Lets Talk

 Yesterday i was up at 5am half asleep and on my first cuppa , twiddling through facebook to see what was going on in the kids lives . Up pops a post by Elon Muskrat,  odd but i get the strangest things because i read politics and opinion of many genres , better to know your enemies etc etc .  Back to the Muskrat post , it was to link to a movie it said , so I thought why not , it took me to Twatter a forum i gave up on months ago because it became a Neo Pillock love fest . Anyway Citizen Patriot is the title , I wont share a link as it probably on Starmers little list by now , so i watched it for a good half an hour and it started to dawn on me it was basically an advert for a modern remake of a Death Wish movie with advanced slasher techniques provided by many different variants of migrants. The "hero" was going round administering vigilantly justice because the authorities were doing nothing , by now i was on my second cuppa and awake so closed it down . Now people may say that i didnt watch it all so shouldnt judge im sure he saw the errors of his ways by the end and went of to start welcoming boats on the beaches. Im just appalled that a trillionaire should feel the need to publicise this tripe , what the hell is happening to the world , money is corrupting every second of our lives but the everyday people have less and less . Please feel free to discuss 

Get up this morning and my feeds are full of white middle aged blokes ranting about patriotism, my not interested finger is working overtime, bless you have to admire the algorithms of Facebook , could Muskrat not be charged with incitement somewhere in the world ?   

Jumblies

 Yesterday i was summoned to do an emergency Car Boot , daughter has become involved with a local cat charity, they had a Jumble Sale that they barely advertised so they had mountains of bedding and clothing left, my daughter decided to car boot it all at giveaway prices, so once again we were lurking in a windy field watching the Kite hovering over us , not sure if he fancied a 90s glitter top or making his bed in a pile of towels , we started at 3 for a £1  and devolved to 5 for a £1  then sold a load of £5 a dustbin bag to a clothes reseller whos always there . It was surprising in some ways we mainly sold to pensioners and youngsters hunting vintage the sort who get excited over C&A labels and beige?  I am sadly lacking in knowledge in all things clothing so they may have been getting stunning bargains who knows or cares . What i know is that we have helped the pussies , they havent had to pay for all that waste to be took away and there is a market out their for truly weird clothing..lol.  I came home with 2 bin bags of bedding for the dog rescue and was very good and just kept a giant hoodie and a pile of nets to use in the garden to keep the caterpillers at bay.

Meanwhile i have a happy week of cleaning and washing auction buys that were also very cheap , seems like a good idea in the heat ...lol

Wanders In

 Grandson has been staying , so im running around like a headless chicken ..lol they are driving me mad , im still hobbling round like creepy death and they have decided theyre putting him yet another scooter together ready for him going back to work . Being helpful they packed the car up for the car boot and i was obliged to toddle off despite being  a member of the zombie club , daughter had to come over and help ...lol I have reached the level of take it away for £1 i dont want to see it again , more crap out of the dining room , i can see the floor in places!! Then she chimed up with you do realise theres at least a couple of van loads at Grandmas that are coming to yours...ffs will my mother never stop haunting me , theres still all the furniture as well AAARRRGGGHHHH ..We dont have the money to pay a clearance firm or a charity as most of them now charge as well 

Well

 Sorry im not around much at the moment but life got suddenly got complicated and busy , grandson ended up having his shoulder reconstructed , its all a bit tie wraps and bionics but hes coming along nicely now . Daughters unwell more from the stress than anything  and ive hatched my third batch of shingles this year which i just dont have time for . Did an auction collection today i bought a single lot of planters went to pick it up and ended up with allsorts of other stuff mainly art , weird modern stuff thats very expensive to buy , one goes for about £170 online but at the car boot i would struggle to get £5 .lol, such is life , not sure when we all be capable to do one though . 

Ive done bugger all in the garden , fortunately it does most of it by itself so we wont starve as quickly as the nay sayers say we will , with the rain and sunshine everything is very lush and green in a traditional english cottage garden , just need the bean row to go in, hundred leeks to plant . Sweetcorn , i had 40 plants then something ate all but 6 , ho hum keeping my eyes peeled for some . So see you around . i shall return!!!

Boots

 So i got dragged to Stickney at 6 in the morning yesterday , beautiful sunny morning not a bit of wind . Did i spend a fortune ?  it was dire , tons of toy stalls , 3d printing , lots of clothing and market stalls but the actual car boot stalls were pretty naff  managed to spend a couple of quid on 2 ramekins and a couple of storage tins walked bleedin miles and achieved only a headache for my efforts . Himself hit the nail on the head when he pointed out there only selling what hasnt sold on Vinted. The house will however reek of onions as i bought a whole net full...lol

Rinse and repeat when i should have had a lay in , but no im awake and ready to be getting on at 5am Sunday morning . Toddled off to meet my daughter at Metheringham , much better quality still bought one thing a posh food flask for himself to take to fishing and half a dozen french beans though my daughter got a bag full of weird stuff

What i think is happening with the charity shops and boot sales is that all the filming and bragging has killed them . A women who bought a large Wedgwood toilet boil for £5 off me has it listed at £75 on Vinted or Ebay , i dont mind I have its sister which i wanted and that one was surplus to my requirements and i sold it for way more than i paid , but bragging and laughing about it on You Tube, well. Wouldnt mind but she wanted to haggle me down at the time ..AAARRRGGGHHH Theres another woman who buys from charity shops and then says how shes made £300 from  £20 shes spent in the shops shes filmed on You Tube and then moans how stuff is getting far to expensive to make a big profit. I specifically  sell to resellers , i paid the mortgage for years with ebay . Now ive retired from that side of it till we get our mother problems sorted out , im only car booting to stop a build up of crap in case we have to move in a hurry , im well aware of the value of things 

Sorry if the fonts are weird its nothing im doing it just a Blogger glitch

Tad Scorchio

 Belting weather isnt it .  in an act of insanity the girls decided we should do a carboot Sunday morning , we were done by 11 as it was so scorchio . Sold stacks of cheapy items , most of it for a huge price of £1 but this was all old stock so i didnt care , the few new bits were a good bit more expensive . Then i took a couple of bin bags of clothes , all large sizes from the jumbles , 50p a bag they cost then i added all my sundresses to the piles , nothing fits me these days , my weight isnt changing but my shape really is , ive turned into a blob with little arms and legs more joys of being post menopausal. i  suppose im going to end up like my granny tucking my tits in my knickers..lol .

Not getting on with the garden , i cant get help from anyone they are all to busy or just not interested , i will do what i can and they can all starve. arseholes the lot of them. didnt do any plants this week it was to hot , im still watering the garden with the washing up water and considering getting a tub to stand in for the shower , but then id be carrying buckets down the stairs which im sure would end badly. Mid week ive an auction collection to do dread to think what i bought for a £1 , but there was one  lot that  i needed that i had to pay a bit more for, so i might as well make a van load with stuff to sell, well thats my excuse and im sticking to it .

Still dont know what is happening about mothers legal matters , its going to drag on and on i think , we now have a nightmare over attendance allowance , they wanted thousands from her estate but they didnt pay her any, the application was sent in they said she was receiving it but they never paid it , they therefore actually owe her estate quite a bit of money but like all DWP matters its a soddin shambles that will drag on and on .

Weak

 Sorry for the delay life has a habit of throwing curveballs at you. Anyway grandson decided to have a wee motorbike accident , bent a few bits broke a few bits etc etc and that was just him , his bike is a bleedin mess and is outside my window, himself  keeps sucking his teeth and pricing bits . It could be much worse but grandson is home and fed up because hes going to be weeks or months till hes back at work and the young get not a penny in sick money. You cant claim on the motorbike insurance because it will double as soon as he mentions it, because its his first year in that policy.  Hes been riding since the first day he could legally , he insists hes never riding again but hes got concussion and hes been talking so much rubbish its hilarious. I do think the fact his girlfriend is a few miles away may change that decision her family are bikers , i think hes horrified that we all just keep telling him to suck it up, shit happens and it was an unavoidable accident caused by a white van with its headlights on main beam coming round a bend on the wrong side of the road . Yes he could learn to drive and be safer but its the cost pure and simple , we shall see , his bike is looking like a right off due to cost , but we have others as does his girlfriends family !!! 

Bikers and Scooterist families always live with the knowledge that the knock on the door may come one day , but it didnt this time. Doesnt mean that any of us want to stop them riding , its part of their souls and everybody has been down the road sometime, im in my 60s and have the scars still and the odd gimpy patch . But it will be his decision and i will make sure they listen to him 

Thieves

 Heres a cautionary tale. Yesterday i took himself out because we hadnt been out all weekend due to expense , everything seems to add a premium on a bank holiday weekend . 
So i wanted to go to a local auction viewing and i bribed him with the promise of a bag of chips, gets to the chippy and my card didnt work , nothing unusual ive always got bugger all in my account but i should have got my pittance from the government , so after i got home i checked it online and found i had 4 transactions to a wedding firm in London? asked my son and he said your cards been scanned its a fraud . I rang the bank and after two or three attempts to get through on the automated system finally got a human in the fraud department , she was really good and i explained that i had unexplained transactions on my account , she asked quite a few questions , whether i had had any unexplained bank texts or phonecalls and funnily enough when i checked my phone id a text in the spam telling me i had set up google pay on my phone , which i knew nothing about !! when she went through all my transactions there was a £1.99 payment to a phone company in Barking London , they asked if i was willing to be contacted by the police which i have no problem with and then said they would stop my card and send out a new one plus refund the payments within 24 hours which they have done . All very prompt and helpful Coop Bank . Sons friend who does something in fraud says that they had set up a small rolling payment on a bank holiday that would gradually clean out your account and most people wouldnt notice so quickly or have so little in the bank so being poor has its advantages. Also because i obviously dont use phone banking at all, it isnt likely the bank would notice till after the bank holiday , so for future information always check your bank over a bank holiday for thieving bastards  

Dry

 im still hanging about unable to get on with my life due to solicitors etc etc . half hearted gardening because i dont know if the council tossers will evict us if this ever gets sorted ..ho hum ... or i could be going to prison, which would be a nice rest. pile of books and a cellmate for company. 

I blew up my dehydrator but it did get some hammer , daughter took it back to Lakeland and they no longer do them which seems strange when they do every kitchen gadget known to mankind. But they did give her a full refund , so she said to order one online from Amazon which i did , it came today ,they just abandoned it on the doorstep and ran , i knew as soon as i picked up that it was smashed , the box was damaged and it had been flattened , more hassle . Im having a bad amazon week my pet vacuum decided to split the water tank , i got it just after xmas and apparently it only came with 30 days amazon guarantee !! unless you took out the extended warranty AAARRRGGGHHH  I pointed out that was illegal and they said it was up to me to get in touch with the manufacturers ..Yingzhou china .....so no chance then but i will try. 

In the real world ive managed a jumble an auction and a car boot , bought a bag of murders , two Saki cups and a donkey planter which i can remember wanting as a kid at the seaside , an Alvingham pin dish lots of plants and veg so an average week 

Car boot 26

 So yesterday I actually did a car boot , first Sunday it has been a good forecast not much wind it can be very bleak in an open field in the depths of Lincolnshire this time of year ..lol  My daughter met me there to do the lumping and carrying. There were tons of stalls and the sun did shine , we had all the usual dealers , did make me laugh sold tons of utter rubbish that i had paid pennies for over the winter , being a collector of all sorts of strange things its all the surplus from the one item in 6 boxes that i actually wanted . We were visited by a couple of You Tubers  i recognised Kirstens Curiosities and Kathys Thrifty Treasures. Half an hour in and we had covered the cost of everything and the gate charge , I bought over a 1000 books for a tenner a couple of months ago and i have been wandering through a track in the dining room since, all very mixed stuff and we sold quite a lot yesterday at 25p  i have loads more still at home so may well be taking them through most of the summer , sold virtually no crystal so its come home and i will give it a run another time , sold nearly all my garden plants  that i took, a tray of alpines and big grasses ive still got a load more and im going to start more today , got to 10 and id reduced all the remaining strange stuff to 50p in a bid to take very little home , packed up and heading home just after 11 . I even managed to give away to the women standing across from me a huge modern canvas of chrysanthemums that has haunted me all winter also donated a load of old torches from the 80s to an old bloke , my daughter told me off but they were the type where the batteries alone outweigh the use of the torch . So it was a profitable day with stuff i really didnt want.

Now i can get into the living room , its a tip and needs cleaning badly , the track in the dining room is still the same but one more should get it down somewhat and i can even get to the big wardrobe in the corner , trouble is theres two auctions this week ...lol 

Food

 Has anyone noticed the quality of big brand is deteriorating rapidly ? I had a tin of Heinz Ravioli last week as a rare treat comfort food and it was bleedin horrible couldnt find a scrap of meat just a bit of grit in the feeble watery sauce. Even himself has given up asking for Mr Kipling bite size cakes that taste of nothing but sugar . Nothing seems to have any quality to it , despite the price hikes . 

Its been a funny old week , we are trying to venture out only once a week due to the fuel costs or maybe once a fortnight when we have no doctors or hospital . Himself is on a moanathon over frozen bread , hes so picky that i wont bake for him its never right. nearest loaf is a 10 mile car journey away so he will just have to suck it up . theres wraps and pittas if hes that desperate. I managed to kill the dehydrator the bearings have gone and it just squeals fortunately it packed up just as i finished the last scraps of the easter cheap veg , it is still under warranty as it came from Lakeland so i will send daughter on a mission as we dont go into central Lincoln anymore , the parking charges are horrific.

Not many thoughts on the impending apocalypse , just bugger on regardless im afraid , not a thing can we do about anything . Just remember if we ever get to vote again we need to take a lot more thought about the quality of those we elect .    

Plan B

I decided to not carboot today and it was a good decision , up all night with the house shuddering and stuff blowing about , one great bang at 4am got me up , still dont know what it was . So up for a cuppa and a cuddle with the cat , watched loads of canning films on YouTube .

My Kitchen Tanja  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyUE9q7Aauo

Country Life Vlog https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tq5jz7kpYAk&t=218s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tq5jz7kpYAk&t=218shttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tq5jz7kpYAk&t=218s

The dubbing on the Romanian canning is very AI but the information is accurate , the Azerbaijan granny is just relaxing as she produces industrial quantities. 

Now im watching the cat scuttle up the garden because just to add to the weirdness we have giant hailstones . I did venture to the carboot at Metheringham  , it was icy and now my eyelids keep sticking ..ho hum this ageing and falling apart is just annoying. stunning amount of purchases , 3 kilner spice jars another small kilner type jar £1.50 spent . This years car boot wants list is quite small , a few more manual kitchen bits to help with my crappy hands , more kilners of one sort or another , dont need clothes the jumble keeps providing, but need to find some bigfoot wellies because grandson doesnt like getting his motorbike boots mucky ..lol

 On the jumble front im spoilt for choice this month , subject of course to the fuel situation a lot of them clash with each other so im going to have to make management decisions, i may just go to those nearest  

Crystal Ball

 This is getting fun isnt it as the jets scream above us ?  I really have shopped like a Doomsday prepper this week , the poor little Amazon guy has a double hernia and a nervous twitch . Popped out this morning to the food pantry , usual amazing mixture of the weird and the odd , lots of posh bread sliced bagged and popped in the freezer, plus they had free bags of potato wedges so more freezer fodder , got more of the catering cartons of Bechamel sauce nobody seems to want , i made cauliflower cheese with it last week and it was gorgeous , himself was horrified. I think we are all going to have to be more innovative with our cooking as the world goes to hell in a hand basket . Popped into iceland to see what they are giving away , got a few bits from the half price freezers , god awful orange breaded chicken things that the others in the household love , a pack of fresh meat burgers for under a fiver !!! and kebab meat because it stops himself whining that he wants to go out for a takeaway ..URGH . I went a way bit feral in Lidl , just a couple of extra everything we actually use on a weekly basis and a giant pork joint because they didnt have any of the smaller size , i was very good about the 8p veg just 2 giant swedes , 2 lots of parsnips and a big bag of carrots . I had 15 pounds left out of the monthly budget so i popped in the chicken factory and the freezer is now full . Himself was horrified when it was all unloaded , but then i saw a you tube video about them running out of milk containers in south korea , so ive emptied my bank account on milk , the amazon guy  is going to love me.

Just in case im going to do a car boot at the weekend  , because the one thing ive run down to afford my grocery blitz was pet food and if my cat doesnt have what she wants i will die and be eaten .

Now this may all sound rather ridiculous , but in the event of things going a wee bit tits up , we are buggered , theres no shop other than a tiny coop 5 miles away and it covers a big area , you cant walk their safely its an A road with no paths and great big land drains either side. Its 15 miles to a supermarket and you dont know what will be there when you get there ? or if the fuel will be available . Im sure the government has bright ideas but im sure they wont do sod all for rural areas . 

Yep im going slightly  mad !!!!  

Armawhatsit

Got up with good intentions , then decided to dehydrate the singular last big green winter squash that seems to be kicking round the kitchen , trouble is the last big ones are so dried out and hard that with my crappy hands its no mean feat , usually i do them with an axe but the other day himself said try your little chainsaw , fortunately i decided to take it out to the garden . It was interesting to say the least , i will now be known as tango tits for posterity , i was dripping in bright orange flesh from head to toe, it sprayed everywhere but once you start to do these things theres no turning back , i couldnt get the chain saw apart to clean , so i took it to himself who goes of his head at how i could be so stupid . But he told me to try it !!!   apparently he was only kidding .ho hum .

Meanwhile in my urge to activate the garden , i tipped out one of my builder bag compost heaps to revitalise the raspberry patch and found a load of huge potatoes that must have grown in there last year so they were a bonus. I did need garden slaves for this job and ive another huge one to go into the veg patch so may need to beg for assistance. The arctic wind has however stopped playing outside  , i just turn blue and numb and get told off for wearing a balaclava and looking like a terrorist, planning a lot more squash and corn F1 so wont be able to gather seed , though i may still chuck a little of my rainbow corn at the other end of the garden for this year and even have a couple of little melon plants that wont go out for months  all good fun !! 

Mutterings

 I wandered off to Sleaford Food Pantry the other day , they were having a collaboration with the local food waste initiative , they had huge catering bags of spaghetti and Fusilli £3 or £5  , not of use to me, but great  if you have a family , tons of veg and fruit , which as im drying everything i can lay my hands on is great value , catering size trays of chicken tenders which the vultures devoured for their tea in fact for my allowance i could hardly lift the bag.  we go a couple of times a month , but you can go 3 times a week , there always seems to be something they have a glut of that they are trying to give away. Theres also a little rabbit warren of a shop called Wise Owl its part of the B&N franchise , the shop is so tiny that they always have a sale section and i dropped in lucky , heinz spaghetti 4 tins for £1.50 , curry beanz the same , lots of extra cheap tinned veg , i could barely carry it all ..lol  I still have £10 of this weeks grocery budget left . So im going to go and make veg powder from dried veg , keeps for years 

 The one big problem there is rurally is there being no fuel available , the garages are selling out . Not sure where this is going , but its going to be interesting 

Delivered

Sometimes i doubt my own sanity!!   I did say to the troops if theres anything you need mail order get it now before the charges go through the roof or we struggle to get stuff delivered ,  For the first time ever they have listened and the delivery's have never stopped this week. I dont ask what they consider essential but today im baffled , a huge air compressor that the fit lad from DPD struggled with and i couldnt even get through the door !!!  and just now another delivery of a set of tyres !!!  for someone who cant afford the groceries he must have found the magic money tree 😛

Prep

 I decided to do a stock take on the food front , errrr well theres a few gaps mainly on the meat front and of all the odd things, dehydrated mash not the cardboard cheapest one but decent catering mash , i dont think i will ever need too buy pasta again ..lol..at least its immortal , over the years ive changed what i stock , its now less healthy long term , but more stuff the useless ones could cook and eat if i snuffed it..lol. You have to be practical . Stuff you could eat out of the tin cold if you had to , i need to increase my plain tea and coffee because they drink that  and never tell me its running out. Ive lots of ingredients but im the only one who cooks with them ho hum well i suppose they could trade them ..lol  im running the dehydrator most days because i got some giant parsnips and carrots from the food pantry its usually later in the yeat that i do this , but i hope to be up to winter levels of dehydrated fruit and veg within a month , also picked a big bag of sprouting garlic from the food pantry that will go into the garden this week . It makes it sound very hectic but it isnt , i just panic mentally about life on a fixed income . Have to laugh himself has just spotted my granose meat substitute on the counter , im not eating that shit is the refrain . Hes been eating it for years when ive needed to spread a block of mince , you can get it cheap from Home Bargains sometimes. its near the sell by date but its another store cupboard immortal . What he doesnt know wont hurt him.

Im currently trying to drum up some veg garden labour , deafening silence  

World Wide

Im afraid im a passivist, so everything going on in the world is pretty abhorrent at the moment , none of the people involved are in the right regardless of their religion creed or whatever . Its the lack of concern for the public that is terrifying , just bomb away for the glory of oil and money . One certainty is that if they back the Israel faction into a corner they will use nukes without any hesitation .  Trump cant remember what lies hes supposed to be using from day to day . Iran has been quietly buying missiles from Temu  for years while everybody was watching them for nukes  . Ho hum ..who the hell knows where this is going. 

im doing a stocktake of supplies, odd stuff that ive run down and not replaced , country living will be in a bad way with rising fuel costs and delivery will probably be the first thing to go which hits you hard when theres no other options , himself and his brother are going off to replenish his welding gas tomorrow, I had to remind a friend about her cooker gas , its the stuff we would normally forget till Autumn that we have to get now before it vanishes , if the problems drag on till next winter we will freeze , heating oil has already gone up by a third in less than a week ...im so mental that ive even considered one of those green plastic greenhouses in the dining room for all the houseplants and me , cheap and cheerful with a candle heater and a carbon monoxide alarm ..lol 

Somebody just mentioned canning jars and lids , i got a couple more Kilner clip tops yesterday at the jumble and will order more disc lids plus garden myself into a coma despite not planning to this year . So for those who never get the urge to can or jam make , dont put your glass jars and lids into the recycling, save a box full and put them at your gate marked free they will vanish in no time.

Right im off  to go and gibber in the corner , while trying to remember stuff ive forgot  

Sleep

 Well living in the middle of two huge airbases , the last 2 weeks have been a tad noisy as well the usual fighter jets but its the cargo planes at night  that are a killer, the house vibrates and that wakes me up even with ear plugs . Just to make it more fun theyre war gaming next week . Living here for years we dont notice it like the incomers they look a tad worried when the jets are screaming above us . But hey theres a war on what can we expect ?  More things to be peeved about are the garages running out of fuel , i get it , we are very rural so people need it for work , but theres no shortage yet, it should take a few weeks for this to hit , people flogging petrol cans for ridiculous amounts on facebook are taking the piss , plus the big chain garages upping the prices already. No amount of dont panic will make folks not panic , so we shall see.  i will stock up on milk just because im at the last pack from the january delivery and a couple of other bits we are low on , but otherwise im pretty well stocked so i dont need to go anywhere we have a vehicle fueled and it can be used just for hospital and doctor visits and we will just sit here and watch the news .   .  

Mind Games

 Here i am , vanishing up my own backside trying to please everyone and pleasing nobody..lol  Anyway I got treated to a day out the other day which was good for my sanity . Spalding with my daughter , she had a hospital appointment and hadnt been there before , we went into the actual town centre , bitter winter wind but it has a ton of charity shops and the empty shops are worse than anywhere ive seen . its clean , pretty and has enough good obscure charity shops to make it worth a wander round, there was a God botherer shouting about Jesus the whole time we were wandering . I do think that allowing the Springfields retail outlet out of town has killed it . We did pop there but only visited the garden centre because they had a dead plant sale on, i bought rather heavily,  oops . Decided to pop into Boston to do the charity shops and pop to the big garden centre there sadly they are under renovation so nothing interesting for us , the charity shops however were quite good a lot of them have shut but theres still a good few and the YMCA had loads of lucky clothing  bags for at the most £2.50 they even had some large size ones  something you never see , so i snaffled a couple and was pleasantly surprised it was mainly summer stock some to keep and some to carboot. Im counting the days till the season starts  i cant cope with this level of crap everywhere and theres loads more to come from mothers yet . Legal matters are turning into a literal shit show and not knowing what the hell is going to happen is constantly preying on my mind.