previously on this blog I've had occasional month long (or even longer like the car and plastic experiments.) trials to test me out so I thought that it's time for a new one forNovember.
I shop at Asda a lot and they have the whoopsie / yellow label reduced items that are due to come to their sell by date.
I am good at making up meals from nothing or various different things so i thought this challenge would be to cater for my wife, myself sand occasional uni visotor my son from what is available in the yellow label items.
Of course there are a lot of items available in the early moring around 9.30 in my local asda but the better deals are generally fewer in quantity but better in rpice, like 1p for 2 salmon fishcakes reduced from £3.00 or bread for 2p reduced from £1.80 but these are available after 2300 hrs.
I wonder how many times I'll be down at the shops at 11 pm or after but that is the test for this month of November, 2009.
One note of caution is that these yellow label deals will soon be coming to an end as the government, in their wisdon has decided to do away with the sell by/ best before/ use before date labels to encourage more food useage and less going to landfill. all well and good for the reduction of methane and CO2 etc but what about the thousands of people who, like me use these low price deals for basic living from day to day ?
November 14 update.
been doing this test but not religeously. Started off ok with a few buys in the last few days of october in order to have food on the table in november but I forgot to continue after about the 3rd of November and went shopping withoutr thinking so this is something that could easily be done ... if I remember that is....
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Thursday, September 24, 2009
T'computer and tings
by you can't live with them and you can't live without them... wives I mean... sorry computers I mean... Ours decided to play silly blighters so I decided to show it the ultimate revenge and got it reformatted... well it's working better now...
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Yeah the new website is up
So the new bselfsufficient website is up and running. It is still the bare bones and needs editing all over the site but it's up and running as we speak.... well until I get my editing head round it, lol.
it can be found here.
it can be found here.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
The carbon footprint buster.... ok the cars knackered...
Here's an experiment come experience starting Friday of last week which was the 24th of July 2009.
We have been wanting to "lose" the car for a few years now, well I have but the wife, bless her (organic) cotton socks thinks too much about me and my bad back to let me get away with ditching it for good.
Anyway it's that time of year again when the car insurance is due and the renewal came through t'other day for £292. 70 pence which for a beast of a car I have, a 2.6 auto omega ( like a 150 mph [allegedly] sports saloon ) I was well chuffed but at the same time reading the "terms and conditions" which said the cost included a " policy issuing fee" of £25.00 OK so they print out the insurance certificate and all the bumf, parcel it up in a nice quality envelope and send it out by courier to my address at a time suitable to me.... fat chance, they bung it all in a PDF, attach it to an email and tell me to print it out so I've emailed them telling them I'm not renewing because of this.
So here I was doing a bit of shopping on Friday and the emissions light came on the dash and the engine sounded like a bag of hammers so I limped it home and put it in the garage because that sounds like the crank case sensor needs replacing which it did a few years ago and then it cost around £345.
Also the car also needs servicing at around £180 and like many others about these days we barely have 2 pennies to rub together so we decided to let the insurance go for now and lock the car away in the garage for a few months.
If you think about it here is a bit of work needed on the car, which is only 6 years old by the way and it is going to cost around £800 !!
The dog needs an operation on his back at about £300 and as we have no money now is the opportune moment to ditch the car hence the chance to experience life without a motor for as long as i can do it.
We are constantly bombarded by media, government, quango's, environmentalists etc about cutting our carbon footprint so this experiment will see what i can achieve much like the plastic reduction one in January.
Friday the 31st of July.
One week into the no car use and it's terrifyingly simple...... Painful, weary making and laboriously long times spent doing what i would class as nothing when I could be doing something else but we haven't used the car.
I have a bus pass and use that frequently and when the boss is with me we get a day pass for her which saves 20p over 2 journeys but obviously we would save more if we used it more during the day.
Shopping is a pain as it has had to be done daily because i made the mistake of "forgetting" I was going on the bus and got a lot of shopping. Thankfully a couple of people helped me put the shopping on the bus which the driver was cool about and I phoned my wife to meet me at the bus stop so she brought the bike trailer round and we got the shopping home OK. a salutary lesson learnt there... always remember what you are doing.
Like the reduced plastic shopping it takes time and effort not having a car. You have to wait for buses, sit with screaming kids, whinging old folk and then get jostled about in ques but all for the sake of the environment..... and saving money...
Still the week has gone OK, I have noticed I've taken more pain relief medication but then I've done more effort.
I think the bus is going to be a goer as they say and that got me thinking because we had planned a few days out seeing it is the summer holidays et al. The car forced the issue but there was me thinking we were stay at our own town again for holidays as we didn't have a car but then I got to thinking about making it a challenge to see if we could get a few days out, at low cost, as we have no money which, if I'm honest is the main reason we are not using the car.
I found out that if you plan ahead then the savings can be quite good. I used to go to Te*co's and saved the club card deals so these have to be used by the end of Aug 09. Hence we are going to apply for tickets to the york dungeons and one of those bus rides round york whilst also visiting the railway museum. Hopefully these clubcard vouchers will be accepted, I haven't looked at it yet but we hope to have a good day out in York for very little money by combining offers. I have a disabled train pass which saves a third off the fairs and a second adult can go at the same price so the ticket cost will be around £10 for both of us after discount, the free entries for clubcard vouchers will hopefully pan out and if so we have a get on and off bus ride to see different parts of york for nothing.
Apart from the train fare it looks like we will only need to pay for food but as the newest TV chef, Valentine Warner says " do a picnic in a Loaf.... An ingenious idea and one I plan to do.
4TH August
Got the disabled train pass today. It cost £18 but for two of us to go to Newcastle metro centre tomorrow and then york next week we will be saving £17.52... more or less paid for itself straight away. One other thing on the above post about getting the tour bus to save money, On the national rail site here you can get cheap bus passes for certain areas of the country if you buy one at the same time as the train ticket. Unlimited day ticket type pass and it was going to be £3 for the York one which is a lot cheaper than the tourist buses.
We went to visit the in laws yesterday and although they only live 4 miles away it took us two buses and 40 minutes at a cost of £6.80 return for one person. Having said that we got my wife a day pass for £2.90 so saving nearly £4. This is not quite half a gallon of petrol for my beast of a car so in monetary terms it was cheaper to do it by car until you add in the hidden costs of motoring like road tax, wear and tear, servicing etc.
It took 40 minutes and 2 buses each way but we were able to go into the shopping centre and have a cup of coffee and a few minutes to ourselves just reading a newspaper or looking in the library which I haven't been in for years... It was quite impressive also.
I think the buses are a goer...
One thing we didn't have to buy when shopping is garlic,lol. I lifted the last of the garlic yesterday and in all i have over 400 bulbs now and we have been eating home grown garlic for a couple of months now. When I say eating
I mean eating. There is nothing better than pureeing a couple of cloves of garlic and spreading it on a slice of home made brown bread with real butter.... heaven.
12th August
The dog had his op last week, £238 and is doing well, in fact he's not phased by any of it. As a result he had to go for a check up on Monday the 10th and as he's getting on a bit the two miles to the vets and back would have been too much for his hips. Without the car we decided to get the bus into town and walk home most of the way but he enjoyed the bus ride not one bit. He has the propensity to expect a fuss off everyone he sees so as you can gather a bus full of potential fusses and not one did he get... oh the simple life of a dog. Anyway, he had his check up and everything is OK with the stitches.
Oh it cost 20p for the dogs bus fare....
Like the plastic reduction trials at the beginning of the year on this blog being without a car takes it's toll and time becomes a premium.. better not tell tesco or they will package it and sell it as tesco finest... Time, the tesco finest type or this is no ordinary time, this is M&S Time.......
I don't think it is possible to do without supermarkets in a town if you don't have a car. It could be possible to do without them for the plastic reduction topic where you can spend a bit more time shopping at small shops but, from memory the effort I had to put in back in January couldn't be done without a car. I guess in a village setting with full amenities it would be possible but then they don't have buses to the town...
17th of August.
OK so we are about 3 weeks in to the no car experiment and it's as if we have never had a car..... Sad in a way as I've had a car every day since November the 18th 1978 when I past my driving test except for 2 weeks back in 1999 when we sold one car and the next one wasn't ready.
I reckon the time taken to change our lifestyle in a big way will be between 3-6 weeks. I found it easier with the no plastic after about 3 weeks I seem to remember and this week has been the tipping point for the car. I will need to drive again in October when I take my wife to the theatre to see the river dance thingy as that is in Sunderland and there are no buses or trains between our town and Sunderland after 10 pm, 9 pm for trains so I'll need to way up the idea of hiring a car, looking for a shared lift or getting a weeks insurance for my car for that day. The tickets were bought for my wife by our son for Christmas otherwise we would not have booked them if we were without a car. In future it will be a decision to make where we want to go somewhere and the first search will be the transport requirements. If they don't fit then it would be a case of not going.
Having said that we are Hartlepool United FC supporters and we have always chose to go to away matches in the car except the dodgy ones like Leeds United and Darlo if they ever get into our league again,lol. The main reason is because my wife says so and the reasons are like stopping for breaks when we want, shared driving, less time on the road etc but she came out with a comment the other day after the draw for the next round of the Carling Cup. We got Burnley at home but she said she would rather have an away match at the likes of Middlesborough or Newcastle. i retorted how would we get to those matches then ? to my astonishment here reply was ON THE BUS... with a sneer of sarcasm... The astonishment was due to the fact she was talking about the football supporters buses...
So the upshot is that my wife, faced with having no car and a love of football she is prepared to "slum it" with the rest of us to see her beloved team in action.... Yes.. goodbye Car...
21st August 2009
Nearing the end of the month without the car now and it is starting to take it's toll. I had to the doctors yesterday to have my bloods done. Our surgery has done a "well man clinic" for over 12 years now and all this is, is where you give or rather the vampires take an arm full of blood and send it off for the lab rats to play with then I, as a hypochondriac have to suffer for 10 days until the results come back to tell you that you are OK..
Well it was that time of year again last October and I sort of "forgot" about it until December when they kept telephoning me to book an appointment. All this is in the aid of preventative medicine as it picks up anything like rises in your sugar etc. Anyway, done that and everything was OK but since December I've lost 22 kilo in weight through consistent effort and good food intake, which for that read stop eating 6 fried egg sarnies at one sitting or a full box of jaffa cakes at one go or things like that. My favourite diet song has to be Peter Gabriel's " No self control", lol.
Soooo, for those still in English this is over 3 stone in 8 months so I'm well chuffed but now the doctors have decided that in the aid of "preventative treatments " they will test everyone between the ages of 40 and 64 to see what %age risk you are of coronary heart disease. Like I want to know if I'm 75% at risk of a heart attack ?? Some might but I'd worry so much that I'd get stressed out and have a heart attack...
So the vamps took the blood and now I have to wait until the 1st of September for the results...
Now what has this got to do with not having the car? A lot as I had to walk down to the surgery as the buses were not on at a good time for me. So I set off and it took me nearly an hour and a half to walk 3/4 of a mile, totally knackered with the back pain when I got there out of breath, blood pressure through the roof and nauseous with the pain and I'm on morphine tablets now so imagine the amount of pain I was in...
Still had the sense to get the bus back but even then I had to walk about 200m back home. Done absolutely nothing today except sleep, wake up take some more pain relief then sleep again.
I know I could have got a taxi from door to door but I didn't have the £5.40 that would cost so the loss of the car has been rough over the last two days but hey ho I'll be back to normal whinging and whining tomorrow...
25th of August
Recovering from the missive above, boy does it take it's toll ! Been rather subdued as I'm in a lot of pain and we need some shopping so even though I said I'd never do it I've decided to have a look at online food shopping so just looking for a free delivery coupon / code for Asda then I'll be sorted.
The %age risk of a heart attack turned out to be 10%, lol.
29th April 2010
The car was still out of commission until March 2010 when we finally saved the money up for the repairs to the car. It turned out to be the coil packs, the distributor caps, plug leads and spark plugs in old money but that cost the thick end of £380. We got to use the car between the 25th of March and the 9th of April when the test ran out. Got the car tested on the 25th of April and it needed an exhaust..... £500.76p so we have used the car for less than 2600 miles in the last full test year and it's cost us about £1600 !!
Without the car on a long term takes it's toll. There is no doubt what so ever in my mind that I need a car or a lot more money. On average wqe spent around £50 a month on transport such as taxi's and train but that would have been a lot more if I'd used a taxi every time I went out. Thankfully I have the spacka bus pass but whilst this is free, which is good you need to pick and choose the drivers and buses you use or the bouncing about shags up the back even more.
On the whole I think I will be selling the car as soon as possible because there will be another repair bill soon and thern the car will be off the road again until we save the money up.
We have been wanting to "lose" the car for a few years now, well I have but the wife, bless her (organic) cotton socks thinks too much about me and my bad back to let me get away with ditching it for good.
Anyway it's that time of year again when the car insurance is due and the renewal came through t'other day for £292. 70 pence which for a beast of a car I have, a 2.6 auto omega ( like a 150 mph [allegedly] sports saloon ) I was well chuffed but at the same time reading the "terms and conditions" which said the cost included a " policy issuing fee" of £25.00 OK so they print out the insurance certificate and all the bumf, parcel it up in a nice quality envelope and send it out by courier to my address at a time suitable to me.... fat chance, they bung it all in a PDF, attach it to an email and tell me to print it out so I've emailed them telling them I'm not renewing because of this.
So here I was doing a bit of shopping on Friday and the emissions light came on the dash and the engine sounded like a bag of hammers so I limped it home and put it in the garage because that sounds like the crank case sensor needs replacing which it did a few years ago and then it cost around £345.
Also the car also needs servicing at around £180 and like many others about these days we barely have 2 pennies to rub together so we decided to let the insurance go for now and lock the car away in the garage for a few months.
If you think about it here is a bit of work needed on the car, which is only 6 years old by the way and it is going to cost around £800 !!
The dog needs an operation on his back at about £300 and as we have no money now is the opportune moment to ditch the car hence the chance to experience life without a motor for as long as i can do it.
We are constantly bombarded by media, government, quango's, environmentalists etc about cutting our carbon footprint so this experiment will see what i can achieve much like the plastic reduction one in January.
Friday the 31st of July.
One week into the no car use and it's terrifyingly simple...... Painful, weary making and laboriously long times spent doing what i would class as nothing when I could be doing something else but we haven't used the car.
I have a bus pass and use that frequently and when the boss is with me we get a day pass for her which saves 20p over 2 journeys but obviously we would save more if we used it more during the day.
Shopping is a pain as it has had to be done daily because i made the mistake of "forgetting" I was going on the bus and got a lot of shopping. Thankfully a couple of people helped me put the shopping on the bus which the driver was cool about and I phoned my wife to meet me at the bus stop so she brought the bike trailer round and we got the shopping home OK. a salutary lesson learnt there... always remember what you are doing.
Like the reduced plastic shopping it takes time and effort not having a car. You have to wait for buses, sit with screaming kids, whinging old folk and then get jostled about in ques but all for the sake of the environment..... and saving money...
Still the week has gone OK, I have noticed I've taken more pain relief medication but then I've done more effort.
I think the bus is going to be a goer as they say and that got me thinking because we had planned a few days out seeing it is the summer holidays et al. The car forced the issue but there was me thinking we were stay at our own town again for holidays as we didn't have a car but then I got to thinking about making it a challenge to see if we could get a few days out, at low cost, as we have no money which, if I'm honest is the main reason we are not using the car.
I found out that if you plan ahead then the savings can be quite good. I used to go to Te*co's and saved the club card deals so these have to be used by the end of Aug 09. Hence we are going to apply for tickets to the york dungeons and one of those bus rides round york whilst also visiting the railway museum. Hopefully these clubcard vouchers will be accepted, I haven't looked at it yet but we hope to have a good day out in York for very little money by combining offers. I have a disabled train pass which saves a third off the fairs and a second adult can go at the same price so the ticket cost will be around £10 for both of us after discount, the free entries for clubcard vouchers will hopefully pan out and if so we have a get on and off bus ride to see different parts of york for nothing.
Apart from the train fare it looks like we will only need to pay for food but as the newest TV chef, Valentine Warner says " do a picnic in a Loaf.... An ingenious idea and one I plan to do.
4TH August
Got the disabled train pass today. It cost £18 but for two of us to go to Newcastle metro centre tomorrow and then york next week we will be saving £17.52... more or less paid for itself straight away. One other thing on the above post about getting the tour bus to save money, On the national rail site here you can get cheap bus passes for certain areas of the country if you buy one at the same time as the train ticket. Unlimited day ticket type pass and it was going to be £3 for the York one which is a lot cheaper than the tourist buses.
We went to visit the in laws yesterday and although they only live 4 miles away it took us two buses and 40 minutes at a cost of £6.80 return for one person. Having said that we got my wife a day pass for £2.90 so saving nearly £4. This is not quite half a gallon of petrol for my beast of a car so in monetary terms it was cheaper to do it by car until you add in the hidden costs of motoring like road tax, wear and tear, servicing etc.
It took 40 minutes and 2 buses each way but we were able to go into the shopping centre and have a cup of coffee and a few minutes to ourselves just reading a newspaper or looking in the library which I haven't been in for years... It was quite impressive also.
I think the buses are a goer...
One thing we didn't have to buy when shopping is garlic,lol. I lifted the last of the garlic yesterday and in all i have over 400 bulbs now and we have been eating home grown garlic for a couple of months now. When I say eating
I mean eating. There is nothing better than pureeing a couple of cloves of garlic and spreading it on a slice of home made brown bread with real butter.... heaven.
12th August
The dog had his op last week, £238 and is doing well, in fact he's not phased by any of it. As a result he had to go for a check up on Monday the 10th and as he's getting on a bit the two miles to the vets and back would have been too much for his hips. Without the car we decided to get the bus into town and walk home most of the way but he enjoyed the bus ride not one bit. He has the propensity to expect a fuss off everyone he sees so as you can gather a bus full of potential fusses and not one did he get... oh the simple life of a dog. Anyway, he had his check up and everything is OK with the stitches.
Oh it cost 20p for the dogs bus fare....
Like the plastic reduction trials at the beginning of the year on this blog being without a car takes it's toll and time becomes a premium.. better not tell tesco or they will package it and sell it as tesco finest... Time, the tesco finest type or this is no ordinary time, this is M&S Time.......
I don't think it is possible to do without supermarkets in a town if you don't have a car. It could be possible to do without them for the plastic reduction topic where you can spend a bit more time shopping at small shops but, from memory the effort I had to put in back in January couldn't be done without a car. I guess in a village setting with full amenities it would be possible but then they don't have buses to the town...
17th of August.
OK so we are about 3 weeks in to the no car experiment and it's as if we have never had a car..... Sad in a way as I've had a car every day since November the 18th 1978 when I past my driving test except for 2 weeks back in 1999 when we sold one car and the next one wasn't ready.
I reckon the time taken to change our lifestyle in a big way will be between 3-6 weeks. I found it easier with the no plastic after about 3 weeks I seem to remember and this week has been the tipping point for the car. I will need to drive again in October when I take my wife to the theatre to see the river dance thingy as that is in Sunderland and there are no buses or trains between our town and Sunderland after 10 pm, 9 pm for trains so I'll need to way up the idea of hiring a car, looking for a shared lift or getting a weeks insurance for my car for that day. The tickets were bought for my wife by our son for Christmas otherwise we would not have booked them if we were without a car. In future it will be a decision to make where we want to go somewhere and the first search will be the transport requirements. If they don't fit then it would be a case of not going.
Having said that we are Hartlepool United FC supporters and we have always chose to go to away matches in the car except the dodgy ones like Leeds United and Darlo if they ever get into our league again,lol. The main reason is because my wife says so and the reasons are like stopping for breaks when we want, shared driving, less time on the road etc but she came out with a comment the other day after the draw for the next round of the Carling Cup. We got Burnley at home but she said she would rather have an away match at the likes of Middlesborough or Newcastle. i retorted how would we get to those matches then ? to my astonishment here reply was ON THE BUS... with a sneer of sarcasm... The astonishment was due to the fact she was talking about the football supporters buses...
So the upshot is that my wife, faced with having no car and a love of football she is prepared to "slum it" with the rest of us to see her beloved team in action.... Yes.. goodbye Car...
21st August 2009
Nearing the end of the month without the car now and it is starting to take it's toll. I had to the doctors yesterday to have my bloods done. Our surgery has done a "well man clinic" for over 12 years now and all this is, is where you give or rather the vampires take an arm full of blood and send it off for the lab rats to play with then I, as a hypochondriac have to suffer for 10 days until the results come back to tell you that you are OK..
Well it was that time of year again last October and I sort of "forgot" about it until December when they kept telephoning me to book an appointment. All this is in the aid of preventative medicine as it picks up anything like rises in your sugar etc. Anyway, done that and everything was OK but since December I've lost 22 kilo in weight through consistent effort and good food intake, which for that read stop eating 6 fried egg sarnies at one sitting or a full box of jaffa cakes at one go or things like that. My favourite diet song has to be Peter Gabriel's " No self control", lol.
Soooo, for those still in English this is over 3 stone in 8 months so I'm well chuffed but now the doctors have decided that in the aid of "preventative treatments " they will test everyone between the ages of 40 and 64 to see what %age risk you are of coronary heart disease. Like I want to know if I'm 75% at risk of a heart attack ?? Some might but I'd worry so much that I'd get stressed out and have a heart attack...
So the vamps took the blood and now I have to wait until the 1st of September for the results...
Now what has this got to do with not having the car? A lot as I had to walk down to the surgery as the buses were not on at a good time for me. So I set off and it took me nearly an hour and a half to walk 3/4 of a mile, totally knackered with the back pain when I got there out of breath, blood pressure through the roof and nauseous with the pain and I'm on morphine tablets now so imagine the amount of pain I was in...
Still had the sense to get the bus back but even then I had to walk about 200m back home. Done absolutely nothing today except sleep, wake up take some more pain relief then sleep again.
I know I could have got a taxi from door to door but I didn't have the £5.40 that would cost so the loss of the car has been rough over the last two days but hey ho I'll be back to normal whinging and whining tomorrow...
25th of August
Recovering from the missive above, boy does it take it's toll ! Been rather subdued as I'm in a lot of pain and we need some shopping so even though I said I'd never do it I've decided to have a look at online food shopping so just looking for a free delivery coupon / code for Asda then I'll be sorted.
The %age risk of a heart attack turned out to be 10%, lol.
29th April 2010
The car was still out of commission until March 2010 when we finally saved the money up for the repairs to the car. It turned out to be the coil packs, the distributor caps, plug leads and spark plugs in old money but that cost the thick end of £380. We got to use the car between the 25th of March and the 9th of April when the test ran out. Got the car tested on the 25th of April and it needed an exhaust..... £500.76p so we have used the car for less than 2600 miles in the last full test year and it's cost us about £1600 !!
Without the car on a long term takes it's toll. There is no doubt what so ever in my mind that I need a car or a lot more money. On average wqe spent around £50 a month on transport such as taxi's and train but that would have been a lot more if I'd used a taxi every time I went out. Thankfully I have the spacka bus pass but whilst this is free, which is good you need to pick and choose the drivers and buses you use or the bouncing about shags up the back even more.
On the whole I think I will be selling the car as soon as possible because there will be another repair bill soon and thern the car will be off the road again until we save the money up.
Monday, July 20, 2009
like a bus...
Just like a number 6 bus, never one when you need one then two come together.....
After the recent bad weather we have had I spent some of today looking over the veg patch mrs T has created and oh what a sorry sight. Garlic is well covered in rust now so that has been dug up and the onions have all but been blown out of the ground so many of them have had to be lifted. Mind you that was no effort really as they were blown out of the soil over the weekend. So I have over 200 garlic plants and about 70 red onions to sort out now...
On another board I frequent people will still believe the state will look after them.... fools.
It's all stemmed from the swine flu pandemic that we have here in the UK. I'm on the paranoid side full of conspiricy theories and doom and gloom and there are others who think that when everything hits the fan the NHS, fire, police etc will have a "moral and ethical duty" to go to work to ensure we all are kept safe.... hmmm...
All I can say is I have my food and water stockpiled to last about 4 weeks at the moment with more to come.....
After the recent bad weather we have had I spent some of today looking over the veg patch mrs T has created and oh what a sorry sight. Garlic is well covered in rust now so that has been dug up and the onions have all but been blown out of the ground so many of them have had to be lifted. Mind you that was no effort really as they were blown out of the soil over the weekend. So I have over 200 garlic plants and about 70 red onions to sort out now...
On another board I frequent people will still believe the state will look after them.... fools.
It's all stemmed from the swine flu pandemic that we have here in the UK. I'm on the paranoid side full of conspiricy theories and doom and gloom and there are others who think that when everything hits the fan the NHS, fire, police etc will have a "moral and ethical duty" to go to work to ensure we all are kept safe.... hmmm...
All I can say is I have my food and water stockpiled to last about 4 weeks at the moment with more to come.....
Saturday, July 18, 2009
where does time go?????
Sorry for not updating this blog for the last 2 months... Just where does time go ?
Old age or a dodgy back certainly helps blur one day into the other but I am ashamed at not updating this as I seemed to start off so well,lol.
So over the last 2 months what has been happening in the chez teather household?
Well i was expecting the son home from uni for a freebie 6 months before going back to uni in september but along with 6 of his friends they have got another house to share so it now looks as if he has moved out completly... heaven...
Went to the download festival which for the oldies reading this it is the renamed monsters of rock at donnington. Hard going with the back but the facilities for the disabled provided by live nation were absolutly phernominal... really pleased. I doubt i'd go again for health, money, mobillity issues but if you have a son / daughter who wants ot go then you can let them go with a sense of security that they will be ok. Obviously I'll put a disclaimer here but for a festival it was really, really x3 well done.
Veg patch that mrs T built is holding up and producing masses of fruit and veg which we reckon has / will save us over £300 over the year so that has been a boom.
One downer is the dog, Tinks the red setter needs an operation to remove a small lump under his skin. £300 at least and then they asked if I wanted the vet to give him a saline drip to aid recovery, pain killers and things like that...! all of course had to be paid for on top of the £300 estimate but the really gauling thing that has me bitterly dissapointed with the vets is that we have to pay upfront then claim it back of the insurance company.
I've been a regular, faithful cutomer of this vets practise for over 40 years, YES 40 YEARS and they won't let me pay for the op a few weeks after it's done. We used to bread greyhounds so the vet was at our house so much he was a family friend. An average bill back then in the mid 80's was around £400 a month, every month but loyalty doesn't pay these days it seems.
So much so that we will be going to the PDSA and asking them to do the op and pay up front to them but hopefully as a charity they will be cheaper. I will be fund raising for them as well as a way of saying thanks..
Right off to watch the golf to see if Tom Watson can pull off another open win...
Old age or a dodgy back certainly helps blur one day into the other but I am ashamed at not updating this as I seemed to start off so well,lol.
So over the last 2 months what has been happening in the chez teather household?
Well i was expecting the son home from uni for a freebie 6 months before going back to uni in september but along with 6 of his friends they have got another house to share so it now looks as if he has moved out completly... heaven...
Went to the download festival which for the oldies reading this it is the renamed monsters of rock at donnington. Hard going with the back but the facilities for the disabled provided by live nation were absolutly phernominal... really pleased. I doubt i'd go again for health, money, mobillity issues but if you have a son / daughter who wants ot go then you can let them go with a sense of security that they will be ok. Obviously I'll put a disclaimer here but for a festival it was really, really x3 well done.
Veg patch that mrs T built is holding up and producing masses of fruit and veg which we reckon has / will save us over £300 over the year so that has been a boom.
One downer is the dog, Tinks the red setter needs an operation to remove a small lump under his skin. £300 at least and then they asked if I wanted the vet to give him a saline drip to aid recovery, pain killers and things like that...! all of course had to be paid for on top of the £300 estimate but the really gauling thing that has me bitterly dissapointed with the vets is that we have to pay upfront then claim it back of the insurance company.
I've been a regular, faithful cutomer of this vets practise for over 40 years, YES 40 YEARS and they won't let me pay for the op a few weeks after it's done. We used to bread greyhounds so the vet was at our house so much he was a family friend. An average bill back then in the mid 80's was around £400 a month, every month but loyalty doesn't pay these days it seems.
So much so that we will be going to the PDSA and asking them to do the op and pay up front to them but hopefully as a charity they will be cheaper. I will be fund raising for them as well as a way of saying thanks..
Right off to watch the golf to see if Tom Watson can pull off another open win...
Monday, May 18, 2009
being prepared
Hi folks,
I don't know where that last post came from, must of been when I was down but I'm up again now, lol.
The title of this missive is being prepared... what does that mean to you? I ask as we have just had a new boiler fitted and when the men came to fit it they found a gas leak on my hob AND oven so they cut them both off and condemed them. Therefore for 3 weeks we have only been able to cook in a microwave which for a cook like me is worse than being in hell for eternity.
We have had to wait 3 weeks as we didn't have the money to buy a new cooker / hob until this weekend and it got me thinking as to what would happen if we were hit by this swine flue pandemic or in the winter when it returns. What would we do for food, water, electric light etc? I've got a website in progress that was going to be all about self suficiency but there will now be a section on being prepared for a major crisis.
Speaking of which, North Korea are playing silly buggers again. I reckon that kim jong ill is ready to check out of this world and like all dictatorships they want to leave a mark for history to condem them by hence the escalation in the tensions in the region. This brings me back to the point above. What would we do if the shit hits the fan in a big way?
I'm starting to prepare a contingency plan, stockpile food, medicines, water etc in case we need it. Some people will say this is being alarmist but even the British Government says we should all have 3 weeks worth of supplies in our home in case of emergency or a terrorist strike etc.
Take for instance if the part of the country you live in or indeed the whole country was subject to an EMP or electro magnetic pulse. This would knock out all electronic items including mobiles, landlines, tv's, cars, electric and gas power stations and water treatment plants.
So you are sat there with no water, lighting, heating or mobillity [cars]. You will not be able to get money out of cash machines or banks and food shops will not be able to open either as they are run on electric. What will you do? How will you survive? Will you be able to feed your family and yourself ?
If you stockpile food and water, enough for 3 weeks as a minimum then at least you can stay at home for a bit. Without being prepaired you will encounter serious difficulties. If the trouble goes on longer you will need to be able to defend your plot, i.e. house, garden, allotment etc from scavengers and hungry people.
If you have made preperation for events then you can at least be more comfortable and safer than many of your fellow neighbours.
Going back to the alarmist point. If I prepare and you don't and nothing happens then we are both ok. If I prepare and you don't and something major DOES happen then I'm ok and you will be dead.....
I don't know where that last post came from, must of been when I was down but I'm up again now, lol.
The title of this missive is being prepared... what does that mean to you? I ask as we have just had a new boiler fitted and when the men came to fit it they found a gas leak on my hob AND oven so they cut them both off and condemed them. Therefore for 3 weeks we have only been able to cook in a microwave which for a cook like me is worse than being in hell for eternity.
We have had to wait 3 weeks as we didn't have the money to buy a new cooker / hob until this weekend and it got me thinking as to what would happen if we were hit by this swine flue pandemic or in the winter when it returns. What would we do for food, water, electric light etc? I've got a website in progress that was going to be all about self suficiency but there will now be a section on being prepared for a major crisis.
Speaking of which, North Korea are playing silly buggers again. I reckon that kim jong ill is ready to check out of this world and like all dictatorships they want to leave a mark for history to condem them by hence the escalation in the tensions in the region. This brings me back to the point above. What would we do if the shit hits the fan in a big way?
I'm starting to prepare a contingency plan, stockpile food, medicines, water etc in case we need it. Some people will say this is being alarmist but even the British Government says we should all have 3 weeks worth of supplies in our home in case of emergency or a terrorist strike etc.
Take for instance if the part of the country you live in or indeed the whole country was subject to an EMP or electro magnetic pulse. This would knock out all electronic items including mobiles, landlines, tv's, cars, electric and gas power stations and water treatment plants.
So you are sat there with no water, lighting, heating or mobillity [cars]. You will not be able to get money out of cash machines or banks and food shops will not be able to open either as they are run on electric. What will you do? How will you survive? Will you be able to feed your family and yourself ?
If you stockpile food and water, enough for 3 weeks as a minimum then at least you can stay at home for a bit. Without being prepaired you will encounter serious difficulties. If the trouble goes on longer you will need to be able to defend your plot, i.e. house, garden, allotment etc from scavengers and hungry people.
If you have made preperation for events then you can at least be more comfortable and safer than many of your fellow neighbours.
Going back to the alarmist point. If I prepare and you don't and nothing happens then we are both ok. If I prepare and you don't and something major DOES happen then I'm ok and you will be dead.....
Monday, April 27, 2009
Life is tough
Well they say it's only tough when it hurts... well it's tough now. Were is the world going? what are we all to do apart from curl up and die?
Friday, April 17, 2009
coming alone
Been a while since the last update but been busy in my own way. The third deep bed is in now and ready to plant the carrots, parsnips etc and we got the main dumping area behind the garage cleared ready o plant the potatoes but as things have it and everything is a loabour these days the first plunge of the fork into the soil to turn it over before using the rotovator displayed matted roots from an ivy covered febnce to next doors house.
So plan 2, put the spud sets into half a bag of compost and leave them there ! it turns out that this is the best way tto grow potatoes especially if you want to show them, which we don't but still it gets them off the patio sill and into growth.
My son shoveled a big pile of gravel into bags for me today and it took him 20 minutes. If I had tried to do it I'd have taken at least 4 hours, 6 tea / rest breaks and many pain killers to boot... eeh the halcyon days of youth... bles you son for your help...
So plan 2, put the spud sets into half a bag of compost and leave them there ! it turns out that this is the best way tto grow potatoes especially if you want to show them, which we don't but still it gets them off the patio sill and into growth.
My son shoveled a big pile of gravel into bags for me today and it took him 20 minutes. If I had tried to do it I'd have taken at least 4 hours, 6 tea / rest breaks and many pain killers to boot... eeh the halcyon days of youth... bles you son for your help...
Monday, April 6, 2009
My wife.... the burgeoning greenie.....
Been a couple of weeks since the last update / entry but been really busy in the garden. What with the "bad back" constantly troubling me these days it takes just so long to do anything and I mean little things like potting up plants.
I watch gardners world and the theme last year seemed as if it was Carol Klien telling everyone to divide and seperate garden plants. Well this year i've had my dear and long suffering wife dig up a big blousy american hosta who's leaves were at least 12" long by 8" wide and I spend a good few hours dividing them up with a hand chopping axe. I got 12 good pieces out of the one plant back in October 08 and at least 8 of them have started putting shoots out this week so I'm well chuffed.
Also at the weekend my wife got the spade out again and dug up a fern that had long gone past it's best by date and we divided that up into three pots so again I'm well chuffed with the ideas from Carol klien but more so from my wife who has no interest in gardening but who helps me in ways only she can and with enthusiasm as well. She even drives me to the Durham organic Gardening Association so I can get out a bit more. She knows how much I appreciate it as i often tell her that she is my life line to the world.
One other thing is she is becoming more green as each week goes by. By 2015 she will be planting seeds no doubt,lol.
I watch gardners world and the theme last year seemed as if it was Carol Klien telling everyone to divide and seperate garden plants. Well this year i've had my dear and long suffering wife dig up a big blousy american hosta who's leaves were at least 12" long by 8" wide and I spend a good few hours dividing them up with a hand chopping axe. I got 12 good pieces out of the one plant back in October 08 and at least 8 of them have started putting shoots out this week so I'm well chuffed.
Also at the weekend my wife got the spade out again and dug up a fern that had long gone past it's best by date and we divided that up into three pots so again I'm well chuffed with the ideas from Carol klien but more so from my wife who has no interest in gardening but who helps me in ways only she can and with enthusiasm as well. She even drives me to the Durham organic Gardening Association so I can get out a bit more. She knows how much I appreciate it as i often tell her that she is my life line to the world.
One other thing is she is becoming more green as each week goes by. By 2015 she will be planting seeds no doubt,lol.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
It pays to whinge.... politley... part 3....
Gawd will this whinge fest ever end ???
I'm on virgin media and they are starting to take the Preverbial one... Because the bank returned their [ virgin] direct debit unpaid even though there was enough money in the bank account virgin have now cancelled the DD [even before I had chance to] so on the new bill which arrived today they have charged me £10 for missing the DD payment, another £10 for a late payment fee and because they have cancelled the DD there is a new fee of £5 for a "manual payment handleing fee"
I called them and they wouldn't refund / cancel the charges and said as it was the banks fault I should go there which I will tomorrow but Virgin are taking the P now with their poor broadband service so it's time to change.
I wouldn't care but i'm a loyal customer who pays on time and who has an XL package so it's nearly £80 a month at present but I bet i get it reduced by a good bit after a few days of net research. I'll be getting the lowest price packages and then asking my wife to check the details, she's the brains, I'm the brawn,lol so then I willmaking a pot of tea, sitting on the floor and calling dear old virgin and "having a chat" about their costs and pricing structures. If they want market share then they will have to give me a better deal or i'm off.......
I'll update acordingly.
I'm on virgin media and they are starting to take the Preverbial one... Because the bank returned their [ virgin] direct debit unpaid even though there was enough money in the bank account virgin have now cancelled the DD [even before I had chance to] so on the new bill which arrived today they have charged me £10 for missing the DD payment, another £10 for a late payment fee and because they have cancelled the DD there is a new fee of £5 for a "manual payment handleing fee"
I called them and they wouldn't refund / cancel the charges and said as it was the banks fault I should go there which I will tomorrow but Virgin are taking the P now with their poor broadband service so it's time to change.
I wouldn't care but i'm a loyal customer who pays on time and who has an XL package so it's nearly £80 a month at present but I bet i get it reduced by a good bit after a few days of net research. I'll be getting the lowest price packages and then asking my wife to check the details, she's the brains, I'm the brawn,lol so then I willmaking a pot of tea, sitting on the floor and calling dear old virgin and "having a chat" about their costs and pricing structures. If they want market share then they will have to give me a better deal or i'm off.......
I'll update acordingly.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
It pays to whinge.... politley... part 2
Having been bolstered with the whinging below I decided to play the insurance game and got several quotes then went through greasy palms . co.uk
Speaking of Greasy palms, If you join GP using this link you too can save money off just about everything. Also if you use the link to join I get £7 but only after you have enjoyed £15 in commision and then you get to use your own link to make a few bob.
Anyway I done the quotes, then re done them using GP and then i phoned my normal broker who does my car insurance. My best quote through GP was with More than and it was £245 with a £40 cashback brining the total down to £205. My car broker quoted me £206 so I said Oh I can get £40 cashback off GP to which he replied, we can;t match that price but we can knock £20 off for you as you are a customer already.
£20 off was down to £186 and it was a better policy to boot. He never asked what the original price was before the cashback and i never told him.......
If you are looking for anything to buy on the web then I can heartily recomend GP on the premis that you may as well make some money out of the purchase.
also if buying online first look for cash codes for delivery charges and these get free delivery. There are loads floating around so you should never need to pay for delivery from any of the major shops ( even for food etc) if you use the computer properly.......
Speaking of Greasy palms, If you join GP using this link you too can save money off just about everything. Also if you use the link to join I get £7 but only after you have enjoyed £15 in commision and then you get to use your own link to make a few bob.
Anyway I done the quotes, then re done them using GP and then i phoned my normal broker who does my car insurance. My best quote through GP was with More than and it was £245 with a £40 cashback brining the total down to £205. My car broker quoted me £206 so I said Oh I can get £40 cashback off GP to which he replied, we can;t match that price but we can knock £20 off for you as you are a customer already.
£20 off was down to £186 and it was a better policy to boot. He never asked what the original price was before the cashback and i never told him.......
If you are looking for anything to buy on the web then I can heartily recomend GP on the premis that you may as well make some money out of the purchase.
also if buying online first look for cash codes for delivery charges and these get free delivery. There are loads floating around so you should never need to pay for delivery from any of the major shops ( even for food etc) if you use the computer properly.......
Thursday, March 19, 2009
It pays to whinge.... politley.
I run a car and have always been a main dealer customer for repairs and servicing etc. One reason is I can't do the jobs myself and secondly I want to use dealer parts and not some copy items.
Anyway the car went in for the M.O.T test yesterday and failed on the indicator stalk flashing the headlights occasionally so it needed a new indicator stalk fitting. Got the price of £84 fitted so I said yes.
An hour later I got the call to say the car was ready so I paid the bill and went home. Looking at the bill they charge £35 to fit the stalk now all it needed was to unscrew 2 screws in the cover / cowl round the searing wheel and unplug the stalk and plug in the new one re screwing the cowl back in place. No more than a 10 minute job even for a spacka like me.
I whinged at the service desk by phone and got the fitting charge reduced by £24.00 + vat. I'll have to go back to the garage to get the refund on my card but I need to go to a shop near there anyway.
Also I had a whinge at the Lloyds TSB yesterday about a charge for a "returned D/D" the thing was there was plenty of money in the account to cover the DD but they still returned it and were going to charge me £20 for their mistake....
It will be a cold day in hell when they get to do this to me I'll tell you so on the phone I went, 0870 number, 15 p a minute ...right, got to speak to a human and told then to ring me back. They did and then after about 40 minutes [ just imagine if I'd been paying the bill ] they agreed that it was "an unforeseen banking error on their part" I know it was, stop the charges... They did but they wouldn't refund a charge for a mistake I made but I bet i get it back before the months out or at least get it suspended until the court case about charges finishes.....
Hey up the lads are here to finish the deep beds for me... must dash...
Anyway the car went in for the M.O.T test yesterday and failed on the indicator stalk flashing the headlights occasionally so it needed a new indicator stalk fitting. Got the price of £84 fitted so I said yes.
An hour later I got the call to say the car was ready so I paid the bill and went home. Looking at the bill they charge £35 to fit the stalk now all it needed was to unscrew 2 screws in the cover / cowl round the searing wheel and unplug the stalk and plug in the new one re screwing the cowl back in place. No more than a 10 minute job even for a spacka like me.
I whinged at the service desk by phone and got the fitting charge reduced by £24.00 + vat. I'll have to go back to the garage to get the refund on my card but I need to go to a shop near there anyway.
Also I had a whinge at the Lloyds TSB yesterday about a charge for a "returned D/D" the thing was there was plenty of money in the account to cover the DD but they still returned it and were going to charge me £20 for their mistake....
It will be a cold day in hell when they get to do this to me I'll tell you so on the phone I went, 0870 number, 15 p a minute ...right, got to speak to a human and told then to ring me back. They did and then after about 40 minutes [ just imagine if I'd been paying the bill ] they agreed that it was "an unforeseen banking error on their part" I know it was, stop the charges... They did but they wouldn't refund a charge for a mistake I made but I bet i get it back before the months out or at least get it suspended until the court case about charges finishes.....
Hey up the lads are here to finish the deep beds for me... must dash...
Feed the hungry 2 on £75 for a month.
As an update this will not happen this month,lol.
Towards the end of February I was gearing up for this challenge but then my back gave out again. Well I say again, it just got a lot worse than normal pain so being in agony and bearly being able to lift my arms let alone do anything else my loving wife went shopping for me but being spaced out on pain killers or as I refer to them pain relievers as they never totally kill the pain but being spaced out I never conveyed to my eife in legible tones anyway what i was planning. She "got a few bits to tied us over " and spent £90 quid !!!
I take full blame for this but i'll try the £75 challenge later in the year as April sees holidays and from May our son decends on us from Uni and he is like a plague of locusts all in one go....
... but we love him to bits.....
Towards the end of February I was gearing up for this challenge but then my back gave out again. Well I say again, it just got a lot worse than normal pain so being in agony and bearly being able to lift my arms let alone do anything else my loving wife went shopping for me but being spaced out on pain killers or as I refer to them pain relievers as they never totally kill the pain but being spaced out I never conveyed to my eife in legible tones anyway what i was planning. She "got a few bits to tied us over " and spent £90 quid !!!
I take full blame for this but i'll try the £75 challenge later in the year as April sees holidays and from May our son decends on us from Uni and he is like a plague of locusts all in one go....
... but we love him to bits.....
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Electric tarrifs
As we all know it's often cheaper to switch suppliers now and then for our gas and electric.
I used to do this religeously every 4 months but have become a bit slack over the last year only changing twice but since Ebico put their prices up they are not the cheapest now and if you need to save money then it is necessary to look around and change as the needs arise.
I've said before I don't trust the comparison sites which stems from the time i was a door knocker salesman for British gas and Eon. I always look at the companies own website to find the details of the lowest tarrif and often you may find that the power companies offer a two rate tarrif which can be hard to work out for your home.
My tip is to always take daily meter readings and then you will know what you are using. It's no good blaming the power companies for taking to small a D/D when you are using the power.
A person on another computing board i visit wrote out this formular for me to work out the cost of two tarrif electric bills.
=IF(SUM(A2:L2)<901,SUM(A2:L2)*0.1826,(900*0.1826)+((SUM(A2:L2)-900)*0.0796))
It can be cut and pasted into the top line of an excell spreadsheet in column M2. The first row is labeled jan, feb, march, april etc, one month in each cell A1 through to L1.
In ROW " column A you write your monthly electric useage figures. For me it was 230kwh. so I'd put 230 in cell A2 240 in Cell B2 260 in cell C2 all the way along for each month.
In the formula above you will see the numbers 901 and 900. These represent the first tarrif. For many companies it is a higher price for the first 900 units of a year then cheaper for all the rest. British Gas has 500 units at a high price then the rest at a lower price. Some use 182 units which IS FOR A QUARTER so should be multilpied by 4 idf usig the above calc. If your power company uses a figure then this 901 / 900 will need to be altered to suit your tarrif. The last bit you need to alter is the 0.1826 and 0.0796 in the above formula. These figures represent the actual cost in pence of your tarrif. The 0.1826 is the higher tarrif ( for the first 900 / 728/ 500 units etc) and the 0.0796 is the lower figure for the remaining units you use in a year.
If any of you good followers have any problems then leave a comment or better still email me and I'll do a spreadsheet for you if you give me your company and figures etc.
I'll be experimenting with this formula over the next few weeks to see if it works for gas. It should as the gas is also in KWH but there needs to be a conversion process first to get it to KWH if you have an old meter like me,lol.
I used to do this religeously every 4 months but have become a bit slack over the last year only changing twice but since Ebico put their prices up they are not the cheapest now and if you need to save money then it is necessary to look around and change as the needs arise.
I've said before I don't trust the comparison sites which stems from the time i was a door knocker salesman for British gas and Eon. I always look at the companies own website to find the details of the lowest tarrif and often you may find that the power companies offer a two rate tarrif which can be hard to work out for your home.
My tip is to always take daily meter readings and then you will know what you are using. It's no good blaming the power companies for taking to small a D/D when you are using the power.
A person on another computing board i visit wrote out this formular for me to work out the cost of two tarrif electric bills.
=IF(SUM(A2:L2)<901,SUM(A2:L2)*0.1826,(900*0.1826)+((SUM(A2:L2)-900)*0.0796))
It can be cut and pasted into the top line of an excell spreadsheet in column M2. The first row is labeled jan, feb, march, april etc, one month in each cell A1 through to L1.
In ROW " column A you write your monthly electric useage figures. For me it was 230kwh. so I'd put 230 in cell A2 240 in Cell B2 260 in cell C2 all the way along for each month.
In the formula above you will see the numbers 901 and 900. These represent the first tarrif. For many companies it is a higher price for the first 900 units of a year then cheaper for all the rest. British Gas has 500 units at a high price then the rest at a lower price. Some use 182 units which IS FOR A QUARTER so should be multilpied by 4 idf usig the above calc. If your power company uses a figure then this 901 / 900 will need to be altered to suit your tarrif. The last bit you need to alter is the 0.1826 and 0.0796 in the above formula. These figures represent the actual cost in pence of your tarrif. The 0.1826 is the higher tarrif ( for the first 900 / 728/ 500 units etc) and the 0.0796 is the lower figure for the remaining units you use in a year.
If any of you good followers have any problems then leave a comment or better still email me and I'll do a spreadsheet for you if you give me your company and figures etc.
I'll be experimenting with this formula over the next few weeks to see if it works for gas. It should as the gas is also in KWH but there needs to be a conversion process first to get it to KWH if you have an old meter like me,lol.
Monday, February 9, 2009
Feed the hungry 2 for a month on £75
Well, my month of reducing plastic in the shopping went well in January and continues to this day but with the deppression, (sorry worldwide resecion that had nothing to do with Gordon brown,) we are now in I thought it might be worthwhile doing another month long experiment. For the month of March I will attempt to feed my wife and I plus the occasional visit from our son from uni on £75 in total.
I've done it before on £120 but it was a skimp to do it and that was before the resent price rises in food etc.
I'll be utilising a full stock cupboard of which i'll list the contents here when I decide what will be in it.
I've done it before on £120 but it was a skimp to do it and that was before the resent price rises in food etc.
I'll be utilising a full stock cupboard of which i'll list the contents here when I decide what will be in it.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Will this depression be all bad
I call this downturn a depression rather than a recession because I think the present incumbent at Number 10 doesn't want to own up to the truth. I'm not a political supporter of any of the parties believing that all of them will fill their own pockets then let the rest of us fight over what's left. Cynical yes, sad, even more so but who wants to be remembered as the prime minister who took us into a depression?
The current track is that "it's a worldwide recession that was started by the Americans so it had nowt to do with me guvnor... honest"
The sad part is that many people will suffer in this depression, mainly those who have lost their jobs and cannot keep up the repayments on the new beemer or jaguar, the credit card payments, the various loans and the purchases of T%&*0 Finest shopping basket.
But ask yourselves this question. Will it really be that bad ? I was one of the consumer is king brigade until my financial crisis in 2005 - 2008 when I eventually ended up escaping bankruptcy by the skin of my teeth but that focused my mind to ensure i never again had any credit cards, loans, debts i "might not" be able to repay etc.
I spent the first 3 months of 2005 in denial, then the next 3 months blaming everyone else then finally I owned up to it being my fault and my responsibility regardless of the fact banks and building societies kept offering me more money. Of course i took it and spent it but hell life's too short to worry isn't it? well isn't it ?
After a lot of Internet searching and reading, often in the early hours as I couldn't sleep with worry I eventually got to grips with the problems and started to sort them out. Only one of the 14 creditors ha ranged me but I got the better of them in the end and stuffed them well and truly which makes me smile even now.
I had to live on less than £75 a month on food for 3 of us... which we did, I had to be housebound as being disabled I couldn't afford petrol so couldn't use the car and it got so bad I resorted to scrounging the allotments for veg to make soup.
We cut back on everything, the creditors were king and got their money first before anything else bar the mortgage and council tax. I learnt to bounce Direct debits without incurring charges and running up debts on the electric and gas in order to buy food and stay warm as well.
We learnt to grow veg, make our own bread, butter, cheese, jams and pickles, sausages and burgers whilst also making do and mend with clothes and furniture etc. Many of the things we still have now would have been long gone had we had more credit cards or access to loans etc. We would sell anything we could but also demanding a fair price and thus not used eBay and the likes. We cancelled birthdays and Christmases, holidays and even chocolates from the corner shop.
We paid off a ver big debt in a little over 3 years through cutting back to the bare bones of an existence and making the best use of what we had. I say this as it has made me a much stronger person and also a stronger family. It's taught s to be a lot more cynical of society and government, to be helpful but not at our own expense and above all to be realistic and trade in cash. If we have the cash we can make a purchase.
So to the initial question, will this depression be a bad thing? I think not for the simple answer that it will make a lot of people sit up and look at what they buy, what they do and the way they do these things in a similar way our financial troubles made us. It will be most uncomfortable but it will make a lot of people come to terms with their predicament and never again will they buy into the consumerism that this "world " economy relies on to make the rich richer and the less well off feel good by buying products they don't need or worse still want!
We are now on the way to self sufficiency. We still shop at food stores as we are still meat eaters and don't keep our own livestock... yet but we have reduced our reliance on the power companies, we store water and still grow and make food as above. We are happier and healthier now, less stressed but still wary of what government can and often will do that may not be good and we will take that as it comes.
In my opinion becoming more self sufficient is going to be the way forward out of this economic crisis and the way forward to help combat global warming, food and power shortages that will come in the future as sure as day follows night. So if self sufficiency in whatever guise that presents itself is the answer where do we start? Everyone could install, or have installed micro generation for electric and hot water, even harvest rainwater and grey water but at what cost? £100,000, £200,000 ??
What we need to do is start of in the garden.
Simple as it seems but to grow a bit of your own food is a step that puts you in control, gives you a bit of time to be "at one with nature" and help you relax and unwind after a hard day at the work place but also it saves you money and the planet food miles. Obviously is you have a couple of acres as a back garden you can do an awful lot of growing your own food but you don't need much space, anything from a plant pot on the windowsill to grow a few herbs up to a full farm. If you have a back yard you can grow food in pots, if you have a bit of soil you can grow quite a few food plants in as little as a square meter of space. The native Americans used to grow three crops together. They grew sweetcorn and as it grew they under planted this with beans and used the sweetcorn as a climbing frame. After the beans were away they planted squashes or today we could plant courgettes as well. This became ground cover and so reduced the time spent weeding the ground. This method of planting is very hungry on the soil and attention needs to be given to the amount of water needed and also replenishing the soil with fertilizers.
Water harvesting
Which then neatly comes onto two other aspects of providing your own. Water harvesting and fertilizers. Water harvesting need not be grand sunken chambers the size of houses which cost £1000's of pounds but a few water butts in the garden. Having water butts is one thing you can't do on the windowsill but an average house roof is about 60 sq m and an average rainfall is about 1 metre of water per year so you could in theory harvest 60 tonnes of water per year or 60,000 Lt's. This water can be used to water your veg and fruit and also wash your clothes... and no they don't turn out grey and also you can flush the toilets and wash the car with the rainwater. If you go further you can filter the rainwater with a simple box of sand and there are many designs out there for this. Many offer purity of water in the 90% to 99% free of bacteria and germs but for even more safety you can use a set up of ultra violet scrubbers and then you can use this water to drink and bath in but please do your own research for the exact specifications of these methods.
Fertilisers As the cropping above is fertiliser intensive then you can use chicken pellets if you are going to grow organic but why not keep a few chickens in a small space in the garden and keep the guano or chicken much for a couple of years to mature then use this as a fertiliser.
The ideas keep coming from one leading to another and over time you can get a great deal of satisfaction out of being a bit savvy on where your food comes from and don't forget this all started with an idea to grow some herbs in a plant pot on the kitchen windowsill and costs nowhere near 100s of 1000's of pounds.....
Of course if the government really had their heads screwed on (proper like) instead of throwing billions at the banks they should offer free interest loans for environmentally friendly micro generation projects such as solar PV, solar Thermal and water harvesting but what do they know.........
The current track is that "it's a worldwide recession that was started by the Americans so it had nowt to do with me guvnor... honest"
The sad part is that many people will suffer in this depression, mainly those who have lost their jobs and cannot keep up the repayments on the new beemer or jaguar, the credit card payments, the various loans and the purchases of T%&*0 Finest shopping basket.
But ask yourselves this question. Will it really be that bad ? I was one of the consumer is king brigade until my financial crisis in 2005 - 2008 when I eventually ended up escaping bankruptcy by the skin of my teeth but that focused my mind to ensure i never again had any credit cards, loans, debts i "might not" be able to repay etc.
I spent the first 3 months of 2005 in denial, then the next 3 months blaming everyone else then finally I owned up to it being my fault and my responsibility regardless of the fact banks and building societies kept offering me more money. Of course i took it and spent it but hell life's too short to worry isn't it? well isn't it ?
After a lot of Internet searching and reading, often in the early hours as I couldn't sleep with worry I eventually got to grips with the problems and started to sort them out. Only one of the 14 creditors ha ranged me but I got the better of them in the end and stuffed them well and truly which makes me smile even now.
I had to live on less than £75 a month on food for 3 of us... which we did, I had to be housebound as being disabled I couldn't afford petrol so couldn't use the car and it got so bad I resorted to scrounging the allotments for veg to make soup.
We cut back on everything, the creditors were king and got their money first before anything else bar the mortgage and council tax. I learnt to bounce Direct debits without incurring charges and running up debts on the electric and gas in order to buy food and stay warm as well.
We learnt to grow veg, make our own bread, butter, cheese, jams and pickles, sausages and burgers whilst also making do and mend with clothes and furniture etc. Many of the things we still have now would have been long gone had we had more credit cards or access to loans etc. We would sell anything we could but also demanding a fair price and thus not used eBay and the likes. We cancelled birthdays and Christmases, holidays and even chocolates from the corner shop.
We paid off a ver big debt in a little over 3 years through cutting back to the bare bones of an existence and making the best use of what we had. I say this as it has made me a much stronger person and also a stronger family. It's taught s to be a lot more cynical of society and government, to be helpful but not at our own expense and above all to be realistic and trade in cash. If we have the cash we can make a purchase.
So to the initial question, will this depression be a bad thing? I think not for the simple answer that it will make a lot of people sit up and look at what they buy, what they do and the way they do these things in a similar way our financial troubles made us. It will be most uncomfortable but it will make a lot of people come to terms with their predicament and never again will they buy into the consumerism that this "world " economy relies on to make the rich richer and the less well off feel good by buying products they don't need or worse still want!
We are now on the way to self sufficiency. We still shop at food stores as we are still meat eaters and don't keep our own livestock... yet but we have reduced our reliance on the power companies, we store water and still grow and make food as above. We are happier and healthier now, less stressed but still wary of what government can and often will do that may not be good and we will take that as it comes.
In my opinion becoming more self sufficient is going to be the way forward out of this economic crisis and the way forward to help combat global warming, food and power shortages that will come in the future as sure as day follows night. So if self sufficiency in whatever guise that presents itself is the answer where do we start? Everyone could install, or have installed micro generation for electric and hot water, even harvest rainwater and grey water but at what cost? £100,000, £200,000 ??
What we need to do is start of in the garden.
Simple as it seems but to grow a bit of your own food is a step that puts you in control, gives you a bit of time to be "at one with nature" and help you relax and unwind after a hard day at the work place but also it saves you money and the planet food miles. Obviously is you have a couple of acres as a back garden you can do an awful lot of growing your own food but you don't need much space, anything from a plant pot on the windowsill to grow a few herbs up to a full farm. If you have a back yard you can grow food in pots, if you have a bit of soil you can grow quite a few food plants in as little as a square meter of space. The native Americans used to grow three crops together. They grew sweetcorn and as it grew they under planted this with beans and used the sweetcorn as a climbing frame. After the beans were away they planted squashes or today we could plant courgettes as well. This became ground cover and so reduced the time spent weeding the ground. This method of planting is very hungry on the soil and attention needs to be given to the amount of water needed and also replenishing the soil with fertilizers.
Water harvesting
Which then neatly comes onto two other aspects of providing your own. Water harvesting and fertilizers. Water harvesting need not be grand sunken chambers the size of houses which cost £1000's of pounds but a few water butts in the garden. Having water butts is one thing you can't do on the windowsill but an average house roof is about 60 sq m and an average rainfall is about 1 metre of water per year so you could in theory harvest 60 tonnes of water per year or 60,000 Lt's. This water can be used to water your veg and fruit and also wash your clothes... and no they don't turn out grey and also you can flush the toilets and wash the car with the rainwater. If you go further you can filter the rainwater with a simple box of sand and there are many designs out there for this. Many offer purity of water in the 90% to 99% free of bacteria and germs but for even more safety you can use a set up of ultra violet scrubbers and then you can use this water to drink and bath in but please do your own research for the exact specifications of these methods.
Fertilisers As the cropping above is fertiliser intensive then you can use chicken pellets if you are going to grow organic but why not keep a few chickens in a small space in the garden and keep the guano or chicken much for a couple of years to mature then use this as a fertiliser.
The ideas keep coming from one leading to another and over time you can get a great deal of satisfaction out of being a bit savvy on where your food comes from and don't forget this all started with an idea to grow some herbs in a plant pot on the kitchen windowsill and costs nowhere near 100s of 1000's of pounds.....
Of course if the government really had their heads screwed on (proper like) instead of throwing billions at the banks they should offer free interest loans for environmentally friendly micro generation projects such as solar PV, solar Thermal and water harvesting but what do they know.........
Monday, February 2, 2009
A month without plastic.... conclusion.
February 2ND
The month of January has come to an end and as such the challenge of no plastic also ends.
It was quite clear from the first day of shopping that this would be a Plastic REDUCTION CHALLENGE because an enourmous amount of plastic is used in todays food industry.
All along this challenge i aimed to reduce, reuse THEN recycle but my first dissapointment was milk. We drink a lot of milk and as such I looked for a doorstep delivery but the this was a no no from the first phone call. The milk had to come from the next town at least 15 to 30 miles or so away as our local depot was no longer viable many years ago and closed down so there was an issue of food miles. Secondly the cost of milk in proper glass milk bottles was 62 pence per pint. I mean come on, no bloody wonder the poor milkman is no longer doing so many doorstep deliveries. In a previous post I said we drank 3 pints a day but on counting we actually drink on average 3.8 pints a day. If our son is home from uni that will go to 5. So an average of 4 pints a day is 28 pints a week or 10220 pints a year. For doorstep deliveries the cost would be £6336. For poly cartons from the shops it would be £3654 !! I know I wanted to reduce my purchase of plastic milk cartons but come on spending an extra £3000 to do it is madness.
Thus I aim to reuse as many of my poly milk cartons as I can. I've got a lot of sugesstion for this but some to help on the way are making butter in them, cutting up and using for plant labels, making funnels out of them, bird seed fillers etc, etc.
My second dissapointment was the use of plastic for my dogs minced steak. He has a dodgy stomach and so we need to be careful of the amount of fat in his food. We found minced steak in 500g bags for £1.98 then it went up to £2.00 a bag. This is less than 8% fat so to reduce my use of this plastic, A grade 6 I'd need to mince my own which would be no problem but I'd need to find a supply of meat for less than £4 a kilo.... If you know of anywhere that sells steak at less than £4 a kilo let me know please.
Other than that there were no major dissapointments and it doesn't take long to "train" butchers, grocers, fishmongers etc that you don't want plastic bags. I mean it took me a week to actually buck up the courage to ask my fishmonger but then it was cool for all the rest. Within the second week I'd trained them to expect me to hand them a box marked beef, fish or pork etc and often one lass on the butchers stall would actually ask for the box to tare it out on the scales so I didn't even have to have greaseproof paper which I thought was cool.
Over the 4 weeks I had a total of approximatly 823g of plastic that I couldn't find a re use for, mainly the dog food wrappers but also the odd plastic tray from bacon because we wanted a bacon sarnie when only the Asda type shops were open.
Which is another point. In days of yore we shopped on a daily basis if there was a non working(outside the house)housewife or weekly on a saturday if the women were working. How on earth did we manage with shops only opening until 5 pm or 10 pm if it was the local corner shop. I mean, you couldn't get a pound of bacon at 9 pm on most nights could you... And maybe this is a way forward in this depression we are in now. To plan a weeks meals and stick to it. Buy all the ingredients and no more then either prepare daily or weekly and freeze. Maybe this will help cut down on the waste thrown away each week and the amount that comes out of our purses and wallets each week.
One other point is that it takes more time, effort and money to shop locally as opposed to doing one big shop at the likes of ASDA. It takes planning and time management. These are skills of which I need to hone and hone a lot but I'll get there in the end al being well.
On the whole I'd implore everyone to try the reduction of plastic for a month experiment. It certainly changed my views and I am one who already does an enourmous amount of environmental friendly shopping anyway.
This reduce plastic ethos will be continued from now on and even stepped up to badgering local shops to stop supplying plastic bags for fruit and veg. After all paper bags have done us proud for many a year before plastic arrived.
The month of January has come to an end and as such the challenge of no plastic also ends.
It was quite clear from the first day of shopping that this would be a Plastic REDUCTION CHALLENGE because an enourmous amount of plastic is used in todays food industry.
All along this challenge i aimed to reduce, reuse THEN recycle but my first dissapointment was milk. We drink a lot of milk and as such I looked for a doorstep delivery but the this was a no no from the first phone call. The milk had to come from the next town at least 15 to 30 miles or so away as our local depot was no longer viable many years ago and closed down so there was an issue of food miles. Secondly the cost of milk in proper glass milk bottles was 62 pence per pint. I mean come on, no bloody wonder the poor milkman is no longer doing so many doorstep deliveries. In a previous post I said we drank 3 pints a day but on counting we actually drink on average 3.8 pints a day. If our son is home from uni that will go to 5. So an average of 4 pints a day is 28 pints a week or 10220 pints a year. For doorstep deliveries the cost would be £6336. For poly cartons from the shops it would be £3654 !! I know I wanted to reduce my purchase of plastic milk cartons but come on spending an extra £3000 to do it is madness.
Thus I aim to reuse as many of my poly milk cartons as I can. I've got a lot of sugesstion for this but some to help on the way are making butter in them, cutting up and using for plant labels, making funnels out of them, bird seed fillers etc, etc.
My second dissapointment was the use of plastic for my dogs minced steak. He has a dodgy stomach and so we need to be careful of the amount of fat in his food. We found minced steak in 500g bags for £1.98 then it went up to £2.00 a bag. This is less than 8% fat so to reduce my use of this plastic, A grade 6 I'd need to mince my own which would be no problem but I'd need to find a supply of meat for less than £4 a kilo.... If you know of anywhere that sells steak at less than £4 a kilo let me know please.
Other than that there were no major dissapointments and it doesn't take long to "train" butchers, grocers, fishmongers etc that you don't want plastic bags. I mean it took me a week to actually buck up the courage to ask my fishmonger but then it was cool for all the rest. Within the second week I'd trained them to expect me to hand them a box marked beef, fish or pork etc and often one lass on the butchers stall would actually ask for the box to tare it out on the scales so I didn't even have to have greaseproof paper which I thought was cool.
Over the 4 weeks I had a total of approximatly 823g of plastic that I couldn't find a re use for, mainly the dog food wrappers but also the odd plastic tray from bacon because we wanted a bacon sarnie when only the Asda type shops were open.
Which is another point. In days of yore we shopped on a daily basis if there was a non working(outside the house)housewife or weekly on a saturday if the women were working. How on earth did we manage with shops only opening until 5 pm or 10 pm if it was the local corner shop. I mean, you couldn't get a pound of bacon at 9 pm on most nights could you... And maybe this is a way forward in this depression we are in now. To plan a weeks meals and stick to it. Buy all the ingredients and no more then either prepare daily or weekly and freeze. Maybe this will help cut down on the waste thrown away each week and the amount that comes out of our purses and wallets each week.
One other point is that it takes more time, effort and money to shop locally as opposed to doing one big shop at the likes of ASDA. It takes planning and time management. These are skills of which I need to hone and hone a lot but I'll get there in the end al being well.
On the whole I'd implore everyone to try the reduction of plastic for a month experiment. It certainly changed my views and I am one who already does an enourmous amount of environmental friendly shopping anyway.
This reduce plastic ethos will be continued from now on and even stepped up to badgering local shops to stop supplying plastic bags for fruit and veg. After all paper bags have done us proud for many a year before plastic arrived.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Life goes on
Sadly my neighbour of 17 years died on the 18th of January after a short illness. She was one of the most kind and gentle people you could ever hope to meet. She could see the good in everyone even those who couldn't see it in themselves. She made the most wicked potato and leek soup you could ever eat and her recipe, one of many has been passed onto me so each time I make P&L soup I will remember my neighbour.
Her lovely daughter scattered her ashes yesterday and just as she did there was a massive rainbow in the sky, no rain, no sun just an overcast sky with my neighbour smiling down.
But this gets me thinking about life and things. We are so wrapped up in material goods like posh cars, fine foods, expensive holidays, all probably paid for on the never never that one day, in fact now there will be a depression not a recession. My family and I will be ok as we have nowt of value, no posh cars, no rich foods and certainly no holidays. So for us life will go on as normal until we come to the end and become another rainbow in the sky. For many others angst and depression, loss of houses and lifestyles will cost the NHS a lot more than anything else.
Hopefully this blog, and my main site http://www.bselfsufficient.co.uk/(when it's sorted) will become a bigger source of info for others to get through the crisis that is upon us and also looms in the next decade with the loss of oil / fossil fuels etc.
Her lovely daughter scattered her ashes yesterday and just as she did there was a massive rainbow in the sky, no rain, no sun just an overcast sky with my neighbour smiling down.
But this gets me thinking about life and things. We are so wrapped up in material goods like posh cars, fine foods, expensive holidays, all probably paid for on the never never that one day, in fact now there will be a depression not a recession. My family and I will be ok as we have nowt of value, no posh cars, no rich foods and certainly no holidays. So for us life will go on as normal until we come to the end and become another rainbow in the sky. For many others angst and depression, loss of houses and lifestyles will cost the NHS a lot more than anything else.
Hopefully this blog, and my main site http://www.bselfsufficient.co.uk/(when it's sorted) will become a bigger source of info for others to get through the crisis that is upon us and also looms in the next decade with the loss of oil / fossil fuels etc.
Friday, January 23, 2009
A Month Without Plastic Week 4 / 5
January 22ND
Very little to say now as I'm well into the plastic reduction mode I've come to the conclusion that it is not possible nor feesible to eradicate plastic totally so it's going to be as much as possible a gradual reduction with the eventual aim of zero plastic but that will mean drastic changes such as no milk.
We had the bin emptied on Wednesday as my neighbour put it out for me whilst I was out but it was only about 4" in the bottom. For what was in there you could have put it in a dog poop bag I guess let alone a plastic carrier, heaven forbid. I've even trained my local veg shop to continue to provide the paper bags but my real objective is to get him to remove the plastic bags on a roll he has. I will keep whinging until he does.
As I say nothing has happened to report to the world against plastic. I haven't bought anything in plastic except milk since the last posting and when I went to the butchers yesterday I had my plastic boxes in my bag and was being served by a new staff member who was going to put some chops into a plastic bag to the cry of "No he does't use plastic bags" from another staff member. This was before I had the time to get my pork box out of the bag... canvas bag that is.
January 26TH
Still not a lot to report except bought two bags of mince for the dog so that's another 40g of plastic to add to the bin as it's type 6 and our council don't recycle it at present.
I really must find some meat to mince up myself as we use one bag of mince a day for our dog so that works out at an amazing 7.3 kg of plastic each year. The trouble is that at one bag a day you don't realise the impact on the plan but the greater yearly picture is quite astounding.
January 28TH
Been on a big shop tonight for the next two weeks and spent £70 including £14 for minced meat for the dog. Sadly this was the only things in plastic but that's my target to focus on now and buy meat and mince it myself. I'll have to fine it at a cost of less than £4 a kilo to make a saving in cost. I say saving in cost over saving in plastic because I can't buy stuff that is more expensive just for the fact it's not in plastic. Sad as it seems but I don't have a choice.
Speaking of choice, Lush, the cosmetic body products shop uses only recycled paper in their bags and the last one I got at Christmas had 3 spaces on so that if you get three stamps on it for reusing it you get a free soap or something.... The previous carrier I had from them had the date of 2006 written inside by me so I reckon it must have been reused at least 12 to 15 times in the intervening years.... Sad i know but hey it keeps me out of mischief.
January 30TH
Seems sort of sad now as the sparkle has seemed to go out of this trial now as I regard it as "normal" to reduce the use of plastic. Stil no cheaper versions of milk bottles.
Very little to say now as I'm well into the plastic reduction mode I've come to the conclusion that it is not possible nor feesible to eradicate plastic totally so it's going to be as much as possible a gradual reduction with the eventual aim of zero plastic but that will mean drastic changes such as no milk.
We had the bin emptied on Wednesday as my neighbour put it out for me whilst I was out but it was only about 4" in the bottom. For what was in there you could have put it in a dog poop bag I guess let alone a plastic carrier, heaven forbid. I've even trained my local veg shop to continue to provide the paper bags but my real objective is to get him to remove the plastic bags on a roll he has. I will keep whinging until he does.
As I say nothing has happened to report to the world against plastic. I haven't bought anything in plastic except milk since the last posting and when I went to the butchers yesterday I had my plastic boxes in my bag and was being served by a new staff member who was going to put some chops into a plastic bag to the cry of "No he does't use plastic bags" from another staff member. This was before I had the time to get my pork box out of the bag... canvas bag that is.
January 26TH
Still not a lot to report except bought two bags of mince for the dog so that's another 40g of plastic to add to the bin as it's type 6 and our council don't recycle it at present.
I really must find some meat to mince up myself as we use one bag of mince a day for our dog so that works out at an amazing 7.3 kg of plastic each year. The trouble is that at one bag a day you don't realise the impact on the plan but the greater yearly picture is quite astounding.
January 28TH
Been on a big shop tonight for the next two weeks and spent £70 including £14 for minced meat for the dog. Sadly this was the only things in plastic but that's my target to focus on now and buy meat and mince it myself. I'll have to fine it at a cost of less than £4 a kilo to make a saving in cost. I say saving in cost over saving in plastic because I can't buy stuff that is more expensive just for the fact it's not in plastic. Sad as it seems but I don't have a choice.
Speaking of choice, Lush, the cosmetic body products shop uses only recycled paper in their bags and the last one I got at Christmas had 3 spaces on so that if you get three stamps on it for reusing it you get a free soap or something.... The previous carrier I had from them had the date of 2006 written inside by me so I reckon it must have been reused at least 12 to 15 times in the intervening years.... Sad i know but hey it keeps me out of mischief.
January 30TH
Seems sort of sad now as the sparkle has seemed to go out of this trial now as I regard it as "normal" to reduce the use of plastic. Stil no cheaper versions of milk bottles.
Monday, January 19, 2009
A Month Without Plastic Week 3.
January 15th
Went to the butchers where I got the meet wrapped in greaseproof paper the other week and asked for some bacon. Real thick cut Ayrshire roll bacon fit for kings and the young woman went to put in a plastic bag after wrapping it in greaseproof paper. I said I didn't want the plastic bag so got a blank look and so I repeated myself, I don't want a plastic bag thankyou.... So she pulled a plastic carrier of the hook and put the greaseproofed wrapped bacon in it. Whilst waiting for my change i took the bacon out of the carrier bag and left it on the counter to the cry of Excuse me you have forgot your bacon.... no i haven't holding it aloft. Well the look of puzzlement on her face was a real picture. My son commented... "Dad you can't help it that she's thick" ... Got him trained already,lol.
The reason I went there for my bacon was because I went to Asda, Tesco and Morrisons to see if the bacon was available without plastic. These so called shops of convenience proudly exclaim that they have fully trained butchers in their shops but I wonder what these butchers do when all their work is out of sight of the public and all the meat is pre packed. Matbe they are the packers or maybe they are just a picture you see in the adverts...
Having said that it was "less convenient" to me to go to the butchers as it was a special journey today that I could have done without if I was looking at food miles....
Still here is half way through the month and it is becoming increasingly easier to shop without plastic, you just have to think about it and if need be spend a little more time thinking, planning and executing your plan. By doing so you are supporting local businesses, (maybe)getting a bit more exercise walking around more shops but above all you are being part of the community. I often feel that we are a nation selfish singles who get up, go out to the car, drive to work and then drive home on a night locking the door behind us until it is time to do it all again the next day. The problem for me with this is that you lose the conection with society and your neighbours. How many times have we read that a body was discovered in a house and it had been there x number of weeks and nobody knew of the death until the stench alerted them.
If we walked a bit more, took a few minutes extra to enable usa to talk to our neighbours or smile at a stranger you pass by or sit next to on the bus the world would be a better place. Maybe I'm being nostalgic for a bygone era, maybe it never existed but I know in my street people know who I am and that they can count on me to offer help if needed.
January 19TH
4 days since the last update but all is going to plan. I bought some bacon from Asda on Friday Saturday and it was packed in the usual plastic packaging. The sad part of this, and a salutory lesson was that it was about 10 pm that we went shopping so I couldn't go to the local butchers for the bacon. The sad part was that it reenforces the idea of these shops being "convenient" stores because for many reasons I couldn't get to the local butchers before it closed. I guess i could have waited until today, monday but we wanted a cheese and bacon toastie that night not waiting until mMonday morning for one. The local butcher lost business because of this and I gained a bit of plastic in the process. All in all my plastic so far this month is very much reduced and weighs around 230g if my maths is correct... yes i have weighed every bit of plastic on digital scales but the actual amount is far smaller in volume than previous months. A normal 2 weekly bin emptying cycle would see the wheelie bin stuffed full of all sorts but mainly plastic that couldn't be recycled.
By selective shopping and thinking about my shopping habits, by thinking of alternative uses if I have to buy plastics I've reduced this down to about 4 " in the bottom of the bin. We are approaching the empty week this wednesday so i'm well chuffed at that Because it means that the bin will not need to be emptied this fortnight. If this is a way forward then my bin will only need to be emptied, I guess about every 6 months but like everything it takes effort to continue this but certainly for a month this is the goal.
After the month I feel that I will be sufficiently "trained" in my habits to continue with the reduce not recycle pledge for plastics.
Went to the butchers where I got the meet wrapped in greaseproof paper the other week and asked for some bacon. Real thick cut Ayrshire roll bacon fit for kings and the young woman went to put in a plastic bag after wrapping it in greaseproof paper. I said I didn't want the plastic bag so got a blank look and so I repeated myself, I don't want a plastic bag thankyou.... So she pulled a plastic carrier of the hook and put the greaseproofed wrapped bacon in it. Whilst waiting for my change i took the bacon out of the carrier bag and left it on the counter to the cry of Excuse me you have forgot your bacon.... no i haven't holding it aloft. Well the look of puzzlement on her face was a real picture. My son commented... "Dad you can't help it that she's thick" ... Got him trained already,lol.
The reason I went there for my bacon was because I went to Asda, Tesco and Morrisons to see if the bacon was available without plastic. These so called shops of convenience proudly exclaim that they have fully trained butchers in their shops but I wonder what these butchers do when all their work is out of sight of the public and all the meat is pre packed. Matbe they are the packers or maybe they are just a picture you see in the adverts...
Having said that it was "less convenient" to me to go to the butchers as it was a special journey today that I could have done without if I was looking at food miles....
Still here is half way through the month and it is becoming increasingly easier to shop without plastic, you just have to think about it and if need be spend a little more time thinking, planning and executing your plan. By doing so you are supporting local businesses, (maybe)getting a bit more exercise walking around more shops but above all you are being part of the community. I often feel that we are a nation selfish singles who get up, go out to the car, drive to work and then drive home on a night locking the door behind us until it is time to do it all again the next day. The problem for me with this is that you lose the conection with society and your neighbours. How many times have we read that a body was discovered in a house and it had been there x number of weeks and nobody knew of the death until the stench alerted them.
If we walked a bit more, took a few minutes extra to enable usa to talk to our neighbours or smile at a stranger you pass by or sit next to on the bus the world would be a better place. Maybe I'm being nostalgic for a bygone era, maybe it never existed but I know in my street people know who I am and that they can count on me to offer help if needed.
January 19TH
4 days since the last update but all is going to plan. I bought some bacon from Asda on Friday Saturday and it was packed in the usual plastic packaging. The sad part of this, and a salutory lesson was that it was about 10 pm that we went shopping so I couldn't go to the local butchers for the bacon. The sad part was that it reenforces the idea of these shops being "convenient" stores because for many reasons I couldn't get to the local butchers before it closed. I guess i could have waited until today, monday but we wanted a cheese and bacon toastie that night not waiting until mMonday morning for one. The local butcher lost business because of this and I gained a bit of plastic in the process. All in all my plastic so far this month is very much reduced and weighs around 230g if my maths is correct... yes i have weighed every bit of plastic on digital scales but the actual amount is far smaller in volume than previous months. A normal 2 weekly bin emptying cycle would see the wheelie bin stuffed full of all sorts but mainly plastic that couldn't be recycled.
By selective shopping and thinking about my shopping habits, by thinking of alternative uses if I have to buy plastics I've reduced this down to about 4 " in the bottom of the bin. We are approaching the empty week this wednesday so i'm well chuffed at that Because it means that the bin will not need to be emptied this fortnight. If this is a way forward then my bin will only need to be emptied, I guess about every 6 months but like everything it takes effort to continue this but certainly for a month this is the goal.
After the month I feel that I will be sufficiently "trained" in my habits to continue with the reduce not recycle pledge for plastics.
Thursday, January 8, 2009
A month without plastic week 2.
January 7TH.
Probably one of the better days without plastic although I did fall at the last hurdle and it was costly on my health. As I was saying in the last post about the miles traveled to do the shops I tried today to use the bus and walk. I know I shouldn't as I'm quite ill when it come to walking but if you don't keep going then you may as well give up on life. It won't be long before I'm in chair so I may as well try a bit harder now.
Anyway....
So I got the bus from around the corner of my house into town. Well that started off with a dodgy driver finding all of the pot holes in the road and bouncing me all over the place. Now I'm no light little bunny but I got well shaken and stirred. Anyway got off the bus in town and I had a plan as I knew I wouldn't last long. Went to the butchers stall in our market hall and looked at the display. On the counter was a pile of greaseproof paper but hung up were a range of plastic bags and carriers. I asked if I brought in some resealable containers would they put the meat in them as I was trying to reduce plastic use age.
The butcher said it would be OK but they wrap everything in greaseproof paper as a start. I ended up with a good conversation about the environment and butchering and ended up with just under 4 pounds of fillet steak which 3 of us enjoyed as a going back to uni evening meal for our son.
So here I am carrying this fillet steak in my hands as I forgot to take my bags again and then I saw some lovely brambly apples, well an apple pie for afters just screamed out at me so £2.00 worth of apples in a paper bag and I refused the offer of a carrier bag and said why. The shop assistant, a 16 / 17 yr old replied "whatever" and threw it in the bin........ The chavs will destroy the future...
So I'm on my way back through the shopping centre and I'm really flagging now and the car is a good 100 yard away. I take a rest on a metal seat just in time as my legs start to give way and it looked as if i was sitting down but really it was falling down on the bench. Sat there for 10 minutes or so but the problem was I had had no food, a #1 cardinal sin if you go shopping and secondly it was right near subway's. Oh man do their sarnies taste and smell nice. Still my willpower was nearly broken but not totally as i got a 6" sub for my son after the pain had eased off but my head wasn't in the right place and the lady put it in a bag and handed me it. It wasn't until I got home after flagging a taxi down that I realised that I had the plastic bag.
After a good rest and some seriously strong pain killers my wife drove us to asda and for the first time I used one of their wheelchairs to my sheer disgust and embarrassment. Got some more dog meat mince and so that's another 5 plastic bags for the weigh in. I hope to get a metal mincer this month so that i can mince my own meat for dog food and thus know the fat content but also cut out on 30 odd plastic bags each month in the future as he gets one bag of mince per day. There will be food miles for that as i need to go to smogville for it but it is also a sausage making shop so I will get a sausage making kit at the same time.
As far as I can see it is going to be virtually impossible for me to not use plastic but at the same time I have only put 45g of waste in the bin this year which started yesterday after the first bin emptying day of the year although the 45g of waste includes the plastic where as by now it would have generally been well full and even emptied once.
January 8th
Took our son back to his flat today so took the opportunity to go to the Grainger market in Newcastle. Great place to shop for cheap bargains but all of the highest quality. In the old part it is row upon row of butchers and veg stalls, delli's and other little shops vying for your attention and money. I first went ther about 37 years ago and still love the place. I haven't been to Leeds in a long time to shop, only to see the scum leeds united take on my team but there used to be an indoor market there where you could buy like a whole pig or half a pig and have it jointed for you but it's been best part of 30 years since I was there... thankfully.
Bought a load of fresh fruit and veg [from Grainger market]and annoyed the line of customers as I had 4 large canvas bags full of F&F and took over 10 minutes to make the purchase. Poor son had to carry them all as well... all say awwww ! One woman was constantly tutting away and talking to the next customer about me taking time so to my sons dismay I made some really sarcastic remarks and she stopped whinging.
Went to the butchers and bought over the path from the veg stall and got some ox liver for liver and onions but sadly this had to be in a plastic bag as I didn't have any boxes with me. I love cooking and have done so for over 30 years now but didn't know until today that you cook ox liver in a slow cooker mode and lambs liver is fried. Liver came out lovely and tender after 4 hours slow cooking.
The secret to doing this plastic reduction thingy is to beome a boy scout and "BE PREPARED",lol. For me that means making a list, a route plan of shops, carrying cash and having the boxes and bags together.... Oh and the biggest thing... remembering to take it all out with me.
January 12TH
4 days since the last update so sorry for that. Been suffering from the dodgy back again which in a way is quite helpful for the reduction in plastic terms because I couldn't leave the house ,lol. Thankfully we had the basics in the cupboards so we didn't starve... we will never starve ! Before the back got a total grip on me I did manage to get to Smoggsville to buy a sausage making kit and a mincer.
I dropped so many hints before christmas it was unreal but did it turn up from Santa... no it didn't so I got one myself. It was expensive in that the mincer was a solid stainless steel one and a good size for £65 + vat and then the kit was £24.00 and a joint of pork shoulder and belly pork was a further £24.00 so the initial outlay was quite large but we got over 10 pounds of sausages made and have eaten about half of them. my neighbour, Bob is a self confessed sausage lover so he got some, wrapped in good old greasproof paper so he will report back soon. For me, my biggest critic is my wife. I don't mean critic in a bad way but she is honest in her advice so I take her council often and she loved them so I reckon we did ok.
Because the back kicked off I haven't been able to get out since Friday so the only plastic used was a 2 x 4 pint milk bottles. I managed to look in the wheely bin today and it's virtually empty with a couple of plastic / cellophane type bags from a pack of chilli's and some chicken. Also a tray that had chicken on. On the other hand there is about 9 plastic milk bottles in the recycling box but the rumour is that this credit crunch crisis has seen the bottom fall out of the recycling market so a lot of recycled gear is being dumped in land fill by local councils...
If this rumour is true then it is well worth doing the reduction in use first before the recycling bit.
Having said that I got a childrens wind turbine kit in the sales after christmas and used a plastic pop bottle to mount this on. Basically it's a Key Stage 2 kit where you make a turbine and as the wind turns the blades the small LED lights up. The reason I got one is that I'm a practical person rather than a reader and delegator so I needed to see in action the principles before having a go at a larger one to add into the grid. Anyway I stuck it out in the garden and was told the wind wouldn't be strong enough.... well last night we had 3 jumbo jets trying to land in our garden thinking this led was a runway light it was so bright.
I reckon we get enough wind so i'm looking for a non plastic set up of a wind turbine now....
January 13TH
Went shopping today but only to Asda. Remembered to take the shopping bags and my newest home made one, that's two now and it looks so much better than the first. Also recycled some brown paper bags from the local greengrocer to use in Asda and got funny comments from the checkout lass because she had to look in the bag to see what the produce was.... Don't worry a caustic reply is always on hand to put the infidels down,lol.
I was going to do chops and veg last night but changed it to ssausages and veg because the chops were in a plastic tray and clingfilm wilst the sausages were fresh home made pork and leek. I did buy some mince for my lovely Red Setter so that was two plastic bags but these will be reused to pick up his waste when out walking and 2 x 4 pint cartons of milk. I am finding myself becoming a bit of a zealot on this subject at the moment or really sad because there was an advert on the tv last night during big brother for a big store. Can't remember which one so I won't name any but it was advertising all the fresh produce and everything except the carrots were in plastic bags.... I'll be watching again as I feel a letter coming on....
January 14TH
I asked for some ideas for reusing the 4 pint cartons on another site I go on and so far there are about 20 ingenious sugestions. I'll copy them here over the weekend. Thank you my fellow ishers.
Got all the food for today so don't need to go out, thankfully as it's bitter cold and freezing ice up here.
Probably one of the better days without plastic although I did fall at the last hurdle and it was costly on my health. As I was saying in the last post about the miles traveled to do the shops I tried today to use the bus and walk. I know I shouldn't as I'm quite ill when it come to walking but if you don't keep going then you may as well give up on life. It won't be long before I'm in chair so I may as well try a bit harder now.
Anyway....
So I got the bus from around the corner of my house into town. Well that started off with a dodgy driver finding all of the pot holes in the road and bouncing me all over the place. Now I'm no light little bunny but I got well shaken and stirred. Anyway got off the bus in town and I had a plan as I knew I wouldn't last long. Went to the butchers stall in our market hall and looked at the display. On the counter was a pile of greaseproof paper but hung up were a range of plastic bags and carriers. I asked if I brought in some resealable containers would they put the meat in them as I was trying to reduce plastic use age.
The butcher said it would be OK but they wrap everything in greaseproof paper as a start. I ended up with a good conversation about the environment and butchering and ended up with just under 4 pounds of fillet steak which 3 of us enjoyed as a going back to uni evening meal for our son.
So here I am carrying this fillet steak in my hands as I forgot to take my bags again and then I saw some lovely brambly apples, well an apple pie for afters just screamed out at me so £2.00 worth of apples in a paper bag and I refused the offer of a carrier bag and said why. The shop assistant, a 16 / 17 yr old replied "whatever" and threw it in the bin........ The chavs will destroy the future...
So I'm on my way back through the shopping centre and I'm really flagging now and the car is a good 100 yard away. I take a rest on a metal seat just in time as my legs start to give way and it looked as if i was sitting down but really it was falling down on the bench. Sat there for 10 minutes or so but the problem was I had had no food, a #1 cardinal sin if you go shopping and secondly it was right near subway's. Oh man do their sarnies taste and smell nice. Still my willpower was nearly broken but not totally as i got a 6" sub for my son after the pain had eased off but my head wasn't in the right place and the lady put it in a bag and handed me it. It wasn't until I got home after flagging a taxi down that I realised that I had the plastic bag.
After a good rest and some seriously strong pain killers my wife drove us to asda and for the first time I used one of their wheelchairs to my sheer disgust and embarrassment. Got some more dog meat mince and so that's another 5 plastic bags for the weigh in. I hope to get a metal mincer this month so that i can mince my own meat for dog food and thus know the fat content but also cut out on 30 odd plastic bags each month in the future as he gets one bag of mince per day. There will be food miles for that as i need to go to smogville for it but it is also a sausage making shop so I will get a sausage making kit at the same time.
As far as I can see it is going to be virtually impossible for me to not use plastic but at the same time I have only put 45g of waste in the bin this year which started yesterday after the first bin emptying day of the year although the 45g of waste includes the plastic where as by now it would have generally been well full and even emptied once.
January 8th
Took our son back to his flat today so took the opportunity to go to the Grainger market in Newcastle. Great place to shop for cheap bargains but all of the highest quality. In the old part it is row upon row of butchers and veg stalls, delli's and other little shops vying for your attention and money. I first went ther about 37 years ago and still love the place. I haven't been to Leeds in a long time to shop, only to see the scum leeds united take on my team but there used to be an indoor market there where you could buy like a whole pig or half a pig and have it jointed for you but it's been best part of 30 years since I was there... thankfully.
Bought a load of fresh fruit and veg [from Grainger market]and annoyed the line of customers as I had 4 large canvas bags full of F&F and took over 10 minutes to make the purchase. Poor son had to carry them all as well... all say awwww ! One woman was constantly tutting away and talking to the next customer about me taking time so to my sons dismay I made some really sarcastic remarks and she stopped whinging.
Went to the butchers and bought over the path from the veg stall and got some ox liver for liver and onions but sadly this had to be in a plastic bag as I didn't have any boxes with me. I love cooking and have done so for over 30 years now but didn't know until today that you cook ox liver in a slow cooker mode and lambs liver is fried. Liver came out lovely and tender after 4 hours slow cooking.
The secret to doing this plastic reduction thingy is to beome a boy scout and "BE PREPARED",lol. For me that means making a list, a route plan of shops, carrying cash and having the boxes and bags together.... Oh and the biggest thing... remembering to take it all out with me.
January 12TH
4 days since the last update so sorry for that. Been suffering from the dodgy back again which in a way is quite helpful for the reduction in plastic terms because I couldn't leave the house ,lol. Thankfully we had the basics in the cupboards so we didn't starve... we will never starve ! Before the back got a total grip on me I did manage to get to Smoggsville to buy a sausage making kit and a mincer.
I dropped so many hints before christmas it was unreal but did it turn up from Santa... no it didn't so I got one myself. It was expensive in that the mincer was a solid stainless steel one and a good size for £65 + vat and then the kit was £24.00 and a joint of pork shoulder and belly pork was a further £24.00 so the initial outlay was quite large but we got over 10 pounds of sausages made and have eaten about half of them. my neighbour, Bob is a self confessed sausage lover so he got some, wrapped in good old greasproof paper so he will report back soon. For me, my biggest critic is my wife. I don't mean critic in a bad way but she is honest in her advice so I take her council often and she loved them so I reckon we did ok.
Because the back kicked off I haven't been able to get out since Friday so the only plastic used was a 2 x 4 pint milk bottles. I managed to look in the wheely bin today and it's virtually empty with a couple of plastic / cellophane type bags from a pack of chilli's and some chicken. Also a tray that had chicken on. On the other hand there is about 9 plastic milk bottles in the recycling box but the rumour is that this credit crunch crisis has seen the bottom fall out of the recycling market so a lot of recycled gear is being dumped in land fill by local councils...
If this rumour is true then it is well worth doing the reduction in use first before the recycling bit.
Having said that I got a childrens wind turbine kit in the sales after christmas and used a plastic pop bottle to mount this on. Basically it's a Key Stage 2 kit where you make a turbine and as the wind turns the blades the small LED lights up. The reason I got one is that I'm a practical person rather than a reader and delegator so I needed to see in action the principles before having a go at a larger one to add into the grid. Anyway I stuck it out in the garden and was told the wind wouldn't be strong enough.... well last night we had 3 jumbo jets trying to land in our garden thinking this led was a runway light it was so bright.
I reckon we get enough wind so i'm looking for a non plastic set up of a wind turbine now....
January 13TH
Went shopping today but only to Asda. Remembered to take the shopping bags and my newest home made one, that's two now and it looks so much better than the first. Also recycled some brown paper bags from the local greengrocer to use in Asda and got funny comments from the checkout lass because she had to look in the bag to see what the produce was.... Don't worry a caustic reply is always on hand to put the infidels down,lol.
I was going to do chops and veg last night but changed it to ssausages and veg because the chops were in a plastic tray and clingfilm wilst the sausages were fresh home made pork and leek. I did buy some mince for my lovely Red Setter so that was two plastic bags but these will be reused to pick up his waste when out walking and 2 x 4 pint cartons of milk. I am finding myself becoming a bit of a zealot on this subject at the moment or really sad because there was an advert on the tv last night during big brother for a big store. Can't remember which one so I won't name any but it was advertising all the fresh produce and everything except the carrots were in plastic bags.... I'll be watching again as I feel a letter coming on....
January 14TH
I asked for some ideas for reusing the 4 pint cartons on another site I go on and so far there are about 20 ingenious sugestions. I'll copy them here over the weekend. Thank you my fellow ishers.
Got all the food for today so don't need to go out, thankfully as it's bitter cold and freezing ice up here.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)