camping

as mentioned in the previous post matthew and i are going to Greenbelt at the end of the month. this is a work trip for me, and matthew has very kindly agreed to join us. we shall be taking a group of young people from across Cornwall. this is the first time that i will have been since i was a teenager myself and my memory is mainly of mud!

we took stock of our camping equipment, we both had bits from before we were married, and decided that we needed a bigger tent to accommodate the two of us. matthew then took the requirements one step further by requesting one that he could stand up in (he is 6ft 4). so after some research we ordered a Vango Icarus 600. it is quite large, so large in fact that we can't actually put it up in our garden, so this weekend sees us undertake a camping trip just so that we can have a go at putting up the tent!

in the process of buying the tent we have of course spent more money on additional accessories, including a canopy extension, new airbeds (and pump) and a barbeque. tonight we wrote a list and discovered that if you go camping you need to take an awful lot of stuff with you. in comparison there is something quite simple about booking into a b&b.

for this trip we are going all the way to the Roseland (about 10 miles), we have gemmed up on the instructions including video and hopefully all should go quite smoothly. so please think of us tomorrow night, unlike the video i suspect we shall have a minor argument whilst erecting the tent, the tent pegs will be a lot harder to put in and it will definitely take longer than the suggested 12 minutes.

herman

we have a new lodger at home. goes by the name of herman. he doesn't require too much attention, just a daily chat and occasional feeding. though my budget for eggs, flour and sugar has suddenly increased. the bonus is that every ten days or so you do get some cake to eat! so he probably isn't doing too much for matthew's and my waistlines.

i was given a herman starter dough, with instructions of how to feed and care for it over ten days. on the tenth day you divide it into five, save one as your next starter, cook one and give the others away to your friends. worrying that i might run out of friends, i have discovered that if you only give him half quantities, you have enough mix for 3 portions and therefore only have to give one away or (some could say even better) cook two cakes.

i have cooked the original recipe and then had fun experimenting with different ones, so far a carrot cake, two lemon drizzle, one chocolate and one coffee. the carrot got given to my aunt in thanks for putting me up for the night (it was then put in the freezer to my uncle's disappointment), one lemon and the chocolate are lurking in the freezer. the rest have proved to be very tasty and moist. i did try and make some biscuits, but they didn't work too well.

this is quite good timing as i am building up a stock of cakes to take away to Greenbelt at the end of the month. but if anyone would like to take a herman and have a go themselves, please ask.

good life update

just to update you on our garden produce. we've had a few, very tasty, strawberries, but with only four plants there were never going to be loads, however the plants are reflowering so we may get a second crop. the potatoes were a let down. having had loads of healthy looking leaves, they suddenly wilted, so we decided to harvest and got a lot of very small, but again tasty, potatoes. i think ants were the problem here, the bin was full of them when matthew harvested.

my carrot got attacked and was never more than a very skinny root. the beans are now flowering, but seem to need copious amounts of water, similarly with the tomatoes.

to date the success has been the chilli plant and we have harvested four now, with more setting, in fact in a few minutes i hope to eat a lovely chilli con carne made with homegrown chilli!

so in summary, not a brilliantly productive garden so far, but still some hope for the future!

little miss sunshine

yesterday was my postponed nine month dental check up. it was postponed from the easter holidays as i was a bit poorly back then, so it got rearranged for the summer holidays.
for various reasons i have kept with my dentist in hereford. yes it is a bit of a trek back there now, but it generally gives an excuse to visit friends and it is nhs! so although it was a four hour journey each way, involved an overnight stay with relatives and quite a bit of petrol, the actual treatment only cost me £16.75 - bargain! apparantly i have got lovely teeth and because i was a such a good patient i got a free sticker - i chose the Little Miss Sunshine one!

bargains?

today matthew and i 'saved' £76. one of our favourite glass shops Jo Downes had a 70% off sale, and for once there was no 'up to' in tiny weeny letters on the sign. even better this reduction was on everything (except mirrors but it did say that in reasonably large letters, they were 20% off), so we bought a soap and moisturiser holder (see picture) for the Moulton Brown products that we bought in Bath, another sale 'bargain', and some other bits and pieces that either we will use or that will be finding their way as various Christmas and Birthday presents over the coming months. in all we purchased 8 items for less than the full price cost of the soap holder - not bad.

this almost beats the amazing £300 that we saved at the Swindon outlet centre back in May, there we had to spend £150 to save the £300. actually mathematically it probably does beat that shopping trip, it's just that the numbers are more impressive on the Swindon trip.

but the question is - how much of this sale stuff is actually a bargain. do you really need it? will you use it? all questions to be considered. in Marks and Spencers amongst the debris of their women's sale clothes one woman did comment that what seemed like a bargain in the shop wasn't always a bargain by the time it got home.

if you notice the time of this post - yes it really is stupid o'clock - i can't sleep, and having done so well on my 'bargains' earlier in the day, i feel it is now time to surf the net looking for more - but don't tell matthew!

another surgery update

the latest innovation in our surgery is a self service check-in, if there is a queue at the reception desk, you can go to a screen and enter your date of birth. it then recognises you, confirms your appointment, tells you that you have checked in and to wait until you are called.


in some ways this is a bonus as it saves hanging around in the queue behind someone with a tedious query on their prescription, but is it the start of a slippery slope? how long until there are no reception staff? and if you follow that train of thought, how long until the doctor is a screen - though to a point nhs direct is already doing that.

absence

i see this phrase a lot on blogs...
'sorry for not posting recently, i will try and do better', or a variation and it looks as if i am now posting it myself!

excuses:-
2 weeks away on holiday - rather expensive but very nice
new job is taking a bit of time to get my head around
i'm tired
i can't always think of something amusing to say!

so i have a few posts up my sleeve and will add them on when time permits. in the meantime i hope you haven't missed me too much!