Cherries and Utilities

I am having a renewed enjoyment in digi scrapping at the moment. I wanted to see just how many different layouts I could make with the Summer Beach kit from Owl Tree Studios. I admit, only a few of the embellishments from the kit fitted, so I turned to Kate Hatfield's lovely doodly stuff to complete it.

Laura and Wayne came over for a BBQ three weeks ago and bought the young Australian couple who have been staying with them for the past year along too. Our cherry tree had finally decided to produce a decent crop of cherries (probably knew it was for the chop as it was heavily ill and blocking light for the new conservatory).

There were quite a few Martin hadn't been able to reach but quick as a flash Gemma asked if she could climb the tree to collect them. Getting up was a doodle, a small boost from Wayne, but getting her down prooved a bit more of a problem.


I think the lads were tempted, but no, she didnt end up in the hot tub!

This last fortnight has been Martin's annual two weeks off, which is news for another day, but one of his many tasks while off was to sort out the utility bill. Our service provider sends a 6 monthly review which this time was also our yearly review. The gas was fine, but the electricity had jumped from 9kwh per day to 21 kwh. What!!!!!

We phoned them up. After a long conversation they said they couldnt do anything until we had talked to the consumption advisory service.

Another long conversation and it turns out that despite it being way over the average for high consumption it is about right for what we are running.

Ooooo kay. Next stop then is moneysupermarket to see if we can get it cheaper, because our provider wants to put the bill up another £70 a month, putting our utilities way over and above what we pay in morgage. Surely not right.

But what is that we spy... our own provider is going to provide our utilities at a saving of £411 a year on what we are already paying them? All we have to do is change tarrif? Surely not?

So back on the phone to our utility co. Yes thats right, and if you had changed last year you would have saved £250. Well why didnt you say so???????

Then they couldnt work out how much our monthly payments should be on the new tarrif, so ok leave it as it is and give us a call in a couple of months to see if it needs re-adjusting.

All this took us 2.5 hours of our holiday time. Just to be where we were anyway. So that was 2.5 hours of our lives we will never get back.

Next review we are going to make sure we ask if there is a cheaper tarrif available just incase they come up with some new ones.