Kitchen Paper, Freebies ... and Pension Payments

 

It had to be done.  😄

This weekend's little shopping trip included a twin pack of kitchen paper. 

 My roll finally ran out on Friday and as I had just one napkin picked up from a café left, so I thought it was time to make an extravagant purchase.  I last bought kitchen paper in November or December of 2024, so picking up all the leftover napkins from cafés etc has really worked out well for saving me money and stopping wastage.

 

This photo appeared on my blog in May 2025, and shows the roll still looking very healthy then.  I can understand why I ended up running out in May, we just haven't really eaten out as much and even our coffee stops on the motorway have not given me as many napkins to bring home, Alan spilt some of his coffee on two occasions and we had to mop it up.

Out of interest here are my May freebies ...

Two sachets of sugar from breakfast in Morecambe.

Brown sauce and two napkins from Booths.  

Alan now admits to always fancying some brown sauce when he's ordering his bacon bun, but once he sees the bacon in front of him he can't bear to slather it on.

Napkins from the service station.  

Alan said there was a wad of napkins on top of the dispenser and the lady handed them to him.  I was over at Subway and just picked up two.

Free coffee from the Greggs app.

 

These are representing the two monthly free coffees we get from Dobbie's.  I forgot to take a photo, we actually get a latte for Alan and a black Americano for me.

Sauce and a sugar from Booths.

From Burger King at the services, I fancied chips and they do the best ones, I did pick up two ketchups but one was more than enough, so the other came home with as well as the salt.  I didn't realise that the chips come already salted.

A free steak bake for Alan from Greggs at the services.

Our two free coffees from Burnside garden centre.

Also a leftover Flora spread pot from my breakfast.

And then finally, a few napkins from the services yesterday ... so maybe I could have held out on buying the kitchen roll.  😄

Looking very full ...what's the betting this has to move house with us.

So I can keep tabs on it I have written the date on the inside ... a bit like when I 'dated a toilet roll'.  

So my first shopping for June from Aldi looked like this and cost me £11.22.

The receipt for posterity.

I am now officially a UK pensioner as I received a pro-rate pension payment last Friday.  My next payment will be in four weeks.  It's so nice to have some money coming into my bank account again, but I'll still be watching the pennies as avidly, and collecting as many freebies as possible when we are out and about, you can count on that. 

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

Real Retirement, Selling the Office Stuff

 

Alan is now embracing his retirement and relishing the late mornings and time to do things, it's taken him a while to settle into this.  He was supposed to retire in 2017, but as most of you know that didn't come to pass and our plans unexpectedly took a dramatic change.

Now he has one more trip back to headquarters to hand back his security passes and secure laptop and then that is completely IT!!

As all the work from home has now ended he has been sorting through his office over the last two weeks, shredding all the confidential documents and disposing of other less sensitive stuff.  Now that he no longer needs a desk that is almost seven foot long, he has moved the things that he still needs into the small box bedroom in his house.  Instead of a new smaller desk, he now has a kitchen worktop balanced on two of our old short filing cabinets to fill the window wall of the room completely, and his big desk has been listed on Facebook Marketplace.

As has this little set of office drawers which has moved house with us five times.  I'm not even slightly sad to see them both go.  Now when we come to sell this house the 'office' can be shown as a proper double bedroom which will hopefully be so much nicer.

It feels like the end of an era and the start of something much better.

My 'office' remains at it is, as I mostly worked from the little breakfast bar in my kitchen unless we were working together recording training courses.  So now it can be my 'blogging desk'.  😄

Sue xx