Well I highly enjoyed writing last year’s missive so I thought I would go ahead and do another one!
Let’s see, looking back on 2022, well…
In January we started the year with a glorious sunny walk in the woods, just me and my gorgeous girls on New Year’s Day which was a lovely way to blow away the cobwebs and start fresh and new.
Honestly all the conflicting advice out there at the moment has left me totally confused.com
Almost all the cost of living advice involves blocking up draughts as the main way to avoid heat loss in your home and spend less on heating.
And almost all the mould and damp advice says to ensure you have not blocked any vents and keep all ventilation holes open for air flow.
Except that the giant ventilation holes in my house are pretty bloody draughty. Cos they are literally huge holes in the walls of every room. Sucking all my lovely heat straight out and letting all the cold damp air straight in.
(Other people tell me they have ventilation vents under the floorboards or in hidden places you can’t see, but ours are in the walls directly over the beds, where the cold air blows directly onto you while you sleep…)
So do I block them up to save money on my heating or keep them open to avoid more mould? There doesn’t seem to be any clear advice out there on how to tackle both of these problems at once (trust me I’ve been googling for weeks and I’m none the wiser for it).
I’ve currently got a plan to install an uber-fancy extractor fan in the bathroom that will run all the time to try and reduce the humidity, and am looking at installing some sort of high-tech airex vents that open and close based on the humidity and temperature. But who knows if that will solve the problem.
I also can’t work out if I’m being the most energy-efficient with my heating. I’ve been warming it up a little in the morning (up to 17 degrees) and then keeping it off all day, and have the evening heating set to 19 degrees. However at the moment the house is dropping temperature quite a lot during the day, down to 16 or 15, so in the evening when it kicks in, it takes FOREVER to come back up to 19 degrees. So I’m wondering if it’s using more energy letting the house cool down during the day as it takes so long to come back up to temp, or would it be better to keep the temp hotter in the day so it comes on little and often rather than for hours in the evening? Anyone know what would save me the most money?
And while I’m facing this conundrum here is another one….
The eco-settings on my washing machine all seem to be ridiculously long cycles that wash at cooler temperatures for hours and hours, (literally 3-4 hours for the eco washes). But surely it’s costing a hell of a lot more money/electricity to run the machine for so bloody long? I really want to be eco friendly but am currently running the shortest cycles possible to keep costs down. Is there some sort of trade off or balance to be had between the environment and the cost of living?
All these things seems to be either/or options.
Answers on a postcard please!
So, I am currently having quite the dilemma. Like many people out there in a post-Covid world.
To go back to the office or not go back to the office?
Continue readingSo, once again I am learning more and more about the pros and cons (mostly cons) of Chateau D’Omnishambles…. This week it’s mould (mold?) and condensation…
Last winter this wasn’t something I noticed or cared about as last winter this house was a building site, with broken boiler, no radiators, plastering and construction going on and the doors and windows were open all winter while workmen trudged in and out etc. My previous house was a new build and extremely well-insultated so didn’t have this issue (that I was aware of).
This winter in the new house, we have discovered mould in all the windowsills, a result of the condensation running down the windows every morning since it turned cold.
Continue readingI’ve been wanting to make this one for ages. The original pattern had the tree “leaves”/circles all in one colour, which I think would have looked a bit better, but this was for my newest daughter and as we don’t have any of her baby clothes we wanted it to include other special memories for her like her football kit, school cardigan, pyjamas and nighties, favourite dress etc.
So it’s more colourful and a bit random in terms of a colour-scheme but it’s special and she loves it.
Tonight I paid single tax.
That extra money for things that couples just don’t need to pay for.
S’s football training has been moved later in the evening and it’s a total logistical nightmare. Previously it was 6pm to 7pm on a Monday night, and that was hard enough, as I’d have to entertain a very tired 4-year old on the sidelines in the cold, dark, and often very wet side of the pitch. A usually goes to bed at 7pm and she has been especially knackered since starting school so on Mondays we don’t get home from football til 7.30 and then it’s almost 8pm by the time I can get her teeth brushed and into bed. It also doesn’t help that S’s football team is close to her old primary school which is not even remotely local and all the way across town.
Now the practice is from 6.30 – 7.30pm so that they can share the floodlights with another team, and it’s a massive pain in the arse.
I just can’t expect A to stay up that late, standing about in the cold dark drizzle. And I don’t want S to have to give up football either – she’s a very athletic kid who loves sports and has a lot of good friends on her team. Friendships have been tricky at her new school lately and so maintaining friendships outside of school is crucial right now.
So we have tried out a new babysitter, a local 6th former who babysits for my friend.
I put A to bed, waited til she fell asleep and then said teenager popped over and sat in my house watching telly while I drove across town to collect S from football practice.
Couples have a built-in partner who can just stay at home with the kid while you do this sort of thing. They don’t have to pay some random kid £5 a week so your kid can stay on their football team.
I’m especially annoyed about it as I literally never get to go out, and having a night out usually costs a fortune – you’ve paid £30-£40 before you’ve left the house so it’s just too expensive. But here I am paying a babysitter weekly, NOT so I can enjoy myself but to trundle about collecting the children from their activities.
It’s a tax only single parents have to pay. And I’m irrationally annoyed about it.
In spite of the fact that my second nephew isn’t turning 18 for about 18 months, I decided to crack on with his quilt as it’s an easy pattern and one I was keen to try, and I had quite a lot of scraps of Arsenal shirts leftover from the first quilt for my older nephew!
Being a parent, and especially a single parent, means being all things all of the time, whether you want to or not. It’s a huge responsibility to be the person holding everything together even when sometimes you don’t feel like it.
You are the anchor, keeping everything stable.
You are the Captain, in charge and sure of yourself and your decisions at all times.
You are the navigator, charting a course, figuring out where you are going and how you’re going to get there.
You are the ship itself, keeping everyone safe as you roll around in the stormy weather, reeling and rocking, getting pummelled and battered, while keeping them warm and dry.
You are the activities director, planning all the playdates and football matches and swimming lessons and fun stuff.
You are up the mast clinging to the pole trying to spot any icebergs bearing down upon you, working out if you can avoid them or not, or if you will inevitably have to take the hit.
You are the safe harbour when the outside world is too rough and inhospitable.
You are all of these things, and sometimes, you are also an exhausted human who needs their own safe harbour, and anchor and captain to look after you too.
If you’re lucky enough, you have a support system (or harbour) strong enough to hold you sometimes when you need to dock and refuel, to bolster you ready to head back out to sea and do it all over again.
This morning our milkman apologised to me that he couldn’t deliver my milk on time as he’s had a crate of milk stolen off the back of his truck this morning and he had to go back to the depot to get more before he could deliver it to me.
He said this sort of thing has started to happen more and more recently.
And here’s the thing.
There is no resale value for a bottle of milk. It’s a highly perishable item that is worth relatively little.
The person who stole it almost certainly wasn’t intending to sell it for profit. They most likely just couldn’t afford to buy milk for their own family.
They probably only needed a few pints, but because it’s hard to subtly steal 3-4 glass bottles without drawing attention or dropping them, it would have been easier to just take the whole crate.
I really wish we had a Government that could honestly and genuinely understand how desperate people are at the bottom of society that they can’t even buy milk.
Energy prices for heating and electricty are going through the roof, mortgages are scary and many, many people will be repossessed and will become homeless in the next year, including families with children. People are choosing whether to heat their homes or eat, and articles are appearing all over on how to save money by not using your oven to cook, and how to stay warm without heating your home etc.
The Government has quite literally gone mad and caused most of this crisis themselves, and are refusing to see the sheer desperation of a large portion of the population who have been through enough over the last few years of austerity and Covid combined.
I honestly found this milk theft to be so, so sad and I feel so much empathy for the person who stole it. I cannot imagine how hard that person’s life is right now, and I wish someone in charge had even 10% of the empathy that I feel.
One photographer's journey...
Stuff I've seen, and places I've been...
Stuff I've seen, and places I've been...
Stuff I've seen, and places I've been...
Stuff I've seen, and places I've been...
Had we but world enough and time... 