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Jam Lady



Joined: 28 Dec 2006
Posts: 2501
Location: New Jersey, USA
PostPosted: Mon Apr 02, 18 1:23 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
    

Guess what



and no, it is not April Fool. Today is April 2nd.

Mistress Rose



Joined: 21 Jul 2011
Posts: 15539

PostPosted: Tue Apr 03, 18 6:00 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
    

Is that post-onion snow or a continuation of the same? I know my cousin in Canada has had snow, but she isn't expecting it to last long. The forecast was for snow in parts of the UK, but we just had rain yesterday.

gregotyn



Joined: 24 Jun 2010
Posts: 2201
Location: Llanfyllin area
PostPosted: Tue Apr 03, 18 1:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
    

This morning it was really warm, after snow on Sunday night and Monday at my friends' house. I have knocked off the thermals 'long and top' and have still been warm at work today I kept the roller door open as long as the boys in the workshop would let me. There is still some snow on the ground after the first burst where it was piled high by the snow ploughs and diggers, but the Sunday/Monday outburst has all gone now.
Back to work today. It seems strange that our boss who farms with his father, as well as work with us comes back, this week-nearly a month off for the lambing. He does his own and his father's flocks, as his dad is my age and finds concentrated work like lambing hard going. I know what he means.

I hope all going well with the campaign, Cassandra, you appear to have it all under control, from your comments and it must be so if you have the time to look at knitting patterns! If you run out of jumpers to knit, I will send you an order for one for me; sizes unknown-well not for public disclosure! They call me fb at work, and that 'f' is not for facebook, the f is for fat-no imagination needed. Glad you are getting plenty of rest ready for the hustings to come, no doubt. Anyway a fire for heat is luxury, I use a hot water bottle or two!

I will go home, MR, and measure the length of the rugwool I have at home, and will write it on my hand so it should be with you on Thursday, i.e. the measurement. I have to hit the doctors today for my life in a bag which they donate to me on a 4 weekly basis and load a trailer of logs for a friend, to be delivered tomorrow after swimming-free when you are over 60-our oldest "member" is well over 80 and fitter than me!
Sorry to hear of your friend in Devon, MR, I hope she has the rest of her life pain free. It was the thing that upset me most when I think about it, my mother said it was not being ill, just the worst pain she had ever had. I went to the nurse and she said to make the most of her now as soon she will be without pain but completely out of it, as though drunk and she will feel no pain from then on-but how do they know?-basically she was overdosed on a "drug".

The w/e was good at my friends' home with all the children and grandchildren there, I come away a few bob lighter, but I can't take it with me, and whatever state I'm in, they will take a lot from me if I land up in a home. The welfare state is not so welfare as it was...

Mistress Rose



Joined: 21 Jul 2011
Posts: 15539

PostPosted: Wed Apr 04, 18 6:49 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
    

Glad you had a good weekend Gregotyn. We missed the snow here, although it wasn't exactly that warm. I was able to get out in the garden on Sunday, and again yesterday for a little while. Husband and son got some work done up in the woods, but came home early as they were fed up with getting wet.

At the moment friend is managing all right. She is taking morphia occasionally, but not very often. She is determined to be with us in the summer, so we will see. She hears how the latest scans are tomorrow.

As there was nothing particular I could do in the woods yesterday, I stayed home and did odd jobs. Baked biscuits, finished sorting out the compost heap and did a few other things.

cassandra



Joined: 27 Mar 2013
Posts: 1733
Location: Tasmania Australia
PostPosted: Wed Apr 04, 18 6:57 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
    

Well if you are going to get spring snowfall you might as well do it properly! I hope you had all your preparations in order JL.

I have been running around in circles and tonight it is the launch of my campaign with a press release being circulated to all major media outlets. I have been steadily locking down all my on-line presences that are likely to be found, so as to minimise the potential for harm from either of the political candidates, and have been reviewing the advertisements that will be going to press this week and recording radio advertisements (which will not be launched till midway through the election period so they have some chance of an impact). I will be forwarding my press release to the various newsletters etc that I have advertised in as well. The radio station has indicated an interest in an interview which is good (local radio - nothing too scary).

I have booked me and the dog into various accommodations this weekend as I will be canvassing in more remote locations and this will save me a lot of travelling time.

Apart from all that frenzy it has been rather luscious weather and I ave eaten far too much chocolate and I seem to be perpetually exhausted so nothing new then.

Take care all and catch up as and when.

Gregotyn, if your Australian friends are coming to visit, please consider travelling back with them so you have company.

Mistress Rose



Joined: 21 Jul 2011
Posts: 15539

PostPosted: Wed Apr 04, 18 7:03 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
    

Glad all is going well. Take care you don't overdo it, and make sure you eat properly, including plenty of fruit and veg to keep you going. It is all too easy to just grab a bun when you are busy like that. Good luck.

gregotyn



Joined: 24 Jun 2010
Posts: 2201
Location: Llanfyllin area
PostPosted: Thu Apr 05, 18 2:14 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
    

We have made up for the goodish weekend, frosty 2 mornings this week as back to work, Tuesday, warm; frosts yesterday and today. I could have used the gritting lorry being out this morning as it took a lot longer to get to work, when I could have done with being there earlier than 6am. Windscreen was solid must have rained and froze quickly.

MR. is right, Cassandra, don't overdo the running around too fast; do what you can and get it done at a sensible pace, tomorrow is a wonderful day. I would ask the radio station for a list of the questions they will ask, so that you have some knowledge of what you can say, without having to stumble your way through something you know nothing about that had happened 30 seconds ago. Don't go madly Left wing as you are wanting to attract disgruntled middle of the road voters, you will already have the left hardcore voter with you. I shouldn't preach to you as you will know more about it than I ever will-sorry. How soon to d day?

Chocolate is not the food to be eating get something that is sensible-excess sugar loosens the tongue too much you want to be listening, and then agreeing, and then what you would do to help them out of their worry.

I would come over to Aus. with the friends, but it will be a while before I get a passport, so not this year. They will be back and to for a few years yet. My friend's wife's sister has just lost her husband and so she and I may come over together sometime. She is a girl I took out for a few times, but she was too young at the time, I had been working a few years and she was still in school. Her parents approved of me so that was good! I would have been working in a leather tanning company now if I had got it together with her, in Walsall.

I always have a good time with the Bridgnorth gang. And usually forget something, but not this time, for a change; perhaps the memory is returning to something like normal, but I won't be holding my breath. I have such a poor immediate short term memory; I lose things in seconds after I have put "it/them" down! and spend a lot of time looking for it/them. At work I set off to get x, y or z, but have to go back to find out where to look. I am beginning to have a pad of paper with me with a view to correcting this time wasting. Life is too short to waste any of it.

I hope the scans turn out to give some hope for the friend for some extension. My mother was doped up to the eyeballs in hospital; she could see her Aunt having a birthday party; I thought she must be having her first view of where she was going, as the Aunt had been gone for nearly 30 years! At least the morphine gives the pain relief, which is so important for those watching too.

Mistress Rose



Joined: 21 Jul 2011
Posts: 15539

PostPosted: Fri Apr 06, 18 6:56 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
    

We have been fortunate with our weather; lovely yesterday and doesn't look bad today.

Did a variety of things yesterday. Husband and son did some more work in the coppice. The vast majority of it is down, but there is a bit round the edges, and they want to thin the trees out a bit. I walked across the wood to put up the latest signs; Spring in the Woods. We do those every season to let people know what is going on, and to remind them how to behave as well. A few flowers coming up, I saw toothwort and the first early dog violets. The wood anemones are doing well now, although plenty still to come.

While I was away, husband and son were cutting wood and preparing the little retort charcoal kiln and received a phone call asking for more log sacks, so I helped get the kiln going then filled 20 log sacks. Had to stay late to see the kiln going well, and it did eventually go well, and finally got home about 9pm.

We loaded the log sacks on the van, so the first job for husband and son today is to deliver them, then hopefully empty the charcoal kiln and bag and deliver some of that, before delivering a log load.

gregotyn



Joined: 24 Jun 2010
Posts: 2201
Location: Llanfyllin area
PostPosted: Fri Apr 06, 18 2:29 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
    

It is all go in the south of the country, MR? here I am a bit more relaxed, as the boss lad has returned from lambing at home so he and no.2 are running the shop and I am happy hived away in the lorry garage, doing what I want to-tidy up and make it look as though it is cared for. I have made up a small pressure washer for our shop-had a delivery of 5 today-and this is a new type to us-a cold water washer. Normally all ours for agriculture are hot water machines, heating the water instantly.

It was a good warm morning but now looks like rain. I am running out of suitable chopping wood. I have ear marked a few pallets of good character-larch or douglas- suitably dry and straight grained for breaking up and chopping. I will be getting the boys to sell more oil so that the pallets I want will become available sooner. There is no substitute for dry wood in stock at home, not in stock at work where it is vulnerable to say the least. One of the lads at work would take the wood if he knew I wanted it! No one likes him, me in particular.

I am glad the charcoal is starting up again I always think that although a dirty job it is a better paying proposition than fire wood which is so labour intensive. I handle the wood at least 8 times at the point of delivery. I have outlets for the chippings that come off the sides and pallet blocks-chopped and bagged for a coal merchant. But I enjoy it, so what if it doesn't pay? There can't be too many things left in life that pay for your enjoyment and I do enjoy what I do, in my time. I don't do the TV any more so no license fee, they keep trying, asking why the property doesn't have a license. I sent one letter which explained I didn't think that a license was compulsory if you had no operating TV, all quiet since. I have a trailer load of logs to do in the afternoon tomorrow.

My kerbside daffs have decided to appear. I saw them on the way then it snowed and now there is a few weedy specimens in flower. I have seen blankets of primroses out in a place I don't normally see them; they appeared as the snow melted, so the primroses came out of the cold very well.

I have just had a strange thing happen. As you know I come to the library and it allows me to use the pooter for 1 hour, then I ask for the next hour after you get a warning, no warning was given. So I went to the librarian and she has put me back on, and what I wrote is still there fresh in the pooter as though I had carried on, what a thoughtful machine, but it has cut me off my emails.
This week has gone quickly, then I remember only 4 days working for pay so a short week financially too! Off now to cut and chop wood!

Mistress Rose



Joined: 21 Jul 2011
Posts: 15539

PostPosted: Sat Apr 07, 18 6:46 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
    

The outlet husband and son delivered log sacks to yesterday has just asked for charcoal as well. As we make it at the moment it is rather labour intensive, and I think it probably is less lucrative than firewood in some ways. The firewood is usually handled very little; the trunk has to be got to the yard, shifted from the heap to the firewood processor, then processed directly into the back of the truck. The log sacks take more work as the cut wood is dumped for me to sort and bag. Still good exercise, and I have lost weight this winter.

The charcoal wood has to be cut, usually using the processor, but sometimes from a rack by chainsaw, then hand loaded into the kiln. The charcoal then has to be dug out using a shovel and sieved into a dumpy sack. It is then bagged by shovelling it into a tray and put in the bag. Still, it gives us a product to sell all summer.

Husband and son cut a fair bit of smaller wood yesterday for the big kiln, so we will be running that next week. Hoping for dry weather as it will be bad enough drying the hearth out without wet wood too.

cassandra



Joined: 27 Mar 2013
Posts: 1733
Location: Tasmania Australia
PostPosted: Mon Apr 09, 18 3:54 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
    

I'm eating pretty well thanks MR - Yesterday a nice farmer gave me a bag of cox's orange pippins to take home with me (I have given half away). We chatted for long enough to establish we had mutual acquaintances and as I was parting I suggested he was welcome to contact them if he wanted further assurance - he said 'no need, I have met you'. I wish all people were that open and decent.

My B&B booking was ultra posh with a main room containing bed and lounge, television, kitchenette and table/chairs, a corridor leading to another room with twin beds and a bathroom across the way. They even had a restaurant so dinner was sorted without me having to go for miles looking for food (it was rather rurally located). The one down side is that I left my big purple puffer jacket there, but they claim to have not seen it. Since I know I had it there and wore it across to the restaurant, it seems unlikely to have disappeared in a puff on purple smoke, so I won't be staying there again.

Last night I stayed with a friend who sent me home burdened with a marshmallow rabbit (belated Easter) and two bottles of white wine because apparently she doesn't do dry whites (a mutual challenge as I don't do sweet whites and she is fond of serving them).

And I ran into a former colleague and a group of lovely engaged and interested people from one part of the territory, and became sodden with rain and generally had a good time. Someone has calculated I need a minimum of 3000 votes if there are ten candidates (I know of nine so far counting me), so I still have a long way to go. I did discover that there is another whole large community involved, so now have had to start knocking on doors there too. Fortunately it is fairly close by and I go through there regularly. So I am doing one block of development at a time en route to other destinations.

I will certainly know my way around the place before the end of this. And the pets will be glad to see the end of this coming and going. Poppet reverted to wild for at least half an hour after my return, but has come good. She is presently occupying my right thigh, and BIlly is looking displaced. Seb is fast asleep on my bed and showing the usual signs of exhaustion arising from too much excitement at the kennels.

Mistress Rose



Joined: 21 Jul 2011
Posts: 15539

PostPosted: Mon Apr 09, 18 7:17 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
    

Glad things are going well Cassandra. Pity about the jacket though. Lucky the new lot of potential voters are not too far away. At least you are personally getting out and about, which I don't expect all the candidates are doing. We have been in this house for coming up 36 years and have never had a whiff of one. We sometimes don't even get their literature, and that usually comes with the post. There was one for the local elections once, but having explained why, very politely, I held her party in very low esteem, she said she hoped I wouldn't hold it against them locally, and left probably thinking I was a lost cause.

The weather has decided to be wet here, as it was yesterday. Plus is that I had a good restful day, the minus that I couldn't get out in the garden as I hoped, and there is a lot to do out there. We were hoping to load the charcoal kiln today, but not sure if we will be able to unless it clears over. Worst thing is it isn't raining according to the weather forecast.

gregotyn



Joined: 24 Jun 2010
Posts: 2201
Location: Llanfyllin area
PostPosted: Tue Apr 10, 18 2:14 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
    

How exciting this election is Cassandra, you appear to be well organised and received by those whom? you meet. This is good, I hope they all spread the word for you. I don't do sweet white wine, only heavy red and dry as a bone, or I drink water with food. Regardless of Poppet's behaviour, it is of no importance compared to Seb's, and Billy will come round, (I am a dog person). I expect they would vote against you if they were allowed to vote, just to keep you at home more!

Nothing like getting in with 2 products, to a new outlet MR.
I put weight on in winter and lose it like mad in summer; when I was younger a swing or 3-4 stones was recorded. 2 wardrobes for work and going out and 2 more for winter/summer! There is less change now as I am fairly well constant in my work, winter and summer and in my home working as well.

Our weather has been dry all day so far, and quite pleasant, as it was yesterday, but just starting to look a bit overcast so we may be getting a change. I still haven't got all the pallets I need to chop so that I can go away in early May. My Australian friends are coming over and we are going to the same house they rented in Chipping Campden a couple of years ago. I will be away for a week. I have to get the map out and do the route again, and also the return as I did an accidental trip through Worcester when I wanted to bypass it to get to the Kidderminster turning, especially as I hit it at schools out time! Almost that time now-oops!

Mistress Rose



Joined: 21 Jul 2011
Posts: 15539

PostPosted: Wed Apr 11, 18 5:47 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
    

No doubt the cats and Seb are getting a bit ratty at these absences when your clear duty is to be their slave Cassandra. Still, I am sure they do pretty well out of it. Hope all is going well with the canvassing.

We had our first more or less dry day after 2 very wet ones yesterday, and more rain in the night. We managed to get one kiln loaded yesterday, but everything is very wet. We also still have orders for log sacks coming in. Husband is going up early to light the kiln this morning, and then come back for breakfast.

I walked round the wood with someone yesterday who wants to take some pictures, and it really was horribly wet everywhere. Just to be perverse, the bluebells are coming up to flower fast now, and I have organised some bluebell walks for the end of the month! Just hope they last all right if it stays wet.

cassandra



Joined: 27 Mar 2013
Posts: 1733
Location: Tasmania Australia
PostPosted: Thu Apr 12, 18 12:07 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
    

The reception can be mixed Gregotyn - I only tell you about the nice ones - some just shut the door in my face or order me off their property without even bothering to open the door haha. I had one women on Tuesday who indicated she did not feel there was anything she could do as the government was completely out of control and acting for itself. I pointed out that what she could do would be to ensure that her vote counted and that she could do some research on each of the candidates to inform her decision. By the end of the conversation she was feeling a lot more empowered and will hopefully vote for me once she has investigated the options.

I have encountered a massive impasse in the media which was not only ignored my media release (while publishing articles about other more well known candidates, some of whom have already been given previous coverage) but has also failed to publish my letters to the Editor. I do at least have one media personality following my Twitter feed now (which is being done for me by a friend because I have no clue how to Tweet).

Yesterday I was at home doing paperwork and today being freezing, wet and windy I am also at home, and will catch up with some more paperwork, draft a few more page updates, and organise an outfit for tomorrow when they will be making candidate announcements and media will be present so I will be too and few of the other candidates - though I suspect they will be for all that.

Today it is paying advertising bills, sorting out the transfer of my radio ads from one radio station to another, and chasing up a few other things. And packing a bag for the weekend. Luckily the trip to Hobart tomorrow will allow me to drop Seb off to kennels as I am again going away for the night (though Seb will be in kennels for three nights). This trip will take me to the northern coastal area of the electorate and I will be staying in a caravan park. There is an issue I am still struggling to get my head around relating to the provision of free camping which is seen to compete with the local businesses of caravan parks, but the absence of which leads to homeless tent-dwellers using the shrubbery for toilets in the absence of public facilities. We do have a housing crisis here in Tassie - the victim of our own success, the government's decision to increase our population by 20% in a short period without doing the strategic work to support it, and the rise of Air BnB. The last of these is topping out now as people are becoming increasing aware that to participate one must have furnished accommodation, cleaning between occupants, linen services and the visitors are just as likely to wreck your place/run out without paying as any tenant is, so the perceived massive financial benefits are not being realised.

I have given up on my signs - they are too 'tasteful' to be effective as I hate garish colours and the font size is too small to be read at a distance. Besides, there is barely a square inch of southern Tasmania that is not plastered with noticeboards. So I will make a virtue of my poverty and suggest I am considering the impact this has on our beautiful State and the tiresomeness of the rapid election cycle on the voting public.

Unfortunately a lot of candidates, allegedly independent, have cheer squads which I lack (or rather I have them, but they are not the sort of people who realise what is involved in a campaign and I am not good at asking for favours) who are posting about their presence in particular locations and their position on local issues as if they are just Joe Public expressing a view. Since people are pack animals this usually leads to a series of eulogies about them being out in pouring rain etc which I can not compete with as I am too busy being out there in the pouring rain, haha.

Never mind, at least I will have tried and with the number of candidates the minimum number of votes I need to avoid being excluded from preference allocation is decreasing daily. So wish me luck tomorrow and hopefully I will at least make it to the second round of preference distribution this time.

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