Steel Kitten

I’m terrible at being a consumer

I’d like to tell you that my non-consumer story is about saving the planet and living by the old mantra “use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without” but it’s not.

It’s actually about being stunningly lazy. I really cannot be bothered to shop. I'm sure being indecisive has something to do with it - when faced with so much choice I can't choose anything. Bit like a kid in a sweet shop.

Over the last 5.5 years it’s been easy for me to do abdicate from shopping. When you work from home in sleepy village and are busy pretty much constantly, there isn’t a lot of time to shop, on the High Street or online. Up until a few days ago I can’t really remember the last time I actually bought something from a shop - I think maybe sometime in March (or April?) when I had a wardrobe clear out and bought a business dress to replace something that didn’t fit.

So with my recent return to working in an office, I’ve noticed an alarming pattern developing – the pounds in my bank account are going down and the number of parcels being delivered is going up. At first I was alarmed. What the hell was going on? Then I found myself writing a list of all the things I wanted to get. OMG. Now I was really worried.

Having to actually leave the house and interact with people has given me a (much needed) attitude adjustment thanks to many discussions about belongings and shopping trips with others etc. I’m seeing how the other half live and realised Martin and I have left the care of our belongings in the hands of fate for too long.

Most of the time, it is the woman who fluffs the nest and notices the things that need replacement while the man stands there and says “Gee honey. Did we really need that? How much did it cost?” That’s assuming he notices in the first place.  That just doesn’t happen in this house. If it breaks or rips it gets turfed out and rarely replaced, possibly because our belongings are so old that replacements involve learning about a whole new technology. Decades may have passed since we last purchased that item and it’s like having to learn another language sometimes. So we don’t bother.

I’ve found myself thinking I’m being too lazy, that I should be making more of an effort to fluff the nest and take care of our belongings, so in an effort to shame myself into action I wrote that list and the reasons why we needed the stuff. I will now show it to you. Here it is in order of importance with the blue items being those that have been bought recently:

1. New shaver for Martin – his current model of 15 years has taken to eating his face
2. Laptop battery – died almost a year ago!
3. Wooden outside broom – my other one broke a year ago. Mind you, one side had no bristles left on it by then.
   
4. Four new white pillowcases – old ones very thin, sprung holes and bleaching no longer works.
5. Two new pillows – current pillows are as thin as biscuits.
6. Handwash pump dispenser – been refilling a cracked one for a year.
7. New frying pan – old pan has little non-stick coating left. I assume we’ve been eating it and flushing it down the sink.
8. Headphones – the noise of Martin’s NASACR races for five hours sometimes drives me nuts. Big DJ ‘cans’ are needed if he wants to make it to his next birthday.
9. Furminator for Fleagle – the poor thing has bad mats despite regular grooming.
10. Fill the bunker with wood and smokeless fuel while at summer prices so we don’t spend a fortune heating the house in the winter
11. Living room suite cleaned – at 15 years old it could do with a spruce-up
12. New hoover/carpet cleaner – current model 6 years old and does not suck up much dirt. It doesn’t hoover, it spreads. Also with three cats the carpets are…well…tacky in places shall we say.
13. New pair of jeans – my only good pair are decidedly worn and have sprung wear holes on two leg seams
14. Antique brackets and wooden shelves for kitchen – no shelves in kitchen at all. All kitchen stuff stored in another room.
15. Bedroom carpet – didn’t put one down after decorating two years ago. Still walking on floorboards.
16. New duvet – current one 10 years old and started to fall apart a few months ago in the washing machine
17. New sideway gate – none there now and it is a security risk
18. New computer for Martin – his current model is 8 years old and keeps trying to die. Every now and then we take the back off and talk to it gently.
19. New printer – current model 5 years old and likes to drop ink where it shouldn’t. I shout at it - frequently
20. Food dehydrator – so I can make use of all the fruit and veg in the garden
21. Halogen table-top oven – to reduce the amount of gas we use
22. Re-trim and chrome the Fiat 126 – no good reason for this. Just vanity.

Now, on careful reflection I don’t think this list is too bad. In fact, I’d say a lot of what is on this list has been needed for some time. So I’m pretty reassured that I’ve not suddenly morphed into a shopaholic. If I had, I doubt those jeans would that far down on the list  (mind you, I think it’s way down there because I hate jeans shopping and would rather do a fire walk than spent three hours trying on denim and come back with nothing. Having an hourglass figure means much of the clothing in the shops doesn’t fit.)

So a few things about our life are getting a spruce up and being replaced, as they should have been many moons ago. I’m getting a spanking education in the latest carpet cleaning technology and Martin is getting his head round just how much computers gave changed.

We’re both squabbling over the new smart wooden outdoor broom (which Martin keeps taking to use in his workshop and then locking it away!!) and who gets custody of the DJ headphones in the evenings (me, me, me).

Perhaps two pairs of everything is needed?

Signs of summer

Nothing says summer like ripening fruit.

Every pass up and down the garden I make seems to involve a detour to a fruit bush.

And in this kind of heat, I'm currently the only one wandering up and down the garden.

Hurrah! All the fruit is mine. Mine I tells ya, mine!

On a slightly different note; The Wall. It has assumed such a large part of our lives now it must be capitalised in every sentence.

Do you remember I said I believe that Martin would sell one of his future car restorations when I saw it actually happen?

He told me the other day that he just couldn't part with it [sigh]

However, he has a Cunning Plan for paying for The Wall without selling a car.

[sigh]

[double sigh]

He's going ahead though and booking the waller for the beginning of September, so it must be very Cunning indeed.

Deep breath. Trust. Deep breath. Trust

On its head

It seems to me that when I make a decision about anything lately, something happens to turn that on its head. I feel that every time I am presented with two options, I make a decision and then something happens to force me away from the option I picked towards the other one.

Sometimes I feel like screaming at the universe "why give me two choices when I end up having none? Do you know how much brain power and energy it took to make that decision?"

I will not be building the wall. I will not be going on a stone walling course. Martin has decided to sell one of his (many) half-built restoration projects to pay for someone else to come in and do it. He's quite insistent. At the moment my next door neighbour is removing what remains of the concrete panel wall dividing our fronts so he can use it for a project of his own next door. He even needs to soil out of the raised beds for the project, so with very little effort on my part the existing wall will come down.

Now, there's many a slip obviously. The money needs to be there up front to give the builder a deposit, so  Martin still has to sell one of his projects. This is what they call 'the critical control point'.

Shall I be honest? I'll believe it when I see it.

In the meantime I'm putting my head down and earning the money needed for the project in case the half-built restoration project never makes it to sale. I've just hit a stream of freelance work from a company in Belgium, so for the foreseeable future it looks like I'll be working 7 days a week to get that done.

Side-swiped by life

Just in case you couldn’t guess, life has side-swiped me recently. No time to do anything much besides working and sleeping it seems. Last week I started a six-month contract for a company who needed a copywriter to step in after their existing writer went on maternity leave in April. It isn't the London company I blogged about before, but one in a nearby town. The London one kept saying  yes, yes, YES! But when I asked when they said "ermmmm......" Over a month of arm-twisting and it became clear - they lost a big client and were trying to get some new ones to take their place. Their decisions was to keep me hanging on in the background until they could afford my fees while hoping I wouldn't take on any big jobs in the meantime. Trouble is the prospects they approached for new business were asking for more time to sort out their own financial 'houses'. Eventually I called a halt to the whole thing as it was quite daft.  

Still, if I hadn't have done that I probably wouldn't have seen this other company's opportunity. For 26 weeks I will be going into their office for three days a week to help clear their backlog of projects and get some new ones off the ground. My primary task is to write materials about training in the installation etc of environmental technologies, so I’m as happy as a pig in you-know-what! Finally I’m writing about green issues but this is a new angle for me and gives me a perspective on the green issues from an economics point of view.

I’m still fitting in my other freelance work around this during the other two days, evenings and weekends, but for obvious reasons I’m pretty shattered for part of the week. I get up with Martin and go into work with him. Instead of going to the office at 6am though, I sit in the car and work on other freelance jobs and writing (not blogs sadly though!) until he comes out ready to go on his rounds. He drops me off on his way over to his patch, and I roll up and start at 9am. I can honestly say I don’t think I’ve ever worked at this intensity level before. I’m head down and focused ALL day. Part of my remit is to cope with any unexpected work that rocks up, which can happen at any time from anyone, so I’m making sure I’m carefully allocating my time to get through both planned and unplanned work. That and trying to keep accurate timesheets at the same time. Phew.

Then there's a huge freelance job I’m trying to get through at the moment so every non-sleeping hour counts.

All this means my priorities have had to change somewhat. My plans for the kitchen garden have down-sized dramatically. Right now I’m only growing some mange tout, tomatoes and lettuce plus a few pot potatoes and strawberries. Oh and herbs of course. I still have the rhubarb, plums and greengages, pears and wild raspberries only because they take care of themselves so I’ll still have enough for jams. But no leeks, onions or brassicas this year at all.

So for the next couple of weeks I shall be narrowing my sights. Work, housework, small amount of gardening (mostly weeding, feeding and watering) and that's that.

The wall is still outstanding – the quotes we have been getting have ranged from the ridiculous to the downright ludicrous (we were surprised they weren't presented by contractors wearing clown outfits) and we have knocked back every one so far. I can understand some places being desperate for work but charging many thousands of pounds in labour for something which everyone thinks will take one person only 10-14 days is pushing it. They think we are a captive audience you see. We already have the stuff on the driveway and no doubt they believe we want to see the terrible mess cleared ASAP so they’re racking the price up in the belief we think we have no choice. What they don’t realise is when you have been living in a terrible mess for six years a bit more has no effect, so they can stuff their silly quotes where the sun doesn’t shine.

However guess who has drawn the short straw for building it?  

Oh yeh. Just call me Geoff Capes.

No seriously, I am going to be building it. I’m going to find a weekend course on building stone walls next month. I’ve done enough concrete mixing here to have that down to pat. My next door neighbour has offered to help dig and lay the foundations. I just need advice and practice getting the thing straight, both in direction and across the surface faces. As the stone has already come from a building, there are a vast number of flat pieces plus square corner pieces. I don’t think there will be a lot of chipping or shaping to be done overall. All I have to do is restrict my additional freelance work to one day a week and I have three days to play with the wall. As long as I start by the beginning of August and get it finished by Christmas I will be happy.

Well that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Just don't ask about the kitchen ok...

Some lovely snuffles

I couldn't wait to show you to superb snuffles picked up on our travels over the last week.

First off, these.

I picked them up at the recycling centre. The woman on duty told me she was about to throw them in the cardboard recycling but I could have them for £1 as they were a bit scruffy. I paid my money and walked away confused. It wasn't until we had left that it dawned on me - the woman thought they didn't have anything in them, that they were empty cardboard rolls. However, each roll had 4 espresso cups in them still wrapped in plastic.

Then there's this tete-a-tete seat.

Martin picked this up a couple of days ago outside someone's house. The former owner had decided it was too much effort to sand and re-paint so they had thrown it out and bought a new one. Whenever we paint the workshop, we'll sand and repaint the seat the same colour.

So that's my fab snuffles. What about yours?