Lifeboat Muster Point for TalkExiles - Thread 2

[Kucingsparkles]

Continuation of previous thread.

Gather here all ye refugees from the foundering ship of JTT, if ye be in need of "How the heck do I format my post?" "Why can't I edit my typos?" "What do those acronyms mean?" and most importantly, "Where is everybody that I used to know?"

Or just to chat randomly.

I love memories like that. I loved ska and followed the same route as others here into punk. When we moved back to Belfast in the early 80s I encountered Stiff Little Fingers for the first time and listened to them a lot bought cassettes (!) of their albums, then they broke up not long afterwards. I was gutted to think I'd never see them live and then they suddenly reformed when I was at uni for a fairly small tour of 10-15 venues (I think) with the final one being back home, so we got tickets. The Beastie Boys were famous by then and near the end of the gig SLF covered TBB's big hit and sang No Sleep Till Belfast with the whole crowd singing along. The atmosphere all night was electric.

I've posted this other one at least twice before so apologies to anyone who's already bored of it but it really is one my most joyous live music memories and it was only many years later that I found someone had uploaded to YouTube....

It’s about the 1997 U2 gig in Botanic Park in Belfast a few months before the GFA was signed, I went with family.

"They can't sing Bloody Sunday in Belfast, surely, with this mixed crowd of nationalists and unionists who are trying to put the past behind us." (Confronting the memory and legacy of BS was of course part of putting the past behind us, but it was still a point of discussion that night.) But they can't not sing it, because it's The Song. So what will they do? 52 minutes in, standard "this is not a rebel song." Dedicated to the main leaders at the time in Norn and Brit.

I still get tears of happiness in my eyes every time I think about that moment, or watch this grainy footage.

I was at that gig BNBN, won the tickets off the radio or something. Wouldn't have mattered if I hadn't though, I just lived up the road from the park, would have heard it anyway.

I wondered if you might have been! Glad to hear it.

Some great memories being posted today. I loved that period for music, it was so lively.

Thinking on the time Madness booked a table at the restaurant I worked at. I wasn't working that night but one of the other waitresses phoned me and said that one of the band members had said he was on a macrobiotic diet and what should they cook for him. I'd been reading about the macrobiotic diet and how it often excludes vegetables of the nightshade family, so I told her to go through the list - peppers, aubergines, tomatoes, potatoes - so he'd have to keep saying 'No'. In the end, they cooked him a simple mix of rice and vegetables which he was very pleased with.

Sharing the sadness about Terry Hall; 63 is just too young (and pretty much my age; I’d have expected him to be a few years older, I think).

Also, impressive gingerbread structures. That’s a tradition we’ve never had in my family. I wonder why.

And @Peae even if I don’t know who you were then (for totally understandable reasons), we clearly gave a shared history of Big Brother threads!

@artant - nor mine, but did-i-l is American so maybe it's an American thing? She is great about doing arty-crafty things with the children. I used to try with mine but they weren't very interested.

I'm American and I don't know anyone who actually does gingerbread houses or men or anything. I always thought it was more of an English thing.

Nor mine - think it’s a German/Central Europe/Scandi thing that spread to the UK via the US. My children have been badgering me to make one with them picked up from American TV I think. Have resisted so far as we already have too much sweet stuff, but may plan better next year and relent.

Ah well an Actual American contradicts my theory! In any case, I think they are a relatively recent Christmas thing in the UK. Gingerbread houses are familiar because of Hansel and Gretel.

Ah, it being a German thing makes sense.

I think Gingerbread houses are wholly German. A German (Hamburg) colleague of my mother lodged with us in early-mid 1960s Norwich and helped us make a gingerbread house from her mother's recipe, and it was the wonder of the neighbourhood and far beyond. No-one had seen or heard of such a thing.

I really must see have I still got Ursula's recipe - it was spicy and not very sweet, and when I was little I much preferred the sweets and the icing.

think it’s a German/Central Europe/Scandi thing

The gingerbread house thing in our family started when DH was working in Germany, so that fits. We used to buy one each year, ready-assembled and decorated, from the Weihnachtsmarkt. Then when he moved back to the UK, we found a flatpack "kit" from (where else?) Ikea - this was not very successful as the biscuit pieces were really brittle and didn't taste that great. We tried various home-made self-planned ones for a couple of years, very hit-and-miss. And then one happy year, we discovered the Lakeland moulds and their foolproof gingerbread recipe and the rest is history.

4 or 5 years ago, my wife picked one up in IKEA, too. I don't think they'd ever registered with me, before then.

As we are nearly at 900 posts, I was pondering the next incarnation of this thread. It's not really a life boat anymore, is it, as we have mostly all settled in and are enjoying our new large many-subject-areas-and-interests home. So perhaps it needs an evolution in thread title? Suggestions?

“The cesspit” might be off putting. “Why won’t they just shut up and go away?” or “They wouldn’t stop going on” probably too bitter and backward looking. Think it does need JTT exiles in it to explain purpose.
Maybe something neutral and dull “JTT exiles continued” or maybe a nod to Wendy Cope “JTT exiles: the planet goes on being round”?

I'd imagine most who ever considered coming to MN from JTT have done so by now, are we really expecting a big future influx? Although when I glanced through JTT last night, they were talking about a change of ownership in February, I believe.

“The cesspit” might be off putting.

LOL!

“JTT exiles: the planet goes on being round”

This one appeals to me.

One small point is whether a too-specific thread title will be off-putting to non-exiles (who might just think WTF, why are these people ghettoising even though we aren't, IYSWIM), vs if the thread title is too vaguely open then non-exiles will turn up and be perplexed (and think WTF, why are these people ghettoising...).

Are people that bothered, Kuc? The women's rights general thread, which I thought might draw some complaints, seems to be thriving just fine.

I'm having a weird problem here - every time I change pages, I get the pop-up that asks me about my attitude to cookies. It goes away when I click on the 'close' thing, but then pops up again on a new page. WTF? Anybody else getting this? It may go away after I've posted of course...

No it didn't - popped up again as soon as the page refreshed.

See the dilemma. Happy to go with the consensus.

”Just not that talk”
“Of Minority Interest”