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.....

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?

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...

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.

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.

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.......

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...

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.....

Feed the hungry 2 on £75 for a month.

As an update I

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.