Steel Kitten: planning

Showing posts with label planning. Show all posts
Showing posts with label planning. Show all posts




I was pleased to see the back of last week. It was very stressful for me but I'm hopeful I have resolved the problem, which my current reading list should hint at its identity. 


I start my working week on Tuesday but lately my brain has convinced itself it should start Monday evening at 11pm. It rolls around all the work issues I could face the following day until I fall into a fitful dozing session around 3am only for me to jolt awake 15 minutes before I am due at my desk at 8am. I reached screaming pitch last Tuesday morning. After having a week off I looked just as tired on my return as on my leaving. The problem - in a nutshell - is my own inability to say 'bugger off' when yet another impromptu zoom meeting/call/instant message rolls in from my colleagues. The constant interruptions and lingering meetings mean I am behind on my work. That is what is keeping me awake worrying.


I spent the whole week being ruthless with my time, blocking off my calendar, refusing meetings, not answering the phone, blocking everyone on video-conferencing software and cracking through everything I had been behind on. My entire calendar is now blocked off in chunks over the next few weeks to accomplish a list of goals to get my backlog of work completed. Anything else is secondary. I sellotaped this phrase to my screen as a reminder to use it: “I’m sorry I’m completely scheduled this week with no free time, perhaps we can put something in the diary for next week or the week after?” Funnily enough, it sorted out a lot of people who just wanted me to do their work/ thinking for them on the spot. The rest had to be dealt with by blocking on video conferencing software so they couldn’t get through to me. I set my profile to Do Not Disturb and now no-one gets through unless on a safe list, and only my manager and the CEO are on it.


The second step was resigning from a social committee at work. I was flattered to be asked a year ago to represent my department. In  all honesty I knew it wasn't a good fit for me but decided to give it a go. I hated it. The emails were never-ending, the zoom meetings impromptu and stretched out by extroverts who loved nothing better than to wile away the time yakking - meanwhile my workload was piling up behind me and I was behind on my promises. The final straw was volunteering me to represent an additional 'hobby' club at work. Enough was enough. I felt like a massive weight had been lifted the second I pressed 'Send' on my resignation message. They weren't that happy but I don't care any more. I can't do hobby stuff in deference to my revenue-generating work.

-oOo-



Despite the heat this weekend I decided to get out and go to a car boot sale on Sunday, the first one for quite a few years. I have got out of the habit of doing them, not sure why, Probably because I got fed up with bringing a load of stuff in and not having a place to put it. We really got back into the gardening again lately so I was on the lookout for anything gardening related. 



Didn’t find much in that respect, however, I did find a brand new leather belt for Martin (£1.00), six new handkerchiefs (50p) to replace some that are fit for the rag bag, two Oxford pillowcases (£1.50), a Stephen Fry book (50p), a piece of Laura Ashley fabric (£2.00, about 2m) and two dresses (£3 and £2). Total spend £10.50 plus sunburn. I got that for free.


-oOo-


Thursday was our 15th wedding anniversary and we went out  to the local Nepalese curry house to celebrate (coincidentally, it was also five years since we completed on the property). It’s the first time I’ve been out for a meal in 15 months and it was absolutely wonderful. But there were signs all around of the fallout from COVID-19. The food is very good and the restaurant used to be packed with tables crammed in cheek by jowl. Now of course with social distancing the tables had to be a prescribed distance apart and there weren’t that many people eating. In the old days  the place would be full, despite being a Thursday night. This time there were only six tables out of a possible 15 and by the time we left at 8:30pm just three tables remained. Another post-COVID change was with portion sizes. We normally have a Tandoori mixed grill, which comes out on a sizzle platter and is absolutely piled with meat. This time the meat was all neatly arranged on the platter with no piling - as sign of economies to avoid having to put the prices up on the menu (and probably incur more expense having them reprinted). There was enough food though, but I guess we'd used to taking some home in containers and having it the next day.

                                                                            -oOo-



I've been trying to propagate as many of our existing plants as possible in an effort to reduce our garden spending. Over the years the driveway has been a good source of thyme, oregano, poppies, foxgloves, gooseberries, strawberries, alchemilla, wallflowers, fleabane, lavender, bluebells, nigella, aquilegia, tomatoes, spinach, and buddleia. Every now and then I have a wander round, dig them up and pot them on. I find the occasional self-seeded sweet pea but that does not like being transplanted so it has to take its chances against the cars. 


It's very helpful on months like this one, which is shaping up to be a pretty expensive month. We’ve managed to have the house insurance, classic car insurance, an oil delivery and payment for having a Wills updated all come in the same month. I did start the Will process quite a long time ago but what with work being busy and the solicitor going off on holiday, we’ve only just now managed to go in last week and sign them so that’s one worry off my mind. 


I've had a few nice little frugal wins though (although not quite on the scale to balance the outgoings). 


The boss stumped up £20 per person to cover snacks and drinks for Euro finals night so we had pizza delivered. 


The regular savers matured so that was £100 in interest. 


Then I realised that the healthcare plan I have at work has a dental and optical component to it that I hadn't used so I quickly ruffled out my receipts for my sight tests, glasses and dental check-ups since February and put the claims through. That should pay me back about £120. My firm 'gives' us about £250 to ‘spend’ within the health plan, and you can shape different components to suit your circumstances. If it costs more than £250, you can pay extra out of your salary. I have a basic health plan, which reimburses me £60 for sight tests and £60 for dental check-ups and hygienist fees, as well private consultancies, hospital treatment if necessary for any illnesses, and complementary heaIthcare (physio, acupuncture, etc). In addition I've chosen critical illness cover to pay out a lump sum of £50,000 if I become seriously ill. That costs me £5 a month. Absolute bargain. 

                                                                            -oOo-

So, all in all, a quiet but productive week. I successfully cracked through a load of work and accomplished all but one of my goals. Tonight will tell...will I sleep or not...?

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My week of annual leave passed by all too quickly and work looms tomorrow. 

Still, I managed to get done a lot of the things I wanted too, including a trip on Thursday to David Austin's rose gardens and plant centre over near Wolverhampton. Beautiful roses and now was definitely the right time to visit, as almost every rose was in bloom. I have a ridiculous amount of photos of my favourites to pore over for ideas.




The one above is stunning - a ground cover rose called Raubritter.


This one was a lovely mauve colour with yellow centres called Blue for You. Very strong fruity scent.



And this one - Old Pink Moss - was a very close match to the rose that I found in the churchyard when scattering my mother's ashes. Again, very strong scent.

I was incredibly restrained and came away with only one rose - Blue for You.



I do intend to buy Old Pink Moss at some point. Raubritter is also a contender just for its sheer exuberance. It is ridiculously prolific - it immediately cheers me up just looking at it. David Austin does have incredibly healthy good quality roses. I've got some in the garden already. This is Gertrude Jekyll out by the back door. 






-oOo-

 
I was in Lidl's on Friday and I happened upon one of these - the £1.50 fruit and veg box. 




I'd heard about these mythical creatures on various frugal blogs but never actually seen one in the flesh. That's because I was looking in the wrong place. My local Lidl keeps them by the tills, not in the fresh produce section where I had been looking. I decided to road test one. 




Absolutely gob-smacked at the sheer amount of stuff here, especially the amount of fruit. There were  another two large potatoes that aren't in the picture because I put them to the side out of shot when unpacking. This will last us most of the week. I already had a cauliflower in the fridge so today I'm going to use all of it up by doing a large dish of cauliflower in white sauce. I'll freeze half and the rest will be for dinner tonight to go with a lamb casserole I made yesterday. I've also got a vegetable lasagne to do for the freezer to use up some aging veg so I might lose the aubergine in there, perhaps slice it up and use it to replace some of the pasta sheets. 

-oOo-

After my last post Maria asked me about the gluten free cake recipe I used. 


It’s a basic mix that I used for non-gluten free Victoria Sponge cakes but I swopped in Doves Farm self-raising flour and made up only about a quarter of what I normally do, so only 2-3oz of butter, sugar and flour, 1 egg, bit of baking powder and vanilla essence, 1oz of flour for ground almonds and the fruit sliced on top. I gleaned from the internet that the key to gluten free baking is to make it a bit wetter than you think you should so I thought in this case the fruit would add the needed liquid as it cooked down. However, it seemed to make a very damp cake and while very tasty it was thin and fell apart easily. I decided to go back and do it again, this time doubling the amount of mixture to make it sturdier. In effect I was making one layer of what would have been a Victoria sponge.


I should add I also had a plan B, which I believe is essential to successful cooking. If it didn’t work I could dump it in a bowl with some cream and make it look like a deliberate effort at a dessert. 


Good that I had that plan because it didn't work 😁


Well, it sort of worked. The fruit disappeared into the depths of the cake. I see now why sponge flans were invented. 




Still tasted lovely but I may not worry about trying to perfect this. I think this is a case of how fruit behaves in a sponge unless the sponge is baked first and you add the fruit later (i.e. a flan). 


-oOo-


I was heavily focused on financial stuff this weekend. I've worked out that to retire at 55 (in seven years) I need to have a minimum of £350,000 and we're already a good part of the way there, which is encouraging. I used Guiide and Firecalc for the basic calculations, which showed me that £350000 will give me a 91% chance of retiring without running out of money. For a 98% chance of never running out of money I need £400,000. Up until last month I couldn't see how it was possible to build this because we needed the money we had saved to cover the shortfall between Martin's former salary and current pension income. However, a combination of my recent pay increase, Martin no longer having work expenses and our reduced spending has shown me that actually it is possible. This month we are on track to pay all of the bills without touching any of our savings. Every month that the savings stay the same or increase brings my retirement that little bit closer. 


I've not included everything in the figures. Inheritances are excluded, even those we have been told we should get later this year, as to me that is an added bonus. Until that money lands in our bank account it isn't real. I have also ignored the house equity, keeping that 'in reserve'. The plan is that sooner or later Martin and I are going to downsize - perhaps 7-10 years - at which point the remainder of the mortgage will be paid off and we will have some extra cash in the bank for our retirement. If it all goes wrong over the next few years, if the markets take a heavy downturn and take years to recover, if I become ill and can't work or lose my job and can't find another, then there is always that to fall back on.

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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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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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As part of the 31 NSD trial, I went through our expenses over the last few months and had a closer look at what we were spending money on.

A lot of money goes out every month on smallholding feed, equipment, fencing, medication and vet bills. I can mostly plan for the things needed but not emergencies requiring vets or fencing because the sheep have executed a mistimed Fosbury Flop and hurt themselves or got their heads stuck and thrashed until a fence post snaps. It is still worth keeping livestock as the quality of the meat and eggs is much better than what we could buy in shops.

The car is always springing something on us. February was two tyres for £103, neither planned, because we noticed the sidewalls had cracked. March was a new light unit for £15. We got away lightly last month.

The cat's vet costs are just ridiculous at the moment. Georgie was diagnosed with a thyroid problem at the beginning of March, had two sets of blood tests, expensive medication and a tooth extracted plus tooth cleaning. Fleagle has a problem with a lump under her tongue, which has necessitated three vets visits and two lots of meds. She goes back next week for an examination of that lump under anaesthetic and a tooth clean plus blood tests. The insurance should cover some but not all the costs of these two - Petplan would only offer us a shared responsibility policy for two elderly cats - so that's something but vet bills are now shaping up to be a regular expense so I need to find cheaper sources of medication for them instead of shelling out full price all the time.

I have discovered that we seem to pick up the tab for things more often that we should and overspend on people's birthdays and anniversaries. £30 for a relative's birthday lunch for the two of us turned into £90 last month because we picked up the tab for everyone. I can't even pretend alcohol was involved in the decision making on that one, we were drinking lemonade. I have realised we need to be a bit meaner because I can't remember the last time someone paid for us. If I budget £30 for a gift, we'll end up spending £40 by the time we take into account a card, maybe flowers and a birthday cake.

Finally, charity shops, car boot sales, etc. I've said before that these two end up not being such a cheap hobby, especially if you don't need the stuff you buy. You just end up piling more stuff into the house. I mostly gave up regular Sunday car boot sales before we moved here, as I was spending £20-£30 a week on bags full of stuff and cluttering up the house. Done the odd one as I've come across it but nothing planned. Unfortunately, regular charity shopping took its place. Analysis of the receipts shows I'm not just buying stuff in the charity shops, I might go into Savers or Boots and buy something, then I'll find something in the library in the For Sale section, then I'll have tea and cake at a local hospice cafe to support them and finish off my 'cheap day out' looking around Sainsbury's. Breaking that habit in Feb/March was the best thing I could have done, because that was shaping up to be a £20-£30 a week habit as well plus whatever I bought in Sainsbury's 'off-list'.

In all I can see where economies need to be made and habits need to be changed, because we're spending our early retirement. If we continue like this we will miss out on retiring early together, which we will always regret.

We need to refocus our commitment to our long-term plans.


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While I was away, I found an interesting book in a charity shop called The Happiness Project, by Gretchen Rubin. It appears that this was quite a big thing when it came out back in 2009 but as I don't tend to read newspapers, go on social media, watch TV much or listen to the radio I completely missed it. I completely miss most things but I work on the basis that if they are important to me I will find out about them when the time is right, and that seems to work quite well.

Basically, Gretchen Rubin committed to 12 months of finding ways to be happier. Like all people she was ok, but she felt she was coasting a bit and had fallen into a rut. She could be a bit happier but wasn't sure how so she took an aspect of her life every month and made 4-5 resolutions to do better. I hadn't come across that idea before - normally everyone makes their resolutions in January and is over them by March.

Among the many, many resolutions I found interesting (and I will probably blog about later) was identifying and resolving unfinished projects. I always have a silly number of those but lately I had begun to feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of 'open loops' that were occupying my brain. Every 'commitment' not completed is an open loop that is tracked and takes up a lot of mental energy being remembered. Then there is the damage to my self-esteem caused by beating myself up about not having done them. I'll admit, I'm not the greatest finisher in the world and I frequently suffer from being 'mentally drained' due to the ever-growing to-do list I hold in my head and the 'tellings off' I give myself over it all.

So, I sat down with a journal and downloaded everything in my brain that was an open loop. Then I started getting some of them off there. For example, this is the Technology list, and crossed off is what I've achieved since coming back off holiday:

Technology
Find an app for logging receipts and reporting spending categories DONE
Fix Macbook or have hard drive removed for storage DONE. FIXED
Fix Apple wireless keypad DONE. BATTERY LEAK CLEANED UP. NOW WORKING.
Fix iPod DONE. HARD RESET REQUIRED
Fix Black and Decker handheld vacuum DONE
Sell off handheld voice recorders that are no longer needed for freelance work DONE
Buy additional back up drives for photos DONE
Go through old phones, remove pictures and recycle phones
Donate/throw out any cables from items we no longer own.
Organise my photos across all devices and back up
Print out and display the ones we love the most AUSTRALIA PHOTOS DONE, NEXT IS OUR WEDDING PHOTOS (ONLY 13 YEARS AFTER THE FACT)
Convert vintage non-working clocks to battery CANNOT DO, WILL RUIN CLOCKS
Clear out work inbox (5.5k emails!)
Clear out personal inbox (3.5k emails!)
Unsubscribe to everything I don't want to receive emails for WORK IN PROGRESS
Transfer my Typepad blog into yearly ebooks to print on demand, a year per month ONE YEAR OF 13 DONE

I've got similar lists for Smallholding, Household and Health to work through this year. Some of the lists are long but relatively quick, such as tossing 'aspirational' clutter (cough...exercise equipment...cough), others are much more involved and depend on external factors, like repointing the barns where the masonry bees have done damage, which needs good weather.

The Happiness Project is worth a read if only to demonstrate that others have the same challenges as we do. I lost count of the number of times I thought "Yeh, I do that/think that/have that." We are not alone :)

You can read the first chapter here.
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Sorry, I didn't come back before Christmas as I was flat out on work deadlines up to the last minute and then cooking for two days. I finally feel a bit more human today so came back to blog. 

 I gave in on the whole journal planner thing...I'm sure you knew I would...and put it on my Christmas list 😀 (somehow, the Daily Stoic Journal also slipped onto my list. I've been eyeing it up for a while). I've been sat here working on the annual forecast part of it, deciding how I want this year to pan out, what I want to focus on and want I want to spend less time focusing on. Things have gone off track for me a bit over the last six months, and I'm not making decisions based on things that are important to me. 

I like the layout of each page because it is based on the Eisenhower decision matrix that I have used and I know works for me. There are weekly, monthly, six-monthly and yearly reviews of the most important self, relationship, passion and work goals.

 The Daily Stoic Journal is a bit different. I've wanted to learn about Stoicism for a while but it is difficult to get a good idea of something this complex by just reading a big book. When it comes to learning, I favour learning-by-doing. 


Stoicism was practised by the ancient Greeks and Romans (Marcus Aurelius was the most famous Roman practising its tenets) and developed a philosophy of personal ethics based on using self-control and fortitude as a means of overcoming destructive emotions. This journal is a learning tool, looking at a Stoic idea every week and encouraging self-reflection each day using guided questions. 


I thought it sounded an interesting way to keep those things that are most important in life top of mind, and help me become a bit more centred and grounded. Stress has really been getting to me lately and I need to take a step back and consider whether some things are worth the aggravation. 

 There's an interesting article about the benefits of Stoicism here.

 So, with less than three hours to go before midnight, it's almost time to out the old and welcome the new. 

 Happy New Year!
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For years I always thought the 12 days of Christmas started on 21st December and ended on 1st January. It seemed quite a natural time period for it to happen, 20/21st being the Solstice and the official start of Winter and 31st/1st January being the end of the year and the start of the new. 

 Then as I grew up I realised that it was the Pagan 12 days of Christmas, and the Christian version started on 25th December (Christ's birth) and ends January 5th (Epiphany; when the three kings/wise men visited Jesus with gifts). 

 Somewhere along the way I decided I like the idea of both and so my period of reflection and plans for the future start on 21st and go right through January 5th.

 Today I kicked off proceedings by unexpectedly waking up at 4:30am, wide awake for no particular reason but knowing I was not going to be able to sleep again. I didn't purposefully do it to see the dawn but maybe it was in the back of my mind. To be honest I've been very busy at work and stressed about it, so this isn't the first morning I've woken horribly early and got up, but this is the first one where I've got up and not started work. I just sat downstairs at the dinner table with a few cups of tea, reflecting on my job, health, inner and outer life, spirituality and purpose. I then I watched the dawn come up through the mist and rain.

“Our environment, the world in which we live and work, is a mirror of our attitudes and expectations.” — Earl Nightingale

 I think this year is going to be a very different one for me because my attitude and expectations are changing by the week. 
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So, work is nuts and I've been scarce around here. This time of year my firm does 25-30% of its business so that works out at about three times my usual workload. And I can guarantee one thing that will simultaneously happen at this time of year; I will go mad for planners and organisational journals. Because everything is happening in a whirlwind and I'm lurching madly from one crisis to the next my brain convinces me that if I had some hideously complex life planner it wouldn't happen.

Every year like clockwork I end up buying a journal or diary that I abandon mid-march, pick up again in July, lose track off in August and then November it starts again.

I have tried so many different ways of organising myself and none of them have worked well.

I've done an A4 diary with a day to a page with time slots. Not a chance. Tried it in A5 size. Another nope. Normal diary with a day to a page and no times, both A4 and A5. Nope. Sometimes filled it in, sometimes not. Tried a small pocket diary. Never kept it in my pocket or bag, and kept putting it down. So small I couldn't find it if I put it down because I move a tsunami of stuff around the house every day.

I've done David Allen's Getting Things Done, which involves always getting everything out of your head, onto paper and filed appropriately. I fell at the first hurdle. I couldn't get everything out of my head. I think I have an abnormal amount of thoughts, ideas, imaginings. As fast as I was getting them out they were going in/popping up. Losing battle.

I didn't get on with bullet journals - mainly because I didn't realise they are actually a hobby not a work tool. It took me a ridiculous length of time to put together the structure of it. I want a planner to already have all that stuff. I also couldn't get along with the wasabi tape and sticker business. I haven't got time to colour.

I've had a daily greatness journal, and while that has been the most successful to date I still only kept that up for 90 days because I had been putting off getting started with the smallholding stuff when I got here and that got me going. But the second 90 days? Nope, never happened. I actually found the questions a bit monotonous and I rarely, if ever, went back in the evening to reflect on my day. The only saving grace with that one is that as there are no dates, the next time I want to do a 90 day challenge I can pick it up and fill up the next quarter.

Gratitude journal? Ok when you're in a good mood, disastrous when you're in a bad mood. Once that bile is down on paper there's no going back. My hormone hate can be directed against even sunshine at the wrong time of the month :)

On a week-to-week basis I'm more of a do-er, not a planner. I don't have time really to sit and plan my day, week, month. I get up in the morning and just get on. In my mind I have periods of time when I know I must work and not do anything else, where I want to read and not do anything else, and the rest of the time I fit in what needs to be done. I look around and think "sink needs a clean" "there's a load of washing to be done" "what's the next thing in the inbox" and I just do it.

I have a list on my phone of things to buy and or do in town and I keep a relatively good appointments calendar on there too. I have a work notebook to keep track of work stuff and a personal journal where I focus on my emotional intelligence, self-esteem and mental health. I have a third book where I track my personal development through the films and plays I see, books I read, and programmes I listen to. That last one started because I sometimes beat myself up for not reading/watching enough good stuff so it was quite a surprise when I started writing it down and realised I did.

So, why this post?

Because, of course, I have been suckered in by the promise of another planner. I'm not going to say which one because I don't want to provide free advertising. I don't think I need it, I don't think it will add anything to my already over-pressurised life, but my goodness do I want it. I just can't shake the feeling that I haven't yet found the right planner, THE planner that will somehow be so absorbing and engaging that I will keep using it. And that THIS one could be it!

Then Martin said the fatal "do you want it for Christmas?" and that's where I am tonight.

Struggling over the decision on whether to have another life planner. Hmmm....

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Well, another thought experiment has landed courtesy of Saving Ninja. 

 What would you do if you knew with absolute certainty that you would die in exactly 10 years time. It doesn’t matter how you know this or what you will die of; in 3652 days you will drop dead.

Hmmm...what I would immediately do is eerily similar to what I would do if I won £1 million. 

I would tell no-one...husband...hotel...scream…swear to secrecy…

Why the secrecy? I've no problem with Dh's feelings and opinions, but other people's? No. I don't want to know. Once people find out I have a terminal illness, from then on every comment or opinion on my life choices would be couched in terms of the illness, and they will be mostly negative. I would get 'The Look', the 'Poor You' pitying look that I absolutely despise. And of course there are those who could only focus on the terrible impact my news has on them. I have one of 'those' people in the family. You know the ones I mean, I'm sure. 

So, what I would do would depend on whether I was dropping dead at a specific hour in 10 years or winding down in health until incapacitated and dribbling.

Dropping dead at a specific hour
Really, 10 years to live is too long to contemplate stopping work. I would carry on working for five years to secure DH's financial future, but I would change the destination from where I would do this. I would persuade my DH with everything I could muster to live abroad in the sun with me. I only need a laptop to work and I only pop into work once a month now, which is doable. I'm sure DH could pick up some work to bring in a few pounds here and there. There is a great deal of difference doing an eight hour day in, say, Spain than doing the same hours in England. I would invite BIL to come and live in the house for a low rent to look after MIL and keep an eye on the place. He’s currently renting and would probably appreciate the security.

In five years, I would look at cutting down work to 2-3 days per week. Still saving though.

With two-years to go I would give up work completely and go travelling on the savings with DH.

Before the appointed hour, we would return to the UK so I can drop dead here and be cremated. We already have life insurance policies so that would pay off the house, leaving DH with various pensions and the cars as assets after I die.

Health winding down

Ditto for the first five years except I would make sure that I would live in the most advantageous climate for the management of my health problem. After five years I would look at either cutting down to part-time or give it up completely to do some travelling for a year or two. When it was obvious it was becoming too difficult to manage any more, I would then be presented with the most appalling decision.

I want to toddle off to Dignitas in Switzerland to ensure a painless death. I do not want to die in this country as the welfare services for the chronically ill and/or incapacitated are not good. We have the Liverpool Care Pathway, which is inhumane and nothing more than legalised torture. We treat animals better than we treat the terminally ill. We’re not terribly logical or civilised in this country.

However, if I take my own life our insurance policies would, unfortunately, be null and void. There is no payout for suicide. DH would be left with a mortgage.

So if I want DH to have a secure financial future, I have to endure a horrendous long and drawn out painful death unless I can figure out a way to discreetly top myself. Difficult to be discreet about these things if you are incapacitated and need care. And what if they mistakenly think DH has done me in? It doesn’t bear thinking about. 

 This has been an interesting exercise for me so thank you to Saving Ninja for that. As much as I think I am in control, life has a habit of showing me I'm not. I had never considered what would happen if I had a long drawn-out illness. In my mind, I have always just died suddenly and so my preparations have been based on that. 

 I guess I have some more planning to do. 
Here are a few other bloggers' views on this thought experiment:

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With so many things we want to do over the next four months I've realised I really have to knuckle down and focus on raising extra funds. Even though we have savings, I hate dipping into them. They're our security.

 I've been doing some thinking lately. There's a lot of stuff I'm hanging on to hoping to one day have the time to do something with them. The sad reality is that even if I did have the time my life has moved on and I no longer have the same tastes or desires that I once had. I've been buying things from car boot sales and charity shops for years, storing them away thinking "one day I'll get them out and do something with them" but nothing happens.

 Well, that day has now come, in a manner of speaking. I'm going to sell off the things I no longer have a strong affinity for, clear some space and raise some money at the same time. I need to separate what is important to me from the unrealistic little hoarder in me that wants to collect, and collect, and collect! My aim is raise £1000 selling off all of this stuff by the first week of January. That way I'll have the money to pay for the fleece to be processed into wool and put the rest towards spending money for a holiday in January.

 I didn't realise until earlier this evening that this stuff is really distracting as well. I feel unfocused, torn in separate directions by it all. It actually makes me feel guilty and negative, which I can well do without.

 For example, my knitting machine. I realised last week that knitting machines take a lot of sustained time to learn how to use. All I'm doing is sitting down every few months for a day or two, spending half the time trying to remember how to use it and then getting started on something and stopping part way because life or work takes off. A few months later I'll come back to it, feel guilty, unravel what I was working on and the negative cycle then repeats itself. I know I'm not going to be free to spend that sort of time in the future, and if I do have a sustained period of free time I'm slightly ashamed to admit using the machine is not something I will rush to do. I have too many other things I want to do.

 So tonight I pulled out my knitting machine and all of its accessories, cleaned it up, photographed it, wrote an ad and listed it. Hopefully, someone else out there will get a great deal on it and I'll be happy that it is going to a good home, not to mention dumping the guilt and getting my hobby room table back.
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It was dark at 9pm last night. Ridiculous. Where has the summer gone?

I'm starting to freeze and dehydrate a few bits out of the garden now to enjoy the harvest for a bit longer. I've rediscovered tzatziki after circumstance dictated I find a home for six huge cucumbers, some from the neighbours and some from a kind farmer on Martin's delivery. I used my own home grown garlic and dried mint, which I was quite chuffed about, and that made a few nice lunches.


The farmer also gave us 18 courgettes which, while it sounds lovely, simply transferred the problem of courgette gluts onto someone else. Unsurprisingly, after ploughing through that lot I'm not so keen on courgettes any more and unlike her I couldn't give any away. We're also producing pounds of tomatoes but the aforementioned farmer has also supplied us with loads as well, so I am currently part way through loading a full five layer stack on the dehydrator to preserve a few.


I realised last night that we only have about two weeks before it is Autumn, and I'm just about keeping up with my chores to get ready for winter. The biggest one is getting the new boiler fitted and that is bang on schedule. It's due to happen on 3/4th September, and we're just preparing the site now. We're moving from an indoor to an outdoor boiler, as there is no possible way we can fit a new oil boiler indoors that will abide by current regulations. I ordered the new boiler at the end of last month for delivery in time for the heating engineer's inspection last week. I chose to research and buy a system myself, as I know he marks up any products he buys. In this case, that would have been several hundred pounds on top of the usual trade discount I'm sure he gets.


Then an electrician came in yesterday morning to move some electrics out from where the boiler will sit, which the former owner had put in for outdoor lighting. It used to be a seating area that we kept our gardening paraphernalia on as we didn't like sitting there. Now all we need to do is buy and lay two large concrete paving slabs on a dry sand/cement mix and our part in this will be complete.

In the end I did buy 500 litres of heating oil, which is galling as last year the sum I just paid covered the majority of a 1000 litre order. I'll wait to see if the prices come down in the autumn; they can't keep on rising - sooner or later they'll come down.  I've ordered 10 bags of solid fuel and rang our local wood supplier, who owns an ash forest, to ask for a delivery of two cubic metres of wood. Next year we're hoping to build up enough wood that we don't need to buy any in, as a poorly apple tree in the back of the paddock has to come down and I want to get that cut up and under cover to dry out and season properly.

Two things I won't be doing this year is having someone in to sweep the chimney or empty the septic tank, which together usually cost me about £170. We have our own rods now to do the chimney and with so much heat this year the septic tank will be lower than normal so can keep going for a bit longer. I might get some beneficial bacteria to empty down there and keep things ticking over, and then inspect over the winter.

So that's the big stuff being sorted. Just got to write a list of all of the little stuff.


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Our house is not on mains gas, so we use kerosene to fuel our (ancient) boiler backed up with log burners.

I quickly realised when we moved here that the price of heating oil fluctuates depending on the season, and when you need it the most it will be the most expensive. Generally, winter prices can be 10-15p more expensive than summer so it pays to buy as much as possible in the summer.



Our tank takes, when full, 2500 litres and I have a monthly saving plan with a heating oil brokerage called Boilerjuice. Whenever I want a quote, I plug in the figures into its online calculator and it collects prices from local suppliers. Generally, I find the quotes are pretty competitive when compared to ringing round the suppliers and the longer you can leave it before needing the oil the cheaper it is.

So, this year as usual I waited until August to get my quotes for 2000 litres delivered ready for winter, only to find that the heating oil prices have gone barmy. Last year at this time I paid 33p per litre. This year I am being quoted 49p per litre. I paid £660 last year and this year it will cost £1050 for the same amount of oil. That's a whopping 60% increase.

So, I got up at 5:30 am this morning to do the figures and come up with a different strategy.

First, I'm going to get a list of suppliers and go direct to see if I can get a few pennies off a litre. I can also get the money in my Boilerjuice plan account refunded back to my bank account if I need to pay for fuel elsewhere.

Second, depending on what prices I can get direct, rather than fill the tank up I'm going to get the minimum order quantity of 500 litres and watch the prices like a hawk to see if they come down. My research this morning tells me that in three of the last five years October-December has had lower prices than the summer.

Third, we're having a new boiler fitted in September, which should be a lot more economical with fuel consumption than the current 23 year old one so hopefully what we do have will last longer. I'm also having new accurate digital thermostats put in so combined with the new system pump I had fitted in January, our consumption should be lower.



Fourth, I'm going to add to our stockpile of wood and order some smokeless fuel so we can delay putting the heating system on for a bit longer this autumn.

Fifth, I'm going to thoroughly prep this house for winter. I'm going over to Moneysavingexpert forum to have a read of their Preparing for Winter thread to pick up some ideas. Every week I can keep this house warm and delay putting the heating on is money in our pocket.

Finally, I'm going to pray that this heatwave continues well into the Autumn!
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This week I've had to decide whether to fix our mortgage for a further period of time to secure a low-ish interest rate or risk going onto a variable rate that is more than twice our current one, effectively doubling our mortgage interest payments. Not a tough choice really given our current savings and retirement goals, but how long to fix it for has required some mulling over.

 The traditional length of time is 2 years and these deals usually have the lowest interest rate, with or without product fees. This time, however, I'm thinking of paying a little more and fixing for a longer 5-year deal. 

 Why?

 Lots of reasons. 

 1. Interest rate rises are on the cards in the UK, probably starting around August time, so I want to lock in a decent rate now. If inflation suddenly started rising over the next couple of years and the Bank of England scrambled to successively raise interest rates to control it, we could be looking at paying hundreds of pounds more every month when our two-year fixed deal comes to an end. A 1% rise, while sounding small, is actually quite 'ouchy' for us. 

 2. I don't know how secure my job is post-Brexit and the last thing I want is to have to prove my income for a new fixed mortgage deal in two years time when I may have just lost my job. I'm a great believer in 'Sod's Law', which states that whatever can go wrong will and with the worst outcome. 

 3. Martin is at an age where he could be offered voluntary redundancy at any time. If he is and the deal is so favourable we take it, we don't want him to have to prove his income for a new fixed mortgage deal in two years. While we know we can meet our commitments, our lender's computer doesn't really 'get' frugal people and works on standard percentages of joint income. It will say 'no' when based on one income and savings due to the outstanding mortgage amount, even if we prove we are managing fine because we don't have the usual gym memberships, netflix subscriptions and loans. In five years time it could be a different story.

 4. We may have a house price crash. Our area has quite slow growing house prices but should there be rampant inflation, recession, or a house price crash within the next couple of years, the value of our home could drop and our Loan-to-Value rate could mean we don't get the best deal. 

 5. Five years gives enough time for any post-Brexit troubles to have ironed themselves out, for any mini-house price crashes and stock market tumbles to recover.

6. We'll be much more secure financially - another five years of pay rises, investments rising, savings' interest compounding, pensions maturing, and more capital paid down on the mortgage.  

So we're on a rate of 1.89% at the moment, looking at 2.29% for five years, and have submitted our financial paperwork to our broker to see if we will be accepted. 

 It's not a given though. I'm no longer doing as much freelance work as I was 2-3 years ago, having opted to cut back on that to ensure I have time for gardening and smallholding tasks that give me pleasure. However, given that our overall savings and the value of the property having increased since we bought this place two years ago, I can't see there being a major problem. And having our savings account with our mortgage provider has the added bonus of letting them see how much we save regularly every month!
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When I first decided in 2005 I wanted a smallholding, I had a tendency to view my dream through rose-tinted glasses. Everyone does to some extent, whatever the dream happens to be, because until you start living your dream you can only approximate what your life will be like on a day-to-day basis. Your brain will also always make the dream a blissfully happy experience.
If someone asked me in 2005 what I would do on my dream smallholding, what my plans were, my answer would have been very vague. At that point, I knew there would be chickens and veg, probably pigs and sheep, but how many of them and on what acreage I had no clue. I also didn't have a clue whether that would sustain us, whether we would have to sell our produce and even how we would afford it, but I was confident it would all work out. Then I came across this quote on the internet.
"A dream without a plan is just a wish."
According to psychologists, you will be around 50% more likely to achieve your dream if you write it down. That's when I realised how far removed from reality my dream was - I had nothing written down at all. Watching repeats of The Good Life and reading smallholding books didn't get me any closer to having smallholding. That started a period of intensive research as I tried to separate the dream from the likely realities I would face. I started writing it down.

For example, for some people the dream is to spend every day immersed in smallholding, making jam, pottering around the garden, bottle feeding orphaned lambs, gathering herbs, wearing hunter wellies and a Cath Kidston tea dress...the reality is not really having the time to potter due to a full-time job plus lambs stick their poo-covered trotters on the dress the second they see a bottle and chewy little piglets bite straight through your expensive wellies.
The dream could be to have an old stone cottage with an Aga to cook on that heats the whole house, where you can sit with you feet up against it in the evenings and produce a wide array of wholesome tasty food...

 the reality is all that stone can make for a cold damp house, and if anything goes wrong with the Aga or you have problems getting it or keeping it lit, it will usually coincide with you doing chores outside on the wettest, coldest, muddiest day ever. Then you find your dinner hasn't cooked while you've been out and there's no hot water to wash the mud off :(
Before coming here I was very confident I wouldn't be bothered by cold slippery mud because I would be living the dream on my smallholding! Now I'm here...I really, really don't like cold wet slippery mud. It is grim to deal with during torrential storms when I have to check the animals; my clothes get covered, shoes are always plastered in it, I have ended up covered in mud after slipping flat on my back in it, and the house entrances need constantly cleaning during the winter. There are sometimes mud smears up the walls.
So, if you're thinking about this Good Life (and for everything I have written it is a good life) here are some other things you might want to consider: 
  • How's your health and will it stand up to what you want to do? 
  • How isolated do you want to be?
  • How far do you want to be from a main town?
  • How far from your neighbours?
  • How much land is enough and how much will be too big an area to maintain? You can cope with it now, but what about in 10 years time when your back hurts a lot more?
  • Do you consider privacy to be the last house on the way out of a village or a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere?
  • Do you want mains gas heating system, or will you settle for an oil or a wood burning range as your source of heat? What secondary systems will you have?
  • Do you want to be able to drive in bad weather or are you happy to be snowed in for a few days? At what point would you feel trapped and start to panic?
  • How are you going to fund it? If you're a couple will one of you work or both of you? Full-time or part-time? 
  • Will you buy outright or have a mortgage? The bigger mortgage you have the more hours you have to work to pay for it. Would you be better renting or maybe buying with parents or friends?
You won't get everything you want, it's rare when property hunting that you do, but what will you compromise on? For example, you may not want neighbours within five miles of you but if you have a health problem in the future you could need their help one day, so perhaps no more than a mile away would be better.

 Get it all out of your head and write it all down. It will change as the months and years go by, that's inevitable, because life changes and you have to adapt to keep up. Things will happen to you that make you grow and develop wisdom about who you are and how you fit in the world, and that in turn will change what you want and your dream. The act of writing things down creates a powerful mental shift, it starts the wheels turning. 

But it won't happen unless you commit your dream to paper. 
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