April Ins and Outs and Any Penny Savers?

The usual income of State Pension, interest on savings and Suffolk County Council Spouses pension - I'm worried about what happens to this when Local Government Reorganisation makes SCC vanish. I've read that pensions are protected by law so it should be OK, but you never know. Interest  on savings seem to have dropped - need to check that out.

As predicted April was an expensive month, and then I bought my new bike. The TV Licence[up by £5.50] and house insurance[down by £3] were the planned large expenses and the bill came for the March boiler repair. Council tax of course [up by £8] and charity plus broad band and phones are all direct debit. I put £71 worth of diesel in the car. Finally I read the electric meter and paid for the month. 

I was going to say I'd not needed the tumble dryer all month  but when ED and the boys were up after Easter she brought 3 loads of washing with her! - her washing machine was playing up and of course boys get very dirty very quickly. Everything needed getting dry as soon as possible so I tumbled it.

Garden spending was growbags and compost, then the vegetable plants from car boot sales and a tray of leek plants from the garden shop.

There was other spending on two birthday gifts, odd bits for the house, window cleaner, bathroom and kitchen and some sunflower hearts for the birds.

Back in March Aldi were supposed to have some metal plant pot holders that hook over a fence. I was going to get a couple for my sisters birthday but they didn't appear in Stowmarket Aldi until late April. So when I saw them I got two each for both my sister and sister in law - they are ready for Christmas.

When the weather warmed up last week I sorted through the clothes in wardrobe and drawers to see what state summer clothes were in and decided I needed new summer shoes, a second summer skirt and shorts and I really need tee shirts too but will scour charity shops first. 

image from google freepik

The only penny savers I can think of...........

• Gift of rhubarb from my sister
• Dishwasher only used every other day
• Filled car up with diesel when visiting YD - saving 6p a litre on garages near me
• Made up a tin of Lemon Home Cook Marmalade, works out at just over £1 a jar

• No alcohol bought as usual, and no lotions, potions etc
• No newspapers and magazines - except for the Puzzler
• Bread made in the bread-machine. 50/50 wholemeal/white flour
• Lights only needed for reading after 8pm now
• Reading library books and from my shelves for free
• Saving apple peels etc into the freezer for making the next batch of 'compost jelly' sometime
• A gift of flowers from my sister for my birthday lasted two weeks

May should be less spendy, as far as I know there is just the car breakdown insurance and EGS birthday. No more bikes or big expenses! [Touching wood]

St George's Church, Stowlangtoft

 This church was locked when I've visited a couple of years ago so I was pleased to see the 'Church Open' sign.

When Simon Knott [Suffolk Churches website] visited here in 2018 he was told by the lady who let him in that the church was heading for redundancy, to be taken over by the Historic Churches Trust as it wasn't being used for services . But it seems this didn't happen and the church is now open at weekends and has a once a month service.

Opposite the door into the church is the WWI War memorial

Above it is the huge remains of a Medieval wall painting of St Christopher carrying the Christ Child over the water.

Octagonal font with seven saints and Christ carved in the panels

Every window has some stained glass, mostly Victorian

A very bad photo of a  drawing showing who's who in the East window glass

.

People come here specially to see the Flemish wood panels of the reredos. They were given to the church by an owner of Stowlangtoft Hall and date from the 1480s. But in 1977 they were stolen and disappeared for five years until the were found in an Amsterdam gallery. Legal proceedings to get them back failed but luckily they were bought and all costs paid by a Dutch businessman and returned to the church. Now the Sanctuary and the panels are alarmed so hopefully they won't be stolen again.

Like the last church I visited at Framsden, Stowlangtoft also has misericord seats with carvings that survived better than Framsden.

There are lots of excellent carvings on the pew ends too

There's an online church brochure HERE for more information.


Back Tomorrow

April Car Boot Sale Finds?

Apart from that mistake of the shelf unit, purchases have been virtually non existent. .

A pack of charity Christmas cards for £1 and that's  it!  [except from a few plants].

I bought a red pepper plant for £1 when none of my first sowing germinated. [Now they've eventually appeared I'm going to have plenty!] I wasn't going to bother with aubergines as my preferred way to use them is in a aubergine and tomato pasta sauce and just one aubergine makes quite a few portions but then someone had aubergine plants also for £1, I just bought one. Finally two courgette plants again for £1 each as I hadn't got around to sowing any. I have got enough cucumber and tomatoes through so won't need to buy those. Someone was selling 3 sweetcorn plants for £1 which I thought was a bit expensive but I'm sure there will be some cheaper later..... for some reason I forgot to get seeds....or peat pots to sow them in......

I'm not sure why my gardening mojo has vanished this year - maybe it's due to the years of having everything ruined by next door's cat, pigeons and slugs.

My 'fill a blog post with weird you tube things' yesterday brought several comments and Steve's comment of "how much peanut butter can a person stockpile" immediately brought to mind a vision of someone having cupboards full of jars of PNB and at the time of dire emergency opening the cupboard and being killed by getting hit on the head and buried under 100's of falling jars!! 

I think this could be a plot for Midsomer Murders!

I think I might have been reading too many crime novels!!

Back Tomorrow.......... unless..................!

Believable?

These were on the side bar when I was looking at Colette's Bealtaine Cottage site.

 Is this what they call Doom Scrolling?

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zVYPGeh79Y

I like this one as it says Peanut Butter is the perfect food to store for an emergency - well I can agree with that one!

I said I was short of ideas for blog posts!!

I expect I'll  be better tomorrow 😄

The Last Saturday in April

 If only all the blossom on a fruit tree developed into fruit.

This is the Falstaff Minarette Apple,  ( a type for small gardens that grows straight up), this is it's 5th spring. There are more flowers this year than any previous and slightly later this year too which is hopeful. 

Earlier in the month the young pear tree was covered in white blossom but even if  a few of the blossom become fruit I expect wasps will ruin them like the two pears  they chomped their way through last year.

My annual try at getting Basil cuttings to root in water started this week. I took several cuttings from my 95p Aldi plant, hopefully some will produce roots. Not sure how they'll do because like last year the shoots are very lanky with few leaf nodes to turn into roots. Last year wasn't a huge success but I did have enough to use fresh leaves through the summer. 

In the garden I've 'done' the patio Yet Again with the wire scrapper thing that takes the top off all the weeds in the cracks. Then I poured boiling water over - hopefully that will set them back for a while. Also moved the last lot of compost onto one of the veg beds. I stopped making compost when rats ate their way in. I shall be pleased when the food waste council collection starts in June. There isn't much food waste but it'll be good to put the odd bits out for collection each week.

Having decided to resell the shelving unit I started searching around for other things ready to do a car boot sale in the summer. The grandchildren no longer need changing mat, toilet seat and potty and they've all hardly been used so just need a clean and they will sell plus some of the toys that they've all out grown. I found quite a few other things I'd like to see gone, so will definitely do a boot sale sometime. After every one I do I say Never Again but then 'stuff ' needs going and although I do donate to charity shops it's nice sometimes to get some money back. 

I shall keep my eye on the weather forecast for a sunny Sunday in May.

Hope you have a good weekend - I probably be back Monday - although at the moment my mind is a blank for what to write about.

Mute Swans

Don't ask me why, but I've been watching the very cringingly cosy and unrealistic crime series 'The Marlow Murder Club' on the 4 Catch up channel or maybe on the U channel- can't remember which. In one programme they  mentioned Swan Upping on the Thames which reminded me I had this cutting from last years folklore diary.

The nearest swans to visit from home are at Needham Lake - next to the car-boot sale field, so I went to take a photo- as you do when you have a blog and posts to fill!!

There is a really good page about Swan Upping HERE. It looks like a very colourful occasion.

A toast to Queen Elizabeth II

Back Tomorrow

Books For The Country Gardener

This is another page from the book that I had for Christmas - The Country Commonplace Book by Miranda Mills.

No idea of the criteria for the authors choices for these book lists but "The Potting Shed Murder" was rubbish! I only got a few pages in before giving up on it and it went back to the library straight away.

I've reserved the first on her list - Elizabeth and Her German Garden by Elizabeth von Arnim - from the library, it will be here next visit.  Morville Hours is one of those books that was everywhere when it was published but I've not read it or any of the others.

Back Tomorrow

The Church of St Mary, Framsden

A path from the village street crosses a bridge and then through this lych gate with lots of texts and carvings.

Unusually, the outside of the church is plastered and painted white on this side

In through the porch

Into the light church that has a South aisle. The nave isn't used for services, there is a huge curtain in the chancel arch and just the chancel is heated to use for the congregation.

It looks as if this old stove is sometimes used in the chancel to keep everyone warm but there were electric heaters too.

The old coffin bier and extra chairs stored in the south aisle

Like nearby Helmingham church there are many painted texts.

Very little stained glass, just  the red borders to some windows and a few pieces of older glass mixed in.

The pulpit and stairs to the long gone rood loft

These are what many people visit the church to see, probably damaged on purpose during the reformation

 Much more HERE on Simon Knotts' church site.

Thanks for comments yesterday, I think I'll resell the shelving, it's not going to last long outside with or without drainage and waterproofing.

Back Soon

An Unwise Car Boot Sale Purchase?

It was back in 2021 that I found this plant stand from a car-boot sale for £20.

Since then it's been painted twice, had plants on and off and  seems to have been mentioned in 15 blog posts!

After it's new paint and update this was it in May last year.

It's tied to the trellis and is a bit rickety now, all the shelves are sloping forwards rather a lot but it's still just about usable and everything - mainly various succulents, survived the winter.

But when I spotted this at Stonham Barns car-boot sale on Sunday and the lady wanted £5 I bought it. It's very sturdy  and I thought it would be a good replacement................BUT it was only afterwards that I wondered if it is actually made for standing outside as it has solid shelves!

With no drainage on the shelves maybe it would be better to re-sell it as I'm sure it's worth more than £5.

Back Soon

 

Trying, Not Finishing and Persevering

 Seems I give up easily!

I really tried with the one on the left 'The Crooked Cross' by Sally Carson until it got too depressing. It's a 2025 Persephone publication originally published in 1934 by an English author who spent a lot of time in Germany pre war. The story is an account of the fictional Kluger family, including daughter Lexa, who at Christmas 1932 is engaged to be married to a young doctor with a Jewish name - Moritz Weissman and how their lives are changed  during the rise of the Nazis.

Persephone have now published the follow up to this story 'The Prisoner'. I won't be reading it.

Then I tried the middle book, which is  2013 crime fiction by a American author but set in the UK despite misgivings, as sometimes US authors have not bothered to use our English words for various things that have different names across the pond. This story is the 13th in a long series featuring American Dorothy Martin who lives in the UK with her retired British Chief Constable Alan. I was getting on OK with it and then the author starts to mention several times that Dorothy hasn't had time to floss her teeth! For goodness sake - talk about padding the word count!

Having abandoned two books quarter of the way in, I hoped to actually finish the book on the right 'The Weather Watcher ' by Claire Anders. It turned out to be a lighter than I thought read, a coming of age story about a young Scottish girl, who, when her mother decides she ought to marry the son of a family friend just before the War starts, decides instead to join the Women's Auxiliary Air Force and train as a Meteorology  Assistant.  I might have given up as it's leaning towards being a romance but persevered as the details about a 'Weather Watcher' were interesting and hopefully researched and accurate. There was information of something I'd never heard of despite it happening in Felixstowe - Operation Outward.  I've read so many books about  WWII but never heard of this.

Picture from Wikipedia of balloons being released on the east coast for Operation Outward

I've still got 6 other library books to try before the library van is round again at the end of the month and only one of those I definitely know to be readable, so there may well be another post about trying and failing to finish!

Back Tomorrow

Random and Odd Stuff From Last Week

The cheapest nearest diesel was £1.86 a litre last Sunday,. Apparently this is £8.46 a gallon - good grief. (thats's $11.37). I'm so old I can remember when petrol was £1 a gallon - that was in the late 70's. Have to travel, so need fuel -  I'm keeping topped up.

Did anyone else watch the 2nd series of  'Capture' on TV over the last 6 Sundays? It ended last Sunday, I  have no idea what it was all about.😕

Started on the 10 minute journey to Keep Moving Group only to find after half a mile  that the way out of the village was suddenly 'Road Closed' - no warning = 3 point turn = back the way I'd come and  then several miles on small back lanes = all jolly good fun! Arrived 20 minutes later = only just in time.

Did you hear about this .....Supermarket Digital Labels? Instant price changes when demand is higher/lower- with electronic shelf edge labels-  Oh good grief. For instance strawberries and cream would cost more on a hot Summer Saturday and less on a wet Winter Monday. Thankfully no supermarkets here have plans to introduce these -Yet!

On Thursday morning my phone made an unusual bleepity bleep noise, when I looked it was wishing me Happy Birthday! It wasn't a message or a phone call - just Happy Birthday on the screen. How strange.  AI creeping in?

17 days of The World Snooker Championship starts on TV today, it will keep me company while I'm reading and half watching. There are 11 Chinese players in the starting 32 - that must be the most ever.

I see blogger is playing up again - sometimes not updating the "Blogs I Read" when a new blog is posted. 

Have a good weekend .