Thread 9 - TalkLair: “Russell's teapot goes on being round”

[Kucinghitam]

Continuation of previous threads (thread 8).

The new lair of JTT escapees is all cosy and homey; we have truly settled here. Outside, the garden is blooming with summer flowers - should bloody well be, what with all that rain. 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…

Nicely served.

I think a lot of cats have problems with humans in the wrong place. MaBint used to share a cat with her neighbours and he was perfectly happy in either house, but if one went round to the other's for dinner he panicked. And Curious will happy accept head rubs and chats from me in the back garden but flees in terror if she spots me in the front - or, even worse, in the side passage between the two.

An elderly black cat appears to have adopted our entire street. She spends all her time on the pavement, road and sleeping under parked cars, so I'm in a perpetual state of anxiety on her behalf. Rumour is she belongs to a house on the main road, but there are at least four houses that now leave her food and drink in tiny bowls on the pavement in front of their homes. She looks so old and skinny I think they just can't help themselves. She is the spitting image of my 20 year old who died last year, so every time I see her I'm absolutely awash with emotion. Its very stressful!

It's really nostalgic for me reading all about cats roaming free, as my cats did in the UK. It doesn't happen nearly as often here. Some of that is to do with wildlife - we do get coyotes here, and fishers, so it's protective. A lot is to do with cats killing songbirds. A friend of mine is so hostile to cats in her garden (she has one neighbour who lets her cat roam) that she's threatened to take it to the pound next time it gets in her garden. I had great difficulty persuading her that this was an overreaction and that even though she is 'allergic" to cats (she has been in my house with little sign of distress) a cat in her garden won't bring her out in hives and certainly doesn't deserve to be kidnapped. I have to say that my opinion of her has diminished somewhat after that conversation.

Yesterday I had a silly but actually quite pleasant mishap at work - went to fill a bucket so I could clean some tools but the water pressure was a lot higher than expected and the hose suddenly whipped out of the bucket and sprayed me from head to foot. I put the hose back in the bucket and the same happened again, so I got properly soaked, and I was SEEN because the customer's daughter was standing nearby. I did feel a bit silly but enjoyed the drenching and my clothes and hair dried out quite fast. It's tempting to do it again.

In the current weather I'm surprised you didn't do it on purpose!

I do still have some dignity left, Brit! 😅

I can't remember where I heard about this, so apologies if it was on this very thread, but I enjoyed this 30 minutes about Flat Holm Island:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001ppvk/our-lives-series-7-one-man-and-his-island

@SinnerBoy and other arachnophiles.

As a result of your amiable approach to those labyrinth spids in my shed, I've just left them alone. I'll post some pics of a spider disappearing down one of her tunnels in the shed. She's huge; we call her, inevitably, Shelob. Her portals are surrounded by the shrivelled husks of a thousand flies and moths and other spiders, some of them pretty flippin' big themselves.

I tried to get a pic through the window of the shed at dusk, the other night. I knew where to look, so I cautiously approached and shone my phone torch to where I expected to see her. Not there. But as I glanced to the right a few inches, she was rearing up with four legs on the window, inches away from my schnoz. (I was wearing my old brown jeans so that's ok).

I feel sure that if I leave her there, her clan will take over the shed. Possibly the north of England.

An excellent spider, Angelico!

Gonners · Today 18:33

Coincidentally, Flat Holm was an answer on University Challenge this week. A princess / pretender to the throne fled there, after a defeat.

I sailed past it almost daily, for months, in 2021, doing a survey for Hinkley Point. We sheltered behind it, a few times.

Just been reading the very sad thread about the young woman in hospital with mitochondrial disease and the court case about withdrawal of treatment. I do wish people would RFT before they weigh in.

@Kucinghitam tell Mr K that his paying rent comment made me snort laugh. Django pays rent, and Francis lives rent-free because a heart-nosed unit like him doesn't have to pay rent. I wish Django didn't feel the need to pay rent but you have outdoor cats dead animals may well come with the territory.

IIJM that was previously unaware of the existence of post-box toppers?

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4892287-to-think-that-postbox-toppers-are-an-aberration-and-those-who-produce-them-should-be-shot-at-dawn-i-should-say-light-hearted-here-but-it-goes-against-the-grain?page=2

@MouseMinge I wish Django didn't feel the need to pay rent but you have outdoor cats dead animals may well come with the territory.

Arf! Our ex-feral indoor Spanish cat (indoor because we lived in an upstairs flat, and we only catnapped her when the bastard council decided to poison all the ferals) used to present us with the tails of small lizards. The lizards obviously survived and just grew new tails.

Clever lizards!

@Britinme I've just been looking at that thread, I don't know if I can go past page two because it's upsetting. Clearly, the young woman wants to live but also, clearly, she's not going to and all the wishful thinking in the world won't make that happen. It's desperately sad but I hope that her name and the name of the hospital stays out of the media because if they don't then the hospital and the staff are going to be faced with the awful protesters that other hospitals have had to deal with when they're trying to treat a dying patient who people who know nothing about medicine think can be saved by miracles.

Oh, and @duc748 - postbox toppers appeared here (East Kent) two or three years ago. Or maybe four or five? They started out as a Christmas thing, then Easter too, but I noticed them in the next village this morning. They're really quite beautifully done and make me smile.

@MouseMinge that's exactly how I feel. I didn't finish the whole thread but I got pissed off by the number of people who weighed in without even reading all the details beyond the story in the Mirror.

I started reading that thread about the woman with mitochondrial disease last night and had to stop. The number of wot-i-reckons was getting to me.

On a lighter note, IIRC knitted clothing for street furniture first came to my notice maybe 9-10 years ago when I lived in another city. There was a local yarn shop that started making what I can only describe as bollard socks, to decorate the two on the street corner outside the shop. Soon there were socks on more and more bollards, and then I started seeing them in other neighbourhoods. Within a couple of years, the lamp-post jumpers and postbox toppers started.

I like them. There's one near where I live now which is frequently updated, seasonally-themed or for big events.

I wonder who first thought of the idea.

As usual when it’s hot our broadband has conked out, and even the repetitive calling of 1571 and 1471 (because they’re free) hasn’t reset the router. Just noticed the blue light is back on so trying to catch up while I can. This fucking stupid house in its stupid fucking position, grrr!

I finished Holly and have just started reading it again. When I did my marathon re-reading of all Stephen King novels (bar the few I’ve lost) the ones from the past 20 years were like completely new novels to me, and I think that’s because in the olden days I always used to read them twice, first time at a gallop to see what happens, and the second more leisurely. Since we moved here macman has always swiped them off me as soon as I’m done. Anyway, it’s rather gruesome but I loved it, even though I don’t think I love Holly Gibney as much as SK does.

Hope all are well and that the thread cats have somewhere cool to trespass/sleep. x

So it's the heat that's messing up the broadband? I'd wondered if that was it as ours kept dropping out and my brother was complaining about theirs too.

There is a possibility of rain and a thunderstorm in the forecast today. Fingers crossed it happens.

It’s just a guess, but our ancient telephone system is made from copper wires which expand in the heat. IANAE, but it’s a bit of a fucking coincidence that the hotter it gets the shitter the broadband. It was fine for the crap weather we had all of July and August.

Good job I have unread books, a once-read Stephen King and a book of hard killer sudokus.

But it is grey, cloudy and rainy today, temp just 19C at present, so fingers crossed.

I’ve read a few pages of that thread on ST, and just wish more people had clicked on the link to the court report, which is comprehensive. Tragic case. Of course it is possible to fly an ICU patient to another country, and the Trust apparently has no objections to approaches from other countries, but there are no current trials, and the one that may open is for a different type of mitochondrial disease. The family could probably raise a few million but at the moment what for?

It's hard enough to face the inevitability of dying when you're a old bugger like 73 year old me and 81 year old DH. Must be harder when you're 19 and for the parents of the 19year old too.

Oh yes, the angriest, most-cheated patient I ever had with incurable lung cancer - “Why me? What did I ever do to deserve this?” (apart from smoke for 70 years) - was 94 years old.

And denial is a very useful coping mechanism, as I said on that thread, the patients I had who were in denial about their diagnosis often far exceeded their original prognosis, as did a colleague who survived 20 years with metastatic breast cancer, she ignored it and it sulked quietly in the corner.

Similarly with the girl I knew who didn’t realise she was pregnant until 6 months gone - literally overnight she went from being slim as a pin to heavily pregnant, I swear, saw it with my own eyes. The mind is an amazing thing!

We had a family outing to the cinema this arvo (me, Mrs BN, teenage support biped, almost teenage full human) to see Barbie. What a great bunch of lasses and lads that was.