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