Igenlode Wordsmith

I am still plugging away through my very overdue accounts from last year and have now completed nine months -- but for the last two months I have been working on, the recorded cash expenditure has quite definitely exceeded the amount of cash withdrawn from my account (by a few pounds at a time), and at this lapse of time I have absolutely no means of working out where the extra money to fund this spending can have come from -- I have had to simply give up on attempting to balance my accounts for the period in question. ( Read more... )

I have also made the decision to give up on my pot of parsley, which has never been healthy enough to actually use in cooking and which is just dwindling year on year. Even the 'new' parsley has all died, one plant at a time, and the much bigger 'old' parsley proved, when I finally pulled it up, to have virtually no root on it. It clearly just doesn't like the growing conditions.

And I have ripped a pair of pyjama trousers very convincingly across the seat -- there is no point on earth in trying to mend those. As it happens I have rather more (non-matching) pyjama trousers than jackets, since to my perplexity it was the jackets that kept ripping... so at least this evens things up a bit :-)

I discovered at lunch-time (while looking for my shopping list) that my cash purse wasn't where it ought to have been( Read more... )

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Edit: I found it. Dropped into the inside pocket of my bike bag rather than the main bag that was also inside the bike bag -- I was obviously in a hurry and 'missed'!
I think the universe is trying to tell me that I really should be getting on with that detailed breakdown of my expenditure (currently only up to September 2024....)

Edit 2: Cash in hand: £16.04. More than I had realised -- I must have only just withdrawn a couple of weeks' worth!

I went to the garden centre to see if I could get sorrel seed, but they didn't have any (a lot of things were out of stock at this time of year, but there wasn't even a space where sorrel ought to be), and I found some potted sorrel plants outside at the back, so spent £5·50 on one of those. I always liked picking and eating the leaves from the garden and it will add interest to my salads, along with the kale. I just hope it doesn't prove as much of a disappointment as the oregano plant has, despite being kept in full sunshine (I keep wondering whether I ought to get rid of that, and then hoping it will have a decent enough flavour this year to make use of with the tomatoes...)

I was tempted by the red-veined sorrel, but decided that the plain green would probably be more vigorous and more likely to breed true if it self-seeded -- though sorrel is supposed to be perennial. The plants in the garden centre were many of them busy sending up flower spikes already!

My saved-seed rocket, which I have in fact been harvesting regularly, is now showing signs of trying to flower, so I should probably plant some more of that; the commercial seed is younger and hasn't got to that stage yet, but is not nearly so vigorous.

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( Gas debits again )

After an awful lot of poring through months' worth of receipts, I've managed to identify a point at which a twenty-pound note definitely appeared 'out of thin air' without being withdrawn from the bank, on the 16th of October when I was buying batteries and paid for them with a £20 note when according to my calculations I only had £4.18 in my wallet, which was not enough to be able to afford them out of the change I had on hand. I do sort of vaguely recall the episode; I have a feeling I was going to pay for them with a Visa card and for some reason couldn't or decided against it -- maybe the card machine was not working, maybe I was going to ask for 'cashback' and they said they didn't do it -- and I think I may have suddenly remembered that I did in fact have a backup note in my *other* wallet (from the long-lost days when that used to be my 'personal' money for my private amusements as opposed to the housekeeping; it has been all housekeeping for rather a long time now) and have decided to use that instead.

And I think the 'two-wallet problem' may perhaps account for the further discrepancy that has arisen over Christmas, when I transferred my last remaining £10 note into my 'private' wallet, went on holiday expecting not to need to spend any money, had to withdraw thirty pounds in an emergency, and spent some of that while obviously receiving change from it. So there was some change left behind in the 'housekeeping', as I only took the note, and other change that ended up in the 'private' wallet and is still there, since I didn't transfer it back when I returned. ( Read more... )

British Gas: "Hello, here's your energy statement.

Total energy costs (excluding VAT) £1.16
VAT at 5% £0.06
Total energy costs (including VAT) £1.22
You've paid us £126.00

We will regularly review your monthly payment of £42.00 to make sure you're on track to cover your expected energy use" :-P

I had another visit from the gas man to read the meter this week (I'm quite impressed that British Gas still bother, instead of pushing off the labour onto the customer -- nobody reads my electricity meter!), and in consequence have received another letter telling me that my direct debits need to go up... which I could have told them last January, when they reduced the payments in the first place. :-p

The new monthly direct debit is for £28, which is gratifyingly close to the £30 that I actually budgeted (although I'm a little alarmed to notice that I apparently *planned* to budget £40, but didn't remember to do so!)

Total energy costs in the last 6 months: £150.

Today it's 2.25am instead of three a.m.... and after much labour I have traced the failure of *this* month's accounts to add up correctly to the fact that I entered the value of £10.85 of groceries including £2.91 of ox-tail (already entered separately) as 10.85+2.91 instead of 10.85-2.91.

Just how many different mistakes is it possible to come up with when trying to correlate two sets of figures recorded in two different ways? :-(

I've been running my annual bills (about a month behindhand), which enables me to compare electricity costs between this year and last year. The record starts in April, which means the winter months fall at the right-hand end of the graph; as you can see, the actual quantities of electricity used normally vary very little across the seasons. (I obviously misread the meter in June 2020, resulting in a spike which was then corrected by a sharp dip in the amount 'used' in the next month!)

In January 2022, the new price contract kicked in. Costs immediately went up to over 150% of their previous level :-(

(Click for full image and key to chart)

( Average monthly expenditure )

It's that time of year again... my current gas supplier's contract is ending, and I have to decide whether or not to roll over onto their recommended 'cheapest like-for-like' option or not.

Last year I very nearly chose to switch my gas over to Ecotricity's new 'green gas' supply, alongside their longstanding electricity supply. Only they totally failed to respond to my contact until long after the two-week switch window had closed, which was not very good commercial strategy on their part as they lost a potential customer (and not particularly reassuring in terms of general competence). ( Read more... )

I've been running my expenditure figures for the year. They add up to £9155·55 (which is not an accurate total, as there are a couple of hundred pounds' worth of tax outstanding, an indeterminate repair bill, and a quote for buildings insurance -- which I don't currently have -- of about six hundred pounds. On the other hand, £144 of music subscriptions have been refunded because I was unable to use them, which doesn't show up under the monthly breakdowns. So say about ten thousand pounds.)

The monthly breakdown under the main headings turns out to be as follows: ( Read more... )