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…

That's great news @angelico53 ! I went to librarianship college straight from school and got on the wrong course completely, dropped out after one term and went to uni the following year to do something that suited me much better. All the best to your son.

Hope he enjoys it @angelico53!

My 18 year old started yesterday. I suspect she will be in the artant #1 category - which would be fine, if it weren't for the £twenty squillions of debt.

That's great news, @angelico53 . I was a late uni person too. I went at 30 and I'm so glad I didn't go when I was younger because I got so much out of it doing what I was passionate about.

@MavisMcMinty thanks for the podcast link. Something to listen to tomorrow!

Yes, when I spent three years avoiding lectures and generally enjoying myself things were very different. No fees and a grant you could just about get by on. It’s very different now. I’m sure I actually learnt a quite lot in those three years it’s just that hardly any of it related to my degree!

I hope your daughter manages to both enjoy herself and learn some interesting and relevant stuff!

I'm just boggling that @weaseleyes has an 18-year-old. (I did know that, really. I mean, my kids are 14. Just boggling at where the time whizzed off to.).

Whenever my friends’ kids head off to the next stage of education I feel I need a recount as something is clearly wrong. I can only conclude that time is slippery and sometimes years slide by without me noticing.

A young man on my dog-walk the other day was surprised to see me sitting on the log he walks over (very nimbly and agiley) to cross the river, and was then almost startled off the log and into the river when he saw Kitten Ava stretched out nonchalantly along the middle of the log - she’s mainly black so well camouflaged, he didn’t see her until he almost stepped on her.

Anyway I was wondering who he was and realised with a shock he must be the neighbour’s little boy who’s the same age and has the same name as my youngest nephew… they are both 15 now and my head can barely believe it.

Awww at Kitten Ava!

And talking of crossing rivers, I have been enjoying this thread:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4905382-neighbours-indiana-jones-ing-their-way-into-our-garden?

Only read the first post, but that does look like an entertaining thread!

I've now read all the OP's comments and some of the others and am hooked.

I always feel for people who end up with some manner or other of arsehole for a neighbour. My upstairs neighbours are lovely and my downstairs neighbour is a bit odd but easygoing. The nextdoor neighbours on both sides are so quiet that I have no idea who they actually are. Works beautifully for me.

That’s a brilliant thread!

I saw that earlier, and meant to have a look. It certainly lives up its billing!

That thread is splendid, I’ve only read the OP’s posts so far but they’re great, this made me lol.

“Sawing through the ladder, rigging up a Ring doorbell system from 70ft away and some of the other more baroque suggestions from you all may have to wait until there’s a Shroud III. Some of those Halloween ideas are deeply disturbing, and whilst I’m not opposed to mentally scarring people for life, I know from experience that it takes planning.”

Good luck with results, mouse, and congrats Angelico / SonOfAngelico.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4905627-to-think-my-neighbour-is-a-cf?page=1

I’m a mature student. I missed more or less all of my secondary education, but my dad was an engineer and very good with the sciences so he taught me a lot. Not sure what I would’ve done if gone to university when I was 18. Probably medicine if I’d had the grades for it. By the time I eventually came to apply to university, I realised I probably wasn’t cut out for the stress of medicine what with my own health conditions, so chose biomedical science instead. I’m about to graduate with a first and don’t even have a GCSE. I kind of wish I’d chosen environmental science or engineering now but hey ho. And I do LOVE pathogens.

It’s been an incredible journey for me, opening up each new textbook thinking, WTF, and closing it knowing so much more than I ever thought was possible for someone like me to know. I’m really sad to be finishing but hopefully there will be an opportunity to do an MSc in the future, when I know more about what I’m going to do long-term.

Brilliant couple of threads!

We are grumpy because we had a lovely meal booked tonight in Williamsburg, as we head towards the kids in NJ tomorrow and home on Thursday. We got to the restaurant to find there was a power cut affecting the whole downtown and all bookings cancelled. We are now back at the hotel awaiting a pizza delivery, which is not the same thing at all.

I’ve just finished reading Tara Westover’s Educated which was absolutely brilliant. She missed out on all of her childhood education and ended up with a PhD from Cambridge. I cried through a lot of it as so much resonated with me, not so much the circumstances behind her lack of it (extremist Mormon parents) but her desire and determination to be educated, against the odds, to escape the life that had been mapped out for her.

Love the love of pathogens, @CyanCrystalViolet

@CyanCrystalViolet I love your education story! You have done so brilliantly (and pathogens are amazing).

Boo for power cuts @Britinme.

Apropos of nothing, this suggestion popped up on my Insta. Makes toast, eggs and beans! The ultimate student-house appliance, methinks. Or possibly the ultimate ChezKuc appliance, as DH and DDs were all very excited by it.

Finding the education you actually want/need in later life is wonderful. For me it was horticulture, when I was forty. When we moved up to Lincolnshire, I had my first garden for many years and really went to town on it, cutting out lawn to make new beds, cramming in plants (thank heavens for Morrisons), chopping and changing how the garden looked. It was the most delightful headache. One day, Mr Tric was looking at the village newsletter and noticed an RHS course being advertised to be run nearby. I applied to join and my life changed. It's the best course I've ever done and I immersed myself in all that was taught.

I felt like a duck taking to water for the first time. I loved where we were taught (in a building on the site of a mansion with 300 acres), loved the material, got on with the teacher and other students. Everything that was taught sank in, as if I was simply being reminded of it. When exam time came, I wasn't even especially nervous because I'd revised for many weeks. The RHS have a reputation for tricky and difficult questions, it's all define, describe, list, explain, with no multiple choices. I was never much good at exams before and did badly at school and not much better at university, but having chosen the right subject made all the difference. 20 years later I'm happily working in the area and feel like I've finally found my place.

Like the other late-comers to education, it feels almost better to have been late because I now know what I want.

What a corner of positivity this thread is, after some of the pretty grim reading elsewhere on MN!
In other news, I have a re-occurrence of a CF neighbour situation. It's not in the same league as the wonderful Indiana Jones thread (and doesn't merit telling the world) but still a tad annoying. I have no garden as such, just a small back yard, fences on both sides. A tool-shed at the end and a wood-store (with a roof) alongside it, both up the boundary with my neighbour. Some time back, I noticed a lot of breadcrumbs in my yard. it was attracting the odd sparrow, but also the bloody pigeons. I got the step-ladder out and had a look, and sure enough, my NDN was chucking breadcrumbs onto the roof of my shed, and birds were gathering on the roof, covering it in bird-shit, and then the pigeons were dropping crumbs into my yard, making a hell of a mess. He wants to feed the birds, but the CF doesn't want the mess on his property! I cornered him about it, and made it clear that this was unacceptable, and not to put breadcrumbs on my property. Quite apart from the mess, I am concerned it attracts vermin. And he muttered and mumbled, but that was that. Then, yesterday, I noticed breadcrumbs in my yard again. Standing on a garden chair this morning, I could see the roof of the wood-store: the CF has taken to throwing his breadcrumbs on that now! So I grabbed them and chucked them back over the wall into his yard. I should add that his yard is very neat, and festooning with plants and so on. He's always out there watering. So, as I said, he doesn't want any mess in his yard. The wall is high: we can't see into each other's yards. Through the kitchen window I noticed he was tossing a few crumbs back, so he must be there. So I went out and loudly shouted "Oi! No more crumbs on my property!" I don't want WW3 here, other than that, he is a bit odd, but doesn't cause trouble, he never minded me parking my car outside his house when I had two cars for years (the sort of thing many less easy-going neighbours would have complained about), but I'm not standing for this. I am thinking the right move is a note through his letter-box, saying, I've told you before, and I mean it, no crumbs on my property, and if you persist, you'll be getting them back through your letter-box?
Proportionate?

I think that sounds entirely reasonable, @duc748 - he's definitely a CF!