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 have a vague recollection of walking around in a black bin bag, and of my dad shouting incredulously at teenagers to come back on Halloween on the 29th of October. This would be repeated later in the year with, ‘come back on bonfire night!’ And ‘come back on Christmas Eve!’ The children on my estate were very keen.

Flushed with success over turning me onto Claire Keegan, my Dad has sent me home with his spare copy of James Joyce’s Ulysses, so I’m going to give it a go, but he says it’s better the second time you read it. Ha! It’s HUGE, like a medical textbook, with tiny writing. (His other copy is a Folio illustrated edition and it’s really beautiful.)

I had to read that during my MA. It took me six weeks to struggle through it and I hated it. When I finished it I threw it across the room and swore never to read it again, a vow I have had no problem keeping.

Heh, Brit - if my Dad’s right you should read it again!

I mainly associate it with Kate Bush’s song Sensual World, based on Molly Bloom’s soliloquy.

She got permission to use Joyce’s own words a few years ago (having been denied it originally) but I prefer Kate’s interpretation.

Life is definitely too short.

Oh dear, I’m expecting it to be a real chore now!

You may well have better literary taste than me!

Stephen King is my literary pleasure.

I'm going to try to post a photo, I put it on the computer and saved a screenshot, but unlike last week, it doesn't want to let me transfer it to the phone.

We left Grimsby at 02:30, en route to Hartlepool and we appear to have the starling population of Grimsby onboard. There's about 70 or 80 of them!

That's adorable @SinnerBoy! They look like they've neatly stacked themselves in racks.

I managed one half-hearted contribution to the Trick/Treat thread, but really it's quite scary (appropriate for Halloween?). Those who are incensed at the "snobbery" of the OP seem to be particularly buoyed by the flames of class warfare. I genuinely see that both sides have a point though.

I think it is lovely for children to have the fun of T/Ting in a properly decorated neighbourhood, there is something a bit sad about being in an area where 99% of houses have gone dark (like where I live now). We ourselves used to walk DDs to a nearby estate (5 minutes walk) where lots of houses decorated for Halloween, so that they'd have lots of nice things to look at and more doors to knock. In fact it is one reason why we seem to be making more and more effort each year despite teen DDs not being interested in dressing up and going out anymore - to cheer up the area. We've been building up our fake pumpkins collection to have a bigger display (that way we only have to carve one actual pumpkin), also put up lots of fake cobwebs and fairy lights.

BUT. Several years ago, we lived in a set of Victorian streets where lots of houses made a big effort for Halloween - lights, big spiders, rows of pumpkins. And many of the adults really dressed up as well. (We were the sad house who had one pumpkin and the grown-ups boringly wearing normal clothes.) It was really wonderful to go T/Ting amongst our neighbours, DCs little school/nursery friends etc - very social community feeling that would linger in happy chats at the school gate for weeks afterwards. I can quite imagine the chaos of loads of cars clogging up those narrow residential streets, the resulting danger to young pedestrians in vision-blocking masks in the dark, the irritation of hundreds of randoms ringing your doorbell, of running out of sweets within minutes meaning you have to take down all your decorative efforts and hide in the dark. I didn't realise until I read that thread, that people share destination neighbourhoods on Facebook/social media so that these areas get genuinely swamped!

I haven't read the thread, but reckon there's a destination street near us - it's lots of pretty, largish, Victorian houses with lots of kids and a good community spirit. Last Christmas they put advent numbers in the houses, so someone is An Organiser. MrPSD went along there last night on his usual walk, and struggled to get through the hordes of children.

We went there on Halloween about 14 years ago when MiniPSD had a party and it was busy, and decorated, but there were only a few groups of kids. Things have obviously developed, presumably because of social media tipoffs.

Probably not a thing in England but always been big in Scotland. Ireland has similar tradition. Guising was what we called it growing up, and I still do, though my children call it trick or treat. The tradition went to America and then came back rather bigger.

Very well stacked starlings, Sinner. They do similar on the radio mast for our local police station.

Lovely starlings, Sinner. Did anyone notice them arrive?

Starlings are great, shouty scousers on a night out in the finest.

I didn't notice them, we sailed at 21:00 and was just getting up then. I heard them, but didn't go out of the workshop, as it was chucking down. I realised that there must be loads, because of the volume of their racket, looked out and was rather surprised!

Two fledgling thrushes now, too.

.

The one on the green grating flies away, the one on the yellow sits until you get very close, then hops a few steps away.

Hmm, first one appeared to load...

I love that if I can be arsed, and mostly I can't, I can wander down to the pier at about 16:00-17:00 and see them all coming in, a few hundred at a time, then joining together so there are thousands of them, and then settling on the roofs on the pier. Because you can see them so clearly from below you also get to see the odd one or two who are getting it "wrong".

I tried Ulysses for the 100 year anniversary and got so far and no further. . I did go to the end for Molly's soliloquy but it's a slog. There are bits within the slog that are more enjoyable and less of a slog but I decided life was too short. If I'm going to read a classic brick I'd rather go back to Anna Karenina or War and Peace. Both have moments of slog but are generally bloody glorious.

Thanks for the pics, SinnerBoy, it must be lovely seeing all those birds on the ship.

Re large literary tomes, I've been reading Ovid's 'Metamorphoses' and am enjoying it more than expected. When I was given it, my first thought was 'Oh god...' but it's actually quite entertaining, albeit very strange in parts.

macman had his flu and Covid jabs yesterday and is ill, shaky and shivery today. As I am apparently MUCH TOO YOUNG to be offered the jabs, does anyone know if this is normal? He had no reactions to either jab in previous years, but I don’t think either of us has ever had both jabs at the same time.

I had no problems when I had flu and Covid jabs together but there seems to be a wide range of reactions.

MrG was a bit under the weather after the 'flu jab this year, though this may have been coincidence as he was later complaining of a sore left arm until I reminded him that he'd been jabbed in the right arm. I gave him a single soluble paracetamol and he recovered.

I don't think either of us has ever had both jabs at the same time, but a friend in her 40s who works in a sort of independent-living care home (and has had Covid at least four times) had both together this year and felt rough for a day or so.

<on edit> What @Britinme said ... it varies.