Posts

Posted on

meandering ~ Staithes to Runswick Bay

Oh my goodness, we have been back from our holiday now for over a week, and what a dreadful week last week was, not a brilliant home coming.

I had this post about our little trip out to Staithes and Runswick Bay almost complete but never had the chance to proof read and make it live. So before I report on the horrors of last week I will take you back to the holiday week.

The weather over the week got far worse rather than better, so we had to choose our trips out carefully. Sketching was impossible, even from the car, as there was no let up in the rain. On the Wednesday we stayed in the apartment, DH did a lovely little sketch from a photograph whilst I did some writing for the blog post.

Below for anyone interested are a few photos and commentary of our day out on the Tuesday to Staithes and Runswick Bay.

We woke up to more drizzle on the Tuesday morning, but there was little wind which makes a big difference by the sea, so we wrapped up made a flask of soup and a few sandwiches and set off to explore Staithes.

For those who have never been it is the birthplace of Captain Cook and the old village, centred around the harbour, is down a long steep hill.

Only residents parking is allowed down at the harbour but parking at the top is more than adequate in the winter and free until the season begins in March.

The hill down to the harbour is not for whimps, neither going down or coming back up, but a sturdy handrail is provided to keep you upright. Once down into the village the footing is easier although there are cobbles to negotiate on the roadway. There is a mass of higgledy-piggledy housing clinging for dear life to the hillside, plenty of steps and nooks and crannies…and here and there you come across a narrow ginnel feeding its way through between the houses like a maze.

We questioned whether the houses in front would have been built after the houses behind or vice-versa. Did someone come along and build in front and block your view or did they squeeze in behind? Some of the cottages are almost completely hidden, tucked well behind with no view at all.

There are a modest amount of shops, some we found open, even though it is out of season and hardly any tourists about. We dodged into the sweet shop cum deli for a hot chocolate (best I had tasted so during the week – rich, dark and not too sweet), of course it might also have been the fact that just holding the warm mug helped to get the blood flowing to my fingertips once again.

The whole village is full of cute cottages and like Runswick Bay you can imagine going in a door at the bottom and coming out three houses above you.

After a good wander around we started back up the steep unforgiving hill.

We decided to move the car round to Runswick Bay and sat in the little car park overlooking the sea to have our lunch. There was still drizzle here and quite a breeze, but that didn’t stop the washing going out on the line!

Runswick Bay is one of the prettiest fishing villages, with a series of white washed cottages with red pantile roofs all higgledy piggledy and climbing up into the hillside. It was once renowned as an artists colony and has an obvious wealth about it – quite a noticeable contrast to that of nearby Skinningrove.

It has known disaster in the past when in 1682 the original village was destroyed by a landslide and it is said that no villager died because they were all attending the wake of a man in the only surviving cottage! The village was rebuilt but it has always been in danger of further landslides so in 2018 there was £2.28 million pound award-winning coastal erosion protection scheme put in place to protect the village in future.

Both the beauty and the drawback of the place is that no cars are able to get close to the houses. There is a residents car park provided and I expect for visitors and full time residents alike all shopping and baggage has to be unloaded and walked to the house. Goodness knows how they manage with furniture and appliance deliveries and even worse should any building maintenance be required.

The tight knit walkways are fun to explore as you never know where you might pop out from along the maze of footpaths.

On the Thursday we visited Kirkleatham museum which is well worth a visit to see the story of the steel works that evolved in the area after the discovery of iron ore in the nearby Cleveland Hills in 1850.

It is a fascinating exhibiton – I was amazed to learn that Middlesborough, now a sprawling industrialised town, was once a tiny hamlet with a farming community of only 25 people. It was enlightening to discover how steel is made from the iron ore in the large blast furnances. Those steel framed structures of the plants that you see, comprising of sheds and towers and long runs of pipes resemble a long forgotten theme park. On the outskirts of Middlesborough these old steelworks at the Lackenby works stretch for miles like an industrial wasteland. I am presuming these buildings are still operational but it is hard to tell as there is such a feeling of desolation to the area.

In 1967 the British Steel Corporation was formed as a national company and re-privatised in 1988. Eventually, through its chequered history and demise it has ended up being owned I believe by the Chinese. I thought this sign was quite poignant.

My grandad, and many of my relatives worked in similar steelworks in Sheffield – it was a protected job during the war and he worked long hours and was always in danger of a bombing raid. My dad was a metalurgist and he often went to the power stations as part of his job though I have no idea what he actually did there, I only know he has notebooks full of mathematical equations. He always said inside those large concrete cooling towers they were the size of a football pitch.

There was also an exhibition of textiles in their temporary exhibition space at the museum with some rather lovely textiles on display. I did weaving many moons ago in the attic at the Ramsden Art School as part of my foundation course, and a couple of years later aquired my own table top loom that was going to be put in a skip. The problem with these large looms is that they take a lot of yarn and you require a skein winder. When we downsized from a four storey mill workers house to the house we are in now there was no room for the loom and it had to be sold.

Seeing these lovely exhibits has made me want to have a go again with just a tiny frame.

On the Friday afternoon we spent a couple of hours pottering around Guisborough – a bit of window shopping and a few minor purchases. On the way back, just as the light was going, we stopped to look around Skelton Old All Saints Church….but that is another post another day.

We are now catching up with ourselves after both our holiday and the eventful week we had last week, and given that this is a long enough post for anyone to read I will tell the tale another time.

Although I was trying to make our shopping stretch over two weeks I could not ignore all the items on offer at Sainsbury’s today, so I ended up spending far more that I had intended but I have a well stocked pantry to show for it. I can’t help noticing that some prices have leapt up again and even when on offer the offer now is dearer than it was the time before.

I have my audiolgy appointment tomorrow – I always dread it. The NHS hearing aids I was given are so hard to get used to they make the world seem a very loud place so I am tending not to wear them unless I have to. The audiologist is not impressed by my lack of progress – I know I should persevere but I have to be in the right frame of mind and this period of my life is rather stressful at the moment dealing with my mum seems to make my hearing worse.

You never know I might even manage a comment or two on the blogs I read. I do keep dibbing in and out as time allows but it was half term last week and blogging plus mum plus grandchildren do not sit well together…something has to give!

I will be back soon, thank you for reading. x

It is always lovely to hear from you, if you would like to leave a comment please click here.

Posted on

meandering ~ discoveries and drizzle

Where do you go when it is damp, cold and continuous drizzle?

On holiday to the north Yorkshire coast of course!

And here we are.

And I am loving it…the winter bleakness, even the dull and damp weather can’t diminish my enthusiasm.

Our 1 bed apartment (see this link if you are interested) looks out over the sea; crashing frothy waves, the occasional surfer (brave), the more than occasional dogs running round and the rolling sea mist.

The journey north was quick last Saturday so we stopped off at Great Ayton (birthplace of Captain Cook) for refreshments and a wander. Too muddy for the little park, we wandered round the churchyard of this Grade 1 listed 12th century church – the Church of All Saints with its cute entrance gate. Though why there has to be an ugly’clean it up’ sign for dog owners attached to the ancient gatepost baffles me – surely no-one would be so disrespectful in a grave yard not to clear up after their pet.

The church is still used today for special services but has no electricity or heating. The tower was removed in 1880 and the whole place is a mix of different periods adding to it and taking away. It is though, a wonderfully peaceful setting and if I were to be burried one day this is the sort of place I would choose, under the great Yew trees with rampant blackberries, ivy and a carpet of snowdrops.

Members of the Cook family are burried here, though we didn’t stop to identify the graves.

I was quite taken by the old vicarage next door which you can see here over the wall standing in front of the newer church of All Saints. It is currently up for sale for the first time in its history and is quite a wonderful house – peeking through the shrubbery for a quick nosy I could easily see myself living there and all for £875,000. Dream on in my case.

Saltburn is not far away from Great Ayton so we arrived before tea, located the flat and dragged our bags up the never ending staircases to the 2nd floor (no lift) but then we need the exercise. We never pack light when going self catering – there are certain things I always take ‘just in case’ after finding some rather unsavoury equipment in previous rented accomodation, one is a sharp knife and our potato peeler (I find other peoples are often blunt),a cheese grater (we have come across some quite rusty ones in the past), a clean jug (I once discovered that it is quite common for some people to use a jug to take a urine sample in for the doctor – so I take my own…jug that is), my steamer (as we never boil our veg and most places don’t run to a steamer), a chopping board (as most will have had meat chopped up on them)….yes I am picky when it comes to the kitchen….oh and a couple of extra towels to supplement the ones provided.

I might add that thankfully – this apartment is well equipped other than the steamer.

Then I take my library of books – this trip I have included two on sketching, as that is one reason for the holiday, the Michael Mosely book Just One Thing to read and make notes, an interesting book called Shiny pennies and grubby pinafores : how we overcame hardship to raise a happy family in the 1950s by Winifred Foley, A Stitch in Time by Una Stubbs (recommended on someone’s blog and which I bought recently for £1.78 as new), last years Country Living Spring edition (still waiting to see this years in the shops), my February folder of magazine cuttings, notes and ideas and my planner.

So I am well stocked up.

On Sunday we abandoned our holiday for a few hours to go across to Yarm to visit my mum for the day. It was the best day so far…calm, sunny and really pleasant – so we bundled her into the wheelchair and pushed her the half mile to the local park and the cafe. It was a good visit and mum enjoyed herself so we were not expecting the barage of calls the following day when our holiday proper began. Sixteen calls throughout the day – I had set my mind to not answering any of them and letting it go to voicemail. It was always the same questions ‘when was the next carer going in?’, ‘why was I not answering straight away?’ Knowing the carers would alert me to any problems I knew she was safe and cared for and honestly…I just needed to enjoy one day of my holiday away from the never ending calls.

I didn’t enjoy the day much in the end it was as bad not answering the calls as it is answering them. I rang her just before the last carer came as I always do and of course she was not pleased that I had not answered her calls and I said I couldn’t possibly be on the end of the phone all the time and sometimes had to have a shower, go shopping or to the doctors etc. Her huffy reply was she wouldn’t be bothering me anymore ever again, which of course then makes the guilt too much to bear and my palpitations worsen and a sleepless night ensued. It was well after the early hours and a long conversation with DH wondering how we can manage this new period in our lives as mum becomes more anxious and needy of us and has to call for reassurance as soon as a carer leaves.

So on Tuesday, true to her word, we had no calls. I rang her at my usual teatime call and told her who the next carer would be and when Vera was on the TV and she was grateful I had rung. I rang her again at 8pm to tell her to put Vera on (thank heavens for Vera on a Tuesday) and all is well again. I expect it will be business as usual again now and she will have forgotten our conversation of me not being on the end of the phone all the time.

Whilst dodging the calls on the Monday, we had a stroll around the centre of Saltburn, checking out possible places for a drink or a meal and having a browse in the craft and gift shops. We returned to the apartment for lunch, a healthy egg salad open sandwich on rye bread and afterwards drove out to Skinningrove, the next coastal village down.

If you have never been and experienced the delights of a gritty, down to earth northern coastal village, then Skinningrove is the place. Fogotten in time, and with no injection of any serious funds from the council budget, I presume, it has a raw charm which I quite like but would not appeal to many who no doubt would prefer the nearby picturesque villages of Staithes and Runswick Bay.

The original cottages, in what would have been a small hamlet, are so lovely. Built with the local sandstone blocks of a soft orangy-brown hue, topped with red pantiles, they once housed families making a living through fishing or agriculture, before the industrialisation took hold.

In the early history of the village there would have been only 13 dwellings, but this was all to change when a seam of iron ore was discovered and in 1848 the opening of nearby Loftus ironstone mine attracted, not only a large workforce, but the building of long rows of tightly packed terraces to house them in and the place expanded within 40 years to 348 dwellings resembling something that looks more at home on the outskirts of Manchester.

This dense mass of red brick terraces (the remaining ones now rendered and painted) with only a back yard and no garden covered the valley bottom and was encased either side by steep hillsides, the mine workings being on the top.

Photo Credit: Facebook

The sheer scale of the model village is absolutely awesome, I couldn’t avoid showing this picture I found from the local Nostalgic North Riding group – my original link through to this photo did not work on all devices so I decided to include the picture (I am never very sure of what photos I can copy from the internet so I hope this one will be kosher). It is said to have had over 80 small shops within this tight knit community. I would imagine that these brand new two or three up and two down houses in red brick would have been thought a luxurious place to live in the day but now suffer from needy maintenance and repair.

These terraces are some that remained after the clearance in the 1980’s

On our stroll around the streets we came across a few notable things.

I thought this hidden away Fish and Chip shop in an old garage round the back of the houses quite enterprising.

And when we came across this sculpture the ‘shanty town’ of sheds littering the hillside on both sides started to make sense.

It is a land of pigeon fanciers. Makeshift huts and sheds, some in a state of near collapse are a continuing reminder of the dedication of the many pigeon fanciers that lived here.

The slopes of the valley would have been their only green space to grow a few vegetables and house their pigeons. It is hard to tell whether some of them are still in use or just abandoned; there seems little evidence of any gardening or winter crops…and not a pigeon in sight.

Eventually, this boom went into decline and progressive closure of the mines led to mass unemployment and in 1958 the last of the mines closed for good. The 1980’s saw extensive demolition at the heart of the village and the long terraces replaced with some very unspectacular more modern social housing, which does nothing to enhance the appeal of this village, but has given each family a small garden. The village has since been awarded the status of a Conservation Area – far too late in my mind. Many of the really old buildings had already been destroyed. Still you can’t help feeling that this village presents a true picture of its history, where the pleasant and picturesque sits tightly together beside the decay and decline and has become an enduring memorial to changing times.

Just as the village itself is in decline so is the hobby of keeping and racing pigeons – it is no longer a young man’s sport anywhere in this country.

It is that kind of idyllic place, nestled into the surrounding hills with a beach on the doorstep and a peaceful atmosphere, where you want it to be beautiful and cared for. A place to treasure. But the reality is different. The community is still tight knit but there seems to be a complete disinterest in improving or acknowledging the decline of their surroundings. When we passed an old chapel, now used as a builders storage unit, I asked the guys working there what the inscription said on the carved stone above the doorway. They were quite amused came out to have a look and said they had never noticed it before! Looking on as an outsider this whole village feels more like a poor urban area and only the rugged beauty of the shore and hills around saves it.

I saw this quote on Facebook ‘History is made up of ordinary days, lived one at a time’.

This sums up this strange place where Skinningrove’s past has shaped the community that’s here today and will continue into the future.

It is Friday now and we still have more discoveries to make this holiday, sketching has been quite minimal so far given the continuous rain, but that doesn’t matter – we will try again another day…maybe even another holiday.

Back soon x

Posted on

dear diary ~ a more productive week

If you don’t know what to say…talk about the weather.

It is wintery – that’s all I can say!

I have found a gap in my time to write this post and now I can’t actually put thoughts onto paper. It has been one of those weeks, where instead of being busy and achieving little, I have done little and surprisingly, achieved a lot.

As I said a few posts back I had planned to look at our finances and paperwork during January and move on to reshaping our health and diet during February.

But February came rather too quickly.

And the paper mountain still resembles a mountain.

I thought I would have to abandon the paperwork task and all I had planned to do in terms of overhauling our finances and decluttering the paperwork to move on and keep up with the original plan, then I read somewhere the other day that there really is no rush to accomplish everything in January and this is the main reason that those well intended new year’s resolutions fail.

This advice has stuck with me and an alternative approach is just what I needed. So the paperwork clearout will continue before I switch to looking at our health and diet.

In the meantime, I can read up on ways to make our diet simpler and healthier. I am sure we will not expire before March through lack of a better diet, and my recent blood test results were good, so I have no reason to rush.

With this updated plan in mind I set about decluttering the files. Not an easy job. I didn’t do them last year and maybe not the year before either. I had accumulated a stack of papers beside my desk and another on the craft table, added to which we brought down a box full of old papers from the loft. The very sight of them each day has done nothing for my peace of mind and other than a kind overnight fairy coming and waving her magic wand I knew they would haunt me until I dealt with them.

So while DH and I have been recuperating from the virus, and the weather has been dreary I made a start on the mound.

Paper clutter is one of those tedious tasks; endless decisions about each piece of paper – toss or file?

Will I need it in future, would I know it was there and could I get the information online if needed?

I know all the advice is to get rid of papers and receipts, but I have been saved many a time because I have kept hold of documents and receipts and could subsequently get a refund or compensation.

So now all the paperwork is suitably sorted and filed away and all the files re-ordered and labelled and the filing drawer is a joy to behold when I open it. The old receipts are shredded and have gone onto the compost heap and last years are packed away neatly in a little box that will be stored in the loft ‘just in case’.

I have a little more packing to do for our week away. The weather has not been good here but it will be nice to have a change of scene and be besides the sea.

I am hoping to do a fair amount of sketching and take my watercolour paints with me. It will feel odd not to have any gardening to do like we had at the cottage. I will miss that and need to get used to a whole different kind of holiday going forward – one that is a holiday and not more work.

We will only be half an hour’s drive away from mum. We will see her on Sunday, but we will not tell her we are staying close by as she will expect us to ‘call in’ every day and that is not what this holiday is about. In fact I have not mentioned we are away because she cannot retain new information now so best not to have that conversation in the first place…for my sanity. Her mind is going sharply downhill now. Everyday she rings as soon as the carer has gone to ask when they will be back. They have a set routine of times but she seems to have lost the ability to understand time now. Five minutes to her is a very long time, so when the next visit is 3 hours away I get numerous calls asking when they are coming.

Once the 3 o’clock visit is over she rings to see who is doing the 6pm one and after they have got her to bed then the calls begin about what is on TV. It is like being in a loop I cannot escape from. I know the holiday will be continually interupted by phone calls but there is little I can do about that – dementia affects everyone around them as much as the person themselves.

DH has made a curry to take with us and some celery soup. We have some slices of nut roast in the freezer that we will pack as well, and I bought a quiche with my Nectar offer. We rarely have anything that is a ready made meal from the supermarket and we hardly eat anything with pastry but I do like a quiche every now and then – it is a shame I couldn’t fit in the time to rustle up a homemade one.

So by the time you read this we might be fully packed, in the car and headed north. I do hope so.

Goodness, I have just realised we will be coming home on Valentine’s day and I haven’t made a card for DH. Oops!

If you would like to leave a comment please click here.

Posted on

dear diary ~ resurfacing in February

Saying goodbye to January and a welcome to February.

After a day or two of feeling considerably yuck, and just when I thought I had shaken off the worst, the virus decided it would linger a little longer. So I had to linger a little longer with it, sometimes on the sofa and sometimes I just gave in went back to bed and slept…the clock round in one instance.

I fully expect this was a reaction to not eating properly or getting to bed at a decent hour for a number of weeks on and off. My body was not going to wait any longer and decided an enforced rest was necessary.

I was disappointed though. At the start of the week, I had planned to embrace my patiently waiting task list, and suddenly and abruptly my plans were cut short as the cold rapidly took hold. At least I managed to go for my blood tests on Friday morning, so not all was lost.

The weather is pretty dismal here; blanket grey skies with an enveloping fog that is always lurking in the background. Drizzle competing with snow, and cold – always cold, so anything bright really stands out like the little red berries on our cotoneaster horizontalis outside the window.

There are other small flashes of colour too – the pretty pale yellow petals of the primulas poking over the tops of the terracotta pots dotted about the garden.

Still I have nothing against January, or February. I welcome the slowing down after Christmas, and like a crab scurrying away into its shell (I am a Cancerian), I love to retreat into my snug, warm home for a few weeks getting ready to emerge when the brighter weather beckons.

In my more lucid moments I have been reading and watching. Reading the Persephone book DH bought me for Christmas‘They were sisters’ by Dorothy Whipple – an engaging read but never expect an absolute happy or conclusive ending with her books, they often leave you with hope that situations might improve for the characters, but nothing more. She tells a good story though.

There is a film too from (1945) I might browse the Talking Pictures channel just in case they have it listed. We are not sufficiently in this century to have a paid TV subscription like Netflix – it would not be a good use of our money. We never had a TV at the cottage in Scotland and I actually preferred not to have one. On our earlier visits we didn’t have a phone or the internet either and were sufficiently cut off from the world to just absorb the peace and quiet. But then the longest we stayed there was only 3 weeks and most often it was only a week or weekend.

I will soon be starting the epic ‘How to End a Story‘ the collected diaries of Helen Garner but not before I have a browse through some of my recent library requests, ‘Unprocess Your Life’ by Rob Hobson, ‘Just One Thing’ by Michael Mosley and ‘The Doctor’s Kitchen’ by Rupy Aujla all in preparation to begin my next project of restoring our diet and health this month.

On the watching side, we have been viewing The Great Pottery Throwdown, Landscape Artist of the Year and the Agatha Christie adaptations on BBC iPlayer. I am also a fan of Art of the Garden on the Freeview Sky channel. I suppose anything with art in the title will always catch my attention.

We are pondering another art workshop, this one being held at a cheese and wine tasting venue in a neighbouring small town of Brighouse. An odd place for a painting and craft workshop (and there is no wine or cheese included) but they are making use of their room whilst it is not been used for tasting sessions. There is a social session and an artist led session to choose from.

Our idea is to jump in the car one day soon and check the place out before committing….and I will sneak in a visit to one of my favourite places – the large independent Boyes department store for a mooch around. You can always count on them to have something that you never knew you wanted and all at affordable prices. And yes, I do keep telling myself I shouldn’t even cross the threshold to avoid any temptation.

So how did my financial review last month go?

I spent as much time as I could in January addressing our financial position and fashioning a new budget for the year using last years figures, increasing them by a 10 or 20% margin to allow for the continually rising prices.

Once all the interest payments from our ISA savings have been accounted for we will be a few pounds richer. It always feels good to see the pounds increase when normally, all we experience, is the monthly decrease of our pension income.

I received the Vinted sales report for last year – a tidy £171 acquired on clothing items sold. Most of this is actually going to my daughter for the clothes she had accumulated but didn’t have time to sell herself. It is unfortunate she has not yet regained her pre-pregnancy size and these lovely clothes were languishing unworn in her wardrobe. Not all the clothes were advertised on Vinted as I took a lot to the charity shop as well so they didn’t miss out.

But we have yet to have the boiler service (next week), a probably large dental bill (postponed for 2 weeks), and we have a holiday upon us for a week on the North Yorkshire coast. A whole week looking out over the sea…I can’t wait.

Having a quick review of the housekeeping we managed to keep it down to just over £290 for the month, so I am pleased with that. It would be amazing to keep it at that figure every month, but I have to be realistic and I was starting January with a lot of stock in the pantry. Ideally, I would prefer to keep only ‘one in hand’, or ‘replace one as I use one’ but I have to be realistic and being ill, together with the bad weather, I realise I do need to keep the pantry well stocked for the first 3 months of the year at least as it gave us something to fall back on when we couldn’t get to town.

But yes, the coffers are definitely looking good so far this year.

Not being well enough for a trip to town, I did as maybe we should all do (and I know many of you already do) shop local. But really, a tin of non-organic Heinz baked beans £1.77 from the Co-op (I had to read the price label twice), I didn’t even look at the price of the loaf, courgettes and mushrooms, just offered them up at the till and paid by card.

I desparately needed a small present for my friend’s birthday too. The present box is currently empty, so after leaving the doctor’s surgery on Friday I had to find something in the village amongst the beauty parlours, dog parlours and turkish barbers (like everywhere we are short on proper shops now).

I completely forgot about the gift shop along the main street and had decided on a cyclamen from our lovely florist. But when we got there the cyclamens were on display outside and decidedly limp from the drizzle. It is the tiniest shop but she has one or two gifts inside and I spotted just the thing, these tiny mice. I bought an extra one while I was there to keep in the present box. I know my friend will love it as it is the sort of thing she would gift to me.

I delivered it to her doorstep and declined to go inside – so as not to spread my germs.

Of course just lying down not being able to participate in real life for a few days left time for thinking and daydreaming….. and thinking and daydreaming of organising and running our home. Some readers will know that I am very much a fan of Lean and using Lean methods to run my house. It is a system developed by Toyota in Japan many moons ago, and in my mind there are many good things practiced by the Japanese and Lean is one of them. It is a system I used at work with my team to good effect, but it works just as well for running an efficient home.

There are many strands to the whole concept. I will briefly explain:

Streaming, the idea that everything is progressed as a stream that is followed through from beginning to end – cooking, laundry, shopping;

Kaizen or continuous improvement where you look for ways to be more efficient and create solutions to any problem areas;

Muda, meaning waste and this encompasses anything from money, time or ingredients and especially the environment. Reducing this waste is particularly beneficial;

Seiri and 5S; Sort, set in order, shine or clean, standardise and sustain. This speaks for itself – wouldn’t we all love a home that ran itself efficiently by just following a few simple rules;

And lastly, you manage all this with the help of a simple Kanban board a home’s central dashboard if you like.

It is a while since I have really used these principles and I am eager to get back to streaming the management of our home again. Last year and 2024 were ususual years for us with a lot of coming and going with plenty of house selling and buying within the family and, as is quite the case, things move on and my systems and streams need an overhaul.

I have a few more areas of our finances to improve on and streamline before I move onto this months topic – our diet. You cannot have missed the number of TV programs, magazine articles and books all talking about the disadvantages of eating ultra-processed foods and the many advantages of eating well. It is something I researched last year and also signed up to the Zoe programme, started a few years ago by Tim Spector (who is also running the TV programme What Not to Eat). So no doubt I might have a few posts talking about my health journey.

But that is another day another post.

Have a good week everyone, back soon x

If you would like to leave a comment please click here.