There were gales early in the week and lorries blew over around here.

There was an earthquake this week and some people's beds shook or their chimneys fell down.

There is another gale blowing here today so there will be more lorries falling over.

The local paper is full of news about there being a shortage of places to park in the market town up the road. We've all known that for years. That is five year old news.

The posh pub half way to town where the food is supposed to be excellent had a power blackout that caused them to loose money and when the power came back on it burnt out some of their fridges.

There's a report about a planning disaster in the local paper but no doubt they have got the information wrong which is quite normal.

I told the tutor at college that I was only doing well on the interactive web design course because I was very good at paperwork and that there was more paperwork than design work. Other pupils agreed with me. We'd already told him to get some new trainers because the ones he had before half term were falling apart for all to see.

The washing machine went maverick this morning and instead of doing a 32 minute wash at 50 degrees did a boil wash at 90 degrees. Exit two woolly jumpers and two pairs of shrunk socks. But the knickers were very white.

We celebrate a year on the allotment this weekend! A whole year.  And the dandelions are showing in force already. Soil is still soggy and it's far to early to plant up here really. So I spent two hours with a spade shifting some bags of dandelions. Of course they will come back in some cases but at least these are not going to flower and then seed whilst I'm catching up on other things.

It was certainly interesting working in a very strong gale force wind that blew all the wheelie bins up and down the road once the bin men had emptied them. There will be people in the nearby houses looking for their bins tonight.

The answer to the question is - quite a long way if the family decide they want to go round the garden centres and take you free. Local branch had been on holiday all week, been away, come home, caught up with the housework and decided that they had time to go round on a tree for the allotment hunt.

So we went to places that I hadn't visited before to see what was on offer. Two big national chains were rejected as the stock was not as good as the first one up the road that we visited. The daughter said that she liked the look of it last year so why not drop in? The gentleman in charge did an excellent job of  sounding like he knew what he was on about. He's going to be putting out his bare root but potted up stock from Thursday next week and has a good variety of dwarf fruit trees he says. Well in that case we will have one eating apple, one cooking apple, one plum tree, one crab apple tree (I do like crab apple jam) and one pear tree please. Basically his stock looked good and his prices seem very competitive. Oh and it is only ten minutes up the road to collect and another 10 back down to the allotment.

Oh and he suggests putting down some heather friendly compost for a patch so that we can plant blueberries. Not interested. I dislike plants from the heather family and am no great looker after other ones that like acid soil. But "they" want blueberries. Right then - suppose we can try. "They" also want grass under the trees and a seat to sit on. They can have the seat but it's going to be things like clover under the trees. I've cut enough grass in my working life not to want to start that again.

Heck - left to it I would plant all flowers myself. Who signed up for this allotment and paid for it? I think I might decide to have a revolt one of these days.

The 30p question? Oh I forgot to transfer any money from the savings account to the current account which has no overdraft late and which had £1.46 in it on Friday afternoon. So it was a case of  living in the cash free economy with the 30p that was in my purse from 5pm Friday till 06.30am this morning when money appears in the current account again. I'd done all the shopping and paid all the bills so it was no emergency - just boring. It also proved that there was absolutely nothing that I wanted to buy anyway so the money saved for the allotment fruit trees is quite safe.

Now that there is cash in the account, there is still nothing other than the trees that urgently needs buying. Or is even tempting me to buy it. But I have not been to the shops yet by way of the housing office to pay the water bill.

I've been adding pictures of crops grown on the allotment during 2007. These are just to record what was harvested and to give people an idea of what we picked during the season.

Having been creating a diary of the year for a project in order to gain a certificate to show that I can use MS Publisher, a lot of pictures came to hand and it seemed a shame not to add them to the blog.

The diary is going to be the first of a series that record the events of each year on the allotment so that there is a sort of rotation plan, a record of soil improvements and an interesting history of what is being done. It's something to do during the winter months when nothing can be done due to the weather - though last year in the monsoon season that hit mid summer there was nothing that could be done usefully except write up a diary

But for those who want to know what we are doing - this will give some clues. More pictures can be found at http://www.flickr.com/photos/flohewitt/ though I will try and upload some here in the future.

After I had sorted out the £5 shelves yesterday I went for a walk down to the allotment. The ground was frozen! Solid in some places! How depressing - I was going to start a bean trench as there was lots of kitchen waste standing in bags. Humf and I spotted the little house mouse heading for them, attracted by the smell of rotting I suppose. So it was a case of emptying the bags onto the compost heap - which was frozen too!

On getting up this morning, the temperature had risen and the rain was falling. Not to mention that a hooligan was blowing. Now how is the soil supposed to dry out if first it freezes then it gets rained upon? Last week it was beginning to dry nicely and the thoughts were turning to getting hold of a rotavator and turning over all the soil before we start to plant up for spring. There's an idea that has gone out of the window for another week!

Having spent my last fiver on the shelves and paid all the bills (it's direct debit week ), there's a grand sum of £1.50 in my purse and £1.46 in the bank. Now short of raiding the savings account, I'm not going to be going anywhere social till the next lot of  money hits the bank on Monday. As I want to keep the savings to buy fruit trees for the allotment it might just be wise to have some days which require no money. There's a jigsaw to finish on the table and the bed to strip tomorrow. Stripping the bed, loading the washing machine and hanging out the washing is easy. It's doing the resulting ironing and making the bed again that puts me off. I'm also waiting for the telephone to ring - some people are possibly interested in taking the old shelves away but unfortunately I've no pictures and the family with the camera has gone on holiday ....

Awkward corner which will only take shelves and tables up to 90 cms (about 35 inches) wide. Difficult to find. Bought some inexpensive white wrought iron ones that did the job for a time but which didn't fit the decor and which I didn't like. After a lot of spring cleaning and sorting out of book cases and shelves, there was a lot less "stuff" lying around as it was all better organised. Oh and an awful lot less dust.

Lo and behold, the ideal set of shelves in the right beech colour for a fiver turned up in the charity shop today and daughter bought them home in her nice car where the seats fold down flat at the back. Yippee! collapsed and folded up the others, replaced and loaded new shelves. Put a nice picture up behind and now room right.

No longer threatening to move house. 

It's a good time filling occupation working in the garden or on the allotment and costs nothing to labour there. Family and myself planted lots of herbs (mints, parsleys, rosemary, thymes, chives) around the inherited sage bush last year so have a ready supply to liven things up. We've got loads of strawberries too and rhubarb also already in place.

It's too cold to start at the moment (well definitely today) but we are planning to plant patio fruit trees (apples and pears) as well as blackberries to add to the few raspberry canes, gooseberry bush and loganberry we have.  Other than that - onions, carrots, beetroot, peas, runner beans, potatoes, shallots, lettuce, purple sprouting broccoli, marrows, parsnips .... depends when we run out of space. I've pick up some nasturtiums for the bees and flying insects as well as some French Marigolds to go as companion plants for the carrots and cabbage.  The daughter says that we'll go for a trawl round the nurseries this weekend to see what is coming in that we want to grow. The nearest garden centre has patio pears but no apples. They say they couldn't get them.

Next year when I have cleared out all of the compost heap it would be nice to see if we can afford a greenhouse - just a little one so that we can bring some bits and pieces on. It all depends on cost.

That's the best part of a project done then. It's taken four days of almost solid work on MS Publisher to put together 10 pages of pictures and 10 pages of content. I'm glad to have broken the back of it. Now I can have the rest of the time from now till a week Thursday to do more interesting things. There is just one small problem. I've managed to overwrite most of the coursework that I have done on my memory stick and I've lost the backup that I thought I had. I do hope the college hasn't lost the disk that was written for the internal verifier over half term. This is the only backup that now exists. Else I am going to have to go and recreate a whole lot of stuff from hard copy which will be a right royal pain in various parts of the anatomy. But at least it's all easy enough stuff that I have lost - the only problem is that is has to be done in the three weeks before the course is taken in for the final marking at Easter. Cough, splutter. 

I am up to date on the other course in which I am involved though I may well struggle a bit to do the things that I want to do using Flash on the final project for that one. No panic till after Easter for that and then we'll get down to seeing if I really understood the things that we have done - or more exactly whether I can create the effects that I want to do if I have understood it. It is only very basic design work in Flash and not even touching on anything that would require a real understanding. All the pretty stuff that you get in games from Flash is the work of those clever people who spend their time writing code for the internet which is far off my planet of understanding.  I just want to get some simple flowers to nod, some wording to appear on the banner at the top and a little orange with a face on to wink on a website about my allotment. The rest is easy stuff in Dreamweaver that I have been doing for years without number. But a revision course on basic stuff never hurts. But tomorrow I can go down to the allotment and finish off digging in the green manure knowing that there is no homework hanging over me.

I've been asked yet again today. No I don't think so. Nothing planned. And not having planned I haven't budgeted for one.

I'd like a full season on the allotment for a start. Having to shoulder the greater majority of the work there as the rest of the motley crew work, no time seems a good time for a holiday between March and November.  The college courses do end in March and July so these aren't really an excuse later in the year.

I've looked but the travel to places like the Channel Islands or the Scilly Isles is what really makes it costly. Oh and being just a single. Some day someone will explain to me in simple terms why it costs more for a single person to stay in bed and breakfast than for two to do the same. An itinerant life with regular moving of home and jobs away from home have also ensured that there are fewer places in the UK to visit. If you have lived there or worked there you are less likely to think of going there on holiday. It takes the shine off places - you've been there, seen it, done it and got the tee shirt.

But the free All England bus pass from April will make a difference to going out in Northumberland. The present pass only works within Tynedale which is a very small area with only a very few places to go. Being able to escape free to Newcastle and Carlisle, to Morpeth and Alnwick, to all the places up the coast and even to Berwick on Tweed will make a difference. At least there will be more free days out by bus available. The local coach company is threatening to put on a tours programme again. However this is dependent on enough people booking the particular trip to make it economical to run the coach. No takers - no go. We'll see.  Mind I'm not sure if I want to go to Edinburgh, York, Harrogate, Keswick and Chester again.  You can only see the same sights so many times.

After getting down to the allotment on Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday for a couple of hours each day digging in green manure I looked at the house on Wednesday. Sigh - ironing. Mine and for the daughter. And it's amazing just how much "stuff" collects in cupboards when you just put things away so that the place looks tidy. There's a wheelie bin full of flattened cardboard boxes for collection on Monday. Doesn't the average packaging make one heck of a mess all over the floor when you are clearing up the boxes that come with things like new vacuum cleaners and the like?  Note to the environmentally friendly side of me - shopping makes an awful lot of waste.

A morning was spent looking for a suitable folder for the final project on the desktop publishing course which is now well in progress. It has to be completed by Easter and has to be presented properly in hard copy form. What with that and looking for the printer ink so that I can print stuff off and ordering clover in bulk for the allotment I was one broke lady by Monday lunchtime. It was all planned spending but I would have been happier if it had not all happened the same week. There are still two deliveries due and no doubt that will be more packing to dispose of  when they arrive.

Meanwhile I need to go and settle down with the dusting. At least it is now much reduced dusting as there is a lot less "stuff" hiding around the place. I had no idea how much "stuff" I had moved with me when I came back up north. The son only hired a small van so I must have packed the boxes tightly and he must have stacked well in it. I thought that all the "stuff" had been recycled, given to the family or thrown where broken on moving but I deceived myself. 

Basic ideas that most pensioners could use to help extend the pension. Remember that if you don't have a computer that you will find one in the local library where you can follow up some of the tips and hints.

Tips for food, grocery shopping and the regular bills

• Order groceries online. The supermarket carries the bags and you'll avoid the temptation to buy extra items. You save on traveling too.
  
• Bulk-buy staple items once a month (on-line if you can to save delivery charges) from the supermarket and may use of any buy one, get one free offers
• Become vegetarian - meat is expensive and vegetables are cheap
• Grow your own vegetables – in pots on the patio, in tubs on the windowsill, on an allotment if you can get one -all of these are good fun and good exercise
  
• Write down all your expenses and work out how much you need to put aside each week to pay the bills. Save so much a week for heating and lighting,  so much for clothes, furniture and telephone, even the TV licence if you have one, Christmas presents, hairdressing and remember the food. Then draw your spare cash from the bank and live on this – leave the debit card at home
• If you have a computer you can set up an on-line e-savings account that you can run. This allows you to put some money aside every week for bills when your pension arrives so that it is earning some interest for you. You can transfer it to the savings account and back again instantly. There is no time lag so long as you do this with your own bank.
  
• Look for bargains in charity shops, compare prices on-line if you have a computer  and on eBay - although some charity shops have become expensive
• Use Freecycle
  

Tips for activities

• Get on the net - start your own blog, you'll quickly make friends
• Find your local Age Concern day centre - you'll find lots of friendly faces and a hot meal for around £3 a day. You may find that there are other day centres that do the same if there is not an Age Concern centre near you
• If you're fit and able, volunteer. It's fun, free and satisfying
• Don't buy newspapers and magazines, go to the library to read them - it gets you out of the house and saves on heating
• Use your free bus pass as often as possible
• Remember that some taxi firms will give you a discount if you ask first and show your bus pass
  
• Pack your own lunch when you go out
• Check out local walking groups - it's a good, free way to keep fit and meet people
• Cycling - not for all pensioners, but if you're fit, it's an affordable, healthy way to travel
• Check out church coffee mornings where you will find out what is going on locally
  
• Check out OAP-discounted exercise classes at local leisure centres
• Don't forget Orange Wednesday and OAP cinema discounts
• Check out the exhibitions at local museums and galleries where there may be free entry
• Check out courses at your local college to see if you qualify for discounted or free entry
  
• Give up your TV to save on the licence and make use of your radio which is free and computer for entertainment at home
• Make a note of hairdressers that have OAP special offers on set days of the week
• Get to know your local cafes which may do special offers for OAPs on certain days.
  

Tips for heating

• Get your house properly insulated to avoid wasting energy. Grants are available. If you rent your home make sure that your landlord has done the insulation required
  
• Shop around for energy providers
• Pay your bills by direct debit as often you get a discount and you may also save even more if you have a computer and run an on-line account
• You could choose just to heat one room in the house if you have a large house. Why do you think our parents lived round the range in the kitchen in days gone by?
• Claim entitlements, including the Winter Fuel allowance. Many pensioners don't, either because of red tape or because they don't like handouts. But you've paid for it through National Insurance and you deserve it! The CAB or local Age Concern can help fill out the forms

It has been fairly dry for days here so decision made - got the walking work shoes on and went down to the allotment with all the intentions of working. Ground is still very wet but just about workable. Having looked at the green manures, it is obviously time to dig them in - they are showing signs of having had enough of growing. So a start has been made. It's a very rough dig but it's going to have to do and the clods taken down as coming up to planting. Once our friend clay starts to dry out a bit we can put a board down and work over without trampling.  The target is to have all the digging in of winter greens done by the end of next week. Cough, splutter she says as this is a generous double allotment and it will take most of the week to get things in order. It isn't schools half term next week as I thought but the week after so I'm going to have to go into college on Thursday and to fit in a little bit more homework prior to that.

Unfortunately a mouse had somehow snook into the shed. No sign of holes in the shed. So it must have walked in when the door was open some time ago. The shed was tidy but the mouse had found the newspaper that was being saved for the bonfire, the bottom of the kitchen roll, a pair of gloves and an old box. A little paper goes a long way with a mouse. It had also chewed a hole in a fruit net but that I can mend with suitable string and a good needle and also the ties on the end are repairable. So no real damage done except that the gloves have had to go to the bin. I shall be most upset if I find the little so and so has returned tomorrow.

I did find means of hanging up a lot of the nets and carriers of seeds (untouched) against future predators. It is amazing what you find when you need it if you throw almost nothing away on an allotment but just store things tidily.  I virtually emptied the shed except for the canes and had a real good sweep out, checked the tools, containers, bags, and generally gave the place a pre-season spring clean. Note to self - two sets of shears need sharpening. I was going to have a quick prune of odd fruit canes but that will have to be included tomorrow.

I've plans to plant some dwarf fruit trees this spring (March here) so that next year we have apples and pears. It seems that the local nursery does not do dwarf plums. There should be peaches and nectarines but the allotment is not protected enough for those.

I'm really looking forward to the new OAP bus pass that will let me travel free throughout England on service buses. I'll be able to go to Carlisle free (instead of a day ticket) and to Newcastle free (instead of half price). Ooh and I can go to Alnwick and Morpeth and to the seaside too. Carlisle is a lovely place as are Alnwick and Morpeth and some of the coastal villages too!

Hurry up April.

I'm still watching Piper and her struggles to live within the boundaries of a pension and pension credit.

If she only learns from this month to save as much as she can for her pension because she doesn't want to be that poor, it will be a lesson well learned.

By the time she reaches the grand old age of 65, the state will be doing very little for any pensioners. So saving up now and learning that there are inexpensive means of travel, inexpensive but enjoyable meals and inexpensive pleasures for her free time can only be useful for the future.

Came across a new forum for people of a slightly older age that doesn't really want to be a dating agency. Now I like seeing the start of a forum and watching to see if it will take off. Sometimes it takes a couple of years before it develops its own personality and settles down. I remember the St Neots Community Forum from its very younger days and this is now a sturdy town facility and much used. So I am wondering if Shiny Hut will do the same thing - it has the same sort of feel about it. It's certainly a jolly different name.

Came back from the other town up the road by way of the garden centre yesterday and picked up some seed potatoes for a first trial of spud growing on the allotment this year. I have no experience whatsoever so this is really going to be experimental gardening for me. Along with growing marrows. Anything is worth a trial. Perhaps the readers will tell me about tricks for either of these crops. Your successes and failures well described are welcome. 

After the snow, the rain and there seems to be no chance of a few days for the soil to dry out so that I can start to dig in the green manures. Ho hum. It will probably be a lovely day on Thursday when I'm at college. That would be typical - just like yesterday when I had to go to the hearing aid clinic and see that the grandson was fed before going to his folk club where he plays fiddle.  Exit a day on the allotment when the sun was shining.  Meantime the year is wearing on and it seemed to be time to change the face of the blog. It's supposed to be after the season of snow and winter and nearly into the season of spring bulbs and the first signs of  nature jumping too it.  Hmm that would explain the snow last Friday then.

The snow on Friday all piled in on Prudhoe. The school was shut just after lunch break. Apparently according to the bus drivers the snow started at the first bus stop in the town and ended at the last bus stop in town. Every other local village and town merely had dandruff.

That's what comes of being a town built on a weather facing hill I suppose.

Single person on a small income, rotten cook all my life as not interested and just done a survey of the food cupboard. Well I did before I went on-line Wednesday evening for a grocery order from Tesco to arrive after college yesterday.

One or two tins of pasta sauce hiding in the backwoods from days when both time and money were scare. Other than that there is a good variety of lentils, pearl barley and soup mix pulses as well as a variety of cans of beans for use in soups. With the winter veg in the shops (leeks, onions, carrots, cabbages, swedes, main crop spuds and similar) it's a good time to make good thick soups. One pan will do lunch and evening. Baked beans on toast and cheese on toast are quick and easy (if no longer cheap with the rise in prices of bread and cheese). With greens, onions, peppers and apples I can make up a mean stir fry. I suppose I could  pick up some vegetarian suet and add dumplings to the soups when bored with spuds. Haven't done that for ages. Love a quick fry with mushrooms and tomatoes on toast for breakfast. Have some quick recipes with things like swede that you can spice up and put under the grill with a bit of cheese and a few seeds on top as well. But I seem to have grown out of the recipes that were handy when there was a family to feed. The supermarkets also sell in quantity - buy one get one free isn't always what the single person wants. The offers are handy for cleaning, laundry, hygiene but usually no good for feeding the single person.

But I'm looking for ideas that are one pot (saves washing up), quick to cook (saves on the electricity) and which don't need to be made in large quantities as I don't have room for a freezer in the flat. It does have it's limitations - lack of kitchen workspace and lack of place for even a little freezer being two. Yes I could get a fridge/freezer but I use the top of the fridge as the place to keep the Kenwood Processor which is vital in my limited cooking life.

Anyway I stocked up with fresh vegetables (did my best to buy British too), pulses and other good things (no chocolate biscuits even though I did buy a special offer of Coke in bulk and the most enormous jar of marmalade).

So the weather can do it's own thing for a few days. Not good for those pensioners who want to go to the shop to get out of the house though and to see people.