General Chat

Morning.
Not a nice morning so far today, it' has been raining 7 everywhere is soaking, so not sure if i will manage to get outside & do some more work on the hedge!
Typical really, staring a project only to have to stop 1/2 way through because of a change in the weather.

Florence, reading your latest reply re staying with your mum made me chuckle, the last time I visited my late mam in York was a nightmare, she had a council flat (block of 4) on a long street & hers was downstairs with the bedroom window facing the pavement.

Mam told me I would have no trouble sleeping as it was a quiet street etc & that she never heard a thing when in that room.
Aye right, it was awful, I hardly slept a wink, people up & down the street walking past the window I could hear what folks were talking about, some stopping to chat/argue to others they met along the way, the clip clopping of stilletto heeled shoes, others shouting to others across the street, & worst of all the entrance door to the flats slamming shut every time someone went through it.

My mam was very surprised to hear of my complaints as she never heard anyting at night & she wouldn't accept my suggestion that she was because she was DEAF !!
I am used to a much quieter life, wrap round fields, no immediate neighbours no passing traffic, perfect peace.

I wouldn't go back to my home city either, York is such a busy, noisy place these days even way outside of the city walls, & after 51 years of living in rural Aberdeenshire I would never settle.

Joan.

Morning chit chatters

Joan, latterly my mum was quite deaf too but she says she wasnt! She would have the tv volume up at 42!!!! When I would ask her to lower it she said she could hear it perfectly at that level :-D :-D Nevermind that it burst my eardrums.

Yes people walking by and stopping to chat or late night revellers arguing outside.

Nah, dont miss that at all. Of course I wish the buses ran a bit more frequently but I cant get on them anyway. I feel a lot safer in general here and far less crime. I cant remember anyone being burgled in the village areas I have lived in.

So its overcast, still blowing a gale and think it is going to chuck it down soon.

Just pottering about tidying up as per usual. Some accounts need my attention and need to rewrite my xmas card list.

I have new roses in bloom here, quite something, a red one and a yellow one. The pansy seeds I planted have also started to sprout now so hopefully come Dec they will look quite pretty.

Having the friend to dinner tom eve so going to prep stuff later and may even cook the curry as always tastes better the next day and it will save time as we are supposed to be going out somewhere weather dependant!

Daughter took my 2 duvets back today. The quality was quite poor and wasnt happy with the colours so shall get a refund for those. I am going to reorder the one I have on my bed in a single size. Its white with duck egg/turquoise flowers and hearts on it and its lovely and soft. Much better quality. Don't think the nieces will mind getting the same, they share a room anyway.

Right break over and off to be busy

Florence in the hebrides

I have had a lovely day out with my neighbour. She wanted to go to Scarborough, so we did. We parked on the front and went for a walk around Peasholm Park. Then we had lunch in a cafe on the front, a good find as it served homemade food, not the usual fish and chips. We then walked along the beach picking up bits of sea glass which she wanted. We came back along the prom and went back to the same cafe for coffee and scones. On the way back we stopped at Pickering and I showed her the town centre which she had never seen.

Before I left this morning, the estate agent sent the revised brochure. There were just a couple of bits to put right, so I phoned up and he altered them while I was on the phone. He asked if it could go live on their website, so we agreed. On the way back home they rang and we have our first viewing in the morning l will have to gallop round tonight and make sure everything is ready. I am really tired after my long walk on the beach, so I could have done without that.

Wow Linda, thats amazing! Hope its a good outcome :-)

The viewing seemed to go well, it was an older couple who have sold their house and are in rented accommodation. Ideal, but we probably won’t hear from them again :-(
We have another viewing tomorrow

My new iPad arrived at lunchtime. There is nothing wrong with my current one, but OH always has my cast offs and the one he has is so old that it won’t run some of the apps any more. He likes reading the BBC News and suddenly it wouldn’t run on his old iPad anymore. So I got a new one and he now has my old one. It should have been so simple to set up my new one, you just download the latest back up from iCloud and the new iPad is identical to the old one . It should have been, but it wasn’t :-(. Last week Apple updated their operating system to iOS 17 and my old iPad was updated, but my new iPad sitting in a box in a warehouse was still on iOS 16, so it wasn’t compatible with the iCloud download. I had to go round the houses setting it up from my old iPad before I could do the iOS upgrade. That left me with most of my apps missing. So I did a factory reset on the new iPad and then I could download the back up from the iCloud and everything was as it should be
What a palaver for something which should have been so simple, at least I am tech savvy enough to sort it out.

Good morning all.

Sleepless night as the wind was strong from midnight and still is! neighbours plastics from their bin strewn across my garden(not the first time!). Daughter messaged her on FB asking if her bin was ok! She sent her daughter round to pick it all up although she should have been in school??

Had a lovely day yesterday. I made the curry in the morning and prepped all the trimmings and set the table. We had "Nosecco" in wine glasses with a cocktail cherry lol and really enjoyed that.

Friend came over at 4pm and we were able to chat and laugh before the meal as I only had to cook rice and bake naan bread and onion bharjis which dont take long.

They really enjoyed it and we enjoyed good company. Havent laughed so much in months. We all have the same wacky sense of humour :-D :-D They left about 9 as had an hours drive.

looking forward to them coming back beg of Dec....just in time for my Birthday :-D

So have tidied up kitchen and returned to normal. Just a huge basket of ironing needing my attention. Daughter away to town so can get on a lot quicker by myself.

Linda, hope the 2nd viewing goes well today, fingers crossed.

I am quite PC savvy and a techy too. When we got a new PC years ago, I set it all up myself and all my friends didnt have a clue!

I dont have a IPad but a PC, Kindle and a phone. Daughter has everything except a PC lol.

Hope everyone is ok and if you would like some wind, I will happily blow it down your way :-)

Florence in the hebrides

Your evening sounded good Florence, I am glad that you have enjoyed yourself.

We have had three viewings today, two of them cash buyers. We decided that we had better go and start looking at houses in Harrogate, so we have made some bookings for viewings for next Monday and Tuesday, as we have to stay at our daughters house on Monday night to help out when she goes to London for the day on Tuesday. Annoyingly I can’t get one of the estate agents to ring me back and they have two houses we are interested in. I wouldn’t be very happy with them if I had a house for sale with them.

I hope that you are OK up in Scotland Florence and Joan, the weather seems to be dreadful.
It is 20 degrees here, very strange for October.

The estate agent I couldn’t get in touch with finally phoned back, but they are so busy that we can’t see the houses we want to see with them until next Friday. We are seeing some others from other agents on Monday and Tuesday.
We have some more viewings on ours next week, no offers yet though, so we can’t offer on anything we like.

We had our Covid booster this afternoon, I hope that I wont be ill as Inwas after the flu jab.

Windless and reasonably mild (approx 10-12 degrees) here, halfway down the west coast of Scotland.

I expect you're much the same farther north, Florence.

However, it has RAINED heavily and continuously since yesterday, and isn't forecast to stop before about 6am tomorrow.
I haven't set foot outside at all today.

Looking at Accuweather, we seem to have both a yellow and an amber warning for rain.

AWFUL, AWFUL day here in Aberdeenshire, sooo much rain, the water bowie is ffull to the gunnels & more & much of the rain water has over flowed into the drain.
It has more or less stopped now & hopefully won't start again.

I have done nothing much today, apart from making snacks & our main meal I have been crosstitching for most of the day.

Linda, let's hope you will get to see the 2 properties that you would really like to see very soon, such a pain when you can't move along at a steady pace viewing etc, you can't afford to waste time hanging around, I'm sure you want to get things moving along, finding your dream home & selling your present one & hopefully all sorted as soon as possible.!

Hope you are ok Florence,& everyone else.

Joan.

Evening everyone

Well its been a bit breezy today, mild and no rain! We have been included in a weather warning that starts tonight and into tomorrow but no sign of any rain.

I think Glasgow, Stirling and roundabout there got flooded on some roads and trains were cancelled.

Have been busy bees making some more cards as 3 fayres booked and don't want to run out or be making more in between the fayres.

Hope you are ok after your booster Linda.

Quick tea tonight and now sitting cosy with the heating on as felt quite chilly. Watching strictly and the The Wheel.

I also play Online backgammon and Cribbage. Anyone play online games?

Stay safe all

Florence in the hebrides

Botheration :-( :-(

I forgot to put the bread into the bread maker earlier ,so I was rushing about trying to watch Strictly at the same time. I have just gone into the kitchen to see how it is going and there in a bowl on the worktop is the oatmeal which is a major ingredient of this loaf. I dread to think what it will be like when it comes out, it will probably have to go straight in the bin.

It has been pouring all day, quite torrential at times. We are at the bottom of a hill and the water has been rushing down in a river and collecting at the bottom. Watching the cars has been quite interesting. It is a 30mph limit but they often drive too fast. Today though they were crawling along in the middle of the road in case they got stuck in the water.

The A82 along Loch Lomond was flooded, the local trains were cancelled and so were all the cross-border ones, stopping at Preston and Newcastle.

I haven't been outside at all. :-(

Oh dear Linda, that is a real nuisance because it takes so long to bake!! It may be ok, you never know being hopeful. ;-)

Andys mum, glad you haven't been flooded out. Just seen some of the pictures on the news and its quite awful.

I hope you are still alright Andy’s mum.
Luckily the bread was fine. It was white flour with a large amount if oatmeal and a tablespoon each of sesame , sunflower and poppy seeds. It turned out like a good white loaf with the seeds in it. It normally has a more chewy texture because of the oat meal, but it is a perfectly respectable white loaf now.

It is warm, but cloudy here. There is supposed to be sunny this afternoon and nineteen degrees, which will be good as it is the monthly litter pick.

Glad the bread was ok Linda.

Andy's Mum do hope that you are dry and ok, such a worry for you, such awful weather. down south we have been lucky this time. thinking of all of you in the bad weather.

Just copied what I put on another thread as don't want to type it all out again.

I get so used to just seeing the invoice when I log in that it was quite a shock to get one saying delivery cancelled. OK, luckily it does not affect me too much, I have food in for today and have manged to get an alternative slot for tomorrow. But I was thinking how inconvenient if I was expecting visitors. Just shows how things can go wrong. They don't give an explanation, just an apology but I do feel they should offer something for the inconvenience

Yes, I am fine, thank you all. We are in an upstairs flat and the garden is a slope, so rain all runs away. If it's deep enough it covers the road and then flows down on to the beach. The main problem at this time of year is all the fallen leaves, which block the gutters and drains. The council is very good, but with strong winds and torrential rain they simply can't keep up!!

Afternoon to all.
Another very wet & windy day here, been raining through the night & still chucking it down today.
Our house is at the top of a hill & the fields aound us slope somewhat so any "flooding" settles in the lowest corner of one of the fields, we do get puddles collecting at the bottom of the house road where it levels out.

We used to have to pick our way through the puddles long ago when the children were going to school & manys the time they wore their wellies to get to the bottom of the road & then change into their school shoes before having to wait in horrible wet weather for their school bus.

Thankfully we don't have to do that any more.

Glad to hear the loaf turned out not so bad after all Linda.

Joan.

Afternoon everyone looking in.

Its actually been a lovely autumn day. A gentle breeze, mild and sunshine so not bad at all. Last night though, there was thick fog and couldn't see a thing outside but all cleared by morning.

Hope the rain has stopped wherever you are and your weather has improved.

I have been working on this family tree most of the day and its driving me mad!! Just couldn't find people in 1939 grrr How do people just disappear??? Anyway, my head began to get sore so enough for one day. Shall carry on tomorrow.

Daughter has gone for a few days elsewhere so all quiet and tidy here. I noticed my milk was out tomorrow eeeek but thankfully my friend was able to get some and came in for an hour earlier so we had a good catch up.

Really trying to lose a few pounds so nothing huge for tea maybe just a toastie.

I'm going to make a bean hotpot/stew with sliced pots maybe tomorrow and also will need to make a loaf as running low on bread.

Goodness, I'm normally well stocked so must have had a few senior moments when doing the last shop.

Was thinking back in the day at this time of year, we use to go chestnutting, blackberry picking and mushrooming. Was fab gathering food for free and then cooking it that night...those were the days eh.

Hope everyone ok after the weekend awful weather

Florence in the hebrides

It has been really hot here today. I put my ankle boots on and that was a mistake as my feet were boiling.
We have been looking at houses today. The first bungalow had potential, the second one we ruled out. When we looked at the kitchen, it had an electric hob. I asked where the oven was and apparently it didn’t have one, they just used the microwave :-S
The third bungalow had been newly renovated and was great, but in a grotty area, so that is out. We are staying at our daughters tonight as she has to leave very early in the morning for her London day. She doesn’t get back until 9.40 pm, so we will be helping son in law with the girls.
We are going to see a house tomorrow, we were supposed to be viewing another one as well, but that has just been sold. On Friday we are coming back over to view three more properties
We had feedback on the four viewings had on our house. Two definitely interested, one really keen to buy it, but have to sell their own property first. We have two more viewings on Wednesday as well, so we will just have to hope someone makes a suitable offer, but I am not building my hopes up too much.