Thread 5 - TalkExiles: "The Planet Goes On Being Round"

[Kucinghitam]

Continuation of previous lifeboat threads (thread 4).

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.

Years ago when I made my late-night hay-topping-up visit to the horses, walking up the north-facing hill I could see a green glow in the sky. I told everyone I’d seen the northern lights and they all scoffed. Years later I read that they are sometimes visible on the Devon moors so up yours, doubters and cynics!

I saw them over Portland once, about 17 years ago. Beautiful and felt quite eerie.

Bugger, missed this, but given it was drizzly last night the sky was probably clouded over anyway.

Failed to notice it was happening but local social media news feeds full of some amazing photos.

Congratulations on your new job, @dollymixedup!

And sympathies to @bignosebignose - I hope it is a mild case. I've completely lost track of COVID prevalence now (despite being part of the ONS survey).

Covid was at about 1/70 at the start of half term, and seemed to be bottoming out at that level from the previous peak. Too early for the post half term numbers.

Congrats @dollymixedup and a swift recovery to @bignosebignose

Thanks all, so far so good, the headache and temperature have gone and it feels like a heavy cold today, tired and sniffly, so with a bit of luck the brief fever was my vaccinated immune system kicking ass.

Can anyone advise on my Situation? www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/4752682-quick-minor-car-accident-question

I drove up to a local dark spot to try to see the aurora. Someone crashed into my parked car because, as he put it, he was paying more attention to the sky than the road!

The least the universe could have done after all that is to have provided me with a sighting of the aurora borealis, alas it wasn’t meant to be.

Oh that's a bummer @CyanCrystalViolet . Sorry about your car. We didn't see the aurora either :-(

Oh dear @CyanCrystalViolet!

(We didn't see it either - too cloudy).

There's a fab pic of the lights taken from Crosby beach in Mersetside, with one of Gormley's bronzes in theb foreground:

www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2023/feb/27/northern-lights-seen-across-uk-in-pictures#img-3

We are all cursing that we weren't aware that the lights would be visible there - we're 30m from the beach there. Dang.

Macman and I went to Crosby to see the Gormley installation on the way home from his Mum’s funeral in Liverpool. The fucking tide was in.

These are from 2021, North of Hammerfest:

www.flickr.com/photos/48541674@N00/52717166980/in/dateposted/

www.flickr.com/photos/48541674@N00/52717224948/in/dateposted/

I don't think they're too bad, for being taken with a mobile, on a moving ship. We've missed them here, the last couple of days, because of clouds.

And this garden muncher was in Hammerfest, the day before we joined the ship:

www.flickr.com/photos/48541674@N00/52716751881/in/dateposted/

The do look very tasty flowers. Much more appealing than moss.

Oh wow, they’re great photos, Sinner!

I was in bed at 21.00 so no aurora spotting from me.

My boydog fucked off again a couple of days ago, I’d been to the shops and was unloading my car, gate wide open, too busy heaving 25kg bags of dog food and logs and kindling to pay him any attention. Anyway, I took the other dog and the cats out on our walk, and a few hundred metres from home Badger came towards us all from the opposite direction. When he saw us he stopped dead, about 50m away, looking really scared and wild, like he didn’t know us at all, and it reminded me of a local farmer who’d lost his Jack Russell a few years ago, chasing a deer. (A deer! A JR thought he could bring down a deer!)

Apparently dogs go into a kind of fugue when they get lost, don’t know who they are or where they live, avoid any kindly people trying to rescue them, etc., and even though Badger wasn’t far from home and almost certainly not lost, I wonder if that’s what was going on with him? The farmer neighbour did eventually get his JR back, but he’d been gone a whole week, with occasional sightings of him 10+ MILES away.

Oh poor, naughty Badger! I hope he's remembered who his family is now?

Yes, when I called him he went wild with excitement, as though I’d just got home after being away for a few days, it was so weird! Me, his Mum and his cats, and he didn’t recognise any of us!

We had a springer spaniel who was nuts even by the standards of the breed. She was a terrible runner-away, utterly convinced she was going to catch a deer, and frequently brought to the nearest pub by the rangers where we used to walk her. She was a failed drug-sniffer and her enjoyment of everything was just the absolute best. I miss her still and she died 25 years ago.

It always amuses me how many of the posts on the Facebook group My Dog Is A Twat are about springers.

Aw, they are bonkers, I love their bonkersness. Such cheerful dogs, such joy in life. I’m sure other breeds are as well, but Dottie and Badger are my 6th and 7th, I’m a total springer addict.

Ugh, that makes my blood run cold! I've arrived at gardens I work in to find deer chomping away on plants I've been tending. Tulips and bluebells eaten to the ground and roses and other shrubs now just short, ragged stems. It's vexing, that's for sure.

That's funny about Badger, Mavis. Dogs are strange people.

We also get groundhogs. In my last (countryside) garden we had those and deer too, but here it's just the groundhogs that hide under the garage. I grew some kale once in my old garden and exactly when I was ready to harvest it I went out and found the lot eaten down to stubs. We've done nothing with this garden so far so there's nothing for them to steal.

We gave up growing sweetcorn for similar reasons, Brit. We have a perfect bed for it, it grows beautifully, forms lovely large cobs, and then exactly when it's ready to harvest the badgers clear the lot overnight.

I'm still deeply embittered about the cattle from next door getting and eating my purple sprouting broccoli.

Poor Badger - I've seen just that bewildered wild expression in dogs' eyes - they need lots of cuddling and encouragement. Has anyone written about what it is and why it sometimes happens?