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…

Our food waste bin blew over.

Sorry to hear about your furnace troubles @Britinme and during such a cold snap too!

DH messaged me this morning to reassure me that we still have a roof (for now), but our rickety old garden gate has bitten the windy dust.

Britinme · Today 04:26

No storm here but our furnace has gone on the blink and it's going to be -13C tonight.

Crikey, that sounds pretty rough. Have you any other source of heat?

Hope you can get that fixed quickly, Brit!

After all the racket last night, it seems the damage sustained is 1 (empty) bin fallen over, and a neighbour's roof tile landing on the lawn (a rather solid tile, so good thing it didn't land anywhere else). Solar panels happily generating power, so they must still be attached.

Good result, Binturong, glad you didn't get any damage.

No we haven’t got another proper source of heat but we left the oven (electric) on all night with the door ajar. The house is pretty well insulated, not being of masonry construction as most American houses aren’t, so although it’s cold it's not freezing inside the house. We were warm enough in bed though as I write I’m sitting up in bed with a cup of tea in my hand and I need to have a cardigan on. DH is downstairs and the furnace fixing guy from the oil company (oil fired furnace and they serviced it last March) is expected soon. DH thinks it may be a clogged filter because when he presses the reset button the system starts up and then conks out a few seconds later. There’s plenty of oil in the tank - we’re on automatic refill and the oil company is good about knowing our pattern of usage.

My parents are both somewhat afflicted by the hoarding phenotype; their home is so cluttered that I always stay in a hotel when in Malaysia. But this trip I’m trying to keep costs down, so I’m staying with them.

I was helping my mum to clear out her ancient fridge (she can’t bear to throw away food) when I found a little plastic tub, neatly labelled. See attached photos.

In case the pictures aren’t visible, the tub contained: a slice of cake from my wedding, 20 years ago.

What did you do with it, Kuc? Is it still edible?

I like that it’s labelled Wedding cake (London) to distinguish it from any other bits of cake from weddings in other locations!

So far it sounds like the storm has passed us by without too much damage which is good news. Hope Elderberry is similarly unscathed.

I'm unscathed, but an ash tree is the garden wasn't so lucky. Pacing it out I reckon it was between 60 and 70 feet high. Rotted almost wholly through at the base - fell perpendicular to the public road and missed the perimeter hedge by a few feet. Lucky all round. Talking to people this morning suggests the nearby town also got the advantage of the wind shadow - places all round had blackouts (150k+ homes and businesses nationally) but this area escaped.

I hope that boiler is working again by now.

And I want to know is wedding cake fridge the same machine as engorged sea cucumber fridge.

Sounds like a narrow escape all round with the fallen tree but glad you got through the storm without too much damage and disruption. Well done that wind shadow!

Thank goodness for the wind shadow!

With the ash tree, it's saved you a few bob by coming down on its own which is jolly good of it. Shame it can't cut itself up for firewood too.

Ash is the best firewood too.

I am laughing at Kuc's preserved wedding cake - can't imagine it's edible!

Furnace man is still here, having turned up an hour and a half after he said he would. The furnace is running but still keeps turning itself off when it shouldn't and the guy is scratching his head and trying to figure it out. It's only about thirteen years old so it shouldn't need replacing yet (at least I hope it doesn't - goodness knows I've got enough bills mounting up).

Fruitcake lasts pretty much forever, I think, so it’s probably edible but not exactly at its best.

Eating it now would be destroying a relic of the wedding.

They still sell bits of Queen Victoria's wedding cake which is probably past its best but doesn't look anything other than a little on the dry side.

I'm glad everyone has come out the other side of the storm unscathed apart from a gate and a tree. And a tile. I got blown about yesterday afternoon but stayed in for the rest of the day. On Saturday night it had already started blowing a lot, seaside I guess, and I was blown forward to the edge of the pavement when a car was coming around the corner. I was overly dramatic about it and there's no way it was strong enough to blow me in front of the car but it felt like it was hence, dramatics. I'd been out with Snoop to see Mark Watson who was very good. He went to university with Suella De Vil and knew he well enough - they weren't friends - to know she was thick as mince and an arsehole to be laughed at by other students. Whodda thunk it!

In food news I've been having baked potatoes with lashings of butter, eating a little bit of the skin and yesterday having a full meal of it by adding a sandwich filler (marked down in the supermarket) of tuna, sweetcorn and mayonaisse. I'm almost a normal person!

Excellent baked potato news! Baked potato with beans and cheese was my standby canteen lunch when I was working on account of the other hot food being a bit rubbish and very expensive. Mostly I took lunch in with me but I do like a baked potato now and again!

@Kucinghitam my mum hoarded a piece of her wedding cake too, except she kept it in a drawer. When I was 7 or so I remember going into the drawer and eating a bit of the 19 year old icing.

Excellent news about the baked potato, @MouseMinge ! Our dinner tonight is leftovers from the remains of a ham joint chopped up with baked beans, sauteed onions and some other veggies and mashed potato on top and baked. There wasn't quite enough mashed potato to seal the top, so the potato has almost disappeared into the rather soupy underneath stuff. It looks a bit grungy but actually tastes really good. That with some green veg will take me less than ten minutes to prep and reheat, and I made some brownies yesterday so that is dessert.

To my horror, mum actually took a bite of the cake! Apparently it was still edible, according to her. She appears unscathed after several days, fingers crossed. I made her throw the rest away.

The marauding reanimated sea cucumber was in my aunt’s fridge.

Good news on the food front, Mouse. How's your swallowing? My brother in law got out on Friday and still has a feeding tube.

We still have the top tier of our wedding cake, it looked fine last time I looked at it, it was laced with brandy, which has probably evaporated over the last 16 years...

@VictorianBigot I wish I could remember. And I googled where it was near. Bardsley's! They close early because they're so good they don't need to be open late to make their money. And there used to be queues for food. They are so good.

I want the cheesy chips and beans right now.

Last night I had the delight of some Higgildy Piggildy cheese and caramalised onion little pastries. Like sausage rolls but not. I then had some quiche. The first was a bit difficult the second more difficult which made little sense but I will keep trying stuff. Oh and I had a bar of Lindt milk chocolate and a twirl.

I know we've still got nearly two pages to go but I'm surprised we're getting close to a new thread soon. Time flies when you're chewing the fat.