A sprinkle of snow

Goodness me, we had a cold start to the day today. Although the thermometer on the outside of the kitchen window said 2 degrees C it felt chillier because the weather has been so mild so far this winter. I put a bit of washing out and then we had a sprinkling of snow, luckily it only lasted 10 minutes before the sun came back.

Hardly enough snow to see

I had thought about a bike ride to Leiston to see if the EACH charity shop has opened yet, but staying in seemed a much nicer idea and two fires lit early to warm the house and hot soup for lunch soon had us nice and warm.

Today's packing was two boxes of books because the removal company have supplied special  boxes that are much smaller, I can get started on all the books I know we won't need between now and moving. I'm sorting out a big pile for Col to read when he has all the days in hospital being pumped full of chemicals. Talking about books I've finished another book in the historical crime series by Maureen Ash. That's three read one after the other. I think they are a good read and wonder why they weren't published here but all six are published by Berkley Crime, New York. Thank heavens it's library van day next Friday, there are a big pile for both of us awaiting collection, in my pile are several new books by favourite authors.

When I went to Tesco during the week I was pleased to see they had their broccoli/calabrese heads back at 49p each after they went up to 69p over Christmas, it's one of my favourite veg and so versatile. We had about a quarter as small sprigs in a mixed stir fry, a half for dinner tonight as part of a salmon,broccoli  and pasta bake and there is still some left to use as a veg accompaniment for Monday dinner.

Thank you to everyone who commented yesterday and welcome to Laurie M and Tracy G who are new in the followers pictures.

Back Tomorrow
Sue

Time to get packing and frugal Friday

I did have to turn out yesterday in the dark, cold, windy, sleety night to drive back to Ipswich to pick Col up again - The things you have to do for husbands! :-)   As he was able to have the bed quite early in the day they were able to do the first treatment yesterday rather than today. He has lots of leaflets, more tablets and dire warnings about what do if feeling ill. On the plus side  he found the food on Somersham ward (the oncology ward) is completely different to the rest of the hospital, they have huge meals and, when he is in for a couple of nights for the alternate treatments, he'll even get fried breakfasts!

The removal company dropped in a load of boxes yesterday so I can really get packing now. We already had a dozen or so medium sized boxes here which I've filled with things that can be put into storage in the shed. I can also start packing boxes of books. I've gone off the idea of taking the old  dark stained wood shelves with us so the books can stay in boxes until we get the living room carpet changed and then get some new shelving. By which time we will know how Col is and what we will do next.

 And finally, what  frugal things can I remember from this week ...............

Made 4 portions soup from the outside bits of a head of celery, a couple of carrots, half an onion and a tin of tomatoes

Found some unused 1st class stamps in my old stamp album when I was packing it away so have put them in the drawer to use them this year.

Ate homegrown beetroot, parsley, brussels sprouts, leeks and apples.

Made 3 loaves bread which work out at less than 38p loaf.

Free heat all week.

Took a flask and a snack to hospital to save having to buy at the cafe.

Cleared a blockage in the drains ourselves.

That's about it for today ,thanks for comments yesterday.

Back Tomorrow
Sue

The beginning

This morning we went to hospital for Col to have the bone marrow sample taken. We were told 2 weeks ago that if they had a bed he would stay in and they would start the chemotherapy and he needed to be an in-patient overnight for the first treatment to check for allergic reactions.
Did they have a bed, yes but probably not until after lunch. We decided we would wait at the hospital.
Ten minutes after I had gone to put more money in the car park machine, we were told yes, he could go straight to the ward, so he checked in and I came home.

Just had a phone call from him to say I might have to go and pick him up again tonight as they may not do everything they planned at this first session. So I await a phone call for the 25 mile trip back to Ipswich again. Ho Hum!

Blimey, it's turned cold,wet and very, VERY windy. I hope that I can keep the fire alight if I do need to go and fetch Col later. I've got two cats curled up in the living room, both snoring gently neither will want to go far outside now.

I had photos of snowdrops and a primrose on yesterdays post and someone asked if they were early and yes they are well ahead of normal because of the mild winter we have had so far. Now it's gone cold they will stop growing for a while I reckon.
Dc at Frugal in Norfolk asked if the new owners wanted to extend the kitchen because I said I had to photocopy planning permissions etc and send to the solicitors. No, they want copies of the permission and completion certificates from when we had the new kitchen  and bedroom extension built in 2011. I thought I had already sent them and don't really know why they want them again. They were also querying the windows that were replaced in 2010 and 2011. Goodness knows why. I assume it's just their solicitor being pernickity and not the new owners looking for problems to get the price down, they seemed too nice for that.
And to answer Sandy expat, no we didn't make the tree men a cuppa. They were right up the top of the field and on the land under the pylons so too far away really and there were several men in  3 vans. They were working for National Grid. When ever we have anyone working here for us I always find a cuppa and cake on arrival helps the work get going really well!

Back Tomorrow
Sue

Wednesday odds and ends

We have snowdrops - I hope we don't have snow

A chillier day today, temperatures dropping, but nice and sunny. We've got a bit more wood cutting done. Col feels OK standing still and just moving the chainsaw up and down and we've been doing the odd half hour cutting so the heap doesn't get too low - we have no idea how he will feel during the chemo treatment.

Two other jobs outside today, the first we did together - involving the draining rods and lifting manhole covers all the way between house, septic tank and ditch, lots of plunging the rods through various places and pouring down buckets of water - the joys of being on "private drainage"! The second job was Colin taking an old  plough back down to Friston. He brought it here a few months ago, just before he started to feel ill. The plan was to clean it, get it working properly and sell it with the proceeds being split between us and the owner. But of course he hasn't been able to do it. He gave someone we know ( who deals in secondhand machinary) a call to see if he wanted to buy it as seen, only to find that the man had had an accident and was hopping about on crutches. So the plough has gone back to the shed it was standing in where it will probably stand for another 30 years!

We've got a tree sugeons here at the moment, they are working for National Grid trimming the trees that are under the high voltage cables and pylons. This is done every few years but this company actually asked if we wanted the logs and wood chippings, whereas last time a different company just left a right-old-mess behind them with heaps of chippings all along the ditch edge. They are leaving the logs in small piles and all the chippings in one giant heap ready for the new owners to use in any muddy bits in the campsite driveway.

A Lakeland catalogue came through the letter box this morning, full of lovely things and expensive gadgets. I opened at random and found a £49.99 replacement for a saucepan and spoon -it's a special popcorn making pan with built in stirring thing. I suppose someone will buy it. I like the look of the Mason Cash bowls in very dark blue but I have enough.

I'm still going round the house packing things away in boxes and sorting out stuff to go. Today I hauled everything out of the airing cupboard, there were a few  sheets that we won't need as there won't be room for an extra bed. Also found some curtain liners that I'd fogotten we had and a couple of  old pairs of curtains that might be handy in the bungalow, as we still haven't heard what is being left behind. I've asked our solicitors twice now to see what's happened to the form the vendors need to fill in. On the selling side we had an email wanting lots of information on planning permissions for the kitchen extension, which I'm sure I've already photocopied and sent.It's a good thing we have a photocopier to do them again.

And a few primroses appearing too

 Welcome to a new follower - Thrifty, and thanks for lots of interesting comments yesterday

Back tomorrow
Sue

Tuesday Things ( with an edited in sentence at the end!)

Do you know that December, when the rest of the country was flooded, was our driest month here since June - weird. Col added up the rainfall measurements that he had written in his diary and told me I ought to share this with everyone.

Yesterday we  took a bag of glass to the bottle bank and I thought "Thank goodness we'll never have to fill the car with bags and bags (and even more bags) of empty booze bottles from the campsite." It never failed to amaze me just how much people holidaying on our site could drink. I would be worried about driving with some of the folks who've been here! and it was so embarrassing to be putting so many bottles in the bins. Not that anyone took any notice - it was just me who was embarrassed!

On my post of December 31st I mentioned that I was in a "fed up with blogging mood" because everyday there would be comments that seemed to be questioning what I did or making me feel I had  to justify what I had written. Now the same thing has happened to Sue at Our New Life in the country. The person or people who do this don't have a blog of their own but make little digs or perhaps I'll give them benefit of the doubt and say they don't realise what they are doing.  For example - I said we now had an artificial Christmas tree, several reasons for this described in this old post. But Goodness Me - How wrong this is! Surely only a real live tree will do! Never an artificial in THEIR house! So not a nasty comment and definitely not a troll. It's just when this happens on almost every post it gets a bit tedious.
Sue is starting out on the smallholding and self-sufficiency "journey" and we are at the end. I wasn't able to blog about our smallholding adventures because blogging didn't exist 23 years ago so didn't get the on-line "helpful" comments, instead we got them in person when ever we showed someone who didn't know us around the holding.
All the "Why don't you do..............." and then a list of ideas we could/should gave done. There would always be a reason why we hadn't. Mainly lack of time and cash! I stopped outside paid work in 1980 and Colin's job working for the County Council was always average wage. he worked full time right up until 2012. We had 3 children too - children aren't cheap.
Some of the suggestions that we were never able to do were 

• Cover our  roof with solar panels (  we couldn't afford to and wouldn't have got our money back)
• Start a produce box delivery service ( Never been THAT keen on growing and we did try this on a small scale with 2 of Col's work colleagues and it was fine until things didn't grow or there would be a week when there wasn't quite enough of one thing and selling at the gate worked much better anyway).
• Keep and breed pigs/cows/sheep on a big organic rare breed kind-of way. (We only wanted to keep enough for us).
• Expand the campsite to cover the whole field ( Not THAT keen on people!) 
• Apply for permission for caravan storage - that was often suggested - but it was expensive to set up and we didn't want to have more caravans here.

And many other ideas I've long forgotten.

What I'm saying is do comment, comments are lovely,they  make people feel like friends but don't think you know better than the person writing the blog. And if you really do know better then start a blog of your own!

And on that note I shall say thank you to friends who commented yesterday and good luck to Phil's daughter who wants to be an archaeologist - we always say its more of a calling than a job - and our son has been lucky to have had archaeology jobs for 10 years but  knows that he may not always be so lucky, especially if you are not single and able to travel to another part of this country or abroad.

Back Tomorrow
Sue

PS I 'only' got 64 comments after my December 31st post and Sue in Wales got 160 after her yesterday post.
 Oh that's soooooo unfair I shall cry and stamp my feet!!
(Edited to say that is meant to be ironic and I forgot that other parts of the country/world don't do Suffolk Irony :-)

Beaten to it

I got all ready to write about doing the National Lottery - if that's what it's still called - then discovered I had been beaten to it by dc at Frugal in Norfolk. Actually I should say NOT doing the lottery as we never have, not even a scratch card thing. I didn't even know that they-who-run-it, is it still Camelot?, had added another 10 balls so as to make it even harder to win until the news featured the fact when speaking about last Saturdays draw and the gi-normous amount of money that could be won. Apparently the lottery system crashed as thousands of  people rushed to spend their hard earned cash trying to win.
I've read that you are more likely to be struck by lightening, win an Oscar or become an Olympic Champion than win the lottery.
The only good thing I can say about this backhanded way of  taxing people ( I know that's naive but that's how I think of it) is that it's paid our son's wages for the last couple of years. He is an archaeologist - and lucky to have been employed as one since he graduated. Many people who do an archaeology degree find it difficult to stay in that profession, contracts are short and jobs limited especially since County Councils stopped having their own archaeology departments. His job for  Eighth in the East is Heritage Lottery funded but finishes in September. They are hoping to get funding for another similar project. Fingers crossed for him.

A grey sort of day here today and chillier too. My turn for the doctors this morning - only a prescription review and then a couple of bits of shopping. I managed to leave the cat wormer stuff on the counter at the vets - duh! Popped a bag of bits to the charity shop. A new EACH ( East Anglia Childrens Hospice) charity shop will be opening in Leiston very soon, they were starting to put clothes in today.That will be the 5th charity shop in a fairly small town. The EACH shop is taking over the premises of the Job Centre which has been standing empty for several months - or longer. I don't know if they moved somewhere else in town because if you go online they are still listed at the old place. Heavens knows how someone in town finds a job nowadays.

I'm sure there ought to be a moral to this post............... but have no idea what it is, so will just say

Thanks for comments yesterday
Back Tomorrow
Sue

Oh Dear - More Books and Sunday Shifting

Lots of windy weather here last night and some rain too, but no drop in temperatures like Scotland and Northern England. The forecast is for temperatures going down as the week  goes on. May need to get the long sleeved roll neck tops out for the first time this winter, and it must be winter because Ski Sunday is back on TV.

I spent a couple of hours this morning shifting stuff from the garden shed up to the big shed to try and get all the outside stuff that we're taking into one place. We are leaving more gardening things than originally planned as it's unlikely I'll ever grow 70 tomato plants and a dozen cucumber plants again I don't need to take dozens of  flower pots. We cleared out 3 sacks full of various pots when we had the yard sale. I've no idea how we came to have so many as we never bought any new.

Our youngest gave me an Amazon voucher for Christmas as she couldn't decide which books to get me from my wish list. So instead of buying some old 1p books, I went for a couple of books, recently published and on one of my favourite subjects.

 I've taken 2 more off the shelves and put them in the charity shop bag. The charity shops are doing very well from our downsizing and when you know you've got to fit everything into a very small space or keep it stored in a box in a shed then it's amazing what you find you can do without (and why had I kept an old large cracked Mason Cash mixing bowl when I have an identical perfect one, plus one smaller, in the kitchen?)

Many Thanks for comments yesterday and I think I missed welcoming sammie to the followers.

Now I'm having a bit of feet up session on the settee, had a horrible night of waking dozens of times in a panic thinking "What If?".

Back Tomorrow
Sue