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Ambulance response times are a very pertinent point, and long waits are not confined to rural areas any more..... About 3 years ago (IIRC), my elderly mother-in-law fell. Suspected hip fracture. An elderly lady in her late 80's was sitting in the cold (it was winter), in pain. It took something...

A kukri doesn't have a straight cutting edge so is outwith scope. To be in scope, needs to have a blade length between 14 and 24 inches, have a primary straight cutting edge, a secondary straight cutting edge, a blunt spine and either a tanto or reverse tanto point. The scope is actually...

Amazon Renewed. Had a couple of Dell laptops off there, as new, much lower price, better spec than minimum. Often the best ones are ex company spares that were never issued. Had a couple of monitors off these too. GC

Yeah, I had a shed like that on my allotment. I inherited it in a poor state, fixed it up with scraps and painted it with left-over Cuprinol Colours (a fetching sea green!). The other allotmenteers reckoned it wouldn't last 12 months, but it survived 5 years of storms- and I passed it onto the...

That's really good to know as I was looking at their stuff. I was looking at the ones with fatter tubes (the 35mm tubes). I have come to the conclusion that paying for installation and concreting in the ground anchors is the way to go. Yes, it's costly, but so is the time and heartache of...

Certainly considered it. Oil theft is a particular issue in rural areas, but we're not on oil, we're on mains gas as we are within enough distance of the main regional main that they put a spur on when it was installed. We lock stuff up here at least as well as we did in the previous place in a...

Changeover switch with external input socket. We had one put in when the new place was rewired, pretty standard around here and low extra cost when done during a rewire so worth doing whilst we were at it- as a bit of future-proofing. (Shouldn't be plugging a gennie into house circuits without a...

But so will any non oxygen environment. In coal mines they got fire damp (methane) and choke damp (carbon dioxide). The former made the safety lamp flare, the latter made it die. Whereas the sewer workers who died on Fabian Way Swansea 30 years or so ago were IIRC asphyxiated due to a halon...

Yeah but back in the day we grew up with these things and learnt how to use them safely..... and typically in a drafty location even if indoors...... insulation in vehicles and houses is so much better these days..... .... and people did die of CO poisoning too, just it wasn't reported much. GC

Indeed. We had solid fuel fires when I was a bairn, so I grew up with them and learning how to ensure they behave. Whereas my other half didn't so I am having to teach him how to light and manage the Rayburn (anthracite) and the log burners...... GC

Interesting about woad. Way back from when I had a go at Kendo, I recall finding out that kit dyed in Japanese indigo was preferred because although the dye came off and made you blue, it was believed by the Japanese to have antibacterial properties. The actual dye in both cases is indigo...

Don't disagree, not setting fire to the tent was ta major reason given in my day not to use a stove in them too. Those intrepid explorers used a different sort of tent- canvas, higher/bigger, and not havign a sewn-in groundsheet probably rather drafty.... although again I recall books saying...

Quite probably. The idea of a "hot tent" was nothing I'd heard of until seeing it recently on you tube. I grew up with the idea that you cooked outside and in utter extremis (up a mountain, howling blozzard) you might use your Trangia in the vestibule for cooking a hot meal/drink.... but still...

If anyone wants a source of natural dyestuffs or plants, I found this shop on Etsy: https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/TheOutsideDyers?ref=own_favorite_shops_page I have not used them but they do have an interesting looking offering.... GC

There's a lot to be said for having a tarp or other rain shelter for cooking when camping in the west of the UK. There's times in west Wales where it rains for days, often heavily.... most recently a couple of days of very heavy rain just after they had been talking about a hosepipe ban in...

OK, now I'm at the new place, I want to sort out a polytunnel. Back when I had an allotment at the old place, I had a small (2m by 4m) tunnel, brilliant thing...... not big enough...... and eventually I managed to make it strong enough not to blow away in winter. I say eventually because I...

The previous place, when the estate was built in the late 1980's, they put a good mix of trees in, very nice. Over the years, folks moved out, trees gew, new people moved in- and they wanted to get a second car on the drive, so they chopped the trees down and paved it. Encouraged by the paving...

Yeah, this was a long time in coming, over 30 years of saving and 3 years of hard graft. But there's some serious lessons from the past about comfortable buildings..... not all are good, but some work, and rather than reinvent the wheel and all that..... .... and trees- including street trees...

Looking at recent threads on preparedness and also on the usual video channels, I see a lot of stuff about (a) kit and (b) some specific huge event. But I wonder.... is "preparedness" really all about a state of mind....? (And if so, what state of mind is optimum?) What I mean is, how many...

I am glad that we have (a) finally moved to the new place and (b) the nature of the new place. Up a hill in west Wales, lots of trees about. Old stone house with thick walls coated with white lime render (and insulated on inside) and a slate (not pottery tile) roof, new part block...