Nearly Time

 Maybe i should panic?  ive got a full house this year , im cooking xmas day and ive got a buffet to do for Boxing Day ..lol  havent been this busy for years , ive decided the buffet will be a meatfest its just easy that way lots of wraps and make your own mixed salads and pickles along with various nibbles from Heron that were cheap and cheerful and just require chucking in the oven , ive been buying bits since September so its proved not as expensive as ive feared on the current strict budget .i will do a mountain of my infamous Bhajis for the boys . I did venture to the chicken factory last week and they had huge family sized chickens for £5 but i have no freezer space so bought a load of cheap M&S products of a chicken nature that are keeping us busy this week. All the veg is prepared and in the freezer ive just mash and roasties to do on the day and xmas eve i will churn out loads of yorkshire puddings . We are auditioning a new trainee daughter in law with attached teenager this year , dread to think what they will make of our joke bad taste prezzies and lack of festive bullshit and himself shouting all the time  but ho hum at least theres no weird diet requirements this time . Son does say he plans to marry her , we shall see

ive had my third win on the competition front and for a change its one just for me ive won a huge selection of House plants, pots and plant paraphenalia . got the mailing invoice today and im horrified at the cost .

Scary

 Went to Asda today , himself had a dentist appointment and it was the nearest supermarket , it was crowded but bearable , packed with pensioner couples arguing like hell ..lol.. one old bloke was about to die for saying he didnt like the  colour of the wrapping paper the missus was buying , guess he should have waited in the car like he does all the rest of the year , There was dozens of bewildered blokes wandering round with shopping lists obviously told to pick stuff up on the way home then you tripped over them shouting down their phones at their other half because they couldnt find stuff or it wasnt in stock and they darent make any descision for themselves . I did laugh one builder with a white van full of his stuff literally tipped his whole trolley in on top of everything then just launched his empty trolley across the carpark . I do think the shops are making a bit of a heroic effort this year this is the first time ive seen the shelves packed in there all year and they even had all the checkouts manned , mind you for the prices they are charging they need to be . Ended up having to pop into Lidl for the last 2 items on my xmas shopping list , streaky  bacon and cranberry sauce . who knew they would be hard to find ?

Anyway please remember its now pensioners driving on busy roads time of year , so please take granny shopping before she leaves a trail of devastation in her wake . Also the foodbank reminder, no chocolate oranges or selection boxes they are over run with them this time of year , dried milk is always a good one and i did see a lady loading a donation bin up with small boxed xmas cakes but you can eat those anytime .

Non Retail Therapy

 The problem with me having a small pile of money pre xmas is i will spend it not so much on xmas , but on the last jumble sale of the year a whopping £2 worth of pleasure , A ring bound Grand Canyon cookbook , another big kilner cliptop, a gorgeous turquoise Pyrex divided dish and a little rexard doll from the 70s . But then you have to realise its the pre xmas auction season and box lots are going for next to nothing..lol ..we had a trip out to Grantham to pick up the other day only to find my 2 boxes of weird and wonderful had mutated into five boxes and an Antler wicker picnic basket ..lol ..i did ask and the man said its all got to be cleared and you always buy crap?  it was free so what the hell . I managed to fill my wheely bin with a whole box of fake Tupperwear  himself filched a few for his fishing and i kept a huge cake carrier and the worlds biggest Pizza plate for the xmas buffet , the picnic hamper was filled with table lamp bases , they will be stripped for the wire and cable for updating lamps i like . I really did actually buy a box of dolls and cuddly toys , the dolls are worth a bit and can go to ebay after xmas, the teddies can go in the free box over xmas . There were tons of brand new RAF ties and black ties and tea towels, towels and tablecloths , so useful things and finally a big box of craft stuff with lots of part finished tapestries and my reason for buying it a huge file of vintage knitting patterns from the 30s , im still rooting my way through it all . Ive another auction to pick up from tomorrow and the last sale of the year is on Thursday .  I still have change from my £10 pocket money to spend ..lol 

Online auctions can be a cheap and cheerful bit of fun its not all antiques and spending hundreds of pounds .  4 china dolls have already left the building for £20  to a lady who goths them 

Wanders In

 Its the funny season yet again , tapping my foot waiting for xmas to be over ..lol but in the real world we have had to find nearly 5k for the van repairs so we are having a very skint winter and im trying to sell the contents of the dining room online, such is life . 

So in a fit of misery i bought a raffle ticket for a whole £1 and won a huge grocery hamper , not a xmas hamper but real everyday food and it was huge , far bigger than shown and it was from Tesco delivered the day after my skint monthly shop , so we cant move for food , im frantically dehydrating loads of veg because ive no freezer room , theres a stack of ready meals in there , just hundreds of pounds of real food , you open any cupboard and it all falls on you , himself has discovered he doesnt like blueberries and theres a limit to how many kiwi fruit he can demolish , guess im going to be dehydrating fruit mix next , plus theres several bags of frozen fruit , theres rice, pasta and so much more packs of heinz soup , tomatoes , spagetti beans etc etc , theres not a single thing that we wont use  . This will keep me going well into next year , so we celebrated by spending every penny we had on heating oil , the luxury of heating might even cheer me up a bit 

Shop Shop

 Well i got up this morning to 240 Black Friday emails it wasnt to hard to delete the whole lot , which of course means im a huge failure for not buying bugger all today . Not so much lack of funds more lack of interest . Turkey has entered the freezer all the veg is in there , plus loads of crap for the boxing day buffet , just need to source a huge bag of decent chicken nuggets for the plebs and big kids . Cheese can wait till the last minute , everything else i can bake and make . So  im not worried about the farmers stating a blockade , cyber attacks over xmas , power outages, you can barbecue a turkey if you have to !!  identity theft , well theyd be in for a nasty shock you aint got nothing what are they going to steal ?  pension theft ha ha ha .

ive a project for today , compressing a huge auction lot of craft stuff i bought for the price of a decent ball of wool , the huge box of wool i will add to my hoard and it gets used eventually , theres a load of full vintage sewing baskets to go through , yet more knitting patterns , tons of embroidery silks a couple of half done embroiderys  a jacobean cushion front and a tablecloth . Mountains of tatting thread and books , so many bags of knitting needles , embroidery transfers and i dont think i will ever need to buy sewing needles ever again , it should keep me busy for ages as i sit here like an episode of hoarders 

Tad Warm

 Well its officially winter , everything looked very Christmas clean this morning when i opened the curtains . Picked the last of the outside tomatoes in the snow the other day , towels are frozen on the line , just off to put on my wellies and hang a few more out . This year ive been lucky the huge sycamore has dropped its leaves on my side of the fence it depends on the wind direction , so ive been clearing up four or five barrow loads every morning so it doesnt kill the grass this means ive popped four foot piles in the veg garden and covered them with ground cover sheets ...if that along with copius amounts of well rotted chicken manure doesnt help the washed out garden come spring who knows ?

The farmers chose the best time to stage a demonstration , when theres nothing much doing on the farms at the moment other than cabbage and leek harvesting , which hoards of Eastern Europeans do in all weathers , then the supermarkets will up the prices and their profits and the actual farmers will be held up as the villains . We live in Dyson land he owns most of the land around here , well his family trust does , he doesnt pay taxes here only in Singapore , nor will he be affected by the death duties regs . He grows huge amounts of government sponsored bio fuel, a contract from his buddies the Torys. The sad truth is that farming is pretty much finished on a small scale here they need to cover the whole country over with solar panels and wind farms just to try and keep the lights on and the EVs running . The most disgusting thing is that King Charlie got that extra 45 billion in his greasy pocket from leasing his property aka the sea bed for wind farms . 

Meanwhile all the crap thats going on is keeping everybodys mind off World War 3 , nothing to worry about there is there? 

Well Hard

Well he thinks he is...lol  Himself demanded a decent pot noodle the other day he knew i would have some hidden somewhere, ive been leaving an assortment of vile and out of date ones on the worktop knowing he cant bend and get into the bottom cupboards , we were down to the last 3 scabby rejects  so i made them and offered them to the birds who are turning their noses up as well ..lol... himself  pottered off with his decent pot noodle chuntering about how ive changed since we got married so hes now rationed to 1 a week .

Are we already for the starvation that the farmers blockades are going to cause ?  thought so , indifferent would be the full scope of my emotions on that one . Then the Labour Numpty appeared on national TV saying we dont need farmers and the government will smash the farmers like Maggie Thatcher did the miners , I think it was a bit obvious that he never lived through that bit of history and had learnt it in his public schools economics class. Bet they didnt teach him that hungry people are angry people and a government can fall with a very loud bang if they annoy everyone enough . 

Then there was the dispatches documentary on the Windsors , cant say there were any suprises there bunch of theiving parasites was always my view . They merely scratched the surface and the Royals have just ignored it . They could make a whole series on other stuff they profit from but ho hum 

Royal Wedding

 What a week lol we got married last Monday , yes i know i should run for the hills , find my inner self etc etc but at my age and after 20 years of his shoutiness and general daftness im used to him .  No frills no fuss he got married in his camo shorts and a Lego tshirt and i raked a 70s burgandy velvet frock out of the back of the wardrobe and my DMs , we took a grown up kid each, one of who knew nothing about it till we got there. Due to his dire walking abilities he was on his crutches and stumbling allover, so we ended up getting married in the Coroners office which was the nearest available room ..lol it appealed to my inner goth . 

What occasioned this event , well i think he finally agreed when he found they were going to charge him £400 more for his car insurance because we wernt married , or it could have been the threats from our ever loving landlords the Local Council , recently theyve been reminding me that i and son are homeless in 6 weeks if he goes into care or dies at every turn . Or the not being able to deal with his medical matters because im not his next of kin AARRRGGHHHH .

So its a marriage of convenience with added Chinese food . And we now have the magic bit of paper that will shut them all up 

Jumblie

 So ive been to at one of the posh villages this morning to a jumble sale and spent my whole budget for the month lol... these sort of jumbles are few and far between and when they opened the doors i was nearly barged to the ground in the rush by a gaggle of resellers determined to get what they wanted , i could have come home with so much more  if i had shot a few of them. But im happy with my haul and i noticed the couple of  loud resellers were getting really mouthy about some of the prices. Three trips to their laden car later, they were shooting off to another sale . so obviously the prices cant have been that bad . At that point as they drove away the old bloke running it shouted everythings now half price and we will take offers too now theyve gone. Had to laugh , but i have come away with a big bag of books lots of winter reading to be going on with , a 1970s Mrs Beaton and a few 50s kids books . a cardigan and a scarf  by some posh make and i have managed to buy two big lush red vintage rugs you know the kind they dont sell on Wayfair but they do sell in antique auctions . Struggled to get them to the car and can now barely move , but i was determined , ive wanted some for years and could never afford them they will spend a week wrapped in plastic with tons of Permethrin powder ,apparently they came from the manor house !! 

Blessed

 So another fun packed skint week on the horizon ..lol  the van has entered the garage and we await the verdict on how much damage it has done . Himself is still on his extreme economy drive , you know the one where we cant go out and hes no money for the groceries but the delivery vans keep arriving for him . Not that we needed anything im well stocked up, in the slow cooker i have a really weird version of chicken stew , son donated some vile extra spicy chicken portions and i defrosted them peeled most of the god awful orange coating off chopped them and added to a bag of stock from a garlic chicken , three years out of date white tinned kidney beans and all the dregs of last years dried veg , plus three aged sticks of celery from the fridge it smells gorgeous ..time will tell 

The slow cooker died last week i spotted a big crack in it , son had some amazon vouchers saved up, so i now have a blue one because they were £10 cheaper . I still had the huge slow cooker but thats for big chickens and joints , not that ive used it lately . the everyday sized one does us for 2 nights of stew of some description . As kids we both grew up on mystery meat stew and big wedges of bread and butter or dumplings . I sometimes think that its yet another out of fashion food kids miss out on .Sometimes you just have to feel blessed by what you have , with good memories and bad times in the background 

£30 and Counting

 So another week of the £30 food budget and off to the social supermarket , 3 red cabbages ,2 large bags of string beans , bag of mushrooms and a mountain of sprouts ,4 huge cooking apples , celery  , burger cheese slices one frozen curry , tin of potatoes tin of irish stew tin of soup and a pack of tiger buns didnt go anywhere else so saved the money till i picked himself up from hospital after a minor bit of repair and popped into little Tesco on the way back .  a big bag of 11p giant oranges, a load of bakery, yellow stickers bananas 25p  huge bag full .

Today has been prep day So ive microwave blanched all the beans and sprouts , just loaded the big slow cooker with redcabbage and apple for xmas and beyond , more apples from the garden for the dehydrator .

Best find of the week i decided to repot my scabby dead looking ginger plant to find 2 huge roots , so ive loads of fresh ginger , repotted two little nuggets and have bought the planter in for the winter funny what you can grow from a 10p Tesco dried up nugget of ginger .

My big question is why cant the food pantry get rid of a lot of the veg they are given?  I seem to be getting mountains of it . Im more than grateful the price of a cabbage in the Coop can be £2.50 , in fact i cant afford any of their fruit or veg its out of my price range. This isnt a food bank its a community waste initiative . i know energy prices are stopping a lot of people cooking but i use the slow cooker and microwave for practically everything . The mountains of exotic bread i sort of understand most people wont have a clue what to do with it if its stale , but why charge such a high price instore for it when theyre giving mountains away ?  Must admit on the veg front theres a couple of things id run screaming from the building about Advocados and Aubergines my pet hates ..lol

Bad Habits

 So off to the cat jumble i went , managed to buy a weird handbag bright yellow and furry , couple of books and it was fill a bag for £3 on the clothing front . so it had to be done . out of a bag full two items fitted such is life and if i can find a decent clothes rail by spring i may carboot my huge pile of dont fit which will have amassed by then .im a really odd shape and size so if i had to buy from shops or online it costs me an arm and a leg because it mostly doesnt fit , so ive given up on them and just buy a mountain of might fit from the jumble and sometimes get lucky.  It was the last carboot of the season so i dragged myself out of a nice warm bed and toddled off to Metheringham there was a good few stalls and plenty of buyers but it was really baltic and the frost light was on in the car , bag of veg, a couple of giant Kilners and 3 balls of wool , how will i cope till the Spring..lol  On the busy front im drying endless apple chips made pear jam that im told is to sweet ??  last of the pears used but still mountains of small apples. Highlight of life in a small village seems to be the antics of Mavis the escapoligist sheep , just the one sheep who because i get up early i seem to be bumping into an awful lot while walking the cats first thing it came with us the other day the cats looked suitably disgusted 

Economy Driven

 The repairs to our van are going to cost over £2000+ so at the moment the whole of our income has to be saved to pay it we are nearly there, we have barely spent a penny for 2 months and i was given a £30 budget for this month...lol ..i like a challenge . Anyway it was off to the Sleaford Community Pantry this morning thats a whole £7 for whatever this weeks list is , now i usually walk round and have a good look then sort of write a menu in my head with whats on offer, this week i got a big frozen pizza for himself and a big tub of cottage cheese for me , 5 shelf items , so a tin of potatoes and a tin of carrots , a tin of Fareshare soup bag of oats and some cheese nibbles ,  veg items so a bag of carrots , bag of tomatoes small cabbage , cress and large cucumber , freebies were all manner of spices so i got a box of some kind of indian chicken seasoning , then the lovely lady says its compulsory to take at least 4 lots of bread even if its just to feed your chickens , it seems they had a bread problem lol they had received an unexpected delivery of huge amounts of posh bread as the lady called it , nobody really wants it but to me this is a bonus i came away with 4 small sourdough loaves all have been sliced and garlic buttered and popped in the freezer , that will make a whole winter of soup bread , huge bag of different bread buns all weird and wonderful ive sliced and tomato pureed them for whatever pizza bits i may have, into the freezer again. Bread and butter pudding my favourite , done a huge one with dried egg , nobody will know if i dont tell them , i will portion some into the freezer . Now ive just got to make our favourite coleslaw with mayo and mango chutney . Pop into iceland to see if theres anything with a yellow reduced sticker got two big bags of some obscure fish fingers for £1.75 each . still had nearly £10 left so to the Moy Park chicken factory on the way home . £2 fresh chickens with todays date , southern fried chicken bits for himself x2 , 4 big kievs and a chicken crown for sunday  dont think i did bad out of £30 plus my endless prepper pantry just adds together all the obscure bits . Only thing im getting low on is milk but ive started to cheat and rinse out the cartons and refill with powdered , himself wont touch powdered milk but he never realises that ive done this for years when we are hard up 

Stocking Up

 So its that time of year , stock the pantry for winter , ive always got a pretty full pantry, but during the winter we dont get out much ..lol  crutches dont do well on ice so himself is pretty much grounded once that starts . 5 miles to find a god awful cheap coop bread loaf , a butchers we cant afford and a community market once a month for gold plated veg . But we are used to it, so its just stock up well this time of year and hope for the best . These days its cook as much in the slow cooker as possible and use the microwave for most other things . I dont batch cook because himself wont eat stuff thats been warmed up , however he will eat a crap ready meal with the nutritional value of hamster cage droppings. but give him soup or stew out of the freezer and he turns up his nose. Men are just weird. On a plus front i popped in M&S at just the right time the other day and filled a big drawer in the freezer with heavily discounted decent ready meals , they also have their soups on offer at 62p which makes them 2p dearer than the Tesco own brand ones so ive stocked him a bagful of them . Still struggling on the veg front most of it is unaffordable though im hoping to get to the Community larder this week , ive tons of apples and pears still so im still dehydrating them and canning them Theres little leeks in the garden and thats pretty much it , desolate windy weed patch sums it up this year . Dried stuff wise i found a decent offer on amazon for red lentils and mung beans so i ordered a box full , amazon is a weird mix of tread carefully and decent offers that even with the monthly fee can work out really good .  Im a fan of Maggi instant catering mash that you can get in big sacks but its now got very expensive its much the same as Idahoan and lasts all winter . I ordered Sun mash this time its powder rather than flake very bland and hard to mix but hey it was on offer and adding a bit of flavouring never killed anyone . Im missing having squash but not having seen any around the boot sales i would imagine nobody has many this year , i will wait for the day after Haloween for the cheap pumpkins..lol i noticed a single golf ball sized one has set on down the garden im not holding my breath , the Tomatoes having yielded not a thing have now decided to go mental and ive  a windowsill full of green ones ...Its been a funny old year garden wise and im finding that its that time of year when i get really fed up and keep just staring out the window when i should be full of life and getting on with things . Winter is coming and i bleedin hate it , hes already moaning he wants the heating on and its to early yet...lol

Rained Off

 Well i hope this helps my final bid to get the ruddy potatoes out of the ground , so what do you do when rain has reached the level of monsoon ? Of course you go outside and pick apples...lol . So its been apple sauce day today , i dont use sugar i just peel and chop with the posh apple peeling tool , glad i paid a whole £2 for it in the Spring at the car boot. Then boil them with minimal water so theyre at the mush with chunks stage , fill loads of old jam jars then boil for half an hour in the big jam pan , ive sat here counting the jars popping shut and it sounds like 100% sucess , if your tight like me you sometimes get the odd jar doesnt seal but im not wasting money for new lids this year , every penny needs to be saved for the van repairs . I did go to the carboot but that was to drop off a batch of ghastly china modern dolls , to someone who revamps them into Haloween creatures , she pays me well for them and i spent a whole 20p on a couple of hand towels because all the kitchen ones are missing . No idea what oily handed cretin that was!! 

So lets talk the world , im suffering from ostrich syndrome at the moment , you know dont mention the war , Armegeddon , plague etc etc etc , just ignore the news cos theres never anything good in it . Dont mention politics same shits different coloured ties.  We live in terrible times , where our opinions count for nothing, so i guess i will just stick my head in the sand and bugger on with life  

R Soles

 We did a second car boot sale yesterday , we had had heavy rain last night so it was very misty and gloomy daughter and her friend set up next to me . We had some big tarps that himself had chucked in the garden once he had used them once , whats new . Anyway i just flung everything on the tarp and left anything that the damp could damage in bags and boxes sold loads of stuff i wanted rid of for a quid or two but what really peeved me was early on a bloke who im well aware has a music shop come and offered me £1 each for some vinyl i  offered him them at £5 each and he threw them down and stomped off muttering . Now i was well aware that online a couple of the LPs sell online for over £30 each and they were immaculate . Later on i toddled to the loo and left the girls in charge came back and the crafty arsehole had offered them £3 for the whole pile and they took it . Now am i annoyed ..very..but i will share the story around and make shore that everyone at the boot sale is well aware of him , crafty arsehole hope he doesnt get many bargains now  

Whats Going On

 Today the dehydrator is hosting a fridge pity party , cucumber ends , last of a punnet of cherry tomatoes half an onion , celery trimmings and a sad tiny red cabbage , ground down this will make veg powder , great as stock powder or a couple of big spoons in a pan of mash . Still struggling with motivation on the apple front ..lol. they are everywhere.

Managed to do myself a bit of an injury while chopping down branches , twisted my back and couldnt move for a couple of days and then dropped a big branch on sons head so thats a work in progress at the moment .

We have now been a year of the builders over the road , they have built mcmansions instead of the eco homes on the original plans , ghastly things twice the size of the original plans , theyve been reported umpteen times for the huge bonfires they built next to the old farm buildings the idea being to smoke out the bats living in there , they have suceeded and are now demolishing the building and squeezing in another house , the fires are now being built against a giant sycamore with a preservation order on , doutless it will die and they can squeeze another property on there, what was originally to be just 4 eco homes has turned into a housing estate . In the world of planning these days once the original plans are granted they go back after 6 months and get granted whatever they want to change.  Dread to think who will move in to these monstrosities , 4 bedrooms with two retiree occupants is the norm . Why they cant put a bedroom tax on private properties I dont know  

Being Prepared

 Woke up at 4am for a change and got watching a few of The American preppers on You Tube while i added yet more granny squares to my mountain . Good grief half of them have gone biblically batty, quoting the bible , Revelations seems to be a favourite or theyre all about to be raptured , which i always think sounds a bit like the aliens coming to harvest theyre food crop . What is  going on ? are they putting something in the food? 

Meanwhile im sat here with the jets screaming overhead because its Cobra Warrior the airforces annual war games season , we have Italians Americans Canadians Polish all spotted in the Coop looking baffled , theres others here as well so the plane spotters are going mental . Being between two of the major bases its a bit like living on the side of a motorway during this exercise . Not sure what night shifts are on this week but its dig the ear plugs out time .

Managed to buy 3 books and a tshirt for son from the jumble , the carboot however fielded a load of plastic coated metal garden stakes for a bean row , the bloke had only used them this year and his beans much like mine yielded bugger all so hes given it up as a bad job , so i snaffled them and proceeded to javelin everybody as i wandered round with them , still looking at raised bed ideas I dont think im going to get any better at digging my concrete ground , all i know is that it has to be cheap..lol 

Winter Checklist

 So its the time of the year when i start to check off the stuff i need to get done for the winter , apart from the usual 10 tons of garden jobs that im not hurrying with due to disalusionment . The never ending saga of the jam jar lids that i finally have the right sort of , still havent figured out why all the bleedin suppliers cant put on , these will fit  a Lidl pickle jar or these fit a standard jam jar along with the size and the number of lugs . I have a huge box of jars seals lids etc etc that are unused but i figure they will be ideal if the freezer dies or we have a big power outage , himself doesnt like me canning meat based stuff but i know how to do it .  we cant afford a generator or solar big enough to power a large freezer .Still have to source the Camping Gaz cylinder that i emptied , nobody locally supplies it anymore so im waiting till im in town to go on a hunt . ive a mountain of apples to tackle but i could do with a few more cookers to make the apple sauce and pie filling a bit more tart  . Pears sit happily on the tree yet before i start making endless pear chips which i could happily eat all winter. Popped into the chicken factory shop today they were practically forcing big tubs of chicken drumsticks on you at 75p a tub so i got a load that ive bagged and split for chicken soup and stew for the winter . Got a big bag of veg from the Community larder that will be mainly dehydrated , they were also forcing carrier bags of broad beans on you which is no hardship they will be podded and blanched into the freezer they will go . Im missing the squash that usually sits on top of the kitchen units , nobody seems to have any so im not the only one had a massive fail this garden year . Noticed how well plants sell these days at the car boot so ive been frantically taking cuttings and splittings galore .

Jumble sale season is upon us now, the little Cat Charity has one tomorrow  so i will see what i can find just to annoy himself...lol

Meanwhile

 In the meantime ive not done a stroke of gardening , think ive lost the will to even venture into the depths . Best ive managed is popping a few mini daffodils in the planters round the door ive got a big tub where ive thinned out the ones in the back yard planters, how a dozen daffs have turned into a couple of hundred never ceases to amaze me. 

Himself has been a tad mentally challenged he blew up his new van on the way to Mablethorpe and we had to pay to have it recovered because Mr I know what im doing didnt bother to tick the recovery box on his insurance !!!  i havent said a word . The fact he was 3 days over the warranty about finished him its going to cost thousands for a new engine if it cant be repaired . Ho hum we will be skint till next year and there wont be any heating oil so he had better get used to it being cold . I have enough food and pet supplies to last 6 months so we will be fine . Im still off to the Jumbles no matter what he says ...lol 

On a plus note my cousin  rang me up whinging that mother had a black eye and she was being abused yet again trouble is theyd sent me the video already as she walked smack into her toilet door, he insisted that the doctor see her straight away , poor little love was there to see someone else so obliged , mother decided to attack her , nothing new but it rattled the poor girl .  As he said ..God shes fast, not sure if he meant mother or the doctor running for her life  

The Little Things

 Its been a busy sort of day , lots of online sorting out, then i finally managed to get some plums bottled , i thought they would have finished by now but theres a couple of shady branches left , theres nothing more satisfying than hearing the pop of the jars sealing shut . Nearly didnt get any canning done as i had no lids. himself having crushed and damaged most of them , everywhere on line was sold out of the ones i needed, found some only to find id ordered 4 lug instead of six , ordered a test lid from a different supplier only to find out theyre a drop shipper and they may arive next month sometime . The other supplier i ordered from sent a sample that was great , but they dont have any in stock AAARRRGGGHHH  managed to find 4 lids so that was this afternoons project . Himself wants plum jam , but i use Kilner orange tops for that and ive packs of seals for them so that will be later in the week ..its all go then its the cooking pears next, once lids arrive from somewhere...memo to oneself order loads of lids once the autumn rush is over.  Bleedin useless prepper thats me   

Temper Temper

 During the week i had a bit of a paddy , id a stack of boxes of stuff to go from the renovation , stuff id found bits of auction lots , etc etc  now this has been under my feet since June so i told them i was doing a car boot regardless of the fact i might die or cripple myself . I got the usual high level response my daughter offered to take it all to the charity shop but there was a few decent bits among it and i wanted a bit of cash . So yesterday i crippled myself loading the car and then it chucked it down it chucked it down during the night as well but i was still going and it turned out very humid but warm and i had two huge plastic sheets hed saved and chucked in the garden from when his gazebo died last summer . I just chucked it all on the ground and let folks get on with it . Daughter turned up so i could go to the loo and to look in bafflement at what id sold . Loads of 50s dress patterns , Sindy caravan and stable , lots of paperwork , big meat plates , bags of fabric scraps 2 boxes of knitting patterns and various weird craft stuff , i sold a good 3/4 of it then it chucked it down and i was home by half past ten ..lol  I made £45 which is good for me and now daughter wants to do one next weekend , she did say folks will buy anything at Metheringham , no we are very rural and you cant just pop to the shops all the time so we craft through the winter on budgets of pennies . I think it was worth my while but the folks either side were moaning they hadnt made a £100 this week !!! I did buy a couple of bits A half bag of king edward potatoes nice big bakers that will keep for the winter a whole £2  and an Alvingham Pottery toilet sign from 1976, id never seen before and i have a whole lot of Alvingham...lol

Spooky Stuff

 Heres a Mumsie post , we are having a few problems Mumsie is collaring everybody who visits her and announcing that she wants to go home , someone seems to have been filling  her with the idea of how much cheaper it will be . Its costing £1700 a week for her care and those who visit her for the odd hour here and there think it would be cheaper at home . Shows how much they know about the cost of decent care , she would require 24/7 attendence , shes still very mobile and can be quite aggresive at times , she has hallicinations really scary screaming stuff , she has no concept of time so theres no sleepy time or feeding time , so the care would need to be very skilled and theres the fact that shes so paranoid that shes constantly accusing her carers of assaulting her and stealing from her .

Now for the spooky stuff daughter went to visit at the weekend and Mumsie was talking to the people she sees around her , whole one sided conversations but then she told my daughter that they were all dead and were waiting for her .  Now i come from a family of spiritualists my great grandmother was a medium and talked to all her three husbands as if they were in the room , my grandmother was a regular attender of the church and i grew up with this as did my mother who hated it and labelled it all a freak show . Now i have seen things all my life and i have a son and grandson who do . Does this mean we all have a mental illness ???? Or is the world of Spirit just a genetic reality for some people ? Gran used to tell me as a kid not to worry because spirit cant harm us and ive done the same with my son and grandson ...Bunch of weirdos arent we..lol

Gardeners Curse

 Well this year has been a stunning failure in the garden , what hasnt been eaten has just failed to thrive , i suppose with an indian summer i may yet get a few squash , my corn has just never grown its about a foot high and thats it , the potatoes are tiny and i need a pickaxe to get them out of the ground , runner beans lush covered in flowers but hardly any pollinated , onions just sat and sulked .  Leeks however look good the only things thriving are the weeds and ive never seen them look so colourful and varied . Broad beans were great but are done now . Fruit wise theres tons of apples tiny but tons , plums are very late and doutless the gales are threshing them into a pulp , i picked a load a couple of days ago with the intention of canning them but then found that all the lids are mouldy so im waiting for more , the joys of having to keep everything in a shipping container during the renovations .  This is the first year ever that the garden hasnt earned its keep , but hey ho that is the nature of gardening . But i have to say the cupboard is bare of its usual jars of winter food and all i have is half a dozen jars of fruit from last year . Not even a single tomato this year so i may have to make an effort and venture to Stickney to the Polish guy who brings a van full every week , then spend a week canning ..ho hum 

Shoppin

 Now that Mr Bah Humbug is mobile i took him with me to Sleaford for this weeks little expedition , hes quite enjoying his freedom though he does get a tad irate when he gets folks bipping at him as the crane delivers his buggy to the ground in a busy car park disabled space , sorry for the inconvenience folks ..lol But then again he does very easily go off like a bomb and threatening to rip someones wipers off  and ram them up their arse in a busy car park is a tad excessive . But the guy was shouting that he had the right to a disabled parking space and it wasnt for delivery vehicles. When he calmed down we went to the community pantry , got veg including a marrow, mine once again have been eaten , i think  i may have a muncjak visiting  the rabbit wire is all intact so its got to be something that can jump , winter project i think trying to fence even higher with a zilch budget and no help grrrrr.  Anyway we have found a few shops he doesnt demolish with his muscle spasms and dodgy driving , he wanted to go round iceland and hes loading up with all the stuff he loves that i dont often buy  we get to the till and hes spent £87 on a bag full the look on his face was brilliant he hasnt been food shopping since before covid he hasnt shut up about it since .  lol

 

Prepper Tale

 Thought this might give some folks a giggle , i listen and watch a fair few prepper and survivalist blogs , podcasts etc  and the more you watch them the more you realise that there are a few extremist nutters out there, along with folks who are just fascinated with the ways you can be prepared . Himself is into the radio and cb scene and you get a few of the more extreme nutters on there , so im sat reading as he listens and chitters to folks all over the world . Then he starts rolling around in fits of laughter and this would seem is the story . A notorious local prepper nutter has been burying caches for the event on local roundabouts (just why?)  he had used the usual blue barrels but had then encased them in big oil barrels , the local council is doing local road alterations at one of the local roundabouts . You guessed it they hit one of these big metal drums with a digger . They then have hysterics and ring the bomb squad thinking theyve found a WWII bomb , full circus time with evacuations etc . robots the works . Anyway they quickly sussed that it was an oil drum, panic over , carry on digging .  Meanwhile the nutjob in question is all over the airwaves going off his head about the Council infringing his human rights , hes going to sue etc etc etc . The trouble is Himself and his partners in crime are busy egging him on . They have even suggested digging his other  caches up and putting in ha ha letters or filling them with stuff like cuddly toys .  Me i just hope i have the comman sense to not hang round for Armageddon , would you want to be stuck with the Camo clad nutters who plan to be left?

Chaos

 So by now everybody in other countries thinks their are mass riots in the UK , well thats according to all the news anyway , but really theres an awful lot of protest marches going off peacefully . I watched the "riots" in Blackpool then i watched actual footage from people who live there and regularly you tube about the place . More police than thugs seemed to be the rule , so the coppers gained lots of overtime , the thugs didnt get the result they wanted and the Punks had a good weekend at their rally . What i did notice in more than one video was the same  man young and smartly dressed chucking bottles at both sides of the argument and the police , then melting away and reappearing at another group . The police seemed to be concentrating on circling the groups of idiots then taking loads of photos which they didnt like much . Knock on the door for them once things are calmer I would think . They always go on about Muslim no go areas but theres far more estates where the police need to turn up mob handed for a simple arrest . I cant say im much phased by this its quite obviously been orchestrated for someones agenda  theres a lot of suspects including the current government the Tories , Putin  etc etc etc  but if you lived during the Miners Strike in a steel town and witnessed the cavalry charges and the truncheon happy coppers first hand this is nothing been made to look something by the media . There were more news crews than rioters at these happenings 

Stating to feel a Bit Monty Python , The Three Yorkshire Men ....Call that a riot ? 

Transport

 Well it would seem that our new rulers are continuing on with there plan to make PIP a voucher scheme , I have read some of the proposals most of the ideas floated are idiotic , some are good but the fact is it was originally floated by the Tories as a way of robbing the benefit back to the benefit of their donors . The problem with a voucher system is disabilities will never be a one size fits all situation . Currently theyve screwed the Motability system into the ground , the vehicles on offer are all electric the benefit wont cover even remotely the lease hire for the vehicles , theyre all huge vehicles as well . We bought a new to us van recently, hes saved ages for it , its a specific model that he knew could be fitted with a wheelchair hoist , to have a new hoist fitted would have cost well over 5k . Over the course of a few months he has bought all the bits needed from here there and everywhere and because he knows what hes doing but is physically incapable of doing it , he has begged hassled and annoyed every family member and friend into doing bits on it . Its brilliant it can lift his chariot and the wheelchair without dismantling them . All with change from 1k .  The proplem i see with the new voucher system is that it will make disability totally unaffordable for many . I know those who have to use taxis all the time because they cant drive , what use is that if you have no taxis ?  We got told he should use the Call Connect bus service but its not suitable for his particular disabilities. Had to laugh hes supposed to be able to get disabled road tax reduction but he cant get it because he has a van . Plus if your using the disabled tax scheme your vehicle insurers will likely double or treble your insurance . If the benefit is paid as cash it allows each individual disibility to cater to its needs and they are widely variable.

Start of the Year

 Prepping for the winter has officially started , I managed to buy 5 stones of onions from the carboot this week , i have some in the garden but they are rubbish this year but they will do for eaters red and japanese onions but not very big . These were big brown soup onions doubtless rejects from the pack houses, to big and the odd one a bit damaged but the dehydrator doesnt care , the whole house smells of onions and will do for a couple of weeks , ive done half a dozen bags for the freezer for when im having an idle day and it never ceases to amaze me how little space they take up once theyre dehydrated , they keep for 2 or 3 years as well . £3 well spent i think .

Next job will be bottling plums , again not many this year but more than enough for us . We ate all the plums bottled last year but i still have a few bottles of gooseberries left so shant do any for this winter . Apples are mental and im still on the look out for a juice extractor i killed ours during the building work . Has anyone tried dried crab apples would they serve a purpose? Its a tree i just use to polinate the apple trees but its laden this year and nobody likes crab apple jam or jelly . I will wait for the autumn raspberries as the builders dropped a skip on the summer ones..bless . 

So its fair to say im keeping myself occupied , nothing exciting going on at all , the jumbles have pretty much died till September the odd car boot when i can be bothered to get up at 5.30 lol 

Ask GP

 I noticed an article somewhere in the press the other day saying how many people the online GP service is killing it wasnt a small number !!  now there are several variants to the system this area is lumbered with Ask GP  which is basically appaling its  a gatekeeper system whos aim it is to stop people bothering the physical GP . So he wants to put in that one of his tablets is giving him the runs , so he tries to spell diarohea, cant, so he puts in that he has the shits, it comes back with go to the chemist and get imodium   Which is fine unless youre ill or like my partner disabled with complex medical needs and also happen to be dyslexic and a tad stroppy all the time . What should be a simple medication review request turned into an epic battle of wits between him and a computer system .  It decided he needed umpteen blood tests prior to his medication review the trouble is when he went to book the tests it wasnt for 5 weeks and he needed his perscriptions now . simple you would think but now he had to shout his way through the system till he reached the locum GP who has never seen him or obviously read his notes. First she decided he should go to free swimming , he doesnt swim and it would be a 30 mile round trip every day , so that set him off , then he needs to go to the local walking group ..lol  he can manage maybe 10 paces on his crutches most days by this stage hes bellowing down the phone which is normal he cant tell at what volume hes speaking , they now record all calls so i hope theyre saving it for training purposes . Now he has to explain he has an inoperable spinal tumour , so she sugests Slimming World at which point he did kinda lose it and pointed out was that going to shrink his tumour ? Now how did this all happen ? well im no longer allowed to deal with the doctors for him due to data protection , because he has no mental impairment  ..Ho hum im waiting for the call to tell me i can deal with his GP again...lol 

Back on the hospital cycle again next week , because the medical professionals at the GPs cant read his test results properly , the hospital rang us to ask why he hasnt been for a transfusion this year , we told them the GPs say theres nothing wrong with him and it gave the nurse a giggle because there is something wrong with him that doesnt ever get better he has a weird type of aneamia thats very close to Cystic Fibrosis as she said any doctor should be able to see this from his results . The problem is its so rare that a medical professional on the switchboard whos done a course online isnt going to be able to see the problem with his tests .....Onwards

Green

 My daughter is having a House plant frenzy and is constantly passing on cuttings of one thing and another , for my birthday i got plants . But the problem is its that cold here in the winter that they will all have to go in with himself  i have visions of him beng surrounded by the amazon jungle , hes not fond of plants and does tend to give them a kick or encourage the cat to knock them over . We only have one small window ledge so it makes it interesting . Hes now declared war on a huge potted Phormium that ive put outside the front door he keeps grumbling about it being in the way every time he passes it ,  he went to give it a good kick the other day and because of the shape of the pot it bounced back and attacked him , he promptly fell back into one of his garden chairs that snapped in half dumping him on the floor , I had a hard job to keep a straight face as i helped him up ranting and raving . No injury done to him but hes sat on the doorstep staring at it with utter loathing yet again this morning . If plants could talk i would think its smiling and saying youre not going to win this one mate

What did i miss?

 Well the world has changed so much ..not at all lets be truthful. We had a none election where nothing changed , 74 years of the tories continues here on the fen , not that any party made any effort to take this seat , we had a couple of leaflets a few days before the election , we didnt know till then who was even trying for our vote . Our old ancient MP despite being a robbing tory with a mansion and a duck house was pretty useful on a local level the present incumbent it would be fair to call a piss taker , never seen ,does nothing for her constituents. A NHS consultant who votes against the NHS at every turn, yet another scion of a large farming family. Ho hum in this area of no faces other than white, they stuck a bloke called Mohammed in as the Labour candidate he did suprisingly well but didnt have a chance of unseating our current MP . So thats my politics for the day over ...ho hum 

Im more concerned with the quality of garden veg this year , by now the dehydrator is on full time in a normal year , crap new potatoes , same variety i alwys use but all theyve yielded is a couple of giant baking size potatoes each , maincrop is looking a bit more promising but the slugs and snails are having an orgy this year , loads of flowering green beans but no bees to polinate them , beetroot just vanished , strawberries vanished overnight and they were in a cage . Broad beans seem to have been the one winner and are laden to the ground so are the apple trees i keep thining them, theres leeks and onions down among the weeds somewhere, i couldnt get doen there for all the scaffolding for weeks, so we will see. im not doing tons of bottling and canning this year i got it about right for the two of us last year 3 big bottles of everything with added huge bottles of mixed veg is about enough for us . onwards seems to be the motto at the moment im reading much more and viewing the internet less and less , will AI kill the internet ?  

Gibbering

 Well its been an interesting few weeks , it seems i was right the back of the house was indeed falling out !!  So everything turned into a circus with a whole lot of scaffolding and hoards of builders . Then they found that when they removed the kitchen units there was literally nothing behind them you could see into the fireplace in the front room and wave to Himself  , this explained the draft because you could see right up the chimney . The floor in the kitchen and dining room was so bad it has all had to be replaced , lots of rewiring tons of plastering , new ceiling in the kitchen theyve redecorated everything at the rear because they made such a bleeding mess it took so long that they only left me 4 days to unpack the container in the garden that they then didnt pick it up till Friday ...GGGRRRR  im still living in a sea of boxes , the internet is patchy . The mice got into the boxes in the container AAARRGGGHHHHHH very glad i didnt store any food out there and the cats are resolving that problem ..But then theres the fact they are coming back to tackle the upstairs back of the house and bathroom  at some later date along with more roof repairs . My imaginary hole in the roof was actually 4 inches round and it was indeed leaking into the back wall but theyve patched it for now !!!  So yes i may have a lovely kitchen but the fact theres more to be tackled fills me with horror 

The Return

 I will be back, 6 weeks of builder inspired hell is now over , im still unpacking stuff , im still dealing with my bizarre family and all being well i will have full internet access from sometime next week . Thankyou for your concern ...its been fun !!!  sits in corner gibbering gently 

Promises Promises

 Thought id let you know im still alive , Monday the container arrived finally after many phone calls  , and fortunately I had grandson and son both in the mood to do a bit of humping of heavy stuff . Emptying the dining room has been horrific its mainly my library...lol . The family are suitably horrified  , many mentions of having me sectioned and burning me on a pyre of books .

 Foreman for the construction company turned up yesterday and is horrified at the mould, the huge crack across the floor, the state of the back wall crumbling and the collapsing ceiling , he started giggling when i told him they had two weeks according to the council , it was a very nervous giggle ...lol  Though i have scored bonus points for the fact i have an actual functioning stop tap , those of you who have been with me for years may remember the two year battle with Anglian Water over wanting a water meter fitting , they were billing me £1000 per year and refused to fit a stop tap to allow the fitting of a meter i finally won that argument and my water bills are around $270 a year now . None of the other houses have stop taps and the whole street has to be turned off if anyone has a problem...lol 

Now i just have to load all my doomsday prepper food stock , i dont want food in the container because it doesnt do even tinned food good to overheat so most of it will have to go in the bedrooms theyre not starting till the 11th so im not rushing with that ...lol

la la la

 So a whole week since the start of the council debacle and i have heard zilch nada nothing , no container no commencement of the work from xmas , a little man did ring and say he was comimg to urgently clean the gutterings in june , did he need a ladder? ffs is he the size of a two story house ?

i got a phone call from my cousin , she usually tells me the births marriages and deaths because she still lives in the village i grew up in . she wanted me to have a ride out and see her so my daughter and i popped over yesterday , now shes the one who was widowed last year and we didnt think shed be around for long they were besotted with each other and shes doing her best to decline gracefully at her own pace , shes 75 they never had family she gets about fairly well and with a bit of outside help is managing well . The reason she wanted to see us beggers belief , Good old Adult Social Care the department from hell within many councils had paid her a visit to inform her it was time she went into a care home , they had tried to guilt trip her into going into care because she could sell her bungalow and fund good quality care and she was costing them far to much ..wtf !!!  Now she may be a little old lady but she has a way with words much like i do and somewhat cussed them out of her property . Then she rang us and wanted to know her legal position with this flock of vultures , they had even told her that they were coming to empty out all her husbands garages and sheds and belongings because it was being morbid keeping things and it has been a year since he died . She is getting repeated phone calls from her GP asking her to admit shes depressed instigated by Adult Social Care who quite obviously want her declared incompetent , dear lord are none of us safe from do gooders convinced we must be immortal at our expense , Her sin apparently is that she talks to Maurices picture as if he was there , ye gods cant we be peacefully morbid ?  She admits her cancer is back and shes refusing treatment , but she wants to remain at home and talk to her husband till the end , daughter has offered to take Power of Attorney over this whole shitty mess , not that we are becoming more than familiar with this whole milk the pensioners scheme instigated at government level .

So onwards , who knew dealing with Mommy Dearests fiasco would come in so useful

AAAAARRRRGGGGGHHHHH

 
I am trying to remain positive here , im not around due to peak gardening  now the ultimate curve ball has hit . Our beloved landlords , who never do anything to these properties , remember the xmas fiasco with 4 contractors refusing to do the ceiling works upstairs due to it being to dangerous to work on , then deathly silence . Well a couple of weeks ago we had a structural survey two blokes came and sucked their teeth , went away and nothing then we got a letter saying they were fitting a new kitchen , Thursday the builder and the kitchen designer turned up , actually the builder turned out to be the top honcho from the new company who have been awarded the contract for building upgrades worth millions as this is the first set of houses to be done , i did point out the collapsing ceiling in the kitchen the fact that most of the house has no internal sockets and everything has to be run on extension cords and the fact that the slugs are all under the kitchen units and get between your toes first thing in a morning i even showed him the giant one making its way to the cats dish . the window inside the kitchen cupboard with a bit of hardboard nailed over it etc etc etc ,,,he blanched a bit at this point jumped om his phone  and arranged to meet someone from the council here the following day .

Next day , council lady bigwig turns up with bob the builder and he informs her that they need to rewire, replace the floors all through the back of the house and replace most of the back wall  which alone will take two weeks , the ceilings cant be replaced downstairs till all the bathroom and ceiling work are done upstairs and  the start date is early june , she was not happy and started the whole,  why have we never reported any of these problems routine , i pointed out we have reported it for the last 20 years and they have done nothing and i have documents and proof of this . Things started to get a bit nasty when she said they would move himself out because it was dangerous for someone who is disabled and i pointed out that theres me and my son living here , she said we have no rights to housing so wont be helped . Bob the builder blew a fuse which was good as i was just drawing breath , it was an interesting discussion as the builder told them they wouldnt be taking the contract if she and the council expected them to do half a job . ive been informed they are delivering a container which i must pack the whole of the back of the house into but at least ive got a month to do this , we will be camping in one room for the duration . Her parting salvo was they cant justify the expense so shes going to look at the surveys and go higher up the food chain...

So ho hum i await further contact come after the bank holiday ...its gonna be fun  

Still

 Still here still trying to fit in a bit of blogging , its that garden busy time of the year , so much to do so little dry weather to do it in . It would seem that all i do is burrn off endless sticky bud that the cats drag round in their fur its the winner of this wet year so far along with sycamore seedlings i seem to have 10 million of those also needing burning off . Now i know that sticky buds or cleavers are edible and yes ive tried steaming it , but its got to be the most boring veg on the planet , green mush pretty much sums it up .

The fruit trees seem to be drowning in blossom but there doesn't seem to be a great deal of  bees about due to the arctic wind. time will tell , gooseberry bush that i butchered last year has gone mental and i have actual ripening strawberries that i need to get the mesh covers on ...yet another job for the list along with planting out leek seedlings , first of the corn ready to plant out as well but it will need to be covered . Last of the main crop potatoes popped in last week , but may shove a few more in if i find any .

Ive jumbled myself into a coma the last few weeks and still have change from the original £10 i started with , 2 car boots attended at Metheringham ,with their usual strange bounty . loads of decorative tat if thats your thing, im there for plants and more large Kilner jars for my dried stuff , i did get an Ikea one this week , some 50s recipe booklets and of course a big bag of wool for my granny square fetish. 

So life continues here on the fen edge , boring bland and for the most part pretty uninteresting , hope your all having a productive spring ?

Bleak

Once again the new tablets made me a tad ill for a few days , theyve settled now but appear to be doing nothing  whatsoever for the problem they are supposed to miraculously cure , cant wait for the inevitable phone call from a medical professional telling me im not taking them , its such a regular occurrence i expect it ..lol

Anyway lets look at the edited highlights of the world news , was it just last week that the Israelis killed the British security team looking after aid workers , news for 3 days and now gone from our eyes , plus four aid workers of various nationalities, they had an enquiry sacked a couple of folks probably gave them each a medal and moved them to another spot to accidentally kill more folks.

Then it would seem there was a fair bit of rioting in London this weekend , didnt happen did it? well at least not in the major press outlets . How long can they keep taking no notice of the voting public ? Just dont mention the war seems to be the motto . Then the RAF are knocking Iranian drones out of the sky in our name ? What an utter shit show the world is at the moment , how the hell they think they can hide everything in the days of the internet is beyond me , just look beyond the BBC and the Daily Mail its all out there along with an endless supply of utter rubbish , but the truth is somewhere and its all very unpleasant   

 

UG

grumpy old woman post............... Told you my dealings with the doctors were getting worse . so i trailed out for my health lecture on tuesday , get  there after 3 detours diue to a water main collapse, resurfacing and homeless and lonely traffic lights in the middle of nowhere just parked in the road !!! I then have to sit in the plague riddled  waiting room for an hour, full of coughing kids and old blokes with a death rattle.  To be told they are changing my medication yet again !!! Some new wonder drug that they licensed for heart failure thats done wonders for those with type 2 diabetes , im not allowed to drive for at least two weeks till it kills me , she hands me a booklet telling me the tablets may rot my skin off , my pee may become acid and i may have blackouts ...oh be joyful ...then she starts lecturing me on my sex life ?  baffled by this stage , i pointed out it was a vague memory at which point she said oh your a lesbian? Now ive so far had three days of splitting headaches , my psoriasis is itching so i want to rip off my skin , im dizzy every time i stand up and my blood sugar is going up . Two weeks of this should be fun im currently sat on a carrier bag waiting for my fanny to fall out ? 

Time

 Having the time to blog is a problem at the minute , im hobbling about on a tiny patch of shingles damaged leg , bleedin painful but harmless . got problems with my doctors who now have outsourced there repeat prescription service to yet another company , who send you out an appointment time then nobody rings . Much like the statement on Ask GP that i have not been replying to there text messages that occasioned a phone call from one of their mythical GPs berating me for not answering , she was not very happy that i offered to email her a copy of my phone records showing that there have been no calls or messages.  if i could go to another practice i would , but if youre rural theres no choice . Tuesday ive got to go to another practice 15 miles away for a 10 minute appointment with somebody to show me how to behave when dealing with my health .  Why has it become so hard to just die in your own time without too much intervention because we must all want immortality . All a lot of people want is a quiet painless death. It doesnt matter if your 60 or 90 . i think the mummy experience has made me very bitter and twisted , the latest palava is that because the Local Cheshire East Council have cancelled their contract with mothers home from the 31st March her fees have gone up to £1640 a week!  the home wants us to tie into a three year contract , as mother is classed as terminal and we have no idea how long she will go on the answer is no. They are not happy and are threatening to evict her, but the bill is being paid every month and daughter is driving them batty just by saying no to a long contract , the state pays 90 something each week towards her care the rest has to be funded by mothers estate ...ho hum im not that nice a person so i cant wait for my touch your forelock and be grateful Tuesday appointment ....see you on the other side peeps 

Life

 Why is it the little things in life that really get your goat ?  Hotdogs, you know , the ones in a glass jar they have now gone down to 5 in a jar , what possible use are they ? You get 6 hot dog buns in a pack and if you live with a greedy git like me , thats 4 for him and 1 for you and a bun full of fried onions , shouldnt be a huge thing but its just yet more shrinkage nonsense . We dont even eat them that often ...lol

Mothers Day has come and gone but in a blinding flash i thought id get mother one of those fold out bouquet cards mainly because she wouldnt be able to chuck them at the staff, at worse she could inflict a paper cut . Anyway my cousin visited this weekend and found a pile of cards unopened sat on the side in her room , he opened them all but when he got to the bouquet card she told him to get rid of it , she didnt want paper flowers . One thing i know is that ive never being able to do anything that pleased my mother even tin the days when she had her marbles . I once sent her a bouquet at Christmas and her neighbour found it boxed on top of her dustbin the same day because she didnt want cheap petrol station flowers in her house . They were far from cheap they had cost a weeks grocery money . So if anyone has any suggestions of what i can get her for next months birthday ?  Himself has suggested a stake and a pile of kindling 

Seen It All

 So i was forced to go to town because i needed to treat myself for mothers day , himself wanted to go for a meal and we ended up at the usual Brewers Fayre  himself loved it  , i just had some wedges and the most cold  rock hard club sandwich i had to force down , it had three crumbs of chicken and three miniscule bits of transparent bacon, lashings of nasty mayo and a hot fried egg tossed on the top a slice of tomato and a load of salad leaves . URGGGGGGG himself started kicking off because i was struggling to eat it and the toast had been microwaved and had gone rock hard and rubbery . It was a shame because its always clean and the staff are lovely . But i was ungrateful because he had taken me out for Mothers Day . He then took me to the garden center , i really took my time wandering round just to get away from him , basket on arm i was people watching to kill time and let him calm down . I noticed a very smart older gentleman in the delicatessen part , always worth a wander to look for yellow stickers  he picked up a couple of bottles of wine and we carried on meandering for the dead plant section right at the very back near the bins where they have now hidden it , im rooting through the dead stuff but they havent exactly marked the dead stuff down and i notice hes sat on the edge of one of the raised beds , he takes a bottle of wine out of his basket opens it and glugs the whole thing down and pops the empty among the plants , then he does the same with the other bottle , looks at me and smiles and strolls away . I was gobsmacked ..lol ..well at least thats one way to get round the security tags.  I didnt buy a thing so himself was not amused, but at least i got a glimpse of the secret life of pensioners 

Think A Head

 So this morning i got a trip to Heron due to himself wanting me to post some stuff to the DVLA  that requires signatures and stuff so we ventured to the strangely sunny climes of Horncastle. Heron didnt produce any surprises but they had a big dump bin of yellow sticker stuff so ive stocked up on various bread stuff . brioche buns , different breads and current loaves and they has a stack of out of date Doritos something i dont usually get because himself would start to look like Pringles and Doritos given a chance , but fishing is starting this week and 10p doritos might shut him up moaning about what he wants for the food bag once ive picked the stickers off he will be non the wiser  . i didnt get him the pies he wanted because theyre now that damned dear i can make them cheaper , i have a stack of pie filling in the cupboard so im going to do a bit of ugly baking this week .

In the news...WELL ,,,what the heck is Sunak on about all the terrible extremists we need to be protected from ?  Is this a ploy to avoid an election by any chance ?  i keep expecting them to say we need a Unity Government  due to the terrible dangerous times we are living in , either that or the money that backs both our main political parties is crapping itself after George Galloway became a MP  , surprise surprise nobody fancied any of the candidates they offered . George Galloway is a well known grifter but he makes no bones about it, ,he will do anything that pays his mortgage, maybe he will be the most honest bloke in the Temple of Horrors known as Westminster?

Then there was the bloke from Kellogg's having his Gerald Ratner moment in front of the world , for those who cant remember that far back Gerald Ratner had a huge chain of high street jewelers selling  crap to the masses  who went on air and said he sold earrings for 99p, cheaper than a M&S sandwich the public were horrified that hed sold them tons of cheap crap and that was the end of his company . Mr patronise the poor Kellogg's  pointed out that if you couldnt afford proper food you could eat 2 bowls of his cereal a day . That has gone down like a ton of bricks as well , hope it hits his profits 

Prep Weird Stuff

 So here we go , one of my sad blog posts on the subject of prepping just to bore you all to death ...lol Now Mr Bah Humbug is all of a panic because theres a shortage of fishing hooks because they are all made in China and fishing bait is also getting very expensive in fact most hobby stuff is getting scarcer , i noticed that glue of various types is getting a bit thin on the ground the other day , but im not to worried i have mountains of craft stuff gleaned from my travels and im good at improvising anyway , do you remember making flour and water glue for scrapbooks many years ago? 

We had plums that ive bottled this week in a huge crumble that lasted for 3 days , asparagus from the freezer and carrot and swede mash as well , this was the time of year i had stored it all for , it just adds to the variety in our diets theres not a lot of fresh fruit and veg in a village with no shop and an overpriced community market for the wealthy . Seed potatoes were bought early and they seem to be vanishing quickly from the garden centers , theres tons of onion sets about so i picked up a mixed bag , the garden is still waterlogged and flooded but the kale is having a bit of a fit so i need to make some green powder in the dehydrator . I need to split loads of plants into pots just because there is talk of condemning the house we are in  , so thats yet another worry , they have a duty to rehouse us but it may well be in a tower block so im hoping to drag it out till harvest , we have to be careful that they dont put you in a B&B because theres no escape from them , thankfully him selves disability doesnt make it easy for them to get us out . Who knows what they will do the builders refusing to work on the house  has caused a big stink  and somebody locally has been on the TV about their ceiling collapsing and hit a family member so they need to do something 

Inspiration Failure

 Now i have a problem in life , its an enquiring mind thay doesnt stop . So i called in the butchers for a couple of slices of stuffed chine a well known expensive local delicacy and the young lad doing the slicing says would you like the bone ?  he charged me £3 for the damned thing that was a bag that heavy i could barely lift it . Now the chine is a huge lump of fatty back pork from a pig that has slices cut into it that are stuffed with a parsley mix and roasted , being a posh butchers they only cut the perfect slices off it leaving far more on the bone  than they use. it took ages to strip the meat which is basically ham from the rest of it 6 bags later thst will make amazing pies and sandwiches for the fishing season , but it also left a huge chunk of fat from the underside of the joint that i decided i would render to make flaky pastry . My gran always did this in the wash copper . Somewhere i had seen that it could be done in the slow cooker so i popped it in on the lowest setting and waited patiently it does take its time overnight and all the next day . Then himself said he could smell something burning , you guessed it had finally rendered and scorched a big lump of skin  ..AARRRGGHHHH still trying to decide if i can use it or the birds will benefit ..ho hum you have to try these things and theres still the actual bones to boil up yet . So £3 spent and an interesting experimental kitchen trial .

When

 When will the rain ever stop ? Its been warm enough to get on in the garden but its under water or just sloppy mud , ive potato sets sat tapping there feet, a bag of mixed onion sets, broad beans to set going its all very tedious and tapping my foot . So ive dug out my endless granny square bag and im trying to get going again with my daft hands just for something to do ..lol . We have heard no more from the builders and the council about all the urgent work they were going to do ..ho hum 

But in the scheme of things around the world lifes pretty good at the moment , ive been watching lots of weird you tube videos , Azerbaijan Grannies cooking , Polish girls cooking on wood stoves , Scrappers around the world , mental preppers who seem to be getting rather wound up about immigrants , best one this week was the gentleman going on about Chinese bio labs making viruses that kill none Orientals, all i could think about was how the UK would be endless Chinese takeways with no customers ? Im finding it hard to take life seriously . the news and press are worthless drivel not worth a visit . The Royals seem to be everywhere , it may be to distract us from the endless warmongering . Though at this rate next week it may be Prince Edward becoming a late life transsexual just to grab the headlines?  

Jumble 2024

 So lets take a look at the Lincoln Jumble Scene , the season having just got properly started , we have two Cat charities that do a jumble sale monthly in various villages and in the city  Lincoln Cat Care & Lincoln Cat in Crises  both are on Facebook . Then there are various others so it can take up most Saturdays . Advertising can be patchy so its play hunt the jumble on the internet . They all seem to have upped their prices to 50p entrance and 50p and upwards for the weird and wonderful stuff they sell . You get an awful lot of resellers on the clothing front so you need sharp elbows to jump into that melee . And theres a few dealers wading into the bric a brac but theyre a good source of useful household items and theyre cheap if your a shopaholic with a finance problem . I havent done a haul post for a while so heres a pic , plus i got a pile of Spiderman plastic plates because nobody has been blistering them in the microwave have they  GGRRRRR.  I got a WI preserves book because it had got some weird and wonderful variants on the chutney and jam front ,   a Beatrix Potter postcard book because it caught my eye, a magazine with a cover kit i liked ,  a pile of cotton yarn because i need more,,,honest  And to my daughters disgust a pair of vintage crochet covered wooden coat hangers , they tried to sell me a whole box of 70s fabric covered ones for a whole £2 but i just wanted the two pretty ones . I spent a happy hour and got a bag of  homemade sausage rolls and spent a whole £5............small things make me happy!!

Forward

 Neglecting you all again , im just rather busy with daft stuff . Mumsie and her toilet brush are still on the rampage and the arguments with family get ever more peculiar . latest one is over my lack of enthusiasm for renting out her bungalow , there is no way on this planet that i would ever want to be a landlord . Sell the damn place put the money in her account and use it to pay for her care . But the greedy grasping folks in the family want me to move into it then pay her rent , i have no interest at all in money so long as i can pay my bills and i wouldnt want to move to the other side of the country either . Then there was the 30k bill due for her care , just pay the damned thing she has the money ...AARRRGGHHH

Meanwhile in the real world lets talk wars and prepping , we seem to be on a slippery slope sliding in that direction regardless of whos in charge , and i think its now time to gear up a few things , ive been looking at producing my own sunflower oil its going ever upwards and its pretty easy to do , just grow black sunflower seeds and get a grinder , i started looking at the necessary equipment and an electric machine comes in around £300 plus so thats not happening but you can get a little manual grinder for around £80 so im saving , im not wanting to produce hundreds of gallons  so it should be ideal . 

 Then theres the gulf problems where the crap from China is going round the cape at huge cost and time , shouldnt make huge differences for me but it may well create shortages and huge price hikes . It will hit car parts and electronics plus certain foodstuffs . My first thought was cheap shoes for kids , if youve got kids or grandkids and have the spare money buy a few sizes up , school shoes dont change much so they wont go out of fashion . ive just ordered a kilo of peppercorns im a pepper addict so need my fix . Theres vast amounts of crap from China we can live without, but what do you think will be the stuff to stock up with now??

Chaos

 So 2024 is looking to be as much fun as 2023 

Here is my latest dealings with North Kesteven Council!! 3 weeks before xmas we had a visit from the letable homes scheme lady , theyre our landlord and they came to inspect work done by Keir their contractors before Covid , the wet room that was fitted for himself and the major mould issues. Left her rather speechless when i showed her ..lol  they had done nothing except fit a shower, tile a corner and tank the floor that was it . No repairs to the walls before they tiled no extra fan fitted no ceiling repairs they didnt even fit skirting board its a black mouldy disgusting mess i use gallons of mould remover , nothing does any good. Between that and the thick rust coming out of the hot water supply , which is nothing to do with them they say . I just give up , the kitchen ceiling now has a big bulge so somethings leaking but they say not , sons bedroom ceiling has started to grow mould as well but they think thats the guttering so they arranged for someone to do that the next day who never turned up and still hasnt .  i had signed a huge list with the council lady of all the repairs they needed to do to bring it up to the letable homes scheme . The following day a surveyor from the builders turned up with a 2 item list of stuff they were going to do , i told him to go back and get the full list i had signed that took till a couple off days before xmas he then came back with another surveyor who was here looking at stuff in the roof and announced it was unsafe for the builders to work on the property!!!!   over xmas they sent a letter from a different building firm saying they would need access on the 7th Jan on the 4th 2 builders turned up then another surveyor , they said they couldnt do the work either they would ring us . We have had 3 different companies send 4 surveyors who all say its too dangerous to work on the property ...i have to live in it . Theres no point of contact at the Council the women from letable homes walked out of her job and nobody else wants to talk about it . AAARRGGHHHHH

Well

 So i get another call from the home the doctor had been to see mother and said she needed to go into hospital immediately due to what he thought was a chest infection with the possibility of sepsis . He could only do so much because she wouldnt cooperate. The ambulance as duly summoned and she refuses to go in fact she was somewhat vocal on the subject and attacked a paramedic . they retreated the best they got was listening to her heart which isnt exactly beating well , shes been off medication for over 3 weeks now.  So i ended up having a long conversation with the floor manager at the home , mother dearest has been very vocal on the fact that she doesnt want to die in hospital , they do cater for end of life care, they have a proper full nursing team so thats the plan she stays where she is regardless of her condition , the home says she is very breathless but i pointed out shes still scrapping with folks and relentlessly abusive . Then i had to have a long talk with the GP for the home , he pointed out she may go suddenly and i pointed out that if he keeps annoying her he could be proved right . He didnt realise she had a DNR in place and has done for over a year . Despite her dementia when shes in there she has made it clear she wishes to die and supporting her in this decision is grim,  other family members have now chipped in and its turning into a huge family argument , her 90 year old brother supports her in this . Her quality of life is dreadful , she has a heart like a decaying Tesco carrier bag , shes blind , she hates the human race and has had enough.....

PS. shes feeling a bit better today , shes still refusing her medication      

Errrr Happy New Year

 So New Year New Start,  everythings going to be fluffy bunny and great , well it is if your drug dealer has delivered ..lol meanwhile the rest of us keep waddling on in much the same fashion . Got a phone call New Years Day Mother Dearest had had a fall , shes refusing all medication and not eating because they are poisoning her , she was found in a heap on her bathroom floor but wouldnt let them near her to see if she had hurt herself , in fact she was fighting them off with a toilet brush. Her room is camera covered  so the person on the desk spotted her go down and her help was straight on the job .  Daughter went yesterday and shes refusing to let anyone look at her, but shes sprightly and abusive so we dont think shes done herself much harm . The doctors seeing her Friday he may have to hit her with a tranquilizer gun then they will give her heavy narcotics for a few days . I wouldnt have a job in that home for all the money in the world , but all the staff seem to like her , they always say shes easy to care for compared to some they have in there.

So thats it a Happy New Year to you all