Finding the chase and cutting to it

All I want to be talking about here is how we’re doing with our heat pump.

But at the end of the third week of February, we still have 25 days until the end of winter:- 20th March 2025 is our first day of spring in the UK.

So, I cannot do that.

What I can say is I seem to have finally broken my infection – today it felt like spring when I woke up! My sheets were sodden – a good fever will do that, but I can breathe easily and my head no longer feels like it weighs a ton.

Ironically, I owe this to allowing a hypo to ride last night after my body decided to put up a fight – stubborn highs that cannot be fixed by normal corrections, that will be an infection.

Our anatomy is no different to a non-type 1 diabetic’s. A non-type 1’s body will trick the body into releasing a huge amount of insulin just to get a hypo – what’s different is the scale and speed.

A non-diabetic will do this in a matter of a couple of hours. Because we’re gently trying to bring down the low, we can go a couple of days like this – all the while feeding the bacterial/viral/fungal infection with some excess sugar.

Our immune systems are different and expecting them to behave the same maybe a little unrealistic.

Sounds logical-ish. What’s the answer?

It’s easy to say don’t be afraid of the hypo, but that is actually the answer. And many of the “hybrid loop” systems in use today are exactly that – so when we’re feeling our best, we need to step up and take control.

And everyone is different, and every infection is different. Worse than that, my body is killing and reproducing new cells, every day to the extent that no cell in my body is older than seven years. Today really is a completely different day to yesterday.

Ah, that’s sounds like a nightmare!

It’s one of the reasons many type 1’s look knackered most of the time.

What worked for me yesterday was hanging in there, not panicking when I started to drop, fasting most of the day, drinking 3 litres of water and not doing a thing. I was lazy, I achieved very little, although just living I did get 3,250 steps under my belt. I passed a kidney stone.

I’m not going overboard today either. It wasn’t my turn to do lunch or clear up. I did do some washing, took the soft plastics and glass to be recycled. I will have a bath in a few moments. I will recalibrate my watch’s blood pressure monitor.

I’m considering my post for the 23rd March. I’ll draft it asside from the final figures next week.

Because, patience is a virtue. As well as being utterly annoying.

My husband and I celebrate our birthdays within a couple of days of each other, so it is always tempting to combine the celebrations.

Especially as we’re down to one wage.

But there’s no need if you have some skills in the kitchen, a bit of time and energy, and patience.

For my husband’s day, I asked him what he’d like to have, and the answer that came back was my home made French onion soup. I will be deploying my food processor to finely chop the onions and grate the cheese, but the only thing I’m really doing is expending some time.

A lovely bung ’em in the oven sourdough baguette will make a meal fit for kings, all for less than £4 a head, and a bit of washing up.

We’re having some friends over on the Saturday for a roast chicken dinner. Two people don’t eat complex carbs – and one of those doesn’t eat any – so I’ll be working a couple of special side dishes for them and a lion’s share of the main protein. But again, this is not an expensive pleasure.

One of our good friends makes the most amazing cakes. So, we might skip making an option no-one will take!

Hopefully, a good time will be had by all, with smiles all round 🙂

The ancient Christians (in fact most religions) understood the benefits of Having something to look forward to. Be it heaven or the next public holiday or feast, they understood the need to celebrate life.

These days we call it Wellness, but that feeling that things are OK and can only get better is powerful, hope is everything.  Indeed, some forms of torture are based on breaking someones hope.

Hope can be intangible, as simple as one small step to make things better, to ease an area of suffering.  In medicine, it was given a name in drug trials: the placibo effect.

Of course, for many, where there is no life-impacting condition, contentment is seen as good enough.

But hope is a fire, a light in the dark.  Hope is a driver, an end goal, a life-raft to cling to amongst the dreary everyday…

That’s very philosophical!

I guess so…

What’s brought it about?

We’re on holiday, skiing in France and it’s the first time we’ve done this trip by train. Not the easiest journey but as 90% of 800 odd miles was powered by electricity, a relatively green one.

It was not plain sailing: our first train, and indeed the whole track, was closed due to a tree falling down. But we made use of an alternative route and as it was our time, we got to recover.

The international stations were amazing, pianos were available and talented passengers regaled us with music – some from memory.

Lyon station had a room with many wheelchairs, walking frames, and walking sticks to help those with mobility issues. On top of that, every staircase was mirrored with a ramp and lift. As we had wheeled cases, it made our lives so much easier. We live in a county town – the equivalent in Suffolk of Lyon, but the facilities in the SNCF stations meant the transfer times were not unentertaining.

Right at this moment, I am watching it snow. In fact, it’s a bit of a white out from our chalet’s window. We’re choosing not to ski today, having got a 5 days skiing out of a 6 day ski pass.

I’m cosy, sipping a fruit tea, trying to get my wayward glucose ranges back under control. And resting my achy breaky knee.

I had hoped it would be better by now. It hasn’t turned out that way, but I am skiing and the fresh snow tomorrow (once pisted) will be incredible.

Hope springs eternal…

Yesterday, on our second train of the day, the TGV from Lyon to Lille, there was a proud poster which I could read while queuing for the loo: using this train is by far the best way to travel to reduce the impact on the environment.

Indeed, https://www.sncf-voyageurs.com states that France’s electric trains cost 3g of CO₂ per km compared to 260g
of CO₂ per km a flight would have cost us.

Which was why we let the train take the strain. Here’s what the cost was.

Going there.

We live in Ipswich – one of the best things about that from an ecological point of view is that the trains to London are all electric. So our first leg, Ipswich to London was planned on being electric down the East Anglian line from Norwich to Ipswich – a distance of 103km. First bill is 309g of
CO₂. Plus the 3 miles the taxi took to Ipswich station = 141g.

Only it wasn’t. To be fair, I was gladdened by the taxi showing up and being electric – we should have been doing the whole journey as minimally impactful as possible. But we were scuppered at Ipswich, finding that all the trains had been cancelled due to a train taking out the powerlines and the power coupling on the train trying to pass underneath at the same time – thankfully no-one was hurt…

The advice was to travel to Cambridge then down to St Pancras – actually, great for us, as we were staying there over night. Thanks to delay, repay, more than cost effective. Only, those trains are not electrified: instead of 3g
of CO₂ per km, we’re now costing 106g per km and travelling much further than 103km: 71km from Cambridge to Ipswich and then the distance from Cambridge to St Pancras, another 76km – so that CO₂ cost is 15,582g (71+76 = 147km * 106) or 15.6kg!

Now a night in a hotel, and we can set off for the next 3 trains across France.

All electric to Lyon.

The Eurostar is electric to Lille, as was the TGV from Lille to Lyon. Going we had some long transfer times, but as we were taking it easy, that wasn’t an issue.

So, distance to Lille from St Pancras was 245km, so 735g Lille to Lyon is 556km, so that’s another 1,668g or 1.7kg of CO₂.

We then swap to a diesel train to do the last leg, again a diesel train: so 106g per km doing 132km, so the charge is 13,992g or 14kg in terms of CO₂.

So that ( 13,992 + 1,668 + 735 + 15,582 + 141)g from home to the alps. Not including the transfer bus (16km for 108g per km, so 1,728g), again diesel, from the station to our chalet, a grand total of 33,846g or 34kg of CO₂. For a holiday.

But this was better than us taking the car across the channel to the same location and significantly better than taking the plane, which would have been 260g per km, at 760km that would have been a whopping 197,600g or nearly 200kg. Driving down would have been around 100kg.

What about the big cost: time? What did it cost you in terms of time?

So, including transfer times, we travelled from 5:30am Saturday morning to 19:30 local time – so 11hours.

And you did it all in one go coming back?

Yes, we did, but that is a different tale!

A granny stoppers is a device used on a public path that is intended to discourage “grannies” or the less physically able to progress with a route. It is widely used in the UK as a means of excluding people from what other people have deemed “unsuitable paths for them”.

They can be narrow stiles, which do not let wheelchair users ascend a path, or steps, or anything that makes this as awkward as possible. And they have been widely used over the past 50 years on our footpaths and national parks.

Thing is, it’s not just grannies who get discouraged – it’s people nearly in wheelchairs or prosthetics, people with pushchairs… Get outside is often cited as a brilliant means to lift your spirit, allow you to escape the everyday grind of living with a disability. Then such routes are built on purpose to be inaccessible.

There are campaigners doing their bit to change this – it is not about putting in concrete paving, but just removing the purpose built barriers – let people decide what is accessible to them.

Sounds good, I think. So what?

Well, all of life needs to be that. Having had antibiotics a few weeks ago, I finally decided I wasn’t kicking out a small bit of thrush it encouraged to grow and on my way to getting my insulin, asked for a treatment combo I know will kick it into touch.

The pharmacist refused to sell it to me – you need a referral to the doctor, it’s the law.

No, it’s not. You have made a decision that because I’m on insulin, I cannot possibly be controlling my diabetes and need permission from a pressed GP service – and possibly you think my GP is going to tell me what to do with my insulin doses.

Angry does not cover how humilitating this experience was for me. On one hand, my endocrinologist is telling me I’m not diabetic and a pharmacist is telling me I cannot have medication that a non-diabtic could by in similar circumstances.

Thing is, I know my value to that pharmacy – I can buy the canestern somewhere else. If I get such treatment again, my contribution to the profit line of that pharmacy will go with me.

On paper, January looks like the end of winter, the days are getting longer, work is in full swing, all should be good.

The problem is, in the UK at least, the December pay check comes a week early and, for many, the next pay check is the last working day of the month… January’s will come on the 31st, which is a Friday. That means for many there are 42 days the money from December has to last.

Council tax – our land tax – is taken in January, but not in February or March, if you pay monthly. When we were paying the mortgage, we would put the “missed payments” off against the mortgage on those months as it was money we don’t use.

Gas and Electricity or Electricity usage is higher as the days are short and the nights are long and cold. I’m writing this while the peak of today has been -0.3°C (today’s max so far), the minimum has been -3.8°C. What’s amazing is that at -0.3°C, the heat pump doesn’t need to put the electric heater on during the day thanks to some solar heating benefits!

One of the surprising things we’ve seen with the heat pump is the formation of ice infront of the compressor fan. The heat exchanger rips the heat out of the air and exhausts cold air, freezing any moisture in front of that path…

If you sit and consider what’s happening, it’s obvious why this is the case, I just wasn’t expecting it to be so dramatic.

OK, so January is a tough month, money is low, so, just grin and bear it!

There are some great deals out there. We have been enjoying heavy discounts to lighten the mood on things like eating out and make the most of what we have left so far.

In the old days, when cash was king, I’d withdraw the money I was going to spend a month into my wallet and when it was running low, economise. These days, I do the same electronically – spending money in the joint account and savings taken early. If we need to dip into them, we can, but it is a clear decision maker – beware of dipping into overdrafts which can be costly.

Of course, the direct debit for the power means we should be fine for the duration of the month, the excess we pay in the summer is being drawn against – by the time we get to renewal, the balance should be a tenner or so positive and a low payment the next couple of months despite the higher costs. Even with the heat pump, the typical cost a day is between £5 and £13 excluding standing charge, compared to -£15 and -£10 when we’re feeding in during April.

Dry January is a big saver: alcohol is taxed quite heavily, so cutting out this expense is really beneficial to the bottom line.

We’re gently dieting, living off the weight put on over Christmas. It is a strategy that has worked for millenia.

The heating is not set at 21°C 24/7 but varies between 16°C and 19°C. Making use of temperature appreciation and warm clothes, just adding an overcoat to go out is really beneficial. A walk before tea means the house feels warm, as it is compared to outside.

I draw the curtains when it’s dark, providing an extra layer of insulation. Meals cooked in an oven are cooked with roast vegetables – making the most of the heat.

It sounds odd, but going to bed earlier means we don’t light unnecessarily. During the summer, we stay awake much longer, barely lighting the house for more than 2 hours – we don’t carry this to excess in the winter but a bed time of 21:30 to 22:00 means rest away from the telly and phone, using paper or e-paper which is easier on the eyes. Critically, only 6 hours of lighting big rooms and hallways. (I do appreciate lighting is a relatively cheap use of electrical units, LED bulbs being much more efficient but 0W is a saving over 3W for example – staying awake until midnight can mean 4 or 5 lights on at 3W for 8 hours, and that’s excluding the TV!).

It’s been three months since my husband was made redundant. We were lucky, having already paid off our mortgage, he’s been able to use the money from the redundancy to just live and not pay off any debts.

We had no car loans, and no loss of a car package with his role. We have savings put asside to run our vehicles. Moving to the heat pump and disconnecting the gas meant that redundancy payment is not being asked to do much.

Life is cheap. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t a shock or that we didn’t take that deep breadth and question everything. Do we need that? Does that make our lives significantly better or safer?

We still shop in the supermarket we used to. We had already moved to making much of our food from scratch – this is so much cheaper than buying ready meals. We do not throw much away at all. We buy food that’s in season.

We walk into town as much as possible, rather than take a vehicle. It gets exercise in as well as saving money on fuel or electricity, tyres, and parking. It’s often quicker too. I’ve been reusing carrier bags since 1992 when our local Sainsbury’s gave you a penny off your shop for every bag you reused.

We’re saving money each month at the moment, to the point where we can take a holiday and get coffee in town when we go in, or a restaurant meal once a month.

And my beloved it’s searching for a new job. It is tough out there, for anyone else out there doing the same thing, good luck for your search.

My rental properties were all on rated water bills: this is where a guess is made on water usage based on the number of people living in a property. So, this was a little frustrating at the time, but when I bought a house, this was one of the things I really wanted and got each time.

One of my good friends thought this was insane: why would anyone want that?

I live in the UK, but my grandfather had been based in the middle east for some of his working life and he was keen to instill that water wasn’t a right but a priviledge. I am careful about my usage and fixing any leaks or drips as soon as possible. I havested water for outdoor use, showered to keep clean, and made use of short and eco programmes to save power and water.

To be honest, a water meter seemed like a good way of being rewarded for this behaviour. I have never thought about it more than that. A one bed flat in Bath was rated at £240 a year. My five bed house outside of Ipswich with two adults and a baby was water metered at £180 a year. No brainer!

Until just recently, I never gave it a second thought. 60% of the houses in the UK now have a water meter and that includes all the new builds. On average, people with water meters use less than 82% of the water than those in rated buildings, over the total time in a property. As the population in the UK is growing, water demands and meeting them is not going to be a “someone else will solve this” type of problem.

Conceptually, water demand figures are given in litres, while your water bill is in m³. So, let’s have a look at our family’s usage:

Date	Reading (m3)	Read?	Billed Amount (£)
11/11/2022	623	Yes
29/01/2023	651	No	53.86
10/05/2023	687	Yes	73.13
30/07/2023	715	No	61.53
10/11/2023	753	Yes	82.87
28/01/2024	781	No	61.35
09/05/2024	821	Yes	89.63
11/08/2024	856	No	82.85
21/11/2024	883	Yes	66.90

OKKKKK…

I’m trying to work out “our usage”. Now, using the actual reading fro the 11th November 2022 until the 10th November 2023, we used 130m³ which is 130,000 litres. The time period is 364 days, so 130,000/364 litres/day or 357 litres a day. At the time, there were three of us in the house, so 357/3 = 119 litres a day per person.

We were not “being careful” at this time. We were having 3 – 6 baths a week, between the three of us, for example, daily showers often on the same days as the baths… But the UK is trying to reduce the usage per person from the average of 146 litres per day per person to 120 litres.

Oh, well, you’re OK then! Especially on a wet little island.

Well, let’s look at basic usage around the house. There’s always room for improvement!

Task	What’s using water?	Quantity (l)
Flushing toilet	Half flush	3
Flushing toilet	Full flush	6
Bath (p shaped)	75% full	179
Washing up	75% full	68
Using dishwasher	Eco wash	14
Washing machine	Cotton wash	70
Washing machine	Eco cotton wash	50
Washing machine	Quick wash	36
Shower	5 minute wash	40
Washing a vehicle	Car – mix of bucket and hose	100
Washing a vehicle	Motorbike – mix of bucket and hose	20

There are options, if we want to reduce our water usage…

Choosing devices with half-loads makes a big difference – I miss our half-load washing machine and dishwasher!

I make around 180 decisions a day to keep healthy. Even using my “hybrid-loop”, I cannot leave it to just keep things ticking over because they tend to run me high and that causes me physical pain, or over corrects when I dip low mid-afternoon..

Quality of life is a key aspect most people don’t have to question: if I do x, the consquences are y – pschylogically that may cause issues, but very few decisions cause physical pain.

My condition does not forgive that easily, more so now than when I was younger – my body has figured the way to get what it needs, and that’s by shouting very loud. It shouts loudest at the edges of normal range, muting as things get further out.

Run higher than it hurts, then?

No, thanks, that leads to other issues! Including long term pain from neuropathy. So, I would rather have a little pain to avoid that. More than 80% of the time, my body is is normal range, actually most of the time it’s above 90%.

At 51, life is not pain-free, but compared to many diabetics my age, my duration, I am in amazing shape, sitting by a warm fire in a beautiful house I own – I earnt the money that paid for this sanctuary. I have no debts.

Christmas lights are glittering, baubles and tinsel are reflecting against a window. The sun has nearly set on another day. I am watching junk TV – a bit of a stomach bug has caused diarrehea, nausea, anorexia, and dizziness, means I am laying a little low. A bit annoying when I’m back at work on Monday from my lovely Christmas break, but that’s life.

Most things heal, you adapt while that’s happening. As I get older, some things won’t be that easy and patience will need to be developed. Not always the easiest thing to do.

I’m taking it easy today but that doesn’t mean lying down. Just gentle activities and I’m looking forward to cooking tea tonight. Something simple, light and tasty. Not too much mess to clean up. It’s my turn to cook the Sunday roast tomorrow and I am looking forward to spending some time with my beloved on a skiing holiday in the near future – every time I think of that it makes me smile, although it’s always a little scary. I am nervous about injuring myself.

Going off topic, again! Is the juice worth the squeeze, please?

Yeah, it really is. The day to day is hard, but having a small bug actually makes me realise just how healthy I am, day to day, so to speak…

December is one of “those months”. I am aware of families who take months to recover from the increased costs incurred, but actually, much of the fun a delivered for very little.

Presents.

A small something to unwrap is lovely, but when you get to be an adult, it’s just stuff. Lending a hand in the kitchen for the feast is worth any number of fancy presents!

A beautifully packaged chocolate or cake, especially if made by the gifter really is worth much more…

Children don’t need many gifts – even the stocking can be kept simple for little ones, tasty fruit, gift wrapped traditional sweets are thoughtful but not expensive. Saving a few pounds a month for a single larger gift is really appreciated. Children just love the family getting together and playing games.

Commercialisation of Christmas has made it a multimillion pound gift-fest. The important thing is being together and having a good time, gifts cannot give you that.

Food.

For the past six months, I had been buying odd things ready for the Christmas feast. Frozen veg, materials for the stuffing, wine, potatoes, gravy, for example, can all be got before the big day.

Our food bill over December was larger by £30 – which is £6 a month put away.

I cook most things from scratch. Vegetables are all plain and frozen by us. This can save a good £30 on the meal.

The majority of the vegetables are served plain. The turkey is served with sauces and stuffings, so nothing else needs to be done that way. I cheated this year and roasted most of the side dishes, only the leeks, a few sprouts (for bubble and squeak) and peas were boiled, so we had water for the gravy at the end of the cooking process.

For four people, you only need two baby cauliflower – it’s a side dish not the main course. Two of the people had that baked with cheese sauce. Cool, but again, residual heat from the turkey not a separate oven.

The big cost for us was the turkey. Shop around. A well cooked turkey, with time to rest, can come in at significantly cheaper.

I do not buy any meals for the next week. It’s left over city. The turkey died. I am not about to put anything to waste if I can help it! The previous post shows what can be achieved.

OK, OK, so what did it cost you?

I am going to exclude the things we already had or were gifted – our guests brought the wine, for example. £160 in total or £40 a head. The turkey itself was £72 of that. We had turkey (4.95kg) cooked in bacon, pigs in blankets, chestnut and sausage meat stuffing, peas, leaks, cauliflower (half as cauliflower cheese), sprouts roasted with bacon and chestnuts, roast potatoes, broccoli, carrots, cougettes, bread sauce, some plain boiled sprouts, cranberry sauce, redcurrent with ruby port sauce, and gravy.

And a christmas pudding, brandy butter (home made), whipped cream.

You’re living in cloud cuckoo land, that’s a fortune!

Agreed, it’s a huge amount of money.

But if I’d bought the stuffings and precooked vegetables, pre-made sauces, it would have been another £30-40 on top and with less opportunities for left-overs. If I’d shopped around for the turkey, ones the same size could have been got for significantly less (Aldi does one the same size for £16) (which would bring my total down to £104 or £26 per head). To be fair, I could have spent more on the turkey…

Even before the big day, we made a difference. The honey roasted ham was less than a fiver (the same price as a chicken), and we fed 9 meals out of it – a “prepped” honey roast ham from Waitrose is £12.50 and for significantly less meat. Our ham was cooked with locally sourced honey, £0.80 a jar of Suffolk Honey bought four years ago.

That’s not counting the communial spirit, either. We all helped on Christmas day and when cooking the ham; everyone, under the age of 70, cooking one thing.

Which meant we were all in the kitchen, so the rest of the house didn’t need much heating.

Not everything went smoothly – the cauliflower cheese was a reach and a little undercooked. Which was a shame because I could have done just two caulis and it would have been perfection.

So, there’s always an ancedote given for free! Same time, same place, next year…