Making Good Use

By Gum, Gumtree is Good

Thanks to an extremely useful tip from Tonya, I listed all the items I'm trying to sell on to the Bristol Gumtree site as well as having them on Trade It.  I only listed them yesterday and this morning I had a phone call from someone interested in the vintage printer's tray.  By 5.00 pm the deal was concluded with one happy buyer and one very happy seller (that's me) who has managed to clear at least one item from the silly amounts I've amassed.  Now, anyone want a small corner pine shelf unit or a child-size Samsonite suitcase??

An Urge to Purge

I've got the urge to purge a lot of the 'stuff' I've been carting round with me for years and years.  Sadly, a lot of it hasn't even seen the light of day in 17 years and now I'm rediscovering it all I'm quite horrified with the monumental amount of cr*p I've accumulated.  Already two boxes of books and other sundry bits plus a couple of pictures have gone in a well-timed charity collection but there are boxes and boxes of 'stuff' of mine still piled up in the garage here. 

Much of it is quite large and / or heavy 'stuff' which is not really suitable for ebay selling (and speaking of which, I have uncovered so much I'll be able to list on there in the New Year that I could take a break from visiting any charity shops between now and Easter - not that I will!!  Just thinkin' I could if I really wanted to.) 

Anyhoo, what to do with some of the larger items?  My sister came up with the perfect solution - list them for free in the online version of the local Bristol  'Exchange and Mart-type' newspaper' Trade It.  It was really simple to upload the ads with photos (much simpler than listing on ebay) and I'm keeping everything crossed that the phone will be ringing off the hook this weekend with locals wanting to buy my 'stuff'  in time for Christmas. 

Things are not really helped by the fact that a) I'm finding it difficult to hear the phone ring if I'm not in the living room (no idea what happened during the move as the phone used to have a perfectly sensible ring but it now seems to be uber quiet,) and b) I had no idea that there is now a voicemail service since I changed the phone provider to Virgin.  I actually had six messages on there (only one related to a Trade It ad) which have accumulated since Monday!!  That'll learn me not to bother reading the instruction booklet I was given by the engineer.

So, if anyone in the Bristol / Bath area wants to buy a vintage printers tray, an unused and boxed vintage bread board and knife set (Prestige none the less), an oak framed vintage hall mirror, or a vintage framed Lyles Golden Syrup advertisement check out Trade It online and give me a ring!!!!  I'll be really glad to see the back of any / all of the above items.

5p Very Well Spent

The weekend before we left Essex, P and I went off to a Christmas Fair at a little village church.  There wasn't an awful lot in the way of bargains to be had but I did pick up a couple of bits of toiletries and a huge pile of vintage postcards for £2.50.  Amongst the toiletries was this teeny tiny little pot of Origins Youthtopia firming eye cream which cost me 5p. 

I knew Origins was a good make (and, indeed, think I came across some Origins face wash at the same Christmas Fair last year) but it wasn't until I got home and checked out their website that I realised these teeny tiny little pots (5oz / 15ml) cost over £20!!  Goodness, what a price!!  I didn't list it on ebay as someone had obviously tested the product at some point but thought I would use it myself.  Well, whaddaya know, this stuff is marvellous.  I've been using it every day for the past three weeks and the bags, wrinkles and dark rings round my eyes have definitely improved.   It's pretty miraculous and I'm really impressed.  Not sure I'm impressed enough to spend over £20 but for 5p I am very very impressed indeed.

Hello, Me Babber

I heard the above phrase spoken in the broadest Bristolian accent on Saturday (at a local Christmas Fair) and knew at that point that I was home again. 

The move went as smoothly as these things can, and we were very lucky that we moved last Wednesday and not this Wednesday as Essex was badly hit by snow yesterday - which would have made for a very tricky move indeed.  Luckily, we've yet to see any sign of the white stuff here in the ever-so-slightly-warmer West Country.

Poor P only had the one night in our new home and flew off to Hong Kong last Friday evening in order to start his new job on Monday.  Today was the first time I've been able to speak to him on the phone (a week was the quickest Virgin could connect me which is not bad at all considering BT were quoting a date in January!!  Seriously, they think six weeks without a phone or the internet is acceptable in the 21st century.  Jeez, I don't think so!!) 

 We're both missing each other like mad but such is life in this economic downturn.  At least P has a job for the next six months.  He's still hoping something will come from the interview he had in Switzerland last week and so am I, especially as you can fly direct from Bristol to Zurich these days.

I'm still surrounded by unpacked boxes and things are a bit daunting at the moment.  I have been helped tremendously by having Mum round the corner (I pop round for a cup of tea most afternoons) and she has been a real trooper.  Some very good friends of mine who also live just round the corner have been fantastic, too, and I'm really grateful to them for all their help.

We found that the garage roof was leaking quite badly in one place - not ideal as we have a ton of 'stuff' stored in there at the moment - but I contacted a local builder who has, hopefully, fixed the leak.  He'll be back again on Tuesday to start on the rather long list of fiddly little things that need sorting out around the house.  Again, it's helpful to be on familiar ground as I know he is a reliable and pleaseant chap to deal with.

I'm taking everything one day at a time and eventually it will all get sorted.  At least there is no looming deadline like there was with the moving date, so that makes things easier to cope with.

Home Owners

Finally, yesterday, after some tense last-minute hitches, we've become proud home owners.  It's not the first time for me as I used to own a house in Bristol before but for P it is a new experience.  Sadly, it is not one he's going to get to relish for too long as we will be moving in next Thursday (the long-distance move takes place over two days) and on Friday - barring an absolute miracle - he will have to fly to the Far East. 

One of the jobs he was pinning his hopes on in Switzerland has turned out to be a 'no', but he is going over there for a whistle-stop visit on Monday and Tuesday for another interview.  We know he won't get an answer on that job very quickly (the recent 'no' decision from Switzerland took almost six weeks!!) so the Far East it will be - at least for a while.

We are both up to our hocks in cardboard boxes, bubble wrap and parcel tape, and in clearing eight-years worth of accumulated clutter and detritis from the house.  At the moment it seems like we're on a never-ending packing treadmill - with a scarily looming deadline of 8.00 am next Wednesday.  Still, it's quite good fun to put old items out on the pavement - two very ancient portable TV's and a clunky old microwave dug out of the loft - and see how long before someone takes them.  This evening the microwave lasted less than an hour and a half!!  We suspect most of it is being snaffled by the lad with the scrap metal lorry who lives across the road.  I've often wished him somewhere else when he's been out in the road loudly re-arranging his scrap in the back of the wagon at totally inconsiderate times like 8.00 am on a Sunday morning or 11.00 pm in the evening, but now he's saving us a fortune in 'special collection' fees from the council.   Plus he also took a rodent chewed sun lounger (with metal frame), two totally dangerous rickety old stools (with metal legs) and a rusted metal clothes rail (cheapo tat from Argos) which we dug out of the shed at the weekend.  If he'd like to knock, he could also have our totally knackered wooden garden bench with heavy cast iron ends, otherwise it'll have to stay where it is - if we tried to move it I think the wooden planks would disintegrate.

Last night, we were mentally going through what we've bought new in the eight years we've lived here - the list is pretty short.  Two TV's - one when we first moved in to replace a teeny portable TV and the second a few weeks ago to replace that, one laptop - bought in the summer, and a washing machine - bought when we moved in.  I'm pretty impressed with that - only four new, retail items bought for the house in all those years.  Plenty of other things have joined us here, of course, but they've all come from boot sales or charity shops.  And will we be buying anything new for our new abode - not if I can help it, no!!

Thank you all so much for your kind comments on my last post - it is lovely to know so many people are rooting for us during this crappity crap crap time.

Homeward Bound

Apologies for the scarcity of blog posts recently - there is an awful lot of upheaval and change going on for P and I at the moment - and it's led to a distinct shortage of time and little cheerful news to impart.

Very long story short, after two totally crappity crap crap crapulous years in which we have endured redundancy, unemployment, bereavement, health problems and being stuck in a crappity crapulous rented house for much longer than either of us had ever anticipated (we were two days away from cutting a deal on a beautiful house to buy when redundancy hit us as a bolt from the blue) I am heading back to Bristol to live whilst P has been forced to find work abroad.

Upsides of all this are: we are - finally - going to own our own house; I'll be just round the corner from my Mum (and Lily the cat;) my sister, nephew and brother-in-law are only a short car drive away; I know the area well and still have friends there.

Major downside, of course, is that P and I will have to live apart for however long it takes for him to find work in the UK again.  It is hard to believe, with unemployment apparently falling rapidly, that a specialised solicitor with years of industry experience, who speaks three languages fluently (and two more to a pretty high standard,) and who has more qualifications than you can shake a stick at has, after two years of exhaustive and relentless job applications, found it totally impossible to find work here. 

If it had happened to anyone else I would have thought they were not trying hard enough but I can honestly say that P has exhausted every avenue either he or I could think of.  He has been prepared to do any sort of legal work within his field of speciality, at any location within the UK.   He has written hundreds of speculative letters, 95% of which go completely unanswered, applied for any and every job he thought he might have any chance of getting - again, the vast majority of those applications go unanswered - and attended several dozen interviews (astonishingly enough, even after attending interviews he often never hears from the company again.  It is so rude and disheartening and when, exactly, did it become OK to treat people in such an appalling manner!!) 

Eventually, back in the summer, we knew we'd have to start thinking outside of the box (and, indeed, outside of the UK) and he has now been offered short-term contract work in the Far East.  He's also got a couple of applications still on the boil for legal jobs in Switzerland (where he was born and brought up) which we are desperately hoping will come to fruition as Switzerland is a darn sight nearer  to the UK than the Far East is.

So yeah, it's a difficult time and somewhat bittersweet.  Sweet because I'll be much nearer to my family but hellishly bitter because P won't be there with me.

Cheap Eats - For a Change

For some unknown reason, yesterday our local Co-op had a load of their own-brand organic eggs heavily reduced.  The display-until date was November 6th but the best-before date is not until November 12th.  I'm guessing good old 'elf and safety' regulations may have something to do with why they were selling them off so cheaply when they are good to eat for another week.  Whatever the reason, I was delighted to be able to buy half-a-dozen for only 99p instead of the usual £2.10.

I know I could buy non-organic, non-free-range eggs at 99p a half-dozen all the time but eggs are something I really would not want to eat unless they are free-range at the very least, and preferably organic to boot.  I'm the same with chicken - if it ain't at least free-range, we ain't eating it.   I just would not feel comfortable eating chicken or eggs from battery-farmed sources - no matter how cheap it might be - I'd rather have a vegetarian meal instead.

Anyhoo, the 99p eggs coupled with a bag of peppers, a tin of tomatoes and an onion made a very cheap evening meal of Chachouka.  (And very tasty it was too though the eggs were just a tad over-cooked as I got carried away watching Jamie's 15-Minute Meals on Channel 4+1, ahem!!)  Served with some part-baked crusty bread from Aldi, I reckon the total cost of an evening meal for the two of us was somewhere around £2.00.  As I'm always in total awe of those bloggers out there who manage to feed their families for around £1.00 per head day in, day out, I was really pleased to have managed - most unusually - to pull this off myself.  Seriously, I don't know how people manage to do that so successfully - I cook every meal from scratch, a lot of it is vegetarian and I shop mainly in Aldi,  but I'd hate to tell you how much our food bills are these days.  It's frankly scary!!

Imported Yankee Twaddle

My Dad particularly disliked Halloween and always referred to it as 'imported Yankee twaddle.'  I tend to go along with him with this sentiment - when exactly did Halloween get to be so big in the UK?  When I was a child there was no such thing as trick or treat - though there was a local ghost story about a statue of a woman that stands on top of an old barn (Sally on the Barn) who would come to life and walk the surrounding fields every Halloween.  It used to scare me half to death as a child (but then, I was a very easily scared child!  Just ask my sister, who would torment me with shouting out things like 'Cybermen' (my personal Dr Who monster bete noir) or 'Green Noah' (a particularly scary Jackanory story that I hated) everytime I went upstairs on my own!!)

There is something I very much dislike about trick or treating - like it's begging but with menaces.  At least with the old 'Penny for the Guy' routine (and surely Guy Fawkes night is what we should be 'celebrating' at this time of year - being English and all that) children had to have made a decent looking guy before adults would cough up any money (and they had to sit around on freezing cold pavements for hours on end to get any decent takings, too.)  When I was in Switzerland the other week, I noticed signs of Halloween creeping in there as well - and Halloween was a totally unknown concept in that country until very recently.  No doubt it's all down to 'globalisation!!'

I doubt we'll get many trick or treaters bothering us this evening - we rarely do - but those that do ring the bell will get rather slim pickings here.  I have wrapped up some pink and white marshmallows in white kitchen roll, secured them with elastic bands (courtesy of the elastic-band dropping local postie) and drawn some ghost faces on them.  They're nothing wonderful but I'm darned if I'm going to lash out on buying a bag of Cadbury's mini chocolates at an extortionate price just on the off chance that some kid in a fright mask will ring the bell (especially as I can't eat up the chocolate that's left over these days due to ye olde gall bladder problem!!)  If any more than four children come to our door, then they'll have to make do with an apple or a banana.  Not sure they'd see that as a 'treat'!!

Fabric Finds

Thrifting finds have been somewhat elusive of late - what with the boot sale season now being finished and me not having been very well so haven't been perusing the charity shops at all - and, oddly enough, most of the items I have come across in the last week or so have been fabric finds.

There was an Autumn Fayre at a Methodist church on the outskirts of Southend last Saturday where I found a nice pile of vintage linen tea towels - several of them unused.

Plus an unused vintage souvenir tablecloth from Torquay - with gorgeously evocative illustrations and colours. 

At the same Autumn Fayre (and not fabric related) I found a really nice pair of Hotter sandals for my Mum, which had been hardly worn.  They were only £1.00 and I was so pleased to have found them as they retail at £55.00 new.

Then at the 'Coffee and Jumble' on Monday I found a bolt of unused 1940's satin brocade upholstery fabric.  I paid £2.00 for the lot and had no idea just how much there was until I got it home - 18yds plus!  Wow, no wonder it was so bloomin' heavy to carry!!

Schweiz

We only had a whistle-stop visit to Switzerland last week and as there were members of P's family to meet up with and a couple of business appointments for P, there wasn't really much time for 'seeing the sights'.  Nevertheless, we did manage to fit in a couple of small trips to some very impressive places.

First up was a visit to the monastery / church / abbey at Einsiedeln.  The outside was pretty impressive but the inside was just amazing.  Photos weren't allowed but some of the pictures in the above link give a good impression of the 'wow factor' interior.  I have never seen such a rich and gilded church in my life.  It was high baroque meets mittel-Europa Catholicism with amazing amounts of gilded gold bling thrown in for good measure.  Truly jaw-dropping in all its rococo glory.  Makes the good old C of E look very plain by contrast.

Einsiedeln itself was a pretty little town, high up in the mountains, with some gorgeous old houses.  Only downside was it was unbelievably cold that day (note the snow on the mountains) and neither P nor I were dressed warmly enough.

The cold and snowy weather followed us all the way back to P's home town and the view of the snow-topped mountains made the motorway journey something rather special.

Next day we had only a very short trip into the hinterland about 5 minutes drive from P's childhood home.  It always amazes me that people really do live in these classic Swiss chalets - they are so pretty and cosy looking - they always remind me of the little weather houses where a female doll pops out one side to indicate one type of weather and a little man doll pops out the other to indicate something else.

This was the view onto the Todi - the highest mountain in the canton of Glarus - from up there.

And there were a lot of these very curious Brown Swiss cows about too.  They were really friendly and this time I found the sound of their cow bells really rather comforting (as opposed to really rather irritating!), especially when you can hear them at night.

And, finally, I'll leave you with a view from the living room window at P's childhood home.  This was the final rays of the evening sun just hitting the top of the mountain.  Beautiful.