General Chat

Good morning from a chilly Yorkshire. It is only six degrees , but it is windy, so feels colder.
OH has ventured into the town in search of his Saturday scones. In the last house, it was less than a five minute walk, here it is about fifteen, probably less for him as he walks faster than I do. He is going to have a mooch around and get some books from the library.

Yesterday he put the door curtain up in the hall, so that made it warmer last night. He has finished priming the skirting boards for the lounge, so hopefully they can go back on over the weekend, although we need to venture out to look at dressers for the dining room. We were going to have the people who are doing the kitchen make one, but they quoted silly money for that, so we can buy one cheaper elsewhere.

As Florence didn’t post yesterday, I assume her trip went ahead, so I’m hope all is well

Linda, although it sounds very tiring for you, I also envy you the excitement of choosing all the new paints etc and blinds It will look wonderful when it is finished.

It is all so complicated Ann, gone are the days when you just had one plug and an aerial to connect.

It is a bright morning here, so I hope Florence’s weather has calmed down and her plane was able to take off.

My daughter and son in law are coming over at lunchtime, so hopefully he can sort the TV out and my daughter can help me choose paint colours and more blinds.

Good morning all from a drizzly misty glos. I do hope Florence got away ok for her appointment. Makes my problems with buses etc for hospital appointments seem laughable.

Well done Sylvia on sorting the electrics. There is always something isn't there?

Linda, wow all of a sudden you seem to have taken a leap forward. Bet you slept well last night, it must be a good feeling to see things coming together.
I don't normally look behind our large TV, not being very tall and the TV being quite big it is difficult for me to see. But I recently was looking to see where something was plugged in and I saw the mass of wiring there. Of course that was T's province but so many wires. We also have a sound bar, but also there is a WII still attached but never used. I would not know where to start to disconnect it.

I hope hope your plane is going in the morning Florence.

You are lucky that your electricians managed to find the spare parts Sylvia, it could have been costly if you had had to replace the lights.

The floorer finished mid afternoon. I had to go to Esme’s Easter service in the church next to her school as her parents were working. It was the usual chaos, but the children have a good time dancing all over the church.

I was only out for a couple of hours so we have managed to get everything back in the lounge as it should be. It looks good until you notice that there are no skirting boards, just raggy holes in the bottom of the walls. OH is priming the skirting boards in the garage tomorrow and can then put them back in place. They will need glossing of course, but he is going to do them in situ because it is so dusty in the garage.

We have been watching a very small tv which refused to show any ITV channels because the arial is not good enough. We put the large tv back together using the photos I took before we dismantled it along with the copious notes I made. At first the sound bar wouldn’t work, but somehow we sorted that out. There is an unbelievable tangle of wires behind it. We can’t see the talk talk box on the menu and can’t change channels using the smart remote, but apart from that it is fine :-( We will need son in law to sort it out.

Our new dining table arrived a couple of days ago, so we had it put in the garage. We carried it in this afternoon, but it weighs a ton, so my shoulder is aching now. OH put the legs on and we managed to turn it over. It seems to be quite big, but it isn’t, it is just that the room is small. That was why we gave away our previous set. We haven’t got chairs yet, but we have a couple of white Ikea ones which we have been using in the kitchen . We were going to christen the new table when we realised that we had thrown away all of our table mats, so we will have to buy some more before we can use it . I need to buy some new cushions for the sofas as well because the current ones match the curtain our old house. I did see some last week, but didn’t have the sample of our curtain material with me

Aw Sylvia, so glad you got it all sorted.

I havent been able to get on here as internet is playing up...probably due to the stormy weather we have as that does affect it grrr.

The wind did abate earlier but now has gusted back up again.

Quick tea of cheese & tomato pizza so very little washing up.

Have decluttered handbag etc and all ready for off in the morning.

Just going to chill after tea and watch me soaps etc. Thursday night is good with back to back programmes with only an interval when the late news is on before my fav Question Time and then bed. If its not that interesting, i shall get off early to bed so i get a few hours sleep.

2 Planes were cancelled earlier and I diverted eeeeek . I think there is fog and mist as it looks hazy across from where I am.

If I don't get away tomorrow, there will be tears :-(

Staying positive though as the weather here can change very quickly and for the better,

Re fluorescent tubes -

The light fittings in my kitchen are, I assume the ones installed when the house was built in the 1980s.
I don't know how old the tubes were when one finally failed at the end of last year, but they're the ones which were already there when I moved in here 18 years ago.

I bought replacement tubes of the same kind - but they wouldn't work. I tried new starters - still wouldn't work.
An electrician told me that it was because the "ballast" (whatever that is - I think it's the thing in the light fitting which sends power to the tubes) gets used gradually to working with poorer and poorer tubes, and therefore won't work with new ones, and I would need new ballasts.

However, my son brought LED tubes - and they work perfectly in the old fittings, without having to do anything with ballasts or starters.
Instant light, instead of slow flickering tubes.

It still feels like magic every time I switch them on!

Our electrician arrived at 8:30 am ........... phoned to say they were on their way (2 of them! today after 3 yesterday), then less than 5 minutes later phoned again to say they were "downstairs" in our back driveway! OH had to run down to let them in. It does make sense because they are working in the basement, and that door opens to the driveway.

I woke at 5 am, went back to sleep, woke suddenly, darker than usual but it was already 6:55 am. I rolled over and out of bed so quickly that I twisted my hip, could barely walk to go and wake OH. Breakfast was over by about 7:45 am and I could do my leg exercises. Didn't bother with a shower!

It is now about 9:20 am, and yes it feels like mid-day!!

Thankfully the hip has eased off as I have been able to keep it at the correct angle.

The guy seemed hopeful that he could find replacements, although I guess it might mean replacement fittings instead of just long bulbs! I'll find out when he presents his bill! We'll also find out then how he wants to be paid! He is fully licensed, and one of his workers is a young apprentice according to OH.

Florence .............. all light switches over here are up for on and down for off. After close to 57 years over here, I still occasionally try to do it wrong!

When I was on my own back in '92/93, I found that I was eating a lot at the breakfast bar in the kitchen rather than at the dining table or watching TV, so I got in the habit of buying flowers every week and having them in a vase that I put at the back of the bar against the wall, so I had something nice to look at all.

Update .............. OH has been up to see me ............ 9:30 am and the electrician has finished and wanted paying, offered him whichever method he preferred, we had a little back and forth, but then cash. I'm OK with that.

He'd found all necessary replacement bulbs, even did a little bit of re-wiring, mainly removing bits of the very old wiring that had been disconnected when we did the reno back in the late '70s but not pulled out.

So it is now 9:45 am and all is done. The day is ours ............... if we can stay awake! :-D

Morning all
Awful weather here and stormy winds and rain. neighbours wheelie bin is away halfway down their garden on its side!!Why don't people put bungees or rope around their bins to secure them in wild weather beats me??/

Linda, glad your floorer turned up on time. my brother runs a flooring business and always starts around 8am so it gets finished on the one day if possible, But yes getting up so early means that by lunchtime, it feels like 5pm!

Sylvia, i hope your electrician can find replacement stips for you. That is a problem in older houses. My grandparents home was built around 1906 i think and all the light switches were black where you lifted it up for off and down for on. Grandma still had these in the 1990's. Dad has now modernised things and replaced all the old switches but at a price.

I'm off to the mainland tomorrow for my hospital appointment and taxi is coming at 6.30am so we will have to be up at 5,30am so think of us when you lot are still cosy in bed lol The forecast is dreadful, worse than today with wind speeds gusting over 60mph so I hope we get away!

I have just showered and washed hair so my next job is to dry hair and it takes so long because its so long & thick.

Then I want to do the ironing so all up straight. I hate leaving the house all untidy etc just in case we got stuck away. Flick the hoover around too. At least then when we arrive back we are coming home to a clean tidy house. We will be shattered tom evening so an early night it will be. We wont get home til after8pm.

looking forward to lunch out and hopefully a trip to a few shops for some bit and pieces.

Re cooking for one, when daughter goes away, I don't mind as I get to make just what I want and not 2 different meals. I do make more than enough for one and so I freeze what's left for another day like curry or soup etc. But on the other hand, if I don't feel like a meal, I can just make a toastie or beans on toast whatever I want.
I will say though, it is much nicer to eat with another person and when I'm on my own, I sometimes sit in the living room with the tv on for company, not often but sometimes if I feel a bit lonely.

Well better crack on as they say.

Hope you all have brighter weather than we do up here!

Florence in the hebrides

The floorer was here at 8 am Sylvia. The radio comes on to the Radio 4 news program at 7am, but we just doze as we listen to it. Often I go back to sleep, then I read my emails and I don’t normally get up until after nine. I was up bright and early this morning, I always have a shower, but I had even washed and dried my hair before the floorer arrived. It is only 9am now, but it feels like it should be late morning.

I had experience of living alone for almost a year back in 1992/93 when OH and daughter went to New Zealand for 10 months. I went down to join them for December and January, but otherwise was alone. I/we don't mind frozen home made meals so I would do a major cooking on a Sunday, such as stews and casseroles of the usual size, then parcel up individual meals and freeze them for use dring the week. I would take pop one in the oven straight out the freezer as soon as I got home from work, and had a hot meal with little extra work.

I also took the chance to try new meals that I knew OH or daughter would probably not like, such as lamb with 40 garlic bulbs :-D . It turned out lovely, and I really would have liked to make it again! I have to admit that a couple of the new stews that I tried were not really to my liking, but I made adjustments to the frozen ones so they were better!

OH and I still make stews and casseroles large enough for 6 or 7, but freeze them in portions large enough for 2 (stew) or individual packages.

I bought several books from a series titled 500 Recipes for xxxxxx. back in the early to mid-60s when I was living in flats and wanting to learn to cook. One was titled 500 Recipes for One. I still have them and even use them occasionally, although I must admit that I now find them rather bland and add more spices and herbs!

I noticed this morning when we went out that the cherry trees along the street north of us are out in full flower! They're a very pale pink ............. but it's 3-4 weeks before they normally flower :-0

We managed to get to my ophthalmologist's and picked up my new glasses, they're rather larger than I've had for quite a few years, so I'm having to adjust to a larger lens surface!

Talking of earl yyworkmen ................ OH finally managed to find an electrician who cam with good recommendations to look at the long tube lights in our basement. We've had problems with them for 3 or months as at least 3 have gone out but we haven't been able to find the right bulbs .................. the problem with an old house, the bulbs are no longer made, the electrician said this morning so he went off to find the correct replacements.

He will be back tomorrow morning between 8 and 9 am. :-0

We don't normally get up, or at least dressed and moving around, before 9 or 9:30 am

I'm not looking forward to having to get up around 7 am!

All of this administration so head banging Joan. We spent a long time this morning trying to change our address and phone number on the various savings accounts. It should be easily done on line,but it wasn’t . Some of them we couldn’t find where to do it, so had to ring up. Some you could change your address on line, but had to ring up to change the phone number. The premium bonds should have been easy, but with this new two factor authorisation you have to get a code sent to your mobile. I wasn’t getting the code, it turns out someone at their end had inputted my mobile number wrongly. I couldn’t tell that because they only show the first two and last two numbers with a load of asterisks in the middle.
It took well over an hour, but it is mainly done now.

The fitter arrived to put the new flooring down at an ungodly 8. 15am. He has been doing really well, but had to leave 2.45 to collect his daughter from nursery because she is ill. He promised he will be back early in the morning.

Hi Florence, They have only asked for a letter of explanation & my original B cert, they have already seen that & they have also seen the Marriage cert.

They have also seen variuos official statements (State pension, Bank etc )
& Utility bills (Electric, Council Tax etc )
I'm climbing the walls with it all.

I agree £50 is very welcome & LOT to me, but it's not a lot from the Pension folk !

edited to add....... the various official letters & household bills ALL have my name showing as Joan.

Joan.

Oh dear Joan, I can imagine how stressy this is for you.

I suggest you compose a letter explaining what your full name assigned at birth was and send your birth cert and marriage cert by registered post with tracking.

But, make a copy of both certs before you send them.

it will cost extra for reg & tracking but that way, you can trace and see when it is delivered.

Does your marriage cert show your full name?

£50 a week when you are a pensioner is a lot of money ie £200 a month which will help hugely.

Hopefully sending the letter & certs this time will sort the matter out soon.

And so it goes on !!

Juat had an email from R Mail Pension folk asking for a covering letter & my original Birth certificate to be sent by POST.

I am absolutely cheesed off with all of this, the other day we spoke to someone on the phone who advised us to send an email explaining the situation regarding never having had a Dr licence or Passport & pointing out that they had already seen my original B cert.
Now we have to do the above all over again.

I really feel like telling them they can stuff the pension but I can't afford to !
It's not as if it's a huge amountl of money, approx £50 per week.

Joan.

Well such a beautiful day here and no wind so daughter and i went out into the garden and resorted pots, weeded and christened the new fork making lots of holes for the grass seeds. Might have to paint the wooden planters as they have faded over the winter and look rather shabby now so another job on the list to do.

Joan, when you make a will and you need to make a new one now, you can ask sol for advice re your name etc. It was only a few years ago, I forced my dad into making a will as he has property etc and if he died without making one, that would create a huge heap of problems for me. We do now have it all in place thank goodness.

Also my brother & sil decided to do a Power of Attorney and named myself & her brother on the forms but.... when I went to sign the forms, they had put my shortened version of my name(what people call me) and not my actual full name so it all had to be sent back to the sol and redone...all 30 pages!!

I'm not wanting to worry or stress you in any way but think you should ask your sol for advice.

My roses are doing well too and my hydrangea has lots of growth as well. Dwarf geraniums have come on a lot too.

Sounds like we are all going to have colourful gardens this year as long as we get some sun!

Off to have a rest and some lunch now.

Florence in the hebrides

Hello ArgyllGran, re cooking for one, I do prefer tradition cooking/meals & I have always cooked from scratch, & sometimes I find it hard going doing the same for just me.
I am not overly keen on freezing full meals & much prefer to cook a "fresh" meal each day.

I have got my meat purchases down from what I used to buy, anything that comes in twos (Ch breasts. chops) I split, the same with sausages, I like fresh mince but that is easy enough to split into smaller portions.

It's just the actual cooking for one i don't like, over the years i have gone from 7 in the household, & now down to just me, such a change in my cooking habits it takes some getting to grips with !
I dare say I will get there eventually.

The sun has come out so maybe I will be able to get outside & finish off a couple of gardening jobs after all.

Joan.

A lovely sunny spring day here, too.

From the kitchen window I've been watching a robin busily building a nest. It gathers up dead leaves, and takes them into a hole in the bank at the back of the house.
It seems a very vulnerable place to build - I hope the local cats don't find it.

Joan, for ideas for cooking for one, I find Miguel Barclay's "One Pound Meals" books helpful. All the recipes are for one person.

Another one I like is "5 Ingredients 10 Minutes" by Jules Clancy. Recipes are mostly for two people, but easy to scale down.
They're so easy, they're hardly recipes at all, but more like ideas for putting ingredients together, and with lots of variations suggested for each recipe.

If you prefer more traditional cookery, perhaps you can find a second-hand copy of Delia Smith's "One is Fun" - now out of print, but copies available on eBay and Amazon, among other places..

Also, there's lots of stuff online.
For example:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5774513/cooking-for-one-mark-three/p1

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5520090/meals-for-one

Morning to you all.
Todays weather is not so nice at the moment, a bit dull & looking out of the window there must have been a wee shower, so that has scuppered what I was going to do in the garden.

Yesterday was a nice day apart from the wind, which stopped me from doing more jobs I had planned for the garden.
The Snowdrops are beginning to fade but the Crocus are putting on a lovely show & the Daffies are aslo starting to bloom.
I can see new growth on other plants, Roses, Potentilla Ferns & the 4 brand new Clematus that I planted up last Autumn are also showing buds, really please about the Clematus as I wasn't sure if they would survive the high winds & icy days.

Our youngest daughter (in Lanark) is coming for a visit on Saturday, she is bringing the youngest child (nearly 3yrs) with her staying until Monday, soo looking forward to seeing them.

Florence, I really can't see me changing/reversing my name back to my birth name, I have been Joan all my days & have used it on all offical things for many many years.
It's only hubbys Private Royal Mail Pension folk that are having an issue, ALL other offiacial places have never had a problem with which name I am known under.

Well I must go & have a tidy round, not that there's much to tidy, just the bed to make, not sure what to have for my tea, I don't find it easy thinking up meals for just me.

Hope everyone is well & your weather is better than ours today.

Joan.

Morning all.

Lovely sunny spring day here and not too chilly in the sun but cooler in the shade but overall a nice day. I shall be going outside soon to have a wander round and maybe a short walk if legs allow!

Had a nice surprise from the electric company today on mums flat. I submitted a new reading and for some reason, they reversed 4 months worth of charges and we are now in credit??? Only about 5 units have been used in last month but i don't understand the reverse charges, however I'm not going to ask lol.

Been busy this morning sending emails chasing up appointments and replies....it never ends does it?

made a lovely veggie bake last night using up the veg, cauliflower, mushrooms, red & white onions etc. made a cheese sauce using a tub of herb & garlic philly and then scattered some grated cheese on top. In the oven for about 20 minutes.

Well it was sooo tasty. all the best dishes are not made to recipe but those that are thrown together, well that's what I think.

Hope everyone else has the sunshine we have :-D

Florence in the hebrides