We Did it!

To everyone who has already sponsored me for last Sunday's Lincoln10k:  a BIG THANK YOU.  If you haven't and you want to, there is still time.  Just click here. 

In the meantime, I promised you photos.  The Mrs Slocombe Academy for Young Ladies turned out in force.  Naturally, we hurt the eyes of everyone who looked at us.

(From left to right, Fifi, Dorothy, Sheila, Scarlet and Hester.  Chris W is missing because he is a serious runner and was busy "getting in the zone".)

There was a small panic on Friday, when I realised I couldn't find my race number.  I phoned the council and they sorted me out with a backup one, which I collected during the morning before the race.   Dorothy sorted us out with pink gym-bloomers - Mrs S would be proud.

Once the signal blew, it took us about 10 minutes to cross the starting line.  All the walkers were in the slowest group, at the back.

Our official times haven't been posted yet, but we know we completed the race in less than 1 hour 46 minutes, because that was the time on the race clock when we crossed the finishing line.   Here is the whole team:

And heading back to our hotel:

I must say, the staff in the hotel didn't bat an eyelash when we staggered into the bar dressed like that and ordered a victory round.  At that point, I had a Gin and Tonic in my sights and wasn't stopping for anyone. 

We had a great time.  Thank you Lincoln, and thank you to everyone who has sponsored us.

- Pam

Shameless Plug

Please sponsor me to do the Lincoln 10K next weekend, Sunday 3rd April 2011.  I'll be raising money for the Shooting Star Children's hospice.

When one of my oldest friends said he wanted to do some fundraising to mark his 25th year in London, I said "Sure, why not?".  When he asked for suggestions, I came up with his home-town's 10K race and then uttered the fatal words:  "Do it in drag.  If you like, I'll even walk it with you".  (He's not a runner.)   Thus was born The Mrs Slocombe Academy for Young Ladies:  Scarlet (Howard), Dorothy (David), Sheila (Chris F) and Fifi (me) their French maid.  We won't be fast.  We will be funny.  And we will surely burn the retinas from your eyes:

Here's Dorothy and Scarlet posing for the camera.  Aren't they fine strapping young gels, as our headmistress Mrs Slocombe would say?

- Pam (I must be mad.  But please sponsor us.)

Thanks George

Yesterday was Budget Day for the UK.  At  12.30pm, George Osborne stood up in the House of Commons and delivered his budget speech.  All the tax changes and personal allowance rises, etc, that have been hinted at by the press became real (by "hinted" I mean embargoed until 12.30 but they couldn't keep their mouths shut).  In the UK, the new tax year starts on 6th April so the effects won't be long in coming.  On a personal tax front, this is what will affect me directly:-

1. Fuel duty went down by a penny.  
2. Employees' National Insurance went up - that's the "con" tax which pretends it's our social security tax but actually just goes into the general tax pool.  The chancellor announced he is going to consult on merging NI with income tax.  About bloody time too.
3. The tax free personal allowances goes up by £1,000 from 6th April BUT the band where you start to pay higher rate (40%) tax drops by £2,400, so anyone earning over £42,475 is immediately worse off.

I feel most aggrieved about the drop in the banding for higher rate tax.  When you think about it in context,  £42.5k isn't that high a salary: the average salary in London is £31k;  the average house price in the UK is £180k; the average council tax on that house is £1.5k;  the average car costs more than £10k; and an outer London zone 5 annual travelcard is £1,880.  This isn't the first time games have been played with the 40% tax band - when I started working in tax, the higher rate kicked in at about £37k; 20 years later, while average salaries have more than doubled, it has barely moved.  If it had risen at the same rate as inflation (which is what the bands were meant to do), then it would be over £50k.

As for me,  I expect to be £20/month or £230.93 per annum worse off. That's what the BBC's budget calculator  tells me http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12773565. 

- Pam (more belt tightening)

Stitch & Craft Show, Olympia

Errr.... How do I put this?  "Forgive me Father for I have sinned...?"  No, I'm not Catholic.  How about "I've solved the dilemma about whether to buy a 16GB or a 32GB iPhone4.  It'll have to be the 16GB one because I've spent the rest of my money on yarn"?

Yes, I think that works.

Today, I took the day off work to go to the Stitch & Craft Show at Olympia, the little sister to the big Knit & Stitch Show held at Alexandra Palace every October.  This is the second or third time I've been to this particular show and I may not have gone if it wasn't that one of the magazines I subscribe to offered discounted tickets at £5.

I told myself:   it'll be a cheap day out.  I can take my lunch and some coffee and save my money for yarn.

I told myself:   no stash enhancement unless I find something amazing or an amazing bargain (and, preferably, aran/worsted weight).

I told myself:  I don't need any more yarn.   I'd just buy some tools, maybe some KnitPro/KnitPicks crochet hooks.

I told myself:  I'll set the budget at £30 and stick to that.


I lied.

I'd barely walked in the door when I encountered the Black Sheep Yarns booth.  (They were directly in front of the door.)  I've mentioned them before.  Every show, they bring along thousands of skeins of yarn, which they sell by the bag at half-price or less.  The owners dump all the sealed bags  into a big heap and the knitters just dive in.  It resembles a rugby scrum.  Would you believe me if I said I was sucked into the vortex and barely made it out of there alive, clinging to bags of yarn to escape?

No.  I didn't think you would.  

My haul from Black Sheep includes:

• 30 skeins of Sublime Cashmere Merino Silk Aran, in the coast colourway (light blue).  Sufficient yarn to make a sweater for DH.  (I've probably bought far too much but that was the quantity recommended by Carole from Black Sheep for a man his size.) I was thinking of making the Inishturk Sweater from Lionbrand for him.  If he doesn't like the yarn, I'll make it for me.   Total price:  £68.97.
• 20 skeins of an unknown brand pure-wool 4-ply, in a really pretty baby-pink.  Given their size, I assumed the skeins were 25 grams each - I've just weighed a bag and I was right. Knitting destination - something vintage. Total price:  £19.98.

At this point, I escaped Black Sheep and wandered around the show.  However, I had to pass them as I was leaving and the only way to get out of the vortex was to buy:-

• 10 skeins of Sublime Soya Cotton DK in shade 085, Noodle, bought to make the pattern, Souk, from the book shown, The Luxuriously Exotic Soya Cotton Hand Knit Book also by Sublime.  Cost including the book:  £23.98.

(I  really like the cover pattern, Passionflower, and the colour it's in (shade 088, pomegranate) which is why I returned to the yarn heap.  However, they didn't have any pomegranate and it does occur to me that it would work well in the Sublime Angora Merino in Giggle Pink, that I already have stashed.)

The other place I dropped money on yarn was the Lang booth, home of Addi Turbo knitting needles, and Jawoll sock yarn.

The Jawoll Magic is for a pair of socks for DH; the other two are self-patterning and we may fight for them.  Total cost:  £19.

So much for self control.  [sigh]

I did buy some tools: stitch holders and the like, spending £9.45 in the process, but not the KnitPro hooks - the available sets didn't appeal to me.

Anyway, I've just added up the cost of today's haul and I'm not proud of myself:  £141.38. 

Yes, I have the money in the bank to cover it.  Yes, I won't get into debt over it.  Yes, I will use it all... Eventually.  But I'm not pleased with myself for walking in the door at the show and diving straight into the Black Sheep yarn pile, going "Aran!  Aran!  Must have Aran!  What can I make with it now I've found it?".  (The light blue wasn't even a colour on my list - it was the only shade they had that appealed to me that both DH and I can wear.)

[sigh]

This was meant to be the year when the stash decreased NOT increased.  If I knit for an hour a day, every day, until Christmas, do you think it'll make a difference?  (Like I don't do that already?  [sigh])

- Pam





PS:  The show wasn't just about yarn.  One of the stands was manned by Corum, the charity that was originally the Foundling Hospital.    They were displaying some of the thousands of foundling tokens left with the children by their mothers (in an age of illiteracy and before fingerprints, the tokens were a means of identifying a child should the mother come back to claim them later).  Most of the tokens are cloth, sometimes embroidered, sometimes just a piece of ribbon onto which was written a name.  (Many mothers tried to name their babies even though they knew they'd be renamed once they were admitted.)  The token was attached to the child's record of admittance.  They form a valuable textile archive, which is why they are being displayed a this show.   Someone commented to me that they found it fascinating. "It's heartbreaking," I replied and started to cry.

A Diagnosis (and a car review)

The garage finally called me today.  The Toy didn't have a broken clutch or a damaged gearbox; it was a broken drive shaft.  Cost to repair £400.  He'll be ready tomorrow.  I'll collect him on Saturday, which is the first chance I'll get.

In the meantime, I've driven to Site in a hire car, a Honda Civic.  So far, I've done over 260 miles in it.  On the one hand, it's not a model I've driven before, so I'm quite happy to give it a test drive; on the other, the designer seems to have swallowed some of the same rubbish that Renault feed their designers:  all style and no function.   Take a look at the rear end; can you see what I mean?  (Pictures courtesy of Honda.)

See that spoiler, half way across the rear window?  Not only does it put a thick band of (?) metal across the window cutting the view in two, it almost obscures the headlights of any vehicle behind you until, that is, said vehicle hits a bump in the road which creates the optical illusion that it is flashing you.  Add to that the fact that the car doesn't have a rear wiper or washer, throw in a total inability to demist the lower half of the window (the top window has an electric demister) and the whole design of the hatch seams totally stupid.

(Interior shot of a left hand drive, automatic Civic.)

Another gripe (I have three, in total), is to do with the central console between the two front seats.   Like most cars in Britain, this one has a manual gear box.  The position of the gear lever is, probably, fine in an automatic (see above), but it is awkward for a manual driver.  In addition, having the only cup holder directly in front of the gear lever is insane because you have to reach over your travel mug, holding your elbow at right angles, to avoid knocking the cup over (see below).

My final gripe is minor.  I'm having problems coming to grips with the high beam on the headlights.  It seams that on virtually every other car I have ever driven, you pull the indicator lever towards you to put on high beam and push it away from you if you just want to flash your headlights.  In this car, it's the opposite.   (In some older cars, you pushed a button on the floor with your toe.)

OK, so those are all the bad things.  On the plus side, it handles well and is fairly nippy.   On the motorway, it was a comfortable drive so long as I didn't have to change gear.  It was easy to set up the mirrors, seat, etc, to suit me.  It has good wing mirrors which made reverse parking at work easy.  The interior is versatile, with the rear seats folding up as well as folding down flat to create a large rear space for transporting goods.  The driver's seat can be raised or lowered using a pump-action lever at the side and it's something you can do while you are driving, when you discover you can't see the speedo because the steering wheel is in the way.  The instrument display is clear and sensibly laid out.  Visibility is good to the front and sides of the vehicle.  It doesn't have a electronic demister for the front window but that window defrosted fairly quickly this morning in -2C.

Over all, I can't give it a higher score than 6 out of 10.   If it was an automatic, I'd give it a 7.

- Pam



(edited later to add:  that rear window thing is REALLY ANNOYING!!!  You can't see a damn thing out of it if it's raining and, of course, you can't clear off the rain drops because THERE IS NO WIPER!!!  After driving in the rain this morning, the score just dropped to 5.)

Not a good evening

Ever heard a tale about how bad things come in threes? Well this is one of those.

The only thing I had on my mind, when I left work on Thursday, was whether I should buy a 16GB iPhone4 or hold out for another month so that I could afford to buy the 32GB version.  My inner geek says "get the one with bigger storage", but I am about £40 short.  I drove home scheming:  the arguments in my head running along the lines of "if I take £40 from this account, I could get the phone now and pay it back next month" or "why don't I just charge it and finish paying it off next month?".  (I quickly shushed the latter argument.)  Another part of my brain was arguing:  "Why not settle for the 16GB? Do I really need 32GB of storage?".  It lost. 

Holding of purchasing for another month was still winning later on my way to a pub quiz, when I turned the car around outside the pub.  Then I heard it.  A metallic crunching noise, followed by "clatter, clatter".  I quickly parked the car up.  I first thought I'd damaged the steering (I'd had it on full lock); no, that felt fine.  Wheels, then?  They were still turning.  I decided it had to be a wheel bearing.  First thing wrong.

I went to the quiz, knowing that I could drive home with a broken wheel bearing, even if it wasn't safe to drive on the motorway to work.  We won.  And promptly donated our winnings to charity.  (You have to if you're known to be a friend of the quiz master.) 

Afterwards, S offered to shadow my drive home, in case something happened on the way.  Turned out, he didn't need to.  The Toy rolled about 2 feet before something seized up and he stopped.  So I phoned the RAC, switched off the engine, switched on the hazard lights and settled down to a long-ish wait.  When he arrived, the RAC mechanic determined it wasn't a wheel bearing.  It was the clutch.  The self-same clutch I'd had replaced 6 weeks ago.

(Incidentally, the most bizarre thing happened while I was waiting. A car pulled up beside me to ask directions.  Given that the only way to identify that my car was possibly occupied were its flashing hazards, I was a bit surprised to say the least.  Still don't know why they didn't walk into the pub and ask them.  It was fully lit.)


Watching as the mechanic hitched the Toy up to tow home, I noticed a long scratch on the passenger side.  Some bastard had keyed the Toy while I was in the pub.  Second thing wrong.


Got home well after midnight.  DH greeted me with a hot drink.  Then noticed a puddle of water on the oak floor in the hall.  Underneath the radiator.  A radiator that had suspicious looking rust marks down one edge.  It was obviously leaking from a seal near the valve you'd use to bleed it of air.  We could see the water drops forming.  I switched the radiator's thermostat to "off" and positioned a tupperware container under the drips.  Third thing wrong.

Definitely not a good evening.

In the morning, the RAC towed me to the garage, while DH followed and then drove me into work.  All I know is that the Toy will take several days to fix, so I've arranged a hire car for my trip to Site next week.  And we'll get the plumber in to fix the radiator next week.  It's still dripping a little, but not enough to get close to filling the Tupperware box.

- Pam

Frugal Friday (on Saturday): Think when you spend the money

Have you been following the news about the Christchurch Earthquake in New Zealand?  Have you donated? The Red Cross are running various donation sites - I used the British one to ensure they could claim tax relief on my donation and thus increase its value by 20%.

I was thinking about the earthquake on my drive home from Site yesterday, wondering what I could do from 15,000 miles away.  Australians tend to think of New Zealand as our little brother; they were part of the federation talks in the 1890's until New South Wales pissed them off.  You didn't need a passport to travel between the two countries until the 1970's, when the Australian government imposed that requirement.  And about a third of all Kiwis live in Australia.

Anyway, I was wondering what I could do.  As a knitter, my first instinct said "Knit something to donate", but I'm so far away that donating knitted goods is impractical.  So I settled on donating cash.

Then I saw this, on the back of a toilet door in the motorway services at South Mimms:

And it made my blood boil.  So much so, that I took a photo.

I have nothing against Red Nose Day, the biennial fundraising event run by Comic Relief.  I'm sure they're grateful for the free publicity.  However, what made me angry is the implication that they'll get the £1.50 or £4 if I buy those products from the services shop.  They'll be lucky if they get 10 or 20 pence.  How many people fall for this?  Sure, if you were going to buy an overly expensive box of Maltesers from the shop anyway, then buying the packet that ensures a donation to charity might be a nice gesture.  But were you going to buy two before you saw the promotion?  And at a price where you could get four or five packets from the supermarket?

Surely it's better to donate money directly to the charity involved and cut out the middle man?    In the case of the Maltesers, if I really wanted a snack, I could have bought something healthy from the Waitrose next door and donated my change to Red Nose Day and still given more than they'd receive from the promotion.

This happens at Christmas, too, with all of those "charity Christmas cards", when the charity named is lucky to get a couple of pennies from an expensive packet of cards.


We all have limited funds.  If you want to donate money to charity, give it to them directly.  That way, they'll get the most benefit.

- Pam

Frugal Friday : How I Saved The Week

I had a "well D'uh!" moment this afternoon.  After I collected my new glasses (see below), I popped into the bank to deposit a cheque and ended up having a chat with one of their advisors.  In the middle of her trying to sell me one of their "new, improved" cheque accounts complete with shiny fees, we both had an epiphany.

Her rationale for "upgrading" my account to a shiny new one was that it because it has a much lower rate of overdraft interest, even with the fees it'd be cheaper.  They're currently charging nearly 20% p.a. on overdrafts for accounts like mine.  Plus they've imposed a monthly fixed fee of £5 for each month in which the account goes into overdraft.  And even with last year's good effort, I'm still overdrawn for much of the month. If I didn't want to do that, she suggested, what about taking on a bank loan and transferring my overdraft to that?  Or utilise a 0% credit card offer?    "I've got a 0% credit card offer.  I used it to pay for the freehold to my flat," says I.

"And why haven't you transfered your overdraft to that?" she demanded. 

At which point, I stared at her.  And the penny dropped.

Hard.  

I could do that. And I could continue paying down that debt and pay it off faster because I wouldn't be clobbered by interest and charges each month.  The effective interest rate is about 4% p.a. instead of 20% p.a., so why haven't I done it before?  (4% because that's the rate of the balance transfer fee.  I'm simplifying, of course.)  The 0% rate runs out in November - that should be enough time to clear the overdraft, while continuing to pay down the balance already on there for the freehold.

There are risks.  The biggest being that I could drift back into overdraft, ending up worse off than where I started:  heavily overdrawn but this time carrying a similar balance on a credit card.  Can I trust myself not to do that?  A year ago, I don't know, but now I think so.  I've paid a lot of debt off in the last year.  I track my spending.  I've put money into savings.  I've recovered from the drain on my finances of having an empty flat (better, the tenant has just signed a new 12-month lease with a rent increase of £25/month).  And my salary's gone up (I've had two raises). 

When I got home, I logged into the credit card website and made the transfer.  It does make sense.

- Pam



PS:  About the title, one of the podcasts I listen to is the Knitcents podcast.   Roue, the host, does a segment called "How I Saved The Week" where she lists her latest efforts to save money.  I've stolen it from her.

Got my voice back

Hello, did you miss me?  It feels like forever since I last wrote.  Where do I start?  I've written a thousand blogs in my head but now they've all vanished. (Typical.)

OK, let's start with the computer.  I took it to a local tech place, where they found a damaged sector and nothing else.  There were no viruses, no bugs, no identifiable cause for Windows going SNAFU. I got it back last weekend - they did a complete rebuild and reinstalled Vista together with all the drivers.  £69 very well spent.   There is only one remaining problem:  my bluetooth mouse won't work.  I haven't tested yet whether the problem is the mouse or the computer.  If the latter, then it's a physical problem and not the driver - I've managed to test the driver.  Any suggestions?

In other news, I have new glasses - my first pair of verifocals*.  Collected them this afternoon. They look pretty similar to my existing glasses, so no great change there.  First impressions of verifocals:  the reading "corner" by the nose is fine, easy to adjust to;  it's the change of focus out by the arms that is weird.  I wasn't expecting that.  It's like looking into a mirror in a hall-of-mirrors and using the reflection to see with.  It only happens if I turn my eyes instead of my head to look at something at a range of 3 feet or so away.  Monday night's rehearsal is going to be a big test - can I read my music and watch the conductor without feeling sea-sick?

- Pam


* This feels like a further step in the transformation into my mother.  Not only do I look like her and suffer her infertility problems, I've developed her eyes too.  Short sight and long sight in the same eyeball.  < sigh >

Ramblings

DH is at work so I've nicked borrowed his computer to do a quick update.  I've been at Site most of the week, got home an hour ago and will be back there on Tuesday.  (Sunday night = Superbowl night.  With the match finishing around 3.30am, I've taken Monday off.)  The laptop situation is really, really annoying me.  I'm not on it all night, everynight when I'm away, but I resent having that choice taken away from me. And I miss the ability to witter away write down my thoughts as I want, when I want.

I had plans for this year.  It's amazing how those plans are dependent on having a computer.  I wanted to work out to an exercise DVD in the mornings when I'm at Site.  My choir will be singing in Nancy, France, in June and I wanted to learn some French beyond Ici est le facture pour le BlahBlah project (after four years dealing with the staff of a French client, my grasp of their language is still embarrassingly bad).  I wanted to blog more often.  I wanted to practice my singing using the rehearsal midi-files my choir provides.

Had a conversation yesterday with one of our tech guys at work.  My original plan was to drop the laptop off at the clinic at PC World but he suggested finding a local place instead, saying PC World's customer service had a bad reputation.  There's a place in Uxbridge I may try.  It needs Vista reinstalled and, probably, all the drivers.  Fingers crossed, I can drop it off tomorrow and get it back, fixed, on Monday afternoon.

On the way home tonight, I dropped into Costco and was very tempted by one of the netbooks.  I didn't buy it but it remains an option.  I could spend the Sanity Fund (currently £375 and all earmarked for an iPhone).  We'll see what tomorrow brings, I guess.

- Pam (feeling like a moaning minny)

Apologies for the radio silence but...

Meine Laptop ist kaput.  Or at least, very, very sick.  Sunday, it struggled to get to the log-in screen and had to "repair" itself.  When it does load, there are so many "Driver xxx has stopped working" messages that it takes 15 minutes to get the desktop up and running. 

I don't even know what half of those things do.   Why should software that comes preloaded fail? It's only two years old, for heaven's sake - why should it be having these problems?

I'm taking it to the clinic at PC World on Saturday and they can rebuild it.  In the meantime, I probably won't be blogging much.

- Pam  (suspect the cure will be "Windows 7" and an expensive bill)

Involuntary Silence

At one point this month, it seemed that everything I touched broke.  The Toy kept revving strangely every time I changed gear.  My mobile phone had a temper tantrum.  The files I needed to use at work?  Crashed. 
And the laptop, my computer, refused to load my profile.  Instead, I kept getting this weird message, "The User Profile profile service failed to logon" and then it would return to the log-in screen.  This happened the day we were going away for New Year.

It took some frantic internet searching to find out what had gone wrong:  Vista has a bug where it renames your profile as a backup and then tries to create a new copy.  Except that the new copy has nothing in it to load.  There is a solution:  you have to change it all back.  If it happens to you, here is the discussion board that helped me - you need to read the entire thread though.  And it does work. 

I've spent the last week cleaning up the laptop:  deleting old podcasts, running a backup, creating a restore point, running a registry cleaner.  Things aren't perfect when I login the laptop takes ages to load and I get dozens of "xxxx Service Failed.  Windows is checking for a fix" messages.  Even the service that checks for fixes failed!  I'm at a bit of a loss about what to do next.

Anyway, while it wasn't working, I started to compose a New Year post.  It seems a bit to late now to give it a post on its own so here it is:

Getting my head around 2011

Happy New Year!  Did you do anything special to celebrate?  We went to friends.  How was your Christmas?  Have you made any resolutions?  How did last year's go?  I promise to have a Sit-Rep up on last year by the end of Sunday.

Over the last two weeks, I've eaten too much, drunk too much, cooked, knitted, watched 50+ episodes of CSI, broke the laptop, visited the Imperial War Museum, gone to the football, attended 3 Christmas meals, attempted to fix the laptop, played with the Best Dog In the World, gave blood, shopped a little, caught up with friends, de-stressed, snuggled with DH, etc, etc.  I am so glad I booked the week off before Christmas and that my employer closes between Christmas and New Year.  I was knackered and tired and (probably) had another dose of shingles.

The period between Christmas and New Year has always been a special time for me; a time for reflection and day-dreams and making plans for the future.  This year it seems like everyone is getting on that band-wagon: everywhere I look, I'm getting the same message "New Year; New You".  (It even appeared in the subject line of emails from two yarn stores. What on earth is that about?)   So far, I only have one New Year's Resolution:  to get fit.  

It's incomplete, but I hope you get the idea.

Oh, and the problem with the Toy?  Needed a new clutch.  

- Pam

Christmas

I didn't mean to be silent for so long.  The job is hell as usual.  Nothing personal, just too much work and not enough me.  As well as the usual shutdown between Christmas and New Year, I took the week off before Christmas and have spent the time winding down.

Saturday morning, I sat drinking coffee, watching the snow fall and listening to the cricket live from the WACA in Perth, Western Australia:  England versus Australia.  In my head, I could see a hot summer's day bathed in that glorious golden Australian light. What a contrast.   Britain has been caught out again by winter.  You'd think they'd learn. It snowed for three hours causing chaos as usual:  the second runway at Heathrow was closed for days; Eurostar trains were cancelled; roads closed.  We've had snow on the ground ever since, with the odd flurry to top it up. 

We did "Polish" Christmas last night:  roast goose with chestnut stuffing, roast potatoes, roast onion, honey glazed parsnips, broccoli, and orange sauce; then the presents and then Christmas Pudding.  It was just the two of us this year and that was perfect.   Guess what DH gave me for Christmas?  The complete series of The Good Life .  I didn't even know it had been re-released!  I feel thoroughly spoilt. 

The goose was an interesting cooking challenge since it was too long for the baking dish, even diagonally.

It ended up getting roasted with its feet in the air, wrapped in foil and propped up on the side of the oven.  (Note to self:  next time 30 minutes a kilo at 170C, draining of fat every half hour.)   Although DH had picked up a turkey on a visit to the butcher earlier in the month, I really wanted a goose*.  The butcher said he could get one but it'd "cost an arm and a leg".  We collected him on Tuesday and I hate to break it to our kosher butcher, but at £46, his goose was cheaper than the non-kosher one I bought two years ago for Christmas at Peter's (£70-odd, IIRC).   The turkey is in the freezer for later in the year.
 
Today, we're off to friends to have another Christmas.  I'll leave you with one other lasting memory:  my husband insisting he wasn't cold, clearing snow from the cloches in the veggie patch.

 Eat your heart out, Crocodile Dundee.  You aren't as hard as DH.  :o)

Merry Christmas everyone.

- Pam


*  This is the first year since we moved into the house that the stove has been wired in and I could use its electric ovens.  Except for last year when I did a duck in the microwave-convection oven, every other year I'd prep the turkey but it'd get roasted in my MIL's oven before being brought back here for dinner.  I wanted to celebrate having a proper working stove by cooking something I haven't been able to cook, so enter the goose.

Football rant

Could someone in the Chelsea hierachy please explain to me:  what is the point of Salomon Kalou? You play him as a foward but, lets face it, he can't score goals.  In four years, he's scored what?  34 goals?    Even your prize defender, John Terry, has a better goal scoring record than that.

Kalou just isn't up to the job you're giving him.  Do you know his nickname on the terraces?  Forest.  As in "Forest Gump".  He'll run forever, but he can't tackle and he can't score.  Why did you get rid of decent players, like Joe Cole and keep Kalou?

Sigh.

And you wonder why we're struggling.

- Pam

Frugal Friday on Saturday - introducing Herdy

This is Herdy.  Herdy, is a sheepy-bank.

Herdy was a Christmas present, last year or the year before.


Every evening, Herdy gets fed with 1p, 2p, 5p and £2 coins.  DH and I have been collecting them since 1999.  We have larger containers for them than Herdy but they were put into storage when we started the building work in March so Herdy came into play.  Today, we emptied a very full Herdy.

It took quite a bit of shaking.

And the £2 coins kept getting in the way.

 Eventually, Herdy was empty.

As you can see from the picture with DH's hand, Herdy is not huge.  Even so, he contained:

£94 x £2 coins

£3.50 x 5p coins

£2.28 x 1p and 2p coins

A grand total of £99.78p, which has now been added to these:

When full, we'll bag them, tag them and take them to the bank.  The coppers jar holds about £22 when full.  The 5p jar has never been emptied, was last counted at 3/4 full and held around £90 then. (Oh, and it weighed in at 20lb today.)  The Maltesers money box holds £600 and is known as the "running away fund" (it goes towards holidays).

Because we fill these in tiny increments, this is money we don't miss.  We do have one rule we (almost always) apply - if you get one of these coins, don't spend it; take it home to feed Herdy.  When we started the collection, I was inspired by a story told by the Australian finance guru, Noel Whittaker, about a client of his, a single mum living on benefits who saved enough for a deposit on a home for her family.  She did it by applying one rule:  never spend a $5 bill.*  When the £2 coin came out, I decided to do the same with that.  It's a good rule - we've saved well over £2,000 of holiday money that way.

- Pam



* When my sister was a mortgage broker, she had a client in almost identical circumstances who did something similar.  In her client's case, she'd realised that every time she went shopping and decided to buy a "little treat" for herself, it cost about $5.  One day, she had a lightbulb moment and realised that if she saved all those $5 treats, she could save enough for a down payment on a home.  And so she did.