Georgie's ashes came back. I was expecting the usual plastic tub with ashes in a plastic bag and instead we got this. How lovely. Bit of choker. We were both dabbing our eyes and clearing our throats when we saw that. 



The Victoria plum tree has ripened a bit too quick for my liking so I’ve managed to put several pounds of those in the freezer, halved and stoned them then laid out flat on trays. Makes then easier to bag up and take a few out of the time for my breakfast. I’ve also been picking raspberries again for the second time this year:  both the autumn and summer raspberries have flushed again but they’re not really making it into the freezer, we're using them as I pick them. The blackberries have just started to come on and I've picked the first batch, so I'm hoping to get a few pounds into the freezer, and the Bramley apples trees are dropping their fruit, so some of those will be peeled, sliced and frozen soon. And of course, there's tomatoes.



My GP appointment didn’t quite go as planned. Although I’ve been asked to go and get a blood test to see if I have anaemia, there is a national shortage of blood vials at the moment and so I have to wait until after the 17th of September to book a blood test. For now only the emergency cases will be seen, which is fair enough, but for me I can’t wait that long to see what’s gone wrong and to get an idea of what is needed to make me better. So I have put myself on a bit of an DIY treatment plan. 


I've made the assumption that this probably is anaemia, as it starting after donating blood is too much of a coincidence. I have doubled my iron supplements and take one pill morning and evening, chasing them down with orange juice - you need vitamin c for efficient iron absorption as it keeps the iron in a format it can be most easily absorbed. As the seat of most vitamin and mineral absorption is the gut, I need to help it absorb well so I’m drinking half a glass of kefir and a glass of kombucha every day, which are putting vital cultures into my digestive in case they have become depleted. I’ve also got back on the exercise bike to help get the blood and oxygen through my body. My aim is that by the time I get to the 17th of September I may not need to have a blood test at all and can ring my GP and cancel it. I can see the benefits already, my eyes are no longer sore, gritty and red-rimmed and I don't feel so exhausted each morning but I'm still falling asleep in the afternoons.


I've been doing lots of annoying admin every day, from reading meters to sorting out broken IT, just normal life stuff that has to be done but for some reason there seems to be a lot of it this week. Every day this week there's 5-6 things on my list that have to be sorted to keep our lives ticking over. Just writing this I've realised I need to book the sweep to do the chimney, have the boiler serviced and get the septic tank emptied so I've added them to the lengthy list. 






I did a bit of charity shopping in the week at a nearby town for a bit of a change when I had a half day and found a few things, including this Royal Doulton plate called 'Holy Cow', which was one of a set produced as part of its folk series. I couldn't resist. I don't normally like that kind of thing, but I loved the Amish feel to it. At the same time I popped into a local Sainsbury’s and picked up some yellow sticker bargains for the freezer, mostly marinated chicken breasts. 




Then I went to a car boot sale on Sunday morning and managed to find a Peter Porter puzzle for £2, two copper picture frames for £1, a book on festive food from around the world for £1 and another book on art nouveau posters for 50p. 



Bargain of the day though had to be this William Morris duvet cover and pillowcase set for £1.50, which I'm going to make into a light bedspread for the spare room. This room has a bit of a Victorian style and strong colour scheme, but the bedspreads I’ve seen are far, far too expensive so I’ve been looking out for something to turn into one and this will do nicely. 





So Sunday was treat night; pizza, cider, a couple of films from amazon prime and the new puzzle, much to the delight of Baldrick and Missy, who have taken over puzzle rights from Georgie. But unlike Georgie I can get them off quite quickly by blowing on them. If I had done that to Georgie he would have beaten me up. 




I actually finished the puzzle last night, there was so many colours and features in it that matching them up was fairly easy, but I'm not starting another one. I'm going to take a break from puzzling for a week, do some reading and make some new curtains for the kitchen. 




I decided on an apple green gingham in the end (the picture makes it look sage green but it's not); blue didn't match with anything else in the kitchen and while light grey did match it just looked drab so apple green it was. I bought four metres for about £22 including postage and by chance found a complete extendable curtain pole set in the tool barn, all still sealed, which I think I got at a charity shop a couple of years ago. I'm going to keep it simple and do a cafe-style rod heading, as that's just folding and one line of stitches.

 Hopefully, by this time next week they'll be done and up!

Read more »

I took two half days off work this week to tackle our finances. A lot of things have happened at once and I needed some solid time to review and organise things.

Savings

I've been trying to find places for our savings with good interest rates now our Coventry Building Society Regular Savers have matured. To compound this, I received a letter from Tesco letting me know they are ditching their current accounts in November. I've been using our account as a savings account, as it was offering 3% on balances up to £3,000, although we kept a lot more in there. This dropped last year to 1% and continues to fall so I have to find a home for those savings. 

Some of the accounts with the best rates are for existing customers, others are only for people living in a specific postcode. Some that look ok will only take very small maximum deposit limits and so are not worth the hassle of setting them up. 

We already have Stock and Shares ISAs which we use those specifically for investing for my retirement, and I don't want to reduce our annual limits by opening up a cash ISA.

I've looked at premium bonds but I actually don't like the lottery aspect of it. According to MSE's premium bond calculator I could be looking at about £75 in prizes for the amount I would buy, but that is obviously based on chance. I could get more but it is statistically likely I will get less.

I've never been keen on tying my money up for a fixed term, in case we have an emergency and need the money, but I'm slowly coming round to the idea as some of the better rates on the market are fixed term accounts. 

After much research the only options that suits my specific requirements are a 12-month fixed term account with Oak North Bank for 1.23% interest and/or a regular savings account with Coventry Building Society at 1.05%. That's a lower interest rate than last year but it allows larger monthly deposits so is simpler to maintain, and crucially, I can still access the latter if I need it. 


-oOo-


Retirement accounts

Once that decision was made I turned my attention to Martin's accounts. His SIPP is being transferred to Vanguard from BestInvest, as the latter's drawdown costs were far too expensive. I'm looking to keep that invested for the rest of the year and start drawdown after April next year. Our aim is to keep Martin's income under the Personal Allowance of £12,570, which we won't be able to do this year due to him working his last two months in the new financial year. Once we add in his occupational pension the SIPP will put him over. 

However, I noticed last week that his monthly pension statement stated HMRC has given him a Basic Rate tax code, which is not correct and means he is being taxed at 20%, despite only having a small pension as income. That tax code is often given to people who have pensions and are still working. So, we rang up HMRC, talked through the issue with them and they have now changed the tax code to account for this. He should now get a refund on the tax taken from his pension since June and a refund of the tax he paid during April and May while working. 


-oOo-


Credit cards

Finally credit cards. One of my 0% rate promotions is coming to an end in September. If you've read my blog for a while you'll know I favour putting larger spends on these cards, paying back a set amount and keeping my savings earning interest. It's a technique called stoozing. Because I have savings I can pay off the debt at any time if I need to so I don't feel burdened by it, but I get the luxury of repaying it at my leisure over time. The card repayments come from our income every month so my savings and investments can sit there untouched from one year to the next. 

After searching the market, I found a Marks and Spencer card that offers 0% interest for 20 months and was successful with my application. The car we bought last week was purchased using our normal household credit card to get the buyer's protection, and originally I was going to use a combination of my bonus and savings for that but I've decided not to so that balance will shortly be transferred onto the Marks and Spencer card. I'll then set up a regular payment every month and just forget about it. We will be renewing our mortgage deal in a couple of years and so I'll clear the balance three months before our new deal. 

There is another technique to saving/making money using credit cards but it's not as easy as it used to be so I don't do it. It's called a Super Balance Transfer or Money Transfer. Basically, you get a card with a 0% interest rate on money transfers and a low fee, then do a money advance off the card, up to the credit limit you've been given, into your current account. You're effectively taking a cash advance from your card. You can then put the cash into a savings account and get the interest. This is not so easy to do as it was 10 years ago. Back in the day there were very little, if any fees, for cash advances and huge savings interest so it was quite lucrative, but credit card lenders didn't like people doing it so changed their terms and conditions, the fees have increased massively (lowest is currently 3%), and savings interest rates are low.

You can still do it, but you need a special Money Transfer credit card but really it is too much faff for no reward so I stick to the stoozing. The only way I would change my mind is if we had a recession and the price of the funds in my pension and ISAs dropped significantly, making it worthwhile to buy the lower priced units in anticipation of the day they increase in value. I've done that before during a market dip, using savings though not money transfers. 

It's still good to have that possibility in my back pocket. I may need to use every means available to me if I'm to retire early. 

Read more »


So on Sunday Martin and I joined my sister and nephew to scatter the rest of my mother's ashes in a small welsh village where she grew up. It was the anniversary of her death and we'd already had a partial scattering on her birthday in June at a church near Thame that she and my dad used to visit every now and then to admire the roses. 


We had hoped small welsh village equals quiet. We couldn't have been more wrong. In the last few years the local river at the bottom of the village has become a mecca for canoeists and we had forgotten it was bank holiday weekend. The car parks and green spaces were thick with 4x4s, wet suits and fibreglass canoes.  


We went down the steps to the launching area and veered off to the left, stepping from rock to rock and keeping our feet just above the thick mud near the bank mud, passing under shrubbery and forging through greenery, until we found a little private outcrop and that's where we scattered her the rest of her ashes (once there was a lull in the throng of passing canoes). So my mother now rests in a quiet spot near the bank of the river where she used to play as a child. 


After that we went up into the surrounding hills to visit the house where she used to live and saw the oak tree where she said she sat and ate jam sandwiches as a child. And a big old beastie it was too. Nice to see it still standing and from the size of the trunk it must have been at least a couple of hundred years old and likely much more. Then Martin and I walked down the hillside footpath that she used to take to get down to the town and river. The steps were relatively modern and made of concrete but so steep, almost 45 degrees, I can't imagine how she used to get up and down there. Perhaps wooden planks were laid to form steps, otherwise that would have been a frightening descent in wet weather. 


The rest of the week was quiet but busy.


MIL went to stay with her other son. Since then we’re been eating mostly lamb and beef out of the freezer. We realised we don't tend to cook many meals with red meat when MIL is here, as her teeth are so blunt she can't chew it any more, however, we’ve decided that we want to eat more of it as we love it and don't want to be restricted to the small repertoire of easily chewed meals we seem to have fallen into, which mostly revolve around chicken and mince. I'll cook something else for her on the nights non-minced lamb and beef are on the menu. 



As it is chilly tonight we’re having a lamb curry with potatoes and sultanas and a glass of red wine, while sitting in front of a roaring fire, the first since mid-spring. I’ve had cold feet all day despite wearing socks and slippers and there has been a chill in the air inside the house so Martin decided to fire up the log burner. The summer is coming to an end and the garden is going over. I actually don’t like this period of time of year, not quite summer but not quite autumn. Not cold enough for a duvet but a bit too cold for just a patchwork quilt and fleece. The plants are going over and we’re in a race to get the tomatoes all ripened. 


The Nissan Micra didn’t make it past the MOT and needed quite a bit of work done, including welding. Luckily Martin could do it all, including the welding as he has a MIG welder, so it cost us about £50 in replacement parts but took a good day and half of labour to get it right so it passed. He was right when he said last week it is just not feasible to keep it anymore. All the major work has been done to get it into a good condition so it will make a nice little runaround for someone.



I managed to do another puzzle over the week, read one of my charity shop finds (Rhett Butler’s People) and spent some time on Ancestry updating my mother's family tree with some of the information she had acquired over the years. I go through spurts of interest with my hobbies, but despite the large number I seem to regularly cycle through them. In the next cycle I might get back to finishing that jumper 😁


There was no shooting lesson last week, I cancelled that as I was just too tired. I gave blood at the beginning of August and have still not fully recovered from where I was on day 3 post donation, despite taking supplements, so I have a GP appointment tomorrow to discuss anaemia. When I say appointment, I mean of course phone call. And when I say GP I mean paramedic/triage nurse. I know COVID is still hanging around but getting a GP appt is like trying to get rocking horse droppings. Hopefully I’ll get a blood test done soon to find out what my iron levels are. 


So that’s my week. Another busy one coming up as we have the sheep arriving in about 10 days. Our ride on lawnmower has broken down and the part is obsolete, so we have to find a way to get the paddock mowed and sort out the electric fencing system before they come. Sheep can’t eat long grass, there’s no nutrition in it so it’s all hands to the pump to get the paddock into grazing condition in time. 

Read more »

Yes, it finally happened. I finally accepted that we had to update our daily car to a more modern car. I think we felt the earth shift on its axis when I ‘gave in’ 😂 

Early on in our marriage I identified cars as a significant money drain and impediment to retiring early, and I still maintain they are, so this is very much an experiment. It's only because my recent bonus came in that we've done it, as while bonuses are lovely to receive they sit outside our budget as luxuries as they can never be relied upon. 

Martin and I had spoken many times before about having a more modern car but I've resisted. I refuse to lease a car, as I want to own something outright in case I need to sell for the money. I won't buy a new car, as the depreciation costs in the first three years are horrible. Also, I'm very suspicious of anything with CPUs and sensors. It annoys me that you have to spend £50 and get a garage to reset each sensor that trips and diagnose the problem, which may or may not be the real problem as sometimes sensors can trip other sensors into playing up. You could end up spending hundreds of pounds fixing something only to find it was a problem knocked on from elsewhere in the car. Finally, modern car parts come in units. You can't just fix a small bit like older cars, you have to replace the whole unit. It means modern mechanics are trained to put sealed units together like lego, rather than pinpoint the exact seal/pipe/part that has malfunctioned and replace that.

In all, I think it is a licence to pick my pocket and I've strongly resisted. However, I now accept that we had to make a move towards a modern car for our day-to-day needs, as finding an pre-sensor style car that is low mileage and in good condition is now very difficult and I need something smart and reliable for visiting clients. After a few years of trouble-free motoring our 20 year old automatic Nissan Almera is getting to a point where it is quite tatty and dinged, has 91,000 miles on the clock, and is needing a little too much attention every year. Audrey no longer drives her 19 year old manual Nissan Micra and neither does Martin now he's given up work so that is just sat on the drive. I don’t drive manual cars as I dislike the faff of gear changes otherwise I’d have it. The tax on both of them is high, nearly £360 a year for the Almera and about half that less for the Micra, and there are likely to be increases in the future to try and combat climate change by getting elderly polluting cars off the road.

They’ve done well though. We bought the Almera in 2018 for £500 with 64,000 miles on the clock, as we needed something for me to drive and had strength to pull the car and animal trailer. The Micra 1.0 belonged to my parents from new and Audrey bought it from them in 2017 to update her even older last car. It had 56,000 miles on it when she bought it and now has 66,000. 

So, after doing some research, we decided to buy an automatic 2009 Toyota Yaris 1.3 at a local dealership. We found a few likely candidates in Lincolnshire to test drive over the last week, and finally settled on one that drives well, with a full service history, bank of first time MOT passes and only very minor advisories and 53,000 miles on the clock. It will be more expensive than what we're used to spending (around £4,000 compared to our usual £500) but the onus is on Martin to prove its worth. He talked the talk for a modern car and in his opinion this is a good one, so now he’s persuaded me it better walk the walk! The car tax will be £30 a year and insurance £190. 

The plan is that the Micra will be MOT'd before the end of this month and advertised for sale so we don't have to buy another lot of road tax. Also, we've just got the MOT on the Almera, and are aiming to replace that in 3-6 months with a classic car of the right engine size. A classic tow car will have no road tax, as it will be older than 30 years, can go on a classic car policy on a limited mileage for less than £100 a year and Martin can maintain it. 

I have to say, the new car it is very quiet and smooth to drive. Having only ever driven older cars I can see the technology progression between the older and newer styles. It's also a luxury to have a working CD player - the Almera and Micra only have tape players 😁

Read more »


Monday was a bad day. We took Georgie to the vet as he seemed to be a bit unwell last Tuesday and Wednesday, off his food and drinking a lot of water. He seemed to recover Thursday and Friday, ate a whole deli chicken (!), two cans of tuna and a a couple of cans of cat food, and was brighter and more active, but went downhill Saturday and Sunday and just slept and drank a lot. A trip to the vet on Monday revealed he had end stage renal failure and there was no hope for him. 


We had seen no particular signs of renal failure, like we did for Sophie, and his blood tests were normal for an 18 year old when he had them done six months ago. But now some of his renal markers were so high they were more than the machine could measure. One marker was so high the vet said he'd only seen that three times in his long career. One kidney had atrophied and the other was inflamed and irregularly shaped, either due to cysts or cancer. Georgie had been masking the symptoms and the changes were so slight we didn't see them until too late. 


The vet was clear that even with drip hydration and renal food he had no more than a week or two at the most, so we took the painful decision to have him put to sleep.  We spent some time talking to him and stroking him, with him purring all the while, then held him and stroked him as he was injected. He was gone in less than a minute. The vet has arranged to have him individually cremated and when his ashes come back he'll sit on a shelf with Fleagle and Sophie so they can all be together once more.  



We were looking at pictures of him yesterday afternoon and found the first one when we discovered him in our greenhouse all those years ago. The date? 16th August 2006. He left us 15 years to the day he met us. 


-oOo-


Georgie was mostly of feral parentage and was beaten and abused before being brought to the village where we used to live when he was 10 months old. For the first few months of his life he was wild with his parents in an urban sprawl. Then it seems he was found by someone and brought indoors, only for them to throw him around and we suspect do things to him with water and aerosols; he couldn't tolerate even a small drop of water on him (apart from rain which he's ok with) and the sound of an aerosol can spraying had him in pieces. He finally left that owner after they threw him out of a second floor window. Luckily, someone picked him up off the floor after seeing the incident stuffed him in the boot of her car and brought him to the village. Had the RSPCA been called it's almost certain they would have put him to sleep because he was so frightened and aggressive at that point. 

Although he had a new home, he never settled, ending up being fed by four different people and roaming and fighting because he had never been neutered. In the end his current owner simply locked the door on him one day and let him roam. We were told by neighbours he was now an unwanted stray and to do something with him because he annoyed everyone by stealing food and climbing in through windows to fight with their cats and spray. 



When we came back from honeymoon we discovered him in the back garden playing with Fleagle and a few days later after he repeatedly returned we decided to see if we could play a role in rehoming him somewhere. In consultation with Cat's Protection (CP), we captured him and took him to be neutered. At that point we had no foster carers for him and CP told us to put him back in the greenhouse after we picked him up from the op. That night he pushed out a cracked pane of glass and escaped, much to our dismay, and we thought that was the last we would see of him but he returned for 'supper'. A hasty consult with CP and suddenly we were his foster carers, after which we could bring him into the house.

He was given the same curfew rules as Fleagle and Sophie - no going out before light or after dark. If he wanted his supper he had to come in for it and he wouldn't be allowed out again.  There was a very fraught first few weeks while he adjusted to the idea; he shredded the curtains, bounced off furniture, scratched, ran up the wallpaper, yowled, woke us up - in fact anything he could do to try and make us let him out/kick him out after dark. We didn't give in - no matter how warm it got in the house we didn't have any windows open in case he escaped. 

He eventually he settled down and turned into a lovely cat. We stuffed him full of high protein food so he put on weight and got a glossy coat. CP tried to find him a home and after several attempts that fell through Martin asked if we could keep him. Turns out they had been having some lovely moments together first thing in the mornings when Martin was making his sandwiches (I believe ham may have been involved!) and he believed he could be a nice addition to our home. The relief in the CP Officer's voice was palpable as she scratched another difficult case off her books. 


He was never a cuddly cat you see and all the potential adopters wanted lap cats. No-one likes a spiky cat. He really didn't like being touched, but over the years we could stroke his head and back, always at his instigation though or we got bitten or scratched. Sometimes he would come on our laps or partially sit on us and we would hardly dare move, recognising it was a privilege to be needed by him at that point but understanding he didn't want a big deal made of it.  








He was a big fan of claiming objects to sleep on - a piece of paper, magazine, book, iPad, plastic bag, didn't matter. He liked it all. Even better if it was something you'd just put down for a second. 











Sometimes he didn't look comfortable at all, perched on top of some teetering stack, but he was determined. 




Saying that, if he wanted real comfort he always headed to the same place - the clean washing pile that was waiting for ironing. 



We think he liked to claim places that had no previous cat smell, a dominance thing maybe. If something new came in the house he would sit on it, and if it could be slept on he would. 

He loved the smallholding when we moved here. He was always a hunter and there was ample vermin for him to dispatch with our blessing, although we weren't always so keen when he brought home baby birds. We had mostly trained him out of that by rewarding him with cheese for mice, rats and rabbits, and nothing, not even recognition, for a bird. He was clever enough to understand.


 

Things changed for him in January 2018 when he was 15. While out one morning in the paddock he was trampled by one of the sheep, breaking his leg in two places and leaving him needing an operation for a permanent plate to hold the pieces together. 



We couldn't understand how such a streetwise cat could have been surprised like that, until a few months later when we realised he was stone deaf. He never heard them coming. His other senses became super acute but he started doing that wailing that all older or deaf cats do when they are trying to locate you. 


Then in the winter of 2018/19 he started being much more attentive about food and stealing off plates. 



At one point he launched himself at a lump of cake being held by my brother-in-law, who was looking after him while we were in Australia, desperately clawing at it and biting a chunk off. When we came back we took him to the vet straight away, and he was diagnosed with an over-active thyroid and put on medication twice a day. He was not a cat that could be wrapped in a towel and pilled so we had to be crafty and sneak it in his favourite meaty sticks twice a day, and even then sometimes he simply sorted the pill from the treat in his mouth and spat the pill out. Then we had to change tactics and find another treat, like cheese or perhaps even leave him for an hour and try again. We never wanted it to become a battle ground - he was his own cat and pushing him could very easily turn it into one, with us on the losing side.


What we didn't know at the time was that an thyroid medication can make even mild age-related kidney disease worse. He probably did have a bit - the vet said his renal markers were borderline but that was quite common for an elderly cat with ageing kidneys. At that point perhaps we should have put him on renal food and phosphate binders as a precaution but the vet was reassuring about his blood results being ok for his age so we never did. I know for the future now - the first sign of thyroid issues and on to renal food our cats will go. 


In October 2019 Fleagle died and Georgie reacted poorly to her absence. He was very clingy with us, off his food, and kept going round and round the house yowling and looking for her. They tolerated each other and a truce developed between them over the years so his reaction was a surprise. He stopped going outside for anything more than a sniff of the wind and suddenly started to shadow us from room to room. Having another cat in the house made him feel secure so we found him Snowy (renamed Missy), a three year old Maine Coon who looked up to him and let him be boss. He calmed down and was himself again.


Over the last couple of years, every morning he would come to the paddock with one of us when we opened the chickens, find some soft leaves or a nice mole hill for a toilet stop, eat some grass to help him bring up his furballs, wait for us to finish then wander back to the house with us. Then it was time for a head scratch, his pill, some food and upstairs for a nice long nap during the day, usually wherever I was as he liked to be near someone even if he was sleeping. He would reappear downstairs at around 5:30pm for a breath of fresh air and some more food. In the evenings, he was a fiend if I had my jigsaws out. He loved sleeping on the jigsaws and in the boxes, and I was forever trying to stop him rucking up whatever I was working on and picking his hairs out of the pieces. 












That last photo was the moment I gave up on doing a puzzle that night. Every time I took the boxes away he moved over and stretched out on it. He'd already flicked pieces on the floor with his claws.


In the last six weeks of his life he changed a little more, preferring to stay upstairs more and latterly taking to sleeping on a pair of Martin's working jeans in the corner of the room, but still eating food and his pilled treats, coming out for a head scratch, and wandering downstairs in the evening. Of course we now know his kidneys were playing up, and this type of withdrawal is typical of advanced disease but at the time we saw nothing unusual, it just seemed to be Georgie claiming yet another odd sleeping spot and getting a bit older so liking his sleep. It was only when he hid behind an ottoman Saturday afternoon and only came out to try and eat and drink, slightly staggering as he did so, that we twigged something was wrong and took him to the vet.


-oOo-


Both Baldrick and Missy sensed something had changed yesterday when we came back and sat cuddled up with us on the bed. Baldrick now has the run of the house, rather than Georgie-free zones, and has been wandering around looking for him. After his run out in the morning yesterday and today he zoomed up for a cuddle on the bed, then raced off back outside.


I had never considered a future without Georgie, never once thought of a day without him. He was a quiet, strong, stoic cat with a stubborn personality and a mind of his own and just seemed to go on forever. 


Our mornings and evenings revolved around his medication and food choices, so they are now eerily empty of purpose. I have no furball for a companion any more and that will take some getting used to. Baldrick and Missy are young, three and five years old respectively, and are very active cats that like the outdoors so they're rarely in.  


I will miss him dreadfully. Rest in peace my darling little boy. You were so loved.






Read more »

I'm seeing the dawn in this morning while writing this. I had an allergy attack in the night and finally gave up on sleep at 4:30am. I thought I'd tiptoe around, make a cup of tea and start my day quietly but the cats had other ideas. They started howling about two minutes after they saw me come out of the bedroom, not for food but to go out and play in the garden. We don't let them out until 6-7am because we have some large foxes in the area and the last time we let one of them out early there was a screaming confrontation on the lawn with one of them. I've retreated to my hobby room with tea and box of tissues but now they know I'm up they're determined to crack me. I have Baldrick wailing on this side of the door and Missy on the other with Georgie bringing up the rear by ripping at the landing carpet for good measure (Georgie and Baldrick still don't get on after a year so have to be kept apart). 


                                                                                       -oOo-


Last week was a tiring week. As I thought it would, giving blood wiped me out completely, despite taking iron supplements, and I had sore itchy eyes from exhaustion pretty much up until Sunday morning. When I woke up Monday morning I finally felt rested so I spent the morning weeding, cleaning and tidying the area around the front door and the afternoon doing a deep clean in our bedroom. Can't quite be sure but I think that might have had something to do with my sneezing fit at 4am, although why it took so long to emerge I'm not sure. Seems a bit unfair to be fine all evening and scuppered in the night. Still, I decided to make an early start on my day so I can be finished early this afternoon. I’m supposed to be going on a track day with Martin at Cadwell Park shortly so he can test out the recent modifications he’s made to his vintage sports car but when he took it to fuel up about midday the throttle kept sticking and he couldn’t get it to tick over. He’s on the drive trying to fix it at the moment but it’s not looking good.




I've nearly finished knitting my jumper. I made it through all of the Downton Abbey series and the film as well. I'm currently blocking it before sewing the pieces together and then I have a deep rib neckline pick up the stitches for and knit. I only have one set of mats to pin on so I have to do it piecemeal. I knit so infrequently it's not worth having several sets just so I can do all the pieces at once and because of the cats I can't block on the floor or on a table. I'm aiming to have all the pieces blocked by Saturday so I can finish the ribbing by the time I go back to work next Tuesday.

The next thing I knit I'll remember to block as I go after I finish each piece.


-oOo-


We took Audrey out in the week to a local garden centre that had a boutique clothing section. This was her first outing since the lockdown last March and her longest walk since her hip operation seven weeks ago. She was looking for an outfit for her granddaughter's wedding in October. I took the opportunity to have a look at some of the autumn clothing that had just come in for knitting inspiration. Most of the knitwear was thin acrylic and hung like sacks but I did like the overall idea of a few items and have been searching on the internet for possible patterns for my next project. I do like boat necks and batwings so with a little modification to the shaping something like below would be nice and would help use up balls of wool.







I also like ponchos. Something about having my arms free appeals.





And of course the long cardi. Another one of my staple favourites.


I've also got quite interested in a couple of patterns for fitted ribbed cardigans in my 1950s Knitting Illustrated book but the pattern is spartan to say the least. The main pattern is for a 'younger' lady while the pattern for the 'mature' lady mentions a few modifications but that's it. I'm not kidding myself anything other than the 'mature' lady' pattern will fit. Patterns have come a long way since then thank goodness. 


-oOo-


I made the mistake of booking a shooting lesson for Saturday afternoon thinking I would be ok but I was tired and shot badly. I don't even think I made 20% of what I aimed for. It was hot and the thunderflies were bad. I ended up sweaty, itchy and breadcrumbed with them. 

I've been hoping to get enough training and experience from a tutor so that I could hire a gun and enjoy some quiet target practice without having to have a licence, but it seems the law changed two years ago so you can’t do that. I have to have a shotgun licence or go out with someone with a shotgun licence. As I don't know anyone with a licence that means I have to either pay for an instructor to be with me all the time, which will get expensive, or apply for a licence. I started the application process on Saturday but it appears due to COVID it will take around six months, as officers are still dealing with a backlog and they only work on the licences for two hours a day. It also means I have to have a gun cabinet fitted in the house and have an inspection by a firearms officer, despite not wanting to own a flipping gun. It doesn't make sense to me. I can apply for a licence, get a gun and store it in my house 24/7 with no gun safety or maintenance training at all. I can walk into a range and start shooting at targets with zero ability. Yet I can have hours of training from an experienced coach and still not be able to rent a well-maintained gun from the range for one hour a week in a well-organised and supervised environment.

It’s an odd system that doesn’t seem to take into account people’s lack of training in handling and maintaining a gun, just their mental and physical fitness to own one. 


                                                                                -oOo-


So, while it was a good week knitting-wise everything else was a bit of a fatigued mess. Glad to see the back of it really.


Read more »

 



I wanted to finish off the jumper I started knitting last year after mum died and was searching for something to have on in the background that I could peer over my needles at. I find period dramas are great for that kind of thing. Modern programming has too much going on to wring as many dopamine hits out of the audience as possible but period drama series move nice and slowly through the story at just the right pace to match the needles. I decided to watch Downton Abbey. 


Everyone went nuts when this came out in 2010, so much so I avoided it completely. It was like mass hysteria, which I hate, so I resolved to not be drawn in but watch it one day when I felt ready. That day was last Tuesday evening eleven years later. I'm quite enjoying it and am on season 4 now but finding the whole drama with the Bates' getting a little irritating. I feel like it is really being strung out and from what I understand it continues right into series 6. There are other characters it would be nice to see more time devoted to. 


I’m not particularly happy with the fit of the jumper to be honest. The gauge swatch is spot on, and when tested my knitted piece matches the gauge but the jumper will be fractionally too small. Obviously I won’t know for sure until I wash and block the final piece but this yarn seems to have very little positive ease. I deliberately knitted the next size up so I could have some room and feel comfortable but realistically I’m unlikely to wear it if it going to be snug, especially around my middle. I cannot stand the feeling of being restricted. Still, as the wool only cost me £1.50 I'm not that much out of pocket and it's good practice for doing the pattern again with a different wool.


-oOo-


I had brother in law Staying over on Friday night, as he and Martin were going to Silverstone all weekend and it was easier to go from here then his own house early in the morning. That gave me the perfect opportunity to give the bathroom a deep clean so it was visitor ready. Being in lockdown I had let my standards slip a bit, after all, who was going to see it, but I hadn’t appreciated the psychological impact that has on me. I like seeing something tidy and clean. Starting with a bucket of hot slightly soapy water I cleaned the walls, the panelling, the door and the tiles. I descaled the taps, plug holes, shower head and toilet. I cleaned the window, windowsill (inside and out) and mirror. The cat litter trays were sanitised. The floor was scrubbed, as was the sanitary ware. It was very satisfying, and made me realise I actually don't need to repaint the paintwork, just attack it with elbow grease. It took me two hours but should take me a lot less in the future as I intend to stay on top of it. I’m setting my sights on deep cleaning one major room each weekend, with ad hoc sessions on smaller areas. 




Part of the problem with cleaning this place is clutter. Each week I’ve been sorting a box to go to the charity shop and dropping it off on the way food shopping, and trying not to replace the items with new purchases. I did buy this wine rack though, as I needed one for the pantry. We have a lot of bottles left over from Martin’s birthday party and guests also brought some as gifts. We're not big wine drinkers so we have about one bottle a month, if that. They’re currently stashed haphazardly in the pantry and every now and then I kick one one over. Luckily never broken but it's an accident waiting to happen. 


-oOo-





I'm back on the diet again as of today. Plenty of salads and vegetarian food to see if I can shed another 10lbs before the autumn.  I've managed to keep off the last 10lbs I lost so I'm quite chuffed. The salad greens are massively prolific at the moment, the tomatoes are just starting to turn red, the mange tout and green beans are coming into their own and the cucumbers are getting to a nice size so I shall have some big fresh salads in the coming weeks.


-oOo-


Had another shooting lesson on Saturday. Managed to hit 14/17 and got all excited but then the instructor tested me to see if I was any good at tracking clays above me and I managed 0/8 😂 Brought down to earth there but in his opinion I was doing incredibly well for only my second lesson. However, this time I am covered in bruises just in the crease of my arm, above my armpit, where the edge of the gun butt pushes in. I also have a big black one on my jawline, so I obviously wasn't holding the gun as firmly as I should have been to prevent it bouncing up after firing. I'm having to wear make-up to cover it up in case someone thinks Martin and I have been fighting. I'm going to make myself up a pad for my arm/shoulder and face this week to help prevent the bruising.


-oOo-




I managed to squeeze in a trip to the garden centre yesterday, which was next door to the blood donation centre. It was time for my quarterly outing to give blood and I like to have a putter beforehand. I photographed this wonderful stag that I would love to have in the garden, but I'm afraid £800 is out of my price range. 😵

To prepare for giving blood, I started taking time-release iron supplements last week and will take them for another couple of weeks to make up for the worst of the iron loss. Each donation amounts to a loss of about 200-250mg of iron, which is made up at a rate of 1-2mg per day afterwards. Supplementation can help that process go faster. I've been investigating becoming a plasma donor recently, donating every two weeks instead of 12 for whole blood, but have been declined. I do not weight enough apparently. At 5ft 3 I need to weigh more than 13 stone (182lbs) to have enough blood volume to take a pint (560ml) of plasma. Not sure why they can't take smaller quantities from women, perhaps a third to half a pint. I suspect they would see their donation levels rise considerably but perhaps the whole process is an expensive one and they need to maximise every donation.  

-oOo-




So, this week is set to be a quiet one. Work is much less busy, as my clients are on holiday, and my evenings will be full of Downton Abbey, knitting, and garden pottering as I make up my iron levels. I'm going to take a leaf out of Georgie's book and nap a bit at lunchtimes. He's an expert napper, especially on my knitting bag.

Read more »
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)
Powered by Blogger.

Read my old blog

www.steelkitten.typepad.com