Life Laundry...

Sorry I've been quiet this week – you may recall, I work in  vintage fairground restorations these days and we’re racing towards our first of two ridiculous delivery deadlines…i.e., we have to complete, test and install a massive 48 seater chair-o-plane – by 11^th May.

This has meant both a loss of weekends and longer, physically (and mentally) exhausting days since I ranted about it a couple of months ago.

My ranting of course has done nothing to help – nor has a stroppy Estonian joiner… who I have to say is the most difficult person I've ever had to deal with in my 43 years so far.  I’d go as far as to say, that if HE is “typical” of the nation – they can stay where they are …  … …. I'm sure it’s just HIM that’s a bad egg.  Anyway, I've given up on social interaction with him now – sticking to “Sven please can you do this and please can you do that” type of days… they drag and the atmosphere is awful but everyone else feels the same way and the bloke has effectively sent HIMSELF to Coventry.

No matter – the job will get done and THEN we have to fire back to the Brooklands track which is currently lurking on our shelving.   On a more positive note, here are a few photos I took so you can work out the scale.

We initially tried to erect the centre pole using our forklift and a scaffold tower – luckily my self preservation head kicked in and I stopped proceedings, in favour of a hi-ab from a local firm we use. 

http://www.aphollingworth.co.uk Incidentally, if EVER a company employed the RIGHT people … it’s these guys.  They are total stars… NOTHING phases them and they muck in.  They have a few drivers but the main ones we've dealt with are Kevin (in the photos above ) and Dave.  Dave calls everyone “flower” and is the nicest, most friendly bloke you could ever meet.  I've a lot of respect and appreciation for them all.

See – I've done it again.... I might as well change my middle name to Tangent!

LIFE LAUNDRY was my  planned topic....

Yesterday  afternoon (Saturday 17^th April ) after I finished work, I rushed into town to bank a cheque I’d had sent by ‘Experian’ in response to a form I filled in on the Money Saving Expert website (thank you Martin Lewis)…now I don’t normally join in with these sort of things, but I read an article about them bundling in an insurance policy with their premium… without telling folk.  In 2013-2014, I’d been paying their monthly fee for access to my full credit file, so I could clean it up after  the mess I’d made in the preceding years – without being too candid here,  I’d been in a bit of a pickle debt wise which took the best part of 7 years pay back and sort out.   I learned the hard way and as such, I'm now very sensible with money (well apart from this whole boat thing) …    ANYWAY … I got this nice refund along with a bit of interest.

Feeling flush (see how little it takes these days?) I decided to buy some new socks – Socks are good… Socks are something that no matter how fat your arse,belly,legs, and love handles are getting, they’ll always fit.

So I bought myself 15 pairs of socks – costing 25 quid (bargain or what?) and agreed with myself, to pay the remaining bonus cash off the mortgage… I’m doing  a lot of that actually… anything NOT already destined for the boat fund (such as monthly interest on the savings and the money from the solar panels feed in tariff) is paid straight off the mortgage.

As I walked back home, if began to think about the future – more specially, when we are living on the boat full-time,  I’ll never really be able to justify buying so many “extra socks”… in fact, I’d think 15 pairs of socks will be the TOTAL number I’ll have.   The storage space on “ELLIS” is modest at best… perhaps the equivalent of 1 double wardrobe between us on the whole boat and even then, the bottom of it will be partially obstructed with things like the piping for the loo or bedding storage etc. 

When I got home, I opened the wardrobes and took a long look – if you ignore the “clutter”… you can see we have WAY too much stuff.  It’ll have to go.  

By now my brain was in overdrive - panicking a bit more when I took my work gear out of the washer and headed to the tumble drier in the garage

We are going to have to begin getting rid of stuff... the trouble is, I'm one of life's hoarders... my brain is wired to think "I'll save that bit of whatever - it might come in useful" - they call it 're-purposing' these days....  

In the past,  I have been known to climb into skips for  a good rummage  - AND come out with some pretty useful stuff.  Perhaps it's time to do that in reverse!

Until next time...