It had to happen.......

.....................I've had to unpack two boxes that had been packed and taped up. Except that we still couldn't find what we were looking for!
It was all because we had a bill in the post for baling the big bales last summer, we knew we owed it but there was also a bill for 2014's baling and Col knew we had definitely paid for that at the end of 2014. We had the receipt....... somewhere.......but where the heck was all the paperwork for the 2014-15 tax year. So two boxes were opened and searched, with no luck. Then I checked in the box file laying on the desk which I knew held this current tax years bits and there was the folder labelled 2014-15. Ho Hum!
The two boxes that I unpacked  were old ones we'd been given, they've now been repacked into one of the large, better quality boxes from the removal company, so not a complete waste of time.

Thank you for comments yesterday, I will try and remember to do book reviews on here. My first to read is Silent Nights - Christmas Mysteries edited by Martin Edwards. It's one of the British Library Crime Classics.The short stories in this book are mostly by long forgotten authors. I'm very much looking forward to many more old crime fiction that will be republished by them this year and have just gone on the library website and ordered Death On The Riviera by John Bude. BLCC have already done 3 of John Bude's books and they were all a good read and didn't come across as too dated.

We watched the second episode of Shetland last night and the story still didn't finish. I'm also  watching Dickensian when it doesn't clash with something else but I'm getting worried that there may not be happy endings for some of the characters!

No other news of note except to welcome Jennifer who is a new follower

Back Tomorrow
Sue

Library day

Shopping first, trying to find tasty ideas to make Col feel better and to get rid of the horrible taste he has in his mouth all the time, yet another side effect of chemo.

Then down to the library van, not on my bike today as it was pouring with rain and very blowy. This is my haul.

Most are crime fiction but there are a few non-fiction that I've found mentioned on blogs. Now that Col isn't "him outside" anymore we thought you might like to see his  collection too. He orders on line as I do and gets his ideas from the bibliographies at the back of other books and ideas picked up from TV programmes, like the Simon Dawson Pigs in Clover featured on the Ben Fogle programme.  Not sure why he's ordered the Simon Dawson Self Sufficiency book as we've borrowed that before and we won't be at all self sufficient  in our bungalow in Ipswich!

I've just been listening to the news and the weather forecasts for the East coast of the USA - They have large amounts of snow forecast and a state of emergency has been called for many States. So please do take care those of you reading from the other side of the Atlantic.

Many Thanks for comments yesterday

Back Tomorrow
Sue

Thrifty Thursday, frost and those birds are back

Thrifty Thursday this week instead of Frugal Friday because tomorrow is library van day - at last - so my library books will feature in tomorrows post,

Have their been any thrifty things this week? Not many

• We took a flask and snack to hospital on Tuesday to save using the cafe ( and thank goodness we did as we were there 2 hours longer than we thought.)
• Free heat and hot water as usual
• Used home grown leeks, squash, Brussels sprouts, apples and beetroot plus apricots from the freezer.
• Home made bread all week
• Several extra portions of various dinners have been popped in the freezer, handy for me when Col is in hospital. 
• Got a discount on feed by asking around for who wanted bird peanuts/feed to make up to 10 sacks

I can't think of anything else.

Today was a big bake day and Col choose sultana buns, I choose coffee sponge and by mutual agreement cheese straws were made too. Some are for the weekend and the rest have gone into the freezer. Plus sausage rolls for dinner and to put in the freezer and 2 mince pies with a scrappy bit of puff pastry that was left over from the sausage rolls. A few years ago that little bit of pastry would have been chucked out but not any more!

We rarely get  a hoar frost, the sort that leaves everywhere covered with  frosted edges, perhaps because the air is dryer or it's windier nearer the coast.This morning just for a while everywhere sparkled and I snapped the sage

and the conifer

but it was soon gone and we had a grey morning until the sun appeared.

I quickly grabbed the camera again later because the redpolls were back on the niger seed feeder and facing the right way to see the colours. They'd gone a second after clicking so only just in time.

Many thanks for comments yesterday, regarding which I have a dilemma. When I was posting just 2 or 3 times a week I had time to answer comments individually. Now I'm posting everyday I seem to have to choose between answering comments or reading other peoples interesting blog posts or spend longer on line which would leave me no time for reading which would be a Disaster! I do read all comments of course but what to do about answering??

Which reminds me to reply to Phil - Knodishall church is thought to be  built  in the 15th century around  an earlier Norman building. The tower is 15th Century, the buttresses 19th century but there are much later improvements. There is no record of a village around the church but it seems that the village as it is now grew in the 19th century around a green and mill  ( a mile away) rather than around the church. The Victorian primary school ( now a house) is actually half way between the church and the newer village almost as if they hadn't decided which part was more important.

Oooops nearly forgot to welcome Marjorie, follower 344 in the google pictures

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Sue

Wednesday odds and ends

Thank you to everyone who said that the birds in yesterdays photo were Redpolls, we would never have thought of that because the picture in our RSPB bird book shows them more highly coloured.We looked on line at various pictures of Redpoll some looked to be a good match to our birds and others different. I've not seen them back today to get another look.

When we got home from Ipswich yesterday the house seemed extra cold despite the Rayburn having been banked up with coal  and even after we'd got the living room wood burner going I still couldn't get warm. I went upstairs a few hours later and found out why - I'd forgotten to shut the bedroom window when I got up- stupid woman!

Bread baking today, just 3 ordinary white loaves as the cheap malted wheat  flour that came from Approved Food several months ago has come to an end. I've also made 3 pastry cases and filled one for a quiche for lunches for the next few days plus I made a veggie curry for dinner tonight. We've not had curry for weeks due to it giving Col awful indigestion but as the indigestion is now bad all the time he said we might as well give it a go, and everything tastes odd to him at the moment anyway - yet another side effect of chemotherapy.

The car was due for it's MOT test just when he is next due in hospital so he took it in early and went this morning and thank goodness it passed, one less thing to think about. I start to feel panicky when I think of all the things that have got to be organised for moving but the box packing is going along nicely and we have quite a lot of empty bookshelves.

This afternoon was bright and sunny so I headed out for a walk, haven't walked far for a couple of months so I just headed down to the church via a field path, took a couple of photos to share on here and came back again.

Knodishall - St Lawrence church - a church without a village as there are just 4 large houses close to the church and the actual village which is known as Knodishall should really be called Coldfair Green and is just about a mile away. Our road, although part of Knodishall is almost a separate hamlet of 12 houses just over half a mile from the church.

I suppose at some time these buttresses were added all down this side to prop up the wall. I zoomed in on the  waterspout on the top of the tower and now I can see where someone got the idea for The Simpsons!

The church is quite small and stands in a lovely churchyard. Our son and fiancee plan to marry here in December so we will be back for that.

Welcome to Carolyn who is new to following.

Back tomorrow
Sue

Tuesday trip

Col delivered all the sacks of birdseed and peanuts yesterday afternoon, everybody knew he was coming.....nobody had any money in the house......everybody will bring the money up later in the week! We often used to find campers arriving on site with no money to pay for their pitch and it really seems as if we are heading towards a cash-less society. That was one of the questions the new owners asked us last week "do campers pay by card?" but as far as I know it costs quite a lot to get a card reader thingy like shops and businesses have so we always asked for cash - or cheques, but preferably cash! I suppose if we do become cashless everything will be done by phone app or by waving a card. We advised the new owners to ask for payment on arrival, not because people go without paying but if you wait for people to pay when they leave you are never really sure what time they are going.

Today was yet another trip to hospital for Col to have a post chemo blood test, which sounded as if it shouldn't take long. What they didn't tell him last week was that you then have to hang around for a couple of hours to wait for the results to check that you don't need to go on a drip for an hour ( no idea what the drip would be, he didn't ask!) anyway we went to Lidl and B&Q in between times. We've bought a small dehumidifier to use in the shed at the bungalow where we will be storing lots of things and I treated myself to a £2 bunch of white tulips from Lidl, we can't buy flowers at this price anywhere locally.

Bird expert needed! Are these just female chaffinches? though they don't seem quite the right shape or something more interesting. We've seen these two on the niger seed feeder several times but they never seem to be facing the right way, I think they have a slight pink tinge on their fronts. I thought about bramblings but not bright enough colourings. Someone will know I'm sure and I'll keep trying to get a better photo.

Thanks for all the comments yesterday. I love sharing a book title and hearing about other people who've read it or forgotten all about the author. It's funny how scarey proper librarians were back in those days. The chief librarian - Mr Fordham used to peer at people over the top of his half glasses and we though Miss Patterson a real old battleaxe although she probably wasn't even 40 when I started work. The hours we worked were awful - 2 long days a week until 7pm one of which would be either Friday or Saturday and either half a day or one and a half days off each week. We even worked 'til 7 on Christmas eve and New Years eve if it was our night to work. Happy Days? maybe not!

Back Tomorrow
Sue

The naivety of a 16 year old

I hope you enjoyed the local history links yesterday, it's always odd to go down that end of Aldeburgh and know that between the sea and the river there was once enough land  for a small village, but now all washed away.

Yesterday I finished Rose Cottage,
a short fiction book by Mary Stewart that has been sitting on my bookshelves for umpteen years. When I first started working in libraries aged 16 in 1971, she was a very popular author. Her first book Madam Will You Talk was written in 1955 and was followed by several more which I think are classed as romantic suspense. Then she wrote a trilogy of really large 'meaty' books about Merlin and King Arthur. I think it was the first of these, written in 1970, that I enjoyed so much and thought it so good that I can remember asking the old spinsterish reference librarian  Miss Patterson (it was an old fashioned library and we were all called by our surnames!) if she thought it would become a classic. I can still remember her huge hoot of laughter as she said " I really don't think so!" I remember feeling extremely silly.


But look what is say's on the front of a more recent edition " THE FIRST IN THE CLASSIC MERLIN SERIES.
Ha Ha Miss Patterson, not a classic in the sense she meant but maybe I was right after all.

However, Rose Cottage was definitely not a classic and now I've read it I shall add it to the charity shop bag.

The birds need more peanuts and  the feed mill  does a discount for 10+ bags feed.When we had 100 chickens there was never  any problem buying more than 10 bags, so Col asked around everyone we knew locally and we managed to find enough people wanting bird food to take a trip to Framlingham and stock up on peanuts, wild bird seed and 2 bags of chicken feed for our elderly friend who had our last 8 chickens. It's so much cheaper to buy by the sack from the mill rather than tiny little bags from pet shops or garden centres. Col dropped me off in Framlingham so I could do a tour of the 3 charity shops but no pennies left my purse at all.

Thank you for comments yesterday
Back Tomorrow
Sue

Local history links

I forgot to ask in yesterday's post if anyone had watched the first of the new series of  Shetland on Friday night. I'm sure I read that it was going to be a separate story in each of the 6 episodes, so we were waiting for a rapid conclusion as it got towards 9.45, only to find it carries on next week. I didn't like the scenes of the boy stuck in the container- another thing to put me off travelling in lifts!

Another bright but cold day here today, we had to pop to Aldeburgh to the chemists ( first side effect of Cols's chemo - let's just say it's the opposite of Dash In A Real Rush Hurry Or Else Accident! and we've tried prunes!) so took the opportunity to look at the sea. It was incredibly clear ( not the sea, that was as grey as it always is) and you could see right out to the shipping lanes with the big freight carriers coming out of  the Port of Felixstowe and the wind turbines off the coast.

We drove up to the Slaughden end of Aldeburgh where the most  Northerly Martello Tower ( now a Landmark Trust holiday home) stands between the sea and the river behind it. That's an Anthony Gormley sculpture on top of the tower, not somebody about to jump off! The river doesn't run out at Aldeburgh but several miles away at Shingle Street

 If the sea was to break through the ridge on which the Martello tower stands, it would flow inland across the marshes and would flood much of Aldeburgh turning what was left into an island.

Looking out to sea by the Martello Tower, the huge rocks have been put there to protect the bank  (I can never get the horizon level!)

and turning round to look inland with the river Alde and the flat marshes that stretch inland for several miles

Home for lunch and more of the delicious soup mentioned in Fridays frugal list. I've just looked to see how much a tin of Heinz Cream of  Tomato costs, and it's 95p (though on offer at 50p a tin at Tesco and Asda) which wouldn't have even made 2 big bowls full whereas my recipe makes 4, tastes the same and costs no more than 55p.

This afternoon we'll be watching the first part of the final of the Masters snooker that's been on all week and tonight things clash - Call the Midwife, Snooker or Endeavor. A problem there I think.

Thanks for comments yesterday

Back Tomorrow
Sue