on with my mountain of data entry chores ready for tomorrow ..stuff it ,im going to winge to you lot instead..lol
Young Baldrick , why ? just tell me why I ever got involved .
One of his mothers relatives has decided that she is going to run everything for him because we are so useless . The first we knew of this was pictures of him in a hot tub swilling beer at this relatives house . She had been to his housing scheme creating, rang Mr Bah Humbug , demanding that we pay his rent that she had just forked out for and take some responsibility for him having no food or benefits . He now has phone credit , pocket money , an xbox etc etc .
We then get a call from his housing scheme to say he hasnt clocked in for curfew and they would have to ring the police , having seen the pictures on facebook we supplied the  phone number . They rang back later to say said relative had fetched him back creating a fuss . When we went down to see him the following day he refused to come and speak to us , so i went for a chat with his keyworker while his dad ambushed him trying to slope off .
It turns out that said relative had turned up with her huge benefits paid for four wheel drive , stinking of weed and with her kids in the car , practically kidnapped Young Baldrick and whisked him away . they have no choice but to let him go because he is an adult , but because she was taking him she had to supply her drivers license to be photocopied , so if she turns up again stinking of weed they will contact the police .
Mr Bah Humbug thinks he told her his rent hadnt been paid to try and scam the money and has informed her his rent is covered by Housing Benefit so dont come to us . He had no food because we deliver it on a Friday morning , if he chooses to sell the food to get drugs and alcohol thats his own fault . He had no phone credit because his internet usage is monitored there but they cant monitor his phone . His own xbox is broken because he took it apart in a bid to fit a warp drive to it or something of the sort . even hes not daft enough to turn down an xbox and loads of free money . He also stunk of weed . He is currently being assessed with a view to independent living , so yes by believing his mothers weeping sob story , someone she admits she hadnt spoken to for years she has made his situation 10 times worse .
She has also changed his doctors , managed to get his Glucoma eyedrops from a walk in center after our GP said they could blind him if his eye pressure has changed , which is why he had an urgent hospital appointment pending .
She found out that you cant just go and open a bank account these days and he cant get a penny because he hasnt yet got a bank account .
So yes i feel i have a right to winge and unburden on you all , its been a cracking week

Sunday 3 April 2016

Jumble Season

So i have a whole week of no lunches because ive spent a whole £5 at the jumble sales yesterday . Really went quite mad i think , Birchwood Scout Hut Cats in Crisis yielded some very nice very heavy and lined red curtains for the big front window , they were on my summer car boot sale list  and cost a whole £2 . The old ones can be washed and go in the next one to get a flat box .


Rather nice petit point evening bag that should clean up really well , resale value very low , thats my excuse for keeping it , 50p . Junk jewellery lucky bag 75p this has bits  of stuff that will go to the car boot , plus it had a couple of gems for my collection , I really can spot a Miracle Brooch at a thousand paces, gilt toned with an agate stone , not one i already have. Plus a silver fake pearl swirly  effort that is growing on me marked Canada .

Then i fitted a bit of work in and drove home via Poterhamworth Booths for a Scout Jumble Sale and Auction , They were practically giving stuff away , so ive acquired 2 big Pyrex roasters one for me and one for the next one to get a flat box , also a large new John Lewis wok , I did kill mine . The auction was hilarious , run by a pair of elderly gentleman , who had no idea what they were selling . Everything was £1 or even 50p . Just a few tools fetched more . If I had storage I could have acquired loads . But I stopped for the giggle.
I even bought what i thought was a gorgeous flowery Joe Brown summer dress , to be told by my daughter , that really isnt you its too girly . Sometimes I just give up , I forget that all my adult life ive had people accuse me of being a bad transexual , comment on how manly i am etc etc .
Maybe thats why i collect little bits of beautiful on my travels , to make up for the fact that it would be money wasted on me . ....oops that does sound rather negative , but really im quite accepting of what life has given me , it gets me from A to B and its better than the alternative