The Missionary Position

It had to be done just to see how many page views it generates !!!
Tedious day off would be the truthful title , I managed to get a day off today by turning off my phone and ignoring the world
6am im outside hanging washing out in the dark , I love the feel of grass on my bare feet even when it gets frosty , at least i dont startle passing dog walkers with my un sexy nighties and pj's in the darkness .
make  Mr Bah Humbugs pack up , stick in more washing wave him goodbye
7am daughter trots through on her way out of the door , mumbling the days orders , then the munchkin arises for homework breakfast and a good chunter, he really isnt a morning person even at nearly 6 .
8am hang out more washing , sort out the washing yurt thats amassed this week , give up in disgust get dressed and then its the school run  9.50 hurl still muttering munchkin through school gates .
9am get home , notice youve 6 missed calls and umpteen voice mails all work related , turn off phone sod them all!!!
9.30 settle down with Outlander and a huge pile of month end paperwork , finish paperwork at 2pm having lost the will to live !!! and eaten vast amounts of Galaxy chocolate .
3pm fetch more washing in hang more washing out , look at the sock pile and debate just hurling them all in the bin to see if theres any reaction when then say "ive got no socks" and i inform them i chucked them all .
3.30 sit down to blog , and assume the Missionary Position an excellent little book rescue that cost all of 50p  Women in the Mission Field , love it, it's so middle class saving the poor heathen , you have visions of these ladies if they existed in this day and age going across to Calais and preaching the word to the heathen hoard , then coming home on the ferry with half a dozen strange foreign blokes stuffed in their eco car. sadly missing a page so it will have to rest in the home for redundant volumes

What will the rest of my day off contain , pick up munchkin, take for a wander to the
park for homework , he needs leaves to make something. plus yet more conkers to trip everyone up . Cook tea , listen to them all moaning about there hard day , sort yet more washing , notice that despite all the washing being at the washer this morning and being able to see the floor around the washer for the first time in weeks by 7pm there will be another pile AAAAAAARRRRGGGGHHHHHHH
lifes so exciting when your a working granny

Sunday Car Boot + Jumble Sale

My escape from reality started yesterday, I packed up work at lunch time and did a crafty trip to the Washingborough  Bowls Club Jumble Sale , I love these , they practically give stuff away . so what did I buy ..... Pink Pyrex divided dish,couple of small scratches so i may force myself to keep it ...lol ..i never seem to find the lids for these, somewhere there must be a thrift shop full of them, but do i really need the lids?  i was thinking more of twin pies one heavy on the meat for Mr Bah Humbug one heavy on the veg for me , for the rare occasions when its just the two of us. It was a whole 30p

Stack of 10p tatty ladybird fairytales good enough for the munchkin to illtreat till he tires of them then i can cut them up...lol


And from last Sundays carboot i finally got around to unpacking these great 60s wooden kids jigsaws , not big on value but the graphics are gorgeous .Plus another bestway dolly knitting pattern to build a new stack for ebay

More Mugs , always a good xmas seller , Brownie Guide and a great Pyrex coronation mug plus a 70s pot that i have a use for .
What have i managed not to buy , well the Salvation Army did have a huge box of 70s maps of the US and Switzerland for a whole £3 . popular for crafting but i know i would never get round to it .
The jumble sale was infested with Pyrex and Corning so I did really well buying just one bit ..lol Plus this morning i spent a whole 70p at Metheringham car boot on a really exciting box of wooden floor underlay bits and yet another Edwardian ribbon plate looking lonely

Not sure how but the camera has decided to get stuck on macro , i will have to ask the technologically advanced household members for advice when they get home , usually you cant get it to do macro for love or money , so today we have bad photos even by my standards

Asda Wins the Vile Foodstuff Award !

Having worked a ridiculous amount of hours this week , been hounded and persecuted to the point where i just turn off  my phone between uses and also having lost the will to live .
The final straw was the lunch i managed to grab as i took a toilet break in the otherwise none stop day , my excuse was that it was cheap  and theres bog all for packup left in the fridge .
So i purchased a Chicken Sweetcorn & Pasta Salad tub from Asda , i thought half today finish it tomorrow , how wrong could I be , this was a tub of stunning vileness , apparently it had a tasty herby mayonaise dressing . not sure if id describe it like that more like the foulest cheap salt and vinegar crisp flavoured sticky gloop , so sour your mouth puckered.  You struggled to get this unappetizing lump apart , there was some sweetcorn in there but the chicken had no taste at all, came in tiny cubes and it took some finding, i dont think there was even a spoonful in it . this must be the first time ive had to chuck a food item in the bin because it was far to disgusting to eat . Come on Asda you can do a whole lot better .
I would have took the damned thing back but its not worth a 30 mile round trip .

Its the Scarecrow festival at dunston Saturday sunday and they dont tell you , but last year there were loads of yard sales as well 

Running for the hills

No I've not run away from the Blogiverse, I'm still here sort of.  My real world colleague decided to run for the hills , so I'm lumbered working my usual three days plus covering his five days as those who are good at maths may have realised that adds up to working eight days a week.  That's supposed to be 8 till 8. As well!
Now I have school runs daily to fit in among this. A bunch of useless tossers at home moaning there sock draw is empty and there tea isn't cooked.  So patience isn't my strong point at the moment.
Having spat my dummy yesterday somewhat spectacularly with work and threatening to throw the towel in , they've managed to throw me a pay rise and they're honestly going to advertise my colleagues job this week...mmmmm
They just do not grasp that I prefer quality of life to quantity of money.
It's been so bad that I haven't even unpacked my bag from the car boot on Sunday and even my knicker drawer is empty.
I suppose if I can hack this for a whole month it will fill the oil tank for the winter but if I don't survive just chuck me on the compost heap when I run out of knickers

Scotland & Independence

Well the Scots decided to stay , very surprised . But then maybe there just wasnt enough trueborn Scots up there to swing the vote .  How david Cameron managed to keep a straight face is beyond me , hes really gutted because the Labour party hasnt died yet . Im just gutted because my ex husband isnt going to be walled in up there .
 Scotland I would have missed you , the crazy experience that is all night Asda aka Walmart in Edinburgh  , where they just pop the drunks into shopping trolley and stick them by the tills .  Stirling services with its bouncers on the door .  Playing dodge the deer belting up the A9 in the middle of the night . Edinburgh Castle best concert venue in the world . The highlands where nothing can repel the midges in a summer . Wild Camping without irate farmers . Glenmorangie , Runrig and haggis .

Then theres the other side of the story what would i have done with all the tartan fabric ive being amassing for a yet to be decided project . would Robbie Burns have been banned in the UK. Would we have to drink all the Buckfast fortified wine ourselves . Would i never have seen a fit bloke in a kilt again .

bit of dougal porn for us older ladies 

Scotland for once you made a decision with you heads not with your hearts , now lets concentrate on declaring our independence from self serving , conniving career politicians .

Bithday Giveaway

Birthday Giveaway winner no 2 is Bryony Cater i need an address please

Birthday giveaway results

Marta chan.....is the winner.....24 hrs for an address please

In the meantime I've got a truly fascinating work course tomorrow, vulnerability and the energy industry........let's hope there's some decent charity shops in Thetford to kill my lunch hour  , my work colleagues are a pretty riveting bunch , if you chat football and have a hairy chest!!!

Gathering Nuts in September

Im really a bit of a sad case sometimes, i got all excited yesterday because i gathered my first cob nut  crop aka hazel nuts. My  scrawny little 3 year old bushes that i planted in my bid to grow a native fence have given me a litre or so of nuts . I suppose once they get bigger and the squirrels spot them i will never see a nut , although the cat has tried squirrel wrestling before he really didnt win that one . We did crack a couple open and tried them , very tasty , so theyre now drying in the sunshine on a window ledge till xmas or until i need some for baking .
These have been a great idea, nice bushes lots of weird caterpillers for the munchkin to study , really low maintenance , you can take a crop of branches for garden use , you get catkins in February just when everything else is sad and dead and if the squirrels dont spot them 3 years later you have a crop of nuts , i cant understand why more people dont use them as hedging

Best of all were the weird bugs I had to look up on the internet , shield bugs great little things about the size of an adult fingernail ,harmless sap suckers , that are eaten in some countries as a canape . the look of horror all round when i said they were edible was worth it ..lol

image stolen from somewhere 

Thrift Shops and Poverty

Budget crisis at the house of nettle knickers this month we have squandered every penny on weekends away ,trips to London and graduation . In fact weve done 6 weeks of wreckless squandering , sod the budget...lol
Back to reality time as the first of the threatening letters arrived today . Ive not loaded ebay for a month and work is the usual sporadic pleasure , so tomorrow if the weather is remotely like, i need to do a car boot just for fuel money for the week . Mr Bah Humbug chimes up helpfully with do you fancy going to Whitby for goth weekend ..bless him ., i think this is to make up for not doing the Steampunk event at Lincoln Castle this weekend due to household endemic poverty .
Ive had my first trips to the seaside thrift shops this week and ive hardly broke the bank , just a few bits for pennies , nice cross stitch linen tablecloth with a tea stain im sure a bit of bleach will cure, groovy 70s Family Circle craft book , a single vintage pillowcase and a couple of strange egyptian pattern napkins . I left behind loads of yellow rose phoenix pyrex mixing bowls and serving platters , Saint Andrews Hospice at Sutton on Sea is currently infested with 50s Fire King , JAJ Pyrex and
more. Great if you do the vintage fairs .

A Little pile of reading material , a toilet reading book for the boys , Mees very tatty Lincolnshire a read and cut up i think and of course a really good edition of Farmhouse Fare , best vintage cookbook of the lot, i have a wartime edition and this is a 70s reprint full of handwritten little notes and receipts.

Finally just because they needed a good home theres a Fireking Mug , i always buy them then list them when  get to six , plus theres this gorgeous 1907 Edwardian beauty ribbon plate by Phillip Boileau , designer of images for postcards that i havent a clue what i will do with, nobody seems to like the turn of the century anymore and i keep picking up bits for pennies

Graduation day

Im a very proud mummy today , it was graduation day at Lincoln Cathedral , quite a venue complete with big screens because the inconsiderate medieval builders put all these pillars in the way .

Glorious sunny day , all her hard work and effort has finally paid off and i hope both her and her little man go on to great things

A Belated Birthday Giveaway

Ive just realised ive been blogging for a year , somehow ive maintained my motivation so despite a busy graduation week , plus the creative marrow challenge , i will make the effort to fill a box and give it away to the universe , it will be a crafty fabric sort of  box, plus whatever else ive pack ratted of a crafty nature giveaway even
Xmas items .....why when i dont do xmas?
 This will be an anywhere in the world giveaway but to keep costs down it will be sent by the dreaded surface mail , we're still good for xmas posting dates , just ! winner will be picked via munchkin and pillowcase at 6pm on the 16th barring major disaster .

Now heres the really hard bit . to enter you have to speak to me , go on you can do it . all you need is to speak up in the comments to get an entry , I know some of you are shy and i seem to get readers from the farthest flung corners of the world , plus my usual gang of vocal locals, anyone can enter , you get 24hrs to send your address once picked, if not we pick again . ive had neary 20000 viewers so some of you may still be there . Heres a bad photo off some of the stuff ive found in the last half an hour. Big bit of red holly leaf fabric , sheet of fabric xmas tags, 2 fabric kitty cushion fronts , vintage bag handels, xmas ribbon, aida  , dimensions chart and charms , sparkly silver floss, vintage needle keeper , knitted beanie book , pile of vivid red triangle lace inserts that i never got round into making into bunting , I will keep adding to the little lucky dip box as I find more strange items after all i would need to live into my hundreds to ever use the stash i have amassed

Outlander

so what do you do when most of your technology is dead? You sit down and trawl the pirate tv sites of course .
Twenty odd years ago, when I was vastly pregnant and stuck on bed rest with my eldest , I requested reading material and my other half came back with the first book through the door of the bookshop . somehow it was something good , very good..It was Cross Stitch by Diane Gabaldon . A time travel Jacobite romance, it stayed on my shelf for years until I sold what turned out to be a  first edition,  for a huge amount of money. I never realised it had been issued in the states as Outlander and had a huge cult following plus there was lots more volumes in the series.
But now they have made an excellent TV version and I'm hooked, only available on pirate tv in the UK.  The costumes and  the man flesh  are outstanding , lots of big hairy blokes in kilts , what more could a girl ask for , there's something about a highland accent. I'd show you the pictures but I'm still stuck on this wretched I pad

Grumpy Bird and Technology

Sometimes I wish I was as good with technology as my kids but I'm not , plus I'm mean as well. so on Saturday my monitor developed a fizz , even I know this is a leaky capacitor and a sign of imminent death.
Conversation went like this
Son 1....theres a cheap one in Argos £79
Me....I don't have £79
Son  2 ...we get our Jobseekers Friday we could donate
Me ..you have to order and collect so that will be another week, I will have a look on eBay
find cheap Buyer collect monitor on eBay go and collect
Me ... Can you set this up
SOn1....of course we can , errrrr the leads don't fit
Me ....you said this would fit
Son1....mmmmmmmm

I  plan to stuff there heads in the slow cooker later just for fun, I've ordered the correct leads the moral is never listen to your sons , they may be the technological generation but a simple thing like a power lead is beyond them.
so I'm picture less due to having to use this wretched iPad thingy of Mr Bah Humbugs , and putterless due to the sad demise of my monitor
but the one thing that is driving me mad is the simple fact you can't just pop to a shop when you need something anymore , nobody carries any stock everything has to be ordered online...ggggggrrrrr

Custom cars and Vintage

Mr Bah Humbug twisted my arm and dragged me off to Spalding Yesterday's for my Sunday vintage fix. Custom Culture 2014 Brilliant sunshine and a brilliant event. I was drowned in a sea of Rock n Roll and 50s Americana.

The music was great , the stalls were amazing so much vintage clothing and accessories, tattooists working away , I am so sad sometimes that my lousy skin won't allow tattoos.  Jive displays , air brush displays, wood carving , burlesque dancers and a body art section .

 Mr Bah humbug was moaning that his sunroof is now so big he can't have a flat top anymore and getting all drooly over the vehicles. It was well worth the trip , I just wish I had a bottomless pit for a purse

The London Experiance part 2

Sometimes i think i fetched my abilities to understand art from a previous life , day 2 in London I only wanted to go and do one thing . The Tower of London WWI tribute , seemed appropriate as my great grandad was one of those whose body was never recovered . I nearly fainted £22 to get in,  i think not , though there are concessions if you prebook . But you dont need to go in to see the poppies theyre in the moat , turns out theyre an installation?  they were impressive.

I was dragged to Westminster to see everything , the nicest thing was the security guards at the supreme court , of some African origin? they were lovely cheery blokes , it was so nice to find someone friendly . I think that was the one big difference I did notice after 20 years , all the foreign people in the service industries , but they were all so nice and capable i cant see what the problem is .
But then my daughter got her shopping head on and i lost the will to live , i was merely there as a pack pony..lol , so in just 3 hours she dragged me on and off the tube umpteen times , we went to M&M world
Hamleys , Covent Garden which was just an overpriced hell hole ,China Town the one place I had to be dragged from , I was forbidden to shop on this trip due to lack of funds , but being surrounded with weird
Chinese tat is paradise for me , i wanted to shoplift a big bag of waving kitties and Chinese opera masks ..lol
Back to the hellhole that is Victoria Coach Station for 4pm bus , this was like a UN refugee camp , really grim , the drive back through London did amuse me , we drove down Oxford Street past mega Primark and all along the window ledges outside were sat hoards of arab ladies in their black robes surrounded by mountains of Primark bags . Thy say they all come to London to shop at the end of Eid, all that money to get here and they raid Primark?

So has London changed much in 20 years ? The English seem more miserable , not every face you see is a foreigner despite what UKIP say . The  streets  are much cleaner  , despite there being few bins . There still arent enough toilets and they dont signpost the ones that they do have. The pigeons are still the mangiest specimens in the world  and I think it must be very easy for those in a position of power to forget that anything outside the city of London matters or even exists, but its probably  not fair to judge London on the bit of the city we saw , the suburbs may be very different

London after 20 Years

Its 20 years since I last went to London. So a trip to see a band was a good excuse for my daughter sponsored trip to the capital .  This was an extreme budget break ..lol  we stayed at a back packer hostel on the Strand , The Strand Continental Hotel , hidden up a dingy Edwardian staircase between 2 shops , no lifts and five flights of stairs £25 a night and a continental breakfast slung in , it was clean spartan student accommodation , but the breakfast room was truly beautiful it was stuck in the 1940s 

We did the trip down on National Express coaches , they have improved in 20 years though a numb bum after 5 hours on a coach wasnt good.lol 

It was just a trudge up the Charing Cross Road to the Borderline to see Alan doyle , yes thats right someone only the Canadians among you may have heard of . He was the lead singer for Great Big Sea now he has his own amazing band . the Borderline is  typical 60s down in the cellar venue staffed by pig ignorant Eastern European grunts . But you can put up with an awful lot for a good band and an excellent support act .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgqfO_RGSls

It was a brilliant night , and we got to meet them all afterwards for a very civilised meet and greet , my daughter was overjoyed she got a photo and signings , shed spent the night right at the front with all the kiddies , us oldies who sat at the back got the good sound quality.

Strangest experience?  I was sat in the wrinkly park at the rear having a friendly chat  with a few other fans, as you do and got chatting to an American male , we were chatting about bands wed both been to see. Then in to the conversation he slipped " do you fancy coming back to my hotel for some casual sex after the show? " WHAT !!! good grief i wouldnt have considered that at 20 let alone in my 50s . I think the death stare did the trick as he scuttled off . My daughter howled when i told her and is now telling the universe about it , so i figured i had better tell you all before she did .

Another post on the budget capital trip once i get the photos sorted !!

Bank holidays Bah Humbug

So it's grumpy old bird day , that great British tradition a wet drizzly Monday.  This always seems like the most pointless Bank Holiday. The kids go back to school in a week or so , nobody gets paid till next week. no car boots due to the weather.....Up early and read the Daily Mail on line, another flamin award ceremony , an exercise in pointlessness,  dodgy bobble headed birds , letting the wind get to there flange.  I'm so glad my daughter is old enough to dress herself  and doesn't need a stylist. What on earth were they thinking it's all a bit emporers new clothes, sorry girls you look like a bunch of dodgy hookers, did your mother never tell you it's vulgar to let it all hang out ?

meanwhile the rest of the world watches in horror as the Middle East descends into something from a not funny Xbox game, as our esteemed leader Dave goes bleeding surfing. Obama doesn't seem to be letting it interfere with his golf handicap either. your world leaders boys , show a bit of backbone and bleeding lead.
There's parents of every religion and race grieving for their children, there's a whole rash of murders plastered across the pages, Ebola . It's all so negative.

Meanwhile ime cooking for the 5000,  falling over people , wondering what the hell I'm going to do with yet more plums and deciding how little I need to pack for 2 days in London

Feeding the 5000

So up nice and early this morning with a munchkin in toe , New York , Billinghay and Metheringham car boot sales and i spent a whole £1.50 on a skirt that i will perform surgery on when i get the chance . the only other thing I even bent down to look at were some burlap pig feed sacks , then i remembered it may look nice in the home and garden mags , but really its itchy , horrible to sew and gives off dust forever more . The ultimate guide to how bad the car boots are is that the munchkin asked for nothing and could he have a milkshake from the Co-op instead .
Yesterday however it was off to the tin factory , and just look at the haul .

48 tins of beans , a case of new potatoes because Mr Bah Humbug is lazy when hes here on his own, 4 tins of grill with beans , 5 tins of butter beans , 5 big tins of tomatoes , 6 big tins of bean salad for when i forget to put the beans on to soak the night before , 50 sachets of porridge , 10 bags of stuffing , 10 tins of cheese which makes the ultimate cheese toasty  , 2 peppermint squash, 2 jars of posh ginger conserve all mine  ,  plus a couple of multipacks of crisps , some are missing from the picture because someone started to put it all away while i was looking for the camera!!
Grand total £26.70.

Now its possible to make some of these cheaper , but you cant buy even value brands cheaper in a supermarket . Now the Americans among you are often into canning produce but because of out horrendous energy costs its more of a luxury than a cheaper way of storing things . We do not eat the most healthy diet on the planet but it is varied and cheap , we supplement it with lots of vegetables which are very cheap  in season here in Lincolnshire. Though how all the potatoes at the car boot were cheaper in the Co-op was a little baffling ? Tommorow is another day and theres a little car boot at Tattershall village hall if the weather holds out

Cant get Better Than Free

So Mr Bah Humbug is off squatting in a tent with his scooter buddies and i have to work today ....joy .
But take a look at what i was given .

This was a donation from daughters boyfriend , his mum works in a school and they were going to throw this in the skip!!!  But i suppose to anyone else it does appear to be rubbish , she had tried to give it to others who were horrified .
This is the exciting bit  (to me anyway..lol ) Its a Singer 275L  produced from 1959 for a very short time , the last of the metal machines and its a hand model , she has a couple of minor missing bits , but being a Singer they can be sourced from other models , its just the little plastic plate over the stitch length adjuster that will be a pig to find , but this doesnt make a difference to its function at all , its just me being a singer nerd , her case is very tatty so i think i may jazz it up a little . she will be a functioning beauty once im finished

Thrift where are you?

I guess im starting to panic , I put in loads of bids at  http://www.bidspotter.co.uk/en-gb/auction-catalogues/cjm-asset/catalogue-id-cjm10222   try not to laugh at some of the prices fetched , I won  nothing . toddled down to the viewing at Unique chuck out sale only to find a sea of broken pots and nothingness, they have a big 2 day "antique sale" at the weekend that im struggling to find anything interesting in at a price I  can afford   http://www.unique-auctions.com/. Its nearly September and i've never been so low on stock, usually im struggling to see the floor and falling over boxes everywhere , instead im contemplating moving furniture and doing a bit of decorating..lol
Hopefully there will be a nice weekend and i can wander the car boots, but then again i need to do one last car boot , with my mountain of curtains and bedding . Ive bought nothing all week in the charity shops everything was just of no interest , im so glad that i only have my ebay shop to stock , those of you with booths have to continually buy and sometimes that must be a chore .
Heres a couple of car boot lurkers , i was thinking of doing something with tartan and the bag of dolls was a whole 10p . see i will buy anything for 10p