General Chat

Afternoon all

I heard something today about the volcano in Iceland erupting and how we should all stay indoors because the fumes were over the uk? Well it was in the DM but if it was that serious shouldn't we all have had that alarm warning thing go off?

Was nothing on my local news about it anyway!

I'm using my new casserole pan today for the 1st time with chicken thighs, onions, sliced potatoes and mushrooms together with some chicken stock and sweetcorn cobette's.. So cant wait to eat it all later on.

Its showery here but the sun keeps peeking through and rainbows too. My grass has hardly grown though in 2 weeks and so i don't think it needs a cut tomorrow, shall see what my grasscutters think tomorrow.

Non recyclable bin day tomorrow and here's hoping it wont be raining or blowing a gale.

Hope everyone is having a peaceful Sunday

Florence in the hebrides

That is a pity but of course it must be preserved and it was in an awkward place to stand and look. It is about 5 years since we were last there.

Ann, the large family tree thing has been lifted out while they are doing the extensive roof restoration. When they have finished next year, they are going to put it somewhere else where it is more accessible. I would like to go back once the renovations are complete.
This aft, we are going to drive over to Shropshire to stay with my sister for a couple of days

good morning all, drizzly rain here and 13 degrees and doesn't look to be windy,

AG hope that you are recovering well from Covid, there is a lot around as others have said, but like flu you can't just stay in and not go anywhere. Must admit I was a bit concerned when going into the hospital last Monday but staff were not wearing masks so maybe it is not as bad here as in other places. I do know people who have had heavy colds but with no tests immediately available no idea if it was covid or not.

Linda hope that you have enjoyed/continue to enjoy your break. You certainly need one. We took out NT membership in 1986 when we started going to the Lake District. It was our way of saying thank you to them for all the work they do there. When T died I continued membership as daughter also belongs and we ofter visit places. Most years I get me money back, so many lovely places to visit. And I love Coughton Court, been a couple of times. Did you see that huge family Tree on the wall? Another time you are staying there, if you have not already been, go to Hidcote Gardens, One of my favourite places.and not far from Evesham. Another place that is not NT but not far from Evesham is Batisford Arboretum. Both these places have a good restaurant.
Florence, pleased that you eventually got yourself a meal, easy to skip meals when on your own.

Oh my AG, so glad you are getting over it. Its is rife up here too and wards in the local hospital keep shutting to get rid of it.

I have now eating a proper meal and feeling fine. I just felt the day running away with me and couldn't catch up. Here' hoping I will sleep well tonight because if don't, then I jolly well should do!

You were Lucky Linda, you escaped a nasty storm. Hope you enjoy the rest of your break and the weather is good to you.

For the rest of the evening, im putting me feet up and watching tv, no more dishes or anything else, just chilling :-D

Enjoy your holiday, Linda, and relax while the family are away.

Yes, I've had all the Covid jabs and boosters.
And thank goodness for them; I certainly wouldn't want to feel any worse than I did on Tuesday.
As you say, there's a lot of it around. I know of two other people in our village who have it at the moment, and we must have all caught it from separate sources, as the three of us have had no contact with each other for a few weeks.

There is an awful lot of Covid around at the moment AG, I have been in contact with a couple of people who had it at the time when they were infectious, but luckily I didn’t get it. We have had our booster jabs this year, but that doesn’t stop you from catching it, it is just supposed to make it jess severe. I hope that you are soon over it AG.

We are away for a few days and the weather has been quite good in Evesham. Reading my normal local news on line, it looks like it was quite a storm at home with trees down all over the place I assume everything is. oK, I left my mobile number with the neighbour over the road , but haven’t heard anything.

We took out National Trust membership last year when we went for a few days to the Peak District. We visited several National Trust places, so it was cheaper to take out the annual membership. It finishes in a couple of days and we aren’t renewing it, so to get our money’s worth we went to Coughton Court which is near here and had a nice afternoon. I noticed that the National Trust are now offering an Explorer Pass which is 4, 8 or 11 days. They are cheaper than having an annual membership, a good idea if you are just on a short break and unlikely to visit other places later in the year.

For goodness sake, Florence! Have something proper to eat! No wonder you're feeling tired.

Same weather here. Bits of sunshine, but mostly heavy rain, and windy.
The sunny bits don't last long enough for it to be worth hanging any washing out.

Well, after avoiding it for all these years, I've finally had my first bout of Covid!
It started with a sore throat on Sunday afternoon; on Monday I thought I probably had flu; on Tuesday I could hardly drag myself to the kitchen to make a hot drink.
It's been improving from Wednesday onwards, and now just feels like a slight cold.
Yesterday I remembered I had some old test kits - slightly out of date but still usable - and yes, it was definitely positive.
I'll check again tomorrow.

Fortunately I went shopping last Friday (which is probably when I caught it) , so have been well stocked up.

Afternoon all

well its very windy here with some pretty heavy downpours too. We never lost any power but some in the town on Wed eve did for a short time.

i have been so busy. i just had to sit down. Started clearing up etc before tesco came dead on 11am. Oh my was a big order so 5 crates to empty. i had run down the freezer & fridge and also using up half empty bottles of shampoos etc in the bathroom. 3 half empty bottles of bathroom spray no less so i condensed them into 2 last week and only have 1 bottle.

But i had no greaseproof paper, bacofoil, freezer bags etc so that all bumped up the order.

So emptied onto my big kitchen table and it took me ages to sort it all out and get it put away. Then I had ordered a new suitcase on wheels, a big one and so that was sitting in the hallway which had to be moved.

So emptied the bottom of half the wardrobe and then put my medium suitcase inside the big suitcase with a smaller bag and its not standing back in the wardrobe. Phew i am exhausted really. And lastly the box it came in had to be broken up as it was massive. So now i have finished that, im sitting with a can of diet coke!

It is now absolutely torrential rain, bucketing down but at least the plants are well watered.

Joan, I remember living in the other houses and having to chase sheep out of my garden. they did indeed eat my roses one year and a lot of other plants too. i was livid!! Ex said,"thats what you get for living in the country."

But still & all, sheep should be stock[proofed in their fields by the farmer. Its not acceptable to have them trampling all over your lovely garden is it.

I havent even eaten today as yet but had a choccy biscuit to keep me going for now.

Daughter has just come off the bus and is soaking wet grrrr

Happy Friday everyone

Florence in the hebrides

Hello to all from a rather windy Aberdeenshire.

The day started rather grey & wet, the sun has been in & out this afternoon & the wind has put in an appearance, & so my planned outdoor tasks have been put on hold.

Nothing exciting going on here unless you call chasing sheep out of the garden exciting !!
It all started on Wednesday evening, I tend to go to my bedroom around 7-00pm & sit in my chair & read or do some crosswords, after about an hour at around 8-00pm I was getting ready for bed & visited the bathroom,& on looking out of the window (palin glass) i saw a sheep on the drive.

I checked the front of the house to find 6 other sheep in the "best" bit of the garden, with their noses into my Roses & other plants, I phoned my daughter who got in touch with the farmer etc.
Thankfully the sheep were rounded up quickly & a call from my daughter told me they had got out of the field because the gate had "blown" open !

Then would you believe, yesterday at precicly the same time I spotted some sheep in the garden again !
& so once again had to contact the farmer, who rounded them up again.
The once saving grace about it was that it was still light enough to see where the sheep were, making it a bit easier to round them up.

Fortunately there were on 6 sheep in the garden considering there ar eat least 50 in the field, things could have been very different if they had all got into the garden !

Oh the joys of living in the countryside !

Joan.

Storm Ernisto is moving in swiftly and the wind is pretty gale force just now. Wasnt supposed to be bad until later this eve about 7pm?

No ferries and no post....usual story.

I have been beavering away doing fam tree work but my eyes were getting sore so taking a break for coffee and a bite.

Oh dear Linda, your poor daughter. Not great when the washing machine breaks down but how could they not find her policy if you had the paper work? Did she pay it all in one go or paying monthly as the ref would be against the d/d if thats how shes pays it.

Lucky you are able to deal with all her laundry left behind and yes 2 cases full on their return no doubt. But the launderettes have huge machine where you can almost get it done in one go. i used one myself many years ago and their dryer, was worth the money as was much quicker than doing it in my own machines.

All of my room thermostats can be set indivually so Ive set them all for 16 degrees just now and unless the temp drops below that, the heating wont come on as its warm enopugh. If i find its chilly tonight, i just turn it up to 22 in the lounge and it will come on straightaway.

Whilst its good doing somethings online, being in a rural area, I would not rely on wifi to operate heating etc. Mine is so easy anyway, no wifi required. The connection goes off when you least expect it so not reliable.

With the gale just now, the internet is up & down and wouldnt surprise me if we lose power later.

Re using bots online though, Amazon are very good and quite often will connect you to a real person if you cant sort out your query and they deal with it very quickly.

Think im making progress with my calf wraps as last night when i took them off, im sure i can see a difference now and left leg is def looking slimmer. No word from the nurse since last week though t check on me progress

Hope all is well with everyone looking in today.

Florence in the hebrides.

Ann, I had to make lots of phone calls to TalkTalk trying to sort the internet out when we moved here and their help centres are mainly abroad. I had great difficulty in understanding anything they said. They tend to talk very quickly as well which doesn’t help. I often use the online chat option. You get the bot at first, but if you are careful you can be put through to a real person, although sometimes as you say, you end up going round in circles with the bot. It takes much longer to type , so the process is slower, but at least they don’t have an impenetrable Indian accent .

This time the google woman I spoke to had a very strong American accent , but the first thing she said was if she was speaking too quickly I had to tell her. I wonder where she was, but given the fact that she was calling me ma’am, she could well have been in America. The thermostat went back to Poland, but the new one arrived the day after it was ordered, so they must have depots here.

Good morning all.
Linda, I hope your daughter and family are enjoying their break in Tenerife. that is good of you sorting the remaining washing. That must have been so very inconvenient for the washing machine to go wrong at that stage in their plans.

I too prefer to do things on line. with my hearing problems I do struggle with the phone and, if the on line procedure is good to use it helps. I hate these firms that have on line forms etc that send you round in a loop and no matter what you enter, however you appear to be doing things correctly you never get through to the end.

I much prefer to deal with everything online, but I appreciate that some people don’t.
I hate having to ring up to talk to someone, you can never get through and when you do they invariably try to talk to me as if I am an idiot, just because I am older.

When we moved here, we took the central heating thermostat out and had a google Nest thermostat put it instead. The old thermostat was on the wall in the utility room, but tucked away in a corner, so you practically had to climb on the worktop to get to it.
The new thermostat is on the wall in the hall, but I control it using the app on my iPad or phone. It really is much easier to use.Any way last week, the thermostat on the wall came up saying that the date and time were wrong and that it couldn’t connect to the internet. We tried to sort it out, but there was obviously something wrong with it. It was still controlling the hot water manually, but the connection to the app had gone.

The plumber who installed it came the next day and said that it was working fine to control the boiler, but there must be a software problem, so I would have to ring google. My heart sank thinking that it would be like the dreadful time I had with the internet.I googled the fault and tried all it said, but it didn’t solve it, so I bit the bullet and phoned. I was amazed that they answered straight away and the young girl actually listened to what I had tried. She asked me to try a couple of things, but said that it would be replaced under warranty. I had two choices, I could either send the old thermostat back and once they received it, they would send the new one out. Or I could have a new one sent out straight away and I didn’t have to send the old one back until I had received the new one. In order to do that, they would have to place a £219 charge on my credit card. They don’t take the money off, but if I didn’t send the old one back they would. I chose the latter option as it wasn’t going to cause a problem having that money ring fenced on the card. The new thermostat arrive the next day and I amazed myself by actually setting it up on my own.I printed off a prepaid label for the broken one and took it to the post office. I couldn’t believe that it was going back to Gdansk in Poland. It only took three days and they acknowledged it had arrived and took the charge off my credit card. So I am very pleased with google, well apart from the thing breaking in the first place. To be fair we had the same unit in our previous house and it caused us no problems at all.

My daughter and Co. are in Tenerife, they went yesterday and were delayed by some sort of Saharan dust storm, but arrived at the hotel around midnight. Esme didn’t wake up until 10.30 this morning! They have WiFi, so we have had a guided tour of their apartment.

I collected all their washing and have done it because their washing machine has broken down. They had taken out a five year extended warranty, so rang for a repair, but were told that they didn’t have a policy despite having all the paperwork to show they have. They were going to have to contact Curry’s where they bought it from. Just what you want before your holiday. They had a lot of washing, so instead of coming here, my daughter went to a launderette and used three machines. That was a few days before they left, so I have done what they have worn since then. There will be two suitcases full once they get back.

Oh I see.
I'm not happy about that, I do very little official things on-line, & what I do do I'm still issued with paper statements / bills / receipts !

These companies "assume" too much, not everyone can manage or like dealing with official on-line things & many don't actually have the means to use them !

One of these days the internet world is going to come crashing down & goodnes knows what will happen then !!

Thanks for the info. though.

Joan.

Joan, my one this year it said would be the last paper one so I'm guessing your hubby's would have been the last one and as you are a "new" customer, paper licenses are no longer issued.

if you have registered to pay monthly, then you have registered for a license which is held against your address in the Tv license records so no need to actually hold a paper license as its all on their computer. But you can as I said login to your tv account and see the payment plan which can be printed out.

Florence....paper licnces must be available because our new one sent in July came in the usual paper form, but as it was still in my hubbys name I needed to change it to my name.

All they had to do ( imo) was list it in my name but no, they said they HAD to make a new "contract" in order to issue the licence in MY name ! which has meant the monthly payment didn't carry on each month, & the new contract has a new starting date.

If I had known this was going to happen I would have paid the whole lot in full, & requested a paper one as normal.
It was hubby who preferred to pay monthly & I just thought I would do the same.

Joan.

Banks are a nightmare to get on the phone , I spent ages this morning trying to get through to sort out something . I don't know why we can't just phone the branch . All sorted now but it is always a faff to get through.

Quite breezy here to day but it has stopped raining so put my washing out . Garden still looking tidy but noticed some of my old pots are starting to crack so new ones will be needed. Can't complain as they are really quite old so have lasted well. We should be getting a bulky waste pickup next month so if I can sort the new ones soon the old ones will go then . It is a council run thing so hopefully it will be round in Sept to near us. As neither of us drive it is really useful for us.

Just sent some cards out for a couple of birthdays that I didn't want to forget so they have gone a few days earlier than normal but can't rely on the post nowadays.

well hope you are all keeping ok and the weather is being kind to everyone.

Ginnie

Forgot to say. courier been & gone and new Cast Aluminium pan arrived today, so pleased with it as it matches the bigger one I have.

Working my way through 13 children, trying to find their marriages etc and so far on number 2.....its gonna be a long haul!

Hi Joan
they have done away with a paperless tv licence to save paper but don't worry as you can access your tv license on line and then if you want to, you can print it out.

I pay monthly by d/d and its now gone up to £15 a month from 21 st of Aug for me.

Its says on my last paper plan, if you cant use the QR code visit
tvl.co.uk/paperless then you can see the payment plan online and the dates the d/d will come off. if you haven't got a printer, your daughter could perhaps access it online for you and print the schedule out on her computer maybe?

Hope this helps :-D