Splice the mainbrace

0c here and very dull. The forecast is for 3 cold nights coming up, I’ll be glad when it gets a more mild at the weekend and the long range forecast is for it to stay that way. Bird watch: several Gold Finches come to feed on the nyger seeds, Blue Tits, Great Tits feed on the peanuts, had a Black Cap for a fleeting visit on Saturday for the first time and not seen since, flock of Redwings still visiting the garden to feed on the berries. The Woodpeckers have stopped visiting the feeders and since the start of the cold spell the family of Sparrows have largely stopped coming.

Still -3c here and it’s taken the central heating 2 hours to raise the lounge temperature up 4 degrees to 18. It’s costing us around £13 per day for gas during this cold snap £17 including electricity!

Ooh that doesn’t look nice to drive in.

Mild here this morning already just above freezing!! took until 11.30 yesterday. No snow but rain late afternoon yesterday has made it very icy. Forecast shows it getting less cold from a week tomorrow hopefully it is accurate, I don’t mind dry cold but not extreme cold we’ve had -6 and -7 nights here and just above freezing max the past few days.

Last posted 14th November.

I'm a bit of a data fact nurd and have recently found the National Grid live information on the link below. It has all sorts of live data on type of power generation type, demand against generated and how much exported or imported. The UK is currently importing 13% of demand mostly from Norway and France with us having the worst combination of cold temperatures and light winds so our wind farms are generating a lot less than they could. National Grid: Live (iamkate.com)

Didn't get above freezing here until 11.30 and reached the dizzy hights of 2c. Now it's raining, it will be very icy on the roads and pavement later with -3 forecast. Looks like it's on its way to Stoke where no doubt it will fall as snow.

So do I, I had forgotten the Faroe islands and whaling connection before P&O told us the reason. I just wish they had put a non uk port of call on the itinerary rather than Liverpool.

-7c here at the moment, I put the heating on earlier than normal today. When it gets this cold I get concerned about freezing water pipes, boiler condensate pipes etc. The forecast shows the temperature rising to 4 today but I can’t see that happening with so much coldness locked in the ground already cooling the air. The itinerary of our P&O cruise next summer to Iceland and Norway has changed with a complete reversal of the ports of call i.e. Norway then Iceland now, one Iceland port dropped but trondheim added, Faroe Islands dropped (we really wanted to go there, but we have been told they won’t be going there now due to their whaling policy), and Liverpool added , of all places, which is only 40 mins away from where we live and have been there many times before hardly a suitable replacement for the Faroe Islands!!

Clear skies here with the sun coming up. My outside thermometer is showing -3c but the local weather stations are showing -5 to -6! The temperature in the house dropped from 18 to 13c overnight and we have what I thought was a well insulated house. I don’t have much planned for the day, we have got the Christmas decs down from the loft earlier in the week but apart from the outside led lights like others on here we’re finding it difficult to summon up the enthusiasm to decorate the house. Until last year we always had a real Christmas tree but once our last son left home I find the tree too heavy to carry around and place in the holder on my own, we got a ‘realistic’ artificial tree last year but it isn’t the same.

It’s still frosty here out of the sun. We have a flock of Goldfinches that have been coming the last few weeks that are getting through our stock of Niger seeds at a rate of knots and we have had the past few days a flock of Redwings visit to eat the cotoneaster tall shrubs around the garden. Our central heating thermostat is playing up, even though not up to set temperature keep losing remote communication with the receiver unit. Turning the thermostat down then back up again kicks it in again but it is annoying.

Back from the hospital and the good news is that it’s not cancerous and nothing needs to be done, the bad news is it’s something that I can’t pronounce (seborrhoeic keratosis) but apparently most people have at least one in later life.

I have a new washing machine arriving this afternoon. We had one of those weeks last week where the old one failed mid wash and tripped out the house then 2 days later the printer locked. Apparently after so many prints the ink pads need replacing (we had it for some years but not used that much) but it costs more or about the same to replace than buy new.

I put our Christmas lights up outside yesterday, quite modest compared to some with a few led sets weaved through our trees and shrubs. Our neighbours hang icicle types around the eaves of their house, I’m not good confident with heights on ladders so I don’t do that! I read a which? report that had done a study to show that a average led set only uses 50p of electric if used 6 hours a day for a month. I’ve got a hospital appointment this morning for a potential basal cell cancer on my forehead. I had only recently noticed it which is why I went to the gp but my wife showed me a photo from over 2 years ago and it shows it then and if anything is smaller and paler now. So hopefully all is ok and it may not be a BCC.

I’ve never managed to get the monitoring device to work, I just look my use up on the edf web site account, it does take a day or 2 for the daily usage to show though.

Thinking about it, QV is probably going to be based in the Caribbean for the winter but the sailings haven’t been released yet.

Queen Victoria summer in the med returns to Southampton on 21st October 2024 and then no other cruises listed (refit?) and Queen Elizabeth I assume staying out in the Pacific.

We’re not planning to change our normal times for washing, tumble drying etc which is off peak times anyway. I was just pointing out how the financial reward calculation works.

We’ve had 4 days of overcast skies and temperature of between 4 and 6c. We resisted putting the gas central heating on until the last few weeks but this week even with the thermostat turned down a degree or two from previous years still costing £8 a day in gas! This time last year we were on a fixed deal costing 2.5p a unit now is the price capped 10p 4x the cost!

I was ‘invited’ to sign up to edf ‘ beat the peak’ scheme to use less electricity at peak times during a few days over winter. I have signed up as there is nothing to lose, you get a financial reward by using less power at peak times (£3 per kWh) compared to normal usage at peak times. We don’t normally use power hungry appliances at peak times but to get the most out of the scheme you need to use them now at peak times on the other not ‘beat the peak’ days to up your normal usage at these times, it seems a bit counter intuitive to me!

For a change here on the Cheshire plain we didn’t have fog yesterday just low cloud and dull all day. Temperature only got up to 6 so it will be interesting what the daily gas bill will be in these colder conditions, it has already been averaging about £6 a day the past few weeks, £10 including electricity. We had the fibre laying people come around our area a year ago and they made a right mess of some peoples lawns (no pavements on our estate) but the network is still not active. We already get 60 to 65 mbs through normal fibre to cabinet broadband so we already are fast enough.

Thanks for the info. In your experience do you know what the deciding factor is whether surgery or cream is the treatment?

I’ve been referred to the hospital dermatology dept to be properly assessed.

Sorry to keep the medical theme going. I managed to get a gp appointment this morning to look at a suspect spot on my forehead. I had a basal cell cancer removed from my forehead 2 years ago so I’m fearing the worse, it left me with a 1 inch scar and a stretched skin flat spot around it, of which I’m very conscious. My forehead has had zero direct sun in the last 2 1/2 years but I guess these just develop from past exposure. I think I will need to enquire about using chemotherapy cream in the future but you can get very sore unsightly skin while using it but it’s better than ending up with a succession of scars and flat spots!

A 3w led bulb is equivalent to a 45w tradition filament bulb so 15 times more efficient. The led bulb uses about 0.09p per hour to run or 1p runs it for 11 hours.