Lessen the stress of buying a new washing machine

This is what I used to keep me calm while searching t'internet for a new washing machine! Home made scones with the home made strawberry jam and a nice big mug of coffee.

When I tried to switch my 18 year old washing machine on this morning all the lights just kept flashing, not for the first time!  dodgy electronics is a major problem and I nearly bought a new one when we moved here. Up to today I've switched on and off a few times and it's been OK. Add to this the grubby rubber seal that's starting to perish and leak a bit and the fact that modern machines use less electric, I decided it was time to fork out for a new one.
I started by googling washing machine reviews, then had a look on Amazon and ended up on ao.com as they do free delivery if you choose the right day and £20 off for first order from them. Then a very nice girl rang up to offer me free disposal of the old machine"are you sure it's free? " I asked and she assured me it was an extra bonus for being a first time customer. I've not paid the extra for having it connected as Col says he is feeling well enough to do that. Fingers crossed.
What I won't like is having to learn how to use a new appliance - patience ( i.e reading the instruction booklet properly) is not a virtue of mine!


Thank you for all the comments about charity shops. The Oxfam bookshop would be my first choice for a place to volunteer and my least favourite would be somewhere where there is nothing to do! ( like the people who sit in a room for the National Trust, just occasionally answering questions from visitors, that would drive me nuts). The problem with the bookshop is that's in the town centre so I'd need to pay for bus ticket or car parking - neither are cheap. Anyway I'm not really looking for  a volunteering job at the moment because  with the stem cell treatment coming up soon Col will be be unwell before getting better again so now isn't the right time.

And of course as soon as he is really well again we will be off in our caravan  visiting all those places that I listed somewhere.

Sorry I didn't get round to replying to all the comments. Faith asked about a Suffolk blogger meet up, a lovely idea but are there enough of us? Me, you and Sadie - anyone else in Suffolk ( is there anybody out there?!) Sadie asked if I enjoyed the weather - NO! I got absolutely SOAKED after dropping Col off at hospital and then going to Sainsburys where they had a massive sudden downpour just as I was going back to the car - no rain back at the hospital. The downpour got to this side of Ipswich in the afternoon  and flooded the front driveway! Prolific commentator Galant said she didn't like the cats in the puzzle, well that's OK as you're not doing it - and the "other cottage" is actually a shed!

Welcome to 2 new followers - Sue ( lots of Sues around!) and candbharrison

Back in a day or two or three
Sue

Getting accustomed to a different sort of summer

Moving from the smallholding and campsite to a bungalow in town is taking some getting used to now that summer is here.

 From May to October every year for 23 years I was busy with gardening, growing for sale, young livestock, poultry keeping and selling eggs and looking after the visitors. Suddenly that's all gone and I find that after hospital visiting and normal housework I don't want to spend all the rest of my time reading or cross stitching. I need to have a bit more variety of things to do.
So a  jigsaw puzzle came home from the charity shop with me yesterday

It says it's complete and was only £1 and looks nice and summery. Although it does have some weird shaped pieces and bits with straight edges that aren't really the outside edge. Hmmm maybe a tad annoying.

I've actually been considering if I should volunteer in a charity shop, but I keep getting put off. For instance yesterday there were six of them helping in the Hospice shop but I had to wait for quite a while listening to 3 of the ladies having a debate about what type of hangers men's trousers should now be hung on! Had it been 'officially' changed or was it just their shop manager, how long had it been different and why had nobody told them?
 Aaaaaaagh couldn't be doing with all that.

 Anyway I really need to be at home to take care of Col  at the moment and he is home again - Hooray. Col's brother was taking their dad to hospital for an appointment yesterday afternoon and then up to visit Col but in the meantime they said Col could come home before teatime so Andrew brought him home and delivered me 4lb of strawberries - very handy. I shall be jam making today.

Welcome to  new followers -  Phil in Australia, (who had a blog called house of simple but now has a new blog  called Mr Homemaker), Hippymamax6, Joolz and Christine. Thank you for reading.

Back in a day or two
Sue

Thought for the day.........................

............Who decided tea bags should be in boxes of 40, 80 and multiples? surely 50 and 100 would be more logical.

Oh, I've just noticed two more people have clicked the follower button, so welcome to Bridget and someone else but not sure who.

I finished this new Elly Griffiths book in double quick time and was slightly disappointed, hardly a mention of archaeology at all and  the characters have lost their character (if you see what I mean). This is the 8th novel in the series, this time set mainly in the pilgrimage village of Walsingham in Norfolk. If you haven't read these and you like modern crime novels and prefer to buy rather than borrow, then The Book People have the first 5 on offer for £7.99, and no I'm not getting paid to tell you this - unfortunately!

What to read next? I choose The Year of Reading Dangerously, How 50 Great Books Saved My Life by Andy Miller but Oh Dear, after 40 pages I was already getting cross. A few weeks back I had a book called How to Be Well Read by John Sutherland - his choice of 500 'great' novels, and after flicking through discovered that although I read a lot I wasn't well read at all. Reading The Year of.....  I realised that actually I'm not bothered that I've never read all the books that I 'ought' to have read. That's the difference between me and Andy Miller, he pretended to other people that he had read all the big classics, he was ashamed at what he hadn't read and wanted to  read more of them. Whereas I just can't be ar**d!
Mr Miller has a lot to say about a reading group he joined - it sounded 'awfully pretentious darling' and that is one of the reasons I've never joined one, I like reading, I enjoy sharing my thoughts about books on here but as for dissecting and discussing a book afterwards - No, I'm too busy getting on to the next book!
I see that my friend Mary In Bath has commented yesterday that she enjoyed The Year Of.....  and said it will give me more inspiration for reading, we'll have to agree to differ on that I reckon :-)
There was just one sentence in those first forty pages that struck a chord........ a nineteenth-century German philosopher called Schopenhaeur said "It would be a good thing to buy books if one could also buy the time to read them". Oh So True.
 
 We had a good thunder storm and rain on Saturday afternoon, I had the football on TV to keep me company while cross stitching (yep, Col is still in hospital, they won't let him out as his temperature just won't stay steady and his immunity level is at rock bottom) and was expecting the picture to go all peculiar as it did over at Fareacre but then I remembered -Duh! we hadn't got a satellite anymore, we're on Freeview now we're in town, we couldn't get it in the country. Good, no more losing the picture during every storm or heavy rain. We hadn't had any rain for a couple of weeks and everywhere smelled wonderfully fresh.

Please could some of you do something for me? I've noticed that on some folks blog roll my blog is still listed as Frugal In Suffolk - well, as we are now pretty un-frugal especially when it comes to food and buying a beach hut! could you go into the edit bit and change the title, Ta - much obliged.

Back Soon
Sue

Yet more library books........... and a rose

Another load of books brought home from the library. The waiting list was very long for the Elly Griffiths and I'm pleased that it's my turn at last. Guy Fraser-Sampson is a new author to me, he is speaking at the Felixstowe book festival. I've read most of Rachel Hore's books - this is the latest. I think The Fever Tree was mentioned on a blog - no idea what it is. The Year Of Reading Dangerously looks good and The Hogs Back Mystery is another in the British Library Crime Classics reprints. The Attenbury Emeralds is one of the books by Dorothy L Sayers that Jill Paton Walsh finished writing. Human Voices by Penelope Fitzgerald caught my eye on the returned shelf.
I'll let you know how I get on with them all. (Maybe I should stop ordering from the library for a while and read all the books I'm acquiring elsewhere, then I could blog about it or even write a book, like Susan Hill did with her book Howards End is on The Landing! )(or Not)

I squeezed between the caravan and the shrubs out the front to bring in this rose which is different to those in the back garden but it's a disappointment -gorgeous colour but no scent whatsoever. Which means that out of the 7 bushes here only one is scented.

Have a good weekend everyone, enjoy the weeks of football if that's your thing, personally I'm looking forward to Monday when Tennis from Queens Club starts on TV. Talking TV did anyone catch a programme on BBC4 last night, I hadn't seen it trailed at all but happened upon it by chance, it was called Make! and featured two crafting workshops - Lampshades using textiles and paper cutting, I assumed it was the first in a series but it seems to have been a one off. Pity, as it was quite good and inspiring.

Back Soon
Sue

The £100 book?

Is the book in this photo really worth £100?
Well, there are a few copies on Amazon for sale for that price but whether anyone will buy them is a different matter. I paid 50p - much more realistic. Knowing nothing about it or the author - as I was only drawn to it by a small embossed picture of a farmhouse on the front cover - I came home and looked him up.You can read about him here if you want. Seems he was best known for having an affair with Evelyn Gardner when she was still married to Evelyn Waugh.
So where was this treasure?........... At a midweek boot sale which I ventured to early this morning, held at Needham Market which is just a quick dash down the A14 from here.
(I'm pleased that I am now confident enough to zoom to boot sales along busy main roads! I couldn't and wouldn't have done it a couple of years ago). There were quite a few booters there but most of them looked like traders or dealers and other than the book, only  £1.20 was spent on the wooden train and a pack of notepaper and envelopes.
By 8.30am it was getting hot, and I'd been round once so drove home again via Asda for shopping. Then spent an hour sitting in the garden until it got too hot for that too.

Col, by the way, is back in hospital AGAIN! He just had 3 days out then felt hot and shivery, his temperature was almost 38 so a phone call to the special cancer ward 'hotline' number and they told him to go back again. His neutrophil level was almost zero ( Neutrophils are the white blood cells that protect against infection) so he will be in hospital having frequent platelet, blood infusions and antibiotics and they will keep a close eye on him for at least 5 days. The type of Non Hodgkin Lymphoma he has is certainly a nasty one.

Thank you to penfriends (who read this blog) SW for the little hat for baby Jacob and  WM for the muslin cloths also for our little fella. Both arrived in the post this morning. J, H and baby Jacob are hoping to get here for a weekend soon if we can't get there.

Thank you for comments, now it's time for another half hour in the sun - just in case this is the last day of summer!.


Back in a day or 3
Sue

More views from a beach hut

On a clear day, it's possible to just make out the huge offshore wind farm further down the coast














This boat isn't the RNLI or coastguard but Felixstowe Volunteer Coastal Patrol Rescue Service.
Formed in 1997 to make up for a gap in coverage by coastguards. We've seen it a couple of times on Sundays, zooming along between yacht clubs in the River Orwell and the River Deben






 Both the above were taken a few weeks ago but today we managed to get down to the beach hut again, although there wasn't a lot happening out at sea. Just a few yachts and this wind surfer.

 Although lovely and sunny the wind was really cold and if we had known before I packed up lunch just how chilly it was and that we were going to have to come back to the hospital for 4pm we possibly would have stayed at home where it was about 10 degrees warmer. The hospital thing was for Col to have another platelet infusion, they hadn't got any in for him when he went in for a blood test earlier this morning on our way to Felixstowe.

Last week our son printed off some pictures of baby Jacob and took them in to Col in hospital  to show to all the nurses ( he's been in hospital so many times in 6 months that practically all the Somersham ward staff know our whole life history!). M printed off 2 sets, so on Sunday we invited Col's dad and brother over for tea so they could see their great grandson/nephew and pick up one set of photos to take home.They were also able to look at all the other photos of Jacob on various peoples facebook pages.


 Thank you to everyone for gnome comments and Lizzie asked how life compares generally, living in town compared to the countryside. I think the answer deserves a whole post on it's own........I'll work on it.

Back soon
Sue

The week just gone

Apart from becoming Nanna Sue on the 27th, gazing at pictures of baby Jacob, stitching, sudoku-ing, baking  and watching as much tennis as the weather allowed, I did do a few other things while waiting for Col to come home after chemo number 6. (The really silly thing is that he probably didn't have any infection as nothing showed up in the blood culture. The high temperature was probably due to him having a heat pad round his neck because he felt so achy!) I finally picked him up yesterday afternoon.

So back to last Sunday when I zoomed out of Ipswich early to go to a car boot sale. It was Huge but mostly dealers or people wanting silly prices. All I found was a yellow ink refill for the printer, a big pot of parsley, a babies knife, fork & spoon set and a book about the ENSA organisation during WWII. Total spend £3.80 so apart from the exercise I got walking round, it was almost a waste of time.

I've walked to the shops and post office through this alleyway  passing under these colourful trees

I've been to Asda and seen these most frightening of garden ornaments

The worrying thing is that earlier in the year they had many more than this so some idiots people must have bought them. They even had queen shaped ones and now they have gnomes in swimming trunks!


I went to the library to return some books and  collect a few more. From the picture on last Monday's post two went back unfinished = Deadlier Than the Male was a study of women's crime writing looking specifically at 5 well know authors . It was a bit to literary for me and as it was first published in 1981 it's a

little dated so I just flicked through the chapters on Josephine Tey, Dorothy Sayers and Ngaio Marsh.  All of the reviews of The Girl from Station X by Elisa Segrave were good but after about 3 chapters I  couldn't be bothered to read on. The mother/daughter relationship was too uncomfortable. I probably should have persisted to find out what exactly her mother did at Bletchley Park during the war but............
Picked up were two diaries. First 'The view from the corner shop' by Kathleen Hey, the diary of a Yorkshire shop assistant in wartime and The Journal of Beatrix Potter - a massive tome of nearly 500 pages.


Then this morning it was the once a month boot sale near Woodbridge. Last month it was Huge, today the weather was foggy and nowhere near as many booters there. So after just  short  look round  I returned home with this small haul.

 Another Sudoku book for 30p, a cotton pillowcase to cut up for the inner sachets of the lavender cases for £1, 3 bird pegs for crafting -50p, yellow-duck hand puppet was 20p - he's brilliant! and all the 7 Josephine Tey books for £2. It's many years since I read some of them and the coincidence of reading about her in Deadlier than The Male and then spotting these books seemed too good to miss.

And here we are - a Saturday at the beginning of June. Although Col has to have blood tests and platelet infusions everyday this week, the weather is set to warm up so we might get to the beach hut  and there is a good tennis final on TV tomorrow - what else can a person ask for!

Back Soon
Sue
PS welcome to Ana and Jan who have clicked the follower button.