I am sat here with a cup of tea, having just caught up with the final Great Pottery Throwdown Programme and missing it already. I have enjoyed it so much and the final competitors seemed like old friends. I'm not surprised AJ won as they had skills right across the board. My couple of pieces of pottery made a few years back look a bit pathetic!
Today one of my cousins, S, and her husband came to visit again. We met up last year when they were staying in Pembrokeshire too. It's lovely to keep in touch with my family. I set to and made a Lemon Drizzle cake at breakfast time, then made a pizza as an alternative at lunchtime, but gosh, they arrived laden with a fabulous cold feast and I won't need to cook all week now!
The out of kilter feeling is worry over the mountainous rise in the cost of living - I needed Stork marg for baking this morning and a SMALL pack was £1.80! OK, it was in Co-op who are always dearer, but heck, the spreadable butter type stuff was eye-wateringly expensive - a large Lurpack was £5.85!!! A pound of butter would have been £3.30 by comparison . . . Think I will be stocking up on cooking oil as much of that comes from Ukraine apparently. Flour will be something else going through the roof. I've stocked up but need more room for storage.
We are having to pay motorway prices for fuel here in town - diesel is 169.9 pence per litre - about £10 a gallon now, so we shan't be going far and on sunny mornings I may walk into town and back (2 miles each way) for the daily paper, anything small and light we have run out of. I could do with the waist-reducing exercise but it is uphill most of the way home!
I ordered heating oil yesterday and they wouldn't quote a price. Delivery will be in 2 -3 weeks and we will just have to accept it is what it is, but Keith's illness makes him feel the cold more. I will have to cocoon him in blankets, quilts and a hotty botty.
Then you watch the news about Ukraine and we have NO problems compared with the poor people who are being bombarded, murdered and their homes blown to smithereens. Praying seems futile . . . It's starting to feel like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse have just ridden into view.
