General Chat

Morning Anng, morning all,

Dull morning here but dry ,it's 9 degrees and there's a little wind as its blown the big piece of polystyrene packaging that was on the dishwasher down the garden ,We need to break it up and get it in the green bin, oh suns now trying to peep through .

Mel it sounds as if your snack went down well at the Carol service and there was lots of lovely food that everyone brought with them .

Need to do some more Christmas shopping this morning just something for Katie and Lewis then my sister and bil and then we're done .

Good morning all. 9 degrees here and raining. didn't sleep badly but not really well either. Still it is another day.

Packing day for me as daughter arrives tomorrow.

Oh it sounds like you enjoyed it Mel and your snack went down well too with plenty of other food there as well.

I have just managed to buy a new top in an ebay auction at the last minute for less than half price so am chuffed. Off to bed now hopefully for a good sleep tonight and I hope everyone else sleeps well too.

Glad the party went well Mel all sounded good and so much food you won’t want a meal tonight. I too thought it was an evening do.

Vera pleased the return journey was OK cheaper than a taxi!

Good that your vision has improved but frustrating that you are not finished with the treatment yet. I suppose your eye is vulnerable we should have guessed it would not be straight forward

Enjoy the carol service Mel. AnnG’s idea is a good one, anything with cheese is usually popular. It all depends on what you have available in your cupboards. I put cubes of cheese with grapes when I didn’t have pineapple and that worked as well. Anything fruity is usually popular but, as I say, you have to work with what you have available. I’ve got to do the same thing for a club Christmas tea tomorrow but I’ve got time to pop to the shops in the morning.

AnnG, the bus company has been in and out of private ownerships, mergers, takeovers etc for years but it has always kept the same name. It now appears to be in a small group operating in Norfolk and Suffolk. I assume that there was a driver shortage for some reason and ours was pulled off a different route to drive our bus but in that case the company should at least have provided him with a map and some instructions. He didn’t seem to have anything. It would have been nice if he had explained or apologised but I expect he was getting a bit wound up himself.

Mandy, we did come back by bus as one was due within a few minutes of us leaving the hospital but we looked carefully to make sure it wasn’t the same driver. We were delayed for about 20 minutes but that was due to the volume of Friday traffic trying to get round two difficult roundabouts. Once we were past those the journey back was fine.

At the hospital there was good and bad news. The scans showed that all the swelling for which I was having injections etc has gone at last so that was good. The vision tests showed that the distance vision in the eye that had cataract surgery has improved hugely and there is even a slight improvement in the distant vision in the other eye. So I went in to see the doctor expecting to be told I could now go and get tested for new glasses but no such luck. Apparently the eye is still inflamed so I have to go back on the drops for another four weeks and use them more frequently, then go back and see the doctor again. I thought of your OH Annx and hope I don’t have to use the drops quite as often as he did. I’m not a happy bunny as I still can’t get the correct glasses and so can’t drive or rather won’t take the risk if I know I am not seeing well. I hate asking OH to drive me everywhere as it usually means he has to hang around waiting in order to drive me back. Oh well, worse things happen at sea.

I’m now going to try and find where I put the 2 Secret Santa gifts I’ve got to take to tomorrow afternoon’s club tea. As I bought one in April and the other in July when I saw suitable gifts I could have hidden them anywhere.

My eye is very sore now so I think it’s time to close the computer down. You seem to be going through a spell of bad nights Annx so I hope tonight will be a good one for all of us.

EDIT Just seen your post Mel and see you’re back from your carol service and food. For some reason I thought it was this evening. It sounds as though there was quite a spread and your cheese, pineapple and olives went down well.

Hope you get a better nights sleep tonight Annx. I usually do if I have had a bad one.

What a trip onthe bus Vera it really makes you wonder who is in charge of these things changing the numbers on the buses. How was the outcome of your visit to the hospital any, were your eyes better after your treatment?

Back from our Christmas party now and what a lovely spread I could'nt begin to tell you what there was as it was so much. Funny you should talk about the cheese stuff on sticks cos thats what I took. I put pineapple cubes on then cheddar cheese and then a stuffed olive. They looked quite festive as I put them all round two small plates with all the stuffed olives pointing upwards. They all went. there was 18 of them. The children all had thier presents from Father Christmas and there was about 5 little boys who got flashing cars each and did they make a noise. It always amazes me how such a loud voice can come out of such a small person.

We had festive pimms when we went in and then the tea, sandwiches cheese and biscuits, and fresh fruit, melon, grapes, raspberries and slices of orange.Choc cakes fruit cakes, mince pies and mince wheels little sausages and many sausage rolls made by different people, a huge cheese board with four kinds of cheese, Stilton, Cheddar, Brie and something else. Loads more that I can't think of and there was tea and coffee and even a glass of sherry if you wanted it.

I asked the vicar if there had been a collection and he said he had'nt thought of that but he would put a plate out, if he did or not I don't know but I gave him my pound for the church anyway. At the harvest festival the collection goes to a charity and I thought the Christmas one did too.

I laughed when I read your posts with you mentioning the cheese and onions on sticks.

Afternoon All,

No frost here and we've had weak sun that's sinking already now. Another bad night sleepwise and awake till after 4.00am so I lay in late. Lunch was a quick affair with Asda's chicken crown in a sage gravy. Also baby pots, carrot, parsnip. red cabbage, broc and red onion. I had a banana out of the fridge after. I wish I'd known about keeping them in the fridge years ago. The skin changes colour a little but the banana inside stays perfect much longer. I hate over ripe bananas that are too sweet and full of sugar. My turn for the advent calendar choccy too, but they get smaller every year don't they.

Vera, what a saga with that old bus and Mr Bean for the driver! You must have doubted ever getting there and thank goodness that lady was able to get him back on the right track. I can just imagine your OH making that comment with an 'I knew it would be a mistake' look on his face. At least the clinic still saw you though, so I hope it was good news for both of your eyes.

That's nice Jannine has invited you for a Christmas eve meal to look forward to Mel and a chance to see the renovations too. Some cheese cubes might go down well with the other snacks or cherry toms or peanuts if you have any.

AnnG I remember those sticks with those things on them and people would wrap a raw potato in tinfoil and push the sticks in to make a hedgehog effect. They usually went down very well too. OH went for a short walk earlier and said it was mild, but said it was freezing when he went out to put something in the bin later.

one thing that caused a giggle and was very popular at ours last week was cheese and pineapple and small siversking onions and cheese on sticks.

Morning Anng, morning all ,

Another nice sunny morning ,no frost that I could see and it's 7 degrees .
Oh dear Vera what a todo with the bus , if that lady hadn't told him which way to go goodness knows how long you'd have been riding round , did you get a taxi home .

Off to sons in a while for coffee so better get sorted out .

Morning all,

Nice and bright again and 10 degrees here and pc saying rainy days ahead.

Our Carol service is in the Village hall tonight and father Christmas comes after with a little present for the children and then its a bring and share do after. I may go as its only up the drive. I know a couple of the neighbours are going and shall know most of the prople there but I can't think what to take in the way of snack food. Everyone takes sausage rolls and little sandwiches and crisps.

Good morning all 8 degrees here this morning what an up and down temp we have lately.

Vera I am guessing the clue is in the fact that the company seems to have been taken over and like all new brooms have done a bit of a clean sweep. they changed all the route numbers. the drivers are then put on routes that, even though they are experienced drivers, they have not driven before. (They do stay on the smae routes normally. Normally what would happen is, a driver who knows that route would travel as passenger with the one that doesn't. Maybe they were short of drivers through flu.
I bet you saw parts of the area that you had not seen before. As for the rattly bus, we have a few and some are relatively new, blame the state of the roads and pot holes.
Glad you got there in the end anyway.

Don't be put off bus travel by one experience though it is useful. :-)

What on earth were they thinkin gof putting a driver on the bus that did'nt know the route. It would have to happen when you were getting oh used to going by bus Vera.

That’s nice that you’ve got a dinner and some good company to look forward to on Christmas Eve, Mel.

I said I would tell you about my hospital trip yesterday so here goes. As my appointment was at 1.50 and I can sometimes be there for a couple of hours, which would mean OH driving home pretty much in the dark, I decided we would go by bus. Part of the idea was to show OH how easy travelling by bus could be. Easy? Huh, that’s a joke.

First obstacle was trying to make sense of the online timetable which is a nightmare with so many abbreviations and symbols to indicate such things as which buses only run on schooldays or only run on non-school days etc. This wasn’t helped by the company running the service not only changing its name but also all its bus numbers. Having got panicky because I couldn’t find the 754 bus I discovered that the 754 is now the 43 and right under my nose all the time. Anyway I eventually found we could catch the 12.29 bus from our nearest stop and it would drop us outside the hospital at 1.35. Perfect timing.

We duly got to the bus stop good and early and were shortly joined by another man. He was very pleasant but insisted on telling us his life story in the 10 minutes we were waiting. I know all about his wife, his washing machine breaking down, his friends Tony and Peter and the details of their phone calls that morning, where he was going for lunch, what he was going to eat, how much it would cost etc. etc. etc. We were glad when the bus arrived more or less on time and off we went. We stopped for 4 minutes at the bus station in town and changed driver. So far, so good.

We knew it was a bit of a round the houses route and we started off well, stopping in 3 villages and then somehow the driver went wrong. We were well off the main route by now and we went this way, we went that way, we went round in circles. A lad came down from upstairs asking where he was because he now had no idea where to get off the bus, then a girl came down looking very worried. Soon we reached a junction with a sign pointing left to the town where the hospital was and right to the town we had just come from and HE TURNED RIGHT. Half the passengers were yelling “You’re going the wrong way” at him but there was no way he could turn a double decker bus round in a narrow back road.

Time was marching on so I decided to ring the eye clinic as I have their direct line programmed into my phone. I forgot to mention we were also on what must have been the oldest bus in the fleet. Talk about Shake, Rattle and Roll. And the racket! I couldn’t hear a thing when I got through to the clinic. I ended up with my head practically under the seat in front, one ear covered by my hand and the phone clamped to the other and by dint of shouting at each other the clinic and I had a conversation which went something like this:
(Me) I am very sorry but I am coming on public transport and there has been a delay. I won’t make my appointment.
(Clinic) When do you think you will arrive?
(Me) I have no idea. I’m on a bus and it has got lost
(Clinic) Stunned silence, then…. You’re lost? On a bus?
(Me) Um..yes
Cue laughter and chatter from the clinic as the receptionist I was talking to regaled her colleagues with the story of the lady lost on a bus. The upshot was that they said if I got there before 3 pm they would slot me in.

Eventually a lady passenger went to the front and said to the driver that she was supposed to be getting off the bus at such and such a village. She now had an idea of where we were so she would direct him to her village which was on his route. She stood at the front of the bus and did this and got him to her bus stop. She then told him very firmly that he must not turn right or left but to continue straight until he hit the main Bury Road, wished us all good luck and got off. The driver got on to the right road and various people got off at stops along the way. There were 4 of us for the hospital though the others were visiting so not so concerned about the time factor. As we were nearing Bury the thought crossed our mind that this driver was likely to follow the signs into town and miss the hospital as he clearly didn’t know the area so when we were a couple of roundabouts away another man directed him on to the roads he had to take and we arrived outside the hospital at 2.30 pm, only 55 minutes late. OH just looked at me and said “And you think we should use the buses more?” For all we know our driver is still going round in circles. If you read of a bus driving down the runway at Heathrow, you’ll know who it is.

So that’s the saga of our journey to the hospital. I can laugh about it now and I hope it’s given you a smile. My eyes are getting quite achey so I'll tell you how I got on at the hospital another time.

O and she's asked me up there on Christmas Eve to a nice ham dinner so I shall see what they have dne to the house then too. She's not working in the hsed now either she's in the tiny spare bedroom made into an office for her. :-D

Silly me I was copying incase I lost it and I did so put it back on there and must have got muddled as to where to put it. OR it could just be the pc as I get words come up that I hav'nt written.

Janine my neighbour came down with some homemade fudge and mince pies for me and a card and she stayed and we chatted over a cuppa and a biscuit. She was here ages and I so enjoyed the company. That reminds me I hav'nt opened her card yet.

I think I have sorted that post out now.

Now what am I going to have for dinner???

Lol Mel, your post of 15.51 is interesting. I think you are trying to wake us all up and get our brains moving. Are you sure you have your cursor at the end of your text before you write a new bit? I might well be wrong but it really looks as though your cursor is part way down your text, sometimes in the middle of a word, when you put in a bit more script so it ends up all jumbled. It’s so easy to do. I know because I’ve done it myself more than once. What a pity that bottle leaked and soaked other stuff. Have you managed to sort out a refund and replacement for it?

I am glad some of you are getting more post now. We seem to be on a Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday schedule and had a dozen envelopes through the door this morning, 9 of which were cards. Included were cards from Annx, Mandy and Gwyn so thank you all very much. They are all quite different and all lovely. I remember 2 posts a day as well and somewhere I even have a postcard that my great grandmother sent to her daughter. It was posted in the morning telling the daughter that great-grandma would be coming for tea that afternoon. I’m guessing that would have been in the 1920s. Those were the days – delivery in a couple of hours if it was going to a fairly local address.

Annx, you asked what happened to the bloomers. They found their way to a suitable charity shop. If I remember rightly it was Age Concern, which later merged with Help the Aged to become Age UK. At least mil didn’t expect to see them on display when she came. Yes, I had heard that many ethnic minorities don’t take up vaccinations. I wonder why. I could be wrong but I don’t think there is a religious basis to their reluctance. It does seem a pity as it’s one of the reasons diseases like measles are on the rise again. As to our friends M & V they do have a difficult life but are coping, as one has to. They only have a small bungalow, having moved from a very large one several years ago. M rang to tell me that yesterday they had a delivery – 2 large oxygen cylinders, 6 small cylinders and a large oxygen concentrator, whatever that is. Some are in their small loo, a unit in the hall has had to go to make room and there are bits of equipment everywhere. You can’t fault the NHS in the care they are giving V but they are certainly making life difficult in other ways. You have a long wait for your next garden bin collection. I think I’ve said before that ours run all year apart from the 2 weeks over Christmas and New Year.

I’ve had another busy day and it sounds as though you have been busy today as well Mandy. I must go and get more drops put in my eye and think about us cooking some dinner but I will try to get back later to tell you about my hospital visit yesterday.

Afternoon All,

No frost here but it was chilly. OH came with me to the shop as he had 2 books to pick up from there. He was shocked at the reduction of what they stock. No lamb or pork now, it's all beef and chicken only. Less choice of veg or fish, much more asian and chinese food in the ready meals. It seems food must be less profitable as they have found space for a huge Costa coffee machine. He has gone to one and a half matches this afternoon and has taken some footie programmes to pass on.

Yet another update on my PC and it has moved the list of tabs it put on the left hand side of the screen a while ago back to the top of the screen again, just as I'd got used to them on the side!

We had a bit more post this morning so maybe they are increasing deliveries now it's getting near christmas. I remember afternoon post as well, as we also had an afternoon version of our local newspaper in addition to the morning one.

I've done some hoovering and also started looking at and turfing out what is out of date in the food cupboards and fridge.I must do the same in the freezer in the garage this weekend too. It will make more space for this time of the year.

Mandy you have been busy and got a lot done I'm running out of ideas what to eat lately but the pattie sounds nice and tasty. :-)

Mel that was a shame the parcel leaked so I hope you get a refund. Imagine if it was a christmas present for someone and there was no time to re-order. Have you had Asda insisting you put in your payment details again like I have? I suspected a scam and rang them, but apparently not.

Vera it sounds like a stressful journey wondering if you would ever get there!

mel I think your post needs sorting out a bit. :-D

ck and got her phone number and we had a chat

Aaron came round but did'nt do much just put more wood up on the chicken run but had to go by 12 noon as Asda was coming and his wife and little girl have a nasty cough. He's coming again tomorrow.

Went to the shop for my paper, ham and rolls and on the way back I saw my friend so managed to get her number as it was'nt in my phone.
While I was there I noticed that the large flower arrangement had gone so that was good. I hope it was bought and not pinched as they don't take them in at night.