Making Good Use

Insulation

It may not be entirely seasonal to be thinking about insulation in the middle of summer, but my Mum's front door has really been letting in the wind lately so we've spent a very useful half an hour trying to filll the gaps around the edges with insulating foam tape. 

When Dad was alive he made sure the door was practically hermetically sealed with foam tape because he really felt the cold, the house is on the top of a very high hill, and the front door faces north.  Rather foolishly, Mum and I decided to strip all the tape off the summer after he died - when the temperatures rose to 38 degrees (approx. 96) - somehow forgetting that it would be much colder that following winter.  Oddly enough, it's only been the last few weeks that Mum has decided that enough is enough with the draughts from the front door, and with the cost of gas and electricity forecast to rise by 40 per cent next winter, it was time to take some action.  For the £2.99 cost of the tape (and there is still some left over) we're hoping that a good proportion of the gaps have been plugged.  At least we can no longer see daylight down the side of the door which has to be an improvement.  I think I shall be visiting my local Wilkinsons when I get back to Essex and having a go at the incredibly draughty french windows in our dining room.  I have had a go at plugging the gaps on them before, but I think with the cost of heating our homes set to rise so dramatically that I'd better make sure every single last gap is plugged.  When Mum and I were in Wilkinsons on Saturday I noticed they sold long foam tubes for insulating pipes, I'm hoping they'll be just the thing to fix to the bottom of my french windows as a form of draught excluder.  I had been thinking about making an extra long draught excluder for the french windows but wasn't sure how I would be able to stuff it economically, hopefully the foam tubes will do the job just as well for a fraction of the cost.  If they look too utilitarian at the bottom of the door I could always cover them in fabric instead.

Also on the lines of keeping warm, I found a rather nice long-line cardigan / jacket in one of the charity shops this morning.  At £4.00 it was incredibly reasonably priced for the charity shops around here.  It's a rather pleasing black chenille yarn and will work both as a jacket in the autumn and as an extra layer of warmth when I'm at home in the winter - especially if we have to keep the heating off for longer because of the extra cost.

Of course, if we all had the non-stop energy of a five year old we'd never feel the cold.  If it's there, he has to climb it!

It's All Down Hill to Christmas

This was a favourite saying of my Father's - every 21st of June he would say the same thing - 'it's all down hill to Christmas'.  In some ways I know exactly what he meant, from now on the days will get shorter and shorter, although it will be the end of July before we really notice the difference.  Both he and I were / are 'summer' people - I love the sun as much as he did, and we both struggle with the long, dark winter days.

The summer solstice - the day I dream about when in the midst of grey, dark, dank winter.  Although oddly enough, apart from the fact that it is still not totally dark at almost 10.00pm, this evening has been just as grey, dark and dank as any mid-winter afternoon - except there has been approx. 12 hours more daylight.  It's certainly not been the sunniest or hottest midsummer's day ever but it is the day the sun begins its creeping journey southwards again. 

I've had a very nice summer solstice, as I'm in Bristol visiting my family, and being treated to a delicious Italian early birthday lunch.  Hope you've all had a great summer / winter solstice too.

I Wasn't Expecting That

One of DN's favourite questions at the moment is 'were you expecting that?'  The question usually follows him blowing a loud raspberry in your direction, and your answer has to be 'no. I wasn't expecting that'. 

Yesterday evening I saw something in my garden which I really was not expecting.   It was just before 9.00 pm and I'd gone out into the kitchen to make myself a cup of Rooibos tea before settling down to watch Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's 'River Cottage Spring.'  It was a nice evening and dusk was not even really beginning as yet.  I wandered over to the kitchen window to have a look out and was amazed to see a large-ish hawk sitting on the grass totally engrossed in tearing something fleshy to shreds.  I went to fetch my camera and did take a few photos but I was too far away and the light was just too dark to get a decent picture.  I had wondered why the lovely robin, who sits on the top-most branch of the pine tree in our garden and signs his little heart out every evening was totally silent yesterday - now I know why.

I do wonder where the hawk had come from, although we are not that far from open countryside (less than five minutes in a car), and presumably this one had spotted something worth nabbing in our garden.  When I told Mum about it she said having a hawk about will keep the mice down (what it was eating last night could well have been a mouse) and that it will probably return again.  If it's going to keep the mouse population down then it is more than welcome to treat our garden as an eat-all-you-want buffet for as long as it likes.

Waste Not .... Update

The TV programme last Friday about eating food past it's use-by-dates proved to be very interesting - if a little stomach churning too.  The reporter did indeed eat food past it's use-by-date for two weeks - although as far as I could see only for one meal or portion of a meal per day - with no apparent ill effects.  I personally would not want to eat sausages or chicken five or six days past the use-by-date but he said they tasted fine and laboratory tests proved that any bacteria in the meat was well and truly killed off in the cooking process.  I did think it was a bit of a con that the last few days involved the reporter eating an 11-days-past-it's-use-by-date muffin - not too much risk of food poisoning there I would have thought - and on the final day eating a piece of mouldy bread which he toasted.  I've certainly been known to eat mouldy bread when I was younger - although I tended to pick the mouldy bits around the edges off before I ate it.  I don't really think the programme was going to change the way I feel about use-by-dates on food but it was a good way of making people think about the food they throw out because it has gone past it's date.

What did interest me a great deal though was the interview with a 'freegan' - somebody who takes food out of the industrial wheelie bins at the back of supermarkets.  That really was a revelation to me.  I'd heard of freegans before but had assumed that what was thrown away by supermarkets was food that was pretty much unsaleable, or that it would be out of it's wrapper and sort of mouldering away at the bottom of a filthy bin.  The selection of perfectly good food that was well wrapped and, in some cases, still in date was amazing.  He and the reporter filled numerous carrier bags with the food and took it to Anthony Worral Thompson who then proceeded to cook up a veritable banquet with it all.  I think I'm right in saying that the food that had been 'freeganed' had come from an Iceland store and as our local Iceland store's back entrance leads on to a public car park it did set me wondering about what exactly might be available in their bins.  Sadly, I'm not sure I would ever have the 'neck' to actually start foraging around in Iceland's bins (or any other supermarkets come to that), especially at this time of year when it is daylight until so late.  Maybe in the depths of a dark winter's evening!!  But the sheer amount of food the freegan liberated does beg the question of why this food - which appeared to be perfectly usable - was not passed on to something useful like a homeless charity or the Salvation Army who could really make use of this food, rather than sending it to landfill.  The sheer scale of the waste was overwhelming and, as the freegan pointed out, this is happening at the back of every supermarket, on every high street in the UK - scandalous!

Cutting It

Today was all about cutting things.

I started bright and early this morning with cutting the grass front and back.  This time it was a relative pleasure to cut - not too long and nice and dry.  And, as always, it remains a huge pleasure to be able to empty the clippings straight into the wheelie bin and not f*rt about stuffing it in silly little 'soya' plastic bags.  As the grass cutting itself had been so easy I decided to get out the clippers and start chopping down the grass the mower can't get to - round the edges of the lawn and the base of the fruit trees.  They were only cheapie clippers that I got from Aldi a few weeks ago but they really do the job well and it makes a huge difference to get the grass cut right to the edges.  So now the garden is looking neat and tidy before the next lot of rain arrives tomorrow.

This afternoon I went to the hairdressers to get my hair cut.  I phoned for an appointment yesterday morning thinking I'd have no problem asking for a time during Tuesday morning - what with it being early in the week and the impact of the credit crunch.  Ha, I was wrong there - the earliest appointment they could give me was 1.45 pm.  I don't go to have my hair cut all that often - once every two months or so (I usually have to resort to hacking at my fringe myself in between appointments), as at £22.50 each visit I'm too 'frugal' to go too often.  They always make a nice job of it and I come out feeling much better when I've been 'shorn'.

I also got round to cutting up a few more vintage pillowcases to make four more pillowcase book bags.  I'm not sure when I'll actually sew them up, but the measuring and cutting and ironing the material seems to take longer than the actual sewing.

'Bargain Box' Bargains

I hadn't been to the 'Bargain Box' sale in Basildon for a few weeks, and the last time I did go I came away empty handed.  This time I was very pleased with the two items I bought - a lovely vintage peg bag which is absolutely huge and should fit the ridiculous number of pegs I possess (I need a lot you see because they have to colour co-ordinate with the items being pegged out - I know, a touch of OCD), and four and a half yards of 36 inch wide carmine red needlecord fabric.  The photo doesn't really do the colour of this corduroy justice as it is a sumptuous deep rich red.  Just the ticket for making a few winter-weight bags later on.  In fact there is so much material and the colour is so lovely that I might even be tempted to make myself a winter top with some of it.  50p for the material and 50p for the peg bag - the 'Bargain Box' is certainly well named.

Waste Not ....

I see there's a programme on ITV this evening about 'use by' dates on food and in it there is an experiment about how long you can still go on eating said foods - presumably before being rather unwell.  I'll be interested to see what conclusions they come to.  With the current huge increases in the price of food it makes sense to waste as little as possible.

Because I have to shop little and often - not having the use of a car nor a freezer - I'm lucky in that I don't do a huge weekly shop and so can just buy for the next couple of days or so.  That way, in theory, less food should get wasted.  I do always check the dates on chilled foods that I buy because sometimes old stock has been over-looked and I don't want to end up buying something on that day's date unless it has been heavily discounted. I don't worry too much when certain items in the fridge get past their 'use by' dates.  If it's cheese I ignore the 'use by' date anyway and would just cut off any dodgy-looking bits and eat the rest, although as I LURVE cheese, it rarely reaches it's 'use by' date anyway.  Milk or cream I'm happy to use up if they're a day or so past the date - as long as they still smell alright.  I'd be a lot more careful with chicken, pork or fish, but I don't tend to buy much of those anyway.  I was once the secretary to a Consultant Psychiatrist who was incredibly frugal.  She was happily regailing us one lunchtime with the fact that she had yogurts in her fridge that had had an October use by date, this was close to Christmas, and that she had every intention of still eating them!!  It fair put me off my sandwiches. 

For items without anything as strict as a 'use by' date I tend to keep on using them until they're completely disgusting - or growing their own culture.  Fruit that's seen better days gets used up in a fresh fruit salad, eating apples that have gone a bit soft are used as baked apples.  Any veggies that have seen better days get used up in making savoury rice or a veggie curry.  The heel ends of bread which are too dry even for toasting get cut up small and put out for the birds. 

As for 'best before' dates - well, those I totally ignore.  We keep on eating said item until it's finished.  I've only recently finished up a bottle of HP sauce that had a July 2003 'best before' date.  It was fine, although not as spicy as the new one that replaced it. 

Noro Kureyon

I do love Noro Kureyon knitting wool.  The colours are so bright and vibrant and no matter how odd the combination may look to be, it always knits up wonderfully.

I recently 'cracked open' the single ball I bought when I was last in Gades wool shop in Southend on Sea.  This particular ball had all sorts of wonderful colours within it - from a rich russet brown through purple, midnight blue and cerise to maroon and jade green.

I started off by knitting myself a little mobile phone cover for my new mobile (an astonishingly cheap £9.95 pay-as-you-go jobbie from Car Phone Warehouse).  I'm no great fan of mobile phones but thought it might be prudent to avail myself of one before we went to Disneyland.  It did, indeed, prove useful on one or two occasions.

I used the rest of the ball up with making a few more knitted corsages.  The amount of yarn each of these uses seems to work really well with Noro Kureyon as each corsage becomes one distinct colour.   I'm pleased with how these have turned out as they are really strong and vibrant summer colours.  They'll be up for sale later this afternoon on ebay, where, fingers crossed, they'll sell as well as some of the 'spring time colours' I listed a little while ago.

10.00 pm on a Summer's Evening

I just love this time of year - not for the weather particularly, although a glorious summer's day in England is wonderful - no, I just love the fact that it barely seems to get dark.  The photo below was taken at 10.00 pm yesterday evening, looking north-west-ish.  The sky still holds a glimmer of light and, indeed, when I popped out again at just gone 11.00 pm there was still the faintest suggestion of light even then.  The sky starts lightening again for the dawn just before 4.00 am.  I love, love, love it and it makes the drab, dreary, dark days of mid-winter seem a reasonable price to pay for the long, long summer daylight.

Apparently in the Shetland Islands it never really gets dark at this time of year and they refer to the long hours of daylight as the 'simmer dim'.  P and I did go there once some years ago but as we basically only had one day in Lerwick (we sailed overnight both there and back from Aberdeen) we didn't really get to experience the 'simmer dim'.  Six years ago we spent a week in Reykjavik in early July and there the light was amazing - broad daylight still at 11.30 pm, and light enough to read a book indoors without a light on at 2.30 am - fabulous.

I Suppose it's a Bit Like Riding a Bike

We've got a very hard quarry tile floor in our kitchen, and if you drop anything breakable on it it's 'goodnight Vienna' for that item.  I once dropped a small Pyrex jug on the kitchen floor which exploded with the force of a bomb and I found glass fragments weeks later half-way up the hall.  It really is a totally unforgiving floor (and bl**dy cold to stand on in the winter too).  Anyway, Saturday evening I had my hot-air brush in the kitchen ready to blow-dry my hair (don't ask - the plugs upstairs are rather awkward to access!!)  I only let go of the cord for a moment and the plug fell heavily against the tiled floor.  There was a nasty sound of cracking and when I look a large chunk of the plastic plug had sheered off, exposing the wires inside.  Probably rather foolishly I still plugged the brush in and dried my hair.  I was probably very lucky I didn't electrocute myself!!

On looking at the the plug in the cold light of day I realised that it really wasn't too safe and that I'd have to do something about it.  It did seriously cross my mind to just dump the whole thing and ask for a new one for my birthday but, after giving myself a strict talking to, I decided to buy a new plug and have a go at fitting it.  After all, the worst that could happen would be that the thing would spontaneously combust on being plugged in.

Now I haven't had to fit a plug for many years as these days all new electrical appliances sold in the UK come with plugs already fitted, but I vividly remember the days when that wasn't the case and the first time I'd had to fit a plug by myself - using a carving knife as a screwdriver (very sore fingers for days afterwards!!).  If I could do it in my early twenties, I could certainly do it in my late forties - and these days I do, at least, have screwdrivers. 

P, who hails from Switzerland, has a funny story about when he bought himself a desk lamp in Habitat in Bristol in the early 1990s, and thought all the lamps were faulty as they didn't have plugs already fitted as standard, which they have done for many years in Switzerland!  He was totally amazed that we were supposed to buy a plug and fit it ourselves.  Since then, of course, things have changed.

So I go sailing into our local Woolworths yesterday morning in search of a plug.  Now maybe Woollies do still sell plugs but I couldn't find any and with no member of staff in sight, took myself off to the local electrical shop (I was only being totally lazy in not going there first of all but it is at the bottom end of the High Street and it was obscenely hot yesterday - and that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it!), they of course had plugs a-plenty and for the grand sum of 89p I was sorted.  In the afternoon I fetched a goodly selection of screwdrivers from the shed and sat down at the garden table to change the plug.  It took me all of five minutes it was so simple, and I realised that I hadn't forgotten what to do at all - blue wire to the left, brown to the right, screw the back on and Bob's your uncle.  The hot-air brush is now as good as new again.  Why I ever thought of just chucking the whole thing away seems ludicrous to me now, and probably goes to show how we have all been affected adversely by our 'throw-away' culture.