Thread 8 - TalkLair: “Brewing Russell's teapot”

[Kucinghitam]

Continuation of previous threads (thread 7).

The new lair of JTT escapees is all cosy and homey; we have truly settled here. Outside, the garden is blooming with spring flowers. Inside, the hearth is glowing, pictures are up on the walls, rugs are down on the floors (and assorted pets curled up on them).

We just won’t mention the gnawed bones of our prey over there in the corner of the cave…

Does burning peat suggest a location in Ireland? Maybe when other barrier contraception was unavailable, bedroom walls and doors did the trick. Both my grandmothers could have done with it - thirteen pregnancies, eight children to raise adds up to lots of work.

It does indeed, @DeanElderberry . Both my parents were Irish and every summer, until my daddy died were spent in Ireland. We still went back after he died just not every summer.

@Tricyrtis2022 , I think it was all down to great aunt Eileen. She never married and I think she feared sex happening in the house.

My grandparents died when my parents were very young - except for my mum's dad. He was my Irish Cultural Mentor and kind of took over as my Steady Male Presence when my dad died when I was 18. I used to visit him in his very masculine living room (his second wife was usually out) which had Irish memorabilia and pictures of Lancaster bombers all over it. He came over to England to help build RAF bases during the war. He would ask me questions about Young People Today and try to make me Irish through the medium of poetry and music. I have a lasting love of Clannad thanks to that man.

God I really really miss him.

I've just taken in our Waitrose delivery, and I'm quite certain the driver was silently judging (or at least, perplexed).

To get my excuses in first, (a) I had a £50 voucher to spend, (b) it's time for the end-of-school-year teacher presents, (c) plus I wanted to take some British delicacies as gifts on our upcoming holiday, (d) some suitable-looking stuff was on offer, (e) there's a pack of burgers in our freezer that need to be eaten before we go, (f) we get all our fruit & veg in a weekly box from the local grocer.

So, my Waitrose delivery today consisted of:

• Double-pack Jaffa Cakes (5x)
• Lindt chocolate truffle gift boxes (7x)
• Roll of wrapping paper (1x)
• Pack of brioche buns (1x)
• Multipack of toilet paper (1x)

And it all fitted into one delivery crate, so there was no disguising it

When I was a Saturday girl in Sainsbury’s, a man came through my checkout with a full trolley of tinned dog food and four cans of beer. “Ooh!” I said, “Having a party?”

@MouseMinge that's tragic but also hilarious!

There was a little bit of rain here overnight and the tiniest drizzle this morning. Now that I have outdoor plants a bit of rain makes me happy. Well, nighttime rain has always made me happy, it's the daytime stuff that can be a bit of a pain especially if you've got to be out and about.

Now that Ocado have switched from Waitrose to M&S, I do a Waitrose order every few weeks for stuff I can’t get from Ocado now plus whatever I need that’s cheaper. This has resulted in a few niche Waitrose orders, mostly involving tissues (which my mum gets through countless boxes of) and a particular type of rye bread that she favours for breakfast. I don’t think the delivery drivers judge me but I do think they reckon I’m weird.

Lots of rain here last night. The garden looked happier this morning.

Anybody short of rain can have some of ours.it's poured here all week - the most miserable June I've known. And at the same time it's hot, so I'm in bed with nothing else on and feeling hot and sweaty (and not in a good way given that I have an 80 year old husband with a bad back) listening to the rain hammering down outside again.

Thanks Brit, but we have rain of our own today, I’m so pleased on the garden’s behalf!

I was just looking up the UK’s annual birth and death rates for a brilliant argument I thought I had (but didn’t, bah) and came across this little gem:

The most common birthday in the UK is September 26. On average, approximately 2000 babies are born on this day each year. Why is this the most popular birthday? Count back nine months, and you'll probably work it out!

I have two friends with that birthday and had never worked it out!

When my Mum died and our family was drunkenly reminiscing, my Dad thought it appropriate to explain why we kids were all born 9 months after his birthday. I really wish he hadn’t.

Help! We're being stalked in our own house by Cat Burglar.

We can't open any of our downstairs windows anymore, or she'll get in.

On days when one of us is WFH, we usually sit at the dining table because there's lots of room to spread out laptops and papers. So in the past few days, she's taken to SHOUTING at our back patio door to be let in (yesterday DH was doing a Zoom meeting and had left the door ajar, CB marched in and jumped on the table and shouted all through his meeting until he was forced to evict her).

Today CB interrupted my work several times. So eventually I gave up with the dining room and moved to the front room. I figured she wouldn't be able to see me as there isn't a convenient cat-height opening.

But nope. CB has obviously gone all around our house, leaping up on every sill and peering through each window, until she spotted me. And then SHOUTED so loudly that she got through the double-glazing and my fancy in-ear headphones.

Heh, that sounds like a right pain. Do you know where she lives?

Bubo does the same when his human is away and he's only allowed in the utility room where the cat door and all his things are. I'll be sorting his food out in the kitchen and he'll be outside the door wailing. Here he is wailing at us from some scaffolding a few years ago.

Ha ha! Those mewling faces!

Cats really do shout, don't they? I've just remembered Oscar came and yelled at me at 2.30 this morning and woke me up - no idea why, once he saw that I was awake enough to make a trip to the loo he buggered off again.

Darling little tootums boo.

Took me an hour and half to get back to sleep. Listed the counties of Ireland, the books of the bible, all the countries in the world, counted backwards in 7s from 350 and still didn't manage. Eventually took a paracetamol, which did the trick.

But as I said, darling little tootums boo.

I'm impressed, Elderberry, I couldn't do any of those.

If I can't sleep I place myself in an imaginary landscape and build a house. Been doing that for years and find it very enjoyable.

At the moment, I'm waiting for a dentist appointment in about 45 minutes and very much hoping they'll sort out the awful toothache currently tormenting me. The way I feel right now, I don't care what they do, yank the tooth out or what, I just want the pain to stop.

Toothache sympathies @Tricyrtis2022, I hope it gets sorted quickly!

Am very impressed by @DeanElderberry's prodigious memory.

Cat Burglar comes from our diagonal behind neighbour. They've been having major building works these past few weeks, perhaps this is part of the reason she's come to stalk us. (Also, DD thinks they got a puppy this spring). I was considering sending a mugshot of CB to the neighbourhood WhatsApp group but I wasn't sure what the point would be - it's not like they can keep her away from our garden?

Good luck Tricyrtis - that was me two weeks ago - she actually did take the tooth out (after years of wanting her to) and I'm feeling generally better.

My house-building version of get-to-sleep lists is doing a mental journey round the country visiting each county once but only once. I need to learn the periodic table - at least the top few rows.

No Cat Burglars here, but non-sleep was also an item for me last night. Lights out around midnight. By 12:30 was wider awake than I had been before. Got up at 1:30 and went downstairs and fiddled about on the computer and made a milky drink. Went back to bed about 3:30 and finally drifted off to sleep about 4:30, to awake about three hours later. I feel jetlagged.

a year earlier she had declined to do anything about the tooth until I'd done ten days of two antibiotics, one of them the strictly no alcohol one. The sooner they launch a regrow healthy teeth therapy the better.

Full moon on Monday, the combination of that and the short nights is probably partly to blame for poor sleep. Maybe also for midnight shouty cats.

Do Not Adjust Your Set:
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