General Chat

Hello to all. We had some rain this morning & though it seemed quite heavy the garden is still dry, as it didn't last long.
Lovely sunshine now but it's rather windy so it's spoiling things.

Got the weekly shop done this morning & I got a lovely surprise whilst going round Morrisons.
One of the check out ladies has become a friend over the years of shopping there & whenever she serves us we get discount via her staff discount card.(she's allowed to do this as she's a long time staff member & can give discount to whoever she chooses)

I haven't seen her for a while as she has been working at different times but today she was working whilst we were there.
Whilst I was going round the store this lovely person came up to me & placed a loveliest bouquet into my trolley, she had heard I had been unwell recently & she had been hoping to see me.
I was so emotional,such a lovely thing to do & it fairly cheered me up.

Heres another story to tell you. The other day i got a letter from the Tax office,re my latest tax code, well I couldn't make head not tail of it so after shopping today my daughter looked through it & was confused re the figures & so she decided to phone them.

After a loong wait she got through to someone & asked for help in deciphering the figures in the letter. I get a State pension & half of my late Jacks Royal Mail pension.
The Royal Mail pension for this year comes to £4.018-83 annually, the tax office said my RM pension would be £401.883 having put the decimal point in the wrong place !!

What a shock that was, the wifey on the phone thought it was hilarious, just hoping that it will all be sorted asap.

Joan.

Hello all,
Well we had some much needed rain but everywhere is still dry so some more is needed . Garden is doing ok and the veggies are doing well.

I have been looking in as well and I did write a long (for me) post and then forgot to submit it and went off the page , lol. I need a talking to sometimes lol.

Oh has been painting the woodwork in the sitting room and is now doing the bathroom walls and door. We are using a tile paint to go over the tiles and it is very good coverage and no smell plus touch dry in an hour . A lot better than the old paints that used to smell horrible and take hours to dry.

Hope everyone on holiday is having a good time . I am like Joan and don't really enjoy holidays but used to go every year for OH and the children. We don't go now as travelling is difficult for me on trains and coaches are a complete no for me.

I hope your craft fair goes well Florence and you sell your veg plants .


Take care all.

Good morning all after a dry day yesterday it is wet here in the North West Lake District today. Has benn windy and raining ever since first thing. So no trips out today. Probably packing as tomorrow we go to West Yorkshire for a week. Hope the weather will improve.

Good morning all
Well its raining hard so not a nice day.

We have a mini craft fayre this afternoon 3-8pm so hope lots of people come. good chance to declutter last years stock etc to make way for new craft things to sell in December etc

I hope I sell my 19 cauliflower and 3 pumpkin plants as they are huge now and need to go lol.

Joan, just pop on and say hello and that way at least we know youre ok and anyone else who lives on their own.

Well plenty to do before we leave at 1.30 so better crack on.

Have a good day all

Florence in the Hebrides

Hello Florence, I have looked in several times but not added anything as I haven't done anything interesting since I was last here.

The weather over recent days has changed somewhat & so no outside jobs done, I didn't fancy having to dodge the showers, starting a job & then having to pack up every few minutes is no fun, lol.

Not been a bad day today, the sun has shone & it's quite warm but I couldn't get motivated to go into the garden, in fact nothing much done indoors either ! just feeling lazy today, it's what happens when I get stopped from doing the jobs I started.
Shopping tomorrow so I probably won't manage outside jobs tomorrow either, lol.

I ordered some climbing Roses at the weekend,so I WILL have to go outside & plant them up when they arrive, that should get me back to straightening up the hedge at least.

The Roses I have ordered are called...City of York, where I come from, reasonable delivery charge, £6-95 per order not per item so I was happy with that, & a bonus that the company will deliver to my address / postcode, so many companies either won't deliver to me at all OR want to charge a VERY high surcharge.

I hope you have a really nice holiday when it happens Florence, the last holliday I had was in 1967, our honeymoon, LOL, but to be fair I was never one for travelling so it never bothered us..

Joan.

Hello hello, where is everyone?
Better day here and the sun is back but...is a tad cool and windy!

Just booked our holiday to Jersey in Jul Took ages as there is only 1 flight a day to Jersey from Glasgow and nothing on a Saturday.

Also had to book 2 single flights from jersey to Glasgow as no return available!!!

So has taken all afternoon to get it all booked but all done now and so looking forward to it as not had a holiday away away in 30 years!

Hope everyone ok today and keeping well.

Florence in the Hebrides

It is new Ann, it just opened this summer

The Lilidorei play park at Alnwick Gardens, a major new development, was built with a cost of £15.5 million. This project was a major investment by the Duchess of Northumberland and has been awarded funding through the Borderlands Inclusive Growth Deal. The play park, themed as a magical village, is considered the world's largest play structure of its kind, designed to attract around 280,000 visitors annually.

This afternoon we went to Bamburgh Castle. It hasn’t rained yet, but it was very windy and only about fourteen degrees. Esme was very tired which didn’t help, she isn’t sleeping well, partly because she is in a normal flat bed rather than her profiling bed, plus she us waking up very early because the curtains are not blackout ones and it is too light in the room.

Feels so cold here this morning that I keep looking at the heating switch ;-)

Met office has a ‘feels like’ rating of 13 degrees :-0

Morning all
Was woken up to a very heavy noisy shower so i looked out the window to see.....hailstones covering the lawn!!

Very sleepless night as my sinuses are awful just now and getting through a box of Kleenex or more everyday so pretty bad.

Hope everyone else looking in has some sun and please send it back up here pronto lol.

Day for indoors today as rest of week busy with various things but plenty to do as always.

Florence in the hebrides

Good morning all This time last year Linda we were in Northumberland, I loved it, a beautiful area. We also visited Al wick. We did n’t have a child with us but I don’t remember a children’s area. So either it is new since then or we just didn’t see it. Sounds fun.
Weather here (North West Cumbria) is a bit ‘iffy’ yesterday was dry but very windy and not very warm, we didn’t go far. It is different when you stay with family, easier to just stay in. Friday we go to Skipton for a week. I don’t think the forecast is v good then either. Frustrating after all the lovely weather.

Good to see you Sylvia. We have had our summer duvet on the bed at home for a few weeks now. Here in the holiday rental, they have normal duvets and I was far too hot last night even though the room was fairly cool because we had the window open. SIL was complaining about their bedroom being too hot during the evening, so I solved the problem by opening their window. Of course they closed it when they went to bed , so this morning he was grumbling about how hot it had been during the night. You can lead a horse to water ………

Finally got on GR again!

It's sunny and partly cloudy, with a gusty wind today. Top temperature will be around 17C or so. The air conditioning is on in the building, so the Lounge and Dining Room can be pretty chilly in certain areas.

We have our own individual air conditioners in our suites that e can turn on as we want. I've been doing that in the evening so that the bedroom can cool down to a decent night time temperature, or else I end up throwing off the duvet, pulling up the duvet, and repeat! Of course, I could put this duvet away and get out my summertime quilt that my daughter made :-D

It has been quite a nice day here, sunny, but windy. We have only had a few minutes of rain. That is going to change though, the forecast for the back end of the week looks bad.
Today we went to Alnwick Gardens, they have a new children’s play park called Lilidorie. You have to pay extra for it, but it has been very well planned. The centre piece is a huge castle cum climbing structure and it is fully accessible. You can push a wheel chair almost to the top, avoiding all the rope bridges etc. Esme loved it, she could cope with the rope bridges with mum behind her, but they avoided the cargo nets and the tunnel slides. It really is refreshing to find somewhere which has put so much thought into accessibility. We liked the gardens as well, although OH and I have been there several times.

Afternoon all looking in.

What a miserable last 2 days Wet, windy and much cooler so no walkies to the beach or anywhere else for that matter.

Linda, hope you eventually met up with your daughter etc and wasn't too starving when you eventually ate!! Enjoy the break away and hope your weather is better than ours.

I have just been in the tunnel to water and oh my everything is growing so fast. The baby cauliflower plants which im selling next week have almost gown out of their pots!! i picked my first pea pod today and inside were 6 very fat peas which were delicious.

Having fish cakes, battered fish, chips and peas for tonights tea, quick & easy.

I also made several pots of jam which has finally set along with a batch of oven flour scones. All of which went down nicely with a cuppa.

Joan i have a vision of you whizzing around with the hoover "doing the shake and vac :-D :-D :-D :-D

Take care all

Florence in the Hebrides

There is nothing wrong with a wavy hedge Joan, just think of it as modern art :-D

We have arrived at our holiday barn conversion near Seahouses. It is very swish. I have brought lots of basic food and we stopped off in Alnwick on the way to go to Morrisons and buy the fridge/ freezer things.
Annoyingly we can’t unpack our clothes until my daughter gets here and we decide on the bedrooms. She said they would be here about the same time as us, but of course they aren’t. They are going to be “ just” two hours later than they said they would. It would be down to Son in Law, he does nothing to help with the packing and wouldn’t even begin thinking of packing his things until it was already time to go. I am starving, but if course we can’t eat until they get here :-|

Hi. Not a nice day today, no sun at all, looks like it might as it's so dull, looks like we had some rain either through the night or early this morning as the drive was damp looking when I got up.
I didn't hear it or see it & it can't have been much as there are no puddles.

Not going outside, not even to finish off the hedge, it's still straggly on one side but it will just have to wiat for a more promising day.

I have had my dinner, I cooked some new potatoes ( Jersey Royals) then I sliced them & gently / lighty fried them, plus an egg & some Black pudding, lovely.

I need to have a wizz round the living room with the vaccum before settling down in front of the telly, if I can find something to watch, if not I will probably have a wee nap instead, LOL.

Joan.

Morning all
Joan you made me chuckle about your "wavy hedge"
:-D

I'm sure you have done a good job and no one would notice. So the wind cleared away the blossom, that must be a bonus.

Its windy and cooler here today so no outdoors jobs to be done.

Was at the supermarket yesterday and bought 10 punnets of strawberries all reduced to just over £1 and I'm going to be making jam today .

Linda, when reading to kids, you do have to be so careful what you respond to them. Also kids very often tell you lots of info re their home situation but you do have to just listen and not comment.

i remember one child telling us their mum and a friend drank 4 bottles of wine on a Friday night. The class teacher said dont make any comment or raise your eyebrows just listen and digest. Unless of course the child was given some to drink in which case, that info would be shared with the head teacher and they would deal with it.

So much red tape, so much PC, the world has gone mad and hardly surprising people dont want to be teachers anymore. Its a minefield out there!

Right have a good day everyone looking in. off to be busy making jam.

Florence in the hebrides

Hello everyone. Gosh what a change re our weather today, it's bright & even sunny but such a cold wind, so very different from what we have been enjoying lately, still no rain though most of our established plants are doing well without it.

I was out this morning to do the weekly shop, not busy so we were through the checkout quickly, I have enough Morrison stamps now so my daughter was looking at & choosing which of the free pyrex bowls/dishes that she can get next time she's in the store.
It's no good me choosing one as I won't use it, I've already given many such items away to family.

I haven't managed into the garden today as it's too cold, I hope I get out soon though as the hedge needs finishing off, good job I don't have neighbours as they would have a good laugh at the wavy top.
One good thing about the wind today is that it has blown away the heaps of Blossom from the garden, LOL.

Joan.

It could be the stress of the compacted roots Florence,or a virus, but they definitely need feeding regularly.

I have been reading in school again this afternoon, you have to be so careful about what you say when chatting about the books. I think that I found out that one little boy seems to be shuffling around Foster’s homes, I will have to ask the teacher about him.

We are moving our things around to fit our son in. He is moving up here, but right at the last minute, he has pulled out of buying the house he was going for. The owners mother had it and she inherited it after the mother died. Her son is supposed to be a builder and has spent the last two years modernising it complete with a big extension. When my son had the survey done, there the surveyor made a comment that there was a dispute with the neighbour over damage to the party wall caused when putting a steel beam in. The sellers haven’t mentioned this at all, but after much digging it seems that the neighbour is demanding 50k to put the damage right. The sellers are saying that they don’t have the money to pay him until my son completes. I don’t think so! There would be nothing to stop them from walking away and leaving my son with the liability, so he is pulling out. It is annoying because he has lost money on the searches and survey etc. He is going ahead with the sale of his own house and is moving in with us until he can find somewhere else to buy.

Well tbh, i don't normally give them any feed. i didn't last year and had plenty of toms.