Tag Archives: holiday

Holiday Day 1

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Today I started with a lie in and followed up with a relaxed breakfast featuring bacon croissants. I have become very cosmopolitan in my later years.

In the after noon I went to the shop because, in the course of the morning I suddenly realised I had left my battery charger plugged in at the shop. I’d noticed it bleep yesterday to tell me the batteries were charged but had forgotten to disconnect it. Fortunately, the automatic cut off had worked and all was OK. This isn’t always the case as they sometimes get painfully hot. This is a reminder of why I was worried about fire.

In the evening we had a large salad, plus some quiche and a sliver of cheesecake. The salad was rocket, tomato, cucumber, spring onions, mushrooms, peppers, dried apricots, almonds, feta and watermelon. It’s partly an attempt to eat more salad, and partly an attempt to clear up a lot of  part packets of stuff.

Tomorrow I will make soup as we have a number of mushrooms and carrots coming to the end of their shelf life. It will be Mushroom Soup and Carrot and Lentil Soup, I’m not going to try to make Carrot and Mushroom Soup.  That would be a step too far.

I’ve also been reading posts, though I’m still struggling with time. My apologies to everyone I have been neglecting.

Finally, we watched The Great British Sewing Bee. It’s a harmless way to pass an hour in the evening, despite the slewed comments of the judges. They definitely have favourites. In the judging it’s quite common for judges to criticise the non-favourites for faults that they then ignore when telling their favorites that their creation is superb, even though one or more obvious faults are jumping out of the TV screen.

Bumble bee on bramble flowers – Sherwood Forest

n most TV  competitions.

Holiday and a Reality Check

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It ws decided a few weeks ago (not by me) that we would close the shop from Wednesday to Wednesday. The owner is on holiday and decided that it would be easier for staffing if he closed the shop. In other words, after the debacle at Christmas, and his solution (making us take one of the weeks off out of our holiday entitlement because one of his staff (again not me), had made a fuss about coming in for some of the time despite us being given time off as a bonus.

Stamps, stamps, stamps…

The result is that we are now being directed when to take holiday and I am no longer paid for working on Wednesdays (normally my day off). To be honest, I can’t be bothered to argue about it as I have less than a year to go. At that point my small works pension and my Old Age pension will combine to produce an income approximately equal to my current part-time shop job. That’s the advantage of my pitiful career trajectory – retirement will not see me any worse off than when I was working. If I can actually find a part-time job after I retire I will actually be better off as a retiree.

Meanwhile, we had the AGM of the Numismatic Society last night. Eighteen men of a certain age gathered together to mutter and raise hands as the Treasurer read his report and the Secretary read his report and the Chairman gave his annual address The age range is from 45-85, with more at the top end of the scale than at the bottom.

Display of old relics at Flintham Show

Fears about being in a dying hobby are well-founded. Cigarette card collecting used to be a big collecting area. These days, despite a large stock, we sell very few cards and the collectors are mainly in their eighties. Card collecting continues, with football and other gum cards (such  as Star Wars and Batman) still having a following. Pokemon cards have a strong following too, as do many other sorts of card that we don’t deal with. Old dogs and new tricks spring to mind, but as most of the young people do their business online they don’t need a shop.

There were, as I recall, ten collectors shops with coins and medals when I moved to Nottingham 35 years ago. Now there are two, one of which is mainly a jeweller these days.

That’s how it’s going. Collectors generally find eBay a great place to buy (as I do) and they just don’t bother coming into shops these days, a trend I saw starting over 20 years ago. I’m one of the last remnants from the old days, already halfway between dinosaur and fossil . . .

Silver Coin Set

Cheese, Chutney and Cholesterol

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I’ve reached the balance phase of my extended Christmas holiday. After five days doing very little, whilst wearing layers of flannelette I am now bored. Tomorrow I will dress and go out. It’s now feeling like I need to do something in preparation for going back to work. By “something” I mean something other than watching TV, napping or checking eBay.

It’s time to start work on the book of poetry, catalogue my collection and declutter the house. To be fair, I often say it’s that time, so don’t expect too much in the way of actual action. The only difference this year is that we are within two years of retirement and moving.

I have about 18 months to go and Julia has two years longer than that – she’s younger than me, and because of that we fell on different sides of the divide as the government raised the retirement age. I can draw my pension at 66, she has to wait until she’s 67. As the retirement age for women was 60 when we married (compared to 65 for men) she already nurses a grudge against the government, even without the additional year. That is why I will now remain tactfully silent over the matter and not remind people seeking equality to be careful what they wish for.

We just had cheese and biscuits so I can now report that the Onion and Date Chutney I mentioned in the last post was as good as the Sweet Root chutney, and both go well with Lancashire cheese. They also go well with garlic and herb soft cheese, though I don’t want you to think I’m showing off about my cheese supply with all this name dropping.

We actually don’t have much variety compared to previous years, as I always used to buy Camembert or Brie and at least one variety we’d never had before, plus Stilton, something else blue, cheddar, Wensleydale with fruit, and some of those Xmas novelty truckles. This year we have Stilton, Red Leicester, Lancashire, a truckle of Chilli Cheddar and the soft garlic and herb cheese. We still have enough cheese to block a major artery, but we have less variety, which makes it easier to use in an orderly fashion. I try my best, but we have found a few furry surprises at the back of the fridge in our time. One year I actually developed a semi-soft blue Cheddar, which was very good, though possibly poisonous. I’m still here so it was probably OK, but according to the internet you need to be careful with mould. On the other hand, I can’t help noting that Alexander Fleming got a knighthood and a Nobel Prize from messing about with mould.

A Few Days in Wales

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I still haven’t tried to trace the missing post, but I have solved my focus problem. I had it on “P”, which was Programmed Automatic on the last camera. Not sure what it is on the new one but setting it to “A” solves the focus issues – it works fine now.

We have been in Wales for the last couple of days. Sunday was mainly travel. Monday was mainly low visibility and wet. Tuesday was very pleasant but we spent half the day travelling back. It’s the first time we;ve been away since lockdown and it was very pleasant. The only problem is that accomodation has gone up. We may have to start looking at B&B instead of cheap hotels. The main advantages of cheap hotels are the ability to come and go as you want, and you know what you are getting before you arrive. When we used to use B&B the accommodation could sometimes be a bit of a shock. As could the landladies.

Llandudno, including War Memorial

We have been having the all you can eat breakfasts again – yoghurt, fruit, cereal, toast and drinks is £7.50 and with the addition of a full breakfast only costs £2 more. That’s sausage, bacon, egg, mushrooms, tomatoes, beans, black pudding, hash browns for £2 extra. I don’t actually eat all I can, but I do eat enough to last me through the day.

We ate at 9.00 this morning, had tea and cake when we visited the posh farm shop at lunchtime them had soup at 8.00 tonight when we got home. We didn’t really need the cake I suppose, but I do like fruit loaf and it seemed rude not to have the bara brith seeing as we were in Wales. Having said that, my Mum had several similar recipes, including one that featured grape nuts cereal soaked in tea. I used to make it too. As usual, I didn’t make a conscious effort to stop, it’s just one of those things that petered out.

Llandudno

I seem to have lost the habit of taking photos. I do have a few but haven’t taken them off the card yet. So photos are from old visits. It hasn’t changed much since the 1890s, apart from the cars, so it doesn’t really need new photos.

Places to go – Llandudno

 

Drifting Thoughts

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Work went well yesterday and by 2.00 I had the parcels packed and in the post. I walked back into the shop thinking that my next move should be to ring Julia and tell her that I would be able to pick her up. This is always a problem on Friday as she finishes a bit earlier than normal and it can be a bit difficult.

As I got back to the computer I realised that we had a new order. It was for one gum card (Alma Cogan from the A&BC Who-Z-At Star Series, 1961). That’s easy enough – compliments slip, into a holdr (we have some left over from a stamp collection we bought) , into a board backed envelope, first class stamp and address.

While I was doing that another order came in – banknote. Same again. Easy to find and simple to pack.

Then another came in. He wanted fifty different items. I haven’t a clue where half of them are…

So Julia didn’t get a lift home last night and I worked late. However, as I’m currently being paid for my full  week for working one day, I can’t really complain if I have to work a bit longer.

It’s amazing how quickly I adjust. When I started full time work at the age of 16 we used to do five nine hour days, then I moved to doing six eight hour days. We had two weeks holiday in those days. Am I sounding old and crusty?

Now I do  six hour days and have four weeks holiday. I work Saturdays but have Sundays and Wednesdays off (the latter being my choice so I get a day off when Julia does). It’s not hard. In fact I’d like to do longer days, as it hardly seems worth it to go in for six hours.  The strange thing is that I still feel tired by the end of the week. It’s not just an age thing, because I know someone a lot younger than me who has similar hours and he complains about how onerous his working life is.

I think we’ve just got softer as a nation. At the risk of sounding like one of the Four Yorkshiremen, there are people who are just ten years younger than me who think they are badly done to as they work 35 hours and week and have  a month off, plus Bank Holidays. For the sake of my American readers, who are probably reading this with an expression of disbelief, here is how the rest of the world does it. Even Kazakhstan and South Sudan have better holiday provision than you do.

Work, gum cards, holidays, snowflakes – amazing where a blog can take you.

Am Awkward Day

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It’s Monday, so it should be the start of a new week, but somehow it doesn’t seem much of anything – being in that awkward gap between Christmas and New Year. When I was working with poultry it was never a problem as they needed attention every day. The same when I was in the antiques trade – I always had plenty to do in the days between Christmas and New Year because people had Christmas money to spend and time off to attend fairs. Even when the kids were at home, we had plenty to do.

This year, locked down and instructed not to travel, it’s trickier, so I decided that today I would lounge around the house in dressing gown and slipper socks and loaf my life away. It’s after 11pmnow and the plan seems to have worked reasonably well.

As usual, after watching a bunch of high achievers on Christmas University Challenge, I’m left wondering how they managed to rise so high in their professions when they are unable to answer comparatively simple general knowledge questions. Same goes for Celebrity Mastermind, Even the contestants on ordinary Mastermind didn’t exactly shine like beacons of brilliance. The contestants on Only Connect, of course, continue to mystify me.

In other words, I’ve watched far too many quizzes today. However, while I’m watching quizzes I’m not eating, so that is good. We still have chocolate and biscuits in the house, as we are cutting back. I suspect we may not finish them until well into 2021. That’s partly lifestyle choice and partly over-exposure to Weight Watchers adverts.

I just found that I can select a month when looking back at old photos. Seven years on WP and still haven’t learnt how to do it!

Seal pup – Donna Nook, Lincolnshire

This is a seal photo from the days we were allowed to travel.

 

A Lazy Week

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I’ve just squandered a week of my life. This is partly due to waiting for a call from the builder who never called, and partly due to laziness.

I have done nothing of importance, been nowhere and written nothing apart from the blog.

Unless you count replacing a plug on Julia’s reading lamp. That’s more difficult than you think in these days of moulded on plugs.

I had three choices. One was to replace the plug with one bought from the supermarket. Julia put a stop to that one by moving it. Women have a mysterious superpower where anything they move tends to disappear.

That left two choices.

As the fault with the plug was that someone (who may or may not be the person who moved the replacement) broke the main prong (the one that works the shutter and opens up the other two holes) there is an option of wedging the shutter open with matchsticks. However, even I consider this to be a tad dangerous, despite my history of alternative electrical arrangements.

So in the end I took the plug off another appliance and used that. This avoided the necessity of moving away from the TV and going out in the cold.

And that brings me back to the question of wasting a week. I’m feeling happy, rested and in tiptop mental condition. Maybe it isn’t a waste after all, maybe I should do more of it. And maybe, as a marketing exercise, I should rebrand it as “relaxation” or even “mindfulness“.

Sorry about the picture, I’m very lazy. If I could use Photoshop I’d bung a Santa Hat on a puffin, but as I can’t, it’s another robin.

Parenting, Porridge and Pessimism

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We had a lie in until just after eight and got ready without having to rush to a deadline, then, in case the luxury of the moment should spoil us, we had porridge. Without sugar.

If porridge had a family tree it wouldn’t be far from wallpaper paste on the chart, probably a second cousin, but it’s good for me. It’s full of dietary fibre, it’s economical and it helps build stoicism.

I will spare you the next few lines, but let’s say that they weren’t cheerful and the spirit of optimism has taken a holiday too. All I have left to look forward to is five and a half years of work before I retire and embark on life with some very poor pension arrangements. Stoicism is going to come in very useful.

I know I’m getting old as I’m entering the penultimate stage of parenthood. I’ve pushed them around in a pram, worried about their health, maturity, education and careers. I’m now worrying that I won’t be able to leave them anything when I die. That only leaves the final stage, where they have to worry about my health and push me around in a wheelchair. I only hope my brain lives long enough for me to appreciate the irony.

Julia has gone to town to renew her bus card. I have sorted out my car insurance details, moved stuff round to give access to the electricians, and taken waste paper out. With all the pizza menus, seed catalogues and generally useless waste I reckon I’ve just dumped a good couple of pounds of waste paper in the recycling bin.

According to the 2011 census figures there are 126,131 households in Nottingham so that’s over 252,262 pounds of waste, and that’s accumulated in just a couple of months so the annual figure will be 1,513,572 lbs of waste paper. That’s 686 metric tonnes of paper that need never have been produced.

I just looked Nottingham City Council up to see if they had figures that I could compare and they don’t. They do, however, tell me that they give out 160,000 single-use recycling bags last year. They are for people in flats. They are taking steps to end this, but it seems that it’s taken a long time to get round to it.

Apart from seeing the seals, as mentioned yesterday, I don’t have many plans for the next week. I’d better think of something fast, as worrying about death, children and recycling isn’t what I had in mind when I booked a week off.

I may give some thought to feeding ducks. What people don’t realise when they talk about “feeding ducks” is that there are people out there who will quite happily tip out a pack of white bread and then, after five minutes of laughter, will walk off leaving bread floating on the water and cluttering up the shore. The result – apart from a nutritionally dodgy meal for ducks – rats and festering bread.

Mallard x Pintail Arnot Hill Park
Armot Hill Park – ducks

Laundry, Laziness and Lincolnshire

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The new week beckons, and as I’ve booked a holiday I have nothing to do but collect my camera from work and host a visit from the electricity board, who have to bring the earthing of the house up to modern standards.

It’s been OK since 1928 but British Gas won’t tackle fitting the new boiler until it is done. As with all work of this type I expect they will look for more faults and give me a lecture on the age of the system. Pardon me for the gloomy nature of my expectations, but I have a wealth of experience to back it up.

I’m also waiting for a builder to contact me. The wait is a worry as it suggests a cavalier attitude to punctuality and customer care. However, all the decent tradesmen we used to use have retired so we have to find a new one.

Three hours later…

Laundry is done. The shopping is done. I have delivered a lecture on economy to myself – though only after spending £6.40 on stuff we didn’t need. It’s time to write the rest of the post as the bacon and black pudding cooks. I’m doing it in the oven with some other stuff for later.

But first, noticing an absence of post from last night I had to find it and publish it. I seem to have prepared everything then failed to post it. Another Senior Moment in a growing line of them.

That was pretty much the theme of last night’s conversation, with four of the nine present being sixty plus and one teetering on the brink of it, the conversation was mainly about health, holidays and memory (or lack thereof). I didn’t actually catch all of it as my hearing is also going.

Three hours after that…

Lunch has been consumed. Jessica Fletcher has brought the killers to justice in her home state of Maine – the most dangerous place in the Union, if TV is to be believed – and the beef stew is bubbling gently on the hob.

I’ve prepared the Mediterranean veg for tonight’s fish cakes, but that is as far as I’ve reached in my culinary plans. I did have plans for a vegetable curry too, but so far I’ve failed on that. The idea of a cup of tea by a warming gas fire is far more attractive.

And with that brief snapshot of life in the Midlands, I will drift off with my cup of tea and see if my wife has any birthday chocolate left.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Donna Nook – the seals are back!

Seal Report for last week – 362 bulls, 1,254 cows and 872 pups. That’s quite a lot of seals. I’m planning on getting the cameras sorted and heading off for the coast at the end of next week, though this depends on the rain to a certain extent. Not so much the rain itself as we are used to that, but the floods might be a problem. There are still active flood warnings in effect for Lincolnshire, and high tides are contributing to the problem.

No1 Son Has a Bad Day

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He was supposed to fly from Gatwick yesterday. However, he ended up with a daytrip to Brighton whilst waiting for his flight yesterday and today headed off for a weekend in East Anglia. It’s not the Christmas trip to Innsbruck which he had planned, but he’s better off than a lot of people who have had their plans disrupted.

Assuming that this is an eco-protest rather than a terrorist attack or prank, I’m not altogether out of sympathy with the protest, as we are killing the planet with all our travel.

However, a couple of hours would have made the point without wrecking Christmas for thousands of people.

It now seems that airlines and travel insurance companies may be able get away with taking the money and cancelling the flight as it is “an extraordinary event” and not covered by insurance. Nice work if you can get it, but typical of insurance companies and airlines, who never seem to take their responsibilities too seriously.

I’m expecting a major backlash against drones now, and some questions in parliament about the lack of effective action against the drone.