The Garstang Show 2025

 

It was our local country show on Saturday, and happily the weather did us proud.  Although it was cloudy for most of the day, it stayed warm and dry, just right for all the animals.

There were lots of horses, both being judged for  looks etc and taking part in various events in the separate eventing field.

There was a slightly smaller show field of vintage vehicles than last year.  This local wagon won first prize in the commercial class.

This seemingly was HM the Queen Mother's private bus, delivered to her in July of 1966 and mostly used to ferry staff between royal residences in London, and take staff, luggage and Corgis when the royal family moved between palaces for holidays.  It was beautiful.

There was a little field of giant tortoises, about eight of them in total.  Sadly only children were allowed to go in the enclosure with them.  😉

A John Deere tractor or three made Alan drool and remember his previous John Deere's.  I doubt we will ever have enough land ... or money ... to warrant the purchase of such a monster, modern version though.

Of course there were all the classes of cattle,

and sheep.

But the part we enjoyed the most was sitting and watching all the dog shows, with so many fun and novelty classes for pet dogs to take part in.  We laughingly worked out which of our dogs would have won each class ... Sophie, the best sausage catcher.  Mavis, the dog with the most beautiful eyes.  Suky, the dog most like her owner ... although Alan said my ears aren't quite silky smooth enough!!  And the dog with the best handshake would have to go to Rosy.

It was a good day, but as you can see the showground and car park were pretty big, almost as spread out as our town which is on the left of the photo, and we both went home for a lie down and a rest come mid-afternoon.

Sue xx

Rounding Off the Shopping from July ... Offers and Freebies

I finally received my £100 eGift card after taking out my Pure Cremations funeral plan four months ago.  If you remember Mum got three vouchers to give to friends or family and if they used the vouchers she got £100 for each one, and each of the users got £100 off their new plan and a £100 gift card for themselves.  My brother kindly did all this on Mum's behalf as her LPA is in his name.

Now, what they don't tell you is that to actually get your gift card you have to phone and remind them, and one by one we all did this, me, my brother and Alan, and we all got exactly the same response each time ... 'oh this should have been done automatically we are so sorry, it's our fault it will be with you in a couple of days'.  Now I'm not stupid, they are obviously hoping that more people will forget to claim than will phone them to ask about it, or even as it's mostly elderly people taking out these plans will die before the claiming time is up.  

Crafty, a little sneaky or just plain cheating?

Anyway I chose to get a Sainsbury's eGift card as did Alan, and my first shop using it was the things above.  Just a couple of things that I needed, a little treat, a pack of toilet rolls as they were on offer again, and some chicken for Ginger ... who is now mostly refusing to eat cat food except for his dried mix, and lives mainly on fresh chicken or salmon.

I spent a total of £28.99, so I have £71.01 left to use as and when I need to.  A brilliant freebie ... once I actually got it.

My only other shopping last week was hummus and bananas from Sainsbury's, bought to take advantage of the offer that was running throughout July where you got a rising amount of extra points for each shop.  You only needed to spend £1 or more to get first of all 2 x50 Nectar points, then 100 points, then 200 and then 300 points on five individual shopping trips over a set period.

I decided to take advantage of the offer in a sensible way, using the odd change from my little box to buy only the things that I actually needed ... but one at a time.  I did Google what a total of 700 Nectar points would earn me and it turned out to be £3.50.  Not a lot, but as our store is literally three minutes away by car, I didn't use much petrol, I only bought things that I actually needed and in a couple of cases was very careful to just go over the minimum spend of £1.

So by and large I do think it was worth it, and it made me careful about what I spent my money on each time I visited.

After getting my final shop of the challenge and picking up the 300 points, I dropped some clothes and shoes off at the charity shop, and decided to call into Booths on the way past on the off-chance that there was a Wednesday offer on.  There was ... so along with the bread rolls that I needed I picked up  this weeks little offer, and it is very little, so much so that it showed up as £0.00 on my till receipt. 😄

Well that's me all up to date with shopping.  July was a good month for freebies, with lots of napkins, condiments, a free Greggs coffee and vegan sausage roll, a £100 voucher that will keep me going with my shopping budget for quite a while and a boost on my Nectar points total too.

Sue xx