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From this
To this
Via this.
Who knew that there was quite so much junk in Mum's outhouse! We're both filthy dirty, achy and totally cream crackered, but at least we've got the satisfaction of a good job well done.
For any non-UK readers, cream crackered is a bit of modern rhyming slang. I'll leave it to your imagination as to what it rhymes with.
I've gone west to see my family (and Lily) for a few days so posts may be a bit sparse. We've not got a firm agenda planned out and much of it will depend on the weather - wet, wet, wet after tomorrow apparently - just to make a change!!
I finally finished sewing up my knitted patchwork blanket last night (hurrah!) but the photos will have to wait until I'm home again.
This piece in Saturday's Daily Telegraph certainly caught my attention. How on earth can someone live on just £1 per day for a year? The article in the paper was only small so not a lot of actual information was given away but it did say that Kath Kelly (the woman who managed this amazing challenge) did a lot of eating at free buffets, shopped at jumble sales and visited supermarkets an hour before closing to pick up bargains. Apparently, she also picked fruit from bushes and trees beside a ring road (as she lives in Bristol I suspect I know which ring road she is talking about), and collected £117 in loose change dropped in the street. Even that is amazing as I do keep my eye open for dropped change and sometime find 1p, 2p, or even 5p pieces - but can't imagine I find £1 in total during the year, let alone over £100.
Kath Kelly has written a book about her challenge which I would be very interested to read. Sadly, it is out of stock on Amazon - which probably is on the strength of the article in The Telegraph. I wonder if I could get hold of it from the library?
I know a lot of fellow bloggers have mentioned this book in the last year or so, all praising it highly. Dear Gill at Lucy Locket (www.lucysarah.blogspot.com) sent me this copy absolutely ages ago. I added it to the teetering pile of books beside the bed and somehow it got subsumed beneath other books I picked up in charity shops or car boot sales (pretty much all of them thrillers), until last week when I found it again half way down the pile.
I was in the mood for a change from murder and mayhem and thought I'd give it a go. Well, what a fabulous book. It is so easy to read, and although it's not chock-full of action, the narrative is so gentle and descriptive that after the first couple of pages I was well and truly hooked. For some reason I'd imagined it was an American book (probably because I've read a lot about it on American blogs) but it's not, it's set in Suffolk, and the descriptions of the countryside are wonderful.
Also amazing are the descriptions of the desperate poverty the Mortmain family find themselves in at the beginning of the book. It certainly puts our present 'credit crunch' into perspective (the book is set in the early 1930s), and I love some of the inventive re-fashioning the female charaters do in order to squeeze every last useful moment from their clothing. Inspirational stuff.
Talking of the credit crunch (and I'm not sure the 'CC' is the reason), I realised yesterday that although it is the beginning of September, I haven't spotted any Christmas cards for sale yet. Not in charity shops (some of which have Christmas cards from mid August), nor in W H Smiths. Has anybody spotted these early harbingers of winter yet?
I've finally decided to start a price book to note down what I'm actually paying for groceries at the moment. I had another 'sticker shock' moment in Aldi this week when I realised their unsalted butter was now 99p and not 69p as I had been imagining.
I dug out this old notebook from years ago, the front half had been used but the back portion was still good, so I turned it upside down and started from the back. I'm not quite sure I'm doing it correctly but I've allocated each letter of the alphabet one page and am noting down the item, the price, and where I bought it (and size of pack if relevant). I intend to have it in the shopping trolley at all times and then I can refer to it if I think I've spotted a bargain, or if I want to check that the price I'm paying for something is actually the best I can find. I'm hoping it will be useful in my quest to save money on food items, but if not I'm sure it will make interesting reading in years to come.
I've done really well with selling my handmade items on ebay this past week, and yesterday I sold this bag. Interestingly enough the address to send it to was 'The Royal', ITV Yorkshire. Now I may be barking up the completely wrong tree here, but I do wonder if my bag is going to be used as a vintage prop - I think I'm correct in thinking 'The Royal' is set in the sixties (I've never actually watched it). Could it be my bag is destined for fame and fortune on the small screen? I do hope so.
In the midst of a mighty downpour this morning, I put on my kagoul and popped down the road to the little narrow laneway where I'd spied some juicy looking blackberries the other week. I thought it best to go picking those particular blackberries when the weather was especially inclement in order to minimise the risk of somebody shouting out 'Oi! You shouldn't be picking those.' I'm pretty sure they are wild blackberry bushes, and not the overflow from somebody's garden, but I did feel a bit like a criminal whilst I was picking them.
Mind you, I haven't gone foraging for blackberries for many years. When we were children it was a regular part of our annual calendar and many a Sunday afternoon in September was spent with my parents and a trusty walking stick (to reach the really juicy ones that were always tantalisingly just out of our grasp), filling Tupperware containers from the hedgerows. Dad was very fond of blackberry jam and my poor Mum would then have to cook up these pounds and pounds of blackberries to make his jam. Nobody else was that keen on it but as children we really enjoyed picking in this free food from the hedges, even if we weren't going to eat the final product.
I doubt there would be enough in the laneway here to make much in the way of jam, but there is plenty enough for a blackberry and apple crumble, and hopefully I'll be able to pick in more again next week.
Today's lunch was a surprisingly tasty concoction of a two-day-out-of-date mozarella cheese (since watching the recent TV programme about eating food past its sell-by-date, I've become a lot more blase about dates on food stuffs), the rest of an organic cucumber from the other week (still surprisingly crunchy) and some cherry tomatoes, all chopped up in a large bowl with a pinch of dried basil and a drizzle of olive oil. I had a herb and garlic tortilla wrap with it. A very nice - and pretty virtuous - lunch.
I've also used up a couple of over-ripe bananas by making a banana loaf. That will make a nice change from toast for breakfast for the next few days. Tomorrow I'm hoping to pick in a few blackberries that I saw growing in the very narrow lane half-way down our road (pretty safe to pick those as there's no way traffic can get through that lane, and they're too high up for dogs to be able to wee on). Added to some of the rather sharp eating apples from the garden they should make a tasty crumble filling.
The car boot sale yesterday was, for me, rather lacklustre. Most of the sellers seemed to be flogging baby clothes, prams and toys - very useful for some people but no good for me. I got a couple of books for re-sale and a copy of 'Witness' on video. I was pretty pleased to find that as the copy I'd taped from the telly years ago has mysteriously gone AWOL, and I do so love that film - especially the barn-raising scene.
The 'Coffee and Jumble' resumed this morning after a month's break. I only bought a couple of vintage Skyline kitchen utensils. The smaller one is a potato peeler, but I've no idea about the vicious hook-like object. Anyone have any ideas? Afterwards, I popped into Somerfield where they were selling off large packs of Dove Yeast for 10p each. Now, oddly enough, I wanted some more yeast for the breadmaker, and at that price (one day past its use-by-date) I was happy to take a punt on it still being active. Of course, on reaching the checkout it came up for the full price of £1.09. A small altercation took place as I tried to persuade the woman on the till that it was really reduced to 10p and the people in the queue behind me started tutting a bit. Eventually she believed me and rang it in again at 10p. On the way out I pointed out to one of the supervisors that the yeast was still coming up as full price, and could they please do something about it. I really don't like Somerfield much, but they are the only other supermarket here apart from Aldi, and great though Aldi is there is a limit to what you can buy there.