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.

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.

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

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.

It's cooling down

The Summer is no more! Who knew?
Well I think it is kind of a relief really.
For one thing, Autumn is supposed to be cooler and when we get a sunny day, it is a bonus.
That is much more pleasant than 'Summer' being only one sunny day in 30 for some reason, even if the weather is exactly the same as June ,July and August's has been.

I have been playing campfires in the garden.
I take the junk mail down to the compost bin area and burn it in the storm kettle.
The water is enough to fill our big red tea pot ,enough for 6 mugs of tea.
I wait for the ashes to cool down and throw them in the compost.
Lately I have been trying to light the fire without matches and it is not easy.
Even using a steel ,I only manage it every 3rd time .
The rest of the time, I resort to a lighter.

Today was spent in clearing the old dishwasher ready for it to be put out.
I have been using it as a cupboard in which to keep the plastic tubs and containers that I reuse in the kitchen so they are all over the table at the moment in the dining room.

I think it might end up as the scrap man's treasure.
We have been offered a working one from freecycle and OH and hopefully DS will fetch it tomorrow.
I could easily go but there are 2 men here and really I think I should expect DS to pitch in and help while he has no work and lives here completely free of charge.

The Dishwasher lives in the old downstairs loo area.
There is no loo in there as it was cracked many years ago and we took it out and sealed over the hole in the floor(with a bin lid and concrete in-case we should ever refit a loo).
The cold water pipe is handy for the machine.
The outlet has a little stand pipe that OH made which goes to the downpipe outside through a hole in the wall.
The lobby leading to the back door has a freezer with a fridge standing on top of it as our kitchen is too small to accommodate them.
Tomorrow we will have to move them out of the way ,just so we can move the machines out and in.

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The garden is looking green and a bit messy.
There are still some courgettes appearing on the plants despite the mad harvesting.
I picked about 7 portions of Runner beans yesterday too.
They are in the dehydrator which runs at night on economy 7 (cheap electricity).
The very smallest beans will dry in one night but bigger specimens take 2.

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The little dears are back to school next week.
Hoo bloomin ray!
This holiday there has been a screamer out nearly every day.
By screamer, I mean a female child who's parents don't know what anti social means.
The child screams at every given opportunity and is out there right now (it is gone 9pm and pitch dark).
She is about 4 years old if I have heard correctly (the children speak loudly and shout mostly and are not shy about broadcasting there address, ages,names etc) .
They live about 3 or 4 gardens away as the crow flies but the sound travels so that they seem as though they are under the window or in the next garden.
One cannot really be surprised by their volume, their mother swears like a navvy .
They are called every name under the sun and ordered to F off if they don't like it.
Apparently ,they are doing her head in!

Thankfully,we do not live next door.

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My neighbour's grandson now has a small daughter.
She arrived around January time and so is still a sweety.
Her daddy seems to dote on her rather as mine doted on me I believe .
He is not to be seen recently without the little one attached somewhere about his person like a mascot at a football game.
We have known him since he was around 2 years old.
He is very good with the little one.

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According to my mother, my father was always very good with the little ones.
Strangely that is a double edged sword.
Being good with the little ones in our case, involved dad absolutely worshipping the youngest child to the point of idiocy.
Many a time I remember my older brother being chastised for my wrong doings.
It was always his fault because where else must I have learned to act or speak like that?
Actually I probably picked up an awful lot of my misdemenours from nursery school where I went before I was old enough to go to the local school.
We lived in an area of high immigration and very low standards of living,not because there were many immigrants as such but because it was an area of low earners and rubbish housing.
The nursery was free because mum had to work.

I got my own turn as the older sister a few years later and became the slapping target for about 7 years until I complained at school to a teacher( deputy head) who promptly drove me to my home and asked my parents what was meant . My mother admitted that dad was 'heavy handed' and the teacher (quite bravely I thought) told dad to lay off or be reported to the Social services.
He never slapped me ever again.

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cutting bottles

I have been trying to cut the ends off the vinegar bottles that I buy in sains or asda.
There are at least 10 every couple of months because that is the cheapest way to buy a gallon of vinegar.
I do try to put them in the recycling bin but they take up a lot of bin space and weigh the plastic kitchen bin bag down.

I tried to cut a straight line using a glass cutter but it is almost impossible to get it straight and steady.
Next I looked online for glass cutting comments.
There was a very interesting utube video about using hot and cold water to separate your scored bottle.

Then I found a home made jig on Instructables and that is what I made this morning.
My jig is an old shelf we had lying around in the shed and I already had the screws and the glass cutter so the whole thing was free.

Hmm, it is easier said than done though , cutting a bottle.
I dont know if my cutter is a cheapo thing or blunt but it was difficult to get a continuous scored line even using the jig that holds the bottle perfectly.

My endevours so far have resulted in various wobbly edged glass shapes.
I want them for mini garden cloches as they are glass and wont blow away.
The plants wont care about the edges being wobbly but my eye is offended just the same.

I shall persevere!

I love instructables and today while looking for the instructions for the jig, I decided to use some of my surveys money to buy a pro membership. I can download their instructables as pdfs then or download their ebooks which are compilations of various things.

2 years membership is about £24 so very good value when you think of all the info that I find on there.

Amateur metal working

I have been making bits for my wheel hoe.
Well , one bit really.
It is an oscillating hoe.
A lot of the new wheel hoes have them and I thought I would try my hand at a home made one.

Mine is made from a strip of iron bar we had, and 11 inches of a 24" steel rule(OH's late father had them everywhere so we had a surplus).
The steel rule is the blade.

So far I have had it working but the oscillating bit needs some fiddling to get it right.

I needed to bend the steel and used some pieces of wood and my own weight and a club hammer.
Once bent into two Stirrup shapes,one bolts to the other and all are bolted to the wheel hoe.
The oscillating bit is a little piece of metal that has a small space for the blade to wobble within so that it swings ever so slightly as you push back and forth but not enough to let it erode the metal or the bolts.
The deliberate agrarian has a few pictures of his own that he makes to go with his 'planet Whizz bang hoe' so that was a handy guide.

Also I have been playing with a couple of Absolutely ancient seeders.
They are from the late 19th Century I think as the only info I could find on the WWW was for one made around 1879 and is very similar with the same makers name.

They came as a pair because they were incomplete but there was enough there to make one whole machine with a bit of fiddling.
It seemed a shame to just discard the other parts so I have been fabricating my own replacement bits using the Dremel, a hack saw, a drill and several old bits of metal from things we had lying around broken.
I have one working and needing a new handle and paint the other is working,needs a better handle and paint.

The one with no handle has part of an old wooden one still stuck in the metal handle bracket so I have some work to do to get that out,the screws holding it in are stuck fast.
The other has a thin handle I connected to it rather weedily and although it does work as a handle, it isn't robust enough and will need replacing.


This morning I dug my bean trenches (finally).
The weather is still one long round of drizzle or mizzle or just thin rain.
Grey clouds and cool wind.
The beans are becoming taller and are going to need to go outside in about a week, so the trenches are dug and comfrey is laid in them thickly to act as a fertilizer.

The spuds are just starting to show their leaves.
The row with the shop bought seed potatoes anyway.
The others will show up in their own good time. They were not as far along in the chitting when they went in so will be later to surface too.

Everything in the garden is nestling in a cloddy mess.
The strawberries have loads of flowers and the rhubarb is doing well.
They don't mind the rain although it does encourage the slugs as well which means keeping an eye on the strawberries as they will hollow them out if they can get to them.

Finally Pics of my Jalo Gardener Bracket !

We have had rain for days and days.
Today I actually got out into the garden with my phone which has a camera on it.

I got some digging done with the Trusty Azada.


The junk lying on the ground  is all the stuff I have got covering the 'cleared but not working on at the moment' earth.
The blue thing at the far end,is the old car cover thing that was left here when we moved in 24 years ago.
It is thick plastic and quite heavy.
From there on,is all weeds and trees.


It was quite cloddy but I pesevered.
This more ploughed bit is hopefully going to be for the beans.
The bit of wooden fence was chucked into the garden by a neighbour in the houses along the bottom behind a 6ft fence. I have it for walking across the mud at the moment.

Next I got the new Toy (A Jalo with cultivating teeth/Tines YAY) and gave that a try.
I was looking on Ebay for the tines for my other Jalo and found this .
Often you will see either Jalo or planet junior hoes with various tools very cheaply because they are collection only but I was lucky with this one as the owner had offered delivery too.

The last one I saw with many tools, went for about £90 and there is one up there today with about 5 days to go, that will sell very well despite being collection only I think, as it has every tool that Jalo produced  apart from a seeder.

This one was £27 . I thought that was a bargain because 3 Tines from America (only place selling them new) is about £53. I paid £ 15 for the delivery and it came in 2 days so that was very good value and far cheaper than driving half way across the country to collect it.

The Tines are in very good nick with only light surface rusting which was easily removed with a light rub down and the handle of the machine could really do with a rub down and paint just to smarten it up.




The teeth work well and go quite deeply after the Azada has broken the ground.
I have 5 teeth or tines for it but have only got 3 on it in the 2nd picture as it is so muddy today.
Then I changed the teeth to the plough fitting (which I bought on Ebay a few weeks back for £12 delivered) and ploughed for a while.
I forgot to get a picture of the plough .

Last of all, I got the other Jalo out of the shed to take some pictures of the new bracket that I made last week.



My Bracket made from a  cut down  Satellite dish bracket .

I made this because you don't often see single tools for sale with delivery for the Jalo.
You have to look for weeks and weeks before one turns up and then of
course you must bid for it.
That can push the price up too far.

We have a few wolf multichange tools that we bought before we moved here and I have one or two newer ones ,they are the type that all fit into one handle ,so the bracket has furnished me with all the other tools I might want for my wheel hoe.

The wolf tool handles slide into the rectangular tubing,with a small slither of rubber just to make it a firm fit.
Then just do up the bolt.

It works perfectly and I can fit the wolf tools into the bracket and have it set to any angle along one axis ,so that it can be for deep or shallow use.
That is massively improved on my first bracket which was just a tab to hold the wolf handle steady against the frame.
The first attempt worked perfectly too but I had no depth control except that of lowering or raising the handle angle by holding it differently which was awkward.

The Bracket simply unbolts from the Jalo if I want to use it without.
No drilling or cutting on the trusty old tool.
 

These machines really help with a vegetable garden ,especially if you are tackling the work single handed.. They take a lot of the slog out of the work.
I think it is because you are pushing and pulling like you do with a mower but you are not having to also take the weight of the tool. Even the wolf tools are easier because you have two hands to do the propelling rather than one.

shredding and ploughing

OH cut next doors and our hedge .
It is ours but he has to go next door to do the other side.
There was a lot of debris.

Luckily,we have a new toy.
It is a shredder.
We had one once before that we were given by someone on Freecyle but that one did tend to cut out at the least provocation so after a while we passed it on to someone else.

This one is a Bosch and is much much better.
It handled almost all the branches from the hedge and some of the old plum tree remains.
Some bits were as thick as a broom handle and it had no problem making them into little bits.
Then I had rather a lot of mulch to distribute and so , the fruit beds were added to.

I have also been busy working on my Wheel Hoe.
I wanted to make an adapter so that I could use wolf tools on it and it took all weekend of fiddling.
I did make one a couple of weeks ago but it was rather basic,comprising of a tab to hold the wolf handle still whilst bolted to the hoe frame.
This new bracket is able to be adjusted for depth and angle and is much stronger.
I got the parts out of the dustbin.
OH had thrown away a broken satellite dish that we found lying in the road but the recycling bin men wouldn't take it as it is the wrong kind of thing to put in our recycle bin.
I fished it out and saw a new use for it.
The dremel came into its own again as it was the only thing that would cut holes in the thick metal.

All we need now is for it to stop raining long enough for me to get some use of it.

I may even get some pictures up later in the week. No chance today due to the rain .

Books


I am reading 'A hat full of sky'.

I cant decide as yet if it is a saying of the 'Nac Mac Freegle' (the wee free men)
or if it is referring to a vacant space where your brain ought to be.

Make do and mend Tuesday

Reframing the frame

The cold frame has seen better days.
It started off as an angled frame made from old shelving with half a glazed door for the cover.
After a couple of years, the cover got smashed when a piece of roof tile was blown through the glass.
Then for the last 2 or three years, it has had a PVC cover made from an old PVC greenhouse cover,cut down.
This last winter it split and became useless.
I decided it was time for a new top so this afternoon was spent sawing wood to make a sturdy frame on which to affix some more of the greenhouse cover(I never throw anything away if it looks to be future recyclable.
The cover is tied down to a hook on the main body of the cold frame so hopefully will last a while before needing replacing again.

Our big shed windows could do with replacing too.
They are made from old push chair PVC rain covers.
The covers have eventually split (after about 20 years of use).
There is easily enough PVC Greenhouse cover left to remake them.

Shoe goo

My zip up shoes have needed mending for ages.
They are light weight ,comfortable shoes but the sole, being light weight ,was splitting and two pieces had fallen out of one shoe sole.
I bought some shoe goo a while ago and have used it to mend some slippers for indoors but this is the first time that it has been used to mend out door shoes.
It is a black, rubbery substance that dries flexible, black and shiny so ideal for shoes.
They are drying off in the shed (the shoe goo is quite strong smelling) and I will try them outside in a few days.

The cost of waste

It came to me yesterday as I was cutting up Onions  for our evening meal of Bolognais that in the dim and distant past, the servants of a big house would have been punished for throwing away anything that was of use to the family that employed them.
The punishment was more likely than not, a reduction in the servants pay.
Things such as

• Ash
• soot
• dust
• bones
• peelings(I had just added ours to the compost tub in the kitchen)
• old paper
• card
• broken pots
• food left overs
• Fat
• Blood
• rags
• string
• Shells

would all have been reused or recycled .
We are having to relearn the habits that were obvious to our forebears.

There were other things that got used that maybe were not the responsibility of servants
For example Urine was used to
bleach hair
treat Dandruff
bleach fabrics
as a mordant in dying
a compost starter

People have become far too fussy,too squeamish to see what is in front of their own eyes and nose.
We have an abundance of materials on which to live and many of them are thrown out like the proverbial baby with the bath water .

Some people are talking about how we will all cope when the Oil stops either being produced at all or at least  offered in the west.
I think we will have to go back to the ways of our Ancestors and start to rediscover the resources we once had.
We are much luckier than they, as we know about Solar and Wind and water turbines and how to store Energy in Batteries.
I cant help thinking that  life would be cleaner and Healthier if Oil were to become a scarcity.

There are plenty of people who are already trying their best to reduce their own impact on the earth and finding that in the process their lives are enriched and become less stressful.
One of my favourites is the No impact man