Latest Moan From You and Me 2025

Thinking of doing any paving?

 

I learnt about that from Martin Lewis. It's a rule HMRC keeps pretty quiet about, but if you are on a low pension but have some savings (maybe from downsizing), it is actually very useful. When interest rates hit 5% recently, you didn't need a bank vault's worth of savings to go over the £1,000 limit.

 

PSA, I'll have to look it up.
Thanks.

 

They don't round here, most of the ones that have gone in since they started having to be permeable are block paving of some type. Drainage is by cambering away from the property onto the road.

 

Back to gardening. Prepared a section of my vegetable plot for planting shallots. Bought some onion fertiliser and went out this morning to fertilise. After all my hard work weeding, hoeing etc thanks to all this rain it is covered once again in small weed shoots. Now where did I put that hoe?

 

The bl@@dy mice have dug up 4 newly planted containers of spring bulbs.....time to move them somewhere inaccessible. But where?

 

Can you cover them with chicken wire or similar, @Tinkerton?

 

Why do the apparently simplest of jobs always turn into a half marathon and end up taking all morning if not the whole day?
"Can you tighten up the screws on the airing cupboard door handle?"
"Yes of course"!

Ha bl**dy ha. 3 hrs later finally done it won't bore you with all the grizzly details but involved the angle grinder to shorten the spindle between the two handles!!!

 

Through no action on our part, we are now on our third broadband and landline provider! Our latest provider, ( Utility Warehouse) have informed us that we are being put on a new rate, which is higher than our current one. I’ve been on the phone to them this morning to see what deal I could negotiate. Got put through to their obviously completely wrongly named ‘retention department’. No reduction to anywhere near what we are paying now, or what a new customer is being offered. Maybe they should call it the Repulsion Department! Now trawling through the decision making process for who to switch to.

 

I can recommend Plusnet, @Ergates, though if you want to keep a landline, they are gradually transferring those customers over to EE. (Both are now subsidiaries of BT.)

I am considering joining the 21st century by getting a smart phone instead.

 

We are happy with Plusnet too. We don't have a contract - just a rolling monthly plan. Ours is £18.27 pm. Our landline is provided by BT separately. No date given to us yet by BT for digital voice, but we were told if we didn't change our plan then we wouldn't be switched?! If it happens we will go to BT for both landline and broadband, which would then have to be fibre. I think hubby said we may have a separate line just for BB.

We like our landline as you can hear it ring anywhere in the house. When people call me on my smart phone I hardly ever answer it as I don't hear it and I certainly don't carry it around the house. I find them a pain as a phone, but great for internet etc and email, especially when out and about.

 

Its mostly block paving around here or the dreaded gravel, that spends most of its time migrating into the street.

 

Just looking at the offers with EE, @ViewAhead. We don’t have very good mobile signals inside the house, so at the moment, we do need the landline. I don’t have a smartphone, just a little Nokia that I use for texts and calls when I’m out, and also for two factor authentication when I’m doing anything financial on the house computer. My main item is an iPad, it only works with a wifi connection, but I seem to be able to find enough of those when I’m out these days.
We don’t actually get a lot of calls, and when someone does try to reach me on the mobile, I usually miss the call while Im wondering what that funny noise is.