General Chat

Not good an exploding egg in the microwave. Did you prick the yolk? If I do egg in the micro I alway cover it with kitchen paper.

Shopping came with jolly Carl. We had a little chat. I had done a little bit of casting before he came and done a wash which is now on the line as the suns has come out and theres a bit of a breeze. I was going to put it on the airer but put the fleeces out as they dry quickly so changed my mind and put the lot out.

I have hoovered a bit and fed the girls and wild birds and now I am hungry.

Pc is saying 4 degrees and cloudy and the weather thing on the pc is saying snow and ice on Wednesday and Thursday it says its going to be raining and 11 degrees!

Now I have just spotted this:-

Coronavirus

People aged 75 and over, those in care homes and vulnerable people are to be offered a spring Covid-19 booster jab.

The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) said it has advised that certain groups of people should be offered the vaccinations, with options including the Pfizer, Moderna, Sanofi/GSK jabs.

People aged 75 and over will be offered a jab, along with care home residents and anyone aged five and over who is immunosuppressed.

People will be offered the vaccine around six months after their previous dose, with NHS England setting out the specific details of the programme at a later date.

The Novavax jab will also be available for use only when alternatives are not considered clinically suitable.

All I feel now is sore painful hands and totally frustrated. The handle is in two parts of four pieces (the handle collapses for storing if necessary). I fitted the two upper pieces together, no problem and then tried the lower pieces. they are supposed to click into place and will only go in one way to fit together. So far it has taken all my strength and it is within a MM of clicking into place but I just haven't so far had the strength to do it. I am going to have to give up for now and try and re-gain some strength in my hands

Well I had ordered a new vacuum cleaner from GTech at the weekend and that came at 10 o'clock this morning. After fighting the packaging (such thick solid cardboard my hands had trouble getting it open) it is all spread out in the kitchen and I have been having a rest before tackling putting it together. There seem to be lots of bits so I need to look at the booklet to see what is what. Since I got up and showered and washed my hair I have washed the bedding and the second lot of that is in the drier. I have also cleaned the microwave after I had an exploding poached egg. DPD had said they would deliver my parcel between 10 and 11am and it arrived at 1005am.

Morning AnnG, Mel and all

2 degrees and sleety rain. The iPad is telling me that it’s not getting above 4 degrees all day and tonight it will go down to -5.

I didn’t manage to rest yesterday afternoon as my neighbour rang just as I got settled. She’s clearly worried about her OH and needed someone to talk to so I felt I couldn’t cut her short.

Several bad nights plus the back pain tiring me meant that I took a couple of strong pain killers and slept like a log. I didn’t wake till after 8 am and felt fine till I moved. Then I realised the back problem hadn’t disappeared overnight. I shall have to dose myself up again this afternoon as I need to go to our Ladies Group AGM.

Enjoy your h/w ladies. I won’t be doing any today ;-)

Morning Anng and all,

No frost here either and its 3 degrees now and it has been sunny but it seems to have disappeared now and the sky is grey.

Shopping day today so I shall have that to wipe down when it comes.

Slept really well and did'nt get up in the night but woke at 7.30am and the heating had'nt come on as I had turned it off at the switch. so its still heating up now and then I am going in the shower.

I too have HW to do today so you and me together Anng. I have some ironing and want to change the bed too. I do that in stages as its so hard for me to do on my own.

Good morning all. slept quite well and awake at 7am. 1 degree and a bit dull but dry so far and no frost.

No idea what I am doing today, Probably change the bed, wash the bedding and a bit of HW. Not going out anyway.

Thats nice Anng to have a grandson's birthday on your mums.

I have had sun and rain and I have washed the car with the pressure washer and the kitchen windows and some of the guttering but I was getting wet so I have given up. Now I need to do the insides of the kitchen and dining area windows as they do need doing badly.

Must corn the chickens first though.

Hsav'nt thought what to have for dinner tonight either shall have to dig down the freezer and see what I can come up with.

Going to have a cuppa after doing the girls.

I can see out of my windows now thank goodness they really needed doing.

It would have been my Mjm’s birthday today (born 1909).
And also one of my Grandson’s born 1992.

We are expecting the window cleaner soo. they sent a message to say after 3pm. but it has just started to rain after being dry all day. It did feel warmer than yesterday when I went out earlier but the sun soon disappeared so no tan today vera. I wonder if you got could out looking at the garden vera, maybe bending over to look at plants. Hope it loosens up soon for you.

My pc is saying Humid and 8 degrees now but feels like 4 degrees going down to 7 by 3pm up until 6pm when we get rain and more rian up until 7pm. then its going to rain till 1am.

My hands are freezing I have just made a cuppa so I can put my hands round the mug.

Have you got a good tan yet AnnG? I’m not so much brown as rusty! It’s been raining on and off all day. I did all the washing this morning and between showers I walked round and looked at the plants we’ve lost. There are lots of them and will cost a lot to replace. I think it’s been a combination of factors. For a couple of months before Christmas we had endless rain so everything got waterlogged, then it was too dry and we had several heavy frosts.

At the moment I feel very uncomfortable as my back started paining me again this morning for no apparent reason. I’ve got a heat pad on and am currently propped up on the bed against the pillows and with a hot water bottle to cuddle but I’m finding it hard to keep still for more than a few seconds. I might lay down and try to sleep for a while so I’ll wish you all an early night night.

sun shining now and 7 degrees. I had better get the sun cream out!!!

Good morning all

6 degrees? That’s almost a heatwave, lol. It’s 2 degrees here but apparently it feels like -2. It’s also raining. I’m not getting any exercise at the moment so had planned to walk to the Co-op and back as I wanted to stock up on a couple of bits they have on offer but I’m thinking twice about that now.

Better get some washing on as the laundry basket’s overflowing again.

good morning all 6 degrees and grey again. Hopefully the window cleaners will be here today. Had to chase them up as we have not seen them since November. It is quite a big firm and was very reliable until the end of last year. I think the problem is they also do corporate cleaning and I think residential cleaning suffers. so we shall see.

Gill, they probably are crocus as I assume you would be able to see them better if they were daffodils. I still think that with your garden sounding to be quite long, when you start on it, it would be a good idea to create a 'break/division either a third or half the way down to the end, either with trellis or a row of plants across so that you only work on part at a time. Maybe clear the whole and tidy it first though. As it is a big garden a couple of Buddleias would be good to attract the butterflies. maybe Hydrangeas or Rhododendrons. But a lot depends on what soil you have and whether the garden is open on the boundaries and therefore has wind breaks.

Morning All,

A bit brighter here this morning and it saying 6 degrees on the pc but cloudy.

Need to get up the post van again this morning with two more parcels to post.

Your dinner you used to have sounds like ours when I was a child. Did any of you have boiled beef and carrots? with peas pudding? We did and I loved it. We did'nt have it very often but it was a treat when we did. Always a roast on a Sunday like Anng said either beef, pork, or lamb and Monday usually cold meat and mash, peas and pickles.

Thanks everyone for your kind words, OH never really suffers but this time he'd had a chest infection and wasn't quite over it so I think that's why he was worse. Luckily I've never had it which I'm surprised about with being around OH both times, but I'm not complaining.

No AnnG we haven't got any snowdrops but I think we have some yellow crocuses down the bottom of the garden, well, there's yellow flowers down there and they look lovely. It's still a bit to wet to get down there to have a proper look but they look like crocuses.

I was wondering if any of you could recommend some flowers I could put in the garden, we're after large ones, both tall and bushy that come up every year. With the garden being so big we'd like something we can see from afar. I took some large daisy type flowers out of the garden last year and put them into a pot as they were in the wrong place, so if they come back I'll plant them in the garden, but I'm not very good at planning gardens so any suggestions on big flowers would be a great help.

We brought a few evergreens with us from our old place and one or two small plants but they'd be lost in the back garden so they'll probably go in the front as that garden is a lot smaller.

Love the photo's you've sent.

Oh Sandra's just rang me so I'll have to go.

My Mum used to cook boiled gammon to serve with mashed potatoes and cauliflower with white sauce in the 50s. Sunday was always roadt lamb, beef or pork plus roast potatoes and two veg such as peas and cabbage or runner bean and cauliflower. Other meals were steak and kindhearted pudding or pie always potato in one for. Or other or liver bacon and onions or maybe pigs fry in a casserole. She was a good plain cook. Never cooked mushrooms. Or curry, never rice with meat. Rice was pudding.

Mandy, thank you for the pictures of the dog and elephant. They are so cute. I love the elephant’s ballet shoes and the dog looks a cheeky fellow. I can just imagine him chatting up all the lady dogs. You are very talented. You mentioned you hadn’t been to Aldeburgh. We’ve been several times and like it there. It’s the place with Maggi Hambling’s “Scallop” sculpture on the beach. It’s a real Marmite piece, people love it or hate it. I love it (and I loathe Marmite).

I googled coprosma AnnG. It looks an attractive plant. I wondered whether we could replace our apparently dead hebes with it but it grows taller than we want. You got your food delivery early in the end didn’t you.

I hope bil can get your mowers sorted fairly quickly Mel. It won’t be long before the grass needs cutting and you have such a lot of it, you’ll be needing those mowers.

We had a bit of a disturbed night last night as an ambulance arrived to whizz our next door neighbour into hospital again. Poor man, he’s in and out like a fiddler’s elbow. It’s such a worry for his wife whose own health isn’t good. Usually he is in for a week or more each time but she rang me a little while ago to say the doctors had stabilised him and he was coming home and transport was being provided for him. She doesn’t drive so normally has to rely on friends or expensive taxis and it’s a 40 mile round trip.

On the “what we remember from childhood theme”, eating our Sunday dinner OH and I were saying how our mothers would have been horrified by our meal. Dinners were pretty much always meat, potatoes and a veg. I had done roast gammon which was unknown in our homes. It was boiled ham for salad and sandwiches on special occasions. I had also done a large tray of roast veg - baby potatoes, carrots, leeks, peppers and beetroot. Baby potatoes weren’t available, only new pots in summer, and they certainly wouldn’t have been cooked with skins on. Carrots, along with onions and parsnips, were for stews and casseroles. Neither of our mothers ever bought leeks and I don’t think peppers were readily available. As for roasted beetroot......shock! horror! Beetroot was for dousing with vinegar and having with salad. How times have changed.

I was pleased as, with a bit of shelf jiggling and careful timing, I managed to cook the meat, all the veg and a gingerbread loaf at the same time so not too expensive on fuel.

Ambulance has just arrived outside. Our neighbour must be home.

Can't make up my mind whether to order oil or not. I can't remember how much the tank holds but think it is 1500 litres. I have just dipped it and its just about a third left in there. If I can wait till next month it maybe cheaper?????

Afternoon All,

Got up at 7.15 for the loo and went back to be as the heating was'nt on till 8am, fatal woke again at 10.38am to a nice warm house. This put me all behind and I wanted to do so much today too as BIL was'nt coming.

He bought the bits for the mower so I did'nt have to pay for bits he could'nt use. Of course I give him lunch when he works so hard on the mowers or the grass. Its only a couple of sandwiches or bacon and egg or something like that. He drives 25 miles to me to help so its only fair I feed him while he's here.

I too lost my geraniums in the shed even though I brought them into the lounge after the first frost. I have also lost oh's money tree which was so big to get into the lounge by the patio doors where it usually sits for the winter, BIL put it in my shed and I covered it with fleece. There are still a few green bit under it so it may have had babies which I can resuce.

Mandy your knitting is superb and I love all the new ones. I have replied to your email with te pictures. You be careful if you have to go out in the snow if you get it you don't want to be falling over again and injuring yourself.

Yes its good to hear from Gill and I suppose hubby getting covid again from work isn't unusual with the visitors comeing to see their rellies etc. but they should be keeping the place well disinfected with vunerable people in there and for the staff that look after them.

Well I think I will have a couple of nice new laid boiled eggs for lunch today, I just fancy those.