Asda v Lidl

Well ive had a very boring weekend never ending vehicle problems meant i got to a single jumble sale , no car boots, nothing . gutted when the weathers been so glorious .But on my usual £1 budget i picked up these . Ive been good and chucked a load of books into the charity sack lately but I just cant leave buttons behind , they needed a home didnt they ?

So today I had to pop into Asda aka Walmart, just for the usual bread milk and something masquerading as butter . Last week we went into Lidl for a wander. Now today in Asda I noticed something odd , im rather partial to the German meat products that Lidl sells you know the weird sausage type items that you cant pronounce I get them for a treat for Mr Bah Humbug , but Asda has started selling many of the exact same pork items at about half the price of Lidl , very odd, they also sell a huge range of Polish food quite cheaply , now Boston Asda is located in little Gdansk where all the Eastern Europeans live so i've no idea if this is just certain branches or if its countrywide , theyve also stated selling a huge range of pastries freshley cooked , just like Lidl , pickles just like Lidl but all significantly cheaper . They also have a Lebanese food range , go figure? not many Lebanese in Boston .
Meanwhile i'm still waiting for Armageddon , I didnt bother with the washing this weekend just in case ,
anyone know what the next predicted date is ? Mr Bah Humbug just informed me we have 2 months of utter blackness to look forward to according to NASA, amazing what helpful facts you get sent on Facebook isnt it ?

Chores Getting You Down ?

Once upon a time , when I gained my freedom from my husband after 22 years , it was just me and the kids in an very empty house we had rented , we had the internet within 7 days but were still sleeping on the floor in sleeping bags for months , had to get my priorities right after all..lol
I had no pots so we just ate off paper plates and binned them , just because I could , no TV for 2 years ...lol  we had a YMCA sofa thats still in my front room that took 3 months to save up for , everything had to come from boot sales , i had a really poor paying job on permanent nights , but I was FREE , free to make my own decisions for the first time in my life .
I had come for a strict family where I was the only teen rebel , they prayed a lot for me . By todays standards they would be classed as physically and mentally abusive but back in the 70s they were just a little over the top . I can remember being taken to the doctors by my mother and him looking me up and down and saying " Well I Can tell you what the problem is now, she will be one of those strange pipe smoking tartan slipper wearing females , You had better put her into care " So I was Diagnosed as a lesbian at 13 by the medical profession . Got that very wrong didnt he ...lol  But my mother being my mother promptly put me in care and left my father while he was working abroad .
My dad was summoned back from the far east after the police caught me, having run away from care and set up home in Blackpool with a fair lad as all teenage lesbians do.
Bless him , my dad was rather clueless , hed been in the army then had worked abroad for years , now he was saddled with a 13 year old wild child , so he decided to move back to his family in Lincolnshire. I loved my dad dearly but his family were strict and very christian , a womens place was in the home you didnt work outside the home all you did was pod out endless children and clean house .
When I was 18 I was taken to the door of a flat and told this is where you will live now , I was far to embarrassing for them all to cope with .
Now you may be wandering where this is leading , after 2 years on my own after my marriage broke up  I met Mr Bah Humbug in an internet chatroom for those with kids that were outside the norm , as a one finger typist it was hard work to hold a conversation with him , he uses 2 fingers now . On the spur of the moment I went to meet him and that was it we just hit it off . But the moment I knew he was the one was when we went to his mothers and she had a washing yurt , and piles of craft magazines everywhere and a sink of dirty pots .
He doesnt bat an eyelid when im working strange hours and the house turns into house of sloth , he never moans when the kitchen table has been taken over for craft purposes for 3 days , he just doesnt notice mess its great , so longs as theres food and he has socks in his drawer hes happy . So I have my freedom but I get a bloke as well its great!!

Just One of Those Days

I thought i'd get a good days domestic servitude in today after the monsoon yesterday . Didnt sleep very well last night , daughter was out and she may be a 23 but I still worry ,so i was up 5 times to see if her car was here , what I didnt know was she'd parked behind the hedge ...doh

Started sticking windfalls through the juice extractor , only to realise i'd forgot to put a jug under the spout and it has gone down the gap between the worktop and the cooker and i cant move the cooker on my own ..grrrrrrr

Stuck yet more windfalls on to make rhubarb and apple jam , went out to hang washing , came back and it was burnt solid to the pan ..aaarrggghhh

Then thought i would start on the never ending yard chores , wood treating the swing bench and fence panels , this is where i miss Mr Bah Humbug the most , yard chores , most are just to heavy for me to manage without help and getting help from any of them is an impossibility .

Went to fetch washing in and got stung by something on my neck , now full of Piriton but feel like crap.

On almost a plus note found 1970s mens Astaka of London fake fur car coat at the car boot for a whole £3 , washed it in the washer it survived but the washer has eaten a button so thats another chore , dismantle the drain on the washer . It hasnt shrunk, so I will be warm this winter and the whole family will shake their heads and die of embarrassment .
Also found a couple of tiny homemade vintage dresses , bought for the fabric 10p and 25p

Jumble Sale Season

I love this time of year before the Xmas Fairs start it is Jumble Sale Season , had a trip out to Minting , a pretty little speck on the map with a very civilized Jumble Sale this afternoon , managed to fit out most of my winter wardrobe needs for a £1 the bag full , fat bird items are quite hard to find , we tend to wear clothes till they fall to bits due to the price , even a still tagged pair of pyjama bottoms . And for Mr Bah humbug a Ben sherman that he couldnt fit his space hopper belly into ...ho hum

Of course some flowery fabric bits crept in to the bag , along with a proper vintage pinny , in big bird size , something ive never found before , so thats a keeper .

 Next week is Jumble sale Heaven .
 10am Birchwood Scout Hut Cats in Crisis
  11am Nettleham Scout Hut
 The secret Jumble Sale , Washingborough Village Hall Bowls Club 1.30 pm.
Village wide yard sale at Eagle

I may have to sell a kidney and  travel between dimensions to attend them all , plus im not going to work no matter what they offer me . I think I have a problem , theres very few items on this years wish list that i havent found so far , just a decent microwave ,a new to me sofa and a stair carpet...lol dont think i will get any of those from the jumble

Hull and Back

I know ive not been around much this last couple of weeks but I got lumbered with a load of holiday cover and things as they are , I took it . So i've had days in the traffic hell that is Grantham , nothing nice to photograph , if there is you cant park near it , didnt look to be a lot in the way of thrift shops either . So that was a very ho hum day out .

But then i got to go to Hull , havent been for about 5 years , still love it , great to drive round with its little dual carriageways in the burbs with the excellent u-turn breaks in the middle .
 So lets talk about Hull . From the pictures you would think i didnt rate it , but i always have , huge chunks were bombed flat during the war its a city full of the working class that no longer has jobs that pay more than minimum wage , when the docks went it sank into the pits . But it always manages to drag itself back up somehow . Now it has great shopping , and its going to be City of Culture , but once you leave the town center its still itself , i noticed that among the  gorgeous rundown huge terraced houses that were turned into multiple occupancy years ago there are lots of hipster palaces creeping in , they know how to exploit the grants systems for renovation and the big terraces are gaining a new life , why have a 5 bedroomed newbuild on an identikit estate when you can for the same price get a huge Victorian Terrace with character .
As usual theyre knocking swathes of old back to back terraces down and replacing them with new build social housing , but why do they have to make them so ghastly? Is it a punishment for being poor?

 Hull was once a very rich city back in the 60s you used to come across on the ferry from New Holland and it was like going to London for us . but whats killed it is the lack of parking everywhere , it always had great public transport so people didnt bother with cars , but they do know so the side streets can be hard going .
So what can you say. Hull may be a flashy old tart past her best but shes trying

Dear Jeremy

Well what a surprise , this is a bored 50 something house elf and carer  actually looking at politics and giving a damn for the first time in years .
Now the Tom & Jerry show have arrived , for those of you overseas I will explain , in the UK we had 2 main parties for years , but somehow they all became liars cheats and PR  company driven idiots, who we all loathed , they became one bland mass .  So at the last election somehow the unexpected happened, the Conservatives ended up forming a majority government due somewhat to a particularly dire Labour Party election campaign and UKIP being voted for by the Daily Mail readers  aka the likes of my mother .
Post election the Labour party decided to hack each other apart and blame everybody else but themselves for their failings , they just didnt grasp that we didnt want beige politics . Now the Labour Party have elected Jeremy Corbyn as leader , hes been lurking around parliament for donkeys years , putting the boot in here and there and annoying the beige element .
So here my review of him..lol
 Hes been an excellent MP for his constituency in London but until no one had considered him as a leader material
He really does care , a little to the point of the ridiculous as only a hippy socialist can , not a bad thing
Hes been married lots and his kids adore him and  obviously find him a huge embarrassment , always a sign that hes been a good dad .
Hes a vegetarian , sandal wearer  .
 He has no dress sense whatsoever , please let it stay that way , just make it clear that he doesnt employ a stylist and dresses himself in a morning .
As a party they need to beat out of him any tendency to call people comrade to their faces , we can handle Marxism .but we like it with a beige tinge chuck .
Then as his deputy hes got Tom Watson, well I admit to a weakness for chubby furry blokes , but this guy should be on the stage at Live from The Apollo , as a party for godsakes let him be funny , he will provide a welcome relief from the miserable situation this country is in . Hes as hard as nails so let him be .
The point is we have an excellent double act here , they can go far , the Labour Party can rebuild itself , if it goes back to being about the public and theyre needs
We live in interesting times folks , but none of us want to go back to the days of the miners strikes , its still not a good memory for many of us

Kustom Kulture 2015

A  thoroughly enjoyable weekend , never have I been more pleased than when i snuggled under my 70s charity shop blanket , it was bleak freezing and windy and a cripple and an old fat bird had a great time trying to put up a large tent in the wind..lol  But we managed , im not sure it was one of his better ideas as were like a pair of cripples now .

The event however was amazing , brilliant music , fantastic stalls , I shant ask where the Psycho Juice lads got that crying boy picture from.  Hicksville Bombers headlined Saturday , daughter and grandson had come up for the day he was in love with Sharna Mae and the Mayhems and his attempts at jiving were great to see .

Meanwhile Im so glad im skint , the man who has conceived a useful purpose for grey squirrels was plying his wares  https://instagram.com/thetaxidermist/  modern taxidermy at its best , im sorry but they just appeal to my love of Victoriana and my love of different .

The cars were as ever amazing , it was just a completely pleasurable occasion , well organised , loads of variety , though Mr Bah Humbug was a little disappointed that he was to short to see the Gilded Merkin Burlesque Dancers . We also noticed a trend for balding blokes of a certain age wearing top hats , go figure? anythings better than baseball hats . There were tons of rockabilly dressed men and women , but also a huge variety of other genres , this seems to be the event for the misfits of every other individual with style .

We shant even go into a six year old boys fascination with body art and tattooing , but he made his mum stay till the final parade .

More War Graves

Went to work yesterday with Mr Bah Humbug in tow , he was having a "its only a flesh wound" kind of day , thats a challenge to find the quote for those into their movies .
So to be kind to him we didnt get much further than Lincoln, we ended up having a picnic outside Scampton Church , this has the biggest war graves cemetary in the area, in fact its still in use today . Its a tiny beautiful country church but as with all church yards it has its differences , at first glance I wondered why there were a couple of commercial wheelie bins parked by the front door , but on closer inspection they turned out to be tombs

Couldnt resist the pews dumped round the back , the timber has weathered wonderfully , havent a clue why they never gave it away or used it .

There are a large collection of war graves to the side of the church the WWII ones seem to be mainly Canadian with a smattering of New Zealand not many are  older than 21 . Theres also the crew of a German Bomber that crashed in the road outside the church . They are still adding to the graves , there are many that are from obscure wars around the world

In the current times when many of us realise that a major war is brewing in the arab nations and the refugees are drowning in a sea of reporters ,it doesnt matter that we can sit at home and watch these terrible things from the safety of our living rooms it does effect us all and we have a duty to do something for the people who are fleeing. These are people not fleeing for economic gain , they are parents and grandparents fleeing to safety from a war they didnt create , once things stabilise, the vast majority will return to their Homelands and rebuild their country , the trouble is this is going to drag on  for years , You cant reason with fanatics and its pointless pretending theres a negotiation ending to the story of Syria ,

 How many of our young of every nationality will end up with a simple white headstone ?

£1 What can you get

So yesterday Mr Bah Humbug decided to come to work in Grimsby with me yesterday , well I actually asked him to because I can take advantage of his blue badge parking , after all there must be some advantages to living with a cripple .
We decided to splurge on groceries while we were there, so off to the Value for Money Stores in cleethorpes , they had these cheese and spinach tortellinis for 4 for a £1 , I did get a huge bag full , theyre a good store cupboard staple for the winter , loads of mackeral in mustard sauce, 39p each theyre usually around £1.20 Mr Bah Humbug likes these . Lots of rice , posh make arboria 4 for a £1 . In fact 8 bags later I was starting to feel guilty .

They still have a barrel grocers at Cleethorpes , so I stocked up on rolled oats for winter , and a huge bag of dried soup mix , they even have loads of spices , that came in at 50p for 100g .
Then on to Freeman Street Market , for a freezer full of meat , they still do bags of bones for stock at 25p for a carrier full , oops sorry they have to label them dog bones these days . we arent huge meat eaters , but they like the burgers and sausages , plus they do cooking bacon 800g for 99p .
The pie man was raided for steak and kidney puds 6 for a £1 and minced beef and onion pies 5 for a £1 .
But the best £1 of the day had to be this 70s blanket much brighter than the photograph and out drying ready for the weekend away . Rock Foundation , still the best charity shop on Grimsby high street .

If you wondering why we are suddenly rich , by our standards anyway weve risked some of the rent money we have been saving , it seems that after much arguing , eviction proceedings starting etc etc in 10 days theyre actually going to pay us housing benefit , our first proper scrounger benefit , cant you tell how proud I am? My mother will be overjoyed , we are now officially the family disgrace