Not such a late night last night, though later than I should have done really, but not too much to drink. Clare was out for her Christmas meal (her second Christmas meal as it goes) and I waited up for her in case she needed a lift home. She didn't need it in the end. She called me to say someone would give her a lift back, so I cracked open a cider just before bed. I had watched Wednesday (on Netflix, very good) with the boys while she was out, and made some tea. I had pie and brussels sprouts for my tea and very nice it was too. These are some Pukka Pies which I've got because you can cook them in a microwave, but I did them in the oven because I had the oven on for the boys anyway. I am dreading to think what the energy bills will be for yesterday. After a week of very low, I think it might have hit a tenner1. I put three washes in, and the oven, I'm sweating just thinking about it.
I'm dictating this walking back from Parkrun. I got up early and did that and walked in, all in good time. Even ran for a little bit just for a warm up. My watch gave out on the way there so I know my official parkrun time will be counted. And will this count for Strava? Yes I think it will because there's a thing you can do on the phone, you start recording on the phone and it uses the GPS on the phone. And of course that would work. Pretty slow run, over 26 minutes. I stopped to walk a couple of times because one knee kept starting to hurt and I didn't want it to actually go. I knew in advance it was the tinsel run so I'd grabbed a nice Christmas hat and ran in that, but I didn't know it was a collection for the food bank. I should have known that and brought some stuff along. I did make a donation to the food bank yesterday. _I do a lot of work for charity_, and I don't like to talk about it...
Folkestone parkrun results for event #364. Your time was 00:26:46.
Congratulations on completing your 105th parkrun and your 94th at Folkestone parkrun today. You finished in 127th place and were the 89th Male out of a field of 382 parkrunners and you came 15th in your age category VM50-54. Take a look at this week's full set of results on our website. Your PB at Folkestone parkrun remains 00:20:50. Your best time this year remains 00:21:36.
Also did my big Christmas discount shop yesterday, but it turns out I got the dates wrong and the 20% discount was while we were away and didn't count yesterday. So I spent a little more than I thought. I was going to buying some of the big ticket items like laundry detergent and white washing whitener and crates of beer and things. But still I get my good Tesco 10% discount. All the prices are right up again though. I think buying this stuff without a discount a couple weeks ago I would have been cheaper. Things like the wine multi-buy are long gone but still found a few deals. I think I might have to go back today though. Christmas Eve, it's going to be busy, and are we going to find the time today? But, I'm out of basil. I made a bolognese in the slow cooker (oh that's another thing that will've added to the bill) and I didn't have any basil. There wasn't a lot of fruit for the boys breakfast today too.
One final thing that will have ramped up the energy usage of yesterday. I finally got around taking the battery out the beetle and put it on charge. I don't know how much energy that uses to charge a battery. It's some. Also, the boys played more than their fair share of Xbox yesterday. I think I'm going to try and keep the power off for the rest of Christmas. Turn all the lights off and hopefully go down the pub.
I should do more of these dictated chats because even though it's boring content, it is a lot of content. A lot of texts for me to read back later and I've really enjoyed this year. Reading back old posts from 20 years ago or more and each time I think "there's a little detail missing here, I wish I had a little bit more of the small stuff which would really help me remember things". So, I'm walking back, along the seafront obviously. Sea is pretty calm today, but you get the occasional big splashing wave, it is nice. The beach has been restored slightly. They do this thing with big diggers once or twice a year where they move all the shingle back into place. So it's looking good. Every time there's a really big storm and the stones get washed back into the sea, the beach looks a bit damaged. It is looking okay now. Can see a few people fishing ahead of me, and some families out for our walk. It looks pretty misty further up towards Hythe, maybe that's just the sea spray.
Nearly home now, I'm just turning into Battery Point, so any second now I'll be able to see that collapsing wall. The one that we got the threat of an enormous bill to repair. So this is part of the landscaping, which they say is part of the common ground. Well it is part of the communal part of this estate really. It's made of wood, and it's seeminglyneeded to support some of the houses. Supposedly the bill could come to a quarter of a million quid, which even when divided by 100 houses on the estate is still a hell of a lot of money. We haven't heard anymore since the initial note. I don't know what's happened. I'm really really hoping that the original message was wrong, and we are not jointly responsible for that wall. It's being repaired at the moment, so there are what looks like a big metal sheets hammered into the ground to stop any of the land above it subsiding, then massive concrete block supporting those, and then there are like big wooden struts pushing up towards the house. I can see it looks like an expensive job. It looks like it's going to take a long time. I really don't hope I don't have to pay for it.
Not feeling too flush at the moment with the general Christmas expenses, and then that little holiday. That wasn't cheap, and I didn't realize how much of it I hadn't already paid for, and then we had extra bonus cost on the end because of the train ticket fun. So I'm still in credit right now, but a couple of festive weeks until payday. Oh, and a water bill just came in so that's another 200 quid. Then in the New year things should start settling down. Shouldn't they?
I'm really thinking of us not having a holiday next year, because this years holidays were so expensive, and I don't think they were entirely appreciated. So maybe we just have a staycation? An actual staycation, staying at home. Also, Clara's got one final exam type thing to do so she needs to do some intensive guided studying or something for, and I think that will happen over the summer, so that would affect any time we could take off. So we will see. Maybe we'll find a last minute holiday in the summer. Maybe we just won't and I'll take all the wedge that I would have spent and spend it on fun things around the house. I might get my decorative wall in the study done. I might get a bike storage unit. I might get another chest of drawers. Exciting stuff like that. It's not enough to buy solar panels which is my big expensive dream. A dull big expensive dream really isn't it.
Home now so time for coffee, and some cereal, and then go and buy that basil. Then we're going to look at some Christmas lights today and then by 5pm hopefully to the Inn Doors.
Estimated 734 cups of coffee from my espresso machine2 probably comes to £1.60 per cup (including actual coffee and now servicing2 but not the electricity).
Paul Clarke's blog - I live in Hythe in Kent. Wed + father to two, I am a full-stack web developr, + I do javascript / Node, some ruby, python, php etc. I like pubbing, parkrun, eating, home-automation + other diy stuff, history, tree stuff, Television, squirrels, pirates, lego, + TIME TRAVEL.