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Yep, you read that right. It's been 5 years since I donned the trainers and went out for an intentional run. I've put trainers on to wander down to the shops and do a bit of gardening but actually have a pair of running shoes, put them on and run up the road? Long time. 


I'm doing the Couch to 5K plan here on the NHS website.


Actually, I'm making myself sound like some kind of gazelle. I didn't just run up the road. I staggered a lot. Coughed a bit. Got a tiny blister on the back of my right heel, which I accidentally ripped off this morning with a towel after a shower (note to self: add plasters to the shopping list). The last 10 seconds of each running segment was tough but I did it.


I'm not using the podcasts associated with the plan - I live in an area with narrow roads and no pavements so I need to hear road traffic approaching. Instead I took a stopwatch out with me. 


So why this sudden fest for sport? Well, I've realised I need to overhaul my thinking about my health. If I don't take steps to improve my physical health I will be at a disadvantage when it comes to recovering fully from COVID if I catch it. I want to increase my lung capacity first and foremost so I'm able to breathe much deeper and build up my breathing muscles. Add in a good dollop of fresh oxygen for its restorative powers and hopefully a bit of weight loss and muscle tone, and I'll be happy.


I realise it might not be the ideal time of year to start this but better to get up and get on than sit and wait for the ideal time, which usually never comes. I'm aiming to be running 3 miles (5k) by March. 


At the same time I've made a discovery with my diet. Most evenings over the last few months I've felt  uncomfortably full, even painfully so, after dinner. More by accident than anything I found that grains and white potatoes are causing it. I had to use up a lot of veg recently that I accidentally over ordered in my shopping so started switching sweet potatoes and parsnips for normal potatoes and rice, and spiralised/strips of courgettes and butternut squash for pasta. I suddenly realised I no longer felt bloated and uncomfortable.  



I still eat some bread now and then - let's face it, some days are so grim you just need that bacon and fried egg sandwich - but otherwise I've dropped the processed grains and white potatoes and feel a lot better for it.

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I'm sitting here with my third cup of tea writing the coming week's to do list. I usually have two lists, one for the week and one for the weekend, and the weekly one is split into work and personal tasks. 


There was a time I'd get upset if I couldn't complete everything on every list, now I'm a bit more mature and relaxed and split the list into priorities. It won't hurt if washing the inside door mat is bumped to another day but it could hurt us if I don't check the credit card for errors or scammers' activity. 


If the adverts are to be believed Christmas is almost upon us, which translated from retail speak means it is absolute eons away. Is anyone else fed up that autumn seems to have been completely disregarded, like an inconvenience to be rushed through to get to the glitter and spangles? It's like the message of mindfulness that was started on social media during the first lockdown has been completely forgotten. 


Don't get me wrong I am shopping for Christmas presents, I like to be prepared after all, but I'm not putting up decorations or filling the house up with festive paraphernalia. I'm trying to appreciate the colours and smells of autumn, enjoying toasting my toes in front of the log burner and the clear crisp nights with visible stars. I've switched over the summer textiles to our autumn/winter coloured ones. I'm cutting up logs and stashing kindling. The boiler is serviced, the oil is topped up, the radiators tested and sticky thermostats fixed. My summer clothes are packed away and the autumn ones are out. 


At the same time I'm slowly building my prepping stores, as I have some concerns about what January and Brexit will bring. Any hold ups at the ports will impact on fresh goods coming in from abroad so I have been adding a few bits of frozen, tinned and dried fruit and veg to my shopping for some time now, and making some freezer store meals. I've also been drying some tomatoes and mushrooms, as I've found them nice additions to simple meals. We have a few leeks in the garden and some root veg, which will help plump a few meals out, and of course our freezers are full of meat and veg from our previous livestock and harvests.


With mum gone and COVID and lockdowns making it difficult to see family, Christmas won't be a massively festive affair for me. It will be quiet and reflective, a time to appreciate what I still have.

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Yes, we have another cat!


Baldrick is about 18 months old and turned up in our garden mid-August and stayed. With the help of a cat charity we made contact with his original owners, who confirmed they didn't want him any more. 


I lost the battle with the naming. I wanted Logan. Martin wanted Baldrick. The argument was still going on after three days when we went to pick him up from the vets and she asked for the name to put on the micro-chip record. In the end I recognised that Martin very rarely fights so long and hard for something, so if he does it means a lot to him and I gave in. Most of the time we just call him Junior though 😁 


We should have named him after a hobbit as he is very passionate about food. We thought he was starving when we picked him up, but he is just very lean and muscular. He was a healthy 4kg but I'm sure that's changed because he adores food. Not human food, only cat food, and we struggle to stop him thieving. 


He was unneutered so he sprayed in the house to mark his territory. We had him neutered and we had to train him out of it by taking him to the litter tray first thing in the morning and not letting him out into the house until he'd wee'd in it. Now he doesn't spray except outside. 


He's a very talkative cat. I would say sometimes the word is 'incessant'. It transpires some of this is him being part Siamese and the other is anxiety, probably from being booted out by his owners and left to roam. Lots of strokes and play have helped.



He's so loving, cuddly and nudgy. Lots of headbops and kisses. We love him. 😍


We've always believed cats make their own choices. This one knew he was onto a good thing here 😄


By the way, please excuse any blue plasters in the photos. I have been chewing my fingers to smithereens since mum died and blue contact adhesive strapping stops me getting to them. 

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Sorry I haven't been back here for while.


I got a serious case of the blahs in April. 


Then I took action to get myself out of the blahs and slid into a new, much more highly paid job when a colleague left. 


Then just when things were looking good my mum was diagnosed with terminal cancer in Mid-July and died August Bank Holiday weekend. She had a dormant cancer, where a few rogue cells from her 'cured' tumour 30 years ago lodged quietly in one of her ribs and then spread by stealth. She went into hospital to have something else sorted and a routine scan showed it was everywhere. COVID restrictions meant she spent a lot of time in hospital and a hospice without being allowed visitors, but they let us in to see her one last time the night before she passed away.


I'm grateful mum didn't suffer on for years.  I'm grateful we had another 30 years with her. 


My head's a bit of a mess. My house is an even bigger mess. The garden is a travesty. The only things that aren't a mess is the job and our finances, although our savings this year have not been great. But I'm slowly pulling my socks up, pottering, accomplishing a little every day.


That's all I can do really. I'll get back into the swing of blogging soon and post some pictures of the flotsam and jetsam of the last six months.


Hope you're all doing ok and hanging on in there. 



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So, I'm getting close to fever pitch at the moment.

I always thought I'd thrive if I was put into a situation where I couldn't go anywhere, as long as I had my books. Well I have my books - and much more besides - and I'm not ok. I didn't realise how much I needed useful revenue-generating work.

Since being furloughed I've worked hard to keep active, even going so far as to put together a schedule for myself, but the uncertainty surrounding whether I will have a paying job or not at the end of all of this is weighing me down. I'm sleeping badly so every 2-3 days I resort to taking a pill just to get some rest and allow my body to repair itself, although it usually means I'm a bit too sleepy the next day to do anything worthwhile. I'm having to carefully plan any big jobs to coincide with the point where I am rested and awake.

There's another aspect to furlough that people don't really talk about, and that's the rejection and loss of self-esteem. You think you are a necessary part of the team until furloughed, and then you realise that you have been classed 'a non-essential worker'. It feels like a slap in the face. In fact, I feel exactly as I did when I was made redundant in 2013: unnecessary. I'm not someone who deals well with being considered unnecessary. What makes it a bit worse is I know that my firm is ok money-wise, with plenty of reserves on the bank, so this was just to grab some free money. Three people have handed in their notice since and two have already gone. I wonder if the management will ever grasp the damage they have done.

Anyway, that's how my week has been. Don't get me wrong, I've been keeping my mouth firmly shut and ploughing on ahead with things round here. Being furloughed on full pay is a gift. It's just that bloody word (and its synonyms) going round and round my head: unnecessary (unneeded, pointless...).

Right, moan over. Shut yer face, Sarah.

So, we're cleaning up the 'building site' at the back of the barns.


We've not been successful trying to get rid of the 3,000+ bricks to anyone so we've been skipping them. I decided to bite the bullet and just turf them out. We've been here four years in July and enough is enough. Once clear, I'll be siting a greenhouse down there, as it is a wonderful warm spot next to a wall that gets the sunshine most of the day and I can grow lots more tomatoes for pasta sauces.

Talking of tomatoes, I ordered some tomato plants from a local nursery that was doing a lockdown special delivery service for people in my postcode so I managed to get eight + growbags: six for the mini greenhouse and two for hanging pots.






The hanging pot I got from a charity shop for £2, along with a couple of retractable pulleys (also £2) for easy watering.


I was delighted to find someone had stuffed two brand new hanging pouches in the growbag box when I opened it up so I shall be finding some plug plants to go in those this year.


I decided to plant up some heavily sprouted Tyson potatoes, left over from our last sack, in the pig pen, as it has lovely friable fertilised soil thanks to the efforts of our last two pigs.







I've also planted another pear tree and blackcurrant bush that I bought way back last summer and gave my blueberry a good water and feed. I was annoyed to find my two cranberries didn't make it through the winter. They were completely dead with rotted roots so I've yanked those out.

Finally, I have a few self-seeded gooseberry bushes, a tayberry and a loganberry still to plant up, but not today. Today it has been raining and it was really needed. Loving the sunshine and all, but it felt weird to be watering dry pots every day in mid-April 😁




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Completely out of the blue.

Along with 22 other colleagues, we have been put on two months furlough. The government is offering to reimburse 80% of our salary's under its new job retention scheme and luckily our firm has agreed to make up the other 20% so I'm on full salary. Trouble is, will I have a job to go back to at the end of May? Currently, two people have split my job between them, and the worry is if they soldier on doing my job and theirs in the 'spirit of the Blitz' the firm may decide to make it permanent.

While two months paid leave sounds nice, it is in fact not when you wake up every day wondering if you will have a job in the summer, should you be job hunting and what if you find something? I have nearly six years with this firm - it could mean starting again, no job security until two years after starting, six months probation, interruption of pension, maybe having to work in an office again.

Right, so the negative stuff out the way. Now for the positive.

Maybe it is time for me to move on, get a pay rise, more responsibility, challenge myself, etc, etc. I have got very comfortable working from home, sat on the bed, meandering through my days. Maybe it is time for a change.

So, the plan it to clean up the house and garden thoroughly and get all the outstanding jobs done, while simultaneously updating my CV, improving my skills by actually learning how to use some of this professional software I have on my work computer, and then job hunting. I will make me feel better to take some kind of positive action.


Over the weekend I ripped into the sunken garden, which had got out of hand. The variegated ivy had completely taken over one bed, killed off some shrubs (it was actually choking the little conifer on the left of the picture) and was snaking its way down across the paving, so I ripped it all out and cleaned it up. I was annoyed to find that the ivy had forced its way through the wall, which now has a big crack running down it and a edging piece lifted that will have to be repaired and concreted back. I have a large shrub stump to get out as well. The rosemary is looking bedraggled and very sorry for itself so once the flowering is over and the bees have had their fill, I'll be dragging that out and planting a new one.



In general the sunken garden it looks unkempt and a bit straggly. Around the outside is a semi-circle of lavender, which is quite old and has started getting woody and dying back in places. I had a search through my seeds and found some dwarf lavender, so have decided to rip out all of those big lavenders later this year and replace them with tidy dwarf lavender plants interspersed with a bright orange early spring perennial (if I can find one). I'd like to get some more early flowers for the bees.



Martin has been very busy cutting down a massive conifer that had got so big it was obscuring the light into the kitchen and blocking out view of the garden. That's now just a stump so we'll even that off and add a pot of something bright and trailing.


So, lots to do, as ever, and now I have the time to really crack into it.
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I'm getting into a daily rhythm with the social distancing.

DH's alarm goes off at 5am, he gets up, I go back to sleep. The lighter mornings wake me up around 6:30am but I won't get up until after 7am. I like the initial morning doze in the warm. Once I'm up the cats are let out, tea for me and mother-in-law, litter trays emptied and cleaned and I check the news online. Text my mother and sister to see how it goes with them. Then shower, maybe some yoga stretches, and then I get down to the business of the day.

Work is coming in fits and starts. We no longer have face-to-face meetings with clients, so our customer service team has been re-booking teleconferences with those who are still working. This has disrupted the normal flow of things and documents have slowed down.

I like the structure of work, it helps me focus on other things besides what is going on in the world. I have been alternating editing with housework. Edit a report, hoover the landing, edit a report, wipe the door handles, edit a report, steam clean the bathroom floor, etc. Break for lunch and to read my book, 30 minute nap, and then it begins again, with the ironing done sometime mid-afternoon. Mother-in-law goes for a trot round outside. I throw a few more yoga shapes if I'm stiff, maybe weed a veg bed. No-one visits here except the occasional parcel delivery man - DH picks up our mail from our postman so he doesn't have to stop here.

DH texts to see if I want anything before he comes home (the answer is usually no). He picks up anything mother-in-law needs, or posts off something my parents need (yesterday it was latex gloves). Then he comes in, strips off and showers. I take all outdoor clothes down to be washed. We sit on the bed with tea and watch the daily update. I cook the dinner, hang up the washing, do a bit of reading/painting/watch a film, do DH's lunch and then go to bed by 10pm.

At 5am the alarm goes off and we start again.

It is a boringly normal day, every day and that's the way we're trying to keep it. Low key, unsurprising and distanced from as much of the world as possible. We want to be part of the solution, not the problem.
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With everything going on, I've been thinking about the best way to use my food supplies to ensure I can stretch it across the longest time possible and still keep our food interesting. My intention is to make our food last out as long as we can to allow others who have greater need to buy food at the shops.

 I can't say how long my food store will last as I never built it up with a 'target' in mind. I just bought extras of what we normally use during a month when they were cheaper, on multi-buy deals, yellow stickered or when I had the extra money to do so. I was routinely putting surplus fruit and veg in the freezer or dehydrating it last year so I have some supplies in that respect. 

So, I had a think last night about some of the things we currently do and how we can adapt those to work better in the current environment and decided I'd share some of my thoughts.

1. Not eating the same things at the same times day in, day out. I'm guilty of this, and to a certain extent so is Martin but as he is a postman, eating out on delivery has to revolve around things that are easy to handle and wrapped as he cannot wash his hands properly. 
I don't have an excuse - I often just have cheese and crackers or a cheese sandwich for lunch because it is quick and I don't want to think about it. However, gluten-free bread is so expensive and currently in short supply so I'm planning on making what bread I do have go much further by rotating my lunches to include a lot of variety. I probably won't worry about baking bread - I've had too many failures trying to make a decent loaf and it uses up a lot of ingredients with every failure. Now is not the time to perfect my skills.

So, for example, lunches for me might look like:

day 1: sandwich
day 2: soup and breadsticks or add some pasta to the soup to bulk it out
day 3: crackers with the normal sandwich filling
day 4: one slice of bread to make half a sandwich (or an open sandwich) and team it with some fruit and a yoghurt
day 5: baked potato and the sandwich filling
day 6: salad and the sandwich filling
day 7: something not traditionally lunch
day 8: use up protein powder as meal replacement shakes
day 9: leftovers from the previous night's dinner
day 10: pancakes

Other things I thought of:

2. Pasta is not just spaghetti or recognisable shapes – it’s also macaroni and broken up lasagne sheets. I was reading about shelves being stripped bare of all pasta apart from those two and was surprised. They are both pasta and can be used. 

3. Consider replacing pasta with a vegetable, such as something spiralised or cut into thin strips using a potato peeler. 

4. Consider eating foods out of the normal sequence – nobody says you can’t have a bowl of porridge for dinner, or cheese on toast for breakfast. In fact, no-one said you have to have breakfast at all. Most days I don't feel like eating until late morning anyway. 

5. Eat less by reducing potion sizes

6. Use less cheese at a time by grating it. 

7. Eat last night's leftovers with some additional carbs or veg

8. Have a bowl of soup before, or a more veg with, a smaller dinner.

9. If I run out of pasta, I have a pasta machine lying dusty somewhere and it is easy to make, just a bit time-consuming. 

10. Drag out the back of the cupboards and see what's there, lying forgotten. I did this yesterday and found a sachet of peanut satay sauce, an out of date mini Dolmio stir through sauce, some shredded coconut, a tin of pilchards, and some lasagne sheets. So tonight's dinner will be satay chicken for Martin and Audrey, pasta for me with the mini Dolmio sauce (peanuts give me gut ache) but in all honesty I'm not sure about the pilchards. I don't even know where they came from! I'll probably try and lose them in a fish pie. I'm the only one in the house that likes coconut so I might try to make some coconut 'milk' to drink and for porridge.

11. Using less meat and padding out main meals with grated veg and/or pulses. We routinely use pulses but have not yet tried veg so I will start doing so. Instead of using a whole tin of pulses we'll use half and add some grated veg.

 12. There will be limits to how many of each product we can have when we eventually do have to buy some food, if any is on the shelves at all, so we have to think outside the box. For example, if I can't get chopped tomatoes then I'll look at passata, fresh toms, sundried toms, plum toms, ketchup, tomato puree, baked beans, tomato soup, etc. Think of all the different ways a particular type of food can be treated and get something different. 

 13. Grow some. Some things are quick to grow. Lettuce leaves, spinach and herbs are quick and simple and can form the basis of a salad. I have beans I can sprout. 

 Anyway, that's all of my thoughts on food for the moment. Hope some of my ideas might be useful for you. 
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So, with all the Coronavirus recommendations (including the new ones that came out this afternoon) it looks like we're practising social isolation and distancing. For introverts like us three (five if you count the cats) I'm hoping it won't be too tough. In fact the only social extroverts around here are the chickens 😁

MIL is 86 with many health issues, so could be badly affected by catching the flu. She's a bit of a homebody anyway, doesn't socialise and doesn't seem unduly upset with the prospect of isolation,  although she isn't happy that she wasn't able to see her niece last weekend for a planned (but cancelled) lunch because the young lady had just come back from a holiday in Slovenia with a cold. We basically had to be very firm with MIL about not going and she's now quite thankful that we did. She  understands the dangers.

Martin is a concern; as a postman he is still going to be going out and delivering mail. Royal Mail has issued guidelines to its posties over the weekend on how to deliver packages that require the homeowner to sign - basically they will not be expected to sign and Martin must put the packages on the floor, knock/ring the bell and then step back a safe distance until the person picks up the parcel and closes the door. We have been considering everything he does from during the day, from when he pulls into the car park at the Royal Mail warehouse until he gets home. He is equipped with wipes to clean his van, gloves for handling parcels and hand sanitiser to use frequently throughout the day.

As for me, I work from home, rarely go into the office and only go out to the shops now and then for groceries. My gym membership has run out as well so I won't be renewing. I'll look at that again in the autumn. At the end of January I decided to reduce my visits to charity shops and went cold turkey on them for almost all of February. I had been experiencing odd withdrawal reactions when I didn't go that surprised me; I was quite unhappy and had a Fear Of Missing Out on bargains. I realised I needed to tackle it. Thankfully I'm past that now but it took nearly four weeks to get there. It seems a bit prophetic now and I'm glad I'm not dealing with those feelings while trying to get my head round COVID 19 restrictions. So, I'll be ok with the isolation I think.



I took the photo above in my local supermarket 10 days ago as I went past the toilet paper aisle to get some peas. Personally, I put food above toilet paper. Let's face it, there's no shortage of things you could use instead of the toilet tissue in an emergency. I'm saving MIL's daily newspaper and am delighted to see that modern inks don't come off on your skin. I'll say no more! 😂

Thankfully, I started building up a groceries stockpile a while ago in response to Brexit so I haven't had to do much shopping, just plugging a few apparent gaps, such as cat food, sugar, bits for Martin's lunches, stock cubes, cider and frozen veg. I was concerned about the possible higher cost of food, aiming for my stockpile to smooth any Brexit transition rather than going to the shops and finding my weekly shopping jumping by 10-20% in one go. As it stands, it now seems that it will help us over the next few months as we socially distance ourselves. I'll still pop out for a few bits of fresh now and then but otherwise I'm here working, reading, gardening and painting.

Interestingly, I never even considered hand sanitiser for my stockpile (why would I for Brexit?) so only had a little bottle for travel purposes, but I did have isopropyl alcohol and aloe vera gel for various reasons. I have mixed these together in a 75% alcohol minimum solution and we use that.

We'll get by.

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Are you as fed up with this wind and rain as I am? Every day the wind has been howling and the rain lashing down, and it's causing all sorts of mischief. 

On Sunday Todd the horse was in the paddock for the last day of his spring visit, and got spooked by wind. He barged the paddock gate and the whole thing snapped under his weight, taking out a huge fence post with it. I was in the house and heard the almighty crack then spotted something in my back garden that shouldn't be there...


I've been stuck in the house for long periods of time over the last couple of weeks and I think I've got a bit of cabin fever. I won't drive when it is very windy as I dislike the way the car snakes around the road. I also won't walk around in it, as it makes me unsteady on my feet and one nasty fall and hospital visit is enough (did I blog about that??). So I haven't even been out in the garden to tidy up, meaning I've completely failed on one of my 20 for 2020 goals for February, which was to get out in the garden for 20 minutes a day. I was hopeful of being able to clean up the patio beds today though; when I went out to do the chickens this morning it was windless and sunny. It's now just gone 9am and the sun has gone, the rain clouds have moved in and the wind had picked up again. Arrrggghhhhh.....


Missy doesn't care a jot. She has turned from a timid cat that wouldn't go far from the back door before Christmas to a confident roamer of the property. The wind and rain do not bother her at all, there's too much exciting stuff to explore, and getting her in proves difficult sometimes. Previously she used to prowl the house in the evening, creating mischief and annoying Georgie because of her pent up energy. Now she's tuckered out of an evening, and likes nothing better than to sit on her chair by the fire. Glad someone is enjoying themselves in this weather.

It's a cat's life isn't it 😁
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Yellow sticker food bargains have played a significant role in our efforts to save more and retire early. Week in, week out I’ve snuffled the aisles of every shop with food I go into, even though pickings have been pretty slim lately due to my schedule, looking for things that are reduced. 

My lunch yesterday was a huge cheese salad with shredded spiced mushrooms, all yellow sticker. My breakfast banana came from a pack of eight reduced from £1.35 to 50p, and my GF bagel was from a four-pack reduced from £2.00 to £1.00. My dinner this evening was lemon and herb marinated hake (which I bought at Tesco the other day and forgot about when doing Wednesday's post), a big salad and the rest of the shredded spiced mushrooms. Even the lemon and herb marinade was from a bottle reduced from £2.00 to 2op. I paid full price for the mayo though...well, I bought two 800g jars on a 2for1 at Christmas and decanted one into a squeezy bottle. 😀 




Oh yes, there's no doubt that yellow stickers are a big help with the food budget. I have a pretty simple yellow sticker pricing strategy; I buy things that are reduced by 40% off or more. For example, if something is £3.00 reduced to £2.50 I’m not interested. Once it goes to £2 I start to maybe consider it. If it is £1.70 or less I’ll get it. I don’t buy pork or lamb (for obvious reasons) and don’t do exotic fruit and veg. I try and stick with things I know we all will eat. 

I also look at sections in a specific order. I look in the discounted sections of the meat and fish aisles (as they are generally the most expensive part of a shop), general refrigerated goods, the deli, fruit and veg, bread, ambient and frozen then homewares and flowered/plants. Then I loop back and pick up the rest of the stuff on my list, making adjustments as I go depending on what I managed to pick up reduced. 

 I very rarely buy anything in homewares but occasionally snuffles have turned up printer paper, stationary and the odd packs of seasonal goods that I tuck away for the following year. Plants and flowers can sometimes yield interesting stuff; I once found a mini spruce tree in a tin for a £1 reduced from £4. That lives outside and every year gets potted on in spring and decorated at Christmas.

 This approach has allowed us to consistently pay a vast amount less for our groceries shopping every week, which I combine with bulk buying items when on offer, finding the non-reduced bargains regardless of which shop they are in, and checking all the supermarkets weekly for offers through mysupermarket.com. 

We're lucky in that we have quite a few food shops in close proximity in our town, including Iceland, M&S foods, Lidl, Aldi, B&M, Sainsbury's, Poundstretchers, and Morrisons. Tesco is well out of town, about 15 minutes away, and so is ASDA and Co-op, at about 30 minutes each. Waitrose is about an hour. Those get occasionally snuffled when passing. I love having so much choice, although it can make for a bit of work keeping up with them all.

 It can be worth it though. For example, Martin likes a box of proper Jaffa cakes every now and then (not found a generic version he likes), and Sainsbury's has a box of 10 for £1 or 20 for £1.60. However, in Iceland you can get a bulk box of 10 packs of 10 for £4. No contest, although I have to keep them hidden otherwise he eats the lot!

On the smaller end of the scale, I like having a cappuccino once a day and I have a Dolce Gusto machine. I can sometimes find bulk deals online for the pods, which is especially good if I can find a discount voucher to combine them with. The lowest I've ever bought a pack of 16 pods was for £2.85 a box and that was with a store discount coupon. Most of the time Poundstretcher has a box of pods for £3.50 compared to £3.69 in Sainsbury's (although at the moment they are £3.50). Unfortunately, neither Aldi nor Lidl in my area do their own branded-compatible cappuccino pods otherwise I'd have those instead. A 19p saving each time I buy may not sound a lot but if you made the same saving on every item you buy you can start to see how that would build up over the months and years. 

 Saying that, for a while now I've been drinking Kenco Duos, as they've been on offer for £2.00 in many places but they've now gone up to £3.50 everywhere but Asda (£2.00). That's too much for six coffee pods so I'm back on the Dolce Gusto until I can find them cheap again or pass by an ASDA.

 Yes, I know I'm getting a bit anally retentive about prices, but apart from the love of a bargain there is another, more personal reason for doing this. Martin has been up at the crack of dawn for 25 years. Come rain, shine, snow, dogs, nasty shouty people and broken bottles of ink in parcels (the curse of the dyed hand) he has delivered the mail conscientiously. 


I want him retired. I want him to enjoy waking up every morning and sinking back under the covers, knowing he doesn't have to go anywhere. 

 To do that I need to stretch his salary. It's very hard-earned. 
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Before I start this post, Brisbane Susan has mentioned that she cannot see any comments (is that right Susan?), although she can leave them. I'm not sure why this would be, as all the correct settings are turned on from my end. It may be something to do with your browser compatibility - perhaps Internet Explorer or Firefox have issues recognising the code - or maybe you have an older version of a browser that needs updating. Those are the only two options I can think of right now.

Anyone else having issues?

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So, I sat down and worked out the year's normal and additional expenses last week and I was not happy with what I saw. I won't go into detail in the post - I'll save it for next time - but suffice to say we have A LOT of things that need fixing and repairing this year.

I realise that DH and I are going to have to get a bit frugal to meet these expenses. I no longer do any freelance work for extra cash, as it is too much for me to cope with on top of this place, a full time job and my hobbies (hobbies are now a priority for me, as I had let them fall by the wayside and suffered for it). I still maintain a lot of frugal actions and tasks that I've always done but one big thing that has been greatly reduced is yellow sticker shopping. Travelling to the office every day used to provide me with ample opportunities to nip in to local food shops for a quick snuffle as I went past. Now I work from home, I am restricted to when I go out - usually the middle of the day - and there isn't necessarily much on offer at those times.

So, I've realised I need to go back to doing it. Somehow. The idea of an additional trip out in the evenings doesn't fill me with joy, as there is the expense of the petrol, but then again if I end up with the amount of food I used to I would save much more than the petrol costs.

To give you some idea, yesterday afternoon I dropped into two Tesco's on the way back from visiting my parents. The time was about 7:30-8pm, and this is what I got.













The salmon was cut up into six then cooked, three frozen and three put in the fridge. The salad produce and fancy shredded mushrooms will see me through lunches for the next seven days - I just need to add some protein to it, say, salmon 😋. The whole mushrooms are going to go into a soup, perhaps with a dash of the smoked bacon, while the sliced mushrooms will be sprinkled into various dinners over the week. The unsmoked bacon will be teamed with our hen's eggs for breakfast while the veggie mash will go with sausages one night for dinner. The two mangoes are destined for fruit smoothies. Finally, the teacakes will be eaten by Martin as an after work snack while the scones will be in Martin's lunches and as puddings after dinner.

The sum total of this lot was £9.45. It would have been £37.54 full price so I paid 25%. I already have enough meat and other bits to use for dinners so apart from a few little bits like tea bags, milk, bananas, apples and gluten-free bread, that one shop has topped the fridge and freezer up so I don't need to do a weekly shop.

Result!
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Everyone, meet Todd. Todd, meet everyone.

No, don't worry, I've not gone and bought a horse, I've borrowed one from my neighbour across the road. He's eaten all the grass in his paddock over there and I offered to let him graze our paddock down for a few weeks.

Anything to get out of cutting the grass. 😂

Doesn't he look handsome - he's 25 years old this year, which makes him a very senior horse. You wouldn't think it to see him frisking around.

However, some areas he's really rucking up, notably the area near the gate. At the moment, Todd is only grazed in the morning to restrict his grass intake and prevent colic, so around 1pm he goes over to the gate and pads around waiting for his owner to come and get him.



After he's gone, I've decided it is time to get someone in to harrow, overseed and roll the paddock. A combination of molehills, thatch and settlement has meant it is turning into rolling hills and valleys but first the grass needs taking right back. The ride-on lawnmower won't be able to cope with the lumps and bumps but Todd has no such issue.

I didn't have too much grass after all. I just had a horse deficiency 😁


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So, I didn't quite make it. I managed to make it through Viking Britain but by 10:30pm last night I still had 300 pages of Volume 3 of War and Peace to go. It would have taken me another 3-4 hours to complete so I decided to call it a day and read the rest over the next couple of days.

So, how did it go?

Viking Britain by Thomas Williams
This was a very good and dense read. Viking history is always something that has been on the periphery of my interest in early British History. I've always had more interest in the Iron Age, particularly the Roman occupation era, as we made massive strides in food production due to all the new varieties of fruit and veg brought over by them. I hadn't appreciated until I read this book just how entwined our history is with the Vikings and how they changed us. This took me a massive 8hrs and 5mins to read, mainly because I kept stopping over words and how to pronounce them plus making notes. I've found some interesting info that I want to explore, like the fact that my home town in London was the scene of a battle between the Anglo-Saxons and Vikings. Also, Lincolnshire has some interesting Viking history that could warrant a few days out to explore. Overall, a good thought-provoking read.

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
After the first couple of volumes I had almost lost the will to live. I was just not feeling inspired or interested in what was going on. That's a bad sign for me. I have to be interested in what I am reading. However, because of the challenge I ploughed on and I'm glad I did. The third book has been great so far. Very exciting and I'm looking forward to completing it. I can see what Tolstoy is leaning towards as the story unfolds - the characters develop, change, find their purpose, do away with fanciful things and embrace greater self-knowledge and mastery over their former selves. His characters struggle with what they think they should do compared to what they want to do. Nice to see that is an age-old struggle. He was a bit of a self-improvement junkie was old Tolstoy 😁


I can confidently say that had I not set myself such a big challenge I wouldn't have come as far as I did. I'm not a great fan of SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-bound). If I know I can achieve them I don't want to do them - where's the challenge? 😁 I could have set myself the goal of reading War and Peace in seven days, but I knew I would accomplish that no problem at all. I needed something to really stretch me and 7 books in 7 days did. It also taught me a lot.

1. Never judge a book by its cover.
I had firmly held beliefs about what The Handmaid's Take, Pet Sematary and The Book Thief would be about. I was completely wrong. I've realised I'm too judgemental and too quick to jump to conclusions, and not just about books.

2. I spend too long on the internet.
Most of my reading had to be done interspersed with work, and to fit everything in something had to give, which was the internet. I'm pretty shocked at how long I spend on the internet in the evening.

3. I can focus better when under time pressure
Work expands to fill the time available. I knew that but still I was surprised at how much I could get done in 30 minute and 60 minute spurts. Setting my phone alarm stopped my mind from buzzing, something I'm still not sure why would happen, and my focus was laser-like. I know some people practice this type of time-chunking (the Pomodoro technique is an example) but until this challenge I hadn't appreciated its power.

4. I can't speed read a non-fiction book.
Viking Britain showed me that something with lots of facts needs more careful consideration. I need to understand what was written in the context of what I already know, or in some cases what I think I know but am wrong about.

5. Keep going. You never know what is around the corner
In the past I would never have persevered with a book I didn't enjoy in the way this challenge made me do with War and Peace but I'm glad I did. I could never have guessed the third book would be so good. Lesson learned.



I've thoroughly enjoyed this challenge. Martin likewise with his. He completed his challenge at 11:58pm last night. He built the plane he wanted, from scratch out of balsa wood and plans, tested it around 4pm yesterday to make sure it flew (which it did, brilliantly) and then covered it with white film. At some point he'll put some more detailing on the wings to jazz it up a bit but considering this was a large sheet of paper and rectangles of balsa last Tuesday afternoon he has achieved something fantastic.

We've already decided to do another challenge, perhaps next month. This time mine will be something crafty.
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Well, the stack of read books has got higher.

Just to recap, the '7 books in 7 days challenge' started last Tuesday and ends at midnight tonight, during which time I have to complete seven books.

At the time of my last update I had completed three books and was about to start book 4. So how has it gone? Pretty well. I've completed five books and am currently reading my last two.

Pet Sematary by Stephen King
Again, I had an idea in my head what Pet Sematary would be about - and I was completely wrong 😁
By the way, the spelling is deliberate - in the book the burial ground was named by local children and that's how they thought Cemetery was spelt. The plot worked out completely different to how I thought it would. Overall it was a good book, however, unlike 'Salem's Lot', which I read between Christmas and New Year, I wouldn't read this one again. Now I know the twist, I can't forget it. I also thought the book shouldn't have ended where it did. It needed to go on. It took me 4hrs and 26 mins to read.

The Martian by Andy Weir
Having seen the film I knew how the book would go, and it was almost exactly the same. A bit more technical stuff and a big bit had been altered in the film, quite a technical bit, so presumably that was to aid understanding for the audience. There's only so much science stuff you can introduce in one go to a non-scientific audience. I really enjoyed it and finished it in 5hrs and 3 mins. It took longer as I stopped every now and then and read back on some of the technical stuff as it was being explained. I will probably go back and read it again at some point.


Where am I now?
On Saturday I started War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (translation by Anthony Briggs). By yesterday evening I had completed two of the three volumes in 8hrs and 50m but made a decision to read the third volume today and instead begin reading Viking Britain by Thomas Williams around 8pm yesterday.



Why? Because War and Peace has been very hard going and I'm a bit tired of reading it. I've not really found it that interesting on the whole, although there have been some very nice scenes here and there where I was emotionally stirred and got into what was going on. I'm hoping it is just the translation because it feels very disjointed, and the way women are portrayed is misogynistic, which I find difficult to put up with but have to remember it was a feature of the times Tolstoy lived in. I've struggled and have fallen behind in my timings, but then it wouldn't be a challenge if it was easy. 😁

So very shortly I'm going to start reading Viking Britain again (I got about a third of the way through that in 2hrs 41m yesterday) and will complete that, have a late lunch and then it's on to the final part of the challenge - the third volume of War and Peace.


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