Our New Life in Devon

 Last weekend we went to Trago Mills near Bovey Tracey, which is a huge department complex. OH bought himself a warm padded coat, and I've made a good start on the Christmas shopping. I bought wrapping paper, Xmas serviettes, cards for close family and friends, Christmas crackers, and liquer chocolates. OH called in Sainsburys and picked up some tubs of chocolates for the adult children, and I have already bought tins of shortcake biscuits for them. We just give money to our sons, and the 2 eldest grandchildren. Daughter-in-law gets a gift card and box of chocolates. A bottle of spirits each is always welcomed. I don't buy them gifts as I never know what they would like anyway. So it's alcohol, chocolates, biscuits and cash which is what I know they like. Our daughter is a bit different....... She likes presents so sends me a list usually, as does the youngest grandchild. This makes it so much easier for us at Christmas as we only have to buy presents 🎁 for 2. OH and I don...

 It's official! I actually dread updating my phone. Why, you may ask? Well it messes up everything that I've already set like staying logged in to Google, or even preventing me to log in unless I do it several times. Logging me out of various other sites I'm on. I'm unable to get predictive text on 3 different sites, and all day today I'm anonymous on my own blog. That has now been rectified as of 10 minutes ago. Did I do anything to help it. No, it just magically decided to recognise me again. Google sends me an email each time I log in marked security alert, so that's more work deleting unwanted emails It's quite difficult for me to decipher passwords as although they are stored on my phone they are in code and heavily abbreviated. But that will change..... Martin Lewis made a very good suggestion a few months ago. He advised keeping all passwords in a book somewhere. His reasoning was: it's more likely that you will loose your phone, or have it stolen...

 The weather here has been raining almost every day for what seems like weeks now. I was sat here thinking how nice it would be to go abroad to somewhere dry and warm for a week or 2. However, looking at the news I can see Spain has had torrential downpours, Sicily was flooded with pictures of cars floating in car parks, and Tenerife has huge waves and torrential rain. I've been to a few of the Canary Islands years ago and visited Lanzaroti while working for a disabled couple as their personal assistant -  or caregiver if you're reading from USA. Floods in Sicily  credit to Manchester evening news When I left social work I took a temporary job with an agency as a visiting home carer. Following this I then decided to look for something more permanent and went to an interview for a Personal Assistant to the disabled couple. At the interview the job was described as cooking breakfast,  helping the paralysed person to shower and dress, doing some laundry, light housework...

  Today started well with OH vacuuming the house, and taking the dogs for a run with our son while I mopped the floors here. An hour later son rang to say OH couldn't find his phone. It's a new phone and he's only had it a few days! I searched the house but it was not here. They soon returned and son managed to track it to Teignmouth beach!!! where they had taken the dogs swimming. It had been in the sea as the tide was now coming in, and a lady had picked it up on the sand. She answered it when son rang it. As she took it from her pocket to answer it the seawater poured out! The screensaver was damaged but the screen was OK underneath tg. Son rinsed it out back here and got all the sand out. He put it in a plastic box with those packs that absorb damp for a few hours. The new case OH bought this week had disintegrated, so off they went to Teignmouth, yet again, to the phone shop to get a new screen saver and case. Phone seems OK as it is waterproof (so they say) so fingers...