Thread 3 - TalkExiles: "The Planet Goes On Being Round"

[Kucingsparkles]

Continuation of previous lifeboat threads 1 and 2.

Gather here all ye refugees from the JTT Flat Earth Society, welcome to the reassuringly oblate spheroid of MN! Ye all already know the answers to the questions "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?"

So really we're all here just to chat randomly.

My little Preg thread baby will be going to university this year 😬

My baby nephews are now 14 and 16. My baby niece is 28 and married, something her old spinster aunt never felt grown-up enough to go through with. And it’s 23 years since I discovered GUT on my brand new work internet.

About that for me too @MavisMcMinty

I think it's 25 years since I found it which seems impossible but there you go.

I've finally got into unpacking/sorting. The kitchen and bathroom have been mostly done being the easiest. Today I've done about two thirds of the bedroom because until I sort out the aerial socket it's where I'm spending most of my time. It feels good.

My first nephew is 25 tomorrow.

Car woes are rotten. I'm about to take our Toyota in for a wheel bearing fix, 300+£££. OTOH, it's then guranteed for a further 5 years - 10 years in total, if you service at main dealers. That's pretty good.

My youngest has just got rid of a landrover he's had for 5 years. A fab, barmy vehicle that he must have done 150000 miles in, cost him a grand, spent a couple keeping it going. I personally have a terrible allergy to spanners, very close to anaphylaxis, so I haven't been able to help, but I've seen him tying a drive shaft (?) to a something else with a couple of cable ties in the morning, before going off to work.

OMG!

Manflu has struck. I've been told to work from home because all the sneezing, coughing and nose-blowing was putting colleagues off their work.

get well soon and keep your distance

It's hard to get into Fort Mach.

I no longer feel bad about spreading my germs to workmates - they often come in with colds saying they don't want to lose pay. Fine - neither do I!

But if ordered to go home, cool! No long drive in the dark this morning 😁

Good result, mach. Hope you feel better soon. I'm back at work again, as is Mr T, though he is still Coughing for England.

I took the chance while management were 'concerned about our health and wellbeing' to get my contract altered to working at home, so they can't easily compel me into the office.

Macman is part of the 1958 National Child Development Study, and has had a nurse round this morning to take bloods and do various tests, which they do every 5 or 10 years. They started with 18K participants, and still have 11K, which is really impressive! It’s such a brilliant study, so much has been learned from it, including that working outdoors is so much healthier than working indoors.

I skulked upstairs in the bedroom and could hear lots of excited “oohs!” - he has the strongest grip she has ever tested, which is apparently a good indicator for longevity. Hooray! At least one of us should outlive all our animals!

Coincidentally, our last lodger’s son was part of the Millenium Cohort Study of 2000-2001.

That’s funny, I was literally just writing about descriptive studies and then saw your post @MavisMcMinty. Sounds fascinating. I’ve been participating in the ONS Covid study for a couple of years now, not as exciting but still nice to be a part of.

Until he met me, macman was extremely blase/ignorant about the NCDS, but I have since enthused him with the brilliance of the study and how useful he is being part of it. Same with my lodger and her son, I was much more impressed about their participation than they were themselves!

I'm much improved, thank y'all. Eating my lunch in my armchair on a work day is a lordly pleasure.

Really terrific article in the Guardian about political choices in the NHS.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jan/06/patients-dying-nhs-hospital-corridors-avoidable-deaths

I read Hunt's self-serving book when it came out. He's a blighter. I was on the receiving end of some Huntathons in the NHS when he was SoS. But strangely, he gradually came to see the light on a couple of things (like openness, freedom to speak up, some limited acceptance of safety culture). Hence his attempt at rehabilitiation with his book about avoidable deaths. Which he is now happily presiding over as chancellor.

Afternoon - we've just come back from Center Parcs - much splashing around in the water, and slightly achy legs from all the cycling. I'm hoping that all the exercise has slightly offside at least some of the food, I'll see in the morning.

My preg thread baby is already at uni - he was one of the first lot, several of them have started uni last year. Next year (about June time I think?) it'll be 20 years since the first preg thread started on GUT.

MOT due next month for my aging Zafira - don't want to replace it though, as cars which will comfortably fit 2 gangling greyhounds plus a couple of teenagers are not that common.

Bike and Alfa MOT'd, 70 quid. Well haven't got the ticket for the Alfa yet, but I've paid for it.

My car's in for an MOT this coming Monday. I drive like an old person and generally fairly short runs, so fingers crossed it'll pass.

The first cars that me and him drove were £100 ones from his step-dad's scrap yard. The first one was a 1970s Ford Escort where the gear stick would sometimes come off when you changed down and once one of the back windows fell out while we were travelling. Those were the days, eh.

I sure don't miss the days when every journey was an adventure, would you arrive in one piece or not!

True, duc, it is nice having more reliable vehicles, but those early days are quite interesting to look back on. Saying that, the endless weeks of pushing the car to bump start it are not terribly fond memories

I bought my current car when I retired, as although the car I had was still good, it had 150K on the clock, and I knew if I didn’t buy a car then I’d never be able to afford a new one when my lump sum had been spent (about 18 months it lasted, FFS). Unless I wrote it off in an RTA it would be my last car, so I got all the bells and whistles like annoying parking beeps, because when I’m old and can’t move my neck any more, I’ll be glad of them, even though they just irritate me at the moment. Anyway, largely thanks to the pandemic and more recently crippling sciatica, I’ve driven a total of just 3000 miles in the last 3 years, when I used to do 30K a year when working!

I'm a bit tired, we've just had a five hour drive back from near Huntingdon. We met a neighbour at the services, she'd had a ten hour drive to Eastbourne, last week!

Three young ones in tow.