Thread 10 - TalkLair: “The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles.”

[Kucinghitam]

Continuation of previous threads (thread 9).

Although the nights are gradually drawing in, the new lair of JTT escapees is all cosy and homey inside. The hearth is glowing, the walls covered in dubious artwork, books by non-approved authors line the shelves, 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…

I can’t do gynae stuff awake now. I’d need gas and air before I even got in the consulting room.

I'm hoping it's done and dusted now but they're not getting near me again without some manner of hard drugs.

We're going for our Covid boosters on Wednesday. We received no invite from either the GP's surgery (which ran a dual covid/flu clinic last month) or the central NHS system, despite Mr G being Officially Ancient and me being Merely Old. So I assumed they want us to die (which is fair enough), and I had a burst of proactivity and booked online. That will teach 'em! All fine and confirmed by text & email. This evening I had a text from the central NHS system urging me to book. Mr G has had nothing. WTAF?

We also had our flu jabs at the local Boots, as we didn't get an invite for that either. However, to get to the point ... this prompted Sir to complain that his arm is still a bit bruised from the 'flu jab. Oh, I said, where does it hurt? And he rubbed the top of his left arm and said "Just there". Readers, he is left-handed (the weirdo) and chose to be jabbed in the right arm. I was there, I saw it and as soon as I mentioned it, he remembered. His right arm is fine.

In the spirit of science, I rubbed the top of my right arm and if I press firmly enough it's a bit sore. Curiously the left arm, where I was jabbed, isn't.

I'm left-handed and so is Mr Tric, so there 😜

I had my flu jab on Saturday morning, in my left arm as my right shoulder is already painful. It’s still stiff and a bit sore today. I didn’t have the last couple of Covid boosters although I might have this one. I still haven’t had the bastard thing yet.

My dad’s side of the family (including my dad) are mostly left-handed. And mostly weirdos. I’m not quite ambidextrous. I mostly use my left hand/arm for things these days due to my right shoulder issue.

Some of my favourite people are both left-handed and weirdos.

The other weirdo thing on my dad’s side is quite a few of them are red-green colour blind, including the women. My dad used to wear some strange colour combinations as a result.

I think that is hereditary though.

Yes, it will mean I’m a carrier and if I had a son he’d have a 50% chance of being colourblind. I think.

Edit: and 50% chance of a daughter being colourblind apparently. For some reason I thought it was less likely to affect daughters.

Edit 2: 1 in 200 women vs 1 in 12 men? Genetics were never my strong point.

It's just occurred to me that the sore arms thing (for both of us) may be real but entirely unrelated. We've had no washing machine for weeks, and have been carting stuff to and from the local launderette. He slings his bag over his left shoulder, whereas I use my right. There may be a tiny little bit of muscle protesting in the area where a jab would have gone in.

Very simplified explanation ahead:

It's because of the genes for the cone cells (the cells for colour vision). Our pre-primate ancestors had only 2 types of cones, hence were red-green colourblind. Somewhere along the primate lineage, one of the cone genes duplicated and then mutated, resulting in 3 cone types and allowing primates to distinguish reds and greens - the idea is that this was a great advantage to our fruit-eating tree-dwelling ancestors.

In humans (I don't know about other mammals, don't ask me) the duplicated genes are carried on the X Chromosome. (The other cone gene is on Chr 7 if I recall correctly.)

Men have only one X chromosome. So if their X chromosome carries a defective cone gene, that's it, you have no backup and are rendered unable to distinguish red from green. Women only experience red-green colourblindness if both their X chromosomes carry the defective cone genes.

I got Covid boosted last Wednesday (family outing as I wanted my brother to help get my mum in while I parked the car so we booked him in as well despite him living in a different part of the country). Took my mum for her flu jab today but that was via an invitation from the GP which I haven’t had. I’ll look for a drop in, I think. No real aching arm from the Covid jab but the injection site was hot to touch for a few days.

Thank you @Kucinghitam, that makes perfect sense. I was hoping you or bint would be along to explain it.

If I had to be colour blind, I think I would choose tritanopia. So pretty

Both my arms were a bit dead after the flu and covid jabs last week but fine later on the next day. It's the way of these things.

I'm turning on the night storage heating tonight. It's got properly chilly and I'm all wrapped in blankets on my recliner like an ancient grandmother.

I'm not keen on having another Covid booster. My first jab made me I'll for five days, the second for three and the booster for over a week, with two days in bed - being almost never sends me to bed. I was weak and lethargic for a month.

Actual Covid made me very ill for ten days and it took me months to get over it properly.

Getting 8 vaccinations at once, for going to the tropics only made me a bit ropey for a couple of days.

If it messed with me like that I'd be very reluctant to have it again, Sinner.

I put the night storage heating on last night and woke to a warm, but not too warm, flat today. It's still warm, but the sort that is helped along by a hoodie, joggers and thick socks. That will do very nicely!

I am putting the wood-burner to good use, fire it up around tea-time, turn the heating right down, and the house stays warm over night. I've never lived anywhere where I've been warm and comfortable in winter (bar a brief spell in Africa) until now. And I've never lived further North!

I actually had a Covid in the left and flu in the right shoulder this afternoon, so I can weigh up which aches most, or not. But jabs haven't bothered me too much in the past.

Nice to have a woodburner, duc. We had one in our last house and it formed a warm centre to the place, which wasn't just about the temperature.

Since we got our house double-glazed, we haven't needed to use the woodburner as much. (Or possibly I've got used to being colder?). We do light it around the multipurpose-winter-solstice-festivity season though - something particularly delightful about having a lit fireplace that time of year. Just makes everything feel lovely and cosy.

NB: I know that woodburners are allegedly worse than 10000 Hitlers in terms of evil particulates, toxic fumes and destroyers of little children's lungs. Still using mine though, sorry not sorry.

I used ours on Sunday, when it was frosty. Last night, too. I have a stock of wood, some of which is wet, it's from a dead tree, which was broken off at height. I presume that the rain soaked into it.

I've segregated it from the dry wood and put some at the sides of the burner, hoping that it'll dry quickly.

My office was originally the garage, and is off the main heating system, so the woodburner is necesaary to keep me toasty through the winter.

Our big woodstore is at the dark side of the house, so our logs do tend to get damp from rain and cold. Our system is that we have a smaller storage unit in the (open) porch, to which we transfer the logs to dry out before bringing them indoors to the actual log basket.

Have you got a roof over the wood store? You could attach a tarpaulin, to keep the rain out.