Wintry.

The day began grey and wintry and I congratulated myself on getting the recycling and rubbish out before we had some heavy rain. I'm still not sure exactly which time the different collections happen as although it's all on the same day unlike in Barnstaple it's not just one vehicle. First is the pick up truck that collects the glass bottles and jars. Even though it's only every three weeks we had just one glass jar that had held chopped garlic and I couldn't get the smell out of the lid. Then it's the food waste and the general rubbish. Though the food waste is every week I haven't actually seen a collection but I know it's quite early. Last of all, some time in the afternoon is the weekly recycling collection. 

The weather stayed pretty miserable all morning and brightened up for a short time in the afternoon. 

With my ribs not being too good I scheduled an admin day and I feel I achieved a lot. The first job was to try the Screwfix website and what do you know? I was able to order two of the oak upstands and delivery should be in around 17 days. Maybe I'll get an email cancelling the order because it didn't meet the minimum spend but there was nothing about that on the page. I do know that often the on-line side of a company is different to the store. Fingers crossed. I've also had success ordering a window mop/squeegee with a 3ft handle which is just right for this place. That was from eBay. I've always kept a written record of my spending but that was another thing that had lapsed because of the move. Now I'm back on track with my personal accounts. The other job which took a looooooong time was speaking to our electricity provider to get a refund on the credit that had built up on the account for this place. When we set up the account they couldn't estimate usage with just the builders here and instead charged as if we were living here. Then because we weren't here I couldn't take a reading to adjust the usage and the credit built up. It took forever to get through to speak to somebody and then it was relatively quick. But because it was over £800 I had to take a photo of the meter and as I don't have a date stamp on my photos or at least don't know how to do it on my camera, I had to include a document from the bank that had a date stamp from yesterday. Once that's all sorted we'll look around to find the cheapest deal like we're all advised to do.

The last job was to clear the shelf in the coat cupboard and put in the white boxes which I've labelled with permanent marker. Oh and I started the Christmas cakes. Zesting the oranges made the kitchen smell very festive. I've already gone off the recipe by using whiskey instead of brandy and instead of two lemons and two oranges I used three oranges and a lime (I hadn't wanted to buy a net of lemons). I wasn't keen of leaving the whiskey soaked dried fruits overnight in a metal bowl which is all I have but used the ceramic pot from the slow cooker which is big enough to do the all of mixing of the double amount ingredients.

It's been announced that vaccinations will begin in a couple of weeks which is great news. Sadly the fatality number today is the same as 30 days into the first wave and then they carried on rising for another two weeks. If only people would have the sense to continue taking precautions until everyone (who wants) is vaccinated and let Christmas go for one year. How many more people will die simply because they had to get together this year?