Done

 So thats Mommy Dearest put to rest , there doesnt seem to be many of us left , but those who remain are in their 80s and 90s and pretty lively .  The officiate at the crem , couldnt understand when we started sniggering at the choice of the hymns she picked them herself  , she always said it was great if nobody knew them and she was right . We donated her posh plastic wreaths to the undertaker to be reused , he seemed quite chuffed . We then adjourned to her favourite pub for dinner and drinkies , we had to be careful not to give Aunty Mary any booze otherwise it would have turned into a Reform meeting , her and mother were both great singers of Nigel is wonderful . We had the Thelma and Louise aged duo who managed to get lost on the way to the funeral but made it to the pub , they somehow ended up in Stoke and then belted down the motorway in the wrong direction in their tiny car , the general consensus was make sure they go out of the carpark before everyone else ...lol  There were cousins who i hadnt seen since they were kids and Uncle Roy, well into his 80s , there were pictures at grandmas of him as a teenager and he hasnt changed much at all . Then we sat and swapped tales of how bleedin batshit crazy mother was and the legendary drinking . It was a very long day and the weather was atrocious .  Meanwhile back at the bungalow can anyone explain why someone would have a large wardrobe full of cleaning products and hundreds of candles ? Daughter has made heroic efforts at cleaning the place out , but theres still tons of stuff left , hopefully the furniture can be shifted on facebook , it goes up for sale today .

Dib Dib Dib

 Will the 29000 people who are currently without water become the next generation of preppers ?  The simple fact that the penny hasnt dropped that our government will do nothing for anyone in the event of an emergency somewhat baffles me . I grew up in the Lincolnshire wilderness back in the 60s it wasnt a case of prepping but common sense . We had a bus once a week on market day , a mobile butcher , a mobile shop that was if you lived in a village, so of course you made sure you were well stocked up with most everything . It wasnt till the late 60s and the 70s that ordinary people got cars and could shop further afield this then killed the mobile shops and the bus services over the course of a few years. I hate the fact that we are so reliant on Amazon , we are even having to have then deliver our milk each month , all the cat food comes in bulk as well , daft stuff like toiletries , wash powder batteries etc etc Amazon . You cant have morals or scruples if you live rurally . We are surrounded by chicken farms but cant buy eggs , bird flu has killed folks selling eggs at the gate , they stopped the dairy selling milk at their gate , we have posh farm shops that are for the tourists and middle classes just dont look to closely at the labels folks , country of origin may well be the other side of the world but it will have a Union Jack on the packaging or labels, so thats fine. What a bloody mess we are in and they dont want to resolve it  

Spring in my Step

 With all thats going on in my little bubble im looking at maybe giving the garden a miss this year , ive tons of seed saved and may just grow a few container things and portable edible stuff . Its all the decisions that need to be made , plus the possibilities of stuff not going as planned . I would quite like to stay here where i am settled its not great , but nowhere is, maybe i can become the village witch or something , you know grey haired and wrinkly followed around by my familiars Dave the hedgehog and the cats. I know one thing i dont want to move to Cheshire and mothers bungalow or to some barren pensioner ghetto any where else . I like life going on around me , kids in the street , neighbours getting hammered and falling out , im just a common none working class sort of person  But once you get folks sending you endless estate agent blurb you realise what you dont want not what you want , himself would be a nightmare in a little middle class estate theyre used to him here so they dont bat an eyelid . its funny the only thing im looking forward to is a big branch shredder..lol . You see once again even from the grave Mommy Dearest is trying to make me conform to her ideals and it isnt happening , its just screwing with my mind every day . So if my posts seem a bit odd dont worry i will get my head round things eventually but i need time to think 

Gammon

So himself had his monthly trip to the blood folks the other day it didnt start well when you couldnt get near the disabled parking or the drop off points due to the weather , so he had to do snow on his crutches . Anyway he come back in a foul mood because he knew doing that amount of walking would leave him in agony . Now he comes to the good bit , the little hijab wearing blood lady  asks him if its alright if she does it or does he object and want someone else ?  This baffled him and he said he didnt care who saw him , so he asked her why and it seems a lot of the gammon fraternity refuse treatment from her . He was horrified by this but i set him off by saying well you do look the part . Epic rant started but i pointed out your the right age your nearly bald and you wear the outfit .  Theres nobody less of a gammon but i also pointed out that a lot of his friends have a fondness for flags and ranting about immigrants and  a few family members. What is the world coming to .  

Weird Rants

 Now that we have entered the realms of the funeral industry , end of the month by the way somewhat appropriately on my ex husbands birthday as Mommy Dearest loved him so much as he wasnt  a miserable joy sapper like me and would happily sit and day drink with her till falling over then drive me and the kids back from Wales . Those were the days . 

Todays weird thought , shouldnt someone be on dragons den punting rental funeral flowers? the cost of them is horrendous and this time of year even higher peaking for Valentines Day , you can get huge arrangements of plastic flowers off amazon which im sure she would like because the last time i sent her an Interflora bouquet she shoved it in her bin because they were cheap looking ...bless

Then theres her address book where shes scribbled out loads of people and wrote dead next to , some are very much alive just dead to her , theres a notice gone in the local paper in a vain try to round up any remaining family and friends but when your 90 youve pretty much outlived everyone,  so we have no idea how many will turn up.

You just know on the day of the funeral there will be blizzards so we cant get there  

Cold

bleedin hell its a tad chilly , managing on an hours heating in the morning and an hour after dinner , fortunately the suns out and even in a winter it warms most of the house up , sadly not the kitchen dining room which has reached a balmy 12 degrees  due to the smallest radiator in the house in the biggest space , ive been wrapping the tropical houseplants up in bubble wrap at night..lol  though im nice and toasty in bed with a hot water bottle and a cat , no snow it seems to be catching  all down the coast and inland here .But heres a catcher , brother in law rang and asked to borrow some money for electric , he has never done this before , so much for the super duper air source heat pump the council has fitted recently , its costing him £20 a day and they cant turn it off or down , he says its like the tropics he has to have the windows open just to breathe. Another eco bollocks government funded scam , but hey net zero and all that . His house is a prefab Airy house and theyre just not suitable for whats been fitted 

Mommy Dearest

 Well on the 22nd mother left the building after a row with her carer about them putting thickener in her cuppa tea . They went back an hour later and she had sneaked off with no fuss or bother , please no condolences , i wasnt sure how i would feel about this but my only emotion is relief . My daughter and other family are the ones grieving . My son has decided to christen dec 22nd dead granny day and we are to celebrate with enough alcohol to fall over and eating maltesers till we throw up , his grandmother hated him and made it very clear from when he was small . It being xmas everything is a bit of a cock up. The coroner got involved because they are very keen about deaths in care because they covered Harold Shipmans area , i had  a slightly odd conversation asking if i had and doubts about the validity of her death and any suspicions of foul play , none whatsoever so they agreed they didnt need to do an autopsy and we could apply for a death certificate but theyre shut for xmas so more faff about ,  we found out that the undertakers who she had specified had retired but the People at Golden Charter who she had a prepaid funeral plan with gave us another one , they were really helpful , but  nothing can progress  and its unlikely to do till late january because theres a backlog. My daughters got her organising head on and mothers solicitor isnt answering anything so i presume theyre off till after the new year . We shall see life goes on , im just glad that her money will cover her care home expenses and anything else that arrives , i never wanted it and she was always well cared for which was all that mattered . But im sure there will be a few folks popping out of the woodwork questioning where the money has gone   

Pack Up

 Well im afraid its time to pack up early for xmas. lifes throwing us curveballs im afraid . Mommy Dearest had a stroke on Sunday night , we fpund out that the nightstaff at the home dont speak much english so it was fun trying to figure out what was happening until they put the paramedic on the phone , mother is DNR and on end of life care, she has detiorated greatly over the last month i was having to deal with hysterical night staff and  a paramedic who didnt want to take responsibility and intended to take it up the food chain because they couldnt find the correct green form . it was eventually decided to get the on call doctor to come to her , not a big problem as the hospital is just across the car park .  Eventually the english speaking manager and the doctor got back to me, the doctor said he didnt see  the point in her going to the hospital as it would involve a 12 hour wait on a trolley in a corridor before she was even seen , by this time mother had perked up enough to be shouting abuse in the background , the home manager was happy for her to stay there as the missing green form had now been found . The doctor said he was going to sedate her for a couple of days and now we are at the point where despite the stroke shes more alert than she has been for a few weeks and very irate because she has to have a cup of tea in a sippy cup . Who knows ? will she make xmas ? or will her temper kill her . So long as shes safe and well cared for i dont see what else we can do  

Therapy

 I suppose my lack of Xmas spirit stems from my mother and her Hyacinth Bucket Xmases we had as a child , back in the 60s and 70s, fun wasnt welcome at those occasions , it was having to be a colour co ordinated member of the family , having to sit on the knee and be polite to my abuser , a tinsel xmas tree because she couldnt be doing with the mess and my poor old dad never being good enough or getting nothing but abuse from her , if she wasnt the center of the universe at any occasion we both suffered . Between that and the 100 a day clouds of cigarette smoke , it was menthol so it was good for you and the booze that didnt bring out the good in any of them i spent every second i could get away from them hiding under my bed crouched on the lino , just hoping my uncle didnt get sent to find me . I was so relieved when i aged out from his attentions and he found a younger niece to play with .  A few years ago i bumped into my Aunt and probably out of sheer malice asked how my cousin was these days her face was horror struck and she just garbled that she hasnt seen her in years . 

Time Ticking

 Not around a great deal at the moment , to many problems to little time , himself has  been exceeding my expectations in so many ways ,,lol .. well he decided he wanted to take me xmas grocery shopping to the big Tesco at Boston it was an experience, hes on his buggy at ramming speed , not paying a jot of attention to the shopping we actually need  but busy bar humbugging at all the xmas stuff i wasnt going to buy anyway at the top of his voice.  He was busy saying im not paying that and slinging stuff out of the trolley when i finally snapped and pointed out that we have to eat something regardless of cost and that most of the stuff still in the trolley was stuff i couldnt eat anyway . Talk about the death silence , it got a tad frosty thats for shore and i will need to manage a shop without him before xmas .

Then in his disordered thinking mode it seems he had been inviting the world and his wife for xmas dinner ffs this resulted in a bit of a discussion, so we now have them spread over two days which is more manageable but is probably going to kill me as im still only running at 50% plus theres the cost of it all , not helped  by his biggest FUp . You see we ran out of heating oil and we cant get a delivery till the 22nd  plus hed spent the soddin oil money on vehicle parts for other folks who arent likely to pay this side of xmas , so weve had to use the grocery money. we do get a payment on the 23rd so then i will have to run round and get everything i need , hopefully without him. Daughter is sponsoring my bad jumble and auction habit for my xmas present and ive managed to quietly flog a few bits here and there .

Then theres Mommy Dearest who has taken to her bed to die , she is now officially allowed to after a meeting with social services old uncle Tom Cobley and all. after a couple of months in the 1950s which i suppose was her happy time she has packed up and left the building .  It has been noted by other family members who are disgusted that we are not making more effort to keep her alive , but shes well looked after and safe and theres nothing much more anyone can do at this stage  

Tedium

 I think ive got to that time of the year where the urge to kill himself gets really strong ..lol He has his disability van back and hes bouncing around wanting to go out and theres nowhere to go unless your a Xmas Head , its all very craft fair and Christmas Fayre every shop is a sea of xmas stock that you never knew you needed and you dont need it at all . What next on the xmas food front, vol-a-vents with sparkly reindeers tears? perhaps Snowman meringues with Influencer packaging ? The god awful perfume adverts are back in force , but as someone pointed out the other day does anyone wear perfume anymore ?  Mind you its nearly December so those of a xmas persuasion are excused for putting the decorations up now or at least  dragging them out of the attic, finding the lights dont work and you somehow packed the cat along with the tree last year. Your local Facebook seems to be rammed with photos of front doors with a parcel on the step and folks asking is this your front door or are you so and so cos i have your parcel , its as if theyre going past on a sleigh and just sprinkling the area with parcels . Well what else can you expect after all its a Happy Commercial Xmas !!

Progress

 Oh no it would seem i must try the new super duper blogger features, did we ask for them ? do we need them? the big gap in the market for all these wonderful ideas is a sort of Windows basic or  Google Oldie . where there is an absolute basic package that you then bolt addons onto IF you need them. Its all gone a bit far they all think they need to think up a new gimmick every five minutes or maybe the younger generation can only cope that way? Something where if the cat walks over the keyboard nothing much changes would be nice or is that asking to much . I suppose im a bit of a problem because i still see the internet as a tool rather than a necessity , i still use reference books and dont rely on image search for the things i purchase , i was reared to do research and books were what i learned from , you try that online and its welcome to the world of AI deceit, plus it all seems to be pushing a very narrow view of everything that if youve lived a life is very obviously lies . 

Himself keeps asking what i want for xmas ..lol..ive bought him a metal workshop chair because he breaks all the wooden ones . I suggested to him, could i have a bookcase of books from one of the local auctions , they sell whole bookcases full with really bad pictures and a vague description and i would really enjoy going through them and seeing what i want to read or keep , good project for the dead space of the xmas period. Then i could carboot what ive read in the Spring . Well at least he didnt flinch , why am i not surprised he said. But i notice he didnt say no 

Shoe B Careful

Heres a weird one for you , has anybody else had their shoes disintegrate while wearing them of late?  I had a pair of couple of year old Evans boots worn maybe a dozen times and put them on Saturday, went to take them off and most of the surface of the boots disintegrated in my hands , they weren't expensive by most peoples standards but to me they were, not repairable so into the bin they went . Now strangely enough a couple of weeks ago i bought a nice Joules handbag at the jumble and much the same happened to that . So it being cold and because im bored i looked it up on line and found hundreds of people online having the same problem a lot have contacted retailers and been told that its not their fault so go away . I kept trawling and found some answers , hydrolysis is when the souls disintegrate and it would seem that the vinyl covering of pleather as they call it now has to be biodegradable so quite literally they are designed to rot in landfill. You have no idea when buying shoes how long theyve been made surely they should come with a sell by date ?   

Shoppin

 I must have had a premonition , his part for his van has finally turned up !!!  Now the garage just has to find the time to fix it ..lol at least it will mean i can have my kitchen and living room back , i currently have his disabled wheels stuck in the kitchen and his hoist and other disabled gubbins in the living room , they had to be removed due to the value of them before the wretched vehicle could go to the garage so ive been walking round a track for months .

On the shoppin front i'd seen on line that Tesco had half price beef joints , so i thought Xmas . popped in yesterday and was stood at the side of the chiller of beef with three other folks shaking our heads the aforementioned Clubcard special offer , was shrink wrapped vivid red and looked like the end bits off proper joints , i picked up a small you know it will shrink to the size of a beefburger on cooking lump, £25 and this is half price? There is retail piss taking everywhere but thats one of the worse ive seen . Half price shoulder of lamb £18 bugger all on it just a bone. Well i needed bread and eggs and they took some finding, theyve just revamped little Tesco and theres no logic to it . Everywhere were folks wandering round muttering , one women was in the stock cubes muttering about how they had gone up by over £1 in a week,  I guess we are paying for the revamp !! with their billions of pounds profit they are taking the piss .. 

Eternal Autumn

 I look out the window and it seems that we are having the longest autumn in living memory , its either very grey or very sunny . The heatings been on for an hour just to bleed the radiators , im still having to sleep with the window open and a single sheet . But then there was some cheerful chap online the other night pointing out that the worst winter in 20 years started this way !!! The level of birds this year is amazing a lot have managed two batches of young , we are absolutely infested with wrens and tits , so i cant tidy the back garden because they like to pick all the seeds off the weeds . We have a huge ivy that covers and hides the oil tank its now in flower and is covered with bees and wasps daily . Theres hundreds of ladybirds whever the sun comes out . The bald patches in the lawn have filled in i sprinkled them with wildlife friendly seed,  different clovers and grasses so it might be a tad alternative this year and will doubtless upset the neighbours as always . The hedgehogs are still up and feeding every night . in fact its positivly brimming with life out there , which is how i like it .

Meanwhile in the real world the disabled adapted van has now been sat in the garage for 3 months waiting for a part that you can only get from America , which with all the dumb tariff fiddling about is sat in a depot somewhere ?  Even himself who always buys Ford says never again ..ho hum I will stick to watching the wildlife and trying to motivate myself into Facebook Marketplace listing a ton of accidental auction lot Denby tableware , I wanted a doll and two big boxes of pots turned up as a bonus ...lol..i dont want to store it overwinter and tableware usually goes before xmas .

Learning Curve

 I ventured to the Community Pantry last week on my own , due to Himself doing something with his brother that didnt require me . It did cause a bit of an argument because he insisted how would he cope with nobody to make tea and lunch . There are times hes very clingy toddler but BIL was there so i didnt see any problem . Friday is a day i rarely venture into town but it was as dead as a doornail , so i was enjoying having a bit of a gossip with one of the volunteers , an elderly lady of a very great vintage , who like me doesnt tolerate fools and idiots . They were trying to wrap her in cotton wool and she wasnt having it ..lol..The pastor was fussing round her and he was getting told in no uncertain terms . Anyway she was telling me they are now holding cooking classes using fresh foods , they get mountains of fruit and veg donated . They had social services there that day , they had bought a minibus of coming up to 18 care leavers . the plan was that they would learn to make potato wedges or sweet potato wedges a nice simple idea you would think . Anyway there was a major problem , they are not allowed to use knives or own them . In fact they didnt even know how to use a knife . So quite how they are teaching them any measure of independence was beyond both of us . She had suggested that they teach them to peel potatoes in a sarcastic manner . The pastor had promptly scuttled off to buy safety peelers .  The world is going to die if nobody even knows how to peel a potato isnt it? I can see that a lady in her 90s can see that and im sure you can 

Happy Shopper

Oh my did i have a good day at the jumbles , a little church one that was fill a bag for £6 and i was determined to get my moneys worth , rammed it with large size clothing a large book and a pyrex sauce dish that matches my everyday snowflake pyrex then finally i spotted some gorgeous fabric and shovelled that in as well . then on to the next where i also got a huge bag of big sized clothing and of all things for 50p , a veg slicer never used  , that was on the little list in my head having broken mine and using it a lot for the dehydrator. I washed everything when i got home and the line was full its been out a couple of days in the wind and rain trying to get rid of the fabric conditioner smell ..lol There seems to be tons of large size clothing at the jumbles at the moment . Is it because every ones on the skinny jabs?  

My daughter then turned up with a couple of boxes i won at an auction weeks ago , they got forgotten in her garage , i'd only paid a couple of quid for them because id spotted a Tiny Tears arm sticking out ..lol turns out ive two Tiny Tears and a huge Woolworths pram doll , plus a whole box of weird 70s  electrical goods and clean baking tins , so i guess i will be doing a car boot in the Spring . On her way out my daughter  spotted the fabric id bought , says you do know what that is? nice fabric to cut up for patchwork ?  it would seem its an expensive bed set by Joules who knew , its meaningless to me . ive been told that once its dry shes selling it on vinted ..lol

Im Back

 Now mobile , still a wee bit wobbly , usual nerve problems . But hey ive a double jumble out in the wilderness near Spilsby for Saturday to aim for  . Ive being playing kitchen catch up , finally got my apple pie filling canned , doing pears tomorrow . trotted down and finished harvesting squash , more than i realised because they had been hiding under the corn and tomatoes , strangely the outdoor tomatoes are having a second flush theyve gone lush and green again and have set on loads of the small tomatoes , which every time we have a sunny day ripen, its nearly november, im sure the first frost will finish them, but hey theyre getting used . Maize corn are a bit sparse but they have a myriad of different colours so i will save seed for next year . I was planning to harvest the dried beans but its rained so they will have to wait again .

I thought that having barely bothered with the internet i would get up to tons of news and goings on , I was wrong , seems i missed the Rapture and all those folks who got left behind are whinging . It doesnt seem to have crossed their minds that the godly might have actually been scooped up and it was a minibus full Maybe they arent quite as godly as they think they are?

Just sat here watching a pair of kites being harassed by the crows over the back garden , thats it life goes on and nothing thats happening in the world makes any difference. 

Unclean

 Here i am ringing my leper bell yet again, buggerin shingles and its a bad batch not sure whats triggered it, though himself has been a bit rough and been to the hospital so it could be any viral plague hes picked up , 3 days wiped out in bed now staggering about nuked on painkillers , just for a change it figured it would wrap right round my thigh , no point visiting the doctors once its hatched antivirals do jack nothing. they did there usual aka nothing , so got up and threatened them with murder , now Sarcastic son has some bug , hoping its the same one or my life could get interesting. lol

Anyway daughter rang this morning and said they were taking me to the cat jumble , im not infectious just crippled , a jumble sale on painkillers was fun, tons of stuff i neither needed or wanted ..lol.. so for a change i came home laden with studio pottery and West German pottery. i was watching the resellers nearly scrapping over onyx table lamps  guess theyre having a moment on Vinted ? Surprisingly they had an awful lot of really good woodturned stuff that nobody bothered with all labelled as to what wood it was , i did tell one of the resellers to get it but i didnt stop long due to being crippled and a wee bit away with the fairies , first time ive been on my feet for long in over a week , now im feeling it . So it could be build a pillow nest with a good book kind of weekend 

Plus sized

 Amid the dull and draining time of year...you know winter is coming and all that , its the little things that cheer you up , went to pick up my solitary win at the auction and the porter had saved me a whole bucket full of plants that some other bidder had turfed out of the planters they had bought , they have been admitted to my plant hospital and will be ready for sale in the spring ..lol  waste not want not , and all that , and ive gained two large planters and a big strawberry pot as well from my little bid , its always a good time of year to start buying garden stuff , just because you can store it outside till Spring . Ive always been of the view that if youve £5 in your purse you should try to turn it into £10 by whatever means you can . 

Popped into Lidl to do as ordered by the government stock up on water and toilet rolls for the big storms at the weekend . Managed to spot a unicorn veg box at the checkouts £1.50 worth of goodness , 3 huge bags of sprouts , bag of onions that i cant figure how they are out of date , bag of bananas that arent even ripe , 2 grapefruits  , net of tangerines , pack of nectarines , half a dozen decent apples to add to the mountain and a solitary sweet potato , i think the sprouts may have put people off ..lol.. doesnt work for me, we love sprouts . Usually in the rare event you spot a veg box its all wilting lettuce .

Ive a whole weekend of veg processing to face , so im being prepared and dragged the gas camping stove in case the weather is suitably grim and my huge collection of jars and pans are ready to roll , i will stick an extra £20 on the electric and can myself into a coma