16: Horrible worn out old boots

I had forgotten how worn out and horrible these boots were: not only do they look creased and cardboardy on the outside, but they've worn out enough to have sharp fins on the inside.

I won't even put them in the shoe recycling charity box, because I'd hate for someone who needs them to miss out on their chance of decent winter boots by getting these ankle shredders instead.

I will at least take the laces out and keep those.

I know I'm breaking my own rules slightly by posting these boots on the blog when I'm replacing them. But I'm doing that to make the point that I bought these only 4 years ago for about £20 - £30 and now they're too worn out to be usable.

Now that I've been working in a proper job for 2 years, I can afford to buy some new boots that will be much better quality, and hopefully last much longer.

So I've ordered these fantastic looking Doc Martens boots with furry linings - they should be arriving today, and I really hope they fit! 

(I've ordered them from Office because it's easier to return them to a shop if they don't).

It's got me thinking though:

1: At what price point is it worth spending more on better quality, longer lasting shoes?

2: How much difference does it make to the environment if you buy shoes less often?

3: Is it only worth spending more on shoes that you know won't go out of fashion?

4: If you're spending more to get better quality shoes, how do you know that that's what they are?

Aside from being much much nicer, would my £160 new boots have to last for 21-32 years to be worth buying instead of the old ones (or possibly 16-24 years as I think they were too worn out to wear last year as well)?

How much of a financial disadvantage is this for people like the me from 4 years ago, who can only afford £20 boots?

These aren't even the worst shoes you can get: I've bought kid's shoes from ASDA that disintegrated within weeks, and sandals from Primark that broke apart on the second day of wearing them. 

How is it fair or justifiable to fill up landfills and waste hard up people's money like that, not to mention the labour of whatever people in the third world had to make this crap? It really isn't right.

But...

New boots are on their way! 

Lovely new boots! 

I'm looking forward to it😀

15: Years overdue library books

This all started when Youngest Son found a copy of Roald Dahl's 'The Witches'. 

He had been reading the same book at school, so when I saw this copy I didn't recognise, I assumed it was that one - but no, it was from the high school library.

Hapless Oldest Son, who left high school this year, has never been great at finishing his reading books and turned out to have quite a collection of old school library books in his room. 

It's a bit strange they hadn't asked for them back, but perhaps the pandemic had something to do with it.

This left Middle Son with the unenviable job of returning them, but he took it on bravely, and luckily it turned out there was a box for returning books at the library door. Job done, to relief all round!

Meanwhile, youngest son has become so enthusiastic about reading more Roald Dahl books that he looked up Roald Dahl's website and found it was Roald Dahl Story Day on September 13th.

He's a great organiser, and he came up with a whole day of activities for this: cooking with the help of Oldest Son and their Roald Dahl Revolting Recipes book, story times, and printable crafts from the Roald Dahl website. I was still laid up with Covid so all I had to do was printing and encouragement. 

I'm sure this could be said better, but we have the full range of organisational habits in this family, and I'm so lucky with all of them. To use the stereotypical blogger hashtag for the first time, #soblessed...

14: Replacing the boiler

Finally, after 3 years of increasingly unreliable hot water, our boiler broke enough for the insurance to pay us £500 towards a new one. Hooray!

We found our new boiler and engineer to replace it through the British Gas Local Heroes scheme. Having had such bad luck with the old boiler, the extra guarantees you get for the installation seemed like a  very good idea.

Unfortunately, the first engineer we found through Local Heroes tried to talk us into going behind their backs so he'd get to keep the extra commission. This confused us for long enough that Covid hit us before we were able to get the boiler replaced. 

While my husband was ill, I did some more research online and it seemed like the typical guarantee for boilers only covers manufacturing defects. One of my team mates at work had had a very expensively bad experience with a faulty boiler installation job by a company that went out of business, so I definitely wanted to get the installation work covered too.

It's been a month without hot water, so it's been really nice to have hot baths and showers again, and great that they took the old boiler and other rubbish away, saving us from having to get them to the tip.

Apparently, being more efficient, our new boiler will also be good for our energy bills, so I'm looking forward to that as well.

Hopefully this can bring an end to this unfortunate chapter of life when we had a whole family's worth of Covid, no hot water and (my) sprained ankle all at the same time. Surely better times are just around the corner, or even appearing already!

12? Voldemort gel

One of the few good things about Covid is it's kept me off my feet, giving my ankle more chance to heal.

Meanwhile, I've got through this whole tube of Voltarol gel, which I like to call Voldemort gel for that feeling of battling an enemy.

The foot is so much better :)

Day Something: Couldn't do the fingerprick antibody test

Well I tried. When I got my positive test result, the text message asked if I was willing to do this, and of course I said yes, because I wanted to help out with Covid research. 

But I should have watched the instruction video first - it's a lot harder than 'fingerprick test' makes it sound! 

You're meant to do jumping jacks, clench your fists, swing your arms around, soak your hand in warm water for two minutes and do the whole thing standing up. Obviously it's not impossible, but it's a bigger ask when you've got covid.

You're meant to almost fill up the tube with blood, but in spite of following all the instructions, I could hardly get any. I tried massaging it down my hand like they said, and could have tried again with a different finger, but then I started to feel faint and gave up. Sorry folks - I did try.

Weirdly, I had to pack it up as if it was done and being posted, and then throw it away in normal household rubbish. I suppose the packaging is a warning to anyone who goes through the household waste later. Still, seems a bit strange, like is it dangerous waste or isn't it?

Day 11: More Covid tests

So apparently I started blogging again just in time to get Covid. Yay. 

Youngest son and I have tested positive now, along with possibly my oldest son. I thought it was inevitable once my husband got it - we don't have a big house, all share a bathroom, and the three of us sleep in the same room too.

I've been taking him up food, water and medicine, and of course even with a mask on that's a risk, but what else could I do, nail him into the shed? We tried not to let it spread - wiped door handles, taps and surfaces with disinfectant wipes, did separate laundry, stayed out of the room, etc etc. I'm guessing the damage was done before his symptoms appeared anyway. 

It's not too bad so far (touch wood), but I'm also not complacent: someone from my primary school died of Covid a few weeks ago. 

So we're waiting for the PCR tests but the lateral flow tests were already positive.

Also waiting to see if the teenage lifestyle of staying in their bedroom will have saved my older two boys from catching it.

The three oldest of us are double vaxxed now, but the youngest two aren't at all.

At least I had a chance to stock up for it a bit: since I tested negative on Wednesday, I went to the shop as many times as I could to make sure we had enough food and medicine.

My husband seems to be getting better, so it's over to the one teenager that's definitely tested negative to sort anything else out for a while.

Meanwhile, I've got cash out for him, cooked a couple of big enough hot dinners to leave two more meals' worth of leftovers, and I've filled up this lovely 'Covid selection bowl' - who could resist!

Day 10: Birthday pizza boxes, and their little plastic tables

My son had a good start to his 16th birthday, I thought. 

He had some nice presents, that he liked. We were planning to take him out for dinner, and he chose the Hard Rock Cafe. I was also planning to take him out to buy new pyjamas once my ankle had healed enough for walking and driving on.

Around midday, my husband was feeling increasingly ill, and tested positive for Covid.

So that meant an afternoon of getting the kids out of school and going for PCR tests. Not a great birthday activity at all😦

Obviously, going out for dinner was out too, so rather than illegally turn his birthday night out into a super spreader event, we got some special takeaway pizzas and watched a movie called Minari instead.

My husband said later that he couldn't really taste the pizzas thanks to the Covid, but they were great - hot, tasty comfort food, cheaper than a night out, and enough for lunch the next day as well.

It's also good that we live near the cardboard recycling.

But it got me wondering about the little plastic tables they use to hold the lids of the boxes off the pizzas (can't think about Covid all the time after all).

There must be so many of these thrown away every day. Couldn't something else be a more sustainable alternative?

So I've been thinking through a few options.

1) Presumably a wooden version of the table would be too labour intensive

2) A ring of cardboard? Would it look too much like a toilet roll? 

3) How about a triangle? Would it go soggy with grease from the pizza?

4) A U shaped perforation that could be folded down from the lid? Same problem with the cardboard, plus a gap left in the lid that would let the heat out and dust in?

5) A toothpick? Too spiky, might scratch people and wouldn't stop it sliding down.

6) Final idea for now: a dough ball / garlic knot on top of the middle of the pizza. Most pizza places sell these anyway so it would look like a nice little bonus. The question is how to keep it in the middle. Sticking it to the lid would work, but might pull toppings off when the box opens. What if there was a small hole cut out of the middle of the pizza with a dough ball in it, like a record? I think it could work.

Day 9: Covid test: it's here

Yesterday was my middle son's 16th birthday, and my husband woke up feeling ill.

It started off well anyway - he liked his presents. We wanted to go out for a family dinner and he said he'd like to go to the Hard Rock Cafe.

We were just booking it and reading their Covid guidelines when my husband said he didn't think he'd get through the temperature check.

"Should you perhaps take a Covid test?", I said.

And so here it is. After all this time, it's here in the house.

https://youtu.be/xAYSqTu5_ZY

Day 8: Ankle

Thankfully I'm not actually throwing my ankle away, but it is a nasty sprain. 

I meant to be talking about wrapping paper today, because it's my birthday. But then I did this instead. 

That'll teach me for carrying a basket of laundry down the garden steps with platform sandals on.🙄

Here's some wrapping paper anyway, as it seems to fit with the theme!

Also: awesome sandals. But can I forgive them?