A few bargains

Ham-pieces from Aldi £1.65 for 400g

 They always have this smoked and un-smoked. I would prefer smoked but that gives Col indigestion. It varies each time with different sorts of ham and you have to watch the use-by date. Sometimes it's only 2 days ahead rather than 6 days which is more useful.
It can make us................................... Ham and Chips for 2
                                                          Pasta, ham and broccoli bake for 2
                                                          5 days lunch sandwiches for 1
Yes, it would be cheaper to go Vegetarian but we're not.


Savoury Biscuits from Poundland . These are £2 for 250g everywhere except Poundland  where they are £1 for 250g, it's a no brainer!
Yep, plain cream crackers are cheaper but a bit boring.

I look at the junk mail that comes through the door, sometimes there might be a bargain.
Premier shops are small convenience shops often at petrol stations and small shopping precincts on estates. I've only ever been in our local one once as they are very expensive, but sometimes they have bargains.
Like 80 PG Tea Bags at half marked price - £1.32 that I spotted on the latest leaflet.

 Even beating Morrisons special offer of £2.
Yes, there is probably cheaper tea out there, but PG is reliably consistent +good and strong.

And finally I spotted this in the Hospice charity shop for £10, we'll need some extra chairs for the bigger space of the cottage................... can't be many chairs around for £10 I thought.

A pretty cushion will make it a handy chair for the spare bedroom and light enough to carry downstairs if needed.

Welcome to someone new following.

Back with moving news I hope
Sue

An Old Fashioned Charity Shop

Do you remember when charity shops were full to the brim with all sorts of interesting things?
 Before the days when they felt the need to keep up with posh clothes shops, before the days when they had a re-fit every other year and all their hangers had to be the 'right' way round.
The chain charity shops all seem to be much the same now....... Neat, tidy and  colour coded!

Luckily we have the Emmaus Charity shop  not far from us which is still a lovely place to search through and I found a couple of old interesting items in there the other day

The tin is an old biscuit tin with Chinese pictures - it's going to be our tea-caddy and the bottle is made of very thick glass, tinted green and full of imperfections. It has J.K & S on the base which I googled and found it means it was made by John Kilner and Sons sometime around the mid 1800's. It will be good for a few flowers on the deep window sills in the kitchen at the cottage. ( The old part of the cottage pre-dates this bottle!). I dithered over them for a few minutes but decided I would regret not getting them so £3.50p for the charity shop and they came home and made me very happy.

Welcome to  new followers Lyssa,Linda,Jane, Sarah and Sparrow.

Back Tomorrow
Sue

Adsense + latest doings

Do I need an extra £35 a week, well frankly ......YES
According to a box that has appeared on my dashboard page my blog now qualifies for having ads and I could earn up to £35 a week ( subject to traffic) by joining "hundreds of other bloggers making money through Adsense"
Will I be doing this...............NO, although I can see the attraction, but it's not a way I want to earn money.
Does anyone with ads actually earn that much?


When we move to the cottage we will be halfway between 2 towns for shopping, Stowmarket and Diss although we've not been to either for a while. We know both well so maybe we'll alternate. As we'd not been far this week a trip out of Ipswich to Stowmarket was taken . We parked at Asda and over the hedge there was a huge crane/ digger/machine thing just starting to demolish a lovely big house that's stood there for years, in fact while I was at Grammar school in the town it was where the headmaster lived. By the time we had walked around the town  and got back to the car the house was gone - blimey. I expect next time we go to town it will have been replaced by a dozen new houses.
 As usual we looked in all the charity shops and Col got himself another warm work shirt which he likes over a t-shirt for winter for £2.99. We walked down the street and at the menswear shop similar were on a rack in the doorway for £16. Then we  bumped into someone we knew from way back when we lived in that area.
  I found these in The Works,  to finish some Christmas cards I'm stitching..............for next year!

I'm in cross stitch mood at the moment- so getting ahead in case I don't get in the right mood again and thought £1 wasn't too much of a crime in my No/Low spend month.



November spending £527 + Shirt £3+Craft stuff £1+Pharmacy £1+Veg and Store-cupboard food £8=£540

December spending will be MUCH more as apart from the cash presents for our 3 and their OH's, 2 nephews and a niece, there will be a large electric/ gas bill because the last one was estimated low, plus  car insurance. Oh dear.

Back Soon
Sue

Ooops but no apologies!

We've been extending the walks day by day and yesterday did  2.07 miles, which is peanuts I know for most people but for someone who was in hospital until  the middle of September it's not too bad. This walk took us in a circle via the Emmaus charity shop where we knew he could sit down if he needed to.
Much to my surprise I spotted a Persephone on their book shelves, one I hadn't got. Oh dear, what a dilemma, a No Unnecessary  Spend month but there was a 50p book for my collection.

This wasn't sideways when I took the picture!

Actually it wasn't a dilemma at all!
Persephone number 35  "Greenery Street" by Denis Mackail is on my bookshelf.

Thanks for the comments last time and welcome to a new follower

Back Soon
Sue

PS I don't do politics or religion on this blog but I'm praying for a sort-of safe result today!

Chemo cycle round 6..........

.................not quite yet.
Col was due in for the 6th chemo session today but that's been postponed until next week while they do some investigative work to find out why he is still short of breath. So it's another CT scan today instead. He  felt well enough to get out into the garage yesterday  to sort some of his workshop stuff, he's been wanting to get that done for weeks. The garage has a pitched roof and some boards across the beams so he's been able to put a lot of stuff up out of the way. I can now get my bike in and out without tripping over

I picked our first "harvest" this morning ready for our lunch - a colander full of salad leaves, all from 2 small troughs and plenty left too.

 Then I walked down to the charity shop, to take a few more bits in and found a book of Sudoku puzzles for 50p which was a handy find as I've only got 5 left in the book I'm working through. I like giving my brain a work-out over breakfast every morning.

 Not much else has been happening here at the bungalow, which is why I haven't posted for a few days. Lots of reading  and TV watching - loving the Invictus Games.

Welcome to Roses,Lace and Brocante - a new follower, but still numbers are stuck at 353 so 1 in and one out again.

Thanks for comments recently
Back in a day or two
Sue

Monday to Thursday

Welcome to Joanne, Lisa and Dr stevie  new followers to reading my ramblings.

I got quite a surprise when I switched on the computer on Tuesday morning to find the Marrow and Apple Chutney recipe was posted on Monday as it wasn't meant to be there until Wednesday. I'd written it a few days ago and had gone into draft to copy it onto the recipe page and must have pressed publish instead of save before switching off. So there were 16 comments to a post I didn't even know was there - Duh!

Anyway

Monday
The Great Suffolk Pastry Bake

 When I'm making pastry it seems sensible to do several things at once. 5 pastry cases, 2 Apple and Blackberry Pies, 1 apple and apricot flan and a few mince pies with the pastry trimmings and the last of last years mincemeat. All my flan cases, pie dishes and casserole lids have been collected from charity shops and boot-sales over the years. Everything except the flan went into the freezer.

Tuesday
Finally, At Last, all the junk useful items Col put on Ebay  have been posted or collected. They were all bits from the workshop that he didn't want to take with him when we move and didn't sell at the yard sale and the car boot. He's added up the total income which is £121. Another useful addition to the winter kitty.
We had to go to Ipswich to take the gel bike seat cover back to Halfords as it wasn't big enough for my bike. While we were there we nipped into Lidl again for another joint of their delicious ham. At £3.97 for a 1Kg joint of real proper ham it's a bargain. I also bought some limes as they were reduced to 10p each. They've been popped into the freezer until I can buy a tin of lemon Mamade, which will become Lemon and Lime marmalade. I wish we had a Lidl a bit closer than 25 miles away.
There are 2 charity shops next door to Lidl so of course we had to pop in and I found these two for £1.49.

At the back is a pad of crafting papers but I was more interested in the 11 mini coat hangers which I can use for card making. I've got some peel off clothing stickers that I can use with them.
The book looked interesting, I'm currently reading one of Ronald Blythe's books - River Diary - about his and the churches year at Wormingford on the Suffolk Essex border.
On Amazon, one of the reviewers says of this book " You don't have to have any religion to appreciate his descriptions of life in his corner of Essex/Suffolk; his faith informs his life and writings, but he expresses it without proselytising, and places it in the context of the mainstream of English cultural life" 
I'm not clever enough to write like the bloke above! So will just say I enjoy his writing.I've read several of his books of essays and can recommend 'The Bookmans Tale'  to anyone who likes books and reading. In fact I think I'll order it from the library again to re-read.

Wednesday
The Autumn Equinox and the last swallows have gone. We had one family with 2 late youngsters nesting in the wood shed but today when I went in there I didn't get dived bombed as has happened every day before.
 In my Pagan Book of Days it says - depressingly-  "A time when darkness overtakes light, and nights grow longer than days" but it turned into a sunny day until 4 o'clock after several grey dreary ones.
Colin has been cleaning out the guttering - one of the advantages of being a chalet bungalow(or any sort of bungalow for that matter) is that the guttering can be reached easily. I spent the morning making bread and deciding on a recipe for red tomato chutney. After lunch Col took our elderly friend to see his wife in Norwich hospital again.

The Dahlias were knocked about by the heavy rain last Friday and now there's not many flowers left in the garden to bring in except these Sedums, I don't like to cut too many as they are useful food for bees and butterflies. Last week I got a bunch of flowers for £2 from Lidl but they only lasted about 5 days,  I must go searching round the field for some teasels and add them to some evergreens.

Thursday

 This really is the last chutney I shall make this year.My usual recipe for using red tomatoes has lots of red pepper in but our peppers have been really poor so I looked through all the preserving books and then ended up altering a recipe for Red Tomato, Celery and Apple Relish. Mine became just Red Tomato and Apple Relish by increasing the amount of onion. I left out the crushed coriander and mustard seeds that were in the original recipe and added a tsp of chili powder instead.
I used 2 and a bit pounds of Red Plum Tomatoes, 1lb of onions and just over 1lb of Apple. 1½ pints of a mix of Red Wine and Distilled White Vinegar, 8oz white sugar, tsp paprika, tsp chili powder, 2 small dried chillies chopped.
The tomatoes had their skins removed by covering them with boiling water and were roughly chopped,(also removing the hard stalk end) the onions were peeled and chopped small. The apples were peeled,cored and chopped. Everything except half the vinegar was put into a preserving pan, brought to the boil slowly and then simmered for an hour.Every now and again I stirred the mixture and added a little more vinegar. After an hour and a half the relish was still not thick enough to pot up so I stirred in half a tube of Tomato Puree and kept stirring for another 10 minutes. I then potted into sterilised jars and popped on the lids. This made 5 and a bit jars but I have no idea what it's going to taste like or if it will be a good keeper so if you make it I suggest either eating within 6 months or processing in a hot water bath. The recipe book had two extra ideas for using this relish, one was to mix a little with sausage meat when making sausage rolls or to spread a little on the pastry case when making a quiche.

I seem to have been inside making things for weeks. Outside we've had quite a lot of damp or really wet weather and the garden has been neglected, lots of things have finished and need clearing and the strawberry bed is full of chickweed. I think I heard that the forecast is better for next week so hopefully we'll get out and get on with tidying for winter. We are rushing to the end of September far too quickly for my liking.

Back in a while
Sue

Holiday Charity Shops, Clothes for a Wedding and Book Reviews in one sentence

Thank you for all the comments about our vegetable garden, that's just part of our 5 acres. I must go round and take pictures of other parts of our smallholding. They have been on the blog before but probably a couple of years ago and there are lots more new readers since then.We got another bed of potatoes in yesterday but the job I really need to do is weeding the front flower garden if only the wind wasn't still too cold and strong to work out there. March has really been a very windy month from start to finish and today has been the windiest of all, no chance of apricots as the wind has taken the flower buds right off the trees. The first visitors to our campsite are due tomorrow and yesterday we swept out the loos. This morning they were full of dead leaves and dust again - blown in under the doors and the mats and dustbins have all taken off!

 While we were away on holiday we managed to visit a few charity shops, although we were so sad to find that the brilliant charity bookshop on the quay in Watchet didn't open for the season until a couple of days after we were home- How annoying is that !

These were my Somerset finds

Old mixing bowl and jug,  paperback book: - Derek Tangye - Sun on the lintel ( a book that the library no longer has in stock) and a cushion cover very similar to the one my daughter got me for Mothering Sunday. My total spend on these = £7. I also got a tee-shirt for £1.79 but that's gone in the wash and Col found a good quality lightweight jumper for £6 which seems a lot for a charity shop but then anything over a couple of quid seems a lot to me now! Hence the difficulty buying clothes and shoes for our eldest's wedding, which is why we went to the outlet shopping place.

I managed to find comfy smart wide Clarkes' shoes with small heels for £24.99 instead of £40.00       (shoes with heels do feel odd after wellies and crocs!) and Col (who moans loudly at the proper price of shoes and usually  buys cheap ones which then fall to bits or hurt) was persuaded to spend £50 instead of  the proper price of £75. His new suit came with 2 free shirts - handy. Men are lucky - he will be able to wear the same suit for all 3 weddings of our offspring but I will have to have new each time I guess. While at the Outlet village I also got a couple of cotton jumpers.They will replace my decent jumpers which means the decent ones can become working here ones and the two scratchy, cheap, old jumpers can go- Good! I've spent all winter searching charity shops with no luck so the bullet had to be bitten and new bought. Really goes against the grain but at least the new were not full price.

The books that I read while on holiday have been added to my  separate page ( click on Books Read 2015 on the blog header). Hens Dancing by Rafaella Barker is the fictional diary of a woman with two young children whose husband has gone off with his masseuse. Although it claims to be the modern version of Diary Of a Provincial Lady by E.M.Delafield it is much shorter and not as funny. Still a good light read. The Bean Tree by Barbara Kingsolver is about a girl getting away from her rural home in Kentucky, becoming the guardian of a baby she names Turtle and making a new life in Tucson. This is the  second of Barbara Kingsolver's fiction  books that I have read and enjoyed but I still prefer her book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle about her families year of eating local. The Trip to Jerusalem by Edward Marston is the third in his Elizabethan Theatre historical crime series, from my book collection .A Christmas Odyssey by Anne Perry is a Novella, again historical crime, which I grabbed off the mobile library shelves last month. A quick read by this prolific author.

I've copied all my recipes that are on the blog onto a separate page, also on a tab under the header photo, this will make them easier to find. I found an anonymous comment there asking about the Onion (Marmalade) Chutney and have answered it and added a bit I missed off when I copied it over from the Recipes under Labels.

Welcome to Andrea and Faith, new readers following on Bloglovin', and also to Joy, The BUTT'RY and BOOK'RY and Shirl who are all over there on the right in the Google pictures.

Back in a day or three
Sue

From Wednesday to Saturday in Suffolk

Hello, here I am again after a few days off, this is what's been happening here since my last post. I've definitely had more time for other things by not posting everyday.

 I read on a blog about a series of magazines that had been published last year to celebrate the 100th anniversary of  Womans Weekly.

 I expect lots of peoples mums took this back in the day - mine certainly did.

 Out of curiosity I looked on ebay -as you do - to see what they were selling for and watched as one issue went up and up and up to £16.10 - goodness, somebody really wanted that one I thought to myself.

 Then I Googled around and found they could have bought the same issue from Mags UK.com, for £4.95 including postage!  Looking on ebay again a few days later I spotted 3 out of the 12 about to go unsold and  put a bid in  and got them for 1p! Very Interesting they are too.

 I might look out for the ones about earlier decades.

.

 On Wednesday Tesco were giving away their Christmas long-life bags. I'm not sure how much they were before Christmas but I saw them reduced to £1.50 in January.

 This means we've had 3 free shopping bags in the space of 5 days.

 In the charity shop I picked up 2 books for 75p each and then found 8p on the pavement in town.

What a good morning! 

I have been through my cookery books and taken out 10 small ones for the car boot box  to make up for adding 2 more to the collection.

Col has given the campsite shower and toilets a new coat of floor paint plus the walls where they needed a bit of touch up painting.

 I've given the front door a coat of bright red gloss, it's only been waiting for 5 years to be done.

 I'm dreadful at glossing, it always runs. Oh well, better than the grubby undercoat.

 The gas-guzzling Jeep Cherokee with the dodgy electrics has been swapped for a Hyundai Tuscon. Col decided not to step down to a much smaller car because we still want the option of pulling a trailer or maybe a caravan. 

The engine is smaller so should use less diesel and the road tax is a wee bit less.

 Library van day came around again.
My favourites from last month were C.J Sansom's - Lamentations and Bill Coleman's - Gift To Be Simple - a book of photos of the Amish people. Below on the right is his photo of Amish Buggies in the snow, reminding me of a Bruegel painting from the mid 16th century

Here is what I brought home this time. I hope there is something I like here. How have I never tried Ngaio Marsh when they have been around for 80 years? 

 

On Friday while Col was pressure washing the big poly-tunnel and then the house fascias, I whipped up a few fruit and some cheese scones for a weekend treat.

A lovely start to the day on Saturday so I was able to bike to town for a couple of things forgotten on Wednesday. We've come to the end of our own potatoes so I got a few new potatoes to see us through until we can get a cheap sack- full from a market.




Welcome to The Quirky Bird Gardener, a new follower on Google and The Pumpkin Life, Fee and Di on Bloglovin'. Sorry you have started to read just as I'm posting less often but hopefully you will enjoy reading my less frequent posts.

Back in a few days

Sue

Eating out for £1.80

Unless you count our trip to the feed mill and shopping in Leiston, we've been nowhere interesting since the start of the year. So a half day out was called for. My choice is always the same - see the sea and charity shops!

Felixstowe was the destination, with at least 8 charity shops to look round. Unfortunately the charity bookshop was shut for refurbishment, but never mind we went round all the rest.
Nothing wildly exciting found, only useful things and this lot was bought with the change in my purse so I didn't even break into a note.

A new flannel, a new clutch bag ready for the wedding, 2 books also brand new and a cotton top. £4.50  for the lot. The book with the train on keeps coming up on my recommended list on Amazon. So I'm curious to read it, its a crime novel originally written in the 1930s and recently re-published.
 The charity shop with the bright pink clutch purse also had a bright pink fascinator which would have been OK for the wedding if only my hair was long enough to clip it on, and a fascinator with a headband won't work either for the same reason. I may have to have a hat after all. Ha Ha Ha me in a hat is hilarious!

Our meal out for £1.80? Soup from home and a hot sausage roll each from Greggs. Eaten in the car overlooking the grey north sea. We had hoped to walk along the prom after eating but it started raining hard and the wind was blowing a hooley so we came home instead.

Grey north sea and grey sky to match.

Thank you for so many comments yesterday. One day I will share with you my whole collection of Amish and Mennonite books. Angela at Tracing Rainbows suggested The More with Less cookbook which I have plus about 8 other various books collected over the last 20 or so years.
A couple of people from the States mentioned 'puppy mills' which  is what we call puppy farms, where dogs are bred continuously in poor conditions with no thought for their welfare. It seems odd for Amish people to have got into this when they ought to be following the Bible and  caring for all God's creatures.

Back Tomorrow
Sue

Christmas on the telly

Our once a year purchase of the Radio Times happened today.
AND I got reduced price Christmas cards from ARC charity shop ready for 2014.

A trip out, a chance meeting and a surprise visitor

We needed chicken feed so decided to do a charity shop trip around a different town while we were out.We are still looking for jeans for Him Outside and still without any luck. If we don't find some soon he will be forced to buy new. That will come as a shock!

While we were buying a new DVD player. Who should appear in the shop but Him Outsides brother. He was in the town for a opticians appointment and had spotted us going into Argos. It's always a nice surprise to see someone we don't get to see often. I thought we would have to save up for a new DVD player because I had no idea they were available for £17!! So we didn't need to save and now on a cold winter afternoon I'll be able to watch my favourite Good Life DVDs and the Green Valley one I mentioned the other day. Plus Him Outside is pleased as he will finally get to watch the Phil Tufnell On Tour DVD that he found at a boot sale during the summer.

This was my spend today, in the Heart Foundation charity shop I found this lovely Advent calender. I've always been very anti advent calenders with chocolates in - much to the disgust of the children when they were little, and when I saw this I decided that even though there have been no children here for 7 years, it reminded me of one that I had a long time ago ( before anyone even thought of putting chocs in advent calenders) and at £1.50 it didn't break my frugal bank. I shall open the windows and enjoy it all through December.

Just as we were about to start for home we had a phone call from our son who was in the area to go for an interview and thought he would surprise us on his way home. He is an archaeologist and currently lives and works in the Milton Keynes area. The job he is interested in involves working on a community project connected with WWII airfields in East Anglia. As this was the subject of his university dissertation it would suit him well and bring him closer to home where he still has lots of friends. His partner has a business degree and she  has worked in various marketing jobs so I'm sure she would soon find a job in the area. We will keep our fingers crossed for them.

Crossing the border to Norfolk

We packed our passports and crossed the border into Norfolk this morning. My sister moved from Mid Suffolk to south Norfolk last November and we still hadn't got around to seeing their new home. We are  hopeless at visiting family! ( Although they were away in Europe all summer so if you discount those 5 months it doesn't sound quite so bad.)
Being us, we didn't just visit them, we also called in at a Norfolk Library to collect a book that we wanted to look at which was not in stock in Suffolk libraries( plus a visit to a charity shop of course!)
During the summer we bought these two prints of Suffolk villages, previously mentioned in a blog in June.

They are prints that were used in railway carriages to show people all the interesting places they could visit by train. Our friend P put new glass in them and replaced the backing and we now have them up on the wall.
I was interested to find out where and when they were used and Him Outside tracked down  this book.

Hence the trip to a Norfolk Library to borrow. I've had a quick look and it seems our prints were distributed for use between 1948 and 1955. Which is later than we thought as they were labelled as being from the 1930s.
The charity shop visit was also useful as Him Outside found a pair of jeans and also a pair for our youngest daughters partner. They came around for dinner in the week and he was telling us how he was down to one pair of work trousers after his others split and he was working Saturday and Sunday so couldn't go out to get any. Our daughter had looked in the charity shops in town with no luck and mens clothes shops are something we don't have anywhere near.  In the lovely big charity shop they have in Harleston I also  spent 50p on a tub of bicarb. Isn't that the weirdest thing you would expect to see in a charity shop?

Nearly forgot to say welcome to two new followers and thank you for comments yesterday.

Shattered, exhausted and worn out!

Many thanks to A Suffolk Girl, Gill, Karen, Ilona, Trudie, Pam, Cro, The domestic storyteller and my friend Mary in Bath for comments yesterday.

Tonight I am absolutely k*******d. Shopping in Ipswich doesn't suit me anymore. Him Outside had to go to Ipswich Hospital to have a 24 hour heart monitor fitted, so it seemed sensible for me to go too and get all the things that I can't get cheap locally, that means a visit to  Poundland and Wilkinsons,  and Aldi and Asda on the way home.
I had time to have a good look around the town centre walking almost from one end to the other. It was market day on the Cornhill and a stall had huge punnets of grapes and nectarines for £1 each.Wish we had a market like that near here. I browsed all the magazines in WH Smiths where Christmas was the main feature - but what a price they are now. The Grape Tree, which is the reincarnation of Julian Graves was still there so I got some fruit for Christmas puds and cakes. They had a free magazine( just as they had years ago) with a list of all the shops they've reopened since this time last year. 20 so far and 4 more soon, their website is www.grapetree.co.uk. The range of stuff they have is not as big as Julian Graves had- I wanted preserved stem ginger but no luck, but the lady said they were hoping to expand.
Of course I HAD to have a look at the books in The Works. Where much to my surprise I found a copy of a book (Mrs Miles' Diary) from my Amazon wish list, I'd put it on the wishlist as the library didn't have a copy. It only came out in August and the works had it for £1.99. I bought it for myself and have hidden it away for Christmas.After 34 years of marriage I've discovered that the only way to have something to unwrap on The Day is to buy it myself! I also went to M & S for a Christmas present for Him ( necessary underwear - how boring we are!).
Several other Christmas things were bought from Poundland and Aldi, so that I might  be able to avoid another trip to Ipswich for several months.
Our quick tour of a few charity shops resulted in Him Outside finding a pair of slippers but no jeans.
As his hospital appointment was midday we did something we've never done before, we crossed the threshold of the big gold arched M place to have a cheap "meal". A voucher fell out of the free paper that I picked up last week, for meals for £1.99 instead of £4.29. Him Outside said we'd got to eat something somewhere, so avoiding the beef  burgers we had something vaguely resembling chicken. The fries were hot and the coffee was OK. But I don't think we will bother again! We'll go back to our usual pack-ups.
 I've come home with a horrible stiff neck so must have sat in a draught somewhere. I'm sitting typing with my hot wheatbag around my neck in the hope it will help.
I shan't stay up late tonight - not that I ever do- I'm turning more and more into a country bumpkin who hates going to town, it's really worn me out.
Back tomorrow - Library Day!

Get on yer bike!

Ever since I was little I've always had a bike, I prefer cycling to walking any day.
 In one place we lived I cycled with two children on the bike. The little 2 year old fella on a seat on the back and the 4 year old daughter on an adapted crossbar seat between me and the handle bars. Often M would fall asleep and I'd be biking one handed with a hand behind me propping him up. This was done 2 miles to playschool and back simply because we couldn't afford the petrol for the car - Happy Days!
 For many years here we had just one vehicle which Him Outside used for work everyday, so it was either cycle the 2 and a half miles to Saxmundham or Leiston or stay at home. Since he packed up full time work  I've not been biking so regularly because he was often going to the builders merchants, garage etc I would go along with him and get the shopping. This summer it's been his endless trips to doctors that have made cycling to town unnecessary and my bike has only been used for the once a month trip to the library van. I've really missed getting on my bike.

So as things in the garden and campsite are slowing down and I had a bit more time I dusted it down and cycled  to Leiston for the bank, building society and to get some milk. The weather was lovely and I saw all the things that you don't spot when driving.Now I'm back on my bike I hope to carry on all through the Autumn.
(Though  it will be a while before I catch up to my friend A in a village in Essex. When they took on an allotment 6 miles away from their house they started cycling there everyday and reckon to have cycle 1000 miles in less than a year. Wow!)

And while I was in town look what a bargain I found in the Hospice charity shop

Crocs - the smallholders best friend apart from wellies. Proper Crocs not the cheap thin imitations that let thorns through. My size and only £3 you won't believe how quick I was into the shop after spotting them in the window!

Look over there on the right- I'm now up to 66 followers ( not counting bloglovin followers), I'd love to reach 100 by Christmas so click on and follow. Welcome to new followers and lovely to see new folk leaving a comment. I don't always get around to replying individually for which I apologise, it's because I'm always in a rush to get on with the new days blog. So much to tell you!
Back tomorrow with lots of news about the Suffolk Smallholders Society.