That Jeep has got to go!

The Car Tax form came for the Jeep on Friday, its gone up £15 so now £285. As soon as we've taken the machinery that we won't need anymore, to the sale yard for their collective sale in May we are definitely getting something smaller and cheaper. When I took the money to pay for the tax from the Jeep virtual 'envelope' it only left £15 for any diesel we'll need in the rest of the month. Luckily we filled up on the way home from hospital last week at Tesco - getting 4p a litre off so we may not need anymore anyway.

A beautiful blue sky sunny day today and we had a choice, either get the jeep out of the shed and drive to Aldeburgh for a walk along the prom, get the jeep out of the shed and drive out Snape way for a walk in the forest to pick up fir cones or just walk  from here along the local footpaths. Having read the first paragraph you will know which we choose! We changed plans on where to walk after finding how icy our road was and when we came home and looked on mapometer  ( thank you to whoever posted about this website - it's great fun) we had walked just over 2 miles, not much I know, but after the hardly-a-heart-attack and the pneumonia we are building up slowly!

A Ditch full of running water - the nearest thing we have to a river!

The footpath goes along a private lane to one of the second homes near us.

Years ago we put this sleeper across our ditch so we could get onto our land without going along the road and in the front gateway - just for fun!

Another book finished already and another with a religious background.
The Author lives on the Suffolk/Essex border and has written short pieces for the Church Times for years and years. His friends are often writers and artists and he travels widely. Ronald Blythe is now 92 years old and still preaching and writing.

I've read several of his books, probably the most well known is Akenfield, which was turned into a film using some local people as actors, including a girl who was in the same year as me at school. Ronald Blythe is influenced by John Clare ,a poet who also wrote about the countryside including a long poem called The Shepherds Calender which describes the country people of the time. The last part of the poem - 'December - Christmas' -  has a good description of Christmas in the 1820s.

Talking about Christmas, - today the Christmas cards were turned into tags and shopping list card, with the remainder going in the recycling bin.

Welcome to new followers - Lovely Grey on Google friends and Emily Lockett on Bloglovin'.
Thank you for lots of comments about our wood cutting on yesterdays post. Trishwish asked if we take the nails out of the scrap wood. I said " Good Grief - NO!" it would take forever and a day to remove nails from everything we cut up. Col just fishes the nails out of the Rayburn and woodburner before he lights them in the morning ( we don't keep the Rayburn in overnight unless its really freezing). Sometimes, when we are cutting, he hits a nail with the chainsaw which chucks the chain off and blunts it, so we try to avoid that if possible!

Back Tomorrow
Sue

The up-market side of Suffolk

It was a beautiful blue sky morning, just right for a walk. But I had bread rising before we decided so we went out straight after lunch instead. Typically the sky clouded over just as we got to Southwold.

Southwold is 20 minutes north of us and one of the most expensive places to own property, even the beach huts fetch £100,000. The sea was flat calm and it was chilly but there were crowds of people about especially through the town which is full of small up market touristy shops although Costa, Tesco Express and W H Smiths have managed to sneak in during the last few years. Southwold is the home of Adnams Brewery and today there was a smell of their beer brewing all over the town.

We don't have many Lighthouses in Suffolk, this is one of them

The pier

We came home via a shop called "Wild about birds" to buy a new seed feeder as ours is cracked and letting too much seed out. I've never seen so many different types of seed for birdfeeding as they have in that shop.

That was our Monday jaunt.

Home in time for a cuppa and washing up the lunch things and sorting eggs.

Back Tomorrow
Sue

30 Ways to Save £1 -- DAY 10 + A Sunday walk

The Radio 4 weather forecast at five to 7 this morning said " Mainly sunny all day everywhere with a few exceptions. The exceptions are the Norfolk and Suffolk coast, where it will be cloudy". My thoughts were - that's Not Fair! But I'm pleased to say They were wrong and we have had sunshine, although it's blinkin' chilly.

Him Outside was busy outside all morning moving straw to the chicken sheds, getting ready for concreting the shed base and various other odd jobs. I decided to make bread, get a load of washing out and do the ironing. I also checked my seed order and wrote the cheques.

Another walk this afternoon in our " getting back to walking after stents" regime. This one is another one from home avoiding crossing muddy fields and is probably about 2 and a half miles, so a little bit more than last week. Mostly field edges and country roads and just a tiny bit of woodland.

Good to see Him Outside striding ahead again

Beside the fields of a stud farm

Footbridge over ditch and then through a little bit of woodland

This oak tree is along our road. The whole top was blown off it in the winds 2 weeks ago

The top half of the oak across the other side of the road. Laying on the phone wire. We may lose our phone connection soon if someone doesn't fix it as it's pulling the wire really tight

The Day 10 idea for saving £1 was      (see all 30 here)
10. Before you buy something STOP and think if you already have something that can do the same job.
I have a small card in my purse, it says

DO I REALLY NEED IT

DO I HAVE IT ALREADY

IS THERE SOMETHING THAT I HAVE ALREADY THAT I COULD USE INSTEAD

COULD I BORROW IT

HOW MUCH WOULD I SAVE BY NOT BUYING IT

WHAT WOULD I DO WITH THE MONEY I SAVE

Having it in my purse doesn't necessarily mean I look at it! But at least the thought is there - sometimes.

 
 

30 ways to save £1----DAY 3 + getting back to walking

Before I do Day 3, I must say thank you to lots of people for comments left over the last few days, some from a several days ago that I've only just discovered. It was good to find a comment from Jean, to say that she had asked someone if she could pick up windfall apples and had been offered as many as she wanted. My Tip 1 worked ! Brilliant!


 Way back in April lots of people were doing 30 ways to save £1( mine are here) and sending it to Moneysupermarket.com to earn £30. So as there are 30 days in November I thought I would have a closer look at my 30 ways.

30 ways to save £1
3. Don't start pets on expensive brands, if they are started on a cheaper brand, they will never know the difference.

We haven't got any pets at the moment. But we had a lovely Collie cross for 10 years, 3 cats for many of our years here and several cats before that. When I say cheaper brand, I mean anything cheaper than the very most expensive brands. We used to find that once a cat had tried Whiskers it was very difficult to get them back to something cheaper. In the past I always mixed and matched dry food and tinned so our pets got used to all sorts of different things.

I spent sometime in my craft room this morning fiddling with paper and glue to start some cards, then I did a sort out of a cupboard and moved a few odds and ends to the car boot boxes. Finally I sorted through presents in the Christmas cupboard to see how preparations were going.

This afternoon we actually got around to going out for a walk. Since Him Outside had the second stent done we've been planning to get walking again but with all the catching up on work that's been going on here it's taken 2 months to start. We did one of the winter walks we can do from here without crossing muddy fields, just a couple of miles but it was good to be out and about, and very interesting to see how much damage had been done to so many trees by the wind last monday. Our walk takes us a mile down the road towards Friston, through a small gap in the hedge, along a field and garden edge and then back up a wide grassy track, to return to the road just 100 yards from home. I planned to take the camera but forgot. Hopeless!

More Strictly and reading tonight- what an adventurous life we lead!