Cooking and gardening

 Thank you for comments, I feel much better today.  Took a dose of Night Nurse last night, as my sinuses were blocked and I felt a bit sniffly, although it could have been a slight reaction to the flu jab, I suppose.  Anyway, I slept like a log - Betty having a 'woofy' dream woke me up at some point, but I must have gone back to sleep immediately.  Then I woke up early this morning - 05.36 according to the clock - needing the loo....I would normally have gone downstairs then, but thought no I'll get back in bed for another half hour (the effect of the dark mornings!).  However, when I went back in the bedroom I realised I'd read the clock wrong and it was actually 06.36!!  Well, a couple of minutes later by then 😂.  And, you know what - I still got back in bed, eventually getting up around 07.20.  A lie in - unheard of for me!

I got all my clothes sorted yesterday, there's a large bagful to take to the charity shop and my summer clothes have been put in a lidded plastic box under the bed.  But, sod's law, it's bright sunshine today and, other than a few showers forecast for tomorrow, the next few days after that are predicted to be a mini 'heatwave'!  I doubt it's going to be hot enough to get the summer stuff out again though, just pleasantly mild I should think.

This is the first week of our new way of eating (just 3 days of meat meals, 2 days of fish and 2 of vegetarian) and it's going very well.  Yesterday was a 'fishy' day, we had prawn risotto for dinner, and for lunch I did something we used to have a lot when I was a child and haven't had for years......tinned pilchards on toast.  I mixed a bit of horseradish and a splash of lemon juice into the mashed pilchards, piled it on the toast and put it back under the grill to warm through.  Then I topped it with sliced vine tomatoes (I'm not keen on them cooked) and it was absolutely delicious....even husband, who looked a bit dubious when he saw what I was making and said he wasn't sure he'd like it, decided he actually really did.

Today it's a meat day, I'm going to make sort-of Cornish pasties - except that I won't encase the filling entirely in pastry, it'll be in a shallow dish with just a puff pastry lid (I want to cut down on carbs).  It'll be thinly sliced swede, potatoes, carrots and onions (more swede than potatoes, as swede is slightly lower in carbs) topped with minced beef, and plenty of pepper and salt.  I'll also make some apple turnovers with the rest of the pastry - husband loves them and he's not bothered about cutting down on carbs.

Husband's tackling the garden today, cutting the grass, pruning, pulling up the finished veg plants and generally tidying for winter.  I'll have to supervise the pruning of the front flower garden (or do it myself), as he'll just chop it all off willy-nilly if he's left to his own devices - he's a demon with the shears! 😂😒

Rough night and Bowen therapy

 Thank you all so much for all the supportive comments yesterday, after my nasty experience in the freezer shop.  That altercation upset me quite a lot, it preyed on my mind later on and during the night.  The woman was just so unhelpful, so rude about me, loudly, to another customer, and didn't even seem bothered about the fact that some of our shopping fell on the floor, as a result of her ridiculous piling up of it all in a very small space.  As a result, I didn't sleep at all well last night as I felt rattled - the heavy rain didn't help, nor did Betty jumping off my bed and making gagging sounds either.  I thought she was going to be sick - fortunately, she wasn't.  Perhaps she'd swallowed a fly!  She soon settled down again though, which is more than can be said for me.

I'm going to have an easy day at home today, sorting out all my clothes.....some to be bagged up for the charity shop, and summer clothes to be put into a lidded plastic box to go under the bed.  I will try and persuade husband to do the same.  I'd like to do some more rows on my caravan blanket too, but have an aching shoulder this morning so that might not happen.  My hip is really painful too, one of those days where I can't sit or stand comfortably.  

On the subject of which....there's a therapist who lives and practises (practices?) in the next village to us, she advertises a lot on our local social media pages and has a lot of glowing reviews.  She does something called Bowen therapy, which I gather is some sort of muscle massage, for all sorts of aches and pains.  It's apparently very gentle, rather than the chiropractic I've had before which was quite brutal.  She offers a free 15 minute taster session, so I've enquired about that - what have I got to lose?  Her full hour sessions cost £40 and she reckons people generally see good results after just 2 or 3 sessions - so if she's right, that'll be money well spent.  Have any of you heard of (or had) Bowen therapy?

So I'm a 'stupid woman'! (according to a till operator)

 I've just had a very unpleasant experience in the freezer shop - I'm not naming them as I don't want to give them a bad press based on the actions of just one unhelpful and rude employee.  Suffice it to say that it's a big shop (supermarket sized) selling mostly frozen food, with some fresh foods, tinned & packet and some household goods.  We shop in there about once every 3 months or so, to stock up the freezer - we like it in there as they have wide aisles, sell larger size packs and it's generally not at all busy.  I do have to be selective about what I buy and read labels carefully - some of their frozen meat, for example, isn't British, and I prefer to buy British where possible.  But that's just a personal consideration.  They also sell quite a lot of ready meals and what I'd call rubbish food (cheap carb or sweet stuff with no nutritional value, aimed at kids mostly) - none of which I buy.  But they do have good offers on frozen fish, seafood and veg, in particular.

Today the shop wasn't busy, as usual, but by the time we'd got to the checkouts there was a big queue and only one till open.  The cashier did eventually ring for another operator, but had to ring again after a few minutes of no response....another person (I won't call her a lady as she certainly wasn't!) did eventually arrive, scowling - perhaps she'd been on her teabreak 😒.  She plonked herself down with a big sigh and opened up.....the man in front of us in the queue said we could go to her as he was next in line to be served on the original till.  Big mistake!

Our system is that I take everything out of the trolley, husband goes to the end and packs it all - he's a bit obsessive about packing everything carefully into the right bags, so I let him get on with it!  In this shop you're not supposed to pack your bags at the checkout, you put everything back into the trolley and pack your bags at the long shelf at the front of the shop.  However, as we were the first customers at this till and I was unloading the trolley, husband did begin to pack some of the stuff into bags.  I had my back to the till woman whilst taking stuff out of the trolley, so didn't see what she was doing - apparently she was working very fast and piling everything up on the small area at the front of the till, much faster than husband could pack.  I heard a noise and turned around to see a huge pile of our food all balanced precariously on the end of the till, with some of it falling off!  I said to her "Can you stop please?" then carried on unloading the trolley.  She didn't stop, or even slow down, she simply continued scanning stuff really fast and adding it to the massive pile.  Which annoyed me so I said "This is ridiculous, how are we supposed to put food back into the trolley when I haven't finished emptying it?  And there's no room and you're just making it fall on the floor!".  She gave me such a filthy look and just huffed, although did slow down marginally.  Anyway, we got through the till, went to the shelf and started to pack. 

And that would have been the end of it.....until I heard her say to the next customer "Did you hear that woman having a moan?  Stupid woman(!!)".  She clearly hadn't noticed me at the shelf, as her mouth dropped open and she flushed deep red with embarrassment as I marched back to the till and said "Yes that was me!  And I 'had a moan' because what you were doing was ridiculous.  And if you wanted to complain you should have had the decency to do it to my face, or at least wait until I was out of the shop!".  She had the grace to look ashamed, although didn't apologise.

I did briefly consider asking to see the manager, but immediately discounted that idea - in this day and age people need their jobs and I didn't want to risk her losing hers.  And, who knows, she might be having personal problems or had something on her mind, so I prefer to give her the benefit of the doubt.  She wasn't even a youngster, she was around 40, so should have known better really.  But at least I stood up for myself and told her what I thought!

Anyway, we won't be going back to the shop for another 3 months or so, and as they have a fairly rapid turnover of staff she most likely won't even be there next time.

I am finding that the older I get, the less likely I am to suffer fools gladly and if something or someone annoys me or there's some injustice, I will say so.

Cards

 Home now, mostly unpacked and first lot of washing in the machine.  Jean promised to keep in touch by phone, it was still quite sad saying goodbye to them.  We all said how much we're looking forward to next year.  Just relaxing this afternoon and writing a shopping list - we're going to the freezer shop tomorrow to stock up on frozen foods (obviously 😁).

I made a few cards whilst we were away in the van, I've drawn all the designs in coloured pencils, art gel pens, watercolour pens or crayons, or a mixture of all of them.  I'm really getting into drawing now.

Baby ones, all on a similar theme, for my brother and his family (brother's son and DiL had baby Robin a couple of weeks ago).

Wedding card for my nephew, he gets married on Tuesday (he doesn't read my blog so won't see it).  I really like the way this card turned out.

Anniversary card for my best friend.

And a couple of pics of my lovely Betty, all snuggled up with fleece blankets in the caravan:-

She used to give me a look as if to say "Mum what the hell are you doing?!" when I covered her up with a blanket, but now she quite likes it (actually, it's more a case of giving in for a quiet life I think 😂😂).

It'll be fine!!

 Well, both me and Betty (yes I know, bad grammar!) slept better last night, although I did have to get up for a wee and took a while to get back to sleep, but did eventually.  It poured with rain a few times, which woke me up (rain is very noisy on a caravan roof!) but I did fall asleep again quite quickly.  This morning there's blue sky with a few fluffy clouds and the sun is already trying to shine.  Brilliant.

Although the van gets toasty warm quite quickly with the electric fire on, there's no doubt that it does get very cold during the night, now the temperature has dropped quite a bit.  Getting up to go to the loo in the night, it feels decidedly chilly.  I'm glad about that, in a perverse kind of way - it means I'm not really very keen to stay here when it's going to be very cold, so softens the blow of not being able to come here over winter.  Once next March arrives though, I shall be chomping at the bit to get back here, I'm especially looking forward to seeing all the Spring bulbs I've planted in lots of tubs and the garden itself.  I do love Spring bulbs.

We were going home tomorrow but have decided to go this afternoon, once we've seen Charlie and Jean off, there'll be less traffic about today.  Our home garden has been somewhat neglected this year and it does need a lot of pruning and tidying up, the broken gazebo needs to be taken down and the garden furniture put in the garage - we'll be bringing the furniture here to the van next year, so we want it safe in the garage over winter.

Sunny weather is forecast for this coming weekend, so we might come back again then, we'll see.

I have been worrying a bit about leaving the van over winter and hoping it'll be fine with no problems.  But then I remembered that when we took this van on, it had been unoccupied and untouched for more than 18 months and, other than being very cobwebby and dusty (and very dirty!), it was absolutely fine - no leaks or problems caused by the weather.  So we have no reason to think it won't be the same when we come back next year.  And our neighbours (who have been coming here for years) have said they rarely have problems either.  So now I'm not really worried.  C and J have told us everything they do when closing their van down for winter, and I'm going in their van to have a look when they're ready to leave, so I know what to do in ours.  It's been such a help having them next door.

I'm not worried about security either over winter - the owners (father and daughter) both live on site with their families in separate houses, and the site manager also lives here in their caravan (that's allowed under Local Authority regulations).  The site gate is locked over winter, and there are CCTV cameras all around the park.  The site manager has a dog which barks at everyone who walks past (a Labradoodle, she's actually very friendly), so is a good guard dog in that she's noisy.

Restless night and jabbed

 For some reason, Betty was really restless last night - jumping on and off my bed several times after only settling for a few minutes, wandering around the caravan, even wanting to go outside around 3 am.  Whether she'd heard something (I didn't hear anything, but then I am partly deaf) or just wanted to go for a wee I've no idea - I did let her out in the garden but as it was pitch dark, I couldn't see what she was doing, if anything.  She didn't appear to be unwell, just restless.  Which meant I didn't sleep much either.  I sat in the lounge with her for a while, she did settle down eventually, around 5 ish, so I went back to bed then.  She stayed on the sofa, thankfully.  Consequently, I'm a bit knackered (again) today.  And we had to be up fairly early this morning to nip off back home to have our flu jabs.  All very well organised, lots of staff there directing parking, taking names, directing us to the appropriate rooms (several medical staff giving the jabs), so we were both jabbed and out of there within just a couple of minutes.  Nipped home to take a few things home that we no longer need in the van, and to check the post - still no hospital appointment letter for husband - then came straight back here to the van.  

It's poured down all day today, relentless neverending rain, it's so depressing.  At least we're warm, cosy and dry in the caravan, I've got books, crochet and some limited art supplies and husband has the TV (but in a confined space I can't get away from the TV!).  Never mind, it's forecast to tail off this evening, and we should even have some sunshine again tomorrow morning.  That'll be good, it means neighbours Charlie and Jean will be able to close up their caravan and pack their car in the dry.  Yes we will miss them, but we'll keep in touch via text and phone during the winter.

There had obviously been pretty strong winds back at home.....it was a bit windy here at the park but not overly so.  At home though, our garden furniture and some pots had been blown all around the garden, and a pole of our gazebo has snapped.  Pity, it was a nice one too, we only bought it in Spring this year.  And we didn't even get that much use out of it, having spent more time here at the van than at home!  Oh well, we've enjoyed our summer at the van, even with all the work.

We'll come back probably once more for a few days this month, not sure when, it depends on the weather.  It's obviously going to get colder and darker, we don't really want to be here in bad weather, especially if there's not many others around.  Right now, there are only 3 other vans occupied besides ourselves, and obviously our neighbours are off home tomorrow.  Oh, there's someone in one of the seasonal touring vans right down the bottom of the site, I wouldn't think they're going to be here much longer.....unless they're working nearby and using it as a base.

A tear shed

 Yesterday wasn't a good day and I didn't sleep well because of it.  Not dwelling on it though, following a bit of rain this morning this afternoon has been lovely, sunny and warm.  We've had some nice chats with our wonderful van neighbours again today, husband and Charlie did a few little jobs together, whilst Jean and I chatted about plants and garden and van plans for next year.  Jean finished by saying she's become very fond of me, we've made their summer and they'll miss us over winter - that brought tears to my eyes, they really are a lovely couple and in truth it's them who have made this first season in our van such a brilliant and happy one.  Having lost my mother on Christmas Eve 2019, Jean has become almost a surrogate Mum (although she's not actually quite old enough to be my mother!), and we've discovered we have a shared love of crafting and flower gardening, so have lots in common.  We've both said we'll look forward to meeting up again here in March next year.

Thinking about keeping warmth in the van, I've decided I'm not getting new curtains for next year.....I like the curtains I bought this year, they just need to be a bit thicker.  So I'm going to buy thicker linings - the curtains already have a built in lining but it's quite thin, the new thicker linings I'll just add on.  And I'll see if I can make some sort of cover or blind to cover the 2 skylights, to reduce some heat loss there.  The bathroom window needs a thicker blind or some sort of insulation too, Rambler suggested cling film (thank you) but I think we'll go for window film I've seen on Amazon, it's stuck onto the frame with double sided tape and you then use a hairdryer on it to seal it.  Cheaper ones have mixed reviews, but pay a bit more and the reviews are better.  

HH suggested rugs - the new carpet we bought for the van is laid on top of the old carpet (which I'd steam cleaned first), so the lounge floor is quite well insulated.  The bedrooms have rugs on top of the original carpets.  I think we're very lucky - we've had some really heavy rain showers this week and the van hasn't leaked at all, anywhere, and there are no damp patches, not bad for a 30 y.o. van.  Whereas 2 of our van neighbours have both had leaking skylights.

Going off early tomorrow to have our flu jabs, booked at our home surgery.  We'll nip home to drop off a few things we no longer need at the van, and to see if husband's hospital appointment letter has come, then we'll be coming back to the van.