Financial & Travel Musings » Family

Generators for the dark times

Arnold — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 12:15:28 +0000

With all the disasters going on around the world these days it’s no wonder that people are looking at honda generators.

Depending on how complete an electricity service you’d like you can sometimes get away with surprisingly low powered (and hence cheap) generators. In the mist of the 1970s when there were regular blackouts we managed quite nicely on a 300W kit which was more than enough to run the TV, lights and heating. It’s never going to do electric cookers but to do them you need really a really serious generator (couple of kW at minimum) which is a LOT more expensive.

Seeing as you don’t need them all the time, it seems best to go low and get a portable gas cooker as well: that combo is a whole lot cheaper than one of the monster generators that you’d need to run electric cookers.

Personal gifts for the love in your life

Arnold — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 20:53:18 +0000

When you’ve been with someone for a while you tend to run out of the easy gift ideas.

It’s not that you’re not considering what to get her now and again but unique gift ideas for her are harder and harder to come by. Maybe you’ve had the idea to buy a linked series of items over a few years but it’s easy to run off the end of those or even to get bored with the predictability of them after a couple of years.

The best plan obviously is to think about gifts well in advance of when you’re going to hand them over. Thus, you could start looking actively for Christmas gifts once the summer is over, and three or four months ahead of her birthday, anniversary, etc. Put as much thought into it as you can. Has she picked up a new interest in the last year? Buy something related to that then. Has she mentioned anything more than once? (it nearly always needs mentioned more than once, doesn’t it?)

Unique to her is best if you can manage it. Something that takes account of her interests and what she’s like.

Incoming search terms:

gifts for the love of your life

Re-equipping the kitchen

Arnold — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 20:45:37 +0000

We’re almost at the point where we will be ready to start work on upgrading our kitchen.

Lots of bits & pieces have been chosen. All major appliances though which’ll leave us with a lovely kitchen but really naff kitchen utensils.

So we’re finally getting around to thinking about those kitchen utensils. Some, OK, many of them are seriously old, dated and in need of throwing out so we’re going to start looking around at replacements over the next few weeks.

Expensive weddings

Arnold — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 15:26:16 +0000

The price of weddings seems on a never ending spiral upwards with not only inflation to contend with but increasing requirements for little extras around the main business of the wedding too.

So, as well as the wedding invitations, you now need to send “save the date” cards so that people can pencil the big event into their diaries even further in advance than they used to. Those bits of admin mean that it’s not uncommon to need a wedding planner to pull all the various bits and pieces together so that the day is a success.

Even for the main items it’s becoming more of a hassle with the need to co-ordinate the bridesmaid dresses with the rest of the stylistic features of the wedding.

Changing styles in celebrating events

Arnold — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 23:54:19 +0000

I was just watching a rerun of One foot in the grave which was made in the 1990s and it’s amazing how different it is in some aspects from series that would be made these days.

The most striking thing about it was what seemed to be product placement yet wasn’t because it was the BBC. Or at least, one assumes that it wasn’t explicit product placement. Not an episode goes by without one product being named repeatedly throughout the show. It’s more striking because these days even labels from trainers have to be removed (often at considerable expense) before they can be approved for use in a show.

Older TV shows from the 1950s would feature Black and Mild cigars as celebration events for the arrival of a new baby yet these days smoking isn’t allowed at all in hospitals and would be seriously censured in a maternity ward obviously. That’s a particularly noteworthy different in shows made in the 1950s though, oddly, not in those made earlier.

Flakey “definite” decisions from the little guys

Arnold — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 11:26:51 +0000

Our little guys both made the absolutely definite decision last week that they didn’t want to go back to the football coaching until the summer sessions started again.

They’re not too keen on going out in the really cold weather and the hall that the winter sessions are held in is rather dingy. In the summer it’s all outside on a proper pitch. It’s better for us too as we had a great spot to sit and watch the little guys vs our winter spot lined up along the wall of the hall.

However, this week it’s a different tale as they’ve gone from absolutely definitely not wanting to go back until the summer, to mad keen to go this Saturday.

Oh well.

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Too many plaques

Arnold — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 11:16:52 +0000

One of the problems with the little guys going to their football coaching sessions since last year is that they’ve built up a massive pile of plaques as the coaching people award a plaque at every opportunity.

Thus we’ve just run out of space on the little shelf above the fire and need another spot to put them for when they start the next coaching session.

If it keeps up we’re going to need to get a bigger house at some point I think!

Does someone you love ever really leave you?

Arnold — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 13:42:16 +0000

My Dad would have been 84 today had he lived but, sadly, he didn’t quite make it to even 82.

The photo here was taken on whilst he was over in France with us for John’s first birthday.

That’s the pity really… John was only 3 when he died so for him his Granda left him half a lifetime ago. We were over in France for most of John’s life up to that point whilst James grew up knowing him most of his first couple of years of life.

Interestingly though, both of them continue to mention him every couple of months or so and they haven’t forgotten him as much as I’d thought they would have by now. Sadly, they both have fewer memories of him than I’d hoped they would have had over the years but sometimes they create memories of him in situations where they would have expected him to be. Thus, James mentioned that Granda would have been there on his first day at he new school and that he’d have still been looking after them in what’s still their favourite park.

Of course, in many ways most of their “memories” of him will be of things that they would have expected him to have done over the years but which he didn’t live long enough to do. So he didn’t see them start in their new school, didn’t get to see James in the end of year event nor either of them in the Christmas carol singing. But they carry the memory of what he would have done through their experience of the things that he did do for them.

I think it’s fantastic that they can keep the memory of their Granda alive in that way.

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Keeping the place tidy

Arnold — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 11:02:24 +0000

With two little guys and us in need of a larger house, keeping things tidy is something of a losing battle.

The new suite is currently quite tidy but is in need of chair slipcovers if it’s to remain that way for any length of time. Actually, that suite has helped the tidyup effort somewhat in that it’s bigger so we’ve less floor space to get messed up these days.

Next up I think will have to be a new boiler as the current one is on its last legs.

The best place to park your car at night

Getting to sleep

Arnold — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 22:13:32 +0000

Our lives are so busy at the moment that there seems to be no chance that we’ll ever need any kind of sleep aid but that situation is something that can change very quickly indeed.

Full lives naturally don’t always mean that you conk out in the evenings as they’re often associated with quite a lot of stress which tends to counteract any hope of getting to sleep anyway easily. That’s the problem of course: keeping your life in balance is something that’s quite difficult to do.