The return of TWW

Well I haven't been here in ages!

The first thing I did when I found myself again (hehe) was read some of the old posts.

The photos are all gone.
This is because the host decided to start charging and of course, no one in their right mind is going to pay.
So I'll have to find a way around that.

My computer decided to go knees up so all my old stuff was lost except that which was backed up onto hard drives.

It's okay.
Life doesn't rely on having things saved for ever and ever.

More about Kindle Unlimited

I thought I would write today about Amazon Kindle Unlimited once again.

About a year ago, I did a 1 month trial and was not really impressed.
This year I was offered a 2 month trial and decided to give it a go again considering its had time to improve.

This time I borrowed 10 books at a time on various subjects in which I have an interest.
The first thing I noticed was, there are now more books to choose from.
While some are still not very professionally laid out or well written, at least there are enough on offer to find one or two diamonds among the rough.

I borrowed on the following subjects

3D printing
Programming
Frugality
Cookery
Sailing
Make your own
Money saving
Living Without money
Learning Spanish
Camping
Prepping

and a few more I cant remember

Over the two months, I think I borrowed around 250 books which I opened and read or skimmed through.
The skimming was because some of the books were so obviously a waste of time.

I did not borrow any fiction except for the Spanish (some were children's stories) .

At the end of the two months, I cancelled the membership because as before, the books available were rarely so interesting that I would have  thought myself lucky to have paid the months subscription instead of the usual purchase price.

One book I particularly wanted to read and the main reason I eagerly clicked yes to try the two month trial, was not actually available to borrow on UK kindle unlimited. It kept redirecting to a message saying that it was not available as a free read outside of the USA.

Under Canvas

Wow Its a long time since I posted on here!

I thought I would jot down the things we have been up to lately.

This year we decided to get back under canvas.
Really it is a sort of nylon ,not canvas at all but anyway.

In May we hopped in the car and trundled down to the countryside.
The OH had a bit of a cold and a headache but was sure it would improve...

May Camp

Accomodation

We took our old 4 man tent with us.
This is a tent we bought for family camping about 20 years ago.
It is a sort of widened out dome shape with 2 side inner 'bedrooms'.
The middle is just the open space between them.

Bedtime

Instead of taking our camp beds, we took the double blow up Matress that we bought when we used to go up to Scotland to visit the student kids (now both graduated).

That is a massive luxury, it feels just like being in bed at home.
As it was May,we took 4 sleeping bags , socks for bedtime, wool hats for same and hoodies and trackies to wear over our pjs if we needed em (they were used every night so good thing we took em).

Lighting

We took 2 new wind up lamps  and  a little cheapo hand cranked torch and they did pretty well.
The torch was hung in the centre of the main tent and one night after a blowiy cold visit to the loo , I forgot to unhook the little torch and left it alight all night. It was still alight at about 4am so was running for a good 6 hours .

Cooking

we werent sure the old stove was operational so we bought a little butane stove, the kind that fits into a plastic case. You have to buy cylinders of butane to fuel it.
What a useful thing it is.
Just fix the cannister in, turn the switch and it is lit. No matches or anything.
It was like using a gas cooker at home but much smaller.
The cannisters dont last long, we were gone 3 days and used 2 for only light water boiling.

For cutlery we brought knife fork and spoon from the cutlery drawer at home. We used to have those clip together sets but no idea where they are apart from our son's which is in the drawer and was most recently used when he was a sea scout (about 15 years ago).
For bowls and plates we bought some cheapo picnic versions although we do still have a few enameled plates in the cupboard..
Cups we had a plenty, 2 metal camping mugs and a plastic one. They hold about a pint each.

The mess kit is a nesting kind. Its all aluminium. The little kettle fits inside it.

I made pot cosies out of reflective silvered bubble wrap bought in wickes DIY store.
They are basically a shell pot and lid for each billy can,stuck together with duct tape.
I was very impressed by how well they performed. When cooking pasta, we boiled the water with the pasta in, then put it in the cosy in its pot while we did the rest and it was cooked through when we were ready with the sauce.

Entertainment

We didnt take a lot with us this first camp, mostly because we didnt remember what worked ,what didnt.. We forgot the games and books and so were reduced to playing paper and pencil games (I luckily found both in my backpack).
I have a mifi thing so we can get internet. You need to buy a sim with Data loaded on and then away you go.
(You do still need to be able to get a phone signal though).
We only used it for a small amount of time to check a few emails and such so my 12gb sim was maybe overkill.

The little android tablet was very handy as we had a couple of TV shows to watch on a usb stick.

Electricity and other energy

For the first time ever, the solar panel went with us.
We had 2 at that time .
One is a solar briefcase and quite big. The battery for which, lives in a plastic box complete with its charge controller.
The second is a smaller solar gorilla which I only bought at the beginning of may.
Both these chargers powered my big power bank 33,.6 ah..The 12 volt battery 12 ah and hubs little power bank (about 6ah I think).

The lamps of course were wind up but also could be charged with the usb on the solar gorilla or banks.

This set up meant we had both our phones, the tablets and lamps powered easily for three days and could top up the banks via the 12 volt at night.

Furniture

This was quite basic as we werent sure what would fit in the little car.
We took 2 little seats which fold up and are backless.
The mattress of course.
A ground sheet for inside the tent.

Outings

We took our bikes atop the car.
Mine is 34 years old and still fine.
OH had a new old bike about 25-30 years old which he got on ebay.

We cycled 8 miles to the seaside one day(we only camped for 3 remember) .
It was a goodly long ride and we used google maps for navigation which was not particularly kind to us regarding hills and involved much getting off and pushing.

My allergies seemed to be getting going again and I was knackered way before we got where we were going.
Luckily we had energy drink in our water bottles and an energy gel and that helped enormously.

we lunched out and the ride back was via a cycle network route we found  on the internet on OH's phone while we were eating . It was a fantastic ride back, much less hilly and less heavy traffic and of course we had both fueled up.

One day we ventured down the road and along a foot path ( over a style and across a sheep field) just for a walk. The field was soggy and we were glad we had a change of shoes and socks at the tent.

The last day,we went in the other direction and found the old pumping works.
It was an old industrial looking building  with steam engines pumping away (water).
The interesting thing there for me was the nuclear bunker built right beside it .
We went in and marvelled at the massively thick door (at least 12" thick),  the showers (no cubicles, just on the wall. The loos (chemical toilets) and the bunk rooms with bunks hanging on the walls by chains (just like the wartime underground bunkers we saw in the  museum in Holland).

An enticing half height door led to an escape shaft.
Looking in it was a dark hole with a ladder at the back but the little boy who ventured in to see better ,discovered it was about 6" full of water and had a very soggy surprise.

We managed to drive over to Hastings too  as we hadn't brought much food.
We went up the vertical rail for the first and last time.
When I was small and we went to Hastings, the rail was mentioned and discarded as a fun idea.
OH said his Dad had refused to take him and his siblings   on it too.

Now we know why...It is a cable car thing. You get in and sit down and wait.
Then it slides up the hill pulled by cables along a rail.
It takes about a half minute.
At the top is the top of the cliff. You can walk on it.
Luckily the ticket gives you two way travel (once only) so you can then get back in and slide back down again, get out and walk away.

There were some Japanese tourists on the trip we took in it and I could swear one of them said it was a rip off, when we passed him on our cliff top arrival.




 By the last night, I had a streaming cold and a headache and OH was just starting to get over his.
I guess that explained the allergy feeling and the knackerdness of a bike ride.





.

Natural Home remedy Sinus drip fix 

 

Please note...........If you take any kind of blood thinner medicines already or have trouble with blood not clotting, you shouldn't try it without checking with your doctor, as it would cause problems and might be dangerous.

  

Today was the first day I have been able to run in what feels like about 8 months.
Last year I developed a sinus drip that meant I couldnt do anything without my nose pouring or my eyes streaming accompanied by sneezes.

I am not one to go to the doctors for such things, I dont see the point when all they will do is give something to counteract the result and nothing to  find the underlying problem.

In the UK the allergy treatments available are laughable even assuming they had proper tests for allergies in the first place. You are more likely to be put on steroids and given an inhaler for the rest of your life than be actually helped to help yourself naturally.

My online researches led to my belief that it is most likely mould somewhere or maybe dust mites but despite frantic cleaning binges, the situation prevailed.
Sometimes I would go 2 weeks without so much as a sneeze, grow complacent about it and get back on the treadmill and then have a week solid of sneezing and streaming nose.

This is added to my self diagnosed dairy intolerance/allergy (I found avoiding all dairy has improved my health hugely ) which I already address through diet and careful reading of labels in grocery shops.  No more exzema or constant need to pee. No more flaking fingernails and bad breath or acrid body odour.

 

Getting back to the sinuses...
I tried various things to cure or at least improve the Sinus situation .
I think it may have been a longer term thing because prior to avoiding dairy, I had post nasal drip for about 10 years.
That is also sinus related and is really just the sinuses draining down the back of the throat.
Once the dairy was eliminated, so was the Post nasal drip.
It is only this last several months that the sinus thing alone has returned .
I would rather have had a return of the post nasal drip because having your nose streaming and needing to sneeze so often is not much fun , interferes with excercise and makes simple things like preparing a meal, a much less enjoyable experience (hand washing after every single sneeze or handkerchief use).

Most nights have been horrible, really blocked sinuses so that I have had my mouth open to breath.


So anyway.
I tried nose filters.
These are little tiny filters you wear inside your nostrils . They did help hugely at night but during the day not so much. Also they were quite expensive for something that looked like I might need it for years.
Manic cleaning..
Speaks for itself really and didnt make any differentce.
Nasal irrigation..
Really just a nostril wash using salted water,it helped for a matter of minutes.

Inhaling steam with tea tree oil.
Worked short term(maybe an hour) each time.

Oil pulling
You swoosh oil around in your mouth for 20 minutes each morning.
This was somewhat effective (it leads to clearing your throat as residue seems to be pulled up and into the oil and gets spat out) but not very long term although it does wonders for firming up gums and whitening teeth.

Then I found something that actually works!

About a month ago I read about natural antihistamines of various kinds.
This is of great interest to me because all the antihistamine tablets I have found, have included dairy in the ingredients in the form of whey.
Anyway, two of the natural antihistamines I took note of, were Honey and Turmeric.

I had both Honey and Turmeric in the cupboard and so I took a teaspoon of honey with 1/3rd tea spoon of turmeric and went to bed.

I slept all night without having my mouth open.
Next morning the usual nose tickle was returning that usually indicates the start of the sneezes, so I took another dose.

I went right through till evening without a sneeze or need for a handkerchief.
This went on for about a week.
Each time that  I felt a slight tingle or thought my nose felt a little like I had the start of a cold coming, I would take another dose.

Following advice online, I kept it to less than 2 teaspoons of turmeric over a day.
Now I take 1 in the morning, one at night and sometimes one mid way through the day.
I havent had one debilitating day since I began so it looks like for me at least, this is working.

Taste... It tastes a little like sweet cough medicine when taken by the teaspoon.
I read that it is also a popular treatment for arthiritis due to the anti inflamatory properties of the turmeric and that, in India, it is often taken with hot water and sometimes lemon as a curative drink.
It works well as a drink I found.
Sometimes a person will also take pepper with it to enhance the properties of the turmeric.

I decided to make a portable version.
A sort of tablet.
I bought some more turmeric from Amazon and a jar of honey( just the ordinary kind,nothing fancy).
I poured some of the honey into a little bowl and added turmeric until it made a paste.
Then balled the mixture into well...balls. It's quite sticky .
I dehydrated the balls for 24 hours and then packed them in airtight wrapping.
The balls are very slightly soft still but they dont stick together and can be carried in a bag or pocket in a little jar .

A dose is tiny, about 1/3rd of a ball so about 6mm . Easy to swallow and tasteless like a tablet (unless you take a while to swallow them down ).
Turmeric apparently thins blood and so helps against cholesterol troubles .

Remember If you take any kind of blood thinner medicines already or have trouble with blood not clotting, you shouldn't try it without checking with your doctor , as it would cause problems and might be dangerous.

Amazon Kindle unlimited is it worth subscribing?

I joined Amazon Kindle unlimited at the end of January to try out their 1 months free trial.

Right from the start, I thought I would borrow from it to the max
to firstly discover,
Is it really unlimited?
And secondly to see
What the quality of the books on offer in the kindle borrowing library were like.

I borrowed my first 10 books and opened my Kindle reading program which is on my PC.
The archived section had 10 new items showing.
Clicking through they show that they are  there but have yet to be downloaded.

I clicked and clicked on each one and eventually it downloaded.
One click seemed to do nothing.

Once downloaded they are in the downloaded folder not the archived section.

Anyway to get to the point..

I now had 10 new books to read.
A quick peruse showed me that 9 out of the 10 were very poor in quality.
One was only 4 pages .

One had terrible grammar and spelling.

How to books really should describe how to actually do what the title states they will.


I speedily read all I needed to of the first 10 books and returned to amazon for 10 more.
You can have any amount of books but only 10 at once so each new book is a replacement for one that you have previously borrowed.

Every day for 1 month I did the same thing and so borrowed between 15 and 25 books a day.

All the books I borrowed were non fiction.

Strategic book authoring

A new idea revealed itself to me.
Not my idea, but that of many of the kindle book authors.
Write a vague book on any subject and just add links to your affiliated pages.!

Some of the books with links, go to empty domains which is not great either.

A second strategy was quite common too and that was the 'series' style books.
They come in 3 flavours.
1 is the  Part book. It is part 1 of a series of books all around the same subject for example
circus tricks part 1 circus tricks with balls
circus tricks part 2 circus tricks with knives
circus tricks part 3 circus tricks clowning around
circus tricks part 4 circus tricks acrobatics

Then there are the series but not that different variety for example
Women's hair secrets
Men's hair secrets
Pet's hair secrets

Last of all come the speed written series which relies entirely on the name to sell
For example
how to keep a diary for Barrington rovers fans
how to keep a diary for Collywood scrubs  fans
how to keep a diary for Hedgerow united fans
how to keep a diary for Eggbert city  fans

Some Authors kindly offer a free book or advice if you click through to their website as a reward for 'buying' their book.
On clicking through it isn't unusual to find that the free book is only available if you type in  your email and you are signing up to a newsletter .

Sometimes the link is not to a free book but  a subscription to lessons or a paid for book presumably not hosted on Amazon.

Dubious content

During my 1 months trial, I read books which suggested stealing from shops.

Some books talked about selling broken electric items to people at boot sales because they cant check them until they get them home.

One book suggested getting  food from food banks even if you can afford to buy it anyway  because it is free and easy to get!!

A most unscrupulous author described buying and gutting electrical items and then adding weight,sealing and returning them for the purchase price. I hope he was joking but it was difficult to tell.

It does lead me to believe however, that an ebook submitted to amazon for selling on their website may not actually get looked at before it is offered up for sale.


It wasn't all bad
There were a few gems floating in the scummy waters of the Amazon.
Out of some 400 books that I downloaded and read in my trial time, I came across maybe 20 that I would have liked to re-borrow a second time and ONE that I might possibly have bought .

Value for money?

So is it worth it at £7.99 a month?

Well I would say No.
Not unless you read voraciously and spend more than that every month on books.

A better way to use it would be to go onto Amazon when you are looking for a particular book, check whether it has the ' borrow this book with Amazon kindle unlimited' label and if it does, see if the price for that book is cheaper than one months subscription.
If it is and that is the only book you are after, just buy it
If you need to read several books ,they are all in the unlimited library and you could do so in 30 days, then subscribe for the month .
Obviously you can re-borrow a book that takes longer than 30 days to read but that means subscribing for that next month also.
If it is more expensive to buy it than to subscribe for 1 month and you arent going to read it more than once, then subscribe for 1 month and borrow it to read.

You can delete a book from your device but it is still 'borrowed' until you actively return it or the 30 days runs out.

£7.99 does not buy any of the books remember. If you borrow one, read it and like it, you would need to go back onto Amazon and actually buy it .

Since finishing my trial which ended on the 26 th of Feb , I have bought one Ebook on Amazon.
It was The Goldfinch by Donna Tart and was not included in the unlimited books offered .
In fact no single book that I searched for on first joining, was listed in those that I could borrow.

Anyway,if you are interested to see for yourself, why not give the free trial a try?
Write yourself a message on paper to remind yourself on which day the 30 days runs out and stick it by your computer (or kindle) .

© 2015 theamazingwitteringwench

Sugru and other squidgy mendy stuffs

I have been quite busy recently with a home made version of Sugru.
While i love the idea of Sugru and think that the inventor is a clever old clog, I cannot warrant spending £8 or £12 on a few tiny little blobs of it when I can make whole blocks of it If I want just by going to instructables or Youtube and typing oogoo into the search box.

Anyway.

Oogoo or Sugru is a silicone based putty  which sets in the air and becomes flexible and rubbery.

It can be used to mend many things and is quite strong and waterproof.
Stands heat and cold well and can be made to be almost any colour.

The official version Sugru  is available in lots of places and comes packed in foil with a 6 months life span or 18 months if you keep it in the fridge.

• I have used my homemade version to mend a dustpan.
• Make it a new squeegee edge.
• Make hooks for the kitchen
• Pan lid holders
• A knob for a saucepan lid.
• A handle for my deep fat fryer
• hooks in the bathroom
• Some washers
• A holder for my wifi dongle so it sits on top of the monitor
• Buffers on the top of our old loft ladder so it doesn't scratch the wall paper.
• A Grip for the flask lid which gets too tight to undo
• Mended the  end of knob on cup rack
• A new cover for a penknife which I found trodden into the mud when we were out.

Future plans are

• More bathroom hooks
• More kitchen hooks
• More pan lid holders
• Tidier way to fix the laptop connector on two of the fixed laptops
• Some rubber stamps for craft
• Fix my yarn winder to be more robust
• Fix the seal on the double glazed sliding door that leaks

I'm sure I will find other uses .
So far that is 13 things mended and 7 planned.
I don't know how many packets I could get through of the commercial version.

If you are interested in using the sold stuff.
Consider looking around the house first and finding all the things you want to mend with it.
Write a list and what colour you would need.
This stuff comes in black,white ,yellow,blue and red which are all the primary colours meaning you can mix almost any colour with them.

The home made version is slightly more versatile because you can of course make any colour you have in paint , including I think gold,silver and fluorescent and with glow in the dark powder, there is that option also.

Samba broadband dissolved and my already earned credit is now non existent

A couple of weeks ago, Samba broadband folded.

At least they didn't exactly FOLD.
What they did was to stop the service and email everyone to tell them that they had ceased trading.

They actually are still a company and apparently are running in another country but as far as the UK is concerned, they are no more.

Their email pretty much said that they could not negotiate future prices to be as competitive as they had previously been doing and so they were stopping .

I actually expected the broadband credit that I had accrued, to continue to work because I had earned that previously and as far as I was concerned, that would have been earned and credited to my dongle (run under subcontract presumably with Three mobile broadband) .

That is not the case however and my dongle which I hammered hard all day on the closing day to at least use up some of my credit (I had 15 GB saved on it) now does not connect to the internet with Three . I can get on Three's site but I apparently have no credit.
I guess I managed to use about 800 mb that last day.

Thanks Samba! You apparently did not actually have any kind of agreement then with the members but only with Three whom you decided not to pay out of your profits from my and a few thousand other peoples viewing of your adverts.

My 15 GB of non expirable credit stayed in Samba's pocket along with the major earning they got from all my viewing of adverts.

To put it into perspective, each video was 3.5mb that works out that I watched  4388 advertising videos.
A while ago I worked out that we were paid about 1.5 pence a video and so they had 65.82 of my earnings because they just wiped it out on closure.

Plus at least 65.82 they also earned as profit because lets face it, they weren't a charity, I think it was most likely more than that but so what?


I did email to ask about it but they only have an automated reply stating they are so sorry but they have closed due to mean old Three not letting them have such good prices any more.

I am one of the lucky ones.
My Sim cost me £1 and my dongle was free as we unlocked one we got from somewhere else.
Some poor saps had only just bought a Samba Dongle, literally the day before their 'closure' and some people were using their regular 'top up' with cash .

They stated they would reimburse the cash top ups if they had been bought in  that month .

Anyway..
I was not impressed by the deceit. They could easily have put up a message online to say they were closing and people would have used up their 'credit' and no one would have ordered more top up credit or bought a dongle for nothing.

If you are in a different country and Samba is offering free broadband for watching their adverts, think carefully about it before deciding to go ahead and certainly be very wary about actually buying anything from them with 'real money'.

.

Ovivo is dead

Sadly the Ovivo mobile phone connection provider went out of Business on Friday.

I have one phone that was using an Ovivo sim and after hunting around for a cheap PayG sim,I decided on Three's 123 sim and hopefully will be getting one in the post in the next few days.

Ovivo were very good while they lasted and I didn't pay anything out other than the initial £15 for the sim 5 months ago. So my own use worked out at £3 a month.

I think they shot themselves in the foot really because the sort of people looking for free mobile use, are not going to be doing an enormous amount of topping up or buying offers from them so most of their income was likely to come from their advertising on the free data they offered .

I imagine any user not using an android phone or smart phone probably wouldn't get to see the adverts (which would have accrued most of the revenue for ovivo). I certainly never saw one .

Altering a Bra and other articles of clobber

Altering clothes for the frugally challenged.

I have been busy recently with my sewing machine.

I took in three pairs of shorts that I made about 8 years ago and were a good 4 inches too wide for me having lost weight and got fitter.

They are 100 cotton and dark blue with tailored waist band,inseam pockets and patch pockets.
That meant that I had to completely rip out the side seams after removing the patch pockets and rework them with new seams and seam pockets.
I decided not to remove the whole waist band but instead cut into it at the side seam as it was going to be so much narrower overall and incorporated it into the side seam as I machined.

One pair was shortened by about 3 inches, one pair by 2 inches and one pair by an inch.
The longest pair are going to have belt loops added so that each pair is slightly different.
I reattached one patch pocket on each pair but kept the second for using as material for the belt loops.

It took a good while but thankfully I have a very nice sewing machine so it was fun too.


Then I mended 6 pairs of pants( underwear) where the elastic had parted company with the material due to very cheap manufacture.
These last were done by hand because the material is thin and soft and the elastic although sound, is narrow and obviously stretchy.

I also had 4 quite nice bras that I bought back when I thought I was a 36 B
Unfortunately I am not a 36B and probably never was (MUM!).
The big TJ Hughes in town closed and their sale had several 34C bras which I bought to see how they fitted.
They were exactly right for me so I resolved to alter my other bras to fit better too.

I cant do much about the cup size but the chest size is doable.
Here is a diagram of how to do it incase anyone fancies having a go on their own.

 This was 

a really easy project and saved my bras from the dustbin. 

I remember when I first got a bra,Mum was in no rush to spend money on clothes and so it was after much pleading that I was given one, it was mums cast off and was way past its best.

If I had realised how easy it was to adjust the girth size back then ,I probably would have snaffled a needle and thread and got to work to make my ghastly acquisition a bit more acceptable .

As I did not, I went to school wearing it and other similar cast off s with over stretched straps and material and suffered the mirth of the 12 to 16 aged girls during many a PE lesson.

Bleaching T shirts

I found an interesting article on instructibles by a member called stinkymum.

She describes using Bleach in a tie dye fashion to alter dark T shirts.

This was very interesting to me because one of my favourite T shirts is black with a cheetah on and has become faded under the arms which looked horrible.
I also have a T shirt that OH gave me . It had been thrown away still in its packet because it was a small and didn't fit any of the beefy coppers.
When I wore it the first time, the black came off on everything.

So anyway I read through her instructions for various folds and chose two I liked the look of in her pictures.

The bleach went into a large bowl. I did 1 large yog container of bleach and 5 of water as it was wilkos thick bleach.
Then after folding and rubber banding my shirts ,I put them in and went off to do something else.
20 minutes later I took them out ,unbanded and rinsed them.
They had started to change but not very much so I had to carefully fold them back as closely as possible to previously and put them back again.
I gave them another 20 minutes because she had quoted 1 part bleach and 3 water and I had diluted mine by a lot more.

The second attempt was much better.
I rinsed like mad then when the rinse water  seemed to have cleared of browny colour, I put them through the rinse on the washing machine.

The manky underarm is gone from my cheetah shirt and the other shirt looks very cool going from a light mushroom brown to its original black in an interesting fadey pattern a bit like stained glass.
The cheetah is silk screened and so has not been affected at all and now sits in a shadowy shady mottled background. The underarm staining which was really I suppose natural bleaching from sweat and age, is just part of the bleach pattern instead of standing out screaming old and manky.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.
*********************************************************

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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Suddenly that Violin man seems less smiley.

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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.

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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.