Thread 11 - TalkLair: “The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles.”

[Kucinghitam]

Whoops, missed the filling up of the previous thread! (thread 10).

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…

Excellent, Mouse! So nice to eat real food again.

We are having an unexpected weekend in Canada. DH has a small account he's had for years and not used in the Royal Bank of Canada, and in the process of simplifying things he decided to close it and put the money in his US account. It turned out that literally the only way to do that was to be at the bank in person with various forms of ID, since the account is so old they don't have a picture of him on file. So we took off this morning and drove 230 miles to St Stephen, New Brunswick, and decided to make a weekend of it so booked into something that advertised itself as a country in but is actually a bunch of little cabins. The bank stuff was dealt with and we noticed that St Stephen has a Chocolate Museum, so that is on the agenda for tomorrow. We're going home on Sunday. Luckily I have a lovely neighbour who loves cats and was happy to come in and feed ours for a couple of days.

Excellent! It’s a while since my kids have been the age for those meals, but M&S still do a good range, and Annabel Karmel also used to do a range (we’d have bought In Sainsbury’s.)

Lovely to hear about successful eating and trips to Canada!

Our excitement is that school term is over, thank goodness, and I'm not expecting to see my (increasingly tired and fractious) DC surfacing from their beds until noon.

Other excitement is that we are having a crowd of DH family visiting tomorrow for lunch, will be 10 of us in total (several fussy eaters amongst them). Not entirely sure what we're going to feed them. We used to have an excellent fish and chip shop, which was our default "casual takeaway" but now that has closed down.

DH is thinking he will make a large pot of fairly plain vegetable soup, served with crusty rolls and a cheese-n-meats board. And some salad (does that go with the rest?). We are debating whether his Christmas cake is mature enough (and sufficiently fed with brandy) to be decorated and served as the sweet; usually we'd leave the decorating until Christmas Eve. Might go for the lazy option of bought mince pies, they'll feel special enough when warmed up and dolloped with extra-thick cream.

Sounds good to me Kuc. I’ve given up making Christmas cake and Christmas pudding because nobody here but me likes it. DH likes mince pies though so I will make some of those. It’s only us and his cousin for Christmas dinner anyway.

That's lovely to hear you're able to eat, Mouse, it must be heavenly. Result!

Today is a big tidy up day as Mr Veg's mum will be visiting for a few days so we must be presentable - a proper cleaning day rather than the usual 'lick and a promise'. Because we heat with wood and carry the ash through the house, the dust gets everywhere. It's also Cobweb Central. Yesterday I baked bread so no need to buy it and we'll plan the menu for while she's here.

Excellent on the food Mouse, I hope you find something nice for Christmas day.

In "isn't having a cat wonderful?" news, I woke this morning to discover my older cat must have had a bit of poo stuck to her backside so she has rubbed it all over the carpet in the hall and living room, leaving me some rather impressive skidmarks to wake up to.

Ah well, I was planning on give the house a deep clean this weekend anyway...

Just tried some persimmon and it's very nice indeed, though difficult to describe the flavour. There's honey and a subtle something that makes you want more. Better on its own than paired with something else. We'll definitely have them again. Glad I bought them, though have to admit it was the fabulous shades of orange that caught my eye. It's a very beautiful fruit.

I think they taste very similar to mango.

Yes, they are a bit like mango. This morning Mr Veg went to the shop I got them from but they'd already sold them all. Shame, but the man said they were ordering more.

LOL. Yesterday I walked into the bathroom and found a segment of poo on the floor. Not sure if it was kicked out the box or if I perhaps made the mistake of opening the fridge mid-movement and he prematurely leapt out in anticipation of some lick-e-lix.

I do love mangoes. My favourite drink at the moment is apple and mango juice. Drink of the goddesses!

Here's an interesting thing - I'd never heard of it (although a few of the words had somehow made their way into my vocabulary) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yola_language

I'm particularly fond of the expression for sunset (sun going into the glen), and having a single word meaning both sunbathing and lounging in front of the fire.

That's fascinating, seems to be an Irish equivalent of Doric Scots, how am I only hearing about this now?

I'd never heard of Yola either, it looks fascinating and quite the rabbit hole.

What a record Hejira is! Been working its magic on me since (gulp) 1976! Listening on the train home from London. Euston was absolutely heaving!

I love Joni Mitchell.

Song For Sharon and Coyote; such great songs.

The craft fair I went to today had a stall with 'feminist candles. I think they were meant to be scented candles, but didn't seem to smell of much - Simone de Beauvoir had a hint of floral French soap, and Freda Kalo a faint suggestion of fruit (possibly lime?), but I got nothing from the others.

Gosh, Yola is fascinating. I know that it's Wexford centric but I can see aspects of it that appear to have spread/live on in some modern Irish. The best example is in the Yola Etymon column right near the end for go which is goan. I'm sure we all know that from Father Ted. But there are other bits here and there which made me think of Irish-English. There's a lot of "ee" things which lives on, differently perhaps, in the een which is used to often to mean little in Ireland. A maneen is a boy/little boy/little man. Girleen is a little girl, etc. In my own name the eena at the end goes with the bit at the beginning to mean dearest little one which was what my grandmother (Nora) was called all her life and who I was named for.

Anyway, it's bloody fascinating. If I could study something for the pure love of learning, money no object, it would be linguistics and the history and development of language. I think you could study it for you whole life and still have things to discover hither and thither.

I have never heard of Yola but need to look on something other than my phone to make any sense of it.

I’m baffled by the idea of feminist candles. What an odd thing to decide to make.

I guess candles can be plausibly associated with concepts that might generally thought of as 'good', like comfort, or well-being, hospitality even (long gone are the days when they'd have associated with poverty!), so tying that in makes people feel good about themselves?

<lights candle>

I have one of those long candles in a long glass where whoever is on it is made to look like Jesus or the Virgin Mary. Mine is Frida Kahlo as the Virgin Mary. I want one of Keanu Reeves holding his dog off of John Wick looking like Jesus. I have a t-shirt of that and it makes me happy.

Mouse you are a fucking star!

First day of school holidays is going great*. Also, I am getting definite shades of that thread about Teen selfishness and idiocy.

DDs have spent the whole morning slobbing about in dressing gowns, playing on their iDevices and no doubt chatting with their stripey-flagged online friends that they are not supposed to have.

DH and I both WFH. (I'm supposed to be on leave already, but my team is desperate to submit a paper before Christmas and so I am frantically beavering away with everybody else). DH took a break to cook lunch. At the same time, I put a load of laundry in the machine. Then we all had lunch, after which DH went to take the compost caddy out to the hotbin... at which point he shouted for me, because the outside drain was overflowing all over the patio.

So followed a very unpleasant half-hour in which the two of us, wearing matching yellow Marigolds, were crouched outside the kitchen door in the rain, bailing sulphurous filthy water out of the drain, hauling out revolting hair-leaf-fatberg** chunks of disgustingness. Meanwhile, the washing machine was inconveniently adding drainage water to the mess.

Being covered with Drain Grossness from head to toe, we shouted in for DDs to put the kettle on so we could try and flush the drain out. No response. Turned out they had both finished eating (in the bloody kitchen, so they had witnessed the entire development of the crisis) and just ambled off back to the front room to resume iDevice-staring. Eventually got one to boil some water and run the kitchen hot tap, although she did so rather grudgingly.

Came in afterwards, realised we would need to strip off almost all our outer clothes and burn wash them. The washing machine had finished, so we called DDs to take the clean load out, check which could be tumble-dried, hang up the rest, etc. Result was a tour de force of strategic incompetence and dramatic howls at the cruel oppressiveness of the adults, culminating in the winning strategy of picking a massive fight with each other so they could storm off to their bedrooms, slam doors, and escape from actually doing the task.*

Fucking hell I need a mug of tea.

*NOT great.

**We're super-careful to not put fat down the drain, so fuck knows where it came from. Gradual accumulation of tiny tiny amounts over the years, I suppose.

*Evil parent Me didn't let them escape, but gave them a bollocking and made them finish the task before permitting the storming-off-door-slamming.