remember remember the 5th of November

Twas the 30th Anniversary of meeting the Hub, this Guy Fawkes night.
We met at work as many people do.
So many things have happened since and it is hard to relate to the people we once were.
My own kids are both older than we were then.

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On the running front, I passed the 3 mile mark and am on the way to the 3 and a half.
Still jogging along 3 nights a week.
Sunday we do mornings if we can but it isnt always possible if the Hub has a duty on that day.

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I am back to my plank exercise 2 or three times a week.
It consists of pushing into a push up position and holding steady as long as possible.
I can manage just over 4 minutes 40 as a PB

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The garden is still untouched and will most likely remain so until the spring.

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Food wise, I have finished the turpentining and think it helped.
Still Dairy free and will be for the long haul now.
Still Potato free.
Went back to Gluten and yeasted bread as it wasn't making a noticable difference to leave them out.

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Only a few weeks till christmas.
The boy has still not found a job but there is a possible offering coming up.
Our daughter is working and living away still and is back to the university alongside her part time job.
She works in retail (is a shop assistant in other words) and their idea of part time workers is to contract them as part time employment and then tell them when they are doing overtime.
This is to get around the governments rules on the minimum wage and workers rights.

Im sure the government wouldn't give two hoots if they knew as they are all corrupt themselves.
It is quite alright for a political employee to lie and cheat regarding expenses and extra income but not for anyone else. Barring corporations ofcourse who have a lot more clout if they are challenged than a shop assistant or a 'commoner' such as the rest of we plebs most certainly are seen as.

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My fiddle playing has improved vastly.
I can now twiddle my way through various hornpipes and you can hardly tell which are the wrong notes.
Very enjoyable.
I recommend learning a new instrument to anyone.

return to running

Since I have changed my diet so much, I find I have lots more energy.
So..I have gone back to my 3 running sessions a week.

So far I have been doing it for about a month with just 2 runs a week but we went 3 times last week and will have done 3 this week .
The distance started at around 2 miles because my 3 jump rope sessions a week have kept up my fitness enough not to feel like a total couch potato.

We are back up to almost 3 miles.

.
I charged up my garmin watch today and discovered it is 2 years since I last used it.

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The food changes are going well.
I have been oil pulling for a couple of months or so too which has really whitened my teeth.

This week I am trying to be gluten free and see how that affects things.
I think it will be another part change I might make.
We do eat a lot of gluten and I dont think I have an allergy to it but it does get in the way of curing candida problems.

..................................
 For me that means I am now dairy free(since Julyish) spud free(since about august), yeast free and gluten free(for the next 2 weeks or so hopefully).
Plus the oil pulling every morning.

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For the Candida thingummy, I am trying the turps on sugar strategy.
It really needs me to stop eating sugar, most carbs and yeasts and even vinegar.



That doesnt leave a lot.
However,it does seem to work better on none gluten days so I am defo going to give gluten the push for 2 weeks and keep at the turps.

Ive been doing the turps thing for about 3 weeks I think .
Week one every day for 5 days, and the rest twice a week.

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Breakfast doesn't come in sachets

What is all this sachet business?
Oats in a sachet?
Why?

How hard is it to put a big spoon into a bag of oats and scoop some into a bowl?
Put some water or juice or milk ontop and zap it in the microwave for 1 minute 40.
You will have perfect porridge.
If you want it fruity, add fruit..
Syrupy, add syrup.

Next thing you know, they'll be selling you pre made
mashed potato
Ice
Custard
Gravy
cut up raw vegetables
chopped nuts

Oh yeah,they already do..

Lemmings buy them because they like paying for air and tap water.
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Hooray the UK are finally going to charge 5p on a carrier bag.
How many people will now go around picking them up when they see them flapping in the wind?

Ofcourse teenagers and students will still get one every trip and dump it in the park or by the river with their junk in but then kids and young people have grown up with far too much money.

I remember when it was lucky to find a pop bottle in the bushes because if you took it to the shop, the owner would give you the deposit money for it.

The reason kids now have a drinking ,drugs or smoking problem is too much money.
When you are confronted by a group of 13-15 year olds outside an off license or  tobacconists and asked to buy them fags or booze, you no longer wonder where on earth they got that sort of money.
Today's kids are so spoiled with pocket money that they will struggle their whole lives to live up to the standards of income they perceive their parents can afford.

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I am back to running .
We have been for three weeks now, 2 nights a week.
I am so glad I kept up the jumping rope because it has kept my stamina up and getting back to running is quite easy despite not having done any for about a year.

Better homemade vegan cheese

If you have read any of my other recent food type posts you will know that I discovered I have a milk allergy so have been trying very hard to find alternatives to dairy foods without breaking the bank.

Hooray I managed to make a much more cheese like cheese on my second attempt.

It grates and slices and looks like cheese.
It is softer,like a very firm mousse,not hard and crumbly but it is good on pizza or sandwiches or crackers and I even secretly made Quiche with it and nobody commented that the cheese tasted funny.

The recipe is from reciperenovator.com

1 C cashews
1 1/2 C water
4 teaspoons agar powder
   OR
4 Tablespoons agar flakes
1/4 C nutritional yeast
1/4 C lemon juice
1 Tablespoon onion powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

Soak cashews for 4 hours and then grind em up or just used ground cashews like I did without the soaking.
Boil water and add agar simmer for 5 mins stirring.
Put everything into a blender or food processor and blend it smooth.
add any herbs or whatever(I didn't) .

Oil a bowl or tub to shape your cheese.
Pour in the cheese and let it cool.
Put in Fridge when cold enough.

I did this exactly as above and have a yellow,almost cheddar coloured cheese.
You could add a little bit of tomato paste for oranger cheese or cook a carrot before using the agar in the water.

I might try some hickory smoke powder the next time.

I don't think the cup sizing matters because it is just to get the proportions of the larger amounts right.

Half of this amount lasts me a week so I cut it in half and freeze the second bit.
It thaws out well and keeps its firmness.

Free mobile phone use,broadband use and cheap texting

I have been looking at my mobile phone usage and decided that  I could use Ovivomobile for their freedom package.
I didn't like Orange,they messed up all the time.
The website was buggy and they charged an arm and a leg for data use if you didn't top up your phone every month which I never do,so my credit would whoosh away just for a quick look on a search engine taking only a minute or two.

I already have samba mobile for free broadband on my computer.


[[UPDATED TO ADD OVIVO HAVE NOW GONE OUT OF BUSINESS SO DISREGARD  THIS BIT        MARCH  20TH   2014    ]]

OVIVO supply a sim for £15 and when it arrives and you put it in your mobile phone, it adds £15 of credit so basically the sim is free.
Then you are allocated..

• 150 mins of talk time
• 250 texts 
• 500mb Data

For free each month

Then when your allocated free credits are all used you can still call anyone else who is on ovivo for free or if you are wanting to call other numbers you can top up with real money or just wait for the new months free credits or just go for one of their paid for tariffs which are quite cheap too.

If you port over your existing number by requesting your FREE PAC code from your old supplier they give an additional £3 of credit.
You shouldn't have any trrouble getting your PAC code as they must give it to you by law in the UK.

They also do an ovivo data sim (750mb free a month) which I believe is £15 with the same amount added to your account as credit.

You can have as many sims as you want as you pay for each one so you could have 2 dongles to get 1.5gb a month  or two sims for your phone (would have different numbers of course)or two phones and get two lots of the free phone credits.

 If you use your phone a bit more than I do and have an older phone knocking around, this would work out very cheap indeed over a year...

2 phone sims, £30 one off payment would give you every month

300 mins talk time
500 texts
1gb of data

2 Data sims ,£30 one off payment would give you every month

1.5gb data

That is very cheap over a year  when compared with the yearly PAYG tariffs of other companies.

Of course the longer you use it for ,the cheaper it would be .

So if your uni course was 3 years and you bought two sims of each kind(£60 all together) ,it would be £20 a year for phone and internet.

They don't provide the sims or phones in that price plan .

You can pick up very cheap unlocked phones and dongles on ebay or ask family for their spares.

Ovivo sims work in Nokia's symbian  phones  as well as apple and android and window phones.

The only criteria seems to be a phone that can get 3G and needs to be unlocked.

I have been waiting to change to OVIVO for a while because I still had about £7 credit on orange but then I found FISHTEXT which is an online texting thing. You can pay for the texts with mobile phone credit (eat that,orange) and allocate your mobile number when joining.

Then you can text from your PC or using the app on your mobile and the texts are 2p
International texts are very cheap .
They give you 20p credit (0.30euros)  for joining so you can try it out (10 standard uk to uk texts)
Texts to other FISHTEXT members are free using the PC or a wifi signal on you mobile or the free data from ovivo and their app is very low data usage anyway.

Any replies go to the mobile whose number you have used for your member number.
You can also pay to have a phone number online without needing a mobile phone at all.

The texts are cheap and they can be used internationally with a price guide being shown for each option and length of text when actually texting.

So for a bit of hunting around, I now have a free monthly mobile 'rolling tariff'  with £18 of credit
Plus a £5.20 credit on Fishtext

(£23.20 for the cost of £20) a 16% profit :P

without the Fishtext add on credit £5 it would have been £18.20 for the cost of £15 (a 21.33% profit)

These two things would be ideal for a student who must pay for their own phone and internet.

If you and your friends joined FishText the texts from your pc would be free according to their bumph.
Join Samba mobile to get free broadband to use with it or additionally.
Join ovivo and have free texts and calls and mobile data
Get someone to buy you the samba sim an ovivo phone sim and an ovivo data sim (750MB free a month) for your birthday or xmas  and you will have lots of free broadband and phone data.

Get yourself a copy of joikuspot for your phone and use the phone data to get wifi on either a tablet or PC
Log into samba mobile website whenever there is free wifi available (maybe in a takeaway or cafe,a library with wifi,uni) and watch the adverts to keep your account topped up with data.

Use the dongle or your tethered(joikuspot) phone to run skype so you can instantly message your family at home when you are away. The messaging bit of Skype uses very low data.

Then if after all that, you still run out of calls and texts etc, you can still have your family ring you,because phones work both ways and you don't pay to accept incoming calls or texts,only outgoing.

Incidentally,  I have been topping up my SAMBA SIM every day by watching the adverts I haven't  used the data much, we got it for our ten day trip away in the spring (I think I bought it at the end of Feb for £1 using a code from moneysavingexpert and used an old dongle  I unlocked free)when it was used daily and it has been used about 3 or 4 times when the home wifi was being glitchy. (about 2gb usage all together maybe)

I have 7.8gb sitting on it waiting for my next bigger outing.
If you were going to be off to uni next year and bought a sim now or asked for one for a present, you could accrue a lot of data on it in the time you are at home and avoid paying for the internet when you are away

If you want to get yourself one, you can click on my referral link here to save yourself £2.50
http://www.sambamobile.com/Signup/BecomeMember?memberKey=0x5C0A8DD4F4DDB8E7FC6D4BD659FB8AD5

And the sim will be £2.50 instead of £5 or a dongle with a sim will be £22.50 instead of £25

I haven't got a referral to share for OVIVO because it would be  my name and phone number which obviously I'm not going to broadcast to strangers on the internet.
Fishtext is also not really a referral based thing. click here to get to their page or just search the name

Parents are not pack horses or taxi drivers

I have noticed over the last few years that children in pushchairs are getting bigger and bigger.

When my son started infant school at 5 years old, one of the other children was brought in a pushchair with a dummy firmly inserted in his mouth.

Now some 20 odd years later,I see many many big children being pushed around when they are perfectly capable of walking.

It is important to let children walk once they can. Baby reins help with stumbles , a wrist strap stops them running into traffic.

We had both of our children out of the 'buggy' as much as possible by 3 and walking everywhere as soon as they could.
It was easier with my son because my daughter was younger and he could always hitch a lift on the pushchair when he got tired .

My daughter was given a shoulder lift if she was too tired to manage a longer walk.

We could walk the 2 miles to school with both children and I would shoulder lift my 3 1/2 Year old daughter to town (about 3/4 mile),then she would walk  with me around the shops and we would both walk the 1.5 miles home.

It took time because small children cant walk as fast as adults and it meant that we could no longer  rely on the pushchair to carry the shopping but better that than have children who baulk at walking anywhere. Parents are not pack horses or taxi drivers.

When our kids went  to 6th form college after homeschooling, they were each presented with a bus time table and a bus pass.
The pass enabled them to get a bus at the top of the road and then another in town to the school, about 6 miles away. They both opted to walk to town and take only one bus rather than stand and wait for the first one.

Making milk ,yog and other white stuff

Almond milk in the machine

Yesterday I made Almond Milk in the soymilk machine.
It was quite easy.
A little cup of soaked Almonds, water up to the line.
Turn it on.

The milk hasn't got a strong flavour ,I think it is closer in flavour and consistency to Skimmed cows milk than the soy milk is.

Soy Yoghurt from home made milk

My soy yoghurt making has improved.
The last batch I made also had about half a cup of rolled oats added to the milk machine to add thickening.

When it was done, I added a Tablespoon of sugar and let it cool till it was yoghurt warm.
Then added the yoghurt left over from last time to start the new batch.
I put it in a jug, put the jug in an insulated picnic bag and left it for about 8 hours.

This batch was much much creamier than last time and had less whey on the top when it was done.
It was much closer to the shop soy yoghurt that I bought to use as the first starter.

Tofu from home made milk

I also made Tofu.
This started with making the soymilk as usual and then while it was still very hot, straining it and adding 2 tablespoons of  Epsom salts (bought from Boots the Chemist in UK for £1.25).
The milk curdles into a mass of little curds and thin whey.
You must leave it around 15 minutes and then line a mold with something to hold the curds while allowing the whey to drain.

I made a mold from a take away container with holes punched in it.
The liner was some clean material (tights/panty hose).
Then when the mixture was poured in and the mold put onto a cooling tray over a bowl, I put another take away container into the first, on top of the mixture and put some canned food on top as weights.

The Tofu is sitting in the Fridge till dinner time when I will make a Tofu scramble to have with salad.
I suppose it is about 1/2" thick by 4"x6" and cost me about 30 pence to make not including (20 minutes) electricity for the milk maker machine.

The pulp left after making the milk is Okara and can be used to add to foods in various ways.
The whey is also useful. It is quite sweet and tastes good in a risotto when used as part of the liquid or in porridge.

There is a little pot of Almond Meal left after making the Almond Milk which can be used in baking also.

Cheese trials

I made some cheese with cashews about a week ago.
The recipe required tahini which I had made in advance but my sesame seeds had been a long time in the cupboard so Im not sure if they were a little soured.
Anyway the cheese is quite firm although not really gratable.
I can just about grate it but it doesn't melt and the grater is very gooey afterwards.

It looks like red leicester because of the tomato paste used for colour.
When I had some on pizza,I found the flavour a bit too sesame seed like which might be because of the age of the seeds.

As a sandwich filling, it was hugely successful.
It goes great with tomatoes and cucumber.
I think they detract from the sesame taste.

I have a good stash of cashews so when all my cheese has been devoured,I will have another go with a different recipe.

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Hot and  muggy in July, who knew

The weather has been hot and muggy.
In the UK there is very little predictable weather.
I mean you can tell it will be cold in winter and warmer than cold when it isnt winter but after that, it is a guessing game.

It isn't unusual to see people in t-shirts and shorts and flip flops, walking around in the pouring rain,they are determined that it is summer and so dress accordingly.

In the winter, people tend to have a coat with them but could still be wearing trainers and no hat or gloves.

I think it is why the weather is such a common subject of conversation here.

People have lost the plot.

When I was a child, we would wear wellington boots to school in very rainy or snowy weather and then at school ,change into the plimsolls that were kept there for PE.

Hardly anyone had extra shoes so that they could just get soaked feet and then wear dry shoes next day so it was very practical.

In the 60's and 70's School children had gabardine raincoats when younger and blazers when older ,which were usually wool and most had an outdoor coat with a hood when it was winter,worn over the blazer.
My younger sister was a teenager in the 80's and was determined to be trendy which meant walking to school,rain or snow in a school  pullover ,her coat and gloves and scarf left at home because they were not cool.

We always had a 'mac' when we went on sea side excursions.
They were often sold from machines on the promenade too just in case . You put in your penny and out would come a little pack all folded tightly. Then when you opened it,there was a thin but waterproof transparent mac with a hood. It was quite embarrassing to be wearing a hug plastic bag shaped like a rain coat but not as embarrassing as walking around soaked to the skin and wrapped in your own arms for warmth that is so often the sight now.
 
A lot of materials were natural ; wool ,cotton ,leather and kept the weather out and the warmth in.

Some of the clothes that are for sale now as hard weather gear, are ridiculous.
All nylon,acrylic  and PVC .
I remember watching a documentary in which some youths were staying with an Inuit family and the head of the family laughed at their expensive clothing  then had them kitted out in real cold resistant garb.

I suppose the more modern materials are cooler in summer.
They are certainly very nice for keeping fit.
All my running clothes are some sort of man made fabric and much nicer than the airtex shirts from the 70s that often stained with sweat and became unwearable .

Swimming costumes are also much better these days providing you go for the ones which have low elastane content.

Anyway as Billy Connoly says 'there is no such thing as bad weather,only the wrong clothes'

learning to make things without milk

I had a busy day yesterday.
I made cheddar without using any milk.
It came from the uncheese book.
Today we are having pizza so I will try some on it.

It looks quite orange like processed coloured cheddar.

I also made Ice cream.
That was from a  recipe on instructables.
We had some last night with strawbs, rasps and cherries.
It was pretty good and my first chocolate flavoured thing in about a month.

Today I made a separate pizza base so I can have pizza with the boys but not worry about how I will avoid their normal cheese.
I made a big pizza base using rice flour just for an experiment and it looks good.
I divided it into 6 and 5 slices are in the freezer.

The cherries are looking good on the trees.
I picked a litre bucket full .
Probably I'll get one more picking and then the birds will have polished them off.
I think they are white cherry but they look very like rainiers cherries in photos.

More about soy etc

I have been having fun with soya beans.
I made a whole litre of yoghurt after making some more milk in my machine.
Th yoghurt is a little runny but after looking online ,I see I can add a few spoonfuls of oats to make it thicker and sugar helps it ferment.

The Okara can be dried and made into protien powder which I have done.

Any whey can be used to add to buns or bread or on breakfast.

There really isnt any waste.

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I have dug up the onions and garlic I planted in the Autumn.
They were free as they were all from last years crop.
They are now dried and packed in jars as powder.

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Chalk and Cheese on ebay

We got our money back from the ebay sales person who made me wait in three separate days  for his collection driver.

The third time, they actually came.

He wanted me to retract my negative feedback,stating that the reason the driver hadnt turned up was that he (the vendor) had gone on holiday.

That excuse rang of dumb deceit so I did not take the bait but pointed out that it was not a valid excuse and that he had twice lied ,the second time being presumably while he was on 'holiday' and so unable to read his messages.
I also pointed out that there had been a problem with some parts being wrong and he said he couldn't know every part of all 6000 items he sold .
That would be the 6000 items he has sold in his lifetime as a trader judging by his feedback score.
He had never even acknowledged that the parts were a problem,choosing to ignore me until I said it was broken in 30 minutes when I used it .

I believe that if I hadn't gone to the resolution center,I would now be trying to get the manufacturers to mend it  . I did look them up and their service people are all miles and miles away.

Anyway he now has his substandard item and we had our money back

As soon as the money was refunded,I went straight back onto ebay and found another trader selling the same item . This trader has 100% feedback score and although it was £10 more expensive, I bought from him.

The item arrived with several messages before hand to say when it was coming (to the hour).
I opened it and found 3 bolts were missing.

That evening I messaged the trader and asked him to please send some and next day he phoned to check the address.

They were in my hand the day after that and fitted perfectly(unlike the first machines bolts which were too wide and touched the rotating blade).

Out in the overgrown veg patch,the machine did well.

I left him glowing feedback .
This morning he phoned to check they had come and I was happy with the purchase.

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I have been looking at various ways to make mock cheese using nuts etc.
It looks fairly easy so that will be my next foodie endevour.
No fancy machines this time.

More about Milk Allergy

Well I have had a busy few days.

I always like to be as frugal as possible so it was the usual task of digging deep into the internet to find ways to manage a Milk Allergy cheaply.

Soy milk made at home the easy way

I found a Soy milk maker on ebay and ordered it. It came yesterday.
The Instructions are in Chinese pictogram style writing but luckily they also include a very basic English translation.
Last night I soaked my first batch of organic soy beans(bought in bulk on Amazon for £21/5KG).

This morning I was up early and rinsed the beans(now about thrice their size).
They went into the bottom of the machine with a Litre of water.

I pressed the button and waited.
First it heats up and then whirrs around with a stick blender thing that comes out of its lid.
This process pauses and repeats and 20 minutes later there is a big jug of Soy milk which needs straining.
The milk looks just like the stuff you buy in Sainsburys.
Its very hot so needs to cool before you can really do the next bit.

The remaining strained out sludge is called Okara and I shall be looking into what to do with it later.

I put most of the milk in a big clean coffee jar and a tiny bit in a glass with a dot of vanilla extract and a few grains of sugar.
It was yummy.

I need to get something finer to strain the okara out as the sieve, although quite fine, isn't small enough mesh really.

Pricing this up (just beans per litre) it would cost me 27pence a litre which is nearly half the price of cows milk bought in UHT. And about £1 cheaper per litre than Soy milk in Sains where it is cheaper than the health shops.

The machine cost me £58 but takes all the hassle out of making the milk.
You can do it in a saucepan with a blender to cut up the beans but I like the convenience of the machine enough for the price.

I am soaking another batch of beans for making soy yoghurt which I shall do this evening.

Sausages have milk in! Who knew?

Another thing I would miss enormously are Sausages.

Quite a lot of sausages have milk powder in them so they are out.

I now have a meat grinder with a sausage making attachment so that I can make sausages without the milk.

Yesterday, I made some bangers with the new contraption.
It was very easy.
I used my blender to make bread crumbs to eke out the meat.
Added Herbs and seasoning to the crumbs.
Cut up some Belly of Pork with scissors and mixed it all together with my hands.

You have to be very fussy about cleanliness for sausage making else you would give yourself food poisoning.
The machine parts get washed first. Then immediately after use and are all oiled for the next use.

I managed to make enough sausages for about 16 links.

This is not cheaper than Asda Cheapo bangers at £1 for 20 frozen  or 50p for 8 fresh but they were so much less greasy (my microwave browner is usually overflowing with fat when they are cooked) and the flavour was very very nice.
It cost me £79 for the grinder and £3 for the sausage casings.
The casings will last a while as I dont think I even used a 1/4 of the amount.

You can use a hand mincer/grinder to make the sausages but they are hard work and you are in a sort of lottery when you buy a mincer due to the poor manufacture.
A really good one is about £40.

There are some meat grinders that run on electricity for anywhere from about £30 but they are priced low to sell abundantly and often are under powered or shoddy workmanship.



I shall be trying to make Tofu and cheese in future weeks and will increase my store of herbs for variations on the sausage front.

food glitches

Well I am back.
I havent actually been away but I was indisposed with a food intolerance thingummy and had to go through the elimination process to discover what it was.
It appears to be both Spuds and Milk.

Having eliminated the two completely, I feel much more my old self.
In fact ,I feel more my young self.

The other good thing about it is, my weight has improved.
I wasn't massively OVER weight but had begun to notice that nothing was keeping me trim as it used to.  Bloating and water retention were the culprits.

I still jump rope 2 or three times a week and that and a couple of walks into town used to be ample exercise for keeping  fit but this last few months it was getting less and less effective.

I think the milk allergy may always have been there.
I fully remember my behaviour panning out over the long summer holidays which was most likely caused by the lack of the daily bottle of free school milk.
We ate very little cheese and butter and mostly drank water but of course milk is in so many things anyway. 
By the time I was a teen, I was drinking copious amounts of tea with milk and 3 sugars so I think that probably took the place of the knock on effects of school milk once I was out of the junior school.


Both my brother and I suffered many ear infections as kids and both had and still have allergy shiners.
I also had a bed wetting problem which went on longer than it should.
I just couldn't predict when it would happen and spent many worrying mornings discovering the awful truth and having to admit it to mum.
Bro is unlikely to do anything about discovering if he has the same allergy.
He just wants a quiet simple life and to be left in peace.
Sis has lots of allergies but I never heard her mention milk.

I did go wheat free for a few weeks to see if it was that but it seems not.

Cutting out the milk means also doing without cheese,many margarine type spreads, yoghurt, chocolate ,butter,many shop biscuits and cakes,even some gravy powders.
Luckily there are many work arounds and I am a good learner.

The spud thing is a surprise to me and was initially more disappointing but actually I am finding that is not so bad either and I have discovered sweet potatoes which are yummy and okay.
The men dont care,neither likes potato.

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Musically we have both been learning our instruments and practicing with them.
I can now do a few tunes with only a bit of squeaking and double stopping where I shouldn't.

OH bought a music stand for us so we can play without having to keep catching the music as it slides down or flops off a prop.
 Having it at eye line helps too to keep the bow angle right.

OH is now quite good with his guitar.
I am less diligent with mine ,I am practicing more with the violin.

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The poor old garden has suffered this year.
I started to chop down the brush with a brand new brush cutter only to have it die on me.
It has taken 2 weeks to get the seller to come and get it so I can be reimbursed.
I will be, I am determined that he will not find a reason to deny me a refund.
I think it was the first time in ages that I have had to go to the resolution center and argue for my rights  on ebay.

It is very strange but some sellers seem to think they are invisible.
I mean ,not that they cant be seen but that their actions and words are secret.
This sellers first reaction when I wrote and told him some of the parts were not right(obviously  replaced with the wrong things so the new item was not what it said), was complete silence.

2 days later I pointed it out again and then when I finally got a chance to use the machine when it wasn't raining, I had to tell him that it didn't work.

He seemed surprised that I was impatient for an answer and  said it was because he had so many queries and messages to get through.

 He said he would collect it and refund.
I waited in and he didnt turn up,well no one did.

I told him he hadnt sent anyone and he apologised and arranged to come.
I waited in and he didnt turn up,well no one did AGAIN.

So,instead of getting very shirty with him,I went into the resolution center and asked him to collect and refund , pointing out that he had twice lied about doing so .

He offered to let me send it at my own expense in 2 days from his message which was not sent until after mid day.

I wrote again and said that the law stated that I should not be out of pocket for a faulty item and he said he would collect it.

A courier finally came and got it . 3rd time lucky?

I took quite a lot of proof photos of the machine in case he is in any doubt about refunding me once he has it.

While his and my messages have been civil, his do scream of back pedaling and lying. I dont think he realises that the resolution team can read the lot.

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I finally finished reading the Game of Thrones.
Such a gripping read.
My favourite character is Aria Stark.
Cant wait till he writes the next one now.
We have watched 2 of the series on TV and find them very sleazy compared with the books.
There is some mild bedroom stuff in the novels but not the pornographical spectacles of the TV series.
Honestly do they think people are that nasty minded or are they just pandering to the imagines masses.
If that sort of thing was not depicted as normal  on TV, it would not be thought about as normal off screen either.

It is just like the old TV series in which every couple would be desperate to disrobe and go at it.

Come on ,life is more than just rutting .
Leaving things to the imagination is so much more respectful.

More musical mending

My OH bought me another Violin !
He got it from Ebay for a tenner and had to go and fetch it.

This new, old violin is quite interesting.
It is a good 100 years old.
Inside is a label describing it as 'The Maidstone'
It came in an old black wooden box like a coffin.
The metal label on the box says 'Maidstone School Orchestra ASST London'.

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Apparently there was a smiley, kind, factory owner named Murdoch who wished to bestow his beneficence on the great unwashed by putting the ownership of violins  within their grubby little grasps.
He imported many Instruments from Czechoslovakia and Germany and then sold them to the plebs on weekly terms.

While that sounds like a wonderful thing to do, it does grab me by the ears and shout opportunist very loudly.
Thousands of these instruments were sold to people who paid for them weekly because there was no way they could afford them outright.
The resulting orchestras wowed the upper classes, (proving you could teach human Monkeys to perform given the right tools).

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It reminds me very much of the weekly payment schemes of modern life in which a £150 computer can become yours for only 36 monthly payments of  £10..
The cost to you is £360 and at the end of the two years you may still be able to use the machine for simple applications assuming that software is still compatible.
The antivirus and office packs included were of course either cut down versions or only free trials and the computers are the absolute bare minimum that can run the OS installed .

Or  the mobile phone you are on 24 month contract for, includes a tablet and the 'whole bundle is yours for just £50 a month.
You receive a phone worth about £80 retail or less, a tablet worth about £70 and a lot of phone use worth about £20 a month .The whole bundle worth under £400 and the actual cost to you...£1200

The companies that provide the 'deals' have bought them en mass and so can get a very good deal on them.
Possibly 100 for a laptop 50 for a phone , 40 for a tablet. Their company will claim every possible penny back through the tax man that they can.

....................................................

Suddenly that Violin man seems less smiley.

*****************************************************

Anyway...

My Violin as I was informed it now was, needed a little tidying up................
The varnish was scratched A lot!
The strings were unattached.
The cork on the chin rest was  wearing off
Only a thin layer of hair remains on the bow.

Of the box......
There was a big hole and some splits in the wood.
3 tiny woodworm holes.
The lid is not a good fit being about 1/4 inch smaller than the bottom.
The green felt lining is torn and there are places where it has  either pulled away from its cardboard or where the cardboard has torn off all together.

...................................................................................................................................................

Having examined it closely, I discovered that the chin rest is newer,at least bought since 1973 because it had £1.39 on a little sticker on its underside proving it was bought after the  decimal conversion.

The tail piece could be original and sports a fine tuner on the E string .
Three of the pegs look to be ebony throughout and the fourth is a little shorter with a pearl dot inset into one end,I think this is ebony too as it is just like the new ebony pegs I bought for the modern violin .

Although there are 4 strings and all are complete,they look brittle and feel rough.
One, the D string, is gut,the others are metal.

In the box is a little metal mute , a lump of hard rosin ,a padded, black velvet shoulder cushion with a leather strap and the bridge.

The box is heavy with a lock but no  key and a small ,thin ,metal ,trunk style handle .

So far I have tidied and restrung the violin .
It has a different tone to the newer instrument and plays nicely.
I will put photos up when I get around to uploading them from my phone.

strumming and what not

I have made inroads with the  mended violin.
I can now muddle my way through a few tunes and it is sounding less and less like a cat strangler.
I finally bought new pegs for it as nothing seemed to get the pegs to stay put.
The new pegs were much much better and it now stays in tune.

It was sounding quite tortorous until I realised I had been using too much rosin.
Now it is getting quite smooth.
I was watching Yehudi Menuin play and discovered his 'body sway' thing and it really does help to get a smoother sound because sometimes it is the bow moving over the strings and sometimes (with the sway), it is the violin moving under the bow.

...............................................................................................................................................................

Oh has a guitar and a Mandolin ,both of which he bought himself new and I fancied trying out guitar ,so I gave it a go with a little disused guitar  that he owns.
We bought it for him about 18 years ago and it is quite small with steel strings.
My poor likkle fingers! The strings are hard work to press down.
OH doesn't use it ,deeming it rubbish.

Looking in the shed where I thought there was another, much older guitar, I came across the remains of the one that his family had owned and maltreated.
This guitar is bigger, more a normal size for an accoustic guitar.
It had almost all its strings broken and on further investigation (once I had extricated it from the tools and bits of old table, I found its bridge was almost completely removed from the body.

Once in the house, I discovered that there were no pegs to keep the strings in, instead someone, it was OH, had pushed the ends of felt pens in to the holes.
They fitted but were all bent up or sheered off.

I took them out .

A new set was about £3.50 on ebay so I sent for some and a new set of strings (£3.99).

I cleaned the poor old guitar body. It was grimey.
There were a couple of places where the body was parting company with the sides but only just, so I ran PVA into the cracks and clamped them shut.

The bridge needed sanding and the place where the bridge had come off was sanded so there was a rough area for the glue to key to.
Then I pushed a lot of flower pots up inside the body of the instrument and eased a thin piece of wood on top so that when I weighed the bridge down to get the glue to stick, it would not break the guitar.

Once all was glued, I blackened in the fingerboard between the frets with a black Sharpie.
It was like a magic wand and once I reblackened the bridge, it looked so much better.
The new pegs and strings came and I strung it using OH's guitar as a guide.

I found a tuning guide online and tuned it and now have quite a nice guitar to learn on.

Looking inside,the label says Madrigal which I think are made in spain.

OH doesn't remember who originally owned this instrument , he cant remember it being bought so it is likely from the 1950's or 60's and purchased for  his father .

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On the flat let side...
We have had a first small payment from the agents.
We had it about 3 or 4 hours and then paid the electrician who had installed the new bathroom extractor and moved a light fitting.
It paid for half his invoice.
So the first income from the flat is -£130

Unglueing a violin bridge

So you have glued your violin bridge to your violin only to discover that they are not supposed to be glued.
Do not despair!
All is not lost.

First of all,can you discover what the glue is?
If you can and it is a water soluble glue, try wetting the feet of the bridge with a paint brush to soften the glue.
If it is superglue, you may be able to soften the glue with something made to dissolve super glue.

In my case, I had no idea what the glue was as we did not glue it ...................

DD bought a Violin from a friend, he was only asking £10, so having learned to play when she was younger, she jumped at the chance of having her own.

When we were helping her move last week, she indicated that she didn't want the Violin because the pegs kept undoing.
Instead of throwing it away as she requested, we brought it home.

Looking at the instrument it was plain it had seen better days.
The fret part(no idea of the correct term)  was painted at intervals with either white nail varnish or white-out ( tippex), to indicate finger positions.
The pegs were thick with resin and some sort of glue.
The bridge was glued on and there was a big drip of glue that had run as well, beside it.

Plan of action

1.Find stuff that dissolves glue of various kinds and try in a little place where it isn't drastic in case it melts the varnish.

I tried

• Water
• white spirit
• Acetone
• Penetrating oil (like WD40)

I used a paint brush to apply and kitchen paper towel to remove.

• The white spirit did nothing either bad or good
• The Acetone removed the White marks on the fret board without melting or spoiling it.
• The penetrating oil did make the glue look more pronounced but nothing more.

 2. Find a thin sharp object to get under the bridge and ease it a bit.

I used a razor blade.
It was one of those flat conventional blades which luckily the men have gone back to using so we had some handy.
A stanley blade might have worked but is thicker so may not have.

The blade was snapped in half length ways so I didnt cut myself too much and I very slowly and carefully worked it back and forth under each bridge foot in a sawing motion.

Success!

The bridge came away.
It left a little of itself behind and in one or two places it took a bit of varnish with it.
There was a lot of glue left behind.

3. Remove as much of the excess wood as possible.

This was all done using the blade.
It took a good long while but caution was needed.

4. Remove excess glue.

The penetrating oil worked best.
It didn't soften the glue at all but it lifted the edge slightly and the blade was very lightly rubbed over it ,which got rid of a goodly amount of glue in little shards (it looked like super glue at this point but as the acetate hadn't touched it,  I don't think it was.

5. cover up the evidence.

The cleaned violin had a few bits of bare wood showing so I used a floor touch up pen that we bought in a set from poundland for doing scratch repairs on laminate floors.

The palest pen was chosen and I carefully dotted the colour on ,waiting and redoing as each bit dried.

On the fret board there was a scratch which was covered up with a Black Sharpie pen (thin black marker).
It actually looks better in the flesh as the darkness outside of each speckled area is not really quite as dark as it looks in the photo.
The new bridge will sit here and cover much of it .

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It still needs a new bridge as the old one was shaved off and the feet are not really very well shaped anymore. Also it has a gory blood finger print courtesy of me.

We need to clean the holes where the pegs go in.
I have cleaned them a bit but two holes feel like they have been gunked with glue and will need a bit more work to clear.
I cleaned the pegs in hot water and they are fine once the old gunk is gone.
We might be able to roughen the pegs a little to help them to stay put.

DH will most likely restring it as he is the strings man (he plays Mandolin and Guitar).

Well that was worth all the hard work!

The flat is already agreed to be let to someone!

They only put it online on Tuesday (photos taken Monday and today is Thursday).
Last Thursday we were still painting and cleaning.
After all that mad rushing around and the non stop work to get it ready we are very pleased.

We have had it for 5 years and it hasn't earned a penny in that time as we were letting to our kids who only really paid for any maintenance to be carried out and the council tax and then in the last 6 months DD was unemployed and the council wouldn't allow her any housing benefit due to it being her parents owning the flat and letting her live there rather than throw her out and rent it out .

They did work it hard and I think that has opened our eyes to the sort of treatment it could face while it is rented out.
A lot of ideas we originally had for making it beautiful were rethought after the kids had finished with it.
We had been going to replace large items with nicer ones but now we will wait till they need to be replaced rather than naively rushing to the shops.

Internet on the go

How does Samba mobile broadband perform?
 If you remember, I said I had joined Samba broadband.
This is a clever idea of theirs.
The company sells you a sim or a sim and a dongle.
You watch adverts on line and the adverts earn you megabytes. Each advert is 3.5 mb.
You can top up with money if you think you would run out but the money top ups are for 30 days straight . The advert megabytes last until you use them. I had just over 1.5 gigabytes in 21 days of membership.

We took several unlocked dongles with us. Samba uses 3 network in the UK.
I used a lot less than I expected due to the enormity of our task and the lack of time. In all,I only used 289 megabytes. This was mainly emails, a few small surveys and some general browsing,I did watch some short videos on nectar adpoints too. I used a Hi link Dongle that can work at 21mbps.

However,despite the comfortable feeling of being able to stay on line, I was disappointed to find that Samba adverts are almost non existent when connecting through their sim.
 I had only one advert for most days and 2 on one or two days.
That meant that although the adverts watched while using the dongle did not deplete the amount I can use, they were pitifully inadequate if I had needed to have more than the small amount of web access I actually used.

If I had only been able to access via the dongle for say a month and we had not been so busy, I would have probably run out with my only option being to top up with money.
 I suppose that one could go into burger restaurants or any of the other places where you can surf with their wifi while drinking a cup of tea and watch the adverts there, to be sure of getting enough to keep your account topped up when no wifi is available but it would need some dedication and determination.

Students would no doubt find this useful and for the very few times that we will need mobile broadband,so will I.
When we stayed at the youth hostel,broadband access was 50 pence for 30 minutes which seems expensive,I would use Samba in preference to that.

They could improve the idea enormously if they had a mobile phone page in which the adverts were accessible as they are on home Internet .
I did try to access their page via my phone browser. UCee browser could access the page but could not view the videos and nor could opera mini or the built in nokia browser(I think based on firefox).

For one thing it is easier to carry a mobile phone with you and you have much more chance of accessing free wifi simply because of the small format.

Secondly, a mobile phone is less alluring to thieves than a laptop would be so turning up in the same spot every day to top up your adverts would be less likely to gain notice .
 I say page rather than App because an App is Operating system specific (unless java or python and still it would rely on a phone being able to handle those languages).
A mobile page can be seen by any mobile browser.

 My other option for internet access was Joikuspot as my phones are all Nokia and that is a Nokia specific app as far as I know. This app worked perfectly although I hardly used it. It was very useful before I got the dongle to see the Samba sim and still go to the log in page (it needed to restart) . I used it a couple of times when I wanted something very quickly rather than find the dongle and let it start up.

My poor DD was about a week without Internet due to having to end her agreement when moving. DH had his phone for tethering (we discovered it is allowed on his tariff ,else he would have used my options).

Back from the north

Well we did it!
The flat is sorted.
It took all the 10 days of constant work to get it ship shape but it is done.

Day 1

When we got there after a 12 hour journey by car (we take turns to drive but still had about 3 hours of sleep stops as there was no rush), the flat was in disarray. There were bags and boxes and 'stuff' everywhere. We sat around for a long while waiting for DD and her BF to get their stuff sorted. They were in no great hurry. In the evening , their guy appeared and about 2 3rds of the pile was removed. We had a take away pizza delivered while we waited for him to come and DH drove one car full of mostly DD's belongings over to her new flat. Then there was a flurry of activity as DH and I began going through the remaining bits to bin as much detritus as possible. We found a backpack full of bits belonging to DS who had lived there for 3 years before DD, including a 3 piece suit and a new pair of shoes.

Day 2

Thank goodness we had bought a steam cleaner.
The Fridge and Freezer were both so frozen that they were ridiculous.
In fact the freezer was frozen with the door open so it was a constant battle between the heating and the freezer.
I am guessing that the two were an expensive factor on the electricity meter. It took a full days work to get both machines back to clean and dry.

We went out afterwards and bought some food to last us the rest of our stay.
The fridge purred back into life when I switched it on and performed well for the rest of the time we were there.
The freezer was left switched off as we didn't need to freeze anything.

 OH began rubbing down paintwork in the bathroom and cleaned and treated the wall and ceiling to remove the mould build up.
The mould was caused by DD drying her clothes in there and her daily shower with the fan left switched off (I believe).

 Day 3

The steam cleaner was again useful to clean the tiling around the bath and restore the grout to something less revolting.
 I also steamed the window ledges and the Kitchen cupboard doors and handles which were grimy and food splattered.

DH retreated the mould areas and when it was dry, sealed the wall and ceiling with PVA. Then he rubbed down the back of the bathroom door which has a full length picture of a bathing beauty glued to it courtesy of the previous owner. We did not attempt to remove it, I have fond memories of removing glued on posters from wood because I worked in the photo exhibition industry and know that glue and wooden panels are a nightmare to clean back.

The cooker top needed only a light steam to remove some built up cleaning cream and as it is only about 6 weeks old, it was a quick job.
 The windows weren't too bad,just a standard clean with squeegee and washing up liquid. Outside is left alone.
The flat is on the 2nd floor and only the main window opens enough to clean both sides.

 Day 4

 More shopping. This time for Mattress covers, a few small tools and scratch restore pens for the floor. I found the pens in poundland. There is a big scratch under the living room door where something had got stuck and it was not easily removable. DH managed to get it out and it was a big piece of grit or gravel. That has been there since we bought the place .

 DH painted the bathroom woodwork and the door. An electrician installed a new extractor fan for us with a humidity controlled timer. He also moved the light in the bedroom so that it was in the middle of the room and not over the wardrobe.
I gave the woodwork a second coat while DH went for fish and chips.

 Day 5

We paint rolled the bathroom walls and ceiling with special paint. While DH gave it a second coat, I started to paint roll the living room. This is a big room maybe 15 feet square with slated ceiling at one side and so a lot of surface area. The ceiling needed doing in this room too.

On fitting a mattress cover to see how it looked, I discovered that it was a little large. This is because the last owner had bought a small double bed which was a non standard size. The mattress is fine and so a cover seemed the best bet. I spent the afternoon sewing the two covers to fit.

 I filled over some holes left by nails and screws in various places and a couple of larger holes caused by careless decorating or removals in the kitchen. One small area needed the wall paper removing and re-gluing as it was almost hanging in mid air.

 Day 6

 The builders came to paint the outside woodwork.
They are cheeky chappies.
 Builder 1 leaned out of the window and rubbed down the woodwork (it is a massive drop if he fell). He leant back in shaking and stressed out!
Then he produced a rope and handed me the end saying 'hold tight for just a wee while' and proceeded to lean a bit further while I held the end.
Obviously if he had fallen, there is no way I could hold his weight but I think he thought it added safety.
His crony, builder 2, appeared on the ladder outside and did the unreachable bits. Later they both came in and worked from inside. I was not happy to see them placing their cloddies all over the cleaned window ledges and even the bed.
Then they examined the concreting on the roof and made a note of what needed doing. We are responsible for the windows and their little dormer roofs .

DH painted the living room with plastic sheets over everything. I am the masker outer so that was all done before hand.

Day 7

The builders reappeared to apply a second coat and give an estimate on the concreting.
I was entertained with stories of terrible tenants who punished their kids by making them use their bedrooms as lavatories. Of tenants who bang up the heating and tape up all the air vents then dry their clothes everywhere resulting in mould(I didn't comment on DD's track record).
One of the builders said that some tenants will use candles rather than replace a light bulb and my mind shot to the candle burn on top of the bedroom chest of drawers and the candle wax that I encountered almost everywhere.

We cleared the bedroom (putting the bed in the living room) and I masked off for painting. The cupboards were filthy and so they got a thorough clean. DH paint rolled the walls to cover up the green .

 I started to paint the kitchen where I had reattached the paper and filled holes.

 Day 8

We finished the bedroom and replaced the bed.
 I cleaned the light shades with bread (it captures the dust and the crumbs disintegrate so it needs to be done over the bin).
The bin was cleaned to remove the food splats.
The kitchen was finished and the carpet was steamed to remove food splashes.

 Day 9

 Mastic day.

 I am the one who does the mastic work.

We had to attach a panel on the wall behind the bath. It covers the boiler and a cupboard above but you cant leave it as an opening cupboard because the shower would be unusable if you did. So it is screwed in place with covers on the screws and mastic is used to waterproof in front and behind the panel.
There was some to do behind the kitchen sink too. We found a tube of black had been left by one of the plumbers and so I filled in the missing 'disc' on the kitchen tap with a little bit to match the black disc on the other one.

 We hung the shower curtain. Fitted a kitchen cabinet with a mirror. Installed a shelf that sits around the basin.
I steamed the whole bathroom floor to zap any nasties hiding around the toilet etc.

 Day 10

 The builders arrived late.
They were there when I got back from the shop (travel food for the home journey).
DH was flustered and red faced.
Builder 2 in stepping on the worktop beside the sink, had caused a cracking sound and DH said the underside of the worktop was cracked. It wasn't visible from above or the sides.
I told builder 1 (the boss) that he should replace the top as they broke it.
He refused.
He told DH where he could get a matching piece to reinforce the counter and said he would pay for it.

 We felt caught out, we needed them to be gone and the work done so that the letting agent would see it finished and give us a price for letting. We were coming back home the same evening.
DH bought the wood and fitted it.
We tidied and vacuumed after the builders had left minus the price of the wood DH bought.

I filled in the scratches with the pen.It worked perfectly.

The letting agent rep came and looked around. He had been a few weeks previously when DD and BF were still here.
That time they had not been able to photograph it due to all the 'stuff' and possibly to the unkempt look of it. This time he nodded in approval.
The quote he gave us was 25 pounds more than the previous one so that was good.
 After he was gone we loaded the car for the journey and then got fish and chips(no washing up) We slept for about 2 hours before starting back.
We were home 12 hours and 600 miles later.

 How much did it cost?

 It was £810 for the builders.
 The petrol for the journey @ £140
 New fan Paint Light fittings
Spares for w-machine(knob) fridge(icebox door) freezer (inner flap)
 Electricity while there and until tenant installed (£35)
grub (takeaway and bought to cook/eat)
mattress covers/under sink shelf/bathroom cabinet
Mirror for hallway
Sundries (screws,glue, rollers, brushes) @ £350
So far around £1300
I haven't added the cost of the electrician as we haven't had the bill yet.
We still need to get a smoke alarm wired in.

The steam cleaner will be used at home so I didn't add that (£30)cost either.
 It was well worth it.
A company hired to come in and do it would have scrapped the fridge and freezer and we would have needed a new washer dryer because the dryer knob(£8 to replace after a little research) was broken.
That would have been a minimum of  £700 for machines alone.
I have no idea how much cleaning would have been and it would have needed at least the kitchen carpet steamed in that price.

*Looking online it seems that an 'end of Tenancy clean with steamed carpets' could be £150 for the size of the flat, I think that is without any clearing of stuff left behind and certainly with no maintenance  or decorating so looks like we made the right decision to do it ourselves*

The estimate for letting was £25 more per month which is £300 over a year

*Actually it was £ 75 a month more and was priced to let  at £50 a month more to see how many bites could be got. If it does well at £50 more,I am happy with that as it is £600 more than we thought it would let for over a year.*

DS is happy, he was reunited with his suit and shoes and the iron he bought and forgot when he came home. We also found one of his old phones, a pair of  expensive gloves,his mini fridge  and his wooly hat.

I brought home 2 towels,a tea towel,a pillow,pillow case, a casserole and a big square pie dish,
the old hose from the broken vacuum which we replaced (it fits my ordinary vacuum and my wet and dry machine).  We also salvaged a wooden venetian blind DD bought in error as it was too small.(its fits our stair window perfectly at home so we bought it from her.These things were not needed at the flat but too good to throw away.

We threw away, 2 chairs (replaced with new padded fold up chairs).
The old extractor (new one is more efficient)
A lamp shade (was awful)
The clothes rack (so people are more likely to use the garden clothes line or the dryer)
and the old round pedestal table which was coming apart(replaced with a nest of 2 pine tables).
The chairs and the rack were left where someone could take them if they wanted to.

Not long to go till we go to Scotland.

Up on the 27th
DD moving out the same day.

megabytes , mobile phones and unlocking

We are soon off to scotty for the big push.
In other words...
DD is moving out of the flat and we can get in to clean it up and put it right prior to letting it.

DD has been there rent free for about 6 months so we have felt no qualms about her putting up with it as is.

I bought a steam cleaner from Ebay to take up with us to make sure the place is thoroughly clean .
I have tried it out at home and it is a good little machine.
The freezer was rather startled to discover it was going to get defrosted for the first time in about 18 months.
We have an old Aqua Vac that we bought years and years ago to cope with all the mess of pets and small kids.
It mostly lives in the shed as it is so noisy that the user has ringing in their ears after using it  which can't be healthy.
Anyway,armed with the Aqua Vac and the Steamer, our freezer became the cleanest it has ever been except for when it was new.

The flat has had new radiators,a new cooker and a new shower.
We are probably going to paint the Bathroom .
I think we will be buying a new mattress for the bed too.
We have a new extractor fan to fit in the bathroom.
A sparky will actually fit it so that it is in compliance with safety regulations.

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While we are up there, we wont have TV or internet access.
We can take our laptops so we will take some films to watch .

I have joined Samba so that I can take one of our unlocked mobile broadband dongles for light surfing and emailing.

I have only just discovered Samba.
It is a company that sell a sim or a sim with a dongle and then you access their webpage to watch video adverts which credit your sim with megabytes.

So far I have been a member for 12 days and have about 900 megabytes for using when we go.


If you are interested in joining them, they are here http://www.sambamobile.com

I bought my sim using a code from moneysavingexpert which allowed me to get it for £1 delivered.
I dont know how long the Code is valid for but it is worth taking a look if you are interested in joining      

OR

I can refer you and we each recieve £3 worth of credit....
My referral is here click here to be referred

The sims are quite cheap once you consider that the credit is free .

Sims and microsims are £5
A sim with a Dongle is £25

You can use the sims in any unlocked dongle or I believe in a 3 dongle as they work on the three network.
The microsims work in some tablets.

You can also add credit using your paypal account or debit/credit card .

Credit that you add with your money lasts 30 days.
Credit earned by watching ads lasts until you use it.

 I think anyone who wants to surf away from home every now and then would find it useful.
If you were hoping to use it every day instead of broadband,it would only really be for very light use unless you were going to top it up .
 3 ads a day  would give only 10.5mb which is enough to view '30 web pages and 100 emails' (quoting their customer service). I have never had less than 3 to watch .



I also have Joikuspot on two of my phones.
It is a wifi access point program that turns your phone into the hotspot.
I wont use it much as mostly I will use the dongle but it might fill in when the dongle is running low.
I'll only use it with K-meleon which is a light weight browser.

These two things together are better than buying another mobile broadband sim with credit on.
I can get some data credit for 50p a day on my phones and will only use it if the samba sim runs out.

To see how much data I will use, I have  Bitmeter on my laptop. You can monitor your connections with it so you dont go over what you have allowed yourself per day.
On my phones I have DataMonitor which does the same but just for the phone.

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I unlocked all our broadband dongles.
We have huawei dongles .
One was a BT dongle and the other three were from 3.
The newest one is a HiLink dongle and I had to find a friendly forum with a person in the know who could give me the unlock code but it worked and all are now unlocked for free.

I have several Nokia phones as each time OH upgraded,he handed me his old phone.
The most recent two are on three because they are the kind that need a machine especially for unlocking. One I use as a camera and calculator and dont keep a sim in. It still works on our home wifi as a browser.
The other is my used phone for calls.
I also have an older version that is unlocked and on a different network.
In my drawer I have an N-gage which I unlocked with an unlock calculator and a 3310 also unlocked via calculator.
The N-gage is unlikely to get much use, its battery is too weedy but it does work.
The 3310 cant use 3g and most networks rely on 3g these days.

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Pi R squared

I have been playing with the Raspberry a bit more this week.
One of the SD cards didn't seem to like it so I swapped it with one the OH had which is the same size,different make.
This one works fine and my card works in his phone quite happily so it was win/win.

There are quite a lot of operating systems available for the Pi so I have changed around a few times to see what they are like.

My favourites so far are openelec and debian wheezy but puppy alpha is also very nice .

There is a boot loader so that you can put more than one on a single SD card.
That is trial and error.
First I couldn't run it at all because it only recognized ethernet,then I tried a different wifi dongle and that worked out so I put all 6 of the OS that are downloadable to work with it and loaded them.
Everything seemed okay until I ran debian and then none of the other OS were accessible.
After much messing about,I now have Puppy and openelec on that one card.

There is a very handy little windows program called HDDbackup which is free and lets you blind copy to an image or from an image of any sized HD including SD cards. That has saved a lot of frustration as it means I can just restore the whole SD card with its OS when I make a hash of something .
It works like xcopy used to work on the amiga, copying every bit on the disk without the need to understand the data.

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Snow

It snowed here last weekend and we have a good thick layer still.
The garden is white and silent.
OH has driven to work by car this week as he can't get the motorbike out onto the main road due to our living in a side road off another side road. Meaning that the council wont clear it.
They do clear the main roads or grit them but that is useless if you cant get onto them in the first place.

We have been trying out our shoe cleats that I bought for christmas.
They are the kind with springs going under your shoes and you stretch them on over your ordinary shoes.
The kind we have are excellent and made walking into town for supplies this weekend, a doddle.
 We took them off on the non snowy parts of town and in shops and where there were still the odd patches of snow, it really noticed how slippy it was compared with wearing them.

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I m trying a new search and be paid thing.
It is called Qmee.
You add it as a search option and it pays you to search.
No referrals as yet so you will need to google it if you are interested.
One or two places have invites.
I did it yesterday for the first time.
You search as usual but without purposefully trying to 'score pennies' of course.
When a search is relevant to the criteria they are looking for
 (I think this equates to...is sponsored and earns them something),
 you are given a few links to one side and you can earn some pennies by clicking on one.

I havent tried cashing out yet as it will take a while to be worth cashing out but I earned 63pence yesterday much to my surprise.
I don't constantly search all day long but use around 30 searches a day I guess and around 8 of them were with this new 'project'.

They will check the sensibility of searches and how frequently they are accessed so hopefully will weed out greedy online vultures who spoil it for everyone by sitting all day at their computer and typing and clicking with the aim to become millionaires.

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Online vultures do exist and in their focus on becoming online rockafellers forget that these schemes that pay for online activity must earn in their turn else how will they have anything to pay their minions?
Hence why superpoints sank under the weight of their members.
I have to admit that they were quite generous, promising to give a referrer points based on referrals and sub referrals plus very frequent pay outs.
It was as I said on first joining ,more of a pyramid scheme and they are unsustainable in the long term.
I had one referral while I was a member and they never to my knowledge used the site even once after they signed up.

The littlest pc

I got a lovely surprise of a raspberry pi for xmas.

The OH bought it for me.
Some people would call it a geek toy but it is very much my thing.


When I was about 19, I bought myself a ZX Spectrum, it had 48k of ram and you plugged it in to your TV to see the programmes.
The data was all on cassette tapes and you needed to have a cassette recorder to be able to run them.

Well the Pi is a similar idea except that it is more sophisticated being 40 years further evolved.
You can plug in things using its usb ports so that it can be online with wifi and  have any amount of storage via harddrives.
Mine has a cable going to a spare monitor (OH salvaged from the bin at work) .
I have a 7 port usb hub with a wifi dongleand some flash drives which were surplus to requirments as were the keyboard and mouse.
It powers from a mini usb connector so I have a mains adapter on mine but you can plug it into any usb outlet to power it.
The operating system is free and you can put it on an SD card so you can have multiple OS' and just swap the cards over when you fancy.
I have 2 cards so far, one with debian wheezy(linux) on and one with openelec running XBMC.
The latter means that we can watch some of the catch up services online without needing to plug in a laptop and it makes a very nice conduit for playing any of our audio and video files.

I will definitely learn to program my pi, I always missed that about the speccy, the programming language was so easy and it was something that gave me a huge sense of achievment, plus it helped me to organise my mind in a much more calm and patient manner .

Some people use their Pi to control their TV.
They have a usb socket on the TV and plug the pi straight into it,then have a wifi dongle to pick up the signals and watch their media without needing a lot of other hardware.
You can use them to catch live TV if you have a TV dongle but we wont need that .

Some people have them joined to their xbox gane machines in a similar manner.
You dont need the keyboard ,mouse or monitor if you network your pi with another computer because you can then see the results on the controlling computer's screen.

Giving the telly a miss and the freecycle vultures

We used to have just radio when the kids were little.
I preferred it that way.
It meant we could get on with our lives instead of shceduling our lives to fit in between the programmes on TV.
There were drawbacks, conversation at the school gates was invariably about the latest cliff hanger 'soap' rubbish.
However, there were many good points to being noTV.
The kids didn't badger us for fad toys.
We didn't need to think about all the latest new products in the supermarket.
We were quite happy with life without wishing for the artificial lifestyles portrayed on the screen.

OH brought a TV home with him one day much to my disgust and we have had it ever since.
18 years later and he finally announced a couple of weeks back that there was nothing on TV anymore.
This was triggered by his sitting in front of the screen for much of christmas flicking back and forth through endless repeats of Last of the summer wine and then on Christmas Eve the 2 ronnies etc.
All from the 1970's and 80's.

I pointed out to him that we could watch streaming TV for £5.99 a month.
Streaming TV is not live broadcast so if we only watched streaming stuff, we could cancel our TV license (£12 a month) and still watch something each night AND almost every thing we watch will be new to us.

It is a win /win situation.
OH will get to see something every single day that he hasn't seen before, he still can see his old favourites if he wants as there is plenty of choice there
AND
we no longer need to pay for the privelidge of being served up reconstituted TV that we have both seen before and been made to pay for if we watched it the first time round and every consequent time since.
AND
it is half the price of the ridiculous TV license.

Our set top box is going to charity. British Heart foundation will collect the machines from us to sell in their shop.
We have 2 set top boxes for them ,a video and a DVD player.

There will be one TV in this house which belongs to my daughter and that is only going to be kept for her to play DVDs on.

We have a ginormous monitor in the living room so we can watch our streaming films on that and feel like we are watching on a big screen telly.
The monitor was one OH rescued from the rubbish and is 50" wide. It hangs on the wall and the picture comes in through his little netbook which is only about 10" wide.
There is no sound on the monitor so he has a little speaker thing for that.

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We were going to freecycle the video machines.
I listed them and then was bombarded with demands .
How rude people can be.
Although I listed everything seperately and waited a few days to be fair( so everyone gets to see the offers)
I had demands along the lines of ...

'I will take it all,where do you live'?

'Is it the such and such model,if it is I want it'

'Give me your address ,I will collect it today'

Then there were quite a few that made me feel uncomfortable  just because they had

'sent from my iphone'  
along the bottom of them.

These 'iphone' messages tended to be followed by others all from the same people with requests for all the other offers (we had 6 things on offer).

While I love freecycle and freegle and will continue to offer and request in the future, I will be checking the British Heart foundations website every time we have anything that is good enough to sell on ,incase they can make use of it purely because of the greedy gannets that sit and wait for their iphone messages to come rolling in .

I know not everyone is a trickster and many people don't mind their offers being sold on but I do mind and they are my things to decide about.