Leftovers

Monday I cooked one and a half chicken breasts with a handful of mushrooms, half an onion and two thin rashers of bacon. I added some flour and milk to make a white sauce. I cooked enough pasta for four people and we had this for our evening meal on Monday and for lunch today.
When CHS was eating his lunch his colleague announced that the same meal could be purchased for £1 ready made so I'd wasted money making it from scratch. So I added up what I'd spent.
Chicken  £1.50
Bacon         20
Onion           8
Mushrooms 23
Spaghetti.   30
Milk.           25
I haven't added in the cost of butter and flour to make the white sauce of the cooking costs but even allowing for those I think I'd still be under £4 for 4 meals and my meals are more substantial than the ready meals and a lot tastier

Scratching around for pennies updated

So Christmas was budgeted for as were two January birthdays.
We have saved up for the engine change but there have been a few problems that have increased the bill by £400, our choice mostly.
And then there was a broken tile on my house £80 there is a large stain on the bathroom ceiling and the tenant wants it repainted which means the whole bathroom needs doing.

My monthly budget starts on the first of the month so although CHS got paid last week and we still have  savings left I decided to manage with what I had.

Raiding the freezer doesn't yield much, it's a very tiny freezer but I found a few slices of liver and 4 sausages.  I found a £2 coin in the car, so my shopping list today was onions and milk. Total cost £1.46

We will have liver and bacon tonight and sausage casserole tomorrow. I have chicken thighs too but we had chicken on Monday.

CHS announced on the way to work that the boat engineer needed an empty milk bottle today so when I got back to the boat could I 'throw the milk away and rinse out the bottle'!
Throw a pint of milk away? Not bloody likely!
I had porridge for breakfast and made cheese sauce with the rest of it as I have a cauliflower, it will go nicely with the liver and bacon.

High winds and low bills

It's windy here again but I quite like the boat rocking.

We were given our electric bill today, £34 for the last quarter.

We bought a new gas cylinder today, £22 it will last 3 months.

Also a bag of logs, £6 and 3 bags of coal, these will last 10 days.

I've finished the waistcoat for Dgd, I'm hoping to take a photo of her wearing it next week.

White knuckle weather

Wednesday's weather was white knuckle driving weather, heavy rain, high winds and the potholes getting bigger by the minute.

Thursday and Friday all is still and calm, sunny at times.

The weather is so changeable at the moment.

Moment of panic

I had a moment of panic, I suddenly remembered that last year when I was changing my mortgage that there was a problem with my driving license.
I'd used it as proof of ID as I don't have a passport. It had been refused as it was out of date.
With all the stress of dealing with semi literate solicitors clerks and other idiots I completely forgot about this.
When I remembered it earlier this week, it meant I had been driving illegally for over a year.
I rushed to check my driving license, expiry date 2021, phew. It isn't out of date, the solicitors clerk had read the issue date instead.

Canal time

We are having our new engine fitted this week, it's happening in canal time, this is different from normal time.
The engineer was supposed to be here first thing Monday morning. CHS was up dressed and pacing the deck by 7:30. The engineer arrived about 10. I was expecting him around lunch time Tuesday so I was pleasantly surprised.

CHS really struggles with canal time I keep thinking he's mastered it but then I realise he hasn't.

No one rushes on the canal, probably because the boats travel at 4 miles an hour people slow down as well.

Every job we have had done on the boat has taken 3 times as long as promised, but as the price remains the same I don't mind.

CHS and I have some animated discussions (blazing rows) about this when we are cruising.  He doesn't feel I'm making enough effort to break the world speed record for lock operating.

It got to the stage where I refused to go out because he got so het up about me not getting the locks and bridges open fast enough.

This was a problem as we are leaving the marina soon to become constant cruisers!

In the end I asked some of the weekend lock volunteer's to have a word with him. They explained that there is no need to rush at the locks. Slow and safe is the best way.

Cry wolf

We have had an escaped wolf wandering around, a few people tried to catch it thinking it was a German Shepherd dog!
The wolf named Torak escaped from the nearby Wolf Conservation Trust there is disagreement as to whether he escaped during the recent stormy weather when a tree fell and damaged the fence to his enclosure or whether a gate was deliberately left open.
He was recaptured unharmed before long.