And those are just the severe weather warnings for Friday and Saturday this week. Nothing for the soft south east of course!

So that means a weekend at home from the looks of it. Cheap enough. But not as planned. There was a major food shop to beon Friday but no-one will be delivering with that sort of weather around. Good thing that the cupboard is not bare.
And a day out to Carlisle on Saturday would be nice. But buses don't go through snow drifts. Do you think the weather man could be wrong? Just perhaps?

Do you think I should do something about food earlier than Friday? Ho hum but I'm at college all day tomorrow. And the allotment will be out of bounds if it gets like snowy so there goes another activity.

Well annual allotment rent is due in January - it saves you getting thrown off for non payment of dues so today was the day.  You can only do it on a Saturday morning between 10 am and 11.30 am. So I dutifully went down the road in the pouring rain to the cash machine and drew out £30. I calculated that this would give me £20 for the rent and £2 for membership of the local allotment society (no allotment if you are not a member!) and some change to go into the supermarket for food to cover the weekend. Then I wandered off down to the appropriate shed hidden behind one of the local pubs. Ah yes says Joan - that will be £25 for rent. Hmm that has gone up I says. Town council has just put up prices says Tony. Then it dawns on Joan that I'm 62 and a pensioner so I should only be paying half price and rent promptly drops to £12.50. No said Tony you can't have money back on last year when you should only have paid £10. Oh bother and other rude words but not spoken out loud. Anyway the long and short of it is that I happily paid £12.50 as it was less than I expected. I was also only charged £1 for subs for the allotment society and they also sold me £1's worth of raffle tickets for the annual draw (they do this every year). So I paid a total of £15.50 when I had expected a bill of £22. £6.50 profit then. 

The bad news is that the society is "leveling the playing field during the year" and I will have to pay £25 rent annually till I am 65 to come into line with the men's retirement age. Luckily my birthday is at Christmas so that is only 2 years and on year 3 I will be able to pay half price again. Must remember to take my birth certificate down in 2011 to prove that I am 65!!

Did I save the money and spend it on food or save it? No I went into the indoor shopping at the Metro Centre in Gateshead as it was raining, had a cup of tea and two crumpets, bought the local paper and treated myself to a bubble bath from Lush.  Anyone who has never been into a Lush shop is missing out on treats. Vegetarian, ethical and absolutely lovely bath bombs, slices of bath bubble, soaps, shampoos, bath jellies and loads of other goodies. Yes you know Lush by the smell and yes it's far more fun that Bodyshop. It's much more about colour, sparkle and smell with as little packaging as possible.

Had a good walk round the other shops and considered possibilities for the digital camera that I need for the course I want to do at college next year.  I haven't seen the one that would be ideal yet and I haven't saved up for it yet. But this is a large expense and not to be done in a hurry. The longer the money stays in the savings account the more interest it will earn and the less it will cost me thanks to the generosity of the bank paying me for the money I have lent them.

Right so the government should do something about obesity? Well the doctor did a quick MOT on me last year, said I needed to loose 5 stone and that I should eat more fruit and vegetables. But I'm just not motivated to loose weight. So what is anyone going to do about that now? So here is my health question and answer session
Q: I've heard that cardiovascular exercise can prolong life; is this true?

A: Your heart is only good for so many beats, and that's it... Don't waste them on exercise. Everything wears out eventually. Speeding up your heart will not make you live longer; that's like saying you can extend the life of your car by driving it faster. Want to live longer? Take a nap.

Q: Should I cut down on meat and eat more fruits and vegetables?A: You must grasp logistical efficiencies. What does a cow eat? Hay and corn. And what are these? Vegetables. So a steak is nothing more than an efficient mechanism of delivering vegetables to your system. Need grain? Eat chicken. Beef is also a good source of field grass (green leafy vegetable). And a pork chop can give you 100% of your recommended daily allowance of vegetable products

Q: Should I reduce my alcohol intake?

A: No, not at all. Wine is made from fruit. Brandy is distilled wine, which means they take the water out of the fruity bit so you get even more of the goodness that way. Beer is also made out of grain. Bottoms up!

Q: How can I calculate my body/fat ratio?

A: Well, if you have a body and you have fat, your ratio is one to one. If you have two bodies, your ratio is two to one, etc.

Q: What are some of the advantages of participating in a regular exercise program?

A: Can't think of a single one, sorry. My philosophy is: No Pain...Good!

Q: Aren't fried foods bad for you?

A: You're not listening.... Foods are fried these days in vegetable oil. In fact, they're permeated in it. How could getting more vegetables be bad for you?

Q: Will sit-ups help prevent me from getting a little soft around the middle?

A: Definitely not! When you exercise a muscle, it gets bigger. You should only be doing sit-ups if you want a bigger stomach.

Q: Is chocolate bad for me?

A: Are you crazy? HELLO! Cocoa beans! Another vegetable. It's the best feel-good food around!!

Q: Is swimming good for your figure?

A: If swimming is good for your figure, explain whales to me.

Q: Is getting in-shape important for my lifestyle?

A: Hey! 'Round' IS a shape!!

Well, I hope this has cleared up any misconceptions you may have had about food and diets.

And remember:

"Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways - Chardonnay in one hand - chocolate in the other - body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming, "WOO HOO, What a Ride!"

It is interesting to follow The Frugal Life and the successes and traumas of  Piper. So much feedback and so many other tips to consider.  Some of the suggestions won't be much use to some of us (a bicycle won't do for many of us pensioners!) but there are lots of other ideas coming out that I'd forgotten about or never considered. Picked up this article with some good ideas in it - the pointers are worth remembering. The local buses carry a freebie newspaper on weekdays which lists a lot of events at the local art galleries in Newcastle (free) and also what films are going on. A look in the local paper in the library is a clue as to very local happenings.

There is a pile of homework from college this week! Notes to write up, postcards to make, practice on animation in Flash - phew this is a bit harder than I expected it to be. Still as the rest of the course has been a bit of a doddle I can't complain. Oh no I hear you cry?  Oh all right - I can complain.

There's a compost heap that needs attention and the garden centre is just beginning to show signs of life - spring should be here soon. If the ground would dry a bit I could start getting bits and pieces done. Want to plant some dwarf fruit trees this spring so that we can have apples next year. Roll on the fine days.

Yesterday it rained heavily, then snowed heavily, then thawed partially and then froze the resultant inch of walked on slush on the pavements. The council has put sand on the pavements this morning but to no avail as the air temperature is still below freezing. Have managed to get a small path from my door across the frozen iced yard and up the steps to road level but then the parking space between top step and pavement is an untreated ice sheet. That's a common situation along this terrace and most of the houses within ten minutes either way have at least steps up to road level even if they do not then have a parking inlet. No-one seems to have ventured out today except for one working household who had no option. The car that usually goes up to the Alnwick Garden to work is still here - that is a very long journey indeed by rural roads.

There will be a lot of older folk who decided not to go out yesterday to collect their pension from the post office or to do food shopping due to the weather - Monday being pension day. They will be less able to get out today than they were yesterday. I can't say that I have seen anyone pass the door this morning from the older group - not even the fitter ones going for their papers.  I see that we do have service buses so I suppose that if I feel like crossing the ice sheet I can go out today.  Not that you can do food shopping in the enclosed area of the Metro Centre, the farm shop at the garden centre will be across another ice sheet called the car park and I doubt if the market stalls will have made it into the local town.

It is a good thing that the stores cupboard does not need refilling and that I still have enough fresh vegetables for a couple of days.  Thursday is college day so I ought to be out then if things have improved.  It will probably all have solved itself by then - one way or the other.

Last Monday the vacuum cleaner stopped working. Ho hum and a bit of an emergency. You ever tried to carry one of these home on a bus? That's right - bad idea.  So on-line again. Last one cost £40 and lasted 4 years. Not bad for a cheap, 1400w bagless cylinder vacuum cleaner. Small flat here so only a small cleaner needed. Definitely bagless to save money, certainly cylinder as this would fit into the space available in the cupboard and definitely a bit more powerful. So now to find one. Nothing suitable had been advertised on freecycle (could have asked family to collect) so it was a case of paying for it. Boo hoo.

Work down the on-line shopping sites that I use and trust. John Lewis too expensive in this case. Nothing I fancied at Amazon as all of the items came from second party sellers that I had never heard of at prices I thought a bit too much. Looked at Argos and there was really nothing there that stuck out a mile. Looked at Asda and there was a nice was but it was ordered on demand and would take 5-7 days to arrive and cost about £8 in delivery charges. It was the thought of a week without a vacuum that was the sticking point. Went onto the Tesco site - look they were not charging delivery for orders over £50 for one week. Good start. I found a vacuum that was reduced by £10 but was just under £50 that fitted the spec being 1800w bagless and cylinder. Fine I was £15 in hand at this point. Now here we stop being frugal for a minute - sort of. I had 6 white mugs that were quite usable but which I hated - just hated - but which were cheap when I bought them and they did the job for many years. So back to the Tesco site. They were clearing Denby mugs at £5 each instead of £10 each.  So add two mugs to the order at £10 and I was over the magic £50 and yet still £5 in profit due to there being no delivery charge.

As an afterthought - the new cleaner was only £9.92 more than the one I bought 4 years ago. If I remember rightly the last one was a special offer on clearance from Argos (which was within carrying distance at the time). So I'd say there was no inflation there. Oh and the local council took the old one away free as I'm over 60 and in receipt of at least two of the listed benefits so no disposal costs. How did I remember what the last one cost? Oh I found the old receipt in case I needed to take it back under warranty when I threw out the instructions (keep instructions for everything). 

I put the old white mugs on freecycle along with some surplus china (nowhere to keep anything here due to lack of cupboard space) and someone who was just moving into their first (council) house with wife and baby took the lot away. They were only 10 minutes up the road so it cost them virtually nothing to collect them (they came up in a car to save carrying) and it cost me nothing to advertise the stuff. And I now have 5 Denby mugs in total - much nicer - and one big yellow one with a smiley face on it that I was given for a present.

Have a one bedroom housing association (arms length for the local council) flat with bedroom, bathroom, kitchen cum sitting room and a small adjoining hall.  It is on a hill well away from the local river but with grand views from the rear over the Cheviot Hills.  The rooms are generous with nice high ceilings (no it isn't built as a council house - it was acquired but that's another story) and it has a lot going for it - not least being off estate and on a road full of private houses. The front door has been replaced with a double glazed unit as it was cheaper to do that than to repair the old single glazed one.

But can I talk the housing association into putting a double glazed door on the weather facing side? Nope. I have tried all sorts of tacks but seem to have failed to have it included in the planned maintenance or done as a one off.

Trouble is that heat absolutely walks out of this side door. The door has been shaved in the past when it swelled with the damp weather. So on dry cold or windy days the cold comes in a treat through the gaps. The best the association would do was to replace the draught excluder round the outside and ensure that the frame was not loose. This was despite the best efforts of the local housing officer and the energy efficiency adviser who thought that double glazing was the best option.

As the heating bill paid by direct debit was up to date with a credit too, I decided that the £200 winter fuel allowance would stretch to some full length lined curtains for the flat.  One set was for the enormous bedroom window looking out over the hills. As we are so far up the slope of the hill there are no houses behind that will defend that side of the house from the weather.  The other set was to provide a cover for this side door to act as a sort of double glazing.  

First stop the charity shops in Hexham. There was one lovely set that would have done the bedroom at £21 in one shop! But as luck would have it the large local department store over the road was selling off pairs of curtains - 90 x 90 and fully lined - at £20 a pair. These actually have a slight fault in that each curtain is made of two pieces of material - but the vertical seam doesn't show unless you know where to look on the styles that I have chosen.  Does explain the price though.

I was also lucky in picking up glide rails in the sales as well - £5 each – in the Gateshead Metro Centre which is just half an hour away on the bus.  The carpenter from the housing association put up a baton above the side door when he came to sort out the draught excluder and for a cup of tea also fixed the glide rail on to it. So all I had to do was to hang up the curtain.So I do feel that for £50 I have done something to help the heating bill. But it does seem sad to have to resort to old fashioned methods that Granny knew when more modern methods would be far more cost effective in the long run and an investment in the property for the future.

It's winter again and that has to be the time of the year when the utility companies put up their prices. nPower our local company has put it's prices up this month by 29.9%, EDF has put up it's prices by 20.8% and British Gas has just said it is raising it's prices by 15%.  These are all total rises for people who take dual fuel from one company. This just leaves Scottish Power and E.ON (used to be Powergen) to say what they will do. Sites like Money Saving Expert, and uSwitch are saying that it is not yet the time to switch till all the power companies have hiked their prices. I must admit that it looks like bad housekeeping for nPower to be that much ahead of the rest with it's rises. You also have to realise that all the switching sites make their money from being given donations from the company getting the new customer - also that the door to door salesmen from the electricity companies get paid so much for each person that they sign up. Also you need to have a degree in maths to compare the prices per kilowatt for the different companies.

Pensioners who do not have a computer and who are not good with the internet even if they go to the library are often totally worried about all the messages on in the media about changing their suppliers as well as all the horror stories about where it has gone totally wrong. They decide that it is all to much, are scared and worried. So they maybe do not get the best deal for them. I think it is worse the older you get because keeping up with all the changes is a stressful occupation and if there is no-one you trust to help you then life gets a bit hard.

Anyway - so far so good - my prices haven't risen. No doubt they will and I shall have to go and have a look around to see what is worth having. I'm always a bit suspicious of being tied into a price for 2 or 3 years as I live in hope that prices will drop. Silly me.

I've picked up from somewhere a blog by a lovely lady who is trying to live frugally. She's young and always had enough money to be able to do pretty much what she wants to date and has a bloke too.  She has looked at what to do and what not to spend but she really has no long term ideas. She planned a frugal month and forgot to put money by for food and replacing furniture - she thought that on a state pension with pension credit she has money for socialising.  So I think we had better help her along as many of the people on very low incomes have already tried to do. First things first - she has put up what she thinks will be her expenses as a pensioner at The Frugal Life 18th January 2008

I think that she has some way to go - I have sent her a copy of my budget for each week and await a reply with interest. Now she does have to realise that I went to London for a weekend but the son paid for my travel (well his wife sent the cheque for the train) and all expenses whilst I was there.  We had to plan this a month in advance in order to get the cheapest possible ticket from Northumberland to London - if you buy on line and wait till the cheap tickets come out you can usually book two singles on specified trains with a set seat in order to be able to travel cheaply. Yes I did take some presents down but let it be said that I got a sizable reduction on a book he would enjoy as it was marked (did tell him mind and show him the fault) and picked up another large present on a buy one get one free offer from a shop that only opens for the Christmas season on the last day as it was closing down. The rest of the presents were special offers picked up over a number of weeks and wrapped up in paper that I bought last year on special offer. I still have some Christmas paper left for next year too.  It's all a case of taking enough money for a cup of tea once a week and going to the various shopping centres on the free bus pass with a bit of spare cash. You will find what you want with a bit of looking and as you have time as a pensioner you can do regular spot the bargain trips. You do need to go to different shopping centres though as there will be different offers in different places.

Had a few very pleasant days in London with family - meal out, visit to the Natural History Museum, looked after, travel paid for. Now here I am back home with a pile of washing, homework from college still to do, a visit to the allotment pending, full rubbish bins .... Oh and I have another course at college that I could do next year and a follow on from that the year after.

The only new year resolution is - either not to get a job as I'm past retirement age and can find lots of other things to do or to smarten up sharply in order to have more chance.  It's just that a proper wage would be fun to spend.