Friday 5 December 2014

Shopping and changing tariff...

I am pleased to report this morning that my sniffles have gone away so that is very good news indeed.

This morning found us wending our way to Springfield's shopping centre at Spalding in Lincolnshire, whose details can be found here.

They have a Paver's shoe shop (despite one not showing up on their store guide) where I had purchased my daytime shoes for DS and FDiL's wedding next year. We had been waiting for them to get their new season shoes in before returning to shop for something reasonably flat and hopefully very comfortable for the dancing in the evening. I eventually found something very flat with the smallest of raised area on the heels. I normally never, ever buy shoes as I don't like them at all, preferring to wear boots or sandals. In fact I hardly buy anything for my feet except the two aforementioned and all boots and shoes stay with me for years, getting repaired where possible.

Needs must however and I bought a pair of leather shoes with a gold stitch decoration. Sandals would be inappropriate as in the evening, the dancing is in the Ceilidh style and toes may well get stepped or stomped on! So other than one small item I am almost finished. Daytime wear and evening wear all done for which I am grateful as neither myself nor DB really enjoy clothes shopping. He still has to get his shirt but we are waiting on DS to decide which type.

We also managed to get T's presents so local people are completed, one more thing to cross off our list. DS and FDiL's presents are in the post to us, just ourselves to sort out.

Some of the big supermarkets have a leg of lamb at half price so we bought one and tucked it away in the freezer along with a previously purchased piece of gammon. Meat price wise (according to our ethos of still living on war time restrictions) we have £7 left for the month of December, as until now, we hadn't bought any. I foresee lots of pies and meal combinations from that amount of meat, which will easily take us into January as well.

We got back home and despite the thermometer on the car reading 7C it was very cold. A quick burst of central heating (set to 16C) ensured a bit of warmth whilst we had a milky coffee and slice of cake. The wood burner was then lit as the sky has cleared and the temperature is now plummeting towards a minus Celsius of some kind.

We had our annual electricity statement yesterday and although we were currently on a long term contract, they informed us that we could save by switching onto another tariff. Never taking them at their word, we checked and could, so did so. The quite substantial savings will most likely get used up this winter but hey, that is better than going that amount over if we had stayed on our current tariff. Price is now fixed to April 2016.





5 comments:

  1. I saw that lamb advertised on tv, but we are being strict and only get fruit, veg and salad, bread and butter in, until after christmas. I have just had a email to say our electricity tariff is ending in February so we need to look into it. It said 7 degrees here today, but it felt very cold,we only put the heating on to have a quick blast, we do not have it running all day.

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    1. Our heating and hot water combined is on for 40 minutes each morning after that, it only goes on in quick blasts, usually not more than twice a day but only if we are very cold! We are using our £2 coins saved since last January for meat for December and January plus most of the presents so it doesn't come out of our normal food shopping.

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  2. Would not setting your heating thermostat to a comfortable 21 ish degrees and let it run all the prove more economic than short bursts? ...just something I'd heard about.

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    1. Apparently not, just read myths about warming your home and even having it on all the time at say 17C is costly. We have oil and it costs nearly £800 to fill the tank which at that rate, would be used up within about 4 months. We put it on until it turns itself off then switch it off

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  3. Does it depend on how well your home is insulated?? I keep my heating on all the time at 16-18 depending on time of day etc. The house is never red hot but then again its never absolutely freezing. I find this very economical because the boiler only cuts in every now and again. Whereas the boiler is forced to work harder if a house has cooled down to say 13 and you want it to be 18. It works for me and I use gas.I do want a log burner next year so the central heating can remain as a background heat

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