A perfect store for crafty bits

I'm thrilled with our two new sets of storage drawers, which were bought with some money kindly given to me for my birthday.



Not only are they wonderfully cheerful, but they are also extremely practical and useful.

They are made by Really Useful Company, who also make the well-named Really Useful Boxes. They are from Hobbycraft and, with discount vouchers, ended up costing about £33 and £20. I haven't often used Hobbycraft before but they do seem to be quite kind about offering discount vouchers.

I find the drawers absolutely ideal for storing crafty things. The individual drawers in the taller unit are a very useful size (7 litres, measuring about 370mm x 230mm x 80mm) and having so many of them means that there is plenty of space. They are easy to lift out if you wanted to carry a project elsewhere to work on, though I tend just to decant things into Whitefurze's brilliant AllStore boxes (of which I have zillions).

I was all set just to buy the tall drawer unit as I was less keen on the smaller one in the shop as it had far fewer drawers and hence colours (though I later realised that I liked it much better with the drawers arranged in rainbow order, instead of the way they had it on display with purple next to yellow!). We then realised that we could swap the drawer arrangement round as the two towers have the same footprint. The shorter one is now a bit shorter still so that it can fit under the slopey bit on the landing...



...and the other one a bit bigger, with a very useful deeper drawer. (They aren't actually designed to allow this kind of swap - the Technomage had to break a little bit of plastic in one of the corners to do it.)



I've thoroughly enjoyed arranging things in the drawers - now I just need to knuckle under and do some sewing!

Hoglet update

Good news from the PACT animal sanctuary - they've told us that all is OK so far with the hedgehoglet we rescued on Monday. He's eating OK and is comfortable, which we were delighted to hear.

We'll keep putting plenty of cat food out for his mother and hope that she decides to hibernate in our garden in the so-far-unused lovely wooden hedgehog house that the Technomage built last year.

The day our combined ages reached three figures

We’d had a very successful and busy day in London to celebrate the Technomage’s 50th in July so decided to do the same-but-different for mine on Tuesday. We’ve been in London off and on for more than 25 years but there are still countless interesting places we’ve never been to and things we’ve never done, so these two days have been a good opportunity to tick a few off the list.

After pressie-opening, both days started with breakfast at a venue of local (Stratford) interest. For his, we’d been to the View Tube overlooking the Olympics. In my case, we took the opportunity to have a first look at the new Westfield Centre – we arrived there via the original run-down Stratford centre, so it was quite a contrast.


As big shopping centres go, I did like the feel Westfield, although there aren’t really all that many of the 300 or so shops that I can imagine using – I’m sure I’ll still continue shopping more in Poundland, Tiger Stores etc in the old centre! We didn’t have time to go into any of the new shops yesterday, but I am looking forward to checking out Lakeland, Paperchase, Lego, M&S, Waitrose and John Lewis at least.

Our next destination was the London Canal Museum near King’s Cross/St Pancras. We’d realised that this also gave us the opportunity to catch a high-speed train from Stratford not-International station. We’d hoped our first trip from there would have been a direct train to Paris but there doesn’t seem any chance of international trains at present, despite the best efforts of our mayor, Sir Robin Wales. The train to St Pancras was expensive at £5.40 each, but the return fare (£7.30 I think) isn’t so bad - it’s £5 off-peak on the tube, which takes 25 mins instead of six!

The canal museum was great – and a doubly appropriate place for the day.


Like our house, it has an icehouse, and my 21st party was on a canal boat. Lots of interesting information and exhibits covering both canals and the commercial ice trade made for a very enjoyable morning.(In July, the museum we visited was the Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green – we thought this too was highly appropriate for a 50th).

A walk along the canal tow path to Camden Lock highlighted the contrasts in even a small area of London. These two photos were taken from exactly the same spot...




There’s a huge amount of development going on around King’s Cross, yet a few yards away there’s quiet water and masses of greenery. I don’t recall ever walking along the canal tow path before – it’s a wonderful escape from the busy London that’s only yards away.

The boat trip on the Jenny Wren proved to be the ideal way of spending a relaxing afternoon (very important to relax at my age...).


The trip lasted about 1.5 hours and took us down the Regent’s Canal, through the Zoo and to Little Venice, and back. Other points of interest included the Blow Up Bridge, which we'd read about that morning at the museum.


It was rebuilt after being destroyed when a boat-load of gunpowder blew up in 1874, killing three people. The museum had an excellent illustration of the tragedy on the cover of the Illustrated London News. More about it here, as part of a lesson plan on the London Canal Museum site, and here in an article by Richard Hill in Canals & Rivers magazine.

There were only two other people on the Jenny Wren, which seemed a shame – though I suppose it is late in the season. (We do have a bit of form in being virtually alone on boat trips – we were once among only half a dozen on an evening cruise on a Hong Kong ferry that would hold hundreds – it did mean that we got plenty of the free beer though!)

Afternoon tea was next. On his birthday, we’d gone to that slice of heaven called the Whole Foods Market near High Street Ken station for a drink and a quick shop for luxury things to bring home. This time, we opted for a more traditional afternoon tea and went to Napket on Piccadilly. Excellent value - £21 for two gave us lots of cakes/scones and a choice of tea or any of their regular-sized coffees.


There hadn’t been much on at the pictures in July so we’d opted for spectacle rather than quality, going for Transformers in IMAX 3D. This time, we went for Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which was great fun, with a good storyline and lots of entertaining action. On arrival at the Empire, Leicester Square, we showed our age/lack of interest in sport by failing to recognise – or even know the name of – the celebrity surrounded by fans and being photographed by everyone in the foyer. Turned out to be a bike rider called Bradley Smith, there for the advance screening of a film called Fastest.

Dinner was at Los Locos in Covent Garden. We’d planned to go there for Tim's birthday in July, but it’s shut on Mondays so we’d gone to another Mexican, Cafe Pacifico, instead. The margaritas were particularly welcome as we’d not had time for any booze all day. We ended up being about the last diners – not because we were very late, but apparently it turns into a club later. Food was good, staff very friendly (like everyone all day) and we had a good time.


Back home, we were too full to start straightaway on the cake and fizz provided by my parents, but we tucked in after a break ...




(joined by the bear Tim's had all his life, the Panda I got for my fifth birthday and another bear I was given for my birthday at least 35 years ago).

And then the day was over and I can start to reflect on being the target audience for all those services and events aimed at the over-50s...

Hedgehog rescue...fingers crossed

Today hasn't quite panned out as expected, as we ended up making a 50 mile round trip to take an ailing baby hedgehog to the excellent PACT Animal Sanctuary in Norfolk.

We'd seen a hedgehog wandering round the garden yesterday, but then later found various bits of hedgehog, clearly savaged by something. Perhaps a bird of prey? By this morning, we hadn't quite screwed up the courage to clear them up but spotted the hedgehog wandering round again, inspecting what we took to be some of the remains.

The Technomage decided to be brave and go and start collecting the pieces. I lurked some way off until he called out that one of the parts was in fact a whole, live baby hedgehog.



It seemed OK but was very young - its eyes didn't even seem to be open. And it was being bothered a lot by flies, which we've since learned is a very bad thing, as the eggs and resulting maggots can apparently kill the hoglet if left untreated.



We dithered for a short while about whether to leave it for its mother to find but then got on the phone to seek advice from a local expert found via the British Hedgehog Preservation Society list. We were advised that it was urgent to get him out of the daylight and into a shoe box with a hotwater bottle wrapped in a towel, and give him some digestive biscuit in water. This we did.



We then rang round to find somewhere that would look after him properly and PACT said that they were happy to take him. On arrival, they whisked him off to see the vet - he was already fly blown, they said. We're going to contact them in a few days to see if he's made it.

Meanwhile his siblings have been buried in Dead Bat Cairn - the pile of flint stones that is the resting place for any dead animals we find in the garden. As well as at least one bat, there's a mole, blue tits and assorted rodents such as shrews and voles.

We like to think of some future archaeologist uncovering it and deciding that they've found evidence of some hitherto undiscovered cult!

Fabulous fireworks

Saturday evening was spent at Catton Hall's wonderful Festival of Fireworks - it's now going to be a regular fixture in our diaries.

There were four breathtaking displays - each lasting about 10 minutes - by top-class businesses of the kind that win international competitions. Sometimes the whole sky was filled with fireworks and I can't begin to imagine how they created some of the patterns. Dazzling. There was even a short daylight display at about 7.30pm to keep everyone entertained while waiting for dusk - a nice surprise (and surprisingly effective even though it wasn't yet dark).

All in all, the event was highly enjoyable, extremely well organised and well worth the £22 each. The organiser was Jubilee Fireworks, which also put on our joint favourite display of the evening (the other being by Pyrotex Fireworx).

I haven't found much online about the festival yet, though some people at the UK Firework Review - who clearly know what they are talking about - were also very impressed.

Much as we like taking snaps, we didn't want to miss the live spectacle and in any case aren't expert at firework photography (and didn't have a decent tripod) so just tended to keep the cameras aimed vaguely in the right direction and keep pressing the button without checking what was in the frame. I'm hoping that some other people out there will put more professional efforts online in the coming days. Pyrotex has loads of videos on its YouTube channel, as does Alchemy (and no doubt Feerie and Jubilee too) so no doubt videos of last night will appear in due course.

Here are some of the Technomage's favourite shots from his Canon SX20-IS...









My favourite pic from my Sony h5 is this one...



I also like this one even though it doesn't look like in the least like fireworks - more like rolls of some golden gauzey material plus a flower of the same material I reckon...



This is the best from my little Canon A495 snapshot camera in firework mode...



Next year, I'm also going to take my ancient but still very useable Nikon Coolpix 950 as I've got a fisheye lens for it - none of the cameras we had with us had a wide enough lens to get the whole view in.

I also tried a few movie clips - not very successful but they may give a bit of an idea.

My current favourite garden tool - Aldi ratchet pruners

Aldi is out of my good books at present thanks to its new parking policy at my local branch. You are now only allowed to park there for 1.5 hours and 'only whilst shopping in store'. Taken literally, it seems you can't even park there while using the bottle bank, let alone popping up the high street to the post office, charity shops, bank, excellent Portuguese deli etc. The Technomage has written a rant on our village website and I've a letter ready to post to the manager.

The new arrangements mean that I won't be popping in there for impulse buys when in town for other things, but next time I'm there for a proper shop I do intend buying another spare pair of their brilliant ratchet pruners - a snip at £4.99. It's not because mine haven't lasted, but simply because I'm highly likely to lose them.


I've got plenty of overgrown shrubs, brambles and self-seeded saplings to tackle and these do an excellent job - they are great both for the initial removal of biggish branches and for cutting even fine twigs up to fit as much as possible in the wheelie bin. I was given a pair as a present two years ago, then bought a spare pair last year.

Good thing too, as I lost the originals last autumn - only to find them this spring hidden under the ivy that covers the icehouse. They were still in perfect condition - unlike all the other pairs of secateurs I've ever left lying round the garden. They're aluminium so are lightweight and of course rustproof. They even come with a little oil-coated pad for lubrication, built into the handle. Needless to say I lost both of these almost as soon as I opened the packets...

Highly recommended - but only on sale for a short period from 25 August 2011 (and perhaps at the same time next year).

So why are birds better at growing sunflowers than I am?

I sowed dozens of sunflower seeds this year and not a single one came up.

Granted, I didn't really expect great success as:
a) our soil is pure sand;
b) muntjac deer find sunflower leaves really juicy and tasty;
c) the seeds were mostly from ancient half-used packets (I have a vast stash of all kinds of old seeds and keep intending to strew them randomly round the garden to see what happens).

However, the garden birds have done their best to help. I've counted at least a dozen modest sunflowers dotted round the garden. They're mostly teensy and spindly...





...though some stronger ones have made a home amongst other flowers in pots.




I'm now wondering whether next year I should simply replace the seed on the bird tables at sowing time with some of Mr Fothergill's finest giant varieties, on the basis that the bird gardeners couldn't do worse than I did!

1 August - the start of the year

I've used a mid-year diary for my journal since 1973, when my cousins started sending me a school year diary that they published. Theirs is no longer available, but I've kept up the mid-year tradition, even in years when I use a Paperchase notebook that somehow always lasts me exactly a year too.

My current preferred books are both A5 page-a-day diaries - a WH Smith one in silver for my journal and a Collins one for my desk diary.


Both actually last more than a year, but I use them from 1 August to 31 July. The Smiths one will be the fifth of the same design and the Collins one will be the seventh, so I am quite set in my ways. I like them both for their own purposes - the Collins one has times down the side of the page so wouldn't work for a journal but is great for work timings, while the Smiths one has narrow lines so you can write a lot on a page (it also has a little quotation in tiny writing at the bottom of every other page, eg yesterday's was Jayne Mansfield's 'Men are those creatures with two legs and eight hands.')

Every year I wonder whether the time has come to keep my diary on the computer, but every year I put off the decision on the basis that I already spend enough time in front of the screen. Yes, it would be quicker to look things up - though yesterday it only took me about 20 minutes using a combination of photo albums and my diary to track down something from 1998 (without being sure beforehand what year it happened). Of course a spreadsheet of key events would have been much quicker still.

The written journal in particular contains a lot of information. I rule columns to make a page for each month to record where we each were on each day and keep lists of books read, movies seen, presents given and much more. These are arguably all things that would be better in a spreadsheet or at least in my Palm handheld, so perhaps I should start compromising and listing these electronically while continuing to use the diary itself for the not-very-exciting records of my days.

There will be two small changes this year. Every year, I try to keep a list for a single month of something that wouldn't necessarily be mentioned in my diary but that might be interesting to look back on one day. One time I listed a month's worth of non-food/supermarket shopping with prices. Circumstances last year led to a horribly long list of things that broke (several bits of both cars, the washing machine, laptop power supply, two separate leaks, a mp3 player etc etc etc). Another time, we totted up how many gigabytes of videos, mp3s etc we had as of that date. I think this year's list will be a month's worth of evening meals.

The other 'innovation' is to add photos. I'm terrible at getting round to printing out pictures, but bought a new toy last week - a secondhand Polaroid Pogo printer. Its not much bigger than my compact camera and prints out 2" by 3" stickers - you just bluetooth them to it, or connect a usb cable from the camera.



Brilliant - and it will be a great help in skimming through old diaries looking for particular events, as well as reminding me of good pictures worthy of proper prints.

My plant of the week: Ceanothus (Californian Lilac)

My absolute favourite shrub is Californian Lilac, with its mass of beautiful blue thimbles (much loved by bees) at this time of year. I particularly love the variety Concha, which becomes absolutely smothered in blue - some years you can scarcely see the leaves. However, I never seem to get it right with them - mine tend to grow too little or - as below - too much.


Here in Suffolk, they've failed to thrive here in our feeble, sandy soil. The ones I've planted into the ground have soon died; ones in big pots have lasted a few years max but then been hit by particularly hard winters.

My latest purchase is currently looking pretty and I'll plant it out soon. I had an unopened bag of top soil lined up to help create a nurturing new location, but found that the bag is currently home to a zillion ants so I'll need to get some more.


In contrast, the last pair I planted in London (Concha plus another whose name escapes me) grew far too fast, shooting up to more than 10 feet high in just a few years years. For a Ceonothus lover like me, it's hard to to make yourself prune them - every branch lopped off means hundreds of flowers that won't blossom! The two flowering periods were a few weeks apart, extending the 'blue season' for weeks.


I'm hoping that the new plant will manage something in between my two past extremes - healthy but not too rampant. I'm promising it that I'll do my best to tend it well and to give it the best start I can in the hope that it too will be smothered next year.

Back on 'normal' food after a week eating below the line

We kept our calculators to hand as we wandered the aisles of Tesco and Sainsbury's looking for five days' worth of food for two for £10 as part of our experiment in living below the line. We much prefer Sainsbury's normally, but were passing both so took advantage of the slight differences in their ranges - when you're watching every penny, you notice when one has a slightly bigger pack, pushing it beyond our budget. As we happened to be in Tesco first, most things that were priced the same came from there but I'm sure the Sainsbury's ones would have been just as good. We'd largely planned our purchases in advance - I don't think we'd have had a chance of sticking to the tenner otherwise.


This was our final tally of purchases, excluding potatoes (as we had an unopened 2.5kg bag in the pantry - we charged ourselves the Sainsbury's basics price of 97p) and salt (we charged ourselves 10p for a box in the pantry that had cost no more than that at Lidl).


You'll see lots of scribbles on the Sainsbury's receipt....


As luck would have it on a day when ever penny counted, something must have been sitting on the scales as our carrot (singular!), three mushrooms and extra onion each weighed 60g too much. Normally, we wouldn't even have noticed but that 27p was a vital part of our budget! We charged ourselves what they should have cost - our scales agreed exactly with Tesco's where we'd bought the other onions.


We contacted Sainsbury's in case the scales had a fault and got into a very friendly discussion with their customer services, who had the store's scales checked. We concluded that someone had perhaps left something like a pad of vouchers the scales. And Sainsbury's did reimburse us to our Nectar card, though we said they needn't have bothered.

The total came to £10.11 after adjusting for the overweighing, so we had to put an onion back in the pantry to bring it to under £10!

It was quite amusing in Tesco's when the checkout assistant began to give us a schools voucher - only to realise that our two big bags of food came to less than £8 and so we were some way off being eligible. This gave us the opportunity to explain the initiative to her too.

Breakfast each day was toast with marmalade (no spare budget for marg or butter but the marmalade was, at 27p, one of the outstanding bargains) plus 47p-a-jar coffee (we'd just got used to having an espresso machine so this was a particular ordeal!) with UHT milk (cheaper than proper milk).


Lunch was homemade bread (value flour didn't make great bread but it was edible) with an outstanding bargain - Tesco's sliced mild cheddar, 10 slices (240g) for 59p. Not a great deal of flavour but pleasant tasting and far cheaper than any other cheese available. It went well with the sweet pickle (great for 24p).


A bottle of orange squash for less than 30p proved very welcome and homemade potato soup rounded off some meals.

The five evening meals were:
- chili made with Sainsbury's basics mince plus baked beans, corn and onion and served with jacket potatoes. The investment in a bottle of chili sauce made this perfectly acceptable - his favourite meal of the week and my second.


- potato and pea curry, made with Sainsbury's 9p-a-jar curry sauce and served with rice. OK - the sauce was pleasant enough but the curry would have benefitted from more onions and no peas.


- meat and potato bake - mince cooked in 18p-a-jar pasta sauce, with the addition of some of our limited supply of veg; then baked in the oven with layers of thinly sliced potatoes. This was very tasty - my favourite meal of the week.


- 'rice and beans' - something we make regularly anyway - rice and kidney beans in a savoury sauce of passata and stock. It had onion and half our can of sweetcorn in it too, plus peas. Quite nice, if possibly less flavoursome than normal.


- pizza - almost to our regular recipe but we'd normally add olive oil to the dough and passata mix, and would have had more interesting toppings than the three mushrooms, half an onion and scattering of leftover mince. It was perfectly edible but rather reminiscent of cheap frozen pizza - strong bread flour and the oil really do make a difference.


The flour did do well in making some snacks - little dough balls flavoured with chili sauce, salt and chives ('foraged' from the garden)


and strips a bit like pitta, flavoured with the chili sauce. These in particular were rather good.


Had we continued for a second week, we'd have been a little better off, as we had a few things left over - yeast, chili sauce, coffee, salt, rice. That would have freed up just over £2, which would have been a great help.


I'm sure that we'll revisit some of the lessons learnt from the week in a similar - if less draconian exercise - in a future week. Of course it's a somewhat artificial exercise to do in a kitchen with a well-stocked pantry that would become available again five days later, but it did at least make us think.

You can sign up at Live below the Line and have a go yourself, choosing a charity to support. The site is primarily geared to encouraging people to seek sponsorship but you can just give a donation.

The extravagance of normal living was brought home on Saturday, the day after we finished, when we were out for the afternoon in Greenwich. Lunch and a soft drink each came to £19 for two, then a couple of pints in a pub came to £8 - equating to more than a week's food money just for the drinks.

A building society account just like my piggy bank

Well, more precisely like my little savings tin:



I've always liked to know which money is allocated for what task - I can never quite get the hang of having everything in one place and remembering or listing what's what. With my main bank, I get round this by having three current accounts, but savings have always been trickier, particularly for little sums that I want to tuck away for special reasons, treats etc.

So I was delighted to learn that the Principality has an online account that gives you five 'pots'. It's all treated as one account from their point of view, but you call apportion it between different savings. You can even add a target total with a target date.

As well as a general pot, I've set up two pots for me and two for joint money. Mine are "Piggy Bank" (eg proceeds of piggy bank emptying especially £2 coins, and used to save for non-essential treats like a new camera or PDA or - something I really fancy - a glass fusing kiln) and "Future Tax Bills" (being self-employed the bill comes twice a year, so it's better to set the money aside as I earn it). Ours are "New Barny" to tuck away money for our next car (our last two cars have been called Barny, so why break a tradition) and "Funny money", for odd little sums that would otherwise just disappear into a purse - winnings, car boot sale proceeds, joint piggy bank funds etc. The idea is that the funny money will pay for something slightly extravagent, like new patio doors that will look nicer and open easily instead of requiring a frustrating fight with awkward bolts.

The Technomage has pots for his own funny money, saving for new gadgets and some general savings. He also has two of our pots - one for the £19 a month we save by not subscribing to Sky and one for new gadgets. We try to allocate 20p whenever we use things like the Wii or the toasted sandwich machine. That way, if they break we can decide whether they've had enough use to justify a new one - and pay for it painlessly!