HOUSEHOLD TIPS NOT FOUND IN WOMAN'S WEEKLY

[Stanley]

Every now and again it's a good idea to clean cupboards out. Amazing how dirty the interiors of some of mine have suddenly become in the last few days......

[Stanley]

This OC cleaning has now extended into maintenance. I suddenly realised this morning that the roof of my small shed in the backyard needs a coat of bituminous paint to reinforce its waterproof qualities. Always a good idea to keep an eye on the roof!

[Stanley]

Take advantage of fine weather to do outside maintenance jobs.... I painted the shed yesterday and today I shall embark on replacing two rotten elements in my wooden back gate. (Good vision again!)

[Cathy]

I watched a segment on our morning tv show today about bacteria in the home. They were advising people to clean their remote controls, phones, and keyboards at least once a week with alcohol wipes or similar. It amazed me that they also said that after many tests in normal homes they found more bacteria on peoples fridge door handles than on the toilets. Apparently its to do with the type of plastic that the handles are made from.

[plaques]

I'm getting a bit like Howard Hughes, paranoid about toilet door handles. Even in hospitals where there are alcohol wipes every 20 yards some men still leave the toilet area without washing their hands. Absolutely unbelievable. I now carry a throw away tissue just to open the door with. Possibly a large reminder notice next to door handle might help but I doubt it.

[Cathy]

I know where you are coming from Plaques, when I volunteer at my hospital I use the hand sanitizer at the front door before I go in (don't take any germs in) and on my way out (don't take any germs out), inbetween I sanitize the desk I am working at and any trolleys I use. If I sneeze I use the sanitizer before I touch anything else.
At home when I clean my cat's litter I always wear plastic bags on my hands then wash my hands and the door handles I have used to get to the bin and back.

[Tizer]

Cathy, I think a more probable reason for the difference between toilets and fridge door handles is that people wash their toilets frequently but not their fridge door handles.

Plaques, like you, I'm always surprised how so many men come out of a toilet cubicle in the Gents and walk straight out the door without washing their hands. The public toilets, such as those in motorway services, pubs, restaurants etc should all have automatically opening/closing doors likes those on the front of shops so that we don't have to use the door handles that these others have contaminated.

This reminds me of once when I was having a pee in the gents at my place of work when a colleague came in with a visitor. They stood at urinals either side of me, all three of us peeing happily. The colleague said "This is Joe Bloggs from XYZ Company" and then hastily added "No need to shake hands".

[Stanley]

I once had a long conversation with Dr. John Wilfred Pickard who used to visit regularly at the engine house and at home after he retired. He used to volunteer at the VD Clinic in Burnley and he was adamant that given the right conditions you could catch anything off toilet seats and door handles. He said that whilst washing hands was admirable, a far more effective strategy was to touch nothing while in the facility except yourself and put your hand in your coat pocket in order to open the door....
My dad brought me a small microscope once. It was reasonably powerful and we had great fun looking at the wrigglies in milk, cheese and other materials. By doing so he alerted me at an early age to the world of the super small that is active all around us. I have never forgotten this and know that it is impossible to avoid all transference, we have our own strategies and varying degrees of trust in that most wonderful thing, our immune systems!

[Cathy]

Bought some batteries today, nothing unusual about that, but when checking my docket later I saw that they came under the heading of Essentials. Sign of the times.

[Tizer]

Some of the batteries on sale in our supermarkets have big security tags on them to stop theft. I asked one of the security men and he said batteries are used for so many gadgets now that people are stealing them.

Supermarkets...Which reminds me, when I was at Sainsbury's the other day the chap on the till almost finished checking out my items and then rang a bell for a supervisor. I asked why and he pointed at the bottle of wine and said "Alcohol". I asked him if I was considered too old or too young to buy alcohol, which was it? He said "No, it's me". He didn't look that young!

[Stanley]

The Cathedral of choice is a marvel of modern life.... I called in last night on the way back from the optician's and made several mistakes, see 'What did we have for tea for the awful details.... When I was at the checkout I noticed for the first time the symbol for a wireless card on the machine (20/20 vision again!) and also saw that my debit card had the same symbol. I asked the polite young man on the checkout what exactly it meant and he showed me.... One swipe of the card and hey presto, the money had gone from my account with no confirmation that I was indeed the owner. Amazing.... But what struck me was that if anybody got hold of my card they could spend as much as they liked with no security check. How can this be an improvement!
So today's tip is that if you have a wireless card chain it to your person!

[Stanley]

I'm still marvelling at how insecure that system is!

[Stanley]

See THIS for some facts about the advantages of eating Garlic. We would do well to take note of the well-attested benefits from eating it as part of a varied diet....

[Stanley]

Where do you keep your bleach and other strong chemicals? Under the sink where visiting children can get at them easily?

[Stanley]

Don't worry if you note a tiny vibration in lamps that use the modern LED based bulbs. Nothing wrong with them, it's a characteristic of the technology.....

[Stanley]

If you have waste to dispose of don't just drop it in the street in the hope that someone will pick it up....

[Stanley]

Someone took notice? The tyres have disappeared....
As many of you know, I have taken the knob off the hot tap on the kitchen sink and drastically cut my gas bill without any obvious ill effects. It struck me yesterday that I have another source of hot water that is almost always available. I try not to overfill my electric kettle when brewing up but don't always get it dead right. There is almost always a small amount of hot water left in it and this is just the thing when washing something out that has grease on it.

[Stanley]

The modern iron-on patches for clothing will not stand the temperatures in a hot wash. They fall off!

[Stanley]

Keep your eye open for hedgerow fruits over the next few weeks. We are coming into the blackberry season.... When she was young, my daughter Janet set off one day and arrived home a while later with a bag full of bilberries. She set to, baked a pie and ate the lot, refusing to share with anyone apart from a small corner for me to try. As I said at the time, that was OK, she'd picked the fruit and baked the pie so it was up to her who she shared it with....

[Tizer]

I wish we had commercial elderberry orchards and were able to buy cheap elderberry cordial. It would be packed with healthy antioxidants and vitamins. And for those who prefer an alcoholic drink, elderberry wine would at least give a good dose of those beneficial components to counter the effects of the alcohol. We used to make our own red wine from a mix of elderberry and apple fruit and after a few years maturation it was like Cabernet Sauvignon. I do think we in Britain have missed a trick by not commercialising the elderberry. It could be our national fruit!

[Wendyf]

Tiz, you have just reminded me about the elderberry wine Colin made last year.....we must try a bottle and see what it tastes like.

[Tizer]

I hope it's good! I said in my previous post that we used to make our own red wine from a mix of elderberry and apple fruit - thinking back, I remember we didn't use apple fruit but apple juice, the clear type that comes in Tetrapacks. Much easier than mashing up apples and having all the pectin haze problems. Of course we added sugar to the mix too. If your elderberry wine has too `ripe' an elderberry flavour keep the other bottles for another year so it has time for some more of that flavour to turn into tannin. We also made a white wine with Sauvignon Blanc flavour by simply using Tetrapacks of grapefruit juice plus sugar. You have to like your white wine dry and astringent! A more sophisticated Sauvignon Blanc type of wine can be made with gooseberries but it's harder work mashing the fruit, fermenting it, squeezing it through and mesh and possibly having to add pectinase to get rid of haze. I remember some nerve-racking moments fermenting fruit in buckets when it went too fast and rose up towards the top of the buckets!

[Stanley]

When I was open all hours I had some very expensive raisins that had been in stock for years and had solidified into blocks of sugar. I made wine with them and corked them too soon. Exploding bottles under the stairs.... The bottles that survived were superb.

[Stanley]

If you are feeling unwell, the first thing to do is not to fly to the doctor but to give yourself a break, do nothing, sleep a lot and eat very little. In most cases this will 'cure' the problem. If you are that way inclined and had an upbringing that encouraged always being active it can be a bit wearing as you get older. Give yourself a break!

[Stanley]

If you oversleep look at it this way, your body was taking what it needed. Don't beat yourself over the head!