What have you been doing today?

Had a good tidy up in my garage today. Tons of crap, old plant pots, bird table, broken drills, an old hydraulic Jack, assorted bits of timber that I’m probably never going to use, broken bike bits, old electrical switches and sockets, used plumbing bits etc etc. All the sort of stuff you think "I'll hang on to that - it might come in handy one day" but of course it never does. Probably would have meant two trips to the dump. My neighbour saw me clearing it out and said I could chuck it in the Thames water contractors skip that’s on his drive. They fill it using the dumper truck and a grab lorry comes at least twice a day to empty it. They told my neighbour to chuck anything they want in it - no limits. That’s good enough for me - I might make a start on clearing out the loft next week. ;)
 
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Just been to the allotment and as I was coming up to the allotment gates I had to slow down as three people were trying to bump start a late Fiesta. I followed them for about a hundred yards and it wouldn’t have it so they stopped just yards from the pull in for the allotments. I pulled round them and got out to open the gate and then I went and asked the bloke who was in the car what gear he was using. He said third so I said to try second and helped them give him another push. Another 50 yards down the road. As we were going along, I noticed the ignition wasn't on and when I told him to put it on he said it was keyless ignition. I told him he still has to be switched on for a bump start. He said the battery was stone flat (one of them had left the lights on) so it wasn’t coming on. I told him he needed some ignition to bump it and left them to it. I went back to my car and looked under the boot floor and found I had a set of jump leads so I reversed out of the pull in and started to go down the road to them. By now they had turned the car round and were pushing the back to their house so I motioned for them to pull in front of my car, nose on. Unfortunately they had stuck the weakest girl in to steer and as it was coming to my car they were all screaming for her to brake. She was screaming that there were no brakes or steering (well there wouldn’t be with no engine running to power the steering and give servo to the brakes) and she narrowly missed my car and the front wall of a house! Panic over, I connected the leads and it started first time. They were all well knackered by now and I doubt they would have made it back to their house anyway.

A bit of weeding and watering on the plot and I potted up some chilli plants that my plot neighbour gave me. I harvested a handful of asparagus to take home for my tea.

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Got my new credit card, and disposed of the old one. The time before last, after meticulously cutting it into little pieces, I realised I had been cutting up my new card by mistake, so I had to complete a little jigsaw and then tape it back together again :mad: :ROFLMAO:
 
Quite busy this week, trying to organise auto-watering systems in the garden, for all the plants she has bought.

One of the systems is really designed to water house plants, indoors. It runs a pump, from a water container, for one minute every 24 hours. The one minute on, begins the instant it is turned on, so I'm thinking this could be extended with a time clock, switching on more frequently.

The other system, is just a manual watering system. Turn the tap on, it waters via numerous outlets. I was thinking 9v solenoid valve, 9v PSU, powered via a time clock, or Smart Switch, via Alexa. The problem I found was flow through the solenoid valve, found in my 'useful bits box' is very restricted. I'm now wondering if a 3-port CH, spring return valve would be able to run at water mains pressure? Anyone know?
 
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Just been out on drain watch. Progressing slowly. As they are getting deeper now, they are only covering a metre a day. Been nearly a month now and the contractors are getting somewhere near to the main sewer at last. I never thought or would be this big a job. Whole street has been closed off for nearly a week now.

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Packing ready for a week on The Kennet & Avon canal, meeting up with some Aussie friends on a bigger trip round Europe, lots of booze and nibbles, might chuck some clothes in. Been in the planning since pre covid, three postponements so far, we have gone for big boat as Gary is about 6' 5", weather is set fine, so apart from getting jammed in a lock what could go wrong?
 
After cooking a curry, cleaning the hob.

Few things I dislike more, than cleaning the hob.
I went induction hob a couple of years ago & won't be going back.

I was never much of a cook when we had gas, so "cooking on gas" means nothing to me.
 
I've spent much of the day on the fuddy blown to banks. I tried to multi task - on a call to one bank while doing online stuff with codes flying about with another.
I made a minor discovery of what they call a Fxed Term savings account at First Direct.
Interest rate is a good 4.6%
Cuteness 1 is that you can close the acccount at any time to get the money out, except if it's before the end (It's 13 months to maturity atm) it costs you £100. That's a lot less than the usual 90days interest (if any possibility at all).
Cuteness 2 is that you can have as many as you like, so you could have £10k, £20k, etc so if you need to get some cash you close the one which suits, and only lose 1 x £100.

You do need a token FD current account - no bother.
FD are about the best to deal with online or by phone, and you can phone all night if you need, or you're lonely.

Rates might rise a little now but probably not much.
 
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