Splice the mainbrace

I did a car insurance comparison last night to see what I could get after my £410 LV renewal quote and I could get it for £245 from Swintons but there is a £275 RAC 5 star defaqto policy quote which looks good. I’ve been with LV for many years, never had to use them for claims though, and they are a good company but being nearly 50% more needs thinking about.

As expected my car insurance renewal from LV came through the post today it's gone up to £410 from £340 a 20% rise, to be honest I was fearing that it could be more. I'll phone up a see if they will knock some money off, sometimes they do and sometimes not. I'll also do an online comparison site and see where the LV cost broadly sits. LV is a good company so I don't mind paying a bit more.

Our car insurance is due for renewal in July it was £300 2 years ago and £340 last year, I’ve already had an information email from LV saying about the increasing cost of parts and labour etc so I’m expecting a substantial increase. I’m with Direct Line for our house insurance so yesterday I did an online quote with them but that came out at £600+!!. I’ll try a comparison site as well before the renewal date.

Already 22c here and clear slightly hazy skies. A couple of lazy days ahead during the nice weather. Our eldest son is en route flying back from Sydney, we saw him for a few days in February in Sydney but this is his first time in the uk for 2 years. The garden is looking really good at the moment with the roses and Mock Orange blooming well. The climbing rose is growing through a conifer.

We’re driving down to St Merryn near Padstow on Thursday to stay in an Airbnb for the weekend. We’ve been lucky with the weather for our uk and overseas holidays in recent years but the unsettled weather is forecast to continue while we are there. Our son is joining us and is driving across from Southampton. It’s the first time that I’ve been to Cornwall since 1979 and the first time for our son so we have lots of new things to visit and explore.

Landing craft being lined up before D Day in Southampton on berths 101 to 106 where the City, Horizon and Mayflower terminals are now. My dad remembered how all of the Southampton parks, the Common and all roads in surrounding areas had troops and vehicles camped out prior to the big day.

We’re driving down to Southampton to stay with our youngest son for 2 nights for him and my wife to go to the Take That concert tomorrow evening ( thanks Eglesbrech for pointing out the correct date 😂) . I’ll be giving them a walking tour of Southampton this afternoon, whether they like it or not!, and then we’ll probably go to the New Forest tomorrow before the concert

The locals call them Bin Chickens because they like to raid the rubbish bins.

14c overcast and only a light breeze at the moment. We had a 10 minute power cut at 8 o’clock so I have had to reset some clocks and check that our sky boxes, router and central heating controls have all come back on unscathed. I always have to reset the central heating timer by using a cocktail stick in the reset port after a power cut it doesn’t just reset itself, all of the programmed settings remain though fortunately. Yesterday I had a re blood test yesterday after I had slightly low sodium levels found during my multi test in April, but I never add salt on plated food and drink about 4 pints of water a day so maybe that’s why.

Thanks. I wasn’t expecting us to win, after beating Leeds twice already this season I felt that in the more important 3rd match you would win. My son was there and it will be a day that he will never forget. I just hope that we don’t do a Sheffield United type performance next season in the Prem though, it has been nice winning more than losing in the championship this season.

Our closest was boarding Queen Elizabeth only about 1 1/2 hours before departure in Tokyo from a Cunard organised flight for a Japan and Alaska cruise in 2019. Cruise check in was empty because most others were already onboard, embarkation was really quick though.

I always look for a good deal and it did ‘pain’ me to pay such a high price for a simple one way flight (and transfer from Rome to the port), but in this instance being such an important cruise for my wife’s special celebration cruise we opted just to keep it simple and safe and just pay up.

We booked another cruise this afternoon, it's a long way off Sept/Oct 2026 but it will be DW big special birthday at that time. We were a bit surprised at the price of the one way flight out to Rome £390 from Manchester (£300 from London) which was added to the overall cruise cost. We could have organised our own flights and saved money (we have done it on long haul cruise flights before) but we just wanted to get it done this time with the cruise line.

We could easily get a train back from Manchester Airport or get picked up from there. We’ll check with the cruise company if coach travel back is provided or not.

We would get a lift to Manchester airport due to the long length of the cruise and cost of parking, so if a coach back from Southampton is laid on then I wonder if there are stop off points, Keele services on the M6 is I think our closest. The cruise description doesn’t mention coach travel being included though.

We’re considering booking a fly cruise which flies out to the med but sails back to Southampton, it would be the first time that we have done a one way fly cruise. My understanding is that if you sail from Southampton and fly back then the cruise company transportation you back to Southampton to pickup your car? But what happens the other way round? Do you just arrange your own transport from Southampton back to home?

Thank you so much about posting about the Take That concert.👏 We were travelling down to Southampton and staying with our son the LAST weekend of June for him and my wife to go to the concert!! We don’t know how we got the dates so wrong 🤔

We’re out this afternoon for a family restaurant meal and then back to our eldest sons house to continue the celebration of my MIL 90th birthday which is actually on Tuesday. There is a bit of a distraction though because our local team Crewe are in the League Two playoff on the tv. Our youngest son drove up from Southampton yesterday for the celebration and it’s lucky that it’s not next weekend because he is going to the Southampton playoff at Wembley next Sunday!

Mind you that’s only 10 miles per leg.

We had a dry morning here where I managed to get some gardening done. It came on to rain at about 12.30 and we’ve had 1/2 inch of rain since, at one point it was raining so hard that my satellite signal went off. Some of the garden plants that have grown so fast in the last month or so have flopped with the weights of water on them, they should spring back once they dry off🤞

Came 11th😩

A lot of focus on Dutch Decoy on ITV 1 covering York race meeting.🤞

And today is Mothers Day in Australia, our middle son now lives in Australia and my wife got a card and flowers during this week so she gets 2 Mothers Days a year 🌸

18c,sunny and a light breeze at the moment. We went out a couple of times after 10.30 last night to look for the northern lights but didn’t see anything 🙁 We didn’t watch much of Eurovision last night only the scoring at the end, we could have Adele or Ed Sheeran singing a million selling song and we still wouldn’t win. We got 0 points from the voting public! Instead we watched a film that we recorded a while a go ‘where the Crawdads sing’ my wife had read the book so she knew the story, I not a great film watcher but it was very good and kept my attention (for once). We have a quiet day today apart from having the MIL around for lunch, homemade chicken sweet and sour with egg fried rice and shop bought spring rolls. I have already this morning cooked the rice because the recipes say the you should use it fridge cold before frying.

I'm annoyed that I didn't know about the expected Northern Lights last night. I watch quite a lot of News and Weather forecasts during the day and I didn't hear anything about it.