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.

Have you ever eaten brains?

Yes, in Morocco, in 1971. They were horrible, but my dad wouldn't tell us what they were until we'd had some.

Tricyrtis2022

I wonder at you living there, Sinner, it's certainly not somewhere I'd choose to live.

Seaton Village is on the road to Houghton, just before Sharpley. Two miles out and rural.

have you ever eaten brains?

we seem to have inadvertently created a zombie thread.

@Itwasntevenblackpudding I agree re French food. Bland and uninspiring. I was desperate for a good curry, or even just some flavour. I love French cheeses, wines, boulangerie and patisserie though.

@IReallyLikeCrows that’s what happened to me when I had strep throat a few christmases ago… My throat got more and more sore and I felt dreadful. Managed to get an appointment just after Christmas and they prescribed antibiotics, felt fine within a day. I hope they can do something for you ASAP.

Christmas baking session ChezCyan. Got some chestnuts roasting in the oven too.

Oh and fish and chips… I’m a Proper Northerner so grew up not knowing anything other than good F&C. When I came to the south I was horrified. Despite living by the sea there isn’t a single fish and chip shop I’d go to round here.

I have just had a cod's roe fritter with fish and chips for supper. It was lovely! (F&C because my ma thought she had some posh fishcakes in the freezer, but they turned out to be fishcake-shaped bread rolls...)

And hello @Itwasntevenblackpudding ! It's odd how food things vary - I remember as a teenager offering to make a cake for my exchange family and being very surprised that I couldn't buy a big box of icing sugar, just sachets of sucre en poudre.

Doesn’t baking powder come in sachets too?

Soft cod roe tastes like fishy brains, hard roe is more like a taramsalata fish cake.

Both are lovely. We used to have soft roe a lot when I was young but haven't had it in ages.

Tomorrow is pay day, so I’m waiting until midnight before going internet shopping. There’s a coffee subscription I’m going to “get for macman” (me). Getting a new lodger next month, it’s just a shame Christmas isn’t in January.

I’ve put Christmas Day’s pigs in blankets in the oven, it’s hard ignoring all the lovely food in the fridge. I have more in the freezer. I like to keep a full Christmas dinner in the freezer since getting snowed in 2 years running in 2009 and 2010. Came in handy when we were snowed in last week.

@CyanCyan . The doctor who called back was lovely but she wanted me to go to a&e - the walk in won't take people who haven't tested negative for COVID and I have no tests left - where, she told me, I might be waiting for up to 24 hours. No. I feel too ill to spend that much time in a&e but I'm also not ill enough to be fast tracked, so no. I've decided I'll go tomorrow morning if I'm still getting worse/am no better.

That said I feel a little bit like my fever has broken and that maybe, just maybe, the worst is over. I do hope so! Swallowing liquid is definitely less painful. I'll be back with an update tomorrow.

I was cheered up this afternoon by Casablanca. That is one near perfect film.

One of those films where you can read the lines out loud! One of the great movies which casts its spell every time.

Hope you've passed the turning point, Crows, and are noticeably improving by tomorrow. If not, please reconsider A&E of you can't see a GP - there's an especially nasty strain of Strep around at the moment, and if you do have that you really need antibiotics.

Hello, @Itwasntevenblackpudding. Nice to meet another non-fan of French food, although in my case the problem is not so much blandness as the non-existence. Vegetarian is not a concept they handle well, and I now have a dairy allergy as well that will rule out most of my usual standbys.

Bit behind on xmas preparations here, as we've been away for a couple of weeks, but the tree is up and lit, food collections booked for tomorrow, and we have mince pies and cake, so the basics are covered. Terribly uninspired on the present front this year, but everyone is getting something.

I do hope you feel better soon Crows: your Morrisons trip sounds ghastly.

I'm another fan of brains, and also of French food, but maybe I'm out of date because I had some memorable long holidays in France in my teens staying with a lovely Frenchwoman. That was in the 1970s. Marie-Jeanne was a good cook, and her parents and relatives lived in South West France, and did things like made, and tinned, their own pâté, made cheese - all delicious. Her cousin had a bakery that made enormous wheels of pain de campagne that people, came from kilometres away to buy. And she introduced me to brains, lightly fried. We ate only small amounts of meat and lots of vegetables and fruit and the quality/taste was excellent to my Yorkshire taste buds. I have only been to France for brief visits recently and was disappointed by the food in a couple of supposedly good restaurants in Paris the last time I was there, so maybe it is resting on its culinary laurels, as I've read.

I still like classic French bourgeois cooking a lot; though when that is done in UK I think there is less of the vegetables and more meat - no starting with a little salad of grated carrots: straight into a meat stew served with potatoes and vegetables. I do it myself when I cook that style.

Crows, is your mouth red, full of sores/vesicles and is there white crap in there? If so, I (non-expertly) suggest it could be strep. I've had it a few times after colds.

Curse and damn the people who have brought the health service to this pass.

Oh @IReallyLikeCrows you poor thing, have some unMumsnetty hugs and . I really hope you're on the mend. I echo everyone saying that if in doubt, please head to A&E. Despite the long waiting times, if you need antibiotics, you need antibiotics.

@BinturongsSmellOfPopcorn

Well the French are slowly being dragged screaming into understanding Vegetarians, but many will still insist that ham doesn't count as meat.

Interestingly, from the point of licensing, beer and wine don't really count as alcohol!

@IReallyLikeCrows I hope you are over the worst and start to feel better soon!

I am up ridiculously early as we fly today and I am too excited to sleep

Okay, got you now. I don't really know the area now, it all blurs into one blob. Looking at the aerial map, the land where my grandparents had their smallholding is now a small housing estate. All the barns and greenhouses gone, memories buried. It was next to the railway line where the coal trains used to run.

Mr T started on the Christmas eve chilli last night. If we're staying with his family, it's traditional that he cooks chilli, but this time he decided to use Mexican chillies and oregano and the smell is incredible, so rich. We haven't tasted it yet but it's been sitting overnight so will have had time for the flavours to blend.

Good luck at the docs Crows, I hope they give you what you need.

@IReallyLikeCrows How are you feeling this morning?

Well, arse.

This morning over breakfast we were just discussing how we need to get the shower repaired in the main bathroom - it's gone lukewarm, no matter what jiggling and fiddling we do to it (possibly related to moving the boiler??). And I was saying that we don't really want to waste money getting it fixed, when in fact the entire bathroom needs doing. And so we'd need to save up for that and/or not go and visit my family next year.

Anyway, as I said this, I glared up at the kitchen ceiling to where the bathroom is. And noted a spreading stain, from the bathtub plughole and going out in three directions.

So the bathroom situation has gone from annoying to ohgodquiteurgent.

Oh no! A leaky bathroom for Christmas, just what everybody needs never!

Oh no! Sounds like either your waste pipe is leaking or the seals have gone.

That should be a relatively easy emergency fix for a plumber to do.

oh Kuc. Rotten timing, and you've already had quite enough of not being able to see family. I hope some miraculously cheap plumbing solution happens.

Even as I type the words I realise how ridiculous they are.