Books at School

 

I loved the part of a school day when the teacher asked us to 'just read quietly', either while she did some marking or went out of the classroom for something.  

It happened frequently at junior school, sadly not so often at secondary school, although I lived for our twice weekly double period of English literature and language.  Even then I could lose myself in the reading.  The reading out loud for the class, taking it in turns to read paragraphs was not fun.  It broke the stories up too much and made remembering them more difficult as I got nervous when it was almost my turn, purely because of the anticipation of jumping in at the right time .  I prayed for short paragraphs and easy to pronounce words ... and rarely got them.

These days of course I can read as much or as little as I want, indoors or outdoors, and indoors is always preferable on a hot day.   I don't have to read out loud for the benefit of anyone else, occasionally I'll read a poem out loud if I'm enjoying the flow of it, but with only Ginger listening in there's no worry if I stumble over a word.  😄

Sue xx

Let the noise of the day soften ...

Art by Sophia Love Storey

Slow down. 

Let the noise of the day soften, the urgency fade. 

Take a moment to simply be, not to do, achieve, or strive, but to exist with gentle awareness. 

Breathe deeply, and with each breath, allow yourself to arrive more fully in this moment. 

Look around you. 

Take in your surroundings, the delicate play of light or the quiet grace of a passing breeze.

Notice the small things: the texture of a leaf, the distant hum of the world, the way your body feels when you let go of tension. 

These are not distractions, they are life. 

The richness of your existence doesn’t reside in distant goals or constant motion, but in the quiet, often missed spaces in between.

When you slow down enough, even the simplest moment becomes meaningful. 

In that awareness, you reconnect, with yourself, with the world, and with the quiet, lasting peace that comes from simply being where you are.

Written by Spirit of a Hippie 

This really resonated with me, so I'm sharing it with you. 💝

Sue xx

Well Knickers to That!!

 

All of a sudden lots of my knickers have been getting holes in them, and one by one have been put into the bin instead of the washing basket after a day's wear.  After I had gotten down to just four pairs, rather than the initial twelve that I had, it was time to order some more.

I used to always by my Sloggis from Debenhams, but now that is no more, both last time and this I have had to buy via Amazon.  It's never my first choice if I can help it, but sometimes needs must and when I went down to just three pairs left, next day delivery was suddenly very appealing.

I was shocked to find that Sloggis are now £25 for three pairs, it doesn't seem horrendous until you put four boxes of three into your basket and suddenly it's £100.  For some reason I got a £5 reduction which took it to £95.  While I was ordering I checked the date of the last time I ordered them and it turns out it was August 2022.  

So, overall I think that almost three years worth of wear for £95 is a good price.  I could work out how much per wear they have cost me ... but I won't my brain has gone to sleep.  😄

Pare down yes ... but always have enough knickers.  😁

Sue xx

The Garden in June

 

The garden is looking particularly lush at the moment, just enough colour to satisfy Alan and enough green to satisfy me.  

The tomato plants are filling out nicely, with more of their little green fruits appearing each day, the blueberries are coming along brilliantly ... although why we chose to move the pots directly under the bird feeding station I have no idea.  I am going to have to keep my eyes firmly on my fruits for any signs of them turning blue before the birds spot them.

The stars of this year are the Lupins, although I have just been snipping off the finished flower heads and they were teeming with greenfly.  A light spray of washing-up liquid in water has been my first line of attack.

The rhubarb is magnificent and is ready for a good first harvest.  The fern that is behind it will be happy to see the light of day!!

The path to the shed is just about still passible, but the tomatoes, potatoes and courgette plant are putting in a bid to block the way.

With the sunshine filled days of April, closely followed by the heavy rains recently it's been good for the garden this year.  Somehow though my green fingers feel as though they have been slipping, and nothing is coming as easy as it used to.  Perhaps I don't care as much, which is a shame.  But I just don't love the pottering around the garden as much as I used to, maybe I should read some of my gardening books, of which I still have quite a few, and see if that reignites anything.

If it doesn't I feel that more perennials will make it into the current courgette bed, giving me even less work to do next year, but still providing food for the bees and the lovely insects that call my garden home.

Click on the link to see the little bee that was buzzing around me while I read in the patio. 🐝

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DK6pvT8oSfm/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

Sue xx

I apologised and moved it ...

 

Ginger, looking at me as if to say 'Why did you put the book on MY little seat?'

I apologised and moved it ... honest I did.  😄

Sue xx

Happiness is letting go ...

 

I just had to share this meme after yesterdays post.  😄

I think it's a lesson we all have to learn at some point isn't it.

The plans we make that go spectacularly wrong, fail to materialise or just vanish halfway through.  Whether it's our fault, someone else's or no-ones, it's always best to just move on.  There are always new plans ... or no plans.

Times change and so do we.  I've always just embraced the changes and run with them, it's made for interesting times for sure, and experiences gained, learned and passed on.

Sue xx

Counting the Pennies ... and Cutting it Fine

I had a bit of a shock this month, a couple of annual payments came off my credit card.  Nothing too outlandishly expensive compared to years gone by, but added together they took my balance to an amount that has virtually wiped out my current account.

Not too bad a total really for a month with a couple of largish payments and food shopping ... oh and there might have been a couple of books.  😉

The money in the bank before I paid the credit card off in full ... and YES I always pay my credit card off completely each month.  In the years I have owned it I have never paid any interest, M&S Bank must hate me.  😁

Oh well, I have the grand total of £24.21 left until my next £25 repayment from my son and next months little pension payment.  I'm not worried in the slightest, but I am going to be super careful this month and for the next few months to build up the account again.

Although, I have already been shopping and added the following to next months credit card bill.  I meant to use cash, but just didn't get myself organised in time!! 

Booths shopping £11

Just the very basics ... and a treat.  💖

Eggs - £5

Bread - £3

Wine Spritzers - 2 x £1.50 = £3

Sainsbury's shopping £8.51

Some fruit and vegetables ... and a treat.  💖

Tomatoes - £1.90

Apples - £1.70

Beetroot - 2 x 65p = £1.30

Bananas - 31p

Lemon - 30p

Chocolate Bars - 2 x £1.50 = £3

Too many treats?

Nope, but I will be a lot more careful for the rest of the month and use some of the cash in my little wooden box and the notes that I have in my purse.  I also have the back up of a £20 rewards coupon from Booths and over £17 of Nectar points.

And now that I have sorted through the food cupboard, as shown on the last post, I know exactly what I have available to use.  So really there's not much I need to buy at all is there.  😀

We'll see how it goes.

Sue xx

Checking the Food Cupboard Out

 

Over the weekend and in spare moments ... mostly while waiting for the kettle to boil for cups of coffee, I have been going through my main food store cupboard and checking dates.  Not because I have felt any desire to throw away any outdated foods ... although I did find some that were very out of date, luckily mostly tins ... but my reason for the sort out was because I wanted to get the top half and the bottom half of the cupboard organised so that I can use up the oldest items first,  and have the things to be used up at eye level, where they stood more chance of being chosen.

I rarely get down to the bottom cupboard as it means getting on my hands and knees to find things, but I do stash away new purchases when there is no room anywhere else.  It had been literally packed to the gunnels at the start of the year, but now after my minimal shopping for a while there was space, so actually getting on and doing the sort out that has been on my mind for a while, seemed much more practical and less off-putting. 

It was nice seeing surfaces and finding things that I didn't know I had.  The best find was two bottles of Aldi mayonnaise ... I had no idea they were at the back of the pasta basket.

At the start of the weekend it was cupboard chaos, but by the end of Sunday afternoon the top cupboard now housed items that need using up this year if possible.  So things with a date sometime during 2025 or earlier.

And the bottom cupboard has things with dates beginning in 2026 and further into the future.  

Well there's one exception, I seemingly have far too many tins of chickpeas and all the tins down here have either a 2023 or 2024 date on them.  They will move up to the next level when I have used the last of the 2023 tins from the top cupboard.  Happily the hummus that I made the other week used the oldest of the tins, dated even earlier.  😄

I was feeling really good about my efforts to streamline my food cupboards, and I have been enjoying using things up and then I read this report this morning.  UK households urged to stockpile tins of food as soon as possible. Oh well, at least I have made some space for a few more tins of food in the bottom cupboard.

Are you a happy prepper, or do you prefer to live from week to week, or month to month?  I was trying to be the latter after years of being the former, but it seems I have just been way ahead of my time ... for once.

Sue xx

Miniscule Shopping and Miniscule Harvests

 

I really didn't need  any shopping this week, and I do actually have some bread rolls in the freezer, but when we went to Booths for a coffee and a cake for Alan, he wanted to pick up some bread, so I picked up another pack of bread rolls for me.  

The ones in the freezer can stay there for another day. 🥶

I also got a packet of those 'Melting Moments' biscuits, they are lovely on their own with a nice cup of coffee, or crumbled onto these little dessert pots that I bought the other day HERE.  Which turns them into an instant crumble.

I had to snap into action yesterday and harvest the kale, well what was left of the kale.  

There were suddenly caterpillars everywhere, and the greedy little blighters were all over it, chomping on my leaves.  I got all the best leaves that were left and blanched them ready for the freezer.  There's no where near as much as I would have liked, but four portions of my five a day to be added to soups or pasta dishes was just about worth the effort.

Art by Aziel Illustrates

Now on this chilly and intermittently rainy day it's time to go back to my book.  I hope you're having a good weekend.

Sue xx

Us Bloggers Did It First

 

Instagram verses Facebook verses YouTube verses blogging.  

I guess it's all a sign of the times.

 I know my youngest grandson wouldn't touch Facebook with a bargepole and to my knowledge he doesn't have an Instagram account.  He is a gamer and used to be on YouTube, but I don't know if he still is or whether he is now on some other platform.  My older grandson shares the occasional thing on Facebook and chats with me via Messenger, and my eldest grandson advertises his removals business with a Facebook business account, free advertising is never to be sniffed at when you are running what started off as a small company.

Quite a few bloggers have made the leap to YouTube and are being pretty successful in their new 'careers'.  I only ever used YouTube as a vehicle to be able to download little films off my phone or camera onto blog posts.  I have never felt the urge to be a YouTuber and can't see myself ever doing it.

I have quite enjoyed my dalliance with Instagram, and have been astounded at the viewing figures on my little reels, posts and stories ... I still get confused about which is which. 😕 

But looking at my professional Instagram dashboard, I have had over 13,000 views in a little over a month ... that is crazy!!  It is also a little bit alarming to think that all those people have been looking at my posts, and the question is of course do I even want so many strangers looking at my films, pictures and ideas?  

As you can imagine I am having a really big think about this one.

I think my forte and my heart will always be in blogging.  

I love the written word, it's tangible, it stays where you put it, and bar a little mis-translation occasionally is exactly what it says it is.  Us Bloggers were also at the forefront of the whole 'Influencer' and online advertising thing.  I remember myself and a few blogging buddies being asked to choose three tea towels each from a lovely small company and do a review of them.  These were actually brilliant by the way and lasted me for years.  Most of what I agreed to review turned out to be really good.  I was very picky and choosy and rarely said yes to an out of the blue offer ... although we did once jump at the chance to get an anniversary meal completely free of charge by agreeing to review a pub chains new menu.

One of the stranger offers was for me to make something with British Onions, and to be able to do that I was sent a goody box of various condiments along with a couple of pounds of onions.  I can't remember what I made but I know that the jar of Marmite sat in my cupboard for years afterwards as neither of us are Marmite lovers.

One of my favourite gifts was rather strangely from Argos.

 They asked me to choose something from their new gardening range to review.  I didn't know what to pick so I settled on giving them a list of three things, and asking for any one of them.  They obviously were expecting bloggers to choose much more expensive items because they sent me all three.

You can read all about it HERE.

These days YouTubers and Influencers, as vloggers are now usually called, get all the freebies and manage to advertise millions of pounds worth of goods for the manufacturers, some of which are downright ridiculous and a waste of a 'normal persons' money.  This has no doubt turned into such big business as less young people watch television and therefore the advertisements, and the advertisers have all had to find new platforms for their wares.

But always remember us bloggers did it first.  😁

Sue xx

Food, Treats and a Thank You

 

This was my shopping yesterday, a grand total of £18.59.  

Most of the things that I bought were on offers, either Nectar offers or my personal choice Nectar offers, so it meant that they were all worth having.  The little dessert pots are delicious and they, along with quite a few other vegan things, have only just begun to be sold at our small branch of Sainsbury's since it's refit, I turn them into a mini crumble type affair by crumbling a shortbread biscuit on the top.  At a reduced price of just 95p each instead of the usual £2,and with a July date, they were well worth getting and we both really enjoy them.

The bottle of Fanta and the bag of Revels sweets are not something that I usually buy, but we are going to the cinema today to see The Salt Path and I know ... as he always does ... that Alan will make a last minute decision to buy both of these at the sweet counter on our way in.  Last time he did that the same two items cost him almost £8 and having saved money on our tickets by going to the Silver Screening I was not about to let him blow money on sweet treats.

I don't usually have any sweets while I'm at the cinema and if I do take a drink it's a bottle of water from home, but as the Silver Screening tickets come with an offer to be able to have a coffee and a cake for just £5 I might be tempted for once. 😀

As I'm not doing any sort of official challenge I don't show all my food purchases these days, but sometimes it's nice to have a reference to look back on here on the blog.  Although it isn't a challenge I am quite enjoying keeping my spending low, while being able to have a little splurge every now and then on things like the in-season strawberries without having to confess.  😄

A card arrived the other day and we were both a bit confused as there are no events in our lives this week, it was a really lovely surprise when I opened it and it was a thank you card from my youngest grandson for his birthday money at the end of last month.  Somehow you don't expect thank you cards these days do you especially from a 16 year old, yet thinking back he did the same last year. 

 It made our day.

Sue xx

The Books That I Read in May

 

It's a nice new month, and although the weather outside the window seems to think we have rushed into Autumn, here inside the house it's pleasantly warm without any heating on.  The wind blowing a hoolie outside makes me glad to be sat at my desk with the kettle within reach, and for once I have found some biscuits in the cupboard so there are now biscuits in the gravy tin ... don't ask.  😄

Well if you really need to know ... I had just finished all the Bisto gravy granules, washed out the tin and then realised that I didn't have another tin small enough in size to keep my little packet of biscuits nice and crisp.

Bookworm by Lucy Mangan

It's been a really slow reading month this month and I managed just two books ... yep two!!

Alan bought me Lucy's latest book 'Bookish' a while ago when we were in Wales, and lots of you told me about this earlier one.  So I ordered it from Amazon from the second hand section, and it made sense to read this one first as it's about all her childhood reading as opposed to Bookish which is about her more up to date reading.

I loved it.  

As a child I read so many of the same books as Lucy so it was nice to reminisce about Milly, Molly, Mandy, Just William, the Narnia books et al.  I lost a bit of interest in her early teenage reading as I was never one for the horse riding stories or boarding school sagas, I guess living in inner city Manchester I just couldn't relate.  But I picked up again a bit later in the book and overall I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I've kept this one.

Thea and Denise by Caroline Bond

At first I thought this was going to be a direct rip off of Thelma and Louise, and indeed for a while it seems to be heading in exactly the same way, but happily the story opens up and it's a really good read in it's own right and my plagiarism fears were quashed.

I took it with me to a few places where I was kept waiting, reading it at every opportunity and then finished it off in one huge binge read whilst accompanying Alan to the hospital.  (We were there for over 13 hours, so another book could, indeed should, have travelled with me!)   I always find that fiction books suit me well for waiting situations and this was a nice easy read. 

It would be great as a holiday read too.

And that believe it or not, was the total sum of my May reading.  😐

This has now been donated.

I admit I did not read enough books.

I will read more this month.

I have already chosen my next three reads.  😁

Sue xx

I would just like to point out, that although I provide links to Amazon for all the books that I read each month, not all my books are bought from Amazon.  If they are some of them were bought from the Used section rather than full price.  

I share the links so that you can learn more about the books that I write about for yourself, or read reviews from others that have read them.  Of course most of the books I talk about would also be available from your local library, and if you are very lucky you might even find them in charity or thrift shops.  

There are so many ways to bring books into your home if you love reading. 📚

Simple Saturday Musings

 

Art - Nettle Tea by Lore Pemberton

There is so much sadness, anger and distrust in the news each day at the moment.  Horrifying incidents and things happening that there is just no justifiable reason for them to happen.

It can get so easy to become bogged down with the horror, upset and mistrust of it all.  But the world can be a good place, indeed it mostly is a good place ... it's just that headlines like that don't seem to attract enough attention so they are drowned out.

It's at times like this that pulling ourselves back to the simple every day things can be just what we need.  Take the time to watch yourself doing the simple day to day things.  Making a drink and having it in one of your favourite cups, making yourself a sandwich and having it on a 'best' plate.  Hanging the washing on the line and taking the time to step back and watch as it begins to move in the breeze.

Take the time to enjoy the small moments, and your brain will thank you for momentarily drowning out the things that you can do nothing about.

Sue xx

Getting to the Bottom of Things

 

This made me happy.  😀

You'd think that getting right to the bottom of the fridge drawer and having nothing left in there might have been a worrying thing to do, in fact years ago I would have been horrified.  But the way my mind is working at the moment it was actually a relief to use everything up and especially not to waste any of it.

The last three things in the drawer had been most of a kilo of carrots, bought during the 'cheap veg wars' of the Easter weekend, a few sticks of trimmed and chopped celery and the single brown onion that I 'borrowed' off Alan.

The carrots were topped, tailed and peeled and added to a baking tray with some cumin, mixed herbs and olive oil and then roasted in the oven for about thirty minutes or so.

I served some of them with a piece of fish that had been in the freezer for far too long for my lunch.  The fish was awful, but the carrots were delicious.  So basically I had carrots for lunch and Ginger had a surprise fish snack!!

The rest of the carrots, and the onion were whizzed up in the Nutribullet and have made a large portion of soup for a lunch on another day.

 The final bit of that red onion, also cadged the other day, was mixed with the remaining half tin of tuna and a big dollop of mayo and went into the two remaining white bread rolls from M&S.  The white rolls were so insignificant in texture that I managed to eat two of them for my lunch, something I can rarely do with brown bread rolls.

The celery had it's browning ends trimmed off and was served for another lunch, with the last of my Aldi 'Ritz' crackers and a tub of homemade hummus dug from the freezer

And then just like in the top photo ... the bottom drawer of the fridge was empty.  😀

So I celebrated by giving it a good wipe out, a clean tea towel and bought it three new red onions.

Although I didn't need anymore shopping I did need some onions to help me carry on using up the rest of the contents of the fridge, including the cheese drawer, after all what is cheese without onion.  🧀🧅

So my shopping this week was just three red onions for 95p from Booths, and while I was there I picked up this weeks freebie, which was a Meringue Bar, which on getting it home I sadly discovered has milk in it, so it was gifted to Alan to say thank you for the two borrowed onions.

Sue xx