We have neighbours on one side who clearly DNGAF – it’s been a procession of tennis playing buddies, their various kids and grandkids all visiting over the last week or so. The irony being she’s in her 1970’s and a heavy smoker so you’d have thought she’d be a bit more careful.

On the other-side, two doors up, they’ve still got their nanny coming in during the week because apparently two adults are incapable of looking after two young lads + working from home at the same time. Not to mention their various relatives, friends etc all dropping in.

We’ve also had the pleasure of watching another family all gather on the playing field opposite to play football and practice their golf (!).

..and don’t get me started on the state of the village where everyone seems to think that this is one big waste of time. The poor fishmonger yesterday was getting grief because he would only sell some idiot two portions of monkfish tail, and four portions of salmon – apparently this wasn’t enough for his gathering in the pm and the prat was insistent that he should be able to buy a entire side of salmon and a whole monkfish tail…

To be fair – I’ve had to explain to my in-laws that when they come to collect the shopping we’ve done for them, they CAN’T come in for a chat and a catchup. The entire purpose of my doing it is to save them from exposure to shopping etc. I’m going out weekly to get essentials – fruit and veg, butchers etc – and buy enough for us and them. It then gets boxed up and left on the driveway. But they still need reminding…

our local (small, independent), supermarket down in East Sussex has had flour every time I’ve been in recently. I am meant to have my regular batch of 00 arriving in the next week – though we’ll see if it is delayed/cancelled due to ‘shortages’.

Bakerybits.co.uk still has plenty of stock of flour etc.

I work for a small (12 people) investment firm, based in London and Asia. Those team members who were meant to be coming to the UK from abroad in the next few weeks are now firmly staying put. Markets are crazy so there is a lot going on but we’ve shuttered the office and everyone’s been told to be based at home, some are also leaving the country to work remotely. For me – that means a lot of operational and IT ground-work to ensure all is as seamless as possible. Portfolio-wise, we’re down on the year but we’re sitting tight and will ride things out.

Spotify: 41
Apple: 11
Google: 2
Deezer: 1

(Have tried tidal, Apple & Spotify. We now have a family sub to the latter)

I had an alarm mine in our old place – Mrs W forgot to tell her uncle who went down the garden to collect something from the shed. Cue a very large bang and a very shaken relative :)

We’ve planted Pyracantha hedging on the road-side of our garden fence. It’s an absolute b*tch and you’d have to be properly determined to try to either scale over, or push through it.

sent you a PM.

Double

sebo. We have two – the ‘original’ one that now lives in the studio/workshop – two house renovations means its suffered cosmetically. So it was joined by an identical, shinier one for the house.

We went with the Sebo on the recommendation of a local shop/engineer who sells all makes and models. He loves Dyson as they make up 95% of his regular repair and servicing work. But he has Sebo at home.

Who’s on a 12 month notice period? That sounds nuts. What sort of industry is that?

Finance – C-Suite / quants / PMs / sales. It’s a way of ensuring they’re not able to just lift their book/models/clients from one desk, straight into another. That said, I’m not sure how enforceable these aggressive notice periods or non-competes are…

my tats go over top of arm, shoulder and onto my back – from Lionel Fahy @ Out of Step Tattoo. His stuff is for everyone but they’re all marmite anyway. Need to go and get more work done on them but he’s rarely in the UK so would need to travel and don’t have the time.

It’s been a good few years since mine were done. Don’t regret them one bit. From memory they’re rather addictive – I know a good few people who had one, followed by a load more in short order.

Well, that went well.
8 weeks gardening leave agreed once I’ve finished my handover today. And once I had that in writing I dropped that I had 3 weeks holiday owed too and I expected to be paid for it rather than taking it out of my notice, which they also agreed.
So 11 weeks in the garden starts tomorrow, and I’m going for a beer at lunch.
Lovely.

Blimey.

The last time I resigned, I ended up having to work every hour of the 3 month notice period. Was not fun – ostensibly it was to ensure a thorough hand-over – and even then they’re still calling me a year later asking questions about systems and processes they were meant to be on top of.

Currently on a six-month notice period in the new place…don’t think many people in my industry (finance) can get away with 4 weeks any more and I know of a good number on 12 months. Quite how workable / enforceable they are, I don’t know…it was bad enough doing 3 months of working to rule.

the only way we managed to get a ‘deal’ on our velux was to buy a pack of three from roofing warehouse. From memory, it saved us approx 15% vs. buying individually (with blinds etc).

Whilst we have a stack of film cameras to use as as per prev posts , at the end of last year I picked up a couple of Fuji X100`s for peanuts because they had the common fault of stuck aperture blades, so you only get to shoot at F2 , despite this “restriction” a combination of large sensor and excellent jpeg engine/film simulation and overall handing (almost silent operation) they have been a real treat, having a film Leica the Fuji X100* absolutely give you the nearest to film experience in my view.

+1 on Fuji’s – the X100 is ace. I lucked out and found a ‘beater’ X-Pro2 (missing its card door), well-used, battered but functionally perfect. Stuck it in a case, cheap fast prime lens on the front, and it goes everywhere with me. Keep an eye out on LCE website and the various other usual 2nd hand camera kit online stores. Often they seem to have PX bargains that cosmetically aren’t great and hence sell at a price whereby you don’t need to be precious about it.

Because by law the importer (you) is liable for all taxes duties and charges arising from the import, not the seller. The charge from parcel farce and the like is a direct result of your legal liability for those charges.

If the item is shipped ddp there is no charge to you from parcel force etc. as there’s no liability to you for any charges so no costs to handle it.

That you don’t realise by importing goods you’re signing up to pay those charges doesn’t mean pf are inserting then selves into your contract, it means you don’t understand the contract.

I understand entirely about the tax and duties owed – but the ‘handling’ charge in no way represents a fair representation of the costs incurred by PF/RM in processing the collection of duties. That’s my issue with it…or are you saying that the £12.50 is what it costs those companies to process things?

I thought most sellers declare it as a low cost item when posting, so it falls below the threshold. I’ve never asked a seller to do this but I’ve always found that’s the case when ordering from outside the EU.

you’re also exposed to insurance risk if you can get a seller to agree to mark down for customs…

From memory ParcelFarce ‘handling’ charge is £12, over and above any tax and duties owed. Dependent on the size of the item it seems that you might get Royal Mail, or you get Parcel Force for delivery. RM, I think, charge less and typically the item gets to your local PO, and then you get a card requesting settlement of charges. ParcelFarce, it goes to the central hub and then the paper slip gets issued.

eBay GSP from the US, at least in my experience, is horrendously slow – you do pre-pay the tax etc but the shipping takes multiples of the time it takes if the seller just ships via USPS or courier.

I have a real issue with the £12 charge as fundamentally I fail to see how they get to insert themselves into the contract between the buyer, and the seller’s obligation to deliver the item – the contract is between the seller and the postal service(s) – or so you’d think. It’s also far from a true reflection of the costs incurred by PF in processing the item. Again, from memory I think there may be some court cases pending regarding the legality of these charges…

Working in central London it’s much easier having plenty of places that’ll develop medium format films relatively cheaply (and well – typically cheap != good)

I do have a digital camera – Fujifilm X-pro thing that’s fitted with a fast prime and that goes everywhere with me. But it is the practice and focus of film that makes it much more deliberate and enjoyable for me. My father is a mad keen photographer (and a very good one – has the fellowship of the Royal Photographic thingy etc) – he’s purely digital and going out with him is a contrast; he’ll shoot thousands of pics and then spend hours and hours in the digital darkroom selecting the best pics, editing and finally printing them on the massive large-format printer he’s got. He takes some amazing pics and he has a very good eye, but it’s probably 20-30% with the camera in hand, 70-80% process coming after he’s got them on the computer.

For me, film photography is loaded the other way – my process and practice is at the ‘sharp’ end – being more considered about each shot (if nothing else, especially with MF, each shot costs ££), then it’s off to the developers and that’s where photography stops, beyond having some occasionally enlarged and printed in a bigger format. 99% focused on the process of taking pics – framing, lighting etc etc. The shutter goes down, it’s pretty much done.

I guess it might be different if we had the space to put a proper darkroom in.

Swedish Glace vanilla choc ice (less expensive and still delicious)

+1

Have been eating Swedish Glace for years as our youngest was dairy free until recently so we all ate the same icecream. Their icecream and choc-ices are ace.

Very reluctantly sold my much beloved Hasselblad 500CM before Christmas (finishing up work on the house so needed to raise the funds). I thoroughly enjoyed using it – it was wholly manual so forced me to slow everything down and be much more deliberate when taking pics.

As to favourite film – not one in particular – you can have great fun finding expired film on ebay and seeing what comes of them.

Hopefully will be buying a replacement towards the end of 2020 when funds allow it again.

Oil fired boilers last about 10 years.

Ours was 25 years old and still going strong. Serviced regularly, was told it’d happily keep going ad infinitum.

(That said, we’ve just changed it for an external oil boiler – and reclaimed a huge corner of the kitchen floor space by ripping out the old cupboard it sat in. Time will tell as to how clever an idea it was to get rid…)

Both our builders had the titan SDS ^^, and they use them a fair amount and rate them highly. I borrowed one to lift some kitchen floor tiles and they’re heavy but do the job with grunt to spare – took me the same time to get two up by hand as it did to do the rest using the SDS.

EDIT – not sure whether they had that particular version – from memory there are two, one lighter than the other. I used the heavier of the two…

recently sold both of mine via Guntrader with the minimum of fuss. I insisted on local collection only + cash and all went smoothly. The cost of listing was minimal and I posted decent pics and priced at the average of the previously sold equivalents. I was very pleasantly surprised!

this website is ace according to my two girls;

The Kid Should See This – Smart videos for curious minds of all ages

Just done our ensuite on the cheap.

Orbit Rectangular Shower Tray 900mm x 760mm Stone Resin. £54
Aqualux Shine 8 Semi Frameless Bi-Fold Shower Door enclosure. £190

Both from heatandplumb. The shower door spans the width of the room. I had the plumber fit the shower tray and I did the shower-door thing myself. Was simple enough, all be it a little tough to manoeuvre in such a tight space on my own…

Both bits seem grand, especially for the money. The door is solid and creak-free.

I have seen quite a few rats and rabbits dispatched by dogs and ferrets and I have dispatched a few myself over the years. But I can honestly say, I’m wouldn’t be all over YouTube looking to watch it for entertainment.

+1

We’ve chickens so rats seem to be an inevitability, regardless of how careful we are about food storage etc. Our neighbour shoots the rats he sees and whilst we often put poison down, that A24 trap looks like it might be a worthwhile purchase (£££ though so have to think on it…)

FWIW – I tried various airpod competitors – from £20 amazon cheapies up to expensive Philips (I think) things. None lasted more than three months of use on the commute before either battery life died on its backside or they developed odd sound issues. Much as it irritated me to do it, I bought some airpods and they were far better – functionality just worked for taking calls (not that I like being one of ‘those’ people apparently muttering to themselves), sound quality was grand (all be it that I’m far from being an audiophile) and they stood up well to daily use. Price was a kicker but given they’re one of the two or three things that I use the most on a daily basis, it was a worthwhile investment. Ended up chopping them in for the Airpod Pros (bought for £120, sold for £100!) as the noise cancellation functionality makes them ideal for work when I need to get some coding done and drown out the sound of the office…

They’re bl**dy expensive though.

We needed a static IP so moved from BT home thingy to BT business. Better router (including 3G dongle), much, much better support, slightly better contention ratios etc and it was cheaper too. Currently I have the router working in bridge mode as I have a bunch of Fortigate kit from work. Works an absolute treat.

driving home in the pm with the family – pootling down the country road home and the headlights picked out a barn owl sat on a low branch of one of the overhanging trees. It calmly sat there as we trundled down the road and went underneath it.

About 20 metres down the road, another barn owl. Sat on a low tree branch. And again, happily sat there whilst we drove along the road and under it…

We see and hear them on the wing a fair bit – there was one we used to watch whilst it hunted over the cricket pitch opposite our house in the early evening. Never seen two so close together, let alone one (or two) that was so happy to sit there as we drove within a few feet of it.

Our builders, carpenters and plumber all have Howdens kitchens. We have had an Ikea kitchen before and it was cheap and lasted about five years before it started to look tired. The fitter wasn’t too impressed but we liked it.

We recently did the whole Wren sales process thing – there was about a 125% increase in price between their original quotation and our final ‘approved by management’ price. At the end of the first meeting we were given a rough figure. Poor MrsWoffle then sat through their sales patter and went through all the choices and the price that came out of that was stupid – and it wasn’t like we really went to town.

In the end we’ve just had a Harvey Jones kitchen fitted. The kitchen itself is ace. The company and their sales/project management are really not ace. It came in only 12% more expensive than the Wren price on a like-for-like on design, appliances, worktops etc. If we ever have to do it again (god forbid), it’ll be using our own joiner / carpenter and sourcing everything ourselves….

I’d echo all the above ^^ Chap on my team at work had one – shed a lot of hair all the time, needed a LOT of training and a LOT of exercise (they used to do the whole dog-sleigh thing), and 100% not to be trusted off the lead. But he absolutely loved it

We have a John Lewis condenser – run without issue for the last couple of years. Doesn’t chuck out a lot of moisture, rather just hot air – it’s sat in a utility room with a humidity sensor on an extractor fan and we’ve yet had the sensor tripped when the dryer is working.

Bit harsh on Edwin

Nope. From experience, Uniqlo japanese selvedge at c.£40 are as good as, if not better than, my Edwin japanese selvedge with a RRP of £160. Seem to be the same weight and they wear pretty much identically. They’re not exactly 14-16oz Sugar Canes but they do pretty well for the daily commute.

One of the joys of Madame being a teacher.

An occupational hazard? I know of at least one other teacher who’s opened the door first thing in the morning to be greeted by a turd on their doorstep (of indeterminate origin).

The ‘done’ thing when I was at school* was the paper bag on the doorstep, containing a selection of your finest dog eggs. Light the top of the bag and ring the door-bell before retreating to a safe distance.

(people tend to stamp the fire out…)

*not something I ever did but I went to school with some real wrong-uns

It does let you open a claim for ‘not received’ on a collection-only item.

Are you sure? I had to chase a seller when they went very quiet and wouldn’t co-operate with the courier. From memory, it wouldn’t let me do anything other than essentially ‘try to work it out’ with them – I couldn’t raise a case for a refund due to it not being received…

Just done / doing our ensuite. Small – 760 x about 2.5m. Cost £2K in parts and labour for a ripping out the old units + tiles, then supply and fitting a new high spec shower, and labour for putting in new toilet, sink and vanity unit. Shower included pump etc all up in the loft with associated electrics. It’s cost us an additional 1.5K for the toilet, vanity unit, sink, tiles, flooring, shower tray, glass door etc etc. I’m going the tiling, fitting the shower door (f*cking thing – that’s not something I want to have to do again), flooring etc.

We had two quotes for the whole thing last year – one at £5.5K, the other at £6.2K.

If we’d gone for cheaper tiles, fittings etc then we could probably have done it all for under £2K.

I live near Solihull, it’s prime JLR country with countless company cars on the roads. You can lease up to two through their employee scheme depending on your job.

the chap who bought my Airnimal was driving a brand new Disco. His son actually leased it for him via the JLR scheme. He said he got a new one every 12-18 months. Mind you, going by the recent reliability survey results for JLR, I think it might be more of a curse than a blessing…

Old phone taped to a cheap selfie stick – tape that to a bit of 2×1 if you need more reach. I used a small rechargeable LED work light and taped that to the 2×1 too – helps to have a bit of distance between the light and the camera

Need something waterproof to work out where the incoming drains are and to see how many bodies are laying at the bottom…

Failing that, woffle’s patio.

Bring your trunks, an inflatable desk and a head torch and you’re all set. There’s free wifi*

*not tested once the manhole cover is back on but sure it’ll be fine.

re: septic tank – I’ll know more when I’ve managed to get a camera down there – the builder reckons that it’s only the gutters and rainwater run-off that flows into the (old) drains and hence into the tank, with the foul water going on a different system of equally old drains (to the different, shared septic tank that sits on our neighbours land, at the bottom of their garden). It’s on heavy sussex clay, not sure if that makes a difference as to the likelihood of the water sitting in currently being down to ingress from the surrounding ground.

Are (old) septic tanks usually that close to the house? It would have been about 3m from the old back wall. The shared tank is a considerable distance from the cottages.

It’s all a learning experience!

Re: expense – I guess, but it’s not far of being 50% the size of the original footprint of the cottage. That’s a fair chunk of additional material cost (and work).

I’m going to ask the neighbours if they have anything similar on their plots. If not, it might point to it being something connected to the large house next door, rather than it being specific to the cottage itself…