February reading…

 

I confess I’m rather enjoying documenting the books I’m reading - it’s making me think more about not only the story or subject matter of the books themselves, but also about what I’m picking up to read next. I mostly read fiction - crime/mystery are favourite subjects, I particularly enjoy series that follow a central character from book to book - Val McDermid’s Karen Pirie novels, and Mark Bellingham’s Tom Thorne, those possibly appeal because they are often set in areas I know reasonably well, Edinburgh and London. I also like a novel which although fiction, has a basis in true events as well, which brings us on to the first book of this month…

Fern Britton is a name many will know from her TV work- but she is also a prolific novelist. The Good Servant takes the late Queen Elizabeth II’s governess Marion “Crawfie” Crawford as it’s central character, and deals with her story from her appointment to the Royal Household when the young princesses were just 6 & 2 years old, following her life through until her departure from the household once the Princesses had come of age, and her fall-from-grace following the publication of a book "The Little Princesses" for which she appeared to have knowingly sold personal stories against the wishes of the then Queen. The story is fiction based on fact, and extrapolates out what is known into a story of misplaced love and broken trust - and who knows how close to the real story that is? A good read anyway - I'll set this one aside to make its way to my Mum who also enjoys Britton's books. 

A change of pace and genre next - back to old favourite Lee Child's Reacher series and Echo Burning - found in a charity shop for 50p a few weeks back. It's harder and harder to find books from this series that we haven't read previously, on this trip we actually found two, the other is still on the shelf to be read in due course. I found this a little slower to get going than some - the first third of the book felt a little disjointed somehow - but once the story started playing out it turned into the usual good read with all the classic a child hallmarks - the good guys won the day, the bad guys mostly ended up dead, exactly what you expect from a Reacher book! 

Full non-fiction for my third book of the month - Spitfire Kids by Alasdair Cross deals with those remarkably young people involved with the building, flying and maintaining the poster-boy aircraft of World War II.  An absolutely fascinating read - in good part because it deals with the stories you rarely hear, about the people who are so often forgotten. From the young employees at the Supermarine factory in Southampton, to the women of the Air Transport Auxiliary via plotters and pilots, it is at times a tough read, but for anyone who enjoys learning more about the “behind the headlines” side of World War 2  history I would highly recommend it. This one has gone onto the shelf with the other books of a similar genre. 

Elly Griffiths’  “The Woman in Blue” was next off the shelf, set in the North Norfolk area so I was back to a book where I knew the basic geography of the area if not the specific location. I’ve read at least one of Griffiths books before although she isn’t an author I know well. She writes a good story though, balancing the plot with the personal lives of the characters nicely, and including just the right amount of suspense. Thoroughly enjoyable, and I will be setting this one aside to pass to Mum. 

Finally for the month another favourite author - Val McDermid - with 1979. Picked up in a charity shop, this one was set in Glasgow in 1979, and although rather different from the other works of McDermid’s I’ve read, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Lead character Allie is a Junior reporter on one of the Scottish nationals, and her determination to see success along with a chance meeting on a train leads her to hook up with colleague Danny Sullivan to work on several stories with increasing levels of danger. When the worst happens, Allie finds herself first a suspect, then turning detective in a bid to track down the culprit and see justice done. A fast paced, easy read with the added interest of looking back on how things were quite so different so relatively recently (homosexuality still being illegal in Scotland, for example!). This one will make its way to the shelf with the others! 

I managed to avoid too many additional book purchases this month but did cave in to a charity shop visit on Saturday using £2 of my personal spends for 4 additions to the To Be Read pile - including 2 Lee Child’s we didn’t already have - one of those will become my first book of March. 

Robyn

February in the Garden…

 

Well here we are again - with the garden just waking up from its winters slumber. Bulbs are popping up all over the place - our work the first two winters we were here is paying off now with daffodils, tulips, muscari and of course these gorgeous crocuses too, it's just a shame that we've seen so little sunshine to really encourage them to fully open and show their faces! 

Auntie Daphne's Pulmonaria is still flowering away cheerfully - it’s always the first colour in the garden each year and never fails to make us smile with its little pink and purple flowers and spotty white leaves. In that bed is also some of the other bulbs I mentioned, the very enthusiastic lavender which I give a truly brutal haircut to once a year and yet it always forgives me and rewards me with plentiful flowers, and over the the right there is the blackcurrant bush - still quite new but obviously settling in nicely - just take a look at the buds breaking…

Such a sign of spring! Elsewhere on the fruit-front, as it were, the redcurrant and the gooseberries are looking happy enough, although no signs of buds yet. The rhubarb though has no such reservations and as last year, showing its intentions via a lovely bright patch of pink…

Before we know it that will be taking over the garden again - and providing us with plenty of crumbles, compotes and maybe even some jam this year perhaps!   

Currently keeping us fed through the “hungry gap” is the kale we planted last year, although annoyingly it has gone through the entire winter with cabbage whitefly! Nothing that a bit of a shake and a good wash won’t cure though, and it’s been ever so nice to have some fresh home grown veg all winter. 

All in all, it’s starting to feel like we’re not a million miles away from being able to get the new growing season underway, so it’s probably time to start getting the seed list finalised. Our plans are as usual to so far as possible use the free seeds we’ve got via our magazine subscription, but as always that will be topped up with purchases of any specific varieties of things we want. Time to make a list! 

Robyn

Frugal February…

 

Food spending was budgeted to be up quite a bit this week as it was our favourite local farmers market, and having not gone last month there were some bits we were low on. 

First up was Peter for lamb - £1.75 for a bag of “bones for stock”, but these as usual have plenty of meat left on them and will make a fantastic stew. Also sausages, a pack of meatballs (I do have some in the freezer still but those are already featured on the meal plan) and his final pack of liver - always popular and it makes a delicious liver, bacon and onion tea!  We had our usual treat of a sourdough loaf from lovely Adrian, then popped back outside to see Catherine on the other meat stall. I made the decision to buy the big 2kg pack of beef mince, plus a smaller pack of pork mince for a change - those have been portioned up before freezing. A piece of haslet for lunches - our weekday rolls frequently feature yellow stickered bargains so this is significantly more spendy than usual but it’s something we absolutely love so we’re very happy to buy it! I grabbed a minute steak too - so good for stir fries. Total spend at the market was £53.10 - and for great quality food, and especially meat where we are happy with the provenance, I’m very happy with that. One of the reasons I can squeeze a lot of meals out of a relatively small amount of meat is that meat this good has so much flavour- so you actually need less of it in a dish. Of course we are aware that we’re fortunate to be able to afford to buy like this, and certainly that’s a privilege that not everyone has, but often simply because you do end up using less, it really isn’t that much more expensive than a standard supermarket budget option.

Elsewhere the main weekly shop cost £24.69 - in Lidl again this week, and I claimed a free bakery item from the spin to win and chose a big punnet of mushrooms as my coupon plus threshold spend reward. Not the best value thing I could have had, I usually opt for the 7.5kg sack of potatoes but we still have enough of those from the Christmas veg wars so the mushrooms were chosen as something which I was going to buy anyway. A separate trip to Aldi for tomatoes saw a spend of £1.38 - and the rarity of having literally just bought the thing I went in there for! 

Spending elsewhere has been mostly guided by necessity- we have both been hit by the nasty lurgy that’s doing the rounds - and various over the counter medications have been purchased as a result. We’ve plans for a project in the garden which will require a fair bit of sanding - so a pack of basic face masks are winging their way to us, and my car has had a tank of fuel - although both MrEH’s diesel and oyster credit have been stretched by him sensibly electing to work from home for much of the week to avoid infecting his colleagues! Well, at least there is some benefit! 

Robyn 

Looking back…

In 2006 I joined in with an interesting photographic project called “26 Things” - essentially, you were given a list of prompts for 26 themes, and you produced a photo relating to each of them - the idea being that it promoted thinking creatively and taking a different look at what might otherwise be a pretty straightforward subject. Looking back now I produced some stuff I am still really proud of around that time, particularly around candid and street photography, something which I’ve never done that much of, but when I did, always enjoyed. 

The stairwell in question here is I believe the one at Canary Wharf tube station - and like the majority of the infrastructure for the Jubilee Line Extension it is stunningly beautifully designed. The symmetry, the way the light falls and the way the lighting on the escalators themselves more even than the perspective draws your eyes upwards are all key players for me on this one - I imagine that I still have the original file somewhere and it’s one I may search out at some stage and reprocess. Sadly at the time I tended to upload files in fairly low resolution and size - which fitted with the speed of internet available then but stacks up less well now with devices tending to be larger! 

No reprocessing right now though - as I have kit to sort out ahead of some rugby photography later on - MrEH’s original team he joined not long after we had moved to the town we live in now are reforming  for a final hurrah - and as I was their photographer for several years back in the day, I’m resuming that role today. Should be fun - although I bet some of the players concerned won’t use that word when they get up tomorrow barely able to move! 

Robyn. 
 

Frugal February…

"Story Telling" - Devon. 

Why when the idea of this couple of months of keeping purchases low, are our freezers currently pretty full again? Batch cooking and free food - that’s why! Batch cooking saves on both time and whatever energy source you use for cooking - even making sufficient for a second meal of a dish you enjoy and popping the spare portion in the freezer works - and the time savings are at both ends too, as it gives you an “easy win” meal for a night when just popping something in the microwave or air fryer to reheat is an absolute bonus! 

How does this translate into reality for us then? Well first up was a big batch of dried chickpeas - the well priced tinned chickpeas I often purchase weren’t available, and they’re something we eat a lot, so I turned to the large bag of dried in the cupboard, half filled the slow cooker with them, soaked for 12 hours or so then slow cooked overnight - this turned into about 8 tubs for the freezer (I freeze them in roughly the same drained weight you get in a standard tin), plus a portion that I turned into humous. The last of the Christmas “veg wars” 5p parsnips and shallots were turned into a batch of soup - 4 portions there. I planned to make cottage pie for an evening in the week, so made double, using lentils and finely chopped mushrooms to make the mince stretch further - and while I was at it cooked sufficient lentils to give 5 tubs of those for the freezer too! 

Free food has come from two different sources. First off, the Olio app - an anti food-waste organisation that takes end of life food from various supermarkets and aims to distribute that to those who will use it, in this area Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Co-op all get involved. A couple of Saturdays ago I spotted some bread going begging just half a mile away so requested it, got the nod and walked up and back - 4 loaves of various sorts stashed away in the freezer saving us from needing to make rolls for lunches for a while, and providing several weekends worth of breakfast toast to boot. Earlier this week we gained some potted supermarket herbs, a couple of sticks of lemongrass, and a pack of Lebanese flatbreads - again, all free, and will all get used!  Then my Mum offered us a couple of packs of “beige buffet” type bits she had bought for Christmas and not used, and now didn’t fancy - so those too got stashed away in the freezer! We’re quite happy to take food other people won’t eat - as long as we know the origin and it’s things we will actually use ourselves it seems to make sense to avoid it going to landfill after all. We’re also not shy about using food past its “best before” date - “use by” is of course a different matter, but best before are ultimately advisory, and if you’re confident to trust your eyes, nose and taste, you soon find out that most things last a lot longer than you expect that they will! We have a local friend who isn't as brave on this front, but she's quite happy to give us a shout and say "can you use..." - and generally, yes we can! 

If you’re interested in saving yourself some pennies and preventing some food waste, then have a look at a couple of apps - Olio I’ve already mentioned, and there is also Too Good To Go -  not free, but much reduced “surprise bags” of reduced food from supermarkets, coffee shops, bakeries and even restaurants. It works particularly well to grab food on the go sometimes - especially around stations or in town centres. You never quite know what you might get, particularly with the supermarket bags, but if you are content to be inventive in the kitchen there are bargains to be had.

Robyn 

ps - I've been really enjoying just using relatively random photos that catch my eye for blog posts, rather than taking something "for the sake of it" - and it's made me think that I may well start a "looking back" series of posts too, with the story behind particular shots that I find in my archives and think deserve an airing! 

It all adds up…

Windows - Manchester

 Trying to refocus on the finances this month has looked a bit like this…

- Opting to terminate a regular saver account a month early in order to re-open the same issue of the account right at the end of its release- this means losing a months interest on the one as closed, but then keeping the 7.5% rate on the reopened one for the 6 months of it’s term AND being able to open the new issue account once that was released.

- Remembering that I was due a £25 Amazon voucher from a bank account switch I did at the end of last year, tracking down the email and claiming it while I remembered!

- Doing the quarterly review of our savings so we can keep track of where we are in relation to our savings goals - we’re fortunate to be able to save and so try to ensure that those savings work hard for us.

- Emailing to cancel a magazine subscription I took a trial on - 5 issues for £5 was a good deal, the main subscription is more than I’m willing to pay though. 

- Renewing my car tax as soon as the reminder came through - my car now costs me £20 a year in tax, but forgetting to renew could work out a lot more expensive! I write a quick note on the reminder confirming when I renewed too in case I need to check it later.

- Remembering to check my loyalty apps for shopping coupons and offers - the 20p off milk at the co-op is always useful, I made use of reduced prices for a couple of bits in Lidl and will claim a free vegetable item next week. I don't generally specifically plan my shopping around making use of offers, but once I know what I need, I will look to see if there are offers I can use.

- Ensuring I have a reminder set for cancelling a free trial of Apple TV before I get charged for it. We’ve had a 3 month run to enjoy watching some different bits and bobs, and may pay for a month here and there in the future, but right now it’s not a priority.

- Free seeds with a magazine subscription - 10 packs this month, and almost all things we’ll use. There will be some seeds we will buy for the season, but the freebies shape what we choose to grow. Yes, we pay for the subscription, but £35 a year for 12 magazines and lots of seeds is a decent deal.

- Free kindling for the fire - we save almost all our cardboard, and use a combination of that and MrEH’s newspapers (that he would buy anyway) for the base of our fire. On top of that we use twigs and short lengths of stick (always gathered from places to where the council would otherwise clear them up, never from woodland) or pieces of broken down pallet.

- Free fuel for the fire - MrEH’s newspapers again, pulped up then squeezed into a brick shape in a former - they then get placed on metal racking to dry out. We make a big stack of these through the summer, and use 1 or 2 each night the fire is lit - they give off stacks of heat and help to make the logs we pay for last longer. It also means we're re-using the newspaper rather than recycling it. 

- Sorting out a return for the new toaster we had to buy which turned out to be absolutely DREADFUL! Think toast on one side, plain slightly warm bread on the other, then burned edges within a few moments when you try to re-toast to even things up. Were we keeping it? Absolutely not - it will be winging its way back and we're searching for a better option! 

- More goodies from Olio- flatbreads and herbs, this time. 

All these on their own are small things, but it’s those small things, and doing them consistently that makes the difference. A few pounds saved here, finding a way to do something for a bit less cost there, and before you know it that’s money freed up to improve your quality of life in other ways. 

Robyn

Frugal February…

 

A 3-tube day at Leytonstone…

A Friday with no other plans generally means I opt to get the shopping done, freeing up weekend time for far more interesting uses. This week was no exception, as we combined our usual Friday morning walk with a trip to Tesco to top up stocks of our preferred wholewheat couscous and also some branded orzo on offer at £1 a box. I don’t usually buy branded pasta but this price was very competitive indeed - and in the absence of the discount supermarkets stocking it at present it made sense to pounce. 3 packs of each = £6.90 spent, and were stocked up on two staple items that get well used in this house. 2nd stop of the day was the main shop - Lidl this week. An impulse spend of £2.99 of personal money for one of their beautiful miniature roses - a bright yellow one. We have a red one of these bought several years ago and it’s thrived, so I’m hoping this one will do the same. I made use of 2 coupons for free bakery items - one from a Moneysupermarket email gave us a free croissant, and the other was my free item from last week’s shop being over the first spend threshold on the app. That sorts out a nice treat after tea today! £25.75 spend on the shopping, with just a couple of items still to get over the weekend and a fair few bits and bobs stocked up on too. Finally for grocery shopping was Farmfoods - somewhere we visit occasionally mainly to stock up on a few particular items - this time round two big jars of MrEH’s coffee, 12 tins of tuna, 4 bags of sugar (at 2 for £1.60 this is by a long way the cheapest place to buy it, and this will stock us up ready for any preserving we decide to do) and a couple of tins of sweetcorn too, total spend £23.18 there thanks to another voucher for £2 off a £25 spend.

A planned general spend on Friday was a couple of frames needed for various pictures - some more black & white prints of my photos, and a mounted railway poster print from York last weekend (we wanted a souvenir of the weekend and this seemed perfect, and at £10, very reasonably priced too). The frames totalled £9.98. Final spend for the weekend was another £5.12 for the yogurts and tomatoes I didn’t get on Friday, plus a box of seeded oatcakes.

Part of the reason meal planning works for us is that we treat it flexibly. For various reasons the original rough plan for Sunday lunch didn’t work this week - instead I opted to get some turkey chunks and bacon bits out of the freezer along with a lurking roll of puff pastry and made pasties - two of which were eaten on Sunday, with the others getting popped into the fridge for swapping in to the plan on Wednesday evening. A flexible plan - albeit one that takes account of ensuring that food that needs using gets eaten - is far more pleasant and practical than one that is so rigid it’s difficult to stick to.

We did end up with one unplanned spend this week as our poor old toaster finally toasted its last - can’t complain, it was a wedding present nearly 26 years ago so it’s given good service! We’re replacing with a “long slot” version, better to cope with different sizes of bread - our old one dated from a time when bread came in a fairly standard square-ish size, and we’ve often found ourselves having to repeatedly turn slices round to get them evenly toasted. If the replacement lasts as long as the old one we will be very pleased! 

Robyn

Frugal February?

Stunning rainbow over the river - Dartmouth, 2025

Shall we? I've debated about this the past few years but the month has always come along and had lots of plans in it, which involved (budgeted for, and so acceptable) spending, but that in turn feels like it slightly defeats the object of a frugal month! This year there ARE some plans - but nothing particularly major, and  so it feels like a good time to give it another go.

Aims this time are as much about being mindful around spending as around "not spending" as such - there might be beers on a Thursday evening after work, or a trip to the pub on a Friday, but that will be thought through and we'll ensure that we'll get value from it. We've got friends visiting mid month - and that will probably mean a takeaway. I may make a trip to Waddington later in the month to see the Reds training - hoping for more success on ALL counts than the last trip up! As usual the challenge will cover the food spending, general household spending, and my personal spending, but not anything that relates specifically to MrEH only. 

We still have plentiful food stocks, so are aiming to continue the good work of last month's careful shopping and detailed planning. I'm intending to turn my attention to the cupboards as well now - there are lots of odds and ends of things, and bits that have been hanging around for a while and that we either need to use or just to acknowledge that we're not GOING to use them, and to get rid. If it came with us when we moved house, and hasn't yet been used, then we will be taking a hard line! First step on this is going to be a bit of an inventory I think, and from there I'll start planning how we can incorporate various ingredients. The fridge is already looking a little barer than it was, and freezer 1 in particular now has very obvious space in it, maybe by the end of a month we can aim to get freezer 2 empty and turned off - that would be a win! 

Food wise then:

• Use what we have
• Audit cupboards and fridge and target lingering contents for use 
• Aim to get working through last year's home grown fruit and veg from freezer 1
• Remember that we still have kale in the garden to use
• Start gradually moving over stuff from freezer 2 as room appears!
• Continue to be considered and mindful about special offers and bargains
• Make sure that meal planning continues - it's not only cheaper, it's also easier!

If nothing else, I'm aiming to treat this as a bit of a re-set, and a good chance to stop and think before spending. A return to the "money mantra" of "Do we need it, do we have anything else we can use instead, have we checked whether that's a good price". The food account in particular is looking lovely and healthy at the start of this month and it would be nice to continue to build on that. 

Food spending this month has started off with a £20.97 spend in Lidl on Sunday - we opted to stop in and shop on our way home from the weekend in York which was slightly risky as I had no access to the meal plan - I took the approach that I could if needed modify things later though, and it was better to get the shop done rather than having to squeeze it in after work on Monday. It included the purchase of 3 packs of the Deluxe branded West Country butter which is a favourite, and I had the offer of 15% off, making it several pennies a pack less than the regular (not so nice) one - win! Also a pack of an interesting looking Polish (I think) cheese for £1.99, everything else was our standard sort of weekly purchases.  Awful traffic necessitated parking near my office on Monday so a purchase was needed to allow using the supermarket car park - that was one of my usual "defaults" - an 85p pack of noodles. 

Anyone else fancy making this a Frugal kinda February then?

Robyn

Happy Birthday Tony!

 

St Martins Lane

Last Friday we hopped in the car first thing and headed up to York to join our great friend Tony for his 60th birthday celebrations. He's among the first of our close circle to hit that age and we were never going to miss his weekend of celebrations! 

The drive up was through torrential rain - and that continued although at a slightly eased off level once we arrived in York itself. Original plan had been to park at a station a couple of stops out and get the train, until we realised that we were JUST going to miss the hourly train by minutes. I turned my attention to google streetview and we quickly identified a few spots further in to the city where it appeared we may be able to street park - and so it proved, leaving us just a mile or so to walk to the hotel to drop our bag off. Our original plan for the afternoon had been to explore the city a bit, but the weather really wasn't lending itself to that plan, so after a stroll round the Shambles and its market and a bit of lunch from a street-food vendor we decided to seek shelter, by which obviously I mean we went to the pub, yes! 

Shambles Market from the Market Cat pub.

Another good pal Sarah joined us in the Market Cat and we had a good catch up before wandering back towards the hotel to check in - Sarah and I decided that MrEH could cope with that bit just fine, we'd just pop into this nice little pub and wait for him... ;-) A short while later once check-in was completed and MrEH had joined us we were joined by Ian and his Dad Ken, and then Catherine...the clan was assembling! Time then to head to the station and the excellent York Tap to meet Tony and a good many of the other attendees - lots of people we hadn't seen in an age too so that was good! The night ended back in the second pub I'd headed to with Sarah, before MrEH and I headed back to our hotel.

“Mallard” at the National Railway Museum

Saturday dawned far brighter and more cheerfully than the forecast had suggested which was a bonus. We were heading for the National Railway Museum, and decided to walk part way there around the City walls which turned out to be a great decision even if it did take slightly longer than we'd expected, with photos to be taken etc! The Museum was as good as ever - and we passed a pleasant couple of hours looking at trains before needing to head back to the station to get on one, as the afternoon was to be spent in the Taproom of the Brass Castle brewery at Malton. A nice train ride out, good company and some very tasty beer! The main event of the weekend followed that back in York itself as Tony had booked a room at the rather brilliant Brew York taproom! Somewhere I've wanted to go for a long while - their innovative brews are a bit legendary in the craft beer world - and it didn't disappoint! The beer was excellent - a big range of both cask & keg offerings - and the food from the in-house street-food people included some of the best loaded fries I've ever eaten! (Hoisin Duck, in case you were wondering!). As much as anything else it was great to have a group of people that included SO many good friends all together in one place - great fun!

The Minster from the City Wall

Sunday again started bright and sunny - another nice surprise for any of us who actually believed the Met Office! Once again MrEH and I made the most of the free unlimited breakfast at our hotel before leaving the bag with them and setting out - around the walls in the other direction this time, to complete the bit that we hadn't done the day before. We stopped back in at the museum again too - as there was an entire hall we'd failed to get to on Saturday - before the final pub of the weekend where some of the others had met for lunch. Just soft drinks for us this time as we were driving back of course, but good to have the opportunity for further farewells.

A very full river Ouse! 

An excellent weekend - not the cheapest, but we’d budgeted for it in advance and employed small but impactful money saving approaches like filling up at breakfast, making use of free parking, using our insulated mugs to take tea/coffee from home for the journey up, and utilising a free drink code from our energy supplier for one for the way home - the other was just a cup of tea for £1.50. We also grabbed a Too Good To Go bag from the station for an on-the-go tea on Friday evening. The bonus was being able to fill the car with diesel at a full 10p a litre cheaper than at home- bargain! 

Robyn

January Reading…

 

Starting the month with the book which was the header photo for last months post - Lee Child - The Hard Way, another in the Reacher series - we’ve been reading and enjoying these for years, and now we have added space in the house we are working on getting the full set, previously lack of bookshelf space demanded that they were returned to the charity shop after reading! This one is set partly in England, and a bit of the country I knew well, so an additional layer of interest there, but they are always a rollicking good read. Reacher emerges victorious of course - he always does, that’s no plot spoiler, but in spite of his extreme levels of violence he also manages to be likeable, a measure of Child’s writing talent I think. This will be joining the others on the shelf!

Next up was Liane Moriarty - Big Little Lies. Big subject matter too with its twin themes of bullying and domestic violence and played out in a small community in Australia. Moriarty writes brilliantly - this book is punctuated throughout with little quotes from the various characters, written as though they were given in interviews with a journalist, and all alluding to the "the event" that the book pivots on but without ever giving away the "whodunnit" aspect. The gossipy cliqueiness of the primary school parents giving the quotes shines through and I suspect many people can recognise that sort of behaviour from groups they have been part of! When "the event" occurs towards the very end of the book it actually comes as a shock in the way it plays out and it is all the more impactful because of that. I probably won't be keeping this one so it will either get passed to Mum, or returned to a charity shop. 

Linwood Barclay's Never Look Away kept me absolutely gripped. Started with the apparent abduction of a small child, the twists in the tale came from the very beginning, with things taking a deeply dark turn as the story unravels. Main character David Harwood is well written and likeable, making it easy to feel sympathy towards him, and the author has cleverly wound several mysteries into the  storyline without making it feel cluttered, they all intertwine perfectly and conclude neatly in the final chapters. I didn't want to put this one down and read it in a matter of days - I'll be keeping my eye out for more from Barclay, and will probably pass this one to my Mum for her to read. 

An old favourite author next in the shape of Val McDermid - a truly excellent crime-writer in my view and well deserving of the bestseller status she enjoys. A Darker Domain is part of the Karen Pirie series - and I realised within a few pages that not only had I read it before but in fact I already own a copy - clearly I need to add McDermid's books into my note of authors who I am collecting to avoid duplication in the future! That said, I was quite happy to read this one again - and long enough since I read it first time that I had largely forgotten the storyline, so all good! This copy will head back to the charity shop, and I’ll retain the original one. 

Time for some non-fiction then - and a history of British Rail, by  Christian Wolmar - this one we spotted on the bookshelves at Blackhorse Road Station early last year I think - we always stop and have a look there if heading back from the taprooms on the Blackhorse Beer mile, and have often found some interesting stuff for the taking. I don't read huge amounts of non-fiction, but every now and again fancy something a bit different, and this ticked the box, particularly with the part re-nationalisation of the entity happening currently. It was a fascinating - if slightly heavy read - and corrects many of the misconceptions about the perceived poor reputation of pre-privatisation BR. This has gone aside for MrEH to read, and I suspect it will get kept.

Robyn.

Frugal Friday…

 You would be forgiven for thinking that perhaps meals have been a bit stingy over the past few weeks, but there there you would be wrong. As much as the challenge has been about keeping costs low, it was also about the fact that we had an awful lot of food in stores and frankly it seemed like a good way on focusing on using some of it! 

In the course of the month the meal plan has included leftover Christmas turkey in roast dinner form, and as an ingredient in a stir fry and a risotto, a rather tasty cottage pie using venison mince, a stew made with some of the meatiest lamb “bones for stock” I have ever encountered - only £1 for the bag of them and they produced three good portions of stew. That was a very budget offering actually as the veg involved was mostly from the Christmas veg wars! Also a quick cheaty biryani which combined a yellow stickered  sachet of sag aloo rice plus a reduced price chicken breast, along with some added veg - one of those meals that delivered way more taste than the sum of its parts!. I made katsu curry sauce for the first time on Friday - just a BBC Good Food recipe…well, actually 2 recipes which I sort of combined, but very tasty, and it’s nice to have a different form of curry to add to the repertoire. 

For this final week of the challenge spends started a little earlier than anticipated - on the way back from the theatre we called in at Sainsbury’s and spotted a couple of packs of branded falafels reduced down to 71p a pack - not much debate was needed about that, they went straight to the freezer when we got home and will get used as part of a couscous/veg bowl over the coming weeks. £1.42 well spent. The first main shop was done the following day - £7.46 in Aldi including a couple of packs of toasting muffins with 30% off - straight to the freezer for those, too. Other than that, the regular citrus fruit and apples, a pack of peppers as they had the “wonky” ones with plenty of red included, and a bag of coriander to use with the curry on Friday evening and through the week too. 

Saturday saw a trip to the farm shop as of course it is marmalade season- Seville oranges were required! I took the chance to buy a bulb of smoked garlic - and ingredient I use a lot but not easy to get- and MrEH made a convincing case for one of his favourite brand of yogurts - this is the only place he can get the brand locally. We also pounced on a decent looking rustic bread baguette reduced to 50p which got eaten through the day. Total spend £6.88 there, and we called in to the supermarket on the way back for milk, tomatoes and a couple of bananas- another £2.82. 

Only other spend of the week was another couple of bananas - but MrEH bought those and must have paid cash I think so they’re not forming part of my calculations!  By my reckoning that is a total of £18.58 for the week, and there will be no further shopping trips this month, so that is us officially DONE! A quick tot up suggests a sub-£60 spend which quite frankly I’m really pleased with. The grocery account has started the year with a nice little boost, we’ve made a bit of a dent in our food stocks, and it’s made us get our act firmly together with meal planning, too! 

Now- time for February, I wonder…can we have another go?

Robyn

Small pleasures…

 

I’ve mentioned before that I always try and get out for a walk at lunchtime - the fresh air does me good, at this time of the year in particular the daylight is much needed, and it also sets an expectation that my lunch break is a time I value. Sometimes simply escaping the office for 20 minutes or so can be a bit of a blessing, too! 

On a day like today it is just a delight to be out in the sunshine - and I’m always grateful to have a little patch of green space to walk to as well - in the drier summer months the nearby edge of Wanstead flats provides a network of paths to wander, part of the Epping Forest, it combines a patch of shady woodland with a large area of heathland alongside. Muddy in winter, dusty in summer, it’s still a magnet for dog walkers, runners and just anyone wanting a break from the urban streets. 

I’ve pretty much decided that Frugal February will be  happening by the way - although it will mainly be angled towards the food aspect again. I’m not expecting - or wanting to- keep the spending quite as low as this month, there are a number of bits and bobs we definitely need to stock up on now. I’m sure we’ll find plenty to talk about though over the course of the month! 

Robyn

Just for one…night!

 

On Thursday evening after work, rather than going for a walk then killing time waiting for MrEH in the car, or heading to the pub and sitting with a beer and a book until he arrived, instead I hopped on to the tube into Central London. Lovely and easy from where I work - the nearest station being about 5 minutes away and then a few stops on to on this occasion, Holborn as to start with I needed to pop to the shop at the London Transport Museum. Now, as all Londoners know, there is little point in going to Covent Garden station if you can instead get off at Holborn or Leicester Square, and on this occasion I was on the Central Line (the red one!) so Holborn it was. That’s “Hoe-bun” by the way- no debate here , “Hole-burn” in incorrect and sounds quite unpleasant!  😆

The museum is a short walk from MrEH’s office so we met there, did our errand at the shop, then walked through to Shaftesbury Avenue, where we grabbed first a portion of chips each from a nearby chippy (pricey, as expected, but quite tasty) and then a beer at the lovely Craft Beer Company before crossing the road to the Shaftesbury Theatre for a performance of “Just For One Day - the Live Aid Musical”. Now I LOVE the theatre, always have, but haven’t been for years for various reasons - tickets to West End shows these days tend to be extremely expensive, and sometimes it’s just hard to justify, you know? I’d spotted this show when it first began its London run, and thought it looked excellent, so I had been keeping my eyes peeled for a good offer, and sure enough at the end of last year, spotted a deal through Nectar for “tickets from £20” - I assumed that when I looked there would not actually be any at that price, but for once my cynicism proved well wide of the mark as there were plenty! I secured two seats three rows back in the Grand Circle (“up in the gods” as my Nan always referred to it!) for a straight £40 total - not even a booking fee to spoil our fun! For an additional £10 each I could have had front row but the excellent “View From My Seat” website reassured me that there was really no need to pay that extra cost, and so it proved - just look…

The show had me gripped from the opening moments - a story that everyone my age knows, but looked at through the eyes of today’s 18 year olds - already world-weary and firmly of the opinion that our generation got it all wrong of course! The reference from Jemma - the young girl off to university - to “studying the 80’s in history” brought giggles from a lot of the audience! The cast were superb - so full of energy and some absolutely amazing singing voices, and the band providing the music were also fabulous. The set was incredibly cleverly managed - minimal props, and those there were being moved on and off the stage by the cast themselves meaning set changes were almost seamless. A platform with stadium style seating which moved forward and back on the stage  as needed was used to create the feel of people in their seats at the gig, media at press conferences, and various other settings, and when not needed it simply slid back underneath the band riser out of the way. Many of the cast played multiple characters too - in fact there wasn’t really a “leading role” at all, something which was reflected in the curtain calls at the end when the whole cast took their bows together as one ensemble. Something we noticed also was that there was clearly one cast member missing - but this was covered seamlessly and the only reason it was noticeable was due to a gap on the stage at one stage where clearly there should have been a cast member - whatever part they should have been playing was obviously picked up by others brilliantly. Of course the music too is an absolute highlight - all the hits you would expect and a few you possibly wouldn’t. By my reckoning Queen are the front-runners for hits featured with at least 4, but then what would you expect, but everything is played and sung flawlessly and it was nice to see members of the band getting their moment in the spotlight at various points through the show, too.

The show is coming to the end of its run in London, but will be heading out on a national tour from March I believe. Should you go and see it? Yes - RUN to the box office, you won’t regret it, and you will leave grinning after a thoroughly joyful couple of hours! 

Robyn

(All my photos were taken either before the performance, during the interval or at the curtain call as requested by the theatre)

Frugal Friday

Last Saturday was our local farmers market’s 200th market - congratulations to Don who has been organising these markets for so long now and has made the monthly trip out there such a delight. We wanted to go - but had a proper chat about it, and agreed that as there was nothing we needed, and we were already up against it on time due to another commitment, we’d skip this one. It would have been lovely to grab a sourdough loaf from our favourite local baker, but instead we opted to use the things we have (ingredients and equipment!) and instead bake a loaf at home instead on Friday evening ready for toast the following morning. Had we gone, undoubtedly we would not just have bought the loaf, and while I love supporting our fab local producers, I really do want to focus on "using up" rather than buying more, at the moment. 

I bumped our usual “main shop” day from Friday to Sunday due to other commitments, but that gave me a bit of time to make sure my meal plan and shopping list were both done before heading to the shop. I know I mention this a lot, but I really do find that shopping with a list is the best way by miles of keeping grocery spending properly under control, and the meal plan means I’m not trying to manage shopping AND working out what we might want to eat through the week too, always a recipe for spending more. It also cuts down on time decision making on weekday evenings when, by the time we arrive home, we usually just want to be eating as soon as possible!

This week was a pretty standard week aside from the fact that we needed some frozen veg - peas and sweetcorn. Both things we always have in the freezer as they will work as a main veg component of a meal or a handful thrown in to a dish to bump up the veg element. Frozen veg is brilliant too - frequently fresher than the so-called “fresh” options due to often being frozen immediately after  picking, meaning far more of the nutrients are retained. Bonus of course is that it also tends to be cheaper than fresh, too! As can be seen from the receipt, that "main shop" was a £14.74 spend. 

MrEH has a banana for his breakfast most days, but the quality in Aldi on Sunday was terrible - he stuggled to find the single good condition one he eventually opted for. Generally he will opt to pop in on a Tuesday morning to get those for the remainder of the week, but on this occasion I needed to  make use of the supermarket car park near to work on Monday as thanks to the traffic we opted to park closer to my office than normal - this means needing to be "a customer" and so that was the obvious time to purchase the remaining 'nanas! 3 of them cost me a further 48p. 

Further use of the supermarket car park on Tuesday meant "being a customer" again - this time the purchase was a bag of onions - at 99p not the absolute cheapest option I could have gone for but the cheaper-per-kg bags were full of teeny tiny onions, of the sort that one might lose the will to live peeling, so I felt the 19p extra was a small price to pay for sanity! I would have needed to buy onions next week anyway, so this seemed a sensible choice.

Total spend for the week then £16.21 - so the highest week so far, but that figure also includes the frozen veg and onions which will carry forwards to future weeks, of course. The fridge is starting to look quite bare now - there are still some parsnips and the last couple of carrots, plus a red cabbage from the Christmas 5p veg. Plenty of potatoes and shallots out in the shed too. Bargains like that are brilliant for stretching the budget - just be sure to keep the items in the right conditions and get them used before they pass their best. Food over Christmas costs most households a pretty penny so we absolutely have to make  sure we get the best use out of it.

Time to move forwards into the final week of the challenge, then! 

Robyn

Making the best of things!

Shortly after posting my Frugal Friday post, things got rather less frugal, through no fault of my own!

A trip up to Lincoln to see those Little Red Jets and the 2026 team winter training was well overdue - and Claire and I had plotted and planned for that to happen last week - with me driving up on the Thursday evening, tea at the fabulous Dambusters Inn, then a day of photography on the Friday after which I would head home - however the arrival of a storm with a funny name made us put on our uncharacteristically sensible hats and we agreed that it probably wasn’t the best plan for me to be heading up just when Lincoln was threatened with possible heavy snow, so we postponed by a week. A good decision as it turned out, as there was no flying at all last Friday  (no snow either as it turned out, but that is another story!) Anyway, the forecast this week was FAR better, so all good, surely?

I arranged a slightly early escape from work, and we agreed that we’d meet at the pub “as long as I was up by7.30pm” - not a problem though, that allowed a good three hours for the trip, which should be plenty. Well, that was until the absolutely torrential rain that hit on Thursday afternoon, turning the M11, A14 AND A1 into a succession of swimming pools! Nearly 4 hours later, I finally arrived at Claire’s and we agreed that a takeaway would be just the thing! This morning the day dawned…well, overcast and cloudy, and, worse, with a visibility forecast of “poor”- wait, THAT wasn’t in the forecast! We duly trotted out and sat and waited but it became painfully apparent that no flying was going to happen first thing, so we agreed to head back, collect my car, and return to Waddington via a rather nice butty van we’re fond of for a late breakfast/early lunch bacon roll. Half way back to Waddington, with the rolls scenting our respective cars rather wonderfully, I swung off a roundabout and suddenly saw the dreaded orange warning light plus a “check injection system” warning pop up on the dashboard - and immediately also lost a lot of the car’s usual power… I tried a couple of hard revs in the hope of clearing it, but to no avail, and it became apparent that I was going to need to call the breakdown people.

I should say at this point that this was my first time of requiring help from my current breakdown insurer- Eversure - and I honestly can’t fault them. They have a straightforward web form to fill in with details, then kept me updated at every stage with who was attending and when I could expect them. The excellent local recovery chap turned up within half an hour, plugged in the diagnostic tool and gave me the bad news that it was going to need full recovery. Initially Eversure suggested that they were going to try to get a local garage to take it for a repair, but happily on a Friday afternoon, and with what pointed to a quite major fault, that rapidly proved impractical, and it was agreed that instead they would recover the car back to our lovely pal Neil at his garage local to us, albeit this wouldn’t happen until early next week. Back came the nice local chap - with a slightly bigger truck this time - and off went the car.this was all inside 2 hrs and 30 minutes! In the meantime, Eversure had also agreed that I could simply get the train home and then send the receipt in for reimbursement - very efficient! 

At the time of writing I am on my second train of the day, and here are the gratitudes which come under the heading of making the best of things - first up having friends like lovely Claire who did battle with Friday afternoon Lincoln traffic to drop me at the station, but not before the Reds finally got in the air for the last slot of the day in the most wonderful light - a joy! Having a free hot drink code on my Greggs app - after standing out wielding the camera that cuppa was most welcome when I got on the first train! The delicious piece of Victoria Sponge I have just enjoyed on THIS train - courtesy of a friend of Claire’s who had made it for a fundraising thing they did yesterday but not all of it had been eaten so Claire snaffled a couple of slices for us! Having the wit to ask whether I could use my train ticket on a slightly earlier connection from Peterborough - I suspect I have been a lot more comfortable on this train than I would have been on the later completely sold out one I was scheduled to use! And finally, MrEH for turning out to collect me from the station near home on a chilly dark winters evening - and for the fact that we have a second car for him to use for this purpose, of course! The train journey itself too - I read my book on the first train, have written this post on the second, and will get the book out again for the Tube connection between Kings across and Tottenham Hale, and on the final hop back to our local station from there. Sometimes, it’s nice to have enforced downtime! 

I suspect we are in for a hefty repair bill for the car, but we will deal with that as needed. Thank goodness for Emergency Funds! 

Robyn 

Frugal Friday…

 

Week 2 then - and we’re still going well. I usually work my grocery weeks from Friday to Thursday as generally speaking it works best for me to do the main shop on a Friday - it’s quieter than weekend shopping for a start. This week fitted that pattern, so I started by checking my Lidl app for anything too good to miss - nothing this week though, the things I was given offers for were all things we already had plenty of. I’d made a few mental notes of things that appealed from the freezer, and so put my meal plan together along with a list of things I planned to batch cook this week, then built my shopping list from that to include the usual bits and bobs like fruit. Milk and bananas go on the list as standard but tend to get bought later in the weekend. 

The photo above shows the starting point with this week’s “main shop” done at Aldi - and yes, includes some off-list bargains which were definitely worthwhile purchases. The tomatoes are a staple item - I have a small box of them daily with my lunch and I know they usually last well, so buying them reduced doesn’t bother me as long as - like these - they still look really fresh.  Citrus fruit and apples are regular buys too - I had a single pack of apples on the list this week as we still had a few left, but the packs of small ones were on offer and are better value - we will just take two each of those to work with our lunches. The family pack of mushrooms I have started buying recently - I prep and cook the lot then pop them in the fridge so we have them ready for throwing in meals during the week. I was keeping my eyes peeled for good reductions - the pate came up first, 75% off but an unknown original price - however I knew these had already had a price reduction, so I was reasonably sure they would be 25p each at most with the reduction, and each pack does two days lunchtime rolls for both of us, so good value, and one of each flavour grabbed - even better value when they ended up costing just 7p a pack! Further round the store were a few other Christmas reductions - the final two packs of Lebkuchen on the shelf for 29p are weekend evening sweet treats for a couple of weeks - and I couldn’t bake something myself for that price. The salt flakes I had been debating about since they appeared on the shelves before Christmas - I had already bought the garlic and smoked ones, but was unsure how strong the chilli might be in these. For 49p though I think they are definitely worth a try, and will keep us going until we can stock up on the Cornish brand we usually buy. Finally the little pack of Christmas themed sprinkles were just too cute to leave behind for 29p - they will look great decorating mince pies or cupcakes next Christmas! A £7.46 total spend then, and that felt like good value. 

We had to make a trip to Farmfoods over the weekend as I had spotted they had a really good deal on the washing liquid we use - although this comes from the same budget as the groceries I’m not including cleaning stuff in this challenge, but while in there MrEH found a reduced to clear section we hadn’t previously noticed and nabbed a couple of 6-packs of big-brand crisps at 67p each and a couple of sachets of flavoured microwave rice at 34p each so we nabbed those - £2.02 food spend there. He takes a bag of crisps daily to eat with his lunch and those work out nearly 5p cheaper per pack than the supermarket variety pack we usually buy, so well worth having. The rice sachets are Indian spice flavoured, so I’ll almost certainly use those to make some sort of quick biryani inspired meal. 

We popped back to Aldi for bananas and yogurts and handily MrEH spotted jars of mincemeat for 29p each - the “Specially Selected” range too, so we nabbed two of those to stick in the cupboard for next Christmas. £2.39 spent . Final spend of the week was also in Aldi - some more bananas and the milk - plus a box of mince pies for 9p - well, as MrEH said, it would have been rude not to at that price! 

That gives us a total of £13.93 for this week, and a few extra odds and ends stashed away with that too. Now- time to get my head around next week’s meal plan I think! 

Robyn

Sunny interludes...

 

We seem to have had more than our fair share of grey, drizzly days this winter - and worse, patches of time when we've had proper heavy solid rain for several days on the trot. Drizzle is one thing, but a downpour, regardless of what precautions one takes in terms of umbrellas and waterproof coats is just dispiriting. 

I try to make sure I get out for a walk at lunchtimes on working days - I started this some years ago when I realised that there were some days during the winter when I left home in  the dark in the morning and got back there again in the dark later, and barely saw any daylight all day. Having been struggling with low mood in the winter months it suddenly occurred to me that perhaps some extra light might help - and sure enough, the first year I consistently added a daily walk of a mile or so during my lunchbreak, I noticed a huge difference during the months of shorter days and limited daylight. generally speaking I've kept it up since, and it has to be quite a wet day before I will decline to get out for some fresh air.

My favourite workplace to walk from was when I worked at an industrial estate on the banks of the Thames in East London. and could get a short distance alongside the water, or even on occasion a quick trip across the river and back on the Woolwich Ferry - that always came with an edge of risk though as the old boats that were in service then were somewhat prone to breaking down, and the risk of getting stranded was an ever-present! 

Today's walk was just around the streets, taking in the edge of a local patch of heathland and the fringes of the forest, but the sky was blue and the sun was shining, and it was a delight to be out there! 

Robyn

Frugal Friday

 

Unrelated Alderney Sunset - May 2025

Well here we are at the end of week one - and so far we do seem to have been sticking to the plan!

In the spirit of using what we have, I decided to have a little review of various reward card points we might be able to use for things that are needed this month. As I mentioned last week we had a £6.75 balance on an Aldi gift card which got used against last week’s “main” shop. A good start to the month! We do have £10 in claimable vouchers on the Morrisons card - but we are saving those to assist with the shopping we always do ahead of getting our ferry to the Hebrides - when we call in to Fort William Morrisons and stock up on some bottles of beer and odd and ends for the first couple of days, so those will continue to amass until they are needed.  I do have Tesco club card vouchers - but generally prefer to use those for rewards rather than against shopping- that said, if I reach a point where any are expiring better by far to just spend them! I have a £2 voucher in my Asda rewards wallet at the moment, and £2.50 ready to spend on my Nectar card as well. The real winner here though is an £11 balance on my Boots advantage card - I must remember that should any toiletries be required! I try and remember to review the offers on the Lidl & Co-op apps weekly as well to see if there are any that would be foolish to let go - this week for example the Co-op app offered us 25p off MrEH’s daily paper and 20p off milk - as he has a subscriber voucher for the paper (so pre-paid) that meant the full 45p of savings came off the price of the milk, taking a 4 pint bottle down to £1.20

We had agreed that if we spotted any real bargains in terms of stuff we would definitely use, we’d buy them, and so when a large chunk of Stilton - one of MrEH’s favourite cheeses - appeared in front of us in Tesco for £2.47 we agreed it was worth a purchase. We also bought bananas - 55p for 3.

I had to make use of the supermarket car park local to work during the week, and that did require me to be a customer (not unreasonably) so a packet of noodles got added to stores for 85p.

Total cash spends for groceries this week then - £8.61. We have used various bits up - scraps of pastry from the Christmas baking made into tartlet cases and filled with a potato, onion, ham, cheese and cream mixture (so tasty!) The last of the Christmas sprouts, chestnuts and bacon (chucked in the freezer on Boxing Day to avoid them being wasted) were used with couscous, toasted seeds and some bargain priced mushrooms I’d bought on New Year’s Eve and promptly forgotten about. The last of the Christmas ham formed a nice sauce for pasta with home grown tomatoes from the freezer, some of the 5p shallots from the Christmas veg wars, some more of those mushrooms and a blob of crème fraiche, and the last of the Christmas sausage rolls were reheated and teamed with mash and beans for a tasty tea. I've been adopting an approach of "what catches my eye first" when I open the freezer this week - but intend to revert to proper meal planning for the remainder of the month as I know that works best for us. 

And today we start the weekly cycle again with a visit to the shop, so I had best get my list written! 

Robyn

A gentle start to the year...

 

Over the past few years we've got into the habit of heading out for a walk on New Year's Day - usually to one of our local-ish RSPB reserves - with a view to getting our annual bird list off to a (wait for it) flying start (sorry). This year was no exception, and as neither of us felt like going far, the most local option of Rye Meads got the nod. The RSPB have been muttering for a while now about various "options" for Rye Meads, and sadly it does seem as though in the longer term they are probably not going to retain it on their books which is a shame, although we'll have to wait and see how it plays out. For now at least its lovely little out-and-back trails with the possibility of a longer loop onto the neighbouring Wildlife Trust area remains open to us, and we will make the most of it. 

On this occasion we weren't there long - but it was a beautiful day for a wander with stunning light as the daylight faded away as you can see from the picture above. Bird wise the usual suspects were present, plenty of ducks from one hide, the little family of Long Tailed Tits in the trees alongside and overhanging the path, and a large collection of Lapwings from another hide,  but we also saw a Water Rail which was a nice little highlight , as far as I can think we didn't see one at all last year in spite of knowing all the "right" places to look for them. Secretive little birds, far shyer than their near relatives the Moorhens and way less thuggish than Coots! (Pretty much everything in the bird world is less thuggish than a Coot, mind you!)

It's nice to start the year with a gentle wander, and time taken out to take in nature is always good. It's a budget friendly way of spending an afternoon for us, too - as our membership means we get reserve admittance/parking for free just by showing our membership cards. Rye Meads doesn't have a shop, or a fancy-pants cafe, but it's close enough to home for us that it doesn't need to. It does however sell local-ish ice cream so in the summer months that frequently proves a temptation!  now that we have regained some of our free time which previously went to Beer festival related activities hopefully we'll be able to spend more time there this year too - as long, of course, as it stays accessible! 

Robyn

2025 - a look back

 So, what did 2025 look like? I always think a review of the year will be a fun thing, but frequently never get around to writing it - or get part way through, having made it too complex, realise it’s going to be crazy-long, and just scrap the post. Will this be a year it actually makes it as a published post?

January -  a chilly, frosty month. Several meetings with pals - our regular January date with Colin & Aileen saw us at our usual haunt of the Pembury Arms for excellent 5 Points Brewery beer and tasty pizzas - and a lot of catching up with the CAMRA gossip. Then a short mid week pub crawl with Adam in the east end visiting favourite pubs from years ago. Ending with the usual marmalade making session. 

February saw mainly beery activities it seems - A pleasant Saturday of tap room visits combined with watching six nations matches on the big screens at the Hackney brewery taprooms and via my iPad at Beerblefish. A trip to Sheffield for the National Winter Ales festival - seemingly the last time for that, although we didn’t know that at the time.  A wander around the fascinating Park Hill Estate in Sheffield…

Part derelict, part restored. Also a fun evening tasting various vintages of Fullers Golden Pride at Adam & Lou’s with a group of pals of theirs. Also first signs of spring in our little garden.

March- final visits to both the Beerblefish and as it turned out the Hackney brewery taprooms in Walthamstow. Beerblefish was a planned closure, and sadly with them gone, and a dispute ongoing with their council landlords, Hackney called it a day and shut up shop soon after. We miss these too - a nice walk there through the reservoirs from Tottenham Hale then good beer, plus the excellent Yard Sale pizzas. There are replacement establishments now it seems, but we haven’t yet visited.

The thriving Pulmonaria we replanted from the flat

April - The garden started to flourish - rhubarb, sorrel, and buds and flower aplenty on the fruit bushes. Then to the Hebrides for our annual fortnight - Kettle Cottage and the windy headland again. 

 The usual two weeks of peace and quiet, catching up with Elisabeth & Alastair for the final time in the islands as they have now moved back to the mainland, a boat trip with Nye & Rosie on the Lady Anne, lots of lovely cafe visits, and my phone tells me a lot of cake! 

May - beginning in the Hebrides, the trip ended with a disrupted journey back and our planned sailing from Lochboisdale being cancelled - thankfully our first experience of the standby queue worked out just fine and we got on the mid morning sailing from Lochmaddy instead. 

Home to a bountiful garden - with masses of growth everywhere and the promise of gooseberries to come! Not for long through as later in the month we were off to another island with Laura’s 50th birthday trip staying in a fort on Alderney in the Channel Islands. What a glorious place - we definitely want to return as do several others in the group who went. So much to explore - including a short railway using old Tube carriages, and many other forts and wartime sites too. 

Glorious sunsets, great walks, lots of beach time, some nice pubs, beers at the fort, games - LOTS of games - blue post boxes, riding round the island on e-bikes, and some wonderful memories made!  The month ended with Adam’s birthday pub crawl round South London.

June - and the start of airshow season for me, with a trip to the lovely Shuttleworth, followed by a weekend st Midlands Air Festival with Tim & Alysha. A cracking show, with the first evenings hot air balloon night glow being something a bit different. 

July - and the “main event” of the airshow season in the shape of the Royal International Air Tattoo - RIAT. Once again it was the full six days sharing a house with Marc, Tim, Alysha & Byron. Great air displays and LOTS of laughs. The garden excitement this month was definitely the fruit forming on our chilli plants, along with some really pretty flowers. We were also now harvesting various bits - cucumbers, courgettes and the first of what turned out to be a very prolific runner bean harvest! 

We marked my birthday with an afternoon at the Epping Ongar  railway beer festival - good beer, trains and vintage buses too, thoroughly enjoyable! 

August - the Great British Beer Festival of course, although sadly the last one ever as it has just proved impossible to reverse the financial slide since Covid affected everything so badly. We tried our best, but nothing has proved effective, and as we feared, the move to the NEC was the final straw. Back at home and we finally got around to rebuilding our log store, before heading down to Devon for Dartmouth Regatta - which included this stunning rainbow! 

September - Ludlow Food Festival and our usual favourite campsite at Monstay Farm. A great weekend even if we did discover in the middle of the second night that our trusty tent had reached its final trip! 

The month was wrapped up with a trip to Lincoln to see Claire and attend the BBMF members day  - and I was lucky enough to get a private visit to the beautiful “On Freedom’s Wings” sculpture - just breathtaking even without the surrounding site being completely finished. 

October saw us replacing the tent thanks to an excellent end of season deal, and we christened it with a chilly but enjoyable weekend in Cambridgeshire. The garden was still producing, including some very fine pointy red peppers…

…and yes, more runner beans! There was another trip to Dartmouth for the food festival, and time catching up with family, before I wrapped the month up with a free Hidden London tour thanks to taking part in a marketing photo shoot - rather excellent getting to explore the tunnels at Euston again.

November opened with another trip into London for me - we were booked for the Hidden London Hangout Live at the LT Museum in the evening, so as we would have travel costs anyway MrEH elected to work in the office and I had a day to myself which I filled with a visit to a fascinating photographic exhibition in Bethnal Green, lunch from the wonderful Sud Italia at Spitalfields, then a visit to the Science Museum, a long while since I had been there! 

The second half of the month featured one sad trip - a visit to the Wirral for the funeral of a dear friend who died way too soon, a CAMRA friend who we had both known for the best part of 30 years. The funeral was slightly odd as it was organised by her family with relatively little input from her partner - thankfully a proper wake has been organised for her in London so she will get the CAMRA send off she deserves. 

It was lovely to visit somewhere which was new to me - Mr EH knew it more as his family originate from that area so he spent time up there as a child with his Gran, aunties and cousins. He had to do some work before we left the hotel the following morning so I went out for a walk along the Mersey towards a Liverpool and was delighted with this distant view of the Liver Building!

Then a happier visit - Wolverhampton this time for a 60th birthday party. Bruce knew the party was happening, but did not know that an invitation had been extended to our entire GBBF bar team - we met up and arrived together and he was utterly delighted! 

Bruce’s wife Deb presenting him with his cake!

December - which of course always starts with Pigs Ear Beer Festival! As always a great chance to catch up with folk - Adam and his extended group of friends, Catherine, Andy and Kirsten who had made the journey down from up north and Adrian and Cherry across from Northern Ireland. Good beer, good chat! 

The local charity tractor run and a chance to look at the lights at the heritage Railway made a great entry into the festive season proper…

Yes, the hearth mat is a hideous lime green, we know!

And then it was Christmas itself of course, with us hosting my Mum here this year. We just managed to get the main part of redecorating the front room done before the big day too, with the rather blousy wallpaper now gone and the heritage green I’ve been envisaging for the fireplace wall in place, and the addition of a fabulous (and bargainous!) mirrored clock and sone framed black & white prints and photographs, it feels like a different room! Straight after Christmas a trip to round off the year - to Norfolk, meeting up with some of our favourite folk for the last couple of days of their Christmas stay in the area. Beach walks, toasting marshmallows round the fire pit, then a couple of days to ourselves which included seeing Firecrests and a Tawny Owl at RSPB Titchwell, and a visit to lovely Sheringham which of course included  fish and chips then ice cream! 

So there we are - another year done. Of course it wasn’t all highlights - MrEH spent nearly a week in hospital just when we should have been heading to start setting up GBBF which was a drama we could both have done without. Several losses of people dear to us as well, including my lovely Auntie Sue at the end of the year. Overall though life is pretty good - we still adore the house, and all the more so as we make it more our own. As much as we love being away and exploring other places, it’s awesome to live somewhere that quite honestly you are just happy to be in, pottering around and enjoying the lovely feel of the place!

Robyn