It's a bucket!

* This item was gifted by Spear & Jackson

A collapsible and compact bucket at that. And while I never thought I’d rave quite so much about a collapsible bucket, I also have to apologise for the title of this post. As soon as the phrase popped into my mind, it reminded me of the Brian Conley “it’s a puppet” catchphrase from the 90s, which was big in our family. But rave about a bucket, I am - and of the two things I’ve just mentioned, be grateful it’s the bucket.

And yes, it really is a bucket, not a frisbee, although…

Seriously, when I saw it my first thoughts were “that’d be great for under the sink.” Our buckets have been relegated to the shed, which is all well and good when you can plan, but when you can’t it’s not so good to have your bucket supply a hundred yards away. We’ve not been in an emergency bucket situation (thankfully) but I think MOH knows that if we were, it’d be his job to hunt the bucket down.

Anyway, back to the actual bucket which is easy to pop up and down, it’s one of the new products from Spear and Jackson and well, can be used like a bucket. It’s made from silicone, retails for £8.99, has a pouring lip and a handle (like buckets do) and a potential useful hangy-up thing. Because even though I’ve said it’ll be useful to keep it under the sink, there’s still very little room there so hanging it on the back of the door could be the way to go. I’ve a feeling that MOH will be keen to make this work, especially when he learns of his bucket fetching duties, should the need arise.

A BIT BLURRED - BUT THE BUCKET MATCHES MY POM POM SLIPPERS, AND THAT MAKES ME SMILE

And one more thing that made me smile - so much so that all the pictures I have are slightly blurred - the bucket matches my slippers, how serendipitous is that?

* While this item was gifted by Spear & Jackson, I was under no obligation to share it here on my blog.

Reflecting on my week #74

This week just gone has been one of those that I’ve been building up to for a while and it didn’t disappoint.  You’ll have seen my pom pom sheep on Thursday to coincide with University Mental Health Day, and as well as the craft sessions there were plenty of other things going on.  The craft session I hosted with a colleague ended up doubling in length and was by all accounts a success.  Students and staff turned up to learn to knit and crochet, as well as to sit and start a square, leaving having made ‘a thing’.  Bemused senior managers stopped by to see what was going on and everyone who joined us for some crafting was pleasantly surprised to leave clutching their new needles or hook and a ball of wool, with the good intentions to carry on and learn more from YouTube.  There’s even the potential for  staff to get together occasionally at lunchtimes, which is something that’s promising - it’s almost like a secret club has been unearthed and I’m sure we’ll uncover some other crafters along the way too.

The lead up to any large scale event - at work, or home - is always a bit anxiety-inducing isn’t it?  And this was no different, but people came out and turned up to what they said they would so, generally, just phew.  Our challenge now is to build on this and make sure that it isn’t a one off thing, and quite frankly it’s too important a subject for it to be that,  thankfully there’s plenty of people at my university that think that way too.

These photos are from my walk home through Greenwich Park on Monday, I’d left work early for a doctors appointment and it felt a rare treat to be enjoying the park at this time of day, and I suspect nature knew I’d need a calming influence before waiting for my turn to come, just thirty minutes after it was scheduled.  That’s the thing with appointments at the doctors, you never really expect them to be on time, but that’s not something you can bank on, and arrive late either, is it?  In the end I could have left work on time and arrived before I was called, but then again I wouldn’t have had the time to take these pictures.

It was almost farcical though when I saw the nurse. I was there for a smear test, never pleasant but essential, and she asked why I was there as I wasn’t due a test even though the doctor had said mine was overdue.  I mean, essential though they are, they’re not the kind of thing you’d turn up for out of the blue, are they? And with a welcome like this coupled with the news that the doctor wasn’t correct because “as you’re over 50 the tests are every five years” it’s no wonder that smear test attendance is at its lowest ever.

After a lengthy discussion, where it turned out I was in fact overdue (and therefore the doctor did know what he was talking about) as there should have been a test in 2017, the year I turned 50.  Without a letter to prompt making an appointment I’d unsurprisingly not made one, there was the assumption that turning 50 in the year a test was due was the problem. But because my last test was completed in 2014, in the end the test was almost grudgingly carried out.  

As I said, just the preamble anyone needs before any test... I told you the gods had sent me through the park for a reason! 

We dashed up to Norfolk after work Friday evening, throwing MOH’s bike in the back of the car in the hope the weather forecast might be wrong. It wasn’t. His bike didn’t get an outing after all, but unable to stay inside MOH went for a walk in the wet, windy weather arriving back more than a little damp - the pockets of his coat were still wet as we arrived home last night. Nice.

The weekend wasn’t a right off though, we had a lovely meal out in The Lifeboat Inn at Thornham, one of the best restaurants we’ve discovered up there.  Unusually all four of us opted for fish main courses, and even weirder I had a fish starter too, even I didn’t recognise myself!

There was successful wedding hat shopping too. My eldest niece is getting married in May, and a new hat was bought, I’m still working on the rest of the outfit, but the hat is now the lynchpin. It might not be the most conventional way to buy a hat, or plan an outfit, but there you go.  

There’s a fabulous hat shop in Burnham Market, called The Hat Shop, which I knew would be the place to try, and if I had no success here, then I’d be struggling so may need a complete rethink. It’s the sort of place you could never imagine, but has hats of all shapes, colours and sizes, and is quite something. I tried on many and was rather taken with several, all on an Alice-band-but-larger-than-fascinators including a lime green slanty oval one that completely clashed with the outfit I have in mind, a navy velvet creation which I think I upset the shop lady with by wearing the wrong way round, and insisting it was more comfortable pointing left than to the right which she assured me was “how it was designed”. Well, designed that way or not I preferred it the wrong way round and if I’d have bought it would have worn it that way too, as the band was way more comfortable and placed the hat where I wanted it on my head. 

I didn’t buy that one though as I’ve already got a navy hat, and velvet didn’t seem very Spring-like and would mean an outfit rethink. Instead I bought another coral hat (yes, I know I’ve already got one in that colour already) it’s a deeper colour though, I think, and quite different to the one I have and just kind of worked with my hair colour and style. 

WEDDING HAT: SNEAK PEEK

And so, as it kind of worked, I bought it. Eek! I’ll be checking it against the outfit in daylight today, and will hopefully amaze myself with my shopping and colour matching skills. That or be on the lookout for something Spring-like that matches my new hat.

There’s plenty of shops to browse around in Burnham Market, and in one I spotted this sign which is my ‘de rigeur’ mode for text messages, so apologies if I owe you a text response, but please know I’ve read your text and replied in my head, even if I haven’t got around to doing it for real yet...

Shed tidy-ups and storage

* This is a paid collaborative post

If you’re anything like me your shed is a place to cram things into over the winter, which come spring is something to be sorted out.  It always starts out as being a Really Good Idea, but rapidly goes downhill part-way through, and of course that’s usually when some bright spark - yes that’s usually me - has suggested we empty the whole shed, and our garden ends up looking something like this:

In my defence, MOH is a rummager.  And it drives me potty.  However as the shed is supposed to be his domain I try not to let it bother me too much. Then there’ll be a point where he admits he has no idea where he put the thing he’s after, unless it’s bike stuff of course, he uses that more regularly so has a better of idea of where that is.  But when he says the shed needs a sort out, then I know we’re in for an “everything out” kind of tidy up.

It’s no bad thing either.  We often find all sorts of things we didn’t realise we still had. There’ll be many diversions of wondering if this fits that, or if it could be used for something else and it’s then that I remember why I keep these chairs.  Every time we discuss their fate, and they live on the edge, but survive the cull.  It’s when I remember their usefulness during shed sort outs, when one of those diversions take place, that I’m always grateful we kept them.  I’m learning from experience though, now I even set one up ready for use,  I’m not even kidding…

Once everything is out, I can often be found marvelling at how much stuff came out of a relatively small space.  Quickly followed by wondering how on earth even a reduced amount is going to fit back in.  At times I wonder if we should buy another shed, something like the concrete sheds from Lidget, so that we have space for everything, although I think like many people we would fill whatever space we have - but that’s normal right?

On the whole the contents does go back in, and looks neater than when we first started so that’s always good.  We know now to choose a day that’s at least going to be dry as this is a process that takes place over an elapsed time period, for many of the reasons given above, but also because when it comes to Operation Refill there’s as much discussion about what should go where and how much it’s used. 

My logic says if it’s not used so much then it can go at the back and can have things stored in front of it, as there’s not space for everything to be right at the door, and never will be.  But then again, if it’s not used much, do we need it at all.  Like pruning plants, pruning stuff can be addictive!

In our latest tidy-up I’ve tried a radical approach to storage.  Instead of having our shelving racks around the edge of the shed, we’ve filled a quarter of the space with racks which are stacked three deep. So now it’s really important to know what’s used, and what needs to be gettable, and have this on the front, open rack or placed on the ends which are just about accessible.

MOH took some convincing, but went with it, and I’ll admit it’s not usual. But it leaves us with plenty of space for the lawn mower and other garden tools, and bikes, including mine, and all the paraphernalia that comes with them, the sun loungers and parasols, and even a ladder.  That’s not bad going either really, when you consider we also needed to find homes for our latest paint tins additions following all that work on the conservatory too. 

But we got it all in, and I think I pretty much know where things are, down to at least to which rack and often which shelf.  It’s the sort of brain I have and a ‘skill’ that MOH thinks is peculiar, but then again as I said before he’s a rummager, which is probably about as far apart on whatever kind of scale this is, that you can get.

So tell me,  have you got a shed tidy planned, and is your approach similar or quite different?

* While this is a collaborative post, all views and opinions remain my own.