Dark Evenings ... and Only Slighter Lighter Mornings

Ginger has been a little bit baffled by the time change over the past week.  

While the mornings have been slightly lighter, it only seemed to last a day or so because of all the rain clouds that we have had.  Ginger comes over every morning for his 'squidgy', a tube of paste-like cat treat that he seems addicted to.  I like him having it even though I think it is basically pussycat junk food, because it seems to trigger his appetite, which until recently had been waning.  After emptying the dish and then having a little cat milk, he goes out the front door of mine, through next doors garden and reappears in our back garden where he makes straight for his cat flap which is on Alan's back door to see if Alan has surfaced yet.

If he hasn't Ginger comes straight back to mine and waits in anticipation of Alan's curtains opening, and the promise of breakfast.

While all this is going on I am simply drinking coffee and watching some YouTube, I have no inclination to be climbing garden fences before breakfast.  😄

Gosh, it even seemed gloomy in the fridge this morning.  Maybe I should stop putting things so neatly in front of the lights!!

I have to say, I am loving the long dark evenings ... I always do.  There's something very relaxing about settling down nice and early, with good food, a good book and then some really good television.

Just recently I have watched and thoroughly enjoyed all of Nine Bodies in a Mexican Morgue, The Veil and then I completely binge watched Riot Women.  Gosh Sally Wainwright can write a good series.

Now, I just have to find something of equal calibre to follow that!

Sue xx

Life Has Been Strange, But Be Happy

 

The final amount on my Sainsbury's gift card was burning a hole in my pocket, so I decided to have a little stock up of things that I really needed ... and a couple that I just plain and simple wanted.

I have scoured all the shops in our home town for a bag of Gram flour over the last few weeks, alas to no avail.  So while we were in Manchester visiting Mum on Sunday we called to the big Sainsbury's there, and I got a huge bag.  It was the only size that they had, but two whole kilos should last me quite a while. 😁

By using the gift card, which I got when I took out my Pure Cremation funeral plan, I only needed to add an additional 91p to the payment.  Shown on the receipt but not on the photo are the nine packets of Ginger's favourite cat food, which happily was on a special Nectar offer for me.

Sadly these were bought in error, as I thought they were dairy-free, a lot of White Rabbit things are but these are not.  Alan very happily volunteered to eat them for me.

Sorry for the lack of posts over the last few days, life has been strange.

Sue xx

History in Letters, Jars and Food

History in letters, well half of them in this case are 'Blueys' the free to send lightweight letters for Army use.

I was doing a final check through my Mum's document files ready for delivering them back to the bungalow with all the documents that relate to it ready for my brother.  When I came across all the correspondence that my eldest son, Simon sent to his grandparents during his time in the army.  

They start during his basic training days, and then go on to chart his history of deployments, and continue when he was on the frontline.  The final couple are when he was serving his last weeks in the army as a sentry at Catterick barracks, before heading home.   I've kept them all to hand back to him next time we see each other, as they will match up nicely with the letters that Mum and Dad sent to him.

I obviously have all the ones he sent to me, and he has the ones that I sent to him, maybe one day we will match them together as well.  It seems a lifetime ago that I wrote to him twice a week, and sent him a weekly 'goodies' parcel through the free parcel service the Post Office offers for military personnel serving overseas.

It's also been a busy week for sorting in other areas.  I sold a selection of Kilner jars on Facebook Marketplace that I no longer had any use or space for. 

The sale paid for this weeks little shopping top up.

Oh, and just before the weather turned really atrocious I managed to get the garden virtually put to bed for the Winter.  There are just a few pots left to tip into the compost bin, or throw away.  

The white curtain pole is on top of the mesh so that Ginger and his feline friends can see it's not safe to jump down off the fence there.  It looks a mess but it does the job.

Finally ...

It's most definitely reading and tv watching weather at the moment.

Stay cosy everyone.

Sue xx

 

A Scenic Autumn Wander

All images by Michael Coleran.

Shared with permission.

If you start near the river, it's the River Wyre by the way, you will see if you are lucky one of our residents Herons.  They stand proudly on the banks, eagle eyed for looking for fish in the fast moving water.

If you are very very lucky, you might also see one of the few otters that have recently taken up residence.

Wandering along the riverbank will take you to this lovely grassy area, but beware of Labradors and retrievers running happily running up to you after a swim in the river, they have been known to shake and shake and leave the occasional muddy footprints. 

The ruins of Greenhalgh Castle.

If you keep going along the river and step out onto the end of the High Street where I used to live and then walk over the bridge past Sainsbury's you will eventually come to the ruins of the castle.  There's not much left now, but once it was magnificent.  Lots of houses in our town boast a few stones in their walls from the original castle.

You can get as close to it as Michael got here to take photo, but access to the ruins is now not allowed, it's even fenced off from the sheep.

Years ago it was accessible to everyone, but I guess one too many little boys thought that scaling the walls was a good idea.  

We did make sure that Simon was very conscious of causing no damage, and he only posed for the photograph.

Come back into town and walk past Sainsbury's, keep going and you will pass the Royal Mail sorting office, then cross the mini-roundabout and take a left and you will come to the park on your left and Aldi on your right.

But if you keep going along the lane you will come to the canal bridge, and then you can walk down the ancient stone steps for some more nature and glorious Autumn colours.

I love the old bridges that are all along the canal.  It's Lancaster Canal, and is unusual in that it has no locks over it's 42 mile length.  Which we really appreciated when we had our little holiday on a narrowboat on this canal a couple of years ago.  

The colours are magnificent aren't they, this is truly my favourite time of the year.

I hope you enjoyed this little jaunt around my current home town.  

Many thanks to Michael for permission to use his lovely photos.  He's one of our official town photographers, and is there for all the events that go on as well as being out and about snapping away at the wildlife, nature and changing seasons on his early morning walks.

Sue xx

Shrinkflation Strikes again

 

Shrinkflation has struck again.

The lovely vegan Aldi sausage rolls, were miraculously held at the same price of £1.19 for years.  They were tasty, they always cooked up really well, and were enjoyed by meat eaters and non-meat eaters for so long.

Then shock horror, a few months ago they vanished from the freezers.  

I checked every single time we went in there, and while other things disappeared and then came back there was never a sighting of the sausage rolls either on the shelves or on any of the shelf edge labels.

Then on Friday look what I spotted, stacked high  filling a third of the top shelf of the freezer and being introduced as a new product ... sausage rolls.

But in a pack of two!!

Now that is a little bit sneaky if you ask me.  They are still really good value for money as sausage rolls go, and hopefully they will be as tasty as before.  I have opened the box and they do seem a little bit longer than they were previously and I will be trying them for flavour for lunch one day this week. 

At least I guess this shrinkflation is blatantly obvious, there for all to see two instead of four.  But one of my favourite sausage rolls is now 50p instead of it's original 30p, and that is quite a jump.

Although I guess, in the grand scheme of things, it's not the end of the world. 😄

Sue xx

Hardworking Worms, and YouTube

 

Art - Lady of the Garden by Lore Pemberton

Unlike this lovely image my garden is almost done for the year, although amazingly I have some flowers still looking lovely, if a little scruffy around the edges.  But they are providing nourishment for the couple of bees that I have spotted recently, so they will remain as they are until no little lives depend on them.

 I have one more tomato plant to take down and feed to the tiny compost bin.  It really is tiny so I feed it with weeds, trimmings and food scraps slowly, leaving the worms to do their magic for a few days in between ... it's amazing how hard they work.

A lot harder than me if I'm honest!!

I also have to be honest and say that I have not been reading much at all this month, the dark mornings and evenings have seen me snuggled up on my chair with a mug of coffee and the television switched to the YouTube channel.

 While the television itself can be is full of depressing news and mind-numbingly boring quiz shows (not you Only Connect and The Chase), there are so many people filling the screen with lovely positive videos and interesting things to watch.  So that is currently my viewing of choice.

So here are a few YouTube of the channels that I am really enjoying at the moment.

Rewilding Jude

https://youtu.be/Em0IQlPWyMc?si=5mE39fcdSy2Qcc2t

Minty and Mortar

https://youtu.be/sBwWFs7FbL0?si=mWhHQhPflKBQJlvs

Rebecca at Railway Cottage

formerly Rationbook Rebecca

https://youtu.be/w0vg8kEQc5Q?si=66-SP2jQWDgy5KOa

thistinylife

https://youtu.be/ru7lvlbPa0c?si=9lRtMpIWwR2nMbAi

These are just a few of my current favourites, if you click over and visit them I hope you enjoy them too.

I hope you have a lovely weekend. 

Sue xx

Here, There and Everywhere ... At the Drop of a Hat

 

Today is Alan's first official day of complete and utter retirement.  He's been getting his state pension since February but we had one last contract to honour for our company.  

Now it's done!!

He went to back to base in Berkshire yesterday and handed in his secure laptop, his security passes and a few documents, and now he is a free man.  Although he had worked for the same establishment for the last seventeen years he was, believe it or not, a contractor working for them through our company.  But, as he has been there for longer than a lot of the full-time regular staff, he was given a lovely send off from his long term colleagues.  

He also got a lovely gift of an engraved decanter commemorating the date, and a bottle of whisky to fill it with.  Now lots of you know that he's an unusual Scottish man, as he really doesn't like whisky at all, so I am going to do my old trick of turning it into Blackberry Whisky and it will be ready to drink in a years time, when we will crack it open to celebrate the one year anniversary of his retirement.

We started our new here, there and everywhere, go at the drop of a hat lifestyle this morning and took ourselves to the coast for a walk along the prom, and then had a cooked breakfast in one of our favourite cafés.  Before leaving for home we called into the Morecambe branch of Aldi to compare it to ours ... it's slightly bigger and has a slightly better range of stock, but it was freezing in there.  They are one of the remaining stores without doors on all the fridges and boy does it make a difference!!

We chatted all the way home, in fact we chatted so much that ... for the first time ever ... we missed our turning off the motorway.   Alan had chosen to overtake a convoy of lorries at the wrong time.  We both burst out laughing and said 'it doesn't matter we're retired', yep, we have all the time in the world to do a thirty extra miles circle to home .

Thank you for all the comments on the last post, I'm glad that so many of us are on the same wavelength.  To waylay any worries about me not posting anymore, after much thought I have decided that it's not the blog that is going to vanish in any way, it's all the restrictions that I have been putting onto myself and blogging about that are now lifted.

Yes, I will still be doing most of the things ... saving money, eating cheaply etc etc, after all I am now retired and with the titchiest of pensions until next May, so there's definitely no extra cash to throw around.  But I am not going to let that change the things that I want to do or the optimistic mindset that comes with the freedom that not having to work brings.

There will be some changes, and hopefully you will enjoy them as much as I have enjoyed thinking about them.  😀

I will live my hobbit life happily ... minus the hairy feet!!

 

Sue xx

I knew who I was this morning ...

 

Quote from Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Never has this quote been more true for me.  

I fired up the laptop this morning to write a blog post, and made the mistake of reading lots of other peoples posts before I'd even thought about starting to write mine.  After missing a few days due to 'stuff', I scrolled back and read through lots of posts to catch up, as I always do.

I shouldn't have done it.  Apart from a few bright lights it was such a downer.

The world is full of such negativity at the moment, and over the past year or so as well as being shown all over social media, television and newspapers it has silently, insidiously been slipping itself into blogland.  

This space used to be so different.  I understand some of it, but not all of it.

My first thought was to completely discontinue my blog, and delete it all entirely.  

Luckily I had a think, over a coffee and a bowl of chips in Booths café with Alan, and on getting home and sitting at the computer I came to the conclusion that I will alter what I post about, change what I do and hopefully, in doing so, make sure that I am making no contribution to the steady decline in blogland.   

It might just be me, hey it probably is.  

Please don't worry about stuff, but I'm taking time and space to change things up, work things out and do what's right in my mind for me.  If you've noticed this trend towards the negative let me know, if I'm the only one ... let me know that too.

In the meantime I will be here but differently.  

If you don't like the way that I change things up ... and I don't mind at all if you don't ... I'll be leaving all the other blogs on my sidebar for you to hop over to as usual.  I can see from my stats that my blog is used as a jumping off point to lots of other people's and I would hate you to lose the links.

Although it's chilly these days ...  I'll be wearing my slippers.  😄

Sue xx

Let It Be

Art by Sophia Love Storey

Let it be.

Right here, right now.

The breath rises, the breath falls,

and nothing more is needed.

Let it be.

The world moves, the clouds drift,

the sun warms, the rain falls,

all is unfolding as it will.

Let it be.

No grasping, no pushing, no wishing it different.

Just this moment, exactly as it is.

Let it be.

Hear the silence between sounds,

feel the space between thoughts,

rest in the gentle pulse of now.

Let it be.

And in letting go of all else,

find the tender hush of now,

a cradle for the weary heart,

soft, open, and enough.

~ 'Let it Be' by Spirit of a Hippie

Mary Anne Byrne

Too beautiful not to share with you.

Sue xx

 

Butter Chicken Cooking Sauce ... Used at Last!!

I have had a sachet of Butter Chicken Cooking Sauce in my store cupboard for such a long time, so this week I decided that it was time to make use of it, and in the process use a couple of tins from the cupboard too.  So I added a tin of carrots (they were only 18 months out of date 😄) and a tin of chickpeas. 

It looked a bit sad with no flashes of green, so I added a big handful of mixed vegetables from the freezer, I should have added a couple of spinach pellets too but I didn't think of that until I was eating it much later.

Once it was all cooked together I decided to whizz it up with my stick blender into a nice thick curry sauce.  I do like smooth sauces and smooth soups, I'm not one for lots of things floating in a sauce, although Alan is.

It made five perfect sized portions for me.  I wasn't in the mood for rice by the time I had made the sauce and washed all the pots, so I had it with a lovely fresh roll ... with perhaps a bit too much spread, but it was delicious.

I put two of the remaining portions into the fridge and the other two into the freezer, so that I didn't need to rush to eat them.

I still didn't fancy rice the next day, so I decided to make some Curry Pasties with one of the pots of curry from the fridge.  I chopped all the potatoes into quarters and stirred them into the curry sauce, diluting it slightly as it had thickened up.  The ready rolled pastry was from the freezer, and originally from Mum's bungalow when we shared out her frozen foods between us and my brother.

Tip of the Day 1 - Roll your ready rolled pasty out a little bit thinner, it always cooks and tastes so much better.

Tip of the Day 2 -  Roll it out between the paper it came on and a liner from a cereal packet, that way you don't have to add any additional flour, which would make it tougher.

Tip of the Day 3 - Cook your pastry products on the same paper that the pastry came wrapped in.  It saves you using baking parchment or having a messy tray to wash.

I managed to make four pasties, one of them split open so I ate it straight away, before I had even taken a photo, I should have remembered the photo though it actually looked quite nice with all the filling visible.  I then gave two of the pasties to Alan for his tea and ate the other one myself ... two meals half an hour apart ... why not!!

I had the tiniest portion that just wouldn't it into the pasties so I saved it ...

... and had it on a piece of buttered toast for my lunch the next day.

It was surprisingly tasty this way.

The other portion of curry sauce was eaten nice and simply with a portion of Basmati rice and peas, and was very filling.  Sadly, there is no photo of this either ... gosh I've been a bad blogger this week ... but I'm sure you can imagine it.  😄

One pouch of Butter Chicken Sauce, which I rate really highly in terms of flavour, ingredients and price ... and lots of lovely meals made from it.  Also, in finding that link above I have just discovered that it is currently on offer in Sainsbury's, so I think I will have to stock up on a few of them if I can.

Sue xx

Another Week of Minimal Shopping

 

Just another week of minimal shopping.  I need to make a list of things to buy with the remaining money on my Sainsbury's gift card, but in the meantime Alan wanted to shop at Aldi yesterday morning, so I went with him.

I didn't need a lot, so I didn't get a lot.  The large cucumbers were just 10p more than the 'normal' sized cucumbers, and they were tiny, skinny little things, so I went large.

The receipt for posterity.  

It comes in handy having the prices on my blog posts for comparison over the years, mostly the prices go up but every now and then there is a nice little surprise reduction ... none that I can see on here though.

I bought the oats to refill this jar once I get right to the bottom.  

I've been eating weetabix most days since our holiday, but I'm starting to fancy some porridge again now that the mornings are so much cooler.  I don't like warm milk on weetabix, I've never been able to eat any cereal that way.  My Mum used to have hot milk on her corn flakes when I was little, but I never understood the attraction.

 I did, however, quite like the idea of myself with the Ready Brek glow.

Sue xx

Leaves and Sausage Rolls

 

Travelling up and down the motorway on Sunday to go and visit Mum we were treated to the full display of mostly British trees giving us their autumnal displays.  The colours are just starting to really stand out and it always makes me happy.

We were also treated to the sight of a squirrel having a snack in front of my car before I pulled away from the car park at the care home.  I didn't want to disturb him by starting the engine so we just watched ... he was literally 'having a break and having a KitKat'.  If you are from the UK you will remember the adverts for that particular chocolate bar, although they never mentioned squirrels!!  😄

We struck lucky with our 'freebie' timings at Greggs when we stopped at the services on the way home.  We had enough on the app to qualify us for a free coffee, a free sausage roll and a free doughnut.  It meant we got our Sunday lunch for two people for just £7.10.  

Out in our garden everything looks fresh and washed after Storm Amy, the stones remind me of being on Llandudno beach and all the plants seem to have come back to life.  Weirdly my Hydrangea has put out another white flower, just as all the others are in their Autumn colours.

A final hurrah to see the season out.

I'm also loving the colour of the leaves on my blueberry bush.  It will be a plant pot full of twigs in a few weeks so I am enjoying it while it lasts.  

I love seeing the garden readying itself for the Winter, I think we all need to take time to wind down a bit and lay dormant for a while.

Sue xx

Questions ... and Answers

 

I realised after answering a question from Bovey Belle yesterday, that there may be many more of you, especially all my newer readers, who may have questions about various things that I post regularly about.  

BB had asked me specifically about non-food item shopping and did I buy it separately from the food.  I forgot to answer part of your question ... yes, I am using mostly frozen vegetables at the moment, alongside tinned vegetables.

Anyway, I thought I would do a very quick lazy post encouraging anyone that wants to, ask any questions that they have been wondering about in the comments section, and within reason I will answer them all there.

Sue xx

Autumn's Softer Rhythm

 

Art by Paco Yao

 Autumn's Softer Rhythm  

Relaxing in autumn

feels like sinking

into a softer rhythm,

the world slowing

beneath drifting leaves.

The air carries

a gentle crispness,

cool enough to wake the senses,

calm enough

to invite stillness.

Colors glow warmly,

as if the trees

exhale their final breath of beauty

before winter’s quiet.

Beside me,

a steaming cup of coffee awaits,

a good book rests open,

companions to the hush.

In this season,

to sit,

to breathe,

to simply be,

feels like enough.

~ ‘Autumn’s Softer Rhythm’ by Spirit of a Hippie

Mary Anne Byrne

Shared because I loved it so much, I hope you do too.  💛

Sue xx