Get the 'Ark' ready

This morning the rain was pelting down so I checked the weather forecast for the week ahead. Accordingy to GMTV we are in for a wet week and during September (between the 9th and 11th to be precise) there will be severe storms and flooding in many areas of the Country. I seem to remember in mid July that they were forecasting a heatwave in August which hasn't happened so I'm not getting the sandbags out just yet .........

A Weekend Away

We were both away from our humble abode this weekend. Peter was at Kemble Air Show and I was at my parents. I'll let Peter blog about Kemble separately.............

During my Andover 'sleepover' at my parents I did a car boot sale on the Sunday with my friend's teenage daughter, Sophie. We had the car absolutely crammed with stuff and it took us about 45 mins to set out the stall properly. We had one rain shower towards the end but apart from that the weather held off and there was a big crowd of sellers and buyers. Unfortunatley the days of thinking you are going to make a hundred quid or so on the day are well gone as we made £20.00 each. People these days are so stingy with what they will pay - I had some beautiful cushions and was originally asking £2.50 for them but knocked them down to £2.00 and they still took ages to sell - loads of people picket them up but when they found out the price quickly put them down and walked away - I mean we are talking £2.00 here not £20.00!! When boot sales fist rstarted my friend Wendy and I used to regularly make £80 to £100 each on the day. I think a couple of things are to blame for the loss of income - Ebay, more charity shops about and loads of bootsales to compete with. Oh well, we had a nice day out anyway and the 'people watching' was fun.

After the sale I headed home and Peter got back a few hours after me - we both agreed we'd had fun weekends but is was nice to be back in our little house - Arhhhhhh

Recycling

I heard an interesting debate on Radio 4 this morning about re-cycling and boy did it open a ‘can of worms’ with listeners. The crux of the matter was that people were all for making the extra effort that sorting stuff out for recycling takes (so no problem there) but what they were unhappy about was:-

• Bins for recycling and non recyclable waste being collected once a fortnight. As many people pointed out, after two weeks their bins stank to high heaven and contained maggots and attracted vermin (nice !).
• Some Councils are issuing more and more receptacles in which to divide waste. We for instance have one large green wheelie bin for cardboard, newspapers etc., a large black wheelie bin for general waste, a glass collection box and a green bag for garden waste. All these are collected on different days of the week, dotted throughout the month, so it’s very easy to forget to put them out.
• One listener to the programme pointed out that she lived in a very small terraced house with no front garden, and a tiny back garden, and her bins take up a huge amount of space. People in flats had similar problems with their estates blighted by row after row of unsightly bins (and the obvious potential for kids to tamper with them)
• Yet more listeners said the bins they were provided with were not big enough and Councils would not take any side-waste without an extra charge (some were charging £6.50 per extra bag!)
• The final moan was about Councils who ask for rubbish to be separated and then are seen pouring it into the same bin lorry – now ‘that’ is terrible!
  
  My own view is that recycling is good and more and more needs to be done. If someone could find a use for more of the plastics that are used (for example that used in ready meal containers, yoghurt pots etc) then the waste in our house would be cut down to next to nothing. However, Councils need to think things through more thoroughly before introducing new schemes – some people’s properties just aren’t suited to accommodating giant wheelie bins and the Councils need to recognise that. I also think that collecting the ‘general waste’ bin once a fortnight, especially during the summer months, is nothing short of disgusting and a real backwards step in a civilised society. Finally, I am very concerned about the ‘rumours’ that are circulating about Councils charging households by ’weight ’ of their rubbish. Are they insane – this will undoubtedly lead to the following in my opinion:-
  
  · More fly tipping
  · People putting their rubbish into other people’s bins (probably in the dead of night)
  · Yet another ‘stealth tax’ on people who already pay huge Council Tax bills
  

Airport Security - Hmmm

Yesteray Peter spent 'spotting' - planes that is. I thought he had just gone with his mate Paul but it appears that Duncan and Jimmy were in the car share arrangement too. They went to Stansted and Heathrow. So that's 4 guys with binoculars and cameras climbing up banks, squeezing through bushes to get as close as possible to the planes. Not once were they questioned about what they were doing - whilst I would hate any of them to get into trouble it does seem strange that they were not even approached by security just to check they weren't carrying anything - particulary in the current climate.

Weird Text Message / Phone Message Thingy

The phone just rang at work and when I answered - a trumpet started playing (parp parp parp) and then a woman's voice says "you have a BT SMS voice message" - press '1' to listen. So I listened and I got the message "he qualified". Quite who has qualified I have no idea !!!

I have had one of these type of messages before and they are weird. You can have great fun with them too - just type a text into your mobile - send it to a land line number and the recipient will get an automated voice message. Sometimes the pauses are in all the wrong places when they speak so can be well funny..........

Help I'm Getting Addicted to Richard and Judy !!

Just recently I have been tuning into Richard and Judy when I get home. I usually get home about 4.30pm - whizz around doing chores for half an hour and then tune in. A lot of the show is 'lightweight' and Richard is such a bafoon (or maybe that's part of the charm - watching his many gaffs!). Anyway, in amongst the general 'dross' they do have some interesting bits on the show - I love the weekly book review they do. Any book they recommend goes straight to the top of the bestseller list so they really are powerful influences on the book buying public. Last night they were also talking with Dave Gorman (who I am a big fan of) about 'blogging' and that was interesting too. How else would I have found out that Paul Daniesl sells stuff on Ebay and someone has a blogg devoted to telling the world what Paul has actioned (complete with pictures) and how much he got for it!

However, I can' t help but feel a bit ashamed when Peter gets home and catches me watching R&J (what a guilty pleasure daytime TV is). However, it will all soon come to an end because R&J share a slot with Paul O'Grady on a 3 month on air - 3 month off - ararrangement and I've gone off him a bit!

Oh and there's this really good programme on before it too - where 6 random people who don't know each other each have to cook a meal and they mark each other out of 10. There was some mad woman on there the other day who did a menu with 26 dishes on it - all of which she cooked badly. One of her main courses was called 'strange thing' which was basically anything she could think of thrown into pastry and a face put on the top. It looked a total mess when it came out of the oven and all it's features came off ........

National Trust

Yesterday I did some articles for our website. I normally contribute far less than Peter to the site but I think I have gone someway to redressing the balance. I basically went through the National Trust Guide Book and wrote a review of all the places we have visited since we have become members - which we are going to post on the site (or rather Peter is). Looking back, we really have been to some fab places (ranging from a windpump, to a fen, to an artist decorated chapel) and the good thing about the National Trust is that you are never far away from a place to visit, wherever you are in the Country.

We have been to 19 places since we joined so I reckon we are 'just' about ahead of the game (ie. we have visited enough places to ensure that the fees we would have paid to get in would have been higher than what we have paid on membership).

Air Travel

The morning we set off to Bristol we heard about the extra security at the airports, particularly for American bound flights. My first thought was: my brother and his family are out there at the moment but at least they have got there safely. They had a lot of car and bus travel each side of their plane journey so if they had been caught up in the current delays with two small children to look after it would have been very stressful for them. They are due to fly back on Saturday and I hope they have a smooth transition through the airport from the States but I somehow doubt it as the Americans tend to be, if anything, even more security concious than we are. Of course it is far better to suffer hours of delay to ensure the planes are safe but I will be thinking of them on Saturday when they head home as I think they may have a difficult time.

Feeling Autumnal

The weather has definitely changed over the last week, I first noticed it when we were in Bristol – the mornings are starting to feel chilly and some of the leaves are coming off of the trees. I love Autumn and the run up to Christmas. As I told Peter yesterday, one of the Sunday papers reported that there are 'just' 134 days until Christmas and Selfridges and Harrods have already got their Christmas stock in! Peter made a face and said, remind me “30 days before” which I was quite impressed with – he used to be a Christmas Eve last minute shopper!

I guess our vegetable patch will soon die down now - we have had the last of the beans but Peter picked 3 cucumbers yesterday and a corgette (well marrow sized really) so there are still a few things coming on :-)

Balloons

We have spent the last four days in Bristol for the Balloon Fiesta. We had bought advanced parking tickets so visited 3 times over the weekend. Unfortunately on none of the occasions we attended did the Balloons actually take off - too much wind in the upper atmosphere it seems. However, some of the balloons did infate for the sake of the vast crowd and Peter got some nice pictures. We did note however that it was always the same balloons who went to the effort of putting on a show (i.e. the good old Churchill Insurance Dog - pictured above) whilst others disappeared out of the arena with their balloons still in their trailers as soon as they found out they weren't allowed to fly. However, despite this, it was a fun event and there was lots of other stuff going on as well as the balloons.

On Thursday night we stayed for the night glow which was lovely and they played some good music tracks to accompany the beautiful spectical of the balloons against the night sky, plus there was a great firework display. Getting out of the car park afterwards however was not a happy experience. We sat in a queue not moving an inch for about an hour before someone eventually opened up an additional exit - good job really as things were getting a bit threatening with people tooting their horns, getting out of their cars and basically driving their cars with a 'tank mentaility' i.e. not letting anyone else in the queue or they would get crushed! I was glad both we, and our car, got out unscathed.

Daylight Robbery

Since we moved into the house a year ago, we have been paying estimated bills for electricity and gas at £25 and £30 per month respectively.

We have just received our ‘year end’ invoice and we have underpaid massively on electric and gas and they want us to pay £48 for electric and £59 for gas for the year ahead. Considering as we only use gas to heat our hot water I’m at a loss as to how this can cost £59 per month! We are going to take a weekly meter reading each week to see how much each of our appliances are using – we suspect our old fridge/freezer, which never seems to get up to temperate, may be gobbling up energy. One thing's is for sure we won’t be leaving any lights etc on now when we are not in the room. It would be useful to find out the average energy consumptoin of everyday household objects like the TV, video, computer etc - might try and find this out on the internet.

The Boot Sale

Sunday was hot so I decided to sit in the garden and look through some boxes of junk (correction: "quality merchandise") to find items to sell at a boot sale that I am doing with my friends daughter, Sophie, in a few weeks time. Found loads: much of it needed a good clean so the dish washer was on full pelt for the crockery. Although I have a lot to sell quantity wise I'm not sure that people will pay much for it - people haggle over a few pence these days. I want to get our Canada fund off to a good start though so I'm not going to let stuff go for nothing! Put a few of the 'choicer' pieces on Ebay to see if I can raise more that way.

Talking of Ebay, mum said she wanted to find a knitting pattern to make a Winnie the Pooh for my newphew Joe, so I looked on Ebay and, sure enough, there were 3 for sale. Isn't Ebay just amazing - you want the most obscure thing and invariably someone somewhere is selling just that item!

The 'Hired Help' has arrived !

Mum and dad called on Saturday on the way through to "somewhere else". But the somewhere else got cancelled so they stuck around until mid afternoon helping me with the garden whilst Peter went to football. My parents can't resist getting stuck in whenever they come around whether it be DIY, gardening or whatever - it is really really helpful to us and we do appreciate it even though we do get the odd comment from my mum like "Susan, it looks like you have a problem with limescale in your downstairs sink - have you tried Cillit Bang". Dad, bless him, had also brought some wooden garden chairs over which he had made for us - they are great and have wide wooden arms on which to put your G&T whist you chill out in the garden. I'm so lucky to have a dad who can knock things up in a shed !!!

Dreams and Ambitions

Have been feeling a bit stuck in a rut lately. You know what it's like, you work during the week and come home pretty tired but you do some chores and sling a ready meal in the oven and then you are basically too tired to do much else. At the weekend-end you end up doing more chores and trying to keep the garden up together. It's just a treadmill you get on...... that's not to say that I'm not happy in our new home and with life in general - I just think I need some 'adventures' to look forward to.

Anyway, I have definitely decided today to enrol on an OU course this winter in 'Creative Writing' - it's a twelve week course and it will give me an interest and a challenge on the long winter evenings to come.

Also got all 'enthused' again this week about planning a trip to Canada (a work colleague had just been and brought back some wonderful photos). When Peter and I first got engaged we said we'd do a big trip one day but house buying etc got in the way but I have been thinking that we are 'never' going' to have enough 'spare' money to do it so we just have to find ways of making it happen - just set a date in our minds and go for it. So I reckon we are aiming for summer or autum in 2008. I have started up a web saver account and any extra income we get can go in there to help build up a fund. I'm doing a boot sale in 2 weeks so that will be the first cash injection.

As good as a Friday Gets.............

Well my boss is on holiday now for 2 weeks (that didn't stop him calling in with some extra work though about an hour before he had to leave for his flight!). However, it shouldn't take me that long to get through it and then I'll have some time to catch up on some much need clearing out of files etc.

Got a free lunch today as there was a buffet arranged for a meeting and they didn't eat it all (I like a freebie!!)

My work colleagues sent me a £25 voucher for Amazon as a thankyou for helping her out with her job over the last few months. Such a nice gesture and means that the books and CD that I thought I couldn't afford this month has suddenly become achievable! I placed my order within minutes of receiving the voucher so I have a parcel to look forward to next week.